Oh. My worst book of the year is Mockingjay (book 3 of hunger games).

I got it from the kindle lending library in APRIL and still have not finished it. It's just terrible.

Don't finish it.  Imagine your own ending.  The real one will just piss you off.

My daughter loved the series but admitted that the third book wasn't very good.

I have never read a book in which the main character spent so much time comatose, drugged, or emotionally catatonic that the entire plot occurs off-screen.  It's like reading a Superman story written from the perspective of Ma Kent back in Smallville.

"Why, hello Clark!  It's so good to hear from you!  How have things been going there in the big city?"

"Fine, ma.  Sorry I haven't been able to visit much.  Luthor built a Kryptonite-powered mech suit and *somehow* a violent criminal used it to start robbing jewelry stores."

"Oh my!  That sounds dreadful!  I want to hear all about it, but I have to take in the wash before it starts to rain...can you sum up the entire adventure in a paragraph or less?"

-Autistic Angel

Are you going to play Rayman Legends when it comes out?

-Autistic Angel

Yup, we've learned a lot about cancer in the last 35 years. 'The changing science' was a good tagline.

Well, I think ATB's point was that in medicine, as in all the sciences, none of the new information gathered since the late 70's counts.  You can tell by how he reliably advises his loved ones to seek antineoplaston therapy over any of those laughably fictional metastasis suppressants.

And really, what is "climate science" except a few decades of meticulously peer-reviewed data used to inform an international consensus?  Consensus!?  Who even knows what that means?

Do they have reviews in your country? If not let me explain how they work: people- known as critics- go and see the movies and then tell us how they are.  When a bunch of critics say the same thing, that's called consensus. The consensus so far is that the movie is boring, drawn out and not very good (just like the consensus was that XCOM has lots and lots of bugs (many of which you never saw, so I understand why you think they didn't exist or that one could not make a judgement on something without actually having seen it first hand).  Thus, I can also say it is boring.  Not that I mentioned before the reviews came out that there's no way the book should be 3 movies or anything...

Thanks so much!

-Autistic Angel

Let's all take a moment to appreciate that msduncan believes scientific facts are tested and affirmed in a manner similar to selecting the winner of American Idol.

-Autistic Angel

Yeah, like Doopri, I finished The Witcher 2 with a heavily melee-centric build and quickly learned that properly applied alchemy can transform a gruelingly difficult fight into a fun, flashy victory.  Again, I never put a single point into the tree, but I definitely picked up every recipe and beastiary book I could find.

Definitely do not put any skill points into deflecting arrows.  Unless things have been heavily patched, you'll be able to count on one hand the number of times you face archers of any note.  Definitely do pick up the dodging upgrades that increase how far Geralt can roll -- with a little practice, they'll let you spin all the way around an enemy for a quick backstab.

Much like Dragon Age, this is a game that expects you to spend your money.  Crafting supplies, armor and weapon blueprints, quest objects -- it's not like Geralt is saving for retirement.

I also invested some points into some of the Signs.  Quen, the shield Sign, is invaluable even before you upgrade it to reflect damage back on your attackers.  A lot of the combat is about crowd control, so I also got a lot of use from the Yrden Sign which evens the odds with runic traps.

And yeah, even on the PC, The Witcher 2 controls much better with a 360 gamepad.  I started playing that way around Act II and never looked back.

-Autistic Angel

GODDAMMITGRATCHPLAYMOARPERSONA4!!!1!!1@wDFV

-ARTUISTIV ANGL

Sorry, everyone: that did not go very well.  The download from the Oracle archive site arrived as corrupt on two separate downloads, and I tried four separate restoration points in System Restore that all failed.

Fortunately I found the MapTool thread Arkon was talking about and that had a link to Java 6.37 -- from the very same Oracle site, mind you -- which downloaded and installed properly.   MapTool was launching properly again as of about 10:00pm last night.

My advice is to definitely not upgrade to Java 7 until the next version of MapTool is working properly.

-Autistic Angel

Girl:

Anna Moleva, who often goes by “Ormeli“, is a cosplayer from Moscow who has personified other video game characters before. But her uncanny portrayal of Elizabeth from BioShock Infinite really brought her to our attention.

