Nobel Prize to Obama *** UPDATED

The Nobel Peace Prize has been awarded to Barack Obama for his promotion of peace and because he is not George Bush.

This award says a lot more about the Nobel cast of characters than it says about Barack Obama, who was actually nominated for this award only two weeks after he took office.

"Only very rarely has a person to the same extent as Obama captured the world's attention and given its people hope for a better future," the Norwegian committee said in a statement.

"His diplomacy is founded in the concept that those who are to lead the world must do so on the basis of values and attitudes that are shared by the majority of the world's population."

Asked why the prize had been awarded to Mr Obama less than a year after he took office, Nobel Committee head Thorbjoern Jagland said: "It was because we would like to support what he is trying to achieve".

"It is a clear signal that we want to advocate the same as he has done," he said.

If the other Nobel prizes were awarded on the same merits as this year's peace prize a chemist could get his cool $1.4 million for wishing he could discover something. The medical prize could be awarded for wanting to heal. The physics prize might be awarded to some schmuck who hoped to make a meaningful observation sometime in his career.

Obama's achievements in promoting peace thus far total up to somewhere between disastrous and nil, and by my account he is just as deserving of this once meaningful prize as he is the National League MVP.

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Jules Crittenden has a great roundup but it is Patrick of Popehat that has the most insightful comment and question:

The only significant war that Obama has resolved is the Henry Louis Gates conflict, and there he had an assist from the makers of Bud Light. Was Anheuser-Busch at least nominated?