Everyone reading this one?  Good.  It means the Russians haven't hacked this shares base yet out of retaliation for our continuing our solidarity with Ukraine at this time.  The Heir heard what The Circus had to say on Colbert with Putin, and even though there's only one thing he disagrees with, he doesn't disagree with the rest, but he believes The Circus is taking too small a world view on the Invasion and making public radio-ish over-generalizations about Biden.  The thing the Heir disagrees with is the contention that Putin "keeps winning and winning and winning," because the Heir has yet to see any evidence that Putin has ever won -anything- except the righteous indignation of that portion of the global populace that still believes in principle.  He actually did -not- win the war over Crimea, because the Heir still recognizes Crimea as part of Ukraine, not part of Russia, and he doesn't care what the maps say.  Those maps that show Crimea as part of Russia the Heir sees as pro-Kremlin and not representative of a global world view.  But the Heir notices that The Circus along with too many elements of self-commentary style media makes glaring omissions such as Russia's unholy alliance with China and what that means for the world as a whole.  Because once China supports Russia through the sanctions apparently free of charge, it's because China and Russia see the more principled West as their primary adversary in their pursuit of a global personal corruption for the world.  Also, what about active measures?  Speaking of personal corruption, the next time you see a disorderly person running around going "I can do anything I want" and committing offenses and offending people, it's more than justified to suspect a pro-Kremlin operative fighting the concept of principle, and is not necessarily of Russian heritage, but -is- in agreement with the Kremlin's apparent stance in favor of personal corruption.  Don't think for a second it's a "druggie."  As for The Circus's insistence that Putin is trying to make Biden look "weak," Putin actually achieved the opposite.  Not only is NATO and much of Europe and the West united in their stance against the Invasion, so are many ordinary citizens living in those countries.  The Heir was -stunned- when he saw a good few thousand people on video in St. Petersburg (in Russia no less) -also- protesting the invasion, defying authorities' attempts to intimidate them into silence.  But we Inside Tropical Soul don't have any illusions (at least not the ones we're aware of).  This solidarity in favor of Ukraine and against the Invasion we see as -not- shared globally.  The Heir sees South America as 90% pro-Kremlin, and the African subcontinent as 40% pro-Kremlin, including Angola, and those countries with a Putin-like strongman in power.  Asia the Heir sees as mixed.  Certainly Japan and South Korea may condemn in the Invasion in some form, as well as India, but he's not sure about Southeast Asia, and he's pretty sure most Arab countries are -for- the invasion.  Qatar the Heir thinks may be an exception.  For the time being, though, this appears far from a World War III of any kind.

Today We Are All Ukrainians

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The Heir momentarily considered telling the world, "See, we told you so," but he's aware of impending loss of life and refugee crisis, and he figured it would come off as insensitive.  So he's merely going to take the position that what's resulted comes as no surprise to him, but also that one "observer" on public radio that expressed skepticism of an invasion as a way of trying to make Biden look paranoid about the Kremlin the Heir holds as coming out *wrong.*  What did strike the Heir was hearing on audio how Jim Himes in Congress vowed to hold to account any and all persons/groups that have assisted the Kremlin in the past.  This may very well include the radicalist movements of the 2010s such as Julian Assange, and Ed Snowden, and the Anonymous hacking group.  The first two's ties to the Kremlin are well documented, but the Heir now suspects that Anonymous may have gotten material support from the Kremlin in their attacks.  Yet another reason for the progressives to denounce such groups and not try to live down how they supported them out of what the Heir sees as their hostility to Funny Named Skinny Kid as well as moderate registered Donkey citizens (about possibly 90%).  This is all the Heir has to weigh on with, but certainly make sure to come back for more.  In the meantime, let's hope for the best for Ukrainian citizens.

