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Team owner Jim Irsay fired team vice chairman Bill Polian and his son, Chris, the Colts’ general manager on Monday. He said there was a good chance coach Jim Caldwell will be back next season, but his evaluation was not over.

He also must still decide whether a healthy Peyton Manning and a new quarterback can co-exist in the same locker room, and which veteran free agents come back next year, if any.

“I don’t think there’s ever been a year in the NFL where a team went 2-14 and there’s not been changes,” defensive captain Gary Brackett said Monday, less than 24 hours after a season-ending loss at Jacksonville.

Outsiders had expected the first order of business to be the firing of Caldwell, who won 14 straight games and advanced to the Super Bowl in his first season as Colts coach. Caldwell said he simply went about his business Monday, speaking with Irsay following the 19-13 loss at Jacksonville and with both Polians on Monday, part of his usual routine.

“You lose as many games as we lost in a year, there’s a problem, there’s an issue,” Caldwell said. “But when we were 14-2, the way you guys put it, my job was in limbo then, right?”

The elder Polian had constructed Super Bowl teams in Buffalo and Indy, and an NFC title contender at Carolina.

But troubling signs emerged this season as the Colts lost time and time again — 13 straight at one point — with Manning sidelined to recover from Sept. 8 neck surgery. And it was Manning who suggested he and Bill Polian were not on the same page.

Polian said on one of his weekly radio shows that he and the four-time league MVP had discussed the possibility of establishing a transition plan at quarterback and that Manning was OK with it. Manning later said the two had never discussed the 2012 draft plans, which include the No. 1 pick amid speculation that the Colts will take Stanford quarterback Andrew Luck to groom as Manning’s successor.

Then, just before Christmas, Polian told local reporters that Manning would fail his exit physical, a move that would actually help the Colts because it would allow him to continue working out at the team complex during the offseason.

“That was kind of news to me,” Manning told reporters Sunday, then said he probably could pass the physical.

Fans have been clamoring for the ouster of Caldwell and both Polians. Irsay, a frequent poster on Twitter, has been listening.

“I want 2 thank all ColtsFans..here,throughout the country n abroad,4ur tremendous,loyal support all year long. Ur feedback is heard n noted,” he tweeted Monday morning.

For their part, players offered support for Caldwell, who just wrapped his third year as head coach in Indy.

“One thing about Jim is that he’s a stand-up guy, and guys respect that,” cornerback Jerraud Powers said. “He’s a great coach, a good guy, and it was unfortunate situation this year. But he never lost the locker room.”

The longer and, perhaps, more critical debate is how to rebuild this team and what to do at quarterback.

Manning never played after undergoing his third neck surgery in 19 months, a fusion of two vertebrae.

He did, however, start throwing to teammates in mid-December and received good reviews from both Bill Polian, who was watching, and running back Joseph Addai, who was catching balls. Doctors familiar with the procedure who did not treat Manning say he should return to a high level of play now that the fusion has healed.

If he is healthy, Irsay has promised to bring back Manning regardless of the $28 million bonus he is owed in March.

But after posting the NFL’s worst record without Manning, the Colts also have won the Luck sweepstakes, potentially putting two franchise quarterbacks on the same roster.

“I think I can co-exist with any player I’ve ever played with,” Manning said Sunday. “I think I’ve always been a good teammate in that way.”

If Manning returns, Irsay might be more likely to bring back former Pro Bowlers Robert Mathis, Jeff Saturday and Reggie Wayne, all of whom are now in their 30s, and keep other key high-priced cogs in the Colts’ success such as Brackett and safety Melvin Bullitt.

“I think when you’re playing, you’re so entrenched with the people you go to work with every day,” Saturday said. “It’s different for us to go out and think like an owner. But whatever decisions, we’ve got to take it as a community and move on.”

He’d clearly had enough of the Polians, though.

Bill Polian drew the wrath of fans in 2009 when he pulled the starters in the third quarter against the New York Jets, costing the Colts a chance at a perfect season after going 14-0. At the time, Polian told listeners that the team’s goal was to win the Super Bowl, not go undefeated. Indy wound up losing the Super Bowl, too.

