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This is Ron Paul, Republican presidential candidate. As you can see, his wiki bio is being edited by his staff, but that's not the point. He's heavily against the Iraq war, and has been getting praise across the internet for being against the "patriot" act, against the torture bill, and against everything related to the war. Sounds eminently sensible, right?

Yeah... not so much.

Ron Paul on race:

"Opinion polls consistently show that only about 5 percent of blacks have sensible political opinions, i.e. support the free market, individual liberty and the end of welfare and affirmative action,"Paul wrote.

Paul continued that politically sensible blacks are outnumbered "as decent people." Citing reports that 85 percent of all black men in the District of Columbia are arrested, Paul wrote:

"Given the inefficiencies of what D.C. laughingly calls the `criminal justice system,' I think we can safely assume that 95 percent of the black males in that city are semi-criminal or entirely criminal," Paul said.

Paul also wrote that although "we are constantly told that it is evil to be afraid of black men, it is hardly irrational. Black men commit murders, rapes, robberies, muggings and burglaries all out of proportion to their numbers."

And:

"We don't think a child of 13 should be held responsible as a man of 23. That's true for most people, but black males age 13 who have been raised on the streets and who have joined criminal gangs are as big, strong, tough, scary and culpable as any adult and should be treated as such."

And:

"Regardless of what the media tell us, most white Americans are not going to believe that they are at fault for what blacks have done to cities across America. The professional blacks may have cowed the elites, but good sense survives at the grass roots. Many more are going to have difficultly avoiding the belief that our country is being destroyed by a group of actual and potential terrorists -- and they can be identified by the color of their skin. This conclusion may not be entirely fair, but it is, for many, entirely unavoidable."

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Added bonus: Ron Paul is paying for astroturfers to run around, following people who mention his insanity and post comments. Let's see if I can catch a few, even after I have this notice saying I know them and that I fucking hate spammers.

Bush anoits self to lordship over all three branches of US government "in case of emergency."

In a new National Security Presidential Directive, Bush lays out his plans for dealing with a “catastrophic emergency.”

Under that plan, he entrusts himself with leading the entire federal government, not just the Executive Branch. And he gives himself the responsibility “for ensuring constitutional government.”

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fengi speaks wisdom. Quoth he:

It may not be true the Bush administration has shoved corrupt, incompetent fuckheads into every nook and cranny it controls, but damn if they aren't trying.

Al Hurra television, the U.S. government's $63 million-a-year effort at public diplomacy broadcasting in the Middle East, is run by executives and officials who cannot speak Arabic, according to a senior official who oversees the program.

That might explain why critics say the service has recently been caught broadcasting terrorist messages, including an hour-long tirade on the importance of anti-Jewish violence, among other questionable pieces.

Facing tough questions before a congressional panel last week, Broadcasting Board of Governors member Joaquin Blaya admitted none of the senior news managers at the network spoke Arabic when the terrorist messages made it onto the air courtesy of U.S. taxpayer funds. Nor did Blaya himself or any of the other officials at the Broadcasting Board of Governors, which oversees the network.
...
Blaya conceded that the top officials in the network's chain of command could not understand what was being said on al Hurra broadcasts...the network's news division also had no assignment desk, he said. That left decisions over al Hurra's content in the hands of its reporters and producers, who are, according to Blaya, hastily-hired Arabic-speaking journalists with insufficient understanding of Western journalistic practices or the network's pro-Western mission.

The station is run by a board of governors, eight of which are appointed by [Bush], the ninth by the Secretary of State.

(no subject)

Yes, this is a real page from a real, printed comic.

Happy "you probably live in a city" day!

There’s no big countdown billboard or sign in Times Square to denote it, but Wednesday, May 23, 2007, represents a major demographic shift, according to scientists from North Carolina State University and the University of Georgia: For the first time in human history, the earth’s population will be more urban than rural.

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Fred Clark explains basic economics:

Imagine this happens to you:

Some big Manhattan publisher gives you a $100,000 advance to write the Great American Novel. Then you look at the fine print and you realize that your deal gives you $100,000 every year until you finish the book.

