Before the prize was announced early this morning, the AP ran an item on the likely winners, which included this priceless sentence, buried deep in the story:  

U.S. President Barack Obama is thought to have been nominated but it’s unclear on what grounds.

The story notes some other possible honorees:

Chinese dissidents are leading the odds of winning the Nobel Peace Prize this year, the 20th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre and the 60th since the establishment of the People’s Republic of China.
Speculation on the chances of Chinese dissidents for the peace prize, announced this year on Friday, has been a yearly ritual. 

But this time there’s a stronger current of expectation surrounding critics of China’s long-standing communist regime.
Emerging superpower China remains deeply sensitive about criticism of its bloody 1989 crackdown on pro-democracy protesters at Tiananmen Square. And awarding dissidents would be a major poke-in-the-eye in the year the communist regime celebrates its diamond jubilee. 

The Nobel Peace Prize committee is famous for making grand symbolic gestures aimed at influencing the world agenda, as in 1989 when, in the wake of the Tiananmen massacre, the prize went to the Dalai Lama, the exiled Tibetan spiritual leader.

“Poke in the eye,” indeed.