An Open Letter on behalf of the Middle Class

An open letter to this election year’s candidates for office:

Ladies and Gentlemen,

It has certainly been a trying year on the political scene.  Over the last twelve years or so, certainly since the 2000 election year, partisanship has taken hold of our system of government to a degree not seen since the Great Depression.  In this information age we have seen politicians from both parties caught spouting lies and nonsensical “data” like never before, all due to the fact we have ways of checking their statements against the facts.  The press has been only too eager to add their spin on such gaffes, making sorting through the drudge to get to the facts all the more difficult.  Regardless, it has been an entertaining yet depressing year for both parties.  From Obama’s inability to construct some form of coalition that allows for passage of legislation to the Republican Party’s inability to get its candidates to stop speaking out of ignorance, it would be a miracle if voters have any confidence in any candidate in the field at this point.  There are things to look for, however, and that is what I am about to give you now.

I am not a politician, nor do I profess loyalty to any particular party.  I do consider myself a bit more liberal than conservative on most issues, so bear that in mind.  It was during GOP candidate Mitt Romney’s acceptance speech that I was prompted to write this letter, because I think there is a pervasive lack of understanding, either through ignorance or willful neglect, of your constituency.  This misconception, I might add, applies to BOTH parties.  I am 37 years old and a father of three children.  I have been married for thirteen years and once my thesis is complete I will have a Master’s Degree in history to complement my Bachelor’s Degree in Social Studies Education.  My household’s income is less than $40,000 annually and that is with my wife and I both working full-time jobs.  I just finished working a temporary part-time job to help make ends meet, and I am currently scrambling to find another.  The city in which I live is in one of the most economically-depressed areas in the state and the nation.  Put simply, we are living day-to-day and hoping to keep the ship afloat. 

Why do I bring this up, you ask?  Well, it is quite simple.  Both candidates for President and nearly every Congressional candidate I hear talks about the same thing:  bringing success back to the American people with jobs, and income, and whatever promise-of-the-moment they care to make.  Mr. Romney made it very clear how he feels America can once again be the land of opportunity for those willing to take a chance.  It is certainly a valid point, and a laudable outlook on the future. 

But his America, and President Obama’s, and Nancy Pelosi’s, and Jim Boehner’s…is not my America.

My America does not involve starting my own business.  Nor does it include the opportunity to take a chance on something.  I have no margin for error.  My goal has never been about becoming independently wealthy.  I do wish to find employment sufficient to provide a comfortable living for my family and allow my wife to work only if she so chooses, rather than because there is no other option.  Who doesn’t?  This, my fellow Americans, points at the heart of the problem.  I want to be a teacher.  I want to show future generations the brilliant successes and abject failures our country has endured.  I want to help the young people of tomorrow understand why the people who run these ads every two years are so hateful to each other, though some campaign attacks simply defy explanation.  Here is the bottom line for you, Mr. Romney and you also, Mr. President:

What about me?

What about my family?  What about our America, an America where we, too can see success?  We own our home, but we are upside down along with millions of other Americans.  We own two vehicles but insurance costs for two GOOD drivers are still prohibitive.  We have an attic fan that we run for most of the spring despite rather severe allergies simply because we cannot sustain a $200+ per month electric bill that comes with our air conditioning. 

You see, ladies and gentlemen, I do not hear anything about what you plan to do to help my family.  I hear no plan for improving our schools and opening up more teaching jobs, well, unless we are talking math or science.  My wife is one of the most valuable people in this country because she can act as an interpreter for the deaf community.  She is certainly more powerful as a woman than Ann Romney because she has raised a family while working full-time to help support it instead of staying at home thanks to being independently wealthy!  Please tell me how WE get to see this America of jobs and opportunity.  Explain to me how WE benefit.  What policies have you suggested that simply cannot take the risks???

I frankly do not care what party to which you pledge allegiance.  I simply want you all, be you Blue or Red, to remember me. 

Because I am middle-class America, ladies and gentlemen.  I am he of whom you speak.  I am “Joe the Plumber,” the greeter at Wal-Mart, the store manager at Gamestop or Hastings, the bank teller who cashes your checks, the cashier who grimaces with you every time you pay for fuel.  I am that person, and there are MILLIONS LIKE ME.

WE ARE AMERICA!  We make this country move.  We pay our taxes, we spend our paychecks on groceries and fuel, and the occasional movie or steak dinner.  WE ARE AMERICA, and our voices MUST BE HEARD.  We MUST not  be SILENT, we CANNOT be SILENCED, and we want to know, ladies and gentlemen, if you are going to help this country, WE ARE PART OF IT TOO!  We educate your children, we sometimes even care for them as if they were our own.  We WORK for a living.

So once again, I ask one simple question.  It is the only question to ask in this situation, and I ask it on behalf of all those who struggle daily to get by, who live paycheck-to-paycheck and who honestly do not give a rip about what is happening to the top 1%.  We only want to hear the answers to this:

What about us?  What’s your plan?

