CNN Poll: President’s approval nearing 50%

President Barack Obama’s approval rating, a crucial indicator of his reelection chances, is on the rise, according to a new national survey.

A CNN/ORC International Poll out Tuesday also indicates that the partisan battle over extending the payroll tax cut may be partially responsible for the jump in the president’s numbers.

Full results (pdf)

According to the survey, 49% of Americans approve of the job Obama’s doing in the White House, up five points from last month, with 48% saying they disapprove, down six points from mid-November. The 49% approval rating is the president’s highest since May, when his number hit 54% thanks to a bounce following the killing of Osama bin Laden. Since then, in CNN polling, Obama’s approval rating has hovered in the mid-40s.

“President Barack Obama’s approval rating appears to be fueled by dramatic gains among middle-income Americans,” says CNN Polling Director Keating Holland. “The data suggest that the debate over the payroll tax is helping Obama’s efforts to portray himself as the defender of the middle class.”

Obama’s gains have come at the expense of the Republicans in Congress and the GOP in general. By a 50% to 31% margin, people questioned say they have more confidence in the president than in congressional Republicans to handle the major issues facing the country. Obama held a much narrower 44% to 39% margin in March.

And the GOP’s overall favorable rating has dropped to six points, to 43%, since June, while the Democrats’ positive rating remained steady at 55%.

“The Democrats do particularly well among middle income Americans, while the Republicans win support only from the top end of the income scale,” adds Holland.

Overall, only 16% say they approve of the job Congress is doing, with 83% giving lawmakers from both parties the thumbs down. The Congressional disapproval rating has topped 80% since August in CNN polling.

The survey indicates that Obama remains personally popular, with three-quarters saying they approve of him as a person.

“Overall, it’s not a bad position for an incumbent to be in as the calendar turns to an election year, but there are many months to go,” says Holland.

The CNN poll was conducted by ORC International from Dec. 16 to Dec. 18, with 1,015 adult Americans questioned by telephone. The survey’s overall sampling error is plus or minus three percentage points.

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(via HuffPo)

Researchers in the UK have found that 92 percent of over 100 public baby changing tables carry traces of cocaine. Say what?

The study was conducted by a team of Real Radio journalists from a local station in North West England. While not the most science-y of scientists, they used specialist wipes to test facilities in shopping centers, hospitals, police stations, courts, churches, supermarkets and department stores.

Their efforts were fueled by last month’s announcement that the UK is the cocaine capital of Europe. Changing tables are only the latest germy hotspot being tested.

As Jezebel’s Margaret Hartmann points out:

“Considering that money (and plenty of other things we touch) are coated in traces of the drug too, it seems unlikely that the contamination is solely due to addicts doing lines off of Koala Kare changing stations. Though, you should still be cautious about putting your precious child directly on those tables, because according to our scientific research they’re coated in baby poop.”

So thank you British journalists. We were already icked out about putting our kids down on those stations. Now, we’re thinking a nice quiet corner of a bookstore, a hidden booth at a restaurant, a park bench… really anywhere, may be a better bet.

Via Jezebel

SOURCE

STORY HERE 

(via The Economist)

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ON CHRISTMAS DAY, millions of Britons will gather around the television to watch “Downton Abbey”, a nostalgic soap opera set in the days of country houses and dignified butlers. Back then, gentlemen cultivated the land (and occasionally went to war); they did not run a business, a task far beneath their station. In living memory, some middle-class Britons would not allow delivery boys to come to their front door; the tradesmen’s entrance was at the side.

This sniffy attitude towards commerce was not confined to Britain, nor did it die out with liveried footmen and debutante balls. Aristocrats across Europe were equally suspicious of the nouveaux riches. And their modern descendants, the middle-class intelligentsia who populate the continent’s universities and staff its public sector, have a tendency to despise the businesspeople who generate the wealth needed to fund their way of living. There is great distaste at the idea that political choices should be dictated by “the markets”; investors should just hand over their money and not ask whether it will be paid back.

