Obafat!

Yasser Arafat, Kofi Annan, Jimmy Carter, Al Gore, Mohammed el-Baradei, Rigoberta Menchu... Barack Hussein Obama.

UPDATE. This is completely bizarre. President Barack Obama has just won the Nobel Peace Prize. 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? Of course, traditionally it has been standard procedure that winners of the prize do their peacemaking first and are only given the prize after they have achieved something. But this innovation sweeps aside such old-fashioned notions of reward following effort. Think about it, it’s so post-modern: a leader can now win the peace prize for saying that he hopes to bring about peace at some point in the future. He doesn’t actually have to do it, he just has to have aspirations. Brilliant. (Iain Martin, Wall Street Journal)