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I went to the fox news link because I normally do not like fox. Both sides are equally terrible and bias. This though, I have say MSNBC's Geist needs to calm down. The GOP is great for us, as much as the Democratic party but too call all GOP members a Pedo is a little outrageous.

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MSNBC's Willie Geist: If Roy Moore Wins, GOP 'Will Be the Party of a Pedophile'

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"Morning Joe" co-host Willie Geist said that if Judge Roy Moore (R-Ala.) is successful in taking Attorney General Jeff Sessions' former Senate seat, the GOP will be "the party of a pedophile."

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Doug Jones uses Moore's victims to gain votes

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Doug Jones uses Moore's victims to gain votes

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This article talks about how Doug Jones, a candidate running for the office position held by Roy Moore, uses his opponent’s sexual victims to gain voters. The attack on Roy Moore for the accusations against him is not bad at all because if what these women are saying is true, then Roy is a piece of garbage and needs to be dealt with. My actual problem with the fact that Doug Jones is using this, is he mentions names and shows pictures of the victims in his campaign ad. These women are already hurt from the abuse and assault that they said they received. Just like everything bad in this country that happens like shootings to push anti-gun agendas or if Starbucks did or didn’t put Christian items on their coffee cups, the using of misfortune to push agendas is becoming ridiculous. This Doug Jones and his campaign staff should really have consequences for this video. To bring out the fact Moore did this is fine, but to mention those victimize for your benefit is ridiculous. Let your values and your policies do the talking, stop trying to make gain off others misfortune. Let the world know what Moore did and let that in itself do the talking.

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Doug Jones's Senate campaign called Roy Moore a sexual "abuser" in an advertisement released Wednesday, its bluntest attack yet against the Republican candidate's alleged history of pursuing teenage girls sexually, some of them underage.

The commercial lists the accusers by name, beginning with Leigh Corfman, the woman at the center of a Washington Post story who said Moore touched her genitals over her undergarments during a sexual encounter when she was 14. The spot displays an accompanying photo of Corfman as a youth, and does the same for six additional women who have come forward.

"And the list is growing," the narrator states. "They were girls when Roy Moore immorally purused them. Now they are women, witnesses to us all of his disturbing conduct. Will we make their abuser a U.S. senator?"

The claims against Moore have defined the Alabama Senate race without Jones's help, as the local and national press have reported further on his behavior in his 30s, when he widely was said to check out a Gadsden, Ala., mall for high school-age girls. More women than Corfman and three others who were the subjects of the Post's report have shared their own experiences with Moore since, including Beverly Young Nelson, who is represented by Gloria Allred.

Moore's campaign has honed in on Nelson's account and made an issue of Allred's involvement, but has issued only blanket denials of the other allegations against him.

A strategist for Jones's campaign told me last week that their side's intention was "to stick with" a positive message moving forward, despite the release of a separate ad November 14 making points like, "Don't decency and integrity matter anymore?"

"Judge Moore has a strong, strong base, and I don't know," [Sen. Billy] Beasley tells me, pausing. "My gut says they'll stay with him. But I think that Doug Jones the last 10 to 14 days has been gaining, his media has been good, and he's expressed the fact that he has the ability to work across political lines."

Jones's campaign released an advertisement on November 14 featuring Republican voters who said they couldn't cast a ballot for Moore in light of the accusers coming forward. "You read the story and it just shakes you," one woman says. "Don't decency and integrity matter anymore?" "Just awful," says another.

[Giles] Perkins, the Jones strategist, says the ad doesn't reflect a wider shift in campaign strategy. "We're hopeful that Doug Jones's positive message will continue to resonate, and it's our intention to stick with that," he says.

The spot shared Wednesday is in a different class of "hard-hitting." A Jones spokesman hadn't returned a request for comment on the campaign's approach to the accusations against Moore by the time of publication.

