Weird, I wonder why he chose Far Cry Primal for this particular rant. The game received mixed reviews and has an average Metacritic score of 76 (across all three platforms). I seriously doubt Ubisoft would pay for such reviews.

As others have mentioned, publishers don't offer explicit bribes. They offer access. Preview copies, preview events, interviews, footage, screenshots, etc. In the long run, that's far more valuable than straight up cash.

It's not so much that they lack the 'spine' as it is they lack any incentive to do so. If they do nothing, they get handed millions with no repercussions. If they work to remove the influence, they start an unwinnable 'war' with all those 'donors' and all their colleagues, effectively ending their careers and the handouts for nothing.
We should have Federal ballot initiatives, maybe requiring a 2/3 vote to pass, so the people could take some control back of congress and stop allowing them to make the rules they have to play by, and stop allowing them to police themselves as well. It's no surprise that an organization that only answers to itself is corrupt, and the people have not held a Federal politician to task for accepting bribes in decades...that I know of.

So yes, they have many workable ideas on how to solve the problems, but all of those ideas are against their own interests until we change the system.

One word: pshaw.

No, silly. The basis of most all magic tricks hinges entirely on doing very complicated things or using very complicated special props.

Using Occam's Razor the selected answer would be: Rose McIver is really doing magic. That's simpler than "Jimmy Kimmel is a horny old man and he wants to beg this C-list TV show actress to do him the favor of being on his show at some future point because he has to bribe low-level actors to do that (as if that's how Hollywood works), so he got prepped on what card to select then rehearsed being surprised when she selected his card" and that's way simpler than "she has a trick deck that's laid out in a special way and requires you to memorize suits and numbers and pulling apart cards without giving it away."

Nonsense.

That's essentially how it works in every fucking country, including the U.S. Pay the bribe or do the time.

^ really dude?

Getting your car from the impound opposed to paying the bribe is kinda missing the point. Don't ya think?

Your video, FIFA Bribe for North Korea 2026 World Cup, has made it into the Top 15 New Videos listing. Congratulations on your achievement. For your contribution you have been awarded 1 Power Point.

I thought he quit?

And your right dickwad.. that has nothing to do with football. So stop taking bribes already!

FIFA Bribe for North Korea 2026 World Cup has been added as a related post - related requested by notarobot on that post.

Let's ignore for the moment what led to this current mess within the Eurozone. You point out, correctly, that Greece is too poor to service its debt. And yes, for the German government to do whatever is required to get back their loans is to be expected. However, Greece was incapable of servicing its debt five years ago. Yet the subsequent programs, all supported or even demanded by the German government, reduced Greece's ability to pay back at least portions of its debt. At the end of the day, goods and services are what it's all about. And by dismantling the Greek economy, nevermind the Greek society, they actively undermined what they publicly claimed to be working for: a self-reliant Greek economy, capable of financing the needs of Greece. And capable of paying back what is owed.

The question inescapably poses itself: was it done intentionally or are they blinded by ideology?

One doesn't have to be as far left as I am to see that it didn't work, doesn't work, and never could have worked. Even the likes of Krugman and Stiglitz are perfectly clear about it.

Varoufakis, as you note, has been just as clear about this at least since late 2010, when he published the first draft of his Modest Proposal with Stuart Holland. There was a very good discussion about it in Austin in 10/2013 under the topic "Can the Eurozone be saved?" Participants included Varoufakis, Tsipras, Flassbeck, Holland and Galbraith, amongst others. I submitted a short clip back then.

His argument that Germany won't see a dime when Greece is shoved off a cliff, as correct as it is, never had any bite to begin with. The German government, and large parts of parliament, are operating in a parallel universe, economically. Over here, mercantilism is the road to success. Monetarism works. Surplus good, deficit bad. Saving good, spending bad. Everyone should have a current account surplus.

It's horseshit by the gallons, and it's the official economic policy of the largest economy in the EU.

And we're not even getting into the political aspects of it. Throwing a member of the EU into debt bondage, suspending its democracy to please the gods of the market... that's a travesty and a half. Yet it's also inevitable if they insist on going down the road of neoliberalism.

