[M]ore than seven in 10 are dissatisfied with the current state of the economy, and just more than a third are either “very” or “fairly” confident in Obama’s ability to promote a strong and growing economy.
And 60 percent believe the coming year will be a time to hold back and save because of harder times ahead . . .
As for views on Obama’s qualities as president, he gets the best marks for being easygoing and likeable (61 percent give him high marks here)
So let’s get this straight, Over seventy percent of the public are dissatisfied with the economy, just over a third of the people are confident in the president’s ability to fix it, and 60% of the folks are battening down the hatches for rough weather.
Yet this man just two months ago won 300+ electoral votes?
Exactly: When the media deliberately mislead the public, we can expect widespread confusion to prevail. Welcome to Low-Information Nation.
A day before President Barack Obama is scheduled to release Vice President Joe Biden’s recommendations to curb gun violence in the United States, the National Rifle Association toldU.S. News and World Report that they have seen membership grow by 250,000 in the month since the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting in Newtown, Connecticut. Politico reported membership had grown by more than 100,000 five days ago. The NRA says that when Politico reported the story, membership was close to 200,000, but the number has drastically grown in just five days. The association now has over 4.25 million members.
NRA “fringe”? More than 4 milllion members, added 250K members in past month. @joenbc audience? 565,000. Math is hard!
Posing as “Citizens Against Senseless Violence,” [James] O’Keefe and company visited the homes of anti-gun journalists employed by The Journal News in New York and the Star-Ledger in New Jersey.
They also swung by Touré’s place and paid a visit to the ol’ Eric Holder homestead. Each household was asked to display a yard sign with the words “This Home is Proudly Gun Free.”
Any guesses how that turned out?
“FBI Police confronted our reporters within minutes of their knocking on the Attorney General’s home. Eric Holder is safe and sound under armed protection, unlike the nation’s children.”
. . . low-income minorities would have a harder time getting approved for mortgages — and they were right!
The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau on Thursday will roll out the first of several far-reaching changes to the nation’s mortgage market, limiting upfront fees and curtailing practices such as interest-only payments that can leave homeowners stuck with unsustainable loans. The agency also will set standards for how much income a consumer must have to obtain a mortgage.
This marks the first time the government has spelled out what constitutes a “qualified mortgage,” an effort to prevent the widespread toxic loans that hurt millions of Americans during the housing crisis.
Banks that offer qualified mortgages will be protected from lawsuits if they adhere to the criteria. The consumer agency hopes that will drive the entire industry to live by the tighter standards that have taken hold since the crisis, ensuring safer loans but potentially limiting the number of people who can qualify to buy a home.
“Credit is going to be restricted, at least a little,” said Cristian deRitis, a senior director at Moody’s Analytics. “The debt-to-income cap, for instance, is going to affect some folks at the lower end of the income scale.”
Your key phrase there: “Banks . . . will be protected from lawsuits.” The Community Reinvestment Act (CRA) was a government-issued invitation to a lot of class-action litigation and mau-mauing of banks, which led in turn to a deliberate lowering of lending standards, which in turn led to a rising default rate, which in turn eventually triggered the collape of the mortgage bubble.
Liberals have tried to blame the bubble exclusively on Wall Street and the dubious business of trading mortgage-backed securities without adequate regard for the obvious risks of “subprime” loans. In truth, there is plenty enough blame to go around, but (a) the involvement of FHA, Fannie and Freddie in the lending market had the effect of conveying the impression that U.S. mortgages were guaranteed by the feds, and (b) the role of the CRA was crucial to what happened. Easy credit as a civil right was an Idea that had Consequences.
Crazy as it is, however, it’s not a joke: Rep. Jose Serrano (D-N.Y.) on Friday re-introduced as H.J. 15 the same bill he offered last year, “Proposing an amendment to the Constitution of the United States to repeal the twenty-second article of amendment” — i.e., to end the two-term limit on the presidency, enabling Obama to be “President fo Life.”
“The president has lied on a number of issues. He promised not to raise taxes on the middle-class — he raised taxes on us today. . . . If any of us are stupid enough to go do work and collect a paycheck and not take from the government? We are now paying more to the government. . . .
“The president said he would fundamentally transform America. He has. He has brought us to our knees. He is lowering our standard of living. He is deliberately doing the fiscal initiatives that will hurt and cripple us. . . . This is a long dark period we are going into for America and I would like to say positive things because i am an optimist but it is hard. This is going to hammer us. We are going to be hammered.”
Earlier today, it was reported that House Republicans would insist on adding spending cuts to the version of the fiscal-cliff deal that the Senate passed. However, faced with the likelihood that President Obama would denounce such a measure, and the Democrat-led Senate would reject the House version, the decision has now reportedly been made to permit a straight up-or-down vote on the Senate bill. It is currently being “debated” on the House floor and is expected to pass.
UPDATE: Darrell Issa has an interesting theory on the Republican Senators who voted for this deal:
BLITZER: All of those 89, including all of those conservative Republicans, including Pat Toomey and others, they were wrong?
ISSA: You know, Wolf, frankly I can’t account for what happens after midnight and all of that partying and revelry and drinking that goes on on New Years Eve at 2:00 in the morning.
Just don’t say they were “spending like drunken sailors.” At least sailors spend their own money.
They just began one hour of final debate on the bill at 9:46 p.m. ET, which means the vote should conclude shortly after 11.
UPDATE II: And they just voted to pass it, 257-167, with Democrats voting overwhelmingly in favor, and Republicans voting against it by about a 2-to-1 margin.
Excuse my failure to comment previously on the Glorious Passage of the Great Compromise in the Senate, but I’ve been working on an American Spectator column about this shameful travesty while waiting to see what the House does. Nancy Pelosi, Steny Hoyer and other House Democrats just gave a press conference demanding an up-or-down vote on the Senate bill. The Congressional Budget Office estimates the Senate bill would provide a pathetic $620 billion in additional revenues over the next decade, while providing an even more pathetic $15 billion in spending cuts. (Insert punchline here.) Sen. Rand Paul sums it up:
“Mark my word, you will raise tax rates and you’ll feel good because you went out there and you got those rich people. . . . You campaigned against rich people and you got enough envy whipped up in the country, and you’re going to stick it to those rich people. But guess what? You may not get any more revenue. You may not get any more economic growth. But you can say, ‘I stuck it to the rich people.’”
What Breitbart understood, and what all too many establishment Republicans and even conservatives don’t, is that there is no accommodating the left . . . The left is hellbent on fundamentally transforming the country into a socialist utopia which has never succeeded anywhere it has been tried, and the press is determined to help them do that. Folks, no matter what you do, they’re going to hate you . . . So you might as well do the right thing and follow your beliefs and principles.
The Senate deal to avoid the “fiscal cliff” will add roughly $4 trillion to the deficit when compared to current law, according to new numbers from the Congressional Budget Office (CBO). . . .
The CBO says the budget agreement will lead to an overall increase in spending of about $330 billion over 10 years. . . .
White House officials and lawmakers who voted for the bill argue the bill would raise $620 billion in new tax revenue compared to current policy.
Which is to say, they lied. Damn them all to hell.
