Many things tell very compelling and moving stories without being great works of art
From this, I'd say we have very different definitions of art, and great works of art. To me, to be art, it only needs creativity, vision, and some originality. To be good/great art is wholly dependent on the opinion of the viewer (in the eye of the beholder), and whether it moves them.
You are right, the game-play style in the original FF was simplistic, but the menu system wasn't the whole game, just the mechanics. Figuring out where you were, where you were going, what you needed to get there and back alive, was the game. It's akin to saying the game of Dungeons and Dragons is just rolling dice.
Tetris is ten times the work of art that Final Fantasy is
I assume you are comparing Tetris to the original Final Fantasy and even with that, you are so wrong it isn't even funny. Where is the "art" in tetris? You have what 5 shapes in a few colors that come randomly; that's art? Uh huh. Meanwhile, Final Fantasy (the original), had a plot, storyline, a script, a world, an array of monsters/enemies, weapons, armor, magic, items, caves and dungeons, all of which is art. One you get FF3, 7 or X, (three of the best Final Fantasies ever), the story as well as the telling is amazing. I put 70+ hours into FFX because of the story and my love for the game, Tetris has about 10 hours over the entire course of my life, because it the most brainless, repetitive, boring, POS that I have ever played. Yet, the remake/release it on just about every platform, go figure.
It's not a semantic dance when you are referring to the law. All court cases brought forth by the RIAA are Civil Cases filed as Copyright Infringement, instead of criminal cases of theft. So, when someone speaks of RIAA cases, they are not speaking of theft or stealing, they are speaking of Copyright Infringement, end of argument.
I've never heard of someone referring to cheating on a test as 'stealing' either. It was called 'cheating' as the person whose answers were copied was not harmed nor were they deprived of anything, nor did they lose anything.
Just because people are lazy and commonly choose to use the wrong term to describe something does not make it right. Not to mention all of the other people who deliberately use the wrong term to garner sympathy and to confuse the issue.
::Being Rant:: First of all, it is not stealing! It is copyright infringement. I'm damn sick of people confusing the two, they are not the same; they are not interchangeable. Stealing is clearly defined, Copyright Infringement is also defined; downloading music over the Internet is in no way stealing, period. It may, arguably, be copyright infringement, depending on the specific circumstances.::End Rant::
Second, what does it matter if we have committed copyright infringement? We are still a member of society who has an interest in seeing the innocent not being railroaded by the Music Industry. We still have an interest in stopping the Music Industry from illegally violating our rights, hacking into our computers (Federal crime by the way, much worse than copyright infringement), and extorting people for large sums of money.
I'm personally aware of many people who have an irrational hatred for the police and police officers, simply because of what they are.
What makes their hatred irrational? And I'd argue that it's not because of who they are but its because of what their job is (a person is not their job). Basically, it comes down to this; If you come in contact with a police officer, it is his job to treat you like a criminal, because potentially, you are. Nobody likes being treated like a criminal, especially the innocent. It is a police officer's job to lie to you, to threaten you, to do anything in their power to trick you into giving yourself up. Nobody likes being lied to or threatened, especially the innocent. This causes what you describes as irrational hatred, and you're wrong, its very rational, people don't like cops because it is their job to treat people like shit.
Am I arguing that cops are evil? No. I just wanted to explain why people have an inherent distrust/disliking for police officers and that it is very justified. Me, I like cops (from a conceptual POV), overall they do a good job and for the most part are probably good people. That said, I would prefer to live my life with as little contact with them as possible, and I would never, ever, ever, trust one.
many psychological experiments are done with a much smaller number of subjects (50 or so)
And that's why they say; "There are lies, damn lies, and then there are statistics". Seriously, I'll never buy into the whole idea of surveying of 50 people and extrapolating the results to a population in the millions, that's just logically ludicrous.
Because at any moment in time you may become a criminal they are looking for. It is not us that have the "Paranoid Assumptions" it is them. That is why they feel they need to have the power to invade anyone's privacy at any time, because anyone is capable of being a terrorist. Think of it like the Agents in The Matrix, except replace "Agent" with "Criminal/Terrorist" and you will understand their thinking.
