BELIEVE IT OR NOT: Al Gore has more sense than President Obama - he canceled his appearance in Copenhagen. Obama has not.

MEN PLAN; GOD LAUGHS: It’s been a tough year for the Democrats.

OBAMACARE PRICE “CONTROLS”: There’s much more, but this is the key graf for me: “If you are an individual ... who doesn't want to buy mental health or drug abuse [or other mandated] insurance--sorry! You'll have to pay for them anyway.”

In other words, if all I want is some kind of high-limit hospitalization insurance, tough. Not only will it not be available, it will be illegal for an insurance company to offer. Medicare – the model for ObamaCare – is already very close to that model.

DECLINE OF THE WEST. “This is not the intellectual autobiography [Cornel] West promised a decade ago.”

I’m wondering who ever thought Cornel West is/was an intellectual.

FROM THE COMMENTS: "We are NOT Sarah’s army, but rather we are an army of Sarahs."

I don’t think the Democrats - and the corporate Republicans - have yet to realize the essential truth of that statement.

OOPS! A Dutch study concludes Mount Kilimanjaro's snow melt — used as a symbol of anthropogenic global warming (AGW) by Al Gore — is entirely natural.

CLIMATEGATE: SETTLED SCIENCE? Frankly, I think Mother Nature is a pretty tough old lady, and it’s the epitome of hubris on the part of a few hundred (or thousand) climate “scientists” to believe that they can know her mind.

THANKS TO A LONE OFFICER on routine patrol, the world will be spared the spectacle of a trial for the man who murdered four officers in Lakewood, Washington.

But what is troubling is this:

[T]he wider public may have been surprised to learn of the assistance Clemmons received from friends and relatives even after he was identified as the suspect wanted in the murder of four police officers.

How heinous must a crime be before people – even friends and relatives – step forward?

RIGHT STRING, WRONG YO-YO: After the incident of the wannabe reality TV stars crashing the Obama’s first state dinner, Jim Geraghty wondered whether or not it would be a good opportunity for President Obama to start talking about our national culture and the destructive impact of this widespread, obsessive, reckless, narcisstic pursuit of fame. So he asked, and Mary Matalin and Peggy Noonan responded.

Mary Matalin contends Obama no longer has cultural authority to speak on our national values, if he ever had it:

I think a 21st century cultural arbiter is a good concept to explore, but not in the same breath as Barack Obama. As we say in Louisiana, “you got the right string, baby, but the wrong yoyo.”

Wall Street Journal columnist Peggy Noonan also questions whether Obama is the right man for this message:

People won't mind if a president of some years, experience and hard won perspective — an Eisenhower, a Reagan — weighs in on some aspect of our national character, which is what we're talking about. But a new president who is young and still not fully understood by the American people? That might be... complicated.

My feeling is harsher: I think Obama sees himself as the winner of the world's greatest reality show.