Free Republic

It's called "gears of war" and is expected to be as lucrative a franchise for the x-box as Halo was. I know developers who work on both x-box and ps3 titles and there's really no contest between the two consoles. The game developers prefer the x-box.

Nintendo's graphics are several generations old, but their controllers -- how the gamer interacts with the game -- are definitely the wave of the future.

XBOX is the big winner this season.
WII is a big runner up

PS3 They sold out a limited number of sets to a few die hard fanboys but they'll have a really hard time moving enough units to catch up to the x-box or even the wii.

Thank you for giving us blanket amnesty for illegals.

• Happened for 6 years with the repubs (re unfunded fences, but we can fund a bridge to nowhere) -- nothing new here

  Thank you for courageously abandoning our troops.

• Pretty sure a "republican" is still commander in chief.

  Thank you for handing victory to the terrorists.

• Pretty sure things are the same now as before the election -- SNAFU.

  Thank you for guaranteeing higher taxes.

• Split house/senate, veto.

  Thank you for guaranteeing no more conservative judges.

• Pretty sure President Bush nominates the judges, sure the dems can stall and delay but over the course of two years they'll have to approve a few.

  Thank you for empowering John McCain.

• yawn.

  Thank you for bringing back universal health care.

• Veto.

  Thank you for endless investigations.

• Needed.

  ---

  Now my list...

  ---

• Thank you for putting an end to the endless infrignements of our rights. Habius Corpus survived for 200 years through the revolutionary war, the civil war, world war 2, the cold war, but thanks to one towel head, hiding in a cave a fundamental right this country has respected is tossed out the window.

• Thank you for putting an end to the endless domestic spying. Requesting phone records is bad enough but black boxes to sniff all domestic internet activity? Come back in two years after you've had time to actually think on that.

• Six years of budget busting irresponsibility. Sure we gave them a pass after 9/11 but 2 years passed, then 4, then 6 and we're still building bridges to nowhere.

  Rush is absolutely right. We had absolutely no obligation to carry the water for people who don't deserve it. Let the republicans wander in the wilderness for two years. When they return maybe they'll realize who they work for (IE not the NSA, not the lobbyists).

So they're going to regulate the Internet too? Thank you, voters!

I don't think you quite understand the issue here, and on this point the republicans were dead wrong.

Simply put, net neutrality says that free republic has exactly the same access to the internet as the new york times and even time-warner.

The reason this is important is because the giant telcos, specifically AT&T, have said that they want to charge premium rates so that the NY Times (who can pay the premium charges) will be guaranteed to get to it's viewers at the absolute top speed possible (the internet express lane), while if Free Republic doesn't pay the toll they will get to you sooner or later, but mostly later -- maybe.

Nevermind that you, the ISP subscriber, is already paying your ISP to access the internet (and free republic), the giant cable/internet co's see this as a way to grab even more cash. They want a cut of google and yahoo and youtube and everything else they can get their hands on.

Network neutrality is EXACTLY what we have RIGHT THIS VERY SECOND, it's what has made the internet a hotbed of progress and innovation, because ANYONE can set up a webpage and maybe get bought out by google for a billion bucks a few years later (ala youtube). Once the ISPs start charging tolls that mostly goes away unless you can find venture capital to pay the tolls for your idea (in that way the ISPs act like a government, imposing taxes and fees and conditions on doing business). I'd seriously like to think the republicans just don't understand the issue, because net-neutrality IS a conservative philosophy since it keeps the beurocracies and tolls (taxes) off the day to day functioning of the network. Unfortunately the reality is they were probably just bought off by AT&T & their lobbyists. Only a pretty furious outcry from net-activists forced the 13-13 stall when they realized this wasn't a good-ol-boy issue, at least not during the election year.

I *LOVE* Gingrich, I think he's the brightest star in the political universe. The man is an intellectual giant and if you could chose only one factor responsible for the republican rise to power it would be a safe bet to point to him.

That aside however, Speaker Gingrich is unelectable at this point. He has too much baggage and while time has let many people forget the reasons why he was forced to step down as Speaker, all of that will be crashing back into the public forefront the moment he tosses his hat in the ring.

It wasn't the Republican voters who deep-sixed the GOP in the elections, it was the independents who defected to the Democrats in large numbers

I'm pretty sure a large number of conservatives abstained or defected too with the intent of gridlocking government for the next two years so we don't get two more years of status-quo (which has basically been the anti-contract-with-America, and with the revocation of habius corpus which managed to survive over 200 years of various wars and conflicts, and the wholesale spying on the domestic phone/internet systems -- anti-America).

