The Cult of Ron Paul

In the lackluster show that is the 2008 presidential election, one candidate has managed to create a cult of followers who attack his critics and blindly believe he is the next president, despite losing every debate and barely cracking the margin of error in most polls. This is Ron Paul.

Ron Paul's online cult (we'll call them Paulites) has pounced on every online poll to try to push their candidate. They have, with or without the candidate's knowledge, created an amazing campaign based on fraud.

In 2000, the House of Representatives voted almost unanimously to fine spammers $500 for each piece of unsolicited junk email they send. The almost was Ron Paul who voted against the bill. Now it seems obvious why he voted against it. Thousands of spam messages flooded inboxes with mail supporting Paul. When faced with the breaking news, Paulites accuses Wired magazine of being paid by Rudy Giuliani. Apparently the Paulites believe that when the facts don't match your belief, blame the messenger.

Paulites have created multiple phony websites pretending to support other candidates, apparently in order to attack any unsuspecting people who may think they've stumbled onto a legitimate message board.

Legitimate Ron Paul supporters, if there are any, will point to his recent record breaking fund raising initiative to point that his support is overwhelming, but the previous record went to Howard Dean, who couldn't even beat John Kerry.

The fact that the Paulites engage in such fraud is an indictment of the candidate. He has not repudiated them, and in fact seems to be encouraging the criminal acts such as hijacking computers to spew the Ron Paul spam. If he's so good at inspiring criminals and nutjobs to do his bidding, how can he ever be considered credible.

Gore Doesn't Want Climate Change Examined Too Closely

This week, NBC Universal kicked off its Green PR blitz. While they'd like people to think it's more than just PR, the fact that they saved it for sweeps begs to differ (not to mention the level of carbon emissions they created sending their crews to the arctic, Antarctica, and the equator). The effort kicked off with the Today Show ignoring anything that could be considered news in favor of stories on climate change. (While I'd prefer some news, this is infinitely better than focusing on Britney Spears or Lindsay Lohan.)

Of course, what would a show on climate change be without an interview with Al Gore. But unlike many who would allow Gore's propaganda to go unanswered, Meredith Vieira asked him about an op-ed piece that appeared in the Wall Street Journal by John Christy. Christy is a scientist who shared the Nobel Peace Prize with Gore and has been highly critical of Gore's apocalyptic predictions. Instead of debating Christy's argument, Gore blamed the media for covering both sides of the story. (Read it for yourself at http://today.msnbc.msn.com/id/21637195/)

Apparently, Gore doesn't want the media looking at the whole story, just the part that he wants to talk about. He claims that there is a consensus among scientists, except there are apparently some scientists who wish to continue the debate. Even if there was a consensus, there was once a consensus among scientists that everything on earth was made from four elements. Consensus is not a reason to end scientific debate.

For all Gore's bravado, the fact that he wants to halt all debate says he can't defend his position very well.