When Manning went down this season, Polian came under fire for not having a capable backup in place, signing Kerry Collins out of retirement and fueling speculation that the team was interested in Brett Favre. He told radio listeners that he accepted the blame.

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Santorum told the GOP crowd, ”I don’t want to make Black people’s lives better by giving them other people’s money, I want to give them the opportunity to go out and earn their money and provide for themselves and their families, The best way to do that is to get the manufacturing sector of the economy rolling”

RawStory reports:

One thing he likely overlooked: white Americans account for the largest percentage of welfare payments each month, mostly because they make up the largest sector of the population.

Welfare is defined by the government as benefits funded by tax dollars, meaning that programs like Social Security, food stamps, veterans benefits, Medicare, Medicaid, unemployment and corporate bailouts all fall under that term.

Read More At RawStory

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She hoped, but never imagined, she’d see her Betty Jane again.

The cruel act of violence bore in Disbrow an enduring love for the child. She kept a black and white photograph of the baby bundled in blankets and tucked inside a basket.

It was the last she saw of the girl – until the phone rang in her California apartment in 2006 with the voice of an Alabama man and a story she could have only dreamed.

Disbrow, the daughter of Dutch immigrants, weathered a harsh childhood milking cows on South Dakota dairy farms. Her stepfather thought high school was for city kids who had nothing else to do. She finished eighth grade in a country schoolhouse with just one teacher and worked long hours at the dairy.

On a summer day in 1928 while picnicking with girls from a sewing class, Disbrow and her friend Elizabeth were jumped by three men as they went for a walk in their long dresses.

Both were raped.

“We didn’t know what to do. We didn’t know what to say. So when we went back, nothing was said,” Disbrow recalled.

Months passed. Her body began to change.

Disbrow, who had been told babies were brought by storks, didn’t know what was happening.

Her mother and stepfather sent her to a Lutheran home for pregnant girls. At 17, she gave birth to a blond-haired baby with a deep dimple in her chin and named her Betty Jane.

In her heart, Disbrow longed to keep her. But her head and her mother told her she couldn’t bring an infant back to the farm.

A pastor and his wife were looking to adopt a child. She hoped they could give Betty Jane the home she couldn’t.

“I loved that baby so much. I wanted what was best,” Disbrow said.

She never met them, or knew their names. But over the years, Disbrow wrote dozens of letters to the adoption agency to find out how her daughter was faring. The agency replied faithfully with updates until there was a change in management, and they eventually lost touch.

Disbrow’s life went on. She married a fruit salesman who became a wartime pilot and drafting engineer and they had two children. She worked as a dressmaker, silk saleswoman and school cafeteria manager in cities spanning from Rhode Island to Minnesota and Northern California before moving to the seaside town of San Clemente an hour’s drive north of San Diego.

Every year, she thought about Betty Jane on her May 22 birthday.

Five years ago, Disbrow prayed she might get the chance to see her.

“Lord, if you would just let me see her,” Disbrow remembers praying. “I promise you I will never bother her.”

On July 2, the phone rang.

It was a man from Alabama. He started asking Disbrow, then 94, about her background.

Worried about identity theft, Disbrow cut him off, and peppered him with questions.

Then, the man asked if she’d like to speak with Betty Jane.

Her name was now Ruth Lee. She had been raised by a Norwegian pastor and his wife and had gone on to marry and have six children including the Alabama man, a teacher and astronaut Mark Lee, a veteran of four space flights who has circled the world 517 times. She worked for nearly 20 years at Walmart – and especially enjoyed tending to the garden area.

Lee knew she was adopted her whole life, and grew up a happy child.

It wasn’t until she was in her 70s that the search for her biological parents began.

Lee started suffering from heart problems and doctors asked about the family’s medical history. She knew nothing about it. Her son, Brian, decided to try to find out more and petitioned the court in South Dakota for his mother’s adoption records.

He got a stack of more than 270 pages including a written account of the assault and handwritten letters from a young Disbrow, asking about the tiny baby she had cradled for a month.

He then went online to try to find one of Disbrow’s relatives – possibly through an obituary.

