When the news broke on my phone this morning that President Obama had been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, my first thought was that the satirists at The Onion must have hacked into ATT just to make mischief.

My second thought was, "He won the whaaaaat?"

My third thought was that Glenn Beck must be spontaneously combusting.

My fourth and arguably most coherent thought was that this peace prize seems a tad premature, roughly akin to the Oscars crowd giving Dakota Fanning a lifetime achievement award.

Actually, the Nobel committee seems to have adopted the philosophy of Little League Baseball, where every kid on the team gets a trophy, regardless of whether he or she hits .500 or zip. The trophy is awarded not for actual achievement, but for the mere act of trying.

Obama is clearly aspiring to usher in an era of peace, but he hasn't achieved anything yet; it's fair to say that no president at the nine-month mark ever will. It's way too early to know whether his initial outreach efforts will bring peace (or, more realistically, a modicum of peace) to the Middle East, Iran, or Afghanistan. Indeed, Obama has yet to indicate how he even wants to proceed in Afghanistan. It's way too early to know whether he can bond the West and the Muslim world, or reduce the nuclear arsenals of major powers. Heck, he ordered the closure of Guantanamo, and the place is still open.

The Nobel rules stipulate that the peace prize should go "to 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." The language appears to require that a recipient do something concrete ("shall have done the most or the best work"), but clearly the Norwegians have opted to honor Obama for his silver tongue and conciliatory tone - as if words are synonymous with achievement.

I assume that the Fox News talking heads will be exploding all weekend (Norway has a public option for health care!). And perhaps conservatives will demand that all Americans boycott Norwegian furniture; who knows, maybe they'll even demand that the Beatles' song title "Norwegian Wood" be changed to "Freedom Wood."

The rest of us can simply shake our heads and wonder, what's next? Dan Brown winning the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction?

»  More A trophy for trying

If you're up for a really good laugh - something to tide you over until next month, when Tina Fey will surely morph into bestselling author Sarah Palin - just check out the latest right-wing fever dream.

During the past 48 hours, many networking conservatives have permitted themselves to become romanced by the notion that Barack Obama didn't pen a single word of Dreams From My Father, that he actually farmed out the whole project to a ghostwriter...and that the ghostwriter was none other than William Ayers, the ex-radical '60s bomber. This new story line has ricocheted hither and yon, stirring great titillation in the fact-free fiefdoms of the blogosphere.

For these right-wing bloggers and their credulous fans, the story line is a dream come true, because (a) it would prove that Obama is truly a fraud, beyond the fact that of course he was born a foreigner, (b) it would discredit the bestselling book that helped vault Obama to prominence, and (c) it would prove that Obama's strings were being pulled by an unrepentant domestic terrorist, thereby vindicating all those conservatives who argued in vain during the '08 campaign that Obama neighbor Bill Ayers was a dire threat to national security, maybe almost as lethal as ACORN.

Actually, a smattering of right-wing fantasists began flogging an Ayers-as-ghostwriter rumor a year ago. But this week, the rumor became a story line because it was supposedly confirmed once and for all...by Bill Ayers himself!

»  More Hits, buzz, and fever dreams

When I read yesterday that a prominent American scientist had been awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for her pioneering work in the field of cell biology, I stared at her name for half a minute.

Elizabeth Blackburn...Elizabeth Blackburn...Why does that name ring a bell?

I was about to take the knee-jerk research route - by using what President Bush liked to call "the Google" - when realization dawned. And all I needed to do, to verify my hunch, was dig out a very fat file. The file is entitled "Bush and Science" (an absurd pairing, I know), and deep inside, yup, there she was: Elizabeth Blackburn.

Here's what was omitted from the Nobel Prize news stories. Just for the record:

»  More Rebuke to the dark age

One of these days (or weeks, or months), the Democrats will presumably wake up and finally face the fact that one of their top congressional players has come to epitomize the arrogance of power - and that their refusal to slap him down is tantamount to condoning his corruption.

Charlie Rangel - chairman of the tax-writing Ways and Means Committee, the fourth-most senior House member, and a legend among black politicians - is the biggest ball and chain weighing down the Democrats' political prospects as the 2010 election season draws near. With the economy still in the pits, the last thing Democrats need is to be tagged as the new "party of corruption." But their ongoing indulgence of Rangel veritably invites the Republicans to tout that label.

By the way, that's the same label that Democrats successfully affixed to the incumbent House Republicans during the runup to the 2006 congressional elections, and the same label that Newt Gingrich's Republicans used successfully against the incumbent House Democrats in the 1994 elections. Midterm elections tend to attract a disproportionate share of voters who are really ticked off about something; not infrequently, these elections become populist uprisings against the party in power.

The problem for the current party in power is that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi pledged to run an ethical regime; in fact, she says she has "drained the swamp." But if voters come to perceive a yawning gap between promise and perfomance, that could spell trouble in the '10 elections. Currently, the House Ethics Committee is scrutinizing the behavior of 15 members; 11 of them are Democrats. And a nonpartisan watchdog group, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW), recently published its new list of the 12 most corrupt House members - seven of whom are Democrats.

»  More Arrogance and entitlement

The Sunday print column, tweaked and updated:

Pass the word, the great recession is over.

What, you haven't heard? Notwithstanding last Friday's dismal report on the latest job losses, various economic gurus are talking about a strong third-quarter rebound, the Dow continues its sluggish upward creep toward 10,000, and a former Reagan economic whiz named Michael Muzza declares that America has already commenced a "moderately vigorous recovery."