But if that's the will of the majority, then so be it. And if that's not the will of the majority, then get organized and change the law.
Now do you mean the simple majority which can be expressed as 50.1% vs. 49.9%? Does that really seem fair? I certainly don't think that it does. Or, you can live in Washington, where they are trying to reduce the 50% (super-majority) vote to less than that for raising taxes to fund schools, which is bullshit.
That's what I think this country really needs, eliminate the simple majority rule. If the country is really divided 50/50, then nothing should be done. We should up it to like 60/40 or 65/35 for simple laws, and at least 75/25 or 80/20 for constitutional amendments. That'll keep these silly Government Nanny laws from being passed and pissing off the average citizen.
It could also be the joy in finally seeing (or causing) James Bond's demise. He's been around so long, had so many movies and games, you just gotta want him to die at least once.;)
How the energy is obtained in the first place. From petroleum drilled out of the ground, a coal mine, natural gas, solar power, nuclear power, and so on.
Well if you consider the fact that everyone needs and is going to continue to use electricity and take its availability as a given, then using electricity to compress air adds zero pollution to the existing system/infrastructure (or close enough to be considered zero).
The efficiency of conveying the energy from the source to the user. Coal and petroleum products are relatively good for this (some loss to evaporation for gasoline, I imagine). For remotely-generated electricity, there would be transmission losses. If you charge your electric car from a solar panel on your roof, much less so.
Also, if you take the existing infrastructure as a given, then this is a non-issue as well when considering how much pollution the air-powered car in itself adds to the environment.
How the energy is stored (or storage losses). This is one of the big issues with hydrogen. It tends to seep through containers. Compressed air would be a similar problem. A leak in your compressed air tank has an environmental effect just as a lead in your gas tank, and is harder to detect. It's more efficent to store a liquid than a compressed gas.
Leaking compressed air has an environmental effect? Really? Is it a negative effect? I would postulate that taking the air out of the environment, compressing and storing it would have a more negative effect (less total air available) than it leaking back out and decompressing naturally. I would also postulate that neither is something we should even bother worrying about, as they should cancel each other out.
The efficiency of converting the stored energy into motion of the vehicle. What are the thermal losses for state changes? Friction in the engine?
Okay, so a byproduct of converting the compressed air into linear motion is heat, I understand that. But it comes at no cost (no air is lost, just the stored energy), and I also can't see how generating a relatively little amount of heat could negatively affect the planet, as everything living creature on this rock does so.
I'm not sure if you're trolling, or are just confusing the terms "Zero Pollution" with "100% Efficient, Zero Loss". Since pollution, by definition, has to be harmful to the environment (or the things living in it), I still fail to see how an 100% Air Powered car would add any pollution into the current state of affairs.
I've never liked the idea since they introduced it originally, I believe, to prevent people from using high end laser printers to counterfiet money and if they did, to trace it back to the one(s) responsible.
To my knowledge, it's never been used as such. I implore someone to prove me wrong if I am.
Well, I know one thing, at my brother's work (my cousin's business), some brain-dead employee decided to make a color-copy of money on the office's color copier and somehow got caught with it in their pocket. Whether they confessed which printer they used to print it to cops or not I don't know, but I do know the Secret Service showed up to confiscate the printer and the computer as evidence, which, if my cousin's husband wasn't a local cop, they would of done and effectively shut down her whole company. So, for all those who don't know why it's a good idea to lock-down your office equipment, imagine losing all the computer equipment in your office because some low-life decided to copy some money.
you need to update your opinion to include the small nagging issue of people actually caring when someone is dying in the street
I understand that people care when they see people dying in the street, but they are not forced to act to help them; some do, others do not. It is their guilt, their sympathy, their generosity, that causes a person to want to act, to clothe and feed the helpless, it is a choice, there is no one but you forcing your hand to help (governmental influence aside), that is the distinction I was trying to make. It's a little bit flawed logic; A person allowing himself to become helpless, does not force you to clothe and feed him. It is your own inability to let nature run its course, to let him die in the street, that forces you to clothe and feed them. Be sure to place the blame in the proper place, as the addict may never have asked for your help.