“I was looking for somebody I thought was probably not living,” said Lee’s now-54-year-old son. He typed Disbrow’s name into a web directory and was shocked when a phone listing popped up. “I kind of stopped breathing for a second.”

On the phone with her biological daughter, Disbrow was in disbelief. Her legs began to tremble. She couldn’t understand how a naive dairy farm girl without an education could have such accomplished grandchildren.

A month later, Ruth Lee and Brian Lee flew to California. They arrived at Disbrow’s meticulous apartment on a palm tree-lined street armed with a gigantic bouquet of flowers.

Disbrow couldn’t get over how Lee’s hands were like her mother’s. Lee was amazed at the women’s similar taste in clothing. They pored over family photo albums and caught up on the years Disbrow had missed.

“It was just like we had never parted,” Disbrow said. “Like you were with the family all your life.”

Since then, the families have met numerous times. Disbrow has gone to visit grandchildren and great-grandchildren in Wisconsin and Texas. She is planning to travel to Alabama in the spring, where they will celebrate her recently marked 100th birthday.

Disbrow has started sharing her story with members of her church and community. The Orange County Register ran a story about Disbrow’s journey in December. The family’s improbable reunion also made the local newspaper in Viroqua, Lee’s hometown in western Wisconsin.

“It has been such a surreal, amazing experience that I still think sometimes that I will wake up and it will just be a beautiful dream,” the 82-year-old Lee said.

Disbrow’s daughter Dianna Huhn, 55, of Portland, Ore., said the reunion has filled a void for her mother – one that for many years, the sharp, stylish woman with sparkling blue eyes kept a deep, dark secret.

“I have never seen my mother as happy,” said Huhn.

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Unfortunately, that was the approach taken by Salon.com blogger Glenn Greenwald over the weekend, while expressing his outrage over President Obama signing the National Defense Authorization Act.

The annual NDAA is the essential piece of legislation that pays U.S. soldiers’ salaries, funds equipment for troops overseas, buys ammunition, and also pays our military contractors abroad.

In the current NDAA, there is an objectionable provision which allows for the indefinite detention of terrorism suspects, which civil liberties advocates fear could apply to American citizens. The potential encroachment on civil liberties justifiably wrangled many, and President Obama even signaled his discontent with the provisions in a signing statement attached to the legislation, insisting that the detention provisions would not apply to Americans.

There is the added possibility that the potentially unconstitutional provisions related to detention will be challenged in court where they could even be struck down by Chief Justice John Roberts and company.

Greenwald has been one of the loudest and harshest critics of the Obama administration, and while not actually a liberal or an Obama supporter, he is frequently identified as a blogger who is “disappointed with President Obama” over what he sees as serious violations of civil liberties. The debate over the NDAA (and U.S. drone attacks in Pakistan) has been ongoing and frequently gets lively between Greenwald and his supporters, and pro-Obama bloggers like Imani Gandy, of AngryBlackLady.com and Balloon Juice (Gandy also contributes to theGrio.)

In a particularly heated exchange on Twitter Saturday night, a blogger named “DrDawg” tweeted about Gandy: “Obama could rape a nun live on NBC and you’d say we weren’t seeing what we were seeing.” In response, Greenwald chimed in, “No – she’d say it was justified [and] noble – that he only did it to teach us about the evils of rape.”

When twitter exploded in attacks on Greenwald for making a “rape joke,” instead of apologizing for the comment, Greenwald doubled down, tweeting that the reference to rape was not a metaphor and in fact Obama supporters would defend the president in the face of “ANY evil: assassinations, child-killings: EVEN rape violent crime like rape.”

“Leveraging rape in that manner is unconscionable,” Gandy told theGrio. And there are certainly racial overtones to the comment, considering the historic narrative of black men being sexually aggressive and even accused rapists in the Jim Crow south. For the first black president to be disparaged in this way is wholly unacceptable.

“All [Greenwald] had to do was apologize,” said Gandy.

