Ron Paul 2012!!! Your thoughts on who we should pick for our "Cause"?

[Reg Dixon]

Is he going to get the nomination?

 

[monkey5]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lgCruQ7w8AY ~~ Looks like it to me! Lol.. Thank you!! ~~ itsme, great video post! monkey5

 

[itisme]

Is he going to get the nomination?

Go to youtube and typa in Voter Fraud and then add a space.....Ron Paul's name will appear.

 

[itisme]

Is he going to get the nomination?

Go to youtube and typa in Voter Fraud and then add a space.....Ron Paul's name will appear.

LOL!!! Romney had a hard time finding a place big enough? To what? Here echos?

Ron Paul, Assasination? This guy is on point but Ron Paul is willing to die to save this country.
http://www.youtube.com/user/MiloBoz?v=z-sHEmgV8Xg

 

[trem0lo]

Huge crowd at UCLA last night, close to 10,000!!!

And yet FOX news publishes an article, Where's Ron Paul?

Here's the speech:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1qxvqZYh97g

 

[whodare]

http://mises.org/daily/5995/The-Worst-of-All-Monetary-Policies

The Worst of All Monetary Policies
by Thorsten Polleit on April 3, 2012
I. Monetary Expansion Is Kept Going

In monetary analyses, the balance sheet of the commercial banking sector is typically kept separate from the balance sheet of the US Federal Reserve (Fed). However, combining the two balance sheets might be much more informative.

First, adding up the business volumes of commercial banks and the Fed provides a (much) better insight into the expansion of the monetary sector as a whole over time — especially so in times of the financial and economic "crisis."

Second, such an aggregation reveals that in times of crisis the central bank unmistakably puts the interest of the banking industry first, with its policy aimed at "restoring the banking sector back to health."

The expansion of the Fed's balance sheet as from the end of 2008 onwards has not only helped prevent the banking industry from shrinking; it has kept the expansion of the monetary system going, as shown by the chart below.

The Fed has expanded its balance sheet through providing additional credit to the commercial-banking system and purchasing (government and mortgage) bonds from banks and nonbanks. As a result, the combined balance sheet of commercial banks and the Fed rose to a record high of close to 115 percent of GDP in Q4 2011.

II. The Increase in the Stock of Payments

The expansion of the aggregated balance sheet of commercial banks and the Fed has been accompanied by a rise in the stock of payments in the form of M1. It has increased by 58 percent from August 2008 to February 2012.

Within M1, demand deposits went up from $314 billion to $772 billion, a rise of 146 percent. The increase in the means of payment may be in part due to the extraordinarily low interest rates (that is, the extraordinarily low opportunity costs of money holdings).

However, it may also be due to the Fed's purchases of bonds from so-called nonbanks (for instance, private households, pension funds, and insurance companies). Under such operations the Fed increases the means of payments directly; it is a policy of increasing money by actually circumventing bank credit expansion.

The marked increase in the stock of payments in recent years is an unmistakable sign of what can be called, economically speaking, inflation, a view held by the Austrian School of economics.

A rise in the money stock leads, and necessarily so, to a decline in the purchasing power of a money unit — when compared with a situation in which there had not been a change in the money stock.

Most important, a rise in the money stock actually prevents a rise in the purchasing power of money — which would have occurred had the Fed not ramped up the means of payments in the hands of commercial banks and nonbanks.

The rise in the money stock can be expected to translate into higher prices — be it prices for consumer goods (via, for instance, higher commodity prices) or prices for assets (such as stocks and real estate).

Rising prices erode the purchasing power of money and do great harm to the (coordination) function of market prices, thereby provoking misinformed decision making of market agents, causing malinvestment.

Such a policy is by no means neutral. The winners of the Fed's policy are, for instance, the holders of goods and assets that are prevented from declining in prices, while the losers of the Fed policy are money holders: they have been prevented from buying at lower prices.

III. The Boom That Must End in Depression

The ongoing expansion of the money supply — a monetary policy of going well beyond measures of just keeping the money stock from shrinking — is indicative of attempts to keep the boom, caused by bank circulation credit expansion, going.

