Many critics have stated that President Obama has not yet earned the Nobel Peace Prize.
In fact President Obama has said the same.  

He hasn't fixed the global financial crisis, nothing has changed in the Middle East.

We are still at war in Iraq and Afghanistan and of course we still have the "axis of evil".

Global warming and Nuclear weapons still exist.

At home he has high unemployment and millions are without health care.

He hasn't changed the way people look at our Gay and Black brothers and sisters and the list goes on.  (God he has had nine whole months)

Why do we and the rest of the world expect so much from one man?  

President Obama has raised these expectations!

He has also convinced a majority of people he can achieve the "impossible"

He deserves the Nobel Peace Prize because he has raised the level of expectation  and offered a vision of what we can achieve.

As president of the United States and a "Superpower" he is in a unique position to bring about change globally

The Nobel Peace Prize is a Global Prize and what other individual on this planet has
an opportunity to make this planet safer?

They are betting on what they have observed over nine months that President Obama needs the prestige of the Nobel Peace Prize and that he will earn it over his
8 year term and lifetime.

This is a sure bet and with our support and activism we can accomplish the "impossible"

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Cross-posted from OH-16: John Boccieri for U.S. Congress

I love days like today...a blogger's dream! The campaign just pounded so much Mojo at me today I had turn it into a major round-up. It's a quite fitting run of "Ground Mobilization" by our candidate, the Ohio State Senator Major John Boccieri. Boots on the ground! It's time to rock Ohio's 16th Congressional District out of the tired funk from "The Hillary, Barack, McCain Diary Train". Get ready for the battle brewing here in Northeast Ohio!

Out of Headquarters...Ground Mobilization!

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Last night has provoked a lot of doom, gloom, and dark theories that Obama will be overwhelmed by the Clinton machine as the contest moves inexorably toward the convention.  I don't think so. Just two weeks ago he was trailing by a fairly large margin across the country.  Now they are in a dead heat. With another week or two he might have won a couple more states last night, including CA, where early voting before his surge probably hurt him by at least a few points.  Others point to his advantage as the contest now focuses on a few states at a time, more caucuses, states where Obama has demographic and organizational advantages.  

The Obama campaign hasn't been perfect, but they've been consistently awfully good.  That means he will do better with Latinos.  (Still, Barack slipped up by talking about black and white children in failing schools last night.  In Chicago, where he spoke, 40% of the kids in public schools are Latinos! That's the kind of slip that needs to be attended to, because it represents so much more.)

There are a whole lot of delegate counts out there, none certain, but all the counts show them very close.  Solid wins for Barack in the next primaries will probably push him into a lead. But it does not look like either of them can swamp the other campaign.  he can't knock her out.  Many suggest it will get very ugly at the convention, but no matter how the FL and MI questions are resolved, the super-delegates will be under enormous
pressure to support the candidate most likely to beat McCain. I expect that the polls will continue to show that's Obama because of his expansive appeal, and because he will be thoroughly tested by then.

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Let's be honest.  The entire history of the United States is built on racial hierarchy and discrimination.  In fact, as Michael Guerrero, the House of Representatives just decided on an exhibition to honor the African American slaves who built the Capitol building, brick by brick.  Racism is our national legacy -- and increasingly our main export.

Witness the War in Iraq.

In this great post on the Movement Vision Lab, Scott Douglas -- a veteran community organizer and leader from Birmingham, Alabama -- writes:

... our government would rather dominate and destroy people of color in Iraq than help people of color here at home.  

Douglas continues:

It is amazing to me that while 72% of people oppose the war in Iraq, the war continues. It's a war that is only hurting people, not helping, whose only point was control of oil.  Presiding over the escalating violence there is costing the United States $3 billion per day!  And yet Democrats and a few Republicans in Congress are only just now beginning to question the war's continuance, let alone it's original rationale.

Compare this to Hurricanes Katrina, Rita, and Wilma and the abysmal response of government.  After two years, there remains the stagnation of commitment led, first and foremost, by the federal government.  In Louisiana, issues revolve around building level five levees (levees that can take the shock of a Hurricane Katrina) and life-sustaining infrastructure such as water, power, gas and sewer services.  We must also restore the wetlands that offers nature's protection against storm surges.

But the unpopular AND expensive war is still prioritized over the needs of Black communities in our own Gulf region:

Across entire Gulf Coast, stretching from Texas to Alabama, affordable housing and living wage job opportunities are scarce. Thousands of families are still housed in FEMA trailers that contain deadly levels of formaldehyde.

Yet the federal government manages to scrounge up $3 billion per day to "rescue" Iraq.  Those of us in the Gulf Coast need to be rescued, too!

The fact of the matter is we're all in it together.  Iraqi lives are as important as the lives of the displaced residents along Katrina's path.  So why are we spending so much money destroying communities in Iraq while failing to re-build communities in America?  

Perhaps more pointedly, why do those of us who agree with the above prognosis fail to see this pattern as a symptom of broader, systemic racism?  

Why don't we see that the reason we could get away with attacking Iraq was race -- most notably, the stereotypes spread by government and media that continues to cast a pale of suspicion over all Muslim and Arab people in the US and abroad?  And why don't we see that the reason we have failed to help New Orleans and the rest of the Gulf Coast is because of racism, plain and simple.  Do you really think our government would have let thounsands of wealthy white folks drown?

We need to talk about race, instead of ignoring.  We need to appreciate difference, instead of demanding assimilation.  We need to address racism, rather than denying it.

Sally Kohn is the Director of the Movement Vision Lab.

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Could our "liberal" political leaders finally STAND FOR SOMETHING?  With Democrats like these, who needs Republicans???  

When the country is desperate for change, isn't it time for leaders who will... er... LEAD US there?  From the War in Iraq to universal health care to SCHIP to immigrant rights --- why can't we have leaders who believe in something and help persuade the nation, rather than pandering.  

Check out this great cartoon about the spineless pessimists and pragmatists standing in the way of a better future.  

Brought to you from the folks at the Movement Vision Lab

Someone once told me, "We have to meet people where they're at --- but we don't have to leave them there." Same with the country.

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