Have Violent Video Games Gone Too Far?

Call of Duty: Black Ops has just released it's trailer, entitled There's A Soldier In All Of Us, showing real people (including celebrities like Kobe Bryant and Jimmy Kimmel) in actual combat scenarios in lieu of scenes from the game.

How much more can our society glorify war, violence, and antisocial behavior if not by showing real people enjoying the death and destruction of a sovereign nations' citizens and towns as if it's a sport? Maybe I wouldn't find the video as disturbing if it did involve a war that is currently active with soldiers and innocent civilians dying every day...

In my opinion, all the ad and game it's trying to sell succeeds at doing is furthering the dehumanization of the hundreds of thousands of civilians who've died and continue to die in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and anywhere else our military/CIA/war contractors are operating without our knowledge. Perhaps if the commercial was set in Chicago, Boston, NYC, or some other US city that used to be a functioning community before being ravaged by war, people would have a different response. After all, is this how you'd like your hometown portrayed in the media of another nation that is still actively killing US civilians (accidental or not)?

As the Supreme Court hears arguments in the Schwarzenegger v Entertainment Merchants Association case involving California's ability to restrict the sale of violent video games to minors, I feel like this commercial is a perfect example of the normalization of war/violence endemic in our media caused in part by video games like Call of Duty: Black Ops, which will only get worse as graphics become more realistic.

Perhaps I'm just overreacting or idealizing the games that I grew up playing but I see a big difference between hyper-realistic games like Call of Duty and cartoon-based games like Contra, Double Dragon, and even early editions of Grand Theft Auto.

One thing that I find interesting as the Entertainment Merchants Association argues that it's members free speech is somehow different than other forms of regulated commercial speech like porn, alcohol, and cigarettes is that CallOfDuty.com requires people to be over 18 in order to access the site, employing the same online age verification tool as the very industries it's trying to claim differentiation from. See for yourself:

• Smirnoff (21+)
• Hustler (18+)
• Marlboro (21+)

In case you think this game is an anomaly or an exception, here are some statistics on the Call of Duty series:

• Modern Warfare (previous release in the series) holds the single-day record for any entertainment medium with $401 million in sales (4.7 million copies sold) when it was released on 11/10/2009.
• Pre-orders of Black Ops are on track to match sales of Modern Warfare
• The Call of Duty series (7 games total) has accounted for more than $4 billion in sale

As a side note, if a Supreme Court Justice has never played a modern video game, does that disqualified them to hear the case?

Tax and Spend or Borrow and Spend?

Tax Day: The Reality of Class Warfare

As the Tea Party ramps up its Tax Day protests around the country, I'd like to introduce some facts and reality to the equation.

As the graph on the right shows (courtesy of the geniuses at WolframAlpha), the average federal tax rate in 2007 was 12.84%, a far cry from the 40% the median Tea Partier believes the rate to be.

The bar chart, however, paints an even more telling picture. How have the ultra wealthy (those making more than $2M annually) changed our tax system from PROgressive to REgressive? If this is proof of blatant class warfare, I don't know what is...

To quote Warren Buffett:

“There’s class warfare, all right,” Mr. Buffett said, “but it’s my class, the rich class, that’s making war, and we’re winning.”

Also, as he said at a $4,600-a-seat Hillary Clinton fundraiser in 2007:

“The 400 of us [here] pay a lower part of our income in taxes than our receptionists do, or our cleaning ladies, for that matter. If you’re in the luckiest 1 per cent of humanity, you owe it to the rest of humanity to think about the other 99 per cent.”

Is that the type of country we want America to be?

The Need for Filibuster Reform

As over 290 bills that have passed the House sit idle in the Senate due to the unprecedented obstructionism currently being displayed by the Republican minority, the need for filibuster reform has been thrust into the forefront.

For those not familiar with the filibuster and cloture process, when either of them are invoked, a supermajority (60) of senators is required to bring a bill to debate and close the debate to bring the bill to a final up-or-down vote.

Why should a Republican minority of 41 senators that represent only 37% of the US population be able to bring the nations business to a grinding halt? If you'd like to check my math, you can see my numbers here. (which were from the most recent census estimates)

To give you an idea how big the disparity of representation in the Senate is, consider the two extremes:

Barbara Boxer/Dianne Feinstein (D-CA): 12.09% or 36.8M people
John Barrasso/Michael Enzi (R-WY): 0.19% or 592K people

How is it democratic to allow such a small minority to control our government?

Michael Moore and Wolf Blitzer

If you haven't seen Michael Moore making the TV circuit to promote his new movie, Capitalism: A Love Story, the clips below showcase his best performance. He makes Wolf Blitzer looks like an amateur, with repetitive, sound-bite inspired questions:





My favorite moment came when Wolf asked Michael how he would respond to allegations that he is being hypocritical in his movie because he himself has benefited and become wealthy from our capitalistic system. To which Michael Moore responded:

"I wonder if there was a Wolf Blitzer 200 years ago who asked Thomas Jefferson, or John Adams, or George Washington: "Hey you guys are wealthy land owners, you've benefited from the Kings system, what are you complaining about? whats this revolt all about?"

