Yesterday Norman Borlaug was given the Congressional Gold Medal, the highest civilian award given by Congress. Nancy Pelosi awarded it and Bush was at the Capitol for the ceremony and yet the main stream media ignored it. I know last night's Countdown spent a bunch of time on celebrity crap.
So who's Norman Borlaug? I admit I didn't recognize the name but I did remember his story from the West Wing. He created semi-dwarf high-yield, disease-resistant varieties of wheat. In the 1960s he worked with Mexico, India and Pakistan and greatly increased their food production. "These collective increases in yield have been labeled the Green Revolution, and Borlaug is often credited with saving over a billion people from starvation." In 1970, Borlaug was the first Nobel Peace Prize recipient for work in agriculture. In 1977 President Ford gave him the U.S. Presidential Medal of Freedom. In 1986 he started the World Food Prize.
The crazy part to me is that Congress voted to approve this and Bush signed the bill into law back in December 2006. Why did it take 7 months to get the medal to the 93 year-old Borlaug? No wonder we can't get armored vehicles resistant to IEDs to the troops in Iraq.
No comments:
Post a Comment