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.

From Rasmussen:

With just three weeks to go until Election Day, Republicans hold an eight-point lead on the Generic Congressional Ballot.

Polling for the week ending Sunday, October 10, shows that 47% of Likely Voters would vote for their district’s Republican congressional candidate, while 39% prefer the Democrat…

Rasmussen figures the November 2nd electorate will be 35% GOP, 33% Dem, the rest Independents (with, as polling has found all year, a strong GOP tilt among this group). Personally, I think that underestimates the GOP total, but it is better to be cautious. I’ll just say I expect the GOP to do well on November 2nd, without making any public predictions as to who wins what.

My goodness, has Carl Paladino stirred up a firestorm. Tremendously useful, I’d have to say – nothing like forcing Catholics to do their thing. At the center of the matter is this – from Allahpundit:

“‘I unequivocally support gay rights. Unequivocally,’ said Paladino, clutching an American flag and marching up Fifth Avenue in New York’s annual Columbus Day Parade. But Paladino repeated his view, expressed earlier Monday on ABC and NBC, that children should be shielded from gay activities, especially their parades.

“‘Those guys in the gay pride parade who like to wear the little Speedos and do their grinding motion up there — children should not see that,’ Paladino said, wagging his finger for emphasis and calling his opponent, Democrat Andrew Cuomo, ‘wrong’ for taking part in New York City’s gay pride march and letting his children watch it.

“He denied that his comments Sunday night to Orthodox Jewish leaders — saying children should not be “brainwashed” to believe the gay lifestyle is ‘valid’ — amounted to homophobia or insensitivity toward gays. They simply mirror the teachings of the Catholic Church, the Catholic candidate said, adding that if Cuomo disagreed, ‘he should go see a priest.’”

And if Andrew is too busy to check with his parish priest (love to see a reporter ask him the name of his parish priest, but we’ll leave that aside), the Catechism of the Catholic Church has been handily placed on line:

The number of men and women who have deep-seated homosexual tendencies is not negligible. This inclination, which is objectively disordered, constitutes for most of them a trial. They must be accepted with respect, compassion, and sensitivity. Every sign of unjust discrimination in their regard should be avoided. These persons are called to fulfill God’s will in their lives and, if they are Christians, to unite to the sacrifice of the Lord’s Cross the difficulties they may encounter from their condition.

Homosexual persons are called to chastity. By the virtues of self-mastery that teach them inner freedom, at times by the support of disinterested friendship, by prayer and sacramental grace, they can and should gradually and resolutely approach Christian perfection.

While Paladino’s use of the word “brainwash” was ill-considered, what he was saying was just the plain and simple truth. He was, moreover, adhering to the teachings of the faith he belongs to. If Carl Paladino’s statements are homophobic, then Christianity and the Catholic Church are homophobic. But such is not the case.

Homosexual sex is objectively disordered. It is not a kind of sex people should engage in – no more than a heterosexual person should engage in adulterous sex. If you want to really cut down to the bone here, you should understand that a married man who has sex with another woman has actually done something worse in degree than a homosexual man who has sex with another homosexual – because the married man has not only engaged in objectively disordered sex, but has also broken solemn vow. Such a married man has not, however, done anything different in kind. While there are different degrees, wrong is always wrong – sex outside of the bounds of matrimony is wrong. Always and everywhere.

You can attempt to argue the point, but you’re never going to get around the truth here. “But Paladino can’t be in favor of gay rights – he’s opposed to gay marriage”. Well, marriage isn’t a right – nothing is a right if it takes more than one person to do it. “But I can’t be happy unless I express my sexuality as a homosexual”. If you really believe that, then I pity you for a fool – sex is not that important in the life of a man in full possession of his faculties and thus able to differentiate between true happiness and transient, physical pleasure. “But I want to love whom I choose”. Then love – indeed, you are commanded to do so; but love and sex are not the same thing.

