LAURENCE SIMON is deeply unimpressed with Time’s “Person of the Year” picks.

AFTER A HIATUS OF SORTS, Gary Farber is back, and blogging up a storm. Who knew that marijuana legalization was a big electoral issue in Israel?

I’VE GOTTEN A LOT OF EMAIL about the WTC Baseball stadium idea. I wasn’t really serious about it, but then it’s hard to believe that people were serious about some of the other offerings. A lot of people seem to like the concept, to my surprise, though the idea of the “Manhattan Dodgers” seems to upset some folks. Hey, it’s better than L.A., isn’t it? Maybe not.

UPDATE: Ack — Alec Baldwin already suggested this! Well, I did say it was “dumb.”

THANKS FOR HITTING THE PAYPAL BUTTON. I just used some of the money to order the video-blogging software that Jeff Jarvis is experimenting with, so stay tuned. But I just noticed a couple of contributions from fellow bloggers. I admit I’ve hit a few people’s tipjars when they seemed hard up, but I’m not hard up — and bloggers donating to bloggers seems like taking in each other’s wash or something. So keep it, or give it to a Santa with a kettle, or something. (Or follow these suggestions.)

Also, here’s a note for anyone seeking anonymity: Amazon doesn’t tell me who donates. Paypal does.

WISHFUL THINKING at the New York Times. I think that Phillippe de Croy is right about this.

INNOCENTS ABROAD has multiple posts, mostly critical, of the New York Times’ coverage of Frist’s elevation.

EVERYBODY ELSE IS WEIGHING IN on the World Trade Center site plans. Jeff Jarvis even weighed in by videoblog. So here’s my thought:

Build a baseball stadium. What’s more American than a baseball park? And what’s cooler than one right by Wall Street? That’s double-barrelled Americanism. And it would help bring people to Lower Manhattan at night.

If only you could get the Dodgers to play there, it would be perfect.

Okay, it’s a dumb idea — but no dumber than a lot of ideas I’ve heard. And it would be cheaper, and you could get hot dogs there.

UPDATE: Baseball blogger David Pinto loves the idea.

Say, if every fantasy sports discussion board starts pushing this, it could happen.

PHIL CARTER HAS MORE ON SMALLPOX. I sure hope that I, and all the people who agree with me, are wrong about the threat here.

UPDATE: Reader Bill Rudersdorf forwards this link to a lengthy analysis of smallpox as a bioweapon, from 1999.

AL QAEDA IN EDINBURGH: Joel Rosenberg has a report from Ken MacLeod.

PUNDITWATCH is up! Trent Lott and Patty Murray are the big stories, but there’s more.

I can’t find a transcript yet, but I caught part of Wolf Blitzer’s rather ingratiating interview with Saudi Prince al Faisal and was surprised to hear the Prince say that in the event of combat “the gods of war” will determine the outcome.

The “gods of war?” I thought there was, you know, supposed to be only one God, Allah, with Mohammed as his prophet. Isn’t the Koran kind of hard on polytheists?

I also caught George Stephanopoulos grilling Howard Dean, and thought that Stephanopoulos did pretty well, while Dean was visibly waffling in response to some rather pointed questions.

UPDATE: Here’s the transcript, and here’s the key passage:

BLITZER: Relatively speaking. They refer to the liberation of Kuwait, which was done 40 days of air war, four days of a ground war. Kuwait was liberated with a relatively modest number of casualties.

S. AL-FAISAL: And that was because of the unanimity in the international community and the joining of the battle of so many countries in the world that affected even the Iraqi soldiers who were fighting the war.

BLITZER: So you don’t believe that they can repeat that?

S. AL-FAISAL: Who knows? Once you start war, it’s in the hand of the gods of war.

The “gods of war.” Hmm. That doesn’t sound very Wahhabist to me.

DR. MANHATTAN HAS more on Thimerosal.

CELEBRITIES WE “LOVE TO LOATHE:”

The list includes:

* “Bowling for Columbine” director Michael Moore (No. 42), who “wears his dissident credentials not on his sleeve, but on his head and his waistline: his mesh baseball cap and fat body are now the leading brand-ID marker for political discontent among the narrow, incestuous ‘enlightened left’ demographic.”

Ouch.

UPDATE: Here’s the full list, courtesy of reader Damon Chetson. I went to the site and couldn’t find it — apparently they’re having archive troubles.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Jim Treacher blogged this first. And he’s been amused to see it get more attention.

HERE’S A GOOD IDEA: President Bush’s Message to the Iranian People seems to set the right tone. Excerpt:

For many years, the United States has helped bring news and cultural broadcasts for a few hours every day to the Iranian people via Radio Freedom. Yet the Iranian people tell us that more broadcasting is needed, because the unelected few who control the Iranian government continue to place severe restrictions on access to uncensored information. So we are now making our broadcast available to more Iranians by airing news and music and cultural programs nearly 24 hours a day, and we are pleased to continue Voice of America and VOA TV services to Iran.