The race appears to be in the neighborhood of a dead heat. A WBRC/Strategy Research poll conducted Monday showed Moore with a two-point advantage, but surveys have been erratic and sometimes favored Jones in the wake of the mounting claims against the Republican. Read more from my colleague David Byler on how to interpret all the numbers and what to watch in advance of Election Day, Dec. 12.

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Doug Jones Ad Names Moore Accusers: 'Will We Make Their Abuser a U.S. Senator?'

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Doug Jones's Senate campaign called Roy Moore a sexual "abuser" in an advertisement released Wednesday, its bluntest attack yet against the Republican candidate's alleged history of pursuing teenage girls sexually, some of them underage.

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Gaming is only gambling when your loot boxes actually affect your perform to others. EA with Battlefield 2 was selling heroes at high value or making you play 40 hours per hero to unlock. Games like Overwatch, have loot boxes that are just appearance. It comes down to us as a customer, we have allowed extra money to be spent and the developers always want more money.

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This is due to an industry-wide move to offer players in-game purchases. There are many kinds of items you can buy in today's video games. One common type is an "item box," which is also known as a "loot crate." You don't buy the loot crates directly, of course. First, you purchase in-game currency (often in the form of "gold" or "tokens") and then you use this virtual cash to buy your loot crate.

The catch is that your real-world money is being used to buy virtual goods that are often awarded randomly. Which looks a lot like gambling.

While gamers understand that software development isn't cheap and that it takes money to maintain the servers which allowing them to battle their friends online, the trend towards what's known as "microtransactions" may be the bridge too far in terms of what they'll accept. Many gamers now feel the industry views them as nothing more than a piggy bank being nickeled and dimed with things like bonus downloadable content (which you have to pay for, in order to get the complete game), "Season Passes," and now loot crates.

All of which could eventually lead to calls for industry regulation on Capitol Hill.

With the Christmas shopping season upon us, non-gaming readers might be surprised to discover that the $60 you spend for a video game may not be the final amount you spend on it. In fact, it might be just the beginning.

With many of the biggest game titles now having production budgets equaling those of blockbuster movies, publishers are doing all they can to turn games from being one-off purchases into revenue-producing platforms. That's where microtransactions come in.

They began with paid downloadable content, or DLC. With DLC, developers continue adding onto a game after the version which was initially purchased. Gamers are then asked to buy either "character packs" (where new playable characters are added to the game's existing roster) or "story expansion packs" (which add hours of new experiences to the game).

This DLC scheme morphed into "Season Passes," where gamers are asked to pay for all DLC upfront (often at initial purchase) with a promise the publisher would maintain game content for another year or two. Those who don't buy Season Passes could still get the DLC, but often much later than early adopters and at a higher price.

Now has come the era of the loot crate, whose origins can be traced back to "Free to Play" games on cellphones and Facebook. You've heard of a friend who put hundreds of dollars into a simple game such as Candy Crush or Farmville. Those were microtransactions.

Loot crates first appeared on console games in BioWare's Mass Effect 3. Players could buy largely cosmetic items, such as pieces of armor or new designs for weapons. More recent games like Blizzard's Overwatch offer gamers only randomly-determined cosmetic changes. This would mean gamers could receive things like alternate or seasonally-themed costumes, in-game emotes which let you "strike a pose," or even pets for their characters.

This cute addition to games is now big business for developers. One industry estimate is that one-third of all gaming revenue in 2016 came from microtransactions. Blizzard's parent company, Activision, reported making over $3.6 billion through in-game content sales from Overwatch and the Call of Duty series. Electronic Arts told its shareholders they made over $1.68 billion in 2017 from microtransactions. Ubisoft, creators of the Assassin's Creed series, reported it made more revenue in 2017 off microtransactions than actual digital games sales.

Naturally, all this nickeling and diming has created resentment among gamers. But loot crates are different. They aren't traditional transactions because the randomness creates artificial scarcity and hides the true cost of what's being purchased.

