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There is a major decision coming up that will truly define the year 2012. Yes, it's almost time for the American Dialect Society to once again vote on the Word of the Year. Will it be selfie? Hate-watching? Superstorm? Double down? Fiscal cliff? Or (shudder) YOLO?

Ben Zimmer is a language columnist for the Boston Globe, and the chair of the ADS's New Words Committee. He tells NPR's Renee Montagne that the Word of the Year can be either a word or a phrase, as long as it's achieved new prominence in 2012. "You might have heard about YOLO, the acronym for 'you only live once.' YOLO caught on this year as a bit of youth slang that young people are already a little sick of."

A selfie is a self-portrait photograph, usually posted to a social networking site — and used most memorably by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton (or, let's be honest, one of her aides) in a humorous message to the Texts from Hillary Tumblr account. "Another word that I was introduced to this year which I quite like, hate-watching, which describes the masochistic act of continuing to watch a TV show even if you hate it."

And of course there were the old-fashioned words that resurfaced this year, like malarkey, popularized by Vice President Joe Biden in a debate with Paul Ryan. "That's a great Irish-American word that's been around for about a century ... it's such a great evocative word and it grabbed people's interest," Zimmer says. "It turns out it was Irish-American newspaper writers who popularized it in the early 20th century."

Some words captured public attention for sadder reasons, like superstorm, coined to describe Hurricane Sandy. "Someone from the National Weather Service actually suggested Frankenstorm, because it was a hybrid of different weather systems, like Frankenstein's monster, and it was also going to hit around Halloween," Zimmer says. But many news organizations considered Frankenstorm too light-hearted in the wake of the disaster, so the consensus settled on superstorm.

Commentary

Forget YOLO: Why 'Big Data' Should Be The Word Of The Year

This is the movie's most problematic aspect. The cinematic brief filed by Berg, who previously investigated a sexually abusive priest in the powerful Deliver Us from Evil, seems strong. But Paradise Lost 2: Revelations also compellingly singled out a possible perpetrator of the murders. That person is no longer considered a likely suspect.

The three's high-profile defenders have long been part of the story. The members of Metallica gave their aid (and music) to the Paradise Lost movies. Subsequently, Johnny Depp, Pearl Jam's Eddie Vedder, Natalie Maines of the Dixie Chicks, former Black Flag frontman Henry Rollins and others have added their voices. Australian rockers Nick Cave and Warren Ellis (of Dirty Three) joined the movement by composing the West of Memphis score.

There's another significant Down Under connection: This documentary was co-produced by Lord of the Rings maestro Peter Jackson and his wife and collaborator, Fran Walsh. (Echols and Lorri Davis, the woman who married him behind bars in 1999, are also co-producers.)

If West of Memphis spends a great deal of time with the trio's advocates, that seems warranted. Without outside pressure, Baldwin and Misskelly would still be in prison, and Echols might well have been executed. Mara Leveritt, who wrote a book on the three, notes that they benefited from a "crowd-sourced investigation." It took way too long, but the crowd finally bested the mob. (Recommended)

Amanda Cohen's Dirt Candy is a graphic novel, vegetarian cookbook and memoir. But because it's all of those things, it's also not exactly any of them — so it fell between the cracks.

Cohen's restaurant in New York City's East Village is called Dirt Candy because it's focused entirely on vegetables (which Cohen says are candy from the dirt). Even though the place has become a foodie destination, it's teeny, with just nine tables. The narrow dining area doubles as the prep kitchen before people come for dinner.

There's barely room to breathe as Cohen's helpers slice through heaps of long beans to be served with Moroccan herbs and coconut-poached tofu, and whisk gallons of scallion pancake batter. (That's what I swooned over during a dinner that started with crispy hot jalapeno hush puppies and a meltingly rich cube of portobello mushroom mousse, modulated with a bright truffle pear and fennel compote.)

On the 18th century gin craze

"This is a period between about ... 1720 and 1750. There's a huge amount of public disquiet, not only about the low price of gin, but the social effects that this is having. Probably the most famous representation of this is the great English artist William Hogarth produces an engraving called Gin Lane, which is a terrible image of the social breakdown that's being caused by gin ... In fact, if you wanted a very good modern parallel for the way that gin was regarded in the 18th century, crack is probably a very, very good one. And Gin Lane really does capture this in appallingly gruesome detail. All sorts of images of death and social breakdown and madness being caused by this spirit."

On what finally brought gin to respectability

"Firstly, we should say ... a very important American invention, possibly one of the great American cultural contributions to the world, is the invention of the cocktail. Through the 19th century, first of all Americans, then Europeans, get the habit of drinking spirits mixed up with the whole happy hour of other things: bitters and tonics and all sorts of things. And that helps to make gin more respectable. It's just one more ingredient in the cocktail cabinet.

"I think the second thing that helps to make gin more respectable is the growth of the gin and tonic. If you imagine colonists from Europe going out to the tropics in the 19th century, one of the biggest problems they face is malaria — terrible, terrible disease, kills many thousands of Europeans, and of course many hundreds of thousands of Africans in this period. Now, at the time, there's only one effective treatment, and that's a drug which in Britain is called quinine ... It's derived from the bark of a tree that grows in South America. Now the trouble with quinine is it's incredibly bitter; it's like chewing coffee beans. So in the 19th century lots of companies start producing more palatable ways of taking your daily quinine — this is tonic water.

