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 Orlanth wrote:
Nobel committee finally caught on.

We ll better late than never.

It is plain as day that Obama got the award from being elected while black.

Laughable accusation. But maybe they are taking it back now because they realized that he was half-white!

He got the award for being the "anti-Bush". I would say that 50% of the award was on credit for his campaign promises and the whole "hope" rhetoric that was going wild, the other 50% of the award was for not being the previous "war-starting" administration.

Both sides of that didn't turn out like the committee planned.

It was a joke at the time and it's a joke now. They regret giving away a prize to someone that hadn't done anything to deserve it, do they? Well, gee. Who'da thought?

 d-usa wrote:

 Orlanth wrote:
It is plain as day that Obama got the award from being elected while black.

Laughable accusation.

True. He got the award for being anyone other than Bush.

 d-usa wrote:

 Chongara wrote:

It's not "Hussein" it's "HUSSEIN!" you gotta give it that emphasis.

Barack H̠ͅu̱̥̰̖̹͎̙s̪̼̜̠̗͚̜s̘̳͙̪̪̯e̩̱̩̠̤͍̘i͖n̠̙͇͉̬͈ͤͣ Obama


Am I doing it right?

How the hell did you do that....!!!


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 d-usa wrote:

 Orlanth wrote:
Nobel committee finally caught on.

We ll better late than never.

It is plain as day that Obama got the award from being elected while black.

Laughable accusation. But maybe they are taking it back now because they realized that he was half-white!

He got the award for being the "anti-Bush". I would say that 50% of the award was on credit for his campaign promises and the whole "hope" rhetoric that was going wild, the other 50% of the award was for not being the previous "war-starting" administration.

Both sides of that didn't turn out like the committee planned.

Hey... at least Obama donated the Prize money.

There's one good thing there.

Call me old fashioned, but I always thought that the point of a prize was that you got it for actually doing something of merit. Not the vague potential that you might do something.

 Breotan wrote:

 d-usa wrote:

 Orlanth wrote:
It is plain as day that Obama got the award from being elected while black.

Laughable accusation.

True. He got the award for being anyone other than Bush.

This is likely the most accurate answer, had Hillary been elected, they may have given it to her too

That said, to be fair, I don't believe they would have given it to McCain had he won the 2008 race.

 Torga_DW wrote:
It was a joke at the time and it's a joke now. They regret giving away a prize to someone that hadn't done anything to deserve it, do they? Well, gee. Who'da thought?

Is it any wonder the committee is losing credibility and respect?

 gorgon wrote:
Obama surely must rank below the great William McKinley.

Well, I believe the only state he hasn't visited is South Dakota, so presumably that's the place for Hawaii to lobby for a mountain to be named after him.

So far as declining the prize, I'm not crazy about that either. I don't think he should have been given it, but I think declining it kind of spits in the committee's (and by extension the prize's) face; too far in the other direction. I think accepting it was the least bad of two bad choices.

But oh man, he shouldn't not have gotten it and as Breotan showed there was like, no one who supported it even then.

 Frazzled wrote:
Lots of people referred to Carter, Clinton, Nixon, and Kennedy like that. Get the feth over it and quit calling people racists on the sly. We all know thats what you really mean.

Yeah, the "we know what you really mean" cuts both ways, homie.You want to say, as Breotan did, that's how we are now styling presidents after George W Bush (when the middle name was an important distinction), you can, but I'm pretty sure when I see it from certain posters and coupled with their posting history, like Relapse working it in 5 times in a single post, I'm pretty sure I get where that nail is being driven.

I did some casual googling with filters, and suffice it to say, the only major political figures whose middle names are routinely used on Dakka Dakka are George W Bush and Barack Hussein Obama (Hillary Rodham Clinton has been used 7 times). The formers is pretty evident in that, well, you need to be clear which one you need, but pointing out that the use of the latter is probably an attempt to point out weird otherness isn't exactly a tough sell.

 Breotan wrote:

 gorgon wrote:
Obama surely must rank below the great William McKinley.

He's certainly not the worst President we've ever had (Franklin Pierce) but he'll never be remembered as one of the best.

