HOPE: Former ACORN Boss Takes Plea Deal for 2008 Misconduct in Nevada. “Former ACORN supervisor Amy Busefink has opted to plead guilty to a pair of gross misdemeanors rather than face 13 felony counts for her role in paying people to register voters. Busefink will be sentenced on January 10. Prosecutors said Monday they will not seek a prison term, but the judge may order one if he sees fit.”

UH OH: Food price fears as US warns on crop yields. “The spectre of inflation loomed over agricultural markets after the US slashed key crop forecasts and warned of shortfalls in grains. The agriculture department on Tuesday cut estimates of US corn yields for a third successive month, forecast record soyabean exports to China and warned of the slimmest cotton stocks since 1925.”

BAD NEWS: ‘Jaw-Dropping’ Data on Black Male Student Achievement. “According to the report, poverty levels are only part of the equation because poor white boys (defined by eligibility for subsidized school lunches) are doing as well as black boys who do not live in poverty.” It’s about the culture.

INDONESIA: Hick minister embarrassed at shaking hands with First Lady. And lies about it: “In footage of the official welcome, Sembiring appeared to share his countrymen’s enthusiasm. He smiled broadly as he shook the president’s hand and then reached with both hands to grasp Michelle Obama’s. But later he said she forced their contact.” So he’s a hick and a liar.

Well, that’s what everyone would say if he were a Baptist. Why should he get a pass because he’s Muslim?

ANN ALTHOUSE: “Two divorced women went out walking, and what do you think they talked about? Philosophy?”

Meanwhile, in less-civilized parts of the world. . . .

BEST MOVIES AND TV OF 2010: A Top 100 list.

THE TRINITY TEST and nuclear forensics.

MYRA ADAMS: Why Palin Should Run for Oprah’s Couch instead of Obama’s Chair in 2012.

MISSILE? “100% convinced it was a jet.”

POLITICAL CLASS: “LIKE BAD RENTERS.” “The political class are like bad renters, not knowing if they’ll be in power more than two years they spend everything at hand and then some, because to conserve it is to eventually bequeath resources on their adversaries.”

LESSONS FROM LONDON: “British Tories have demonstrated how a newly elected party can deliver a program of radical spending cuts. The coalition government, led by Conservatives and supported by Liberal Democrats, aims to cut spending by £81 billion and departmental budgets by 19 percent over five years, eliminating the U.K.’s structural deficit. It is a strikingly bold plan: An estimated 500,000 public-sector jobs will be lost; higher-education spending will be reduced by 40 percent; and departments will be cut by up to 51 percent. These dramatic cuts illustrate the kind of action the U.S. will eventually have to take.”

The sooner we do so, the less overall pain.

UPDATE: But are these cuts real? “You will see that the current financial year expenditure is £696.8 billion. By 2014-15, the projected expenditure was to rise to £757.5 billion. Little George is now proposing that this increase is limited £739.8 billion. This now becomes a 17.7 percent ‘cut’, albeit that expenditure is still increasing.”

AMY ALKON: The vile racist campaign against racism.

MICHELLE MALKIN: Hey, let’s not get carried away with this Bush nostalgia thing. “His candor, decency, self-effacement, and clear love of country stand in stark contrast to the current antagonist-in-chief at the White House, so it’s understandable that many on our side of the political aisle are feeling a bit wistful and nostalgic as Bush makes the rounds. . . . The problem, of course, is that Bush nostalgia is indelibly marred by his disastrous domestic policy legacy of big government, big spending, and betrayal of core fiscal principles — the very impetus for the Tea Party movement upon which he now heaps glowing praise.”

THEY TOLD ME IF I VOTED FOR JOHN MCCAIN we’d be talking about staying in Iraq indefinitely. And they were right! Ah, remember the fierce moral urgency of change?

PROFESSOR FRINK: “Baseball is a game played by the dextrous but only understood by the poindextrous.”

I BELIEVE THIS IS CALLED “SIZEISM:” Marc Lamont Hill: Chris Christie Too Fat To Be President. Tell it to William Howard Taft!

NOT FOR ME, BUT AMUSING: Twinkie diet helps nutrition professor lose 27 pounds.

For 10 weeks, Mark Haub, a professor of human nutrition at Kansas State University, ate one of these sugary cakelets every three hours, instead of meals. To add variety in his steady stream of Hostess and Little Debbie snacks, Haub munched on Doritos chips, sugary cereals and Oreos, too.

His premise: That in weight loss, pure calorie counting is what matters most — not the nutritional value of the food.

