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Bush's new campaign video, "Kerry's Coalition of the Wild-eyed," will certainly inspire his base. It's a miscalculation nonetheless.

The video opens with Gore asking how we can possibly drag the good name of America through Saddam's torture prison. This keeps the Abu Ghraib scandal prominent. That's not so good for Bush; it doesn't poll well at all. Then you get the cheesy Nazi images which won't hurt Bush, although their use here implies that Abu Ghraib wasn't so bad -- which, again, people will disagree with.

Next, Howard Dean says he wants his country back. This may be the most effective moment for Bush; the Dean = anger meme is still around. It's immediately followed by the segment of Michael Moore's Academy Award speech in which he says that we went to war for fictitious reasons. Hey, if Bush wants to remind a disenchanted public that they may agree with Moore, that's fine by me.

Then Gephardt calls Bush a miserable failure. 54% of Americans polled by USA Today think that sending troops to Iraq was a mistake. Whoops. More Nazi images in left-wing political ads follow -- again, this'll be pretty effective -- and then Gore calls out that Bush has betrayed this country. You know, it's easier to smear Gore as an out of control maniac when you don't show him speaking with honest passion.

Finally, Bush kindly presents Kerry's soundbite about all the people who are unemployed because of Bush's policies. Ouch.

So yeah -- this is going to make anyone who was already going to vote for Bush very happy. But it is not going to persuade fence-sitters. It simply exposes the undecided to 20 seconds of Bush criticism without any response from the Bush campaign other than "wow, aren't they angry and cynical?" Problem is, it's a cynicism and anger which is shared by many voters.

(Via rone.)

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So I figured I might as well go to an Amber convention because I like new things and I have friends who said “You should come!” And if I’m going to go do something new, I’m of course going to write about it. Thusly.

The Black Road has something like 36 people attending, which makes it the smallest con I’ve ever been to. The small size means it’s relatively easy to get all the GMs and all their players talking before the game. I had two PCs in hand weeks before the convention, which boosted my anticipation considerably. It’s tempting to think this could work for bigger cons, but that way lies madness. At least for the convention organizers.

First game was a cool swashbuckly affair run by Ginger and Michael. I got to play a Rebman water mage with attitude. I find that in a con game, if you blow your first roll, you might as well go with it — it’s a corollary of the Rigney Rule (“Your character is defined by his or her first action and the consequences thereof.”). When Nerissa asked the currents where land was and they lied to her by 180 degrees, it was pretty clear she was going to be the snobbish sometimes competent one of the bunch. More on the game later, maybe.

Oh, but I will note that it used the Everway rules, which were mostly transparent to we the players but which also worked out well. Next I’m playing in a cooking-themed game set in Amber. Tomorrow I’m playing My Life With Master and kill puppies for satan, both Amber-themed, of course. But still. Who knew that in order to play indie RPGs, you just need to go to an Amber con?