Bush was not the problem.  Obama is not the solution.  So says French news organ Le Monde.

This is of course shocking news for folks with BDS (Bush derangement syndrome), not so much for the rest of us.

Bush was not the problem. Obama is not the solution: one year after the arrival at the White House of a Democratic president, disenchantment is mutual on either side of the Atlantic. The Allies are discovering — if indeed they were unaware of it before — that misunderstandings go beyond individuals.

Having denounced Mr. Bush’s imperialism, Europeans are criticizing Mr. Obama for his impotence. They are complaining of his not being able to bend China at the Copenhagen summit on the fight against global warming. “We overestimated his room for maneuver,” said adviser to the French executive; “The Chinese were facing a weakling”, said a person close to Mr. Sarkozy.

Sad and scary.  And oddly hilarious.

Newfoundland Premier leaves province for undisclosed location south of the border.

Newfoundland and Labrador Premier Danny Williams is set to undergo heart surgery this week in the United States.

Yes, the rich and powerful in the Great White North don’t cotton much to that vaunted Canadian socialized medicine.  Lord knows, waiting in a queue for substandard service is only for the little people.

Not sure what will happen to those poor souls should Obamacare become law.  Best take care of those health needs now I suppose.

I love the smell of hypocrisy in the morning…

A must read obituary for the global warming movement.

The global warming movement as we have known it is dead.  Its health had been in steady decline during the last year as the once robust hopes for a strong and legally binding treaty to be agreed upon at the Copenhagen Summit faded away.  By the time that summit opened, campaigners were reduced to hoping for a ‘politically binding’ agreement to be agreed that would set the stage for the rapid adoption of the legally binding treaty.  After the failure of the summit to agree to even that much, the movement went into a rapid decline.The movement died from two causes: bad science and bad politics.

Read the whole thing, it makes some excellent points.  Including this one, which pretty much captures my sentiments on AGW:

The urge to make the data better than it was didn’t just come out of nowhere.  The global warmists were trapped into the necessity of hyping the threat by their realization that the actual evidence they had — which, let me emphasize, all hype aside, is serious, troubling and establishes in my mind the need for intensive additional research and investigation, as well as some prudential steps that would reduce CO2 emissions by enhancing fuel use efficiency and promoting alternative energy sources — was not sufficient to get the world’s governments to do what they thought needed to be done. Hyping the threat increasingly doesn’t look like an accident: it looks like it was a conscious political strategy.

Emphasis mine.

UPDATE: I swear, I just can’t keep up with all the new revelations of fruad.  What a fiasco.

Man, I think I’m gonna need a scorecard to keep up with the hits the on UN’s IPCC report that purports to prove man-made climate change.

Let’s see, we have the emails showing that certain data sets were “tricked” to show temperature gains over time.

Then there was the fudged numbers from weather stations in New Zealand and other locations.

The it turned out that those melting glaciers in the Himalayas wouldn’t be gone by 2035 after all.

Next we learned that the increase in weather related property damage couldn’t be tied to AGW after all.

And now the Times of London is reporting this:

A STARTLING report by the United Nations climate watchdog that global warming might wipe out 40% of the Amazon rainforest was based on an unsubstantiated claim by green campaigners who had little scientific expertise.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) said in its 2007 benchmark report that even a slight change in rainfall could see swathes of the rainforest rapidly replaced by savanna grassland.

I’m just glad that AGW is “settled science”.  Otherwise, folks might begin to wonder what the hell is going on.

Or maybe not.

The PowerLine boys have the lowdown here.

Obama voters or those global warming alarmists with their “settled science“?

Well, I’m guessing in many cases they are one in the same, but still…

Well, I heard it all the way in Korea at least.  Yes, the Bay State has a new Republican senator!

Comments are open for any of my liberal friends who want to argue that this election was not a repudiation of Obama’s leftist agenda.  I really like to hear them.  Virginia, New Jersey and now bluer than blue Massachussets. 

Meet the new Senator, Scott Brown:

And the Democrat’s reaction to his election:

Ah, ain’t life grand?

When his lips are moving.

