CNN is reporting that:

The small improvement came despite the fact that housing fell for a record 21st straight month, with private residential construction dropping by 2.5 percent to an annual rate of $484.9 billion, down by 17.5 percent from a year ago.

Homebuilders have been battered by the worst slump in the housing market in more than two decades, a decline that occurred after five boom years which had pushed home sales and prices to record levels. Analysts believe the slowdown in housing will last through much of 2008, forcing builders to keep slashing their construction plans in an effort to reduce a huge backlog of unsold homes.

The housing meltdown has been exacerbated by a sharp increase in mortgage foreclosures, which dumps more homes on an already glutted market, and tighter lending standards by banks, which is making it more difficult to qualify for a mortgage. LINK

CNN is also reporting that consumer confidence if rising, LINK
and I don’t believe it. A gain “to 88.6 in December from a revised 87.8 in November” is representative of the holiday spending and even that was dismal and below expectations. From the broader view, inflation is rising at unprecedented rates in conjunction with stagnant wages, compounded by a decrease in public assistance programs, cuts to Medicaid for schools, a second veto of the Child HealthCare Bill - and Bush is the most admired man in America? If this is the consensus of the public, then the misinformation and propaganda spread by the MSM is obviously distorting the perception of the average American.

Granted, the Gallup Poll posted which almost appears to be a disclaimer as to why Bush won the poll, stating that:

Bush wins despite just 10% of Americans naming him, which is two points more than his predecessor, Bill Clinton, receives. That score is Bush’s lowest in the seven years he has been named most admired man, and the fact that it is enough to win suggests that no dominant male personality has captured the public’s admiration this year. LINK

Even with the “disclaimer”, as we watch Pakistan descend in chaos due to Bush’s foreign policy failures and causalities increasing in Afghanistan - and a public that has expressed their revulsion for the War in Iraq, Bush being named as America’s most admired man is absurd on its face, and we all know it, yet Gallup hasn’t been challenged to run a poll that will offer a truly representative rating of George. W. Bush. Let then run a poll, right now as we see oil increasing by the day and our economy sliding backwards on who is the worst President in American History, or rate his foreign and domestic policy as viewed by the average American, not the elitists who worship a President that spares no one but the rich, and then maybe our confidence will return to the polls, but right now, their claim that Bush is “admired in America” is simply a distortion of the truth propped-up by the MSM refusing to tell America the facts rather than spin and propaganda.

For years, the Russians have been calling Bush the “Master of Disaster” - and for America, those words ring loud and clear.

William Cormier

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