During the 2000 presidential primaries I was evenly divided in my support for John McCain and Al Gore. If it had ended up being McCain vs. Gore in November, I was honestly unsure during that primary season which of them I would be voting for. If John McCain had been the Republican nominee and Al Gore had still selected Joe Leiberman for his running mate, I would have voted for John McCain in November.

(Why? While anti-Leiberman sentiments are easy to come by these days, my leeriness at the time was predicated entirely around Leiberman’s pro-censorship positions. These were positions shared by Al Gore’s wife Tipper. This meant that Al Gore had surrounded himself with voices preaching pro-censorship positions. Civil rights violations are, frankly, a nearly unforgivable political sin for me — and, in a democracy, freedom of speech is almost certainly the most important civil right. Al Gore never actually crossed that line personally, but he was flirting with it dangerously in his selection of VP. That was the tipping point for me.)

As it turned out, of course, George W. Bush ended up being the Republican nominee. Bush wore his ignorance and incompetence on his sleeve and came pre-packaged with a long history of dismal failure. I knew he would be a complete disaster for this country and voting for Al Gore became a no-brainer. The Stakes were far too high.

In any case, eight years ago I was ready to embrace a John McCain presidency. I didn’t agree completely with his politics, but I respected his principles, his intelligence, and his integrity.

But eight years has made a huge difference: Today I am vehemently opposed to a John McCain presidency. Why?

Well, here’s one reason:

At some point during or after losing the Republican primary in 2000, John McCain made the decision that he would do whatever was necessary in order to secure his party’s nomination in 2008. He became a political panderer and utterly sacrificed his personal integrity on the altar of personal ambition.

But more importantly, John McCain lost his moral compass during the past eight years. Frankly, John McCain lost my vote (and my respect) when he condoned torture. Repeatedly. John McCain — a former POW — should know better. And he should be ashamed to compromise his own ethical code in order to achieve his political aspirations.

(For the record, McCain loses a little more of my respect every time he tries to defend his pro-torture vote in February 2008 by pointing to the position he took vis-a-vis torture in 2005… which is when he first flip-flopped on the issue. Saying, “I didn’t flip-flop on torture because I flip-flopped on torture in 2005,” is, frankly, insulting to every intelligent and informed person.)

All of this was more than enough to turn me against the idea of a John McCain presidency. But recently even more disturbing news is beginning to break: John McCain’s campaign has a corruption problem. Lots of corruption problems. He’s also shown a remarkable willingness to break and/or bend the very campaign finance laws he personally championed.

Apparently I shouldn’t have been so quick to give him a second chance after his involvement as one of the Keating Five.

Why is this important? Because the Republican party has a serious problem with corruption and cronyism. At a national level it’s not hard to draw a line from Nixon (a name which has practically become a byword for corruption) to Reagan (the White House featuring the most criminal convictions in history) to Bush. But the congressional Republicans have been plagued by their own scandals (Jack Abramoff, Tom Delay, Duke Cunningham); as have Republican governors (Coingate, George Ryan, Ernie Fletcher, John G. Rowland). In short, their corruption is rampant at every level of government: National, state, and local. Heck, the Republicans even steal from themselves.

So when John McCain not only establishes that he’s willing to compromise his own ethical integrity in order to achieve political power but also appears to engage in widespread, systematic corruption… well, that makes it impossible for me to support him for any political office. Nor can I have any faith in his ability to lead this country out of the troubled times that George W. Bush has left us stranded in.

Sometimes I forget that, just because I know something, it doesn’t mean that everybody else knows it, too. So here’s a meme that needs to be more widely known:

The race for the Democratic nomination is already over.

The fat lady may not have actually sung (past tense), but she’s definitely singing. Actually, she’s already hit the final note and is just kind of holding onto it at this point.

If you want the full explanation for this, you should check out this piece from the Politico. But the short version goes something like this: If Clinton wins every remaining primary race by a margin of 60-40 (which is essentially impossible), she would still end up trailing Obama in both pledged delegates and the popular vote. So even in her best-case electoral strategy, she’s completely dependent on the Democratic superdelegates to perform a coup — disenfranchising the primary voters and nominating her over Obama.

How likely is that? Not very.

Many superdelegates have already declared their allegiance, of course. Others will declare over the next few weeks (like former presidential candidate Bill Richardson did yesterday). But the superdelegates who have not yet declared are probably content to let these remaining primaries play out because:

(1) The primaries generally appear to be invigorating the party base and pulling new people into the party.