Sincerely,

The Middle Class

REVIEW - KINGDOMS OF AMALUR: RECKONING

Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning  is a fantasy action-RPG, and was the first and only offering from the fledgling 38 Studios, founded by former Major League Baseball pitcher Curt Schilling, and Big Huge Games.  The creative talent included art direction from Spawn creator Todd McFarlane, story from fantasy writer R. A. Salvatore, and game design direction from Elder Scrolls: Morrowind and Oblivion director Ken Rolston.  Though this review should be relatively spoiler-free, there is no guarantee of that so read with caution.  Spoilers will not be flagged with “ZOMG!!! SPOILER ALERT!”

Disclaimer:  I have 84 hours in the game as of now, and I have not yet finished it.  This review is meant to give my impressions of the game and gameplay to this point, not a final judgment.

Story:

The basic premise of the story, and the theme that runs throughout the land of Amalur, is that all beings are tied to the Threads of Fate, a concept seemingly borrowed from Greek mythology and modified in a very interesting way.  Your character is one of many killed at the hands of the Tuatha, a sect of immortal Fae who inhabit Amalur.  Their leader, Gadflow, has waged a bloody campaign across the face of Amalur in the name of his new god.  The Gnomish alchemist Fomorous Hugues, in an attempt to combat the onslaught, worked on a way to resurrect the fallen in what was called the Well of Souls.  It was through this your soul was returned to your body and you were brought back to life.  Unfortunately, you wake atop a pile of decaying bodies whose souls failed to return.  It is an excellent way to start the game and sets the tone immediately. 

The escape from the Well of Souls provides all the basic training you need to set out among the world of Amalur as a truly unique individual.  You see, having been resurrected from the Well of Souls, you are no longer tied to the Threads of Fate.  In fact, you are able to control Fate itself, affecting your future and that of others.  It was a bit disappointing to find that power is generally limited to specific plot segments or Fateshifting enemies (more on that later) and many of the choices made have little to no effect on the world of Amalur as a whole.  Still, it is a neat story conceit that keeps things moving in a land where a lot of things are happening but there is very little genuine emotion from any characters.  NPCs will talk to you with either a button prompt or as you pass them by, but nothing gives the impression this is a desperate, war-torn world beyond NPCs telling you it is.

Side stories and their attendant quests are plentiful, but while the questing itself is interesting, the stories tend to be rather bland and unmemorable.  They are also indiscriminate, so I can simultaneously be a member of the Travelers, which is a thieves’ guild; the Warsworn, who are essentially mercenaries; the House of Ballads, a Fae ruling council; and Archsage of the Scholia Arcana, which is more-or-less a mage’s academy (no, not like Hogwart’s so stop it).  It’s nice they didn’t require you to choose a faction and then close off all other quest lines, but it can be very difficult sometimes to keep track of what faction holds your current quest.  Also, if you are given a mission as a Traveler to steal from the Warsworn, there is no penalty for getting caught other than paying a fine or spending some precious XP to get out of jail.  While it would be nice to see more action and consequence within the story, it doesn’t significantly detract from the enjoyment of the game.  The writers and developers clearly intended for this game to be played fully, and by that I mean no options would be closed to the player. 

Visuals:

This world of Amalur is visually rich, and I mean rich.  Character designs are beautiful and not generic (if you can excuse the fact nearly all Ljosalfar and Dokkalfar women have large, firm breasts that are showcased quite fully by their outfits).  There are several skin tone variations to the characters as well as several variants of facial hair and clothing.  All are actually quite pleasing to the eye. 

The environments are, while not exactly stunning, extremely pleasing to the eye and differentiated quite nicely.  From the desert of Detyre to the spider-infested forest of Webwood to the Tywili Coast near Rathir, each environment is as unique and beautiful as those who inhabit the land.  They are bright, colorful, and vastly different.  From a technical standpoint, the environments do suffer from texture-popping and the occasional hitch as you run from one area to another, but overall these are minor complaints.

Sound:

The sounds and music are, well, fairly bland.  The same attack music plays every time an enemy spots you, which gets old, and you get the same background music for every load screen as well.  Weapon sounds are crisp and fit what you might expect from the various weapons in the game.  Voice acting is also somewhat bleh, though it is clear some of the actors are actually trying, and as a bonus they either had a positively huge cast or some very talented actors who are able to significantly alter their voice for a wide range of characters.  Still, the net result is a lot of talking to characters that are either neglecting to showcase any emotion whatsoever, or presenting their emotions in a way that contradicts whatever situation in which they find themselves. 

