Why Real Conservatives Can No Longer Vote Republican

Conservatism is a political philosophy heralding back to the founding principles of the country. For example...

Conservatives believe that it is the nature of even benevolent government to be corrupt. It is therefore important to keep government small and limit it's power. Conservatives believe that civil liberties are paramount. They believe that individuals are better able to determine their best interests for themselves than government. They believe that freedom of the press and freedom of speech are keystones of democracy. Conservatives believe that a competitive free market is the only effective way to weed waste and corruption out of the economy. Finally, conservatives believe in financial responsibility. Not only is it simple common sense that one should not spend more money than one has, it also acts as a check to keep government small and thereby limit government corruption.

Real conservatives don't believe that democracy can ever be, or should ever be, some kind of Utopia. Real conservatives understand that when you live in a free society people are not only free to achieve and succeed, they are also free to be stupid, make mistakes, crash, and sometimes even burn. The price of liberty is often safety. And that's OK with Conservatives, because Conservatives believe that freedom is worth dying for. If I might paraphrase Ben Franklin, "Anyone who would surrender liberty for safety deserves neither".

Republicans pay lip service to this philosophy, but every chance they've had to deliver they've betrayed their own platform in the name of political expediency, which in today's political environment means pandering to the prejudices of it's constituency and shaping policy to maximize campaign contributions.

Here are a few of my favorite examples of Republican "Faux Conservatism":

The Patriot Act: In one fell swoop we've basically run the constitution through a shredder. The government can now secretly arrest an American citizen, hold him indefinitely without ANY due process of law, and torture him at will.

The Drug War: Apparently individuals are free to make mistakes EXCEPT where consuming drugs is concerned. I don't even know where to begin. This betrays almost every tenant of conservatism.

Free Speech Zones: Thank You Dubyah for Free Speech Zones. Apparently you have the right to speak your mind, just don't do it in earshot of anyone that matters or you can be arrested.

The Deficit: Republicans haven't been social conservatives for generations, but they were at least fiscally conservative back in the old days. That all changed with the Reagan administration. Reagan replaced "Tax and Spend" democratic economic policy with an infinitely less responsible "Borrow and Spend" model. There was a moment of hope under the Clinton administration when the debt at least stopped growing (BTW liberals, before you break your arm patting yourselves on the back keep in mind that Clinton couldn't have done it without the help of the Republicans and the leadership of Newt Gingrich), but Dubyah pissed those accomplishments away in pretty short order. It didn't help that he sat on his hands while Wall Street played fast and loose with trillions of dollars right under the noses of his political sycophants in the SEC. Then, when there was a real crisis in the form of an economic crash the coffers were empty.

Health Care: Health care in this country is a monopoly. It is illegal to compete with health care and health insurance providers. This is cozy for the health care industry that's getting rich and for the politicians that are enjoying generous kickbacks in the form of campaign contributions, but it's leaving the rest of us in a bit of a pickle. What really pisses me off is that they are pretending that "privatized" health care is in some way true to the tenants of capitalism, when in fact it's been little more than a cartel for generations.

A Quick Thought About Harold Camping and the Aftermath of This Weekend's Rapture

A lot of irate folks are calling on the feds to help Harold Camping's victims. The consensus among these voices seems to be that the fed should seize his ill-gotten gains and distribute them to the people who gave away their belongings, quit their jobs, or otherwise messed up their lives.

I strongly disagree.

The Bible says flat out that nobody, not even the angels, will be warned in advance of the Rapture. These people, while they may be victims of a terrible lie, chose to ignore the word of God in favor of the word of a charismatic false prophet. Being a Christian is a responsibility, and the victims of this scam abdicated their responsibilities. They made a choice to ignore scripture, and they need to live with the consequences. I'm not prepared to surrender my first amendment right of free speech and my fourth amendment protection from search and seizure in order to protect people that should have known better in the first place. As far as Camping is concerned... I pray that he repents his evil ways and does the right thing. If he doesn't he'll have proven once and for all that he's not merely confused or misled. He's just plain evil and he's going to have to face his Judgment just like all evil men.

I shudder to contemplate the aeonian punishment that might be waiting for him.

A Play Toy Ball

A play toy ball is rolling in the night
Companion blue and bubble broad and steamroller steady
Through an ever black
Glitter dot
Never new sea.

Marketing for Accountants: What's New In SEO?

Big changes seem to be
afoot in the search engine marketing field. Google's algo seems to
putting less emphasis on anchor text and more emphasis on the relevance
of the page with the incoming link. What does this mean to you? It means
it's time to get back to basics and make sure your page content is
relevant to the page you're linking to if you want to enjoy a page rank
benefit from it. When distributing content try to get it published on
keyword relevant sites. This has always been the rule, but now it's more
important than ever. There are some on-page factors you can exploit,
too. Use old school SEO techniques: Use keywords in your page/article
title and consider the old school metrics like Keyword Density and
Keyword Placement.

