So you weren't at PAX last weekend, and didn't play Duke Nukem Forever? Well, then you probably agree with Gearbox's Randy Pitchford when he says that a playable demo for the mythical title is probably "an important thing to do." That's not a confirmation but, now that the cat's out of the bag, the company will start investigating ways to effectively market the game. Putting a demo in the hands of a skeptical audience is a good start, if PAX is any indication.

If you missed it, you might still think of Duke Nukem Forever as vaporware, and remain convinced that Gearbox told PAX attendees that "it would be really funny" if they all pretended the game was playable. Wouldn't it be nice to lay your extremely paranoid fears to rest?

Pitchford: Duke Nukem Forever demo an 'important thing to do' originally appeared on Joystiq on Mon, 06 Sep 2010 19:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Continue reading NintendoWare Weekly: Fenimore Fillmore, Samurai Shodown 3

NintendoWare Weekly: Fenimore Fillmore, Samurai Shodown 3 originally appeared on Joystiq on Mon, 06 Sep 2010 15:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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While the latest polls indicate Sen. David Vitter (R-LA) has a commanding lead on his Democratic opponent Rep. Charlie Melancon (D-LA), the top Republican in the state — Gov. Bobby Jindal — still refuses to give the scandal-plauged incumbent Senator his endorsement:

“Voters can make up their own minds,” Jindal said.

The Republican governor said he does not get involved in federal races.

However, Jindal was a special guest at a 2008 fundraiser for Baton Rouge Rep. Bill Cassidy’s campaign.

The governor also endorsed Woody Jenkins in his failed bid for Congress.

Last week, the Louisiana Democratic Party produced a five-and-a-half minute video documenting Vitter’s prostitution scandals. (HT: Political Wire)

Bungie revealed an interesting tidbit about the creation of Noble, the protagonist Spartan squad engulfed in the conflict on the titular planet in Halo: Reach. There were initially more members of the team, though two were eventually cut in favor of the five in the final Noble team we know today (excluding Noble Six, the player character in Halo: Reach).

"Back in the early days, we talked a lot about The Magnificent Seven and The Seven Samurai," Lee Wilson, story and cinematics lead, said. "And yes, originally, there were seven Spartans. Here's a little bit of trivia for you guys: Rosetta and Tom, yes, were two of the Spartans we had to cut, unfortunately."

Wilson described Rosetta as being "sassy," while Tom was "a cowboy." If you need us, we'll be pouring one out for the first casualties in the Fall of Reach.

Halo: Reach's Spartans who didn't make the cut originally appeared on Joystiq on Sat, 04 Sep 2010 22:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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When DeathSpank: Thongs of Virtue was first introduced, we were baffled by the mysterious origin of the game's various undergarments of legend. Now that we know where they're from -- thanks to this latest trailer, care of PAX -- well, we're just as baffled. Head past the break and see for yourself.

Continue reading DeathSpank: Thongs of Virtue's virtuous thongs: explained!

DeathSpank: Thongs of Virtue's virtuous thongs: explained! originally appeared on Joystiq on Mon, 06 Sep 2010 05:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Since Congress passed its health care legislation expanding health insurance to tens of millions of Americans earlier this year, leading conservatives have debated about the best way to oppose it. Some have advocated for simply repealing the entire bill wholesale, while others have argued for a “repeal and replace” strategy that would replace the legislation with a yet-to-be-determined conservative plan for health care.

Scott Tipton, the Republican candidate for Colorado’s 3rd Congressional District, is advocating for a third option: rather than repealing the legislation or replacing it with something else, he wants to “choke off funding” for the legislation, effectively stifling its effectiveness without doing anything to improve the U.S. health care system:

The Republican candidate for the 3rd Congressional District called for reductions in the size of the federal government and said he would vote to ?choke off funding? for health-care legislation passed by the current Congress. Scott Tipton spoke to about 110 people, most of them supporters, Thursday night in a town-hall meeting in the Grand Junction City Council chambers. [...]

Health-care legislation will cost $2.2 trillion over the next 10 years, Tipton said, and the only way to bring those costs under control is to cut them in the House, which controls the nation?s purse strings.

Tipton’s desire to “defund” health reform has previously been floated by Rep. Michael Burgess (R-TX) and Newt Gingrich.

