I Can Haz Nobel?

The newshole is awash with stories of President Obama winning the Nobel Peace Prize. He's in rare company, as only the third sitting US President (after Wilson and Teddy Roosevelt) to win the award. Predictably, Republicans are up in arms over the announcement, scoffing at the idea of giving the award to a man who's been in office nine months. Of course, these are the same Republicans who scoff at the very idea of a Peace Prize itself...they don't exactly have a great track record in the peace arena.

At the end of the day, I think this is probably a bit premature, and will be an unneeded distraction for an administration with an ambitious agenda and tons of corporate money working against that agenda. In the end, I think Obama got the award precisely because he's not George W Bush. After 8 disastrous years of war, pestilence, cowboy diplomacy, and ugly nationalism I can see how some would think a small change back towards "normal" warrants this much attention. But where I come from you don't get a reward just for doing the right thing...you need to go above and beyond. Stop the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Increase US foreign aid (the peaceful kind, not the military kind) to more than 1% of the federal budget. End poverty here at home...then we'll talk.