So, after all those hundreds of billions of dollars, now Obama tells us there are no “shovel ready” projects…

Bachman: the $5.4 million woman. Amazing fund raising total.

Obama’s favorite fat cats, GE, got $24.9 million in stimulus funds.

Whitman makes the un-answerable argument against Brown in CA:

Whitman, 54, admitted she would benefit as an investor, then fired back at the 72-year-old former governor, who has been a fixture in state politics for decades.

“My track record is creating jobs,” she said. “My business is creating jobs. Your business is politics. You have been doing this for 40 years, and you have been part of a war on jobs in this state for 40 years.”

If the voters in California elect Brown, then they’ll get precisely what they deserve…absolute economic melt down. Its really just as stark as that…though I think that the people of CA will prove wiser than Brown hopes.

Obama attacks help Rove group raise bags of money. Thank you, Preisdent Obama; we couldn’t have done it without you!

Very interesting news:

… I was speaking with a prominent Tea Party member in the eastern part of the state she has been doing the heavy work of going door to door on days off to talk to voters, passing out literature and pushing her candidates. The report I got was astounding.

Over and over doors were about to be closed until the voter heard the Magic word “Republican”. When the voter heard that word, doors were opened, literature accepted and thumbs up given. Only one in four at best thought otherwise…

We’ll have to see how this pans out – though maybe our Matt, as a former Boston resident, can give us a better idea of what is going on in the Land O’ Liberals. But it does ring true – over and over again we’re seeing actions which indicate a Republican wave is building…not just in polling, but in stories of long-entrenched Democrats suddenly getting panicky and running attack ads against their unknown GOP opponents.

The Democrat story was that the GOP peaked too soon – my thinking is that we haven’t peaked, yet.

From the Wall Street Journal:

…so far the only thing that seems to be coming back is nostalgia for George W. Bush. A new CNN poll finds voters still believe Mr. Obama is a better president than Mr. Bush was, but by only 47% to 45%. That’s down from a whopping 23-point margin last year. “Democrats would be wise to think twice before bringing up the name of President Bush on the campaign trail this fall,” says CNN Polling Director Keating Holland.

And what are they doing? Running against President Bush. The American people wish they had President Bush and 5% unemployment back – you know, the sort of unemployment Democrats were saying was the worst disaster since Hoover?

Obama is doing the impossible – making Republicans popular.

Help him out here.

Details over at Noonan for Nevada – the nutshell: Defense contractor gets an earmark from Harry, donates $100,000.00 to Reid and Democrats.

From Bloomberg:

Hope has turned to doubt and disenchantment for almost half of President Barack Obama’s supporters.

More than 4 of 10 likely voters who say they once considered themselves Obama backers now are either less supportive or say they no longer support him at all, according to a Bloomberg National Poll conducted Oct. 7-10…

Obama and his Democrats are counting on fire up his supporters to stem the tide of defeat on November 2nd – this poll indicates their efforts might not bear much fruit.

As I’ve said before, Obama won because he was the “Un-Named Democrat” in the flesh. You might recall that for years an “Un-Named Democrat” always polled better than this or that specific Republican in Presidential polling. The reason for this, in my view, is that people could place their finest ideals on an unknown person and prefer that to the all too fallible reality of a particular Republican. Once, however, people had to choose between an actual Democrat and an actual Republican, things changed. Obama swept in to American politics with hardly anyone taking a really long, hard look at him…and as he was a blank canvass, and wasn’t what we had at the moment, people could think what they would of him.

And they loved it. He was Hope and Change; he was the man who would, at long last, bring an end to politics as usual and heal our divides. The only trouble was that Obama wasn’t a blank canvass – he was, and is, a very real man…and his reality is as a hard left ideologue.

As a hard left ideologue, Obama is a mish-mash of ignorance, bigotry and crack-brained schemes. Once in office, all of this came to the fore because Obama was unequipped to do anything else. Being what he is, he could not do other than increase the divisions between us; could not do other than advance the cause of liberal special interests; could not do other than advance liberal economic and social policies rejected by the broad majority of the electorate. As this all came out, people became disillusioned – and now its showing in polls.

I don’t think he’ll be able to get that back – not now, and not in 2012. Even if the economy improves, I think that Obama has built up a reservoir of distrust which he will not be able to overcome. He said – or, more accurately, had said about him – things which were not true of himself or his plans. People feel betrayed – feel that they were conned in to backing someone they would not otherwise have supported.

We’ll see how all this works out, but this decision on the part of Democrats to force Obama through the primaries and bamboozle the American majority in to backing him will, I think, prove the most self-destructive act in liberalism’s history.

From Zerohedge:

…we will cut straight to Levitin’s somewhat unpleasant conclusions: “Our speaker predicted that more and more lenders are likely to stop their foreclosure processes in both judicial and non-judicial states. He also expects more states’ attorney generals to get involved. At the federal level, it is possible than banking regulators might step in as there is legal and reputational risk for the banks involved. Ultimately, if these issues do in fact escalate, the Administration may try to broker some sort of settlement…

What will the deal be? Possibly a program of writing down the balance on the “underwater” mortgages. I’m not too sure of this, as it has a gigantic potential to backfire as those who are not underwater won’t get any benefit, and might not be pleased that others – often written off as deadbeats in one form or another – do. There is a lot of latent anger, I think, revolving around the whole housing crisis and I don’t think there ever will be an easy way out of it…though that will not stop Banksters and Bureaucrats from thinking there is.