But, in terms of President Obama's political health, and the Democrats' prospects for success in the 2010 congressional races, upbeat macroeconomic statistics really don't mean squat. Voters won't believe that the economy has truly begun to rebound until they can see tangible evidence with their own eyes.

»  More Life at ground level

More Friday factoids:

The new jobs report puts the unemployment rate at 9.8 percent, thus spreading cheer among Republicans who are already wielding the stat this morning as a political weapon against President Obama. But somehow they keep omitting the fact that the jobless rate has not been this high since 1983...when the guy in charge was their icon, Ronald Reagan. He was saddled with a jobless rate in the range of 11 percent, and that wound up costing his party 26 House seats in the '82 midterm election. Obama, similarly saddled with high unemployment, may well lose that many seats in 2010 - but as the Republicans crow triumphantly, the rest of us should refrain from behaving as if such losses have never happened before. In fact, history teaches us that - with only three exceptions (1934, 1998, and 2002) - the president's party has lost seats in every midterm election over the last 100 years.

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It's too early to pinpoint the favored contenders for the 2012 Republican nomination, but there's plenty of preliminary action. I heard the other day from a smart source that Gen. David Petraeus is quietly taking soundings of his own. (A heretofore apolitical military man? Hey, it worked for Eisenhower.) I also think it's worth keeping an eye on South Dakota Sen. John Thune, who, aside from literally being tall, dark, and handsome, is working hard to build up some foreign policy credentials - as evidenced by reports that he has authored a new GOP memo on how to refute Obama on the issue of impending arms talks with Russia. I also saw this week that Minnesota Gov. Tim ("T-Paw") Pawlenty has already assembled a huge roster of big-time Republican consultants - plus one curious choice, ex-Bush White House political director Sara Taylor. That name ring a bell? Back in July 2007, Taylor told Congress that she couldn’t talk about how the Bush team had wrecked the integrity of the Justice Department because, in her words, "I took an oath to the president, and I take that oath very seriously." She was then gently informed that, as a federal employee, she had actually taken an oath to the U.S. Constitution. Presumably, while preparing to serve T-Paw, she has now brushed up on how government actually works.

»  More Riffs and tiffs

A change of pace today: Roman Polanski.

Bring him back, play it out in court. And, if the court deems fit, lock him up.

Like so many other cinema devotees, I love the guy's movies. Chinatown is classic film noir, Rosemary's Baby is top-notch paranoia, The Pianist is both terrifying and inspiring. I can't disagree with the European artists' petition that hails Polanski as "one of the greatest contemporary filmmakers."

But since when should great artistry protect a rapist from the consequences of his crimes?

»  More Bring him back

It was a small episode in yesterday's Senate Finance Committee debate on health care. Nevertheless, it's worth a moment of scrutiny, because it spoke volumes about the intelligence-challenged mentality that has stymied reform in this country for lo these many decades.

Senator John Ensign, the Nevada Republican best known for having trysted with the wife of a top aide, strongly disputed all the health statistics which consistently show that the United States lags behind other western nations in terms of quality care. His protestations were entirely predictable; after all, most conservatives are incapable of accepting the notion that the United States lags behind anyone else on anything - because this is America, and America by definition is always number one.

Ensign and his brethren don't like to hear that America, despite spending more per capita on health care than anyone else, ranks 50th out of 224 nations in life expectancy (this, according to the CIA World Factbook); that the Commonwealth Fund, a private foundation that has tracked health care since 1918, consistently finds that when America is measured against five other western nations (Australia, Canada, Germany, New Zealand, United Kingdom) on five key health care metrics (quality, access, efficiency, equity, healthy lives), America ranks either last or next to last; and that, in a life-expectancy study conducted by the OECD (the Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development), America during the final two decades of the 20th century ranked only 19th of the 29 OECD member nations.

But what really ticked off Ensign was a Senate colleague's reference to international statistics which show that America has a higher preventable death rate than other western countries - that, in other words, America has the worst track record of losing people who could have been treated under a more efficient, accssible health care system.

»  More Forget those cars and guns

As President Obama decides whether to sign off on Gen. Stanley McChrystal's request for a massive troop hike in Afghanistan - the president is slated to conduct high-level meetings today and tomorrow - his usual critics are already complaining that his pause for reflection is proof that he's a wimp and a wuss. As they see it, Obama should speedily say yes because the military commander in the field always knows best. For instance, from the cheap seats, here's potential 2012 challenger Mitt Romney: "This is not the time for Hamlet in the White House."

But presidents are not supposed to rubber stamp the military brass; that's not how our system is supposed to work. The head of the military is a civilian - that would be Obama - and the civilian, looking at the big picture, is constitutionally empowered to have the last word. The Pentagon has been trying to box Obama in, by leaking McChrystal's 40,000 troop hike request to The Washington Post last week - with McChrystal advertising himself in a 60 Minutes segment the other night - but it doesn't necessarily follow that Obama should forfeit his responsibility to think for awhile outside the box.

And those who support Obama on this point can hardly be typecast as liberals. To cite one example, Michael O'Hanlon, a Washington think-tanker best known for his outspoken hawkishness on Iraq, told an audience of neoconservatives the other day that they should cut the president some slack. In his words: "Mr. Obama is entitled to think twice about (McChrystal's recommendation). He is entitled to wonder, just how precise is this military arithmetic? Just how promising is this counter-insurgency strategy anyway? I do think generals should say what they think they need. But presidents should also digest that request."

O'Hanlon said that everybody should indulge Obama "at least for a few weeks of deliberation and indecision. If he is still in November where he is today, I will not be defending him. But I think where he is at this moment is understandable."

»  More Thinking outside the box