"Now, British colonists in the late 19th century discover that tonic water and gin sort of complement one other. They've both got this rather sort of refreshing botanical kind of flavor. So the British start drinking the gin and tonic and making it the distinctive drink of British colonials. And they bring this habit back to Britain in the, I suppose, in the 20th century. So those are the two things that start to make gin a much more respectable prospect."

On the gin-based cocktails pink gin and Kublai Khan No. 2

"Well, pink gin again speaks to this rather wonderful global history that gin has. Pink gin is a combination of gin and bitters. Now, bitters were invented essentially in the 18th century as a kind of remedy for seasickness. So again, you've got this idea of sort of global trade and exchange; people going all around the world taking gin with them and then using it to sort of mix up their own home remedies. And pink gin became the classic drink of the British Royal Navy.

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Lisa Jackson, administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, is stepping down.

The Associated Press reports that:

The New York Times writes that Jackson's four years at EPA:

"Began with high hopes of sweeping action to address climate change and other environmental ills but ended with a series of rear-guard actions to defend the agency against challenges from industry, Republicans in Congress and, at times, the Obama White House. ...

"After Republicans seized control of the House in 2010, Ms. Jackson became a favored target of the new Republican majority's aversion to what it termed 'job-killing regulations.' One coal industry official accused her of waging 'regulatory jihad,' and she was summoned to testify before hostile House committees dozens of times in 2011."

There were 350,000 first-time claims for unemployment benefits last week, down 12,000 from the week before, the Employment and Training Administration reports. That's the lowest level since early March 2008.

The agency adds that "the 4-week moving average," which tends to smooth out some of the volatility that comes with the weekly figures, "was 356,750, a decrease of 11,250 from the previous week's revised average of 368,000."

All those figures are "seasonally adjusted," meaning that they're tweaked to supposedly account for such things as the holidays. But, as Bloomberg News reports, "claims in 19 states and territories were estimated because government office closures on Dec. 24 prevented a complete count, a Labor Department spokesman said as the figures were released."

So watch for some revisions in coming weeks.

Later this morning, we should get fresh figures on new home sales and consumer confidence.

As the nation's first African-American president, Barack Obama benefited from and expanded his party's enormous advantage among minority voters.

But as he prepares to start his second term, Obama hasn't managed to usher in behind him many Democrats who are minorities to top elected office. Conversely, Republicans — despite their highly limited support among non-Anglo voters — have managed to elevate more top politicians from minority backgrounds.

"It's just an objective, empirical fact that more members of minority groups have done well winning in the Republican Party," says Artur Davis, a former Democratic congressman from Alabama who has switched allegiance to the GOP.

"The Republican Party has proven welcoming to minorities, and its voters will elect minorities as long as those minorities share their worldview, as long as those minorities are conservatives," Davis says.

Thinner Lineup

Obama's success disproves the notion that minorities can't be elected as Democrats, and in terms of lower offices, far more minorities are elected as Democrats than Republicans. But when it comes to major statewide offices, Davis is right.

Minority Democrats face several obstacles, if only because they often represent congressional districts that are more liberal than their states as a whole. Many of them, in fact, hail from Southern states that are unlikely to elect Democrats of any color statewide these days.

For their part, Republicans are happy and eager to promote politicians of color who embrace the party's conservative agenda.

When Congress reconvenes next month, Democrats will make history by seating the first caucus in House history comprised of more women and minorities than white men. The House GOP caucus will remain dominated by white males.

By contrast, the lineup of Democrats holding top statewide offices is thin — limited to Gov. Deval Patrick of Massachusetts, who is African-American, and Sen. Robert Menendez of New Jersey, who is Hispanic.

Republicans can boast of a number of minority officeholders whose first two names in news accounts seem to be "rising star," including Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida and incoming Texas Sen. Ted Cruz.

Once newly elected officials are sworn in, Republicans will have more women governors and more Hispanic U.S. senators than the Democrats. Republican Tim Scott of South Carolina will be the only African-American in the Senate — appointed by Nikki Haley, one of two Republican governors of Indian descent. (Louisiana's Bobby Jindal is the other.)

Minority politicians are likely to have "a smoother path" running for top offices as Republicans, says Robert C. Smith, author of several books about race and politics.

"The left highway is crowded, and the right highway's less so," he says.

Hobbled By Success?

The nature of the districts many minority Democrats represent handicaps them when they set their sights on statewide offices, says Lara Brown, a Villanova University political scientist.

"When you look at those minority-majority districts, this is why Democrats don't have statewide elected officials [from minority groups]," she says. "Their constituents and these districts are very liberal, and that makes it very hard for these individuals to moderate [their positions] to win their states."

Smith, who teaches political science at San Francisco State University, says this argument was more true 10 or 20 years ago than it is today.

He notes Democratic black politicians with aspirations for higher office — such as Davis, who ran as a for governor in 2010, and then-Rep. Harold Ford, who ran for Senate in Tennessee back in 2006 — self-consciously adopted moderate or even conservative positions in order to run statewide.

"Twenty years ago, black politicians had little ambition to seek office beyond being in Congress or being a big-city mayor," Smith says. "Now, they're positioning themselves as centrists so they can run for statewide office."

The Need For Crossover Appeal

Still, reaching the top rungs can be difficult for African-American politicians in particular — because the vast majority of those holding elected office are in the South.

Neither Davis nor Ford was able to win election, and other blacks nominated to statewide posts in the South have done even more poorly.

