Calax

There's also tax implications on the federal level. In Iowa, a gay couple can file as married, because they're legally married. However, in California (who are using the "Separate but Equal" doctrine, I **** you not) you file as "domestic partners". A Domestic Partnership does not have the same tax rate and loopholes as a "married" couple does. That's the thing about Marriage. It's a social/religious institution that's become enshrined in the bureaucracy of the Federal Government in the form of tax loopholes and other economic and legal breaks for a spouse. In California, None of that applies due to the fact that a gay couple is a "domestic partnership". One of my teachers back in Community college who I griped about here (the Sociology teacher who preached about social issues instead of taught) always referred to her husband as her "partner". And when she asked about getting benefits from the school (a state institution) for her "partner", they thought she was referring to a lesbian partner. Had that been true, she would have had to pay extra money because her "partner" was not her "spouse". THAT is the insidious thing about all of this, marriage has become so enshrined in government that laws are built around the fact that you have a ticket saying "married". The minute it's not called a marriage, you've got companies and institutions rules lawyering their way around a variety of things to get more money from the couple because they aren't "married".

The 14th Amendment was designed exactly to protect black former slaves from discrimination in the South. Gay marriage would have offended the framers and the authors of the 14th Amendment, save whatever ones may have been (secretly) homosexual. And judges are supposed to be impartial, but they're often chosen by politicians. the 5-4 conservative-liberal split on the SCOTUS is due to politic (whoever's president when a justice retires or dies gets to choose the replacement,) and most of their rulings have been split down political lines, i.e. Citizens United. Oh I know that. But the point overall stands that the Supreme Court, at least initially The idea was that it was a body that wouldn't be swayed by the popular politics due to the fact that their jobs weren't dependent on a voting public. They are political unfortunately, but they also have to explain every one of their decisions completely. The idea that GD seems to be having trouble with is that the Supreme Court can vacate a state/national law as part of their job, which invalidates the public will. Except that that's part of the reason the SCOTUS exists, to protect the minority from the majority. And the point of the legal battle is that the states law is in conflict with constitutional law. And for the record, one of the things that was said during the Prop 8 battle by the "anti-gay" side was that if it wasn't passed, schools were going to be forced to teach a "gay lifestyle" in high schools as part of curriculum.

I think, GD, the issue you have isn't one you should have. The entire point of the suit is that the amendment passed violates the human right to equal protection under the law for all citizens. Which is EXACTLY what the entire process is designed to do. I mean, if Mississippi passed a law that if your Melanin level was above X you couldn't get married, you'd see that thing get shot down faster than you could spit, because it runs contrary to the constitution. Isn't the entire purpose of the Judicial body to be uncontrolled by public opinion and thus would be able to do the "right" thing rather than the "popular" thing?

IIRC holy paladins can now spam the crap out of Exorcism for impressive dps. Although it depends on your level, and if you're high level, why don't you duel spec to Ret? (Or LFD chain like ever bored person) Gfted, you're probably missing half your abilities. It's probably best overall if you just relearn the class from the ground up. Shouldn't take long and they do give you a handy dandy little guide in either the talents or spell book.

Personally, I'd hope that they took the Mako and brought it back, but the missions you do on it are legit "I'm an explorer" side quests where you land on a planet and make your way through terrible terrain before finding something. Heck, make it vehicle platforming, so instead of making "challenge" based around combat, you also have to figure out just how to get from point A) to point B). And do a sort of "stranded" quest, where you and your crew are stuck in the Mako for a while moving from place to place in hostile territory, trying to make it to an extraction zone.

I keep telling you to go to Demonology.

I've heard both that we've come out fine, and that we're gonna lose. I think it's "They paid back the loans with interest, but america still holds stock in the company that'll be sold at a loss."

Eh...

