Ron Paul would be happy to talk to Elon Musk.

I'd be happy to talk with you about it, Elon. https://t.co/tjG6O5CpIj

— Ron Paul (@RonPaul) November 1, 2024

I've been monitoring men in shorts for a long time, and I have my standards... my evolving standards...

So what am I to make of this?

Ron Paul spotted wearing a pair of Daisy Dukes for interview https://t.co/r8GO4XbFEP pic.twitter.com/IghHvrOGp2

— New York Post (@nypost) April 7, 2021

At the link:

The 85-year-old Libertarian inadvertently gave the glimpse of his liberally cut short shorts in the last seconds of a video chat on political issues with host Doug Casey. The men had finished discussing the future of personal liberty, when Paul rolled his chair back from the camera and showed just how much liberty his tiny jeans allowed his slightly tanned, thighs to enjoy.

First, I'm more bothered by the comma after "slightly tanned" — "his slightly tanned, thighs." My guess is they had another adjective after "tanned" but they took it out for some reason. Maybe it was "slightly tanned, skinny thighs" or "slightly tanned, hairy thighs" and they backed off, ashamed of their body shaming. "Tanned" was okay, but the rest — I imagine they decided — was the kind of judgementalism that could get them in trouble. But the telltale comma remained.

Second, I'm going to give Ron Paul a pass. It's a totality of the circumstances analysis: 1. He's 85, so I give him extra room to find whatever ways he can to greater physical ease. 2. He's at home, not out in the world displaying disregard for the aesthetic experience of others. 3. He didn't intend his lower body to be seen, but he refrained from outright nakedness or mere underpants. 4. He's a libertarian, so his theme is freedom, and the shorts express his idea of freedom (though if I were looking for freedom in a pair of shorts I'd pick something more pliable and flowy). 5. He amused us.

***

There is no comments section anymore, but you can email me here. Unless you say otherwise, I will presume you'd enjoy an update to this post with a quote from your email and I'll identify you with your first name only. 

IN THE EMAIL: A reader named Julie writes: 

Best men in shorts post to date! Not only has it been a funny little joy for us all to have you share this shorts obsession with us for years, but also because we COVID weary souls in our home offices totally relate with Ron Paul. I spend hours every week in video conferencing, often with executives I have never met before. Whenever the mood at the start of a video call is bright enough and I am looking for an ice breaker, I make a joke of the fact that my professional on-camera blouse does not match my fraying sweatpants off camera. EVERY SINGLE TIME the professional on the other side reveals a similar predicament and we have a good laugh. It's become a new form of rapid trust building.

"wow, I’m very sorry this happened but I hope this serves an educational function - I’ve never seen someone have a stroke before..."

wow, I’m very sorry this happened but I hope this serves an educational function - I’ve never seen someone have a stroke before, and I’m not sure I’d recognize it immediately in the moment if I hadn’t watched this

— Natalie Shure (@nataliesurely) September 25, 2020

According to the NYT, "It was not immediately clear if Mr. Paul had experienced a stroke. Representatives for Mr. Paul and his son Senator Rand Paul, Republican of Kentucky, did not immediately respond to messages seeking information about his condition on Friday."

"Why Young Democrats Love Bernie Sanders... They have a lot in common with Ron Paul supporters."

According to Nate Silver. "Young voters have a more favorable view of socialism," but...

That doesn’t mean America is undergoing a leftist or revolutionary awakening, however. The biennial General Social Survey has a long-standing question about wealth redistribution, asking Americans whether the “government in Washington ought to reduce the income differences between the rich and the poor … perhaps by raising the taxes of wealthy families or by giving income assistance to the poor.” ...



... What’s distinctive about both the Sanders and Ron Paul coalitions is that they consist mostly of people who do not feel fully at home in the two-party system but are not part of historically underprivileged groups.

"And in the naked light I saw/Ten thousand people, maybe more..."

Nah, I didn't see them, but they were there. 10,000 people — maybe more — filled the Coliseum, here in Madison, Wisconsin, to see Bernie Sanders. I know you wanted me to go. I asked "Should I go?" and you were all...

Oh, yes, by all means. Take photos and/or video, and share your report with us....

