The No Bell Pizza Prize

Maybe I'm having a "don't you talk about my momma/Obama!" moment, but now I'm just getting angry.  Because while I'm upset over the lack of "change" going on right now, I can't take it anymore.  And since I just wrote about this particular subject to friends, I thought I would share it here.

Okay, I'm doing it: 

First of all--in response to criticisms that he received the prize just because he's "not George Bush"-- that's stupid.  No one on the list of peace prize laureates is like George Bush.

Moving on.  Why the uproar?  Has everyone who has received the prize in the past achieved great things by the time they were nominated, even by the time they received the prize?  More recently, Al Gore received the peace prize in 2007 (w/ the UN panel) for his work on climate change awareness.  Yet two years later, we have yet to see any comprehensive energy reform in the US, much less in the entire world.  Hell, we haven't even convinced everyone climate change exists.  I don't remember an uproar there-- "But, why Gore? He doesn't deserve it! It's all talk!  He hasn't done anything yet!" 

How about in 1964, when Martin Luther King, Jr. was awarded the peace prize.  By the time of his nomination, the civil rights movement had not yet won the Civil Rights Act, or the Voting Rights Act.  Furthermore, did he deserve the prize over the people in Alabama or Mississippi or North Carolina who spearheaded the movement rather than figureheaded it?  Let's not forget the efforts of Abernathy, or Robinson (to name a couple).  --"But, Dr. King? He just gave a nice speech in Washington.  He hasn't really done anything yet!  In fact, it's been years and no laws have been passed!"

I don't mean to downplay the achievements of these men or anyone else who has received the prize in the past.  But to pretend that this is the first time the award has been given to someone who has not yet achieved the successes for which they aim would be an ill-informed criticism.  And it's not like he nominated or chose himself-- he was just as shocked as anyone else, and said himself that he didn't deserve to be among the other winners. 
(What he said: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p7bHkH779qg)

I am just as impatient as everyone else.  But when Obama says that this prize is a "call to action," I get happy.  Period.  Because, I'm sorry, he got elected.  No, no--rather, we elected him.  Let's not forget that, it's not a passive sentence, we performed the action.  And now what?  We are just sitting here, waiting to be transformed as a nation.  He told us to hold him accountable.  How many of us, how many of the people who elected him, are doing that?  Are we putting pressure on him to pass health care reform?  To pass immigration reform?  To pass energy reform?  No, but the minority of the nation is pressuring Congress not to, or at least not to pass it in the ways Obama said we'd see it. 

On that note-- have we forgotten that Obama doesn't make the laws? He doesn't write them.  He doesn't pass them.  If we want to see these things happen, and are angry that they haven't happened as quickly as we see fit, we are placing blame in the wrong place.  Maybe we should look at our Congressmen and Congress women.  Or, to get to the root of the problem, maybe we should look at ourselves.  Whose country is this, anyway?

But whatever.  It's easier to email/gchat/tweet/facebook message our friends about how he hasn't done anything yet. 

There.  There's some perspective for ya.

/rant. 

Someone's in the kitchen...

If you don't cook, you should.  If you do, go vegan.  It's a fun challenge.  One at which I've utterly failed as of late (Damn you, cheese and yogurt!  Damn you, lack of Whole Foods in the south!). 

Regardless, I've been enjoying my favorite snack-- sweetriot chocolate bars. Yep, they're expensive.  But they're also vegan, and dark chocolate.  Oh, and they're pretty friendly to humans and the earth in the process.

On that note, I've realllyyy been wanting to try this recipe.  If you can find the ingredients (yeah, south Charlotte sucks) you need to try this out, it's really quick and probably tastes like heaven: vegan chocolate mix.

Lastly, homemade focaccia.  If you are one of those freaks who considers yeast and honey and all that stuff non-vegan, then skip over it. 

