Fuck no.

Noam Chomsky is a genius and I agree with him almost always - but on this - no way - no.

ANY country with nuclear weaponry is a threat to everyone - let alone a country like Iran. Look what a pain in the ass we have with North Korea and Pakistan.

I remember the cold war and the persistent fear of mutual destruction and the perverse rationality behind it.

I don't want ANY country (including my own) to have nukes, least of all non-democratic countries.

Allowing them and any other non-nuclear country to have nukes is the wrong direction.

We need countries to start giving up nuclear weapons, not proliferating and spreading the disease even more.

The United States might be denying Iran nukes for the wrong reasons (OIL) and perhaps Israel for the right reasons, but frankly I don't care either way.

One less country with nukes is never a bad thing.

---------

"Mr. President, it is not only possible, it is essential. That is the whole idea of this machine, you know. Deterrence is the art of producing in the mind of the enemy... the FEAR to attack. And so, because of the automated and irrevocable decision-making process which rules out human meddling, the Doomsday machine is terrifying and simple to understand... and completely credible and convincing". - Dr Strangelove - yeah. makes sense huh.

>> ^VoodooV:

I like how @shinyblurry admits to the power of suggestion, but clearly has decided one way.
Two things I found interesting is that in @mtadd's clip:
1) the chanting occurs right AFTER Ryan just gave a long speech, AND Romney props him up for it so it would certainly be reasonable for them to chant Ryan.
2) the audio is just plain shitty, though it is odd that right before the moment of interest occurs, the volume goes up (sadly, it just amplifies the shittiness of the audio instead of making things easier to hear). I can certainly see how you might think you hear Romney, but one thing that does stand out is that despite how similar their names sound in that context, you never hear the "ney" part of Romney's name in any of that chanting. Ryan Ryan, RomNEY, RomNEY. You just never hear any of that emphasis on that last syllable, which suggests they're saying Ryan.
In the end though, it just really doesn't matter and it just proves my previous post. They're going for the sensationalism. It doesn't matter if it's true or not. It's a manufactured controversy designed to stir people up. Just like the birther phenomenon, just like whatever it was in Bush's suit when he debated with Kerry. It's just like Fox getting caught encouraging and directing the tea party protests and making it seem like there were more there than there actually was. It's manufactured outrage.
The reality is that Romney is losing because he's boring and out of touch and he hasn't presented any concrete ideas and he needs Ryan to stir people up (gasp..more sensationalism vs substance, whoduvthunkit) It wouldn't matter if you caught MSNBC red-handed doctoring the video, it doesn't change the reality.
If anything, giving this controversy air time is still a net negative for Romney. You're just playing the same blame game the right is accusing Obama of. Doesn't make Romney look any better even if MSNBC held a press conference and admitted to a coverup. "And I would have won if it weren't for that meddling press" Ut oh Scooby Do!
You're picking at nits while the house is burning down all around you.
It's not an issue of left vs right, it's an issue of low ratings, or high ratings. end of story.


I decided to believe what the crowd was reported to say, as well as the people who were actually there said happened, and also what my ears hear:

@3:35 p.m.: Ryan pauses for a moment while the crowd begins to chant, “Romney, Romney, Romney …”

@3:36 p.m.: Mitt Romney begins speaking to the crowd. Asks them to chant, “Romney, Ryan; Romney, Ryan; Romney, Ryan …”

http://www.whiotv.com/news/news/setup-underway-for-romney-rally-at-airport/nSLFM/

Even the New York Times reported it accurately:

After Mr. Ryan whooped up the crowd in Vandalia on Tuesday, Mr. Romney moved to the front of the stage. As the crowd began chanting “Romney! Romney!” he cut them off.“Wait a second,” Mr. Romney said, instructing the audience to cheer for “Romney-Ryan! Romney-Ryan!” They did.

“There we go,” he said, pleased.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/26/us/politics/romney-and-ryan-to-start-campaigning-together-more-often.html?_r=2&

http://www.theblaze.com/stories/another-msnbc-scandal-blaze-readers-at-campaign-event-claim-network-misled-in-video-of-rally-chant/

As far as your commentary goes, I can agree with what you're saying generally. This is all about rearranging chairs on the deck of the titanic. You are speaking of some corporate conspiracy, I am speaking to the Satanic power behind the conspiracy. I just think it's interesting that the sift got a kick out of the clip as it was falsely portrayed, and aren't actually interested in what really happened.

