So, yes, people, you can most -reasonably- say that this is a good day for the country, but the Heir/Tropical Soulvangelical/TSV emphasizes it's a good day for the children. That's because TSV observes the children understanding that it's -not okay- to not report hush money payments to a porn star as election spending. For Trump to get a perp walk or dress in an orange jumpsuit or flexing his hands around a set of jail bars isn't as priority to TSV as the moral health of our children. Sure Trump's only indicted, and he hasn't been tried or convicted or jailed, not yet. TSV wants to reserve comment on those last three until/unless they happen. But he takes exception to all this good-for-Trump's-fundraising kind of talk, because he sees those doing that kind of reporting as not really getting it as to the importance of personal accountability. We still have an epidemic of personal corruption that TSV sees as having started roughly 10 years ago with Ed Snowden, and until yesterday hasn't slowed down, and in fact TSV sees it as speeding up. There's a metaphor that world leaders used at the climate conference that TSV would like to borrow. And that's that personal corruption is like heading towards a cliff and instead of braking or slowing down, we're pushing down on the gas pedal and accelerating. Incidentally TSV got a text on his phone asking for campaign money which he will refuse to honor for at least one ''news cycle.'' He observes that nobody's talking about poor kids serving felony sentences for misdeanor offenses or going to Riker's Island as somehow being good for the poor kids' fundraising efforts. So it isn't just about Trump, because TSV wants the system to change so that you can't just run for public office as a get-out-of-jail-free-card, and make your campaign about accountability somehow being a 'witch hunt.' TSV vaguely remembers Al Capone or Charlie Manson actually trying to do that, and he's pretty sure you can't do that in Europe. In that sense at least, there's something endearing about cobblestone streets and fine wines and chocolates and cheeses.

The Heir/Tropical Soulvangelical/TSV wants to say a few words about what he calls Beijing Balloongate, and he doesn't care if this were a month and a half ago. He derides Beijing's response of "calling for calm" as an unaccountable response, and he was hoping that defense officials would say the same thing. He understands full well there are times for a defense dispassionate, but that wasn't one of them. He knows they don't want to be responding to "provocations," but they are the collective voice of America in response to Balloongate, and as far as he's concerned, their response was not strong enough. He also believes that those 2-3 other balloons that got shot down -also- came from hostile countries, and he dismisses a report that one of the balloons was supposedly a ham radio experiment. TSV keeps up on the Glenn Houser radio show, where he heard about the report, but TSV believes that the ham radio people actually lost their balloon in a tree somewhere, and was not one of the balloons that got shot down. Maybe some info would become declassified in coming weeks, but until then, he believes that each of the other balloons came from Russia, Iran and North Korea, respectively, and someone needs to -prove- to him they weren't until he's ready to believe otherwise.