In related news, a roommate of the Idea of Progress paid him the $35 she owed him for last month’s cable bill.

Mitt Romney – Horse and buggy

Fred Thompson – Rascal scooter

Rudy Giuliani – Firetruck used in 9/11, because he was there, you know, on 9/11

On a previous post, I misspelt the word ‘Teletubbies,” as “Teleubbies.” Months later, the top search term used to find this blog is still ‘Teleubbies.” Even more than Ron Paul.

I had corrected the post to be spelled correctly, but type “teleubbies” into Google and you still end up here. It’s made me think about other common words I could misspell and redirect hits with.

Perhaps ‘Nakd” or “Britny Spears” or “fcking.”

We’ll see what happens.

One of the reasons I wrote the post in the first place was an experiment to see if they’d find me here. I’ve had an unusual number of hits for any mention of Paul, and wanted to see if this would be borne out.

It took two hours.

I had comments posted from Gary (no website link), which read, in part:

“Interesting, but you didn’t answer the question posed by your own title. Rep./Dr. Ron Paul is a congressman from the Houston area running for president. He is a constitutionalist/libertarian/republican. He is for The Constitution and the rule of law and he is against big government, The Federal Reserve baking [sic] system, and interventionist foreign policies.

If you really care about “The Idea of Progress” as the title of your blog suggests, you should know how the manipulation of inflation by the private Federal Reserve system acts as a backdoor tax which hits the poorest Americans the hardest.“

On the plus side, he did at least sign the comment (unlike my good friend Anonymous, who took the time out of his busy day to chime in, “Oh lord, what a waste of space. I can’t believe I clicked to get here. Next!“), but basically it showed that he was disregarding the content of the post (though he apparently read the title), and left a link to some video that I don’t feel like watching.

I wasn’t even harsh in my description of Mr./Dr./Rep./ Paul. I’ve been pretty nice talking about him, all things considering. But as pointed out by Cipher Theory, Mr. Paul has a dark side too.

From his Wikipedia entry:

“Paul voted “yes” on the Secure Fence Act of 2006, which authorizes the construction of an additional 700 miles of double-layered fencing between the U.S and Mexico.

He has also introduced H.R. 4379 that would prohibit the Supreme Court from ruling on issues relating to abortion, birth control, the definition of marriage and homosexuality and states that the court’s precedent in these areas would no longer be binding.“

Despite the fact that you are, were, and always will be an anti-war Republican…I really wish you and your cult-like followers would go away now.

I’ve just searched for his MySpace profile, and I’ve found something interesting. There are at least three profiles that are almost identical for him. Same text, same videos, just a different background or typeface. Hmm.

Speaking of Digg, I came across an article about his internet celebrity. It’s written by Ron Sansone, and comes from the International Association of Online Communicators (?), and is an investigative look into the Ron Paul Digg Phenomenon.

How does Digg work? Essentially it is a bookmarking service. You find an article you like, submit it to Digg. Other people trolling around Digg, looking for interesting articles, find it, like it and add ‘Diggs’ to bring it up the rankings. Articles, pictures, pages, and videos on the front page of Digg have anywhere from 113 to 578 Diggs (as of 12:21pm CST 7/4/07, when I checked). Articles on the front page, by virtue of their high profile, in turn get more Diggs. More people are directed to the articles in question.

What Sansone discovered is that there are a core of about 30 Ron Paul supporters, who do nothing on Digg but Digg any article with a mention of Paul’s name. It doesn’t take too many to get the ball rolling. Sansone discovered this when he posted a blog entry that mentioned Paul in the title, but scarcely in the article itself. He ended up suddenly with 17 Diggs, more than he ever got for a blog post.

I’ve noticed it here at the Idea of Progress, too. This is the third in a series of Who the Fuck is Ron Paul? and I’ve gotten more page views on these than any other postings, and I couldn’t figure out why. I had rationalized that it must be my insightful and witty writing style, but I think Sansone’s more on track than that.

If this sounds like a lot of silliness to you, like “Who cares if his name gets pushed up on some bookmarking site?” bear this in mind. More than likely, his television appearances have been generated by the sudden ‘interest’ in him on the the internet. His Daily Show appearance, certainly.

It’s not that Ron Paul himself is personally behind this, although I’m certain his campaign is intimately aware of the situation. Paul is 71, and find me the internet savvy 71 year old that even knows what a blog is. I don’t think that he’s a psycho, and while I am hardly a Libertarian, if a Republican was to be elected, he’s hardly the worst of the candidates. But that doesn’t mean I’m going to give his campaign a pass for their internet manipulation.

Maybe just a gold star for thinking creatively.

He performed admirably in the Republican debate, and he has this way of talking that makes me tink that he actually means what he is saying, always scary to see in a politician.

Here he is on Real Time with Bill Maher. It’s worth a watch.

As a part of my daily web rituals, I check out Digg, which is kind of like del.icio.us, a place to bookmark pages and show off the odd or interesting things you’ve found. For the last couple of weeks, I’ve found that almost every day there is something about Ron Paul.

Who the fuck is Ron Paul?

Today this is what is up there, Ron Paul Goes On the Offensive. It’s from a site called Prison Planet, a website by a conspiricy theorist and ‘Constitutionalist’ named Alex Jones.

Looking for mentions on the New York Times website, I found this one about his wealth, one on a debate that he’s barely mentioed in, and this one also about the debate. “The three apparent front-runners had plenty of opportunities to make their case, but the lesser-known candidates had to jostle for attention. Nobody really managed to steal the show and display graveltas, the ability to steal a debate with outrageous, curmudgeonly statements the way former Senator Mike Gravel of Alaska did in the recent Democratic debate in South Carolina. But Representative Ron Paul of Texas, who calls himself a paleolibertarian, came closest. His reedy voice and excitable manner stood out in what was otherwise a blending chorus of deep monotones.”

His internet supporters seem rabid. Almost like LaRouche people (not that he’s as crazy as LaRouche, as far as I can tell). He’s been mentioned in U.S. News and World Reports as being the most searched term on technorati.com.

Watch out for this guy. He seems like the longest of long shots, and I’m not a supporter, but it will be interesting to see how the internet affects this election.

As far as I’m concerned, another rich old white guy? Yawn.