Hey, got to give credit where credit is due.  Obama promised to unite the country and it looks like that has now been achieved–at least the left and right are coming together more and more these days.  In opposition to Obamacare.  But still…

But once again we see that the wonders of ObamaCare seem not so wonderful to liberals. They don’t like the idea of consumers being forced to buy health-insurance policies from big, bad insurance companies. They don’t like the idea of smacking middle-class employees who managed to obtain generous health-care plans from their employers. And you don’t hear too many of them cheering for the massive cuts in Medicare. (Liberals always told us our society was to be judged by how generously we treat the old and sick.)  So why did all those Democrats vote for this thing? Ah, it was historic!

Only rare pieces of legislation attract opponents as diverse as does ObamaCare. But this is what comes from passing something, anything, in a mad holiday rush with the purpose of delivering a political “win” for the White House and avoiding a humiliating failure for the Democratic congressional leadership. But as the Left and Right discover what’s in that legislation, there may in fact be a broad consensus building over the need to just start over. There has got to be something that makes more sense than this.

In the words of another famous liberal (Joni Mitchell) “Don’t it always seem to go, that you don’t know what you got till it’s gone…”

Read ’em weep.  Looks like AGW is to science as Scientology is to religion.

It is beginning to look more and more like the frenzied effort at damage control in the wake of revelations of questionable scientific practices regarding climate change is failing.  Even the MSM (in this case CBS) is reporting on the apparent conflicts of interest amongst leading proponents of AGW who are receiving millions in grants and government funding that would be at risk should another cause of the recent warming trend be discovered.

As the science scandal known as ClimateGate grows, the largest U.S. physicists’ association is finding itself roiled by internal dissent and allegations of conflict of interest over a forthcoming review of its position statement on man-made global warming.

“It is Socolow whose entire research funding stream, well over a million dollars a year, depends on continued alarm over global warming,” says William Happer, a fellow Princeton University professor and head of the Happer physics lab who has raised the question of a conflict of interest. The reason: the ostensibly neutral person charged with evaluating a statement endorsing man-made global warming is a leading proponent of precisely that theory whose funding is tied to that theory.

Petr Chylek, a fellow at the Los Alamos National Laboratory and an adjunct professor at New Mexico State University, said in an open letter that climate scientists “have substituted the search for truth with an attempt at proving one point of view.” And 141 scientists have signed a statement at CopenhagenClimateChallenge.org that says actual evidence of human-caused global warming is lacking and “unproven computer models of climate are not acceptable substitutes for real world data obtained through unbiased and rigorous scientific investigation.”

The point I’d like to emphasize is that questioning the scientific methods and integrity of AGW proponents does not make you a climate change heretic skeptic.  And although the zealots for global warming want the rest of us to “shut the hell up”, true science demands that the inquiry continue.

One of my favorite left-of-center political commentators, Claudia Rosett, weighs in on recent happenings up north related to the recent devaluation of NORK currency.  As usual, she is pretty much right on point.  Whether or not this opportunity is something that could be exploited is debateable, but it is certainly a positive indication that even the most severly oppressed have their limits.  We’ll see.

While climate delegates are quarreling in Copenhagen, and President Barack Obama is collecting his Nobel Peace Prize in Oslo, an important story is unfolding in relative obscurity, in North Korea. Furious over a confiscatory currency “reform,” citizens of the world’s most repressive state have begun publicly criticizing their government.

It is hard to overstate just how bold a move that is. North Korea’s military “is on alert for a possible civil uprising,” according to a major South Korean newspaper, the Chosun Ilbo. Reports have been filtering out of North Korea that the country’s markets have become arenas of protest, with traders–many of them women in their 40s and 50s–publicly cursing the North Korean authorities.

Please read the rest for some fascinating insights and historical perspectives.

On a related note, last week I attended a lecture by Mr. Hwang Jang-yop, the highest level defector from North Korea to date.  He was for the most part pessimistic about any change in attitude from the North as long as Kim, Jong-il remains in power.  As he noted, if China can’t influence North Korea, there is nothing to be gained from the appeasement efforts of South Korea and the USA.

