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At 10/16/08 05:09 PM, cellardoor6 wrote: Wow, you're doing it again! Ahahaha. I thought the last time was just a lapse of judgment but now it's obvious that you have some mental deficit or something.

You just accused me of not arguing the point, and yet your entire post revolved around me. You didn't touch on the subject whatsoever. You're guilty of what you accuse me of, as you accuse me of it.

Man you're pitiful.

And yet you did the same thing. Notice how you never addressed the actual content of his post and instead revolved your entire post around him?

As for you comment about bias, yes it exists (especially in you), but that doesn't change the fact that this was in fact a simple mistake by Joe Biden and nothing serious. Just like a similar error from Palin would be nothing serious.

Advertising your campaign isn't unethical. There are plenty of legitimate criticisms of Obama, but this isn't one of them. I think it's time you just admit that you were wrong.

At 10/12/08 06:41 PM, adrshepard wrote: You are viewing the Security Council as an objective body, which it is not. It is composed of vastly different countries with different interests. Russia, France, and China had little or nothing to gain by the Iraq invasion. They certaintly wouldn't achieve the security gains the US would, since these countries would certainly not be those targeted by WMDs or Islamic terrorism.

You're operating under the false assumption that France, Russia, and China aren't concerned with nuclear proliferation. Islamic Terrorism specifically might not pose as much of a threat against Russia and China as it would to the US... but any smaller nation acquiring WMDs poses a serious threat to all the powers that be. It also must be noted that Russia, China, and France were not completely closed to the idea of taking action against Iraq, rather they wanted the weapons inspectors to provide some solid evidence (which they didn't) before they made that decision.

There is no evidence of cherry-picking the information.

Despite the fact that the Bush administration favored shaky testimonies from Iraqi defectors over actual material evidence, there's also the whole controversy of a Senior CIA Officer accusing the Bush Administration of distorting the facts in their favor. That's pretty convincing evidence if you ask me.

There were some omissions regarding the level of certainty of some evidence, but that was not the result of interference from the executive branch.

You obviously don't understand that the intelligence community (the CIA in particular) is governed predominately by orders from the Executive Branch. That aside, "some omissions regarding the level of certainty of some evidence" is a larger offense then you give it credit for. For example, the omissions regarding the uncertainty of aluminum tubes being used for the construction of WMDs was deliberately misleading.

The evidence was convincing enough for over 30, I think the count was, nations to participate in the invasion.

None of which ultimately had to contribute very much to the war effort. Most contributions from other nations were more symbolic of their dedication to the US as an ally than their actual belief that Iraq posed a threat.

Your first two sentences do not match your last two, because it assumes the administration had an active role in shaping the evidence or making the case. Two key presentations, the 2002 National Intelligence Estimate, and Colin Powell's speech to the UN, were crafted almost entirely by the CIA and other agencies, and not the Bush administration. I suggest you read these excerpts from a 2004 senate committee report on prewar Iraq Intelligence to get an idea of what was going on.

The Executive Branch more or less has direct control over the intelligence community. Saying that the 2002 National Intelligence Estimate and Powells speech were "crafted" by the CIA does not mean that the Bush Administration had no influence on them whatsoever.

Halliburton was the only company deemed capable of performing the tasks in the required amount of time. Opening a bid would only increase the chances that an unqualified firm would promise to meet the requirements for a low price only to fail later (sort of like the mortgage crisis).

Like I said before, the contract could have been split (which it eventually was later in the war) so that smaller companies could have handled different areas of the reconstruction. Giving everything to Halliburton put the government at an inherit disadvantage. Practically it made no sense to give the entire contract to Halliburton.

I don't understand what business interests you are talking about. If you're trying to say that oil comes into play, you're right, of course. The problem of WMDs and terrorism is augmented by their presence near a highly strategic resource.

Where there's a business there's a business interest. For example I mentioned arms manufacturers. When there's a war, arms manufacturers get to sell weapons to the US army. Thus a war is a business interest to arms manufacturers. Iraq was a special case in that it called for an occupation and reconstruction of a country. So for example, if a building gets blown up in Iraq, it means that a business somewhere in the US (Halliburton for example) gets paid to rebuild it. This war was one gigantic plethora of business interests, the least of which was not Oil, the vast majority of which is being contracted out to US Oil companies.

