"That's why we voted for him!"

All over the radio yesterday, but I was busy (so STFU):




I don't even know where to begin to explain how fucked-up this is.

And then I wake up to this:

The first black American president was honoured "for his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples," the chairman of the Nobel committee Thorbjoern Jagland said.

WTF? Extraordinary efforts? He's done what, exactly? He gave a speech.

Some sanity:

The 1983 Laureate, Poland's Lech Walesa, was more blunt.

"Who, Obama? So fast? Too fast - he hasn't had the time to do anything yet," Walesa told reporters in Warsaw.

"For the time being Obama's just making proposals. But sometimes the Nobel committee awards the prize to encourage responsible action," said Walesa.

Neither did key US newspaper The Wall Street Journal mince its words, describing the choice of Obama as "completely bizarre."

"It is unclear why. For making peace, of a kind, with Hillary Clinton? For giving up the missile shield and cheering up the Iranians? For preparing a surge of troops and weaponry in Afghanistan?" said the paper in an editorial.

"Of course, traditionally it has been standard procedure that winners of the prize do their peacemaking first... But this innovation sweeps aside such old-fashioned notions of reward following effort."

Ahmadinijad said that if Obama removes the US veto power in the UN Security Council, it will show the prize was justified. Nice.

Bahaa haaa! From Wiki:

On October 10, 2009, U.S. President Barack Obama was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize less than one year after his taking office. While the committee praised his ambitious foreign policy agenda, it acknowledged that he had not yet actually achieved many of the goals that he had set out to accomplish.

Even more:

Myth: Candidates can be nominated until the last minute.
The nomination deadline is eight months before the announcement, with a strictly enforced deadline of Feb. 1.

Feb 1 was how many days after O-Bam-A took office?

h/t Mr. Lauraw in comments.

Heh, from Dan's place:

I didn’t know there was a category for hope-n-change, or for not actually accomplishing anything!

Comments from the Corner are good, go read.

Sampling from Jonah Goldberg:

The only thing that really bothers me is that this comes just days after the Obama administration turned a blind eye to the Dalai Lama and told the world that it's at least considering a separate peace with the Taliban. That's grotesque. Meanwhile, there are real peace activists and dissidents out there whose dungeons will stay just as cold and dark for another year because of this. Indeed, this news comes during a year when the Iranian people rose up against tyranny and were crushed. Surely someone in Iran — or maybe the Iranian protestors generally — could have benefitted more from receiving the prize than a president who, so far, has done virtually nothing concrete for world peace.

Richard Cohen is a tad amused.

Update:

Sorry Bob, thread-winner appears over at Protein Wisdom:

You know the rule: conservatives are judged by their misdeeds, liberals are judged by their good intentions.

This is why I hang out at the Hostages.