How Ron Paul could win nomination

Via Billy

Excellent piece.

Ron Paul has a 7.5 percent likelihood of winning the Republican nomination, based on data from prediction markets. That puts him in 3^rd place, behind Mitt Romney at 47.7 percent and Newt Gingrich at 33.7 percent, but ahead of Jon Huntsman at 5.4 percent.

Real Clear Politics has Paul at 9.3 percentage points in its latest aggregated poll trend for the Republican primary. Among active candidates, that puts him 3^rd behind Gingrich at 33.3 percentage points and Romney at 22.0 percentage points. The prediction markets and polls paint a picture of the race for the Republican nomination that contrasts with many indicators talked about on the internet.

Ron Paul is by far the most popular candidate in The Signal's comment section. In every article we post there are streams of comments on Ron Paul. First, thank you for commenting! We appreciate that you are reading the articles and taking the time to comment on them. Yet, the readership of The Signal is not a representative sample of the relevant electorate and the subset of The Signal's readers that choose to post comments are an even less representative subset of the relevant electorate. Thus, being the most popular among those people who comment on this website is not a powerful indicator of the election outcome. What matters is the popularity among those people that will participate in the Republican primary contests.

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Lethal Navy 'Lego' Ship

Via Cousin Colby

The 'My Tram Experience' Racism Double Standard

You've got to wake up.

Via Survival

"It is obvious what's been going on. You have to start acknowledging these people for what they are, and that is moral degenerates who are basically sociopaths and psychopaths. Meaning they don’t feel any sympathy or empathy for other human beings. The only thing they care about is themselves. They will do anything. They will steal. They will lie. They will cheat. They will lie to your face. They will look in the camera with this tremendous earnestness and lie with fork tongues through their teeth in order to advance their wealth and power.

And if we, as a people, don’t get real about this, if we keep having these Pollyanna visions that these people are all on our side and they are really looking out for us, and they are doing the best they can. [Then] we will be cork screwed into the ground and this nation will be reduced to a smoldering rubble. You've got to wake up."

-- Ann Barnhardt

The World's Largest Pork Display, Nahunta, NC

Via Cousin John

New Deal: The abject failure Barack Obama is determined to repeat

Via Milton Wolf

This is good.

Occupier on the Lee Statue Vandalism

Via Douglas

He needs his head straightened.

Bob BrighamOccupy Charlottesville

Sara Michel Tansey is right. There was a one-day vote on mistaking vandalism for violence, pretty much only agreed to so those needing education could get it later and we could hurry up with the march.

And in this case, there wasn't even vandalism. Anything against the shameful statue is civic improvement. It should be commended. I plan on buying a trophy for anyone charged with this act of civic improvement.

Think of it like pulling a weed from the grass at a park. Sure, you're technically killing a plant at a park. But only idiots think you're making the park worse.

Same here, only racists or traitors think that statue should even remain. Props to anyone "improving" this. Improve it like the Berlin Wall was improved, first with spray paint, then more effectively.

I don't think anyone from Occupy would equate 'Occupy' with 'The South' in the analogy, it has it backwards. But as this was likely a teabagger, I will honor even them, as there is nothing you can do to this statue that isn't an improvement. Other than cleaning it...

Gallup: Romney, Gingrich Beat Obama in 12 Swing States

President Barack Obama is in big trouble, with both Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich leading him in a dozen key swing states, according to a new USA Today/Gallup poll.

Former Massachusetts Gov. Romney leads Obama among registered voters, 48 percent to 43 percent, in the 12 states the survey covers. And former House Speaker Gingrich leads the president, 48 percent to 45 percent. Nationwide, Obama leads Gingrich, 50 percent to 44 percent, and Romney, 47 percent to 46 percent, according to the poll.

The 12 states are Colorado, Florida, Iowa, Michigan, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Mexico, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Virginia, and Wisconsin. Obama won all of them in 2008. Each could go either way next year, and Obama needs to win half of their electoral votes to gain a second term, according to USA Today.

The portion of voters in those states who identify themselves as Democratic or Democratic-leaning has dropped 4 percentage points since 2008, while the portion of Republicans has risen 5 points.

In 2008, when Obama won those states by 8 percentage points, Democrats led Republicans in party identification by a whopping 11 points. Now, the Democrats’ edge is a statistically insignificant 2 points.

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Overstated Home Sales Data & Mortgage Fraud

The Market Ticker
Verbatim Post

Oh what do we have here....

Data on sales of previously owned U.S. homes from 2007 through October this year will be revised down next week because of double counting, indicating a much weaker housing market than previously thought.

Oh I see. Remember, this first came up in February and I wrote about it at the time. Let's ask a simple question: How do you miscount an actual sale? A sale is a sale is a sale, right? NAR gets its data from the various MLS systems and of course we the general public should trust the professionals and their data, yes?

In point of fact I was called all sorts of names by some of those professionals when I ran down a report sent to me in the fall of 2010 claiming that the MLS data was incorrect on sold price -- a key element used when performing market analysis for clients who are interested in both buying and selling. At the time I made the audacious recommendation that nobody should trust Realtor data and should instead insist on a pull of the public records at the County level before performing any real estate transaction.

There was plenty of controversy at the time over the original claim and I spent a lot of time running down the facts, including calls to county tax authorities -- and later posted a follow-up later to the original Ticker.

This issue of bad counts of sold homes is, in my opinion, much-more serious, as it's damn hard to claim this is a result of misunderstanding between an industry professional and a naive client.

Let's face reality here folks: Counting how many things sold is pretty simple if there's any sort of verification and integrity in the process, especially when ownership changes are filed with county authorities in public records and thus a spot check should catch any material error almost instantly!

So I must ask -- why now, some eight months after Corelogic first raised the issue? Did it really take eight months to actually.... well..... count? How many fingers do these people have again?

And again I have to ask - why is it that it always seems these errors in important economic statistics are in the same direction?

Cue rabid defenses from the industry (despite the fact that it might have led people to overpay, perhaps materially so) in 5......4......

=========

Via The California Tree of Liberty

“The FBI Estimates That 80 Percent Of All Mortgage Fraud Involves Collaboration Or Collusion By Industry Insiders”

Fraud By The Big Banks – More Than Anything Done By The Little Guy – Caused The Financial Crisis

The U.S. Treasury’s Office of Thrift Supervision noted last year (page 7):

The FBI estimates that 80 percent of all mortgage fraud involves collaboration
or collusion by industry insiders.

This confirms what one of the country’s top fraud experts has said for years: that it was fraud by the big banks – more than anything done by the little guy – which caused the financial crisis:

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Doofus Bloomberg calls for more gun control

Via The California Tree of Liberty

All guns are capable of killing people, so are knives, baseball bats and hands.

“These guns are used to kill people,” he said.

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