Checkmate.

Not sure where to start, here. Doug volunteered to cook dinner (actual, real, cooking here) so I have a few minutes. 

It decided to snow out here, though not very much; probably around four inches or so I'd guess. We didn't bother to shovel the driveway yesterday, and by this afternoon it was all nicely melted off, so there was no issue there. You can hear to snowmelt dripping off the roof and into the gutter. 

He spent a lot of time with the kids today, too, which translated mostly into him sitting and playing Lego Star Wars while the kids watch. This is David's most-requested activity to do with Dad. He likes to watch Dad go through the game, and this gives David a preview of what to do and how to do it when he plays the game on his own. This whole process, however, drives me insane.

I spent a lot of my afternoon updating the Scouts spreadsheets. I have the unofficial and self-inflicted job of keeping track of which kid has completed which task. (The Den Leaders are both as new to this as I am, and they seem to have enough to take care of.) This means that the parents are supposed to keep me informed. I get everything from the single-line email, "Johnny has done everything," down to the parent who sends a detailed, color-coded and dated spreadsheet listing each individual activity and who the kid did it with. Quite a range there. 

While looking through the different requirements for the Sports and Academics Belt Loops, I also discovered that David has inadvertently earned himself a Belt Loop for Chess. 

I have mentioned he plays chess now, right? I don't know how it happened, actually. One day he kept harassing me to "play chess," and I knew darned well he had no idea how to play and I wasn't really up for teaching him. But in a bid to basically shut him up for a while, I said, "Try downstairs. I think Daddy has a chess set down there, it's in a tan box, there's a picture on the front." He enthusiastically thumped his way down there, and sure enough, emerged with the chess set, pretty much to my surprise. He opened the box and started looking everything over, so I ignored him and let him go to town. After a bit, he says, "OK, Mommy, want to play some chess? I have it all set up." So I look over and am stunned that he's got the thing MOSTLY set up correctly. All the pawns are in the front, rooks in the corners, king and queen in the middle back rows. "You do," I said. "Where did you learn to set up a chess board?" 

Shrug.

And he's got the major directions the various pieces can move, too. I played with him a little bit, figured he was about 80% proficient in understanding the basics. I asked Doug later, "Have YOU been teaching him chess?" Nope, he apparently just snagged it out of thin air. We checked the box, thinking he might have copied the picture on the front. No, the photo shows a game in progress with several captured pieces to the side. And nobody could find the directions until after Dad came home. Neither of us has the slightest idea how he came by the information.

So he's been pretty rabid about chess for the last several days. When we went to the library, I picked up a copy of Chess for Kids, which is actually quite a good book. It explains the rank and file of the board, how to read chess notation (which he picked up in nothing flat), covers the moves of the pieces (I learned of the move en passant for the first time) and gives you a little bit on strategy. The unfortunate thing is that we'll have to return the book to the library next week.

Next week, of course is the primary for Missouri. In light of that, I would like to simply ask the following:

When the hell did the Democratic and Republican parties unite into  one unprecedented clusterfuck?

I am having a very, VERY hard time seeing any difference between any of the candidates. I strongly dislike Huckabee. He's way too interested in defining my morality for me. Thanks anyway, but no. That leaves us with:

Mitt Romney, or as I like to think of him, Dubbya Junior. This smug little frat-boy rat with the same tattooed-on smirk as Georgie has actually appointed Dick Cheney's daughter as his

Senior Advisor on Foreign Policy.

No, that's real. You thought it was from The Onion, didn't you? Sorry, but it's true. This obviously means the man is deeply in the pocket of the Cheney family, and is nothing but bad news. Telling quotes from the new advisor to the press:

"I think that clearly, Gov. Romney, when you look across the whole range of issues and challenges our next president is going to have to face, is the one best suited to face those challenges. He has got a very clear record on issues like cutting taxes. Sen. McCain also voted against the Bush tax cuts in 2001 and 2003, for example, in addition to the list you mentioned before."

So...voting against Bush = bad. Voting with Bush = leadership. (Pardon me while I vomit.) More:

"I think that Gov. Romney, clearly, when you look at his position on Iraq, when you look at his position on the issue of the larger war on terror, and I would say when you look at issues like the importance of the United States being able to hold terrorists at Guantanamo in Cuba, which is something that Sen. McCain has questioned and has suggested we ought to bring those terrorists back to the United States where, in fact, on U.S. territory, they would get access to our court systems, access to lawyers.

Gov. Romney understands that that's actually a dangerous approach. And so I think if you look at the whole range of issues that have to do with our national security, I feel very confident and very good about where Gov. Romney is on those issues."

O.M.G. If that didn't make the hairs on your neck stand up on end, re-read it. Allowing those who are held in Guantanamo access to our court systems and lawyers would be "a dangerous approach." One might be tempted to ask, dangerous to whom? They've managed to kill off habeas corpus for those folks. To bring it back would be dangerous....it might expose arbitrary abuse of state powers. You know, this whole habeas corpus thing is so new...it only got started by the (unwilling) signing of the Magna Carta in 1215. So it makes sense that after just shy of 800 years later, we would want to repeal it. 

Expect much more of the same from this crew; more Executive Privilege, more of the caged Free Speech "Zones" and expansion of the Patriot Act. (See previous post.) I will do a lot to see this man barred from office. I find this extremely dangerous.

Then we come to Doug's usual favorite, although he's disappointed so far: John McCain. Doug has admired McCain to a great extent for a long time, but suddenly he's morphed into a NeoCon Moron, too. First off, and this bothers me more than it bothers Doug, McCain has said he's happy to stay in Iraq for 100 years. Secondly, he's pledged big tax breaks to big corporations as soon as he gets into office. Goody, just what we need. Haliburton is now in charge of the Department of Energy. And finally, McCain is apparently in favor of amnesty for illegal immigrants, which I find reprehensible. (I also find the discussion on the topic reprehensible. Being offended that people are immigrating illegally = racism, apparently. It's a red herring, and completely unrelated.) The backing for this claim? Well, he's hired Juan Hernandez as a hispanic outreach director, a man with a long history of pushing for amnesty. We're obviously engaging in what I've laughingly seen coined as Hispandering to get the Latino vote. 

I still say, Vote Ron Paul. No, it's not crazy.

And I still can't bring myself to seriously look at the Democratic candidates. I hate the idea of Hillary/Billary/Hitlery/whatever you want to call her. I didn't like the first Clinton presidency, what makes anyone think the second would be that much different? Not to mention the fact that all these people just keep circling around the power circuit for years on end, trading up and down the totem pole. Urk. I lost interest in Obama for the most part when his webpage went on and on about how massive federal funding should have been used to evacuate the homeless out of New Orleans when Katrina hit. Gosh, and here I thought all those people needed help, not just the homeless ones. My bad. 

Oh my. It's turned late, and I should go to sleep.