As picked up by Eric Kleefeld over at Talking Points Memo, John McCain, whom Oregon Senator Gordon Smith has endorsed in his floundering bid for President, commented to a crowd today in Davenport Iowa on Al Gore's Nobel Peace Prize with negative spin, saying that there were more worthy people out there to whom the prize could have been awarded.

"I would have liked to see that prize go to the Buddhist monks who are suffering and dying in Burma," McCain is quoted as saying.

While most of the world is deeply troubled and opposes the military junta's crack-down on the Burmese monks in their struggle for human rights and democratic reforms, McCain's carping flies in the face of a couple of facts.

First, the nominations for the Nobel Peace Prize are closed after February 1st each year. So since the deadline for this year's nominations were already closed before the recent military crack-down on the monks, the Nobel committee could not even consider them for this year's prize.

Second, Aung San Suu Kyi, who is the noted prisoner of conscience and advocate of nonviolent resistance and who was pivotal in lending support to the fledgling protests which are now at the center of military crack-down, already won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1991 for her peaceful and non-violent struggle for human rights and democratic reforms in Burma.

So not only is McCain's political back-biting in extremely poor taste, it leads one to wonder exactly how divorced from reality is John McCain? Furthermore, what does it also say about someone like Gordon Smith's judgement when he is backing someone for the most powerful position in our nation who is not just petty, but so horribly uninformed when making such pathetic backhanded comments about the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize recipients?