Commando (Various, 1985-1989. Residual of the War Games series)

You guys remember this series, right? From before the midterms. Well, the Left has been at it again this past month or so. Let’s take a look at Commando, some comments I had originally planned, and of course the principle topic at hand- Iran.

The Game

From the Atari 7800 version

It’s basically the same on every system: a vertically-scrolling shooter that is very hard to play, like all arcade games- remember, these aren’t designed for you to beat, these are designed to eat your quarters by killing you early and killing you often.

It’s much like Guerrilla War, except Guerrilla War came second and it was fun because I didn’t have to worry about running out of lives. Dying every 5 seconds, meaning a total of 15 seconds of gameplay, isn’t conducive to a good time. As I mentioned in Guerrilla War, these games about wars of attrition were designed to bankrupt you through attrition- depleting your supply of money until you had none, never letting you actually win. When translating this from arcade to video game system, the developers decided that they’d just give us a ludicrously tiny amount of lives to get through the game since we can’t pop quarters into our console. So while in the arcade you might’ve been able to beat the game after spending $50 worth of quarters to get 200 lives or whatever, at home you have 3 or so. Now you see the problem?

Maybe that’s a lie for the Atari 2600 release- this looks like a desert. This is  almost the same scene as shown above in the Atari 7800 release, just scrolled a little farther up.

Anyway, the story of the game is that you’re a soldier in a jungle shooting enemies and rescuing your allies. That’s about it. I guess it’s a video game adaptation of Rambo: First Blood Part II, except you weren’t sent on this mission by one of the space hippies from “The Way To Eden“.

I can’t really say much more than that, because I am not a skilled enough player to make it to the end without a code for more lives. I do not know how a mortal human would be able to do that, on any release of this game.

The Jungle

When I was first writing this pre-2018 midterms, I had a vague idea about mentioning the Left loosing Vietnam for us 50 years ago, and then demanding we fight another war that they’ll make us lose- with Russia this time. Democratic Presidential hopeful Eric Swalwell made it clear last month that they still view what Russia did as an act of war, at the very time Swalwell’s fellow House Democrats wanted to cut defense spending, a move which fellow Democratic Presidential hopeful Bernie Sanders supports (the cutting part, not necessarily what to do with it).

Now you may ask yourself– why would a political party want to cut military spending while demanding a war, so that we are assured a loss? The real reason probably is due to the following:

• Democrats usually are all about cutting the military.
• The Democrats talked themselves into a warmongering corner when trying to stir hatred against Russia as a scapegoat for Hillary’s pathetic 2016 performance (she lost again to a first-timer, a much-maligned first-timer, in fact more people voted for the Republican and Libertarian candidates than the Leftwing ones).
• The “America is evil” Progressive Caucus is running the show, and they’re the totally oblivious (I am starting to want to go easy on Omar, because I’m wondering if her rampant anti-Semitism really is just stupidity) sloganeering socialists that Nikita Khrushchev warned us about, so they don’t even pay attention to what their moves are doing in relation to policy overall or the rest of the party (or they do, and they hope we lose a war). Seriously, they think that causing economic turmoil and then printing an infinite amount of money is the best way to pay for their big spending plans, so either they have less understanding of the economy than Homer Simpson or they are looking to sabotage it (which if true could mean they also are onboard with the idea of forcing the U.S. to fight a war that their legislation ensured we’d lose).

This is from the PS2 release, as part of a collection of other arcade ports. I suppose it’s “arcade perfect”.

