The Hijacking of Conservatism by Big Government Progressives

from: Big Government

Hey conservatives, are you there?

No I don't mean you Republicans…I mean those of you who are lovers of liberty! I mean those of you who defend the Constitution, not just when it protects them but when it protects someone they don't like. I know you're out there. You may be a Libertarian or an independent, you may not be affiliated with any party at all. Ok you might be a Republican too, but I know you're there.

Well listen up!

I am not exactly sure at what moment the theft of the word "conservative" actually occurred, but I know it has happened. Through the rapid expansion of the size and role of government over the last 100 years the progressives not only infiltrated the Democrats but they infiltrated the Republicans too. They took over words like "liberal" and "conservative." In fact, if you go back far enough "liberal" used to mean "conservative" until they stole that word. Then all the people who loved freedom found a new home as conservatives, and the progressives came to steal that too.

You see, that is what they do. Progressives are wolves in whatever clothes they need to wear to fool everyone about what their actual agenda is. The reason they do this is because their real agenda is so antithetical to the mission statement of America that most Americans would marginalize the people who espouse these ideas if they knew who they were. Unfortunately, America's awareness has been dulled by years of addiction to the graft of big government.

If we are not only to survive but thrive as a nation we must separate the progressives who hate freedom from the conservatives that love it. Only then will we know who's who.

How do we do that? Well conservatives love the Constitution, so let's start there.

The First Amendment guarantees the freedom of speech–not just the speech you like but the speech you don't, as well. Ripping from the headlines, let's look at the WikiLeaks saga. You may not like what Julian Assange is saying, but those who want to peg him as a te...

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http://www.buzzbox.com/preview/the-hijacking-of-conservatism-by-big-government-progressives/?id=22201782

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Sarah Palin's Nomination Chances: A Reassessment

from: NY Times: Politics

Reassessing Sarah Palin's chances as a potential presidential candidate heading into a new election cycle.

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http://www.buzzbox.com/preview/sarah-palin-s-nomination-chances-a-reassessment/?id=22207999

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Breitbart.tv » Georgia Democrat Compares GOP to KKK

Anyone surprised by this kind of rhetoric? Amazingly this guy's defending a party whose support for abortion has resulted in genocide on his own people...

http://www.breitbart.tv/georgia-democrat-compares-gop-to-kkk/

Christians targeted in Iraq

The religion of peace strikes again...

from: AlJazeera: World News

While explosions target Christians across Baghdad, killing 2, government says it will protect them.

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http://www.buzzbox.com/preview/christians-targeted-in-iraq/?id=22182028

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Italy bans use of plastic shopping bags as retailers warn of chaos at the checkouts

More ridiculous nanny state BS from the EU...

from: Daily Mail: World News

Currently Italian shoppers use about 20 billion bags a year – more than 330 per person – and about one fifth of the total used in Europe.

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http://www.buzzbox.com/preview/italy-bans-use-of-plastic-shopping-bags-as-retailers-warn-of-cha/?id=22182657

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Chevy Volt, Nissan Leaf Post Small December Sales

from: CNBC

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http://www.buzzbox.com/preview/chevy-volt-nissan-leaf-post-small-december-sales/?id=22191699

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Barnes & Noble: e-books take lead in online sales | Reuters

The Barnes & Noble nook, a Wireless eBook Reader, is seen during a news conference in New York October 20, 2009.

Credit: Reuters/Shannon Stapleton

NEW YORK | Thu Dec 30, 2010 12:46pm EST

(Reuters) - Barnes & Noble Inc said that sales of digital books made through its website now exceed those of traditional books that it sells online.

Barnes & Noble, which introduced its Nook electronic reader last year to compete with Amazon.com Inc's Kindle, said customers bought or downloaded 1 million e-books via the Nook on Christmas Day.

A spokeswoman for Barnes & Noble said that figure included free e-books, but that most were paid downloads.

Barnes & Noble, which put itself up for sale last summer, is under pressure to show that its share of the e-books market is growing fast enough to mitigate a longstanding industry-wide decline in book sales. Barnes & Noble says it has a 20 percent share of the e-books market.

The top U.S. bookseller also said the various versions of the Nook devices were now its best-selling product, echoing claims earlier this week by Amazon that the most recent version of the Kindle was its bestselling item ever.