As for people actually caring for people dying in the street, that is true. But, I for one, (try to) have no sympathy for someone who has been given ample help and opportunity to correct their situation but have continued to fail. The truly helpless, the ones who in nature's opinion should die in the street or where ever they may fall. In an ideal world, those would be the only ones left dying in the street, those that truly cannot be helped and in that case the rational mind must rule over the emotional one, for our species to survive we must allow nature to run its course with the truly weak, we must let them die.
it always amazed and perplexed me to see people argue, in the name of freedom, for substances that turn you into a slave
Because, there are advantages to being a slave that could cause some to choose that path as it is easier than being responsible. The movie Interstate 60 made a good point about this with the town of Banton, where the legal age is like 12-14, the most addictive drug is legal, and there is a town-sponsored rave every night. The town controlled the supply and the price, which is very affordable, manual labor. Why? "Because some folks just want to get high". They over-educated everyone to the risks, and left them the choice to make: Responsible Freedom, or, Care-free Slavery. Are you sure your life is better than theirs?
1. if you become an addict, you screw up my life as well as tyour own, because now i have to feed and clothe a zombie
You've repeated this sentiment a few times as though it is absolutely true and it is not. There is no natural responsibility for you to clothe and feed those who cannot survive on their own. It is your choice, or in the case of the US, the government's choice, to provide charity to those who are without. It is not required, it is not a must, move to a poorer country, become an addict, see how long you don't starve, and then you'll know what I mean.
And just as an aside, since its brought up, these charity programs that support those who cannot support themselves are really hurting more than they are helping. I am a humanitarian, I believe in giving a helping hand when the chips are down, but I do not believe in a free ride. There should be programs to help those in need get back on their feet, but there must be limits to our generosity, their must be a time when we give up on the truly helpless and let them die in order to continue to help those who can be helped. If we don't start kicking the leeches soon, our gene pool will become a rotting cesspool of the lowest common denominator, which right now is pretty damn low.
The bill of rights, silly.
The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people.
Basically, it was supposed to be that if the power wasn't expressly granted to the Federal Government in the Constitution, than it was left to the States to decide individually, or the people.
I've been reading this thread and common theme is that the code is automatically copyrighted once it was written down. Okay, sounds about right to me. The problem I'm having is connecting the line between a copyright on 200 lines of code and the compilation of said lines into a commercial application. I thought, correct me if I'm wrong, that copyright gave you the exclusive right to publish said work. Now just because you have a copyright on some code does not mean that I can't incorporate it into my own private works so long as I never re-publish or re-distribute the source code. In other words, I would think it would be okay to use the code but only distribute the compiled version which the author does not have a copyright to.
What am I missing here?
Notice how I was careful to only say Bush and said nothing of his Administration. Bush's cabinet may be his own cronies or they may be his party's cronies, which one it is I know I'm not certain of. The other thing that I am not certain of, and I assume neither are you, is who Gore's Administration would of been made up of. You see, one can compare Bush to Gore, apples to apples, but one cannot compare Bush's Administration to Gore's Administration because Gore's Administration never existed. The whole 20/20 hindsight sort of thing. Also to note, I believe I heard (could be wrong) a few people in the Bush Administration were also in the white house during the Clinton administration (to possibly negate the democrat/republican distinction) and since Gore was Clinton's VP, it's not too much of a stretch of the imagination that these very same people in the background may have been there to intentionally slant the reports.
I wasn't actually saying the war itself didn't matter that much, just who was President at the time probably wouldn't of mattered all that much. I want to clarify that in my original post I did not say nor intentionally imply that I thought Al Gore would of invaded Iraq.
Also, regarding the Invasion of Iraq, that was approved by Congress before it happened, so to put the full responsibility onto Bush's shoulders is rather a skirting of the facts. If Congress had denied his wishes, things might of been different. The quick reply to that is the mis-representation/bad-intelligence that was fed to Congress, the UN, and the people. While this very well is a valid point, saying that Bush was behind it all himself, well that's assuming a lot. It very well could be that Gore would have been fed the same bad intelligence, which would have left him little choice but to relay that very same information to Congress, the UN, and the people. Determining how different things would be if things had happened differently is nothing but mere speculation, there is no way to know.