With a veto in the white-house and zero chance of the split house/senate being able to over-ride that veto the only thing I'm truly worried about is that the President has the same open border philosophy as the democrats which means precious little is going to stem the flood of illegal immigration save maybe changing the name from illegal to legal (sigh). But with the CINO (conservatives in name only) being bought off by big business for the never ending stream of sweatshop wage labor, even a republican victory wouldn't have changed anything there either.

Personally I see the next two years in the wilderness as a good thing. The government will be mostly paralyzed, and in two years when we return the republicans to power and someone wants to build a budget-busting bridge to nowhere they may actually remember who their real bosses are (hint -- not the lobbyist or the NSA).

Don't worry, the Dems are here to turn things around.

No, the dems are here to gridlock the government until we can get some better choices than so-called representatives who support monster deficits, think securing our borders isn't all that important, think the religious right is in favor of torture, and trashing rights we've had since before this country was founded.

All told, the dems are about the most useless, pathetic bunch you can find but they're very good at gridlock. Ya gotta give them that. With a 50/50 split in congress and President Bush in the whitehouse we the people should be able to breath a little easier for the next two years.

It's a sad day when you have to vote democrat to stay conservative.

Then by all means prove me wrong. But just saying it doesn't make it so. Links, photos, support, whatever. Until then it's just so many empty words by someone who won't wake up and see the world around him.

Regarding Gulags and torture: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/03/02/AR2006030202054.html

Bush administration lawyers, fighting a claim of torture by a Guantanamo Bay detainee, yesterday argued that the new law that bans cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment of detainees in U.S. custody does not apply to people held at the military prison.

Regarding eavesdropping on a level the east german communists never attained but dreamed they could: http://www.wired.com/news/technology/security/0,70785-0.html

In this case, the government will be asking a federal judge in California to dismiss a lawsuit filed by the Electronic Frontier Foundation against AT&T for its alleged complicity in warrantless government surveillance of its customer's internet and telephone communications.

Give you a break? You mean this is ok because it happened on a republican/conservative watch?

Well I hate to break it to you but this started long before 911, the data miners at the network interconnects were initially installed under the Clinton administration.

And when the EFF filed suit to stop the violation of OUR civil rights the government stepped in and used an english common law that was never created by our elective representatives to squash that suit. Oh and this just isn't your number, my number and how long we talked. This is every word you ever posted on the internet tagged to YOU, not your nym, YOU because everything you posted was tagged with your internet address and matched up to your billing account. The amount of data in the hawkeye database alone is staggering, the black boxes at the internet connects are next-gen super computing technology it's the dirty tricks division of google.

OK even assuming our all conservative government can handle all this power repsonsibly you realize that eventually the pendulum will swing back and if not Hillary dictating how this stuff is used, someone of her ilk. You really think it's ok for Ol Ted Kennedy to be able to flip a switch and know instantly everything you have ever done on the internet and everyone you ever talked to on the phone? (Unless you're on quest who told the feds to take a flying leap)

Anyway, People don't say America is worse than all of them. People, the good ones anyway, say America SHOULD be better them.

Right now we're not.

America doesn't run gulags, America doesn't send people to secret prisons to be tortured, our government doesn't spy on its own citizens in a scene right out of communist east germany. We have super heros to fight the evil which perpretrate these crimes.

Tell me how ANY of this fits in with the American dream or Conservative ideology.

It's sadly appropriate IMHO. I'm not from the greatest generation, not even from the baby boomer generation. I was in my teens in the 80s and that's old enough to remember how were were all supposed to be appauled at how the east germans tapped all of their citizen's phone conversations -- and yet the NSA is now plugged into our telcos and even has spy boxes at the major internet vendors (and had the EFF's lawsuit for illegal domestic spying squashed on a rarely used national security rule).

We were supposed to be appauled at how the cubans ran gulags and threw people in jail without trials and appeals and rule of law and then we opened a prison right next door that was just as bad.

We were' supposed to be the good guys, we didn't torture prisoners until Abu Garab.

The greatest generation would be sick, and it's no surprise their super hero is upset about the world as well.

This isn't the America we're supposed to be, not the one I grew up learning about anyway.

Yea they won't veto sanctions but they won't stop buying oil from them either, at least china wont.

And of course they'd be fools to pass up any business opportunities where Iran would want to buy things from them with their oil money, like missles, enrichment technology, a few nuclear textbooks...

You know, all that jazz.

Jay Bennish is the kid who tapped his geography teacher politically indocrinating his students -- about as far left as you can go really.