Gameplay:

This is where Kingdoms of Amalur positively soars.  I have yet to play an RPG with this degree of ease in movement, potion and spell management, and combat.  Everything your character can do in this world can be quickly and easily accessed through quick buttons or the menu.  There is even a radial menu for potions accessed through LB on the Xbox 360 and R-whatever on the PS3.  And oh, the combat.  When you dive into combat you suddenly feel like you’ve moved from the RPG realm to an action hack-n-slash on par with God of War.  You have two main weapons, mapped to X for the primary and Y for the secondary, and the nature of your attacks is wholly dependent on the pattern of button presses.  Want to slash the heck out of a Barghest?  Just tap X with a longsword equipped.  Prefer to use more powerful attacks?  Hold X or Y for a charged attack that does major damage.  Feeling stealthy?  Equip daggers and hit RB to sneak up behind an enemy, then hit Y to perform a brutal assassination.  Grab a shield to block attacks by holding LT.  Push the A button while walking and you break into a run.  Just be careful because A also harvests reagents and picks up loot.  Pull RT, and your magic menu opens.  Hold RT and press a face button to perform the mapped spell.  It really is that simple, and it works so very well when in combat.  You can even access your inventory during a fight if you want to swap an ineffective weapon for a better one.  If you are too busy with a group of enemies to hit the potions radial, pressing left or right on the D-pad accesses health and mana potions, respectively.  Ultimately, there is never a moment where you feel as if you are tasked with pushing too many buttons at once. 

The effects of your combat moves are well-represented as well.  Longswords slash through the air with authority, chakram look and sound incredibly menacing, and daggers are positively deadly.  There are greatswords that make Ice from Game of Thrones look like a toothpick, and unique weapons like Faeblades that resemble dual-wielded bat’leth.  All of the weapons have a very satisfying level of “thunk” when making contact with virtual flesh, and animations faithfully reflect the weight of the weapon used.  Spells also showcase the quality of animation and effects quite well.  Storm Bolt, for example, will almost always knock back a normal enemy or grouped enemies, possibly even stunning them.  Quake ferociously rattles the screen as your ground-pounding creates instant stalagmites.  All spells and effects generate with authority, for lack of a better phrase.  Even the Scorpion-from-Mortal-Kombat-like harpoon doesn’t make you think “oh, they STOLE that one...”

Closing Thoughts:

There really is not much room for complaint if you are an action-oriented RPG fan.  The few I have are centered around the rather droll voice actors and the fact it is far too easy for enemies to a) lock you out of attack animations so they can beat your brains out, because there are not very many clear-out maneuvers that are instant, and b) if an enemy is resistant to a spell it has ZERO effect, to the point where it does not even knock the enemy out of HIS attack animation.  It is an annoying game trait, but only a very minor one.  The best compliment I can give the game is this:  I have played it for over eighty hours and I am not even halfway done with it.  I pick up the controller, swearing I will only play for an hour, and I play for three or four.  It is that easy to be absorbed into the world.  Start a quest here, and by the time you get there you have had conversations with a half-dozen NPCs, sold some items, picked up and completed three fetch-this quests and still have four more in your active quest line before you realize you have yet to finish the quest you started when you loaded the game.  It happens to me all the time because the way the game plays is so unbelievably smooth.  That alone makes a play through worth every minute.

Overall score:  9/10

Thoughts on the Penn State and Chick-Fil-A issues in the news recently:

First up: Penn State and the actions of the NCAA. 

I won’t get into the specifics of the Sandusky case here. Needless to say that saga is as disgusting as one will ever see, and I expect he will find his remaining days very confining and uncomfortable. What I want to address is the overwhelming case of instant justice and out-of-proportion indignation that results from these situations nowadays. While I understand the Freeh report was drafted by Louis Freeh, former FBI director, and was very comprehensive, the idea that Freeh’s report should be the final, definitive word on the scandal is, quite frankly, absurd. Freeh had the full cooperation of Penn State the institution, but he lacked the power of subpoena and the power to compel testimony from key actors in the case. Certainly Curlee and Spanier refrained from providing testimony to Freeh to protect themselves in upcoming criminal trials, and Paterno was dead! I find it difficult to believe that the Freeh report, as a stand-alone work designed to prove or attempt to prove a case against the institution and the men involved, can be fully accepted at face value without taking the ancillary factors into account.

Yet that is exactly what NCAA president Mark Emmert did when deciding, unilaterally and with full endorsement of the NCAA management council, to crush the Penn State football program with some of the harshest sanctions ever levied. This was done despite the fact the NCAA commissioned no investigation of its own, nor did they so much as attempt a fact-finding of any sort. They simply took the Freeh report, said “Yep, looks good,” and accepted it as full gospel truth. Even the by-laws of the NCAA provide for due process in any investigation, and here they blatantly disregarded their own charter for the sake of an expedient media splash designed to make the NCAA look good. There is simply no other reason for such a quick reaction to the Free report itself. Remember this: It took years before the NCAA finally sanctioned USC for the Reggie Bush benefit scandal. It took months before the NCAA declared Cam Newton eligible to play in 2010, and even then they were criticized for not being thorough enough. Yet by and large everyone is okay with the sanctions given to Penn State with no due process whatsoever!