We were so amazed by her dedication and her resemblance to Elizabeth that we decided to ask her if she’d like to be involved in helping bring Elizabeth to life in our box, our key art and our upcoming television ad.

-Autistic Angel

[absolutely not]

I hear Atlus added a direct "FSTEAK" callout to one of the new S-Links in Persona 4 Golden.

This might be a good time to mention that anyone playing through this story for the first time should absolutely not read the "Himdaisy Persona 4" comic until they've finished the game.  Seriously: there are major endgame spoilers right off the bat, and as funny as the strips are to fans, they won't mean anything to someone who hasn't played the content already.

Look it up after you're done.

-Autistic Angel

AA, it has a 120GB drive I put in myself. The issue is that you can't just swap the drive into another PS3 and have it read the data, because it won't.

I did not realize that was a limitation.  The hard drive connected to my current 360 was transplanted from the one that died before it, so I assumed the PS3 worked the same way.  It's a good thing to learn considering that I may be following you in a search for a new PS3 in the near future. 

Hopefully, though, the company will make good on the warranty for the replacement Blu-Ray drive they sold me that keeled over after a couple weeks.  I'd really prefer to preserve my backwards compatibility if I possibly can....

-Autistic Angel

Oh, you're right.  A quick Google search showed up lots of people complaining about it.  What a weird, arbitrary decision to lock down save games that way.

-Autistic Angel

The only reason for your son to lose his Dark Souls data is if the hard drive has died.  If that's the only reason your 20-gig backward compatible unit has failed, you can simply replace the drive and continue using a markedly superior model.

Otherwise, the Playstation 3 uses a standard SATA laptop hard drive.  There should be all sorts of options for retrieving data from it, including mounting the drive inside your new PS3 long enough to copy the savegame files onto a USB key.

What's the problem with your system?  As the owner of a 60-gig BC unit in need of repairs, it might have parts I could really use!

-Autistic Angel

Yes.

-Autistic Angel

Persona 1 and 2 are very different games from those that followed.  I won't tell you not to play them, but I will say that they were not for me.  There is also no connecting story arc to worry about.

There's a reason the series exploded in popularity with Persona 3.  Unfortunately, the PSP version had to make some important compromises to fit on a handheld system.  The biggest, which has you maneuvering around town with a mouse cursor rather than moving your character through 3D environments, really pulls you out of the game and makes it much harder to connect with your character.  It isn't bad...just less good.

I would highly recommend Persona 3: FES which was the definitive PS2 version, or Persona 4 for the PS2 or Vita.

-Autistic Angel

During his appearance on Meet the Press this week, Senator Lindsey Graham insisted over and over again that the "video protest" narrative was invented because it worked so well to President Obama's advantage.

Well, I think one of the reasons that Susan Rice told the story she did, if the truth came out a few weeks before the election that our consulate in Benghazi, Libya, had been overrun by an al Qaeda sponsored or affiliated militia, that destroys the narrative we’ve been hearing for months that al Qaeda has been dismantled, bin Laden is dead, we’re safer.  And Susan Rice just did not say it was a result of a mob spawned by a video like Cairo.  She actually said on Face The Nation, “I want to remind the American people this president promised to go after bin Laden, refocus on al Qaeda.  He got bin Laden.  Al Qaeda has been dismantled.  And the truth of the matter is nothing could’ve been further from the truth, and the story she told reinforced a political narrative helpful to the president, but disconnected from reality.

"Nothing could be further from the truth."

Apparently Republicans, who ran their 2002, 2004, and 2006 campaigns almost exclusively on the fear that liberals would somehow invite worse attacks than 9/11, the anthrax mailings, multiple embassy attacks, and untold scores of deaths throughout Iraq and Afghanistan that were happening on their watch, are now arguing that this single terrorist attack had the potential to instantly unravel all of Obama's strategic victories against al Qaeda.

Seems like a stretch to me.  Of course, Susan Rice isn't the first administration official who's come under prolonged and concentrated fire for weirdly trumped-up reasons.



