Remember those games when you were younger (they also have them at bars)where you would test your observation skills by picking out the 10 differences between two similar pictures. Here’s a simple example.

Let’s try another. Open these two browsers by clicking (right-click, open new tab or window) here and here. If that’s too much work, I’ll tell you the difference. Carol Browner, Obama’s new Assistant to the President for Energy and Climate Change, used to be listed as a member of the Commission for a Sustainable World Society for Socialist International. That’s right, Socialist International. As of today, however, her bio was taken off the site.

Maybe it’s just a coincidence and maybe she didn’t have time to be a commission member of a socialist organization now that she’s an energy czar. Or maybe it’s similar to the Commissar Vanishes where

Photographs can lie. They certainly do in the Soviet Union from 1929 to 1953, the years of Joseph Stalin’s dictatorial rule. Stalin’s agents routinely arrest and kill as “enemies of the people” anyone who disagrees with his politics. Communist Party workers then try to remove any trace of these people from the photographic archives, and so from the media.”

Here’s an example of said Commissar Vanishing. As I mentioned with Browner, maybe it’s just coincidence or maybe there’s a reason why she’s no longer a part of the commission, but it’s interesting and I’m curious nonetheless.

Thus far, I’ve been pleasantly surprised with some of Obama’s nominations but his energy picks have been dreadful. As my colleague Ben Lieberman points out,

How does $8-a-gallon gas sound? Few Americans would want to see that happen. Unfortunately, President-elect Barack Obama’s choices for the government’s two highest energy posts have expressed a surprising level of comfort with sky-high gas prices. Sen. Ken Salazar, Colorado Democrat and Mr. Obama’s nominee for interior secretary, was on record as opposing lifting the offshore moratorium even if gasoline were to reach $10 a gallon. Energy Secretary-nominee Steven Chu. Last September, he told the Wall Street Journal that ‘somehow we have to figure out how to boost the price of gasoline to the levels in Europe.’”

Mix them in a pot with a socialist energy czar and what do you get? Four frightening years of bad energy policy. The energy bills passed in 2005 and 2007 during the Bush administration weren’t any good, either, but with these three steering the ship, we could reach uncharted waters.