In the unaccountable backdrop of Russia's eminent invasion of Ukraine and the antivax protestors in Canada, one thing apparently flew under the radar.  The Heir only found out through looking at Colbert on YouTube that Prince Andrew made a settlement with Virginia Giuffre, whom the Heir is 90% certain Prince Andrew assaulted years ago.  Even though the Heir feels -somewhat- relieved by Ms. Giuffre's lawyer pointing out that the settlement by itself does not give Prince Andrew a get-out-of-free-jail-card, he also does not concur with the media's apparent belief that this settlement is necessarily all that good of a thing for survivors.  Pro-assault groups like the Cosby Cult always try to portray survivors as "gold diggers" who are only in it for the money.  Of course as far as the Heir's concerned on that one, it takes one to know one.  But he's worried about settlements in general as reinforcing the "gold digger" myth.  He's also concerned that as of this writing, the exact amount of the Giuffre settlement is kept confidential.  He's not sure why the public somehow does not have a right to know how much the settlement is for, and in any case, he's pretty sure that when it comes to Prince Andrew, whom the Heir believes owns 1/5 of the UK's entire GDP, any settlement amount would actually be spare change for the Prince and amounts to what the Heir sees as hush money on the media.  "I already paid money to settle the case, so why is the media still coming after me?" the Heir believes Prince Andrew will end up saying somewhere between 6 months and 5 years from now when he's back in the news in not a good way that might not even involve Ms. Giuffre or Jeffrey Epstein.  It's almost like a bribe the way the Heir sees it, and he should have known about it on audio first thing in the morning.  But he's wondering if the settlement was announced on a late afternoon or an early evening, and the news sources dusted the story under the rug the next morning.  Was -that- part of the agreement in the settlement (?), the Heir wonders.  Settlements like this are only meant to involve an accuser and a defendant, not third parties like the media.  The -Heir- never agreed not to go after Prince Andrew, so therefore he intends to do so in the future when warranted.

The Heir's wondering whether the Associated Press should be renamed as the Associated Putin after that coverage of that "show your proof" reporter.  They don't want to do research on their own, as it seems to the Heir, of those times in the past when Putin did use a false flag.  That's how he took over Crimea, and the Heir does not recognize Crimea as a part of Russia.  He still sees it as part of Ukraine, unless they want to be a separate country entirely, telling both Russia and Ukraine, a pox on both your houses.  This at a time when the Heir sees the AP as *really* getting a black eye for giving oxygen to those anti-vaxxers in Canada, and that one thumbnail seemed to the Heir as having been cropped so as to make it look as if there were more anti-vaxxers at that rally than there probably were.  Also, what about coverage of counter-protestors pushing *for* a vaccine mandate?  And while Russia's in the news, both Russia and China showed their true stripes in forming what we Inside Tropical Soul see as an unholy alliance.  Two wrong countries like that are still wrong no matter what kind of alliances they make.  The Heir wishes that *individual citizens* in the world have the ability to join NATO, and not just whole countries.  Where does the Heir sign up for his personal NATO membership card?  Where does he get his own Ukrainian flag to stand in solidarity with?

The Heir doesn't believe Fortune magazine has any business whatsoever suggesting that Ghislaine Maxwell should get a new trial.  He came across that editorial while finding out whether a 2+2=5 judge granted Maxwell a new trial.  Maxwell already had one trial and she was convicted.  Why the Heir wonders would she need another one?  Just because of that one juror?  This the Heir believes is only happening because Maxwell still has the best defense money can buy.  If she does get another trial and she's convicted *again*, her legal team will keep picking at *that* trial for excuses to get even a *third* trial.  They want to retry her until she's acquitted, no matter what it takes.  If Fortune magazine doesn't see what the Heir sees as obvious (because this is also what happened with Cosby), it makes him wonder whether Fortune magazine is only taking Maxwell's side because she's a socialite.  How about the survivors?  The Heir would ask Fortune magazine, do you believe the survivors?  If not, then the magazine is part of the blame-the-victim epidemic.  If so they do believe the survivors, they then can't believe both the survivors *and* Maxwell without using a kabuki dance logic to try to have it both ways.  Ultimately, this is about the children and making sure that they don't end up believing that what Maxwell did was perfectly okay in the event that she walks on a technicality.  The Heir also wants Fortune magazine to also think about the children.

