Here in Michigan, the senate race isn't as close as one might hope. It's Democrat Debbie Stabenow vs. Republican Mike Bouchard.

Bouchard claims that Stabenow has been cynically avoiding any sort of televised debates. But I have not seen any real evidence of this. Right now, she's got a 9 point lead over Bouchard.

As a business owner, I tend to vote for candidates who favor policies that help businesses. For instance, when my taxes are lowered, I have more capital to hire more people which creates jobs. Debbie Stabenow has often given me the impression that she doesn't understand or agree with the concept that businesses create jobs and when you tax them, you are taking capital away from them. And the federal government is particularly wasteful when it comes to using that confiscated capital.

Still, it's hard to get very excited about Bouchard.  I believe you can tell a lot about a person by their website.  At least in politics, it's hard to sen da message of competence if your website is bad or non functional.  Bouchard's website is far inferior to Stabenow's.

Here is Stabenow's page: http://www.stabenowforsenate.com/

Now here's Bouchard's page: http://www.bouchardforussenate.com/

The first thing you see on Bouchard's page is a blog item about his daughter. Okay, fine. But then you start to click on the top-most buttons and none of them work. You get blank pages. Such sloppiness sends a pretty negative message on competence.  Having such a poor page is certainly going to cost him votes.

I realize that you can't judge a politician by their website (and to be fair, I'm sure this will get fixed in a jiffy) but it makes me less inclined to vote for Bouchard and more inclined to vote for Stabenow (what can I say, I like her). 

Lest someone takes the above paragraph as meaning that I'm a "Cut and Run Conservative" (as Rush Limbaugh kindly labeled me on his show this past week) note the distinction: I am making a pretty obvious observation: Having a web page that looks amateurish is going to cost him votes. I am not saying that I wouldn't vote for him.  But that's only because I've kept closer track on the issues than the typical voter would.  A more casual voter who happens to go to his page and sees that his "Issues" tab is broken is going to not have a positive impression (I'm going to email the webmaster).

It is Day 4 of the Rush Limbaugh railings against frustrated conservatives who might sit out this election.  And once again, Rush has tried to assign motive and intent to me and people like me (given that it was this article  supporting Instapundit's premortem that helped set off this discussion).

My motive? Apparently it's about power. I want to wreck things for the Republicans so that if the Republicans lose in November I can say "See, look at my POOOWEERR!" If Rush bothered to do his research, he'd know that I am not going to any real effort to try to affect the election. I run sites that get over 3 million visitors per day and have over 6 million registered users and the only site I've even been writing about my frustration with Republicans -- and have been for over a year now -- is on my personal blog site on JoeUser.com which gets a trivial amount of traffic by comparison.  What Rush simply refuses to accept is that a lot of bloggers, like most people, may care about politics but they don't care care. We're not on any sort of Jihad. It's not negative energy from conservatives that are causing problems, it's voter apathy.

Given this week's events, I think that it would be easy to get the non-crackpot vote to feel decidedly anti-Republican given some of the rather nasty insinuations Rush has sent my way. I can see it now:

I wrote a blog agreeing with fellow blogger Glenn Reynolds that if the Republicans lose in November that they deserved it and Rush then spent 3 days ripping me a new one on his show demanding in no uncertain terms that we will vote for whoever has an (R) by their name no matter what.  In fact, he went so far today as to coin a new term for conservatives who dare not provide unconditional support to Republicans -- "Cut and run conservatives". 

I have my own term for people who mindlessly vote for a party: Sheep.

I seem to recall Rush and other Republicans ridiculing African Americans and the Unions for voting for Democrats time after time because the Democrats weren't doing much for them.  I guess it's only idiotic to behave like sheep if it's for a Democrat but if you're a conservative, it's your moral duty.

On today's show Rush referred to this article and in response:

By the way, I've got a new name for you conservatives who aren't going to vote out there: Cut-and-Run Conservatives. The Cut-and-Run Conservatives, one of their central themes is, "It's not going to be so bad if Democrats win. The world's not going to come to an end."

So let's define that: Cut-and-Run Conservatives are conservatives who choose not to vote this election cycle because of their frustration with the Republican candidate.  What if they vote for the Libertarian candidate? Are they still cut-and-run? What about conservatives who do vote for the Republican candidate but also don't think that the world is going to end if the Democrats win?

