THE IRISH BAILOUT: A WORLD RECORD. “A bigger-than-expected bailout for Ireland — does anybody expect Portugal or Spain (or Italy) to do any better? And what if it’s not just the PIIGS? Years ago, a fellow calling himself Gekko wrote a column for National Review, called ‘Random Walk.’ He predicted that the euro would be inherently unstable, because the economies it covers are so different from one another. I suspect Gekko is starting to feel vindicated, and I hope he has invested accordingly.”

I was worried about the EU’s future back in 2001.

UPDATE: E.U. Rescue Costs Threaten Germany Itself.

BIG JOURNALISM: Media Matters Lies About Media Coverage of Sarah Palin North Korea Slip. Kind of a dog-bites-man story.

COMPETENCE: More Hope & Change… “Never Before Has a Superpower Lost Control of Such Vast Amounts of Sensitive Information.”

SIGN THAT OBAMA IS IN TROUBLE? People are telling him he could learn a few PR lessons from George W. Bush.

BEGINNING OF THE END? Godfrey Bloom given the Soviet treatment at the EU.

MATT WELCH: Today’s Thomas L. Friedman column is a familiar if distasteful brew of what-Americans-want ventriloquism and public policy by bumper sticker. Emphasis on the word “familiar.”

UPDATE: Prof. Stephen Clark writes: “That last paragraph of Welch’s post had me laughing aloud. Every college or university professor who has quietly endured serial idiocies emanating from a student utterly convinced of their brilliance understands the emotion driving that paragraph.”

RECOMMENDED GIFTS for the person who has everything.

KATRINA VANDENHEUVEL apologizes to John Tyner. Maybe next she should apologize to everyone else that article smeared . . . .

SCOTT JOHNSON: What Can We Learn From Mohamed Mohamud?

PROF. JACOBSON: “Admit it, many of us in the right-blogosphere are obsessed with liberals’ obsession with Palin.”

OLIVER HART & LUIGI ZINGALES: How to Improve the Financial-Reform Law: A brief proposal to protect the system—without stifling innovation.

ROGER SIMON: Sleazy WikiLeaks Meets the Digital Ninnies of the State Department. “The criminality of self-righteous WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange aside, the State Department or other government nincompoops who authored the leaked documents and emails calling Sarkozy a ‘naked emperor,’ etc., deserve to be terminated for extreme doofuss-ness. These days, a school child knows that what you write digitally is forever indelible.”

Is this what they meant when they were promising us “smart diplomacy?” It’s interesting to me that the WikiLeaks stuff seems to reflect so badly on the Obama Administration and the career foreign service, while Harold Koh is trying to keep it quiet. Meanwhile a certain former VP has been largely off the radar for months. Has anyone seen Julian Assange and Dick Cheney photographed together? . . . .

UPDATE: “A moment of remarkable impotence.”

ANOTHER UPDATE: Okay, ever since I posted this I’ve had the Riverbluff Clan going through my head: “Somethin’ is leakin’ I’m two quarts low . . . “

MORE: Prince Abdullah, Neo-Con Warhawk?

PROF. JACOBSON: When Will AARP, Consumers Union and AMA Be Held To Account for Obamacare?

DIMINISHED: From Copenhagen to Cancun.

OUCH: Led by little people with little minds and little horizons.

READER JASON DOCTOR WRITES THAT telescopes are marked way down today. Those make good presents.

UPDATE: Earlier, a reader asked me for recommendations and I couldn’t help a lot — it’s been a long time since I bought a telescope. But now reader Lowell McCormick writes:

Hi Glenn, I have a number of telescopes, belong to the Ponchartrain Astronomy Society and attend many public outreach events where we invite the public to look thru our telescopes. For prospective new telescope owners, I would suggest the Orion XT8″ Classic dob. It gives the most bang for the buck, by far. I would suggest that beginners stay away from anything on a tripod. If a child is under 12 yrs old, go for the same Orion dob in the 6″ or 4.5″ diameter. Stay away from anything on a tripod. The dob style telescopes allow you to spend most of the money on the optics which is the thing you are buying a telescope for. An 8″ can be a scope that lasts a lifetime. And the views of the Orion nebula, Andromeda galaxy, Jupiter and Saturn can be fantastic and awe inspiring thru an 8″ reflector.

The Coronado PST solar telescope at $500 is also a good buy. It works well on a camera tripod.

The larger solar scopes have come down in price by 50% in recent years and the 60mm Coronado @ $1300 is a good buy but you’ll need a $500 to $1000 mount on a tripod for it to be stable.

The Sun is getting active again and the views have been great lately. The hydogen alpha type solar scopes (above) allow views of sunspots, surface detail and spectacular prominences around the edge of the sun.

www.telescope.com has a good “telescope buyers guide” and a listing of telescopes by user level.

I have a 16″ truss dob reflector, 3″ & 4″ refractors on eq mounts and a 60mm Ha solar scope.

So there’s some advice.

TAKING BETS ON 8 Offshore Wind Projects.

HEH: Presidential biographer Edmund Morris to Bob Schieffer on “Face the Nation”: “That’s a fucked up question.” But it’s Edmund Morris who ran out of bullshit. I guess Schieffer’s stocks are limitless.

Plus, from the comments: “Love the way this guy seems to think he’s stumbled upon some novel insight when he calls Americans fat, stupid and insular. It’s not only bullshit, it’s boring, unoriginal bullshit that’s been sort of the European conventional wisdom on America since before the Civil War.” And that statement reminds me of this bit of history from Walt Whitman regarding Europe and America that you’d think a historian would consider. Or, in Morris’s case, I suppose, fictionalize. . . .

CREATING ELECTRICITY from automobile exhaust.

FRONT-LOADING: Amazon rolls out tomorrow’s Cyber Monday deals today.

FASTER, PLEASE: Stem Cell Spray Heals Burns.

AUBREY DE GREY VS. DAVID BRIN on rejuvenation.

INTERESTED IN DISASTER PREPAREDNESS? Check out Bill Quick’s discussion forum.

Related: List: Disaster-Preparedness Supplies.

THE FORD MUSTANG STATION WAGON that never was.

WHAT A SURVIVABLE CRASH looks like.