I'd rate President Obama as slightly better than President Carter but not much more than that.

He's also a lot better than the piece of crap president we had preceding him by the good ol' name George Dubbyah.

 Ouze wrote:
So far as declining the prize, I'm not crazy about that either. I don't think he should have been given it, but I think declining it kind of spits in the committee's (and by extension the prize's) face; too far in the other direction. I think accepting it was the least bad of two bad choices.

He could have respectfully declined the prize;
"Members of the Nobel Prize Committee,
I am touched and humbled by this nomination for such a prestigious reward. That you would even consider me for such an honor is a matter of pride to me, my family, and the country that I represent. However as I look at others who are also under consideration for this prize I see just how much each one of them has achieved, often at great personal risk to themselves and their loved ones. As such, although I am in prestigious company, I fear that my record is not the equal of theirs. We are still at war in the Middle East, we still have prisoners in Guantanamo Bay, and we still have hastily passed legislation that is an affront to the values that my country stands for. It is for this reason that I wish to respectfully decline the nomination for this year's prize, but commit to you, and to the world at large, that I will live up to the ideals of this prize and I hope that before my term in office expires that I will have achieved as much as some others so that I may stand before you again and let my record speak for itself as I accept the prize"

 d-usa wrote:

 Orlanth wrote:
Nobel committee finally caught on.

We ll better late than never.
It is plain as day that Obama got the award from being elected while black.

Laughable accusation..

One its not an accusation, no one is accusing anyone of anything.

 d-usa wrote:

But maybe they are taking it back now because they realized that he was half-white!

He was sufficiently black that in fairly recent memory he wouldn't have had much real chance of becoming POTUS.
A lot has changed.

 d-usa wrote:

He got the award for being the "anti-Bush".

Second the hysteria at the time was about Obama being a black president, not for being not-Bush. Having a black president clearly was a historic milestone, but it wasn't anything Obama could of himself be credited for, he was identified with as black and that of itself is not an achievement. However the milestone is a global importance in terms of race integration, Obama was therefore a good candidate to look for in terms of the peace prize, so long as he did something before hand to merit it.

 d-usa wrote:

I would say that 50% of the award was on credit for his campaign promises and the whole "hope" rhetoric that was going wild, the other 50% of the award was for not being the previous "war-starting" administration.

Rhetoric of hope and change is commonplace to all politicians who seek election in their campaigns. You wont have to dig far to find a message of hope and change supporting the 2000 Bush campaign.

 d-usa wrote:

Both sides of that didn't turn out like the committee planned.

 Ouze wrote:


So far as declining the prize, I'm not crazy about that either. I don't think he should have been given it, but I think declining it kind of spits in the committee's (and by extension the prize's) face; too far in the other direction. I think accepting it was the least bad of two bad choices.



Yeah, the "we know what you really mean" cuts both ways, homie.You want to say, as Breotan did, that's how we are now styling presidents after George W Bush (when the middle name was an important distinction), you can, but I'm pretty sure when I see it from certain posters and coupled with their posting history, like Relapse working it in 5 times in a single post, I'm pretty sure I get where that nail is being driven.

The committee already spit on the prize when they awarded that thing to Obama based on what he might do, bypassing people that already deserved it.
As far as the middle name goes, I was just posting the quote. I challange you, since you claim a great knowledge of my posting history to find a single case where I used his middle name outside of the quote I just posted. Also note that in another post on this thread I mentioned that I never recalled other president's middle names being used to the degree Obama's is.
I make no secret how it is I feel about the man. I think he's one of the worst presidents this country has had, and I despise several of his policies, deals, credit grabs, and blame shifting. None of that has anything to do with his race, so if you are calling me a racist, man up and say it straight out.

I rank President Obama in the same company I put Truman and Wilson. But for completely different reasons

Wilson and Truman are rated as some of the worst presidents in my book for their willingness to throw America into wars that we WEREN'T prepared for. Wilson allowed the US to join WW1 without first preparing our country in anyway beyond simply starting a draft.