Maybe, Maybe not. It doesn't really matter all that much. Iraq is mostly about distraction and a justified (loose usage) place to dump large piles of cash (goals of those at the top). With Al Gore, maybe it would be Iraq, maybe it would be Iran or North Korea, or even something else entirely (another Sex Scandal perhaps) to distract the people from what is really going on, while at the same time shoveling boatloads of money to specific places with little to no oversight.
The main point is; If the issue at hand is being widely reported by the mainstream media, everyone is talking about it, and it has the country pretty much completely polarized, chance are it is only a tool of distraction and the real issues/agendas that the people in power care about are being missed and are going on while no one is paying attention.
Because of political parties and the loyalty toward the party line and not the people . Also, I daresay that at the top of both the Republican and Democratic party are the same people, with the same goals. The divide between the two parties is an illusion perpetrated by those at the top to undermine and eliminate the people's power to vote. You have two choices, one from our side in wolves clothing, and another from our side in sheep's clothing, make your pick, either way we win. Couple that with a winner-take-all electoral voting system and it becomes increasing improbable/impossible for a real candidate that is by the people and for the people to ever get elected. Only those that are by the party and for the party get elected. This is why I do not vote in presidential elections, I know for a fact my vote is meaningless, it gets thrown away because I would never vote for a republican nor for a democrat.
Well I'll admit is does expand quite a bit further down the line than most theorists would, but I didn't find any of it that far-fetched. I mean we do have people having their children implanted with tracking chips. We are being required to have them in our driver's licenses and passports. They are passing laws left and right that would somehow allow the government to take complete and utter control over anything and everything that matters. There is talk about the North American Union and the Amero, whether we are fully committed to it yet or not I'm not entirely clear on. About the only thing that seems really far-fetched is that it was thought of and planned this way from the very beginning. That is a little unbelievable. But, those same people (or their decendents) expending and evolving their way of thinking over the years isn't.
Slashdot Mirror
From this, I'd say we have very different definitions of art, and great works of art. To me, to be art, it only needs creativity, vision, and some originality. To be good/great art is wholly dependent on the opinion of the viewer (in the eye of the beholder), and whether it moves them.
You are right, the game-play style in the original FF was simplistic, but the menu system wasn't the whole game, just the mechanics. Figuring out where you were, where you were going, what you needed to get there and back alive, was the game. It's akin to saying the game of Dungeons and Dragons is just rolling dice.
I assume you are comparing Tetris to the original Final Fantasy and even with that, you are so wrong it isn't even funny. Where is the "art" in tetris? You have what 5 shapes in a few colors that come randomly; that's art? Uh huh. Meanwhile, Final Fantasy (the original), had a plot, storyline, a script, a world, an array of monsters/enemies, weapons, armor, magic, items, caves and dungeons, all of which is art. One you get FF3, 7 or X, (three of the best Final Fantasies ever), the story as well as the telling is amazing. I put 70+ hours into FFX because of the story and my love for the game, Tetris has about 10 hours over the entire course of my life, because it the most brainless, repetitive, boring, POS that I have ever played. Yet, the remake/release it on just about every platform, go figure.
It's not a semantic dance when you are referring to the law. All court cases brought forth by the RIAA are Civil Cases filed as Copyright Infringement, instead of criminal cases of theft. So, when someone speaks of RIAA cases, they are not speaking of theft or stealing, they are speaking of Copyright Infringement, end of argument. I've never heard of someone referring to cheating on a test as 'stealing' either. It was called 'cheating' as the person whose answers were copied was not harmed nor were they deprived of anything, nor did they lose anything. Just because people are lazy and commonly choose to use the wrong term to describe something does not make it right. Not to mention all of the other people who deliberately use the wrong term to garner sympathy and to confuse the issue.
Right, but nothing was "Taken" only copied. So again, not Stealing.