However, such a policy will not cure the economic and political malaise brought about by bank-circulation credit expansion in the first place. In fact, such a monetary policy will make things much worse going forward.

It will not only pave the way toward a deep depression, through which the economy will finally be brought back to equilibrium; it will also ruin the currency. Ludwig von Mises (1881–1973), in Interventionism: An Economic Analysis (1940), noted,

The boom cannot continue indefinitely. There are two alternatives. Either the banks continue the credit expansion without restriction and thus cause constantly mounting price increases and an ever-growing orgy of speculation, which, as in all other cases of unlimited inflation, ends in a "crack-up boom" and in a collapse of the money and credit system. Or the banks stop before this point is reached, voluntarily renounce further credit expansion and thus bring about the crisis. The depression follows in both instances.[1]

Against this backdrop, the conclusion is that the monetary policy of continuing to expand the money supply through bank-circulation credit provided at artificially lowered interest rates is actually the worst of all monetary policies.

 

[itisme]

Yep.....Today with all the markets closed they start preaching the fear...I fear an NDAA 12/31/2011 style assault as is customary by the evil doers, be careful over the weekend and I bet they push this issue the entire time. They just now seeing it, you can't print currecny endlessly??? HHmmm, if so we should have a lot more Ron Paul converts


Thomas Woods Nullify Now Philadelphia 2012
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cBBI0mrDtP8

http://www.tomwoods.com/motherjones/ War on Drugs video

http://www.tomwoods.com/ronpaul/

 

[bentom187]

the new SOPA is here

CISPA:HR3523
http://www.govtrack.us/congress/bills/112/hr3523

[YOUTUBEIF]nrlXtpJlmF8[/YOUTUBEIF]

 

[whodare]

^^^

Here is the summary, pretty scary shit if ya ask me. The line between gov intelligence agency(and the "powers" they weild) and private entity gets thinner....

The following summary was written by the Congressional Research Service, a nonpartisan arm of the Library of Congress, which serves Congress. GovTrack did not write and has no control over these summaries.

11/30/2011--Introduced.
Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act of 2011 - Amends the National Security Act of 1947 to add provisions concerning cyber threat intelligence and information sharing. Defines "cyber threat intelligence" as information in the possession of an element of the intelligence community directly pertaining to a vulnerability of, or threat to, a system or network of a government or private entity, including information pertaining to the protection of a system or network from: (1) efforts to degrade, disrupt, or destroy such system or network; or (2) theft or misappropriation of private or government information, intellectual property, or personally identifiable information. Requires the Director of National Intelligence to: (1) establish procedures to allow intelligence community elements to share cyber threat intelligence with private-sector entities, and (2) encourage the sharing of such intelligence. Requires the procedures established to ensure that such intelligence is only: (1) shared with certified entities or a person with an appropriate security clearance, (2) shared consistent with the need to protect U.S. national security, and (3) used in a manner that protects such intelligence from unauthorized disclosure. Provides for guidelines for the granting of security clearance approvals to certified entities or officers or employees of such entities. Authorizes a cybersecurity provider (a non-governmental entity that provides goods or services intended to be used for cybersecurity purposes), with the express consent of a protected entity (an entity that contracts with a cybersecurity provider) to: (1) use cybersecurity systems to identify and obtain cyber threat information in order to protect the rights and property of the protected entity; and (2) share cyber threat information with any other entity designated by the protected entity, including the federal government. Regulates the use and protection of shared information, including prohibiting the use of such information to gain a competitive advantage and, if shared with the federal government, exempts such information from public disclosure. Prohibits a civil or criminal cause of action against a protected entity, a self-protected entity (an entity that provides goods or services for cybersecurity purposes to itself), or a cybersecurity provider acting in good faith under the above circumstances. Directs the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board to submit annually to Congress a review of the sharing and use of such information by the federal government, as well as recommendations for improvements and modifications to address privacy and civil liberties concerns. Preempts any state statute that restricts or otherwise regulates an activity authorized by the Act.

 

[whodare]

http://mises.org/daily/6000/Wall-Street-Math

There's plenty of blame for the financial crisis being spread around. Those on the left say Wall Street wasn't regulated enough, while those on the right claim government mandates required lenders to make bad loans. The argument is made that the Federal Reserve was too loose, while the other side says Bernanke wasn't loose enough. Some blame greed. Others blame Wall Street's investment products. And then there's mathematics.

