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 appealing to hide their anti-Americanism behind principled disagreement on policy. But most people with common sense understand there is a difference between disagreeing with US policy on some issue and being anti-American.

So here's a quick guide:

You might be anti-American IF:

1. You think the average American is "stupid" or "a sheep" or "brain washed".
2. You prefer law be made by appointed judges rather than elected officials.
3. You think of the United States, as a whole, to be "the greatest threat to world peace".
4. You think American culture is a grotesque cancer spreading across the world.
5. You think that the United States is the greatest threat to the environment.
6. You think that the United States kind of "had it coming" on 9/11 because of years of its "foreign policy"
7. You hope that the United States "loses" in Iraq.
8. You would like to see China or Russia or the European Union act as a "counter balance" to the US militarily
9. You consider Bush, Clinton, or any other US President a "War criminal"
10. You believe that US-style capitalism is a force for global ruin, individual degradation, or environmental catastrophe

You'll note that none of these 10 items involves criticizing a US policy. Or voting for a particular presidential candidate. Or even what kind of car you drive.

Someone who is anti-American is probably not as likely to buy an American made car as someone else.  But not owning an American made car doesn't make you anti-American (I realize this should be obvious but based on some of the things I've read in response to my article this basic bit of logic seems to elude some people).  Driving to some anti-Bush protest in your Volvo with your "No blood for oil" sign may be SYMPTOMS of being Anti-American but these things in themselves do not make someone anti-American.

You'll also note that there is a difference between being anti-American and Un-American.  Thinking that the US deserves to be attacked by terrorists is different than being in favor of say laws that censor critics of the government.  The former would be a symptom of anti-Americanism and the latter would be a symptom of being un-American in my opinion.

That's my 2 cents on it anyway. 

WinCustomize has begun the Fall skinning contest. The top 10 new WindowBlinds skins (in terms of downloads by WC subscribers) will get a percentage of the revenue WinCustomize collects as part of subscriptions. The contest begins TODAY and ends on December 2.

We've written up a guide that shows off what Object Desktop is all about and what cool new things have come out for it so far this year. It also includes a sneak preview of some new programs that are in development for Object Desktop. Check it out.

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 they earn it purely on their own as a service (lawyer, actress, investor).

So why does that matter? It matters because the tax system, written by lawyers in congress, puts in loopholes that enables them to get out of having to pay significant taxes. 

John Edwards, a personal injury lawyer, made his millions by suing insurance companies on behalf of "victims". He then took 25% to 50% of the jury award for himself.  Well, not quite. John Edwards set up an S corporation that he was the sole owner of. Instead of paying Edwards a salary, he took it as a stock dividend. Dividends that are taxed at only 15% and bypass payroll taxes (which means he didn't contribute to social security, Medicaid, Medicare, etc.) for virtually all his income. This is quite common and no doubt plenty of Republicans do it too. But Edwards is one arguing to roll back the tax cuts -- a move that would have no effect on him.

Theresa Heinz Kerry has various shelters herself too.  Last year, her effective tax rate was only 12.7% and in other years has been higher but still less than 15% (the average American pays over 20% in federal taxes).  John Kerry's proposed tax cut roll-back wouldn't affect him (well not entirely true since the President does get a regular salary that can't be monkeyed with).

Most Hollywood celebrities have tax setups that are very similar.  They set themselves up as LLCs or S-corporations and then pay themselves via dividends. It is unlikely that most big name Kerry supporters in Hollywood would be affected at all by Kerry's tax-cut rollback. 

Most "rich Republicans" actually do pay a lot in taxes.  That's because they earn their money via traditional businesses. The big time sales executive at GE making $280,000 a year in commissions can't set himself up as an S-corporation. And small businesses people can't usually do the trick because they tend to have lots of other stock holders. The dividend trick is less effective if you have 600 stock holders to split it with.  Or in some cases (such as mine) where the principle stock holder refuses to engage in such flimflammery (though if Kerry wins I'll certainly reconsider it).

I support the progressive tax system. But I think we pay too high in taxes even after the tax cuts. That's because I know that many of those elites who support raising taxes can be assured that they won't be affected. After all, they don't earn their income creating products and goods for the citizenry. They make it through selling a service in the form of themselves which enables them to dodge taxes. Or they inherited it.  But don't take my word for it, consider after you read this who they most vocal Democrats tend to be. Where did they make their money?  Then consider the most vocal Republicans and where they got their money.

When I'm paying an effective federal tax rate of 29% (that's after deductions) making a fraction of what the Kerry's make, I can't help but feel a bit offended.  Until they're paying their fair share they should shut the hell up about trying to get me and millions like me to pay more.

Check out this really interesting debate between two well informed debaters on the subject of Iraq.

Natural Desktop is a cool new program that looks at your local weather conditions, time of day and time of year and based on that sets your wallpaper, portal animation, and can optionally play a natural sounding environmental sound track.  The wallpapers was created by Digital Blasphemy. The weather portal created by Tiggz, and the sound track from famed composer Mason Fischer.  The result is just phenomenal, a must-have for anyone who is stuck in front of a computer all day.

