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Speaking of fascist minds, huh?

Bush is the single most fascist person in charge of a government in the world at this moment, you should know. He was second in running before Sadam was ousted. Not to point out a pebble in one's eye, when you have a log in your own:

Fascism:
1. often Fascism
1. A system of government marked by centralization of authority under a dictator, stringent socioeconomic controls, suppression of the opposition through terror and censorship, and typically a policy of belligerent nationalism and racism.
2. A political philosophy or movement based on or advocating such a system of government.
2. Oppressive, dictatorial control.

Fascist: an adherent of fascism or other right-wing authoritarian views

This is the president who is a member of a group of secular fundamentalist hypocrite idiots who wish for nothing more than to take our freedoms, and to suppresses those who do not share their views. Exhibit A: Anti-Terrorism Acts that are overly broad and apply to non-terrorists.

Bush, and his cabinet ignored CIA intelligence that indicated Iraq was not in possession of nuclear or other material, was not seeking any, and was not in the process of disseminating what they didn't have to terrorists. Exhibit B: Here, Here, Here, and everywhere else, damnit. If only you would pull your head out of your ass, you could see it; however, I wouldn't expect that from a Bush apologist.

Nobody agreed that he was in material breech. NOBODY. We still haven't found one indicator of anything related to WMDs of any kind, and I sincerely doubt we ever will. The funny thing is the even the Great United States violates tons and tons of UN resolutions, and is in the top ten violators--right behind Morocco (#3), Turkey (#2), and Israel (#1)--yet we haven't attacked any of these other countries, or stopped violating UN resolutions, ourselves.

I'm not Saddams biggest fan (no fan of him at all, in fact), but you'll have to admit this all looks like the US is a real asshole of a big-brother giving the rest of the world noogies, dutch rubs, titty-twisters, purple-nurples, etc. and only getting rewarded for their actions--if you stick your head up and pay attention to what's going on. I'm glad that Saddam is gone, and that his sons are dead. They were a menace to the people of Iraq, however, all indicators say they were not a direct threat to the people of the United States.

Now, the republicans want to pass laws that make the 10 commandments, and pledge saying mandatory in schools. They hold that the US was created with christian morals, and religion in mind, when in fact, it was not, and when anyone tries to show them the truth, they do the equivalent of putting their fingers in their ears and yell "I CAN'T HEAR YOU LALALALALA!!!" If this sort of behavior is not belligerent nationalism, I don't know what is. And, as Bushie says, if you're not against it, you're for it. If he allows these sorts of laws pass, chalk another one up. He's almost completed every criteria to be a fascist by definition. All he needs to do is convince Congress to eliminate the term limits, and give him all the power, and he will qualify across the board.

Furthermore, I state that you, yourself are a fascist, and therefore your ideas are full of shit. "frogs and krauts", indeed. belligerent nationalism and racism. Check.

It's no wonder the rest of the world won't take Americans seriously, with people like you running about--flapping their gums.

From the story:

No doubt, Saddam has mistreated Kurds during his rule. But it's misleading to say, so simply and without context, that he killed his own people by gassing 5,000 Kurds at Halabja.

*The Bush administration have repeatedly before, under and after the war been saying that Hussein's attacks on his own people where a part of the reason behind the war.

Just like the US, pal... maybe it's time we look at our own regime and see if the shoe fits. Ask our esteemed Secretary of Defense.

US system is not so efficient either:

U.S. Wastes Health-care Funds: Administrative Costs Double Canada's Rate - Better System Could Aid Millions Researchers Say

http://www.twnside.org.sg/title/pushes.htm

http://www.cptech.org/ip/health/trade/msf05012002. html

http://www.commondreams.org/headlines01/0419-01.ht m

It is the singular focus of the current Administration, and it seems to have percolated down the whole law enforcement system - to decide first what to do and then figure out how to Bend and Twist laws till they have a fig leaf of a defense .... As the Justice Department Spokeswoman put it in a different situation, but relevant to what is happening " Our policy is to use all legal tools available ... meaning, we will throw the book at you if we could just find something that .... We know what we want to do with your sorry a*** and if you give em a few moments I will find something the the law book that I can intrepret to justify what I have already decided to do ...

