When this BREAKING NEWS broke 40 minutes ago, Caroline Kennedy was dropping out of the whole “You know, I am famous, politically, so anoint me senator” deal for “personal reasons.” Ha, and now it turns out (according to the New York Post, which is apparently correct) the “reason” was she wasn’t the “person” Paterson will choose to run out Hillary Clinton’s term in the Senate. MORE »

• OBAMA’S FIRST VICTIMS? Prehistoric klansman Robert Byrd and/or Liberal Lion Ted Kennedy collapsed during the Congressional Lunch with the new president! Yikes. The lunch goes on. Be careful in there, everybody. UPDATE: Both of them! UPDATE II: No, just Teddy. [Politico]

Is it possible that the fringe nutcase world of Bigfoot and Space Monsters is also the fringe nutcase world of those people out to prove half-Muslin Kenyan Taliban Barack Hussein Obama is an illegal alien? A shocking new development suggests that some Texas redneck who used to call the Art Bell radio show and claim he shot a couple of Bigfoot Monsters may also be some Internet radio wingnut who will one day show the world his ROCK SOLID PROOF that your new president is actually an Indonesian wetback or whatever. MORE »

To illustrate some op-ed about Ferdinand Pecora — the brave New York prosecutor of financial fraudsters who did some congressional hearing at the end of Hoover’s presidency — the New York Times dug up this ancient Blingee. There is no explanation for this bizarre old-timey example of a blinged-out spliff-smokin’ Hero of the Depression, and the bland Associated Press photo credit only adds to the Mystery. UPDATE: Oh, this is intended to be art, by an artist. So a blingee that doesn’t move is now considered Art, the end. [NYT via Wonkette tipster Daisy Chain]

This weird and wonderful year has been packed with implausibilities and impossibilities: the Clintons losing, a black man elected president and Peggy Noonan occassionally making sense. This week’s installment of her serialized first-person novel of Manhattan Madness, Declarations, contains two well-written arguments for the current conventional wisdom — Hillary is an interesting yet troublesome choice for Secretary of State, and Robert Gates should stay on for a while as Secretary of Defense. Which is nice and all, but it doesn’t really leave your Wonkette much to work with. Luckily, Peggy was just coming down from her Dexedrine-Percocet highball when she scrawled her first zany sentence, in Lancome mascara, on the walls of her Upper East Side apartment. MORE »

…And this unbelievable nugget comes from a Fox News reporter. That Sarah Palin thought Africa was a country, not a continent. God bless you, Carl Cameron, for promising an “avalanche” of Palin revelations that had been off-the-record until the election was over. She threw temper tantrums and was unmanageable. She didn’t prepare for her Couric interview. And did we mention that she thought Africa was a country, and not a continent? Wait until she hears about Australia: it’s both. [YouTube]

So much news from doomed loser snowbilly Sarah Palin tonight! Her rogue campaign is going super-rogue, by, uh, getting her own investigator to release a new investigation saying that, actually, she did not abuse her power with the crazy obsession to fire her ex-brother-in-law, and oh, some local doctor sent a fax to Anderson Cooper or something, on Election Eve. MORE »

RACISTS 4 OBAMA: Oh here’s a sexy new trend: Some people have confederate flags and Obama signs. [Gawker]

Alaska Congressman and enemy to interns Don Young still loves his partner in corruption, Ted Stevens. This corrupt duo remembers being corrupt together ever since their corrupt days eating corrupt sandwiches with corrupt Richard Nixon and then corrupting each other’s wives: “I can remember Richard Nixon, you know, his years of service, what he’s done, and everybody [was] ridiculing him, and he ended up being the greatest president in the history of our century. … The Senator will be re-elected. He will appeal it. When he does go, he will win it because there’s no way this is a jury of his peers.” Much like corrupt Ted Stevens, corrupt Don Young will also lose his corrupt seat this year. [Roll Call]

No matter how many times the liberals answer this question, conservatives continue to ask in conjured bewilderment, “why all the anger at Sarah Palin?” The liberals’ answer — that she’s not qualified to run anything but pretends that she is via an unprecedented streak of nasty, horrific lying — well, that’s a load of socialist poo; why do they really hate her? Is it her accent, or her vagina, or just the fact that she’s too perfect for liberals to comprehend? Definitely, all of that, but the major reason mean liberals hate Sarah Palin sifts below the surface of the warped liberal psyche, as Kevin Burke writes in a stunning new National Review article: since all liberals have had several abortions, they hate Sarah Palin (and apparently Bristol!) for not having abortions. This is a real article. MORE »

Ashley Todd is the brave young patriot Ken and Jim have been writing about nonstop since yesterday evening. She got robbed of her pocket change by an angry dyslexic Negro monster lurking behind a Pittsburgh-area money hole, and then Twittered about it all the way home, and now nobody believes her story because America is still a very sexist nation. This morning we found one billion tips in our inbox containing various sordid revelations regarding this tragic victim. Let’s take a look… MORE »