Truman, after WWII GUTTED the US military, the old line from back then is "The Buck Stops here" and "Cutting away the fat from the military" and the popular line from the military was "Cutting to the bone". Truman was completely unprepared for the spread of communism and the Korean war. When we officially went to war with North Korea the 1st Marine division consisted of a single Infantry Regiment that was at around 1/2 wartime strength. The first year of the war saw the US army getting slaughtered due to poor equipment, poor training and being undermanned.

Obama has forced Obamacare down our throats, Cut Military benefits (Not funding, just benefits), attempted to ruin our relationship with Israel and has been a global apologist. I still remember his Cairo speech to this day. Not to mention has caused several stop gaps, government shut downs and is currently pushing for us to accept the Iran/Nuclear deal.

I'm not hostile to the President by any measure but it is vindicating to hear that the decision is being met with regret. Giving a man an award for what you want him to do?

I always assumed the NPP was a legitimate and prestigious award out of ignorance of never researching it myself.

It is meaningless to me now.

 Ghazkuul wrote:
I rank President Obama in the same company I put Truman and Wilson. But for completely different reasons

Wilson and Truman are rated as some of the worst presidents in my book for their willingness to throw America into wars that we WEREN'T prepared for. Wilson allowed the US to join WW1 without first preparing our country in anyway beyond simply starting a draft.

Truman, after WWII GUTTED the US military, the old line from back then is "The Buck Stops here" and "Cutting away the fat from the military" and the popular line from the military was "Cutting to the bone". Truman was completely unprepared for the spread of communism and the Korean war. When we officially went to war with North Korea the 1st Marine division consisted of a single Infantry Regiment that was at around 1/2 wartime strength. The first year of the war saw the US army getting slaughtered due to poor equipment, poor training and being undermanned.

Obama has forced Obamacare down our throats, Cut Military benefits (Not funding, just benefits), attempted to ruin our relationship with Israel and has been a global apologist. I still remember his Cairo speech to this day. Not to mention has caused several stop gaps, government shut downs and is currently pushing for us to accept the Iran/Nuclear deal.

Don't forget his immortal quip about the 80's calling and wanting their foriegn policy back when Romney was stating Russia was going to be a problem. I'm just waiting for him to talk about yet another red line now that gak's getting out of control with that country and the Middle East in general.
Quite the Nobel legacy he's leaving for someone to clean up.

 Ghazkuul wrote:
I rank President Obama in the same company I put Truman and Wilson. But for completely different reasons

Wilson and Truman are rated as some of the worst presidents in my book for their willingness to throw America into wars that we WEREN'T prepared for. Wilson allowed the US to join WW1 without first preparing our country in anyway beyond simply starting a draft.

Truman, after WWII GUTTED the US military, the old line from back then is "The Buck Stops here" and "Cutting away the fat from the military" and the popular line from the military was "Cutting to the bone". Truman was completely unprepared for the spread of communism and the Korean war. When we officially went to war with North Korea the 1st Marine division consisted of a single Infantry Regiment that was at around 1/2 wartime strength. The first year of the war saw the US army getting slaughtered due to poor equipment, poor training and being undermanned.

Obama has forced Obamacare down our throats, Cut Military benefits (Not funding, just benefits), attempted to ruin our relationship with Israel and has been a global apologist. I still remember his Cairo speech to this day. Not to mention has caused several stop gaps, government shut downs and is currently pushing for us to accept the Iran/Nuclear deal.

There are many things one can rightfully blame Obama for (and I will forever miss reasonable Saiga prices...), however, blaming him for the government shut downs is, well, inaccurate to say the least. Obama's been no saint, and certainly no supremely great president, but lets not make it out like he also hasn't been dealing with a congress that's been going out of its way to fight him on everything just to fight him simply for its own sake either.

I lost out on a good job because of that shutdown and the subsequent delay in a contract, and as convenient as it would be to blame Obama for that, the reality is that my ire can't really be directed at him for that, as much as I'd like it to be.

Relapse wrote:


Don't forget his immortal quip about the 80's calling and wanting their foriegn policy back when Romney was stating Russia was going to be a problem. I'm just waiting for him to talk about yet another red line now that gak's getting out of control with that country and the Middle East in general.
Quite the Nobel legacy he's leaving for someone to clean up.