Wall Street has become a numbers game played at high speed by powerful computers trading complex derivatives utilizing even more complex mathematical modeling. Writing for the Huffington Post, Théo Le Bret asks the reader to

Take the Black-Scholes equation, used to estimate the value of a derivative: it is actually no more than a partial differential equation of the financial derivative's value, as a function of four variables, including time and "volatility" of the underlying asset (the derivative being a 'bet' on the future value of the asset). Differential equations are well-known to physicists, since such fundamental properties of nature as the wave equation or Schrodinger's equation for quantum mechanics are given in the form of differential equations, and in physics their solutions seem to be very reliable: so why is this not always the case in finance?
Mr. Le Bret quotes Albert Einstein for his answer: "as far as the laws of mathematics refer to reality, they are not certain; and as far as they are certain, they do not refer to reality."

Murray Rothbard put it another way:

In physics, the facts of nature are given to us. They may be broken down into their simple elements in the laboratory and their movements observed. On the other hand, we do not know the laws explaining the movements of physical particles; they are unmotivated.
Rothbard goes on to make the point that human action is motivated and thus economics is built on the basis of axioms. We can then deduce laws from these axioms, but, as Rothbard explains, "there are no simple elements of 'facts' in human action; the events of history are complex phenomena, which cannot 'test' anything."

Using the models that work so well for physicists, mathematicians on Wall Street got it spectacularly wrong in the mortgage and derivatives markets, just as mathematical economists can never predict the future with any accuracy. Motivated human behavior cannot be modeled.

But the mathematicians or "quants" underscore all of Wall Street's financial engineering, a process that takes a few pieces of paper and folds their attributes together to make new products, most times hoping to avoid taxes and regulation. Author Brendan Moynihan describes this engineering in his book Financial Origami: How the Wall Street Model Broke.

Origami is the traditional Japanese art of paper folding wherein amazing shapes and animals are created with just a few simple folds to a piece of paper. Moynihan cleverly extends the metaphor to the financial arena, pointing out that stocks, bonds, and insurance are pieces of paper simply folded by the Wall Street sales force into swaps, options, futures, derivatives of derivatives, and the like.

The author is adept at describing derivatives in terms a person can understand. Health-insurance premiums are a call option to have the insurance company pay for our medical care. Auto insurance premiums are like put options, allowing the insured to sell (put) his or her car, if it's totaled, to the insurer at blue-book value.

Nobel Prize winners have played a big hand in the creation of derivatives. Milton Friedman's paper on the need for futures markets in currencies paved the way for that market in 1971. But as Moynihan points out, it was Nixon's shutting of the gold window that created the need to mitigate currency and inflation risk.

Nobel Laureate Myron Scholes was cocreator of the Black-Scholes-Merton option-pricing model. He and cowinner Robert Merton used their model to blow-up Long Term Capital Management.

But it was little-known economist David X. Li's paper in the Journal of Fixed Income that would provide the intellectual foundation for Wall Street's flurry into mortgages. "On Default Correlation: A Copula Function Approach" became "the academic study used to support Wall Street's turning subprime mortgage pools into AAA-rated securities," writes Moynihan. "By the time it was over, the Street would create 64,000 AAA-rated securities, even though only 12 companies in the world had that rating."

Robert Stowe England, in his book Black Box Casino: How Wall Street's Risky Shadow Banking Crashed Global Finance, says Li's model "relied on the price history of credit default swaps against a given asset to determine the degree of correlation rather than rely on historical loan performance data."

"People got very excited about the Gaussian copula because of its mathematical elegance," says Nassim Nicholas Taleb, "but the thing never worked." Taleb, the author of The Black Swan, claims any attempt to measure correlation based on past history to be "charlatanism."

Subprime mortgages were bundled to become collateralized mortgage obligations (CMOs), which are a form of collateralized debt obligation(CDO). CDOs weren't new; the first rated CDO was assembled by Michael Milken in 1987. But instead of a mixture of investment-grade and junk corporate bonds, in the housing bubble, CDOs were rated AAA based upon Li's work.