Disagreements with the administration for drone attacks that kill innocent civilians, the detainment of terror suspects, and the prison at Guantanamo Bay remaining open are par for the course. Healthy debate on substance is always important. What is not par for the course is a prominent blogger not only condoning a disparaging comment about the president and rape, but reiterating that it is a valid point to make.

Rape should never be employed to make a point — any point — no matter how noble the intent. It is not a tool to be leveraged as a metaphor. Rape is a vicious crime, and the casual nature in which Greenwald condoned the use of rape to attack those who have a different opinion from his own is deeply disturbing.

Rape analogy in NDAA debate is ironic

Meanwhile, an irony of the infusion of rape into a debate in which it doesn’t belong, is that the NDAA that Greenwald finds so offensive, also includes a provision which finally addresses the serious problem of rape, abuse and sexual harassment in the military.

Before this version of the NDAA, servicewomen who are raped were not allowed to transfer to another base or had a very difficult time doing so. Rep. Michael Turner (R-OH), who along with Democratic Rep. Niki Tsongas fought to get these provisions into the bill has said that, “in civilian life, you have complete control of your movements, and if you’re in an unsafe situation, you can remove yourself. In military life, the victim needs permission to take even basic self-preservation actions.”

The NDAA was also a “must pass” bill — a term for spending bills of vital importance that often attract unwanted policy riders. The president threatened to veto the bill if the objectionable language related to detention was included, but Republicans put it in anyway, putting Obama in a lose-lose situation: veto a bill that needs to be passed and signed into law in order for service members to get their paychecks, or sign the bill with the objectionable provisions and issue a signing statement which addresses those specific portions. President Obama chose the latter.

And for that, even if you disagree with provisions in this bill or if you think predator drone strikes should be stopped immediately — which is a very reasonable position to take — no one should ever employ rape to make that argument.

To argue that defenders of the administration would defend Obama committing rape, simply because they disagree with you on the NDAA, or don’t believe that drone strikes are the most pressing issue of the day, means you have lost the argument.

Greenwald should have debated the NDAA on the merits and apologized for amplifying the rape comment. Sexual assault survivors were certainly offended by trivialization of a trauma to make a debating point, and this incident proves that there are bloggers on the “left” — just as on the right — who have jumped the proverbial shark, and should lose any credibility or respectability they had left.

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Since the mainstream pre-occupation with racial humor will never subside, some can argue that successful white comedians have borrowed these attitudes for their own material. For comedians like Bill Maher and Louis C.K. talking about race and mocking their own white privilege creates a balance of saying, “they can’t talk about that,” with “damn, he’s right.”

Most black comedians being pushed by the mainstream aren’t producing as challenging social commentary. For instance, Kevin Hart, though wildly funny is probably most recently known for making fun of rappers with his Chocolate Drop persona (Check out the hilarious “battle” with T-Pain.)

Maybe you can call it the post-Chappelle’s Show era. Dave Chappelle’s show built a multimillion-dollar success off of biting racial commentary, and skits that hurled barbs at the black middle class, as well as white and black American of all backgrounds.

His show, from its initial episode that featured a character who was a black, blind, white supremacist, took racial humor and turned it on its head, all the while making the viewer feel as uncomfortable as possible, while laughing.

The power of a cable-television show is one that fits into this equation. Both Maher (Real Time with Bill Maher) and Louis C.K. (Louie) have had ample time to build their audiences and have a type of autonomy on their shows that allows them to tackle subjects they care about, race and America being one of them. Their analysis of America’s racial paradigms is one that doesn’t stray too far from what some black comedians might agree with, white privilege is something to make jokes about, as well as black inequalities.

Louis may very well possess the type of talk America needs to get over its obsession with the n-word.

“The thing that offends me the most is every time I hear the n-word,” Louis said during one of his standup rants. “Not ni**er, by the way. I mean ‘the n-word.’ Literally, whenever a white lady on CNN with her nice hair says ‘the n-word’… That’s just white people getting away with saying ni**er. That’s all that is.”

Louis, a close friend and former writer for Chris Rock sprinkles these types of bits throughout his comedy. On an appearance last year on Jay Leno, he said, “If you’re black you get to complain more.” His humorous reasoning, “its not like slavery ended and then everything has been amazing.” Jay Leno even chuckled at that one.