Both companies do not divulge exact sales figures. The sales numbers compare the devices to items within a category, such as individual books or CDs, rather than any category as a whole.

Analysts estimate that Barnes & Noble has sold about 2 million Nooks since the device's launch, while the Kindle, launched in 2007, is thought to have sold about 6 million devices.

Barnes & Noble makes most of its book sales at its 717 namesake stores in the United States. In the quarter that ended on October 30, retail location sales were more than five times greater than on its website, according to its most recent quarterly report.

Barnes & Noble shares were down 5 cents, or 0.3 percent at $14.26 in midday trading on the New York Stock Exchange.

(Reporting by Phil Wahba. Editing by Robert MacMillan)

Barnes & Noble: e-books take lead in online sales | Reuters

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Media Matters’ Chris Christie Freakout 2010 - Big Journalism

This is just good stuff from Big Journalism....

Media Matters’ Senior Fellow Eric Boehlert is apoplectic because Chris Christie went on vacation to Disney World when a blizzard hit New Jersey.

I am almost positive that Boehlert’s job description in the Senior Fellows sacred Buffalo Bob skin-bound job manual reads: Obsess over conservative dudes. It’s been his entire focus for the past several days, giving Andrew Breitbart a reprieve. It’s a good thing that Media Matters doesn’t pride itself on consistency, because some may be wondering where this lefty tenacity was when Kathleen Blanco hemmed and hawed during Hurricane Katrina when she should have been calling out the National Guard, something for which Bush was blamed.

No, “NJ” didn’t call out the National Guard. Chris Christie called out the National Guard because that’s the job of the governor. Of course, I don’t expect a “senior fellow” who so zealously attempts debate on the matter to actually know what he’s talking about if he comes from Media Matters. Soros pays him to be persistent, not knowledgeable, folks.

Media Matters of course loyally defended Blanco even though Blanco and Nagin’s (and Brown’s) ineffectiveness made this national disaster a catastrophe. I would say “and now MMFA assails Christie for that which they defended Blanco,” except doing so compares Chris Christie’s performance and Blanco’s performance which is illogical because they are not equal. Christie is employing all his state’s resources and didn’t have to be prodded by the President (curiously, MMFA doesn’t assail Obama for being out of town when the massive blizzard hit) to call out the National Guard.

Says Christie spokesman:

“Yes, this was a big snow, but we are a northeastern state, and we get plenty of snow, including heavy hits like this,” he wrote in an e-mail to The Hill. “But the sky really is not falling, and we’ll get through this just as we always have, notwithstanding complaints from opportunistic partisans like Lesniak.”

Christie appears to be doing as much as he can with state resources, but it doesn’t help when communities are waiting for the disbursement of federal emergency funds. New Jersey’s finances have been mismanaged for years with Christie walking into an $11 billion dollar budget deficit.

After slashing the budget and making ends meet the man, like anyone, is entitled to a vacation just as President Obama is entitled to a vacation … another one. For which we all pay. MMFA’s criticism of Christie rests upon the presupposition that Christie isn’t doing anything, which is why their hollow criticism is so comedically false.

Interestingly, they say nothing of Michael Bloomberg’s response. Bloomberg’s response is actually less about response post-blizzard and more about what he did leading up to the storm:

Overnight, it seems, the avenues of Manhattan, already choked with motor vehicular traffic, are losing a lane to accommodate new curbside bike lanes. Under the new plan, cars and trucks that elect to park now do so in an essential limbo – in “non-spaces” between the bike lane and the leftmost lane of traffic.

Work on the project, which began in June, has now been completed on First Avenue on the East Side and Columbus on the West but is ongoing. Eventually both sides will meet in the middle, hampering the flow of traffic on all the major arteries.

Yes, I’m sure the narrow streets due to the bike paths are much easier through which emergency vehicles to travel.

The remarks on Twitter have been comical, “Bloomberg takes salt from your food but not the snow from your sidewalk,” and this from Scott Ott:

I realize that there is only so much officials can do when hit with 20 inches of snow in such a short period of time and while I know how frustrating it can be (hey – in St. Louis city the side streets aren’t plowed AT ALL, EVER, folks, so we win Blizzard!), Bloomberg seems to be receiving a lot more flack that MMFA is, of course, ignoring.