Mr. England wryly points out, "A cynic might say that the CDO was invented to create a place to dump lower credit quality or junk bonds and hide them among better credits."

England quotes Michael Lewis, author of The Big Short: "The CDO was, in effect, a credit laundering service for the residents of Lower Middle Class America." For Wall Street it was a machine that "turned lead into gold."

Wall Street's CDO mania served to pump up investment-bank leverage. England explains that if level-3 securities were included (level-3 assets, which include CDOs, cannot be valued by using observable measures, such as market prices and models) then Bear Stearns sported leverage of 262 to 1 just before the crash. Lehman was close behind at 225, Morgan Stanley at 222, Citigroup at 212, and Goldman Sachs was levered at 200 to 1.

Leverage like that requires either perfection or eventual government bailout for survival.

The CDO market created the need for a way to bet against the CDOs and the credit-default-swap (CDS) market was born. Bundling the CDS together created synthetic CDOs. "With synthetic CDOs, Wall Street crossed over to The Matrix," writes England, "a world where reality is simulated by computers."

It's England's view that the CDO market "was the casino where the bets were placed. Wall Street became bigger and chancier than Las Vegas and Atlantic City combined — and more." According to Richard Zabel, the total notional value of the entire CDS market was $45 trillion by the end of 2007, at the same time the bond and structured vehicle markets totaled only $25 trillion.

So the speculative portion of the CDS market was at least $20 trillion with speculators betting on the possibility of a credit event for securities not owned by either party. England does not see this as a good thing. It's Mr. England's view that credit default swaps concentrated risk in certain financial institutions, instead of disbursing risk.

In "Credit Default Swaps from the Viewpoint of Libertarian Property Rights and Contract Credit Default Swaps Theory," published in Libertarian Papers, authors Thorsten Polleit and Jonathan Mariano contend, "The truth is that CDS provide investors with an efficient and effective instrument for exposing economically unsound and unsustainable fiat money regimes and the economic production structure it creates."

Polleit and Mariano explain that credit default swaps make a borrower's credit risk tradable. CDS is like an insurance policy written against the potential of a negative credit event. These derivatives, while being demonized by many observers, serve to increase "the disciplinary pressure on borrowers who are about to build up unsustainable debt levels to consolidate; or it makes borrowers who have become financially overstretched go into default."

Mr. England concludes his book saying, "We need a way forward to a safer, sounder financial system where the power of sunlight on financial institutions and markets helps enable free market discipline to work its invisible hand for the good of all."

Polleit and Mariano explain that it is the CDS market that provides that sunlight.



The panic of 2008 was the inevitable collapse of an increasingly rickety fiat-money and banking system — a system where the central bank attempts to direct and manipulate the nation's investment and production with an eye to maximize employment. In a speech delivered to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, Jim Grant told the central bankers that interest rates should convey information. "But the only information conveyed in a manipulated yield curve is what the Fed wants."

Wall Street's math wizards convinced the Masters of the Universe that their numbers don't lie, believing they could model the Federal Reserve's house-of-mirrors market. Maybe the numbers don't lie, but the assumptions do.

Advising about mathematical economics, Rothbard wrote, "ignore the fancy welter of equations and look for the assumptions underneath. Invariably they are few in number, simple, and wrong." The same could be said for Dr. Li's model and Scholes's model before him.

Until the era of unstable fiat-money regimes ends, the search for scapegoats will continue — because the crashes will never end.

 

[ShroomDr]

http://www.cnn.com/ELECTION/2012/calculator/

Currently Romney needs 493 more delegates to reach a(n unbreakable) majority.

There are 1151 delegates left.

California, Texas, Penn, NY and every other state i can figure out reward delegates proportionally EXCEPT Utah and Delaware (which are winner take all).

So...

Romney is certainly going to win Utah, and if we give him Delaware it would be..
1094 remaining delegates and
436 for Romney to 'clinch'.

436/1094 = 39.853%

Now each states 'proportional allocation procedures' will vary, but you would have to think > 39% is pretty close to where Romney would need to be Nationally, and he's still not solidly there (So Newt and Santorum continue, i wont do their math).