Version 1.1 adds a bunch of customization options such as being able to select your own background sounds, wallpapers, locations, as well as control what the whether conditions (Example: Today I set it to play the raining/thunderstorm sound which can be quite relaxing).

Version 1.1 is free for those who have already purchased it (use Stardock Central to get 1.1 if you have 1.0).  It also has some additional performance tweaking and performance options available.

First off, I really don't like the idea of having my computers getting pre-loaded with anti-virus stuff that times out after 30 days. It's very annoying. But I could live with it if the stuff would uninstall.

But in my experience, it doesn't. My Dell came with Norton Internet Security and it is extremely invasive. But it's more than just invasive, it's crummy in quality.  For instance, it flags any VB script running with an error saying that a "malicious script is trying to run." Talk about lazy programming. So those of us who can figure out how to turn off that stupid script check have to do so if we want to use any widget programs that make use of VB Script.

But then there's the invasive "virus scanning" of Office docs.  Yes, I know that there are macro viruses, but for the life of me I couldn't figure out how to turn that off.  Eventually, it expired and instead of being nagged, I decided I would just take the program off.  Good luck.  In add remove programs it tells me I don't have proper access to uninstall it (even though I'm logged on as an administrator).  It suggests I "login to Norton Internet Security" to do it.  So I open up the program and the whole area to do that is grayed out.

Somehow its virus scanning on Office documents got messed up. That's actually what started this little journey. I couldn't load up my spread sheets or open up MS Word because it would hang on the virus scanning that I never asked for in the first place. 

I eventually had to weed through the various services running on my system, turn them off, and then go to the drive and start deleting the actual Symantec files from my drive. Only then was I able to get back to being able to load up Word and Excel files.  But I couldn't help thinking about how many other people out there are running into problems like this.  This overkill invasive crap on the system almost certainly causes more trouble than it solves. Whoever set the defaults on these programs should be flogged. I suspect 99% of problems with viruses and security come from a handful of places and that those could have been set as the defaults.  But no, it's defaults are so invasive that if some problem comes up, you're going to be left with a broken system with no easy way to recover from it.

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.

But 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 interfering with the final results.

Moreover, Bush can potentially win the election and still lose Ohio as long as he gets Iowa.  That's because Wisconsin is likely to go Bush this time.  So you could have the unusual scenario where Bush wins the election despite losing Ohio.  In that event, it would be Bush 271 to Kerry's 267.

Obviously when it's as close as it is, it's really hard to make a definitive prediction. Our statistical model is not poll driven but is instead issue driven. The war in Iraq is no longer as strongly favored by independents and the jobs issue in Ohio has increased. Those two issues, along with a host of minor changes in other areas, have made the election even closer.

So our prediction right now is that Kerry has an advantage even though national polls currently favor Bush. And that the two states to watch out for are Ohio and Iowa. The computer controlled versions of Bush and Kerry in our simulations now focus almost exclusively on those two states.  New Mexico could also go either way but it isn't statistically relevant.

This article does not indicate a preference by Stardock or Ubi Soft. It is just a report from our statistical model and from waching the computer controlled versions of Bush and Kerry.  If you're an American, regardless of where you live, please make sure you are registered to vote and vote this November.

Stardock hopes to release an update to The Political Machine shortly after the election with updates to the various issues in the game.

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 messing with the final results.

Moreover, Bush can potentially win the election and still lose Ohio as long as he gets Iowa.  That's because Wisconsin is likely to go Bush this time.  So you could have a bizarre scenario where Bush wins the election despite losing Ohio.  In that event, it would be Bush 271 to Kerry's 267.

Obviously when it's as close as it is, it's really hard to make a definitive prediction. Our statistical model is not poll driven but is instead issue driven. The war in Iraq is no longer as strongly favored by independents and the jobs issue in Ohio has increased.

So our prediction right now is that Kerry has an advantage even though national polls currently favor Bush. And that the two states to watch out for are Ohio and Iowa. The computer controlled versions of Bush and Kerry in our simulations now focus almost exclusively on those two states.  New Mexico could also go either way but it isn't statistically relevant.

This article does not indicate a preference by Stardock or Ubi Soft. It is just a report from our statistical model and from waching the computer controlled versions of Bush and Kerry.  If you're an American, regardless of where you live, please make sure you are registered to vote and vote this November.

It's time for the skinners to start getting a piece of the action. And so starting Monday, we are going to begin running on-going contests in which at the end of that contest the top 10 winners get a percentage of the income we earn from WinCustomize subscriptions.

The winners will be calculated based on subscriber downloads of skins that are submitted AFTER the contest begins. A single author can win multiple positions in the top 10.

This first contest is on WindowBlinds skins. So starting Monday, we'll be tracking the number of subscriber downloads of new WindowBlinds skins. On December 2, we'll then look at the top 10 and hand out the prizes.

Our goal is to encourage new, high quality skins to get submitted, reward skinners for their support, and encourage more people to subscribe to the site. It's only through WinCustomize subscriptions that we can afford to keep this site going.