Monica Potts of The American Prospect writes: “For the most part, people of color are the ones who initiate serious discussions about race and privilege in the public sphere. Louis’ comedy is about being a white man — and about how other’s view white men. He doesn’t accept ignorance as a point of view.”

Maher on the other hand has brought black intellectuals and rappers to this HBO show for years. His humor doesn’t hold back when it comes to race, either. He said in a show last year.

“I thought when we elected a black president we were going to get a black president,” he said referring to Barack Obama, “I want him in a meeting with the BP CEO’s, you know where he lifts up his shirt and you see the gun in his pants.”

“Bill Maher sort of has the belief that blacks are always inherently targeted against by the radical right,” said New York journalist Jared Feldschrieber. “He likes to say that there is no left/Democrat anymore, just that the left has veered to the right, and the right has gone to the loony bin,” he said. He points out Maher’s take on Republicans as having issues with race.

The fact that their aren’t any high-profile shows anymore that offer black comedians a space to perform racially insensitive material, could be why these particular white comedians are filling the void. Or, as some would argue, it could be the fact that the same white privilege that they joke about offers them a “pass” to perform such biting criticism.

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And while political prognosticators are calling him a wildcard in the GOP primary contests, his remarks on the issues — particularly race — are just wild.

On Meet the Press yesterday, Santorum — who didn’t have an easy time of it with David Gregory — asserted that Obama is the most divisive president ever.

When Gregory asked Santorum if he faulted Republicans in Congress for not compromising with the president to make government work better, Santorum said the following: “Well, you, you have to have someone you can work with, and this president has done more to divide than any other president that I’ve ever witnessed in my lifetime. This president goes out and gives speech after speech after speech trying to divide America between class, between income group, between racial and ethnic groups.”

Santorum added, “This is, this is the great divider in chief. And it’s very difficult when you’re being lampooned by the president on a regular basis, not just as a party but individually, to then — and the president, who I don’t believe has met with Boehner or any of the Republican leadership in now six months, hard to compromise and work with someone who won’t meet with you, who won’t sit down and try to, try to negotiate things and try to talk. And so I’m not, I’m not surprised at all the Republicans are having a difficult time with someone who has no interest.”

The candidate gave no specific examples to support his claims that the president is divisive, while ignoring the countless examples of White House outreach to Republicans in Congress over the past few three years. These efforts on the part of the White House often proved futile, as GOP lawmakers were focused on the single goal of dividing the country to win the election. “Rich versus poor,” he said. “It is classic class warfare. It’s dividing. It’s a very divisive message.”

And in an interview with CNS in January 2011, Santorum suggested that President Obama should be anti-abortion because he’s black.

“The question is…is that human life a person under the constitution? And Barack Obama says no,” Santorum said. “Well if that human life is not a person then…I find it almost remarkable for a black man to say ‘now we are going to decide who are people and who are not people,’” he added.

What Santorum implies, as have anti-abortion billboards posted in inner cities, is that African-Americans such as Obama should oppose abortion because they were once considered three-fifths of a person by law and not completely human. And in saying this, Santorum succeeds in belittling women’s reproductive rights and the civil rights movement.

For the former Senator, disrespecting the civil rights movement is nothing new.

Last year, at the Faith and Freedom Conference in Washington, DC, Santorum proclaimed that “America was a great country before 1965″ — before the creation of the welfare state, and the time in which President Johnson signed historic civil rights legislation. Further, he accused Obama of not believing in American exceptionalism.

“Social conservatives understand that America was a great country because it was founded great,” Santorum told the audience. “Our founders, calling upon in the Declaration of Independence, the supreme judge, calling upon divine providence, said what was at the heart of American exceptionalism…’We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal and endowed by our creator with certain inalienable rights.’”

“He was talking about Medicare, Medicaid, and unemployment insurance, and it was in response to the Ryan budget,” Santorum said, referring to Obama. “And he said this, talking about these three programs: He said ‘America is a better country because of these programs. I will go a one step further: America is a great country because of these programs.”