Previously there was Eric Holder:



Van Jones:



And Shirley Sherrod:




If two points make a line and three make a pattern, what do four make again?  I'd suggest "tapestry" but that implies too many colors.

-Autistic Angel

"Biblical values" is not synonymous with "morally right".  In fact, it's often counter to it.

Explain.

Now if you said: biblical values =! republican values I'm on board.

or biblical values =! romney's beliefs. I'm on board.

(in my head that's the not equal sign, but I could have it wrong...)

No, you're right.  Three times over, in fact.

-Autistic Angel

AA, maybe, and I mean this in the real sense because at this point who knows, the fact that the consulate requested more security and were turned down?

Seems like a possible reason for a coverup, especially ahead of the election.

But why would the Obama administration want to provide such cover for the House Republicans who proudly slashed $451 million from embassy security funding?

Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah) acknowledged on Wednesday that House Republicans had consciously voted to reduce the funds allocated to the State Department for embassy security since winning the majority in 2010.

On Wednesday morning, CNN anchor Soledad O'Brien asked the Utah Republican if he had "voted to cut the funding for embassy security."

"Absolutely," Chaffetz said. "Look we have to make priorities and choices in this country. We have…15,000 contractors in Iraq. We have more than 6,000 contractors, a private army there, for President Obama, in Baghdad. And we’re talking about can we get two dozen or so people into Libya to help protect our forces. When you’re in tough economic times, you have to make difficult choices. You have to prioritize things.”

For the past two years, House Republicans have continued to deprioritize the security forces protecting State Department personnel around the world. In fiscal year 2011, lawmakers shaved $128 million off of the administration's request for embassy security funding. House Republicans drained off even more funds in fiscal year 2012 -- cutting back on the department's request by $331 million.

Typically, the purpose of a scam is to help yourself at the other guys' expense.  Democrats are dreadfully out of practice, I'll confess, but to do the whole thing *backwards?!*

That makes even less sense than the idea that John McCain skipped a classified Homeland Security briefing about Benghazi to hold press conference complaining about the lack of briefings about Benghazi because he promised to teach a sick little girl the true meaning of "disingenuous."

-Autistic Angel

Does anyone have any clue what this alleged coverup conspiracy was supposed to accomplish?  For all the effort there's been to leverage the deaths of four Americans at the hands of terrorists into a bludgeon to strike President Obama, I have not seen any explanation of *why* the administration would have crafted such a short-lived deception.

You don't engage in an elaborate conspiracy without a purpose in mind.  If the truth had been known from the start, or if Obama's cunning plot had succeeded and no one ever found out, how would the situation be any different?

-Autistic Angel

Honestly, they should just play the theme from a Looney Tunes cartoon in the background now whenever new info is released.

Yeah, man: this thing has gotten *weird!*

Who is this Jill Kelley that she has a high profile biographer, an FBI investigator, the head of the CIA, and the general running the war in Afghanistan flushing their careers away just for the chance to be lewd towards her?

-Autistic Angel

I don't feel like Chris Christie's morbid obesity would influence my vote one way or the other.

This would.

Gov. Chris Christie arrived at his son's baseball game this afternoon aboard a State Police helicopter.

Right before the lineup cards were being exchanged on the field, a noise from above distracted the spectators as the 55-foot long helicopter buzzed over trees in left field, circled the outfield and landed in an adjacent football field. Christie disembarked from the helicopter and got into a black car with tinted windows that drove him about a 100 yards to the baseball field.

During the 5th inning, Christie and First Lady Mary Pat Christie got into the car, rode back to the helicopter and left the game. During a pitching change, play was stopped for a couple of minutes while the helicopter took off.

Oh wait, let me do a find/replace on a couple names and go post this in ATB's thread on hypothetical Obama scandals.

-Autistic Angel

I don't know.  While I agree with brettmcd that George W. Bush should have resigned, it's a strange comparison at a point when nothing we know of this Patraeus affair comes close to that level of chicanery.

The facts so far make me inclined to agree with TiLT.  This man's extra-marital affair seems incidental to the performance of his job.

Unless, of course, this whole investigation was kicked off in response to a security breach or blackmail scheme we haven't heard of yet.  Then this would be a very big deal.