I agree with the $60 million fine; in fact I applaud it. Sending that money to help victims of sexual abuse and for prevention programs is exactly the right move. Spreading it out over a five-year period to avoid a huge financial impact on the university is also a smart idea. The football money does not apply to just the football program; it supports many other sports in the athletic department. Spreading out the fine helps mitigate the impact on other sports programs. Now here’s where the NCAA goes wrong: First, reducing scholarships for the next four years by twenty is brutally harsh for a football program. So too is the four-year postseason ban. Now you may be wondering why I think this is where the NCAA got it wrong, so I’ll explain. The scholarship reduction and bowl ban serves to punish one group only, the players. They’re not punishing the university president, he’s out. So is the athletic director. They are both facing jail time for being idiots. Sandusky is already figuring out how to become someone’s sweetheart in prison. Joe Pa is dead and can no longer answer the charges. Who does that leave? The young men on the team who weren’t even there when most of this took place! The coaching staff, most of whom were coaching in the NFL last year! None of the actors who were involved in the scandal to begin with are currently associated with Penn State, yet the NCAA and Emmert felt it necessary to make sure the football culture did not override common sense. Oh yes, and one more thing: any player who wants to transfer may do so without penalty. I can say I am proud of the guys who stayed, and I also do not blame the ones who left one bit. I blame the NCAA for once again failing to punish the people who made the mess; instead only managing to punish those left behind to clean it up.

 Now, as for the Chick-Fil-A controversy; I am not going to be friendly with this one. The idea that the owner of a private corporation can voice his feelings on a religious issue and have it so blatantly and completely misconstrued is unconscionable. Chick-Fil-A president Dan Cathy’s stance is this:

"We are very much supportive of the family -- the biblical definition of the family unit. We are a family-owned business, a family-led business, and we are married to our first wives. We give God thanks for that. 
"We operate as a family business ... our restaurants are typically led by families; some are single. We want to do anything we possibly can to strengthen families. We are very much committed to that," Cathy emphasized. 
"We intend to stay the course," he said. "We know that it might not be popular with everyone, but thank the Lord, we live in a country where we can share our values and operate on biblical principles." 

Now what I would like is for someone to explain how we went from support of “the biblical definition of the family unit” to staunchly anti-gay and anti-gay-rights. Does the company have a policy against hiring gay men and women? No, they do not. Do they actively and forcefully advocate for laws defining marriage as between man and woman? No, they don’t do that either. What Dan Cathy did was voice his belief, and as President and CEO of the company he can speak for himself AND for his stores. Yet somehow his belief that his company operates on biblical principles (for pete’s sake, they’re even closed on Sunday, which some analysts say costs the company revenues in excess of $1 million each week) has made him and, by extension, his company exclusory, elitist and discriminatory. No, no and oh for heaven’s sake, NO. He was speaking of his Christian, biblically-based beliefs, not the civil belief!

Let me put it another way: I can adhere to whatever religious beliefs I wish, and that’s that. At the same time, I would not use those religious beliefs to suppress the civil rights of ANY GROUP. If a church wants to say “No, we are not going to marry a gay couple in our building,” it is well within their purview as a church to do so. But if an atheist heterosexual couple can walk into a justice-of-the-peace, get a marriage license and be LEGALLY BONDED, why can a homosexual couple NOT do the same?  And where in that interview did anyone get the idea that Mr. Cathy openly and fully supported laws that prohibit gay marriage?  Dan Cathy did not, at ANY time, say gay couples should not be given civil consideration. He said his company supports the biblical definition of family. That’s all. And hey, all of you who spent days crying into your cereal over this, outraged and indignant, threatening to boycott the chain? When are you going to realize the free exchange of ideas is what makes this country great? I mean, you wouldn’t want to oh, discriminate against anyone because they have a differing opinion would you? No? See, I didn’t think so.

The recent decisions handed down by the US Supreme Court (or SCOTUS, since the Twitter generation has to fit everything into 140 characters) have me not at a loss, per se, but rather contemplating exactly what style of court we have.  Spin doctors from each party will take today’s ruling on the Affordable Care Act and use it to either attack the President’s declaration that the mandate portion of the law “is not a tax,” or to declare the President had it right all along and it was Congress, specifically the Republicans, who just do not want to “help the American people.”  The Court will be lauded for being socially-conscious or castigated for being too activist.  The Obama Administration, for better or worse, will catch a great deal of fallout from the ruling, and regardless upon which side of the aisle one resides the key will be to maintain perspective and view the facts in this and many of the other recent decisions.  Why?  Because examining recent decisions will help figure out exactly what kind of court we have. 