But Soros isn’t paying MMFA to go after Democrats.

Media Matters’ Chris Christie Freakout 2010 - Big Journalism

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Allstate Sues Countrywide Over $700 Million Investment - BusinessWeek

Does Countrywide sound familiar to you? Yeah, they're the same company that was giving preferential loans to Chris Dodd, Barney Frank, and so many others...

Dec. 28 (Bloomberg) -- Allstate Corp. sued Bank of America Corp. and its Countrywide mortgage unit over $700 million in residential mortgage-backed securities the insurer purchased, claiming Countrywide misrepresented the investments.

“The defendants knew the loans offloaded onto Allstate were a toxic mix of loans given to borrowers that could not afford the properties, and thus were highly likely to default,” Allstate said in a complaint filed in federal court in Manhattan yesterday.

Allstate, based in Northbrook, Illinois, said in the complaint that the mortgage-backed securities, purchased from March 2005 to June 2007, suffered “drastic and rapid loss in value” when large numbers of homeowners began to default on their mortgages.

The suit, which seeks unspecified damages, alleges fraud, negligent misrepresentation and violation of U.S. securities laws. In addition to Bank of America and Countrywide, Allstate names as defendants former Countrywide officials including former chairman and chief executive officer, Angelo Mozilo.

“We are still reviewing the complaint, but this unfortunately appears to be a situation where a sophisticated investor is looking for someone to blame for a downturn in the economy and losses on an investment it made,” Bill Halldin, a spokesman for Charlotte, North Carolina-based Bank of America, said in a statement.

Outstanding Claims

Bank of America and Countrywide have been sued by the purchasers of more than $375 billion of securities, Bank of America said in a Nov. 5 regulatory filing. The bank acquired Countrywide Financial Corp. for $4.2 billion in July 2008.

Allstate, the biggest publicly-traded U.S. home and auto insurer, returned to profit last year after investment declines pushed the company into a $1.7 billion loss in 2008. The insurer, led by Chief Executive Officer Thomas Wilson, had about $102 billion of investments at the end of the third quarter.

Liberty Mutual Insurance Co., a Boston-based competitor of Allstate’s, is also seeking damages in lawsuits over mortgage- related investments that soured during the financial crisis. In July, Liberty Mutual sued Goldman Sachs Group Inc. in federal court, accusing the brokerage of misleading investors in 2007 when it sold preferred stock in Fannie Mae, the government- sponsored source of home-loan financing.

‘Mixing and Matching’

In its complaint, Allstate claimed that Countrywide began ignoring its own underwriting standards in 2003 in an effort to increase its share of the home mortgage market. The company adopted an internal strategy to match any mortgage product feature offered by a competitor, Allstate said.

“By mixing and matching the worst features of mortgage products from different competitors, Countrywide’s composite product offering became very aggressive within the industry,” Allstate said.

Countrywide misled investors about its underwriting guidelines, the rate at which mortgaged properties were owner- occupied, the value of the mortgaged homes and the widespread use of exceptions to the underwriting process to circumvent guidelines, Allstate said in the complaint.

The case is Allstate Insurance Co. v. Countrywide Financial Corp., 10-cv-9591, U.S. District Court, Southern District of New York (Manhattan).

--With assistance from Hugh Son and Andrew Frye in New York. Editors: Mary Romano, Glenn Holdcraft.

To contact the reporter on this story: Bob Van Voris in New York at rvanvoris@bloomberg.net.

To contact the editor responsible for this story: David E. Rovella at drovella@bloomberg.net.

Allstate Sues Countrywide Over $700 Million Investment - BusinessWeek

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Kooky Dems Celebrate Recess Appointment of "Gingrich-Buster"

Our new Deputy Attorney General, appointed by Obama during a recess and there absent any Senatorial oversight, was neck-deep in the ongoing AIG fraud that's cost our country billions of dollars and counting. But to Dems, that isn't what's important. After all, this guy went after Gingrich.

by David Waldman

Thu Dec 30, 2010 at 10:48:03 AM PST

The Hill notes yesterday's recess appointment of James Cole to a Deputy Attorney General position:

Cole's nomination to the second-ranking post at the Department of Justice had been held over objections from Republicans, who raised concerns over his tenure as an independent monitor of insurance giant AIG between 2005 and 2009. The federal government bailed out the company in 2008.