-Autistic Angel

Clueless as usual there AA, good thing to know nothing ever changes with you.

Would it be too much to ask for you to debate something without starting an insulting contest?

Would it be too much to ask that you and AA not make up things I never said?    Since I know it is too much to ask of you I will continue to post exactly as I do.

Oh, sorry brettmcd.  When you said....

But at least he had the decency to resign for his mistake, unlike a certain former president.

...I naturally assumed you meant the former president whose mistakes included

- going to war over fictional WMDs,

- pulling urgently needed military resources out of Afghanistan,

- losing Osama bin Laden in Tora Bora

- transforming Walter Reed Medical Center into a malignant cesspit

- declaring Mission Accomplished -- an end to major combat operations in Iraq -- eight years before the end of major combat operations in Iraq

- appointing an equestrian judge with no disaster relief training to be the head of FEMA

- nominating Harriet Myers to be a Supreme Court justice

- remaining on vacation for three days while New Orleans drowned

- vastly and intentionally under-reporting the projected costs for Medicare Part-D

- waiting around to hear the end of My Pet Goat after being informed the country was under attack

- enforcing abstinence-only education in schools, reversing a decade of diminishing teen pregnancy and abortion rates

- awarding a new federal contract for military body armor to Sioux Manufacturing after it was discovered the company was knowingly shipping faulty kevlar to save money

- pitching the wild-eyed stories of a thoroughly discredited CIA informant called "Curveball" to the international community as though they were facts

- implementing deregulatory supply-side economic policies that triggered a global economic recession


I guess I jumped to conclusions.  Please, why don't you tell us all which former president you think made the *really* serious mistake and should have had the decency to resign?

-Autistic Angel

Umm...AA...wow, this is awkward...ummm...we've all kind of...you know...moved on. 

The election was four days ago.  Florida just now figured out that Obama won the state.  That's how long it took to unravel a year's worth of plots to erect as many roadblocks to voting as possible.  Fewer polling places, fewer voting hours, thousands of people forced to defend their eligibility from automatic purges, "misprinted" ballots sent out to urban areas, conspicuous billboards warning poor neighborhoods that voter fraud is a federal offense, and on and on and on.  Several Republican state legislatures brainstormed ways to suppress turnout for this election, but with wait times soaring past six hours in Miami-Dade county, even Ohio couldn't hold a candle to Florida.

That's an actual scandal.  It really exists, right now.  We don't have a thread about it, though, because the spectacle of what happens when Republicans wield the power of government to assault people's rights is no longer noteworthy.  It's just what they do.

Instead, we have a thread where ATB asks everyone to forecast what President Obama's scandals might be, if they exist, because all the ones Conservatives have been furiously working to fabricate over the last four years failed to get the job done.  It's an ambitious project, so I'll have to beg some forgiveness if it takes a bit for me to express the minimum level scorn it deserves.

-Autistic Angel

I don't know.  While I agree with brettmcd that George W. Bush should have resigned, it's a strange comparison at a point when nothing we know of this Patraeus affair comes close to that level of chicanery.

The facts so far make me inclined to agree with TiLT.  This man's extra-marital affair seems incidental to the performance of his job.

Unless, of course, this whole investigation was kicked off in response to a security breach or blackmail scheme we haven't heard of yet.  Then this would be a very big deal.

-Autistic Angel

Oh wait, I've got one.

What if, after years of talking a big game about how much he supports the troops and honors their sacrifice in fighting America's wars, Barack Obama puts together a comedy routine that made their primary mission into a hilarious punchline?  He could even air his set on national television so everyone could enjoy a good laugh at the expense of our active duty military!

It could easily be the worst plagiarism scandal since that one time in 1987 that Joe Biden failed to cite a quotation!

-Autistic Angel

Hey everyone, remember that time Republicans organized party-wide opposition to raising the debt ceiling, creating a completely unnecessary economic crisis just to get attention?  And then, when their pointless brinksmanship damaged the country's credit rating in exactly the way everyone was predicting, the entire Conservative movement suddenly flipped and tried to blame it on President Obama?

Maybe in his second term, Obama can do something like that.  Except, you know, make it a scandal.

