VICTOR DAVIS HANSON: “The probable appointment of Caroline Kennedy, the 51-year-old daughter of former President John Kennedy, to fill Secretary-of-State nominee Hillary Clinton’s New York Senate seat is both laughable and yet a parable for our bankrupt times. . . . Ms. Kennedy is about as undiverse as one could imagine. She was educated at exclusively private schools among those of her like race and class. Her financial security is due to either inheritance or marriage; there is no evidence of a self-employed stellar legal or business career. But there is plenty of evidence that Ms. Kennedy reflects the current Democratic Party’s obsession with celebrity and Hollywood-like imagery. . . . George Bush, we were told ad nauseam was born on third base and thought he had hit a triple. But when it comes to Ms. Kennedy, her liberal lineage and assumed charisma weirdly nullified the same tired media charges of entitlement that have been customarily leveled against almost every affluent, well-connected Republican politician from Mitt Romney to George Bush.”

‘TIS THE SEASON TO BE INOFFENSIVE. Jeez.

THE SECOND TIME AS FARCE: “At least it wasn’t on the front page.”

UPDATE: Heh: “Hey, remember that time Sarah Palin thought she was talking on the phone with Nicolas Sarkozy? The NYT presented that mistake as ‘one of the last straws’ that convinced McCain advisors that Palin didn’t have what it takes . . . Fake French — it’s so obvious. Except when it isn’t.”

NEW YORK TIMES: Gone in ’09?

HEH: Chicago TV Station Stages ‘Throw a Shoe at Blago’.

ROGER KIMBALL: Who caused the global economic crisis? (Hint: it wasn’t George W. Bush). “There is a great refusal in operation here, a refusal to face up to facts.”

THE BRITISH CHARACTER: Not what it used to be.

IT’S LIKE YOUR OWN MYSTERY SCIENCE THEATER 3000, SORT OF. A contest to record your own commentary for the new DVD of Death Race.

MARK STEYN ON THE BIG THREE AND THE FUTURE:

Can you still see the USA in your Chevrolet? Through a windscreen darkly.

General Motors now has a market valuation about a third of Bed, Bath And Beyond, and no one says your Swash 700 Elongated Biscuit Toilet Seat Bidet is too big to fail. GM has a market capitalization of just over two billion dollars. For purposes of comparison, Toyota’s market cap is one hundred billion and change (the change being bigger than the whole of GM). General Motors, like the other two geezers of the Old Three, is a vast retirement home with a small loss-making auto subsidiary. The UAW is the AARP in an Edsel: It has three times as many retirees and widows as “workers” (I use the term loosely). GM has 96,000 employees but provides health benefits to a million people. . . . S

o many areas of endeavor that once embodied the youth and energy of this great land are now old and sclerotic. I include, naturally, my own industry. I loved the American newsrooms you saw in movies like The Front Page, full of hardboiled, hard-livin’ newspapermen. By the time I got there myself, there were no hardboiled newspapermen, just bland anemic newspaperpersons turning out politically correct snooze sheets of torpid portentousness. The owners of The Los Angeles Times and Chicago Tribune recently filed for bankruptcy protection. . . .

See the USA from your Chevrolet: An hereditary legislature, a media fawning its way into bankruptcy, its iconic coastal states driving out innovators and entrepreneurs, the arrival of the new Messiah heralded only by the leaden dirge of “We Three Kings Of Ol’ Detroit Are/Seeking checks we traverse afar”, and Route 66 looking ever more like a one-way dead-end street to Bailoutistan. Boy, I sure could use a poem by Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis right now, even one of the lesser-loved ones.

Ouch. Well, things got worse because people — politicians, and their enablers — made ’em worse. They’ll get better when people make ’em better.

TUNKU VARADARAJAN gazes into the Arab sole. “Is this the best they can do?”

JAMES SUROWIECKI: Are Newspapers Doomed? “There’s no mystery as to the source of all the trouble: advertising revenue has dried up. In the third quarter alone, it dropped eighteen per cent, or almost two billion dollars, from last year.”

