The Heir isn't a Biden "lackey" by any means, but he sees the media trying to derail the infrastructure bill by spinning a supposed veto threat on Biden's part that he then supposedly "walked" back from.  He doesn't believe any of this is true, and he wants to see some healthfully dissentful reporting from the trenches to the opposite.  That would be media reporting on media, and how the media's using its access to inside politics to make a largely untrue assertion.  He wonders whether the media's aware of the need for us to make infrastructure upgrades for which the bills are the beginning in order to compete with China, and also the rest of the industrialized world, because the Heir sees the US as the only industrialized country without high speed rail for example.  He thinks that Acela Express is able to go to the full 90-120 past New London, CT, going north, but the portion of the NEC going through practically our backyard is still from the 80's, along with those stripey bread box cars Amtrak is still using.  The Heir's question for the media is this: do they really want us to continue to lag behind to the point where it'll be too late, and the only countries with high speed rail and artificial islands and muchogrids are totalitarian dictatorships?  If so, the Heir wants to guilt trip the media about tending toward that sense of global dictatorship while claiming they're somehow against it by posing as the so-called "Fourth Estate."

"Hey media, riddle me this: What did Jamal Khashoggi die for anyway?  Did he just die in vain while the rest of you practice general abdication from your duties to the public?"

The Heir isn't a religious person in particular, but today Tuesday on his day off from the Bland Barns Catering Counter, he's observing Father's Day and in a particular sort of way.  He's not specifically thinking of me the Mentor or Marco's Grandfather.  He's looking at Father's Day in a more spiritually devout context, and in light of the great social immorality that's still running rampant in the early 2020's as a continuation of it starting in the 2010's.  So while the moguls of this personal corruption are trying to tell the Heir how "wrong" he is for standing with principle, the Heir responds that there's one ally that transcends all others standing by him in his devotion to principle.  Happy Father's Day Week, everyone.

Today sees a test vote in the Senate regarding the voting rights bills, and again the Heir is actually more concerned about the existential message sending about the supposed "end" of democracy that would supposedly automatically result if both these bills don't pass the vote, and more so than whether such an end to democracy would necessarily come about.  And of course neither bill will pass.  This also includes the John Lewis bill, so once that gets blocked and filibustered, the Heir hopes the progressives will try to tell Mitch McConnell that he personally is dishonoring the memory of John Lewis.  He doubts that is going to happen because by resorting to existential messaging the progressives have put their weak foot forward, knowing full well Mitch McConnell will jump for joy on that weak foot.  Also it's the progressive movement the Heir knows full well has no reputation or history of coming up with sound strategies for dealing with a given pending political problem.  They're just not problem solvers inside the central movement or among charismatic public figures within that movement.  The Heir's also not surprised that the progressives may end up going after Ted Lieu for going off the existential messaging when he told the viewers of INN to not lose heart, for he and his colleagues will find a way of getting the voting bills through.  Even though the Heir still plans to help Souls To The Polls and truly in-the-trenches spare-the-PR grassroots groups, it would also satisfy the Heir that some kind of unseen intelligent problem solving pro-voting force would come out of left field and take action in such a way to really stop Mitch McConnell in his tracks, but he also believes the progressives will not allow this force in a million years.  If they're likely to go after Ted Lieu for going off-message, they will also go after this unseen force for taking away from the existential messaging.  That is, until and unless the progressives prove to the Heir *personally* that they do believe in problem solving and that at least some of them get to recant and regret the existential messaging.  Right now, the Heir's still waiting for them.

The Alpha 1 that the Heir got me the Mentor to write about in late March ran into problems, and as is the Heir's wont in such matters, he redid nearly a third of the components, and has certified an Alpha 2, and that's as of 6/16/21.  The Alpha 1 is still historic as it stands as the first test unit of the Tropical Soul Player capable of seriously playing on its own.  But it didn't last because of power compatibility issues.  So now we have Alpha 2, and after the Heir gets a spare battery, he'll feel confident about restarting those field tests we talked about back in March.  One of the Heir's takeaways is that simplicity and reliability wins out time and time again against sophistication and edginess.  The concept of sophistication, both with big tech and with the Heir's experiences with the player, is emerging as a marketing term for convolutedness.  It doesn't matter to the Heir how much marketing big tech does and how many consumers are sucked into believing the marketing, because there's no denying some age-old axioms.  Keep It Simple Stupid.  If It Ain't Broke Don't Fix It.  And where edginess is concerned, that's just another term for riskiness.  It may be appropriate enough for the casinos, like the one in the state neighboring Bachelor Blue State, but it's *not* appropriate for real life.  We in the Bachelor believe that today's naive public who gush about the glamour of "gaming" should really rethink their stances.  1-800-GAMBLER exists for a reason.  You'll notice it doesn't read 1-800-GAMING.  No ifs, ands or buts: "gaming" is gambling.  So, people, stop gambling your lives away, and start actually *living* them.