-Autistic Angel

I predict the major scandals of the next four years will include the Obamas flying a pizza chef and a barber from halfway around the country to cater to their whims on the tax payers' dime; a presidential vacation in India that costs more than $200 million a day; the collapse of military morale after gay people are allowed to serve openly; government-run death panels that murder people's grandparents; federal agents confiscating every privately owned firearm in the country; rolling blackouts caused by new federal regulations that drive the coal and oil companies out of business; the banishment of Christianity, the Bible, and the Boy Scouts; the public embrace of abortion as the new American pastime; ruthless manipulation of economic data and public polling agencies; and the handover of American sovereignty to the United Nations.

I mean, second term?  This time its a definite.  Otherwise, all that stuff would just come off like the delusional rants of jabber-jawed morons.

-Autistic Angel

Never underestimate the Republicans' ability to rewrite their own history.  Case in point:

That was an ass kicking.

I wouldn't call Obama being the first president to win reelection with a smaller number of electoral votes than he earned the first time to an "ass kicking".

That's weird.  Back in 2004 when President George W. Bush won reelection with a much, much narrower margin in a single swing state, Ohio, Conservatives declared he the American people had awarded him a mandate, earning him tremendous political capital to spend on privatizing Social Security.   Never mind that he hadn't campaigned on that idea at all: it was a massive ass-kicking that proved the mainstream popularity of all Conservative ideals.

Of course, Republicans also refused to acknowledge the nationwide shellacking they took in the 2008 race either.  At least they're consistent once in a while.

-Autistic Angel

Nice straw man you've built there.

A straw man argument is when you knock down a position no one has taken.  I am directly comparing the position the Conservative movement is taking right now to the one they took under nearly identical circumstances eight years ago, with citations to back me up.

Try again.

Sometimes it's also good to be gracious when your horse wins.

Yes, it is.

When one jockey mercilessly slanders another, spreads savage lies about his record and qualifications, insinuates that he isn't even eligible to race, and even tries to claim credit for the other guy's victories, that isn't one of those times.  You're not stooping to his level simply by recognizing he's covered in filth.

-Autistic Angel

The second most important tenant of the modern Conservative movement is that the modern Conservative movement is never wrong.  It cannot fail; it can only *be* failed.  The "reevaluation" you're going to see over the next few days will not be about why the right-wing ideology relentlessly championed by Mitt Romney proved to be so toxic in a general election -- it will come in the form of all the Republican friends and family you have suddenly discovering, for the very first time, that they never supported Romney at all.  He lost, they'll say, because he wasn't Conservative enough.

Rush Limbaugh spent at *least* forty-five minutes making this exact point on his show today.  Mitt Romney?  Nice guy, good family man, shrewd businessman, but if only he'd been more Conservative, spent more time calling the President a liberal, been less timid in his embrace of Conservative Truth, they could have overthrown Obama's regime of prejudice and hate.  

We're four years closer to transforming the country into a tyrannical socialist commune, said Rush, and it could have been reversed if only the Republicans would have engaged in a robust, happy, forthright presentation of Conservatism.

Limbaugh and my local right-wing talk show hosts also spent a good part of the day grousing about how unfair and unrepresentative the electoral college is, as though they weren't describing it as an example of the divine prescience of our founding fathers back when Bush lost the popular vote in 2000.

I'm not going to say anything bad about Romney after he made such a gracious concession speech.  That was a class act.  I may disagree with him on almost all fronts, but at least he was a stand up guy when he realized he had lost.

Mitt Romney's very first campaign ad of the general election centered on a clip of Barack Obama saying, "If we keep talking about the economy, we're going to lose."  Obama was directly quoting a John McCain staffer back in 2008 in order to rebut the remarks -- a nuance the ad conveniently left out.

Mitt Romney's final campaign ads centered on lies he made up about how Jeep was firing all their American workers and shipping the jobs overseas to China.  His claims were thoroughly debunked by the media, Chrysler, GM, and even the Republican governor of Ohio, but he just kept right on trying to scare people that their jobs were already gone.