Rep-based gear now?...I never tried to get all the fancy gear, since I only solo'd WoW and thus most of the "best" gear was out of my reach anyway. Well, at least when I was playing. No clue how it's done now. I definitely liked wandering around solo for a long time, however. They redesigned it so that you don't have to grind your face off in dungeons to get gear. It's either the Raid Finder or daily questing. Daily quests are INSANELY grindy, with 6-8 factions (initially) that'll take about a week and a half of every daily being done to hit revered (ie:Unlock most gear). You can do about 30-40 dailies now (although the devs don't really want you to do that many). The solo stuff is ok, particularly leveling, but a new issue that's been introduced (on pvp servers) is that the less populated zones (basically everything that's not "current") is merged with other realms. So you end up with things like the Dark Portal being turned into a boneyard from camping/pvp wars.

Yes, and there's plenty of examples to go around. The federal government simply has no business trying to force the creation of jobs in selected industries merely because it favors the concepts represented by said industries. They're politicians and bureaucrats playing with public monies, not investors utilizing their own private funds, and their track record is miserable. Well, given that this is ultimately a talking point from the Romney camp from the last months of the election, I'll let Jon Stewart have fun with that talking point from 5 months ago. http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/thu-october-25-2012/picking-winners---losers If you didn't watch, as of that show (10/25/12), 8% of the "losers" picked had gone bust. I don't know many investors who have that track record. So, I traced this back and found that it leads to a forbes column, that sources an opinion column. In that opinion column, they're talking mostly about the American Airlines bailout, and the fact that when AA and other airlines emerged from bankruptcy they had a total of 20% of their workforce lost. And then bitch and moan because the Auto industry "Only" lost 16% of their workforce. I'm not eager to start digging through corporate records, but IIRC many of the employees with GM and Chrysler were getting kicked onto unpaid leave so that the companies could still operate, although I'm not solid on that. Also, why do I care about the fact that this investment is larger than the foreign aid budget? No offense, but the Gerald R. Ford aircraft carrier in production is going to cost 300k more than the Autoworkers subsidy.

Ehhhhh New talents is kinda pushing it. Basically instead of ye olde talent trees, you get http://www.wowhead.com/talent#o| That. And green fire is from a rare drop in the daily questing area. i'm honestly debating trying Rift again.

Yeah, but they still can't seem to get past the mewling crying bits where Lara falls, or gets punched or whatever. She seems a little... to vulnerable for the game and how they want to play it.

Tomb Raider. I can't help but compare it to Far Cry 3, similar setting, similar story, similar weapons styles... but one thing that keeps niggling me about Tomb Raider that didn't about Far Cry is just how much of a victim Lara is. Well I suppose I shouldn't say Victim so much as "Prey". Both games have a fairly strong Predator/Prey theme going on. FarCry is about the Prey slowly becoming the most effective Predator in the jungle. Meanwhile in Tomb Raider Lara is always the Prey to be hunted. She doesn't toughen up (as far as I am in the game anyway) and always seems to be gasping for air. On a side note, I just had Lara climb a flippin mountain to the highest peak on the island that's covered in snow... in cargo pants and a tank top with spaghetti straps. While this wouldn't bug me in a game with a more crazy style, Tomb Raider is trying desperately for a gritty "realism" vibe to it. But instead of her shivering and turning blue (she should be hypothermic because the entire island is covered in rain and now she's in freezing temperatures) she's just kinda "Yup... I'm on a mountain now!"

Public "investment" in companies that are imploding? The auto industry is doing better than ever after they were forcibly bailed out by the administration, and paid back all the money invested in them. And in the interview they're talking about how stupid the tax system is and how complicated it is. BUT don't even acknowledge that americans are taxed lower rate than any other nation. By the same token his idea of a "value added tax" basically means that companies would get off Scott Free on having to pay the government anything, and instead it'd all be on the consumers. Which also means that I, as a person below the poverty line, will have more of my income being sent to the government than, say, the Romney Family, or the Baldwins, or Trump, or the Kardashians, because the amount of money I spend on items like food and survival necessities (for the modern world) is a much larger portion of how much I earn. Is government regulation killing industry? Eh, I can't tell. But Industry in India is doing ok and it's MUCH harder to have a business venture there than it is here.