French politicians will defend to the death the agricultural subsidies granted to their farmers. After all, the farmers comprise la France profonde, the heartland of villages and vineyards. But the same politicians are withering about the idea that David Cameron, the British prime minister, might relegate Britain to the fringes of Europe in order to protect the country’s financial-services industry.

One can see a similar attitude in the debate about Germany’s role in creating the current euro-mess. Who are these Germans, with their work ethic, their competitive industrial sector and their success in exporting to Asia? Other Europeans may regard Germany with grudging admiration, but they see it less as an example to be copied than as a tiresome nag, forever blathering about fiscal probity. Let the Germans soil their hands with trade while the rest of us live off the prosperity it brings.

Perhaps these attitudes go all the way back to the ancient Greeks and Romans. Their elites had slaves to attend to their needs. Their lives were not idle, but the path to respectability was through military service or farming, rather than trade. However, it was the merchants bringing the grain from north Africa to Rome who kept the empire fed.

These attitudes persisted through the Middle Ages, when moneylending was a despised activity to be left to minorities like the Jews; sovereign risk in those days was the danger that the king would imprison or execute his creditors to avoid repayment. When mankind began to escape the Malthusian trap of subsistence living in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, the attitude towards the new industries was one of disgust for the “dark, Satanic mills”.

Admittedly, manufacturing is now seen in a rather more positive light. A far smaller part of the economy, it is bathed in nostalgia: real men making real things. Once a job on a production line was a soul-destroying drudge; nowadays that label has fallen on service-sector jobs in call centres and fast-food restaurants.

Apart from technology, the three most successful industries of the past 50 years have been finance, pharmaceuticals and energy. Look at the way those sectors are portrayed in films and in TV dramas and the same attitudes prevail. Financiers are unthinking brutes, whose obsession with numbers is a form of autism. Multinational drug companies are vast conspiracies selling products with fat margins and hiding their deadly side-effects. Energy companies are despoiling the planet.

All these industries are, of course, legitimate subjects for criticism. But such lofty attitudes towards commerce are easy to adopt in a relatively rich society, in which few have to worry where the next meal is coming from. Europeans have had a pretty privileged existence over the past half-century or so, riding on the back of America’s global dominance. But the economic power is shifting towards Asia, a region where many people are prepared to work hard to get ahead and business isn’t always a dirty word.

Eventually, the great estates like Downton Abbey fell into decay. The cost of maintenance soared while death duties depleted the owners’ capital; the servants found better-paying jobs in manufacturing. The aristocrats were forced to discover a head for business, turning their estates into safari parks and their conservatories into tea shops. As their populations age and their relative economic weight declines, Europeans may need a similar change in attitude towards the sordid business of earning a national living.

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It’s been 32 weeks since the first Republican presidential debate. Since then, a changing cast of contenders has faced off a dozen times across the country with millions watching at home.

Of the original combatants from that May 5 meeting in Greenville, S.C., only two, Ron Paul and Rick Santorum, remain. There have been four lead changes in national polls, two candidates drop out, four candidates join the field and billions of pixels poured out by reporters and pundits trying to make sense of it all.

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Morgan Stanley (MS: 15.23, +0.17, +1.13%) finally threw in the towel.

After months of denying that the big Wall Street investment bank had plans to announce across-the-board job cuts if business conditions didn’t improve, the firm announced Thursday morning that it will slash about 1,600 jobs, or a little more than 2% of its total workforce.

In July the FOX Business Network was first to report that Morgan was drawing up plans to slash jobs beyond the previously announced cuts of about 300 brokers from its “retail” division — which sells stocks and other securities to individual investors — if business conditions deteriorated. Morgan has the largest retail sales force with about 18,000 brokers.

The FOX Business report was initially denied by press officials at the firm as fear spread among bankers and traders that slowing business conditions were likely to be addressed through job cuts. Adding to the confusion: shares fluctuated wildly over the summer as investors speculated that Morgan was holding sovereign debt and other securities tied to several troubled European countries.

Morgan continues to deny that it has significant exposure to Europe, though today the firm finally confirmed its job cutting plans.

