Updates, more news, and other things

Sorry for the lack of posting. I know, I'm full of fail and AIDS.

Updates: If you watched that video in the last post, Cenk predicted what Republicans and the insurance companies were going to do to people. He had the foresight to predict that insurance companies were trying to weasel their way out of having to cover children, which they're doing now. He also had the foresight to predict that insurance companies were going to raise peoples' rates to make a quick buck for four years until they have to extend coverage to everyone, all the while spending the profits so they can lie about how the Democrats "raised everyone's premiums with that damn health-care bill!!1" Cenk was talking about how we haven't fixed the root of the problem, which he thinks is the insurance companies themselves (simplifying his message down a ton of course), and that's exactly what's going to resurrect and bite Democrats in the you-know-where. And I believe that this may very well lead to some sort of backwards, confused Republican backlash that may sneak its way in through the ballot box like it did so many other times in the past. Not to get all paranoid, but you never know these days with politics. One step forward could send the whole thing off balance if pushed in the wrong direction by outside influences with money. It's so easy to see Congress being pushed and shoved by lobbyists in every direction. Just look at AIPAC, the "Clean Coal" lobby, the NRA, the prescription drug companies, and the Chamber of Commerce (such a blatant example, oh my, do I even HAVE to go there). So apparently of course the White House is all up in arms about this but there's not much they can even do.

I've been playing the video game Just Cause 2. It's quite slow in framerate on many computers, I'm pretty sure, so if that bothers you, you may want to wait for the patch. But I have been playing it anyway, despite the times when the framerate pretty much drops to very low single digits. It makes a mockery out of what a sham a political system can be despite its intricate cities and futuristic design elements. This amoral/anti-moral, sort-of-anarchist shooter encourages the player to go and blow up government property and sabotage government fuel dumps, SAM missile sites, radar towers, and the like. The problem is that the game does not a lot depth in the different cities. The only difference in the cities is that some of the taller buildings look different. Wow, big deal. Sometimes the missions can be annoying and can take more than a few tries just because of what they require you to do in succession, and if you die in the last scene then you have to do it all over again. Also, what's with not having garages and traditional safehouses, with all the weapons being available for free? I would have like to see that implemented. Also, in GTA, safehouses were good for shooting cops and then closing the door, hiding yourself from cops, and continuing to shoot them while they were besieging your safehouse. They would continue to come indefinitely until the army came and then most of the time I'd get bored and save the game, saving my progress and removing all my heat. I'd give this game 4 out of 5 stars because it's such a pretty-looking and expansive sandbox shooter, but suffers from some bad issues with destroying things in-flight with other aircraft (IT IS SUPER HARD, WHYYY) and problems with depth and safehouses.

I've also been thinking about the Catholic Church. I know, it's super easy to hate on the ol' "CC", but I just can't resist. In response to the whole Ireland sex abuse thing, the Pope "broke taboo" and said he was sorry that the whole thing happened. Okay, yeah, that ought to reverse all of the trauma experienced by young boys induced by the priests at the church... And what's more, we now find out that HE himself is a big player in this sex abuse scandal out of Wisconsin that was completely covered up by the Catholic Church. He did not defrock this one priest who got off on molesting deaf children. But we needn't merely treat this as simply more ammunition against the Catholic Church. We should consider the children whose lives were permanently damaged by predators in positions of religious authority who used the worst forms of coercion to get their jollies. It goes without saying that the Church doesn't want people to find out who the pedos are within their ranks who are abusing the children.

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