END OF YEAR BUMP IN VIEWS OF ECONOMY, OBAMA - Kevin Liptak: "Improving views of the economy have helped hike President Barack Obama's approval rating to a 20-month high, a new CNN/ORC poll showed Tuesday, as markets climbed to record levels at news of an economy in overdrive. More Americans still disapprove of the job Obama is doing as President. But at 48%, Obama's approval rating is at its highest point in CNN polling since May 2013. The gains were driven by newfound backing among women, independents and millennials — groups where Obama's approval numbers jumped 10 percentage points from a month ago….Tuesday's CNN/ORC poll showed for the first time in seven years, a majority of Americans — 51% — have a positive view of the economy, a sharp increase from the 38% who felt that way in October. The jump was present in every demographic group — men, women, whites, non-whites, urban, rural — and was largest among Americans who earn less than $50,000 annually." [CNN, full results]



Not just CNN - Monthly averages of the Rasmussen Reports and Economist/YouGov tracking polls also show increases of TK from October to December. The weekly average that Gallup publishes jumped from 43 percent for the first two weeks of December to 45 percent for the week of December 15-21, Obama's best score on that measure since May.

TMZ has obtained a video of a song performed at a charity event held at the Elks Lodge in Glendale, California which refers to Michael Brown as a “roadkill dog.” The event was hosted by retired LAPD officer Joe Myers as part of a charity golf tournament. About half of the 50-60 guests were also officers, according to TMZ.

In the video, Gary Fishell, a former federal investigator, sings a parody of the song “Bad, bad Leroy Brown“:

“Michael Brown learned a lesson about a messin’
With a badass policeman
And he’s bad, bad Michael Brown
Baddest thug in the whole damn town
Badder than old King Kong
Meaner than a junkyard dog.

Two men took to fightin’
And Michael punched in through the door
And Michael looked like some old Swiss cheese
His brain was splattered on the floor

And he’s dead, dead Michael Brown
Deadest man in the whole damn town
His whole life’s long gone
Deader than a roadkill dog.”

In an interview with TMZ, Fishell’s lawyer says that Fishell now realizes the song was “off color and in poor taste.” “He’s a goofball who writes funny songs,” his lawyer continued. “He thought the room would get a kick out of it.”

Television host Sean Hannity took to Twitter with a liberal use of caps lock on Monday to blast the news website Mediaite after it crowned him as "the worst of Fox News."

Hannity's tweet was part of a back-and-forth spat with staff members of Mediaite after the news site compiled a list of the "best and worst of cable news."

Researchers say they have collected promising weather data by flying instrument-laden drones into big Western and Midwestern storms. Now, they want to expand the project in hopes of learning more about how tornadoes form.

Drones can penetrate parts of weather systems that other instruments can’t reach, and they can do it at less cost and with less danger than piloted planes, the scientists say.

The University of Colorado and University of Nebraska announced this week that they have formed the Unmanned Aircraft System and Severe Storms Research Group to develop the program.

There's at least one key issue, however, on which Webb's record is far from progressive: global warming. That's a big deal. Unlike Obamacare and financial reform, much of the progress President Barack Obama has made on climate change rests on of execution actions that his successor could undo. At first glance, Webb might look like a typical Democrat when it comes to environmental policy. The League of Conservation Voters gives him a lifetime score of 81 percent—on par with Hillary Clinton's 82 percent rating, though far below Sanders at 95 percent. And unlike most of the Republican presidential hopefuls, he acknowledges that humans are causing climate change. He even supports solving the problem—at least in theory.

But when it came to actual legislation, Webb used his six years in the US Senate to stand in the way of Democratic efforts to combat climate change. Virginia, after all, is a coal state, and Webb regularly stood up for the coal industry, earning the ire of environmentalists. As Grist's Ben Adler succinctly summed it up, "Jim Webb sucks on climate change."

Perhaps Webb's biggest break with the standard Democratic position on climate is his vocal opposition to the use of EPA rules under the Clean Air Act to limit carbon emissions from coal power plants. Earlier this year, the Obama administration proposed regulations that could cut existing coal plant emissions by as much as 30 percent below 2005 levels by 2030. Those new rules became a key factor in the historic climate deal Obama recently reached with China, and they will almost certainly figure prominently in next year's Paris climate negotiations. But back in 2011, Webb went to the floor of the Senate to denounce the idea that the federal government has the power to regulate carbon emissions under existing law. "I am not convinced the Clean Air Act was ever intended to regulate or classify as a dangerous pollutant something as basic and ubiquitous in our atmosphere as carbon dioxide," he said.

Webb also supported legislation from fellow coal-state Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-W.Va.) that would have delayed the EPA's authority to add new rules governing coal plant emissions. "This regulatory framework is so broad and potentially far reaching that it could eventually touch nearly every facet of this nation's economy, putting unnecessary burdens on our industries and driving many businesses overseas through policies that have been implemented purely at the discretion of the executive branch and absent the clearly stated intent of the Congress," he said in a release.

But Webb's opposition to major climate initiatives wasn't limited to executive action. In 2008, Democrats (and a few Republicans) in Congress tried to pass a cap-and-trade bill that was intended to slow global warming by putting a price on carbon emissions. The bill would have likely been vetoed by then-President George W. Bush, but it never got that far. Webb was part of a cohort of Senate Democrats who blocked the measure. "We need to be able to address a national energy strategy and then try to work on environmental efficiencies as part of that plan," Webb told Politico at the time. "We can't just start with things like emission standards at a time when we're at a crisis with the entire national energy policy."

The new defense spending bill includes $120 million for tanks that the Army has repeatedly said it doesn't want.

For three years, the Army in numerous Congressional hearings has pushed a plan that essentially would have suspended tank building and upgrades in the U.S. for the first time since World War II. The Army suggested that production lines could be kept open through foreign sales.

Each time, Congress has pushed back. Last week, Congress won again in the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) for Fiscal Year 2015.

In a statement, Rep. Mike Turner, R-Ohio, said that Congress "recognizes the necessity of the Abrams tank to our national security and authorizes an additional $120 million for Abrams tank upgrades. This provision keeps the production lines open in Lima, Ohio, and ensures that our skilled, technical workers are protected."

President Barack Obama described himself as “impatient” for more progress on race relations in the U.S., but pushed back against critics like Tavis Smiley who have criticized him for telling the African-American community to wait on said progress.

“There’s no reason for folks to be patient. I’m impatient,” Obama said to CNN’s Candy Crowley in an interview that aired Sunday morning.*

“On the other hand, I think an unwillingness to acknowledge that progress has been made cuts off the possibility of further progress. If critics want to suggest that America is inherently and irreducibly racist, then why bother even working on it? I’ve seen change in my own life, so has this country. And those who will deny that I think actually foreclose the possibility of further progress rather than advancing it.”

Obama acknowledged the anger over the deaths of Michael Brown and Eric Garner and indicated they were hardly isolated cases, merely the ones that had gotten attention.

“When you look at what’s happened in law enforcement across the country over the last several years, that’s not news to African-Americans,” he said. “What’s different is simply that some of it is now videotaped and people see it. And the question then becomes, you know, what practical steps can we take to solve this problem. I believe that the overwhelming majority of white americans, as well as African Americans, want to see this problem solved. So I have confidence that by surfacing these issues, we’re going to be able to make progress on them.”