In light of the tragedies in Texas and Buffalo NY, the Heir thinks it's actually unhelpful to the U.S. for Canada to propose banning handguns in their country. This will have the effect of pro-gun politicians digging their heels in with their opposition even to things like Red Flag Laws and background checks. The Heir predicts their argument would be (however specious) that such laws are proposed by those who want us to be like Canada. While the recent tragedies once made us seriously consider turning our guns in, the Canadian proposal makes us all now too likely to keep said guns and even get new ones. The Heir wants those outlets doing polls finding that up to 90% of U.S. citizens want background checks and Red Flag Laws to also do a poll on how they also feel about Canada's proposal. The Heir predicts the results to be more divided. His last thought on this post is for people to google the following: Robin Williams Stop Or I'll Say Stop Again. Said comic routine would be enough to exemplify the current moment as of this writing.

The Heir -definitely- doesn't conform. This is about that one poll that claimed that 74% of Americans describe themselves as -very anxious- about inflation. Don't get us wrong, because the Heir's no inflation freak. He's just as against it as everyone else. But -unlike- everyone else, he feels mildly annoyed rather than "very anxious." He doesn't look forward to seeing how his index funds are doing what with the beating that the S&P 500's been taking, but he hasn't noticed any severe lowerage in his regular bank accounts. Contrast to seven years ago when the Heir was the one who was "very anxious" in 2015 when everyone else was doing great and he got laid off. He was told, hey get with the program, the economy's doing -great!-. But now he believes that his financial fortunes are the -opposite- of everyone else's. When everyone else does great, he does terribly. When the Heir does great, everyone else does terribly. So maybe the Heir shouldn't necessarily welcome the end of inflation, because that's when things start to suck for him if they get better for everyone else. That would certainly be the case when the hard sell marketers make a comeback on Postinflationary America. The Heir tunes into Bloomberg 7:30am in the morning, and his takeaway is that the hard sell marketers and the moguls of personal corruption they tend to dovetail with are already making plans for what our culture "must" be like once inflation is over. He's not sure what they'll try to sell or what they'll try to say. But he's sure of two things. A. They'll resort to red herring and slogan arguments. B. It'll be a bad thing for the Heir if like in 2015 he's not "getting with the program." But he's not going to be taken down in 2023 onwards like he was in 2015. He's learned, he's got a defensive posture in the increasing ready, and he will make the marketers sorry they ever messed with him.

While the Heir was looking through his YouTube list for animal/pet and travel videos to add to his Watch Later list, he caught sight of the Fat Albert movie under the Free With Ads section. He deleted it from his list, but he wondered whether he should do a Report on it, because it's associated with Cosby, and he thinks Cosby was an executive producer for the movie. He'll probably consider doing so if Fat Albert reappears in his list, because under no circumstances should a video provider take the shackles off a confirmed sex offender's artistic works just because the offender may have gotten a get-out-of-free-jail-card last July. The Heir's not aware of any option to keep an entire slate of content from his lists accordingly, but the Fat Albert movie may be the only item the Heir may end up seeing out of the mostly retired Cosby these days. But we the people should have the right to control what commercial content is thrown our way that bear such a general criminal association. No-one needs Cosby using the Fat Albert movie to try to say in-your-face to those of us still concerned about principle.

Something the Heir's been wanting to point out for some time now is how right after 2/24 the progressives had just turned on a dime and decided they're anti-Putin after they were essentially for him by championing the libelous radicalists that the Kremlin gave comfort and protection to. The Heir doesn't readily remember the same loss of life with respect to the invasion of Crimea, and that might also help explain for the Heir why the progressives looked the other way. But when people started dying, the progressives immediately threw Putin under the bus. To their credit, the progressives wouldn't stand for people dying, but it also meant that their implicit support for Putin was untenable. So the Heir doesn't see their solidarity with Ukraine as all that sincere. They just know what side their bread's buttered on. Whereas as us inside Tropical Soul, we knew -very well- what was going to happen, and even in the 48 to 72 hours leading up to 2/24, not a peep out of the progressives about the then-eminent invasion. They wanted to continue their anti-Biden rhethoric, and their silence portraying Biden and intel as overly paranoid about an eminent invasion also dovetailed with Ed Snowden's libelous attacks on not even specific intel groups, but the intel process itself as somehow an inherent invasion of privacy rights. Once the Kremlin invaded, it was progressives with egg on their collective faces, and then they had no choice but to say, oh, no, Putin's a killer! So once the war is over, the Heir's sure the progressives will continue to live down their responsibilities to the public.
The Heir wants to reiterate his general support for Eric Adams's campaign against social immorality, even after the Heir criticized the Mayor for Scanner-gate and Mandate-gate. Mandate-gate the Heir acknowledges as the Mayor not being able to do much about as long as there are impending lawsuits, and word from the Mayor one way or the other could affect the city's legal team's strategies with respect to the lawsuits. So if you don't hear the Heir saying, well why doesn't Eric Adams talk about it weeks after it was in the news? That's the reason why. The Heir doesn't think camp dispersals will necessarily address the homeless problem, and that's why the Heir wants there to be housing reform at large. But he doesn't think all that much of at least half of the protestors against the dispersals.

