Congress to Vote on Head of Vecna — Summon Carnivorous Apes to use Scimitar
"No Way This Can Fail!" Promises Druid Stenny Hoyer.
From Steve Jackson Games website….
Many years ago (back when we all were still playing D & D), I ran a game where I pitted two groups against each other.
Several members of Group One came up with the idea of luring Group Two into a trap. You remember the Hand of Vecna and the Eye of Vecna that were artifacts in the old D&D world where if you cut off your hand (or your eye) and replaced it with the Hand of Vecna (or the Eye) you’d get new awesome powers? Well, Group One thought up The Head of Vecna.
Group One spread rumors all over the countryside (even paying Bards to spread the word about this artifact rumored to exist nearby). They even went so far as to get a real head and place it under some weak traps to help with the illusion. Unfortunately, they forgot to let ALL the members of their group in on the secret plan (I suspect it was because they didn’t want the Druid to get caught and tell the enemy about this trap of theirs, or maybe because they didn’t want him messing with things).
The Druid in group One heard about this new artifact and went off in search of it himself (I believe to help prove himself to the party members…) Well, after much trial and tribulation, he found it; deactivated (or set off) all the traps; and took his "prize" off into the woods for examination. He discovered that it did not radiate magic (a well known trait of artifacts) and smiled gleefully.
I wasn’t really worried since he was alone and I knew that there was no way he could CUT HIS OWN HEAD OFF.
Alas, I was mistaken.
The Druid promptly summoned some carnivorous apes and instructed them to use his own scimitar and cut his head off (and of course quickly replacing it with the Head of Vecna…)
Some time later, Group one decided to find the Druid and to check on the trap. They found the headless body (and the two heads) and realized that they had erred in their plan (besides laughing at the character who had played the Druid)…The Head of Vecna still had BOTH eyes! They corrected this mistake and reset their traps and the Head for it’s real intended victims…
Group Two, by this time, had heard of the powerful artifact and decided that it bore investigating since, if true, they could use it to destroy Group One. After much trial and tribulation, they found the resting place of The Head of Vecna! The were particularly impressed with the cunning traps surrounding the site (one almost missed his save against the weakest poison known to man). They recovered the Head and made off to a safe area.
Group Two actually CAME TO BLOWS (several rounds of fighting) against each other argueing over WHO WOULD GET THEIR HEAD CUT OFF! Several greedy players had to be hurt and restrained before it was decided who would be the recipient of the great powers bestowed by the Head… The magician was selected and one of them promptly cut his head off. As the player was lifting The Head of Vecna to emplace it on it’s new body, another argument broke out and they spent several minutes shouting and yelling. Then, finally, they put the Head onto the character.
Well, of course, the Head simply fell off the lifeless body. All members of Group Two began yelling and screaming at each other (and at me) and then, on their own, decided that they had let too much time pass between cutting off the head of a hopeful recipient and put the Head of Vecna onto the body.
SO THEY DID IT AGAIN!… [killing another PC]
In closing, it should be said that I never even cracked a smile as all this was going on. After the second PC was slaughtered, I had to give in (my side was hurting)…
And Group Two blamed ME for all of that…
I have to give Steve Jackson great credit for being able to moderate a game when he had a player character chop off his own head, and was able to do it without breaking a smile.
The current version of the bill, written by the Executive Branch (Constitutional scholars, take note), nationalized all school loan programs into a government-run system. This was done in order to cook the books so that the Congressional Budget Office could be cajoled into announcing that the bill would actually MAKE MONEY in the long run.
I have to give Congressional Democrats great credit for being able to moderate a game when they have the American public collectively chop off its own head, and are able to do it without breaking a smile.
Of course, the CBO numbers are based on certain assumptions that do not bear scrutiny, such as $535 billion dollars cut from Medicaid, such as a 21% pay cut to doctor reimbursements, such as adding 15 million to the Medicare rolls without any loss of service or availability, such as ten years of taxes to pay for six years of benefits, such as all the fines to be collected from all the people failing to buy state mandated health insurance, such as the taxes and revenues being unaffected by the nationalization of 1/6th of the national economy, such as the fantastic idea that no illegal aliens (despite that no provision has been made to exclude them) will use the system, such as a government take over the student loan industry will increase rather than decrease efficiency, and that the default rate will not increase once the lendees ability to repay is no longer a consideration (in other words, that running student loans using the same economic-reality-free un-rules as the Freddie Mac and Fannae Mae mortgages) — all banks in the nation no longer to make student loans except for one small particular one in North Carolina, whose Congressman’s vote was horsetraded for that exception. Other Dems were promised the post as Administrator of NASA or an Ambassadorship to the UN. The Nebraska vote was bought by exempting Nebraska from the system. The Louisianan vote was bought with three million dollars of your tax money.