Almost as a followup on what the Heir said 1/5, and barring any changing or mitigating circumstances, the Heir intends to boycott those activist groups who in turn are boycotting Biden's appearance in Georgia on MLK Day.  Also, if those groups succeed in making Biden change his plans, the Heir will likely decide not to support the voting rights bills even though he agrees with what's in them and what they're supposed to stand for.  But the Heir disagrees the apparent point of view that democracy should somehow involve anti-Biden-ism as a kind of "agitation."  He's not sure sure what Ed Snowden type groups see as "agitation" is really all that good for the democracy the Heir wishes we had during the 80s when the same politicians were being reelected time and time again when the Heir was too young himself to vote.  The concept of agitation really only benefits small vocal groups, and not the populace as a whole.  Agitation tends to reinforce the groups' sense of righteousness in opposition to the populace's supposed wrongness, and therefore the larger populace must submit to the smaller groups.  This the Heir sees as the opposite of democracy, and certainly as the opposite of what the voting rights bills stand for and what's in them.  Democracy is not about Ed Snowden-ism.  That's what dictatorships are about, and last the Heir has heard, Ed Snowden right now still lives within the borders of a dictatorship.

As of this writing with me the Mentor, tomorrow's going to be the anniversary of the 1/6 riots.  The Heir's commemorating a day beforehand by truly wondering whether we necessarily "lost" democracy that day.  He thinks about all the times there are Union Addresses, and there's always one designated absentee who gets to hide out in an undisclosed location until maybe about 24 hours after, and then we get to find out who that is.  The Heir wants to research this one, but he gets the impression that this is a tradition that goes back to the Cold War, but he's not sure when.  He doesn't think today's Millennials fully appreciate the anxiety of the 80s over the possibility of a nuclear war, but that was what he thinks people were concerned about when they designated an absentee.  He also gets the impression that this tradition still continued after the Cold War was over, and regained new importance during the Age Of Terror.  After we killed Osama bin Laden, it appears as though we *still* continued this tradition to this very day.  Biden's due to do a Union Address, and it's anyone's guess as to how they'll manage that whole absentee practice in light of 1/6.  So the Heir's 60% sure that they must have had a designated absentee (or at least one) when they did the formalization of the election results, so whether it was a nuclear war or a terror attack, that person at worst would run the country somehow.  Speaking of the 80s, that was when the Heir thinks we should have been the *most* worried about democracy, and yet we appeared the *least* concerned, as we seemed to have reelected the same people over and over again without even a thought to the job they're doing.  The Heir's wondering...

"...How was *that* democratic???"

We've just gotten word that Ghislaine Maxwell has been found guilty on five of six charges.  I the Mentor (i.e., the Happy Bachelor) asked the Heir (i.e., Tropical Soulvangelical) whether this puts to rest his fears from yesterday I channeled here into a base share, and what he said was that we can be relieved that the courts are finally starting to go the way of The Rule Of Law.  He reiterates that what he said about a post-voir dire still applies, and that it's too soon to tell whether we can put that idea on the shelf.  But one concern he had was that the defense's efforts to discredit the survivors, and by extension all survivors including those of Weinstein and Cosby, etc., would have been reinforced if Maxwell were acquitted.  Their discrediting efforts involved outright slander that survivors are somehow gold-diggers that are only in it for the money.  The conviction of Maxwell the Heir takes as the jury's rejection of that vile line of thinking, which should be discarded to the dustbin of history.  The next trial the Heir's focusing on is the Crumblies, and whether Kyle Rittenhouse corrupted Ethan Crumbley with the former's acquittal, making it look as if mass murder didn't have legal or moral consequences.  The Crumbley trial the Heir's not sure of the date on, and last check the counselors were debating with the judge as to whether to lower the Crumblies' bond or not.  But let's keep it just people, and let's keep adhering to principle, if not for anything else, the sake of the children.

