This week I'm here in New York to meet with the media.  Since I wrote the artificial intelligence in The Political Machine (which recently won Editor's Choice from the top gaming publication) there is understandably some interest in how Bush and Kerry behave differently in the game versus real life.

Of course, since it's a game, there's a lot of differences. But that's for another discussion - one on TV that is.

But media tours are hectic affairs. My trip out here was long scheduled. Unfortunately, the VP debate this week and the Prez debate were only recently scheduled so many of my appointments got zapped. So no O'Reilly Factor or Hannity and Colmes appearance this time.

Tomorrow I get to meet with Sam Donaldson which is pretty cool. Then on Wednesday it's Good Day NY and Fox & Friends.  There will probably be some other things that pop up. But I can't help but be a bit disappointed that they werne't able to get more stuff booked up.  The VP debate really kind of screwed things up.

It's just that I really don't like traveling very much. It's not the plane trip itself. I have no problem flying. It's just the utter feeling of time wastage.  The hour spent in the air port before getting to the plane.  I broke my foot a couple of weeks ago and while I'm able to walk, it's still pretty tender. Going through air port security wasn't terribly fun.

Then when you get on the plane you sit on that plane for what seems like another 30 minutes to an hour before it even takes off.  And when you arrive you have another 15 to 20 minutes of sitting on the runway there.  The net result is that even a short flight such as Detroit to New York consumes the better part of a day.  My 1:30 flight means I need to be there at 12:30. Which means I need to leave around noon. I may get in as 3:00pm but by the time I get to the Taxi it's about 4pm and nearly 5pm when I get to my hotel. It's just incredibly inefficient.

And of course, I'm very conscious as to the other things I could/should have been doing. I've gotten some good resumes in that I need to go over. I am trying to get the new building purchasing stuff done. And there's a bunch of new software that needs to get out the door.

And while I like many things about our publisher, I sometimes get the impression that they have little respect for me or our company.  I don't feel like they appreciate that it's kind of a big deal for me to take 3 business days out for something that represents less than 4% of our company's revenue. The VP debates were scheduled only a couple weeks ago but that's still enough time to have reschedule the trip. But part of me wonders if they just didn't want to lose money on the tickets and hotel reservations or something.  I really like the guys I deal with at the publisher for the most part. Friendly and intelligent people. It's not them but rather the higher up people that I tend to get that unappreciated feeling from.

I think next time I'll insist on satellite uplinks.

This week we expect to release v1.02 of The Political Machine which improves support for Windows 98 systems and makes some gameplay tweaks with regards to the endorsement system (it'll be slightly harder for Republicans to get liberal endorsements and vice versa).

But what about after the election?  Stardock plans to continue to provide new updates to The Political Machine in various forms. One area we plan to try to update the game regularly are on the issues.  We don't want the game to get dated because of the issues. So we plan to keep updating the issues post-election.

We also plan to do an update after the election to make the game a bit less 2004 election centric so that players can play the game without it feeling like they're running the last election.

One way you can help us is to let us know which candidates you think we need to include for the 2008 election. What issues do you feel we should bump around a bit in this election? Let us know here.

And so it comes down to the final stretch. And as we predicted last summer, Ohio is going to be the key state. Both campaigns know it.

If the election were held today, Bush would probably win -- but barely. But there's still more debates on the way with the Vice Presidential debate this week.  Debates can't change the course of a race unless it's fairly close -- like it currently is.

Debates are more than about getting swing voters to vote for you.  Kerry's victory in the first debate was key for him.  It was key not because he needed to swing people to his side as much as he needed to reinvigorate his base.  Remember, if his side starts to believe he's going to lose anyway, then a protest vote for Nader starts to look compelling.

For Bush, losing in the debate doesn't hurt him with his base as much as it undermines the Republican charge that Kerry isn't fit to lead. Clearly Kerry is capable of leading the country.  Now the Republicans have to focus on policy differences between Kerry and Bush. 

Kerry should focus on health care and outsourcing of jobs. But he must switch from platitudes to specifics. What specifically can Kerry do about outsourcing and healthcare? It's not just enough to say "I won't reward companies for outsourcing jobs." How does the government reward them? What would he stop? Similarly, Kerry needs to have a realistic plan on health care. People are looking for specifics at this point.

Bush, by contrast, needs to highlight what they have done already on health care. He also needs to explain the private health care accounts concept. I think the "ownership" society concept has appeal if he can get into the specifics of what that means.  Politicians don't seem to yet realize that the health care issue is more than just posturing now. I had a friend who was laid off a few weeks ago and in that time managed to severely break his foot. As a result, he could be looking at $15,000 in bills from it.  It's not like the "good old days" where only the rarest, most extreme illnesses could break you, now it's something as basic breaking a bone.  That also means Bush needs to explain why everything costs so much more and what he would do to stop that trend.

Because Bush lost the first debate so dramatically, the second debate is likely to have higher than expected viewer ship. That will mean Bush will need to ensure he doesn't come across as peevish. Kerry, similarly, only needs to sound reassuring and put forth positions that resonate with voters in a way they understand.

Ohio is the key state this time.  If you're watching the election night outcome and Ohio goes for Kerry, you can go to bed. It's over.  For Democrats, if Kerry loses Ohio it's probably over for him too (and if he loses Pennsylvania - another key state - then it's definitely over).

Barring a major event, it's going to be a nail biter now. Bush could have put it away in the first debate but blew it.  These two debates could give Kerry the overall edge but it's unlikely now that Bush will be able to regain the momentum he had before the debate.

