Jeff Sessions under fire for doing the right thing

I don't think Jeff Sessions is a good guy.  I think he is a misogynist and a racist.
However recusing himself in the Russia  investigation was the right thing.
The Dictator in Chief however has been pretty mad about it.  In his mind its all Sessions fault that he is under investigation for the Russia mess.

The bit about he would never have hired him if  he knew he was going to do that tells us a lot about Trump.  It makes it clear that he thinks of the Attorney general as the Presidents lawyer not the countries lawyer.
I think Sessions should stay and rough it out.

I would hope, but of course don't expect the GOP to stand up and protest in mass if he is forced to resign.

Rep Steve King, another traitor to the USA

Listening to yet another GOP member try to deflect and provide cover for Trump.
He made it clar he would rather go back and re-investigate Hillary again over her emails than deal with Trumps Russia issues.
These people need to be removed from office!
I get partisan politics and why they want to blame the other guy for everything but at a certain point you have to step up and put the country ahead of your party and political agenda.
Now I don't defend Hillary, shes corrupt and has lots of problems.  However she had her day in court and its over. The Great Obstructionist Party went after her for years and came up with nothing to convict her on.
STOP rehashing history over a politician who has made herself irrelevant.

And his crack at Obama makes him deserve to be shot for treason.
Could Obama have done more? Yes, Should he? Probably but he did try and the Great Obstructionist Party stopped him. They REFUSED to team up for a bi-partisan complaint over Russian meddling and call for tighter security.  They REFUSED to take the issue seriously and to this day thier dear leader still says nothing to see here and it was some guy in a bed somewhere, or maybe Chinese, or maybe whomever. Republicans did not want to help and now they are culpable.  Had President Obama gone out on his own it would have been the brave thing but it would have backfired and they would have roasted him over it on air.
We ALL know this.


Where is the red line? At what point will the Greed  Over Patriotism group finally step up?

Just look at the public record, the things the average American can see for themselves.
President Trump is guilty of violating the Emoluments Clause of the US Constitution.
He is gettign pay for access and DOUBLED his membership fees for his resort Mara Lago and meets with foreign officials there and shows them off to members.
He golfs almost every weekend and uses the weekends and even the White House website (till he was forced to take it down) to showcase his properties and add value to his brand at taxpayer expense.
He is guilty of money laundering for the Russian mob.
He is guilty of obstruction of Justice and witness tampering and intimidation.  Ok he is incompetent at it and has not succeeded so far but failing does not absolve you of guilt.
His defense of his sons meeting with Russians was that its ok because nothing came of it is not a true defense, nor is it true that anyone would have done the same. Al Gore turned his into the FBI and the gal who tried it with him is in jail.

At what point will these people finally step up and act?
At this point they are supporting and aiding and abetting criminal actions against the United States of America  When will they stop?
When will Trumps loyal base of 35% of America finally have had enough of this?
They waiting for him to get on with his promises? Willing to sell out the country as long as they get what they want?
If I cant appeal to their integrity and patriotism how about their sense of entitlement? He WONT do anything for you!
He has proven and does so every day that he cares about no one but himself.  His inability to stop bragging about himself and stop blaming everyone else but himself for things that go wrong and his inability to stop tweeting stupid shit has erased any chance he had of getting anything done.
A REPUBLICAN controlled congress is still unable to pass any major legislation, 6 months  in.  they are incompetent and so used to obstructing they have no clue how to work together to get anything done.

The Trump supporters and the GOP leadership must step up and start working for the country instead of themselves. The rest of us must vote or otherwise remove them from office at the earliest possible opportunity before they destroy the country.

You stood by while he accused a former president of a felony.
You stood by while he lied to everyone about his connections, even as evidence continues to mount.
You stood by while he wastes taxpayer money and lines his pockets.
You stood by while he takes money from Turkey in return for holding up on supporting the Kurds against ISIS.
You stood idly by and provided cover while he fired investigator after investigator, First Yates, then Bahria, then Comey.
You stood by while he tried to intimidate and threaten witnesses against him.
You stood by while he tried ot intimidate the director of the NSA and CIA into talking Comey down.
Your standing by while he lays the ground work to destroy the credibility of the entire DOJ.
Will you continue to stand by when Jeff Sessions and Rob Rosinsiten are forced to resign?
Will you stand by when he gets rid of Meuller?
Will you stand by when he gets us into a war to get his poll numbers up and provide another distraction?
Will that finally be enough? Though of course by then it may well be too late.