"You got folks who work at a Jeep plant who have been calling their employers, worried, asking 'Is it true that our jobs are being shipped to China,'' Obama said at rally at the Franklin County Fairgrounds this morning. "The reason they are making these calls is because Gov. Romney ran an ad that says so. Except it's not true. Everybody knows it's not true. The car company themselves told Gov. Romney to knock it off."

The ad includes images of cars being crushed and a narrator saying Obama "sold Chrysler to Italians who are going to build Jeeps in China. Mitt Romney will fight for every American job." The Romney ad doesn't mention that Chrysler is retaining and expanding its North America Jeep operations, as it weighs breaking into China.

You cannot spend a full year acting like the worst scumbag this side of a Captain Planet villain and then transmute into a class act in a single speech.  Integrity doesn't work that way.

-Autistic Angel

There's almost no way any candidate in the rest of my lifetime accomplishes what Obama did in 2008. That does not at all take away from the fact that this was an epic ass kicking. The Republican party flipped TWO states back from 2008, one just barely. This election, particularly the demographics from exit polls show that the party needs to really reevaluate it's approach.

So did the last one.  The new approach they selected was to move even further to the right, express open hostility towards African Americans, Latinos, and women, and devote the majority of their energy towards making up idiotic controversies about birth certificates, FEMA concentration camps, death panels, and so forth.

The second most important tenant of the modern Conservative movement is that the modern Conservative movement is never wrong.  It cannot fail; it can only *be* failed.  The "reevaluation" you're going to see over the next few days will not be about why the right-wing ideology relentlessly championed by Mitt Romney proved to be so toxic in a general election -- it will come in the form of all the Republican friends and family you have suddenly discovering, for the very first time, that they never supported Romney at all.  He lost, they'll say, because he wasn't Conservative enough.

Never underestimate the Republicans' ability to rewrite their own history.  Case in point:

That was an ass kicking.

I wouldn't call Obama being the first president to win reelection with a smaller number of electoral votes than he earned the first time to an "ass kicking".

That's weird.  Back in 2004 when President George W. Bush won reelection with a much, much narrower margin in a single swing state, Ohio, Conservatives declared he the American people had awarded him a mandate, earning him tremendous political capital to spend on privatizing Social Security.   Never mind that he hadn't campaigned on that idea at all: it was a massive ass-kicking that proved the mainstream popularity of all Conservative ideals.

Of course, Republicans also refused to acknowledge the nationwide shellacking they took in the 2008 race either.  At least they're consistent once in a while.

-Autistic Angel

[Spoiler]

I just finished the game last night.  Question on the ending:

Spoiler for Hiden:

After I got all the way to the end of the Alien ship and killed the mind control alien dude the entire earth started shaking.  My squad ran toward the ship but didn't get on (not sure why)  The purple sphere started going up which made the alien ship go up and explode over the earth.  My transport ship was headed back to base and then the final score popped up. 

Did I miss something or was the ending that abrupt for everyone?

Did my squad all die on the alien ship?

Just seems like there should have been a final dialog back at the base or something...

I'm pretty sure

Spoiler for Hiden:

your entire squad, minus the volunteer manipulating the sphere, boards the Skyranger and safely escapes the blast radius.  I think you get a brief shot of them in the straps as the plane weathers a shockwave from the alien craft.  One way or another, though, it's definitely my assumption they survived.

But no, there's no denouement back at the base.  Maybe it's something they're planning to extend via DLC.

-Autistic Angel

[somehow]

There haven't been two more diametrically opposed presidential candidates in my lifetime.

Depends on which Romney we're talking about. If it's the non-scary moderate who's been running since the first debate (and who governed MA during the first half of his term), then I agree that the differences between him and Obama are minor. If it's the severe conservative of the primaries (and the second half of his term in MA, after he abandoned the job and started running for president), then I agree with you. If we're talking about some unknown mashup, then all I can say is that both of the Romneys and Obama are tools of the military-industrial complex. Their corporate masters differ, but they both serve the ruling class.

I'm guessing that's what ATB had in mind.

Perhaps, but that continuous reinvention of Mitt Romney's positions is one of the many stark difference between him and Barack Obama.  Remember back in 2008 when Republicans spent months touting John McCain's experience and consistency as the most important qualifications to be president?  Four years later, they've nominated a man whose political platform is pulled apart and relaid on a weekly basis.