On the issue of Iran, Santorum’s solution is to bomb the nation’s nuclear facilities, an action which would seem perilous at the least. “This president, for every thug and hooligan, for every radical Islamist, he has had nothing but appeasement. We saw that during the lead-up to World War II, appeasement,” he said recently of Obama’s Mideast policy.

Rick Santorum has a problem with Islam and Muslims. He claims America is at war with Islamic fascism, and once referred to the “fight against Islamic fascism” as “the great test of our generation” in a 2006 op-ed.

At the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in February 2011, Santorum argued, “[Obama] doesn’t say that Jihadism is evil. He doesn’t say that sharia law is incompatible with western civilization and the United States, which they are.” And he claimed that Christianity has not shown any aggression towards the Muslim world, blaming the “leftists” for corrupting the historical understanding of the Crusades: “The idea that the Crusades and the fight of Christendom against Islam is somehow an aggression on our part is absolutely anti-historical. And that is what the perception is by the American left who hates Christendom,” he said a few months later in South Carolina.

Senator Santorum chose to employ an anti-Islam strategy in his 2006 reelection bid, and it failed miserably. Pennsylvania voters sent him packing. He lost to his challenger Democrat Bob Casey by 18 points, the largest margin of defeat for an incumbent senator since 1980. 2006 was a bad year for many Republicans, but it was an exceptionally bad year for Rick Santorum.

A diehard values conservative, Santorum has taken a number of stands to place himself in the middle of the radical rightward fringe. He is a vocal opponent of same-sex marriage, comparing homosexuality to polygamy, sodomy and adultery, and concluding that equal rights for gays and lesbians “destabilize the family.”

Santorum blamed the Catholic Church child sex abuse scandal on liberalism, and characterized the abuse of children by priests as “a basic homosexual relationship.” And he wants to ban abortion through a constitutional amendment, and would mandate the teaching of intelligent design in the public schools.

So, is Rick Santorum a winner? We’ll see, but he might also be a used car salesman and no one is buying his clunker of a product. Remember that the political graveyard of this season’s GOP primaries is already strewn with the careers of such would-be superstars as Michele Bachmann, Herman Cain and Rick Perry. Santorum just might be another mediocre GOP candidate with a questionable history, crazy ideas, and little to no chance against Obama.

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His Republican rivals, in the face of late-arriving economic good news, are making slight adjustments themselves, arguing that Obama’s policies have been a drag on a recovery that could have taken hold sooner.

The competing rhetoric reflects the positive indicators in areas ranging from retail sales and housing to unemployment and falling gas prices. All this has pushed up consumer confidence, a potential barometer of political attitudes. Even Congress and Obama managed to agree on a two-month payroll tax cut extension before leaving Washington for the holidays.

But the economic signs could prove fleeting, as they were in the early spring when economist also detected upticks in activity only to watch them tumble. These new indicators may hold more promise. But a looming European debt crisis is casting a pall.

No one is more aware of that risk than Obama.

“We’ve got an economy that is showing some positive signs; we’ve seen many consecutive months of private sector job growth,” Obama said last week before departing for Christmas in Hawaii. “But it’s not happening as fast as it needs to.”

For Obama, the danger is in promoting an economy that while, slowly recovering, has yet to reflect reality for millions of Americans, or in highlighting positive signs only to see them falter in 2012.

For David Axelrod, the Obama campaign’s top political adviser, visions of a European financial meltdown are what keep him awake at night.

“I think the American economy is gaining strength, I don’t think many would argue that point,” he said. “The imponderable is not about that, it’s really about these externalities and particularly Europe. Especially now that we’ve passed this threshold on the payroll tax cut and assuming that the Republicans in Congress don’t want to rerun that battle, the one big thing on the horizon is Europe.”

Indeed, as the year ends on an up note, leading economists surveyed by The Associated Press expect the economy will grow slightly faster in 2012 – about 2.4 percent compared with the less than 2 percent annual growth that the economy is expected to register by the end of this year.

But underscoring the political challenges facing Obama, these same economists don’t expect unemployment to drop much in a year from November’s 8.6 percent rate.

