My second thought was: "Hey it's a consolation prize for losing the Olympics!"

In his 1895 will, Alfred Nobel, founder of the award, had directed committees selected by the Swedish president to reward "the person who shall have done the most or the best work for fraternity between the nations and the abolition or reduction of standing armies and the formation and spreading of peace congresses."

Which of the nominees this year should have won?

From the AP:

Until seconds before the award, speculation had focused on a wide variety of candidates besides Obama: Zimbabwe's Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai, a Colombian senator, a Chinese dissident and an Afghan woman's rights activist, among others. The Nobel committee received a record 205 nominations for this year's prize, though it was not immediately apparent who nominated Obama.

Apparently, the nomination was submitted just two weeks into his presidency.

The controversy generated by honoring someone who has only been in office less than a year--primarily because he "inspires hope"--will likely outweigh the benefits.

The changed tone to Iran notwithstanding, his administration frequently emphasizes that it is preserving the option to bomb that country, too -- which could be a third war against a Muslim country fought simultaneously under his watch.  He's worked tirelessly to protect his country not only from accountability -- but also transparency -- for the last eight years of war crimes, almost certainly violating America's treaty obligations in the process.  And he is currently presiding over an expansion of the legal black hole at Bagram while aggressively demanding the right to abduct people from around the world, ship them there, and then imprison them indefinitely with no rights of any kind.

It's certainly true that Obama inherited, not started, these conflicts.  And it's possible that he could bring about their end, along with an overall change in how America interacts with the world in terms of actions, not just words.  If he does that, he would deserve immense credit -- perhaps even a Nobel Peace Prize.  But he hasn't done any of that.  And it's at least just as possible that he'll do the opposite:  that he'll continue to escalate the 8-year occupation of Afghanistan, preside over more conflict in Iraq, end up in a dangerous confrontation with Iran, and continue to preserve many of the core Bush/Cheney Terrorism policies that created such a stain on America's image and character around the world.

Through no fault of his own, Obama presides over a massive war-making state that spends on its military close to the amount of the rest of the world combined.  The U.S. accounts for almost 70% of worldwide arms sales.  We're currently occupying and waging wars in two separate Muslim countries and at making clear we reserve the "right" to attack a third.  Someone who made meaningful changes to those realities would truly be a man of peace.  It's unreasonable to expect that Obama would magically transform all of this in nine months, and he certainly hasn't.  Instead, he presides over it and is continuing much of it.  One can reasonably debate how much blame he merits for all of that, but there are simply no meaningful "peace" accomplishment in his record -- at least not yet -- and there's plenty of the opposite.  That's what makes this Prize so painfully and self-evidently ludicrous.

Obama postpones meeting with Dalai Lama
By FOSTER KLUG, Associated Press, 2009-10-06

WASHINGTON - A decision by Barack Obama to postpone his first meeting as president with the Dalai Lama is overshadowing a visit to Washington this week by the exiled spiritual leader of Tibet's Buddhists.

The Dalai Lama arrived Monday in Washington and will be received by prominent lawmakers and the U.S. coordinator for Tibet. But the focus for many in China, Tibet and the United States is the president's decision not to meet with the Dalai Lama until after Obama visits Chinese President Hu Jintao in Beijing in November.

The Dalai Lama has met with the past three sitting U.S. presidents during his visits to Washington. But this week's trip comes at a delicate time for a new U.S. administration looking to improve relations with Beijing and win Chinese support for crucial foreign policy, economic and environmental goals. ...

Sure, Mr. Dalai looks serene and is all peace and love and yak yak yak but does the mask come off once popular attention is focused elsewhere? We can't see, can we?

Why'd he change his name to Jetsun Jamphel Ngawang Lobsang Yeshe Tenzin Gyatso (from Lhamo Döndrub)? Was it to get past the no-fly list?

But this is another op for an awesome speech on a world stage, another chance to fly in Air Force One -- now that he has left the U.S. more than any other prez in a first year, so he will accept it.

He was placed into nomination 10 days after he was sworn into office.  Makes no sense.   Surely there must have been more deserving candidates who have actually done something to have been selected but instead they give it to Mr. Platitude Teleprompter.  

BTW, there IS quite a precedent for awarding people for nothing.  Seinfeld was a show about nothing and it received Major awards. LOL.

Obama is about Obama, nothing else.  That, plus the 1.5 million in cash means he isn't going to turn the award down.  

My only question is, how is he going to turn his acceptance into a Rorscharch test; somehow accepting the award while seeming to not accept it, depending on what the hopey-changey crowd would like for him to do....

He can certainly talks a great game! H#ll, he convinced the progressive community that he was the anti war candidate, when in reality he voted yes on every war funding bill.

This is an odd award. You'd expect it to come later in Obama's presidency and tied to some particular event or accomplishment. But the unmistakable message of the award is one of the consequences of a period in which the most powerful country in the world, the 'hyper-power' as the French have it, became the focus of destabilization and in real if limited ways lawlessness. A harsh judgment, yes. But a dark period. And Obama has begun, if fitfully and very imperfectly to many of his supporters, to steer the ship of state in a different direction. If that seems like a meager accomplishment to many of the usual Washington types it's a profound reflection of their own enablement of the Bush era and how compromised they are by it, how much they perpetuated the belief that it was 'normal history' rather than dark aberration.

I shrugged when they gave Gore a prize, Carter and Yasser Arafat but this one has no reasoning.  I mean if you believe what you believe there was an argument for the others but this one is pure balderdash.

This president is fighting two wars and wrongly in still fighting a war against terror that is only different the Bush in terms of rhetoric and for that he deserves a Nobel Peace prize?

This is the type of Euro-UN-political statement that drives so many in this country crazy and if Obama signs on he's crazy.

Lê Ðức Thọ and Henry Kissinger were jointly awarded the 1973 Nobel Peace Prize for their efforts in negotiating the Paris Peace Accords.[2] However, he declined to accept the award, stating that there was still no peace in his country.

The Nobel committee recognized Obama's efforts to solve complex global problems including working toward a world free of nuclear weapons.

"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 committee said.

Jagland said the decision was "unanimous" and came with ease.

The Obama State Department has quickly, quietly and skillfully repaired U.S. relations with  a host of countries and international institutions. Little of that progress is visible if your primary sources of news are the American media.

And it's also his pattern to accept all this as his due so I think it's highly unlikely he will turn it down.

I think also that giving this award on some speeches that Obama which change how the other countries now look at the U.S vs how they look at the U.S. under Bush is a little over the top.

"He got the prize because he has been able to change the international climate," Nobel Committee chairman Thorbjoern Jagland said. "Some people say, and I understand it, isn't it premature? Too early? Well, I'd say then that it could be too late to respond three years from now. It is now that we have the opportunity to respond -- all of us."

 I understand this Peace prize is given out by the Norwegian Parliament committee.  The other Nobels are given by the Swedish.

"The Republican Party has thrown in its lot with the terrorists - the Taliban and Hamas this morning - in criticizing the President for receiving the Nobel Peace prize,"
DNC communications director Brad Woodhouse told POLITICO. "

We can say the same thing after almost every Academy Award, or Tonys, or Emmys...