At this point the GOP is guilty of aiding and abetting after the fact, those who did not know about this ahead of time.  Right now I feel your morally and ethically guilty.  At what point will you be legally guilty?
I know your all rich white men so wont ever get charged or go to jail.  That does not make it right, it just means you will get away with your crimes against the country.
Hopefully God will take care of you on the other side.

GURPS Broken Into Pieces

GURPS is at its heart designed a a modular system.  Pile up all the parts and you have an overwhelmingly large and even unwieldy system.  However almost no game is designed to work that way. Instead you pick and use just the pieces that are appropriate to your campaign.

Pick Your Attributes

GURPS has just 4 core attributes, DX and IQ cost 20 points a level and HT and ST cost 10 points a level.  You start with a base of 10 and add or lower the attributes based on your character idea.

Brainy type? Up the IQ level.  Athletic? Up DX for a gymnast, coordinated type, HT for the long distance runner or ST for the strong muscleman. Adjust each to taste and within your point budget not random die rolls.

Higher point games are for more impressive character types.

Calculate Secondary Attributes

Secondary attributes include Basic Speed, Move, Basic Lift, HP, Perception, Will, etc.

These are based on your attributes and you can buy them up or down to adjust to get the type of character you want.  

Smart but head in the clouds so does not notice much? High IQ but buy down Per.

Not very bright but animal like senses? Low IQ but high Per.

Coordinated but not able to move very fast? High DX but buy down your Move (yards you can move in a turn) or even Basic Speed (Initiative and Dodge).

Tweak With Talents

Talents represent someone with a general aptitude. The basic set includes a handful and GURPS Power Ups 3: Talents includes a lot more and how to build them.

They can be for someone who is good with plants or animals, or maybe a natural hacker.  talents are not needed but they allow fine tuning and are cheaper than buying up core attributes.

Choose What You Are Good At

The last part of this process is deciding what skills or advantages you have.

Skills represent things anyone can do with the right training.

Advantages are special abilities, some you have to be born with, some could be trained (Improved memory or ambidexterity).  This is where GURPS really shines in allowing you to fine tune a character but the sheer number of choices can be overwhelming.

The GM should pair down the list and there are tools like the trait sorter that can help as well as free PDFs or the index in the back of GURPS Basic.

For any given campaign you only need a fraction of these abilities.

• GURPS Resource List
• Skill Categories
• FORUM list of Resources
• Skill Primer

Flavor and Getting More Points

Finally we have Disadvantages, Perks and Quirks to round things out.

Perks are very minor advantages and Quirks minor disadvantages for 1 point each that are mostly flavor.

Disadvantages are things like One Leg, Blind, Overconfident, Duty, etc that limit you in some way but also give you points in return to buy other stuff with.

That is really all you need to build a character in GURPS.

Though I do support this idea by T-Bone

Trumps Money Laundering Connection

An article in The New Republic called "Trumps Russian Laundromat" makes good reading.  It is well sourced and revealing in just how far back Trumps Russian connections go.
Included sources include not only public statements from his sons but from Trumps own book "The Art of The Deal".
So tell me again why the GOP offered this man as the best the party had to offer?
Why do they continue to support him, no matter how many things keep coming out the GOP just keeps sticking to their support of Trump.

At waht point do we call the GOP to account for this?  In the beginning they could claim they made a mistake and were ignorant.  However every day that gets harder to believe and by continuing to provide excuses and aid in covering up his crimes, refusing to call him to account for the crimes already proven, or impeach him to protect the selling out of the country the Republican party is more and more culpable.
At what point are they criminally liable for conspiracy to defraud the United States, aid and abetting and accessory after the fact in his violations of the Emoluments clause?

Al Gore had someone approach him with info but instead of taking the meeting he called the FBI and the lady is now in jail.  But Trumps lawyers and members of the GOP say this time it was ok, and in fact if there was anything wrong it was up to the Secret Service to stop it.

