Grand Theft Auto

Violence. Sex. Satire to the max. It's fun. There's a story and everything. I was playing it for the story, style, and missions. The violence, stealing, and killing became secondary [it was done without consideration to the actual gameplay]. However, GTA IV [and video games in general] is not without controversy. Jack Thompson [pictured via Kotaku] is a Florida lawyer that has a history of denouncing and linking video game violence to real world violence. He tried to connect the Virginia Tech shooter to video games. Turns out, the shooter [Cho] barely touched video games and was just, in fact, crazy. Political groups tried to ban the release of the newest GTA game but guess what, it sold in record numbers [Kotaku].

Does game violence lead to real violence? No, there is no actual linkage. Lawmakers usually use video games as scrape goats because they are unfamiliar with them and have heard some negative report supporting their ideas. Video games are a billion dollar business and is growing faster than the movie industry.

Game Politics is a website devoted to keeping track of video games and the politics that follow them. It has links to many supporting sites and what viewers can do to act.

Gas-tax holiday! Whoo!

John McCain set a proposal to take out the 18.4 cent-a-gallon federal gas tax for the summer. Hillary Clinton also jumped on the pandering bandwagon and propose the same thing. It won't work. The oil companies will raise the prices anyways, 18 cents or more. The national average is already over $4. The global average is actually higher according to Wikipedia.

Here's a CNN story about McCain's proposal.
Here's a Yahoo! News story about Clinton-McCain's idea.

Fort Bragg visit

President Bush recently visited Fort Bragg, North Carolina [home to the 82nd Airborne] and gave a speech on the defining end to the Iraq War. It coincides with a spending bill in Congress that will appropriate $165 billion for overseas operations.

I'm getting tired of the same speech over and over. More money for the troops is a good thing but bringing them home is better. Spending billions [even trillions] of dollars on an ill-conceived war isn't worth it [or fiscally conservative/responsible].

Here's the story.
Here's the video.

Later,
- Anh

Say It Ain't So

May 22, 2008
Oregon primary results:
----------Votes % Delegates
Obama: 360,728 59% 31
Clinton : 252,270 41% 21

Source: CNN

Kentucky primary results:

Clinton: 459,124 65% 37
Obama: 209,778 30% 14

Source: CNN

Oh no. Another win for Obama and another win for Clinton. The race goes on.

Later,
- Anh

Queerly Beloved

California lifts the ban on gay marriage. It is the 2nd state to do so. Gays around the state celebrate. Everyone else are momentarily shocked then goes back to their bitter lives.

I was @ work [a heartless retail department store] and somehow my Political Science major came up which led to current events. Gay marriage got passed that day. I gave out a half hearted/half sarcastic "yay." Personally, I don't care - more power and equality to gays and lesbians. However, I was greeted with gay marriage opposition. Bring up G.W.'s constitutional ban, which goes against the Bill of Rights of the Constitution [that he took an oath to uphold, not upholding neo-conservative values]. My co-workers supported the constitutional ban.

LA Times story.

Spring Hits

Nothing like poster defacing in the morning... especially when they have a good political twist. The newest game, Grand Theft Auto IV, has posters advertising on the streets of Los Angeles. Some Obama supporter have strategically placed his head on them along with the "Hope" message.

Here's the G4 link.

Niko Bellic 2012.

Later,
- Anh

School's Out

A lot of people are suggesting that Hillary Clinton end her campaign. It is impossible for her to win the nomination, then why continue kicking the donkey/horse while it's down? Nobody knows, not even her campaign staff. Hopefully, this bickering and stubbornness will end in June, that's the rumor apparently.

Democrats' contest will be decided in June? Here's a LA Times story.

[fingers crossed]

Later,
- Anh

Clusterfuck

No, not the Democratic primaries, I'm talking about Iraq. Hey! Where you going? Come back! You can't ignore it and hide under your failing economy. Remember School House Rock [I don't know where I'm going with this]? They did a segment on how our government works and there's actually three [count them, three not one, Mr. President] branches of government [not counting Dick Cheney]. The economy is highly influenced by the government and what the government does is reflected in the economy. So if our government spends billions of dollars in a war, then our economy suffers. That's that and there's no running away from it.

Let's forget about about all that for a minute but let's also keep American Idol off [stop it. It's the censorship and effect of the mass media á la Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury]. Let's focus on the human aspect of the war in Iraq. It's a humanitarian mess, it's horrible for the Iraqi people. I may not fully understand the real nature of war and its consequences without being there myself, but I can still be aware. This post is a mini-clusterfuck, I can't gather my thoughts coherently to make an in-depth point.

This is what I wanted to show you. The War Tapes. A documentary filmed by three National Guardsmen while on their tour of duty in Iraq 2005-2006. I also wanted to show you Carrier, the Navy's point of view from the fine men and women on the carrier USS Nimitz. PBS recently shown the documentary and all 10 parts are available online. Carrier: it's about the life of the personels aboard the USS Nimitz, a [nuclear class] carrier that can support over 5000 sailors and personels.

The War Tapes


Carrier


Remember, we're still in Iraq. Bring em home.

Later,
- Anh

Neverending Primaries

May 8, 2008

Indiana Primary results:
Votes % Delegates
Clinton - 644,594 51% 38
Obama - 630,399 49% 34

Source: CNN

North Carolina Primary results:
Obama - 875,683 56% 67
Clinton - 652,824 42% 48

Source: CNN

What does it mean? It means that Clinton is still running!

However, what's the new Obama strategy? To act as the de facto nominee, that's the story in the LA Times.

Everyone's tired, I'm tired, the pundits are tired, Jon Stewart is tired, and Senator John McCain [R] is hibernating till November.

Later,
- Anh

Meanwhile...

In his spare time, while not campaigning, Senator Barrack Obama has initiated a ceasefire in the Niger Delta. Critics of Senator Obama's foreign policy experience must be shocked to see that his standpoint of negotiations and openness to talks with enemies [rather than shutting them out and being stubborn] might actually work in some cases.

Senator Hillary Clinton's foreign policy experience [which includes visiting foreign nations under her husband's administration and dodging sniper fire] and her standpoint follows President George W. Bush's view of not negotiating with enemies of the United States.

This stubbornness creates a sense of U.S. arrogant and unwielding foreign policies which in the past two decades have made the nations of the world to view Americans as ignorant and arrogant. Also anti-United States sentiments have soared in nations that already hated us.

Representative Ron Paul [R]'s presidential bid rode on the traditional Constitution platform where isolationism should drive foreign policy, not nation building and world policing. He might be one of the few Congress member still seated that isn't corrupted and persuaded by the neo-conservative [Bush] agenda.

The link is to the article about Senator Obama's appeal for the Niger Delta ceasefire.

Foreign policy experience indeed.

Later,
- Anh