The people of Iran want to build a freer, more prosperous country for their children, and live in a country that is a full partner in the international community. Iranians also deserve a free press to express themselves to help build an open, democratic and free society.

My thoughts and prayers are with the Iranian people, particularly the families of the many Iranians who are in prison today for daring to express their hopes and dreams for a better future. We continue to stand with the people of Iran in your quest for freedom, prosperity, honest and effective government, judicial due process and the rule of law. And we continue to call on the government of Iran to respect the will of its people and be accountable to them.

As I have said before, if Iran respects its international obligations and embraces freedom and tolerance, it will have no better friend than the United States of America.

I think that this supports the speculation around the Blogosphere that the Administration is pursuing a broader strategy than all the Iraq-chatter suggests. In fact, it may be that the Iraq-chatter is, in part, designed to keep people from noticing just how broad the strategy really is.

NOW IT’S MICHAEL BARONE crediting the blogosphere for Trent Lott’s ouster. I do think that weblogs — particularly Josh Marshall’s — played an important role in getting the story noticed. But I think that the anger of black Republicans, which started the instant Lott made his remarks, would have ensured that the issue broke through eventually.

IF HE’S SO SMART, WHY ISN’T AOL RICH? Jeff Jarvis writes:

Imagine if AOL had actually sent out some Warner Bros. songs or movie trailers on all those CD-roms over the years; people might have actually welcomed them instead of ridiculed them.

The answer is that Jarvis doesn’t work for AOL. Nor, apparently, does anyone as smart as Jeff. They should hire him (at an appropriately huge salary, of course) to turn their business around with insights like this.

DOES MAUREEN DOWD MEAN to call President Bush and Karl Rove “Butcher Cassidy and the Sundance Kid?” That seems rather nasty, and it’s a rather insensitively loaded term in wartime, isn’t it?

Speaking of insensitivity, note that although Dowd is careful to slip in that Bill Frist has been “scolded for racial insensitivity,” she doesn’t bother to say by whom, or for what. (A classic New York Times use of passive voice — Bill Hobbs explains this canard.) But that’s the folks at Old Media: presented with real “racial insensitivity” — as in Trent Lott’s case — they don’t even recognize it until someone else points it out. That’s because they’re too used to it as an invented item to even think about the real thing.

This is a lame effort, even by the standards of Maureen Dowd’s recent work.

UPDATE: Reader Gerald Berke suggests that I have it backward, and that the “butcher” point is aimed at Rove, not Bush — though he rather spoils it by then suggesting that nobody who’s massing troops for war should mind being called a butcher. (Is there anyone more bloody-minded than an antiwar liberal? They all seem to think the goal of war is killing, rather than winning. But that’s a topic for another post.) Berke’s snippiness notwithstanding, he’s probably right here — at least, it’s hard to imagine Dowd passing up an opportunity to call Bush a “kid,” in the apparent hope that if she says it often enough people will suddenly confuse him with Dan Quayle. How much better this makes Dowd look is a matter of opinion.

UPDATE: Reader and movie critic Bob Patterson offers this explanation of what Dowd was about:

The new film “Gangs of New York” contains a character Bill “the Butcher” Cutting (played by Daniel Day-Lewis) and “the Butcher” is (according to the NY Times review) a “swaggering monster.”

The film is a leading contender for Oscar consideration, but it is only being shown at theaters in Los Angeles and New York City.

Perhaps Ms. Dowd was overly anxious to display her command of the culture vulture hip/chic contemporary scene by making a comparison to this new film.

Folks who do not have ready access to this bit of cinema will not get the (possible) allusion.

[I, for one have issues with this “elitism” aspect of the Oscar season and will be writing a column about that in the near future. (On Friday, December 20, 2002 the USA Today newspaper listed the five leading contenders for Best Picture. Of the five, one “The Two Towers” had been out for about two days. Two, “Gangs of New York” and “Antwone Fisher” were coming out that day (at least in New York and L. A. as far as “Gangs” is concerned. The other two will be out in a few days. Is that elitism or what?)]

It would seem that Ms. Dowd is writing of/for/about/ and “to” an audience that is up on the latest “Oscar buzz.”

Again from the New York Times review of “Gangs” New York is “a city full of tribes and war chiefs.” “The Butcher has formed an alliance of convenience with Boss Tweed ([played by] Jim Broadbent), the kingpin of Tammany Hall and together they administer an empire of graft, extortion and larceny.”

It seems likely that Ms. Dowd was hoping that her readers would connect her words with this latest installment of Oscar elitism. Now that you’ve been updated on all the latest inside “Oscar” information, don’t you suddenly feel “groovy” or some such latest term for up to date and hip?

Yeah. Now Dowd’s column seems really “boss.” But an excessive effort to seem “hep” does seem to mark Dowd’s work, so this explanation makes sense.

RETAIL SUPPORT BRIGADE UPDATE: Bill Hobbs is blogging from the Comcast kiosk at the mall near Nashville and reports that business seems slow there, too.

I have to say, that sort of on-the-scene reportage is kind of cool.