Brilliant.

PS: If you missed Wolf's appearance on celebrity Jeopardy, you missed the man who represents one of the supposed leaders in cable news making a fool of himself and getting blown out by comedian Andy Richter. His grand total: -$4600.

Al Franken Is My Hero

This is the progressive attitude we need to see more of in Congress. Thank you Al Franken!

Corporate Personhood & Citizen's United v FEC

These two segments from the 9/15 episode of The Colbert Report may be the best explanations why the Citizen's United v Federal Elections Committee case currently before the Supreme Court is so important. Imagine what our democracy would look like if corporations could give unlimited campaign contributions... Would it even be a democracy?

To learn more about the ridiculousness that is corporate personhood, check out the book Unequal Protection

The one issue that Stephen failed to mention is that most corporations have non-citizen and even foreign governments as shareholders. Who could possibly think that allowing foreign governments access to our democratic process is what the Framers of the Constitution had in mind?

by Thom Hartmann

The Colbert Report	Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c
The Word - Let Freedom Ka-Ching
www.colbertnation.com
Colbert Report Full Episodes Political Humor Health Care Protests

The Colbert Report	Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c
Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission - Jeffrey Toobin
www.colbertnation.com
Colbert Report Full Episodes Political Humor Health Care Protests

Here is part of the transcript from the opening arguments:

"JUSTICE GINSBURG: Mr. Olson, are you taking the position that there is no difference in the First Amendment rights of an individual? A corporation, after all, is not endowed by its creator with inalienable rights. So is there any distinction that Congress could draw between corporations and natural human beings for purposes of campaign finance?

MR. OLSON: What the Court has said in the First Amendment context, New York Times v. Sullivan, Rose Jean v. Associated Press, and over and over again, is that corporations are persons entitled to protection under the First Amendment.

JUSTICE GINSBURG: Would that include -

MR. OLSON: Now, Justice -

JUSTICE GINSBURG: Would that include today's mega-corporations, where many of the investors may be foreign individuals or entities?

MR. OLSON: The Court in the past has made no distinction based upon the nature of the entity that might own a share of a corporation.

JUSTICE GINSBURG: Own many shares?

MR. OLSON: Pardon?

JUSTICE GINSBURG: Nowadays there are foreign interests, even foreign governments, that own not one share but a goodly number of shares.

MR. OLSON: I submit that the Court's decisions in connection with the First Amendment and corporations have in the past made no such distinction. However -

JUSTICE GINSBURG: Could they in your view, in the view that you are putting forth, that there is no distinction between an individual and a corporation for First Amendment purposes, then any mega-corporation, even -- even if most of the investors are from abroad, Congress could not limit their spending?

MR. OLSON: I'm not -- I'm not saying that, Justice Ginsburg. I'm saying that the First Amendment applies. Then the next step is to determine whether Congress and the government has established a compelling governmental interest and a narrowly tailored remedy to that interest. If the Congress -- and there is no record of that in this case of which I am aware. Certainly the government has not advanced it in its briefs: That there is some compelling governmental interest because of foreign investment in corporations. If there was, then the Court would look at, determine how serious is that interest, how destructive has it been to the process and whether the -- maybe the limitation would have something to do with the ownership of shares of a corporation or some -

JUSTICE SCALIA: Do you think Congress could prevent foreign individuals from funding speech in United States elections?

MR. OLSON: The -- the -

JUSTICE SCALIA: Private individuals, foreigners who -- who want to -

MR. OLSON: That's, of course, a different question. I haven't studied it, Justice Scalia.

JUSTICE SCALIA: Well, it's not different. I asked it because I thought it was related to the question you were answering.

MR. OLSON: The fundamental point here is -and let me start with this, and I think we should -- we should start with this, and the government hardly mentions this.

JUSTICE STEVENS: Before you do, Mr. Olson

MR. OLSON: The language of the First Amendment, "Congress shall make" -

JUSTICE STEVENS: Mr. Olson -- Mr. Olson, would you answer Justice Ginsburg's question yes or no? Can the -- leaving aside foreign investors, can the -can -- does the First Amendment permit any distinction between corporate speakers and individual speakers?

MR. OLSON: I am not -- I'm not aware of a case that just -

UnitedHealth Group

I posted the Chris Hayes clip too soon. The very next segment on Countdown exposed United Health Group as the criminals they are. There's no way to summarize the investigative journalism, you have to watch the entire thing... If you have United Health Group, I have a feeling that you'll want to change asap...

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