What is Romney's plan for working with Israel?  Sometimes he publicly insults all the Palestinian people as though he wants to precipitate an open conflict.  Other times, in debates, he talks about forging a permanent peace, pays lip service to Obama's track record, but complains that he would have done everything sooner, faster, and produced better results though force of will.  In the infamous "47%" video, he told a room of wealthy donors that his plan was to do nothing, kick the can down the road, and hope that things would get better all on their own.

Even the long-advertised economic plan to slash taxes, increase spending, and fix the deficit somehow was disavowed during the first debate, with Mitt Romney furrowing his brow and expressing total bewilderment that such a lunatic plan had ever been associated with his campaign...only to have his campaign issue press releases for days to "clarify" that yes, the plan was still in place.

The only thing we actually know about Mitt Romney's governing philosophy is that he will claim just about anything to appease the people in front of him.  What does ATB think is the Obama equivalent of this perpetual metamorphosis?  His position change on gay marriage?

-Autistic Angel

We have two bad choices. Arguing passionately about one being better than the other is pointless when they're identically awful.

My claim is that obama supporters look like fools for denouncing a guy who supports a different candidate than you when they are almost entirely the same candidate and neither of them is good for this country.  And that you guys are indicting eco for doing the same things that many of you did when bush was in the white house.

With all the focus on Eco-Logic's continuous trolling, I'm not sure this little take on the situation has gotten enough attention.

Does anyone have any idea what in the hell ATB is talking about?  There haven't been two more diametrically opposed presidential candidates in my lifetime.

Is he some kind hyper-specific single-issue voter upset that neither candidate will do enough to ban JujyFruits, or is he making some sort of bizarre meta-point about Mitt Romney and Barack Obama sharing a large percentage of human genetic code?

-Autistic Angel

I do not think our current president is a Muslim born in a foreign country, I did however wonder why he didn't just release everything right away to shut everyone up.

That is all, nothing more nothing less.

I wonder why Romney didn't just release this tax returns right away? 

That is all.  Nothing more, nothing less.

Well, there are two problems with this comparison:

1) There is are several decades of precedent for politicians to release their tax returns.  The same cannot be said of birth certificates, even when the candidates are black.

2) There has never been even one shred of evidence that Barack Obama has lied about his birth certificate.  Mitt Romney, by contrast, has been caught equivocating and back-peddling claims about his tax returns for as long as he's been in politics. 

Romney was ineligible to run for governor in Massachusetts until his accountants quietly filed amendments to retroactively change his primary residence back from Utah, all while his campaign publicly swore that nothing was amiss.  He's attacked political opponents for years over the fact that their family members won't release tax returns, while refusing to produce any of his own.  Most recently, his own presidential campaign openly said he had voluntarily under-claimed his deductions and chosen to pay a higher tax rate in 2011 for PR purposes, and win or lose, he will surely file an amendment this winter to get it all back.

Factor in the various overseas tax shelters we've seen summarized in his financial holdings, and there's no question that Mitt Romney has devoted his adult life to manipulating the tax code for his own personal gain.  The only question is exactly how much he's been getting away with, and that's why his tax returns have been such points of interest.

-Autistic Angel

Yes.

-Autistic Angel

The problem Conservatives have with trying to stoke nostalgia for previous administration is that George W. Bush was astronomically worse on every policy their movement tries to attack Barack Obama on (expanding the debt, weakening national security, inefficient domestic programs), and he was unapologetically guilty of all the things liberals were most concerned about (quagmires in Iraq & Afghanistan, torture programs, warrantless wiretapping, an economic collapse wrought by laissez-faire economics, trying to privatize Social Security, etc.)  Oh, and the New Orleans catastrophe.