In addition to the region's conservative nature, in the Deep South, "in terms of statewide elections, there's high racial polarization," says David Bositis, an expert on black politics at the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies.

Democratic politicians of color frequently are nominated to statewide office in the South, but they rarely win. In recent races in states such as Mississippi and Florida, black candidates have taken roughly 30 percent of the general election vote — about the same share as the minority populations there as a whole.

Following his keynote address to the Democratic National Convention this summer, San Antonio Mayor Julian Castro was widely touted as a potential star. But despite prognostications that Texas may eventually turn "blue" in presidential voting, Castro has to include in his calculations the fact Texas hasn't elected a Democrat to statewide office in nearly 20 years.

Things may be different for Cory Booker, the African-American mayor of Newark, who recently made clear his intentions to run for U.S. Senate. If he's nominated, he'll have a strong chance in the generally Democratic state of New Jersey, Smith says.

Minorities running in northern states with relatively small minority populations "absolutely" need to have crossover appeal, says Arturo Vargas, executive director of the National Association of Latino Elected & Appointed Officials.

He notes that both Menendez, from New Jersey, and former Colorado Sen. Ken Salazar (now Obama's Interior secretary) carried states that are both about 15 percent Hispanic.

GOP's Welcome Mat

By contrast, Vargas notes, even successful minority Republican officials have mostly failed to carry majorities among their own ethnic communities. Rubio, the Florida senator, is a notable exception, having won 55 percent of the Hispanic vote in his 2010 election.

Given the usual lack of support for Republican blacks and Hispanics within their own groups, there's a certain quality close to tokenism that prevails on the GOP side, Bositis suggests.

"The Republican Party has always tried to have a certain number," he says. "If they could find some black or Hispanic or Asian person to put out front, they were always happy to do it."

There's no question Republicans are eager to showcase minority politicians. Their national convention in Tampa, Fla., at times seemed to feature more black and brown faces on the podium than were otherwise in the hall.

Smith, the San Francisco State political scientist, says this is done from necessity. Giving prominent roles to minority politicians, he suggests, may not help the GOP make deep inroads into minority communities that find the party's platform hostile to them on issues such as voting rights and immigration.

"But it gives the party the image of being an inclusive, multiethnic party," Smith says. "White suburbanites would not be comfortable with a party that is not inclusive."

If an ambitious politician who happens to be African-American or Hispanic or Asian also happens to be conservative, the GOP is going to welcome that person with open arms.

"If you're an African-American or a Hispanic of conservative bent — and you will be, or you wouldn't be in the Republican Party — you're going to be in the mainstream of your party more often than not," says Whit Ayres, a GOP consultant.

4 (750 milliliter) bottles 80-proof vodka

Zest of 4 medium mandarins or other flavorful oranges

4 teaspoons of good-quality black tea

2 whole cloves

Peel the citrus fruits with a potato peeler, being careful to avoid peeling any of the white pith. Combine all in a 1-gallon mason jar with a rubber gasket, keeping the vodka bottles for storing the infusion later. Shake twice daily for 10 to 14 days, tasting daily to make sure the flavors develop properly and in balance — not too bitter (from the mandarin pith or tea) or spicy (from the cloves). If any ingredient is beginning to overwhelm the rest after seven days, remove it.

When the infusion has yielded the desired flavor and all the elements are in balance, strain the contents of the infusion jar into another container — first through a strainer to catch big particles and then through two layers of coffee filters to catch small particles.

Taste again. If a little too bitter or tannic, add 1-4 tablespoons of grade A maple syrup. Shake and leave overnight to incorporate.

Pour back into empty vodka bottles and close lids tightly. Serve chilled.

"Just throw the whole lemon in the food processor for lemon bars."
"Don't just soak your dried beans — brine them!"
"You don't need a whole day (or two) to make a good sauce."

Some of the things this year's cookbooks said to me as I tested them were downright contrarian. But that's the brilliant thing about cooking in a global, crowdsourced, Web-fueled world: People no longer cook according to some received wisdom handed down by a guy in a white toque. They figure it out as they go along, and if they stumble on a shortcut, it's blogged and shared in no time flat.

The rebels, rule breakers and renegades who rule this year's Top 10 list aren't looking for a Ph.D. in Traditional Cooking. They're pleasure seekers whose books are filled with quirky facts, gorgeous pictures, ingredients deployed in unexpected places. They're informative, thoughtful and well packaged, and traditional only in the sense that they make classic perfect gifts.

Former Republican Sen. Chuck Hagel of Nebraska is said to be on President Obama's short list to be the next defense secretary. But even the possibility of his nomination has stirred up opposition — particularly from members of his own political party.

If Hagel can survive a political ambush in Washington, he would be the first Pentagon chief who saw combat as an enlisted soldier.

The blunt-spoken Hagel favors deeper cuts in military spending and is wary of entangling America in long overseas missions.

In January 2007, Democrats on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee were fighting President Bush's plan to send more troops to Iraq. Hagel was the only Republican to join them, and he blasted those who refused to take a stand.

"Why are you elected?" Hagel asked. "If you wanted a safe job, go sell shoes. This is a tough business. But is it any tougher, us having to take a tough vote, express ourselves, and have the courage to step up, than what we're asking our young men and women to do? I don't think so."

Lessons From Vietnam

Hagel knew better than most what America was asking of its young men and women. Forty years earlier he'd fought in Vietnam with his brother Tom.

