President's Race

I do not like McCain.

I do not like Romney.

According to the presidental candidate selector at selectsmart.com however, my results are shown below. Obviously I need to do more research on McCain to see if I can get over his angry-little-man personality and support him since apparently I do, in theory, agree with most of his positions.

My big issues are foreign policy [do not give up on Iraq; support free trade], immigration [increase legal immigration;offer a guest worker program and amnesty, build a fence for security going forward], lower taxes, absolute opposition to universal health care, support of 2nd amendment gun rights, and in general a president who will discourage congress from getting involved in domestic issues they have no constitutional jurisdiction over [like marriage, divorce, funding for the arts, etc, etc].

1.
Theoretical Ideal Candidate (100%)

2.
Alan Keyes (78%) Information link

3.
Chuck Hagel (not running) (76%) Information link

4.
Sam Brownback (withdrawn, endorsed McCain) (72%) Information link

5.
John McCain (71%) Information link

6.
Stephen Colbert (gag; campaign halted) (71%) Information link

7.
Newt Gingrich (says he will not run) (71%) Information link

8.
Tom Tancredo (withdrawn, endorsed Romney) (68%) Information link

9.
Duncan Hunter (withdrawn) (68%) Information link

10.
Mitt Romney (67%) Information link

11.
Kent McManigal (campaign suspended) (66%) Information link

12.
Fred Thompson (withdrawn) (66%) Information link

13.
Wayne Allyn Root (63%) Information link

14.
Ron Paul (62%) Information link

15.
Jim Gilmore (withdrawn) (58%) Information link

16.
Rudolph Giuliani (withdrawn, endorsed McCain) (56%) Information link

17.
Mike Huckabee (49%) Information link

18.
Tommy Thompson (withdrawn, endorsed Giuliani) (45%) Information link

19.
Bill Richardson (withdrawn) (37%) Information link

20.
Christopher Dodd (withdrawn) (36%) Information link

21.
Michael Bloomberg (says he will not run) (36%) Information link

22.
Hillary Clinton (33%) Information link

23.
Joseph Biden (withdrawn) (33%) Information link

24.
Al Gore (not announced) (31%) Information link

25.
Barack Obama (31%) Information link

26.
John Edwards (31%) Information link

27.
Wesley Clark (not running, endorsed Clinton) (27%) Information link

28.
Mike Gravel (26%) Information link

29.
Dennis Kucinich (withdrawn) (23%) Information link

30.
Alan Augustson (campaign suspended) (17%) Information link

31.
Elaine Brown (7%) Information link

Board Game Review > Middara: Unintentional Malum Act 1

I don't keep my finger on the pulse of all the independent Kickstarter campaigns running at any given time. There's just too much unique content being produced month after month for me to sift through everything. I leave that to those who write previews and reviews for a living (I am an IT Consultant for a living; I write reviews as a hobby because I'm passionate about board gaming). The only way an independent Kickstarter campaign is going to be on my radar is if the designer/publisher reaches out to me to let me know the campaign is running or if it's created a bit of buzz already in the key circles that I frequent. I definitely wasn't closely monitoring Kickstarter campaigns four years ago when the original edition of Middara was initially funded. It was an adventurous dungeon crawl that promised to be so much more than an ordinary dungeon crawl. With options to run in campaign mode for an ongoing narrative or crawl mode for one off gameplay, it could work as a...

Board Game Review: Anno 1800

Whenever Martin Wallace designs a new game, I am all over it. This is because I absolutely love Brass Birmingham (another MW designed game); in fact Brass Birmingham is my #1 board game of all time. Over the years, his other games I've tried have been pretty good, but not necessarily amazing must-buys. Still, I keep trying each new release of his, searching for that next star performer. That's why I'm excited to report that Anno 1800 is, in fact, a star performer, and an amazing must-buy board game. Anno 1800 was adapted by the publisher (Kosmos) from a Ubisoft video game of the same name. In the board game, players take on the role of industrialists, charged with developing their island economies and exploring other islands. Each player begins the game with a personal industry board with trade & exploration ships, a shipyard, and industrial goods tiles printed on the board. A starting collection of workers (wooden cubes) of various types to produce the goods is a...

Board Game Review: Clank! Legacy: Acquisitions Incorporated (spoiler free)

We’ve had our eye on Clank! Legacy: Acquisitions Incorporated since its debut in 2019 from Renegade Game Studios. In our house, we love legacy games and we own most of the other Clank! editions, so it seemed like a good fit. Boy, was it ever! We finally got the game a couple of weeks ago, and immediately fell for it so hard during the first few minutes of the game that we played it nearly every day with our 11 year old twin sons, Max and Locke. In Clank! Legacy: AI , designed by Andy Clautice and Paul Dennen, players take on the role of employees at a small organization. At the beginning of the legacy campaign, the organization is in the process of applying to become a franchise of Acquisitions Incorporated, a megacorp famed for its for-profit adventuring services. We loved the narrative and appreciated the touches of authenticity, like the franchise charter agreement. We’ve played through other legacy campaign games over the past year where the narrative fell flat at tim...