Comedians have been having fun this week with the idea of old-fashioned piracy re-emerging on the Somali coast (enough of the Johnny Depp jokes). But Associated Press reporter Mohamad Olan Hassan filed a story with a strangely cheering tone for how Somali pirates can take their ill-gotten gains and "transform villages into boomtowns." You have to read it to believe it:

MOGADISHU, Somalia – Somalia's increasingly brazen pirates are building sprawling stone houses, cruising in luxury cars, marrying beautiful women — even hiring caterers to prepare Western-style food for their hostages.

And in an impoverished country where every public institution has crumbled, they have become heroes in the steamy coastal dens they operate from because they are the only real business in town.

"The pirates depend on us, and we benefit from them," said Sahra Sheik Dahir, a shop owner in Haradhere, the nearest village to where a hijacked Saudi Arabian supertanker carrying $100 million in crude was anchored Wednesday.

Governor Palin is in demand. Every newshound, every TV talking head, every newsertainer in the country is after her. She is being pursued for TV shows, book deals, movie roles, hounded by photographers and every hanger on in both Hollywood and the newsertainment industry. But the Associated Press wants to be sure you understand one thing: she is a FAILURE! That's right, in discussing Palin's current celebrity, the main concern AP has is to make sure you know she is a big ol' loser. The AP is so intent to remind you she lost that it has to tell you she lost over and over again. You know, just in case you were unaware she and McCain didn't win the election.

So, did you know Sarah Palin lost the election? Here, let the AP remind you (My bold throughout)...

Some potentially exciting games today:

• No. 15 Michigan State at No. 8 Penn State
• No. 14 Brigham Young at No. 7 Utah
• No. 20 Pittsburgh at No. 19 Cincinnati
• No. 2 Texas Tech at No. 5 Oklahoma

Anybody want to talk College B-Ball? Or my amazing Sharks? Are we heading for another Celtics-Lakers final?

Below the fold, NBer Caringwhiteguy raises an interesting question about FSU's Myron Rolle:

For general discussion and debate. Possible talking point: teenage suicide.

A South Florida college student killed himself by overdosing on drugs in front of a live online audience as some computer users egged him on, some debated his method, and others tried to talk him out of it.

When I read this yesterday, I cried for about ten minutes. Maybe it's because I have a son that age. However, I'm wondering how this story has impacted others, and if this is emblematic of the problems in our society today. Or, is this just a teenage suicide with an Internet twist thereby making it both shocking and novel but nothing more?

CBS News is starting the next wave of Obama intoxication. Rename your school for our Historic Leader:

A school on Long Island has been renamed Barack Obama Elementary School in honor of his historic rise to the presidency.

The move at the largely black and Hispanic school in Hempstead is among the first in what will likely be a wave of name changes around the world now that Mr. Obama has been elected president, from schools and streets to parks and mountaintops.

The prime minister of the Caribbean nation of Antigua has said he's taking measures to have the island's highest mountain peak renamed Mount Obama. In Portland, Ore., students want to rename Clark K-8 At Binnsmead school. Elsewhere on Long Island, the Clear Stream Avenue School in Valley Stream will consider a renaming resolution in December. And parents already have been naming newborns Barack.

For years, little would upset liberals more than the suggestion they were less patriotic than other Americans.  The crowd spewing "Bush-Hitler-Genghis-Khan-baby-killers-AmeriKKKa-Ho-Ho-Ho-Chi-Minh"? Great patriots, all.  Bill Ayers trampling a flag?  Dissent is patriotic, dude.

But now that Barack Obama has been elected, comes an admission, unintended as it may be. Yeah, maybe we weren't so much before, but it's cool to be patriotic. Now.  Such can be seen in Derrick Z. Jackson's Boston Globe column of today, 'It's OK to be an American now." From Jackson's opening paragraph [emphasis added]:

Before Obama's victory speech in Chicago, the crowd of 125,000 people said the Pledge of Allegiance. In my 53 years I have never heard such a multicultural throng recite the pledge with such determined enunciation, expelling it from the heart in a treble soaring to the skies and a bass drumming through the soil to vibrate my feet.

