Most seem to have inhaled the Republican line on Carter.

But I would argue that the massive inflation he inherited was due to the policies of LBJ and Nixon aka guns 'n butter. This was also back when the Volker Fed had balls, not like the Greenspan Fed of the Clinton Bush years.

The OPEC problem (resulting in gasoline rationing) was a long time a'coming. Had we actually followed the Carter energy independence program some 30 odd years ago, we'd be in a different place now. We might have even avoided the I-raqs.

And many of the cold-war military programs that conservatives love to credit Reagan for got initial funding during the Carter Admin.

As far as Iran goes, the hostage rescue was screwed up on his watch, but the seeds for the entire situation of the Iranian revolution go as far back as the '50s.

And he did bring peace to Egypt and Israel. It's almost as if nobody wants to talk about that.

even though Shatner is a putz. Must have been too much LDS in the '70's.

But I'm not really in a position to 'accept' or 'reject' the evidence in any kind of meaningful way, except to look at the NASA chart and see that we are in a bull market for temp increases.

I do note that we seem to be really lousy at adding up millions of tiny actions and figuring out what they mean. It's why we didn't understand the housing mania, and why we as a rule don't understand compound interest.

I will say that opponents (or naysayers) of GW are doing a crappy job of risk assessment.

If global warming is man made, and we do nothing until we know for sure, then we'll continue to have all these extreme climate events, including coastal flooding, and the drying out of the places of were we like to grow a lot of our food (aka midwest). That sounds double plus uncool. It will be really expensive and destabablizing. It's why the military has started to wargame it.

If there is no real global warming and we go ahead with non-carbon energy, we still will have new technology, have a better handle on peak oil, and we will have stopped sending a lot of dough to fund extremists. Nuclear programs are really expensive. Where's Iran going to get their dough if there is less interest in their oil? Plus by products of our energy production like acid rain and mercury contamination re harmful to other business ventures .

To me, making a switch to better technology sounds cheaper long term than our current long term petro-strategy (in the middle east and elsewhere).

Just remember to add $750 - $1000 Billion to the cost of gas next time you fill up.

Back in the old days, programs were stored on punch cards aka unit record images. Way before CRT graphics and all the cool stuff grandkids have today , a certain art form developed of creating images using only printed characters. Just like the shoe idiot.

You can see some (retro) examples here:

http://images.google.com/images?hl=en&source=hp&q=ascii+art

But to play devil's advocate, there is some subjectivity involved in weighing the evidence in this case.

It's not like we can demonstrate gravity by dropping an egg on somebody's face and taping it.

And for most of us, including Fester, we're not in a position to accurately assess the veracity the climate data or the models.

Belief may be appropriate for the likes of us.

But that doesn't mean we can dump gazillons of tons of gas into the atmosphere yearly and not expect something to happen.

Yeah, I could break out my card deck of ASCII pictures from the 80's.

And yeah, saw that. Hard to tell if she was looking forward to it. Or not.

That might be going too far!

Some will be really eager to trash Obama, and won't appreciate if we get in the way of such important work.

And it's not just republicans. It includes people like LBJ and even FDR with Saudi ARAMCO. We've built it up over the course of over a 100 years. It's inconcievable to some (especially the current winners) that we would trade it in for something else.

http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/graphs/Fig.A.lrg.gif

This NASA chart shows that temps have been rising for decades and not falling within the last decade.

I've been self employed, so the crazy increases in coverage are not myths to me but reality.

While you guys are waiting for a 'definite' conclusion, I'm just going to buy a few acres in Iceland so I can drive around in my new geothermal powered Cadillac Escalade and drink shine made from grapes in my own vineyard.

Iceland, the 51st State, the free energy state, baby!

The sausage making is just getting started as far as what an eventual bill will look like.

I share the concern that in theory everybody would be able to get coverage and care, but in practice nobody will be able to afford it.

Cost and Coverage is what I'm concerned about. It's hard to believe that Baucus et al don't have a grip on the expense side of things. So either they are totally in thrall to Big Med, or that these provisions are a poison pill. Or maybe just another way of saying heads we win, tails you lose.