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Sam Brownback (withdrawn, endorsed McCain) (72%) Information link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Tom Tancredo (withdrawn, endorsed Romney) (68%) Information link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Duncan Hunter (withdrawn) (68%) Information link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Fred Thompson (withdrawn) (66%) Information link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Jim Gilmore (withdrawn) (58%) Information link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Rudolph Giuliani (withdrawn, endorsed McCain) (56%) Information link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Tommy Thompson (withdrawn, endorsed Giuliani) (45%) Information link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Bill Richardson (withdrawn) (37%) Information link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Christopher Dodd (withdrawn) (36%) Information link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Joseph Biden (withdrawn) (33%) Information link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Dennis Kucinich (withdrawn) (23%) Information link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: Expeditions Gears of Corruption

L ast year I reviewed Expeditions and ranked it #1 among all Stonemaier games on account of the challenging intellectual puzzle it presents. This year I have played my way through the new expansion, Gears of Corruption , and I’m delighted to let you know that it makes the base game even better. That the expansion so cohesively builds on the base game should not be a surprise to anyone who closely examines the original box for Expeditions. All expansion components perfectly fit in that box including the 2 new mechs that nestle in the placeholder cubbies clearly made for them. That can’t be coincidence. There might a few features rolled into Corruption of Gears that were developed as a result of consumer feedback on the base game (I’m looking at you, wild meeple), but my theory is that Stonemaier did a Lord of the Rings maneuver with this game and its expansions, designing the entire game with most of the additions integrated up front, and then breaking it into base + expansions fo...

Board Game Review: Hues and Cues

Last week we received Hues and Cues from The Op Games. We recently finished playing through Scooby-Doo Escape from the Haunted Mansion (a fantastic game in The Op Games catalogue designed by Jay Cormier, Sen-Foong Lim, and Kami Mandell that you should absolutely pick up to play with your family) and wanted to give another game from the same publisher a go. I picked Hues and Cues because I’ve been pleasantly surprised by other “test whether our minds think the same way” games such as The Mind and Wavelength. In Hues and Cues , players gather around a large central board comprised of 480 graduating colors of the rainbow surrounded by an x-y axis and scoring table. White and black (which are technically not colors) are conspicuously absent as are shades (mixtures of color + black; e.g., grey) and tints (mixtures of color + white; e.g., cream). On each player’s turn, they draw a card with four colors and the x-y axis codes of those colors depicted and they select one. They a...

Board Game Review: Expeditions

Expeditions is my favorite game in the Stonemaier Games portfolio to date. The game is a sequel to Scythe, and continues the narrative years in the future. It has taken everything I loved in Scythe and expanded on it, while chucking out everything I didn’t care for (the combat). Designed by Jamey Stegmaier, Expeditions brings us into an age when a meteorite has crash landed into Siberia and things begin to go sideways for all who encounter it. One team after another sets out to investigate the crash site and they are never heard from again. No one knows what happened to them. Now it’s our turn to find out what’s really going on, each of us leading a competing expedition team into Siberia to bring back desperately needed answers. During a game of Expeditions, all players are seated around the game board, which is made up of individually placed hex tiles laid out as shown above. At the bottom of the game board is an insert affectionately known as the base camp. The base camp holds ...