IMO the difference between Microtrasnactions and DLC needs to be content. Microtransactions could be small stuff like clothes etc. DLC's are actual storylines, characters, and other substantive things. You can't build a game around microtransactions (see: The Old Republic), and shouldn't take a completed product and try to snap out a few pieces for some extra cash right off (ME3). Taken to the extreme, you could see Madden disks become tough to find because the yearly madden titles are instead sold at 2/3rds price off XBL or PSN as more roster updates than anything. Similarly, the BF3 model is actually a pretty good one to follow, and people are happy with it. EA, however, has had a strange relationship where they do fantastic things for the industry, and take steps foreward... while also screwing the industry and making their customers dislike them. Overall they're probably on the right track with pushing things like "project $10" and DLC support, but the way they go about it makes people hate them. Supposedly a good game designer plays the worst games because they want to see what concepts the terrible game tried to pull off in their to ambitious projects, and figure out how that might be done better. That's the feeling I get from the industry watching EA. They see EA trying to push the envelope commercially, but mess it up with the customers. So the competitors try the same stuff and find better ways to do it (or in UBI's case, completely miss the point entirely... Uplay... good god Uplay). As to sequels? You need to strike a balance. If all you're making is sequels, you end up with stale brands that have nothing new to them year after year (MW, Madden, wrestling games...). Meanwhile taking a chance on a new IP is also dangerous because it might not catch on. Currently it seems like if you're going to try a new IP you either have to crowd source that sucker, or have a proper fanbase to support your endeavour. Be it a lead designers name (Chris Taylor, Ken Lavine, Tim Schafer) or a dev house name (Bioware, Eidos Montreal, Criterion, Infinity Ward), it has to be recognized among the customers for the suits to take a chance. The problem is when you get sequels that are really IP's of their own masquerading as sequels. Command and Conquer Generals is probably the best example of this. Then you start losing your brand loyal customers because "It'd be a good game if it didn't have THAT NAME attached". Look at the tumble Final Fantasy has taken. 13 was greeted terribly because people didn't think it was a Final Fantasy game, and (IMO) that fact caused them to judge the game all the more harshly.

Enoch, can I just say that it's weird not seeing a muppet on a sax as "you" anymore.

Riccitello was good and bad IMO. Good in that he decided to keep games producing content (BF3's premium pack for example), Bad in that he took things way to far in terms of piracy and "your entertainment is a service". When he struck that sweet spot of good game that keeps giving you reasons to spend money on it, (which he seemed to be doing as his tenure ended) he was fantastic. But he also had a way of doing things that made him into this crazy jerk. The Respawn Entertainment fiasco in 2011 was deliberately called out on stage (where he says something akin to "We have two new partners, West and Zampnella, in the audience" while pointing at the crowd). It didn't help that he was trying to design a system backwards for delivering content, and seemingly openly hostile to ANY competitor (Steam, Acti, Ubi etc.)

