Dec 15, 2014 6 min read

Wake Up To Politics - December 15, 2014

To read today's edition of Wake Up To Politics in a PDF format, click here. Continue reading to find the text of the Wake Up in the body of the email!

Mondy, December 12, 2014
694 Days Until Election Day 2016It's Monday, December 12, 2014, I'm Gabe Fleisher for Wake Up To Politics, and reporting from WUTP world HQ in my bedroom - Good morning: THIS IS YOUR WAKE UP CALL!!!
To send me questions, comments, tips, new subscribers, and more: email me at wakeuptopolitics@gmail.com. To learn more about WUTP or subscribe, visit the site: wakeuptopolitics.com, or read my tweets and follow me on Twitter: twitter.com/Wakeup2Politics.
From the Editor's Desk: Introducing Event of the Year

Last year, while reading Time’s annual Person of the Year edition, I began thinking: I want to do this too. Except for different.
I unveiled the Wake Up To Politics Person of the Year 2013, but while editors at Time choose their Person of the Year, I told my readers that THEY could pick ours. I presented a short list to the Wake Up To Politics community, and many voted for their pick. Malala Yousafzai won, I wrote a magazine about her, and the Wake Up To Politics Person of the Year Magazine was born.
And you chose well: Wake Up readers picked Malala not just for what she has done, but for what they believed she could achieve. And our first Person of the Year was announced as co-recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize in October 2014, ten months after she was featured in the Wake Up To Politics Person of the Year Magazine. Just last week, the prestigious award was bestowed upon Malala in an Oslo ceremony.
In 2013, the criteria for Person of the Year voting were “The Person of the Year dominated, affected, and changed the political conversation, events, and news in 2013 – no matter if their politics match yours”. This was similar to Time, who choose based on who “for better or for worse...has done the most to influence the events of the year.”
This year, we’re going to be different yet again. As I sat down to create a shortlist for Person of the Year 2014, I had a hard time coming up with someone. And then I realized why: in 2014, we moved away from people framing politics. Instead, moments, movements, and events did.
“The history of the world is but the biography of great men,” Scottish author Thomas Carlyle once wrote, in the “Great Man” theory of history he popularized. Perhaps true, and possibly not. I am not an expert on the “history of the world”. But after hundreds of newsletters published this year, I feel like I could be considered, at the very least, an interested party in the field of “American politics in 2014”. Which may not be a college major (yet), but I think may be a QuizUp topic. And yet, I see no “great men [or women].
You might call it the hashtagification of American politics (that’s what I’m calling it, anyways). Looking back on the news of 2014, it is not people that come to mind. Rather it is #Ferguson, #Ebola, #ISIS, #Ukraine, #Elections, and so on.
Therefore, I am announcing the debut of the Wake Up To Politics Event of the Year, which you will vote on and will be profiled in the upcoming Event of the Year Magazine.
It is my belief that 2014 was not a year of people, but of moements, Event of the Year will replace Person of the Year for 2014. But maybe not forever. For that, we’ll have to wait for 2015.
But now, the voting begins for Event of the Year 2014 – in the next column.

And then, to the news!

Happy Voting,
Gabe Fleisher, Editor-in-Chief, Wake Up To Politics
Wake Up To Politics 2014 Event of the Year

As I explained in the last column, this year, you will be voting not for a Person of the Year, but for an Event of the Year.
Here’s how it works: anyone can vote for Event of the Year in three ways – 1) email me with your choice (options below) 2) Tweet the name of your choice with #WakeUpEvent 3) Fill out the poll on wakeuptopolitics.com.
Voting closes at 11:59 PM Central Time on Friday, December 20, 2014, and begins NOW. Your votes will be counted, and the winner will be featured in the Wake Up To Politics Event of the Year Magazine in late December or early January. Also, you can include a short explanation for your vote in your email/tweet/comments section of the poll; explanations will be included in the magazine.
Remember: your vote for Event of the Year should not (necessarily) be the one you were most supportive of, but the event you believe changed and impacted 2014 (see Person of the Year criteria in above column). Also, I would appreciate feedback on the switch from Person to Event of the Year.
And now, without further ado, the list of choices you can vote from for the 2014 Event of the Year, which is proudly chosen entirely by readers. Here is the list:

- Crimea annexation
- Ebola outbreak
- Ferguson protests
- Flight 370 disappearance
- Gaza conflict
- Immigration debate
- ISIS executions
- Midterm voting
- NFL sexual assault
- Nigeria kidnapping
- Same-sex marriages recognized

Vote for one of those options to be Event of the Year by emailing me at wakeuptopolitics.com, tweeting with #WakeUpEvent, or by filling out the survey at wakeuptopolitics.com! All votes from today through Friday will be counted, and the 2014 Event of the Year will be the top reader choice!

White House Watch

The President’s Schedule At 1:05 PM, President Obama will depart the White House for Joint Base McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst in New Jersey, where he will arrive at 2:10 PM.
At 2:45 PM, Obama will “deliver remarks expressing his gratitude for the service and sacrifice of our troops and their families.”

Capitol Hill News

Weekend Review: Senate Passes Spending Bill In a rare Saturday session, the Senate passed the $1.1 trillion “cromnibus” sending bill after much deliberation.
The chamber first passed a 4-day CR to keep the government open, before turning to the “cromnibus”. The 60-vote cloture threshold was easily cleared by a 77-19 vote, with just 13 Republicans and 6 Democrats voting to filibuster. Then, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX), in an attempt to repeat his effort last year which shut down the government, raised a point of order over President Obama’s immigration executive order, which was killed by a 22-74 vote.
Finally, the “cromnibus” was voted on at 9:50 PM Saturday, passing 56-40, with 22 Democrats and 18 Republicans voting no.
The “cromnibus,” which must be signed by President Barack Obama before Wednesday, will fund the government through September.
Senate: Status Update Before relinquishing control of the Senate, Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) plans to ram through as many nominees as possible, in hopes of filling vacancies across the government before Republicans seize the Senate next month.
Today, the chamber will vote to confirm the controversial Vivek Murthy to be U.S. Surgeon General, who is opposed by Republicans for his anti-gun stance.
The Senate will also hold cloture votes on Daniel J. Santos to be a member of the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board, and Frank A. Rose to be an Assistant Secretary of State.

Today

The busiest mailing day of the year is today, according to the U.S. Postal Service.
The deadline to enroll for health insurance on HealthCare.gov for coverage to begin January 1, 2015 is today.
Today is the deadline for an independent panel to deliver its recommendations on improving White House security. The panel was appointed in October, following a series of Secret Services lapses, and is made up of Tom Perelli, former associate Attorney General, and Danielle Gray, former White House Cabinet Secretary, both of whom served under President Obama; and two officials who served under President George W. Bush, Mark Flip, former deputy Attorney General, and Jospeh Hagin, former Deputy White House Chief of Staff.