Comprehending the Chess Board

 

I’ve mentioned, more than once, that strategy is not my strong suit. But I do play chess, a bit, because the guys in the family enjoy it. Actually, at this point, I’m not often playing chess games; I’m playing chess puzzles, on the chess.com app. They’re set up so, if you make the right one or two moves, you can get a checkmate. And I’m pretty good at it.

Our grandson is a chess puzzles champion, in his interscholastic league. One day he showed me how to play a chess puzzles match (which I haven’t tried since). You needed to make the right moves almost instantly, which he does. I take an average of 5-7 seconds. So I guess I’m very slow.

one of the family chess matches
several years ago

Occasionally I take a free lesson, which shows you how to make good opening moves, and a bit of strategy from there—which makes sense when it’s explained to me, but otherwise I’m at a loss.

Because the chess puzzles seem so easy to me, and the situations follow patterns that come up a lot, I’ve asked my sons how a player would allow those situations to arise. But they assure me, those situations do happen in the natural course of play.

All of this is to say, common sense requires some experience, some careful observation, some understanding of the whole board, and some pattern recognition.

In our somewhat chaotic world today, is there a skilled player who understands the board, or a wild-and-wooly take-any-piece-you-can player?

Glenn Beck thinks we may have a chess champion handling the board. He says,

“If this war ends without spreading, and this theory that I'm going to lay out for you, these six things, if this is what it is, it will all have been done without the kind of global war that has defined the 20th Century. This is America reclaiming its golden age. Just smarter, stronger, and sovereign.”

Thursday’s overview (it was on radio, so you have to just imagine the chalkboard) is similar to one I wrote about a few weeks ago—also because of what Glenn Beck was saying. I don’t think we can say definitively that he’s right, but I think the evidence is building that our President Trump has a good grasp on the worldwide game board—and a plan.

To read the full article, FOLLOW LINK TO SUBSTACK.

The Executive Branch: Celebrating the Semiquincentennial, Part IV

We’re continuing our monthly series celebrating the nation’s 250^th birthday.

·       Part I: The Declaration of Independence 

·       Part II: The Preamble of the Constitution 

·       Part III: Lawmaking 

·        In our Part IV today, as we’re walking through the Constitution, Article II covers the executive branch, the powers vested in the President of the United States of America.

Before we get started, I just want to mention a version of the Constitution I got in the mail, from Turning Point USA. It’s all there, like a pocket version, although it’s slightly bigger than pocket sized. It includes illustrations, and on every page a definition of terms down at the bottom. (Some pages the definitions take up half the page.) The whole thing is there—all the original wording. But with the helps, it just seems easier to understand. If you’ve got a young person in your life—or if you just want an easier way to read and understand the Constitution—this might be a handy version. They sent me mine for free, in an envelope requesting a donation. But you can get these from their website, here. 

Article II, Section 1: Electing the President

OK, Article II of the Constitution first goes over the election of the President, which is using the Electoral college.

To read the full article, follow LINK TO SUBSTACK.

Life Is Full—Because the Tomb Is Empty

"He Is Not Here," by Walter Rane

As I do most years, I celebrate more than just Easter day; I celebrate the Easter season, and particularly Holy Week, from Palm Sunday through Resurrection Sunday.

Celebration can take a lot of forms, as it does for other holidays (holy days) as well. For me, that involves home decorations, food, family traditions, music, study, and anything that helps me focus on the reason for the celebration. Easter is particularly rich in meaning, so it’s full of opportunities.

At Christmas I’ve been filling my decorations with nativity scenes my entire adult life, so I have a pretty sizable collection of small ornaments and table decorations. For Easter there are beginning to be decoration items related to the actual meaning of Easter, little scenes, maybe with moving parts, to tell the story. But I haven’t acquired any yet. I have a couple of small art pieces, and I painted one last year, of the moment of resurrection. This year I have plans to do one of the empty tomb. It’s still in planning stages, but I’m hoping to get time this weekend to make it a reality.

Music celebration is something I fully embrace. This year on actual Easter Sunday, the twice-a-year Worldwide General Conference of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints will be taking place (it’s always the first Saturday and Sunday of April and October). So we’ll be listening to the Tabernacle Choir and hearing messages from general church leaders, including our prophet and apostles, as well as a few others. So music locally was done this year on Palm Sunday. Our ward (congregation) did a very nice program, mostly music, for our sacrament meeting (worship service) this past Sunday. I was assigned the organ that day, and I play for the choir and the Primary (children 3-11). And I sang a solo, accompanied on organ.

I did that solo again in the evening for our stake concert (a stake is a geographically combined group of congregations, like a diocese; ours has eight wards). I also sang in the choir.

The piece I sang was “He Was Despised,” an alto aria from Handel’s Messiah, not one of the more well known ones, but one I really like to sing. Handel knows how to write for the different voice parts, and all of the alto solos are a good fit for my voice; they feel good to sing. This one is mournful. It uses the words from Isaiah 53: “He is despised and rejected of men, a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief,” written some 700 years before they happened.

To read the full article (which includes a video I made), FOLLOW LINK TO SUBSTACK.

Puzzling It Out

 

If we had a picture of what “America First” would look like, how might we envision that?

·       Protected borders.

·       Trade deals that are to our overall advantage.

·       Trade deals that prevent our enemies from controlling the supply and transport of goods we want to buy and sell.

·       Regional protection, to further secure our borders.

·       Alliances that are equally beneficial to us and our allies, rather than mainly costs and burdens to us while protecting the allies.

·       Domestic peace, law, and order to protect life, liberty, and property.