From NY Times article archived http://www.commondreams.org/headlines03/0603-10.ht m

The department itself was unapologetic. "Our policy," said Barbara Comstock, a spokeswoman, "is to use all legal tools available to protect innocent Americans from terrorist attacks." The aggressive tactics used against people held on minor immigration violations were, civil libertarians said, a natural result of the department's new approach. "When it's in this preventive mode," David D. Cole, a law professor at Georgetown University, said of the Justice Department, "it by definition sweeps very broadly and ends up harming hundreds if not thousands of people."

bill moyers

here is a nice little flash-based webpage too about the big ten media companies.

I agree about the voter turnout, and that's something this country really needs. The United States now ranks 139th out of 167 of the world's democracies in voter turnout which is just plain sad. The majority of folks don't actually vote (but love to complain about our law/policy makers). I'm sure some (most?) candidates count on that low turnout.

I don't agree on the first pass comment though. I think a bad show on the first pass will eliminate a chance of it ever happening again.

Not exactly nullified, but many corporations are already finding ways to avoid paying their taxes.

"companies would have the right to vote"

In a sense, companies do vote... through political contributions, lobbyists, political favors, etc.

"environmental protections would go away"

With the passage of NAFTA, we already see this happening. From Global Exchange:

NAFTA includes unprecedented ways for corporations to attack our laws through so-called "investor-to-state" lawsuits. Such suits, established by NAFTA's Chapter 11, allow corporations to sue governments for compensation if they feel that any government action, including the enforcement of public health and safety laws, cuts into their profits. Already, Chapter 11 lawsuits have been used to repeal a Canadian law banning a chemical linked to nervous system damage, and to challenge California's phase-out of a gas additive, MTBE, that is poisoning the state's ground water. Negotiators want to include these anti-democratic lawsuits in the FTAA.

Unfortunately, it's always been much worse than you said. According to this article: "In 1980, CEOs made 42 times the pay of average factory workers. In 1990, they made 85 times as much. By 1999, CEOs made 475 times as much as workers."

Suprisingly, a corporation's right to free speech is not on as solid a legal ground as the telemarketers think. It seems that the interpretation of the 14th Amendment as granting corporations the same rights as flesh and blood people is actually only found in the headnotes of a Supreme Court decision on Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad in 1886, not in the decision itself. The courts have built upon this shaky foundation, expanding corporate rights to include freedom of speech and rights to privacy. Unfortunately, it has never really been decided that corporations are entitled to those rights.

Oops.

Let's hope they sue. It should provide quite a bit of entertainment watching the courts try to uphold the wildly popular telemarketing bill while not accidentally stripping corporations of their rights of free speech. Remember, if corporations do not have freedom of speech, their political contributions would not be protected.

Sorry, but you haven't been reading the news have you. The North Pole will be a balmy retreat in a few centuries...

I .sig, you .sig, we all .sig now!

Bill Gates proves that he's a true visionary whose comments are worthy of respect; just read his opinion about this

Okay, again, same comment here as with Spider's little piece. What facts, what statistics, what anything can these people point to that shows the "decline of Science Fiction" as anything near reality? Some of the best science fiction I have EVER read has come out in the last three years. What the hell are these people smoking?

Disney Corp alienates the progressives.

If you must fall into the role of jingoist and ideologue by demonizing publications of vaguely defined enemies, at least try to be a little more accurate... "women aren't allowed to drive"--indeed! But only in the US supported regime.

And in other news, bacteria still run the planet.

Um, don't you mean "see that Gore indeed had the higher number of votes"? See this article for details.

Even with a paper trail, it's still possible to bury the news.

In several races with electronic voting machines, there were noticeable differences between pre-election polls and the actual election results. In Georgia, both Roy Barnes and Max Cleland led their opponents until the actual election.

Other Dieboldalical results (from a source found via Google) are here.

Chuck Hagel's opponent wanted a hand-recount, but by the terms of the signed contract, it was illegal for government election workers to review the votes.

Short form: what you describe happened, and you didn't even notice. (Final tinfoil hat moment - did we mention that there was a file named "rob-georgia" containing patches not tested by the state on the Diebold FTP site?)

Oh, like the 2002 election: VNS cites problems with exit polls

For more on Hagel refer to If You Want To Win An Election, Just Control The Voting Machines

Please provide the source for your statement. Otherwise it should be modded as -1 for troll.

Look around the web on site:

here,
here,
here,
here, and lots more places.

It is clear that the majority intent of Florida's voters was to send Gore to the White House. Furthermore, it is clear that Florida's voting process was seriously biased against minorities, who predominantly vote Democratic.

The only reason why this wasn't discovered during the recount was because the Bush family managed to cut the recount short as long as it was still favorable for Bush.