To be fair, Romney was saying that Russia was going to be the US's *top* geopolitical threat, which it isn't and has no indication of being. They're have a spat with a neighbor and that has everyone on edge, but it's hardly the greatest geopolitical threat the US faces.

They've allowed Syria to destabilize the entire region and send tons of refugees into Europe.theyve invaded a sovereign nation and taken part of it. I'd say Romney was much more right than wrong. o shouldn't try and glibly dismiss anyone's foreign policy plans, since he can't come up with one at all.

It's sad that a girl shot in the face by terrorist scum and still teaches against violence must share her NPP and this douche got it on credit.

 SlaveToDorkness wrote:
They've allowed Syria to destabilize the entire region and send tons of refugees into Europe.theyve invaded a sovereign nation and taken part of it. I'd say Romney was much more right than wrong. o shouldn't try and glibly dismiss anyone's foreign policy plans, since he can't come up with one at all.

Yes, they've done things. So has the US. The US probably shares far more of the blame for the Syrian crisis than Russia (which is something that Obama can be legitimately blamed for, US policy has been appallingly poorly coordinated and schizophrenic), but Ukraine isn't a major #1 geopolitical concern for the US as they're not part of NATO or even the EU, much less a major trading partner or military power.

A major idea behind the Peace Prize is to give recognition to causes as they are still being achieved, and to encourage people to stick to a peaceful method, rather than descending or returning to more violent means. This means the award accepts the risk of getting it wrong some times. The alternative is for the award to basically turn up and hand over medals to people who've already won their cause. It'd be nice and safe but fairly useless.

A good example of why the approach taken by the Nobel committee is merited is Nelson Mandela and FW de Klerk. They were awarded the prize in 1993, while negotiations were still underway, with no guarantee of a positive outcome. At that point Mandela was a respected orator, but his actions to date had been time as a Marxist revolutionary, a long jail sentence and these negotiations. de Klerk was the leader of the Apartheid regime, which was still using lethal force to suppress black South Africans. Both men went on to achieve great things for South Africa, both with the end of apartheid and in the reconciliation process that followed, but at the time the award was given there was no guarantee. While the prize obviously didn't make the negotiatins work, it granted a legitimacy and importance to them inside South Africa that certainly helped. Far more useful than waiting until the late 90s, when all the work has been done and it's nice and safe to hand it out.

Which is a defence of Arafat's award. At the time he was doing great work to bring Israel and Palestine closer to peace than they'd been before, and arguably since. The committee wasn't to know how it would all turn out.

There's no real defence of Obama's award. That was stupid.



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 H.B.M.C. wrote:
Well Obama was given the award on credit, which isn't really how awards should work.

If you want the award to play a useful role in promoting peaceful causes, it has to be done while the cause is still underway.

The issue with Obama's award is that you really don't need to give more status or recognition to a US president. It'd be like setting up a facebook site to promote the Kardashians. And on top of that Obama wasn't even campaigning for anything that remarkable in terms of peace. He was basically not Bush, which was nice, but so were 42 other US presidents.


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 Vaktathi wrote:
To go slightly off track here, and while not wanting to take away from the point (which I agree was a poor decision), I do find the consistent usage of Obama's middle name of Hussein in criticisms of him, highlighting his "Otherness", to be both telling of the attitudes against him, and irritating.

I find people using Hussein to be quite useful. I tend to get stuck in debates with people who are unwilling or unable to debate anything of substance, and it's a habit I've been trying to break. One useful heuristic for avoiding those debates in the first place is to just stop reading, have a laugh and move whenever I see them use 'Hussein'.

Relapse wrote:
As far as the middle name goes, I was just posting the quote. I challange you, since you claim a great knowledge of my posting history to find a single case where I used his middle name outside of the quote I just posted.

You haven't. If that's a quote, it's uncited, so if it wasn't you who said that, I'd be happy to offer half of an apology for assuming they were your words.

Relapse wrote:
None of that has anything to do with his race, so if you are calling me a racist, man up and say it straight out.

