The Nobel Peace Prize has lost all credibility. It strained its ethos in giving an award to Barack Obama just 9 days after he took office.

But by giving their prize to the European Union--a model of disfunction--they have blown what's left of their credibility by celebrating the failure known as the European Union.

There are riots in Greece. France and Spain are close to bankruptcy. Only the Germans are left to hold things together and we all know what happened the last time the Germans tried to be in charge...

Ok, that was bad. But you get my point. From the AP:

The European Union won the Nobel Peace Prize on Friday for promoting peace and democracy in Europe - an honor that came as 27-nation bloc was struggling with its biggest crisis since it was created in the 1950s.

The Norwegian prize committee said the EU was being honored Friday for six decades of contributions "to the advancement of peace and reconciliation, democracy and human rights in Europe."

"The stabilizing part played by the European Union has helped to transform a once-torn Europe from a continent of war to a continent of peace," Nobel committee chairman Thorbjoern Jagland said.

The EU grew out of the tremendous devastation of World War II, fueled by the conviction that ever-closer economic ties would make sure that century-old enemies never turned on each other again. It's now made up of 500 million people in 27 nations, with other nations lined up, waiting to join.

Not everyone is happy about this decision. Which the Nobel committee does not care about. Again from the AP:

To many in the 27-nation bloc, the EU is an unwieldy and unloved agglomeration overseen by a top-heavy bureaucracy devoted to creating arcane regulations about everything from cheese to fishing quotas. Set up with noble goals after the devastation of World War II, the EU to critics now appears impotent amid a debt crisis that has widened north-south divisions, threatened the euro currency and plunged several members, from Greece to Ireland to Spain, into economic turmoil.

The Nobel Prize once meant you had made a significant contribution to humanity. The choices recently are more like political awards for conceptual ideas that favor the socialist ideals of the Nobel committee.