Ya gotta hand it to them. The Associated Press knows how to cut out all the extraneous background noise and get right to the important issues of the day. Barack Obama will surely be in the center of the vortex of some of the most important decisions in the world during the next four years and even his preparations for taking office are vitally important as a marker to what he might do in office. There are wars and rumors of wars, disasters and relief efforts and historic decisions will soon be made. But no decision is so important, as the AP dutifully tells us, than the one of what the president elect had for lunch. The shocking, heartwarming and resolute decision the leader of the free world... no the leader of all mankind... made for his lunch was apparently a corned beef sandwich.

Darfur still swirls with genocide, Iran is still making plans to destroy Israel, China is on pace to build the largest most dangerous army on Earth, the European Union still angles to lay America low, but all that pales in comparison to the important report the AP could muster (no, not mustard). Yes, the AP brings us the most salient story of our day: "Obama grabs lunch at local deli, greets patrons."

The Associated Press reported tonight that Barack and Michelle Obama will send their daughters to a private school:

President-elect Barack Obama and his wife have chosen Sidwell Friends School for their two daughters, opting for a private institution that another White House child, Chelsea Clinton, attended a decade ago.

"A number of great schools were considered," said Katie McCormick Lelyveld, a spokeswoman for Michelle Obama. "In the end, the Obamas selected the school that was the best fit for what their daughters need right now."

The AP further noted:

Michelle Obama went to public schools on Chicago's South Side, and understands the importance of strong public schools, Lelyveld said, and the administration plans to work hard on that issue.

Naked Emperor News has unearthed a 2007 KJFK radio interview Barack Obama gave to host Christiane Brown.  He promised that one of his first acts as president would be to call on his new Attorney General to investigate the Bush administration(emphasis is mine:)

BROWN: And when you are... if you were to be elected president of the United States, Senator Obama, do you feel that we need to look back if the investigations have been done on this administration find out what happened, because there’s a fear there’s a dangerous precedent being set... the CIA interrogation tapes missing, warrant-less wire tapping, all of these are violations of the Constitution, and people can be forgiven for thinking that it seems like we only enforce the Constitution when its politically expedient.

OBAMA: Well one of things that I’ve said, and I’ve said this repeatedly publicly, since I taught constitutional law for ten years is that...one of my first acts as president is going to be call in my new attorney general to review every single executive order that’s been issued... to overturn those that are undermining the Constitution, undermining our civil liberties, that are promoting this cockamamie theory of Unitary government, that says that somehow the executive branch does not need to obey the Constitution…uhh

(Cross talk)

While ABC, CBS and NBC on Friday night all touted how news that New York Federal Reserve President Tim Geithner will be nominated for Secretary of the Treasury fueled a market rebound, NBC was the most excited with Andrea Mitchell, sounding completely in the tank, hailing President-elect Obama's “all-star cabinet” as she maintained “Obama is determined to pick the strongest, smartest people he can find, knowing that he is facing an economic crisis of historic proportions.” A Nexis search turned up no references on NBC, in December 2000-January 2001, to President-elect Bush's “all-star cabinet” though it featured some stars, such as Colin Powell.

NBC Nightly News put “OBAMA MOVES THE MARKET” on screen as anchor Brian Williams teased: “On our broadcast here tonight, Obama moves the market. Stocks go on a huge rally with first word of the President-elect's choice of a Treasury Secretary.” As he set up Mitchell, viewers saw “TAKING ACTION” beneath a picture of Obama.

You might think media bias is a new thing, but a 40 year confession of a newspaper reporter gives us a peak behind the curtain as to how horribly biased newspapers have been for nearly a half century. Martin Dyckman, a former reporter for the obscenely leftist St. Petersburg Times, reminisces about the day he read over the wire that John F. Kennedy had been killed in Dallas.

The St. Petersburg Times newsroom was in controlled pandemonium. I don’t recall whether I handled any assassination copy that day; more likely, I was editing state and local news. But I was standing at the teletype when the first flash came in that a suspected Marxist, Lee Harvey Oswald, was being held in connection with the shooting. Times Publisher Nelson Poynter was standing nearby when I announced that.

His face fell.

"Oh, no," he said. "I was hoping it would be a right-winger."

That's right. He wasn't angry that a student of oppression tried to destroy this nation. He was disappointed that the President of the United States wasn't killed by a conservative, stealing an opportunity to fuel conservative hate. Some things never change.