 

[SacredBreh]

CISPA:HR3523

The Internet must remain free at all costs. It is the one place we can still share information without being censored!

I have no illusions of privacy, that is a facade even for the most cautious but we do share info on a scale that would not be possible with censorship.

Thanks bentom for getting it out there.

Damn, ShroomDr... sad news. If Dr. Paul does not get the nomination I hope he runs independent. He will put one hell of a dent in both parties if it comes to that.

Great links Itisme......

Peace

 

[gaiusmarius]

i can't understand how Romney could win when his events have about 10% of the people that RonPauls events have. some thing is fishy that's seems clear. wouldn't be surprised if it comes out they cheated Ron from the first primary.

 

[itisme]

i can't understand how Romney could win when his events have about 10% of the people that RonPauls events have. some thing is fishy that's seems clear. wouldn't be surprised if it comes out they cheated Ron from the first primary.

It's called Voter Fraud and the Media being full of crap!

RON PAUL is our rightful next President!

Ron Paul Hits Homerun at UC Berkeley.
http://www.revolutionpac.com/2012/04/paul-hits-a-home-run-at-uc-berkeley/

 

[monkey5]

AGREE 100% WITH YOU!! itsme!!

AGREE 100% WITH YOU!! itsme!!

It's called Voter Fraud and the Media being full of crap!

RON PAUL is our rightful next President!

Ron Paul Hits Homerun at UC Berkeley.
http://www.revolutionpac.com/2012/04/paul-hits-a-home-run-at-uc-berkeley/

~~ AGREE 100% WITH YOU itsme!! monkey5

 

[bentom187]

here are the rep's who co-sponsored cispa
show cosponsors (106)