Worst of all, Greece is just the canary in the coal mine, as Varoufakis likes to point out. Greece had plenty of issues before they joined the EZ, but when they chose to adapt the same currency as a much larger economy hell bent on competitiveness, which is the favorite euphemism for Germany's beggar-thy-neighbour policies, they were doomed to be crushed. The rest of the PIIGS are next in line, unless this whole mess explodes beforehand. Maybe Rajoy's Franco-esque repression techniques fail, maybe le Pen wins in 2017, who knows. Maybe Schäuble finds the 100k of bribes that he conveniently forgot about back in the '90s and chokes on them.

Last but not least, 208 billion Euros – that's the projected current account surplus of Germany this year. That's 208 billion Euros of debt foreign economies have to accumulate, so that the German public and private sector can run a combined surplus of €208b. That's the elephant in the room. Systematic undercutting of the inflation target through suppression of unit labour costs and a dysfunctional focus on exports.

That's so fascinating to me. You're clearly only looking at all the couples from one perspective: American males are shit and Chinese males are wonderful.

Try considering it from both points of view in both couples. The Chinese girl forces her boyfriend to hand over all his money even though he clearly doesn't want to. In order to appease his ball-and-chain, the Chinese guy has to bribe her with a purse. The Chinese girl forces her guy to hold her purse and suffer through shopping with her. The Chinese father-in-law is overtly overbearing and controlling. Chinese couples dump off their babies with in-laws to live free of their burden.

It's not racist to joke about American males being infamously fearful of commitment. In America there are endless references in popular culture to that aspect of American society all the time. Does that make racist the producers of such content?

It's also very commonplace for couples in America to get divorced. Would it have been racist if they'd joked about Americans divorcing versus Chinese staying together despite being miserable?

It's a matter of facts, and pointing out facts in a humorous (to some) way is not a racist act.

And the whole "fucking bitch" line was mostly an over-exaggeration for comedic effect, and it worked. But the fact remains that it's not uncommon for Americans to really feel that way about their SO picking off their plate. (Like I said, I've seen worse than a verbal insult in the form of a physical attack.) Whereas it's ostensibly more uncommon in China.

One word...bribes.*

*(They call them settlements, but when one pays a huge monetary 'settlement' in order to not be prosecuted, that's kind of the definition of the word 'bribe'.)

The advantages of laissez-bribé should be evident to anyone.

It removes the current disincentive to report bribery and the incentive to act on its influence. It reduces the ability of malefactors to gauge the effectiveness of bribes and removes any hold they have over their subject, because there can be no question of impropriety. It allows for effective monitoring of corruptive influence, provides a running record of officials' interests and creates a new platform for understanding and managing the economic imperatives inherent in the public-private interface. It even builds an inescapable fine into the act of bribery itself and converts otherwise hidden income into taxable revenue! Could there be a more elegant and socially responsible system?

Requires oversight, sure, but it's obviously functionally superior to any naive moralistic alternative.

I think James Randy Moss probably understood all this and, American hero that he is, valiantly laid his career on the line to usher in a new era of honesty and accountability in public service.

Um...accepting bribes is a federal felony....even if you don't stay bought.
Taking the bribe is not 'doing his job correctly'....it's a crime, even if he doesn't follow through afterwards.
WTF? Bill didn't offer any reciprocity for the BJ, did he?!? First I've heard that. What legislation was she promoting, or who got the presidential pardon?
I'm all for cops getting BJs daily before they start their shift, not a bad idea at all...but certainly not from those they stop, absolutely not with the promise they'll 'look the other way' about the crime...even if they follow through with the original charge regardless of the fact that they were just bought and paid for. EDIT: Also, not on the clock/the public's dime, not while in uniform, and not posted publicly.

Standard procedure for public officials should be to accept all bribes, disclose them to a supervisory body and take whatever action they would have taken ordinarily.

"Thanks for the BJ, here's your ticket." Is essentially perfect protocol in that situation.

Objectively a culture in which the cop who did his job correctly is treated as the bad guy, rather than the criminal who admits to trying to bribe a police officer, is a pretty bizarre one. Bill Clinton, basically the same story. From an outsider's perspective - is the US just collectively extremely concerned that its authority figures should never get their dicks sucked? Because it occurs to me that perhaps if cops could release some of their frustration that way they might not have to spend so much time beating up black children.