We're into either the fourth or fifth day of deliberations in the Maxwell trial, depending on which media outlet you ask.  Now that it's gone on this long, the Heir's 90% sure the jury's heading for full acquittal.  This despite the judge's voiced concerns that Omicron might threaten the ability of the trial to properly come to an end at all.  But the Heir will not accept anything less than a conviction of some sort.  So until and unless that happens, the Heir wants a social discussion about whether we need to have a *socially* mandated voir dire after a given trial, the same way there's a *legally* mandated voir dire before the trial.  The two questions the Heir wants asked of jurors in a post-voir dire is a) do you believe in the Rule Of Law, and b) do you believe the survivors.  He's well aware that once a court trial comes to an end, the jurors will return to their private lives, which is perfectly appropriate.  That said, the Heir holds out hope that with respect to the Maxwell trial and the Rittenhouse trial, at least one juror may come forward from either of those trials, and talk to a newspaper, and express regret for either the verdict or how the verdict was socially interpreted.  The jurors in the Maxwell trial were instructed not to listen to media reports about the case while the trial is going on, which means that 90% of what they need to know to make principled moral decisions they were left in the dark on.  So a given juror weeks or months *after* a trial may end up doing personal research on their own to find out what important information was not admitted, and then go to a newspaper, and then say, well if I knew then what I know now after the fact, I would not have voted to acquit.  The Heir encourages jurors to do so, though albeit they need to adhere to instructions and wait *after* the trial is over.  But they need to come forward for the children and their moral development accordingly.  The Heir has comments to say about the state of socialite society after the Maxwell trial, though he's going to need to wait, because that's another topic entirely.

Something's really wrong.  So the Heir thought when we went into what appeared to be the second day of jury deliberations in the Maxwell trial.  However, the deliberations have since adjourned until Monday after the holidays.  The Heir *thinks* he saw in writing that they did just an hour on Wednesday until what appears to be communications between the judge and the jury to agree to postpone till Monday.  So that's a sum of 1 day and 1 hour, as opposed to 2 days going into a third.  The Heir *hopes* it's the former and not the latter, because he saw how the Rittenhouse trial went.  The jury in that case went into a second and possibly a third day of deliberations before declaring an acquittal.  He hasn't seen any meaningful trial analysis (yet) regarding whether Maxwell's going to be acquitted or not.  He's wondering whether he'll find it on INN, but he wants someone with authorization *somewhere* to substantively convince him with factual evidence that length of time of deliberations means nothing in terms of what verdict a given jury will reach in a given trial.  The apparent conventional wisdom is that short deliberations=Guilty, long deliberations=Not Guilty.  That seems really cut and dried, so the Heir's hoping for more fact-based analysis rather than the kind of casting of aspersions he's hearing increasingly on public radio (and sometimes INN).  Now here's the thing.  The Heir has *also* read through the Tampa Bay Times through the Wikipedia entry on Ghislaine Maxwell that if Maxwell is acquitted, she still has to stand trial to answer perjury charges, so it wouldn't necessarily be over.  The Heir doesn't know whether a Guilty verdict in a perjury trial would necessarily provide the kind of justice the survivors seek and so well deserve.  But a Guilty verdict in *either* trial the Heir thinks will go *some* way at least towards a culture of the Rule Of Law, rather than the Rule Of Snowdenocracy as per most of the 2010s, people publicly thumbing their nose with "hah I beat the rap" after a Not Guilty verdict or a pardoning, hence displaying a consciousness of guilt.

 

Chef: "Well, what's the Heir has to say for himself, Mentor?"

 

Heir: "That we are a nation of laws, not Snowdens."

 

Chef: "Well, I'm glad *someone's* jumped right out and said that.  Here are your Doubtfighters (chicken sandwich with spicy barbecue sauce)."

The Heir does not plan in his capacity at the Bland Barns Catering Counter to enforce mask usage on the part of the customers if BBS decides to do a lockdown on the account of Omicron, whose symbol prior to this base share the Heir has never seen and doesn't know what it looks like.  What also doesn't help is what the Heir sees as Covid misinformation coming directly from public radio, so who needs QAnon?  Thankfully since that's audio, it's readily obvious to the Heir when they've been less than honest when they cherry-pick both polls and studies to make both Biden and Omicron look bad or worse.  We already covered the polls bit here on the shares base, but now the Heir's hearing public radio trying to claim that Omicron is somehow invincible against all present vaccines, despite Fauci attesting to the contrary.  The Heir sees that just as bad as if someone tried to claim that Omicron is caused by space lasers.  So we can't be choosing to combat one form of misinformation and let slide another form of misinformation.  As we're winding down what's left of this year, the Heir sees public radio as only having that much time to prove they're truly different from QAnon, otherwise it'll be too late.  If they come back to him all repentant on 1/2 or 1/3, he'll just whisk them away with his hand, because they missed his deadline.

