What would the Kennedy Center Honors be without Kennedys? Jean Kennedy Smith, center, the last surviving child of Joe and Rose Kennedy, with her son William Kennedy Smith and Victoria Reggie, the widow of the late Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-MA):

More pics from yesterday’s festivities here.

Whatever else he may get accomplished or not, President Obama has managed to scheduled at least two events with genuine immortals from the Rock/late 20th century popular music pantheon. I’m thinking of the performance at the White House by Bob Dylan and now this Kennedy Center thing with Paul McCartney. Actually, Merle Haggard is one of the prototypical stars of the now mainly departed Outlaw Country movement from the 70s and 80s. But let’s not get distracted.

Obviously a lot of the greats aren’t alive anymore, which makes booking them difficult. But with at least two years and perhaps as many as six years still to go of key booking opportunities, who else should be on Obama’s list?

I’d figured that the “deal” over taxes was going to have permanent extensions on your first $250,000 of taxable income and temporary extensions for those of you lucky enough to have income over that. Having the upper income tax cuts get re-litigated in 2012 is good politics for the Democrats if you get ‘decoupling’ like that — having the debate solely on taxable income over $250,000. But apparently they’re temporary for everyone. Which means you’re going to have this exact same debate in 2012. Which, for those of you following at home, is not a very good thing.

In theory that might not be a bad thing. But after the whiff in September and now this cave, I’m having a certain lack of confidence in their ability to manage this one.

On the other hand, Ezra Klein argues that this might amount to a win for the White House on mid-term political and even policy grounds because of the stimulative effect of the tax cuts and the UI re-up combined. His argument being that there’s enough stimulus contained in the deal to measurably improve the economy by 2012 and thus the president’s chances of reelection. Not only that, but create a better political climate to re-litigate the tax question. I think Ezra may be on to something (I’ll have to give it some thought). But I find myself in a position somewhat similar to that he acribes to a lot of folks on the Hill: it might be brilliant. But it’s getting hard to believe it’s not brilliant by accident.

Elizabeth Edwards’ health has taken a turn for the worse and things sound pretty grim.

Shorter Sarah Palin: I want to make money, not beg for it.

Robert Gates: It’s not looking so good for DADT repeal.

Joe Lieberman says Congress should stay in session until DADT-repeal is passed, even if it means missing the holiday break.

Meanwhile Sen. Inhofe (R) reacts in horror that anti-Christmas forces have made a beachhead in Oklahoma.

Sen. Bernie Sanders: The moneyed elites are waging a war against America’s “disappearing and shrinking middle class.”

14 year old boy admits accidentally starting the massive forest fire near Haifa that became the largest forest fire in the country’s history.

We’ve heard claims that Wikileaks has a cache of Russian government documents and also that they’ve got a big dump coming on some American bank, reportedly Bank of America. But there’s one thing that oddly hasn’t gotten that much attention, even though it’s out there in plain site. That’s the role of Bradley Manning, the Army private who is reportedly (though we have no proof of this) responsible for the Afghanistan, Iraq and State Department leaks. Manning’s role is no secret. Everyone knows about him, even though we don’t have confirmation that he’s the guy. But assuming he is the guy, his role is so central that this is really more the Bradley Manning story than the Wikileaks story. Maybe Assange will bust out next week with a huge cache of BoA files, or maybe the same for the Russian government. But at the moment at least it’s not clear that Wikileaks would have gotten anywhere at all without this one kid giving them all these documents.

Would anything ever have become of Wikileaks without Bradley Manning? And can they ever pull off something remotely like this again?