AFP/Karen Bleie

We’ll have more on this breaking news later, but for now, here’s the letter.

It’s also encouraging today to see that Jim Romenesko’s daily email roundup of media news for the Poynter Institute, which the whole industry reads, featured at the top of its list the story about Gov. Jodi Rell and Attorney General Richard Blumenthal’s willingness to lend a hand to the effort to save the papers. At the very least, it’s better to go down shouting than to slip quietly into the night.

They’ve only just begun. Not only are the newspaper moochers trying to argue that their services are so “vital” that they deserve taxpayer handouts, they are also arguing that they need federal newspaper subscription subsidies to help make voters smarter.

See the following in the Washington Post:

[H]istorian Rick Shenkman, author of "Just How Stupid Are We?" thinks reform needs to start in high school. His strategy is both poetic (to certain ears) and pragmatic: Require students to read newspapers, and give college freshmen weekly quizzes on current events.

Did he say newspapers?! Shenkman even suggests government subsidies for newspaper subscriptions, as well as federal tuition subsidies for students who perform well on civics tests. They could be paid from a special fund created by, say, a "Too Many Stupid Voters Act."

Not only would citizens be smarter, but also newspapers might be saved. Announcements of newsroom cuts, which ultimately hurt quality, have become routine. Just this week, USA Today announced the elimination of about 20 positions, while the Newark Star-Ledger, as it cuts its news staff by 40 percent, lost almost its entire editorial board in a single day.

In fact, though, most people's incomes are no worse today than they were a year ago, notwithstanding daily references to "hard times" and casual talk about a possible depression. That reality was reflected in what actually happened yesterday: a 3 percent increase over last year's "black Friday" sales, which itself represented a fat 8 percent rise over 2006. This photo is of shoppers lined up at 4:57 a.m. yesterday to get into the Best Buy store in my neighborhood, courtesy of the Minneapolis Star Tribune:

Yesterday's healthy sales came on top of a week in which the Dow gained nearly 10 percent.

This is not to suggest that all is rosy on the economic front; it isn't. The financial crisis is real, and we are most likely in a recession. But the hysterical terms in which the economy is discussed are unwarranted and unhelpful. They are also, I think, politically motivated. Reporters and editors like the idea of a looming depression (or, failing that, an unusually severe recession) for a number of reasons. If it happens, it will be taken as refutation of the relatively conservative consensus that has influenced government policies since the early 1980s--a consensus under which a great many people have flourished, but not, notably, reporters and editors. And if it doesn't happen, they will give the credit to Barack Obama and the more-liberal policies they expect from his administration. So for the left, hysteria over the economy is a win-win proposition. Not so for the rest of us.

til Merritt Paulson came along, City Commissioner Randy Leonard had never been to Manhattan. Tom Miller, chief of staff to Commissioner Sam Adams, had never been to Kansas City. And the city's most visible business, the Portland Trail Blazers, had never been receptive to the idea of another major-league sports franchise coming to town.

It's remarkable what one guy with a rich father and an interesting idea can accomplish.

Just 18 months ago, Paulson, 35, was a midlevel National Basketball Association executive living in New York.

Since then, he's moved to the Portland area, bought two minor-league sports teams-baseball's Beavers and soccer's Timbers-and now has propelled himself into the spotlight with an audacious proposition.

Paulson wants taxpayers to spend $85 million to build a new baseball stadium for his Beavers and renovate PGE Park-just remodeled in 2001 at a cost to taxpayers of $38.5 million-for soccer. In return, he'll spend $40 million to bring a new Major League Soccer team to this city.

"I'm willing to make a bet on the Portland market-that's an easy bet to make," Paulson says.

It's also, judging from past experience, something of a longshot. Portland has historically disdained financing sports stadiums (billionaire Trail Blazers owner Paul Allen built the Rose Garden with virtually no public money).

"Portland's an 'if you build it they will come' city," says Brian Berger, a former Blazers employee who hosts the nationally syndicated show Sports Business Radio. "People here don't want to pay for stadiums."

Here are some highlights of Zogby's poll of Obama voters:

* 57 percent thought the Republicans still control Congress. Note that this is worse than a random result, since there are only two possible answers.

* Only 12 percent could identify Obama as the candidate who said that his energy policies would cause the cost of electricity to skyrocket.

The only issues on which the Obama voters were well-informed (or thought they were, anyway) had to do with Sarah Palin. Thus:

* 94 percent knew that Palin was the candidate with a pregnant teenage daughter, the highest correct score recorded by the Obama voters.

* Likewise, 86 percent knew that Palin was the candidate whose party bought her a $150,000 wardrobe.

The Jerusalem Post said "this document could become a source of friction between Jerusalem and Washington." The World Tribune said it "blasted Israel's role" for "hampering the movement of PA forces, blocking plans for weapons shipments and technology to the Palestinians and resisting coordination." All three reports said that Jones wanted to publish his findings, but the White House decided to keep the reports confidential.

Jones has served as Supreme Allied Commander for Europe (2003-2006), Commandant of the Marine Corps (1999-2003) and Chairman of the Congressional Independent Commission on the Security Forces of Iraq (2007). In November, 2007, he was appointed by Secretary of State Rice as special envoy for Middle East Security.

During the final debate with McCain on October 15, 2008, Obama said this about Jones: "Let me tell you who I associate with... If I'm interested in figuring out my foreign policy, I associate myself with my running mate, Joe Biden or with Dick Lugar...or General Jim Jones, the former supreme allied commander of NATO."

While Republican strategists and Beltway blowhards convene VIP retreats and meetings and save-the-party parties, the road to GOP redemption starts right now. There is opportunity to be seized right now. There is a line in the sand to be drawn.

Right now.

WASHINGTON — The Center for a New American Security, a small think tank here with generally middle-of-the-road policy views, is rapidly emerging as a top farm team for the incoming Obama administration. ...

The think tank’s central role in the transition effort suggests that its positions — which include rejecting a fixed timeline for a withdrawal from Iraq — will get a warm reception within the new administration.

Michele Flournoy, who co-founded the center with Kurt Campbell, a former Clinton National Security Council and Pentagon official, now serves as its president. She is one of two top members of Mr. Obama’s defense transition team and is likely to be offered a high-ranking position at the Pentagon. Some Obama advisers say she could eventually be tapped as the nation’s first female defense secretary.

Wendy Sherman, co-head of the Obama State Department transition team, also serves on the center’s board of advisers and is expected to land a high-ranking post. Richard Danzig, a front-runner for defense secretary, is on the think tank’s board of directors. Susan Rice and James Steinberg, both of whom are on Mr. Obama’s short list for national security adviser, serve on its board of advisers.

Well, he was wrong, and George W. Bush deserves credit for refusing to back down when all around him were losing heart: “The war is over and we won.”

Michael Yon just phoned from Baghdad, and reports that things are much better than he had expected, and he had expected things to be good. “There’s nothing going on. I’m with the 10th Mountain Division, and about half of the guys I’m with haven’t fired their weapons on this tour and they’ve been here eight months. And the place we’re at, South Baghdad, used to be one of the worst places in Iraq. And now there’s nothing going on. I’ve been walking my feet off and haven’t seen anything. I’ve been asking Iraqis, ‘do you think the violence will kick up again,’ but even the Iraqi journalists are sounding optimistic now and they’re usually dour.”