------------------------------------------------------------

So in terms of labeling Biden's migrant plan as "inhumane," the Heir believes that that merely constitutes preaching to the choir.  This notion of inhumanity the Heir sees as reinforced by Kamala Harris's inability to answer Lester Holt's question as to whether she's visited the border.  That there is an embarrassment the Heir thinks Ms. Harris could have avoided if her press coaches gave her better preparation for that question, since it would certainly have been a question that would have been asked.  But the Heir noticed that just days after Ms. Harris's botched interview with Lester Holt, she discussed with makers and movers and shareholders in a meeting in Mexico City an economic plan meant to prevent migration from occurring in the first place by, among other things, encouraging investment by the private sector while also ensuring against corruption.  The Heir also noticed that the progressives almost totally ignored Ms. Harris's meeting in Mexico City, and focused almost exclusively on the visiting-the-border question in the Lester Holt interview, so in terms of proving the Biden plan as "inhumane," they're not comparing apples to apples.  It doesn't surprise the Heir that an anti-Biden progressivism would eventually emerge, because that's what they did to Funny Named Skinny Kid, and which the Heir believes helped lead to the 2010s midterms.  The Heir has never bought the progressives' "agitation" argument, because their agitation comments in public serve to cast so much doubt on a given targeted figure that the figure loses popular support no matter what s/he tries to do policy-wise.  If they do respond in "shaping up" to the progressives' agitations, the Heir observes, it makes the figures look weak and un-independent, and less leader-like.  And the Heir wants leadership, not capitulation.  That's what he voted for.  That said, the Heir has his own questions about Biden he wants asked of Jen Psaki at the next press corps meeting, and one of these are as below, but the Heir isn't ready to throw Biden under the bus if those questions aren't answered.  That's how the Heir is not progressive, and he's OK with that.

Heir: "My question is, if the infrastructure plan was already bipartisan because citizens from all persuasions polled as supporting it, why did the guy spend nearly two weeks with the Elephantines on a 'compromise' plan, which I'm sure would never have included high-speed rail in a million years, and which the Elephantines would have filibustered anyway?  Ms. Psaki, why did he do that?"

The Heir believes AOC could have handled the situation with Margie Taylor Greene a lot better than she did.  With what little information was available to the Heir, it appears as though AOC suffered in silence behind the door to her office while MTG heckled her through the mail slot.  If MTG tried to do that to the Heir here at the Swank Lounge, and yes we do have a mail slot at our front door *exclusively* for the purposes of MTG coming over from Washington to Bachelor Blue State to try to heckle the Heir with, here's how the Heir would handle it.  The Heir would yell back at her through the slot telling her that he doesn't have time to have a debate with her as he's working on some very important legislation.  He would then advise her to make an appointment with his assistant or send him an email to arrange a time convenient to both him and MTG to discuss whatever's on her mind.  If she keeps heckling the Heir about his "socialism" and affinity for Antifa or something, he's inclined to get some earphones on playing some pink noise while he's busy working on his legislation, so he doesn't have to listen to her endless rantings, with the expectation that MTG will tire herself out and walk away.  And she will never have arranged to have a proper debate with him at a better time.  It gets back to the concept of principle, and MTG as a Trumpist hasn't demonstrated any more of it than the Ed Snowdens do.  If she truly believed what she claimed to believe, she wouldn't have resorted to heckling the Heir through the mail slot and getting frustrated at his lack of response and walking away.  That's so beneath the Heir if I the Mentor do say so myself.