During the Q&A Mr. Hwang was asked about the potential for political upheaval as result of the money devaluation.  He saw little liklihood of any lasting impact, explaining that the people most impacted were the black market profiteers.  As usual, the ruling elite had plenty of advance warning and exchanged their won for Euros weeks ago.  Still, he saw it as one step closer to the destabilazation that will one day lead to the collapse of the North.

Heh.  I’d been working on a long and thoughtful post concerning the global warming fiasco, but it somehow deleted instead of posting.  Thinking it a quirk of fate rather than some cosmic commentary regarding my take on the future of mother Earth, I will likely resurrect those thoughts one day in the future (assuming we have one).

In the meantime, I think this Dilbert panel pretty much captures the gist of what I wanted to say:

Well, there is also this little treatise on the hypocrisy of those attending the Copenhagen climate conference:

The airport says it is expecting up to 140 extra private jets during the peak period alone, so far over its capacity that the planes will have to fly off to regional airports – or to Sweden – to park, returning to Copenhagen to pick up their VIP passengers.

Taking a private jet to a conference on stopping global warming is a bit like traveling in a sedan chair carried by indentured servants to a summit on stopping human trafficking. Except we’re the ones they want to enslave. If they get their way, they’ll crush us with taxes, make our energy bills skyrocket, and otherwise cut our standard of living back to 19th-century levels.

Hmm, it does seem that actions speak louder than words.

You know, the funny thing is I’m pretty much agnostic on the warming issue.  But I never quite bought in to the whole “the science is settled” screed, because the science is never settled. I can accept that the Earth may be experiencing a warming trend, but that’s not to say the cause is man-made.  And even if it were, the proposed cure strikes me as being just as harmful as the “disease” and clearly unlikely to be effectively implemented.

So, if the problem is burning fossil fuels why aren’t our green friends advocating for building more nuclear power stations?  And parking their f’n limos and private jets….

Oh, and I had a mostly friendly discussion with another blogger in Korea (K-blog as we say in the parlance), ROK Sojourn. You should follow the link to read his views and our exchange in the comments. His basic premise was if you don’t believe the Earth is warming, you should just “shut the hell up”.  Seems to me that pretty much means you’ve lost the argument.  Akin to putting your hands over your ears and yelling “LA LA LA LA I can’t hear you!”.

So, if the science is so settled what are they afraid of?

A great Day by Day cartoon that demonstrates that rather than being a miserable failure, Obama has accomplished much of his agenda one year into his presidency…

So, Obama’s approval rating is at 49% according to Gallup.

Now that’s change I can believe in!

UPDATE:  See that stack of paper in the photo above.  That’s 1990 pages constituting the 900 billion dollar House health care bill.  Or to put it another way…$2.24 million per word.  Yikes!
So, Nancy Pelosi and the House Democrats passed historic health care legislation today.  Over 1900 pages of it.  At a cost of “only” 900 billion dollars.  Excluding increased expenses for the Medicare/Medicare programs.  And assuming “fraud and waste” are eliminated.  And we know the government is real good at that.  No worries though, Ms. Nancy assures us that this plan will save everyone money.  Except for those it doesn’t I suppose.  Like taxpayers.

But at least we have some recent models out there that demonstrate big government intervention can make a difference.  Like the Stimulus program:

An early progress report on President Barack Obama’s economic recovery plan overstates by thousands the number of jobs created or saved through the stimulus program, a mistake that White House officials promise will be corrected in future reports.

The government’s first accounting of jobs tied to the $787 billion stimulus program claimed more than 30,000 positions paid for with recovery money. But that figure is overstated by least 5,000 jobs, according to an Associated Press review of a sample of stimulus contracts.

Oops.  Ok, that’s probably not a good example of success.  So, ok then, no one can argue that the “cash for clunkers” program paid off:

A total of 690,000 new vehicles were sold under the Cash for Clunkers program last summer, but only 125,000 of those were vehicles that would not have been sold anyway, according to an analysis released Wednesday by the automotive Web site Edmunds.com.

The average rebate was $4,000. But the overwhelming majority of sales would have taken place anyway at some time in the last half of 2009, according to Edmunds.com. That means the government ended up spending about $24,000 each for those 125,000 additional vehicle sales.

Hmm.  On second thought, maybe we are screwed.