We ban griefers. We can even IP ban someone. But if someone really wants to get at a given blogger, they can via anonymous accounts. For those of you who have blogs who feel like they're getting stalked by trolls and other jerks, you can stop them. When you create an article, only allow registerd users to respond to your article. That way, you have some say over who can interact on your site. It's important to keep perspective on your blog site - IT'S YOUR OWN BLOG. You don't have to p...
A couple months ago I wrote why Bush may not get my vote . I'm still not thrilled with Bush but I do know I won't vote for John Kerry. Some of my reasons for not supporting Kerry are straight forward philosophical disagreements on his views on foreign policy and his view of the role of the federal government. Others are less tangible. So let me go through my reasons why I don't support Kerry: 1) I don't trust Kerry to be an effective leader in foreign policy. Will Kerry see th...
The strange thing is that the press seems to treat illegitimate votes as a kind of noise, a kind of tolerable if unfortunate democratic static, while intimidated no-shows are a travesty against all that is holy. Yet, and this should be obvious, in terms of the aggregative democratic procedure, an unnoticed illegal vote for one guy (in a two horse race) is EXACTLY EQUIVALENT to scaring off a voter for the other guy. If somebody's dog manages to vote for John Kerry, then, in effect, Velma T...
Making computer games has its drawbacks. But one nice thing about them is that you know when they succeed. They can succeed commercially (i.e. make a profit) and they can succeed critically. With The Political Machine , it appears we've done both. Which lets us breathe a sigh of relief because it was a very close thing for us. I had the idea for the game floating around my head since the 2000 election. And even before that, I had given some thought to doing a game based on poli...
Imagine if we hadn't invaded Iraq. How would the election be different? Well, first we now know that the oil for food program was a total scam. We also know Saddam was in the process of bribing France, Russia, and China in the hopes of ending sanctions. We still wouldn't have gotten Osama Bin Laden in all likelyhood so there would be this terrorist dictator in Saddam who was openly opposing us who, by all accounts in 2003, was in possession of WMDs with every intent to aid terrorists. T...
This is a response to the associated link. Was going to make it a response but the amount of editing it would take made it too time consuming. So I used Blog Navigator Pro to do it up in its built in blog editor. Questions to conservatives: Why is it that the right attacks anyone who questions the war in Iraq for not supporting our troops, yet impugns a decorated war veteran's integrity, including things like purple heart band-aids? Why is it members of the military tell me tha...
Predictably, when someone talks about anti-Americanism the far left will begin distorting it to sound like that if you criticize your country then you are "UnAmerican". Pretty soon, the original point is turned into a charactiture of itself and the original author's points are ridiculed into oblivion. Criticizing the policies of your country does not make you unpatriotic. Not agreeing with the US President doesn't make you anti-American. The intellectually lazy may find it appeali...
Demographically, the Democratic party base is largely made up of two groups: The rich and the poor. If only the middle class voted, the Democratic party would become an endangered species. Yet it's Democrats who seem most inclined to raise taxes. Why would they raise taxes if its leaders are so rich? The reason is that there are rich people and then there are rich people. The rich portion of the Democratic base aren't people earning money in the traditional sense. They inherit it or th...
Check out this really interesting debate between two well informed debaters on the subject of Iraq.
Polls are interesting things but statistical analysis is my thing. And based on our models in The Political Machine, Kerry is going to squeak out a victory in November barring a sudden change in events. The Florida of 2004 may be where you least expect it - Iowa. Ohio and Iowa are going to be the key states this time. But it is Iowa that people should be keeping an eye on even more so than Ohio or Florida. It has a relatively low population which creates all kinds of opportunity for mes...
Kerry's decision to use Cheney's daughter as a political prop in the last debate may come back to haunt him. Non-parents don't seem to get the big deal but most parents I know (left or right) are pretty outraged by it. It may turn out to be the blunder that costs Kerry in Ohio which is the key state in this election. One good article on the issue can be found here: http://thoughtsonline.blogspot.com/2004/10/james-taranto-and-others-may-be-right.html Imagine if Bush had talked about how t...
My 15 minutes of fame got a boost this week when I was on MSNBC's show with Lester Holt to pimp The Political Machine . It was the same weird stare into the camera with only an ear piece without being able to see the other person. But it went well. With the race so close, it's not surprising sales have been so strong on it and it's gotten so much attention. There's a post-mortem up now on how The Political Machine was made and it's created quite a buzz because of how quickly it was ...
Stephen Green is pretty ticked off with how Democrats are trying to undermine the US election with their shenegans. Read it for yourself. And here's a running tally of voter fraud. Slate has some interesting views on the whole Cheney's Daughter is gay thing . My own point is fairly succinct: If Cheney's daughter were suffering from Parkison's disease, would it have been acceptable for Kerry to bring her up as a reason to fund fetal stem cell research? Perhaps you would think that's oka...
Kerry seemed a bit off his game today and Bush seemed very much on his game. This time I give Bush the edge. He seemed relaxed, strong on the issues, and got all his points out. Kerry wasn't that bad but he was a lot more defensive than I would have thought. I don't think it will make much difference though. Bush blew the first debate so badly when the audience was so big. The audience here was much smaller than it was in the first debate. Kerry also played a bit of dirty pool wit...
So far both Kerry and Bush look pretty good. What do you think?