The Heir never thought he'd ever hear Julian Assange's name on audio ever again.  He thought that last year when Bill Barr decided to up the charges against Assange from computer hacking to outright espionage, those of us in need of justice against Assange saw our hopes dashed, because the Ed Snowden progressives would use the espionage charges as cause for martyrdom.  When those particular British courts ruled against our requests for extradition because of the new charges, the Heir saw the Ed Snowdens' fanaticism vindicated.  Though the Heir never gave up on justice with respect to Assange, he since moved onto more national and local cases like the Crumblies and Ghislaine Maxwell, hoping that the country would find justice there they would somehow now *never* find in the Assange case.  That may have all changed, but now the ball's in Merrick Garland's court to decide whether to extradite or not, and whether it's on espionage or computer hacking.  But the Heir sees Merrick Garland's career as Attorney General as a dismal failure, and he's unhopeful that Garland would ever do the right thing in the Assange case.  Let's look at Garland's track record here.  Deciding to defend Trump in the E. Jean Carroll case.  Taking Trump's side in the assaults against protestors in Lafayette Square.  If the Heir doesn't see Merrick Garland as doing the right thing in the Assange case, he thinks Garland should just throw in the towel and hand the job to a more capable AG, maybe someone like Neal Katyal among others.

You remember when the Heir said he's not taking prisoners anymore as of about October 15?  We think we still have that cultural update linked on this shares base, a statement of general indignation.  But the Heir's not limiting his not taking prisoners just to law enforcement and legal cases such as Julian Assange, Ghislaine Maxwell and the Crumblies.  He's taking his stance to his fellow Americans whom he believes will inevitably vote against their (and *his*) economic interests because the anti-Biden media's essentially telling them to, with those dang "polls" whose scientific health is way in doubt.  Sparing specific criticisms about those polls though for the time being, the Heir thinks his fellow Americans shouldn't knock it till they tried it on the social changes bill.  They did oppose Funny Named Care before they supported it, but the Heir thinks that if people don't give the social changes bill a chance, they'll never get that chance again possibly until some distant point in the future when it becomes apparent to the Heir that we will never have truly recovered from the pandemic (regardless of whether the pandemic itself will last or not) until we implement things such as housing reform and green infrastructure.  The Heir and I saw our entire street flooded when Henri hit, and we had to move our opera lit personal limousines to a side street multiple times first thing in the morning, so we're thinking that people who somehow don't believe that the social changes bill will mean anything to them because they're currently having to pay 20 cents more on a jug of milk than they did last year must have never had to deal with things like Henri or Ida or other weather events related to global warming.  You don't have to be a "tree hugging hippie" to know it's for real.  So, people, don't blow it, because you think you have it hard now?  Just wait until the wrong people get in next year, and you'll almost certainly end up with buyer's remorse.

Despite the Arbury verdict, the Heir is still concerned about an emerging phenomenon he calls "Rittenhousing."  That's actively shooting people for the express purpose of arguing self-defense in a trial.  We have no idea why anyone would go to the trouble, because why not stay out of jail to begin with?  What have you got to prove?  But the Heir's looking at the Crumbley case in Michigan, and he wonders if that's a case of Rittenhousing.  It would not surprise him if both the teen and his parents argue self-defense on trial.  They seem to believe that anyone should be able to use any gun in any way they feel like, that being their possible definition of self-defense.  They don't care that the parents hiding out in that one office building may be a demonstration of a guilty conscience.  But the Heir believes the Rittenhouse verdict has given license to any active shooter as long as that shooter argues self-defense, despite the Arbury trial showing what the Heir sees as a common sense refrain in the law as per what self-defense really is and what it isn't.  That refrain the Heir sees as preventing the self-defense argument from becoming a blank check or a get-out-of-free-jail-card, but don't be surprised when the Crumblies argue self-defense in court.  In other Rittenhouse news, the Heir needs to go to the Wikipedia pages on Anthony Huber and Jonathan Rosenbaum to objectively see whether the families have yet to pursue a case against the city of Kenosha and/or seek compensation from the state of Wisconsin.  He hasn't heard anything on audio about it, and he's not going to do a general web search because that'll collide him towards pro-Rittenhouse biases online.