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Obama Wins Nobel Peace Prize


packsaddle

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For your information the Nobel Prizes where established in the will of Alfred Nobel, the Swedish inventor of dynamite. They were first given out in 1901, at a time Norway and Sweden were in a joint kingdom. The year before my dad was born in Norway, 1905 the Norwegians broke away from Sweden and got their own King. The Swedish King was forced on them in 1814.

We could learn a lot from Norway, the give a greater percentage of their GNP in foreign aid and charitable aid than we do. Their people have universal health care for around 100 years and many other benefits that we do not have.

 

 

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Yes, NWScouter, we could learn a lot from them - if you like socialism. Their whole economy and standard of living changed dramatically when they discovered and started producing oil. Don't take me wrong - I think Norway is a very nice country and does have a lot going for it. You won't find very many overweight Norwegians. They tend to live a very long time. They are very clean - you won't find any litter around. And they have a twisted sense of humor. These are the captions on t-shirts I picked up in Oslo from some street vendors:

 

We kill whales for fun. Only 89,995 to go! (with cartoon of harpooned whale)

 

A Map of Scandinavia Without Sweden (with the map showing just Norway and Finland)

 

If we had dolphins, we'd kill them, too! (with a cartoon of a dolphin jumping out of the water, harpooned with the Norwegian flag on the end of the harpoon)

 

Now that I think about it, maybe the Peace Prize was given with that same twisted sense of humor.

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~ rolling my eyes again~ Yes I know, this is a tangent... but...

 

I wish people would stop tossing around the word socialism every time some European country comes up.

 

Read Marx. Read Lenin. Read Trotsky. Read Hegel. Read Mao. Read Stalin. Read Castro. Brent, whatever you mean by "socialism" is certainly not what ANY of them meant by it. At most, some European countries could be called "social democracies." Big, big, BIG, difference. All countries (US included) have some sort of social policy. That does not make them socialists.

 

Bill Frist - former Republican Senate Majority Leader - has been doing a tour of the country with Howard Dean, talking about health care reform. One point Frist makes to his own die-hard ideological brethren, is that hot-button words like "socialism" do more to feed anxiety and irrational fear, than to contribute to honest debate. He has flat-out said, stop using the word socialism. (He also said people ought to stop the disingenuous hype about "death panels" too) I don't agree with Frist on a lot of policy matters, but I sure agree with him on that.

 

OK - back to Obama and the Nobel committee.

 

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Lisa, I can just imagine those eyes. I had a student once who rolled her eyes better than anyone I have ever seen before or since. Of course that meant I just provoked the response as often as possible. And she responded just the way I hoped every time.

Ten years later she's married with children and we still correspond...and those eyes still roll just like always. :)

 

As for 'socialism', I think you already know 'why' the term is being thrown around.

OGE, maybe we need to modify Godwin's rule to include the invocation of 'socialism' as an automatic argument loser. ;)

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We could learn a lot from Norway, the give a greater percentage of their GNP in foreign aid and charitable aid than we do. Their people have universal health care for around 100 years and many other benefits that we do not have.

 

 

Uh huh.

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