Lord Liaden

3 Republicans joined with the Democrats in the Arizona House to repeal the 1864 abortion ban.  One down, one to go.
 
This might be interesting.  State Senate and House seats are all up for election.  The primaries are end of July.  In the Senate, there are 3 Republican incumbents with challengers.  The House is trickier, as it looks like they use the same districts...but there's 2 representatives for each district.  The vote on the ban here...for or against...may become material in the primaries.

"Gentlemen, you can't fight in here! This is the war room!"

I can't tell you how much it pleases me that Joe Biden, and other Democrats, have finally taken the gloves off and are going after Trump and the MAGA Republicans, calling out their BS, showing what buffoons they really are. It's long overdue. You can't stick to the high road when your opposition is wallowing in the mud. You have to sling some mud yourself. It doesn't hurt that the mud the Dems have to work with has some sharp rocks in it.

If you haven't checked out the Osmonds, trust me, you're missing out.
 
And I think that's about as far from politics as we can get. 😏

I can't tell you how much it pleases me that Joe Biden, and other Democrats, have finally taken the gloves off and are going after Trump and the MAGA Republicans, calling out their BS, showing what buffoons they really are. It's long overdue. You can't stick to the high road when your opposition is wallowing in the mud. You have to sling some mud yourself. It doesn't hurt that the mud the Dems have to work with has some sharp rocks in it.

In case you missed it:
 
 

Yeah stuff tends to go on cycles, I think its premature to say Hero is dead.  Its alive as long as players keep playing and content keeps coming out.  Games that were "dead" have had revivals recently and are more popular.  I suspect that role playing games will see a resurgence at some point.  Who on earth could have predicted that board games would be hot again?

Alcoholics Anonymous?

I disagree. There is no heir apparent to Trump. If there was, with all the detrimental developments that have swollen around him, an heir would have appeared by now. And there's no MAGA hierarchical command structure for someone else to step into when Trump is gone, like Stalin after Lenin. The alliance between corporate elites, white supremacists, and evangelical Christians that Donald Trump forged is not natural. There was no such mass movement in America for him to have seized control of. He inspired it, and its disparate elements are invested in him and him alone. There are many other greedy, ambitious, evil people, who could do much harm, but they don't resemble Trump, and they can't replicate his brand of success. Donald Trump is a unique phenomenon. Thank God.

A very good description of Donald Trump. Also fits well within the symptoms of narcissistic personality disorder. At the time Van Vogt came up with his "Right Man" definition, NPD was probably not widely known outside the medical community, if it had even been diagnosed yet.
 
Per that Mayo Clinic description of NPD symptoms, note, "Have secret feelings of insecurity, shame, humiliation and fear of being exposed as a failure," and, "Withdraw from or avoid situations in which they might fail." Donald Trump's massive ego is also an overcompensation for massive insecurity.

Warning, this is a news item, so it contains irrelevant material. The first third is relevant to this topic.

"There's a giant, blind cockroach, and it doesn't run away like normal cockroaches. There's a gigantic blind cave spider."

Beneath the plains of the Nullarbor lies an underground world formed over millions of years

Trump and his cult reminds me more and more of what A.E. van Vogt called "The Right Man"
 
 

The three biggest urban areas in Canada -- Toronto, Vancouver, and Montreal -- are major centers for international film and television production. Calgary also sees a lot of that work. Canadians often spot familiar landmarks from those cities in movies and shows supposedly set elsewhere.

You're welcome!
 
DeanShomshak

And he did this re-arming in the face of serious opposition from people who did not want to consider going to war again and when there were very serious demands on the nation's finances to recover from the Great War. 
 
In my Golden Age campaign, he is a Professor X type character, building up the UK's superhero programme as a hedge against not having enough mundane war materials and aggresively delaying the onset of war by forcing Hitler to engage with appeasement overtures, wasting the nazi's time by giving them easy wins that appear to humiliate the British while furiously working behind the scenes to deliver a core resilience.

It gets EVEN BETTER!
 

This is an article by Kevin D. Williamson of The Dispatch.   It was behind a paywall so I'm reposting it without permission.  Makes an excellent point, I think.

 
 

As it happens, it's one of my hobbies to think about and tinker with Champions Universe cosmology.   I actually came up with my own rationale for the Gods Celestial. My concept is based on and inspired by hints and precedents from the published CU setting books, so it's compatible with them; but takes the ideas farther.
 
One clue comes from Champions Beyond p. 296 discussing the Progenitors, specifically their evolutionary Ascension: "By approximately three million years ago, the Progenitors had become so knowledgeable and powerful that they transcended the Reality of this plane of existence. They learned to transform their bodies into energy as well as other physical forms, and to rise through the dimensions to other places. A few of them became fascinated by this process and left Earth's plane never to return, but most were still absorbed in the Great Mission and remained here to continue it." And later, discussing The Progenitors Today: "Any one of them is far more powerful than nearly any superhuman, and any who choose to ascend into higher Realities likely become more powerful still." As you are clearly aware, those "higher realities" lie in Briah on the Sephirothic Tree of Life, in dimensions whose inhabitants are spirits embodying pure concepts.
 
The other clue comes from Champions Of The North describing CU Canada, which often refers to the "Four Great Spirits": the Land, the Sea, the Sky, and the Ice. These spirits sometimes involve themselves in affairs of the Canadian North, are connected to/served by other powerful entities such as the demonic Kigatilik (see Champions Villains Volume One: Master Villains), and have even empowered mortals to be their agents. Although they're presented in what appears to be a magical context, they come across as more "conceptual" than mere mythic gods; and some of their empowered champions wield cosmic-type powers, including the hero Celestar and villain Borealis.
 
All this led me to decree for my own games, that the Gods Celestial were once beings already of godlike power and status, either "mystic" or "cosmic," whose knowledge and wisdom enabled them to pierce the Veil of the Temple and ascend to Briah and a more transcendent existence. At least some of them retain a connection to Assiah, the Material World -- perhaps metaphysical, perhaps merely sentimental -- and still occasionally revisit it, if only in avatar form. And some of those still actively involve themselves in the affairs of the worlds they left behind.
 
Anyway, that's how I interpret the Gods Celestial. BTW I have my own notions about the Galaxars, the Corelords, and lots of other related stuff; but that's all getting much farther afield from what you asked about.

By the way, thank you for your kind words about my input to the Champions Online gamers. And welcome to the Pen and Paper side of the community!

Speaking as a comic book reader, capes and their like are often used to take advantage of a situation. It has happened to Superman, Batman, and countless others. In game terms, I just treat it a bit like a limb when it comes to grabbing it.