Detroit has a new ambassador, Kid Rock. He's had a great year. GQ has named him Rock Star of the Year. Yesterday, his Jan. 15 show in Detroit (to celebrate his 40th birthday) sold out in 19 minutes.

He's also doing good things. His Kid Rock Foundation purchased 1,000 Thanksgiving meals for the Detroit needy this year. Here's more of his good deeds. [More....]

The latest Wikileaks document release, reported to comprise 3 million documents, may be hours away from release.

The classified files to be released reportedly cover correspondence between US diplomatic missions abroad and the state department in Washington and would possibly reveal "unflattering" views that American officials often held about close EU allies and countries like Russia, China and Saudi Arabia.

Governments around the world on Saturday braced for the publication of potentially embarrassing diplomatic cables, as Washington raced to contain the fallout.

This release will be seven times the size of the October release of 400,000 war documents.

Nobody puts Baby in a Corner, after all. Congratulations, Jennifer and Derek.

Bristol Palin on DWTS tonight: Winning "would be like a big middle finger to all the people out there that hate my mom and hate me."

Time to drive that truck back home to Alaska. No trophy for you. Or your mother or her rabid fans.

Update: Disaster averted. Jennifer Grey wins.

Update: Sarah Palin, despite earlier reports to the contrary from TMZ, is a no-show. She's peddling her book in Phoenix. Probably avoiding the huge boo-ing that would ensue if Ms. Log to Broom actually won.

Update: 9:46 pm: Bristol scores the lowest again with the judges. Report: She was her usual wooden-legged self, getting pulled along by her partner. Jennifer gets a perfect 30, Kyle and Lacey 26. My latest prediction: DWTS will "adjust" the viewer votes if necessary rather than let Bristol win and destroy the show's reputation for future seasons. The bigger question is whether they'd admit they had to do that.[More...]

Here's the latest on DWTS. The two hour finale starts at 8:00 p.m. MT. Last night's show brought in the biggest numbers yet: 23.7 million views. It beat the football games both Sunday and Monday nights. And almost half of the viewers were women over 50.

The “Dancing” hosts labeled this edition of the show as the most controversial in its history, referring to an outcry among some viewers at Ms. Palin’s continued survival, thanks to support by viewer votes. ...almost half the audience for the show consisted of women over 50. The median age for “Dancing” was 56.9, the oldest for any show on the networks Monday night.

To make tonight's final winner even more unpredictable, ABC's voting system got overwhelmed last night, with people getting busy signals. ABC put out this statement:

Charlie Sheen is fighting back. Via TMZ, he has filed a lawsuit against Capri Anderson for extortion and theft. He alleges Anderson, whom he refers to a p*rn star, demanded a million dollars not to go on national TV with her claims of what happened in a NY hotel room a few weeks ago. Sheen also says she threatened to try an have his probation revoked if he didn't pay. The demands were made by her lawyer. You can read the colorful complaint here.

Sheen says Anderson is a liar, and she admitted to police and others he acted like the perfect gentleman. He says she's a long time p*rn star in LA and had money troubles, so she moved to NY to become an escort (and, according to Sheen, a hooker.) [More...]

Update: The Washington Post and ABC News conducted a poll. Results; Majority said Bristol Palin is still on DWTS because of "large-scale voting" by fans of her mother.

The poll was conducted among a random national sample of 514 adults, and interviews were conducted on conventional phones and cellphones. The results have a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 5 percentage points.

****

DWTS says we shouldn't complain if we don't bother to vote. So I voted by text. I voted for the best dancers. Jennifer Grey knocked the socks off the competition. Kyle Massey was terrific and a solid second. Here's the numbers: [More...]

I'm not the only one who thinks politics has run Dancing With the Stars into the ground. According to Popeater, AOL's online entertainment news site, Dancing With the Stars producers and ABC and other TV insiders believe the show will be permanently ruined if Bristol Palin wins, and they fear she might, due to her mother's fan base and campaigning. Insiders give three reasons:

• It will go from being a dancing competition to a popularity competition where whoever has the most rabid fan base will always win no matter how little talent they have."

• "[A]fter Bristol wins no one in Hollywood will ever want to be on the show again," a well-placed ABC source tells me. "Why would a real star want to compete and lose against someone like [former U.S. Senate candidate] Christine O'Donnell or Levi Johnston. It's humiliating. The producers know they are in big trouble for sure."

• "A friend of one of the judges [says] Bristol has made a fool out of all of them. It's now painfully obvious that the judge's scores and opinions mean nothing."

Here's how the voting is supposed to work: [More...]

Ed Kilgore:

[T]rue independents tend to vote against the party in power when the economy is bad, regardless of the perceived ideology or partisanship of the party in power. It happened in 2006 and it happened again in 2010. Arguing, as some have done, that the answer for Democrats is to "move to the center" and find some way to work with Republicans makes sense only if such steps contribute to an improvement in the performance of the economy. If they don't, then it's not the right direction to take, particularly if you consider the costs in terms of sacrificing progressive policy goals and making the Democratic elements of the electorate unhappy precisely on the eve of the cycle when they can be expected to return to the polls.

(Emphasis supplied.) What former DLCer Ed Kilgore said.

Speaking for me only

It seems incredible to me that a historic victory for Dems in 2008 will likely end up with a permanent extension of the disastrous Bush tax cuts. Definitely NOT the most progressive 2 years in a generation. Kevin Drum writes:

Obama wants to pass DADT repeal, New START, and raise the debt ceiling. Conservatives want permanent extension of all tax cuts. That sure sounds like fertile ground for a deal to me. [. . . P]ermanent extension of the tax cuts isn't that big a deal for Dems. I'd trade it away for those other three things and live to fight another day on taxes.

Simply incredible. The lack of understanding contained in those sentences is simply incredible. Live to fight another day on taxes? What day century would that be? Pathetic. I hope these Beltway bloggers enjoy watching social programs get cut to the bone in the name of "deficit reduction" after they urge rolling over on tax cuts for the rich.

Speaking for me only

Brandy got robbed by Palin supporters on Dancing With the Stars. Unbelievable. Bristol improved over the season but that's not saying much since she began like a piece of wood and ended with only an ember. She's no dancer and does not belong in the finals. She didn't even belong in the semi-finals.

What a crock, and a disappointment. Brandy was a "10" dancer and second only to Jennifer Grey. In fact, Brandy vs. Jennifer would have been a close contest in the finale. She may not have the most friendly personality, but it's a dancing contest.

Kyle belongs in the finals more than Bristol. He has more musicality in his tush than Bristol has in her whole body.

Tea partiers mobbed the phone lines, voting for Sarah Palin's child. No one who was voting on the dancing as opposed to politics would have voted for Bristol, except her family and friends. And that doesn't add up to the hundreds of thousands of votes she got. Bristol of course is in denial.

Shame on DWTS for not having figured out how to have a judges' override when the votes so clearly have no relationship to dancing or talent. [More...]

If you were a smoker, would this picture on your pack of cigarettes stop you from buying them? Or cause you to quit? That's what the FDA is hoping. Today, it unveiled 36 graphics depicting death and suffering that it proposes be carried on cigarettes, and is seeking public comment.

Comments are being accepted until January. The proposed FDA rule requires the graphics by June, 2011.