Purely on the facts, Tipton is wrong to imply that cutting off funding for the recently passed health care bill would rein in the deficit. The bill already serves to cut the deficit, and repealing certain provisions or denying them the funds to be utilized would only end up costing the country more in the long run.

Putting deficit concerns aside, a far greater cost to denying funding for the legislation would be borne by the 3rd District Coloradans that Tipton is running to represent. As of estimates made in 2009, a quarter of the people in the district lacked any sort of health care coverage whatsoever. Hospitals in the district who have to care for these uninsured residents without compensation have calculated that they’ve paid “$94 million in annual uncompensated care costs in recent years.” When a surgery center in the district offered free care to residents one day late last year, people were so desperate to be able to be one of the few the center was able to take care of that some of them slept in its parking lot (less than half were actually offered care).

Thanks to Congress’s recently passed bill, an additional 106,000 district residents will be able to get insured and hospitals will be able to reduce the funds they spend on uninsured residents by $84 million annually. That is, if the legislation is fully funded. If Tipton gets his way, more than a hundred thousand people in his district will be unable to get health insurance, and hospitals will continue to expend countless tens of millions of dollars on caring for the uninsured.

Discussing President Obama’s Tuesday Iraq speech on Fox News Sunday’s morning panel, “fair and balanced” moderator Chris Wallace cited Obama’s discussion of the economy in order to ask the panelists, “Is it unfair to say that this a president whose heart doesn’t seem to be into winning the war on terror”:

WALLACE: In that speech, to say “my central mission is to restore the economy,” is it unfair to say that this a president whose heart doesn’t seem to be into winning the war on terror, no matter what it costs?

STEPHEN HAYES, WEEKLY STANDARD: No, I don’t think that’s at all unfair, and the reason you can say that is if you look back at his inaugural address, the key paragraph is the paragraph in which he describes what he called “the crisis now well understood.” In that paragraph he mentions, in one sentence, the war on terror, and then he goes on and gives a litany of economic, domestic policy problems. He talks about schools, he talks about health care, he talks about job losses, he talks about homes. This is how the president thinks, so to a certain extent there’s no question that this is driven by polls, by the potential that people are perceiving him as focused on Afghanistan or he’s talking too much about other things, not the economy. He wanted to talk about the economy. But more fundamentally, this is how the president thinks, for better or worse.

Watch it:

Even leaving aside why anyone should treat a discredited Saddam-Al Qaeda conspiracy theorist like Hayes as credible on anything, this is pretty pathetic. Hayes cites a stage-setting passage from the top of Obama’s inaugural address in order to argue that Obama doesn’t care about national security, ignoring that Obama later spent five full paragraphs of that speech solely on national security.

While it’s true that Obama has a number of challenges on his plate, many resulting from the staggering incompetence of his predecessor, there’s simply no reality-based argument that President Obama hasn’t been completely engaged on national security. In contrast to the Bush administration, which needlessly and disastrously conflated and confused who the real threat was, since taking office, Obama has relentlessly focused on al Qaeda and significantly intensified U.S. efforts to find, frustrate and destroy al Qaeda’s terrorist infrastructure. But for Fox News, nothing will ever be enough.

The larger issue, however, is Obama’s correct understanding of the importance of the relationship between America’s domestic economic security and our national security. What conservatives like Hayes and Wallace apparently don’t get is that without a strong economy, America’s ability to project power and achieve its international goals is seriously diminished. America’s economic health isn’t peripheral to America’s national security, it’s central to it.

Fresh off its victory over Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-AK), the Tea Party Express is setting its sights on taking down Rep. Mike Castle (R-DE) in Delaware’s Republican Senate primary. Castle, regarded as the moderate in the race, is facing a spirited challenge from Tea Party candidate Christine O’Donnell. A new poll shows the race within single digits and the Tea Party Express is committing over $250,000 on O’Donnell’s behalf.

As with Tea Party candidates Pat Toomey in Pennsylvania, Mike Lee in Utah, Rand Paul in Kentucky, Ken Buck in Colorado, Joe Miller in Alaska, and Marco Rubio in Florida, the Republican establishment is trying to fend off O’Donnell’s primary candidacy. However, rather than learn from these defeats and take a more muted approach in future contested primaries, the Republican establishment is doubling down on its anti-Tea Party strategy.

