• 53% approval rating, which is up slightly (+/- 3%)

On race relations:

• 58% of Americans thought Obama would change race relations before his inauguration
• 41% of Americans say he’s actually improved race relations in his first full year in office source

• Where was the freefall? Strangely enough, it was largest among other blacks. While white voters dipped to about 40 percent from 55 percent, blacks were at 75 percent a year ago, free-falling to 51 percent – a 24-point decline.

• 20 Taliban soldiers were reportedly involved in the attack
• 12+ people have died, including seven of the attackers
• 71+ were wounded in the attack near the presidential palace source

• All the increasing restrictions on lobbyists are a disincentive to be a lobbyist, and those who think they can deregister are eagerly doing so. It is creating some apparent contradictions.
• Veteran political lawyer Jan Baran • Regarding the apparent push for lobbyists to be lobbyists in everything but name. Essentially, legal restrictions on what lobbyists can do is creating something of a black market for lobbying. By leaving “lobbyist” as a hard-and-fast definition, many policy advocates choose to simply not register and avoid the oversight. Why are there always loopholes when it comes to the business of political influence? It creates vacuums like this one. source

• 
  One way to think of it … Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, a.k.a. the guy who ticks us off with his useless quips, claims the Massachusetts senate race is a “referendum” on health care. It might just be, but what we’d like to see is a referendum on stalling tactics like Mr. McConnell’s.
• 
  … and another way On the other side of the aisle, MSNBC’s Ed Schultz, who we’ve seen thus far as kind of a left-leaning screen chewer in the vein of a Fox News host, said that he’d “try to vote ten times” to keep Scott Brown from winning. Sorry, friends, but this isn’t cool, either. (Hat tip @jessehines)
• 
  Blast from the past For a little perspective on the state of talk show chatter, here’s a clip from Martin Luther King Jr.’s last interview with Meet the Press back in 1967. We’ve devolved far from this sort of televised debate. We’ve gone from this to crap like Ed Schultz’s blabbering. We’ve fallen far.

• “Titanic was a ship. Avatar’s a rocket ship.” That’s how Chris Aronson, Fox’s senior vice-president of domestic distribution, put the success of “Avatar,” which is showing few signs of slowing down weeks after its release. It’s quite possible it could pass Titanic’s $601 million total by the beginning of February. Here are some numbers on the horse race with history:

Worldwide totals so far

• $1.6
  billion already, after just five weeks of release – holy freaking crap!
• $237
  million needed to topple “Titanic” and its $1.8 billion worldwide total

North American stats

• $41.3 million the film’s weekend box office after five weeks of release
• $491.8 million the film’s total box office – it should top $500 million Monday
• 32
  days time it will take “Avatar” to reach that total – it took “Titanic” 98 source

• two seconds the amount of time it takes to send a text message donation to the Red Cross (or other sources)
• three months the amount of time it could take for that donation to reach its destination; WTF? source

• We’re in a megatransition. It hasn’t ever felt like anyone has the answer. My macro feeling is that I’m glad I had this job at this time. It was great working at the paper when it was on dead trees and could pay for itself.
• New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman • Discussing whether he feels new technology has shown a next path for journalism. It’s something his bosses are currently feeling significant pressure about. According to New York Magazine, the plan seems to be a change from free to pay, using a so-called “metered” system that requests payment based on usage. It’s akin to what the Financial Times does – read a few articles, and a pay wall finally comes up. Since we post a lot about the Times, for example, and think it’s a high-quality publication, we’d probably get a subscription. source

• Wyclef tries really hard to defend his charity here, but before you believe every word you read here, we want to note that while the Haitian pop star is definitely sincere, there has been a lot of waste in his organization in the past, as Gawker notes. source