Or we need to add a new mod of "+1 strong opinion of of a bitter loser."

With Bush as president, we all are losing: we are getting wars, economic problems, huge budget deficits, a failing educational system, rollback of civil rights protections, deterioration of international relations, etc.

It is pretty depressing that Republicans care more about who the President had sex with than about how the country is doing.

Move along, nothing to see, nothing that Sen. Chuck Hagel hasn't been doing for years.

Man, that's a classic one, but I'll take mine politically and environmentally correct and fully capable of attaining the Big O. Just like my, errr, satisfied women...

Oh, your system is great at nutrition and has no problem with hunger, women are safe, and causes no health problems.

because their "goverments" are stupid and evil

Hm, yes, we should bring these international criminals to justice. Oh, wait...

there's a plank in your eye.

The Latest Bogus Fossil-Nuke Blackout: This Grid Should Not Exist
by Harvey Wasserman

This is the fourth---and worst---completely unnecessary major blackout of the Northeast in forty years, dating back to 1965.

It's scope---from Detroit to Ottawa to New York and New Jersey---is absolutely awesome, especially since it's due to total stupidity and corruption.

This does not count the blackouts that raged through California in 2000-2001. Those were "blackmails," set by Enron and the other Bush gas cronies to rip $60 billion out of the state, leading to, among other things, the impending ouster of Gov. Gray Davis.

When the lights went out, Davis kissed the feet of Southern California Edison's John Bryson, who engineered a deregulation bill that gouged $30 billion out of the ratepayers for the state's failed nukes. That opened the gates for the gas pirates to steal yet another $60 billion. Davis got caught in the backdraft.

The culprits in this latest northeastern disaster are basically the same---the barons of fossil and nuclear power and their cronies in the electric utility business.

Their "weapon" is an ancient electric grid that's obsolete if not obscene. It is a massively fragile Rube Goldberg device that dangerously and inefficiently carts around electricity from expensive, polluting and extremely unsafe central generating plants to buildings that waste massive amounts of energy and generate none.

That the grid will crash again and again and yet again is absolutely certain. The only question is who are the real terrorists: errant crazies who blow things up, or entrenched interests that refuse to change?

The technology now exists to transcend this mess. In the mid 1990s California's green energy advocates proposed a 600-megawatt mosaic of solar, wind and other renewable generators that would have entirely prevented the fake deregulatory crisis of 2000-1. It was approved by the California Public Utilities Commission, but then killed by Southern California Edison and the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission.

Today, the Bush Administration wants to further subsidize its fossil/utility friends with a bad energy bill, and by pouring billions into "upgrading" the electric grid. The only thing certain is that every cent of that money will be wasted.

In 1952 a Blue Ribbon report to Harry Truman predicted that the future of America's energy rested with the sun. It predicted 13 million solar-powered homes here by 1975, and the promise of decentralized, off-grid self-sufficiency.

Instead, Dwight Eisenhower took us into the pit of the "Peaceful Atom". A trillion dollars later, we have a half-century of crashing grids and dangerous nukes that are vulnerable to terrorism and must shut down precisely when they're most needed, as they did during this latest blackout. The latest Bush energy bill only makes the situation worse, with more nuke subsidies and a powerful push for fossil fuels, especially coal.

The whole system demands a green deconstruction. Solar technologies are ready to make energy self-sufficiency a tangible reality. Photovoltaic cells on rooftops and embedded in windows can produce grid-free electricity, with battery or fuel-cell backups. Geothermal power can heat and cool with nothing but the power of the earth's crust. Methane digestion can turn waste into usable gas. Basement generators can use biomass fuels like ethanol and soy diesel for off-grid self-sufficiency.

These systems need not provide 100% of a building's energy, but can gradually make them increasingly self-sufficient. Meanwhile more efficient heating, lighting and cooling systems can reduce demand. Windows that actually open and close can balance usage, building by building.

Bush's "upgrading the grid" means a new money pit for the same old unsafe nukes, polluting coal burners and gas turbines whose prices are set to skyrocket... all looped together by danger

Here's some articles from around the web about the power outage (all collected by one site, CommonDreams.org). Personally, I would rather live off the grid totally. It's inevitably going to be so much cheaper, which is the main incentive for me.

An Industry Trapped by a Theory by Robert Kuttner

The Latest Bogus Fossil-Nuke Blackout: This Grid Should Not Exist by Harvey Wasserman

Power Outage Traced to Dim Bulb in White House by Greg Palast

A Tale of Two Power Outages by John Turri

Here's some articles from around the web about the power outage (all collected by one site, CommonDreams.org). Personally, I would rather live off the grid totally. It's inevitably going to be so much cheaper, which is the main incentive for me.