Of course the most likely reasons are no fun. Let’s run with the speculative reasons- let’s assume that the Progressive Caucus is smart and trying to destroy the country to make way for globalization or Latino Supremacy or to create a socialist paradise or whatever, and their beliefs are what Democrats themselves believe as a whole, but which the party sweeps under the rug when it comes time to woo independents for elections (kind of like when they promised (over 50 on the campaign trail, yet only 15 didn’t vote for her) on the campaign trail not to elect Pelosi as House Speaker). Remember- Vietnam was only unwinnable in the eyes of the media (I assume Lefty Cronkite lied about the Tet Offensive, rather than merely getting it wrong) and Democrats in Congress, who stabbed our South Vietnam allies in the back with specially-made punji sticks of betrayal. Also, remember that it reeeeallllly looks like the Left sank our economy just to win the 2008 elections. Making us lose a war so that their communist buddies look more appealing on the world stage, sinking capitalism leading to the rise of socialism amongst millennials: like I said, it’s fun to speculate, and it sure looks right (unless you’re a real Leftist, because I’ve talked to one who’s active in the community and it was reported to me that Bernie and AOC are too far to the Right and thus not true Leftists).

 

The Desert

The NES version. The ground at the top is darker than it should be; it should be the same color as the ground at the bottom. I may have mentioned before that my HD screen does this when I take pictures of it while using it as a TV.

Checked off Russia and Vietnam and wildly factual speculation, so now we move on to something thematically similar: Iran. Democrats figure that Trump is evil for backing out of glorious Obama’s deal to pay Iran $1.7 Billion up front and a few billion down the road in sanctions relief and corporate opportunities in exchange for Iran building a nuclear weapon around 2028 instead of in 2016. We’re told that the Iran deal was working even though some people on the Left (I just assume offhand The Atlantic is Left, based on stuff I’ve seen from them, and Alan Dershowitz is on the Left- he voted for Obama and Clinton) are saying it wasn’t.

 

On the Iran question, Democrats want to remove Presidential powers in the area of armed conflict, to prevent Trump from going to war without consulting Congress. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer made an extremely wrong statement about Congress’ role. He said that Congress wants legislation passed so that the President has to consult with them, and states that such a thing would have prevented us from getting into the Iraq War. Several issues came to mind off the top of my head:

1. Congress was all-in on the Iraq War, so even with more power then we’d still have seen Senator Chuck Schumer vote to support it as he did in 2002.
2. New York Times and Washington Post both reported that Iraq actually had WMDs, and an Obama Administration official thought that it’s possible that the Syrian chemical weapons Obama/the world/Obama again (depending on when you asked Obama) set a red line about were the missing ones from Iraq.
3. Why is Schumer taking a stand now? Obama and Clinton misled us into a war with Libya, without Congress. Why wasn’t Schumer so hot on repealing Presidential powers then?
4. Why was Schumer quiet when Obama talked about striking Syria without Congressional approval?

Obviously Schumer’s views are shared by his Democratic colleagues, otherwise they wouldn’t have made him their leader.

What Do You Think?

Here’s the bridge in the Atari 7800 version. Either I didn’t get to it in the 2600 version or I couldn’t find the pictures.

Uhhhhh… yeah, I can’t really do the usual response this category of post ended with. The Left is too confused on what it wants. It wants the U.S. to disarm and stop with these imperialist wars, so it backs warmongering liars who supported said imperialist wars, but then oppose a war in Iran even though it’d be the same as the Syria and Libya strikes they loved under Obama. Is their aim to have endless (Democrat-caused) wars? Is their aim to disarm us so we can’t fight wars? Is their aim to disarm us so that we’re conquered during one of the wars they start? Maybe they don’t have any aims, maybe they’re just saying the first thing they think of that sounds good. Or maybe the party is fractured and only acts unified when it comes time to win elections.

Nah, it isn’t that last one. The House has been pretty unified when it comes to measures aimed at destroying America, like their bill that forces taxpayers to fund Democrat campaigns (and Republican campaigns allegedly, but since when have liberal bureaucrats applied the rules equally?) whether they want to or not (and do a bunch of other stuff, like more easily send mobs after people that donate to the wrong organization). It reminds me of something Khrushchev said, about how candidates for elections weren’t chosen by the people, but rather by the secret police. And we all know how liberals love Stalinism.

I forgot to get the “Game Over” picture, and I spent 45 minutes going through my picture folders earlier trying to find all the ones for these games. I don’t have the ability to do that now, so please settle for this image of the government guy that was ordering Rambo around and then abandoned him in First Blood II. Image from Memory Alpha.