I talked to my dad today and he was leaning towards Kerry. He's a really smart guy. One of the smartest people I know. But he doesn't follow politics that much, he's very busy doing other things. So he gets his info from the mainstream media which has done a pretty good job convincing him that Bush is a bad guy.

So what were his issues and how did I counter act them?

Outsourcing. If you're really worried about out-sourcing then don't vote for the candidate whose party and policies have largely created it -- The Democrats and their supporters.

When you think of two groups that make the cost of doing business in America higher you think Unions and Lawyers. And who do they support? Kerry. And it's Kerry and his kind that not only oppose legal reform but are ones pushing for increasing minimum wage, putting more regulations on business, otherwise making it less attractive to do business in America.

In 10 years of running a small business, I've paid over half a million dollars in legal costs in frivolous lawsuits. If there had been a simple "loser pays" type reform none of those lawsuits would have ever happened. Kerry opposes that kind of thing. And when a tiny company like ours is paying those kinds of legal expenses, you can only imagine the expenses larger companies pay. Lawsuits are really out of control in this country. And it makes it harder to run a business here.

How much expense or hassle does it take before a company says "To hell with it, let's just move the operation to Mexico" or "Let's just outsource that department to India."

And do the unions and the lawyers and the politicians who push these policies take any responsibility what happens? No. they have the audacity to turn around and blame the Republicans!

Abortion. The next President may pick some of the supreme court justices. My dad doesn't want abortion to be illegal. But that's not how it works. Even if somehow Bush managed to get right wing conservative judges appointed (which is unlikely). But let's say he did, if Roe vs. Wade got overturned it would merely allow the states to decide through their legally elected representatives.

I'm pro-choice but it rankles me that some judge decided that abortion should be legal. We're a democracy. The will of the people should be paramount. Judges shouldn't be making laws, only interpreting the ones that exist. Roe vs. Wade is bad constitutional law. But I don't think Roe vs. Wade will be overturned regardless.

What I do worry about is more activist judges. Ones who think they should be able to legislate from the bench. Liberal judges tend to do that. Conservative judges tend not to. Hence I prefer Bush to Kerry on this.  I'd rather have my elected officials writing laws than an unelected judge. Hence my support for Bush.

War in Iraq.  Iraq seems to be quite a mess - at least if you listen to the media.  But how bad is it really? The wonderful UN only recently managed to get elections scheduled in Bosnia after what? 9 years? Meanwhile, less than 2 years after the invasion of Iraq we're getting ready to hold democratic elections there. Not bad. Especially considering the size and location of Iraq.

And while we have lost 1,200 troops there, that is actually amazingly low in real numbers. Fewer than died on September 11th.

But let's say you think Iraq is a mess. Is Kerry the answer? He's the one complaining that we needed more troops there but at the same time believes we're stretched too thin as is. Well, which is it?

The simple question to ask is this: If you think Iraq is a mess, would you vote for Jimmy Carter if he were running? No? Then why vote for a man who is even more anti-military, more dove-ish than Carter ever was? Kerry's campaign rhetoric may sound hawkish but that belies his entire career starting with his anti-war activities, his denouncements of US soldiers in Vietnam, his voting against every Cold War effort during the Reagan period, and even voting against liberating Kuwait even after the UN had formally authorized force to free Kuwait. Clearly there is no "global test" that will satisfy a dove like Kerry.

Compared to Kerry, Jimmy Carter is a war hawk. Do you want someone like that running the war on terror? A man whose goal is to put terrorism back to a "nuisance"?

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So those were the 3 points I hammered home to my dad. I did talk about other things such as the causes of the recession (dot-com bubble finally burst coupled by the 9/11 attacks -- remember the US being basically shut down for that whole month? That sunk a ton of marginal companies who then lay off people).

It may not convince a die hard Kerry supporter or someone who is a Bush hater, but for that undecided voter, it worked on my dad who was leaning Kerry.

If you want to check out the new WinCustomize site that is in BETA right now (that means it's not done) to see what you think, go right ahead. Let us know what you think and what changes you'd like to see.

You have to be either a WinCustomize subscriber or a Stardock customer to see it. Next week it'll be available to users with Apprentice access or higher.

Galactic Civilizations II won't be released until 2006! But users who pre-order the game (or have an active TotalGaming.net subscription) will be able to start playing the beta in a few months to tell us what they think!

It is through pre-orders that Stardock is able to afford to have such a long beta cycle where users get to make sure the final game is what they need. It is also through pre-orders that Stardock maintains its independence from large publishers.

Pre-Order by clicking [HERE].

With the election tomorrow it's time for predictions. Based on using The Political Machine's issue based predictions and looking at polling data and trends, this is what I'm concluding:

Kerry victory with 306 electoral votes to Bush's 232.  This is a much clearer victory for Kerry than any of the polls and pundits are showing here. But then again, they don't have The Political Machine.

So what do I base this on?

1. The Iraq war isn't a positive for Bush but in fact a negative.

2. I think the Democrats are better at mobilizing their base. This has to do with demographics. It's easier to get people to the polls in urban areas than rural/subburban areas. As I explained to a neighbor, there's roughly 200 people in our neighborhood. It would take hours to pick us all up and take us to a precinct to vote. By contrast, there might be 500 voters in a single building in Cleveland.