While we're at it, let's flip it around: A TRUE conservative, according to Rush Limbaugh, is a conservative who blindly votes for THE PARTY and believes that should the Democrats win that the world will end.

Wow.  I mean, wow.  When the Democrats say things like that on DemocraticUnderground about Republicans we call them kooks. 

Still testing but here are the changes:

+ Initial Colony buildings have less maintainence.

+ New colonies start out with a population cap of 6 instead of 5.

+ Farms provide less food.

+ Morale buildings have been increased in benefit but techs to get to them cost substantially more.

+ Stock market no longer gives morale bonus (wasn't supposed to in the first place)

+ Updated beam weapon model along with large hull models

+ Updated some of the planetary improvement icons to be prettier

+ Updated Achille's heel, Apocalypse, and Pathfinder missions in the campaign based on player feedback.

+ Tweaks to make money not too hard to get early on but not as easy to get ridiculous levels of money later on (though expert players will still be able to do this).

+ fixed bug where ships on auto-attack would try to attack ships they weren't at war with if the ship was in the way

+ fixed bug with auto attack where it was using the wrong function to check to see if a ship was hidden by the FOW.

+ fixed cheat key to force an AI player to surrender

+ added in code so that when using the CTRL+Z cheat to run the game in AI test mode, it will make the AI take over for the human player

+ fixed bug where ships that were being upgraded but were not selected tried to update the ShipContextWnd, resulting in a crash if the last ship to be selected was deleted

+ fixed a bug where a ship (under certain conditions) could fail to start moving even if it had a path calculated to its destination

+ added additional debug info for missing string in tradewnd, took precautions to avoid a crash

+ Tweaks to the AI code that handles planetary improvement so that they don't do stupid stuff by mistake

+ Fixed integer divide by zero crash

+ Fixed bug where if you upgrade a constructor and build a starbase while it is upgrading, the starbase will change into a ship when the upgrade is complete

+  If RAW file fails to load, a height field is generated randomly

+ Fixed crash in Quick Project Window

+ fixed a bug that could occur if you loaded a campaign save game and tried to continue after finishing that mission, instead of using the campaign screen.
 
 New:
+ added option to save ship design to disk.  If turned off, the ship design will not be saved to disk and will not show up the next time you start GalCiv2.  Ship designs will still remain in memory until the data is reloaded (from a save game, from starting a metaverse game after having played a normal game, etc).

In 1992, George Bush lost largely because many in his base either stayed at home or voted for Perot in protest of Bush's tax hike that went against his campaign promise.

This week, Rush complained that I was ignoring history -- that when conservatives stay home, the kooks take over and the result we saw in 1992.

But that's not the way I remember it.  I don't remember the world coming to an end.  Even with the Democrats controlling the house, the senate, and the executive, we didn't get nationalized health care (the closest we'd get to that would be a REPUBLICAN President, house, and senate), we didn't turn commune, in short the world did not come to an end.  Certainly Clinton wasn't a great President but as far as the life of the average American is concerned, the 90s were hardly a national nightmare.

After reading Joe's article and comment by deference. You don't have to be a genius to see that Joe and deference are dimowits posing as Conservitives/Republicians. Dimowits just can't be honest about who they are. Think in terms of a team sport. These two guys are on your team, the game is going badly, bad decisions were made (by the manager, coach, quarterback, pitcher, etc.) you go back to the huddle or dugout, and these two guys say " hey, we deserve to loose this game" and they lay down or quit. I for one am no quiter. To sit out this election is to quit. In closing let me just say to the 10 or 15 people who read this blog, get your butts to the polls and lets WIN this election.

The DIFFERENCE isn't with regards to your analogy (i.e. thinking that it's a sports team). The DIFFERENCE is the effect of losing. I don't think it would be the end of the world if Republicans lost.  The best Rush was able to give was 1992 and for me and others who feel as I do, 1992 is a case study of what happens when you ignore your base and the long-term benefits to conservatives when conservatives do make a principled stand.

I would never withold my vote arbitrarily. But if my senator, for example, was lobbying for a bridge to nowhere and other blatant pork, I wouldn't vote for him regardless of what party he was with unless his opponent was decidedly worse.