The Heir just the other day reforwarded Ted Lieu's letter to Merrick Garland to his reps in Washington requesting the Garland DOJ to drop its challenge to the lawsuit with E Jean Carroll.  But he wants to follow that up with Ted Lieu, because right after the Heir forwarded the letter, he looked at Glenn Kirshner's video on YouTube showing the actual letter itself, and the Heir's kicking himself for how the letter actually read.  The request in the letter read something to the effect, oh, won't you please maybe you know reconsider your challenge to the lawsuit if you so please, hm?  That was such a wuss wording of that request, and the Heir's now thinking that he should have known that *before* he forwarded it to his reps, because the request wasn't assertive enough.  Neither Kirshner nor Rachel Maddow the Heir sees as pointing out how wussed out that wording was, because the Heir fully expects Merrick Garland to conveniently file the letter in his wastebasket.  Ted Lieu was being too polite, and the Heir really doesn't give a rat's ass about Congressional courtesy, since he's just an ordinary Joe that his reps are supposed to represent.  So the Heir wants to find time to use the assertion that he finds lacking both in Washington and on the Insurgent News Network with regard to this letter, and just spell it out for Mr. Garland.  If he doesn't drop his challenge to the lawsuits, including the one with Lafayette Square, he'd better make a satisfactory explanation for such an unjust challenge.  And if Mr. Garland doesn't do that or get a straight answer, and/or instead engage in stonewalling, the Heir won't see Mr. Garland's services as required, and Mr. Garland might as well go back to writing books in his quiet semi-retirement, and have someone more devoted to law and justice and principle to take up the job.

The Heir wants to go after AOC over misleading comments she made over the so-called "Biden" migrant plan.  But the Heir first wants to go after Merrick Garland, because his DOJ is still fighting, among other things, the lawsuits with respect to E Jean Carroll and Lafayette Square.  This despite the latest IG report, because the Heir doesn't see how it's OK to punch a reporter in the gut just to install security fencing, or to risk injury to protestors with respect to ballistics or the lowering of helicopters over the protestors.  The Heir calls for Mr. Garland to answer some tough questions, and he hopes to see that either in committee or in press briefings.  He hopes that the press corps will ask Jen Psaki about those cases, and not just about Biden's favorite ice cream flavors.  If she passes the buck over to the DOJ, then *their* press corps the Heir wants to ask DOJ about why they're still fighting both E Jean Carroll and Lafayette Square, instead of making a justly declination and concessions in those cases.  So the Heir has his own reasons to be skeptical about the Biden cabinet, though he doesn't want the progressives to think he's ever coming to their side in a with-us-or-against-us anti-Biden campaign.  It was Ed Snowden Day just a few days ago, and the Heir will never forget how the progressives gave cover to Snowden, and Julian Assange, and Anonymous, as well as to North Korea over the Sony hack.  We in the Bachelor choose a separate path to accountability in public life, based on the concept of principle.

Today is Ed Snowden Day.  It was 8 years ago today that someone broke into, stole and weaponized classified information for the express purpose of embarrassing the country, and tried to push himself off as a hero for doing so.  But in that time, the Heir has seen very little public discussion about that guy, so how can someone be a hero and not be talked about?  The Heir was considering getting me the Mentor to re-reference that fifth anniversial Twitter thread that debunks and deposes Ed Snowden's claims, but he's going to put that off for now since most people's attitudes are like, today is *what* day!?  Ed Who?  But among other things, the Heir has observed that Ed Snowden's conspiracy theories aren't any more credible than Qanon's are.  That said, the Heir believes that even Ed Snowden isn't going to try to claim that forest fires are caused by space lasers.