They served in the same unit. On patrol one morning in 1968, Chuck was hit by shrapnel in the chest, and Tom rushed to help him. A month later, Chuck saved Tom, pulling him from a burning vehicle. Between them the two brother's earned five Purple Hearts.

Enlarge image i

After years of recession and slow recovery, maybe you didn't notice. But it turns out, 2012 was a fairly good year for the U.S. economy.

The Standard & Poor's 500 stock index has risen nearly 14 percent this year and the unemployment rate has fallen to 7.7 percent, the lowest point in four years. Inflation and interest rates have stayed low, allowing families to cut their debt loads.

"Consumers are feeling better now," said Nariman Behravesh, chief economist for IHS Global Insight, a forecasting firm. Compared with December 2007, when the Great Recession was just starting, "the burdens on consumers have eased quite a bit," he said.

Final data aren't in yet for the full year, but in the period from July through September, U.S. household net worth rose by 2.7 percent compared with the previous three months, according to the Federal Reserve. Combined with overall economic growth of 3.1 percent in that same period, the pace of improvement — both for individuals and corporations — could be described as decent, though far from robust.

Perhaps the key to the overall improvement has been the fairly steady growth in job creation. Employers have been adding an average of 151,000 jobs each month in 2012.

"Job growth was not great, but it was good enough to make people feel like things are getting better," Behravesh said.

That potent combination of greater job security, lower bill payments and rising wealth sent shoppers heading off to car dealerships, malls and restaurants for most of the year.

To be sure, the fourth quarter had big problems that likely reduced the growth rate as the year wound down. Hurricane Sandy depressed retail sales and jobs in the New York-New Jersey region, and the budget negotiations drama in Washington depressed consumer sentiment all over the country, said Tom Porcelli, chief U.S. economist for RBC Capital Markets.

He added that the child murders in Newtown, Conn., may have discouraged some holiday trips to the mall as the mood of the country turned somber in the run-up to Christmas. As the year draws to an end, "you have a consumer moving sideways," Porcelli said.

But most economists believe the effects of those recent problems will not linger long into the new year and that when economic historians look back on 2012, they may see it as the year when the battered U.S. economy finally turned a corner.

Here are some of the glad tidings that Americans might want to celebrate.

Autos

Consumers went car shopping again, largely because their old vehicles were wearing out. As 2012 was beginning, the average age of vehicles on the road was running at nearly 11 years — a record high.

That meant millions of people were itching to get to a showroom. Sales strengthened throughout the year and by November, the industry was selling vehicles at a pace of 15.5 million a year — the best performance since February 2008.

Housing

Home construction started to tank in 2006 and its plunge pushed the country into the Great Recession five years ago this month. The number of housing starts tumbled from a pace of more than 2 million units a year at the peak of the boom to around a half million a year during the worst of the downturn in 2009.

Between 2009 and 2011, housing indicators bumped around on the bottom, with listless upturns quickly fading. But this year, a real turnaround took hold. By fall, housing starts were up to an annual rate of nearly 900,000 units — the best pace in four years.

And prices too have ticked up after the dramatic slide that started in 2006. In the country's 100 largest metropolitan areas, prices rose at an average of 0.5 percent after adjusting for inflation in the third quarter, according to a Brookings Institution economic index.

"The rise in metropolitan home prices indicates that a broadly rooted recovery may be underway in the housing market," said Alec Friedhoff, a research analyst and lead developer of the index.

Energy

The U.S. energy industry is suddenly and dramatically expanding, thanks to the new technologies and drilling techniques that are unleashing supplies of oil and gas. As a result, energy companies are gearing up to train and hire many more workers. In North Dakota, for example, hiring has been so strong in the energy sector that the state's unemployment rate has fallen to just 3.1 percent.

For the moment, big energy companies like Exxon Mobil and Shell are seeing lackluster earnings because of relatively weak prices, especially for natural gas. But for workers, the outlook keeps getting brighter as it becomes clearer that America has abundant energy resources. Studies suggest the "unconventional" oil and gas resources could lead to the creation of nearly 2 million jobs in less than two decades.

Retail

At least up until December, stores saw more customers in 2012, and did more hiring. In November, the retail sector reported 53,000 new jobs — more than a third of all the jobs created that month. That was up sharply from November 2011, when retailers added just 34,000 new jobs.

Shoppers have been particularly eager to spend money at electronics outlets and clothing stores. They have had a little more money to spend, thanks to lower gasoline prices and tame inflation in general. Overall, consumer prices rose only about 2 percent in the past year.

The National Retail Federation, a trade association, has predicted a 4.1 percent sales increase this holiday season — higher than the 3.5 percent average annual forecast for the past decade. "This is the most optimistic forecast NRF has released since the recession," Matthew Shay, the group's president, said in a statement.

Yesterday came and went, but I never finished Ulysses. I never took up skydiving. Come to think of it, I didn't even really finish cleaning up my closet before the "Mayan Apocalypse," which did not occur yesterday, Dec. 21.

I remember thinking,"Finally, I get a Friday off — but there's an apocalypse."

When I first heard that the Mayan Long Count calendar was coming to an end at the end of this year — which, we cannot repeat enough, even Mayans never meant was the end of the world — I began to mentally make a few plans. But, they kind of got lost in the daily business of work, children and watching cat videos on YouTube.

