Special Edition Trifecta 10/9/09: What a Day it Was!

In what can universally be described (at least by us non-scientists) as anti-climactic, fizzling and boring, NASA shot the moon, literally, with millions of dollars worth of equipment. The goal of the mission was to determine if there’s water on the moon; NASA thinks there may be, based on some data gathered several years ago. The thinking was that we’d crash the two pieces of equipment into a polar crater, and the moon would reward us with a giant plume of stuff (a highly technical term) that we could then study to learn if water was really present.

The six mile plume that we were led to believe we could see using a telescope, or barring that, on live TV, either didn’t materialize at all, or it was monstrously dwarfed by that which followed the announcement that Barack Obama has won the Nobel Peace Prize.

I can tell you, I thought I was reading The Onion this morning, when I saw the breaking news banner about the Peace Prize. It was pretty early, I don't even think it was 6AM, when I saw the news and there wasn’t much out there that I had time to look at before getting an early start on the workday.

Remarkably, he’s being honored “for his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples” but not for any actual accomplishments. The announcement from the Committee goes on to state that “Only very rarely has a person to the same extent as Obama captured the world's attention and given its people hope for a better future.”
What makes this interesting is that the award is being given to someone not even nine full months into his presidency, and to a person who has not actually accomplished much of anything.

• Guantanamo Bay is still a prison and not likely to be closed any time soon, as promised, because politicians and Americans can’t be convinced that we can keep these folks safely confined even in our SuperMax prisons, and also because we can’t convince any of our international partners to take these prisoners either.


• The wars in Afghanistan and Iraq continue, as does conflict in Pakistan, and we’re on the verge of sending in more troops not bringing them home as promised.


• Iran continues to move ahead with their nuclear programs, and even though they say it’s for energy not weapons, there’s not a whole lot of trust in this conversation.

At home, we’re more polarized that ever; a small but vocal portion of the population thinks that Obama is not even eligible to be president. What counts for debate on health care, the economy, or the war comes off more like a bunch of harridans shrieking from the sidelines. Many folks look at dissent and see racism instead. We don't have much lately that resembles any concerted effort at consensus, and no one's leading the charge to get us there, including the President.

Is Obama deserving of the Nobel Peace Prize? Not in my book; at best it's premature - and frankly he may never be worthy of it. I think he was nominated on the basis of the speech he made in Berlin as a presidential candidate, more than anything else. The challenge now becomes the difficult task of living up to the world’s expectations, in addition to those of us here at home. It’ll be interesting to see how things play out.

And last, the other noteworthy news of the day? Hummer is now a Chinese brand. For some reason, that just doesn’t seem right.