I wish I were more excited about this election.  It's a sad commentary of our political process and its overall nastiness that the best we can do it a John Kerry or George W. Bush.  Two guys who wouldn't have made it through a first round of interviews at most companies. And so that's what we end up with - guys who can't get real jobs end up becoming politicians. Ever heard the saying "Those who can't, teach"?  They should add a corollary to that: Those who can't, teach. And th...

I'll be on MSNBC's Lester Holt Live at around 4:45pm today (EST) if anyone is interested.  I'll be talking about The Political Machine and what it was like developing an artificial intelligence engine to manage the Bush and Kerry campaigns to simulated victory.

Interesting in how games are made? This article at Gamasutra is a look back at what went right and what went wrong during the development of The Political Machine. http://www.gamasutra.com/features/20041011/wardell_01.shtml  

Listening to Hardball right now and Joe Trippie, of MSNBC, is trying to claim that liberals (now called "progressive") dominate the blog.  What a laugh.  Anyone familiar with the blog, for good or bad, know that it's largely a conservative medium. The the top blog sites are almost exclusively conservative. There's a handful of exceptions but it's not very close. It's always interesting to see guys like Chris Mathews trying to argue that the blogsphere is somehow leftwing simply ...

Why do these shows interview so many spin doctors? Like we care what Hilary Clinton thinks on the debate or what Karen Hughs think. We know what they're going to say and it's meaningless. It's just talking points. Does anyone actually take the spinners seriously? I'd rather have the talking heads on there.

As I've said elsewhere, I think Kerry edged out Bush in this debate.  But from reading views around the net and watching the pundits, it seems I am in the minority. But here's a difference: I was driving home from a friend's for most of the debate so I heard the debate on the radio and that was where I felt Kerry was beating Bush. I only saw the last part at home on TV and that I will say that Bush seemed to be doing a bit better. So I wonder if body language and other elements that...

I judge Kerry as the winner again in this debate.  If I were to numerically score this based on my "gut" I'd give it like this: Debate #1: Kerry 5 Bush 2 Debate #2: Cheney 2 Edwards 1 Debate #3: Kerry 5 Bush 4 Total so far: Kerry/Edwards: 11  Bush/Cheney: 8 What do you think?

Bush is doing better this time but he's still totally outclassed by Kerry. The momentum is shifting to Kerry. President Kerry? Republicans may need to get used to that.

The press has been curiously reluctant to report my constant public support for the president's strategy in Iraq and his policies to fight terrorism. I have been involved in the war on terrorism for two decades, and in my view no world leader has better understood the stakes in this global war than President Bush. The president was right when he concluded that Saddam Hussein was a menace who needed to be removed from power. He understands that our enemies are not confined to Al Qaeda, and...

We don't discriminate against who we work with. We look for the best and brightest from all over the world. JoeUser.com's Blog Navigator is developed in Poland. Our documentation is written in UK. Some of our artwork is from Canada and other parts from Brazil.  And a lot of JoeUser.com's upcoming ASP.NET stuff will probably be done in Italy.  Is this a bad thing? I don't think so. Next month we're going to release a Gold Fish Aquarium Desktop. It's incredibly cool. The fish were de...

Here are 5 items that I would like any future President to consider if they want to actually help the United States economcially -- to create new jobs for Americans. #1 Tort reform. People hear about company A suing company B all the time. Or an individual (or group of individuals) suing some company.  I got personally sued this past year. Want to know why? Because my employer (I'm the CEO but it's a class C corporation) didn't agree to just let some company use our popular icon format w...

About a year ago a friend of mine was telling me how satellite radio was going to be the next big thing and that I should buy stock in a company called Sirius Satellite. I'm pretty conservative as an investor, but in a moment of recklessness my wife and I put a considerable chunk of our savings into the Siri stock.  The stock didn't do as well as I had hoped but I continued to believe that I should stick with it. This past summer, I even had a screenshot of me lamenting my decision to...

Cheney appears to have decidedly beaten Edwards.  Edwards just appeared a little bit out of his depth. I think Edwards could have stood up well against Bush, but Cheney just looked like a seasoned pro. I don't think this will have much affect on the polls though as the veeps just don't make that much of a difference. I think the key sound bites were very much in Cheney's favor -- i.e. the sound bites that will get repeated will show Cheney hammering Edwards and that is where it could ...

Where Kerry defeated Bush, so far, watching the veep debate, Cheney is wiping the floor with Edwards. Edwards sounds like he's just a walking talking point droid. Cheney, on the other hand, sounds like a seasoned pro. We'll see how things continue...

Tonight is the vice presidential debate. VP debates don't tend to make that much of a difference in the bigger scheme of things. Usually what happens is that people end up wishing the VPs were at the head of the ticket.  That was certainly the case last time when Cheney and Lieberman got along so well and had a good, spirited debate in which both showed a great deal of respect to one another. I think you will see something similar this year.  Cheney had the Halliburton anchor on ...