Second, what does it matter if we have committed copyright infringement? We are still a member of society who has an interest in seeing the innocent not being railroaded by the Music Industry. We still have an interest in stopping the Music Industry from illegally violating our rights, hacking into our computers (Federal crime by the way, much worse than copyright infringement), and extorting people for large sums of money.
What makes their hatred irrational? And I'd argue that it's not because of who they are but its because of what their job is (a person is not their job). Basically, it comes down to this; If you come in contact with a police officer, it is his job to treat you like a criminal, because potentially, you are. Nobody likes being treated like a criminal, especially the innocent. It is a police officer's job to lie to you, to threaten you, to do anything in their power to trick you into giving yourself up. Nobody likes being lied to or threatened, especially the innocent. This causes what you describes as irrational hatred, and you're wrong, its very rational, people don't like cops because it is their job to treat people like shit.
Am I arguing that cops are evil? No. I just wanted to explain why people have an inherent distrust/disliking for police officers and that it is very justified. Me, I like cops (from a conceptual POV), overall they do a good job and for the most part are probably good people. That said, I would prefer to live my life with as little contact with them as possible, and I would never, ever, ever, trust one.
And that's why they say; "There are lies, damn lies, and then there are statistics". Seriously, I'll never buy into the whole idea of surveying of 50 people and extrapolating the results to a population in the millions, that's just logically ludicrous.
Because at any moment in time you may become a criminal they are looking for. It is not us that have the "Paranoid Assumptions" it is them. That is why they feel they need to have the power to invade anyone's privacy at any time, because anyone is capable of being a terrorist. Think of it like the Agents in The Matrix, except replace "Agent" with "Criminal/Terrorist" and you will understand their thinking.
But if that's the will of the majority, then so be it. And if that's not the will of the majority, then get organized and change the law.
Now do you mean the simple majority which can be expressed as 50.1% vs. 49.9%? Does that really seem fair? I certainly don't think that it does. Or, you can live in Washington, where they are trying to reduce the 50% (super-majority) vote to less than that for raising taxes to fund schools, which is bullshit.That's what I think this country really needs, eliminate the simple majority rule. If the country is really divided 50/50, then nothing should be done. We should up it to like 60/40 or 65/35 for simple laws, and at least 75/25 or 80/20 for constitutional amendments. That'll keep these silly Government Nanny laws from being passed and pissing off the average citizen.
It could also be the joy in finally seeing (or causing) James Bond's demise. He's been around so long, had so many movies and games, you just gotta want him to die at least once. ;)
I think you are stretching this a little too far.
How the energy is obtained in the first place. From petroleum drilled out of the ground, a coal mine, natural gas, solar power, nuclear power, and so on.
Well if you consider the fact that everyone needs and is going to continue to use electricity and take its availability as a given, then using electricity to compress air adds zero pollution to the existing system/infrastructure (or close enough to be considered zero).
The efficiency of conveying the energy from the source to the user. Coal and petroleum products are relatively good for this (some loss to evaporation for gasoline, I imagine). For remotely-generated electricity, there would be transmission losses. If you charge your electric car from a solar panel on your roof, much less so.
Also, if you take the existing infrastructure as a given, then this is a non-issue as well when considering how much pollution the air-powered car in itself adds to the environment.
How the energy is stored (or storage losses). This is one of the big issues with hydrogen. It tends to seep through containers. Compressed air would be a similar problem. A leak in your compressed air tank has an environmental effect just as a lead in your gas tank, and is harder to detect. It's more efficent to store a liquid than a compressed gas.
Leaking compressed air has an environmental effect? Really? Is it a negative effect? I would postulate that taking the air out of the environment, compressing and storing it would have a more negative effect (less total air available) than it leaking back out and decompressing naturally. I would also postulate that neither is something we should even bother worrying about, as they should cancel each other out.
The efficiency of converting the stored energy into motion of the vehicle. What are the thermal losses for state changes? Friction in the engine?