Rep. Mark Amodei [R-NV2]
Rep. Michele Bachmann [R-MN6]
Rep. Dan Boren [D-OK2]
Rep. Michael Burgess [R-TX26]
Rep. Ken Calvert [R-CA44]
Rep. Ben Chandler [D-KY6]
Rep. Michael Conaway [R-TX11]
Rep. Norman “Norm” Dicks [D-WA6]
Rep. John “Phil” Gingrey [R-GA11]
Rep. Luis Gutiérrez [D-IL4]
Rep. Joe Heck [R-NV3]
Rep. Peter “Pete” King [R-NY3]
Rep. Adam Kinzinger [R-IL11]
Rep. James “Jim” Langevin [D-RI2]
Rep. Frank LoBiondo [R-NJ2]
Rep. Michael McCaul [R-TX10]
Rep. Jeff Miller [R-FL1]
Rep. Sue Myrick [R-NC9]
Rep. Devin Nunes [R-CA21]
Rep. Mike Pompeo [R-KS4]
Rep. Thomas Rooney [R-FL16]
Rep. Dutch Ruppersberger [D-MD2]
Rep. John Shimkus [R-IL19]
Rep. Lee Terry [R-NE2]
Rep. Michael “Mike” Thompson [D-CA1]
Rep. Frederick “Fred” Upton [R-MI6]
Rep. Greg Walden [R-OR2]
Rep. Lynn Westmoreland [R-GA3]
Rep. Rodney Frelinghuysen [R-NJ11] (joined Dec 08, 2011)
Rep. Robert Latta [R-OH5] (joined Dec 08, 2011)
Rep. Patrick McHenry [R-NC10] (joined Dec 08, 2011)
Rep. Ben Quayle [R-AZ3] (joined Dec 08, 2011)
Rep. Kevin Yoder [R-KS3] (joined Dec 08, 2011)
Rep. David “Dave” Camp [R-MI4] (joined Dec 16, 2011)
Rep. Timothy Walberg [R-MI7] (joined Dec 16, 2011)
Rep. Anna Eshoo [D-CA14] (joined Dec 20, 2011)
Rep. Michael Michaud [D-ME2] (joined Dec 20, 2011)
Rep. Mike Coffman [R-CO6] (joined Jan 18, 2012)
Rep. Robert “Bob” Goodlatte [R-VA6] (joined Jan 18, 2012)
Rep. David McKinley [R-WV1] (joined Jan 18, 2012)
Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers [R-WA5] (joined Jan 18, 2012)
Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen [R-FL18] (joined Jan 18, 2012)
Rep. John Sullivan [R-OK1] (joined Jan 18, 2012)
Rep. Randy Forbes [R-VA4] (joined Jan 25, 2012)
Rep. Frank Wolf [R-VA10] (joined Jan 25, 2012)
Rep. Darrell Issa [R-CA49] (joined Jan 31, 2012)
Rep. Gary Miller [R-CA42] (joined Jan 31, 2012)
Rep. Clifford “Cliff” Stearns [R-FL6] (joined Jan 31, 2012)
Rep. Tom Cole [R-OK4] (joined Feb 01, 2012)
Rep. Michael Turner [R-OH3] (joined Feb 01, 2012)
Rep. Mo Brooks [R-AL5] (joined Feb 07, 2012)
Rep. John Carter [R-TX31] (joined Feb 07, 2012)
Rep. Vicky Hartzler [R-MO4] (joined Feb 07, 2012)
Rep. Bill Huizenga [R-MI2] (joined Feb 07, 2012)
Rep. Dan Benishek [R-MI1] (joined Feb 13, 2012)
Rep. Paul Broun [R-GA10] (joined Feb 13, 2012)
Rep. Michael Grimm [R-NY13] (joined Feb 13, 2012)
Rep. Brett Guthrie [R-KY2] (joined Feb 13, 2012)
Rep. Candice Miller [R-MI10] (joined Feb 13, 2012)
Rep. Michael “Mike” Rogers [R-AL3] (joined Feb 13, 2012)
Rep. Geoff Davis [R-KY4] (joined Feb 14, 2012)
Rep. Doc Hastings [R-WA4] (joined Feb 14, 2012)
Rep. Leonard Lance [R-NJ7] (joined Feb 14, 2012)
Rep. Patrick Meehan [R-PA7] (joined Feb 14, 2012)
Rep. Spencer Bachus [R-AL6] (joined Feb 16, 2012)
Rep. Mary Bono Mack [R-CA45] (joined Feb 16, 2012)
Rep. John Kline [R-MN2] (joined Feb 16, 2012)
Rep. Pete Olson [R-TX22] (joined Feb 16, 2012)
Rep. Aaron Schock [R-IL18] (joined Feb 16, 2012)
Rep. William “Bill” Shuster [R-PA9] (joined Feb 16, 2012)
Rep. Joe Baca [D-CA43] (joined Feb 27, 2012)
Rep. Chuck Fleischmann [R-TN3] (joined Feb 27, 2012)
Rep. Phil Roe [R-TN1] (joined Feb 27, 2012)
Rep. Leonard Boswell [D-IA3] (joined Feb 28, 2012)
Rep. Kristi Noem [R-SD0] (joined Feb 28, 2012)
Rep. Rob Wittman [R-VA1] (joined Mar 01, 2012)
Rep. Marsha Blackburn [R-TN7] (joined Mar 05, 2012)
Rep. Alcee Hastings [D-FL23] (joined Mar 05, 2012)
Rep. Randy Hultgren [R-IL14] (joined Mar 05, 2012)
Rep. Robert Hurt [R-VA5] (joined Mar 05, 2012)
Rep. Rick Crawford [R-AR1] (joined Mar 08, 2012)
Rep. Bill Johnson [R-OH6] (joined Mar 08, 2012)
Rep. Adrian Smith [R-NE3] (joined Mar 08, 2012)
Del. Madeleine Bordallo [D-GU0] (joined Mar 19, 2012)
Rep. Trent Franks [R-AZ2] (joined Mar 19, 2012)
Rep. Rick Larsen [D-WA2] (joined Mar 19, 2012)
Rep. Albio Sires [D-NJ13] (joined Mar 19, 2012)
Rep. Edolphus “Ed” Towns [D-NY10] (joined Mar 19, 2012)
Rep. Jim Cooper [D-TN5] (joined Mar 22, 2012)
Rep. Joseph Pitts [R-PA16] (joined Mar 22, 2012)
Rep. Mike Ross [D-AR4] (joined Mar 22, 2012)
Rep. Jon Runyan [R-NJ3] (joined Mar 22, 2012)
Rep. Roscoe Bartlett [R-MD6] (joined Mar 29, 2012)
Rep. Brian Bilbray [R-CA50] (joined Mar 29, 2012)
Rep. Dennis Cardoza [D-CA18] (joined Mar 29, 2012)
Rep. Jim Costa [D-CA20] (joined Mar 29, 2012)
Rep. Morgan Griffith [R-VA9] (joined Mar 29, 2012)
Rep. Larry Kissell [D-NC8] (joined Mar 29, 2012)
Rep. Mike McIntyre [D-NC7] (joined Mar 29, 2012)
Rep. William Owens [D-NY23] (joined Mar 29, 2012)
Rep. Collin Peterson [D-MN7] (joined Mar 29, 2012)
Rep. Steve Scalise [R-LA1] (joined Mar 29, 2012)
Rep. Heath Shuler [D-NC11] (joined Mar 29, 2012)
Rep. Steve Stivers [R-OH15] (joined Mar 29, 2012)
Rep. Addison “Joe” Wilson [R-SC2] (joined Mar 29, 2012)
Rep. Rob Woodall [R-GA7] (joined Mar 29, 2012)