I've already explained the no-bid contract, and you haven't given any evidence of Cheney's connections being involved.

Halliburton was awarded a large contract that was generally against the best interests of the United States in that didn't create an environment of competition what so ever and gave the US government less power in negotiating price. It was a bad deal. The bill could have been put up for bid or split, but it wasn't... even though doing something like that would have been better for the US government. So why didn't they? It doesn't make any sense at all until you realize that Vice President Dick Cheney was formerly a CEO at Halliburton.

It's that logic and reasoning you claim to be so crazy about. It's the ability to put two and two together.

Then I would say the burden is on you to show that it occurred, rather than on me to try to disprove whatever secret payoffs or relationships existed. You're employing the typical conspiracy-theory approach of deducing evidence from an assumed conclusion as opposed to reaching a conclusion from existing evidence.

Funny since that's exactly what you're doing. You're assuming that the Bush Administration was completely benevolent in it's intentions for Iraq and building an argument around that.

And obviously neither one of us can undeniably prove the other one wrong. But we can both look at the evidence logically and see the obvious conclusion.

1. The Bush Administration had a lot to gain from the Invasion of Iraq (business interests)

and

2. There is evidence that the Bush Administration deliberately misled congress and the UN in it's presentation of the facts:
a. Prestigious members of the intelligence community (Hans Blix, Paul Pillar, among others) accusing the Bush Administration of distorting and even fabricating evidence.
b. Notable omissions from evidence presented (aluminum tubes)
c. Notably including evidence that was proven fraudulent before presentation (yellow cakes niger)

If you were really a man of logic and reason like you claim to be you would be able to put these two together and realize that what really happened differs greatly from the official story. So are you really a man of logic and reason?

At 10/12/08 01:03 PM, adrshepard wrote: Convincing enough for who?

The world in general. The evidence that the Bush Administration submitted to the UN was notably weak. Failing to convince 3 out of the 5 security council members to vote in favor of a UN operation against Iraq (one of which was France).

The decision to grant Bush the power to use military action against Iraq was made by a solid majority of Congress. Apparently Congress believed there was a threat that merited military action if diplomacy failed (which it did).

The Republicans had the majority of congress at the time and would of course support most of anything passed down from a Republican president. So the Republicans were in the bag either way. The Democrats, possibly mislead by cherry picked/dramatized information, possibly bought out by personal interests. Either way, the evidence seemed to become much less "convincing" the further away from the US it got.

Even Hans Blix, a vocal opponent of the war, admitted that Iraq was not being forthcoming about its claimed cessation of its WMD program (this is stated in a speech to the security council in march 2003, the transcript I cannot seem to find but I posted before in a recent thread here.)

Of course not, Iraq didn't want it's opponents to know it was un-armed. All the more reason why the information from the Iraqi defectors shouldn't have been trusted over actual investigative reports from UN weapon inspectors. Of course that's the whole basis of the accusations of cherry picking. The Bush Administration built the case that they wanted to be true, not one that necessarily was true.

In addition, the Government Accounting Office cleared (page 8) the no-bid contract for Halliburton because it the contract rules permit limited competition awards when the needs are urgent and the capable companies few.

So it was cleared legally, that doesn't mean that there was no corruption in the writing of the no bid contract. There are other companies out there that could have made a bid on such a contract, especially if the contract had been split. So why give such preference to Halliburton?

The fact that arms manufacturers profit from the Iraq war is not evidence of profiteering or executive corruption. The end result (these companies making money) would be identical regardless if there was corruption or not.

Arguably, there might not have been a war at all if it hadn't have been for the US Business interests involved. So no, the end result would not be the same.

Assuming that there was corruption involving Cheney and Halliburton simply because of association is not realism, it is blind suspicion.

Hardly. I don't assume corruption involving the reconstruction of Iraq simply because of the connection between Cheney and Halliburton. I assume corruption because of the very odd no-bid contract that was awarded to Haliburton AND because of Cheney's connections.