You call to double check. "Does this mean I get $100,000/year forever?" you ask.

"Not forever," the publisher says, "just until whenever you're finished writing." And once the book is completed, the publisher says, you will receive a $2,500 bonus.

This would never happen in real life, of course, because any capable publisher would realize that such a deal would provide a major incentive for you never to finish the job.

But while no publisher is that dumb, the Bush administration is. This, essentially, is the deal the White House has with the Pakistani government for helping us track down Osama bin Laden. Crooks and Liars sums it up:

... the Bush administration pays the Pakistani government $1 billion a year to hunt down Osama bin Laden, and demands zero accountability as to how that money is spent.

The Bush administration is also offering a $25 million bounty for information leading to the capture of bin Laden. Let's do the arithmetic. If you're Pervez Musharraf which would you choose? A one-time award of $25 million? Or 40 times as much this year, and next year, and every year after that?

Let's try one more analogy. Imagine you're Halliburton. You've been hired by the U.S. government to rebuild Iraq's refineries and oil infrastructure. In the meantime, until that job is completed, you've also been hired to supply Iraq with gasoline at whatever prices you see fit to charge. So, do you diligently work to complete the first task, thus killing the goose that lays the golden egg? Or do you do the economically sensible thing and ensure that the lucrative "meantime" lasts as long as possible?

This analogy, unfortunately, is not hypothetical.

Vampires and fangs.

I'm thinking Vampire: The Masquerade (althought Requiem works just as well).

I'm thinking about what happens when you get a pair of pliers and pull a vampire's fangs.

By default, by the rules as written, you've just done a Bashing damage, *maybe* a Lethal. The fangs you extracted crumble to dust in a few minutes or hours, the victim regrows them as soon as he has some blood in his system to spare to heal the damage, and life goes on.

And this displeases me. I don't like it, at all. It lacks style. It lacks *cool*.

I'm thinking, of all things, of the Vampire card game card "Pulled Fangs", which prominently features a pair of pliers, and which causes an Aggravated damage. I'm thinking I don't want pulling fangs to do Agg - I mean, if for no other reasons than a guy with Potence breaking your jaw and sending teeth flying could do Agg, and I think the idea of yanking the fangs out of a torporous opponent causing them to crumble to ash is slightly absurd - but I think it should do more than just be another Bashing damage to heal instantly. These are your *fangs*. They are, fundamentally, the physical reflection of the essence of what it is to be a vampire. They're your tokens and your focus, and treating them like the were your fingers, or your ears, or your phlegm? That doesn't sit right.

And, really, what greater humiliation can there be for a vampire than having your fangs pulled? Trespass in another vampire's territory, get grabbed, your fangs pulled, and you left kicked to the curb at the outer edge of it? And how cool is it, really, for said vampire to hold on to your fangs and be able to produce them to taunt you, or as a show of menace?

What if the fangs don't regrow until they're healed *as if* they were Agg, even though they don't cause Agg when removed? Growing back after a day, a Willpower, and 3 blood?

Maybe your fangs shouldn't grow back at all, until the original set are restored (and then they re-root themselves and work normally again) or the original set are destroyed (and they don't crumble, outside your body). Maybe they should never grow back *at all*, leaving you fangless and showing your shame for the rest of your life, like a scar.

What do you think, oh fellow geeks?

EDIT: anivair presents an obvious method that I didn't think of: a very long time that is not permanent, say, a year and a day. Heal the "damage" immediately, lose the fangs for a year.

Snail sex!

Watch on YouTube

It's as work-safe as two snails sensuously gliding over and grinding against one another can be, when set to music.

Warning for arachnophobes, there's a spider in the video after the snails are done.

(no subject)

(no subject)

Ah, yes, Bush cronies.

Step 1: Get subpoena'd to testify about your boss's actions
Step 2: Plead the 5th, admitting that you did things that were illegal but invoking your right to not be forced to testify against yourself.
Step 3: Be granted congressional immunity, so the 5th Amendment no longer protects you since you now cannot be prosecuted based on your testimony for the illegal things you admitted you did in Step 2
Step 4: Deny doing anything illegal, at all, ever.