The Heir wants to make some observations on the current Voter Rights Crisis, but he wants to be as brief as possible.  Again he sees the anti-Biden progressives try to make use of the issue for their own ends.  He's observed that since Inauguration Day, the anti-Bidens craved to bring him down any which way they can.  They tried the immigration issue.  They tried the filibuster.  They tried the most recent Israeli conflict.  Every time they tried, the Heir saw that Biden had a swift and certain response to each issue they tried to exploit, and they're just outright infuriated at this point.  But now, here comes the Voter Rights Crisis, and the anti-Biden progressives the Heir sees as not letting the facts of what Biden and the other Donkeys For The People were really saying and thinking and doing get in the way of their tired and untrue Cowardly And Complacent Donkeys trope.  The latest Ed Snowden Lite figure the Heir's seeing is Beto O'Rourke, but inevitably as news cycles move toward an upcoming Russian ransomware attack on Jell-O Pudding, Beto O'Rourke will fade just as readily as the Israeli crisis did.  This is the basis on which the Heir does his own agitation on the people to look beyond the rigidness of the "narrative" they might be seeing on the Insurgent News Network.  The Heir had momentarily considered just quitting following INN entirely, but there are still very thoughtful and intelligent observers there, but once they feel like they, too, have to repeat the talking point memo of It's Now Or Never, that's just going to push the Heir even further away from INN, and it's going to be INN's fault.  They're going to end up wasting their good will and their good grace with conscious people like the Heir.  While the Heir decides on his own about what to do about the Voter Rights Crisis, the ball is in INN's court, and not the Heir's.  It's up to INN to make the right decisions to bring the Heir back on a more regular basis.  If they don't, they're just goners.

"I think Souls To The Polls as well as substantive legal groups standing ready to challenge Anti-Voting provisions such as Sore Loser Gets To Overturn The Election are among what I'm considering supporting to get us through the crisis, not the current Ed Snowdens.  And once the crisis comes to an all-clear, we'll defend Jell-O Pudding against the ransomware attacks happening two weeks from now."

So now the Heir gets to rip on Bernie Sanders' broadbrush on the Donkeys For The People's presumed unassertiveness and lack of gutsiness.  The Heir reminds us all that this is an old an tired Ed Snowden progressive trope dating back to 2006 whereby the progressives not only berate Donkey politicians for not drinking the Ed Snowden Kool-Aid, but also the constituents and citizens those figures represent.  And once again the Heir reminds people like Bernie Sanders that it's not for him or his followers to berate or harass other citizens based on what those followers think are the citizens' opinions.  The progressives have an appalling track record of not listening to anyone in their comfort zone enough to find out that about 90% (give or take) of their opinions taken individually are actually shared by most people, and this is reflected in poll numbers showing majority support for the new essentials economics measures such as emphasis on child care and true housing reform.  But here's the thing.  The people agree on the substance, but not on the individual talking points and messaging.  That's why the Heir sees that even now in 2021, 15 years after 2006, the Ed Snowdens are still there with their My Way Or The Highway mentality, and they're simply never going to change.  And yet they have the gall to complain about the "divisiveness" of the public.  It may be a bit overstated if the above polls are of any indication.

The Heir is dismayed at that one organizer's decision to disinclude the NYPD from an upcoming pride march, and the Heir agrees with the head of the gay cops fraternal order that in a sense this presents the oppressed becoming the oppressors.  Just merely weeks after a cop paid the ultimate price because of a DUI-driven anti-cop attack, the Heir sees all cops in general being even lowered in personal credibility and hence a lowered ability to maintain the public trust as a result of the decision.  The way the Heir sees it, people in general looking that this decision aren't going to really disagree with that decision.  Instead, he sees people somehow thinking, oh well I guess that means cops really are bad people if they're being disincluded from even one pride event.  It doesn't matter to the Heir that the decision does not disinclude individual cops from participating, but this represents a kind of a Little Bit Pregnant kabuki dance, and not a very sincere gesture.  He isn't going to blame any cops saying they don't feel comfortable taking part in any event that effectively discriminates against their line of work.  The Heir's hoping that pride events taking place in other cities and the suburbs will respond with a stance of Cops Welcome.  He believes that gays and gay friendly folk in the suburbs at least will still continue to support the cops and not believe they have to choose between such support and comfortably taking part in a pride event.

An online acquaintance of the Heir's had the nerve to make a post about how important it is to get "destroyed" solely for the sake of personal growth, and then implies that they (the acquaintance) are currently "destroyed" right now.  But this is someone who's always had a well-paying job in the upper middle class suburbs, so the Heir has to ask, what does this person know about being "destroyed?"  Forgetting your smartphone or being detoured from the road you want to take home doesn't exactly count as "destroyed."  The Heir's been "destroyed" since 2015 when he lost a living wage job and eventually had to go onto the catering counter at Bland Barns.  He's looking for a supplemental economic solution so it isn't just the catering counter, so he's also skeptical about prospective employers complaining about not getting takers for jobs they're offering.  So the Heir's been destroyed since 2015 and he's still "destroyed" since he's also been struggling to get his Tropical Soul audio Player to reach the light of day, so that way he can prove affordability partly through self-sufficiency, and we in the Bachelor can get back to getting these thoughts on audio.  In any case, the Heir wants to put it out there that no-one who tries to argue that you have to take the good with the bad should presume they necessarily know how bad it can get.  He sees it as a very sheltered attitude.

