Vicious Rants of an Angry Yellow Man

The scientists who won the Nobel prize did their breakthrough works about 30 years ago. They are finally being rewarded now. Obama has been president for 9 months and he wins his prize already? He is greater symbol for peace than Gandhi, who had never won the Nobel? Well, I suppose he is able to bring enemies together. Both the Taliban and Rush Limbaugh believe that Obama is worse than Hitler. Both Israelis and Palestinians think that with the award, he will be tougher on them. Both the extreme right and the extreme left don't think he has not done enough. But other than bringing these mortal enemies together against him winning the award, I don't see how he should have even been nominated. At this pace if the world comes out of recession next year, he will win the Nobel prize--for economics.

The question I have now is will this affect his decision about Afghanistan? He is taking a lot of time to make the decision. In the past he has said that Afghanistan is different than Iraq and that we need to win there. I agree with that and hold him to that. As I have said before, I agree with the generals who recommend that we add troops to Afghanistan. The fact that we got side-tracked by Bush in Iraq and that the job is much more difficult today does not change my believe that we have to defeat al qaeda and the Taliban in Afghanistan. Maybe Obama does not need to authorize all 40,000 troops McCrystal asked for, but he should not hesitate to increase the manpower as soon as possible. I hope winning the peace prize does not affect his judgment in this.

One more thing about the Nobel. The winners in each catergory split 1.4 millon. Since there is usually 3 winners, each get less than 500,000. Not bad but not exactly anywhere near the bonuses the Wall Street types get. Without scientific innovations, businesses have nothing new to sell. In the long run we must increase funding to the scientific fields so that the brightest people continue to go into sciences and we get scientists from other countries who want to come here to do research. Inventing the next computer chip or medicine is much more important than creating the next hedge fund.