I am reminded of two famous quotes:

"Eighty percent of success is showing up."

Woody Allen

I would have been OK if, a few years out, Obama WON the Peace Price. What really matters to me is that he EARN it -- that he actually achieve even a few of things we believe(d) him capable of.

So far? Not so much.

"Awarding the Nobel Peace Prize to Henry Kissinger makes political satire obsolete."

Tom Lehrer

I'm not ready to lump Obama with Nixon and Kissinger... yet. But the laundry list of Obama's outrages and broken promises in just the few months he has been on office certainly argue against this kind of beatification.

Can we trade the prize in for the 2016 Olympics?

How about if we let Presidents have special days when the media refrain from all criticism about how their actions fall far short of their professed principals ... on the condition that we also have special days when the media do nothing but focus on how Presidents (and media powers) violate those same principals, and nobody gets a pass because of who they are, where they work, or who likes them.

Since virtually every day is already a type 1 special day, I'd be thrilled with a 10:1 ratio....

Remember when Obama told our Wall Street overlords last Spring, "My administration is the only thing between you and the pitchforks"?

It was. And is.

At the time I said

"Gotta give Obama credit -- he is able to convince hoi polloi he holds a pitchfork at the same time he in fact stands with those who would (and should) be pincushions.

Obama seems to have a similar skill with the Nobel committee.

Remind me -- who exactly is in the reality-based community?

On my computer, at least, the disparity in sound levels between you and Weiler makes it difficult to listen to an interesting conversation.

but in a sense DADT on the left = overturning Roe on the right.

Bit of a straw man here, Glenn.

"Anyone who believes the establishment media in the U.S. learned even a single lesson from what happened with Iraq ..."

There are lots of people in the Village who think the establishment media did a fine job in the lead-up to our invasion of Iraq. There are (not enough) people outside the Village who think the press did a terrible job, and have learned nothing. People who understand that the press screwed up, but think they learned something... anything? I suspect that class would fit in a phone booth.

And so the vessel into which we poured our faith -- the community organizer and Con Law prof who hope-ified and change-ilized even skeptics like me into a deep draft of Kool-Aid -- is more of the same.

Obama's offenses are infinitely more painful than Bush's were. To his credit, Bush freely admitted his preference for dictatorship.

What's left? Where are the reasons to keep fighting? We get our guy, and our guy turns out to be their guy with better patter (defined as "the talk a magician uses to accompany a trick").

I used to laugh at the far left folks who argued that things would have to get worse before they would get better.

They have gotten worse.

I'm not laughing anymore.

But I'm fresh out of hope.

When bailing water out of a sinking ship, one should be prepared to acknowledge that one's bucket is too small, and the leak is too big.

I guess he is a nominal liberal (as self-dscribed, though true liberals would gladly trade him for a bucket of cool spit), but so utterly irrelevant, so clueless, and so mind-bogglingly stupid that nobody in this discussion mentions him once.

Ladies and Gentlemen: WaPo columnist Richard Cohen.

The Neocons need a fully demonized enemy in order to perpetuate their illogical, fear-driven, conflict-dependent existence.

Al Qaeda, on the other hand, needs a fully demonized enemy in order to perpetuate its illogical, fear-driven, conflict-dependent existence.

This symbiosis is a sterling example of the wonders of evolution (which both groups tend to reject, of course).

That is, the equally putrid penumbra -- the courtiers in the Press Corpse who would not think to point out his cowardice and his greed.

Bayh could not get away with his game in an environment that called out and shamed such evil. What a shame that we do not have one.

Similarities:

- campaigned on ending wars they escalated

- proposed sweeping healthcare reform

- ignored the rule of law at will

Differences:

- Nixon was meaner

- Nixon got things done