UPDATE: Reader Frank Martin writes:

I don’t know where these malls are that are empty, but out here in northern California, our Mall ( roseville galleria ) has been closed twice this week by the fire marshalls due to overcrowding. ( not closed “per se”, but they limited access at the doors to make sure that the crowds stayed limited to within the structures limit)

Today, the “best buy’ had every register open, yet the lines extended past the back of the store. Link.

This is happening while we are in the midst of a series of very large storms.

Keep buying folks, the economy depends on you.

ANDREW SULLIVAN’S $80,000 PLEDGE WEEK has gotten a lot of other bloggers begging for cash. The Acidman is not amused:

Ever since ANDREW SULLIVAN conducted his “Pledge Week” and made damned near $80,000, bloggers everywhere have become panhandlers and squeegie-guys, telling their heart-rending stories of brokeness while pointing to their Pay Pal buttons and tip jars. When hookers do that on the street, they get arrested for the crime of “solicitation.” And the hookers usually offer a more valuable commodity than most blogs do.

This is followed by a stirring tribute to amateurism in the blogosphere. (Uh, yeahhh, that’s exactly what it is. . . .)

I’m all for amateurism. Despite numerous suggestions that I institute a pledge week of my own (my favorite involved a thermometer-like graphic with a 350Z at the top), I won’t be emulating Andrew. I have a dayjob. It pays pretty well — by normal standards, not compared to the obscene amounts of money I’d be making now if I had stayed at the bigshot law firm where I used to work. (And I know exactly how obscene because one of my friends there who stayed and made partner helpfully informs me of what I would be making had I done so. Thanks!) I appreciate the donations — particularly because a nice note with money attached outweighs any number of nasty emails from people who aren’t putting their money where their mouths are. (Message to hatemailers — if you want me to take your hatemail seriously, attach it to a $100 Paypal donation! I promise, I’ll read it.)

But this is a labor of love. It’s free. And it’ll stay that way.

THE “FISKIE AWARD” VOTING is fast-and-furious, with Michael Moore and Jimmy Carter neck-and-neck for first place, followed by such, er, worthies as Ted Rall, Noam Chomsky, the United Nations, and, of course, Jean Chretien. Vote now!

RETAIL SUPPORT BRIGADE SITREP: Reader (and merchant) Woody Emanuel emails:

I am in retail (classic clothing) and the Saturday before Christmas is traditionally THE busiest shopping day before Christmas. Having just closed for the day, I can report that it was perhaps the slowest Saturday before Xmas I have seen in well over a decade or more.

Well, I was just at the grocery store (bought paper towels; didn’t need Saran wrap) and the parking lot at the big mall across the street was pretty full — but definitely not as full as last year. Woody reports that his business has been slow since November; we’ll see if that reflects the national situation or not soon enough.

UPDATE: SKBUBBA emails that I was there too early today:

We went to West Town today around 11:00 AM. Found easy parking, stores not too crowded. By the time we left around 6:30 it was totally jammed.

You literally couldn’t even walk around in Williams Sonoma. Abercrombie and Fitch had lines four and five deep at every register.

Department stores weren’t quite as crowded, but seemed to be doing brisk business and didn’t seem to have enough people to handle it. They were discounting just about everything.

They were also sold out of a lot of popular stuff. (My favorite Polo shirts were in short supply, and there is not one Calphalon Commercial Non-Stick 10″ omelet skillet in Knoxville except as part of a set. There may be one at Proffitts in Maryville because I returned it yesterday when I saw one $20 cheaper at Bed Bath and Beyond, but by the time I got back there today they were sold out. Moral of the story: bird in hand, etc.).

By the time we left the mall around 6:30 it took us 20 minutes just to get out of the parking lot and more were coming in.

Even Ruby Tuesday was SRO around 3:30 when we took a break. West Town Mall shopping tip: Ruby Tuesday has happy hour all day. Two people can get an appetizer and hammered for about $20 plus tip. After four hours of power shopping it is a welcome respite and good for getting your second wind.

So anyway, I think maybe you left before the masses arrived. It was chaotic by 4:00 or 5:00 PM.

Well, as someone whose salary is paid largely by the sales tax, I hope SKBubba’s right. He’s certainly right about Ruby’s — I had lunch there the other day and noted that, Gawker notwithstanding, “drunk shopping” seems to be more than just a New York thing.

TERRORISM IN LATIN AMERICA: Now this is upsetting.

HMMM. A lot of people will be making something out of this:

WASHINGTON (CNN) — U.S. President George W. Bush has delayed his January trip to Africa in part because of the Iraqi situation, and sources say he is ready to sign off on deploying 50,000 U.S. troops to the Persian Gulf early next month.

Of course, there are lots of things it could mean.

SPEAKING OF BLOGCRITICS, here’s a story on BlogCritics’ request for a DMCA exemption, featuring a photo of Eric Olsen.

AND NOW FOR SOMETHING REALLY IMPORTANT: BlogCritics reports on when we can expect the next Harry Potter book.

THE DOGS THAT AREN’T BARKING: Interesting observation regarding the Iraq inspections, from OxBlog.