Assuming that the Iraq war was a case of arms profiteering simply because there were arms contracts is obtuse and reflects a lazy mind.

You're naive or stupid if you consider it unthinkable that a company would try open a new market for it's product. You're also naive or stupid if you don't believe politicians can be bought off. Thinking that arms dealers don't have some lobby for every potential conflict (aka ever potential business opportunity) is the real sign of a lazy mind.

At 10/11/08 02:25 PM, adrshepard wrote: I try to base my positions on logic and reasoning

No you don't. You're realist when it's convienent to be realist, and liberalist when it's not. If you based your positions on logic and reasoning you'd realize that there are 2 alleged reasons that we entered Iraq in the first place:

1. Iraq had weapons of mass destruction and posed a threat to the US and the rest of the world
2. Saddam Hussien had connections to Al Quieda and the 9/11 attack on the World Trade Center

Both lacked convincing evidence. On the other end of the spectrum, entering the war in Iraq was great for US business interests. Haliburton, a company that VP Dick Cheney has strong ties to, got the contract for the reconstruction of Iraq without a bid. Big arms manufacturers got to sell their weapons to the US military. And US Oil companies got the vast majority of the Oil Contracts in the newly rebuilt Iraq.

Logic and reason would lead you to be realistic in your conclusions, which you're not being. What you're really basing your opinions off of is blind partisianship.

Just increase the frame rate of your movie. The "cheat" you're talking about is a phenomena known as tunneling, and it can only be properly fixed by partitioning the space between where the mouse was in the last frame and where it is now into small intervals, and then checking each interval for a collision. But doing something like that takes an extensive knowledge of both Actionscript and Mathematics, so the next best solution is just increasing the frame rate of your movie so that it checks for collisions more often.

At 10/10/08 10:34 PM, homor wrote: because its not like they argue on the issues.

idiot.

The attack ads? As a general rule, no they really don't.

I disagree with that logic. Just because someone else has it worse off doesn't mean that we don't have our own problems.

So my sponsorship money for Meat Boy arrived in the mail the other day. I made my first two purchases with it earlier today. They were highly recommended to me by someone who's opinion I respect, so tell me what you think of them.

At 10/7/08 10:05 AM, GustTheASGuy wrote:

At 10/7/08 09:46 AM, FatKidWitAJetPak wrote: I got codes from online and then learned how to use them. Then I used my own custom coding to do it all.

That's pretty much copypasting.

Oh shut up. No it's not.

Am I the only person who sees the word Therapist and reads it as the "The rapist" every single time?

My first submission to Newgrounds.

• 
  Meat Boy by Bluebaby

  Click to view.

  Type

  Game

  Rated

  Ages 17+

Thanks to everyone that helped with the testing last night. Hopefully it wont be as difficult now that the hitboxes and buzz saws have been fixed up.

Thanks for bringing that to my attention Coaly. We actually intended to leave something behind when Dr Fetus disappears like a portal or something, but we never added it. We'll definitely do that now though to help the player understand where the end of the level still is.

More importantly the swf has now been updated with smaller hitbox collisions on the character, and larger saw blades that better illustrate their hitboxes. Tell me if you guys think it's easier now that those have been changed.

Hey, you guys are awesome thanks for all the feedback so far. We're working on fixing the hitboxes right now seeing as it's the #1 complaint everyone has been having.

At 10/5/08 01:04 AM, blazer133 wrote: mind publishing it? It wont load for me.

Give it a bit, it's 5mbs and the pre-loader isn't in yet.

Hey I'm Jon, the other guy working on this game. Thanks in advance for any feedback you guys can give us.

At 10/5/08 12:03 AM, Wurmy wrote:

At 10/4/08 11:15 PM, Musician wrote: Here's a snapshot:

I'm a horrible tester, but damn.. looks so nice o_o

Wish granted. Ed made a topic :). Anyone else who wants to join in feel free.

Who here wants to help me do beta testing? I need people to do full runs of my game, search for bugs, and provide detailed descriptions of any problems they find. The benefits, obviously, will be getting to play a game earlier than it's official release. If you want in, convince me that you're the right man for the job.