First, let us look at who is on the court and by whom they were appointed:

Position	Name	Appointed by	Confirmation Vote	Years on Court
Chief Justice	John Roberts	George W. Bush	78-22	7
Justice	Antonin Scalia	Ronald Reagan	98-0	26
Justice	Anthony Kennedy	Ronald Reagan	97-0	25
Justice	Clarence Thomas	George H. W. Bush	52-48	21
Justice	Ruth Bader Ginsburg	Bill Clinton	96-3	19
Justice	Stephen Breyer	Bill Clinton	87-9	18
Justice	Samuel Alito	George W. Bush	58-42	7
Justice	Sonia Sotomayor	Barack Obama	68-31	3
Justice	Elena Kagan	Barack Obama	63-37	2

For the purposes of this discussion, justices will not be referred to as “Republican” or “Democrat.”  The decisions of the court and the votes cast by each justice will be classified as “conservative” or “liberal,” and only to give them a category.  It is not meant to declare each justice as one or the other.  Also, to facilitate discussion, the focus will be on decisions reached by this particular court since 2008.  Political rhetoric and hyperbole have reached a level heretofore unseen, and it began right around the middle/end of President Bush’s second term.  This is not an attempt to minimize the amount of political argument or rhetoric prior to this time, but it is fair to argue the current level of such is unprecedented.  Finally, this blog assumes not political affiliation whatsoever.  The analysis provided here is genuinely meant to be as unbiased as possible.  Now that disclaimers have been addressed, it is time to move on to court decisions. 

One final note:  The decisions addressed will be major decisions.  There are several on the docket that generally have little in the way of political impact, and including all decisions for the last four years would make the discussion rather unwieldy.

2008 Decisions:

Note:  In 2008, Sotomayor and Kagan were not on the court.  John Paul Stevens and David Souter held their seats.

District of Columbia v. Heller:  This was a gun control-related case where a District of Columbia law banning handguns was challenged on Second Amendment grounds.  The majority struck down the DC law as unconstitutional and required a license to be issued provided Heller met the requirements for a license. 

The vote was 5-4 with Scalia, Roberts, Kennedy, Thomas and Alito in favor and Stevens, Souter, Breyer and Ginsburg dissenting.  It was a wholly conservative decision and the vote indicates a factional split between the Republican-appointed and the Democrat-appointed justices.

There were five job discrimination cases brought before the court in 2008 and in all but one Thomas dissented against the majority opinion.  One case was a 9-0 unanimous decision, a second had Roberts join in dissent, and Thomas and Scalia dissented in the remaining three.  All five cases were decided in favor of the worker; four of the cases involved age discrimination and one was a racial discrimination case.  Without getting into the specifics for the dissent of Thomas and Scalia, there certainly is no ideological division on the decisions rendered in these cases.  They were all decided by a 6-3 vote or better.

Davis v. Federal Election Commission:  The “Millionaire’s Amendment” of the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act (or more commonly known as the McCain-Feingold Act) was challenged by Jack Davis, Congressional candidate from New York.  The amendment required a declaration of intent to spend personal funds and made the candidate subject to other campaign finance limitations even if the majority of expenses were from personal funds.  The Court ruled in a 5-4 decision in favor of Mr. Davis and struck down the amendment.  This was another split down the ideological aisle, with the conservatives justices voting to strike the amendment and the liberals dissenting, either wholly or in part.

So from our 2008 sample cases, two would be considered “as expected” decisions while the remaining five from our sample would be somewhat atypical.

2009:

Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission:  This was the landmark case of the 2009 Court calendar, as it addressed one of the key restrictions of the McCain-Feingold Act which prohibited unfettered independent spending by corporations or unions on political advertisements.  The basis for the restriction was to allow for equal time for candidates in all campaign phases and prevent large corporations or entities from out-spending the opposition.  Ironically, this was already taking place with the proliferation of Political Action Committees, or PACS, who were allowed to spend as much money as they could raise on any candidate they chose, provided they disclosed they were not affiliated directly with the candidate they endorsed.  The Court’s 5-4 decision was also a complete ideological split vote, with all five conservative justices joining the decision and all four liberals dissenting.  Justice John Paul Stevens wrote the dissenting opinion which was three times longer than the majority opinion written by Justice Anthony Kennedy.  The case was most notable for the admonishment of the court issued by President Obama during his 2010 State of the Union address in which he stated “Last week, the Supreme Court reversed a century of law to open the floodgates for special interests — including foreign corporations — to spend without limit in our elections. Well I don't think American elections should be bankrolled by America's most powerful interests, or worse, by foreign entities.”  One of the justices, Roberts I believe, was caught on camera mouthing “That’s not true.”

The remaining cases in 2009 were either small in scope or dealt more with criminal law as opposed to Constitutional civil cases.  The other major case on the docket was:

Salazar v. Buono:  in which a man sued to have a WWI-era cross removed from federal lands on the grounds it constituted government endorsement of religion.  The court ruled, again in a 5-4 decision, that the cross was put up merely as a memorial, not as an endorsement of a particular religion.  This case was watched very closely; if the decision had gone the other way then all the markers in Arlington National Cemetery and other federal cemeteries would have had to be removed.  It was another conservative/liberal split vote.

2009:  Both cases sampled here are perfect examples of ideological split.