I like how @shinyblurry admits to the power of suggestion, but clearly has decided one way.

Two things I found interesting is that in @mtadd's clip:

1) the chanting occurs right AFTER Ryan just gave a long speech, AND Romney props him up for it so it would certainly be reasonable for them to chant Ryan.

2) the audio is just plain shitty, though it is odd that right before the moment of interest occurs, the volume goes up (sadly, it just amplifies the shittiness of the audio instead of making things easier to hear). I can certainly see how you might think you hear Romney, but one thing that does stand out is that despite how similar their names sound in that context, you never hear the "ney" part of Romney's name in any of that chanting. Ryan Ryan, RomNEY, RomNEY. You just never hear any of that emphasis on that last syllable, which suggests they're saying Ryan.

In the end though, it just really doesn't matter and it just proves my previous post. They're going for the sensationalism. It doesn't matter if it's true or not. It's a manufactured controversy designed to stir people up. Just like the birther phenomenon, just like whatever it was in Bush's suit when he debated with Kerry. It's just like Fox getting caught encouraging and directing the tea party protests and making it seem like there were more there than there actually was. It's manufactured outrage.

The reality is that Romney is losing because he's boring and out of touch and he hasn't presented any concrete ideas and he needs Ryan to stir people up (gasp..more sensationalism vs substance, whoduvthunkit) It wouldn't matter if you caught MSNBC red-handed doctoring the video, it doesn't change the reality.

If anything, giving this controversy air time is still a net negative for Romney. You're just playing the same blame game the right is accusing Obama of. Doesn't make Romney look any better even if MSNBC held a press conference and admitted to a coverup. "And I would have won if it weren't for that meddling press" Ut oh Scooby Do!

You're picking at nits while the house is burning down all around you.

It's not an issue of left vs right, it's an issue of low ratings, or high ratings. end of story.

I like the Pink Floyd soundtracks ('La Vallee' and 'More'), mostly because it was music of an era and so unlike anything before or since...

(Little known 'rumour' is that the 23-minute epic on the B-side of the Meddle album, Echoes, was composed to serve as a soundtrack to the final sequence of Stanley Kubrick's "2001: A Space Odyssey" -- entitled Jupiter and Beyond the Infinite. A different song was ultimately chosen for the film, but one can, if one was so inclined, cue up the song at the title card for this sequence and notice how nicely it fits with the psychedelic imagery of this portion of the movie.... Not so unlike Dark Side & the Wizard of Oz).

Bottom-line: among other things, QM is pointing out that this bill established the precedent of using taxes as a penalty (as opposed to creating revenue), something the Constitution goes to great lengths to forbid government from doing. It's a dangerous precedent because it gives the federal government almost unlimited power to meddle in our lives, something that flies in the face of what a free society should be. If you give government power, they will likely use it. The Supreme Court didn't do its job of observing the Constitution by letting this bill pass.

I think we should all be concerned about that. Unless you're a commie who doesn't give a shit about freedom, in that case go back in time to Soviet Russia motherfucker (I'm just paraphrasing QM here).

This isn't about left versus right, Obama versus Romney (is there a difference?), whether government is screwing up the healthcare industry, or if it's socialism to force everyone to pay for insurance (if it doesn't fulfill @Stormsinger's high and noble standards for socialism, it's at least statist and anti-capitalistic).

You guys carry on now with the shouting and personal attacks.

My bad on D1 dungeons.

There will always be cookie-cutter builds. And besides, when you're talking about 'the' build, you're talking about the ideal items to have, the vast majority of people will never get there. Meanwhile, the options for 'best with what you have' varied heaps. I played D3 through with a Monk, and the entire time, the only stats that felt worthwhile chasing were damage, dexterity and vitality.