“As we conduct our year-end performance management process and evaluate the right size of the franchise for 2012, we anticipate the elimination of approximately 1,600 positions across the firm globally impacting all job levels — to take place early in the first quarter of 2012,” the firm said in a statement.

Shares of Morgan have fallen more than 40% this year; they rose a little less than 1% on the news.

Morgan isn’t the only firm to announce cutbacks as stiffer regulations and a slowing business environment crimp Wall Street profits. Nearly every major firm is paring back staff, including Morgan’s arch rival,  Goldman Sachs (GS: 92.93, -0.32, -0.34%).

Morgan CEO James Gorman has already announced that executives at his firm should expect much smaller bonuses this year, with some receiving no bonus at all.

“The government constraints put on this industry in terms of earning money has never been seen in any other industry,” said securities analyst Dick Bove. “And the result is they have to fire people. This isn’t specific or unique to Morgan Stanley.”

What makes Morgan’s situation unusual is the amount of confusion surrounding the job cuts, and the contingency plans that were in place. Some analysts have speculated that the firm didn’t want to concede it was likely to cut its staff so as not to give credibility to fears it may face losses tied to Europe.

Read more: http://trade.cc/rec

Developing…

SOURCE: CNBC

An exhaustive government survey of rape and domestic violence released on Wednesday affirmed that sexual violence against women remains endemic in the United States and in some instances may be far more common than previously thought.

Nearly one in five women surveyed said they had been raped or had experienced an attempted rape at some point, and one in four reported being beaten by an intimate partner. One in six women have been stalked, according to the report.

“That almost one in five women have been raped in their lifetime is very striking and, I think, will be surprising to a lot of people,” said Linda C. Degutis, director of the National Center for Injury Prevention and Control at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which conducted the survey. “I don’t think we’ve really known that it was this prevalent in the population.”

The study, called the National Intimate Partner and Sexual Violence Survey, was begun in 2010 by the C.D.C. with the support of the National Institute of Justice and the Department of Defense. The study, a continuing telephone survey of a nationally representative sample of 16,507 adults, defines intimate partner and sexual violence broadly.

The surveyors elicited information on types of aggression not previously studied in national surveys, including sexual violence other than rape, psychological aggression, coercion and control of reproductive and sexual health.

They also gathered information about the physical and mental health of violence survivors.

Sexual violence affects women disproportionately, the researchers found. One-third of women said they had been victims of a rape, beating or stalking, or a combination of assaults.

The researchers defined rape as completed forced penetration, forced penetration facilitated by drugs or alcohol, or attempted forced penetration. By that definition, 1 percent of women surveyed reported being raped in the previous year, a figure that suggests 1.3 million American women annually may be victims of rape or attempted rape.

That figure is significantly higher than previous estimates. The Rape, Abuse and Incest National Network last year estimated that 272,350 Americans were victims of sexual violence. And only 84,767 assaults defined as forcible rapes were reported in 2010, according to national statistics from the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

But men also reported being victimized in surprising numbers.

One in seven men have experienced severe violence at the hands of an intimate partner, the survey found, and one in 71 men — between 1 and 2 percent — have been raped, many when they were younger than 11.

A vast majority of women who said they had been victims of sexual violence, rape or stalking reported symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder, as did about one-third of the men.

Women who had experienced such violence were also more likely than women who had not to report having asthma, diabetes or irritable bowel syndrome. Both men and women who had been assaulted were more likely than those who had not to report frequent headaches, chronic pain, difficulty sleeping, limitations on activity, and poor physical and mental health.

“We’ve seen this association with chronic health conditions in smaller studies before,” said Lisa James, director of health for Futures Without Violence, a national nonprofit group based in San Francisco that advocates for programs to end violence against women and girls. “People who grow up with violence adopt coping strategies that can lead to poor health outcomes. We know that women in abusive relationships are at increased risk for smoking, for example.”

The survey found that youth itself was an important risk factor for sexual violence and assault. Some 28 percent of male victims of rape reported that they were first assaulted when they were no older than 10.

Only 12 percent of female rape victims were assaulted when they were 10 or younger, but almost half of female victims said they were raped before they turned 18. About 80 percent of rape victims reported that they were raped before age 25.

