Click to viewTake a look at the front page of crazy-huge crowdsourced web aggregator Digg today and you'll see a totally different portrait of the war in Georgia than you'd find on the front of the New York Times. It's not the scary specter of Russia asserting its dominance over the region and thumbing its nose at the West, gambling that we won't respond with force. It's not tanks rolling toward a soverign nation's capital in the hopes of overthrowing its pro-American leader. No, it is, as usual, a conspiracy by George W. Bush and the Mainstream Media to confuse and deceive you. A false story propagated by those terrible, biased gatekeepers. Also-Russian tanks are fucking awesome!!!! Why the hell would typically nerd-news and cute photo-obsessed little Digg take such a counterintuitive view of a war being waged on the other side of the globe? Three simple reasons.

Have you heard of Ron Paul? He is running for president. He has a blimp. He would like to abolish the government and bring back the gold standard. His internet fans are legion, and they are also nuts. Did we mention that they got him a blimp? And whenever Ron Paul is mentioned, on the internet, in just about any capacity, on sites large or small, the Paultards show up en masse to argue in the comments and berate the regulars. Then they spam Digg with it. It's called The Ron Paul Effect. Would you like the hear the headline of the single worst press release of 2008 so far? It is: "MySpace Community Chooses Barack Obama and Ron Paul as Leading Presidential Candidates in Nation's First Presidential Primary." See? And everyone on the internet can play along.