Winding Down 2013

++USA Today reports that 2013 will be the best year for the stock market since 1997.

++Charlie Cook says the Democrats have only 1% chance of taking the House in 2014.

++Brainwrap reports Obamacare has hit 1,830,054 private insurance and 4,014,222 in Medicaid expansion. That's 5,844,276 total. The Administration reported 2 million surfed the Healthcare.gov on Christmas Eve.

++Karl Rove predicts the GOP will take the Senate in 2014. Senate Republicans are going to campaign against Obamacare.

++The Washington Post reports that TMac's victory in Virginia spells disaster for Mark Warner in 2014 because Former GOP chair Gillespie will run. Warner has a five point lead over the generic Republican.

++Today's CNN/ORC poll has two-thirds of Americans saying this Congress has been the worst in their lifetime. 73% say Congress has done nothing for the problems of the country. 

++Jeffrey Toobin writes in this New Yorker why the Utah same sex marriage has big implications for this coming year and the potential for a real showdown in SCOTUS on same sex marriage.

++Under the radar,Stanford law professor Pam Karland,who advocated before SCOTUS to strike down DOMA and former litigator for the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, will be the Deputy Assistant Attorney General in charge of the Civil Rights Division's Voting Rights Section. That's great news for voting rights advocates. Unfortunately, the North Carolina case has been set for 2015 and not this year.

++American development contractor Warren Weinstein has appeared on a video by Al Qaeda pleading with President Obama to negotiate his release. He has been held captive since 2011.

++The US is shipping more weapons to Iraq to assist that government in its war against Al Qaeda. 

++US Marines have been ordered to the South Sudan where that country looks like it is descending into civil war.

++The US Embassy in Kabul was attacked on Christmas but no one was hurt.

++Suicide bombers attacked the Christmas Mass in Baghdad.

++The Egyptian military government declared the Moslem Brotherhood a terrorist organization. They have added a few more charges against the deposed President Mohammed Morsi. 

++The Iranian parliament passed a resolution to accelerate the nuclear program if the United States passed additional sanctions.

++Pussy Riot was released from the Russian prisons and 93 Greenpeace members were allowed to leave Russia after they had been charged with piracy.

++For those Americans who ever wondered what happens to Turkeys pardoned by the President,yesterday I visited the Turkey at his new home at Mount Vernon. He looks very healthy and was gobbling. There is even a plague that declares him the National Turkey.