Christiane Amanpour, chief international correspondent of CNN and a contributor to CBS's 60 Minutes, displayed her liberal joy for Obama as she emceed an event for the Robert F. Kennedy Center for Justice and Human Rights. As recounted by the Rush & Molloy gossip column in the New York Daily News:

CNN's Christiane Amanpour, who emceed, showed her political stripes when she told the crowd that in the last few months, she'd felt like she was covering "a foreign country having its first-ever democratic election. ... When was the last time we saw the whole world come into the streets dancing in celebration of America instead of demonstrating and burning the flag?"

The New York Observer also observed Amanpour offered her best I'm-not-worthy props to RFK when asked at the naming of New York's Robert F. Kennedy Bridge what she'd like named after her:

At the top of Thursday’s CBS Evening News, anchor Katie Couric referred to a recent court ruling to release five Guantanamo Bay detainees as: "A big legal setback for the president's war on terror." Couric later introduced a report on the ruling and reiterated the idea of the ruling being a defeat solely for President Bush: "...a federal judge ruled today that five suspects held at Guantanamo Bay must be released...it's a major defeat for the Bush administration in its final days."

In the report, correspondent Wyatt Andrews described how: "Defense lawyers call it a victory for American justice and the beginning of the end for Guantanamo." Andrews cited one attorney, Stephen Olesky: " I think many forces are now working toward the closure of Guantanamo and toward ensuring that many of these men who have been held for so long under such desperate circumstances get home." Andrews concluded the report: "...the ruling starts a nightmare for the Pentagon. The military now faces an oncoming rush of 200 Guantanamo appeals, not to mention an incoming president who wants to close the camp altogether." One wonders if CBS will be using the phrase "president’s war on terror" with President Obama.

Earlier this week the brave sailors of the Indian Navy struck a deadly blow to Somali pirate by sinking one of their mother ships.

The courage and dedication of the Indian sailors no doubt is a source of pride for Indian citizens but also cause for cheering among Americans, Europeans, and others the world over who hope to see the Somali piracy threat eradicated.

Yet it was only today that Newsweek's Conventional Wisdom noticed, and only then did CW offer praise to the UN, not India's sailors.:

Day three of "Good Morning America's" "hot seat" series featured softball viewer questions for co-host Robin Roberts, including subjects such as her iPod and whether she'd ever consider appearing on "Dancing With the Stars." The purpose of the daily segment, which concludes on Monday, is to have the tables turned on the GMA hosts and force the journalists to ask tough questions. More typical were the type of queries that people like Regina from Arkansas posed. Via video, she offered this expose: "Your jewelry is so pretty. I would like to know where you get it."

Just as with past "hot seat" segments, there was one truly interesting question. Meteorologist Sam Champion read a viewer e-mail that probed, "With all of the interviews you have done, is there one you wish you could do over?" Roberts responded by claiming, "There are times I wished I had asked different questions...especially this past political season." Perhaps one such example would be on March 26, 2007. That's when the GMA journalist conducted an episode-long "town hall" meeting with (then) presidential candidate Hillary Clinton in which she allowed the New York senator to talk, uninterrupted or unchallenged, for 18 of 26 minutes.

Fox Business Network anchor Alexis Glick is frustrated by the way the government's $700 billion financial bailout is being used, and suggested on "Money for Breakfast" Nov. 21 that it was contributing to market declines.

"I mean, look, we are now at levels at least on the S&P that we haven't been since 1997. You know, people are pretty unhappy with how the TARP fund is going," Glick said in an interview with NYSE Euronex CEO Duncan Niederauer. "I mean, it's got to be - I'm frustrated, I mean I don't know about you."

It's not the first time that Glick has taken issue with the misuse of TARP, the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP).

New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman let his power lust just flow throughout the studio of The Colbert Report on Comedy Central on Thursday night. Promoting his book Hot, Flat, and Crowded, Friedman discussed his concept of America becoming "China for a day," so that his dream of a green revolution -- all those allegedly planet-saving taxes and regulations and product bans -- can be permanently enacted.

When Colbert lived up to his conservative character enough to insert that China has a totalitarian regime, Friedman simply replied "It is a measure of the frustration a lot of people in the green movement have – certainly me," that our democratic system (stuffed with troublesome believers in freedom of enterprise) blocks the passage of a eco-leftist agenda.

COLBERT: Now you have a concept called, you talk about "China for a day." What is China for a day?