Here's a snapshot:

At 10/3/08 12:08 AM, SuperDeagle wrote: Way to go off on a tangent and troll a thread like usual.
Why do you have such a problem admitting your wrong?

I'm going off on a tangent? You've completely refused to stay on topic, opting to give pathetic retorts like "way to miss the point durr hurr" rather than proper responses. And I find it endlessly amusing that you accuse me of being a troll and then proceed to post something as inflammatory as " Why do you have such a problem admitting your wrong?". You're a total hypocrite.

Not only that but your argument is completely unsupported. Obama does not run his campaign completely on "glam" because he's actually able to actually make and present coherent arguments regarding the issues, something that both you and Palin apparently cannot do.

At 10/2/08 11:49 PM, SuperDeagle wrote: Way to overlook the point:

Way to try and dodge your way out of the debate as usual.

At 10/2/08 11:51 PM, cHunter wrote: She's the only one out of the four of them with executive experience.

Shes also the only one out of the four of them who absolutely ass backwards retarded. Honestly have you even been attention to what she's been saying? You can not argue that this woman is ready to be president of the United States.

At 10/2/08 11:38 PM, SuperDeagle wrote: Arguably Obama has done the exact same thing in the majority of his presentations. His whole appeal has been I'm a young black guy.

Except Obama actually produces information that's relevant to the questions being asked. Palin just completely danced around the questions given to her. So no, you can't argue that Obama has done the exact same thing.

At 10/2/08 09:22 PM, GiantDouche wrote: So far Biden is verbally SODOMIZING Palin

She's absolutely terrible at this. The McCain campaign is going to take a serious hit.

At 10/2/08 01:13 AM, ImpotentBoy2 wrote: thanks, but whats step 4?

)

Not sure yet. But when I figure it out I'm going to be filthy stinking rich.

At 10/2/08 01:42 AM, Glaiel-Gamer wrote: Right, it was errors before that led up to this, so ya we should start regulating them better now, but that doesn't necessarily mean pull the failing ones out of the hole with government money.

Well that is a legitimate opinion and I can see why you don't like the idea of these companies getting away with their sleazy business practices. But on the other hand rejecting the bailout would have had serious economic repercussions that I'm personally glad that we avoided.

At 10/2/08 01:17 AM, Glaiel-Gamer wrote: the concept of a bank isn't what failed, it was their business practice. It's their own damn fault they failed and if you keep propping them back up they are going to keep failing. Only the good banks are going to survive this otherwise, which is exactly what you want.

This "survival of the fittest" argument is a nice concept but it doesn't really apply to this situation. These banks failing would remove massive amounts of money from the economy and would just generally decrease confidence in banks, which is something we really don't want. And the banks will not continue to fail if we regulate them properly which we weren't doing before.

At 10/2/08 12:37 AM, Glaiel-Gamer wrote: You mean by giving money to the bank CEOs so they can get new Ferraris?

Did money from the bailout go to compensating CEOs? I wouldn't be surprised if it did, which does blow because they should burn for driving AAA companies into the ground. But the bailout is about a lot more than just giving money to the rich. These companies have become the backbone of our economy, if they were to collapse, nobody would be able to get loans.

Imagine a world without loans. Businesses can no longer afford to function. Individuals can no longer afford to pay for anything large like a house or a car or a college education. You would risk the entire economy grinding to a halt.

While I'm no fan of the people at the head of these companies that caused this entire mess, I personally am not willing to live through that in the name of economic idealism.

1) click on the text box and open up the properties window
2) click on the button that says "embed..."
3) select "all" and then press ok
4) ???
5) PROFIT!

Also, nice to see you again. You don't seem to be on AIM very often anymore.

At 10/2/08 12:27 AM, Glaiel-Gamer wrote: If you had $700 Billion, what would you do with it?

Probably prevent the greatest economic disaster since the Great Depression. You?

At 10/1/08 06:39 PM, SmilezRoyale wrote: I'm pretty sure you mean sectarian violence. But Yeh basically.

Yeah, That's what I meant. Not that I necessarily agree that the US should stay there, I just thought I should clarify the US's argument.