links for 2010-12-29

The Nielsen numbers are in for 2010, and in the battle for cable news ratings supremacy, Fox News took the title for the ninth year in a row — bludgeoning the competition for another year.

The blowout comes on the heels on Fox News’ surging 2009, when the News Corp.-owned channel posted its highest-rated year in the network’s 13-year history. (Overall, cable news audiences were down across the board — though FNC's decline was from a high-water mark.)

+++++++

Roger Ailes has left a permanent legacy in Fox News

An issue of interest to two or more states can lead to a compact. It works this way: State legislatures approve a proposal, the states agree on the parts of mutual concern (such as buying insurance across state lines), then the compact is dispatched to Washington for ratification by Congress and the president (though the need for White House assent isn’t spelled out in the Constitution). Ratification turns the compact into federal law.

However, there’s a bigger reason for forming a compact against Obamacare. By banding together, states would have far more political clout in Washington. Backers of the health care compact figure they need more than 20 states to pressure Washington to go along. Their assumption is members of Congress (even Democrats who support Obamacare) would be inclined to vote for a formal request from their home state. Members who oppose Obama-care would vote for it as well.

++++++

This sounds like a feasible idea. The states need to get crackin'

U.S. home foreclosures jumped in the third quarter and banks' efforts to keep borrowers in their homes dropped as the housing market continues to struggle, U.S. bank regulators said on Wednesday.

The regulators said one reason for the increase in foreclosures is that banks have "exhausted" options for keeping many delinquent borrowers in their homes through programs such as loan modifications.

Newly initiated foreclosures increased to 382,000 in the third quarter, a 31.2 percent jump over the previous quarter and a 3.7 percent rise from a year ago, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency and the Office of Thrift Supervision said in their quarterly mortgage report.

The number of foreclosures in process increased to 1.2 million, a 4.5 percent increase from the second quarter and a 10.1 percent increase from a year ago, according to the regulators.
++++++
Obama concentrated on the disastrous ObamaCare while America burned jobs and now foreclosures.

It is the economy, stupid.

In October, Gary Shilling of A. Gary Shilling & Co., predicted that house prices would fall another 20%.

In the two months since, house prices have resumed their decline. Below, Gary outlines why he thinks the recent drops are just the beginning.

++++++

In California, if Democrats push a repeal or revision of Prop 13, housing prices will go into a free fall.

President Barack Obama enters the new year with a growing number of Americans pessimistic about his policies and a growing number rooting for him to fail, according to a new national poll.

But a CNN/Opinion Research Corporation survey released Wednesday also indicates that while a majority of the public says Republican control of the House of Representatives is good for the country, only one in four say the GOP will do a better job running things than the Democrats did when they controlled the chamber.

Sixty-one percent of people questioned in the poll say they hope the president's policies will succeed.

"That's a fairly robust number but it's down 10 points since last December," says CNN Polling Director Keating Holland. "Twelve months ago a majority of the public said that they thought Obama's policies would succeed; now that number has dropped to 44 percent, with a plurality predicting that his policies will likely fail."
+++++
Obama either improves or he is looking at one term

Tucker Carlson again filled in for Sean Hannity on Hannity tonight, and couldn’t resist, as others already had, delving into the issue of President Obama praising Philadelphia Eagles owner Jeffrey Lurie for giving quarterback Michael Vick a second chance following Vick’s prison sentence for dog fighting. And while Carlson said he “believe[s] fervently in second chances,” he didn’t in Vick’s case. At all.

Carlson differentiated between Vick and others because Vick “killed dogs…in a heartless and cruel way.” This is true. But what Carlson believed to be the proper punishment for Vick is sure to get some attention:

“I think, personally, he should have been executed for that.”

+++++++

Guess Tucker never watches LOCKUP on MSNBC – there even more characters there which should be considered before Vick