I don't think you're a racist, and what's more, I don't think that most of the people that emphasize his middle name are racist, either. I think that generally when it's done the point is often to emphasize that he's "different" than the rest of us, that he's somehow less American and somehow foreign. This exact angle has been pointed by people like Herman Cain and rapper DMX, whom I strongly doubt harbor racist tendencies towards black people. It probably started with Hillary Clinton's camp, with that madrassa rumor.

 Breotan wrote:
Vaktathi, it started with Bill and Hillary Clinton. During Bill Clinton's first run at the Presidency, Hillary routinely referred to herself as "Hillary Rodham Clinton" and Bill was sometimes referred to as "William Jefferson Clinton" as well.

Full names were used before Clinton. But they were never used outside of informal settings, and they still weren't during the Clinton administration. No radio pundit ever said 'that William Jefferson Clinton is a bad president'. People don't talk like that.

But yeah, the use of 'dubya', which was an old nickname of his, was certainly picked up by the left as a way to make fun of Bush as a simpleton. It was pretty crappy.

Probably the same rule about Obama can be applied to Bush. If you want to have a sensible conversation about him, don't bother with people who are referring to him as 'dubya'.

 sebster wrote:
Which is a defence of Arafat's award. At the time he was doing great work to bring Israel and Palestine closer to peace than they'd been before, and arguably since. The committee wasn't to know how it would all turn out.

Having lived as an adult during that time, I'm going to disagree with you on this, especially that last sentence. Arafat's pursuit of peace was wholly insincere. Mr. Magoo could have foreseen how it would all turn out.

 Breotan wrote:
Having lived as an adult during that time, I'm going to disagree with you on this, especially that last sentence. Arafat's pursuit of peace was wholly insincere. Mr. Magoo could have foreseen how it would all turn out.

Well if only the Israeli's, Palestinians and ther greater international community had the insight that you and Mr Magoo share then perhaps we could have saved everyone a lot of effort, and one world leader his life.

Anyhow, it probably isn't even worth talking about how ridiculous it is to ascribe the failure of the process to one guy. I mean, as you're reading this are you considering for even one second that your statement above might have been way too simplistic. Because I suspect you're not, so tilt at that windmill.

. Things picked up when George "W" Bush became president and the Left used "Dubya" constantly as a way to bash him.

I liked to use "the bush" for Bush II - the Tumbleweeding.


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 Dreadclaw69 wrote:
Call me old fashioned, but I always thought that the point of a prize was that you got it for actually doing something of merit. Not the vague potential that you might do something.

You're old fashioned.


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 Ouze wrote:

 gorgon wrote:
Obama surely must rank below the great William McKinley.

Well, I believe the only state he hasn't visited is South Dakota, so presumably that's the place for Hawaii to lobby for a mountain to be named after him.

So far as declining the prize, I'm not crazy about that either. I don't think he should have been given it, but I think declining it kind of spits in the committee's (and by extension the prize's) face; too far in the other direction. I think accepting it was the least bad of two bad choices.

But oh man, he shouldn't not have gotten it and as Breotan showed there was like, no one who supported it even then.

 Frazzled wrote:
Lots of people referred to Carter, Clinton, Nixon, and Kennedy like that. Get the feth over it and quit calling people racists on the sly. We all know thats what you really mean.

Yeah, the "we know what you really mean" cuts both ways, homie.You want to say, as Breotan did, that's how we are now styling presidents after George W Bush (when the middle name was an important distinction), you can, but I'm pretty sure when I see it from certain posters and coupled with their posting history, like Relapse working it in 5 times in a single post, I'm pretty sure I get where that nail is being driven.

I did some casual googling with filters, and suffice it to say, the only major political figures whose middle names are routinely used on Dakka Dakka are George W Bush and Barack Hussein Obama (Hillary Rodham Clinton has been used 7 times). The formers is pretty evident in that, well, you need to be clear which one you need, but pointing out that the use of the latter is probably an attempt to point out weird otherness isn't exactly a tough sell.

Using Dakka as a filter is like using fishnet stockings to to filter your coffee.

