A Nobel Prize in Every Box!... and Other Moon-battery

The useful idiots who award the Nobel Peace Prize have outdone themselves again. In the process, they have solidified the irrelevant nature of their once prestigious award. Somehow, President Obama has won the Nobel Peace Prize, not for anything he's done, but for what he might do... oh, and maybe a couple of speeches he's given. But then again, the consensus is that this is more about a statement against former President Bush than it is anything about Obama's rhetorical accomplishments.

From the AP: "Unlike the other Nobel Prizes, which are awarded by Swedish institutions, the peace prize is given out by a five-member committee elected by the Norwegian Parliament. Like the Parliament, the committee has a leftist slant, with three members elected by left-of-center parties. Jagland said the decision to honor Obama was unanimous." When you share such an award with the other useful idiot, Jimmy Carter (now the 2nd worst president in US history), and Al "the science is settled" Gore, I'm not sure the prestige of present company is all that stellar.

By comparison, from TIME, regarding another nominee: "Compare this to Greg Mortenson, nominated for the prize by some members of Congress, who the bookies gave 20-to-1 odds of winning. Son of a missionary, a former army Medic and mountaineer, he has made it his mission to build schools for girls in places where opium dealers and tribal warlords kill people for trying. His Central Asia Institute has built more than 130 schools in Afghanistan and Pakistan - a mission which has, along the way, inspired millions of people to view the protection and education of girls as a key to peace and prosperity and progress."

Let's not forget the deadline for his application was 12 days into his presidency... 12 days.

In a related over-hyped lack of government accomplishment, can anyone explain to me why NASA feels compelled to spend $79 MILLION dollars to crash a toy into the moon? The official word from the space cadets and rocket scientists is that they hope to find evidence of water on the moon. So the REAL $79 million question is, and let's play their game for a minute, if there IS water on the moon... THEN WHAT? Are we going to colonize? Perhaps import trendy water from the moon instead of France? Maybe setup a lunar Wet N' Wild?

I'll go on record today as saying that no one in my lifetime needs to live on the moon. No one in my lifetime will need water from the moon. There has not been, and will not be, evidence of life on the moon (other than our astronauts). The moon is a giant dustball. I'm no astronomer, but seems to me that all the craters on its surface, resulting from it being pelted by wayward space rocks, tell us that it's as dry as the Mojave desert. Good enough for me. I venture to guess that a vast majority of Americans simply would rather have those tax dollars to spend here on earth... but that's just one man's $79 million opinion.

I'm just not certain which of these is more surreal to me...to believe that a first-term, unaccomplished president can be arrogant enough to file a Nobel Peace Prize application 12 days into his presidency hoping to win (and one doesn't just file unless one wants to win); or that our government who, with hundreds of millions of hard-earned tax dollars, continues to placate grown children who don't have enough toys here on earth to tinker with. And how do we continue to spend as much as we do on a space program that has yet to provide any measurable, reasonable, or rational return-on-investment?

One thing is for sure... if there is intelligent life out there (that drinks water or not), given the continued insanity of news days like this, they certainly aren't looking for us.
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