My President's recent 'Achievement'

How do you measure greatness exactly? And, to further complicate my inquest--how does one receive it while still very much ALIVE?

President Barack Hussein Obama, our country's 44th President of the United States received, and added to his ever-increasing list of achievements, a Nobel Peace Prize for 2009.

My first thoughts were: that's great, but for what exactly? is he not STILL in office, STILL in the role of doing?

I quickly altered my thoughts to paranoia: this is a set up; what was meant as promotion from the Swiss billing may backfire faster than Gorbachev's iron curtain renting.

Still, you have to be impressed that such a man while still in office received the award based on pure merit pre-inauguration. I had suspected such a thing could happen via his literary output; and, at best, I expected the MacArthur foundation to reward him, but a Nobel Peace Prize exceeds my (and many other Americans') expectations.

If we say he earned the award via his oratory aspirations to reach across the political table and break bread with mankind, then it is fitting. If we say, it is because of his ascendancy to the 44th Executive Branch of our US Government, then it is not.

In his own words then: "This award is not simply about my administration...[it] 'must be shared' with everyone who strives for 'justice and dignity'."

Now, we sit back and listen as all the nay-sayers and dejected wanna be should have been me's gripe about who won. Jealous? Perhaps...

Well said, and as always well achieved Mr. president.