I never saw The Ring Cycle, which I'm told, doesn't exactly pick up your mood in any case. I never learned Latin or how to tap dance. I never wrote an epic poem about the Chicago fire. The Cubs didn't win the World Series, which come to think of it, is an event that a lot of people thought would bring on the apocalypse.

And yet, I've kind of valued having the prospect of apocalypse in front of us, however preposterous, down to the very date. Like birthdays and holidays — like the gradually rising pencil scratches on a kitchen wall that mark a child growing up — seeing Dec. 21 approach this year served to remind us that even though an apocalypse may not be at hand, life is fleeting, fragile and unpredictable — and therefore infinitely precious. We've learned that in the hardest way just this past week.

Simon Stinson, the grump in the graveyard in Thornton Wilder's Our Town, tells Emily Webb after she has spent a few minutes back on Earth, "That's what it was to be alive. To spend and waste time as though you had a million years." These days we might add, "So how much time do you want to spend playing Angry Birds?"

But we don't have a million years, no matter how many anti-oxidants we ingest. But that's what puts joy and meaning into the moments we do have.

Even if we could say when our time would end, I wonder how many of us would really want to learn another language, make a surreptitious meal of the Ortolan bird, or spend our last months trying to decipher every last enigmatic Joycean joke in Finnegan's Wake. It would be nice to think that a lot of people would choose to just look at those around us, hold them close and say, "I guess I didn't do anything special this past year. And I wish I could do it all over again."

When a collective of women computer programmers in Kenya needed a name for their ladies-only club, they took their inspiration from a Japanese cult film.

"So Akira is a Japanese word. It means energy and intelligence. And we are energetic and intelligent chicks," says Judith Owigar, the president of Akirachix.

A group like Akirachix would have been unthinkable even five years ago. But Kenya is making a big push toward IT — part of a plan to create a middle-class country by the year 2030.

Kenya has laid hundreds of miles of fiber optic cable. Google and IBM set up shop here. The city even has plans for a $7 billion technology hub just outside the capital Nairobi.

But you need more than tech giants and broadband and even money to launch a local tech industry. You also need a culture of computer geeks. That's where Owigar and her collective Akirachix comes in. They want to make sure that the girl geeks are encouraged as much as the guys.

Bridging The Gender Gap

"You know you're the oddball just because of your gender," Owigar says.

It turns out that in Kenya, exactly as in Silicon Valley, the problem with getting more women in tech is that there aren't more women in tech.

"There are probably other women in tech who are alone, and they think they're the weird ones, but if enough of us meet together, you know, it won't be so weird anymore," Owigar says.

Enlarge image i

After years of recession and slow recovery, maybe you didn't notice. But it turns out, 2012 was a fairly good year for the U.S. economy.

The Standard & Poor's 500 stock index has risen nearly 14 percent this year and the unemployment rate has fallen to 7.7 percent, the lowest point in four years. Inflation and interest rates have stayed low, allowing families to cut their debt loads.

"Consumers are feeling better now," said Nariman Behravesh, chief economist for IHS Global Insight, a forecasting firm. Compared with December 2007, when the Great Recession was just starting, "the burdens on consumers have eased quite a bit," he said.

Final data aren't in yet for the full year, but in the period from July through September, U.S. household net worth rose by 2.7 percent compared with the previous three months, according to the Federal Reserve. Combined with overall economic growth of 3.1 percent in that same period, the pace of improvement — both for individuals and corporations — could be described as decent, though far from robust.

Perhaps the key to the overall improvement has been the fairly steady growth in job creation. Employers have been adding an average of 151,000 jobs each month in 2012.

"Job growth was not great, but it was good enough to make people feel like things are getting better," Behravesh said.

That potent combination of greater job security, lower bill payments and rising wealth sent shoppers heading off to car dealerships, malls and restaurants for most of the year.

To be sure, the fourth quarter had big problems that likely reduced the growth rate as the year wound down. Hurricane Sandy depressed retail sales and jobs in the New York-New Jersey region, and the budget negotiations drama in Washington depressed consumer sentiment all over the country, said Tom Porcelli, chief U.S. economist for RBC Capital Markets.

He added that the child murders in Newtown, Conn., may have discouraged some holiday trips to the mall as the mood of the country turned somber in the run-up to Christmas. As the year draws to an end, "you have a consumer moving sideways," Porcelli said.

But most economists believe the effects of those recent problems will not linger long into the new year and that when economic historians look back on 2012, they may see it as the year when the battered U.S. economy finally turned a corner.

Here are some of the glad tidings that Americans might want to celebrate.

Autos

Consumers went car shopping again, largely because their old vehicles were wearing out. As 2012 was beginning, the average age of vehicles on the road was running at nearly 11 years — a record high.

That meant millions of people were itching to get to a showroom. Sales strengthened throughout the year and by November, the industry was selling vehicles at a pace of 15.5 million a year — the best performance since February 2008.

Housing

Home construction started to tank in 2006 and its plunge pushed the country into the Great Recession five years ago this month. The number of housing starts tumbled from a pace of more than 2 million units a year at the peak of the boom to around a half million a year during the worst of the downturn in 2009.

Between 2009 and 2011, housing indicators bumped around on the bottom, with listless upturns quickly fading. But this year, a real turnaround took hold. By fall, housing starts were up to an annual rate of nearly 900,000 units — the best pace in four years.