Not really. I think it's more that the devs are trying to hard with their games. Warcraft three should have really just been paired down to two sides in the conflict, with two campaigns. To much design and work went into the hero units (particularly in the campaigns) and the games might as well have been re-built around being RPG's rather than RTS's. Starcraft is more complicated, but I think what happened with 2 was that they just ended up focused to heavily on the multiplayer aspect. And the campigns suffer from a more free form mission structure. Thus what you do in one mission/mission set, has to be ignored in the others up to a point because they didn't want to put in the effort of having to acknowledge every possible permutation of mission structure. In WoL it meant that you've got four or five actual climaxes as each string of missions ends, none of which are really acknowledged by the other missions until you're in the final stretch. HotS is the same, you've got a bit more mission structure, but even then the overall writing and effort put into the design feels lower. The fact that you can split up your level design and "unlock" units at different rates, ends up causing the difficulty to skyrocket if you go a direction different. You could go into a mission with only banelings and zerglings... and face mutalisks. Also the game throws a few curves at you that then turn out to be sort of "oh yeah, this happened" rather than bigger moments. I can imagine a few moments that were completely underwhelming for what they were supposed to be (Hello Belial fight). And it doesn't help that your opponents aren't actually the "galaxy destroying evil" that we're supposed to have fought. Instead it feels kind of petty, and Kerrigan comes off as more of an emo monster rather than a sympathetic character (which is what they were going for). Actually, I agree with Entrerix that the old campaigns were better, and I think your reasons are actually why. Specifically, the focus. WarCraft, WarCraft II, StarCraft, they were all very focused on the conflict going on at the time. WarCraft III and StarCraft II both spend most of their time with conflicts of no consequence while the real fight is being set up. It feels very much like we're being gimped. It also helps that the old games had much stronger faction identity by way of them not all being "the good guys who band together to fight the nonplayable evil". I loved playing the evil Orcs in WarCraft II, or the evil Zerg in StarCraft. Now both of those seem to have just been "misunderstood". I think StarCraft II would have been better if it had kept its focus on the conflict between the three factions. Hell, so far the Protoss haven't even factored into the plot. They just "show up" occassionally. Yeah. I think the guys at Blizz are starting to think that "If we force players to play the "evil" race... they want it to be a sympathetic character... MAKE EM ALL NOT-EVIL!" The only truly "evil" faction was the Undead in WC3, and they were more "we want independance" rather than "we're good guys!". It doesn't help that in HotS Kerrigan goes from "oh woe is me, I don't want to be the monster mummy" to "You want back in my swarm bitch? You exterminate this planet like it's nobodies business!" WoL gave us a reason to complete it's quest... we got to see what'd happen when Raynor failed/messed up in (arguably) the best mission of the game, where the Villain showed up, and wiped out the last pieces of civilization (in the form of Protoss). Here? Best we get is Samir Duran in a costume... and he's taken care of in ONE mission. If they'd set up Mengsk as the new "Overmind" style villain that'd play a role in all three games and the ultimate climax was his death, the games would feel much more satisfying.

http://kotaku.com/5991151/breaking-girls-play-video-games-local-news-discovers ... Ok, when did the News get behind by at LEAST 6 years?

Not really. I think it's more that the devs are trying to hard with their games. Warcraft three should have really just been paired down to two sides in the conflict, with two campaigns. To much design and work went into the hero units (particularly in the campaigns) and the games might as well have been re-built around being RPG's rather than RTS's. Starcraft is more complicated, but I think what happened with 2 was that they just ended up focused to heavily on the multiplayer aspect. And the campigns suffer from a more free form mission structure. Thus what you do in one mission/mission set, has to be ignored in the others up to a point because they didn't want to put in the effort of having to acknowledge every possible permutation of mission structure. In WoL it meant that you've got four or five actual climaxes as each string of missions ends, none of which are really acknowledged by the other missions until you're in the final stretch. HotS is the same, you've got a bit more mission structure, but even then the overall writing and effort put into the design feels lower. The fact that you can split up your level design and "unlock" units at different rates, ends up causing the difficulty to skyrocket if you go a direction different. You could go into a mission with only banelings and zerglings... and face mutalisks. Also the game throws a few curves at you that then turn out to be sort of "oh yeah, this happened" rather than bigger moments. I can imagine a few moments that were completely underwhelming for what they were supposed to be (Hello Belial fight). And it doesn't help that your opponents aren't actually the "galaxy destroying evil" that we're supposed to have fought. Instead it feels kind of petty, and Kerrigan comes off as more of an emo monster rather than a sympathetic character (which is what they were going for).

Did you read the study? The DHS one... because while the article you linked is quite "OH NOES THEY ARE PIGEONHOLING US AS TERRORISTZ!" the actual study has Which seems quite a good list given that you're dealing with the idea of domestic terrorism. And while you may not like it, generally those who start pushing out the more extreme rhetoric, are also gonna be the ones who show up and blow up federal buildings (Tim McVeigh anyone?) To your second paragraph? Yeah. But like I'm trying to say, THE STUDY DOESN'T SAY WHAT THE ARTICLE SAYS IT DOES. The article removes enough context to make it sound that much more dire and diversive. It'd be like the flip side article saying "The study lists students as possible threats!" when the study itself says "Student organizations that hold para-military assemblies and are hostile towards any authority figure". Kind of a difference there.