Rush's argument seems to rest on who has control of congress and I simply don't agree that a slim Democratic majority is as huge of a deal as he and apparently you do. And if it such a big deal, then shame on the Republicans for squandering their majority.

Well it's been an interesting day at the office. I listen to talk radio while coding. If you listen to Rush Limbaugh (he's a popular conservative talk show host in the United States) he mentioned one of my blogs by name as well as my handle (Draginol). I essentially argued that Republicans deserved to lose in November which got picked up by other blogs and in turn picked up on his show. 

Back to non-political stuff, been working on the AI for Dark Avatar. It's really proving challenging on how best to use espionage agents.  Should they be concentrated against a single player? And if so, who? Should they be held in reserve (since new agents cost increasing amounts) so that you can do a mass attack or should you do a steadily increasing stream of them to an opponent?

That's what I'm wrestling with and there are probably valid reasons to do each one.

Also got things ready with the 1.4 release. It's mostly just data file changes to make the economy a bit easier and making morale buildings a bit more powerful -- but making the cost to getting those technologies much greater.

Rush Limbaugh is unhappy with me. Or at least, people like me. 

Since Rush Limbaugh referred to my article (and kindly linked to it on his site) I feel I should respond to some of his points.

I am not at war with conservative bloggers. I quote countless posts from many blogs on this program. I use them as resources. I'm referring to one blog post, and I don't even know who it is.

I use a handle on-line. Draginol. I probably should just use my real name -- it's Brad Wardell.  Rush is correct when he refers to my blogs as amateur.  But that doesn't make my observations invalid.

I don't feel I mischaracterized Rush's point of view: Politics isn't just some game. There are consequences for all Americans if the wrong people are in power. Withholding your vote to "teach a lesson" is unhelpful.  

That's his position and it is only the last part I don't agree fully with.  I am not going to withhold my vote on a candidate simply because of their party. But at the same time, I don't feel a candidate is entitled to my vote simply because they belong to a certain party. I also think that as a practical matter, in the age of detailed statistical analysis that short-term setbacks can have long-term benefits.

Regarding the influence of the Blogsphere...

What made me talk about the influence of the blogsphere was that it certianly came across on his show that he thought a lot of people out there (on the blogs) have been essentially brain-washed by the "drive by" media. I, and many others online took offense to that comment because I don't think he's giving enough credit to the intelligence of the average American let alone conservative. I was NOT trying to argue that the blogsphere is "the future" or something. I was only addressing his insinuation that the blogsphere, the biggest source of conservative angst right now, is not easily influenced by the mainstream media and provided examples of where the blogsphere had a very active and influential role in shaping events.

I appreciate Rush clarifying what he meant. On a 3 hour radio show, it is easy to say something that is construed differently than intended. So let me clarify as well since my 3 minute blog was turned into a segment on a show listened to by millions of people: I am NOT hoping Republicans lose. I am saying that it will serve them right if they do lose and that if they lose maybe they'll learn to not ignore their base. I am certianly not advocating for anyone not to vote.

I am making an observation, not a proclaimation.

It's about the feeling that they are ENTITLED to our vote...

I don't like politicians feeling like they're entitled to my vote. I will be voting in the election but I'm not nearly as enthused about Republicans as I was 6 years ago or even 2 years ago.  And I know there are millions of Americans out there who feel the same as I do and will take that one step further and simply not vote. Hence, if the Republicans lose, they deserve to lose. This is something that has been echoed for months on-line on the growing frustration many of us have with the seemingly increasing cronyism, pork, and lack of effective action.

What lessons would be learned?

Rush follows up here. He argues that when conservatives stay at home, bad things happen.

"Well, the Republicans abandoned their principles, and I'm not going to abandon mine, so screw them!" The last time this happened in significant numbers to deleterious effect was 1992, when a bunch of Republicans said to hell with Bush 41 and the no-new-taxes promise that he broke.

Let's look at this carefully.  So, the last time many conservatives stayed home was in 1992 (incidentally, I did vote for Bush 41 in 1992). And so Bill Clinton was elected...and...? The end of the world? I don't think this is a very good example.  Two years later, the congressional Republicans, having done a lot of statistical analysis on what issues their base cares about came up with The Contract with America. This led to a Republican take over of congress.