The Heir is keeping close watch on what he calls the DUI Defunder Case, which is how officer Anastasios Sakos died on duty.  CBS Radio reported at the time that the suspect was on her way home from a podcast that apparently lambastes cops when she killed Mr. Sakos with her vehicle.  Since Mr. Sakos was praised by his fellow officers as a cop's cop, and now that we're opening discipline records, we're likely to see that Mr. Sakos' record was nothing short of stellar, and he probably didn't even as much as borrow a paper clip.  But the Heir doesn't see that as mattering to the defund crowd, who doesn't see Anastasios Sakos any differently than they do Derek Chauvin.  So if as the Heir suspects their cop hate is motivated by personal unaccountability, that should really lower their credibility the next time they try to co-opt Black Lives Matter in their demonstrations, and we get to rebuttress the idea of principle in our larger culture.

There was that one poll where Biden got a 55% job approval rating after his address to Congress, with a 40% disapproval rating.  The Heir observed Colbert making a joke about the 40% being made up mostly of QAnon theorists.  But the Heir suspects that a quarter of the 40%, which is 10% overall, are probably the Ed Snowden types who were against Obama for not being good enough.  The Heir sees them as trying to use that Not Good Enough talking point against Biden, and he's not the least surprised.  The problem is, they really don't have a leg to stand on, since Beto O'Rourke had given Biden high marks on doing what's currently possible to help the migrants at the southern border, even though the Heir believes Biden wants to do more.  The Heir sees Ed Snowdens as trying to go after Biden on the social justice front, and even there they don't have good standing as we're working to get the George Floyd Act passed.  But the Heir sees that as being because the Ed Snowdens don't believe that the George Floyd Act is anti-cop enough.  He sees them as sympathizing more with that one DUI driver along that highway in New York who killed a cop in a hit-and-run, than with the cop who died.  The Heir hopes for a speedy trial against the DUI driver accordingly.  Stay tuned for more stuff on the Heir's mind, as we in the Bachelor eventually try to get audio episodes back up and running again.  We absolutely have not given up on that.

It's been almost a month since we in the Bachelor posted a share, but it's a good day for justice in the country with the conviction of Derek Chauvin in the death of George Floyd.  We in the Bachelor hope that as we get with measures such as banning chokeholds and revealing discipline records, it'll help the public to trust the cops more so as to also better promote the law abiding by citizens.  The Heir particularly believes that revelations of discipline records would also help statistically, because then it'll give the public a good idea of good cops vs. bad cops.  The anti-cop groups the Heir sees as contending that there's no such thing as a good cop, but now we're more likely to have actual substantive information one way or the other.  Speaking of anti-cop groups, that one measure with demilitarization the Heir hopes also takes winds out of the sails of the defunders, because he sees it as the cops' militarization that's attracted young people to the defunders.  So things like banning chokeholds, discipline records and demilitarization we heard on audio as part of the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act, but the bill has stalled in the Senate.  The Heir hopes Chuck Schumer gets to grow a couple and respond to what the Heir expects as Mitch McConnell trying to paint the bill up as weakening the cops on some sort of level.  On the contrary, the Heir sees the cops in general having as their greatest strengths both the trust of the community they serve and a resulting higher sense of moral authority.  When you go brutal by contrast, it's because you are weak, and that's kind of spiritualist balance credo that's been known for centuries.  So we in the Bachelor call for the George Floyd Act to push forward and made into law accordingly.

The Heir certifies that as of 3/26/21, what he now calls Tropical Soul Player (TSP) is ready for testing as an "alpha" unit.  There's stuff he wants to fine-tune the player with, but he has to have the basic build before then, and now he does.  This is his DIY player, which we used to call our Third Pillar Player.  He's already done all the building and debugging.  So now what he needs to do is a kind of "field testing" by playing it in normal usage.  He wants to test it at home before he's ready to test it on the road in his opera lights vehicle.  So stay tuned as per what the next couple weeks or so ahead implies for the Bachelor.