Rape at a young age was associated with another, later rape; about 35 percent of women who had been raped as minors were also raped as adults, the survey found.

More than half of female rape victims had been raped by an intimate partner, according to the study, and 40 percent had been raped by an acquaintance; more than half of men who had been raped said the assailant was an acquaintance.

The public release of the report was postponed twice, most recently on Nov. 28. The findings are based on completed interviews lasting about 25 minutes each; they were conducted in 2010 with 9,086 women and 7,421 men.

SOURCE 

In an interview with KOAA-TV, a local news channel from Colorado Springs, Colorado, President Obama says if Congress is not willing to pass legislation he wants, he will do it himself in order to win another term. Read the transcript below.

Rob Quirk, KOAA-TV: “And one year from today we will know if this a one-term or two-term president. So, I asked the president what will it take from now until then to not only win Colorado again, but reelection as well.”

President Obama: “Well, what we’re going to have to do is continue to make progress on the economy over the next several months. And where Congress is not willing to act, we’re going to go ahead and do it ourselves. But it would be nice if we could get a little bit of help from Capitol Hill.”

SOURCE 

Texas Rep. Ron Paul has surged to second place in a new Iowa poll of likely Republican caucus goers, just one percent behind former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, the current front-runner.

Paul has consistently placed in the top tier of Republican presidential candidates in recent Iowa polls. With Iowans heading to vote in only three weeks, Gingrich holds a razor-thin 22–21 lead.

The poll, conducted by Public Policy Polling, found weakening support for Gingrich among self-identified tea partiers, and a dramatic rise in Paul’s favorability rating.

“There are a lot of parallels between Paul’s strength in Iowa and Barack Obama’s in 2008 — he’s doing well with new voters, young voters, and non-Republican voters,” said PPP in an explanation of its poll’s findings.

Paul has taken aim at Gingrich with an ad alleging “serial hypocrisy” for changing his position on a variety of issues, including health care and global warming. The ad also targeted him for accepting millions from Freddie Mac, and for calling a budget proposal from Wisconsin GOP Rep. Paul Ryan “right-wing social engineering.”

Gingrich’s favorability rating has declined 19 points among Iowans since last week.

Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney placed third in the poll, at 16 percent. He was followed by Minnesota Rep. Michele Bachmann at 11 percent, Texas Gov. Rick Perry at 9 percent, former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum at 8 percent and former Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman at 5 percent.
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Federal accident investigators Tuesday called for a nationwide ban on the use of cell phones and text messaging devices while driving.

The recommendation is the most far-reaching yet by the National Transportation Safety Board, which in the past 10 years has increasingly sought to limit the use of portable electronic devices. It has recommended such bans for novice drivers, school bus drivers and commercial truckers.

The new recommendation, if adopted by states, would outlaw non-emergency phone calls and texting by operators of every vehicle on the road.

It would not apply to hand-free devices or to passengers.

SOURCE 

from CNBC.com

Fine whisky has been part of Scotland’s heritage for over 500 years, but it is only recently that the investment opportunities for its most famous export have become clear. With global demand for luxury whisky on the rise, putting your money in Scottish single malt could make you some pretty neat returns.

Jonnie Miles | Getty Images

“Over the last 10 to 15 years, the demand for whisky has just increased,” said director ofThe Whisky Exchange, Sukhinder Singh.

“My feeling is that the risk in whisky is quite low,” he said. “I can just feel the demand globally; even very recently I’m watching prices go wild over the past six months.”

While the US remains the top Scotch whisky importer, with more than $400 million sold there this year, Asia has seen the largest increase. Demand from Singapore rose 64 percent, making it the third largest importer, and in Taiwan demand was up 45 percent.

Whisky writer Jonny McCormick explained global interest to CNBC: “Just in the last couple of years we’ve seen new auctions open up by Bonhams in New York and in Hong Kong, and these sales are extremely popular. We’ve seen nearly 100 percent sales by lot and by value and the American collecting market is extremely lively. The Chinese and Japanese market is very popular.”