He also suggests something that I’ve noted in the past — we may have been getting more news than we (that is, the market) actually wanted (that is, was willing to pay for) due to cross-subsidies from things like classified advertising. With those gone, we may wind up with less news. I hope not, but it’s a plausible scenario.

USING SPEED CAMERAS to go after your enemies:

As a prank, students from local high schools have been taking advantage of the county’s Speed Camera Program in order to exact revenge on people who they believe have wronged them in the past, including other students and even teachers.

Students from Richard Montgomery High School dubbed the prank the Speed Camera “Pimping” game, according to a parent of a student enrolled at one of the high schools.

Originating from Wootton High School, the parent said, students duplicate the license plates by printing plate numbers on glossy photo paper, using fonts from certain websites that “mimic” those on Maryland license plates. They tape the duplicate plate over the existing plate on the back of their car and purposefully speed through a speed camera, the parent said. The victim then receives a citation in the mail days later.

They should do it to some prominent local politicians and see how long the cameras last . . . .

REPEATING THE MILGRAM EXPERIMENTS, with similar results.

POPPING A CAP on Matt Yglesias. Sorry, if you can’t stand what bloggers blog, don’t pretend you’re cool enough to hire bloggers. Because when you do what Jennifer Palmieri did, you demonstrate that you’re just a bunch of political hacks with a blog, and you’ve undercut your blogger’s position in the future. Dumb. Too dumb for a position in the Obama Administration, I’d think.

UPDATE: Yglesias comments.

RICH KARLGAARD: “Capital is on strike now. It is one of the causes of the crash of 2008 and the fourth-quarter mini-depression.”

HEY, I HAIL MY OWN CABS, TOO! So make me a Senator, already.

THE BEST DVDs OF 2008: TV show edition.

FORT DIX ISLAMISTS convicted of plotting murder.

WHEN WOMEN DRINK men look better, and this persists even after they sober up. Another reason to oppose female sobriety, I guess. . . .

MORE ON THE BAILOUT from Mickey Kaus.

DEMOCRATS DISS EXECUTIVE POWER WHERE WAR IS CONCERNED, but otherwise they’re okay with it:

Congress’s marginalization was brutally underscored when, after lawmakers did not authorize $14 billion for General Motors and Chrysler, the executive branch said, in effect: Congress’s opinions are mildly interesting, so we will listen very nicely — then go out and do precisely what we want.

On Friday the president gave the two automakers access to money Congress explicitly did not authorize. More money — up to $17.4 billion — than had been debated, thereby calling to mind Winston Churchill on naval appropriations: “The Admiralty had demanded six ships: the economists offered four: and we finally compromised on eight.”

The president is dispensing money from the $700 billion Congress provided for the Troubled Asset Relief Program. The unfounded assertion of a right to do this is notably brazen, given the indisputable fact that if Congress had known that TARP — supposedly a measure for scouring “toxic” assets from financial institutions — was to become an instrument for unconstrained industrial policy, it would not have been passed.

But with the exception of Robert Reich, who’s complaining? “Most members of the House and Senate want the automakers to get the money, so they probably are pleased that the administration has disregarded Congress’s institutional dignity. History, however, teaches that it is difficult for Congress to be only intermittently invertebrate.”

MICHAEL S. MALONE: Washington is Killing Silicon Valley. “From the beginning of this decade, the process of new company creation has been under assault by legislators and regulators. They treat it as if it is a natural phenomenon that can be manipulated and exploited, rather than the fragile creation of several generations of hard work, risk-taking and inventiveness.”

BAD NEWS FOR KNOXVILLE: The 2009 Honda Hoot has been cancelled, as Honda cuts back. This will yield a serious shortage of free-spending Goldwing riders.

THE CARNIVAL OF THE RECIPES IS UP, at the amusingly-named A Boy Named Sous.

IN THE MAIL: From Anneke Seley and Brent Holloway, Sales 2.0: Improve Business Results Using Innovative Sales Practices and Technology.