You can bet that there will be an immense amount of statistical analysis after the November election and you can bet that Republicans will take the issues of their base more seriously in the future. 

To be clear: I do not hope that Republicans lose congress. But I also don't think it would be the end of the world. That is where the real gulf between Rush and those who agree with him and me and people who agree with me. 

Most people don't lose sleep over the prospect of the Democrats having a slim majority in congress.   We don't look back at the 8 years of Clinton as a national nightmare. And if hard core Republicans did, then shame on them for having nominated Bob Dole, who never had a chance, as the nominee (I'd never vote for Clinton but knew that Dole wasn't going to win early on -- just like most other people I knew).

If it's a matter of life or death, then treat the job that way all the time

You can't have it both ways. You can't say that it's a matter of life and death for the Republicans to maintain control and yet treat the actual job so casually while in office. If the free world hangs in the balance, then bloody act like that during your term and not just in the 60 days before re-election.

Oh, and btw, in response to some of the more colorful comments trying to guess what my background is, here is a blog I wrote that will give you a pretty good idea of where I come from.

Update: Was 1992 really a disaster?

Given how often I get bashed for being a "right wing nut", being called a "liberal" dozens of times this week has made me conclude that I can safely say that my views are no where near the outter fringe of the political spectrum.

Some of the comments, let alone email I've received, to the recent blogs I've writetn regarding Rush Limbaugh vs. Instapundit have been astounding. I guess I'm simply not used to seeing conservatives behaving so much like left-wing fringe advocates.

When one is insulted, repeatedly, it becomes very tempting to lash back. I can't even fathom how people like Glenn Reynolds or Michelle Malkin or other highly respected, very popular, but regularly flamed conservatives handle it.  I had one guy go on over and over again because in my article I spelled repercussion wrong.  Yea, I spelled it repricussion. It wasn't a typo, I spelled it wrong. So sue me. I'm an engineer, not a journalist.

...So our story so far...

Instapundit, one of the world's most popular blog sites, wrote a pre-mortem about the election.  The point of it is that a lot of very hard-core conservatives (along with most other people) expect the Republicans to lose a lot of seats in congress and very possibly at least one of the houses of congress.  He was not writing that he hopes this happens only that if it does happen, the congressional republicans have no one to blame but themselves.

Yes. The Democrats are worse. No doubt about that.  But Republicans tend to hold their elected officials to higher standards. The Republicans have done a lot of foolish things that, as a result, have deflated a significant chunk of their base.

Rush Limbaugh, however, has tried to characterize Instapundit as being a quasi-moderate, liberal in sheeps clothing type site for daring blame Congressional Republicans because many feel the Republicans deserve to lose.  Rush apparently also read a link from Instapundit to here as well yesterday and paraphrased my blog and continued to generalize Instapundit. He typecast us as being either naive or not thinking about the big picture.

I can't speak for Glenn Reynolds on this part but my views on this do include the "big picture".  First, I am not suggesting conservatives should sit out the election. But I do think that congressional Republicans largely squandered their majority these past few years.  I'm not the only one either. Right Wing News, hardly a liberal, has made the same conclusions.  Given the strength of the economy and the general success of the war on terror, congressional Republicans should be in pretty good shape. But they have made so many missteps (from the border to out of control spending) that it has taken the wind out of the sales of many conservatives.

I don't like some politician thinking that I have to vote for them.  And that's where the gulf really comes in.  I personally do not think that the federal government has anywhere near the kind of power that some people think it does.  One commenter pointed out that Republicans were mad at Bush in 1992 and the result was Bill Clinton.  Did Republicans learn a lesson then and was it worth the price? Well, again, while I'm not a fan of Bill Clinton, the world did not end did it? And moreover, I believe the Republican loss helped send a clear message that conservative views should not be ignored because two years later came the Republican revolution. 

The biggest gulf though is the difference in opinion over how much affect the federal government has over our daily lives.  As someone who actually does pay 7 figures a year in taxes, I am very sensitive to taxes. I don't want them raised and I don't want the Bush tax cuts reversed. It was those tax cuts that provided the funding to open up JoeUser.com as a community (by creating the jobs of the ASP developers who work on the site).  So I would be annoyed if taxes went up.  But I don't think that would happen if the Democrats got a slim majority and even if it did, while annoying, it wouldn't be the end of the world.  I have a very high threshold of what I consider to be "the end of the world" and a slightly less conservative supreme court justice nominee doesn't qualify as one (and even a slight change in the Senate power wouldn't likely have a dramatic affect there). I also don't buy into a slim Democatic majority translating into "cut and run". 2008 will be the deciding year for the War in Iraq in my opinion.