I say go--just for the spectacle of it. You'd be witnessing the Democratic Left in its distilled form. Plus, if by some long shot Sanders takes the nomination, you'll have seen it in its ground floor....

But it was a night rally, on a day where I got up at 3:30 AM. And it wasn't at some outdoor place — like Ron Paul on the Union Terrace in 2012, where you can walk up casually and wander about taking pictures of the people. This was indoors, at a big arena, where you have to drive up, pass through a gate — probably have to stop and pay for parking — find a parking space, observe how many fellow citizens heeded the advice to arrive early to be able to get a good seat, worry about finding a seat at all as you scurry along from your distant place in the parking lot, pass through security, scramble to find a seat, any 2 seats together, and be stuck in one spot in that crowd, from which you won't get too many different photos and you must endure all the speechifying, all the emotion of the others from which you are alienated, wait for it all to end so you can finally have the release of exiting the arena as a component of the slow-moving human mass, wend your way back to your distantly parked car, where you can finally be an individual again and have your conversation about whatever it was like to be bowing and praying to the neon God that is Bernie Sanders and when are we ever going to get out of this parking lot and back home?

So we were back home all along. I was reading, and I'm reading now. I'm reading that Bernie Sanders proclaimed: "Tonight we have made a little bit of history... Tonight we have more people at any meeting for a candidate of president of the United States than any other candidate." The "we" didn't include me. I didn't get to make a little bit of history with Bernie.

As The Guardian put it (yeah, I'm getting my Madison news from the UK):

[His] message resonated in Madison, the state’s reliably liberal capital and home to the University of Wisconsin. It stood as a sharp contrast to Wisconsin’s own conservative White House hopeful Walker, who is preparing to enter the crowded field of GOP candidates. The governor is expected to make his announcement on or shortly after 13 July.

Sanders immediately went after Republicans and Walker... Walker, whom the crowd loudly booed whenever Sanders mentioned his name....

I'm quite sure I'm not the nighttime rally type.

ADDED: From the local Madison newspaper, quotes, like this one from a social work student: "I really like that he values the human life over money. I’m really excited to hear his ideas and see him, finally, in person. It’ll just be so real." She arrived and got in line 4-and-a-half hours early so she could get a good seat and "be focus on him and not the whole crowd."

"Ron Paul is making me see that the measles vaccine is a stalking horse."

"What is really going on is getting massive numbers of Americans to accept the government mandating health care and supplanting individual choice. We're being conditioned. We're getting inoculated against an anti-government reaction we'd have if other mandates came first."

Said I, reacting to a post over at Facebook that links to something Ron Paul said.

ADDED: At Facebook, Annie Gottlieb asks if I "feel differently about state and local mandates, as opposed to federal?" And I say:

What feelings are you attibuting to me, Annie? I didn't say I was opposed to mandating vaccines. I'm just saying I think mandating vaccines could be something that has jumped to the forefront politically because it works well to serve the purpose of denying us choice in all sorts of things, such as what foods we can eat and whether we must exercise and so forth. As for what level of government will be imposing this on us, I think the federal govt is more dangerous because you lose the ability to relocate to another state you might like better.

"The president won the youth vote 3-1, but his numbers have dropped 20 percent, 30 percent among the youth."

"Really the public at large is less trusting of this president, but the youth in particular have lost faith in this president. And so, I think there's a real opportunity for Republicans who do believe in the Fourth Amendment to grow our party by attracting young people and bring that energy into our party."

Said Rand Paul today (on "Fox News Sunday"), explaining why he's going to do a speech at Berkeley next week. That made me think about the time we went to see Ron Paul down at the Memorial Union Terrace here on campus, back in April 2012. He drew a huge, enthusiastic crowd. Here's 3 minutes of my favorite parts of that speech:



I'm glad Rand Paul is working the campus scene too.

Asking Rand Paul about what Ron Paul said.