2010: 

In a notable change, the Court declined certiorari on two separate cases regarding a large cross on federal land near La Jolla, CA.  Justice Alito issued a statement saying the Court could not take the case given the lower courts had not yet made a decision on the cases yet.  After Salazar v. Buono, it was surprising but legally sound reasoning.

Snyder v. Phelps:  This case was filed by Albert Snyder, father of Matthew Snyder, a Marine killed in combat while serving in Iraq.  Snyder wanted a tort for emotional distress against one Fred Phelps and his Westboro Baptist Church of Topeka, KS, who showed up at the Snyder funeral with his family and church members carrying signs denigrating US soldiers.  The court found that, even if causing emotional distress, such displays are lawful so long as they conform to local ordinances.  The First Amendment protects political rhetoric of any kind.  The decision was 8-1, with only Justice Samuel Alito dissenting.  This was a case where free speech, no matter how distasteful, was wholly protected.

Brown v. Entertainment Merchants Association (formerly Schwarzenegger v. Entertainment Merchants Association):  This was another landmark case that established video games as a form of entertainment art and therefore protected by the current interpretation of the First Amendment.  The 7-2 decision struck down California’s law that restricted sales of violent games to minors.  Only Justices Thomas and Breyer dissented, which makes this particular case a complete wash with regard to ideology.

2011: 

Federal Communications Commission v. Fox Television Stations (2012): This is a continuation of a case involving expletives blurted out on live TV during the Billboard Music Awards.  The court filed an 8-0 decision which invalidated FCC fines against Fox for the vulgar language but that also affirmed the FCC’s power to regulate broadcast TV licenses as in the public interest and therefore not a violation of the First Amendment.

2012:

This year has seen some fairly significant rulings by the court.  Let us start with:

Stolen Valor Act: This ruling struck down a law that provided for criminal punishment of anyone who falsely claims to have earned military honors.  It was based on the case of one Xavier Alvarez, who claimed to have earned the Medal of Honor as a Marine.  When Alvarez was exposed as a liar, he was convicted under the act and given a $5000 fine and probation.  The US Supreme Court, upon receiving the case, overturned the law as unconstitutional under the First Amendment in a 6-3 decision.  The three dissenters were all conservatives, but that leaves two of the five to back the First Amendment.

Arizona v. United States: This decision controversially struck down parts of Arizona’s immigration law while upholding one other key provision which allowed the state police to investigate immigration status if someone was detained for other reasons.  The 6-3 decision again had Alito, Thomas and Scalia, three conservatives, as the dissenters.

Affordable Care Act: The Act, long thought to be struck down as incompatible with the Constitution’s Commerce Clause, was upheld, including the coverage mandate, by a 5-4 vote.  All four liberal justices voted in favor, of course, but they were joined by conservative Chief Justice Roberts.  Scalia, Thomas, Alito, and Kennedy dissented. 

So why did I go through all this analysis?  Primarily for ONE reason:  It is to help people understand that when they hear the pundits from either side talking about the fairness of the court or about judicial activism and how this court is in the pocket of the President or beholden to Congress they can understand that, in the words of Chief Justice Roberts, “That’s not true.”  For the Chief Justice to actually uphold a provision that he himself calls a tax as a conservative is, quite frankly, bizarre.  It does help underscore the fact the court is trying to remain as strictly Constitutional as it can but it sure makes it difficult to call some of these decisions when you see reversals of this nature.  It should not escape one’s notice that Chief Justice Roberts has sided with the liberal justices in the three major decisions I used in 2012 as examples.  However, prior to 2012, he was in the conservative camp on every issue not related to First Amendment rights.  So before you throw your shoe at the TV because of the blanketyblanking activist court, look at its track record.  It’s actually fairly moderate.  Just refrain from trying to guess what this court will decide.  As you can see, there is no predictability whatsoever. 

Steroids as "Cheating" is the WRONG focus

While I understand and support the need to get steroids and other performance-enhancing drugs that were illegally obtained out of baseball, and I am glad they are now against the rules, I have a quibble, and it's a big one. 


How do you consider it cheating when there were no rules in place at the time? If Ken Caminiti, Jose Canseco, et. al., were using steroids in the late-90s, and setting aside the fact they were illegal, how is it CHEATING when it's not against the RULES??? Everyone who discusses this issue comes off all sanctimonious and judgmental about the "cheaters" who used 'roids, but they all seem to forget that there was not a single rule in place that prohibited steroid use in the Major Leagues until 2004-ish. NONE. If you want to get all haughty-taughty about the bad men who used steroids, for crying out loud talk about the REAL laws they broke, not the bull-snaps about wrecking the "Spirit of the Game" or the "Sanctity of Baseball." Hell, if you sports writers had reached down and grabbed yours then wrote about the problem BACK THEN, it could have been cleared from our plates almost twenty years ago.

The bottom line for me is this: They were illegal. That should be the focus, as well as the potential long-term harm that can result from use. Stop acting like it was an inherent harm to the game and making that the more important issue. It isn't, and it never was.

How does a gamer value time?