You can listen to the teacher here: http://www.850koa.com/cc-common/podcast/single_podcast.html?podcast=news_worthy.xml

Read more about it here: http://michellemalkin.com/archives/004689.htm

I love it. The MSM has been gunning for the VP so hard on this issue they're destroying themselves even more. Newsweek and MSNBC had a huge splash up with a 4 page smear job on the VP, even the ultra-liberal trash that supports newsweek couldn't even rate it more than a 2. When your own readers see you wrote a hatchet job you got problems.

The public at large saw a typical hunting accident, the police called it such and closed the case, the VICTIM called it such and closed the case. Which makes the MSN blow their last shred of respectability doing a witch hunt on an issue where the cops and victim and anyone who's ever gone hunting all agree there's just nothing left to the story.

Yes I know christians and jews have their own idolic idiosyncrocies. That really doesn't apply to this point which is that there are about a billion "fatwahs" prohibiting the depiction of the "prophet" because the Koran specifically forbids idol worship -- (you submit to Alah not some piece of wood). This is why they're all upset. Someone made depictions of the "prophet" which breaks about a billion fatwahs, and then turn around and worship a cow which, is pretty much straight out of the old testiment 40 days and 40 nights stuff.

Moooo.

Slap it in gold and there you go!

Silly muslims, they riot because some cartonist draws their false prophet and they have a strong prohibition against idol worship and then run off and worship an idol cow.

It just boggles the mind, it just does.

I'm just cracking up at how y'all are reinforcing the stereotypes Natalie was referring too!

And what stereotype is that? Patriotic value-loving work ethic get the job doners? That's fine by me.

So much better than the elitest, anti-american, mostly ignorant, always stupid reactionary hollywood crowd that never saw a brutal, repressive dictator they didn't fawn over Natalie has thrown her lot in with.

Looks like the juicy details about those two Carolina Panther Cheerleaders are finally here: http://www.thesmokinggun.com/archive/0201061tampa1.html

The original report can be found here: http://www.thesmokinggun.com/archive/1107052cheers1.html

And the publicity pics from their former employers here: http://www.thesmokinggun.com/archive/1108051cheers1.html

don't really know what happened to other people, but I think we were made the examples. I mean, Jennifer Aniston called Bush a ''f---ing idiot'' [in a 2001 interview] and nothing happened to her.

Poor little girl still doest get it. It wasn't what she said it's where she said it. If she said it in New York city I doubt anybody would have cared but she had to open her big fat mouth in London on the eve of war.

She should have a nice long talk with Jane Fonda if she really wants to know what happend.

Actually its good news. The more their economy develops, the less likely they will go to war to achieve their goals.

Actually it makes the world quite a bit more dangerous. Most of the industrial world's resources are stretched pretty thin, particularly oil and other petrocarbons. China's growing demands must meet the needs of billions of people.

We're already seeing china manuver to secure oil reserves as it attempted to purchase a large US oil company and recently negotiated contracts with Iran and Venezuela amongst other nations.

Part of the huge spike in gas prices you're paying is a direct result of you now having to compete with chinese civilians.

As China closes the technology gap between us it has a manufacturing base which should be able to supply a military that will be a formidable opponent to us within the next 20 years. And to get an idea of how quickly that technology is advancing the Chinese are set to build the world's first experimental fusion reactor.

Now I'm not one to condemn a billion chinamen to live in abject poverty so I can have a dollar a gallon gas, but it is definately worth keeping in mind that our "war" with Russia was a battle over ideas, our "war" with china will be over resources and that is an infinitely more dangerous and high stakes game.

I am a conservative...but I don't require that my music be made only by conservatives, that the cows I eat must be conservative, and the chickens and fish. Artists are screwy politically...they have always been liberal. Big frikken deal. Is music bad just because the musician disagrees with me?

The problem isn't just liberal/conservative, it's that the dixie chicks took their disagreement overseas and dissed America on the eve of war that's a suicidal no-no. No one really cares that babs is against the war, she was great in meet the fockers. But the dixie chicks have carved a niche in popular opinion that's not been filled since Jane Fonda made nice with the north Viatnamese.

It's a good thing we have all those US troops in Iraq to make sure some oil gets on US bound supertankers now eh?

Iraq was a mistake tho wasn't it? Wasn't it?

As I posted back in April of 2004 ( http://freerepublic.info/focus/f-bloggers/1121399/posts ) there was a lot of reasons to go into Iraq besides WMDs and we're about to start finding out a few of them if the situation in Iran keeps moving in the current direction.