Expected bad news:

With the economy deteriorating rapidly, the nation’s employers shed 533,000 jobs in November, the 11th consecutive monthly decline, the government reported Friday morning, and the unemployment rate rose to 6.7 percent. The decline, the largest since December 1974, was fresh evidence that the economic contraction accelerated in November, promising to make the current recession, already 12 months old, the longest since the Great Depression. The previous record was 16 months, in the severe recessions of the mid-1970s and early 1980s.

“We have recorded the largest decline in consumer confidence in our history,” said Richard T. Curtin, director of the Reuters/University of Michigan Survey of Consumers, which started its polling in the 1950s. “It is being driven down by a host of factors: falling home and stock prices, fewer work hours, smaller bonuses, less overtime and disappearing jobs.”

Ugh.

For two months work, Sarah Palin's traveling makeup artist and hair stylist were paid $110,000, according to newly filed RNC campaign expense reports.

The clothing total, previously at $150,000 is also expected to rise, but the final numbers weren't available when the Times posted its story tonight. Stay tuned.

Barbara Walters names Barack Obama the most fascinating person of the year in her special tonight.

In 2005, she named Camilla Parker Bowles. In 2006, she named Nancy Pelosi and in 2007, Harry Potter author J.K. Rowling.

Also on Walters' list tonight, Rush Limbaugh, a man who got pregnant, Tom Cruise, Will Smith and actor Frank Langella who plays Richard Nixon in the new movie Frost/Nixon.

I changed the channel when she named Sarah Palin.

Who would you have named?

FBI Agent Mark T. Rossini of New York has been charged in Los Angeles with illegally accessing FBI computers in 2007 to help the once-famous, former private investigator, Anthony Pellicano, who was facing illegal wiretapping and racketeering charges. Pellicano was convicted and is in prison.

In May, Pellicano was convicted by a federal jury in Los Angeles of conspiring to run a criminal enterprise that employed illegal wiretaps to dig up dirt on the rich and famous on behalf of his elite Hollywood clients. Pellicano is awaiting sentencing for convictions on those 76 counts, as well as for convictions in August in a separate trial for wiretapping and conspiracy to commit wiretapping.

It looks like Rossini has already made a deal: the charges were filed by information and consist of five misdemeanors of illegal access to computers. [More...]

No change to the status of Florida all purpose star Percy Harvin. He is still questionable for Saturday's SEC championship game against the Crimson Tide of Alabama.

I know you were all on the edge of your seats waiting for today's Harvin report.

This is an Open Thread.

Another driving while Ambien'd story in the news today: An elected District Attorney in Durango, Colorado was sentenced to 10 days of home detention (and loss of his driver's license.)

Craig Westberg, the DA for Archuleta, La Plata and San Juan counties, also must attend alcohol-education classes, perform 60 hours of public service and pay more than $3,000 in court costs and restitution for car damage.

....He was arrested in October 2007 after witnesses reported an erratic driver. Westberg has said he took an Ambien sleeping pill and left home to run an errand when his vision suddenly became blurred.

Patrick Kennedy got a better deal in his DWA (driving while ambien'd) ordeal: Rehab.

Here's a 2006 news article with statistics. [More...]

Former Boston FBI Agent John Connolly, purportedly the inspiration for the Matt Damon character in The Departed, is in a federal courtroom in Miami today, being sentenced for a gangland murder. He faces 30 years to life.

Connolly told the judge today he didn't do it.

During testimony, jurors heard that Connolly was on the mob payroll, collecting $235,000 from Bulger and Flemmi while shielding his mob pals from prosecution and leaking the identities of informants.

The prosecution's star witnesses at the Miami trial were Flemmi, who is now in prison, and mob hit man John Martorano, who has admitted to 20 murders, served 12 years in prison and is now free.

Connolly was serving a 10 year sentence for racketeering when he was indicted for the mob hit.

It's that time of year again, where we really would like TalkLeft readers to take the 2008 annual Blog Reader Project Survey. The survey helps journalists, blogger, and advertisers better understand the demographics related to blogs. Please use this link to take the survey. While we won't get access to your results, the demographic information gleaned from TL readers will help us with advertisers.

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Also, if you get tired of the survey before finishing, you can quit and the answers to the questions you submitted will still count. Thanks, everyone.

Minnesota’s instruments for counting votes are simply too crude to determine the winner in a race this tight. . . . Luckily, Minnesota’s electoral law has a provision for ties. After all the counting and recounting, if the vote is statistically tied, the state should invoke the section of the law that requires the victor to be chosen by lot. It’s hard to swallow, but the right way to end the senatorial race between Mr. Coleman and Mr. Franken will be to flip a coin.

This seems right to me.

Speaking for me only

I didn't see any news today because after work I became enmeshed in the online world of electronic gadgets. I'm still replacing the items taken during my home invasion last month, and since I wasn't insured, I have to go slowly. Make that at a snail's pace. I've spent untold hours this week learning and relearning the features of dvd -vhs recorders, blue ray players and units that do both with upscaling convertibility to 1080p so the picture matches that on your 1080p Hi-Def tv. [More...]

Josh Marshall writes:

I don't have any problem with Obama's cabinet picks so far. But it's certainly true that Democrats with a high partisan profile haven't figured prominently among his major appointments, with the notable exception of Rahm Emanuel.

I guess Hillary is in the "Hillary for New York" party. I am tempted to attribute this to CDS but that is probably not the case. He probably does not think Hillary has a "high partisan profile." After all, Republicans love the Clintons - remember all the Hillary-cans?

Speaking for me only

This is an Open Thread.

I have always called my self a "Centrist." What does that mean actually? Well nothing really. But it is valuable politically.

Pew recently releases a much-discussed survey arguing that, despite massive partisan gains for Democrats, the ideological balance of the country has not shifted much. . . . This finding needs to be disputed . . .

I disagree. This finding needs to be embraced. I think we should argue that the country chose "Centrism" when it chose the Democratic agenda. More . . .