Nobel, Schmobel

It was pretty clear the Nobel Peace Prize committee goofed when they awarded the 2009 version to Barack Obama, apparently for the sole reason that he was not George W. Bush.  I have sympathy for their error; I was as tired of W’s arrogant idiocy as anyone.

Four years later, I wonder if the Nobel folks think they might have overdone it.  Bad enough that Mr. O is tapping the phones of the leaders of allied nations and then can’t get his story straight.  (“The White House knew!  The White House didn’t know! The White House should have known but didn’t!”)

Bad enough that people like Josh Marshall at Talking Points Memo is in fake high dudgeon that people are shocked (shocked!) that the US would eavesdrop on allies.  Yes

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, Josh, their outrage is fake and so is your cynicism.  That’s right, we all spy on each other, but when you’re caught, we get to paint your ass blue and kick it around the block.  Price you pay for being sloppy.  Can’t see Mr. Marshall defending the GOP with such verve.  Right is right, wrong is wrong; party affiliation should have nothing to do with it.

The real question, as Saul Alinsky used to point out, is not whether the ends justify the means; it’s whether these ends justify those means.  It’s situational.  Is the crime worth the time?  The US has gotten so used to this “indispensable nation” crap that we forget just how dispensable we truly are.

Worse still is the crap we hear about how necessary all this is for “national security.”  I’m not so sure.  Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff suspects her phone was tapped not to keep the Free World safe, but to give American oil companies a leg up in negotiations with their Southern Hemisphere counterparts.  I suspect she’s right.

As is often the case, it’s probably worse than we know (yet).  The Obama administration uses NSA resources to pass tips along to major US corporations and my goodness, look at those campaign contributions roll in!

Too cynical?  In the Huffington Post last month, Kate Sheppard reports that the European Commission, in an effort to reduce greenhouse gas emissions is considering a proposal that would “assign values to different types of fuel based on the emissions they generate,” Ms. Sheppard writes.  “The proposal assigns a higher value to bitumen, a type of oil extracted from tar sands that has 12 to 40 percent higher lifecycle emissions than conventional types of crude oil.”

Tar sands?  Isn’t that Canada’s problem?  Yes and no.  Tar sands oil comes from Canada, but much of it is refined and marketed by US companies.  Even more so if the KXL pipeline is built, but the Obama administration still hasn’t (wink, wink) made up its mind on that yet.

Ms. Sheppard quotes US Trade Representative Michael Froman as saying the European Commission has a “’lack of adequate transparency and public participation in the process’ and said that the U.S. is seeking ‘improvements in the EU’s overall regulatory practices.’”  In other words, “Take this filthy oil we’ve cooked up over here in North America and to hell with your efforts to save the planet from climate change.  We’re America, damn it!”

Don’t get me wrong: I’d rather have Mr. Obama in the Oval Office than John McCain or Mitt Romney, but merely being “less bad” doesn’t cut it.  America needs a leader, not a politician.

© Mark Floegel, 2013

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