Yesterday, the Republican Party of Delaware released a statement, calling O’Donnell “reckless,” “hypocritical,” and “dishonest”:

As the facts continue to emerge regarding perennial candidate Christine O?Donnell?s reckless and hypocritical behavior, I wanted to highlight some of the key media coverage her dishonest campaign has received over the last 24 hours?

Days earlier, Delaware GOP Chairman Tom Ross derided O’Donnell as a “troubled perennial candidate” who is “not electable in Delaware or anywhere else for that matter”:

Ross noted ‘while it is disappointing that the Tea Party Express has not done any due diligence on troubled perennial candidate Christine O?Donnell, it is our hope that they will investigate her half-truths and outright lies before squandering tens of thousands of dollars on a candidate who is not electable in Delaware or anywhere else for that matter.’

Indeed, the Delaware GOP doesn’t even list O’Donnell as a candidate on its website.

As Dave Weigel notes, these statements are “some swipe from the GOP.” If O’Donnell wins next Tuesday’s primary, will the Delaware GOP even support a candidate they view as dishonest and unelectable?

The new labor report released this morning finds that unemployment rose last month to 9.6 percent. Still, the economy added a better-than-expected 67,000 private sector jobs in August. ?Since its most recent low in December 2009, private-sector employment has risen by 763,000.?

“Republicans have declared 2010 their ‘Year of the Woman,’ but come January, the Senate GOP will be without a female on its leadership team for the first time in nearly a decade.” With the defeat of Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-AK), Senate Republicans are left with just three female senators, but none of them “appear likely to lobby” for Murkowski’s leadership spot.

Sen. Frank Lautenberg (D-NJ) said the explosion aboard a Mariner Energy rig in the Gulf of Mexico yesterday ?is further proof that offshore drilling is an inherently dangerous practice.? Rep. Ed Markey (D-MA) added, ?much is left to be done to keep America?s workers and waters safe from those risks.?

Former Alaska governor Sarah Palin issued a new attack on the media yesterday in the wake of lengthy and critical profiles published in Vanity Fair and New York magazine. “Impotent, limp and gutless reporters take anonymous sources and cite them as being factual references,” she said. “It just slays me because it’s so absolutely clear what the state of yellow journalism is today.”

A new poll released by the New York Times finds that two-thirds of New Yorkers oppose the construction of the Park 51 Islamic community center two blocks from Ground Zero. Opposition is lowest in the Manhattan borough, where 41 percent oppose its construction.

President Obama will hold a press conference in the Rose Garden next week to discuss the steps his administration has taken to fix the economy. The Sept. 10 press conference will come after Obama visits Wisconsin and Ohio for economic events during the week.

Knocking down a report in the Washington Post, Obama administration aides said they are not considering a second stimulus package to jump-start the economy. The administration is considering “more federal spending on infrastructure projects and tax cuts popular with the business community,” and a $55 billion package that would cut small business taxes.

A new report from the Kaiser Family Foundation finds that there was a 14 percent jump in the cost of the average “employer-sponsored family healthcare coverage” plan from last year. “The average worker is now paying roughly $4,000,” annually to purchase such coverage.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas pledged yesterday “to keep meeting at regular intervals, aiming to nail down a framework for overcoming deep disputes and achieving lasting peace within a year.” “You each have taken an important step toward freeing your peoples from the shackles of a history we cannot change,” Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said.

And finally: Walker Texas Ranger star Chuck Norris is raising his political profile, cutting a new web ad for the NRA, to ?trigger? the vote. “In the spot Norris visits a local tea party (complete with chalkboard!) and ?triggers? them to vote.”

ThinkProgress is hiring! Details here.

You know how we told you about DLC for the iPhone and iPad versions of Bit.Trip Beat a few days back? During an appointment with developer Gaijin Games here at PAX, Alex Nouse confirmed the exact nature of the DLC tracks: they're Bit.Trip Void songs!

He informed Joystiq that the tracks weren't actually being developed by Gaijin Games, but rather at Namco. He's looking forward to trying the new tracks, as you'd imagine -- it's not every day you have an opportunity to be stumped by your own game, you know?

Bit.Trip Beat DLC on iPhone/iPad will be Bit.Trip Void tracks originally appeared on Joystiq on Sun, 05 Sep 2010 15:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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