Back in 2008, the last time we elected a President here in the United States, there were only a few no-do-gooders, ne'er do wells, ragamuffins, all-around punks, and handsome, studly men hanging around your beloved Battle Red Blog. Even back then, there was a no politics rule around these here parts (and one severely enforced at DGDB&D, whatever that allegedly was). There's a reason for this: here on BRB, we are football fans, mostly Texans' fans!, and this is the tie that binds. After the jump, a few thoughts about politics from yours truly.

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In an effort to provide more unintelligible rants original content to the BRB community, we're making a concerted effort to increase our activity on the official BRB Twitter (@battleredblog) and BRB Facebook (here's a link) pages. I'll be in charge of the Twitter happenings, and BFD has volunteered to helm the horrendous failure that is sure to be this site's increased Facebook activity.

Livers permitting, there will be exclusive new stuff (read: dumbarsery you don't get to see on the site) on both Twitter and Facebook each day (or most days, anyway). For example, I've taken to posing "Tonight's Texans Twitter Query" (#TTTQ) each evening and chatting with whoever responds, and I'm trying to make it a point to interact on Twitter throughout the workday as time permits as well.

So if you've got a Twitter or Facebook account, feel free to join the party by "following" or "friending" BRB. Additionally, several of your favorite BRB "staff members" have individual Twitter accounts, which I will reveal after the jump.

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On numerous occasions, in comments in various threads, I've politely asked members of the community to refrain from posting salacious or inappropriate pictures on BRB. I suppose I didn't state my position forcefully enough, because one of the members in our community apparently thought it would be permissible to post nude pictures in the comments to a post this morning. Those comments have been deleted, and the person who posted them has been banned. I am blown away that anyone could think that sort of stuff was fair game on BRB, and I'm angry at myself for allowing things to progress to a point where someone would think posting images like that would be tolerated here.

Thus, allow me to remove any doubt (though again, I'm stunned I actually have to take the time to post about this). Images of individuals nude or in any state of undress are strictly prohibited on BRB. I'm also going to take the image policy a step further while I'm on the subject of image use. Hit the jump, please.

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Sometime yesterday, the fancy stats odometer for BRB (not Sitemeter, which tends to lag a bit behind) rolled over the 3,000,000 visit mark. I can hardly comprehend that there have been 3,000,000 unique visits to this corner of the internet (only 1,349,218 of which I estimate to have been me refreshing the page to falsely inflate the hit count). It's a staggering number, and I am beyond humbled by it.

As noted in the post commemorating the first million visitors to BRB, Scott and I started this site back on January 22, 2007. If you have a minute, go ahead and take a look at some of the early posts via the "Archives" tab at the top of the page. We were lucky if we got a handful of comments when we posted. To think that a typical post now on BRB gets anywhere from a couple dozen to several hundred comments continues to amaze me, because I remember how often the early days of this site consisted of Scott and I talking to each other. We were really excited when we'd get to interact with an actual live reader (like Shake, BFD, or one of the handful--and I truly mean handful; you could count them on one hand--of community members we had back then).

What BRB has become has dwarfed any expectation Scott or I had when we agreed to start SB Nation's blog about your Houston Texans. The reason BRB has grown into what it is today is simple: It's the people who make this place what it is. While I'm sure to fail in properly expressing my gratitude for everyone who has had a hand in the development of our community, please jump with me as I attempt to say thank you.

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About a month ago, I updated the BRB Community Guidelines for new users. I also asked existing members of the community to read the newly amended guidelines. I did this because I (along with several other community members) had noticed a deterioration in the quality of the commentary here at BRB, and I hoped that addressing site rules/decorum/etc. before the regular season started would mean I didn't have to talk about that stuff for a good long while.

Judging from many of the comments and a FanPost or two I've read over the last week, that hope was totally misplaced and amazingly naive.

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