{"id":1570,"date":"2009-10-09T20:59:00","date_gmt":"2009-10-09T20:59:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/highplainsblogger.wordpress.com\/2009\/10\/09\/what-has-he-done-lately"},"modified":"2009-10-09T20:59:00","modified_gmt":"2009-10-09T20:59:00","slug":"what-has-he-done-lately","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=1570","title":{"rendered":"What has he done lately?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<div class=\"twitter-share\"><a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?via=jkanelis\" class=\"twitter-share-button\">Tweet<\/a><\/div>\n<p>Make no mistake, I was flabbergasted this morning when I heard on NPR that President Obama had won the Nobel Peace Prize.<\/p>\n<p>And not in a good way.<\/p>\n<p>Then came this little tidbit: The deadline for submitting nominees was Feb. 1 &#8212; 11 days after Obama had assumed the presidency.<\/p>\n<p>What gives here? The Nobel Committee has rewritten the rules by which it hands out this most prestigious award. They&#8217;re now awarding the Peace Prize for the potential of the recipients. Obama indeed holds an enormous amount of potential. He well might achieve all that he hopes. But he hasn&#8217;t done it yet.<\/p>\n<p>My feeling is this: The scrap heap is piled high with politicians who never fulfilled their potential. President Obama well might be tossed onto that scrap heap when his days in office are over. I hope that doesn&#8217;t happen.<\/p>\n<p>But I also know that the prize ought to go to those who actually have accomplished something. And the list of non-winners with an actual record of accomplishment is quite stunning. Three names come to mind immediately:<\/p>\n<p><strong>Mahatma Gandhi<\/strong>, who sought a peaceful declaration of independence in India &#8212; and died in the effort; <strong>Ronald Reagan<\/strong>, who pressured the Evil Empire into tearing down &#8220;this wall&#8221; in Berlin, a move that marked the beginning of the end of communism in Europe; <strong>Bill Clinton<\/strong>, who has launched his Clinton Global Initiative and teamed up with former President GHW Bush in providing relief for the victims of the southeast Asia tsunami in 2006.<\/p>\n<p>I hope President Obama actually earns the Peace Prize he has just won. But as this is written, he doesn&#8217;t deserve it.<\/p>\n\n<div class=\"twitter-share\"><a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?via=jkanelis\" class=\"twitter-share-button\">Tweet<\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Make no mistake, I was flabbergasted this morning when I heard on NPR that President Obama had won the Nobel Peace Prize. And not in a good way. Then came this little tidbit: The deadline for submitting nominees was Feb. 1 &#8212; 11 days after Obama had assumed the presidency. What gives here? The Nobel &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=1570\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">What has he done lately?<\/span> <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1570","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1570","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1570"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1570\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1570"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1570"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1570"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}