An Industry Trapped by a Theory by Robert Kuttner

The Latest Bogus Fossil-Nuke Blackout: This Grid Should Not Exist by Harvey Wasserman

Power Outage Traced to Dim Bulb in White House by Greg Palast

A Tale of Two Power Outages by John Turri

Here's some articles from around the web about the power outage (all collected by one site, CommonDreams.org). Personally, I would rather live off the grid totally. It's inevitably going to be so much cheaper, which is the main incentive for me.

An Industry Trapped by a Theory by Robert Kuttner

The Latest Bogus Fossil-Nuke Blackout: This Grid Should Not Exist by Harvey Wasserman

Power Outage Traced to Dim Bulb in White House by Greg Palast

A Tale of Two Power Outages by John Turri

Here's some articles from around the web about the power outage (all collected by one site, CommonDreams.org). Personally, I would rather live off the grid totally. It's inevitably going to be so much cheaper, which is the main incentive for me.

An Industry Trapped by a Theory by Robert Kuttner

The Latest Bogus Fossil-Nuke Blackout: This Grid Should Not Exist by Harvey Wasserman

Power Outage Traced to Dim Bulb in White House by Greg Palast

A Tale of Two Power Outages by John Turri

This should give you a different perspective on those images...

Greg Palast takes a look at why the lights went out.

-FL

I think you've shown that you don't know what you're talking about.

Like CNN showinf dead Iraqi children but never showing someone dying from 9/11. But then again that was here in the United States and they must not have reporters here. Or maybe they are just showing there anti-us attitude again.

Or maybe, and believe me, this is a hypothetical, they didn't show the dead from September 11th because dead Iraqi children had nothing to do with Sept. 11. Or, to generalize further, Iraq had nothing to do with Sep. 11.

Or maybe it's because two wrongs don't make a right, and CNN realized that killing Iraqi civilians isn't justified by dead American civilians, even if Iraq had been responsible for Sept. 11.

Maybe that in the ignorant person in me talking. But I would rather be ignorant than uninformed like you. If you watch CNN you only see Anit-US stories.

Anti-US stories like what? East Timor, where we basically green-lit the Indonesian invasion? What's that, you've never heard of it? I figured that the anti-US CNN would have been telling that story. Anti-US, about all those anti-globalization protestors that were illegally jailed by DC Police Chief Ramsey?

Why do I always miss those liberal, anti-US stories?

[snip]
During the Cold War in the 1980s, billions in weaponry and military training was funneled by the CIA, through Pakistan, to the Afghans fighting against the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan.

Out of that CIA-backed resistance emerged the Taliban, which today controls most of Afghanistan and the sprawling terrorist enterprise controlled by Osama bin Laden, whom the Taliban is believed to be harboring.
[/snip]

> A gerrymandered tax code primarily costs the public
> money--measured by overall inefficiency or extra taxes
> unfairly levied on those without political capital.

Can anyone say "Trickle-Down"? Does anyone believe in trickle-down? When the rich get tax breaks, the money doesn't trickle down to the poor, it trickles down to the coke dealers who sell the rich kids dope.

And if you think the poor have as much political capital as the rich, just ask all the black folks who were turned away from voting in Florida in 2000 because they were "felons"...when their only crime was Voting While Black. One article among many about it.

Now if only I were as eloquent as Mr. Zittrain, I wouldn't be modded down as both Flamebait and OT.

A good article at CommonDreams.org about how the fact that it turned out to be a hoax seemed to make it 'acceptable' according to mainstream news sources.

Right-wing misogynists need not apply....

A good article at CommonDreams.org about how the fact that it turned out to be a hoax seemed to make it 'acceptable' according to mainstream news sources.

Right-wing misogynists need not apply....

Don't forget Frist is from TN, the center of the country music industry - probably the closest you can get to Hollywood without actually going to Hollywood. And he has plenty of pull of his own.

I'm rather sick of these radical modern day liberals (as opposed to old school liberals, who actually believed in liberty) being called "conservatives." These modern day robber barrons are not conservators of anything except greed. I have in mind a much appropriate word to describe them...