3. I think fraudulent voting is going to be a real issue. It's a lot tougher to challenge fraudulent voting than it is to try to preserve the sanctity of the system. It's disappointing to think that my vote might be counter-balanced by someone's cat or "Dick Tracy" but our sensational media has clearly decided that it's better to have 1000 fraudulent voters get through than to prevent a single legitimate voter from being turned away. I disagree. I think there should be a balance because a fraudulent voter is effectively taking away the voting rights of someone else by canceling out their vote.

4. The "early voting" mechanism is going to be the big story this year. Early voting favors less committed voters which tends to favor Democrats.

5. That ridiculous "missing explosives" story from last week that looks to have not had any reasonable basis in fact (latest news on that is that a US unit actually removed the explosives at the end of April). But the media ran on that for a full week which may have been enough to tilt the balance in Florida, New Hampshire, Ohio, Wisconsin and Iowa to go for Kerry.

But in the end, if Kerry wins, it will be that first Bush debate that caused Bush to lose. The momentum was in Bush's favor and he so blew that first debate that it shifted momentum that he has not been able to recover from.

So there's my prediction. Not nearly as close as the pundits are predicting.

That said - EVERY informed voter should go out and vote. So even if you're in a blue or red state, go and vote tomorrow. I think the good news out of this election would be that we may have record turn-out which I think would be fantastic regardless of who wins. 

You Republicans who are hoping Bush wins better do what you can to get your friends and neighbors and family out to vote. Because you can be assured that the NEA (teachers) and other unions and other organizations are way ahead of Bush and his allies in organizing get out to vote on election day drives.

This election is going to come down to a handful of votes. Particularly in Florida, Ohio, Wisconsin, and Minnesota.

https://www.galciv2.com/databank.asp

This has a brief overview of the changes in Galactic Civilizations II.

In Galactic Civilizations all ships had an attack and defense value. You could stack ships together but that really meant nothing in terms of combat. And you picked ready made ships.

In Galactic Civilizations II, attack and defense has much more depth. All ships will have 3 types of attacks - beam wapons, mass drivers, and missile weapons. And 3 types of defense: Shields, armor, and point defense.

You also build classes of ships rather than pre-made ships. So you take your technology and design your own unique ships both in how they look and what they do.  The more complex the ship, the more logistical support (logistic points) it uses.

Based on your logistics ability, you will be able to put together ships into fleets which will act together in combat where each ship gets to take a shot during the player's attack role.

So you might create a ship called the DoomGiver class. Attack: 9/3/5 and Defense: 5/3/5 (they'll be displayed in such a way so that they'll line up so you'll be able easily tell how they are in each area. 

So if you battling the Drengin Empire for most of the game and both of you are going after beam weapons (phasors, disruptors, that sort of thing) you might have ships with attacks like: 10/2/1 and Defense: 7/3/3 (beam/mass driver/missiles and shields/armor/point defense).  But then if you battle the Torians they may be big in mass drivers and things can change in a heart beat. So you'll have to put some more thought (and so will the computer players) into who you go to war with.

Fleets won't be that common until later in the game since your logistics ability starts out at 0 and even a trivial ship uses 1 point of logistics. It'll take awhile to get say 5 points of logistics but a battle ship might use 5 points of logistics.

Based on your various choices of weapons, defenses, propulsion, hulls, skins, etc. your ships will look quite different. Far more customization than any game of this kind that I'm aware of. And you'll be able to also look at ships and eventually be able to just tell what kinds of weapons they're strong on visually (i.e. once you are familiar with what things look like on ships).

The goal is to have combat have a lot more depth to it strategically without making the game overly complex. Seems like most strategy games these days get way into tactics -- which is fine. But GalCiv will be a game of strategic decisions, not tactical micro management.  So keeping an eye on what the various races are doing will matter more here but even in fleet battle, it'll just be a straight up ships from fleet 1 fire, ships from fleet 2 fire and so forth).

If you lived in a house that had a rat "nuisance" you might tolerate it. But if one of your children died from a rat bite, you might be tempted to start going around killing all the rats in the house and getting rid of the rat holes.

After 9/11, there were a lot of rat holes in the world. You don't worry so much about which rat bit your kid as getting rid of all the rats. The most obvious infestations were Taliban Afghanistan and Saddam's Iraq.

So goes the thinking in this article. Check it out.

The left-wing media and Kerry supporters made a mountain out of a mole-hill by trying to claim, without evidence, that around 200 to 300 tons of explosives were looted under the noses of the US military thus proving Bush's incompotence (that's their reasoning, not mine, I agree, it's pretty wacked logic).

However, a new report seems to indicate what I had previously suggested - that a US detachment probably hauled off the weaponry at some point. Why? Because 200 to 300 tons would require far too many trucks to just spirit away under the noses of US troops. Even if unguarded, it's unlikely that the insurgency, 18 months later, has enough trucks in one place to move that quantity of munitions and explosives.

But what it does show is that a: John Kerry is reckless and disrespectful. Anyone who would jump to the conclusion that the military (and Bush) was "incompotent" based on a single barely researched New York Times article, especially in the post memogate campaign, is not someone who can be trusted. It's the kind of political opportunism that has many Kerry detractors, such as myself, so much against him.

Will Kerry apologize? Will Kerry supporters apologize? I doubt it.  I don't consider this report or any other we've seen as "conclusive". But that's the whole point - the charges Kerry and his supporters and the left wing media have made were made on the most flimsy of evidence (200+ tons of explosives missing = looters). Making such a charge under normal circumstances would be rash. But making them a week before the election is borderline criminal.