While this makes my job harder, it may just improve Google's results for a while. Only time will tell.

For more techniques to help you sell your CPA or accounting practice visit Brian's CPA Websites Blog every day.

And drop every month or so to take a look at my Marketing for Accountants blog.

Neverwinter Nights Available at GoG.com

A team of 4 players, from different parts of the world ranging from Florida to Sri Lanka, explores an ancient underground fortress in Faerun, the world of Neverwinter Nights.

Atari's Neverwinter Nights has just been made available as a DRM free download for $10 at Good Old Games.

A generation after it's original release NWN remains the most revolutionary cRPG ever made.

The adventure isn't that special. If you're a casual cRPG fan it's worth a play, but it won't rock your world. Baldurs's Gate 1 and 2 are both better cRPG experiences for the RP lightweight (and both are available on GoG). The official campaign is weak at best. The first expansion, Shadows of Undrentide, is MUCH better. In fact, just skip straight to "Shadows" (known in the NWN community as SoU). It's no Baldur's Gate, but at least it gives BG a run for it's money. The original campaign doesn't even try. The last full length module, Hoards of the Underdark (or HotU) is a sequel of SoU and is without doubt the best of the three modules, but it's also epic level. I wouldn't recommend making HotU your first NWN experience.

No. As far as the single player game goes it falls into the "meh" catagory. The graphics are dated, and in the OC the plot is lame, linear, and riddled with painfully 2 dimensional NPC's.

But it's still the best cRPG ever made.

What makes NWN stand apart from any game that came before it is the Aurora Toolset and it's multi-player features.
The toolset is easier to use and more powerful than anything ever released before or since. Dungeon Siege, Morrowind, even Oblivion have toolsets that pale in comparison to NWN. While the sequel, NWN 2, has a toolset that offers a building experience with much better graphics, it offers nothing in terms of improved game play and is much more complicated and time consuming. NWN is also highly modable. It's relatively easy to create and animate 3d models, so fans have fleshed out the game with custom clothing, models, buildings, monsters... you name it. The system is so flexible that it has been used to create d20 modern and even sci-fi modules. NWN is the perfect platform for the amateur game designer. As a result there are literally thousands of fan made modules, and literally hundreds that are actually superior to the official campaign.

Still not convinced? Let's talk multi-player. NWN can be played cooperatively or PvP. The official campaigns can be played co-op, but there are scores of fan made modules designed for MP co-op as well. Now there's nothing new about MP support. Baldur's Gate was an amazing MP experience for the few people who tried it, but compared to NWN it's downright primitive and without the toolset the MP experience in these games was intrinsically limited.

And this brings us to the one thing that sets NWN apart from every other cRPG ever made...

NWN has a Dungeon Master client.

NWN's DM client, in combination with the powerful toolset, relegates every other MP computer game on the market to the status of "Poser". This feature makes real tabletop Pen 'n Paper style role playing available in a thoroughly rendered 3-D environment for the very first time.

NWN still has a very active community. For a complete list of links and resources check out my dedicated Neverwinter Nights page. 

BUY NEVERWINTER NIGHTS RIGHT NOW! It's the best game value you will ever find.

Fine! Raise My F&($ing Taxes!

I for one am fed up with the Republican bullshit in regards to the Bush tax cuts.

Word to Obama:
If the Republicans filibuster just raise my f&($ing taxes. I've had it up to my eyeballs with spoiled rich b$#(%^s f&($ing up the country so they can make a few pennies on the share in the market.

At some point the government has to get real about deficit reduction, and while cutting taxes for the middle class will, I believe, stimulate the economy; cutting taxes for the rich is like throwing $700 billion to Hong Kong.

The middle class is likely to spend their tax savings on paying bills and mortgages and otherwise funneling money back into local economies. I'll grant that. It would be worth trying to keep them in the hopes that it stimulates jobs (and in acknowledgment that, quite frankly, we need the money).

But the Republican contention that cutting taxes for the rich will somehow stimulate the US economy is ludicrous. The rich will invest their tax savings, that's true, but they must take me for some kind of idiot if they think I'm financially illiterate enough to believe they're going to invest it in the US. This just ain't where the money is. If I have a choice between paying higher taxes and getting a handle on the deficit or letting a bunch of Fat Cats throw almost a trillion dollars into creating jobs in China and Brazil over the next ten years I'd just as soon cough up the extra taxes.

No Rest for the Weary

I was hoping with the election over I could take a rest from being PO'd at politicians, but no such luck. It's clear we voted out the bastards to make way for more of the same old crap. This whole earmarking hysteria is just a silly drama for the benefit of the illiterate masses and all it's going to do is increase congressional gridlock. Of course this may very well be the Republican's intent... bring Washington to a grinding halt and then blame Obama for it in 2012.

In any event, any talk about deficit reduction that's not accompanied by a determination to increase taxes and cut defense, social security, and medicare spending is just more of the same old political BS.

Shame on us all for buying into it.