One of the things we've been wanting to do with WinCustomize 2005 (WC2K5) is to enable skin authors to earn income from contributing to the site.

One idea floating around works as follows:

The top 20 skinners would get a percentage of the quarterly revenue from WinCustomize subscriptions if they themselves are subscribers OR have Journeyman access or higher.

The top 20 would be calculated based on a point system that is derived from the # of WC subscriber downloads of their skins and themes. Some sections would count more than others (a WindowBlinds skin counts as 1 point, a wallpaper would count as half a point - we would post the point system so people could see how many points a download in each section would be but it would be largely based on effort and what areas we want to promote at that time).

What do you think?

According to the FEC (and compiled by the opensecrets.org watchdog group) the Democrats have managed to take the lead in overall money raised and spent for the Presidency. 

The statistics aren't as clear cut as one might think. While the Democrast have raised a great deal more money overall, they had 9 major candidates to split it amongst where as the Republicans only had 1. But it doesn't bode well for the Republicans long term as the Democrats have put together quite an impressive cash machine going into future elections.

But holy cow, nearly a billion dollars raised in the fight to be President. Scary eh?

President:

For me, watching Bush debate is a lot like watching my son play baseball. While I may root for him to do well, I feel helpless in being able to make him do well.

Like when my son is batting, I try to will it that he'll hit the ball. Similarly, while observing Bush, I try to will it that he'll nail a point.

So when Kerry says lamely, "I consider nuclear proliferation to greatest threat to our nation." I'm using all my mental energy to try to get Bush to say something like "Well Senator, I consider going after the blood thirsty terrorists who are trying to murder Americans to be our top priority."

Bush isn't as quick on his feet as Kerry.  Kerry, a former prosecutor, is in his own in having to put together a compelling argument on the fly.  Bush defeated Gore in the 2000 debates because Gore came across as a haughty lecturerer.  Kerry won't make that mistake.

One might argue that Bush lost the debate on style -- which is what really matters but won it in terms of substance. Bush's arguments are stronger IMO but he isn't able to put those arguments forward in a compelling way.

Kerry's Iraq position is incoherent. Idealogues on the left may be content to parrot the line "Kerry voted for the president to have authorization to use force so that he would have more leverage to get the UN to put those inspectors back." But any clear thinking American is not going to fall for that.  The US did not have 200,000 troops sitting in Kuwait as mere bargaining chips.  Kerry knew, as did every other senator know, that barring a miracle (i.e. complete capitulation by Saddam) that US troops would be invading Iraq before the hot weather returned (by March 2003 in other words).  To argue anything else is simply being naive at best or untruthful at worst.

But that's where being a good public speaker comes into play.  Kerry is able to put forth his disengenous position because Bush isn't able to put forward a simple and effective counterargument.

And those of us on the side lines can only look on helplessly. Just like I do when I watch my kid playing baseball. 

With the first debate over, I think it was pretty clear that Kerry gained more than Bush.  Neither scored any knock out blows on the other and the # of memorable sound bites is going to be minimal. But overall, Kerry did what he needed to do.

Expect to see the polls narrow considerably.

Here's an interesting read about someone who volunteered to help the poor by working in a soup van. His experiences sound much like what I've seen from others who have done the same kinds of things as well as my own experiences -- most people who are in poverty are...sorry to say...losers.  People who are either lacking in some basic trait (living in their own filth, unwilling to work, belligerent, etc.) or deficient mentally (those people one can understand and I don't apply the "loser" tag to them).

Some people want to pretend that most people who live in poverty are there because of unfairness in society or because of the government or something. I don't agree.  I think is much more straight forward - they're either mentally/physically disabled or simply losers.  In any society, you're going to have a certain percentage of people who are just leeches. People who just take form society without any desire to give anything back. It's a small percentage of people thankfully but large enough to still turn into millions of people.

Yesterday Bill Maher demonstrated the kind of attitude that is all too common with liberals: Intellectual arrogance.  They believe that they have a monopoly on enlightened thinking.

On Hardball with Chris Mathews, Maher says, "We know who's on Bush's team, we keep hearing about how the God fearing people are with Bush. Fine. But what about the people who believe in say science?"

The meaning that irrational religious whackos like Bush while rational, intelligent, people who believe in things such as logic and the scientific method are -- like him -- liberal.

Care to take a poll on who most professional practicioners of science are going to vote for, Mr. Maher?  It's pretty rare to meet an engineer, for instance, who favors liberal positions. That's usually because in my experience liberal positions aren't based on science but rather warm fuzzy emotions.

I'm trying to understand Kerry's various positions.

He said at one time that Saddam and his WMDs were a threat that needed to be taken care of. Later he said that Saddam was a diversion from Afghanistan. Despite that, he voted for giving the President authorization to use force against Iraq. One wonders, if he thought Iraq was a diversion, why even give the President such authorization?

He later said we're better off with Saddam gone but then in an interview months later says he wouldn't have gone to war with Saddam because it distracts from the war on Al Qaeda.

But then even later he says that even knowing what he knows now he would have still voted for the war resolution.

Yet today, in an interview with Diane Sawyer he says that knowing what he knows today he wouldn't have voted for it.

But when asked if going into Iraq was worth it he states:

SAWYER: So it was not worth it?

KERRY: We should not -- depends on the outcome ultimately and that depends on the leadership, and we need better leadership to get the job done successfully. But I would not have gone to war knowing that there was no imminent threat --

Well wait a second, depends on the outcome? What kind of nonsense is that? And if Iraq wasn't an imminent threat, why did he vote for the war resolution in the first place?

I'm really trying to understand Kerry's position. Perhaps it is too "nuanced" for me.