I'm not saying it didn't have dark elements, but vast portions of the story, dialogue and tone, particularly after Act 1 (which I thought was best part of the game), where juvenile and completely off for a Diablo game. I mean for christ sake, the game delved into damsel in distress territory multiple times. Anyway posted this elsewhere, going to just copy paste:

1. Story tone is horribly off for a Diablo game. Act 1, the tone is almost that right mix of dark, macabre & grim horror albeit with overly colourful graphics. Then, in Act 2 and especially 3/4 the game becomes flat out goofy. It's almost like different studios designed the two parts. Regardless, it's obvious the whole gothic, cheesy but serious tone of previously Diablo games has been thoroughly ditched.

It becomes obvious there is a reason that most of the prime evils were mostly mute & why your characters was kept to making sarcastic remarks and one liners in D2. Diablo beretting you with grating "if it wasn't for your meddling kids" dialogue completely ruins the game's tone. Overall the mix of occasional ultra-violence and the overt colourfulness and childish NPC banter gives it an almost surreal and contradictory theme. As if a design house was of two minds, fighting over dominance over the franchise's feel.

There was just no need to muck with what was not broken to the point that it's hard for me to NOT imagine Activision sitting behind the developers dictating them how well the WoW tone sits with target demographics. There is nothing wrong with WoW existing in its own space with it's own unique identity. There's a problem with creative variety between Blizzard games becoming non-existent because they've caught on to what sells best and decided to stick to that.

As for launch issues, I didn't play D2 at launch, but that's not what really bugs me. It is abundantly obvious though that foisting online-only is part of the reason they're having so many launch issues.

Here's my full bitch session - http://us.battle.net/d3/en/forum/topic/5149543659

>> ^mentality:

>> ^RedSky:
@mentality
D2 felt like a huge leap on D1. Randomized dungeons, huge increase in class and especially item variety, introduction of a vast swathe of new environments. In comparison critically looking at D3, while it does have an expanded skills system, at the end of a prodigious 11 year development cycle, D3 has far less item variety at launch, and arguably simplified gameplay mechanics on a number of levels.
Personally, I happen to also think the story is a let down, the tone of the game has been inappropriately been made cartoonish (art design non-withstanding).

D1 had randomized dungeons. Item variety in D2 was very limited because there often was one set of unique item that was 'THE' item for a specific build. The expanded environments in D2 were also very cartoony compared to the dungeons of D1, and calling D3 cartoonish with levels like the Halls of Agony is outright ridiculous.
The fact of the matter is that the grass is always greener, and we all look at the past with rose colored glasses. History repeats itself, but it seems like few people remember all the problems, controversy and bitching surrounding Diablo 2's launch.

And they would have gotten away with it too if not for those meddling kids!

>> ^oritteropo:

That looks like the same ("Pepper's ghost") technique used for the Sega game Time Traveler and the Tupac concert... it was developed in the 16th century, and was popular on stage in the 19th century.
That said though, it was very nicely done until the last few seconds.

@gorillaman, ok, so people should be free to express their ideas, but not free to have different ideas or ideologies from each other. How does that work?

I love how you apply the word "anarchy" to the economy, as if the natural state of things is not people independently trading with each other, but government ownership and control of all the world's resources, when in fact most of what happens in the world's economy is in such a tremendously vast and complex scale that I can't imagine a single entity keeping track of all that, let alone coordinating it.

I can only imagine, though, how incredibly immoral and oppressive such a world would be. Something like Soviet Russia? I'm sure they had their own standards of efficiency, and hell yeah, the soviets were pretty efficient at sending a man into orbit, making nuclear bombs, nuclear submarines... not so much at erradicating poverty though, or not completely enslaving and slowly starving millions of people, or avoiding the total collapse of their economy.

If you're so worried about harm to third parties, how about the catastrophe of having a third party meddling with every economic transaction? That's TWO parties being directly harmed right there, for every single transaction. Is that a catastrophe worth mentioning?

@dystopianfuturetoday the distinction is as clear as day:

- crony capitalism is when government has a lot of power over the economy and constantly meddles with how people do business. So government becomes part of doing business, specially for big corporations, they can afford to overregulate the market and discourage smaller competitors.

- Free market is when government has very limited power over the economy, preferably not even having a central bank, so corporations don't bother associating with government, there's no power there, nothing to gain from it.

Saying free markets eventually degrade into chaos and violence is like saying, "freedom of religion will lead humanity into an era of endless holy wars".

