And then you have someone like Glenn Beck who proudly and loudly embraces this fear, with a sense of relief no less, in his 9/12 movement. For him, America was at its best when it was terrified and traumatized the day after the terrorist attack. Previous posters have pointed out something key about all this: scared or not, the political and celebrity leaders of the fearful movement are fear mongering themselves and exploiting the public's fear.

It's about time someone called the Right out for being craven and weak.

mappy and im1234, your craven disposition toward terrorism suspects is completely disproportionate to any reasonable estimate of threat that is posed by having terrorism trials in NYC (there have been a few already, in NYC and elsewhere, and the sky didn't fall then and, really, probably won't fall next time either).

do you ever consider how you are so enthusiastically abandoning your beliefs in due process and justice, inalienable rights and civil liberties and all that other american-way stuff? and for what? for some sense of protection that still leaves you quivering with impotent fear.

get help.

It's called confirmation bias:

"a tendency to search for or interpret new information in a way that confirms one's preconceptions and avoid information and interpretations which contradict prior beliefs. It is a type of cognitive bias and represents an error of inductive inference, or as a form of selection bias toward confirmation of the hypothesis under study or disconfirmation of an alternative hypothesis.

Confirmation bias is an area of interest in the teaching of critical thinking as the skill is misused if rigorous critical scrutiny is applied only to evidence challenging a preconceived idea but not to evidence supporting the same preconception."

There's more linked to the sig. It's really quite interesting.

I think the decision to give Obama the Peace Prize was a bad one, rewarding potential instead of accomplishment, and a rebuke of past action instead of a commendation of it. That's not a criticism of Obama but of the Peace Prize process. And that hardly "associates" me with Republicans, Orly Taitz or Hamas, any more than the fact that I'm sure I share with [many of] them two eyes and ten fingers.

Someone pointed out that even Obama had words to say to the effect that he didn't feel he deserved the award, and that it was in fact a statement of encouragement for his promises, not an assessment of his achievements:

"I do not feel that I deserve to be in the company of so many transformative figures that have been honored by this prize... I will accept this award as a call to action, a call for all nations to confront the challenges of the 21st century."

I remember one criticism of Bush/Cheney, that they were fostering and encouraging a cult of personality in the Executive Branch, and that for all the difference a Democrat administration would make, the real damage was that the same kind of reverence and blind loyalty would follow. Plenty of that here.

Those of you with your knickers in a twist because GG pointed out the rather glaring and obvious weaknesses with this award really need to grow up. Jesus, you're screaming at him like tweens pitching a fit. I think it's a very valid criticism even while I still admire and very much hope (yes, hope) that Obama will eventually be able to overcome establishment power and manifest his original platform and goals.

In 1994, the Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to Yasser Arafat, Shimon Peres and Yitzhak Rabin "for their efforts to create peace in the Middle East". They hadn't actually accomplished much of any peace, but they had sat down to negotiate the "Declaration of Principles on Interim Self-Government Arrangements" known as the Oslo Accords. While expected to be a milestone in Israeli-Palestinian diplomacy, the reward of the Peace Prize, was at the time (as I remember it) interpreted as being for the potential that those negotiations had to achieve peace, not for the actual achievement of peace in the region. History would later prove belief in that potential largely unfounded.

My reading of this year's Prize is much the same, that it was highly symbolic, not so much an reward for Barack Obama and his achievements but rather for the potential peace that could result from his policies and diplomacy, coupled to his (baby) steps to reduce the potential lack of peace that a full continuation of the previous policies and lack of diplomacy would have predicted.

Personally, I think it devalues the Nobel Peace Prize to award it for the potential peace that may arise from actions and choices rather than the actual peace that is won by actions and choices, as much as it devalues the Prize to award it as a rebuke to former policies and actions.

PJBurke_Sez wrote:

Why is the Washington Post seeking to criminalize policy differences, when all the leadership of Iran wants to do is look forward, not backward?

9/16/2009 9:34:49 AM

I think the headline says it all. The US administers tests, doesn't take them.

And it seems worse when Obama does it. He really does know better.

In the course of invading, occupying and rebuilding (sic) Iraq, dozens of corporations made great profits. Corporations that manufacture weapons, corporations that provide private security, corporations that provide logistics and support services to the armed forces. Corporations that carry out public works and other infrastructure projects. And these privately owned corporations are owned by stockholders and run by senior administrators, who, in turn, made out like bandits. And thus, one prominent effect of invading and occupying Iraq has been the transfer of public funds to a top tier of individuals in corporate America. Seeing as how the majority, if not all, of them are stalwart Republican backers, Iraq may be viewed as an extremely successful and responsive democratic endeavour of this group.