Republican senators also quibbled with a 2002 report that Cole wrote advocating civilian trials for terror suspects. The GOP has objected to trials in civilian courts for any of the detainees held in Guantánamo Bay as well as others accused of acts of terror.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) attempted to confirm Cole by unanimous consent during the lame-duck session, but GOP Sen. Saxby Chambliss (Ga.) objected.

And of course, Republicans with bigger mouths (but no vote in the matter) have more spectacular thoughts about Cole:

Rep. Peter King (R-N.Y.), the incoming chairman of the Homeland Security Committee, has angrily denounced President Obama’s recess appointment of James Cole as deputy attorney general.

King called Cole’s appointment “absolutely shocking” and said it might be one of the worst appointments Obama will make during his presidency.

“I strongly oppose the recess appointment of James Cole to lead the national security team at the Department of Justice,” King said in a statement. “The appointment indicates that the Obama Administration continues to try to implement its dangerous policies of treating Islamic terrorism as a criminal matter.”

Unstated, for some reason, among the Republican objections is something else James Cole treats as a criminal matter: corruption among public officials. In particular, some Republican ones:

Cole, [then] 44, was chosen for the sensitive post of outside counsel to the ethics subcommittee investigating Gingrich after assuring Republicans that he would be unafraid to go easy on the speaker if the evidence warranted.

But as the months went by, he found evidence of a distinctly different kind. It was he who collected and first analyzed enough of it, in documents and interviews, to force Gingrich last month to take the painful and long-resisted step of publicly admitting that he had brought discredit on the House. And Friday it was he who recommended what penalties should be imposed.

Given the political stakes, it was not surprising that the committee, made up of equal numbers of Republicans and Democrats, would resort to bitter partisanship at the hearing. But even as the members hurled accusations at one another, no one -- notably no Republicans -- suggested that Cole's approach had been unfair.

Cole was the guy who unraveled the hidden, interlocking network of non-profits used by disgraced former Speaker Newt Gingrich (popularly referred to as "Newt, Inc.") to finance a jet-setting political lifestyle that, once revealed, forced him from office and brought down a $300,000 fine on his head.

With Gingrich thinking himself sufficiently rehabilitated to run for president -- even while still engagedin his favorite fundraising hucksterism -- it couldn't hurt to have someone around in a prominent position at the Justice Department who knows him as well as Cole does.

Daily Kos: Gingrich-buster among President Obama's recess appointments

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Disgusting. Assailants File Complaint Against US Marine After Iraq War Vet & His Wife Were Brutally Beaten By Gang Members

Personally, I'm in favor of giving Marines the OK to beat the snot out of teenage gangs who physically attack them and their families. Just like the rest of us.

Federico Freire and wife, Kalyn, were looking forward to their first date when he returned from Afghanistan.

But the date turned into a nightmare after 300 teens waited for them outside a movie theater and beat Kalyn unconscious.

Iraq war veteran Federico Freire and wife, Kalyn, pictured above were attacked Saturday outside a movie theater in Bradenton, Fla., by a group of unruly teenagers. (FoxNews.com).

It was their first date out since his return home from the Iraq War.
FOX News reported:

He was an Iraq war veteran home on leave in time for Christmas. She was looking forward to a night out with her husband after so much time apart.

But a group of teenagers had other plans for Federico and Kalyn Freire, who were assaulted outside a Florida movie theater after asking the teens to be quiet during a movie on Christmas Day.

Federico Freire, a 28-year-old Marine, and Kalyn Freire were attacked after the couple attended a showing of “Little Fockers” on Saturday in Bradenton, Fla.

“The saddest part about it was that this was our first date night together in a long time,” Freire’s wife, Kalyn, said in an interview Wednesday with FoxNews.com. “We were just looking to spend some time together.”

When they were asked to be quiet, some of teens began cussing. Later outside the theater, Freire looked over at his wife and saw a young male with his shirt off punch her in the face, knocking her out.