Letters to Congress in SUPPORT of CISPA: http://intelligence.house.gov/bill/c...ction-act-2011

AT&T
Boeing
BSA
Business Roundtable
CSC
COMPTEL
CTIA - The Wireless Association
Cyber, Space & Intelligence Association
Edison Electric
EMC
Exelon
Facebook
The Financial Services Roundtable
IBM
Independent Telephone & Telecommunications Alliance
Information Technology Industry Council
Intel
Internet Security Alliance
Lockheed Martin
Microsoft
National Cable & Telecommunications Association
NDIA
Oracle
Symantec
TechAmerica
US Chamber of Commerce
US Telecom - The Broadband Association
Verizon

 

[itisme]

GOP superdelegates: It's over, Romney is nominee
By STEPHEN OHLEMACHER | Associated Press – 7 hrs agoEmailtweetShare25PrintRelated Contentprevnext View GalleryMitt Romney Plans Multi-Million Dollar Pennsylvania Ad Buy (ABC News)

Republican presidential candidate, …

Republican presidential candidate, …

Republican presidential candidate, …
View slideshowsWhere should Steve Nash play next season?
15 photos - Wed, Mar 21, 2012Police link shootings in Tulsa
12 photos - Thu, Mar 8, 2012Superdelegates name Romney nominee
31 photos - Tue, Apr 3, 2012See latest photos »WASHINGTON (AP) — It's over, and Mitt Romney is going to be the GOP nominee for president.

That's the growing consensus among Republican National Committee members who will automatically attend the party's national convention this summer and can support any candidate they choose.

Even some members who support other candidates begrudgingly say the math doesn't add up for anyone but the former Massachusetts governor.

"I would be surprised if Romney doesn't get the number he needs," said Jeff Johnson of Minnesota, who supports former House Speaker Newt Gingrich.

Bob Bennett of Ohio was more blunt.

"Look, Gov. Romney's going to be the nominee, and he's going to have enough votes," said Bennett, who is publicly neutral but said he supported Romney four years ago.

Romney's chief rival, former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum, is pledging to stay in the race, hoping a victory in his home state's primary April 24 will give his campaign new life. But Santorum has fallen far behind Romney in the race for convention delegates, and RNC members are taking notice, even though most are publicly staying neutral, preferring to let primary voters decide the nominee.

The Associated Press has polled 114 of the 120 superdelegates, party members who can support any candidate for president they choose at the national convention in August, regardless of what happens in primaries or caucuses.

In the latest survey, conducted Tuesday to Friday, Romney has 35 endorsements, far more than anyone else but a modest figure for the apparent nominee. Gingrich has four endorsements, Santorum has two and Texas Rep. Ron Paul got one.

RNC members have been slowly embracing Romney. He picked up 11 new endorsements since the last AP survey a month ago, after the Super Tuesday contests. Over the course of the campaign, however, Romney methodically has added endorsements from every region of the country. In the U.S. territories, where voters help decide the nominee but can't vote in the general election, Romney has dominated.