There's going to be a lot of this, and Rand Paul needs some skills here. Yesterday was a challenge, as he was asked about his father's statement that the 9/11/01 attacks were "blowback for decades of U.S. intervention in the Middle East." Rand's response:

"What I would say is that, you know there are a variety of reasons and when someone attacks you it’s not so much important what they say their reasons are... The most important thing is that we defend ourselves from attack. And whether or not some are motivated by our presence overseas, I think some are also motivated whether we’re there or not. So I think there’s a combination of reasons why we’re attacked.... The bottom line is, I think people around the world and our enemies around the world need to know that if we’re ever attacked on something like 9/11, if anyone were ever to use chemical weapons on our soldiers anywhere in the world, the response would be an overwhelming one from America and I think that’s the credibility we always need to maintain."

Rand's response was:
	Excellent. He took control and refocused in the right direction.
	Okay, but he should have more vigorously distanced himself from his father.
	Not good. He should have expressed outrage at caring about why we may be hated.
pollcode.com free polls

"From what we know so far, Edward Snowden appears to be the ultimate unmediated man."

Writes David Brooks:

If you live a life unshaped by the mediating institutions of civil society, perhaps it makes sense to see the world a certain way: Life is not embedded in a series of gently gradated authoritative structures: family, neighborhood, religious group, state, nation and world. Instead, it’s just the solitary naked individual and the gigantic and menacing state.

This lens makes you more likely to share the distinct strands of libertarianism that are blossoming in this fragmenting age: the deep suspicion of authority, the strong belief that hierarchies and organizations are suspect, the fervent devotion to transparency, the assumption that individual preference should be supreme. You’re more likely to donate to the Ron Paul for president campaign, as Snowden did....

For society to function well, there have to be basic levels of trust and cooperation, a respect for institutions and deference to common procedures. By deciding to unilaterally leak secret N.S.A. documents, Snowden has betrayed all of these things....

Read the whole thing. This is an excellent column, and it's related to something I was trying to say here. In Brooks's list of what Snowden betrayed, there is:

"Sadly, we have been conditioned to believe that the job of the government is to keep us safe..."

"... but in reality the job of the government is to protect our liberties. Once the government decides that its role is to keep us safe, whether economically or physically, they can only do so by taking away our liberties. That is what happened in Boston."

Three people were killed in Boston and that is tragic. But what of the fact that over 40 persons are killed in the United States each day, and sometimes ten persons can be killed in one city on any given weekend? These cities are not locked-down by paramilitary police riding in tanks and pointing automatic weapons at innocent citizens.

Rand Paul goes on Rush Limbaugh's show and begins with a gaffe.

It's an attempted compliment:

RUSH: We welcome to the program this afternoon Senator Rand Paul from Kentucky. Senator, you got some sleep last night, I trust?

PAUL: Well, I did, but, you know, I was thinking of you when I was in the middle of this 13-hours. I got about five hours into it and I was like, "Well, Rush does four hours of this every day. Certainly I can do four more hours."

As anyone at all familiar with the Rush Limbaugh show would know, Rush does 3 hours. (If you subtract the commercials, it's less than 2 hours.) So right at the outset, Rush knows Paul doesn't pay much attention to the show.

RUSH: (chuckling) That's awfully nice of you to say, but I doubt that I was in your thoughts last night, although I appreciate the comment. 

This seems like a corresponding self-deprecating pleasantry, but listening to the podcast, I translated "I doubt that I was in your thoughts" to: I know you don't care about me.

"As a veteran, I certainly recognize that this weekend's violence and killing of Chris Kyle were a tragic and sad event."

"My condolences and prayers go out to Mr. Kyle’s family. Unconstitutional and unnecessary wars have endless unintended consequences. A policy of non-violence, as Christ preached, would have prevented this and similar tragedies."

Ron Paul, on Facebook.

Via Memeorandum.

74 conservative bloggers answer the question "Which of the following candidates would you most prefer to see as the GOP’s 2016 candidate?

There were 19 names to choose from, and Marco Rubio got a clear plurality, which was not surprising. What was surprising was Rand Paul at #2 and Scott Walker at #3. Have people heard that Scott Walker does not have a college degree? Could that possibly work? (I know I was disparaging college in another post this morning.)

Chris Christie is down at #10, with only 2 votes — including mine — and he's #1 on the list of who would you least like.

In 2008, the least wanted candidates for bloggers were…John McCain and Ron Paul.

In 2012, the least wanted candidates for bloggers were…Mitt Romney and Ron Paul.