 Ghazkuul wrote:
I rank President Obama in the same company I put Truman and Wilson. But for completely different reasons

Wilson and Truman are rated as some of the worst presidents in my book for their willingness to throw America into wars that we WEREN'T prepared for. Wilson allowed the US to join WW1 without first preparing our country in anyway beyond simply starting a draft.

Truman, after WWII GUTTED the US military, the old line from back then is "The Buck Stops here" and "Cutting away the fat from the military" and the popular line from the military was "Cutting to the bone". Truman was completely unprepared for the spread of communism and the Korean war. When we officially went to war with North Korea the 1st Marine division consisted of a single Infantry Regiment that was at around 1/2 wartime strength. The first year of the war saw the US army getting slaughtered due to poor equipment, poor training and being undermanned.

Obama has forced Obamacare down our throats, Cut Military benefits (Not funding, just benefits), attempted to ruin our relationship with Israel and has been a global apologist. I still remember his Cairo speech to this day. Not to mention has caused several stop gaps, government shut downs and is currently pushing for us to accept the Iran/Nuclear deal.

He's also killed the Keystone XL pipeline, and the thousands of well paying jobs that goes along with it, simply to vote-pander to the idiot green brigade.

Meanwhile, he goes out of his way to vilify the Alberta oil sands as the greatest environmental evil humanity has ever seen, despite the well known fact that California produces North America's dirtiest oil, AND, continuing to buy from one of the world's most inhumane and medieval regimes.

I heard he helped Matt Ward write the 5th ed GK codex too...

Experiment 626 wrote:

 Ghazkuul wrote:
I rank President Obama in the same company I put Truman and Wilson. But for completely different reasons

Wilson and Truman are rated as some of the worst presidents in my book for their willingness to throw America into wars that we WEREN'T prepared for. Wilson allowed the US to join WW1 without first preparing our country in anyway beyond simply starting a draft.

Truman, after WWII GUTTED the US military, the old line from back then is "The Buck Stops here" and "Cutting away the fat from the military" and the popular line from the military was "Cutting to the bone". Truman was completely unprepared for the spread of communism and the Korean war. When we officially went to war with North Korea the 1st Marine division consisted of a single Infantry Regiment that was at around 1/2 wartime strength. The first year of the war saw the US army getting slaughtered due to poor equipment, poor training and being undermanned.

Obama has forced Obamacare down our throats, Cut Military benefits (Not funding, just benefits), attempted to ruin our relationship with Israel and has been a global apologist. I still remember his Cairo speech to this day. Not to mention has caused several stop gaps, government shut downs and is currently pushing for us to accept the Iran/Nuclear deal.

He's also killed the Keystone XL pipeline, and the thousands of well paying jobs that goes along with it, simply to vote-pander to the idiot green brigade.

Hrm, the overwhelmingly vast majority of those would have been temporary construction gigs and nebulous "incidental" jobs (e.g. recreation, food, etc).

The actual number of long term jobs the Keystone XL pipeline would have created would be negligible. Pipelines just don't employ thousands of people.

There's all sorts of reasons to build a pipeline, but if the only reason people are upset is the jobs issue, I can think of a whole lot more effective jobs programs.

 daedalus wrote:
I heard he helped Matt Ward write the 5th ed GK codex too...

Only the fluff.

 Frazzled wrote:
Lots of people referred to Carter, Clinton, Nixon, and Kennedy like that. Get the feth over it and quit calling people racists on the sly. We all know thats what you really mean.

Then I will call them racists and Islamophobes openly, because that's exactly what they are.

No one refers to Bill Clinton as "William Jefferson Clinton" or Ronald Reagan as "Ronald Wilson Reagan" unless they are using the absolutely most-formal form of address, and in which case they precede that with "Former President". Obama? If it's not Wikipedia and you're hearing his middle name, it's probably because it's some racist Breitbart reader or Fox News aficionado.

Notice how no one on the Right is asking where Rafael Edward Cruz's birth certificate is? That no one questions his qualifications for the Presidency, despite the fact that he wasn't born in the United States? Why is that, do you wonder? Oh, right... because he's a white man.

To be fair it is only the whackiest right wingers who are "birthers", you cannot tar everyone conservative with that brush.