(2) They don’t want to give an appearance of performing a “coup”. The math says that Obama has this nomination locked up, but that’s not the public perception (largely because the MSM is not widely reporting that story).

So, allowing the primaries to proceed is likely to increase Democratic turnout in November. OTOH, rendering the remaining primaries moot (even if they almost certainly are moot) has the real possibility of creating a backlash that would suppress turnout in the November.

Also:

(3) While it’s certainly true that Hillary Clinton’s campaign is ripping into Obama, talking about how this is “hurting him” in the general election seems a little misplaced. It’s not like the Republican hate-machine is going to go any easier on the guy.

If Obama can’t weather these attacks now, there’s no way he’ll be able to weather them 2, 4, or 6 months from now. While I consider the Wright stuff to be a tempest-in-a-teapot with all the meaningful content of attacking Jimmy Carter because his brother Billy was an idiot, I’d still rather see it happening now rather than being stored up by the Rovian machine and trotted out in the middle of October.

(The exception to this is the fact that the Clintons have been practically announcing that they would prefer to see John McCain as president if Obama gets the nomination. Whenever I see another one of these glowing McCain endorsements from Hillary and Bill I have to seriously wonder if they’ve lost their freakin’ minds.)

At the end of the day, though, the candidate who wins the pledged delegate race is almost certainly going to be the nominee. And if that candidate also has the popular vote behind them, then it’s a dead-lock certainty they’ll be the nominee.

And nothing short of Hillary Clinton turning out to be a man who’s spent the last three decades in a secret gay marriage with Bill or Obama secretly being a member of the KKK who has spent his entire life wearing black-face is going to change that.

Yesterday I talked about how important it is for Barack Obama to become the next President of the United States. Today I’m beginning of the process of stepping up my own personal efforts to help make that happen, and as part of that I’m asking you to visit my personal fundraising page for Senator Obama’s campaign. Even as little as $10 — pocket change, really — will help play a part in supporting what may be the most important campaign in a generation.

There is a security gap in this country — a gap between the rhetoric of those who claim to be tough on national security, and the reality of growing insecurity caused by their decisions. A gap between Washington experience, and the wisdom of Washington’s judgments. A gap between the rhetoric of those who tout their support for our troops, and the overburdened state of our military.

Barack Obama
March 19th, 2008

So can you take a few seconds out of your day to help Senator Obama?

Everyone — and I mean everyone — needs to take the time to listen to the speech that Barack Obama delivered yesterday:

You can also find a high-res version (in several parts) starting here.

I repeat only what many others have said when I describe it as the finest piece of political oratory, political thought, and political fortitude this nation has seen in at least a quarter century. (It’s important to note that this speech is entirely the product of Obama’s exceptional mind: It was not the product of speechwriters, but a product of his own pen — a trait which is true of many, if not most, of his speeches.)

When this political cycle began, way back in the waning months of 2006, my first choice for the Democratic nomination and the presidency was John Edwards. I had many reasons for that, but even when John Edwards was my horse, Barack Obama was a very close second. When Edwards left the race, it was with very little regret that I came an Obama supporter.

But this speech — coupled with Obama’s extraordinary Audacity of Hope — has transformed me over the course of the past week from being merely a supporter to a completely dedicated zealot. It is my fervent belief that electing Barack Obama is of the utmost importance.

America is standing at a treacherous crossroads. The last eight years have left us gasping as a nation. I have believed for many years now, that the 2008 election would decide whether or not America was going to reverse its decline and right its course.

But Barack Obama gives me hope that this election will be more than just an opportunity to avert disaster. Barack Obama gives me hope that this election can be about making America a better place and a stronger place than it has ever been.

McCain would be a disaster. Clinton would be acceptable.

But Obama?

President Obama would be exceptional.

For we have a choice in this country. We can accept the politics that breeds division and conflict and cynicism. We can tackle race only as spectacle, as we did in the O.J. trial. Or in the wake of tragedy, as we did in the aftermath of Katrina. Or as fodder for the nightly news. You can play Reverend Wright’s sermons on every channel, every day and talk about them from now until the election and make the only question in this campaign whether or not the American people think that I somehow believe or sympathize with his most offensive words. We can pounce on some gaffe by a Hillary supporter as evidence that she’s playing the race card. Or we can speculate on whether white men will all flock to John McCain in the general election regardless of his politics.

