President Obama is doing the preparatory work for his upcoming State Of The Union speech this week, by visiting three states to tout his successes and also to build support for the proposals he's likely to make in the big speech. This is all standard politics, really. But Democrats should really join in a loud chorus right now to help Obama achieve the first of those goals -- claiming credit for turning the American economy around. This is important for two reasons. The first is that Democrats (and Obama), up until now, have been too timid to claim much of any credit for the economy, out of fears that it could take a turn for the worse and they'd end up looking like Pollyannas (Obama already got his fingers burnt on this previously, with the supposed summer of "green shoots," quite a while back). The second reason it behooves Democrats to claim some credit right now is that if they don't, Republicans are already chomping at the bit to claim all that credit for themselves.

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Bold moves begin to pay off

Barack Obama's job approval polling numbers, at times, seem to follow seasonal trends. He usually loses ground in the summer, particularly in August. In winter, however, he usually gains ground. This year Obama seems likely to repeat this pattern, if December's numbers are any indication.

Obama had a good month in December's polling, and everything points to his numbers improving even more dramatically in January. Ever since the midterm election, Obama has been making bold political moves, and it seems they are starting to pay off in rising public support. But before we look at the larger trends, let's take a look at this month's numbers first.

[Click on graph to see larger-scale version.]

December, 2014

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As always, as we usher out the old year, our thoughts and browsers turn to the Lake Superior State University in beautiful Sault Sainte Marie, Michigan to see the newly-posted banished words list (the 40th anniversary list!). So I invite all "wordies" (oh, I'm a-gonna get some grief for that) to join in the fun!

Here is the full list of banished words for 2015:

Bae

Polar vortex

Hack

Skill Set

Swag

Foodie

Curate / Curated

Friend-raising

Cra-cra (cray-cray)

Enhanced interrogation

Takeaway

[...] -Nation (sports)

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OK, OK, this column was really supposed to go out yesterday. I plead "end-of-year stuff to do" creeping up on me, and to make up for it we will be running not just one but two columns on this last day of 2014.

This is the second part of Monday's article, which consists of a "link dump" of all the stories I really meant to write about last year, but never got around to. Before I get to the second part of the list, though, I have to address a comment from Monday. Here's a second link on a subject mentioned earlier (to an extensive New Yorker article) about "asset forfeiture," also known as "highway robbery by the police." Got too much cash in your car? Well, why don't you just sign it over to our local police force, and you can be on your way (and we won't call Child Protective Services to take your kids away).... This is beyond outrageous, and has been happening in some places in America for a very long time now.

Anyway, today's links are for the most part pretty serious ones, on some serious issues. But before we get to that, let's start with a few links of particular note.

Of particular note

Ben Bradlee, the Washington Post editor responsible for allowing Woodward and Bernstein run their Watergate series, died this year. The Post dug into its archives and ran a great editorial written by Bradlee, on liars. Well worth a read.

Also of note was an article on Al Franken, which made me green with envy over the access the reporters got with Al. [Washington Post]

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We're going to try something new, both today and tomorrow. If successful, maybe we'll make it a yearly thing, who knows?

Today's article is nothing more than a giant collection of links to some stories you may have missed during 2014. Another way to put this is: I am clearing out my list of "things I should write about, when I have the time" -- articles which got me thinking, but which I never followed up on by actually writing about them. I'm cleaning up my bookmarks, and so I thought I'd dump all these out there for others to read, perhaps waiting for a flight home or perhaps hiding in your old bedroom because you are sick of dealing with your extended family's drama right now. Ahem.

In any case, I've tried to loosely group these into categories, but there's no real rhyme or reason to the order. Except for the first few, which I though deserved special mention just for originality. In any case, here are a few links to check out if you're bored in this between-holidays season.

Excellent and original thinking

Every so often I am astonished by some writer's ability to think creatively about a problem. Sometimes the proposed solutions seem well worth a try, or at the very least well worth some serious discussion both in the media and in Washington. Seldom does this discussion even happen, but that doesn't detract (for me) from the originality of the idea itself.

The first of these was an article about how the federal government should behave more like the D.M.V. No, seriously! Richard Cohen of the Washington Post wrote a great article about how the feds should treat Wall Street in the same fashion that state driver's licensing departments treat the drivers they license. In a word: points. When you get a ticket, the D.M.V. (or M.V.A., or whatever your states motor vehicles department calls itself) will assess "points" against your license. If you accumulate enough points in a certain time period, you lose your license for being a bad driver. Now imagine Wall Street banks being treated the same way -- instead of just a fine every so often for wrongdoing, they'd also get points. Get enough points, your license to operate gets yanked. This was possibly the best article I read all year.

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Welcome back to our annual year-end awards column!

Part 1 of this column ran last week, just in case you missed it. We've got a lot to cover, so let's jump right in with no further introduction.