The public’s economic outlook is improving. An Associated Press-GfK poll in December found that 37 percent of those questioned expect improvement in the economy in the coming year. It was the first time since May that the sentiment significantly outweighed the share saying the economy would get worse in the next year.

This modestly rosy scenario is contingent on keeping any financial disruptions in Europe contained to the other side of the Atlantic. Obama has pressing European leaders, particularly German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Nicolas Sarkozy, to act swiftly to avoid a wholesale debt crisis from taking hold. But Obama has few tools other than persuasion with which to influence an outcome.

In a trend the Obama camp is sure to watch, the public is holding Obama more accountable for the economy. The AP-GfK poll found that the percentage who says Obama deserves little or no blame for the economy’s sluggishness has declined from 43 percent in October to 36 percent now.

Republicans are watching, too.

After months of asserting that conditions under Obama have worsened, Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney this past acknowledged signs of improvement, but gave Obama no credit.

“I think the economy’s getting better. I sure hope so,” Romney told CNN on Wednesday. “There’s never been a time when our economy has not recovered from recession. We will recover, but it will not be thanks to the president’s policies. It will be in spite of the president’s policies.”

Republican pollster Wes Anderson, a veteran of congressional and presidential contests, says the first quarter of 2012 could lay down crucial markers that could affect the election results.

“If the uptick in economic indicators that we’ve seen here this month continues into the next month at the same general pace, it will be an interesting race and it will be very close, and there will be an opportunity for Obama to win,” he said. “If economic conditions deteriorate at all, I think he’s done.

“If they pick up significantly in the first quarter – I don’t know what that is, but something that is tangible for middle-class America – he probably gets re-elected,” Anderson said.

The White House is ready to have the president maintain a high economic profile, showcasing his bailout of the auto industry as a concrete example of an administration policy that saved job. Beyond that, Obama’s team wants to portray the president as a champion of the middle class.

“The battle is really over the long term because the Republicans have a fundamental theory that we can cut our way to prosperity – cut taxes for the wealthy, cut regulations, especially for Wall Street, and the economy will flourish,” Axelrod said. “We’ve tested that theory and it failed. Badly.”

“This notion that he’s been there, we should fire him and we should go back to what we were doing before the crisis is not a very strong argument,” Axelrod said. “And obviously to the degree that the economy improves it becomes less of an argument.”

Still, even economists friendly to the administration see contradictory signals in the end-of-year upswing.

On the positive side, the number of people applying for unemployment benefits has dropped to the lowest level since April 2008. At the same time, November’s dip in unemployment from 9 percent to 8.6 percent was partly the result of frustrated workers leaving the labor force and no longer looking to be hired. The private sector is hiring, but states, school districts and local municipalities are shedding jobs. Also, despite an increase in consumer spending, Americans are not seeing real income growth.

“For every positive indicator, there is an indicator on the other side that’s worrisome,” said Jared Bernstein, former chief economist to Vice President Joe Biden who’s now with the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.

Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody’s Analytics whose data is often cited by Democrats and Republicans, said that for all the encouraging signs, the economy still faces drags. That includes deficit reduction measures that helped reduce the debt in the long term but could cost the economy 1 percentage point in growth next year.

Washington politics poses its own challenges.

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Between the kid photos and reminiscences about high school, more and more pleas for help from people with failing kidneys are popping up. Facebook and other social media sites are quickly becoming a go-to place to find a generous person with a kidney to spare, according to the people asking for help and some national organizations that facilitate matches.

Damon Brown found a kidney on Facebook after telling his story on a special page the Seattle dad created under the name, “Damon Kidney.” His friends and family forwarded the link to everyone they knew and on Jan. 3 a woman his wife has known for years, but not someone they consider a close family friend, will be giving him a kidney.

“She said it wasn’t really for me. It was for my kids, because they deserve to have a dad around,” said Brown, 38.

Brown’s story is not unique, said April Paschke, a spokeswoman for the United Network for Organ Sharing, a private nonprofit organization that manages the nation’s organ transplant system for the federal government.