The Macallan distillery is one of Scotland’s most famous brands, and has become a strong name in whisky investment.

David Cox, director of fine & rare whiskies at the Macallan, told CNBC, “We were one of the early pioneers if you like, in the release and availability of very rare and old whiskies. As we released these onto the market, that, together with the reputation of the Macallan, attracted collectors and connoisseurs around the world.”

Cox also highlighted the increasing importance of less traditional markets.

“Russia has become a very, very important market for us,” he said. “There’s still many collectors in Europe and certainly North America as well, who are on the lookout for special Macallan bottlings. But as a proportion of the ones that we are releasing these days, certainly we are seeing a higher and higher percentage going to Asia-Pacific and to Russia.”

For the potential investor, names like the Macallan are a great bet; a 64-year-old Macallan auctioned last year for charity achieved a world-record price of $460,000. While of course not all bottles are fetching these kinds of prices, Singh says investors have a budget in mind—and enough space to house a collection—then getting into this market is easier than it used to be, and specialist shops and auctions are the places to be.

“It’s much easier now that it was a number of years ago,” he said. “As the demand for whisky has increased, more and more specialist whisky shops have cropped up.

“There are a number of auction houses.  I remember when I started there was only one, and there was only one auction a year. I think today there are three or four auction houses doing whisky and each of them are having maybe anywhere between three to four sales a year, which is quite a lot.”

“A collection of about 120-150 bottles … is a nice size collection. You’ll have a balance of some really standard stuff, you’ll have some very rare stuff which is quite expensive, but it’s a controllable size.”

READ THE REST AT CNBC 

(From Savage’s web site)

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TheSupreme Court said on Monday that it would decide whether Arizona’s tough law cracking down on illegal immigrants can take effect, a case arising from the fierce national debate on immigration policy ahead of next year’s presidential election.

The high court agreed to review a ruling that put on hold the key parts of the law signed by Republican Governor Jan Brewer in April 2010. The case has been closely watched because several other states have adopted similar laws.

The law requires police to check the immigration status of anyone they detained and suspected of being in the nation illegally. Other parts require immigrants to carry their papers at all times and ban people without proper documents from soliciting for work in public places.

The justices are likely to hear arguments in the case in April, with a ruling due by July. It could produce another contentious election-year ruling for the court, which also will decide President Barack Obama’s healthcare overhaul law.

About 11 million illegal immigrants are believed to be in the United States. Immigration has become a major political issue, especially in states such as Arizona that border Mexico, ahead of the presidential and other elections in November 2012.

Obama and other opponents, including many Democrats and civil rights groups, have criticized the law and said it could lead to harassment of Hispanic-Americans.

The Obama administration challenged the law on the grounds the federal government has exclusive control over immigration enforcement. A federal judge and an appeals courts agreed, putting on hold the disputed provisions.

The law’s supporters, including many Republicans, said states need to take aggressive action because the federal government has failed to do enough to stop the flow of illegal immigrants into the country.

SOURCE 

President Obama’s popularity is plummeting, with more U.S. voters disapproving of his job than approve it, according to a recent poll.

More than half of U.S. voters believe he is performing badly in his role as the country’s leader compared to 48 per cent last month.

And although Obama has predicted unemployment will continue to drop, nearly all voters – 94 per cent – say the economy is in bad shape.

Unpopular: Obama, pictured speaking about jobs during a tour of a building renovation near the White House earlier this month, is losing favour among voters

He announced during a television interview that the number of people out of jobs could drop to eight per cent by next year’s election – the lowest since he moved into the White House in 2008.

‘I think it’s possible,” Obama told CBS’s 60 Minutes in an interview set to air on Sunday.

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ens of thousands of Russians turned out in central Moscow and across the country Saturday to protest what they believe were rigged parliamentary elections.

United Russia, the party of Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, suffered big losses in the election, but retained its parliamentary majority. On Saturday, protesters chanted “Putin out,” according to a correspondent from state-run RIA Novosti news agency.

Between 20,000 and 25,000 protesters had gathered in the capital, Moscow, Ria Novosti said Saturday, citing police. There have been no reports of unrest and security has been tight.

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