What if the explanation for Obama’s Nobel is that left wing billionaire George Soros (or someone like him) bought it for him? We know that the International Olympic Committee for decades was voting based on bribes from the competing venues. A million dollars or so, a small amount for this hypothetical billionaire, could buy the votes of a majority of the Nobel committee (perhaps through non-cash gifts, scholarships for relatives, aid to a third party), and give candidate Obama a badge of approval to enhance his prestige and potential to win in 2012. Not to mention it gives Obama over $1 million tax free in a way that is not barred by conflict of interest and bribery laws (You pay tax on lottery winnings, but not on Nobel prizes or other recognition of achievement like an Olympic gold medal). In effect, it would be a way of money laundering a gift. My hypothesis in no way requires that Obama have any involvement in this.

What if Al Gore’s Nobel Peace prize was the pilot program? I know that the liberal leanings of the prize committee could produce these results all on their own, but that would also mean they would be more susceptible to taking an inducement without thinking they were going against principle.

I would have been surprised if Slate had recognized that his “power” derives from his decades of personal service, such as meeting with Mormons in communist controlled East Germany and persuading the government to allow the Church to build a temple where Mormons in eastern Europe could be married for eternity, or of his selection of Dieter Uchtdorf (a former VP of Lufthansa and a refugee from East Germany) as his Second Counselor in the First Presidency. My son works in nursing homes in Salt Lake, and Monson is constantly visiting people there, maintaining friendships and care relationships he established as a 22-year-old bishop with hundreds of widows in his congregation. Slate also omitted mention of the publication this year of a Mormon edition of the bible in Spanish, to serve millions of Mormons in Spain and Latin America, with cross references to the Book of Mormon and study aids heretofore available only with the King James Version. And it might have mentioned that the temples announced by Monson include ones in Utah and Japan and Italy, reflecting the international growth of the LDS Church.