20 year-old Destiny McNeil was arrested outside the Royal Palm Movie Theater. (ABC Action News)

Now, one of the young girls involved in the beatdown has filed a complaint against the US Marine.
Brandenton.com reported:

A 14-year-old girl who was told to be quiet by a Marine and his wife on Christmas night at a local theater during a movie has filed a battery complaint with the Manatee County Sheriff’s Office.

The Marine, Federico Freire. 27, denied the girl’s charge, and the sheriff’s office will not pursue the complaint, saying there were inconsistencies in the girl’s statement and that the case is closed.

“We investigated the complaint, and there isn’t even enough there to send to the State Attorney’s Office,” said sheriff’s office spokesman Dave Bristow.

Brittnee Collins, of Bradenton, filed a complaint Tuesday stating she was struck in the lip by an unknown man outside the Carmike Royal Palm 20 theater after words were exchanged with Freire’s wife, according to the sheriff’s office report.

Collins depicted a slightly different version of events after Freire, who is on a two-week leave from Afghanistan, and his wife, Kayln, went public with their story.

Collins said in an interview with the Bradenton Herald on Wednesday that Freire and his wife were viewing the movie while she and her younger family members were getting up and down to get snacks.

Collins, who was sitting in front of Freire, said Freire told the youths to shut up, and then told one of the juveniles he has was going to slit her throat.

“That’s when, I’m like, you don’t need to talk to her like that. She’s young,” Collins said.

Kayln Freire went to get the manager and the row of juveniles was subsequently kicked out of the theater. The teens contacted parents outside for a ride.

Collins then followed Kayln Freire and said, “‘Did you say something to me because I didn’t say anything to you.’ She gets in my face. She’s telling me that if I touch her she’s going to whoop my (butt).”

At that point Freire comes to get his wife and leaves.

Of course, this was all a lie. The gang waited for the Marine and his wife after the movie.
But, now they’re playing like they were the victims.
Disgusting.

Disgusting. Assailants File Complaint Against US Marine After Iraq War Vet & His Wife Were Brutally Beaten By Gang Members Outside Theater | The Gateway Pundit

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Joe Scarborough is a Self-Important Blowhole

Joe Scarborough Reluctant to Save the Country

MSNBC's Joe Scarborough, an ex-congressman, says he"may feel the need to run for office again" if the "absence of leadership" among Washington dingbats worsens. Obviously if he ran for anything, the country would be saved within minutes.

Send an email to Jim Newell, the author of this post, at newell@gawker.com.

Joe Scarborough Reluctant to Save the Country

Tea Party Nation Founder Brands NAACP As 'Liberal Hate Group'

One question - Aren't they?

Judson Phillips, head of Tea Party Nation, recently released his picks for 2010's "top five liberal hate groups." Among them is the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, a selection that is unlikely to smooth the rocky relationship that has developed between the two organizations over the past year.

"To the NAACP, anyone to the right of Karl Marx is a racist," Phillips writes in a post on his website.

In July, NAACP President Ben Jealous addressed mounting complaints from his members that the Tea Party promotes racist rhetoric, resolving to confront the issue.

"Expel the bigots and racists in your ranks or take the responsibility for them and their actions," Jealous urged the Tea Party at the time. "We will no longer allow you to hide like cowards and hide behind signs that say 'Lynch Our President' or anyone else."

Later that week on CNN, Tea Party Express spokesman Mark Williams shot back that the NAACP itself was racist, not the Tea Party.

Williams's subsequent attempt to back up that claim only served to further the perception that he himself harbors racist sentiments, and ultimately resulted in his expulsion from the larger Tea Party Federation. He resigned from his official post within the week.

In October, the NAACP released findings from their study on the alleged ties between hate groups and the Tea Party. "The result of this study contravenes many of the Tea Parties' self-invented myths, particularly their supposedly sole concentration on budget deficits, taxes and the power of the federal government," reads the introduction to "Tea Party Nationalism," a joint project with the Institute for Research and Education on Human Rights. "Instead, this report found Tea Party ranks to be permeated with concerns about race and national identity and other so-called social issues."

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Tea Party Express called the findings "ridiculous and an affront to the millions of Americans who are deeply concerned about the growth and intrusiveness of the federal government with the accompaniment of higher taxes, more onerous government regulations, high annual deficits and a skyrocketing national debt."