And prices too have ticked up after the dramatic slide that started in 2006. In the country's 100 largest metropolitan areas, prices rose at an average of 0.5 percent after adjusting for inflation in the third quarter, according to a Brookings Institution economic index.

"The rise in metropolitan home prices indicates that a broadly rooted recovery may be underway in the housing market," said Alec Friedhoff, a research analyst and lead developer of the index.

Energy

The U.S. energy industry is suddenly and dramatically expanding, thanks to the new technologies and drilling techniques that are unleashing supplies of oil and gas. As a result, energy companies are gearing up to train and hire many more workers. In North Dakota, for example, hiring has been so strong in the energy sector that the state's unemployment rate has fallen to just 3.1 percent.

For the moment, big energy companies like Exxon Mobil and Shell are seeing lackluster earnings because of relatively weak prices, especially for natural gas. But for workers, the outlook keeps getting brighter as it becomes clearer that America has abundant energy resources. Studies suggest the "unconventional" oil and gas resources could lead to the creation of nearly 2 million jobs in less than two decades.

Retail

At least up until December, stores saw more customers in 2012, and did more hiring. In November, the retail sector reported 53,000 new jobs — more than a third of all the jobs created that month. That was up sharply from November 2011, when retailers added just 34,000 new jobs.

Shoppers have been particularly eager to spend money at electronics outlets and clothing stores. They have had a little more money to spend, thanks to lower gasoline prices and tame inflation in general. Overall, consumer prices rose only about 2 percent in the past year.

The National Retail Federation, a trade association, has predicted a 4.1 percent sales increase this holiday season — higher than the 3.5 percent average annual forecast for the past decade. "This is the most optimistic forecast NRF has released since the recession," Matthew Shay, the group's president, said in a statement.

In light of the often tortured interweave of faith and politics in American life, we sometimes forget that our country was first settled by those seeking freedom not from religion but to practice their own versions of it: French Protestants and English Puritans. In many ways, religion is our founding fact. These books explore the vital undercurrent of faith in the expression of American life.

Egyptians voted on Saturday in the second and final phase of a referendum on an Islamist-backed constitution that has polarized the nation, with little indication that the result of the vote will end the political crisis in which the country is mired.

For some supporters, a 'yes' vote was a chance to restore some normalcy after nearly two years of tumultuous transitional politics following Egypt's 2011 revolution, or to make society and laws more Islamic. Opponents saw their 'no' vote as a way to preserve the country's secular traditions and prevent President Mohammed Morsi and his Muslim Brotherhood group from getting a lock on power.

"I came early to make sure my 'no' is among the first of millions today," oil company manager Mahmoud Abdel-Aziz said as he waited in line outside a polling station in the Dokki district of Giza, Cairo's twin city on the west bank of the Nile. "I am here to say 'no' to Morsi and his Muslim Brotherhood," he said.

Another Giza voter, accountant and mother of three Sahar Mohamed Zakaria, had a different take on Saturday's vote.

"I'm voting 'yes' for stability," she announced.

Saturday's vote is taking place in 17 of Egypt's 27 provinces with about 25 million eligible voters. The first phase on Dec. 15 produced a "yes" majority of about 56 percent with a turnout of some 32 percent, according to preliminaryl results. Preliminary results for the second round are expected late Saturday or early Sunday.

As was the case in last week's vote, opposition and rights activists reported numerous irregularities: polling stations opening later than scheduled, Islamists outside stations trying to influence voters to say "yes," and independent monitors denied access.

The vote comes a day after clashes between Morsi's opponents and supporters in the Mediterranean port city of Alexandria. It was the latest outbreak of street violence in more than four weeks of turmoil, with the country divided first over the president's powers then over the draft constitution.

The clashes — in which opponents of Islamists set fire to cars and dozens of people were hurt — illustrated how the new constitution, regardless of whether it is adopted or not, is unlikely to ease the conflict over the country's future.

In Fayoum, the capital of an oasis province of the same name where Islamist groups have traditionally had strong support, a member of the local Christian community said she also supported the charter — a break with most Christians nationwide who oppose the draft.

Hanaa Zaki said she was also voting "yes" for stability and an end to the country's deepening economic problems.

Speaking as she waited in line along with bearded Muslim men and Muslim women wearing headscarves, Zaki said: "I have a son who didn't get paid for the past six months. We have been in this crisis for so long and we are fed up."

In the village of Sanaro, also in Fayoum province some 100 kilometers (60 miles) southwest of Cairo, farmer Azouz Ayesh sat with his neighbors as their cattle grazed in a nearby field. "I don't trust the Brotherhood anymore and I don't trust the opposition either. We are forgotten, the most miserable and the first to suffer. If I say 'yes' there will be stability and if I say 'no' there will still be no stability," he said.

"But I will vote against this constitution," he added.

In the neighboring village of Sheikh Fadl, a car fitted with loudspeakers toured the area with a man shouting, "Yes, yes to the constitution!" In the city of Fayoum, a man could be seen painting over posters urging people to vote "no."

In Giza's upscale Mohandiseen neighborhood, a group of 12 women speaking to each other in a mix of French, Arabic and English said they all intended to vote "no."

"My friends are Muslim and are voting 'no.' It's not about Christian versus Muslim, but it is Muslim Brotherhood versus everyone else," said one of the 12, Christian physician Shahira Sadeq. "Voting 'yes' does not mean stability."