I found it amusing when you said "a system based on absolute competition", a typically biased socialist characterization of capitalism. You won't ever find in the history of humanity a social system that fosters more cooperation than capitalism. Markets are comprised mostly of people exchanging lots of goods and services with each other, and there is nothing more cooperative than free trade. Competition is not the rule of capitalism, it's a disparity: when there are too many options, there is competition for cooperation.

P.S: I ain't fallin' for your trollin'!

now that trailer has me at least a little bit excited for ME3

I gotta say it though, they really fucked up. ME1 was a hit, it was actually something unique. Then instead of improving on it, they turned ME2 into another chest-high cover shooter and instead of delving deeper into the Reaper Mythos, they distract us with the collectors which was a waste of time and now they're going to play catch up to finish the story

The Reapers are supposed to be this super hyper-advanced threat that has wiped out entire civilizations on multiple occasions, but simply because Shep gathers a big enough fleet that will magically take them down? Bull.

It's the same sad story I've heard countless times. They did it to the Borg. They created this insanely powerful enemy, but then realized, oops, we can't make them too powerful because then how will the good guys win? So then they proceed to dumb em down. They didn't learn their lesson and did the same thing with the Dominion, but that time they literally did do a Deus Ex Machina and had the prophets intervene to knock the Dominion down to a more manageable size. The Clans from Battletech was the same thing. They create a force with unbalanced technology so they have to dumb them down and make them act like idiots to balance it out.

I'm going to play this game and I'm sure im going to enjoy it, but still...it just really honks me off that they dumbed the game and the enemy down and meddled with something that was a hit

What I really wanted was a game similar to the whole Pool of Radiance trilogy back in the day where your characters really did truly continue from game to game and not start over like they do in ME.

QM, Mossadegh's effort to nationalize his nation's oil was not a threat to the United States. For one, they were not doing it to make a political point against any government; so, the Iranians had no interest in withholding oil from any customers. What they wanted were the revenues and profits from the oil coming out of their own land; which would have hurt British interests, or more specifically, the precursor to BP. The US got involved because of cold war ideology. Also, our governments were not in conflict at the time; Mossadegh even visited the states at least once.

Your proposition that they would have eventually overthrown Mossadegh is faulty on a number of points. First of all, Mossadegh was an elderly man who could not have lasted a couple of decades. Secondly, he was a prime minister in a democracy with many thriving factions. Like in all democracies, his administration would have eventually been voted out. Also, the Islamic fundies in Iran developed as a direct result of the Shah's brutality. The Persians had one of the richest, intellectual and tolerant cultures in the region, beforehand, IMO. If their democracy had had a chance to mature and thrive, they could have been a major positive force in the region. Why would people in possession of wealth and democracy overthrow their own government?

It's a very interesting story, documented in the book All the Shah's Men, if you are interested in learning more.

>> ^quantumushroom:

@ChaosEngine Thank you for your more civil tone of late. Am I surprised that someone reached for the mouse to downvote MY comment while ignoring THIS?

Stukafox: There's only two kinds of Republicans: Corporate tools and complete psychopaths.

The Blame America First mindset is very real. It's taught in our public schools government indoctrination centers from K thru kollij. "Anarchist" Gnome Chompsky has made millions off this bizarre worldview, which glibly ignores the 100 million murdered by communist regimes and the defeat of fascism (and rebuilding of Europe) by the United States.
As for the charge of US meddling in Iran, the reality is we have interests around the world, things we want to buy and nations that want to sell. Glancing at wikipedia: when the elected government nationalized the Iranian oil industry, that was a threat to both Britain and the US.
Yeah, the Shah was an a-hole, but he was replaced with an even bigger a-hole, an islamic fundie. So instead of utopian perfection, we had an evil replaced with a greater evil. (And who's to say had Prime Minister Mosaddegh kept power through the 1970s, he wouldn't have been overthrown by Khomeini anyway)?
There is not any one era when international relations was superior and reasonable, just brief burps where there was an odd peace.
If you want to celebrate red china for "putting America in its place" like our idiot excuse of a president does, you better damned well understand what you're favoring: a ruthless communist regime that kills people as easily as you throw away coat hangers.

@ChaosEngine Thank you for your more civil tone of late. Am I surprised that someone reached for the mouse to downvote MY comment while ignoring THIS?

