@Trancecoach
um..did you just take an analogy i made and make that your entire premise to defend your position?

sighs.
look man.
i am an anarchist.
i am not defending the government.
why you assume that i do not know..but if i gave that impression,then i apologize.

let me posit this for your perusal.

as an anarchist i believe all systems of authority and power to be illegitimate until proven otherwise.
the burden is on those who profess authority.

as an anarchist i agree that a free market can work quite well,BUT you have never once posited the counter balance to that equation.
because even as an anarchist i have to recognize that there needs to be a system which keeps the hands on the scales that keeps the playing field even and the kids playing nice.

these systems are for the people,by the people and run by the people.
and if they begin to falter and become suspect in regards to corruption.
they shall be discarded in favor of a new system.

so when you say the government is too large and bloated and needs to be made smaller..i agree.
BUT..you stop there.

are you implying that we have a free market now?
did you actually infer that america begot its wealth and power purely through free market exchanges?
have you even been paying attention?

corporate america has been exploiting third world countries for over a century!
and our government has been the fist that punched the:exploitation,ruination and demise of those countries.hell thats the reason WHY they are third world!
hundreds of thousands of humans dying and suffering so we can have cheap crap to buy.
its shameful and if thats your idea of a free market.
well..you can fucking keep it.

you only seem to address one part of the equation.
or are you oblivious to the harm that corporate america has wrought for the past century?

who or what will keep that behemoth in check?
what do you think will happen when you take regulation off the table?
(and i am not making a case FOR regulation by the way.kinda sad i have to caveat that).
do you understand what feudalism actually is?
we are living in what is now being called a "neo-feudalism" state.
or as sheldon wholin called "inverted totalitarianism".

you point to the government but not to the invisible hand that owns it.which is corporate america.

so i am really trying to understand your position but if you are not willing to acknowledge that very real dynamic i dont know how i can take your position seriously.

then again.i am a pretty crappy capitalist.
exploitation aint my thing.
though i dig libertarian socialist.
has a ring ya?

@Trancecoach
ok.
i always agree with you to a point and then you lose me.
i agree that commerce and free markets (with non-aggression) can be a good thing.
i agree that a bloated and corrupted government,bought by those who wish to game the system,a bad thing.
i also agree that inequality is not necessarily a bad thing.

but as @newtboy pointed out.history is a great teacher.
so while inequality is not really my main issue.fairness and justice IS a main issue.

the new global mafia principle only serves the powerful.
and while it may create prosperity for some,it emiserates far more than it helps.
so we both agree that this plutocracy HAS to go,what do we put in its place to keep the scales of fairness and justice equal? giving ALL an even playing field?

we both agree on the problem.
what do you suggest is a fair a just solution?

i know what mine would be but i curious what you envision the solution to be.

@ ChaosEngine-One example of cops barely being able to handle a situation that grows increasingly widespread, reaching into the land of the mounties as well-Believe it ChaosEngine, that prisons and the military and the police all follow the same recruitment scenario with a larger picture beyond what you and most so flippantly believe in using your senses and the programming that has been driven-into you 24/7 365 through constant reinforcement through television commentators, so-called alternative media sources, et-all.

Speaking with someone form Canada recently regarding corporal punishment in U.S. schools, they were aghast to hear that such a thing exists or existed this due primarily to a completely alternate scenario there, their TV programming not having been hi-jacked by perpetrators of the condition that exists in America today, rampant crime, over-bloated prisons, homelessness, poverty of education, a few items on a long list of defective and deliberate aspects of the control-grid of assholes who run the show.

Say that you are not effected by such a ruse and you either are oblivious or from another country. You simply haven't been to war yet nor have you likely never been a victim of injustices that effected yourself on a personal level.

Admittedly, I have always fought the system's cues to conform to injustices, and the fight is daily, as evidenced here in trying to convince those still inebriate, of an obvious condition. SO they whined and justified their actions. Great. The State says its ok, it must be thus, right?

A more urgent question must be asked: What will it take for Seagal to never step his bloated, no-actin' ass in front of a camera ever again?

I'd say he looks very similar to a bloated Alan Rickman

@VoodooV
dont be too harsh on our boy @blankfist at least he has us talking about some pretty important issues.

if we do not discuss the hard issues and deal with truths and only hold onto our own biased ideology,then nothing gets accomplished.

i do not subscribe to blankies capitalistic unrestricted free market position.
i have been learning much about the free market and it does have some substantial strengths in many regards.

the problems arise,in my opinion,in regards to societal responsibility.
unrestricted capitalism makes everything a commodity.
and some things should NEVER be considered a commodity.

so i am against the privatization of schools and commodifying children.
and for those of you who wish to berate me for my position allow me to point to our current prison system:prisoners=commodity

now by me saying this does NOT automatically mean i am in support of our current education system.
i am not.

the system we have now is a bloated and stagnating beast which does little to educate and everything to indocrinate and create obedient workers.

and who is blamed for all this?
the teachers!
of course!
bind their hands,gag their mouths,stifle their creativity and crush their imagination.

