The Iraq War has unceremoniously disappeared
from "news".
Now, the issue has become the economy and
government health care.

I doubt that many of the people losing their houses for xmas will have this year as a positive highlight of life. They may have some change to spend before they go into rental (which will cost heaps until more homes come onto the rental market)

People lose their houses every year. It happens. But one weak sign in the face of dozens of strong signs doesn't mean the economy is in a tailspin. The media has been warning of economic collapse since 2003. And eventually, we will have some drawbacks in the economy and the media will be able to say I told you so, but if we can take what happened in 2001 and have one of the shallowest recessions ever, then I think we can take a little stagnation in the housing market. After all, we survived the same during the 90s with much less fanfare from the media.