Kamla el-Tantawi, 65, voted with her daughter and grand-daughter. "I voted 'no' against what I'm seeing," she said, gesturing to a woman standing close by wearing the full-face veil known as niqab and as a hallmark of ultraconservative Muslim women. "I lose sleep thinking about my grandchildren and their future. They never saw the beautiful Egypt we did."

"Morsi, God willing, will be better than those who came before him," said Zeinab Khalil, a mother of three who wears the niqab, said. "A 'yes' vote moves the country forward. We want things to calm down, more jobs and better education," she said, while waiting for her turn to vote in Giza's poor Imbaba district, a one-time stronghold of militant Islamists.

In part, Egypt's split has been over who will shape the country's path nearly two years after the ouster of Hosni Mubarak nearly two years ago.

An opposition made up of liberals, leftists, secular Egyptians and a swath of the public angered over Morsi's 5-month-old rule fear that Islamists are creating a new Mubarak-style autocracy. They accuse the Brotherhood of monopolizing the levers of power and point to the draft charter, which Islamists on the Constituent Assembly rammed through despite a boycott by liberal and secular members. They are calling on supporters to vote "no."

Morsi's allies say the opposition is trying to use the streets to overturn their victories at the ballot box over the past two years. They also accuse the opposition of carrying out a conspiracy by former members of Mubarak's regime to regain power.

If the constitution is adopted, Morsi will call for the election of parliament's law-making lower chamber to be held within two months while giving the mostly toothless upper chamber legislative powers until the lower house is seated.

The upper chamber, known as the Shura Council, was elected by less than 10 percent of the country's 50 million registered voters. It is dominated by Islamists.

Morsi was already gearing up for the next steps after the constitution's passage, making a last-minute appointment of 90 new members to the Shura Council, a third of its total membership. Current rules allow him to do so, but if he waited until the charter was passed he could only appoint 10.

Friday's appointments added to the handful of non-Islamists in the upper house, but preserved the Islamists' overwhelming hold.

A spokesman for the main opposition umbrella National Salvation Front dismissed the appointments, accusing Morsi of setting up a token opposition much like Mubarak did.

Some, like Prince, say they can readily afford to pay more. Others think it's wrong to call on them to pay higher rates — even as top earners account for a huge percentage of personal income tax receipts. Mainly, they say they are tired of being singled out and accused of not paying their fair share.

"I worked hard and I had some success, and I think that's how it's supposed to be in this country," says Edward Kfoury, a 74-year-old former IBM director who now owns "a couple of businesses" in Maine. "I don't like being called a name and being called a bastard and all these other things."

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House Speaker John Boehner was dealt a major defeat Thursday night. After spending most of the week trying to round up votes for his "Plan B" to extend tax cuts for virtually everyone, he pulled the measure without a vote and sent the House home for Christmas. The clock keeps ticking toward the end of the year, when automatic tax increases and spending cuts are set to hit.

Early Thursday, Boehner expressed confidence not only that his bill would pass but that the Democratic-controlled Senate would feel so much pressure, it would be forced to consider it, too.

"I am not convinced at all that when the bill passes the House today that it will die in the Senate," Boehner said early Thursday.

It turns out he was wrong — very wrong. And the problem was his fellow Republicans. Boehner's bill would have extended tax cuts for income up to a million dollars. But it also would have raised taxes on those who make more than that.

That made some conservatives, like Rep. Mick Mulvaney of South Carolina, uncomfortable.

"I want to protect everybody," Mulvaney said. "I think everybody pays too much in taxes so I am looking for some way to protect everybody."

Around the time the bill should have been up for a vote, Boehner gathered his conference in the basement of the Capitol and told them he wouldn't bring it up. His whip team had counted the votes, and they didn't have enough.

"He couldn't get the votes for this proposal," said Steve LaTourette, a retiring representative from Ohio. "At the end of the day, you can't make people vote."

Many of the unconvinced were freshmen elected in the Tea Party wave of 2010.

Rep. Tim Huelskamp of Kansas, the most vocal of the bunch, said the speaker was asking his members to take a vote that violated conservative principles. The conservatives rebelled.

"This is not Republican material," said Huelskamp. "I think that's probably why they wisely pulled the plug and said, 'OK, let's regroup.' But regroup and reassess — you know, what exactly do Republicans stand for? — and pushing things that we can pull together on instead of divide ourselves on."

The speaker is stuck, said LaTourette. "He can only play with the cards he's dealt. The voters have populated our conference with this set of representatives, and he does his best to work with them. But sometimes your best isn't good enough in the face of some people that just don't want to find common ground."

Jack Pitney, a professor of politics at California's Claremont McKenna College, feels for Boehner.

"To quote the great philosopher John Belushi in Animal House, my advice to the speaker: 'start drinking heavily,' " he said.

Pitney can't figure out why the speaker would make such a public push if he didn't have the votes lined up to begin with.

"If he brings a proposal to the president, the president's going to say, 'Look John, how do I know you're going to get the support of the members of your conference?' That's an extremely weak hand to be presenting when you're dealing with the president. Where this ends up, I don't know," Pitney said.

To those on the inside, the end game isn't any clearer.

California Rep. Buck McKeon, a Boehner ally, walked out of the conference meeting discouraged, saying, "I don't know how we can get out of this mess."

McKeon added that the speaker might not get any credit for it, but Boehner wants to do what is right. "And he thinks with divided government we should be able to do big things, and we can't do anything, and this is really, really sad," McKeon said.