Despite the ongoing feud between the Tea Party and the NAACP, Phillips ranks the group last on his list of liberal hate groups. According to Phillips, organizations like the SEIU, the Department of Homeland Security, the American Civil Liberties Union, and the Southern Poverty Law Center, are all more nefarious than the NAACP.

Check out Talking Points Memo's coverage for more on Phillips's "liberal hate group" index.Tea Party Nation Founder Brands NAACP As 'Liberal Hate Group'

Robert Reich Agitates for Democratic Lebensraum

Please do allow me to sum up for you. The Democrat gameplan for 2011 seems to be two-pronged: a) continue as best they can to stick it to the average American taxpayer, while b) blaming every problem on the newly elected Republicans. In other words, Democrats will continue to ignore reality so they can focus, along with their media buddies, on attacking Republicans. When, oh when, will the people ever learn that we can only have peace if the Democrats are given some reasonable distance from these TEA Party riffraff. A quest for political lebensraum. DC would be fine.

What will happen to the US economy in 2011? If you're referring to profits of big corporations and Wall Street, next year is likely to be a good one. But if you're referring to average American workers, far from good.

The two American economies -- the Big Money economy and the Average Working Family economy -- will continue to diverge. Corporate profits will continue to rise, as will the stock market. But typical wages will go nowhere, joblessness will remain high, the ranks of the long-term unemployed will continue to rise, the housing recovery will remain stalled, and consumer confidence will sag.

The big disconnect between corporate profits and jobs is likely to continue because America's big businesses are depending less and less on U.S. sales and U.S. workers. Their big profits are coming from two sources: (1) growing sales in China, India, and other fast-growing countries, and (2) slimmed-down US payrolls.

In a typical recovery, profits lead to more hiring. That's because in a typical recovery, American consumers head back to the malls -- and their buying justifies more hires. Not this time. All the hype about Christmas sales over the last few weeks masked the fact that American consumers demanded bargain-basement prices. And the price-cutting dramatically reduced sellers' margins. In short, profits aren't coming from American consumers -- and profits won't be coming from American consumers in 2011.

Most Americans don't have the dough. They're still deep in debt, can't borrow against their homes, and have to start saving for retirement.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average is rising because of foreign sales. General Motors is now making more cars in China than in the US, and two-thirds of its total sales are coming from abroad. When it went public last month it boasted that soon almost half its cars will be made around the world where labor is less than $15 an hour.

Walmart isn't doing especially well in America but Walmart International is booming. And Walmart is hiring like mad outside the US.

General Electric is keeping its payrolls down in the US but plans to invest half a billion dollars in Brazil and hire 1,000 Brazilians, and invest $2 billion in China.

Corporate America is in a V-shaped recovery. That's great news for investors and everyone whose savings are mainly in stocks and bonds. It's also great news for executives and Wall Street traders, whose pay is linked to stock prices. All can expect a banner 2011.

But most American workers are trapped in an L-shaped recovery. That's bad news for the Main Streets and small businesses in 2011. It's also a bad omen for home prices and sales, and everyone whose savings are mainly in their homes.

Home prices in major metropolitan areas sank last month, the third straight month-to-month drop. I expect home price declines to continue next year. We're in a double-dip housing market, largely because unemployment remains so bad that millions of Americans can't pay their mortgages.

None of this bodes well for US employment next year. I expect the official unemployment rate to remain around 9 percent.

In other words, whether 2011 is a great year economically depends which economy you're in - the one that's rising with the profits of big business and Wall Street, or the one that will continue to struggle with few jobs and lousy wages.

Sadly, the next Congress is unlikely to do much to reverse any of this. Most Republicans and too many Democrats are dependent on corporate America and Wall Street. Their version of tax reform is to cut taxes on the wealthy and on big corporations, and either raise them on everyone else (sale and property taxes are already on the rise) or cut spending on programs working families depend on.

At some point, perhaps, the disconnect between America's two economies will become so big and so obvious it can no longer be ignored. Progressives, enlightened Tea Partiers, Independents, organized labor, minorities, and the young form a new progressive movement designed to reconnect America.

One can always hope.

Robert Reich is the author of Aftershock: The Next Economy and America's Future, now in bookstores. This post originally appeared at RobertReich.org

Robert Reich: New Year's Prediction