Okay, so a byproduct of converting the compressed air into linear motion is heat, I understand that. But it comes at no cost (no air is lost, just the stored energy), and I also can't see how generating a relatively little amount of heat could negatively affect the planet, as everything living creature on this rock does so.
I'm not sure if you're trolling, or are just confusing the terms "Zero Pollution" with "100% Efficient, Zero Loss". Since pollution, by definition, has to be harmful to the environment (or the things living in it), I still fail to see how an 100% Air Powered car would add any pollution into the current state of affairs.
I've never liked the idea since they introduced it originally, I believe, to prevent people from using high end laser printers to counterfiet money and if they did, to trace it back to the one(s) responsible. To my knowledge, it's never been used as such. I implore someone to prove me wrong if I am. Well, I know one thing, at my brother's work (my cousin's business), some brain-dead employee decided to make a color-copy of money on the office's color copier and somehow got caught with it in their pocket. Whether they confessed which printer they used to print it to cops or not I don't know, but I do know the Secret Service showed up to confiscate the printer and the computer as evidence, which, if my cousin's husband wasn't a local cop, they would of done and effectively shut down her whole company. So, for all those who don't know why it's a good idea to lock-down your office equipment, imagine losing all the computer equipment in your office because some low-life decided to copy some money.
I only made the straight-faced argument that for some people it just might be...
you need to update your opinion to include the small nagging issue of people actually caring when someone is dying in the street
I understand that people care when they see people dying in the street, but they are not forced to act to help them; some do, others do not. It is their guilt, their sympathy, their generosity, that causes a person to want to act, to clothe and feed the helpless, it is a choice, there is no one but you forcing your hand to help (governmental influence aside), that is the distinction I was trying to make. It's a little bit flawed logic; A person allowing himself to become helpless, does not force you to clothe and feed him. It is your own inability to let nature run its course, to let him die in the street, that forces you to clothe and feed them. Be sure to place the blame in the proper place, as the addict may never have asked for your help. As for people actually caring for people dying in the street, that is true. But, I for one, (try to) have no sympathy for someone who has been given ample help and opportunity to correct their situation but have continued to fail. The truly helpless, the ones who in nature's opinion should die in the street or where ever they may fall. In an ideal world, those would be the only ones left dying in the street, those that truly cannot be helped and in that case the rational mind must rule over the emotional one, for our species to survive we must allow nature to run its course with the truly weak, we must let them die.
it always amazed and perplexed me to see people argue, in the name of freedom, for substances that turn you into a slave
Because, there are advantages to being a slave that could cause some to choose that path as it is easier than being responsible. The movie Interstate 60 made a good point about this with the town of Banton, where the legal age is like 12-14, the most addictive drug is legal, and there is a town-sponsored rave every night. The town controlled the supply and the price, which is very affordable, manual labor. Why? "Because some folks just want to get high". They over-educated everyone to the risks, and left them the choice to make: Responsible Freedom, or, Care-free Slavery. Are you sure your life is better than theirs?
1. if you become an addict, you screw up my life as well as tyour own, because now i have to feed and clothe a zombie
You've repeated this sentiment a few times as though it is absolutely true and it is not. There is no natural responsibility for you to clothe and feed those who cannot survive on their own. It is your choice, or in the case of the US, the government's choice, to provide charity to those who are without. It is not required, it is not a must, move to a poorer country, become an addict, see how long you don't starve, and then you'll know what I mean.
And just as an aside, since its brought up, these charity programs that support those who cannot support themselves are really hurting more than they are helping. I am a humanitarian, I believe in giving a helping hand when the chips are down, but I do not believe in a free ride. There should be programs to help those in need get back on their feet, but there must be limits to our generosity, their must be a time when we give up on the truly helpless and let them die in order to continue to help those who can be helped. If we don't start kicking the leeches soon, our gene pool will become a rotting cesspool of the lowest common denominator, which right now is pretty damn low.
The bill of rights, silly. The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people. Basically, it was supposed to be that if the power wasn't expressly granted to the Federal Government in the Constitution, than it was left to the States to decide individually, or the people.