The premise held up: On his “convenience store diet,” he shed 27 pounds in two months.

Plus, with all those preservatives, he’ll be forever young. Or, at least, won’t need embalming . . . .

HEALTHY SEX LIFE makes men live longer.

THOUGHTS ON teaching kids to be winners.

RAND PAUL not selling out after all?

CHANGE: Women Without Kids Up 80 Percent From 30 Years Ago: The number of American women without children has risen to an all-time high. “Even when they’re married they’re putting off getting pregnant. Then they wake up one day and they’re 40 and they want to have a child. It’s like, hello?”

SO IF SOMEBODY’S LAUNCHING MISSILES OFF OUR COASTS, AND IT’S NOT US, then it’s a threat to national security no matter what the Pentagon says. Plus, from the comments: “While it may have been a launch by the U.S. military, it raises the specter of the greatest single threat to the survival of the United States; namely, an EMP Attack that might kill all except 30 million Americans.”

Most likely explanation — something we did, or are okay with because it was an ally, or some sort of optical illusion making a jet contrail (perhaps from a high-performance military jet) look like a rocket launch. However, all other explanations are far from benign. And while an EMP attack probably wouldn’t be as bad as One Second After, it wouldn’t have to be nearly that bad to be very bad indeed.

UPDATE: A lengthy exposition of the contrail theory, with numerous photos.

ANOTHER UPDATE: A reader objects that an EMP attack wouldn’t kill anyone, because it would only destroy electronics. Well, not exactly. If the damage were as bad as set out in One Second After, with the electric grid destroyed and transport almost completely paralyzed, then it would kill a lot of people. That’s pretty much a worst-case scenario, and as John Walker noted in this post I linked a while back, the damage probably wouldn’t be nearly that bad, which isn’t to say that a lot of people wouldn’t die.

MORE: A confused response from NORAD. Well, that’s comforting.

STILL MORE: Reader Larry Rachman writes: “Sounds like those aliens from that faked oil rig explosion are finally heading home. Godspeed.”

As long as it’s not the BLUE HADES getting out of hand. If the Benthic Treaty fails, we’re in for it.

Meanwhile, reader Cliff Beach writes:

Hi Glenn. Thanks for your help in finding (for me) a great AM radio that works in the mountains. But on to the real stuff.

I was in missile defense for 22 years (US Army). I was the chief evaluator for a major missile defense system when I worked for ATEC. Here’s my take for what it’s worth.

I have no idea if this was a missile. Didn’t see it. I have seen plenty of contrails that look like missile launches. I have seen plenty of missile launches as well.

However, the US military knows whether this was a missile shot or not. We have satellites in orbit that have both physical and software filters that constantly search for the signature of burning missile fuel. There are only a few suitable fuels for ballistic missiles, and their burn leaves a chemical signature. The signature travels at the speed of light, which means that the burn signature hits the satellite sensors in a bit more than one tenth of one second. It takes the satellite the same amount of time to process that burn signal, and about the same amount of time to return a radio signal to ground stations that it has detected a launch (of course jets have no such signature, so the false positives are very low, like nil). In just a few more seconds, the satellite or any ground radar stations that get a hit will have calculated the impact area, with a CEP (circle error probability) of a few tens of kilometers, the size which shrinks quickly as the ballistic arch is further refined.

So if this was a missile, the DoD knows it was within a few seconds. If they say they don’t know what it was, they are either lying (if it was a missile, unlikely) or they are doing their darndest to figure out which jet it was, and how to get that out to the public. They know the shit storm they will create if they put out easily contradicted information. Adding to the belief that it is unlikely DoD is withholding info is the fact that DoD has no pubic relations staff sitting around ready to confirm that a passenger jet was flying in the sky near our west coast. They probably have not the foggiest idea how to absolutely confirm that jet A caused contrail B seen by public C and ensure it is believed by conspiracy theorists D, E, and F. Given that we are at war in two different countries, and threatened by many more, I’m personally really glad we don’t have that kind of staff sitting around waiting to explain away something that is a daily, no, hourly, occurrence.

Indeed.

REVIEWING THE REVIEWERS: A roundup of book reviews from all over.

WASHINGTON EXAMINER: Don’t Let Fred Upton Chair Energy and Commerce Committee.

Given that Upton is the author of the asinine incandescent lightbulb ban, I don’t even think he should be seated . . . . Here’s more from The Hill.

INSTITUTE FOR JUSTICE: Licensing Gone Wild: Armed Government Agents Raiding Barber Shops.

Much more on the subject here.