On 23 March of this year, I returned to my home from picking up my 3 1/2-year-old, Halo-playing son to discover my back door had been forced open.  The worthless sacks of genetic garbage who saw fit to force their way into my home, my sanctuary, took nearly all of my wife's jewelry including family heirlooms that were worth more than the collection of their brain cells, my Halo Reach Xbox 360, and most (but not ALL) of my games.  I recovered seven of my games that same night when the oldest member of this group of reproductive errors traded the games at Gamestop.  Oops, didn't know I used to work there and was friends with ALL of the staff, did you?  He was caught, and within two weeks the remaining offenders, or most of them, were also caught.  Our stuff, on the other hand, is GONE.  For reasons unbeknownst to me, my wife's jewelry and my gaming paraphernalia were unrecoverable.  Thank goodness for insurance, because now I have the sweet Star Wars Xbox 360. 
The sad part for me, aside from my wife's heartbreak at having her jewelry stolen, is the fact all the time and effort I had put into my games is now GONE.  Let me break it down for you.  Now understand, these are estimated times, but still, here we go:

Dragon Age: Origins - about 40 hours of gameplay, plus I lost all the DLC since it was on the Ultimate Edition disc, and that was stolen!

Dragon Age II - another 30-35 hours lost.

Halo CE: Anniversary - 15 hours or so because I played on Heroic and I suck, so I die a lot, but I was on my way to the third generator, so I was almost DONE!

Halo: Reach - Finished campaign on Heroic, but that was 20 hours of hard work.

Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning - 15 hours there, and I had something like nine quest lines open at the time.  I can't re-create that!

Gears of War 1-3 - Combined, it's over 40 hours of gameplay!

So, altogether it comes to over 160 hours of gameplay, and this doesn't even count Rock Band Beatles or any of the other games I played just for the heck of it. 
Here's why I bring this up:  How do we as gamers place a value on our time playing?  How can we?  For me, those games represented an investment and a level of satisfaction to which I no longer have access.  My experience on many of them will be exactly the same because the storylines don't branch.  The RPGs will be different, but the problem there is I LIKED how my characters were fleshing out, and now I have to hope I can get back to where I was.  Plus, I thought I was about done with the $#(&$ giant spiders.  All told, this DOES have a value to me, but how can that be expressed in dollars?  Should it?  What do you think?

I will try to make this as comprehensible as possible given my still-bubbling excitement, but here is an instant-impression review for Marvel’s The Avengers:

IT WAS MIND-BLOWINGLY PERFECT!

All right, so a little more is probably necessary.  Let’s just say if I was susceptible to a monstrous man-crush, Nathan Fillion was just replaced by his friend/writer/director/foil, Joss Whedon.  I will break things down just a bit to make this review easier to digest.  I will try to AVOID spoilers, but this is a movie review, so in the interest of not getting anyone cheesed at me:

POSSIBLE SPOILERS FOLLOW!!!!!!   READ AT YOUR OWN RISK!!!!!!!!!

Writing:  Joss Whedon is a genius without equal when it comes to script writing.  His familiarity with his characters and his work writing for Marvel in the past shines through in each character’s lines.  He is able to capture the tension of the arguments as well as the sometimes gut-busting humor of their banter perfectly.  NONE of the characters in this movie deliver a line that makes you think “Gee, that doesn’t really sound like Captain America,” or Iron Man, or Nick Fury.  The timing and delivery of every character’s lines is just dead perfect.  It’s so good, in fact, you don’t even notice the movie is almost two-and-a-half hours long.  It paces itself perfectly.

Cinematography:  It was as expected.  Very clean, with a few odd camera angles at times just to change one’s screen focus.  Nothing exceedingly wonky like Hunger Games (which was good, just too much jitter at times).  The CG was extremely clean and well-placed, every bit as good or better than what we saw from Transformers.  The sets and green-screen scenes were also very believable.  The fight between Iron Man, Thor, and Captain America in the woods is a perfect example of set-work seamlessly blended into a green-screen environment.

Costuming:  OK, I will say this:  I’m not sure how I feel about the change back to the round chest-piece on the Mark VII suit, but I’m not going to have a hissy about it.  There have been so many variants in that armor I’ve lost track anyway.  Overall, though, every costume looked absolutely fantastic, even Cap’s screen-printed wings on his mask/headcover.  I’m glad they kept away from Hawkeye’s purple-and-blue combo with the weird mask, and Thor’s Asgardian garb was just perfect.  And, well…we just won’t get into what I think about Black Widow’s costume…this needs to remain PG or better.  ;)