By comparison, look at the so-called "outrages" of the Obama administration.  Phony birth certificates, secret Muslim allegiances, anti-white racism, government death panels and FEMA internment camps -- the largest and most popular are all completely fabricated because the few plausible scandals they've tried to elevate in the public consciousness require willful and sustained ignorance to chalk up to malfeasance.  Fast and Furious?  A Bush-era program with an extremely murky line of causation.  Solyndra?  A tiny percentage of the stimulus bill.  I believe those events can justly be called a blight on Obama's presidency...but they pale in comparison to the underwoven kevlar dispersed and condoned by the Bush administration.

Then there are all the apocalyptic predictions Conservatives have been making since 2007.  Does anyone here have an update on when the repeal of Don't Ask, Don't Tell is going to destroy our military?  When is Obama going to move ahead with repealing the 2nd Amendment?  What's the progress check on importing Sharia Law, disbanding the Boy Scouts, outlawing the Bible, teaching sex ed course to kindergarteners, or ceding our national sovereignty to the United Nations?  These aren't assertively false like the Birther attacks, but they sure are taking their sweet time coming true.

So no, if Conservatives want to excuse their blindly partisan hatred of Barack Obama, they're going to have to find a comparison point with fewer abject failures than George W. Bush.  Try Reagan.  Once you get past the occasional treason, and at least he didn't end his presidency with a global economic freefall.

-Autistic Angel

Actually this is what I said, which corresponds with what I said above.

Yes, after your first statement proved to be foolish and out of touch, you declared a new position and pretend you didn't.

If you're not volunteering for the Romney campaign, you really should be.

-Autistic Angel

All I've ever said about the polls are that I believe it will be neck and neck until the bitter end.

No, you haughtily boasted about Mitt Romney's popularity numbers at a point in time when President Obama was ahead and widening his lead every day, exposing to everyone that you had absolutely no idea what the situation was.

This coincided exactly with a widespread movement across the Conservative media spectrum to convince everyone that every single poll in the country was somehow being rigged.  That was last week, or course -- this week, those same polls are completely trustworthy, and the jobs numbers Team Romney have been campaigning on for months have suddenly been compromised.

Normally I'd ask how you reconcile the fact that, because these two realities cannot possibly both be true, the people trying to convince you otherwise are *obviously* lying to you on a continuous basis.  With deception this blatant and crude, however, the only real answer is that you don't care.

-Autistic Angel

Can we gather civilian volunteers to help fight fires?  Most residents would rather do something to help their city than just let it burn.

The only place you are sure a large number of civilians are hiding is in the temple of Ioun & Erathis, run by the priestess Lorna.  She has told you she will not assist you in the upcoming conflict, but you could try to change her mind.

I think this is a good idea.  There's a big difference between interceding in the conflict and acting to preserve homes and possessions from indiscriminate fires.  Whatever Lorna's position might be, I bet the civilians will want to help each other.

-Autistic Angel

I'm truly curious if the Romney bounce has changed you all's opinion regarding. Romney's chances, not because I need encouragement (definitely not the case, at this moment at least), purely because I'm interested to know of the polls you all put so much value in have changed your thinking at all.  It looks like Romney is up in Ohio now in many polls and many other swing states as well.

What say you?

Well, there's really only two possibilities.

a) Examine the results of multiple independent polls and, remaining true to my belief in well-presented statistics, understand that the evidence points towards increased popularity for Mitt Romney.

b) Pretend that the beliefs I espoused as recently as last week never existed and choose to shroud myself an ever-shifting haze of paranoid delusions about amorphous conspiracies that coil and wrap around anything I find disruptive to my preferred worldview.

I choose the one that takes way less effort.  I'll leave it to you to figure out which one that might be, Eco-Logic.

-Autistic Angel

AKA Brad Shoemaker is not the best person to be demonstrating games by demonstrating them.

At least, not this type of game.

Well, regardless of whether or not Brad Shoemaker demonstrates the dedication and attention to detail necessary to adequately review a spoon, I think the important thing to remember is that Game Informer's Test Chamber of Resident Evil 6 left me with the following impressions:

1.  Tim Turi's score is about as divisive in the offices as it is elsewhere, and

2.  Watching him play makes the game *look* really awesome, even as it becomes apparent what has driven all his coworkers away.

I wasn't a big fan of 5 myself so I'll probably wait for some distant Steam sale, but it's interesting stuff for sure!

-Autistic Angel