Republicans were up in arms over China Gate and now complain about the Ukraine, however because this time its a Republican its all ok. Why are ANY of these things ok?
The GOP simply cares more about their party than they do the United States of America.


Plain and simple we must get rid of the people now in charge and replace them with new and honest people. Check out Brand New Congress.

GURPS Adventures

GURPS Third Edition had quite a few adventures, GURPS Fourth Edition nearly as many.
Of course Third Edition material is over 90% compatible with Fourth Edition.  The stats are mostly the same with just the point costs being different in several cases.

I personally have little use or desire for adventures.  To me NPC or monster stats, including equipment loadouts are more useful.  Plot ideas and adventure seeds, especially maps are also useful.
However others want single adventure, quest chain type adventures or even campaign meta plot type adventures.
What do you think and want?
Feel free to comment here or on the forums thread here.

Linked Page

Sources

• GURPS Books/Adventures Page
• GURPS Wiki Adventures
• GURPS Adventure Forum Thread
• Quick Play Adventure Series (By Mook at Game Geekery)

Fantasy

• Dungeon Fantasy Adventure 1: Mirror of the Fire Demon
• Pyramid: Dungeon Fantasy Collected
• Coming Soon 2 adventures for the Dungeon Fantasy Role Playing Game Boxed set.

Misc

• Big Lizzie 
• Lair of the Fat Man
• Supporting Cast: Age of Sail Pirate Crew (This has adventure seeds but the full crew and ship stats make it usable in a lot of other material)
• Zombies: Day One

Broken Care Reconciliation Act

The Grand Old Party is so stuck on the idea that they have been promising to Repeal the AHCA for the last 7 years that I think they have lost sight of what they actually promised.
Trump ran and won on the idea of making Universal Health Care and the GOP has been promising something better, with lower premiums and better coverage.
The concepts they are focusing on instead are...

• Taxcuts for the wealthiest.
• Taxcuts and incentives for Insurance CEOs.  Why do they need a special benefit/perk?  How is this even classic republican?  If they run a good business they should not need further incentives.
• Free market policy.  The idea beign that more competition lowers prices and improves quality.  The trouble is that wont work for Health Care. Remember Insurance companies make a better profit if they can get people to pay premiums and no need medical care.  There is no free market concept that encourages insurance companies to provide good coverage at good prices.  They WANT people who are at risk of getting sick to go to another company and will be fighting for the healthiest part of the market and trying to avoid covering the rest. Republicans are either too stupid to understand that concept or they just don't care.  I think its more the latter.

This bill is not about, nor does it even try to improve health care.  Its about checking off a box and passing a tax cut to themselves and their donors.

So if they manage to get it passed everyone who loses coverage, knows someone who loses coverage or see rates go up faster than inflation, or knows someone who dies because if this needs to remember this when it comes time to vote again.

The AHCA was not perfect, nor even as good as President Obama promised but it was better than what we had before. Working on improving it or replacing it with something better would be the right thing to do.  However the Great Obstructionist Party has been unable (actually it looks like they never even tried) to come up with something better, despite 7 years of looking forward to this.

Remember the good old days in American politics?

When I was growing up people voted to swap parties in power to change direction and correct for the last party overstepping.
Democrats were pro labor and the common man.
Republicans were for the wealthy and business.

One party would hurt the opposite side of the country in order to help their side.  We HAD to switch back and forth as a form of balance to gt one side from getting too much of the pie and hurting the country overall.

Now?
We vote for the opposing party to the one in power out of disgust with the one in charge and what they have been doing.
Corruption is no longer an isolated incident that is unusual. Now its the daily grind.
This is not something that happened overnight, or even with Citizens United, though it accelerated with that passage.

We must remove the majority of our politicians and do so in such a dramatic and powerful fashion that the message that voters will not longer tolerate it is made loud and clear.
Too many people do not even bother to vote out of sheer disgust and the feeling that it simply does not matter who wins.  We will just get more of the same, voting is not choosing who is better but who is less evil.
Can we do that? Can enough Americans stand up and say "We are tired of your lies, corruption and stealing from the country!"

Thje next election is in 2018 and I hope we see record turnouts at the voting booth.
But for now we must all call our elected officials and express our feelings, we must attend the town halls of those few still having them.
We will only get change if we push for it, and push hard.