Nobel Peace Prize

The Nobel Peace Prize has become increasingly ridiculous and irrelevant over the last couple of decades, even comedic at times, in a pathetic kind of way.  Here is a list of the winners since 1980:

_ 2008: Martti Ahtisaari
_ 2007: Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Al Gore
_ 2006: Muhammad Yunus, Grameen Bank
_ 2005: International Atomic Energy Agency, Mohamed ElBaradei
_ 2004: Wangari Maathai
_ 2003: Shirin Ebadi
_ 2002: Former U.S. President Jimmy Carter
_ 2001: United Nations, Kofi Annan
_ 2000: Kim Dae-jung
_ 1999: Medecins Sans Frontieres
_ 1998: John Hume, David Trimble
_ 1997: International Campaign to Ban Landmines, Jody Williams
_ 1996: Carlos Filipe Ximenes Belo, Jose Ramos-Horta
_ 1995: Joseph Rotblat, Pugwash Conf. on Science and World Affairs
_ 1994: Yasser Arafat, Shimon Peres, Yitzhak Rabin
_ 1993: Nelson Mandela, F.W. de Klerk
_ 1992: Rigoberta Menchu Tum
_ 1991: Aung San Suu Kyi
_ 1990: Mikhail Gorbachev
_ 1989: The 14th Dalai Lama
_ 1988: U.N. Peacekeeping Forces
_ 1987: Oscar Arias Sanchez
_ 1986: Elie Wiesel
_ 1985: International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War
_ 1984: Desmond Tutu
_ 1983: Lech Walesa
_ 1982: Alva Myrdal, Alfonso Garcia Robles
_ 1981: Office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees
_ 1980: Adolfo Perez Esquivel

Some of these are absolutely worthy, to be sure.  Others seem relatively obscure and unknown.  But then there's Jimmy Carter, the Dalai Lama, Yasser Arafat, Mohamed El-Baradai, and...

...wait for it....

Al Gore.

And now this.

......