DRIVING THE FORD FUSION HYBRID and getting 43.1 mpg on the streets of L.A.

L.A. TIMES: Pressure builds on Obama to release his Blagojevich contacts.

UPDATE: Obama’s Bert Lance? Not sure that quite fits.

JULES CRITTENDEN ON BUSH’S VICTORY LAP: “Mission Accomplished? Well, since you ask, yes. Just like last time, when the mission of knocking out Saddam was accomplished. Don’t believe me, just ask Obama. Or his guy Gates.”

A KRUGMAN-CORKER car calumny.

UPDATE: Related thoughts from Megan McArdle.

SOME MEDIA ATTENTION for my colleague Jeff Hirsch.

JOE BIDEN: “I will work less.” Apparently, the Obama-Biden Administration is taking my advice!

STILL MORE ON CHRIS DODD:

The most preposterous of the many competing for that title is the requirement that the automakers develop plans to revive their companies and present them in March. That’s three months away. Consider this: It’s been six months since Sen. Christopher Dodd, one of the authors of this fiction bill, pledged to release the approximately 100 pages of documents related to his sweetheart mortgages with Countrywide Financial.

Dodd’s woven many tales of why he can’t, won’t or doesn’t need to and never intended to release the documents from deals that will save him tens of thousands of dollars over the terms of the mortgages. The favors Dodd accepted from Countrywide sparked a Senate ethics investigation and may be part of a federal criminal probe into Countrywide’s furtive, sustained campaign for influence in Washington.

Read the whole thing.

EVEN CHICAGO’S CROOKS are appalled by Blagojevich.

ILYA SOMIN on Why We Don’t Need World Government to Solve Global Problems. Certainly a global government that looked like the United Nations wouldn’t be likely to solve many problems, though it would be a boon for graft.

VICTORY LAP? Bush is in Iraq.

YOU DON’T SAY: Democrats’ Scandals Play Into GOP Hands. “Two years ago, it was the Democrats who were pounding congressional Republicans for a string of lobbying, legislative-payoff and sex scandals, but now it’s the Democrats and President-elect Obama who are on the defensive a little more than one month before they are to take charge of the government and strengthen their grip on Congress.”

AMY ALKON: Hooking up is no tragedy. That’s certainly how I felt.

ASSOCIATED PRESS: “President-elect Barack Obama, relatively young and inexperienced, is facing a rapidly growing list of monumental challenges as he prepares to take the reins of a nation in turmoil.”

He’s young and inexperienced? Now they tell me. I thought he was fresh and dynamic!

MORE ON THOSE UNDERFUNDED / OVERGENEROUS PUBLIC PENSIONS: As City Goes Broke, One Expense Is Safe:

Here in New York, the hostages go by different names, but serve the same function. They turn up without fail whenever the city is running short of money: library hours, firehouses, police officers, class sizes, day care centers, garbage pickup, health clinics. As perennial hostages to budget-making, these basic services, public servants and municipal buildings are captive to the current fiscal crisis.

Not so for the fastest-growing expense in the city since 2000: pension funds.

“The city’s payments to the pension plans have grown at 25 percent annually since fiscal year 2001,” said Martin Davis, a labor and pension analyst with the city’s Independent Budget Office.

In 2000, city taxpayers contributed $615 million. By June 2008, the amount had climbed to $5.6 billion. With investment losses over the last year or so, the public costs are sure to rise again. The value of city pensions is protected under the State Constitution, a trust between employer and worker; once employees enter the system, their benefits cannot be reduced. But they can be increased, and have soared, thanks to State Legislatures and governors keen to curry favor with large unions. . . .

So what began as a reward for taking a risk has become a guaranteed payment. On Monday, in the second year of a stock market slide, checks for about $12,000 will be put in the mail to thousands of retirees — many of whom have long since left New York for states with warmer climates and lower taxes.

If the taxpayers are smart, they’ll do the same thing . . . .

MORE GOOD PUBLICITY FOR THE S.E.I.U.:

A nonprofit organization founded by California’s largest union local reported spending nothing on its charitable purpose — to develop housing for low-income workers — during at least two of the four years it has been operating, federal records show.

The charity, launched by a scandal-ridden Los Angeles chapter of the Service Employees International Union, had total expenses of about $165,000 for 2005 and 2006, and all of the money went to consulting fees, insurance costs and other overhead, according to its Internal Revenue Service filings. Charity watchdogs say that nonprofits should never have zero program expenses in two successive years and that well-performing charities direct at least 70% of their annual spending to their charitable purpose. “Of the 5,000-plus charities we’ve looked at, I don’t think we’ve ever seen one that didn’t spend anything on its charitable programs,” said Sandra Miniutti, vice president of Charity Navigator, an online rating service.

Nice work, guys!

CAN YOU PUT CAR COMPANIES under the TARP? Why not? Congress is obviously an irrelevant sideshow. Why let any of their votes actually, you know, affect anything?

PROTESTERS CALL for Jesse Jackson, Jr. to resign.

CHRISTMAS DISCOUNTS on gourmet food.

MORE THOUGHTS ON LUNAR PROPERTY RIGHTS, from Ilya Somin. Meanwhile, here’s a paper that Rob Merges and I wrote on the subject a while back.

THE PERFECT GIFT: A subscription to Pajamas TV! Hey, if you don’t like the Legacy Media, put your money where your mouth is and support New Media. . . .

A BUNCH OF bargain toys for Christmas and Hanukah. Lots more toy deals here.

A BLAGOJEVICH ROUNDUP, from Ellen Podgor at the White Collar Crime blog.

RICH KARLGAARD: Turning Around America — A Modest Proposal.

DO MEN FIND ANOREXIA SEXY? Well, some men: “Anyway on a side note, she describes herself as someone who worked in ‘fashion magazines,’ but when you Google her it seems like she was also once on staff at the New York Review Of Books — which is sort of the annoying part: literati dudes actually dig waify anorexic types, in my experience, more than bankers.”

CHRIS DODD UPDATE:

Please consider the following list:

Congressman Barney Frank/Sen. Chris Dodd/ Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman Christopher Cox:

These three were given the charge to watch the financial system in America, to make sure Wall Street greed-heads and other pernicious people did not hurt the folks. So tell me, how did they do?

Cox, a former Republican congressman himself, simply did nothing, allowing bad mortgages to be traded like sports cards as he fiddled in his lavish office.

Frank and Dodd, as finance chairmen in the House and Senate respectively, actually promoted irresponsible mortgages in the name of “inclusion” — the liberal concept of giving people stuff if they can’t buy it. Dodd also took a sweetheart mortgage from since-failed Countrywide Financial, which saved him close to $100,000. And Frank publicly said Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were in “good shape going forward,” just weeks before both government entities collapsed.

Still waiting on those HUD forms from Dodd.