Romney has endorsements from all three RNC members in Guam, American Samoa, the Virgin Islands and the Northern Mariana Islands. He was endorsed by two of the three members in Puerto Rico.

Romney may be struggling among voters in the South, but he was endorsed by two of the three committee members in Mississippi, Henry Barbour and Jeanne Luckey. Romney even has support from Robert Asher of Pennsylvania.

Santorum's only endorsements are from members in Iowa and Alabama. In Pennsylvania, state GOP chairman Robert Gleason is publicly neutral.

"I talked to Rick the other day," Gleason said. "He didn't even ask me to support him."

Texas GOP chairman Steve Munisteri said he talked to Santorum for about 20 minutes on Tuesday, when Santorum was in the state for a fundraiser.

Santorum told him "what I already believed, which is we're only a little over the halfway mark and that he thinks he'll do really well in the Southern states," said Munisteri, who has yet to endorse anyone.

"He should go into those states as the front-runner," Munisteri said. "If he can win Pennsylvania, he'd then be able to put a streak of five or six wins together based on all the Southern states holding primaries."

Seventy-two RNC delegates said they were either undecided or not ready to make a public endorsement. Many said they are eager for the nomination fight to end so the party can focus on defeating President Barack Obama in November.

But most said they are reluctant to ask Santorum to quit.

"The decision to get in or get out of a race is an extremely personal decision," said John Ryder of Tennessee, who is neutral. "He's got to decide when he thinks it is no longer politically valuable to continue."

"It is very hard to see any path for Sen. Santorum to the nomination. It is very hard to see any path for Speaker Gingrich to the nomination," Ryder said. "But they and their supporters have to make that final call."

In the overall race for delegates, Romney has 660 and Santorum has 281, according to the AP count. Gingrich is even farther behind, with 135, followed by Paul with 51.

Romney has won 58 percent of the caucus and primary delegates so far. At that pace, he would reach the number of delegates needed to clinch the nomination, 1,144, on June 5, when five states, including delegate rich California and New Jersey, hold contests

Santorum met privately Thursday with conservative activists to work on plans to stop Romney's march to the nomination. The group decided to pressure Gingrich to leave the race, believing that would help unite conservatives behind Santorum.

Gingrich, however, has already scaled back his campaign to the point that he schedules few public events. In the three primaries last Tuesday, all won by Romney, Gingrich got 11 percent of the vote in both Maryland and the District of Columbia and 6 percent in Wisconsin.

Even if Santorum had picked up every vote for Gingrich, Romney still would have won all three primaries.

"It's over with," said Bennett, the RNC member from Ohio. "And if Romney carries Pennsylvania, that completes it. He'll be the presumptive nominee before the end of the month."

___

Associated Press writers Brian Bakst in St. Paul, Minn.; Kantele Franko in Columbus, Ohio; Peter Jackson in Harrisburg, Pa.; and Will Weissert in Austin, Texas, contributed to this report.

 

[ShroomDr]

i can't understand how Romney could win when his events have about 10% of the people that RonPauls events have.

Because Old people vote and do nothing else.

When Ron Paul starts [cough] pandering [/cough] singing 'Purple Mountain Majesty' maybe he will pick up more votes.

until then... above the fruited plain...

 

[SpasticGramps]

i can't understand how Romney could win when his events have about 10% of the people that RonPauls events have. some thing is fishy that's seems clear. wouldn't be surprised if it comes out they cheated Ron from the first primary.

A lot of the delegate numbers that the Mittens campaign and corporatist cheerleading media is stating that Mittens has may be over exaggerated. Because a few states moved up their primaries they are subject, by RNC rules to lose 1/2 of their delegates at the convention, but Mittens and his media is counting those potentially lost delegates in their numbers such that it looks like Mittens has more delegates than he may have.

Really this political election is bread and circuses IMO. Government Sachs and their ilk will never let a true free market leaning conservative in. I'm afraid in the end we will be left with Red Team Statist and Blue Team Statist and the usual illusion of choice.

Eventually enough people on both sides of the two party paradigm will realize our illusion of democracy is just that and take to the streets in protest.

And then Big Brother clamps down.

 

[PoopyTeaBags]

WOULD this bill be able to spy on us even if we are usinng a proxy...