Well, if more people like you stopped saying "it's impossible" maybe some of your countrymen would stop thinking it was. Some might even start thinking about how to change it.

I've noticed many Americans seem to have a strange habit of dismissing or often completely ignoring (as you just did) anything that happens outside of the US. Clearly representative democracy must invariably result in two parties with an unshakeable grip on power! Except that most of the time it doesn't. Just in the USA.

Do what people in other places in the world have done. Get off your ass, stop saying it's impossible, and work for change. Go find a third party you can support and volunteer for them. Or run yourself. Sure you'll lose, today. Maybe not tomorrow.

Interferes with someone in the lawful use of data would seem to cover it.

You are engaging in learned helplessness.

Dumbass? Is that a dialect of Brainfuck?

McArdle is astute, combining some actual knowledge of economics (in contrast to Krugman).
However, if there is anything in which I have confidence, it is this administration's commitment to slow, methodical, blame-laden screwings of the lower- and middle-class.

No, that suppository arrives with the Clinton Administration. I reckon she's wreckin'.

This is where I'm going with the argument. It's one thing to say "we cannot take any direct action now". It's quite another to lay zero foundation for any future action. As an example, we have NATO allies in the Baltics. Have we signaled anything to them other than "You are effed"?
Let's see: we've had some Navy presence in the Black Sea. I guess that's not fully nothing.

I find it cynical that you both (a) acknowledge the issues, and (b) attack any attempt to do anything different as "more of same".

Have. You. Understood. The. Project?
What you've got right now is just completely jacked up through the roof. I wouldn't accuse the CoS of being perfect, but it's the least-worst thing I've heard going yet.

Wow, I quite the HL franchise halfway through Ep 2 it stank so badly. All subjective I guess.

I enjoyed HL2 but found it incredibly linear in a way that even, say, the original Doom wasn't. I haven't tried ep1/ep2 but do plan to at some point.

I still go back and play HL1 every couple of years, followed by OpFor and BlueShift. I think that was the peak of single player FPS gaming

Hmm. I really enjoyed Serious Sam 3 BFE which is pretty recent, albeit also a throwback to old school FPS. That you mentioned Quake 4 is surprising, I quite enjoyed that one too... but it wasn't generally well reviewed and I agree with some of the criticisms of it. Duke Forever also had its moments too if you like classic single player FPS, and even the strip club level, which i originally thought was beyond stupid... I've since gained a healthy appreciation for just how much of a parody that level is of similarly interruptive and pointless fetch-mission mechanics as-seen in other games -- that I now sincerely believe that the level's stupidity itself is deliberately intended as a commentary on the game mechanic itself.

To me, its a deceptively smart and cleverly crafted game wrapped in a veil of vulgarity and stupidity. Or maybe its just vulgar and stupid... but I don't think so.

The difference being the incredibly successful and well reviewed lego movie is backing the lego movie sets.

I'm not sure you can or should rely on kids not being interested in them the way perhaps the themes you mentioned. Both my kids want multiple Lego movie sets...

Play Pirates, it was fun in the original "boot up your XT with the floppy"

Yeah, that's the one I have a LOT of nostalgia for and why I expect to play it. :) I've read they've largely kept the original style of the game intact... right down to ship combat and the fencing. Looking forward to it.

Ireland didn't exactly have a war of secession (not a successful one, anyway). The modern republic of Ireland was created through negotiation. India's independence was mostly peaceful as well, with some early agitators giving way to peaceful civil disobedience a la Gandhi, transition to a dominion in 1947, then independence in 1950. Likewise, Canada, Newfoundland, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, Morocco, all gained their independence diplomatically. The US is the only country I can think of at the moment that's had a war of independence and become a successful democracy afterward.

Giving him change to buy cigarettes or alcohol with doesn't help him eat either. Neither does giving him cigarettes to feed his addiction. You can afford to be an addict. He can't.

Donating (or volunteering) at the local soup kitchen, THAT helps him eat.

You're quite correct. No one is responsible for anything anymore--except conservatives.

Racism, idiocy; idiocy, racism.