1. Afghanistan, 1998, 2001, 2002, 2003
2. Bosnia, 1994, 1995
3. Cambodia, 1969-70
4. China, 1945-46
5. Congo (now Zaire), 1964
6. Cuba, 1959-1961 ("Bay of Pigs" invasion)
7. El Salvador, 1980s
8. Grenada, 1983
9. Guatemala, 1954, 1960, 1967-69
10. Indonesia, 1958
11. Iran, 1987
12. Iraq, 1991-2000, 2003 (The U.S. government used radioactive bombs in the first war against Iraq. See United States War Crimes Against Iraq for what appears to be an accurate history.)
13. Korea and China, 1950-53 (Korean War)
14. Kuwait, 1991
15. Laos, 1964-73
16. Lebanon, 1983, 1984 (both Lebanese and Syrian targets)
17. Libya, 1986
18. Nicaragua, 1980s
19. Panama, 1989. The U.S. government called it "Operation Just Cause". The link is to a U.S. military web site.
20. Peru, 1965
21. Somalia, 1993
22. Sudan 1998. There are doubts that the pharmaceutical plant that was bombed was making weapons.
23. Vietnam, 1961-73 (An estimated 2,000,000 Vietnamese were killed.)
24. Yugoslavia, 1999

There are many sources for this information. For example, see this PBS web page: PBS: A Chronology of U.S. Military Interventions (PBS is the Public Broadcasting System in the U.S.) Also see From Wounded Knee to Afghanistan: A Century of U.S. Military Interventions [zmag.org] and The government of the United States is a consistent opponent of international law. [prairie-fire.org]

I put some links and explanation together about wh

What? "Eat it" as in like "shred" or "destroy"? What kind of crap is that? What possible reason would there ever be for even making a ballot tabulation machine capable of destroying ballots? Where do you get your "understanding"? Got any links?

• http://www.gregpalast.com/detail.cfm?artid=217&row =1
• http://www.commondreams.org/views/121400-108.htm

These are only a few references I've run across, but I'm most familiar with Palast's reporting of what happened in Florida (and perhaps other states). You can also try a Google search on "voting machines problems".

The implication is clear: some districts can adjust the voting machines so that more improperly marked votes can be considered spoiled, and are not counted. As in "destroyed". Other districts can set things up to give the voter another chance so that the vote is counted. The real crime appears to be that these districts can be sharply statistically defined in terms of race or party affiliation.

Why should I be held accountable for what I say? There is a big difference between saying and doing. As long as I don't shout fire or slander or such, why can't I say what I want? Why not put the burden of proof on the listener to adapt some common sense and decide for herself if what I say is true? Especially today, when it doesn't matter whether what I say is true or not -- when a huge corporation can threaten to take away everything I have if I don't retract what I said. Even if what I said was true, I'll still lose everything I have in legal costs. Besides, corporations are now claiming the
right to lie.

Here's an offer for you to show us what a he-man you are. Post your real name and employer. We'll research some good whistle-blowing material on your employer, give it to you, and then watch to see if you have the balls to post non-anonymously. You would be able to look up the information yourself, determine that you are right and you're employer is wrong. What negative consequences would there be for posting with your name? None, right? Your bosses would never fuck you for speaking the truth, would they. Come on, hero, what's your name and employer?

Times/UK: Lawyers Furious as US Builds (Gitmo) Death Chambers

LAWYERS expressed outrage yesterday at plans to put al-Qaeda suspects, including two Britons and an Australian, on military trial in Guantanamo Bay.
They would effectively be tried by a "kangaroo court", stripped of all basic rights of due process that would be afforded in criminal courts in Britain or America, they said.
...
He said: "The construction of execution chambers makes virtually every lawyer in the Western world extremely angry. The idea that there is an artificial creation or enclave which, according to the Americans, is beyond the purview of all recognised systems of law is repugnant."
...
Times/UK: Lawyers Furious as US Builds Death Chambers

The Courier Mail: US Plans Death Camp (May 26, 2003)

THE US has floated plans to turn Guantanamo Bay into a death camp, with its own death row and execution chamber.

Prisoners would be tried, convicted and executed without leaving its boundaries, without a jury and without right of appeal, The Mail on Sunday newspaper reported yesterday.