Tolerance means I won’t go butting in where I’m not wanted. It is no office of mine – or of any Christian’s – to dictate to anyone what they shall or shall not do in the privacy of their own home. But tolerance is not the same as moral approval – and no Christian can approve of homosexual relations. We cannot, ever, agree to any action which would tend to instruct society that homosexual relations are morally the same as heterosexual relations. A “gay pride” parade does just that sort of thing – and more and more in our public schools there is pressure to instruct the children that homosexuality and heterosexuality are morally the same. This sort of thing isn’t a demand for tolerance, but an attempt to enforce a world view we reject.

Now, perhaps this world view will be enforced in spite of us. Maybe the solid majority of our fellow citizens will reject Christian teaching and we’ll continue to run riot in a morass of sexual excess…and then, eventually, our civilization will go senile and die. Like the ancient, pr-Christian world, we’ll attempt to stab ourselves out of stupor by getting more and more depraved; but death will the lot of that civilization, and after it dies, it will be found that we Christians are still there, and we’ll rebuild civilization again, just as we did before.

Meanwhile, we’re just going to keep right on going. We’ll continue to speak the truth. We’ll attempt to do so with love and mercy in our hearts (and thus Paladino really should regret the word “brainwash”), but we will speak it – now and forever. It is our duty – we can’t escape it.

UPDATE: Newsbusters notes the MSM is trying to tie Paladino’s comments to an entirely un-related attack on some gay men. Typical of the MSM: don’t think, just lob whatever anti-GOP bomb the DNC tells you to throw…

UPDATE II: Politics on the Hudson has this:

“I unequivocally have no other reservations about homosexuality and I abhor discrimination in any form. I enjoy a close relationship with my nephew who is gay and I certainly consider him to be a functional child of God,” said Paladino, whose nephew is working on his campaign.

Time for people to start to understand that failure to agree with the gay rights agenda does not equal hatred or fear of homosexuals.

UPDATE III: Michael Gaynor wonders if Cuomo will either back Paladino’s Catholic views, or cease to call himself Catholic? It is an important point…

UPDATE IV: Ace of Spades comments:

The gay community has to understand that, contra their desires, they will not likely be wholeheartedly embraced by traditionalists, and should stop insisting that that be the goal or the bar for “tolerance.” Unless they gay community thinks that 70% of the country is “anti-gay” (and a lot of the gay community does think that, of course), this goal has to be considered perhaps one to shoot for one day, but it can’t be made the standard for determining who’s “anti-gay” or not.

UPDATE V: Gay Patriot figures this dooms Paladino –

In various “red” states, most (but alas not all) Republican candidates are pretty much ignoring gay issues (save to say they support traditional marriage), so what purpose does it serve for a candidate in a “blue” state to talk about it on the campaign trail? Well, it does antagonize those fiscally conservative voters in the suburbs who, last fall, voted Republican in local elections.

I’m not so sure – it was always, of course, a very uphill fight for Paladino, especially as he is not a professional politician and thus is going to be gaffe-prone. But that, again, is part of Paladino’s appeal…and a bit of honesty, even if considered outrageous in some quarters, might come in handy.

Another election year, another crop of military voters being kept from the polls:

Despite a federal law requiring military ballots to mail by 9/18, military ballots across New York have not mailed as of today. The Justice Department has done nothing but talk about it…

And there in lies the problem – the Department of Justice is doing nothing about it. Given how entirely politicized the Obama Justice Department is, we can rely upon it that the inaction is based upon the understanding that a very large majority of these suppressed voters would be casting a Republican ballot. “Count every vote” only applies when a Democrat needs to find enough bogus votes to steal an election – when its real voters in an undecided contest, then its best if every vote doesn’t count.

If we do win on November 2nd, then we simply must get to the bottom of voter fraud in this country. A ruthless and fearless investigation must be launched and all facts brought to light. Our way of government depends upon the people believing in the operation of the democratic process – only those who can vote should vote; everyone must only vote once; all no one should be denied a vote because one side fears they’ll vote the wrong way.

It is to be hoped that post-November 2nd even some liberals of character will realize its time to set aside race-baiting and hate-mongering and clean up our voting process. In the long run, we can’t endure as a free people without clean voting – we must clean this up.