And remember: There is no such thing true randomness with computers. Which means that the loot crates pay off not "randomly," but occurring to a predetermined probability scale created by the seller but hidden from the buyer. Like a slot machine.

Videogame publishers counter with three arguments. First, if you don't want to buy it, you don't have to. Second, every item found in a loot box can be found through the game's natural progression, it would only take the application of a player's time. Finally, very few of the items obtained from loot boxes affect gameplay.

The industry's internal watchdog, the American-based Electronic Software Rating Board (ESRB) backs that view, telling IGN in October it did not consider loot boxes gambling:

While there's an element of chance in these mechanics, the player is always guaranteed to receive in-game content (even if the player unfortunately receives something they don't want). We think of it as a similar principle to collectible card games: Sometimes you'll open a pack and get a brand new holographic card you've had your eye on for a while. But other times you'll end up with a pack of cards you already have.

Should there be any gambling or gambling related mechanics in a game, ESRB assigns one of twocontent descriptors as part of the rating: "Simulated Gambling" (player can simulate gambling without betting or wagering real cash or currency) and "Real Gambling" (player can actually gamble, including betting or wagering real cash or currency). If there is any real gambling in a game or app it will always receive an Adults Only rating.

And all of that held true until EA released Star Wars Battlefront II earlier this month.

Battlefront II is the second in a series of massive-multiplayer online (MMO) games EA has released since securing the Star Wars license in 2013. It was a highly-anticipated game where much of the marketing focused on its single-player storyline where gamers found themselves not playing as fan-favorite heroes such as Luke Skywalker, but as a brand-new character fighting for the "evil" Imperial Forces against the Rebel Alliance.

On the surface it sounded great, until players joined the public Beta and found that the multiplayer-where gamers would be spending most of their time-was an absolute mess. Players quickly noticed character skill progression was based on using an in-game item called "Star Cards." While players received Star Cards through grinding away, the only way to get the best Star Cards was through the purchase of in-game loot crates bought with "crystals," the in-game currency.

How do you get crystals? Why with real money of course.

Suddenly Battlefront II was deemed "Pay to Win" by the gaming community. It's one thing when loot crates give you a new costume. It's another when they dictate game-play balance.

Since EA closed the Beta, it's been fighting a losing public relations battle. The publisher quickly announced changes to character progression, lowered the in-game cost needed to unlock popular characters (such as Darth Vader), and shut down all microtransactions on the eve of the game's release.

But even as EA stumbles through Battlefront II's controversy, they may have unintentionally ushered in an era of industry regulation.

Earlier this month, Belgium's Gaming Commission began an investigation into the Overwatch and Battlefront II loot crates systems to determine if they qualify as gambling. A similar one in the United Kingdom launched by an online petition drive found no wrongdoing. However, government officials have promised to "keep the matter under review."

Similar petitions have demanded the ESRB reverse its designation on loot crates which has garnered signatures from around the globe.

While any Belgian fines these companies face would be minimal, if other nations follow suit the domino effect could disrupt the industry. The ESRB and its international counterparts would almost certainly declare any game with loot boxes as "Adult Only" games, which could put a damper on sales.

And if you think loot-crate investigations could never come to America, you're crazy. All it took to jumpstart the 1993 Senate hearings on violent video games was for the 9 year-old son of a Joe Lieberman staffer to ask his parents for Mortal Kombat that Christmas.

How difficult would it be to find someone who's spent their way into bankruptcy buying loot crates to headline a similar hearing? Or to dig up parents whose child has maxed out their credit cards trying to get a certain item or skill set?

Whether they want to admit it or not, the video game industry needs to get a handle on this self-created problem. They need to do as they did in 1994 and regulate themselves to an acceptable standard. Otherwise Washington bureaucrats could well do it for them.

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Watch Out: Video Games May Be Turning Into Gambling

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This is due to an industry-wide move to offer players in-game purchases. There are many kinds of items you can buy in today's video games. One common type is an "item box," which is also known as a "loot crate." You don't buy the loot crates directly, of course.