Jack of Harts

Saturday was my monthly (or so) DnD night. Well, Pathfinder, but you get the idea. We were respeccing all of our characters in a campaign and going from six characters to four characters. My cleric got a sudden conversion to the glories that is being an elemental fire sorceress and she went to town on a couple trolls and some other bad guys. And did NOT get to go fire while inside the dead and dried out tree a bunch of mitflits lived in. But she is an elemental so she’s got lightning and water and air as well. She basically IS magic, and can do a little bit of everything. Though she REALLY wants to burn things, because fire is fun.

And the miniature I’m using for her is painted by a friend and is amazingly beautiful. Complete with her throwing a magical ball of blue flame at the enemy… because she burns that hot. The fact that she was originally painted to be a cleric with soothing healing magic does not go into this at all.

In the end it was a fun time with friends slaying make believe enemies and smack talking each other. Because that’s what friends do. Get together in one room, eat good food, eat junk food, roll dice, smack talk each other when our dice run colder than a Minnesota winter, and cheer when they go hot as an Arizona summer. We backed out on a fight with a five-headed hydra because we didn’t think we were up for that heat. Then dropped a giant dire boar with rolls that made us think maybe we could have taken that hydra. Then flubbed our roles against a troll so bad we thought maybe avoiding the hydra was a good thing.

And if you don’t do DnD, that’s how it sounds to me when you talk about fantasy football.

Fine Fancy Ladies.

Deep Dark Noir.

Sultry Murder Jazz.

Listen to your favorite sultry songs from the small stages of New Orleans and get these sweet, sweet words implanted in your soul.

Check out Pinup Noir: Sultry Murder Jazz. If you dare…

DOGE has recommended billions of dollars in cuts. Based on the information they’ve collected, they might be pointing at trillions. Billions of it are outright fraud. Other billions are to Left Wing causes. And they are pointing at firing at least 10s of thousands of government bureaucrats.

The first thing to understand is that I have no sympathy for any bureaucrat who loses their job. Government bureaucrats are a drain on our economy and should be cut back to the absolute minimum capable of running the government. And then maybe cut some more. All they generate is paperwork and I don’t want them. So that is my bias number one.

My second bias is that I don’t like fraud. I want it found and I want it cut. And I want anyone who fraudulently received our tax paper funds to be sued and put in prison if convicted of it. There must be a cost to defrauding the government and the tax dollars the citizens sent to it. It is our money that was stolen.

My third bias is that I don’t want my tax dollars going to support Left Wing causes. Cutting up children. Sending boys to beat up girls in girls sports. Paying the hotel bills of illegal aliens. Gay pride parades. Some things I just don’t want happening at all, and other things I just don’t want my tax dollars paying for.

The problem is, that while some of these things are discretionary funding that the President absolutely can cut at his discretion. But some of these things have been specifically approved by Congress, and according to the current understanding of the law, the President still has to fund those. In the end, the President and DOGE can only cut so much. We need Congress to really get the cuts and to make them permanent. Because otherwise, the next time the people send a Democrat to the White House, and there will be a next time, that President will just restore all this stuff all over again and try to burn the country down again, just like Biden’s administration spent four years doing.

DOGE is great. I love what DOGE is doing. I love the fraud and waste they are finding. But we need Congress to do something too. And I don’t know if they will.