I've been reading this thread and common theme is that the code is automatically copyrighted once it was written down. Okay, sounds about right to me. The problem I'm having is connecting the line between a copyright on 200 lines of code and the compilation of said lines into a commercial application. I thought, correct me if I'm wrong, that copyright gave you the exclusive right to publish said work. Now just because you have a copyright on some code does not mean that I can't incorporate it into my own private works so long as I never re-publish or re-distribute the source code. In other words, I would think it would be okay to use the code but only distribute the compiled version which the author does not have a copyright to. What am I missing here?
Um, yeah, but isn't that covered in the basic Law of Energy, that you can't get out more than you put in. You almost always get less.
Notice how I was careful to only say Bush and said nothing of his Administration. Bush's cabinet may be his own cronies or they may be his party's cronies, which one it is I know I'm not certain of. The other thing that I am not certain of, and I assume neither are you, is who Gore's Administration would of been made up of. You see, one can compare Bush to Gore, apples to apples, but one cannot compare Bush's Administration to Gore's Administration because Gore's Administration never existed. The whole 20/20 hindsight sort of thing. Also to note, I believe I heard (could be wrong) a few people in the Bush Administration were also in the white house during the Clinton administration (to possibly negate the democrat/republican distinction) and since Gore was Clinton's VP, it's not too much of a stretch of the imagination that these very same people in the background may have been there to intentionally slant the reports.
I wasn't actually saying the war itself didn't matter that much, just who was President at the time probably wouldn't of mattered all that much. I want to clarify that in my original post I did not say nor intentionally imply that I thought Al Gore would of invaded Iraq. Also, regarding the Invasion of Iraq, that was approved by Congress before it happened, so to put the full responsibility onto Bush's shoulders is rather a skirting of the facts. If Congress had denied his wishes, things might of been different. The quick reply to that is the mis-representation/bad-intelligence that was fed to Congress, the UN, and the people. While this very well is a valid point, saying that Bush was behind it all himself, well that's assuming a lot. It very well could be that Gore would have been fed the same bad intelligence, which would have left him little choice but to relay that very same information to Congress, the UN, and the people. Determining how different things would be if things had happened differently is nothing but mere speculation, there is no way to know.
Maybe, Maybe not. It doesn't really matter all that much. Iraq is mostly about distraction and a justified (loose usage) place to dump large piles of cash (goals of those at the top). With Al Gore, maybe it would be Iraq, maybe it would be Iran or North Korea, or even something else entirely (another Sex Scandal perhaps) to distract the people from what is really going on, while at the same time shoveling boatloads of money to specific places with little to no oversight. The main point is; If the issue at hand is being widely reported by the mainstream media, everyone is talking about it, and it has the country pretty much completely polarized, chance are it is only a tool of distraction and the real issues/agendas that the people in power care about are being missed and are going on while no one is paying attention.
Because of political parties and the loyalty toward the party line and not the people . Also, I daresay that at the top of both the Republican and Democratic party are the same people, with the same goals. The divide between the two parties is an illusion perpetrated by those at the top to undermine and eliminate the people's power to vote. You have two choices, one from our side in wolves clothing, and another from our side in sheep's clothing, make your pick, either way we win. Couple that with a winner-take-all electoral voting system and it becomes increasing improbable/impossible for a real candidate that is by the people and for the people to ever get elected. Only those that are by the party and for the party get elected. This is why I do not vote in presidential elections, I know for a fact my vote is meaningless, it gets thrown away because I would never vote for a republican nor for a democrat.
There are fates worse than death, and they can do all of them.... :)
Well I'll admit is does expand quite a bit further down the line than most theorists would, but I didn't find any of it that far-fetched. I mean we do have people having their children implanted with tracking chips. We are being required to have them in our driver's licenses and passports. They are passing laws left and right that would somehow allow the government to take complete and utter control over anything and everything that matters. There is talk about the North American Union and the Amero, whether we are fully committed to it yet or not I'm not entirely clear on. About the only thing that seems really far-fetched is that it was thought of and planned this way from the very beginning. That is a little unbelievable. But, those same people (or their decendents) expending and evolving their way of thinking over the years isn't.