So, going by those results, Chris Christie and Jeb Bush would have to be considered the early favorites for 2016 based on the fact that conservative bloggers don’t want either of them as a nominee.

"We need a third party to save this country. Not Ron Paul and the Ron Paulites. No."

"We need a legitimate third party to challenge the current system that we have, because I don’t believe that the Republican Party... has the ability to rebrand itself."

Said Herman Cain, who would like the GOP to rebrand itself in the opposite way from what I'd like.

I voted for Romney even though I reject the package of issues that comes marked with the label "social conservative," Cain's favorite material. One reason I felt calm and distanced from the results of the election in less than 24 hours is that I only wanted about half of what Mitt Romney was offering, and I agree with Obama on the other half. Making the best of what happened is, for me, automatic. I support gay rights and abortion rights, to name the 2 most prominent social issues in this year's elections.

The linked article — at Salon — is a bit confusing, especially the last paragraph:

After the GOP’s crushing 2008 loss, there was lots of talk about a new third party. When the Tea Party emerged, this talk almost became a reality. Instead, the conservative activists opted for a hostile takeover of the GOP. It’s still very unlikely that Cain or anyone else could start a viable third party, but his comments underscore the cleavage within the conservative movement in the wake of the defeat last night.

I thought the Tea Party was about the economic issues — taxing and spending. Do the social issues belong in the Tea Party? Well, apparently they've seeped in. Were Todd "legitimate rape" Akin and Richard "something God intended" Mourdock Tea Party? I didn't buy the "War on Women" demagoguery, but those guys made the GOP look really awful — at least old-fashioned and dumb if not deeply sexist or scarily religionist.

Can we get a GOP with sound economics and a commitment to individual liberty?

Live-blogging Day 2 of the GOP Convention.

6:03: Ayla Brown — the erstwhile "American Idol" contestant and daughter of Senator Scott Brown — sings the National Anthem.

6:07: "Please release each one of us from ego"... part of the invocation, given by a Sikh.

6:08: The color guard are amputee veterans, which we see because they're wearing shorts, earning a new, immediate exception to my "men in shorts" rule.

6:10: A bombastic tribute to Ron Paul. "No, no, I'm not going to be elected," he said to his wife. "To be elected, you've got to be like Santa Claus." Rand Paul says one thing he likes about his father is the lobbyists don't even bother to come by his office.

6:29: I found it hard to watch Mitch McConnell. I almost got out my sketchbook and pen, though, because his face says "Caricature me!" So I moved from C-SPAN over to CNN. (I'm recording both, and also Fox News.) They had an interview with Paul Ryan, in which Gloria Borger prodded him about how he felt when, as a 16-year-old boy, he discovered his father dead. Ryan moved on to how you have to live knowing you could die at any time, so Gloria asked why he didn't live fast and run right away for President. He said there were others who could do that job, but he was the only one would could father his young children. Gloria did not proceed to ask why then is he taking on the VP slot, but I guess that's a very short campaign period and, frankly, once you get it, it's a lot less work than chairing the House Finance Committee. Then Piers Morgan was interviewing Michele Bachmann, and the 2 of them agreed that Ann Romney was just lovely and then enthused about the "miracle" of the 2 of them agreeing, which Wolf Blitzer then echoed, sending me back to C-SPAN which was showing the on-stage entertainer, a horrifying aging rock singer who was belting the line "I'm back in the game" over and over.

6:30: Rand Paul: "You know when the Supreme Court upheld Obamacare, the first words out of my mouth were 'I still think it's unconstitutional.'" Pushed to reflect, he reflected, and he still thinks it's unconstitutional. "The whole damned thing is unconstitutional." Meade says, "He said 'damned.'" And then, more seriously: "What we have here is crazy old Ron Paul" — and Meade makes a Ron Paul face — "morphing into Rand Paul."

6:50: Video of the Bushes, 41 and 43, and their wives, Barbara and Laura. So they weren't entirely banished from this place. They are circumspect, yet charming, claiming their place in history without seeming the slightest bit arrogant. Old Bush even does his Dana Carvey imitation imitation: "Not gon' do it. Wouldn't be prudent."