The White House issued a statement late Thursday night saying the president will work with Congress and hopes to find a bipartisan solution quickly.

There's not much time left. Congress doesn't plan to return to Washington until two days after Christmas.

There was a 5.9 percent rise in sales of previously owned homes in November from October, the National Association of Realtors says.

At their 5.04 million annual rate, sales were the highest since November 2009.

"Momentum continues to build," NAR chief economist Lawrence Yun says in the organization's report.

As Reuters notes, "the U.S. housing market tanked on the eve of the 2007-09 recession and has yet to fully recover, but steady job creation has helped the housing sector this year, when it is expected to add to economic growth for the first time since 2005."

Earlier today, there was word that third-quarter economic growth has been revised upward again.

House Speaker John Boehner was dealt a major defeat Thursday night. After spending most of the week trying to round up votes for his "Plan B" to extend tax cuts for virtually everyone, he pulled the measure without a vote and sent the House home for Christmas. The clock keeps ticking toward the end of the year, when automatic tax increases and spending cuts are set to hit.

Early Thursday, Boehner expressed confidence not only that his bill would pass but that the Democratic-controlled Senate would feel so much pressure, it would be forced to consider it, too.

"I am not convinced at all that when the bill passes the House today that it will die in the Senate," Boehner said early Thursday.

It turns out he was wrong — very wrong. And the problem was his fellow Republicans. Boehner's bill would have extended tax cuts for income up to a million dollars. But it also would have raised taxes on those who make more than that.

That made some conservatives, like Rep. Mick Mulvaney of South Carolina, uncomfortable.

"I want to protect everybody," Mulvaney said. "I think everybody pays too much in taxes so I am looking for some way to protect everybody."

Around the time the bill should have been up for a vote, Boehner gathered his conference in the basement of the Capitol and told them he wouldn't bring it up. His whip team had counted the votes, and they didn't have enough.

"He couldn't get the votes for this proposal," said Steve LaTourette, a retiring representative from Ohio. "At the end of the day, you can't make people vote."

Many of the unconvinced were freshmen elected in the Tea Party wave of 2010.

Rep. Tim Huelskamp of Kansas, the most vocal of the bunch, said the speaker was asking his members to take a vote that violated conservative principles. The conservatives rebelled.

"This is not Republican material," said Huelskamp. "I think that's probably why they wisely pulled the plug and said, 'OK, let's regroup.' But regroup and reassess — you know, what exactly do Republicans stand for? — and pushing things that we can pull together on instead of divide ourselves on."

The speaker is stuck, said LaTourette. "He can only play with the cards he's dealt. The voters have populated our conference with this set of representatives, and he does his best to work with them. But sometimes your best isn't good enough in the face of some people that just don't want to find common ground."

Jack Pitney, a professor of politics at California's Claremont McKenna College, feels for Boehner.

"To quote the great philosopher John Belushi in Animal House, my advice to the speaker: 'start drinking heavily,' " he said.

Pitney can't figure out why the speaker would make such a public push if he didn't have the votes lined up to begin with.

"If he brings a proposal to the president, the president's going to say, 'Look John, how do I know you're going to get the support of the members of your conference?' That's an extremely weak hand to be presenting when you're dealing with the president. Where this ends up, I don't know," Pitney said.

To those on the inside, the end game isn't any clearer.

California Rep. Buck McKeon, a Boehner ally, walked out of the conference meeting discouraged, saying, "I don't know how we can get out of this mess."

McKeon added that the speaker might not get any credit for it, but Boehner wants to do what is right. "And he thinks with divided government we should be able to do big things, and we can't do anything, and this is really, really sad," McKeon said.

The White House issued a statement late Thursday night saying the president will work with Congress and hopes to find a bipartisan solution quickly.

There's not much time left. Congress doesn't plan to return to Washington until two days after Christmas.

Russian lawmakers have approved a measure that would bar Americans from adopting Russian children, a move that comes in retaliation for a U.S. law that seeks to "name and shame" Russian officials who violate human rights.

President Vladimir Putin has voiced support for the adoption ban, but it's not clear whether he'll actually sign the measure, which has potential pitfalls.

As the Duma, the lower house of Russia's parliament, prepared for the final vote on the adoption ban, opponents of the measure stood in the subzero cold outside holding picket signs. Milana Minayeva's sign read: "Don't deprive children of their lives."

"I think [the] upcoming law is outrageous," Minayeva says. She says it's not right to make it impossible for children who have neither help nor parents to have any future at all.

Minayeva is a television producer, not an adoption activist, but she echoes the stance of many critics who say that orphans and adoptive parents should not be used as pawns in a political game.

A Deeper Resentment

The process of retaliation in the Duma taps into some deep and long-standing resentments on the part of Russian officials. Putin let some of that anger show in his yearly press conference this week.

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In a news conference Friday, President Obama said there were still things the parties could agree on about the automatic tax-rate increases and spending cuts at the end of the year. But he said parties would have to work together to get a plan approved in the next 10 days.

"Call me a hopeless optimist, but I actually still think we can get it done," he said, after meeting with Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid and speaking to Republican House Speaker John Boehner.

"In the next few days, I've asked leaders of Congress to work toward a package that prevents a tax hike on middle-class Americans, protects unemployment insurance for 2 million Americans and lays the groundwork for further work on both growth and deficit reduction. That's an achievable goal. That can get done in 10 days."