Characters:  Everyone in this movie was familiar with his or her character, and it shows.  Each character was not just almost comic-book perfect (at least in the standard/Ultimates hybrid they’ve built here) but they were also inherently believable.  Stark and Cap can’t really get along to start with because Cap think’s Tony is too undisciplined and unwilling to sacrifice, while Tony is suspicious of SHIELD and thinks Cap is way too huah soldier-y and unwilling to question.  In fact, ALL of the characters who have done this before are exactly what you’d hope they would be, so let’s not spend time on them.  It’s Mark Ruffalo I want to spend some time on, because he had some work to do.  As the third actor to play the embattled Bruce Banner (and fourth to play a Banner, if you count Bill Bixby), it was his task to bring Banner  to the table, not necessarily the Hulk.  He did so well I almost wish he’d had more opportunity to play Bruce.  He was the most human, most vulnerable, and most self-assured Banner of them all, and it really seemed as if it was as effortless for him to step into those shoes as it was for the rest of the cast.  How was he vulnerable and self-assured at the same time?  Well, he knew he could involuntarily snap and change at any moment, but he also knew he could control when he changed, and Ruffalo carries that knowledge brilliantly.  Oh, and I would be remiss if I didn’t at least mention how incredibly fabulous Tom Hiddleston is as Loki.  That hurt, crazed, and driven evil he exudes is just amazing.

Wrap-up:  I would give you some review of the story, but really the story is just the backdrop for the characters and the humanity Whedon puts on the screen.  These people are more than larger-than-life heroes, they are genuine people with vulnerabilities and weaknesses to overcome.  In true Whedon-esque fashion, he uses a tragic event to illustrate all of these aspects.  Nope, no spoilers here, but if you know how Whedon works, you know what I’m talking about.  In any case, it all comes together here.  Iron Man, Thor, Captain America, and the Incredible Hulk (sorta) were all able to occupy the same space on the screen without one character vastly overshadowing the others.  And let’s not forget Nick Fury’s screen-stealing moments that transition just as easily into the larger group.  This movie was meant to be L-A-R-G-E, and it delivers like no superhero movie before it.  Like Albert Pujols before he went to LA-LA land, Whedon , Downey, Johanssen, Evans, Hemsworth, Ruffalo, Renner, and Hiddleston hit it out of the stadium.  I haven’t laughed, teared up, clapped, and cheered any movie like I did watching The Avengers.  For the first time in quite a while, I finally feel as if I got my money’s worth from a movie.  Yeah, it’s the first time since The Empire Strikes Back.  The Avengers really is THAT good.

5 of 5 stars, 10 out of 10, 100% fresh…however you want to put it. 

PS:  Watch ALL of the credits!  Post to this blog if you get the joke!

A few random thoughts on Current Events

A few random thoughts I want to share:

I was saddened by the news of Junior Seau's suicide. I remember him being one of the premier linebackers in the NFL; he essentially filled the void left by Lawrence Taylor's retirement and Brian Bosworth's ineffectiveness as the Next Big Thing. I remember the criticism of Seau's "freelancing" or "peeking in the backfield" and how they said it put him out of position so much he had to make the athletic pursuit. Well, if the ability to recover from a bad read and still make the play isn't an indicator of greatness I don't know what IS. The way his teammates and those he helped in the community described his personality just underscores how much of a shame it was he couldn't reach out and get the help he clearly needed.

The Mariano Rivera injury is jaw-dropping simply because it was such an innocuous way to be hurt so badly. He has shagged fly balls for most of his career, so to see him injured doing just that is just a shame. While I'm from the Eckersly/Gossage closer mentality where the closer should get more than three outs, I can't remember a time when I wasn't amazed by Mo's longevity and almost absurd ability. I doubt seriously he will be back to play again, which means in three days two legendary players from my sports-watching era are gone.

The Kansas Senate passed a piece of legislation designed for KPERS (Kansas Public Employee's Retirement System) reform because the system is currently underfunded to the tune of $8.3 BILLION. It will be bankrupt by 2033 if nothing changes. What will happen is new employees will pay an increased rate into the program and will not be guaranteed a benefit of any kind for when they retire. Additionally, the pay-ins will be invested, and the employees will get a guaranteed percentage return. Anything above that goes into the general fund to pay down the underfunded benefit. If the rate of return is below the percentage, well, you lose out. So, you get no benefit if you exceed your contributed percentage, but you lose if the return is deficient. At the same time, our prestigious state senators saw fit to change their benefit calculation that shortened their service year, which allows them to claim an INCREASED benefit! Here, ladies and gentlemen, is where the corruption of the system is clearly illustrated for all to see.

I agree with Kurt Warner's concerns about letting his sons play football in the NFL, and I don't care that he is a paid NFL analyst. He wasn't speaking as one, he was speaking as a father and by rights SHOULD be concerned. See the Seau story above for why. The fact is we do not know the what long-term effects are from the constant, repeated head trauma. Please don't kid yourselves, EVERY player receives head trauma in every game, not to mention the other trauma (broken fingers, dislocations, sprains, etc. that contribute to arthritis and constant pain) that hampers them for the rest of their lives. I suffer from arthritis and back pain, my brother-in-law Russ suffers from severe back pain also, and I know we both have days where we would do almost ANYTHING to make it go away for just a little while. I can't imagine what these former players go through on a daily basis. I know this: I don't want my son to go through that if it can be helped.