Been hearing a lot of Cheney's "outrageous" statement about making wrong choices and terrorist attacks? That's because he's not just being quoted out of context but actually having a sentence cut off.

Here is how the sound bite runs:

Because if we make the wrong choice, then the danger is that we’ll get hit again, that we’ll be hit in a way that will be devastating from the standpoint of the United States.

Big problem with that quote - it's incomplete. There should be no period after "Standpoint of the United States"

Here is the actual quote:

"Because if we make the wrong choice, then the danger is that we’ll get hit again, that we’ll be hit in a way that will be devastating from the standpoint of the United States, and that we’ll fall back into the pre-9/11 mind set if you will, that in fact these terrorist attacks are just criminal acts, and that we’re not really at war. I think that would be a terrible mistake for us. "

Changes the meaning quite a bit doesn't it? Notice that the sound bites cut him off as to make it sound like Cheney is saying that the "wrong choice" would mean an attack.

But that's not what he said. He said that if we make the wrong choice and we get attacked that we might go back and treat terrorism like a law enforcement issue like the Clinton administration did.

It's really amazing that the media would do this kind of distortion. But then again, given the CBS news hoax, who knows what's possible.

Imagine the uproar there would have been if FoxNews ran with a story about say John Kerry having actually been reprimanded for cowardice in Vietnam based on "newly surfaced" 35 year old documents?

Imagine if it turned out those documents were forgeries?  Imagine if the forgeries were so obvious that even non-experts could tell they were fakes just with a casual glance?

I think we all know what the reaction FoxNews would get.

CBS is sticking to its guns despite increasingly overwhelming evidence that the documents they used as the basis for their anti-Bush national guard story were forged.

CBS's "independent" source has come forward saying CBS misled him by indicating that the documents were "hand written". Having seen the documents, even he says they were probably computer generated.

What's really startling is just how obviously computer generated they were.  These "memos" weren't just made with MS Word.  They were made with MS Word with all the default settings. Most people, if they were going to do a forgery, would probably at least change something - margins, spacing, something.  These documents were not just done on the computer, they were done with a specific program.

This image from Little Green Footballs shows MS Word and a scan of the original memo overlayed. The odds of having such a perfect match and not being from the same source are well, basically zero. This isn't a case of where "we'll never know for sure". This is pretty much a slam dunk and CBS blew it by not coming clean.

Bear in mind, the above is Word and the original document overlayed. That's how exact they are -- you can't even tell there's an overlay.  It's not just the superscript "th" either. It's a dozen other things that make it obvious. 

When is the TV media going to simply show this image? A picture is wort a thousand words.

(comparison in print out using MS Word and the alleged document from 1973)

CBS's 60 Minutes may have fallen for a hoax yesterday. After airing documents that claimed to show that pressure was put on officers to "sugar coat" Bush's national guard service, blog sites such as Little Green Footballs and this one seem to provide compelling evidence that this was a hoax.

Story developing.

Looks like the documents that 60 Minutes showed "proving" Bush hadn't completed his National Guard duties were made with MS Word. 

Not too much copies of Windows were running in the 70s.

Apparently the new Grand Theft Auto game will require that you work out to stay in shape -- in the game. Now, why would I do something in a game that I won't bother to do in real life?

It reminds me of the early days of playing Ultima Online:

[Select Mining Pick]
[Target Rock]
"No ore found"

[Select Mining Pick]
[Target Rock]
"No ore found"

[Select Mining Pick]
[Target Rock]
["Iron Ore found. 1/1000 units to create ingot. 50 ingots needed for 1 gold coin. 10 gold coins needed to purchase leather boots."]

(much time passes)

[Purchase: Leather boots]

"I'm going to go exploring!"

["You are traveling the path, a group of travelers stand in the road."]

[Draginol speaks: "Hi Guys! Seen anything cool?"]

[l33tDude Casts Fireball]

[Draginol Dies]

["You have died. Items lost: Leather boots."]

["You have been resurrected near the iron mine. 0/1000 iron units in hand to create ingot. 50 ingots needed for 1 gold. You have 0 gold."]

This is what leads to people going onto eBay and buying a buff character. 20 minutes later and $50 poorer.

[["You are traveling the path, a group of travelers stand in the road."]

["BastardDraginol casts chain lightning"]

["l33tDude dies"]
["Megadeath dies"]
["OwnzU dies"]
["NBKillR dies"]

So the question is, will we be able to buy bad ass Grand Theft Auto guys from eBay?

Just so that everyone is aware: This is not an official support channel.

PoliticalMachine.com is run by Stardock. We are the software developer who wrote the game. This support channel isn't an "official" channel. The official support options for the game are in the back of The Political Machine user manual.

So any support we provide is in addition to those channels. Think of this forum as the last line of defense, it shouldn't be your first option. I.e. this forum is not sanctioned by Ubi Soft in any way to provide support for the game. It's just there because we want to make sure you, our customers, are taken care of.  We have full confidence in Ubi Soft's support abilities and provide this merely as an extension of those support channels.

DesktopX 2.21 has been released.  DesktopX is a program that extends Windows to support true objects on the desktop. These objects are used to do everything from have "super icons" to being combined together to create "widgets" as well as building entire desktops.

DesktopX is actually what Stardock used to develop the user interface in The Political Machine. With DesktopX, Stardock was able to create the actual game screens and prototype them at the same time. The finished screens were then exported out of DesktopX and are read in by the 3D engine in The Political Machine to display the screens. As a result, Stardock's graphics team could literally draw up the user interface how they want including fonts, positioning, alpha blending, etc. 

This same technology will be used to create Galactic Civilizations II. 

DesktopX is a free download at http://www.desktopx.net

Included in this ZIP is a file we hope will fix the following:

1) The endorsement crash problem (Cause: Windows 98 handles INI files differently than other OSes)

2) "Cannot initialize display" (Working attempt here is to try to force into various other modes in the driver to see if we can get around it)

3) Game crashes after intro.

If you're not running into any problems, then don't bother with this.

https://www.stardock.com/private/test102.zip

Unzip into your political machine directory. Only works on the full version and you still need your CD on the drive and such.

DesktopX 2.21 has been released.  DesktopX is a program that extends Windows to support true objects on the desktop. These objects are used to do everything from have "super icons" to being combined together to create "widgets" as well as building entire desktops.

Version 2.21 is mostly an update for those who like to create widgets and themes but has some memory saving features as well:

• Smart-Bitmap Loading to support animated multi-state objects/widgets
• Widgets now have their own name space
• Holding down the Ctrl Key will always move/select an object in DesktopX regardless of how it's grouped
• Sub-Child activation fixed (clicking on a parent object will activate its children and those children will activate their children and so forth)
• DX labels not responding correctly to resolution changing
• Includes new Weather widget that has features for changing color on the fly and other goodies.
• Bundled objects and widgets updated to better show off what DesktopX can do.