That's all.  Oh, and Obama receiving the Nobel Peace Prize?  Let's not talk about it.  Why? Because there's nothing to talk about.  He hasn't actually DONE anything yet, that's true.  I agree with progressive.org on this one.   Or SNL, incidentally:

I think that it will give him momentum, and he has inspired people around the world.  So I'll give him that.  And I'd rather him get it now when he is trying to pass these laws and move towards peace, rather than after he got out of office.  Hopefully it will only help the causes over which I'm so unnerved (due to inaction).  I'll try to be a bit more optimistic.  But my cynical side sometimes takes over my pragmatic side when it comes to politics.  So if Obama truly takes this as a "call to action," as an expectation rather than an affirmation, I'm happy about it.

I'll be lightning

Alright, so now that I've been embarrassed by Peyton who, though inspired by me (among others) to create a blog, now updates about 20x as often as I do.

I don't even remember what my last post was about. So let me do a quick update about the things I have going on/am currently interested in:

I'm a research assistant working on analyzing immigrant youth trainings in FL and CO.  I'm also going to Boston soon to do some other RA work for my old Wellesley prof.  Dreamactivist.org = awesome.

I bought her book (now available in paperback, unfortunately not at B&N) which is about the process by which people become motivated and involved in the politics.  I may even be a super dork and ask her to sign it.

Supreme Court ruled that apparently selling videos of dog fights and animal brutality and such is completely protected under the freedom of speech (US v. Stevens, look it up).  Scalia says, what about the people who like dogfighting? A NYTimes op-ed says, it's true, we may hate racists but we can't stop Nazis from marching or the KKK from spewing racist remarks.  I say, true, but we don't allow them to sell video tapes of the Holocaust or lynching.  Because that means they committed a crime in order to make the video, am I right? Mkay.  And for money? Ugh.  Sick.

Apple, Inc. cancelled membership in the US Chamber of Commerce over their position in environmental policy.  Whether you love them or hate them, Apple took a positive stand for the environment, and that makes me happy.  Even if they do plan obsolescence.  Which is bad for the environment.  Their Forbes number was pretty low, too, on the list of "green" businesses.  Donahue says the US Chamber supports climate action, but not the Markey-Waxman version.  Which is really stupid, because cap-and-trade favors large, multinational businesses who can afford to buy more permits.  Duh, did they even read the bill?

In other news, I hate words like "green" and "organic" and "sustainable."  So dumb, and no one even really knows what they mean, anyway. 

Sen. Boxer (man, I wish I lived in a cool state where my senators DID something) is telling the EPA to do something about the water issue in public schools.  Good for her.

This health care stuff has got to go.  Two-thirds of Americans support a public option and yet it's been voted down every time in committee.  Who do these people in Congress think they work for?  Tough call, since we voted them in but the pharmaceuticals pay for it.

Also, what exactly is the problem with an individual mandate?? We tell insurance companies they have to cover us, but then don't mandate that people buy it?  What then, would stop me, a healthy 22-year old, from going about my life without health insurance-- using the emergency room if I need to-- and waiting until I get cancer to buy insurance?  That would make everyone's premiums go up.  How do people not get that?  Sometimes I think this country is doomed to fail because of bad logic.

Alright, that's all for now.  Yeah, I know, boring.  But hey, maybe you learned something.  And if you read the comments on other blog posts you can learn something about me.  Other than that I'm a political junkie.

Oh, and Amazon dropped the price of their Kindle.  Which makes me more financially able to swing such a purchase, and yet I still have mixed feelings about my role in the death of the printed word.  Hmm.

OH!  I saw Whip It and now I'm obsessed with being a roller derby girl (even though I'm missing it in the QC on Oct. 21st!).  What should my name be?  Help a girl out!!! (I used three exclamation points, so you know I'm serious.)

Related articles:

• Supreme Court To Hear Animal Sex Fetish Case; "Crush Videos," Dogfighting Footage May Be Treated Like Child Porn (huffingtonpost.com)
• Green Inc.: Chamber of Commerce Chief Is Defiant (greeninc.blogs.nytimes.com)