7:00: John McCain. Why is he here and not George Bush? McCain lost. Bush won twice. Meade says: "Because Bush is through with politics." McCain gives a paean to foreign wars in the cause of freedom, and the crowd's response is tepid.

7:50: Danny Gokey — another "American Idol" person. Another Wisconsin person.

8:00: Rob Portman, the short-list guy who came up short. "We need Romney/Ryan and we need them now." He seems perfectly fine, but I am glad he was not Romney's choice. There's some insurmountable dullness about him, no matter what he says, no matter how enthusiastically.

8:31: Another VP also-ran, Tim Pawlenty. He's reading jokes. For example: Obama is "the tattoo President" — it seemed cool at the time, but you look at it and say "What was I thinking?"

9:15: Huckabee and Rice both gave very long speeches that were neither bad nor good. Here's some text from Rice's speech.

9:19: Biggest cheer of the night comes when Gov. Susana Martinez says: "I carried at 357 Smith & Wesson Magnum" (referring to her experience, as an 18-year-old, working for her parents security guard business, protecting the Catholic church at bingo times). She's a good speaker. A nice edge of passion in her voice. With toughness.

9:29: Both Meade and I thought: We may be looking at the first woman President of the United States.

9:30: Paul Ryan. Meade says: "He looks like a young JFK only healthy." I'm struck by this quote, directly attacking Obama: "I have never seen opponents so silent about their record and so desperate to keep their power. They've run out of ideas. Their moment came and went. Fear and division is all they've got left."

9:40: As Paul Ryan expresses his love for the state of Wisconsin, the C-SPAN camera closes in on Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker, and we see there's a tear rolling down his cheek.



That was pointed out by Meade, who confesses to a tear of his own.

9:55: Paul Ryan gives a moving tribute to his mother, who, as a new widow, commuted 40 miles a day to Madison — to my school, the University of Wisconsin — to learn the skills she used to build a new business and a new life in which her happiness was not just in the past and to become his role model. After a long ovation from the crowd, Ryan moves into what will be the greatest iteration of what has been the convention's them: You did build that. He says:

Behind every small business, there's a story worth knowing. All the corner shops in our towns and cities, the restaurants, cleaners, gyms, hair salon, hardware stores — these didn't come out of nowhere. A lot of heart goes into each one. And if small business people say they made it on their own, all they are saying is that nobody else worked 7 days a week in their place, nobody showed up in their place to open the door at 5 in the morning, nobody did their thinking and worrying and sweating for them. After all that work and in a bad economy, it sure doesn't help to hear from their President that government gets the credit. What they deserve to hear is the truth: Yes, you did build that!

11:10: Ryan did a brilliant job. It was much more than a fine speech and an excellent delivery. He embodied that speech. We saw a brilliant candidate.

"Ron Paul Decisively Wins Minnesota..."

"... and Carries Delegates in Multiple Other States."

Ron Paul in a 3-way race with Obama and Romney...

... helps Romney!

"A lot of people ask me after I speak: 'What should I do? What should I do?' Do whatever you want!"

My favorite line from Ron Paul's speech — to a big crowd at the University of Wisconsin—Madison, on the Union Terrace, March 30, 2012. This edit of my video has that and a few of my other favorite moments, including Woodrow Wilson getting booed twice, a call for the repeal of the 16th Amendment, a joke about raw milk, and a "daydream" about politicians who "read the Constitution and would obey the Constitution.:

Huge crowd at the Ron Paul rally this evening.

We were in the "backstage" area. Note how many people are on the other side, including on the roof.  And way up over there:



I have some video too. I need to edit some high spots. The crowd was very responsive, even chanting "end the fed." No heckling. No indication that there were any fans of big government anywhere in the vicinity. Abolish the income tax... cheers! More than once, they booed Woodrow Wilson.

ADDED: Here's the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel article about the rally:

Paul told the thousands gathered at a "town hall meeting" at the Memorial Union Terrace that he is often asked why young people are interested in him.

"One reason - they're getting a bad deal," he said, citing the debt they are inheriting from past spending decisions.

Ron Paul speaks at the UW tonight, on the Union Terrace, at 7.

It looks to be a huge event. It will be interesting to see how the people of Madison react to the iconic libertarian.