Got a response to my last Blog which was very interesting. It took me to task for being an "Obama" supporter and for not living in the US, thus not having a feel for the mood of many Americans.
They were also shocked as to why Obama received the Peace Prize, they weren't alone, perhaps the most surprised person on the planet was Obama!

Here is my response....

You seemed to have forgotten that his statements about the Iraq War while he was a candidate and his statements about his willingness to talk to Iran were considered by the committee. Once he became President Obama was then nominated. It was then his actions since becoming President that earned him the prize.

People seem to have forgotten his speech in Egypt did have some positive results. First in Lebanon where the vote was much different than the media was predicting and that Syria seems to be a little more open to discussions with the US. His speech may have had an affect on the Iranian citizens in their last attempt to vote. He has pushed the world much closer to accepting the elimination of nuclear weapons than any other leader since he became president. Can you name any other individual that has had a greater effect for world peace?

What has he done is your second point. The main thing he has done is not run away from the important issues that faces America. He has got Congress working on improving health care and it will happen. He has begun to pull out the troops of Iraq (long overdue) and he is addressing the situation in Afghanistan. It took Bush eight years to screw over the states and yet people want Obama to bring things back to normal in eight months. I's not going to happen, it may never happen. One of the first things Obama did was to allow stem cell research to resume. He got a stimulus bill passed and it is now having a positive affect on the economy. He fully funded Leave No Child Behind. At the end of this year, while the conservatives are crying about what he has done, more important legislation will have passed through Congress in one year that Bush did in eight years!

Yet with all the negative press he has gotten from conservatives he still has, according to your Gallup poll results, a 53% favorable rate. The last poll I saw taken earlier this week, before the Prize announcement, is that he had risen from 50% to 56%

The US is in critical condition and the real shame of it is that you don't even realize it! Today as I write this a number of countries are working on replacing the US dollar as the world currency. China is encouraging its people to buy gold as they fear that the trillions of US dollars they own will soon be worthless. The US currently ranks near the bottom of the industrialized world in education, health, and living standards and yet you refuse to accept needed changes.

The real shame of all of this is that Americans looking for a quick fix will look to the Republicans for answers and the do nothing party will answer the call. If they do manage to get control of Congress than we will have two years of the US falling further behind the rest of the world. It will be a time when the dollar drops like a rock, gold will head for $2,000, the market will crash after reaching the 10,300 level, unemployment will bust through 10.%, and the big three will become the BIG ONE. Not a pretty picture.

As to being a laughing stock to the world how do you explain him being given the Nobel Prize? The committee is made up of people from around the world! No if we are laughing it's not at the President but his critics! We can't believe that there is even a debate on his health care proposals!

As to my personal point of view I was raised in New England, received my post-secondary education in the west, worked in New England, New Mexico, Colorado, and western Canada. I worked long enough in the states to earn a small monthly check from social insurance. I am quite aware of what is happening in the States, but I also have been exposed to another country's way of doing things. Some are better and others not so much as the US's methods.

Change does not happen overnight but if you have someone that sticks to their goals change will happen. If Obama is not successful then America will have lost it's best chance to regain the leadership it has lost and the American citizen will be the worst for it.
 

Wow! The President earns the Noble Peace Prize in just ten months on the job! Before that the September polls show a 6% increase in his popularity and it looks like a health care bill will come out of Congress in a few weeks.

It is beginning to look like the mountain of resistance is beginning to move. Once that happens then maybe the change promised will happen after all. Getting a country to move from a stand still is hard work, but once you create movement then it gets easier. For far too long the USA has stood still or resisted changing its health care, social security, view on global warming, and a many other important issues. I see that a number of big companies including Apple have withdrawn from the US Chamber of Commerce because of it's stand on climate change and it's refusal to accept cap & trade as a system to reduce CO2 emissions. Just maybe big business is beginning to see the economic benefits to going green. Could Al Gore have been right?

The American economy is a basket case. I see where the middle east countries are having discussions with Japan, Russia, and China about the possibility of using another currency or currencies instead of the US dollar for trading purposes. If and when that happens and its more likely to be when, the US dollar is going to drop in value like a rock! Many people are already putting their money into gold expecting the US dollar to fall to record lows. The key with the stock market is when the DOW hits 10,300 if it can manage to stay at or go beyond that level then the American economy will truly be recovering. Many people think that 10,300 is when the Bear will spring its second trap just like it did in 1931 and spin the economy into a downward spin that will take years to recover from. If Obama is able to prevent that and turn around the American economy then next year he should win the Noble Prize for Economics.