It’s tough to be unhappy when America receives an award.  But for some reason the news that President Barack Obama won the Nobel Peace Prize left me miffed and a bit peeved.

Perhaps it’s now part of our culture that you get bonus points for making a good effort, kudos for just showing up, or a trophy at the end of the season not because you beat all the other teams but because someone, somewhere thought that kids need to be rewarded regardless of performance or they’ll feel like failures.

Our culture is so coddled and so sensitive to feelings that, in the end, we devalue success and achievement and prop up  the failures.

Everyone must be kept on a level playing field, you know.

There’s a bit of a misunderstanding going around on the Presidents new prize.

Sure, he was nominated for the award 12 days after taking the oath of office, but he didn’t win the award at that time.  And you can’t fault the man for being nominated alone, and you really can’t fault him for winning.  It’s not as though he threw his own name into the running.

What bothers me is that he was awarded an award for peace without really showing any accomplishment to justify the reward.

It’s as though we’ve received the grade card with straight A’s at the beginning of the year based on little Jimmy’s sincerity that he’s going to really try hard in school this year.

In my mind, you win these types of awards for achievement, not being able to talk a good game.

It all comes down to the fact that President Obama received the Nobel Peace Prize for talking the talk, and the unabated hope and change will leave us wondering if he can walk the walk.

Commentary Barack Obama, Nobel Peace Prize

I’m the biggest fan of the U.S. military there is, and if it weren’t for a disqualifying condition I’d probably be flying something with the stars and bars down the side of it.

So when I hear that President Obama is tabling the request to send more troops to Afghanistan at the request of his top commander in the field, gentle terms would suggest I was a bit peeved.

And then it was revealed that he had only talked to his top leaders in the ground once since taking office in January.  What a disgrace.

The President has the ultimate say on troop levels and mission strategy, and he is ultimately accountable for the lives of our soldiers in battle.

Personally I think he owes the families of those serving our great country a bit more time in the briefing room making command decisions than on television pitching some half thought out health care plan or traveling over seas to lobby for the Olympics.

The Commander-in-Chief’s true colors are starting to show, and it’s clear he has a tough time making a very serious and critical decision.

If the man doesn’t wish to talk to his commanders in the field, it’s only right that the troops be called home until we get someone in office that can make decisions about the fate of our soldiers.

Politics Barack Obama, military, Politics, war

I’ve been pondering the validity of these frequent “town hall” meetings President Obama has been holding for some time.  They’ve effectively become (or maybe they always were) an invitation to a select few, on in the most recent case, thoroughly filtered questions submitted by email, that toss up softball questions for the President to knock out of the park.

Well, it seems the media is catching on, and it’s not just the Fox News folks that are starting to question the transparency of the big show.

Even Helen Thomas got riled up over this…

Check it out.

Politics Barack Obama, media, Robert Gibbs