Stukafox: There's only two kinds of Republicans: Corporate tools and complete psychopaths.

The Blame America First mindset is very real. It's taught in our public schools government indoctrination centers from K thru kollij. "Anarchist" Gnome Chompsky has made millions off this bizarre worldview, which glibly ignores the 100 million murdered by communist regimes and the defeat of fascism (and rebuilding of Europe) by the United States.

As for the charge of US meddling in Iran, the reality is we have interests around the world, things we want to buy and nations that want to sell. Glancing at wikipedia: when the elected government nationalized the Iranian oil industry, that was a threat to both Britain and the US.

Yeah, the Shah was an a-hole, but he was replaced with an even bigger a-hole, an islamic fundie. So instead of utopian perfection, we had an evil replaced with a greater evil. (And who's to say had Prime Minister Mosaddegh kept power through the 1970s, he wouldn't have been overthrown by Khomeini anyway)?

There is not any one era when international relations was superior and reasonable, just brief burps where there was an odd peace.

If you want to celebrate red china for "putting America in its place" like our idiot excuse of a president does, you better damned well understand what you're favoring: a ruthless communist regime that kills people as easily as you throw away coat hangers.

>> ^jwray:

>> ^quantumushroom:
That's the problem with the Blame America First mindset, believing the rest of the world is made up of innocent countries populated by angels who NEVER fight, but then mean old USA comes along and look: WARS!
What will you do when red china and iran ignore the Golden Rule?

FYI the Iran Hostage crisis was Iran's revenge for the CIA-supported 1954 coup which overthrew their decent elected government and replaced it with a brutal dictator who violently cracked down on all political opposition to himself. The hostage-takers' only demands were that the US apologize for the 1954 coup, return the dictator to Iran for trial, and promise not to meddle in the internal affairs of Iran again. Those are perfectly reasonable demands that the USA should have done in the first place before the hostage crisis. But the hostage crisis put them in the akward position that the "right thing to do" was also "giving in to terrorists" and Ronald Reagan's massive testicles could not abide doing something that would please a terrorist even if it was the right thing to do regardless.


Well put. Except Reagan was an actor hired by the remnants of the Nixon gang who only ever did what he was told.

>> ^quantumushroom:

That's the problem with the Blame America First mindset, believing the rest of the world is made up of innocent countries populated by angels who NEVER fight, but then mean old USA comes along and look: WARS!
What will you do when red china and iran ignore the Golden Rule?


FYI the Iran Hostage crisis was Iran's revenge for the CIA-supported 1954 coup which overthrew their decent elected government and replaced it with a brutal dictator who violently cracked down on all political opposition to himself. The hostage-takers' only demands were that the US apologize for the 1954 coup, return the dictator to Iran for trial, and promise not to meddle in the internal affairs of Iran again. Those are perfectly reasonable demands that the USA should have done in the first place before the hostage crisis. But the hostage crisis put them in the akward position that the "right thing to do" was also "giving in to terrorists" and Ronald Reagan's massive testicles could not abide doing something that would please a terrorist even if it was the right thing to do regardless.

@Yogi - interesting (and disturbing) observation. In the 5 years I've been living in Thailand, most of the people I've talked US politics with (be they Westerners like Brits, Aussies, etc. or Asians / SE Asians) have exactly the kind of read on US foreign policy that Ron Paul is suggesting we have earned here. Ie., they see beyond the faces of the different presidents calling the shots and notice the long-term track record of going out and meddling, whether that meddling is beneficial or not.

For a long time, I bought into what we hear in the US and was hopeful that, say, the Iraqi people would be appreciative and thankful that we came and "took care of the Saddam Hussein problem". Remember when the troops got to Baghdad and we saw the Iraqis jubilantly tearing down his statue, later discovered to be largely or entirely prompted by US psyops? Then I moderated my position and thought, OK, we got into this, now we've got to see it through to the end for the sake of those people whose lives we have disrupted. That pans out real well when they overwhelmingly just want us to get the hell out...

Anyway, it sort of boggles my mind that Ron Paul would get booed over suggesting a "Golden Rule" approach. Maybe more of our fellow Americans need to get a little more world-wise and see for themselves that we've already got a big backlog of ill-will to overcome from our legacy of unrequested "intervention"...