The plans were revealed by Major-General Geoffrey Miller, who is in charge of 680 suspects from 43 countries, including two Australians.
...
"This camp was created to execute people. The administration has no interest in long-term prison sentences for people it regards as hard-core terrorists."
...
The Courier Mail: US Plans Death Camp

Although Dean has been trying to pass himself off as a progressive on everything from the war to intellectual property, a lot of it is spin. His record in Vermont shows that Dean's no progressive , that he'll cave to corporate interests when it's politically expedient. The real progressive presidential candidate is Rep. Dennis Kucinich , Chair of the Progressive Caucus in Congress. Not only is Kucinich's progressive vision and record unambiguous, he has also refused to take any form of assistance from corporations, like law firms and financial firms, in contrast to the other candidates. That's why I trust him to maintain his position on intellectual property rights *after* he's elected.

He recently wrote an article titled "The Case for Public Patents," in which he explains how public patents and nonexclusive licensing of publicly funded R&D could lower health care costs in the US. He likens the system he envisions to "an 'open source' system that makes data and findings publicly available, instead of held secret as proprietary data." He goes on to say: "Open source is how the Linux computer operating system has become a competitive force against Microsoft's Windows." When's the last time you heard a presidential candidate talking about open source and Linux? This position is also indicative of his view on copyrights and intellectual property rights more generally.

He got a late start (February), but he's been making some real strides lately. The MoveOn primary and a long string of endorsements have given a real boost to his campaign. Also, the grassroots network of volunteers is growing exponentially on the internet , where it looks like the primaries will be determined.

It seems Rumsfeld wasn't at all concerned about WMDs in the 80's:

Most glaring is that Donald Rumsfeld was in Iraq as the 1984 UN report was issued and said nothing about the allegations of chemical weapons use, despite State Department "evidence." On the contrary, The New York Times reported from Baghdad on March 29, 1984, "American diplomats pronounce themselves satisfied with relations between Iraq and the United States and suggest that normal diplomatic ties have been restored in all but name."

You are incorrect, Russia is not the largest. The US defense budget for 2004 is $390 billion. The total world expenditures in 2002 was $784 billion. So US defense spending is about half of all spending. For more info see this article.

Bulls**t.

Check this out. It is even effecting your own troops.

Whoever moderated this as flamebait needs to pay more attention to what's going on around them.

According to corporate3strikes .corps won't be leashed.

So try the next best thing (that .corps fear greatly).

Boycott.

Keep in mind the worrying number of Americans who do believe that WMDs HAVE been found, even if it isn't the case. And the even scarier amount of people who even believe that Iraq USED WMDs in the war....

If that many believe WMDs have been found, how many can be tricked into accepting fantasies about how the war "forced" Hussein into destroying them quickly and other bullshit to counteract any distrust? The same survey referred to in the link above also point out how high the support still was for the war at that point.

It might be possible to prevent the Patriot act from being extended, but not if one relies on the distrust of the public - it will take MASSIVE work to get people to understand what's at stake.

Case in point... the U.N. food-for-oil program in Iraq. Saddam kept almost all of it for his government and military, all the while telling the Iraqi people that they had no food because we were stopping the flow of food. Not true... he was keeping it for himself.

Funny, it wasn't just Saddam who was saying this. So was Kofi Annan. So was Dennis Halliday, former head of the UN Humanitarian Mission in Iraq. Halliday resigned in protest, and went on to call the sanctions genocidal. So was Halliday's sucessor, Hans von Sponeck, who also resigned in protest.

There have been some allegations that Saddam got kickbacks from contractors through the Oil-for-Food program, but everything I've read suggests that OfF worked pretty much as well as it could given its limitations. If you have a link to some credible evidence which suggests otherwise, I'd be interested in reading it.

There's no reason why the ESRB couldn't have given Quake III: TA a similar -- or the same -- rating. The "animated" seems redundant since all games are animated. But with the increasing levels of detail and realism, the industry will have to do something to make it clearer what is and what isn't suitable for kids, and how graphic the visuals and levels of violence are, or else it will suffer a backlash. If the previews are an accurate reflection of the game, I have no idea what they're going to do when Doom III comes out.

Now that the new ESRB violence descriptors provide more detailed ratings (presumably to keep up with advancing graphics technology), this should help defang some of the critics who want to prevent mature-themed games from being made. It's still amazing that a parent won't let their kids see an R-rated or NC-17-rated movie but have no problem with buying them games that are intended for adults, and are clearly marked as such.

As for Lieberman and his supposed anti-violence stance, being the political opportunist (source) he is, he sees the writing on the wall. All Lieberman wants is big, fat campaign donations from the entertainment industry elite he disingenuously eschewed during the last election.

Now that domestic game revenues are comparable to -- or surpassing -- Hollywood, what better way to get the big games-industry dollars than by praising the very industry he railed against the last time around?