Looking past the immediate problem, there is clearly a need to completely reform the way loans are written, the way mortgages are dealt with over time, and what mechanisms there are for when a homeowner can no longer afford the mortgage. A better power balance needs to be struck between borrower and lender, while protections have to be put in to place to lessen the chances of speculative bubbles in housing. Some of my ideas in this:

1. Allow for a genuine “deed in lieu of trust”. You can surrender your deed at any time, but that doesn’t relieve you of the financial burden if the sale price of the home doesn’t equal the mortgage amount. My attitude is that the loan is secured by the deed, and that means the bank either gets paid the money promised, or obtains the deed…not both. Allowing people to surrender their deed without penalty would put the borrower on a more level playing field with the lender and make it more likely that when problems arise, a mutually agreeable resolution is found.

2. Eliminate all taxes on the profit of a primary home sale taking place after 10 or more years of ownership – but tax at 50% the profits of any sale in less time. This will take away the incentive to try and “flip” houses rapidly and thus destroy the chances of the rapid price rises we saw just prior to the collapse. This doesn’t prevent an investor from doing what he wants, but it does make it less likely that a home owner will start to view his home as a piggy bank. Exceptions can be made if a home owner can demonstrate that the sale was due to a move of more than 50 miles from the current home location (this to cover people who are transferred or find employment outside their current area of residence).

3. Forbid the sale of mortgages. The bank that writes the loan, keeps the loan. It stays on the bank’s books from start to finish. This will eliminate such nonsense as the “mortgage backed securities” which played such a huge role in the bubble and the collapse, as well as forcing banks to actually underwrite their loans, rather than just shove through whatever they can, knowing they’ll palm it off a month later.

4. Forbid the seizure of a primary residence for failure to pay taxes. This is what I call the “castle” exemption – as in “a man’s home is”. Home ownership carries with it great responsibility and our primary residence is supposed to be a semi-sacred refuge for the family and the individual against the world. No one should lose their home to the government for failure to pay taxes – yes, you can put a man in jail for not paying, but his house should still be his when he gets out. The concept here is to invest in home ownership the understanding that its not just an “investment” but is, instead, a hearth…a man’s foot of earth from which he can face the world. Make home ownership that kind of ideal, and we’ll go a long way towards restoring a bit of sanity in our society.

Whatever we do, we can’t go on as we are. Whatever idiot band aid our Banksters and Bureaucrats use to get past “foreclosuregate”, it will be up to we, the people to think about what has happened, what we want and how to get there. My ideas here aren’t written in stone, but we should all turn our minds to the problem, because solving it will play a huge role in the future success of our nation…or of our failure, if we get it wrong.

From NRO’s The Corner:

…The Wilders case embodies the key Western litmus test for lively free-speech rights, and, predictably, there has been, for the most part, an eerie silence across Europe. Free-speech absolutists on the European liberal Left are terribly uninterested in flexing their political muscle to defend Wilders’s rights. It is a depressing time for the advocates of robust free speech in Europe…

I don’t think it really represents anything more than pure, unadulterated fear. The people going after Wilders are going after him because they are afraid of what Wilders might do – he might force action in defense of truth. The Ruling Class would much rather not.

You see, for them, its a matter of realizing that things will probably go on pretty much as usual at least through their life times – and that is all the Ruling Class really cares about; their own, personal lives. This is what comes of people who are post-Christian. Having no hope or thought for the life of the world to come, the only thing which matters is squeezing every last drop of pleasure out of this life.

The people of the European Ruling Class are a bundle of fears – they fear that the people of Europe will wake to their peril and demand action; they also fear that if they don’t put a lid on people like Wilders, the Islamists might attack the Ruling Class, directly. The risk of loss of power, wealth and even life because of someone like Wilders just can’t be tolerated – so, they go after him and attempt to shut him up.

As for the groups which claim to be for freedom and yet are silent about Wilders – that is simply because the groups which claim to be for freedom are bogus. The Catholic Church is for freedom; the Evangelical churches are for freedom; the United States Marine Corps is for freedom – if you’re looking for defense of freedom outside these sorts of institutions, then you’re looking in the wrong places. The only time you can be for freedom is when you recognize something greater than yourself – and when was the last time a liberal felt himself less than another?

Wilders will be fine. He’ll either awaken his fellow Europeans to their peril, and thus lead a revival…or he’ll be hounded out of public life and eventually emigrate to America, thus enriching us yet another good man.

The Thought Police are at it, again:

You wouldn’t call someone a w*tback, or the n-word. Saying “illegals” is just as bad.

The I-Word creates an environment of hate by exploiting racial fear and economic anxiety, creating an easy scapegoat for complex issues, and OK-ing violence against those labeled with the word.

People are not illegal. Let’s stop feeding the hate machine. Drop the I-Word.

The I-word? For crying out loud.

This is typical liberalism, though. Don’t ask why someone crossed the border illegally. Don’t address the issues how many people should come in to the United States; what skills they should have; what efforts they must make to integrate. Heck no! Leave all that aside – let’s focus, instead, on changing the terms of the debate. In other words, we’ll start a whole slew of new lies to obfuscate what is really going on, and then Liberalism will be happy.

Not just fascists, but penny ante fascists, at that. This is, as my late Godfather would have put it, crybaby stuff. Grow a pair, for crying out loud – its just a word, and aptly descriptive of those who have illegally entered the United States. If someone is offended by the use of such a word, I suggest they go back home and enter the country legally…that way we can all eventually call them something much better than “illegal”: American.