Previously, the Heir had admiration for Eric Adams with his tough-on-crime approach of not sparing the rod and not spoiling the child. But now with Mandate-Gate and Scanner-Gate, that admiration has all but evaporated, and the Heir implores Mayor Adams to do damage control on both to regain the political capital he needs to ensure public safety by protecting the moral health of young people. You've already heard about Mandate-Gate by which pro athletes who incidentally play for teams the Heir follows being told they don't have to get vaccinated, but that city workers still -do- have to get vaccinated. The Heir agrees with that one health expert he heard on analog radio first thing in the morning that this sends the wrong message that pro-athletes apparently don't have to follow the rules if they think they can beat the system. But there's also Scanner-Gate where Eric Adams says he wants to get body scanners into schools to scan for weapons. The Heir sees this as what a former manager of his at the Bland Barns Catering Counter would term as "taking a problem here and making a problem there." Sure you might be able to find more weapons, but the Heir sees the risk of those moonlighter security workers at the monitors uploading images to the dark web for profit, where predators will consume the imagery. You're preventing crime by allowing other crimes to take place. No-one's talked about that, and the Heir doesn't want the scanners to go in there and for us to find out 6 months to 2 years down the road that maybe 2-3 moonlighters uploaded images to the dark web accordingly. That the Heir thinks would dwarf Mandate-Gate 10 times over, and will prompt a political blood-smelling Ed Snowden challenger in the next mayoral primary. While the Heir's sure Eric Adams will defeat that challenger, he will go into his second term with far less political capital than he had in his first two months, and not only will fail to get things done, but will break the promise of there being a more principled city.

So, here's where it's at how the Heir's seeing the war in Ukraine. He sees it as a proxy war between principle and personal corruption, and I the (Happy Bachelor) Mentor may follow suit with a consensus coming from Tropical Soul And Principle itself. But that's why the Heir's skeptical about these so-called "negotiations," because he knows the Kremlin knows they wouldn't be happening if the Kremlin didn't invade. The Kremlin already has a leg-up in the negotiations through the invasion, so we hear in Tropical Soul wonder, what exactly is there to "negotiate?" That is, besides a complete Kremlin withdrawal from Ukraine and atonement in exchange for the easing of most sanctions. Nothing short of that we could ever find acceptable, because everything the Kremlin has ever had to offer were non-starters. They seem to think they can invade any country now, get a leg-up in negotiations, and then basically "own" that country as a result. What we've learned about personal corruption is that the Kremlin will not stop. It'll just keep going and going and going until it owns the entire solar system itself. The Heir also doesn't think that mental illness necessarily "made" that one guy attack those museum workers, because he observes that most people who struggle with mental illness don't act out and attack people. He sees it as a Because I Could situation, that if your privileges are revoked for anything at all, that somehow becomes grounds for retaliation even if the revocation was because you're a retaliatory person. The Heir's seen these self-justified types all too often at the Bland Barns Catering Counter, and he doesn't buy that there was anything that "made" them do anything in particular. Nine times out of ten he sees people acting out on their own volition, regardless of whether they're struggling with mental illness.

The Heir has words of caution for people. It may be heartening to watch worldwide demonstrations online, or grandmas throw Molotov cocktails in the grease tracks of lines of tanks, but the Heir doesn't believe the real struggle for Ukraine has begun. For one thing, Putin still has China on his side, and the Heir is skeptical of China's supposed "unease" about the invasion of Ukraine. He doesn't think China's worried about taking the wrong moral position as much as not getting caught up in a military screwup on Russia's part. The Heir believes China wants Putin to have a better strategy before they help him out in some way, whether that's through secret military funding or trying to secretly defeat Western sanctions. Putin knows that China essentially owns roughly 90% of the world's technology, and at any time China can come back and tell the West, "Well? What are you going to do about it?" The Heir's also concerned with the lack of PR out of Homeland Security regarding highly localized incidents of active measures, and I the Mentor think we went into some detail in a previous base share. But thankfully, we found out that problems that Marco's Grandmother had in her neighbor's online connection, and hence Marco's Grandmother's connection were *not* due to active measures. It was a guy who screwed up at the cable company, and not connected with Russia's invasion of Ukraine. But you can't get too complacent. As the old saying goes, if you see something say something.

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.