We can do that.

But if we do, I can tell you that in our next election we’ll be talking about some other distraction. And then another one. And then another one.

And nothing will change.

Barack Obama
March 18th, 2008

I really hate being forced to pay for the same content over and over and over again.

Take Ptolus: Monte Cook’s City by the Spire, for example. This is a 672 page tome that is, frankly, worth its weight in gold as a gaming supplement. It features gorgeous, detailed cartography accompanied by enough detail that you always feel well-supported when you’re running adventures there, without being so massively over-detailed that there’s no place to make room for your PCs. Plus, Monte Cook has supported all of this detail in the city with enough raw adventure material to fill two or three complete campaigns. And this wealth of material is supported by some of the best indexing and cross-referencing ever used in a roleplaying manual, making it delightfully easy to use. (In fact, I found the cross-referencing so wonderful that Dream Machine Productions has been using a similar system for cross-referencing our Rule Supplements.)

In short, I love this supplement. And I’m currently using it to run a really wonderful campaign from which I’ll probably start posting campaign journals in the near future.

But I’m being asked to pay for this material for the third time, and it’s really starting to annoy me.

First, I was told that only those who pre-ordered the book would receive a plethora of special bonus material. So I made a point of pre-ordering the book at the full cover price of $120 so that I would get all of this bonus material.

… except almost all (if not all) of this bonus material was later released for everybody to get their hands on.

Well, that’s OK. I’m not against supporting a really great product in this little niche industry by paying full price for it. And I did get early access to some of that material, which was kinda neat.

One of the things that comes with the book is a CD full of bonus material, which included — in addition to a lot of original material — free PDF copies of a lot of Ptolus-related products. Among these were Chaositech and Banewarrens. This was a great deal for some people, but since I’d already bought PDF copies of these it was really just a duplicated effort.

But that’s OK, too.

What annoyed me, however, was that this CD did not include the PDF-version of the book which was simultaneously released. The PDF-version was marketed as nine separate PDF products, one of which was given away for free. Total price? $69. I got a 20% discount coupon by buying the book, so that knocked the price down to $55.

(Why would I want a digital copy of content I already own in hardcopy? Because being able to search the text is nice. Also, being able to copy-and-paste text and graphics for handouts and the like is also a nice feature.)

So now I’ve spent $175 for material which, on the day of release, could be picked up from $60 from the discount dealers.

The only disadvantage of these PDFs is that they’re nine separate files, which can make searching a little bit more complicated than it probably needs to be.

Now, however, Malhavoc Press has released an all-in-one PDF “due to popular demand”. They want $60 for it.

“Well, screw that,” I think. “I”ll just pop open my copy of Acrobat, combine all these separate PDFs into one file, and call it a day.” Only I can’t do that because they’ve put a “we know you paid $55 for this, but we don’t trust you” protection scheme on it.

So Malhavoc Press is literally trying to charge me $60 for another copy of material I’ve already paid $175. And it’s not even that they’re offering it to me in a new format. They’re offering it to me in the same format, but in a slightly different configuration. And the only reason I need to pay them for this slightly different configuration is because they screwed me with their copy fascism.

And this isn’t like buying all the Beatles albums on CD even though I already own them on LP: If I wanted to, I could just record the LP and burn it to a CD. The reason I’m willing to pay for the CD is because it’s got better audio quality.

No, this is like a music company charging you $20 to buy a copy of a CD with the tracks in a slightly different order… and thinking they can get away with it because they put copy fascism measures on the original CD which stops you from ripping the tracks and burning a new CD with the tracks in a different order.

I’m not a thief, and I want people to be compensated for their IP. (Since I make my living creating IP, it would be pretty foolish for me to think otherwise!) And it’s not even that I don’t like giving Monte Cook my cold, hard cash: When it comes to Ptolus-related products alone, I’ve spent close to $300. (The big book, the separate PDFs, Banewarrens, Chaositech, Demon God’s Fane, the original version of Queen of Lies, and the Ptolus-revision of Queen of Lies. Plus the Deluxe City Map, the adventure maps, and the sketchbooks.)

But enough is enough.

(And a quick Google indicates that I just coined the term “copy fascism”. Awesome.)