I was at my computer frantically trying to finish a book chapter in the wee hours this morning when I noticed a tweet saying Obama had won the Nobel. I thought it was one of those Twitter rumors that spread like wildfire, but it piqued my interest enough that I clicked BBC, CNN, and AP until I was convinced this was no hoax.

My first reaction was a feeling in the pit of my stomach that winning this global prize so soon on his presidency would be a political loss at home. It’s not going to help him pass health care, and there’s going to be a lot of skepticism—not just from the right--about whether he’s earned such an honor yet. Because he hasn’t, really.

And I hope there is never a hint that any kind of campaign was waged for him to receive the prize, for that would devastate his standing and sully the honor.

No matter about any of that, I still see a hugely important message to America in this award. It starts with "Thank you."  The same “breathing out” moment many of us had when Obama won the election reverberated around the globe, and it was as much about what a bad leader George Bush was on the world stage as how good Obama might be. So the promise of Obama is almost as important as the performance.

When you are taking on a leadership position, it’s always wise to follow someone who has made a big mess, as Bush did so egregiously, with world opinion. But Obama as leader of the free world is not just a breath of fresh air, he’s also a global citizen who respects and walks easily in multiple cultures. The un-Bush. The beautiful American with the winning smile. Our standing in the world has skyrocketed since Obama’s election. We're the 900 pound gorilla, and voters need to need to realize how important a message it is to the rest of the world that we elected a president who believes in talking before pulling the trigger.

So I’m happy about all this. But still, it would be better for Obama’s standing in the U.S. for him to have received it a few years hence.

Guest post By Ellen Bravo, originally published as a Women's Media Center exclusive.

The author, an expert on the prevention of sexual harassment and other issues of women in the workforce, suggests that human resources professionals and corporate executives take the occasion of David Letterman’s revelations to revisit their companies’ policies with the understanding that “sexual favoritism is sexual harassment.” I'm posting her commentary here because I think it is one of the best and most realistic about 21st century sexual mores for the workplace that I've read on the Letterman affair(s). Your thoughts? Read on...

I don’t know David Letterman or any of the staffers he had sex with.

I believe fidelity is the business of only one person, the philanderer’s partner.

Extortionists aren’t whistle-blowers—they’re criminals, and should be put away.

But whenever I hear the justification, “I didn’t violate company policy and no one complained,” my hackles jump up.

Let’s talk about why it’s bad business for the boss to sleep with subordinates.

The key part of consent is that the right to say “yes” is balanced by the right to say “no.” When the person doing the asking is the boss, declining becomes dicey.

Even if there’s no threat or demand involved, how do you know there won’t be repercussions for refusing to go along?

If there’s a problem, whom do you tell? Especially when company policy is silent on the matter,

I used to kinda like Sen. Max Baucus. During the Bush2 administration, he was one of the best we could go to when we needed to make the Republicans' legislation less draconian. Now that he is the pivotal leader for health reform, however, he's acting like the Republicans are still in control. As you can read here and here, he obsessively dumbs down what should be the Democrats' signature legislation.

Thanks to Credo, sponsored by Working Assets, here is a link to a petition you can sign to urge Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid to keep pressing for a public option in the health reform plan despite the Baucus bill. More explanation below:

Next week, the Senate Finance Committee is expected to start debating and voting on its health care reform bill. Of the five Congressional committees writing health care bills, this will be the only one not to include provisions for a public health insurance option.

We can't sit back and let the Senate Finance Committee kill the public option. That is why Open Left is joining with CREDO Action to tell Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid to make sure a public option is included when the bill goes to the floor of the Senate.

The next step in the process is for the Senate Finance Committee and the Senate HELP Committee -- which passed a public option under the late Ted Kennedy -- to combine their bills into a single piece of legislation. This merging is largely determined by the Senate leadership, and so it is important that the Senate leadership hear from us.

Senator Max Baucus, the Finance Committee chair, has tried to justify his bill by claiming there are not enough votes to pass a public option. However, Senate experts say the public option can pass with 51 votes, and none of the 58 Senators elected as Democrats have categorically stated their opposition.

We have the votes to pass a public option in health care reform. We have to make sure the public option is not abandoned before a Senate vote even takes place.

Join us in demanding that Senator Reid keep the public option alive when the bills from the Senate Finance and Senate Health committees are merged!

http://www.GloriaFeldt.com/heartfeldt-politics-blog

I wrote this commentary for The Daily Beast--please go there to comment and share too! 

I felt that it was way past time for someone to call out the cynical politicians who won't vote for health reform under any circumstances but are using women's bodies as a rallying cry to whip up the anti-choice right. Shamefully, President Obama and most of the Democrats are dancing to their tune, and will continue to unless we voters speak out and insist that abortion and other reproductive health care is covered fairly along with other basic medical care.

It’s September. Congress will soon return to tackle health care reform, and I can’t help but notice a familiar political two-step. If you want to see whether a politician--Democrat or Republican--can cut a rug, just ask him or her about abortion. They’ll swing around faster than Tom DeLay on Dancing With the Stars.

Partisans on the right mobbed town halls during the August recess to exploit abortion and women’s health, whipping up controversy around President Obama’s health reform plan. Twisted logic and deliberate misinformation abound in a YouTube ad campaign by the Family Research Council, which, along with other anti-choice groups, also launched a paid media blitz claiming Obama’s health reform plan would pull Granny’s plug while covering abortion—

Personally, I think Americans would be best served, with universal coverage and lower costs, by a single payer plan. But in the absence of any viable campaign for that, the Obama compromise of adding a pubic option to the mix is the best we can hope for. The public option is well-described in this video by Yale Professor Jacob Hacker. Check it out for useful information and corrections to some of the wildly outrageous claims Bachman and her blood (?) brothers are making.

I have the pleasure of speaking to each "class" of Progressive Women's Voices, an exciting program of the Women's Media Center, where I serve on the board. This started during the first class two yars ago when I was asked about the lessons I learned leading a social movement where I worked a great deal with the media and messages as vehicles of social change. My comments have evolved over time from the conversations I've had with PWV partcipants and Heartfeldt Politics readers. So as I prepared today to speak to the final 2009 class tomorrow evening, I decided to share the latest iteration here on my blog. Please let me know your thoughts.

The angry, gunslinging, mobs opposing President Obama’s healthcare plan at town halls have created quite a stir. Screaming confrontations aren’t just great political theater that captures media attention, did you know they literally make your blood pressure rise and cause other involuntary physical anxiety-fear-pain-fight-flight reactions?

If you’re a live-and-let-live sort of person, as most Americans are, your first reaction to public controversy might be a racing heartbeat, but it won’t be long before you’ll probably want to race away. We have millennia of rape and pillage warnings in our brains, after all. Who needs it?

Well, actually you do if you’re interested in getting health reform in our time, or if you’re advancing any