This is awesome although now I feel a little embarrassed that I knew all the famous friends right off the bat except for the most important man in the video game industry....
" Free speech is a bizarre law. On one hand, people should be able voice their opinions on a subject. On the other hand some people have some very offensive views that infringe on other peoples human rights. There is a very fine line between censorship, and protecting the rights of others. And it's hard to get that balance right. Although we really should just appoint me king of the world. And I'll behead anyone who voices opinions that I disagree with. Yeah, that seems like the best course of action. "
While I agree that free speech can be a political minefield, I'm not sure how people's offensive views, even ones as offensive as those belonging to these jag-offs, can infringe on other people's human rights. As for these morons, as far as I'm concerned, they can continue being batshit insane nutbars as long as they want, so long as they stay away from the actual funerals of the soldiers. They should not be able to disturb people during a private ceremony.
Example: the current presidency dropped 9 million dollars of tax payer money to Haiti. That is one example of a serious misappropriation of funds. That tax money is to go to making our own country better not everywhere else.
Holy shit that's a lot of stupid right there. Yeah, fuck Obama for sending taxpayer money to try to help out an inpoverished nation after some of the greatest devastation ever was wracked upon a population. What do you do for fun? Kick puppies? "
Recent studies have shown that our surplus of aid has flooded the Haitian market with food. This drove prices down for producers and sellers and fucked their economy. "
Yeah, we're a bunch of nincompoops for trying to help out. Long-term strategic investment in the country without neocon influence would have been a much smarter way to help out. Too bad the devastation required an immediate action, and the long-term investment is unlikely to occur as the U.S. has such a short attention span. "
Most people who advocate long-term investments in developing countries are liberal. But we'll leave that detail out for ya. "
He's right. The only time conservatives advocate investments in developing countries are when they fund revolutionaries to overthrow those country's duly elected governments. Iran, Guatemala, Laos, Congo, Cambodia, the Contras in Nicaragua...
While no doubt at least some of the anti health reform rhetoric came from insurance companies and drug companies, the ironic thing is Monday after the bill had passed, quite a number of insurance and drug company stocks saw a big surge. Don't fool yourself, there is a reason this bill actually passed. It has been so neutered from it's original form it's going to cause about as many problems for ordinary people as it fixes. It will force a lot of people into the insurance market, limit the number of sources they can buy insurance from, financially punish people that don't opt in to insurance, and will strain the current system of hospitals and doctors in this country. It'll be great for the poor or nearly poor, neutral for rich and upper middle class people and once again, the lower middle class will feel the squeeze.
That said, the majority of people rallying against the bill in the last couple weeks don't even know what the hell they are talking about. Listening to NPR cover these rallies recently and then watching some of the coverage Sunday night, I can't tell you how many times I heard people refer to this bill as the beginning of socialism, which is just ignorant. Socialized health care or universal coverage is what we SHOULD have gotten, but between Republicans scaring the crap out of a lot of people, the Democrats not having the balls to stick to their guns, and the crazy amount of lobbying done early on, there was no way it was going to happen. I personally found it ironic that the Republicans and blue-dog Democrats that were so against universal coverage get exactly that as members of congress. They pay nothing for it and they get coverage that most Americans can only dream of. But once people started throwing the 'S-word' around, nobody paid attention to anything else.
So to answer the OPs question, the reason is pretty much the same reason a bunch of head-scratching legislation passes in this country. A small group of greedy and heartless people lied to and scarred the majority of people into rallying against something that could have been extremely positive for most Americans by saying key words like 'socialism' and going on and on about the ineptitude of the federal government to handle such things (and yet they are supposedly worthy of being trusted with things like collecting taxes, running wars and issuing currency. Strange...) and somehow convincing them that the private sector is better off handling such things, despite all evidence to the contrary.
I think you might be getting Bodycount and Black 2 mixed up. IIRC the lead guy on Black left Criterion for Codemasters and is making Bodycount while a proper sequel to Black is coming from Criterion.
Not at all. It's a bit perplexing when I hardly know the person and they ask me if I thought a game (or movie) was good. In those cases, I just respond something along the lines of "Well, I enjoyed it" or "I wouldn't recommend it". Now, if it's a friend who's opinions and tastes in such things I know pretty well or their tastes and mine are similar, I can go much more in-depth, relating things that are similar to other games I know they have played and liked or disliked and giving them an idea what they are in for.
Most of the OPs predictions seem plausible. Nothing too exciting there as most/all of those games have been known about for some time now, or at least have been speculated as being announced/shown for some time now (Gears 3 for example). The one game though that I'm really hoping is announced at E3 this year is Elder Scrolls V and it better not be a goddamned MMO! Bethesda has to be working on something and with Obsidian doing Fallout NV, I hope to Christ it's a new Elder Scrolls game. I'd love to see some fresh IP as well. There have been some really great new IPs this generation but most of them already have a sequel or in some cases, two sequels by now so hopefully their is a wave of new IPs this year.
Plus I want to see some real non-minigame game that utilizes Natal in some innovative ways. Playstation Move just strikes me as what the Wii controller should have been so I'm hoping Microsoft can show us something more original which unfortunately is not exactly their strong suit .
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