and THEN turn around and say "there...theres your problem.the teachers".

so @ blankfist is not entirely off the mark when he infers or implies that it is government that is at fault.

because they are.

the real question is why?
now i am wading into postulation waters here but this is what i suspect.
1.the american government nor corporations wish to have a truly educated and informed citizenry with critical thinking skills and the ability to consume data and form rational conclusions.
people with those abilities will always challenge power.

they would rather have a docile and submissive public that does not question authority.
best get em while they are young.

so it doesnt matter if the schools are privatized or publicly funded.
they BOTH seek the same results and will BOTH be/are equally corrupt.

and most likely BOTH will blame the teachers for a perceived failure.

because BOTH will ignore,either knowingly or unknowingly,the systematic failure of HOW they teach children.

no longer is art taught.
nor civics (at least not where i live),
nor the humanities.
they are teaching these kids to be systems managers,not free-thinkers.

i believe that education all the way up and through to higher education should be a public responsibility.the investment will pay dividends greater than anything put IN to the system.
i am not going to list them all,just think about what a well educated citizen can bring to table.
see:finland

because at its heart,its essence,is not society a collective practice in community?
there are some things that should never be socialized.
education is not one of them.

money is not the problem.
teachers are not the problem.
its the SYSTEM and how it teaches,that is the problem.

remove the politicians and the special interest from the equation and allow the actual educators to do their jobs.

instead we have turned teachers into baby-sitters and schools into factories of the banal.

what a disgrace.

I despise the whole concept of s****** (I can't even type the word). There was a time when you would have been ridiculed for taking so many pictures of yourself. Or been advised to seek professional help. Just as bad as seeing people's washed-out bloated faces doing their webcam monologues. If only iPhones would shoot pepper spray when they detected a s*****.

You are welcome. Thanks for the Power Points! Now i am bloated.

Walt Disney and his Imagineers are legend.

All things being transitory, ideas decay. Most ideas from popular culture leave few traces of their existence behind, but some fossilize.

Society embraced it, creating the sediment, and then the oxygen of originality was removed. Over many, many years, the parts of it that were inspiring and innovating were replaced by money deposits.

The bloated corporate entity may appear to be alive but it is not. It doesn't create life, just consumes. Consumes your wallet. Consumes your wallet so that it can be a more preserved fossil.

At this point it's pretty likely it's a development build running on PC, too early to tell if it's really been optimised well for current gen consoles.

Anyway, I'm glad they're focussing explicitly on mechanics. I've always found GTA games to be full of superflous 'gameplay' I wouldn't ever spend time on. Perhaps I'm part of the cynical bunch that doesn't buy the immersion angle.

If more mini-games this time around are actual fun diversions then great. If the gun mechanics are tightened up, maybe it'll play as a better 3rd person shooter in it's own right.

Otherwise, I worry they're just bloating out the feature pool like they've done in each successive sequel.

Got no sympathy whatsoever for Paula Dean-Could care less her Southern-white heritage of racism, her food is shit and her $$$-cow is in place because of Walmart and poor people watching too much goddamn television. She represents THE most heinous of crimes perpetrated against un-witting peeps in the U.S.:
Poisoning your body with food and runaway consumerism driven by addiction to the cathode rays.

Oh ANNND she can't stand black folks?? The people who buy most of her crappy shit??

Fuck that bloated, cracker-ass bitch!!

Strange video. I left Norton for McAfee when Norton became a bloated mess that took over your whole computer, then left McAfee for NOD32 for the same reason. Several AV's later (AVG, F-Secure, Kaspersky), I'm using Avira. So far... works well, low memory footprint, don't need to disable it for anything to work correctly, doesn't bog the system down at all. If Avira wants to lose me as a customer, all they have to do is start pushing a "security suite", which they offer, but I'm not interested. It probably goes back to my DOS days, but I dislike giving control of my computer to third-party software. And you can suck your "cloud". No thank you.

Wife (die/eine Ehefrau) is feminine.

German as a language just went through too damn many evolutionary steps over the centuries. It's convoluted and bloated to a point where many people just ignore some of the rules, particularly regarding the "cases" you mentioned.

RFlagg,

I agree with what you've stated about CEO compensation and taxation of the wealthy. I've said the same thing for years. Reagan did the country a disservice by cutting taxes for the wealthy by half. Now, the wealthy are crying at the prospect of a few percent increase. The wealthy are as guilty of an entitlement mindset which was created by Republicans as the poor are guilty of an entitlement mindset which was created by Democrats. After WWII, the top tax bracket was paying more than 90% in taxes. For decades after WWII the top bracket was 70%. We need to be heading back in that direction. We also need to be reducing welfare programs by retraining and educating beneficiaries and properly educating their children.

I also believe that corporations with public shareholders should have salary caps for CEOs and upper management. Too often, shareholders lose money on their investments while CEOs receive shockingly high compensation for failed leadership. A board of directors, when voting on compensation, is not looking at the best interests of the shareholder. A board member is seeing potential for themselves in bloated CEO and leadership compensation.