   Destined For Political Stardom

There was one obvious choice on the Democratic side for the Destined For Political Stardom award: Elizabeth Warren. After the midterm election, she was granted "a seat at the table" in the Senate leadership -- they actually made up a new leadership position just to let Warren have a voice in the direction of Senate Democrats over the next two years. But in actual fact, we awarded Warren the Destined For Political Stardom award way back in 2011, and the way we see it, she's just fulfilling that previous award, so we're going to go with a less-prominent candidate.

There were two we considered this year, beginning with Julián Castro, who is definitely an up-and-comer in the Democratic Party. In 2009, he became the youngest mayor ever of one of the 50 largest American cities, and he has won re-election as San Antonio's mayor twice since then. He was the first Latino to give the keynote address to the Democratic National Convention. This year, he was called by President Obama to join his cabinet as the Secretary of Housing and Urban Development. He seems to be in a race to political stardom with his own twin brother Joaquín, who is currently serving in the House of Representatives.

But while America's own Castro brothers are impressive indeed, and both seem destined for some kind of political stardom, we instead chose a Californian who seems likely to step into the shoes (so to speak) of either Dianne Feinstein or Barbara Boxer: Lieutenant Governor Gavin Newsom.

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Coincidentally enough, the day that North Korea was hacked and the day I wrote about cyberattacks, this site was hacked.

I've restored it, for now, but there may be some heavy-duty site maintenance in the coming days. In any case, thanks to everyone for their continued patience, and we're certainly sorry this happened. If you experience problems in the next week or so, please let me know.

-- Chris Weigant

Follow Chris on Twitter: @ChrisWeigant

The whole story would likely be rejected as a Hollywood plot, on the grounds that nobody would believe it could ever happen, even as comedy or farce. A dictator is insulted by an upcoming movie -- a comedy about his own assassination -- and he unleashes his hackers on the studio to take revenge, by posting their embarrassing emails and then prevents the movie's release by making ludicrous threats to theaters? Preposterous!

Nevertheless, here we are, pondering how to react. The United States government will likely take some sort of revenge of our own, and we may in fact already be doing so. As I write this, there are stories circulating that North Korea's internet (such as it is) is going haywire. What an odd coincidence, eh?

President Obama, in his year-end press conference, called North Korea's actions "cybervandalism." This outraged John McCain, who called the North Korean Sony hack an "act of war." Others have called it an act of "cyberterrorism." While on one level it doesn't make a dime's worth of difference what politicians call it, the interesting thing is how nebulous these terms are, mostly due to their newness.

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Welcome everyone to our year-end awards columns!

As we do every year, we are pre-empting our "Friday Talking Points" columns for the next two weeks, to bring you our best and worst of 2014. And, yes, we are going to continue our supercilious and no-doubt-annoying habit of using the editorial "we" throughout these two columns, so thanks for asking! Heh.

As always, we are using a slightly-modified version of a category list created by the The McLaughlin Group for their own year-end shows, as an homage (which sounds ever so much better than saying we're just ripping off McLaughlin's categories... ahem).

This will be a very long column (just to warn everyone) with lots of short little awards explanations, so let's get right to it. Feel free to disagree with any or all of these picks in the comments, as usual, and propose your own winners for everyone's consideration. I will admit that there is a sort of running theme to this year's awards, due to one issue that remained in the background for most Americans but on which such significant political progress was made this year that it deserved multiple awards. Enough of a teaser for you to read all the way through to Person Of The Year? We certainly hope so.

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[Program Note: No fresh column today, sorry, but I am up to my eyeballs in getting my year-end awards columns (the first of which runs tomorrow) ready. Consider today's comments section an "open thread" where you can suggest any notable names for the various "McLaughlin Awards" I hand out every year. Here is Part 1 and Part 2 of last year's awards, so you can see the category list (which is extensive). Let me know your suggestions in the comments! Also, further programming news: next week we'll have a column Monday and Tuesday, but will then take a break until Friday, when the second installment of this year's awards will run. In any case, please enjoy the following, which was last year's Christmas column.]

Originally published December 23, 2013

Ho, Ho, Holy Cow -- Santa Gets Fighter Escort On U.S. Military Site (Reuters)

A U.S. military website showing Santa Claus delivering his presents while guarded by warplanes has some children's advocates worried.

In a twist to its tradition of tracking an animated version of Santa Claus' sleigh and reindeer as he flies around the globe on December 24, the military is adding the animated fighter plane escort to give a realistic feel to the popular feature, said a spokesman for the North American Aerospace Defense Command.

"We wanted to let folks know that, hey, this is a NORAD video, and we're the military and this is our mission," said the spokesman, Navy Captain Jeff Davis.

[Note: The above article is real. What follows, however, is not.]

We hereby interrupt our live coverage of Pope Francis leading Midnight Mass this Christmas Eve, because we've got some breaking news from the Pentagon. We apologize for pre-empting our traditional Christmas Eve programming, and promise we will continue our coverage after the newsbreak, on a slight time delay so our viewers won't miss a single minute of the Pope.

We take you now to our Pentagon correspondent, who is awaiting the start of this extraordinary and unprecedented Christmas Eve press conference...

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