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CRITICS ASSAIL PEACE PRIZE AWARD TO OBAMA


Soon after the Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to President Barack Obama, political opponents and other prominent Americans weighed in with adverse comments.

Financial guru Jim Cramer told his TV audience that he knew the fix was in when some of the TARP money was secretly funneled to the Nobel Committee.
Lou Dobbs said that the Nobel Committee had followed the pattern of awarding Nobel prizes to candidates from Africa.
TV comic Roger Standpipe felt that it was passing strange that the award was given to President Obama on the same day that the U.S. was going to shoot the moon.
Representative Michele Bachmann stated indignantly that this award proved the influence of ACORN over the Nobel Committee.
Former Republican leader Bob Dole remarked dryly " I guess that the Nobel Committee knows a messiah when it sees one"

AFGHANISTAN DECISION

My guess, for what it's worth, is that President Obama will find a middle ground on the troop increase and provide fewer troops than requested. And the strategy will probably be tweaked toward the Joe Biden position and explicitly or implicitly away from nation building.

I'm fine with that. There may well be words of support for the Afghan government, but we and our allies are unlikely to commit to the numbers of troops and the time and the money required to build a viable, honest national government. In my opinion, we need to keep a sufficient force in the region to keep Al Qaeda and other terrorist groups from re-establishing a base there and to protect and aid Pakistan. What the troop number and operational strategy should be is way beyond my thought process.

While I'm generally against nation building or intervention in foreign lands, I would support one unlikely scenario. If the principal nations of the world would agree and provide moral and material support, I would have us join in action to prevent undue oppression and human suffering imposed by evil regimes such as Idi Amin's or the Taliban.

Huffpost Book Club

If Arienna is trying to catch Oprah she might want to rethink her current book choice, "In Praise of Slowness"