“We see more and more people matched up by social media,” she said. “It’s an extension of the way we communicate. Before we found the Internet, people found other ways: through a church bulletin, word of mouth or an advertisement even.”

This past year, a man in Michigan also found a kidney donor through Facebook, and a Florida woman found one through Craigslist.

Damon Brown admits he was a little embarrassed to ask for help so publicly. Except for telling close friends and family, the Seattle father of two young boys had been keeping his illness pretty quiet.

He was on the official transplant list and had started mobile dialysis through Northwest Kidney Centers but Brown was seeing his health deteriorate – he was constantly tired and achy. He couldn’t sit on the bed to tell bedtime stories to 5-year-old Julian and 3-year-old Theo because he had to stay close to his dialysis machine.

“I’m a strong guy, but I would have to say, it’s been rough this year,” he said. Brown had put himself on the long wait list for a kidney from a deceased donor, knowing he would have to wait at least three years before he was called.

After one particularly difficult visit with his doctor, Damon and his wife, Bethany, decided to create the Facebook page, which has attracted more than 1,400 friends.

A few weeks ago, after the transplant was approved and scheduled, Brown posted the good news to his Facebook friends. More than 300 people responded: “Whoo hoo….what a great Christmas present,” wrote Kelly L. Hallissey. “This is awesome!! Praying for you and your family for positive news and a great way to begin 2012!” wrote Brenda Tomtan.

Many people are not aware that kidney and liver donations can now come from living donors.

In 2010, 16,800 kidney transplants were performed in the United States, of which 6,277 came from living donors, according to the United Network for Organ Sharing. An average of 46 kidney transplants take place each day in this country, while another 13 people who have been waiting for a kidney die each day. About 90,000 are on the transplant list right now.

Jacqueline Ryall, 45, said she felt a need to donate a kidney to Brown to give back her own good health and all she has been given. She’s not a mom and gushed about how beautiful Damon and Bethany’s kids are.

“The real reason I’m doing this is he’s got kids and he’s a good guy,” she said. “My life is in a good place. I’ve been given lots and I have a responsibility to give back.”

Ryall said her elderly mother does not understand why she would give a kidney to someone other than her own brother and sister, and her family is worried about her health going forward.

After her own research, however, Ryall decided it’s relatively safe for a woman in good health to donate a kidney. If something is going to go wrong with her own kidneys, she has heard they usually fail in twos.

“Right now it feels like absolutely the right thing to do,” she said, adding that she hopes her decision will help make other people less afraid to do the same thing.

News media coverage of his quest flooded his hospital with so many requests for information – from total strangers – that Brown said he was asked to pull back on his publicity efforts. Four people passed the initial screening and came in for tests. Now that he sees a happy ending coming for himself, Brown would like to do whatever he can to help others.

April Capone, the previous mayor of East Haven, Conn., knows what Brown means about the attraction of happy endings.

Two years ago, she was sitting in her office checking her Facebook feed, when a post from one of her constituents popped up saying he needed a kidney.

“At that moment, Carlos was at Mayo, testing to get on the transplant list,” said Capone, 36. “He really didn’t tell anyone he was sick. The doctor said, `if you don’t do it, no one is going to know’.” So Carlos Sanchez pulled out his cell phone and posted the request and Capone responded immediately.

“I knew from the second I saw his post that I was going to be a donor,” said Capone, who barely knew Sanchez at the time. Now they’re as close as siblings, talk on the phone almost daily and meet for lunch regularly.

Capone said she had no personal reason for donating a kidney; she just want to save a life.

“It was the best thing I ever did with my life,” she said. “I wish I had more; I would do it again.”

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Police say 68 people were arrested during the scuffle. At least one person was accused of assaulting a police officer, who suffered cuts on one hand. Other charges include trespassing, disorderly conduct and reckless endangerment.

Protester Jason Amadi says he was pepper-sprayed when police tried to prevent the crowd of about 500 demonstrators from taking down the barricades. Amadi says the crowd piled the barricade pieces in the center of the park and stood on top of them, chanting and singing.

Police are still processing arrests but say some protesters have been released. No other details were available Sunday.

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