·       Equal protection of our rights as citizens.

·       Prioritization of citizens over legal non-citizens, and no acceptance of illegal non-citizens.

·       Better election infrastructure and laws to ensure election integrity.

·       More transparency and truth, to allow for clearer decisionmaking.

·       I’m sure there might be a few other things we could list. But let’s just point out that the America First picture goes beyond the boundaries of the United States, necessarily.

Similarly, if you were thinking “My Home First,” you would want your home protected and in good shape for those living in it with you, but you would also benefit from a healthy, thriving, safe neighborhood, within a healthy, thriving, and safe community, city, county, state, region, etc. It’s not that you’re trying to control all those larger circles; it’s that you know you and all your neighbors near and distant will benefit from the things that benefit your home, so interest in those things is mutual.

There have been a fair number of beyond-our-boundaries locations President Trump has acted on since coming into office in 2025. Some of them were more than a little surprising.

I think President Trump spent those four additional waiting years looking at the table with puzzle pieces spread all over—while looking at the picture on the box that the rest of us don’t see.

To read the full article, FOLLOW LINK TO SUBSTACK.

Lawmaking: Celebrating the Semiquincentennial, Part III

The US Constitution consists of three articles—one for each branch of government—plus four more articles with general rules about citizenship and money and such things, and then come the amendments, which are numbered, and of which the first ten are considered the Bill of Rights.

So this month we’re going to talk about the legislative branch, and lawmaking, which is the task of the legislative branch.

But first, a couple of other semi-relevant celebrations. This week, March 4, marks 15 years since I started the Spherical Model blog. Hurray!

And also this week, March 2, we mark the Independence of Texas, from Mexico, in 1836.

As with the US separation from Great Britain, all avenues of diplomacy aimed at having our rights respected had failed, leaving separation—even if by war—as the only alternative for a people who would live free.

In the case of Texas, Stephen F. Austin had traveled to the Mexican capital to express the territory’s grievances and require the Mexican nation to abide by its constitution. In answer, he was placed in an underground dungeon, in which he could not stand, for 18 months. He never fully recovered his health from that ordeal and died a few short years later. Austin came home and declared that the only alternative left to them was to fight. And while the siege at the Alamo was ongoing, the Texas Declaration of Independence from Mexico was signed at Washington-on-the-Brazos (newly re-opened museum info here). Within a few weeks, Sam Houston’s army surprised Mexico’s Santa Anna, the dictator, at San Jacinto, captured him alive, and forced him to recognize their independence and end the war. (By the way, because the Texians won, that place is pronounced Say-ann Juh-SIN-toe.)

As the US Declaration of Independence reminds us, we humans are born to be free. Governments are established to protect our lives, our liberty, and our property. But government, like fire, needs to be carefully circumscribed, so it doesn’t get out of control.

As Thomas Paine put it in Common Sense,

Society in every state is a blessing, but government even in its best state is but a necessary evil; in its worst state an intolerable one; for when we suffer, or are exposed to the same miseries by a government, which we might expect in a country without government, our calamity is heightened by reflecting that we furnish the means by which we suffer.

For this reason, when the founders wrote the Constitution, they limited government to certain enumerated powers—and nothing else, without specific amendments passed by the majority of the United States.

To read the full article, FOLLOW LINK TO SUBSTACK.

Convention Season and Platform Resolutions Time

 

After the Primary Election Day this coming Tuesday, then commences the convention season, through which we elect delegates for the next level of convention and submit resolutions to go into the state party platform

Two years ago I wrote about the process and content for writing a resolution.  I’m going to repeat that here, and then follow it with some ideas for possible resolutions to submit this year.

How to Write a Resolution

Once the primary election is over, then convention season is underway. At each convention level we choose delegates for the next level up, and we put forth resolutions for the platform. At the local level, our platform resolutions move on up to the senatorial district level (some places move up to the county level, but our county has many senatorial districts in it), where they are sorted, refined, and sent on up to be considered for the state platform. (Texas Republican 2024 Platform here.)

The Process

How do those ideas get started? If you’re new to the process, how would you go about putting forth an idea?

You write it down, take it to your precinct convention (or whatever version of that you have in your area), and present it to the other grassroots participants. They might like it as is. Or they might reject it. Or they might suggest amendments to make it something they could support.

To read the full article, FOLLOW LINK TO SUBSTACK.

Republican Primary Picks 2026

 

samples of recent campaign flyers

Early voting for the Primary Election starts Tuesday, February 17, here in Harris County, Texas, with Election Day on Tuesday, March 3. So I’m working to make my choices and recommendations.

Once again, we have the longest ballot in the nation—maybe the world. And this may be my longest post ever. I didn’t want to split it up, because early voting is only days away, and people are asking me for my picks.

The quick version is this chart. While I try to make it all worth reading, this is so long, you may want to scroll to what you need.

As I’ve written this blog for the past 15 years, I stand by what I’ve said. Occasionally further information comes out, which may change what I would say, and a few times I’ve gotten information from sources that turned out to be wrong. Those instances have been few. But when I write about my ballot choices—which mainly comes up at these biennial Primary Election times—I am less certain than I am about my other writing. I have consistently, always, tried to make the best choices, among the choices available, to support strong constitutional conservative candidates. But I have at times been disappointed.

This is to say, feel free use my opinions here as a data point, but do your own research. Get to know as much as you can about the candidates. I’ll share what I know, but under a time crunch, I might not yet know enough.

We’ll go down the ballot, US Senate and Congress, then statewide races first. Then we’ll do local races and propositions.

To read the full article, FOLLOW LINK TO SUBSTACK.