What I really am surprised at seeing is how the hard core right-wing can sound depressingly like left-wing moonbats in the comments section from yesterday. Any deviation from total obedience to "the party" and I'm to be cast off as a Hillary loving liberal. I haven't even mentioned who I'm voting for.  But by holding the view that my vote is not owned automatically by a political party and the zealots come out of the woodwork.  I think that the best thing that could happen for the Republicans would be for them to maintain control but barely. It might wake them up, without as many negative consequences, that they need to pay attention more to their constituents.

The congressional Republicans have, in my opinion, blown some huge opportunities and while I don't want the Democrats to win, if the Republicans lose, they shouldn't blame the voters, they should blame themselves.

Before Rush or anyone starts making sweeping generalizations of individuals or websites, they might want to spend a few minutes looking at the big picture that they are so certain we're not looking at.  They might be surprised.

Update: Here is a link to Instapundit's pre-mortem.

So what exactly could the Republicans do to help win back the support of its base on a wide scale?

Here are a few things:

#1 Promose to bring fiscal responsibility back. Over at Instapundit, you can see Glenn Reynolds Pork busting. A lot of the pork is being done by Republicans. The infamous "bridge to nowhere" is but one example. When I hear things like "The deficit has been cut in half" it makes my skin crawl. Yea, because corporate taxes were up due to companies like ours paying through the nose. It had nothing to do with any sort of budgetary restraint. CUT spending some. Heck, just slow down the rate of increasing on spending and I'd be happy.

#2 Secure the borders. Good job that at the 11th hour house Republicans started to make some headway in actually doing this. Yes, it is a problem that the Republican President favors a quasi-amnesty plan but it took way too long to get this going. But at least they're finally starting to take this more seriously. Pass it before the elections.

#3 Corporate Tax cuts. One thing that would help American companies would be to decrease the taxes corporations have to pay.  As a business owner, I can tell you how obnoxious it is to have my company taxed and then get taxed again when I get paid (C corporation). Heck, I'd be happy with a cap on medicare taxation. Talk about a waste.

#4 Draw a line in the sand on prescription drug coverage. The issue isn't whether every American should have health insurance. The question is whether the FEDERAL GOVERNMENT should be responsible for providing these kinds of services. The answer (from conservatives) should be NO. It is not the role of the federal government to provide health insurance, housing, or food. The Soviet Union (and Cuba) provided those kinds of things. Governments are not effective at doing those sorts of things.

#5 Additional tax cuts.  Eliminate taxes entirely for those who make less than $30,000. It represents a trivial % of what the government takes in anyway. I realize that's not an entirely conservative point of view (i.e. everyone should pay equally but then again, any % based tax system isn't truly equal either).  But any individual in the United States can live on $30,000 a year easily. That's $15 an hour. So we simply don't tax people on the first $30,000.  Then we lower taxes across the board for everyone else.

#6 CUT SPENDING / BALANCE BUDGET. Tax cuts in the long term bring more revenue (up to a point of course).  In the short term, we would still need to cut spending.  The Department of Education is a huge pig of waste. The Teachers Unions do more harm to the education of our children than any other organization I can think of.  We'll get to that next. But in the meantime, make a definitive case to balance the budget and start paying off some of the debt in the near term.

#7 REAL "Progressive" EDUCATION.  Allow people to send their kids to other schools. Make schools compete for funding. In the near term, I can live with the fact that people have to send their kids to public schools (my kids do). But let parents send their kids to other public schools if the school they're child is at doesn't meet their needs. I pay high property taxes which help pay for my local school so I do understand there's some pain in someone paying a lot smaller amount, but I think you'd find most conservatives to be willing to let those who pay less in property taxes still send their children to better schools (as long as locals had first shot at filling available seats) in order to see some competition in our school system.

