Obama Wins Nobel Peace Prize

To be fair, not everyone can look at such things with a mind as open as yours.

 

Here's the thing - the Nobel committee could have awarded the thing to someone who has worked in relative anonymity on worthy projects in a war-torn region, they have done so in the past and after a year of speeches around the world, they tend to go back to anonymity. By giving it to Obama, it's like the award is a no money down home loan to a guy in one of the few positions that can have wide-ranging impact for at least three years, and hoping he can pay it off. The idea behind the award is to promote peace, I really doubt Obama is going to get the award and say, "great, now I can start bombing the shit out people."
It's kind of like Sports Illustrated's Sportsmen of the Year - I thought they gave it to Tiger before he'd really earned it, but it sold magazines. They still haven't given it to Federer, mainly because he's Swiss and not as many people care about tennis.

Here's the list of recent winners - not only could I not name why most of the honorees were honored - I couldn't tell you what country they were from.
_ 2009: U.S. President Barack Obama
_ 2008: Martti Ahtisaari
_ 2007: Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Al Gore
_ 2006: Muhammad Yunus, Grameen Bank
_ 2005: International Atomic Energy Agency, Mohamed ElBaradei
_ 2004: Wangari Maathai
_ 2003: Shirin Ebadi
_ 2002: Former U.S. President Jimmy Carter
_ 2001: United Nations, Kofi Annan
_ 2000: Kim Dae-jung
_ 1999: Medecins Sans Frontieres
_ 1998: John Hume, David Trimble
_ 1997: International Campaign to Ban Landmines, Jody Williams
_ 1996: Carlos Filipe Ximenes Belo, Jose Ramos-Horta
_ 1995: Joseph Rotblat, Pugwash Conferences on Science and World Affairs
_ 1994: Yasser Arafat, Shimon Peres, Yitzhak Rabin
_ 1993: Nelson Mandela, F.W. de Klerk

 

What took them so long?

 

Nice.

 

They gave it to the wrong Obama.

 

I tend to stay off the politics board and lean more left than right, but WTF?

(nice line, Zeke...)

 

Is there any doubt he won simply by being the first black POTUS? The rest of it is simply smokescreen.

I agree this smells of a PR stunt. Suddenly the Nobel will get big coverage.

 

This is too funny. Did they not see the SNL skit?

I first heard the news on the radio, and I was sure the host was joking.

Rather than being a huge honor, this will turn out to be an embarrassment. It just exposes that his popularity is based not on his accomplishments, but only on a hope that he can be all things to all people.

If he had actually gotten us out of Iraq and/or Afghanistan and closed Gitmo, I could understand their thinking, but he's done nothing.

Jack & squat.

The Emperor has no clothes.

 

For being a joke. And Obama is gonna have to deal with a lot of unwanted questions.

 

So to see what the folks at Fox News had to say about this, I tuned in to a panel discussion with a Democratic political pollster, a conservative talk show host and ... drum roll please ... Stephen A. Smith.

He's billed as a journalist and former ESPN commentator.

WTF?

Edit: Now he's in a discussion about Afghanistan .

 

This makes his snub of the Dalai Lama look even worse. He snubbed a fellow recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize. Too funny.

I hope it's not too late in the week for SNL to come up with something on this joke of an award.