True, but then drone striking has only really been a "thing" for the past few years, when Congress has suffered more gridlock than the New York tunnels during a cave in. My point was that GD, Rand Pauls constituents, and the Anti-Obama crew took something that was ambiguous, and made it into something that was specific. If you look at the language (pardoning the stuff about drone strikes having not happened on US soil) he's talking about ANY use of military force within the borders of the States. Be it Drones, Air Force, Marines, National Guard or the magical kitty cat they keep locked up at the center of the pentagon (oh it's there!). Basically the point about drone strikes that everyone was bringing up, that the President could carry out drone strikes on US citizens, is entirely true in a very... different way of looking at it. It's true in the same way he can order the US military to roll down the interstates to attack an enemy on the streets, or to have jets screaming between buildings while fighting an enemy that's on US soil. The reason that everyone is flipping out over it being drones, rather than realizing that, technically, that same "loophole" applies to every other weapon he is in control of, is because of the fact that people assume that Drones are going to be an automated army that has no oversight, unlike an F-22/F-35/F/A-18. There are still pilots for each of these aircraft, there are still ground crews for each of these aircraft, there are still airbases for these aircraft. The only difference is that, rather than having a guy stuck in a tiny seat at 30k feet above sea level trying not to get to bored as he flies across the ocean, the guy is in a bigger room on the ground and can stretch his legs during the 14 hour flight or whatever. Basically the point I'm trying to make, is that the only reason/time that Drones (and by extension any military force) would start raining rockets down on the US is if the US was being openly attacked by somebody in that location.

See... here's the thing. He didn't. If you actually read what he says, he's saying that in the extreme circumstances relating to, you know, an invasion by a hostile nation. As in "We will use drone strikes and weapons to kill our enemies as they're trying to cross the Sierra Nevada Mountains with their tanks and machine guns". They're very specific in citing the use of law enforcement officials within the bounds of United States territory. However, Rand Paul and his supporters, decided to look at it more as a "Well you didn't explicitly say you couldn't so you can and will!". Well his supporters and Obama's opponents did, while Rand Paul drew more attention to it and wanted the clarification before embarking on a crusade of "We're all gonna get put in the concentration camps by the liberal drone strike sky gods who want to steal our guns so we can't shoot back!" Also an extreme circumstance like *dun dun dunnnnnn* a civil war. I don't think you can try the millions that'd be on the opposing side.

Source? Can you provide the actual legislation which enacts this? And I'm quite certain anyone can come up with a list of extravagant, expensive indulgences taken by any president. Since ad hominems and strawmen are the rule here, if (I won't accept the word of an angry... I'm guessing conservative, sans evidence,) Obama did cut financial aid for veterans, he'd still be a world better than what GOP God-King Ronald Reagan did to veterans. And the mentally ill. Besides, it's thanks to Bush's P.A.T.R.I.O.T. Act that the president has the ostensible power to drone as he pleases. US Constitution Articles I, II, & IV, The Budget and Accounting Act of 1921, CBIC Act of 1974. The President submits a budget. Congress approves (or not) and raises the revenue, the President spends the money as approved. As the Commander in Chief of the armed forces he has complete control over what they get, what their operational tempo (rate of deployment) will be and if they get their funding cut it's only because he asked for it/allowed it to happen. If you cut their budget but do not reduce their operational tempo he is forcing them to make cuts themselves. And the softest things like benefits and tuition assitance are the first to go. Believe me, he knows this and is fine with it so long as he can blame the pain on his political opposition. And no argument here on Bush or the Patriot Act. In fact Obama has taken it one step further, two weeks ago his own justice department stated it would be perfectly legal for him to kill American citizens on American soil by drone strike if he deemed them to be terrorists. Uhhhh...

I'd guess you're just being about as mature as a highschool girl.