#8 GET THE FREAKING ENERGY POLICY PASSED.  It's 2006 and we still haven't opened up that tiny patch of ANWR up for exploration despite the fact that it's a desolate wasteland and will increase supply. Create incentives to drill in the gulf of Mexico (Before China and others get there first) and elsewhere.  As individuals, conservation is good. My next home I hope to design so that it's partially off the grid. I'd buy an electric car in a second if I could find a production one (My commute is 6 miles each way). But our government should be focusing on increasing the supply of inexpensive energy.

Feel free to add to the list...

In an episode of The Simpsons, Marge asks Homer "If I died, would you be sad?" and Homer responds "I dunno, woudn't be happy."

That's pretty much how I feel about the Republicans.  If the Republicans lose congress, I won't be happy about it. Not at all.  I think that the Democrats plan for America is a bad plan.  Democrats tend to worry more about intentions rather than results. 

What I am saying is that:

1) IF Democrats do win, it won't be the end of the world. Our life, as we know it, will not come to and end.

2) Republicans in congress and those in the future running for congress will not forget any time soon that they can't ignore the concerns of their constituents.

Yes, Conservatives hold elected officials to a higher standard. So what else is new? But so what? Every day in business I operate with a host of restrictions that others don't operate on.  But in the long run, who really benefits? The guy who's dishonest and lazy or the guy who is scrupulous and hard working?  Show me a successful entrepreneur and I'll show you (nearly always) an honest, hard working person. 

It is, after all, a tenet of conservatism to acknowledge that people are not equal in capability.  The law should be set up so that everyone has an equal opportunity for success but we don't want enforced "equal" results. People should be allowed to go as far as their ability will take them.

So is it really a shock that we would hold our elected officials to higher standards? 

But it's not the same thing as being happy or pleased if the elected officials that we lean more towards are defeated by politicians who share nothing of our political philosophies.

Today on Rush Limbaugh's show, Rush referred indirectly to yesterday's article about the Instapundit vs. Rush fallout.

From listening to the show, Rush clearly seems to think that conservatives, such as myself, are being naive or as he put it, should "expand their horizons" on what the repercussions of a Democratic victory in November would be.

Considerable time was spent on the premise that votes shouldn't be used to "teach a lesson".  Or more to the point, that a vote really can't be used to teach a lesson.  I disagree.  You can bet that if the Republicans lose, especially given how loud the right has been about its dissatisaction with Republicans in congress, that they will take it to hear.

The difference is that many conservatives, myself included, don't think the world will end if Democrats gain control of the house (and even the senate).  We're not like the hysterical left that thinks if its opponents win that the world will be destroyed. 

I don't think we'll see some massive tax increase, I don't think we'll "cut and run" from Iraq, I don't think Bush will be impeached, I don't think we'll lose the war on terrorism.  If the Democrats were about to get a big majority of congress, I might feel differently, but at most, the Democrats would have a tiny majority in both houses with a veto-wielding Republican in the white house.

If congressional Democrats start acting like kooks for all the American people to see, they'll suffer in 2008 when the stakes are much higher. 

And you can also be sure that congressional Republicans won't soon forget what happens in the age of the "new media" if you piss off your base.

So Rush, spare us the patronizing "we've been brainwashed by the 'drive by' media".  It was on-line conservatives that got Trent Lott out after his foolish remarks about Thurmond. It was on-line conservatives that exposed the forged documents on 60-minutes.  We don't get our marching orders from the MSM.  If anything, the marching orders to the MSM increasingly come from the blogsphere. Sites like Instapundit, JoeUser, and tens of thousands of others who in turn express the opinions of ordinary Americans.

We are unhappy with Republicans. That doesn't mean we'll vote for Democrats out of spite, they have their own constiuencies to deal with.  If Republicans lose, it's becauase they didn't earn our vote. And you can bet they will remember that. They will have plenty of statistical research to drive that point home.  And the world won't end.

Update: And no, I won't be "glad" if Republicans lose. I just think if they lose, they brought it on themselves..

Update: Yes, I understand there are lots of Democrats who act like kooks. And yet, when the senate was narrowly under Democratic control prior to 2004 it wasn't the end of the world. IF the Democrats win back the house AND IF they pass bills that Republicans don't find acceptable THEN Bush should use his VETO. IF he does not use it, then that speaks to a totally different problem.

Response: Rush discussed this on the show, here is a response.