The mechanism used to pass the bill without a vote is called ‘Reconciliation.’ Generally it is used only to adjust line items in budget bills. The Rules Committee is meeting to have pass the bill with no vote. Got that? House members would never actually vote on the 2,074-page bill itself nor have their votes on that bill recorded in the official record of the chamber as required by the Constitution (Article I, Section 7). This process called “Deemed Passed” or “The Slaughter Rule” and had been used before for non-controversial joint resolutions (not bills of law), such as raising the debt ceiling; not a law binding us, but a guide advising the House as to its own conduct.
The vote is on Sunday. As of last count, it is a dead even tie, with 18 or so undecided votes.
Alas that we had ever even raised such a generation of economically-illiterate, slavish, selfish and spoiled brats that fully 25% of the population supports this measure, and precisely (as of last count) half of our sworn representatives avowed to defend, rather than to Putsch, the Constitution. They are so ill-educated that they believe there is such a thing as a free lunch; their math skills are so bad that they believe you can add countless tens of thousands to the welfare rolls, cut reimbursement to doctors and clinics, and not suffer any change in price or availability; so ill-informed that they cannot see what health is like in SARS-R-US Canada, not to mention, closer to home, Massachusetts or Hawaii; or perhaps they have such European corruption of character that they know or suspect all these lie are lies, and they know their free lunch will be paid for by an ever shrinking pool of tax chumps, and they merely want to get something for nothing. If you have high self-esteem, you think the world owes you a living, and you are convinced, even as you devote yourself to lies and abominations, of your own pristine moral superiority over the tax chumps whose lives and freedoms and bones you grind to make your bread.
And if you have high self-esteem, you can congratulate yourself on being smart enough to summon up the Carnivorous Apes to hold the scimitar to decapitate you to make room for your new, progressive, and much more powerful head.
From the Hugh Hewitt website:
Keep calling, e-mailing and contributing to the known challengers of fence-sitters:
Rep. Bob Etheridge
D.C. Office: (202) 225-4531
Raleigh: 1-888-262-6202 (BOB-NC02)
Jason Altmire:
D.C.: 202-225-2565
Aliquippa: 724-378-0928
Natrona Heights: 724-226-1304
Opponent: Mary Beth Buchanan
Rep. John Boccieri
D.C. Phone: (202) 225-3876
Canton: (330) 489-4414
(800)826-9015
E-mail
Opponent: Jim Renacci
Rep. Dennis Cardoza
D.C. Phone: (202) 225-6131; 800-356-6424
Merced: (209) 383-4455
Stockton: (209) 946-0361
Modesto: (209) 527-1914
Opponent: Mike Berryhill
Rep. Jim Costa
D.C. Phone: 202-225-3341
Bakersfield: 661-869-1620
Fresno: 559-495-1620
Opponent: Andy Vidak
Rep. Zack Space
DC Phone: (202) 225-6265
Dover (330) 364-4300;
Zanesville (740) 452-6338;
Chillicothe (740) 779-1636
Link to E-mail
Rep. John Barrow:
D.C. (202) 225-2823
Augusta: (706)722-4494
Savannah: (912) 354-7282
Rep. John Adler
D.C.: (202) 225-4765
Toms River: (732) 608-7235
Rep. Dan Maffei:
D.C.: (202) 225-3701
Syracuse: (315) 423-5657
Rep. Michael Arcuri:
D.C.: 202-225-3665
Utica: 315-793-8146/8147
Michael McMahon:
D.C.: (202) 225-3371
Staten Island: (718) 351-1062
Brooklyn: (718) 630-5277
E-mail (Use zip code 10306).
About John C Wright
John C. Wright is a practicing philosopher, a retired attorney, newspaperman, and newspaper editor, and a published author of science fiction. Once a Houyhnhnm, he was expelled from the august ranks of purely rational beings when he fell in love; but retains an honorary title.
