The Heir believes the progressives are obsessively focused on the Secret Service deleted texts. He kind of heard about the issue in passing on audio, and while he does agree we need to get to the bottom of why the texts were deleted, he's never thought about it that much. So he goes on visual with Colbert to see a progressive cable show host as well as a member of Congress talking about the issue, but only starting in the middle rather than the beginning of their explanation. The Heir had to go to Wikipedia to get actually collated info about the deleted texts (albeit in a six-line paragraph as of this writing and not a separate article), and he eventually also went to Glenn Kirshner's youtube channel. To the credit of both, the Heir had an explanation as to what the issue is about, but no explanation for why the progressives seem to want to make conspiracy theories about it and not call for the January 6th Committee to call actual Secret Service agents to testify. If it has to do with classified info, obviously it'll be closed testimony, but the Heir's pretty sure that Bennie Thompson and Liz Cheney will tell the public about what they learned (i.e., non-classified). The Heir sees the progressive conspiracy theory as being to the effect of Trump "made" the Secret Service delete the texts because he's so scary and invincible and almighty-powerful, despite losing reelection with the biggest number of votes for the winner in all of American history. The progressives will always go to the trope of the invincible adversary against whom all are defenseless. That's why the Heir believes the cable host misportrayed the possibility of agents texting goodbye to the their loved ones as apparent "evidence" of said invincibility. Somehow opening the door of a car to make sure there aren't any bombs that'll go off in your face pales against a mob that includes some shirtless guy in Valkyrie Horns. Also fueling the possibility of conspiracy theories is the notion that the texts are just outright gone forever, even though the Heir's sure the NSA has copies, and may quietly and/or classfiedly share them with the Committee upon request. Very convenient the Heir thinks for the progressives to want to pretend that if no explanation is given as to why the texts were deleted, then it must be Trump who magically "made" the Secret Service delete those texts. It's kind of how astronomers criticize how people think about UFO's. Their criticism is people believing that if the flying object is -unidentified- then it "must" be aliens. Of course the other wrinkle here is that -if- agents testify to the committee that Trump "made" the Secret Service delete the emails, the Heir's sure the progressives will resort to "see we told you so," which once made is a profoundly repugnant and faithless and disrespectful response to there being more information about something people want to know more about. All these are further reasons the Heir does not consider himself progressive, because he want to -conserve- knowledge and common sense where the texts at least are concerned.

The Heir's just about had it with card chip readers. Over 50% of the time he puts his card into the chip slot at the shops, it gets rejected with an Input Canceled error. The system wants to blame his card, and by extension, -him- for the failure, instead of the system taking responsibility for largely defective card chip readers. His card is only 2-3 years old, hardly enough for the chip to just fail in his card, so he's not going to bother getting a reissue, since he's 90% sure that the reissue will fail as well. He ends up having to use the strip anyway, even with all the largely unsubstantiated rumors of it somehow not being safe. The fact is, he's had some kind of card for 35-40 years and he's -never- had a personal instance where he got ripped off because he was using the stripe. He's always looked at his balance, and it was always correct. He thinks it's the spendthrifties that were the biggest victim 20 years ago, and he doesn't think it was the strip but rather the fact that Target at the time insisted on using touchscreens for people to type their PINs into, making it impossible to cover up what you're typing while also making sure your PIN was correct. They eventually replaced these with actual number pads. So say what you will about how "great" card chips are and how "terrible" card strips are, the Heir's going to go with what works, the least resistance, because the supposed greatness of card chips is yet another unchallenged claim in which the end user who always gets blamed for a bad chip doesn't get their equal time. Like big tech trying to tell people that one thing shall replace another, it's just a marketing campaign, and not the actual truth of things.

So here's the Heir's take on that ''assault'' on Giuliani in a Bland Barns style supermarket, now that the Heir himself has gigged for Bland Barns for a number of years. He saw the video, and it just seemed to him that the guy just tapped Giuliani on the back. He thought it was rude and uncalled for, but certainly not criminal by any means. Of course Giuliani has the right to sue the guy in court, but the Heir thinks Giuliani exaggerated by claiming whiplash and extensive injury of sorts. He thinks Giuliani was being a crybaby, and he begs to differ with visual that claims that the incident was related to abortion. Instead, the Heir believes that it was related to Giuliani's general criminality going back to assisting the bribing of Ukraine. The guy was probably unhappy that Giuliani is still a free man when even in the age of legal pot the Heir believes there are still people serving decades for having been caught with pot when they were 15. Again it's about the children, and for Giuliani to serve as a terrible role model the Heir sees as -the- cardinal sin. The Heir laughs at the possibility that when all of today's criminals go to Hell when they die they will try to claim double jeopardy, since they were already tried in life and got a get out of free jail card. The Big Guy Upstairs the Heir's sure will laugh in their face, albeit compassionately.

The Heir now believes it's time to abolish the Supreme Court, and it's not just because they "occasionally" put out a ruling he "personally" disagrees with. He has no idea what would take its place, but he's sure that you don't have to resort to an amendment process to make it happen. It's just that with the thing with abortion and guns that he doesn't see the Supreme Court as any more than an unelected third branch of Congress. As far as he's concerned, jurisprudence is dead, and it may have been dead for some number of months and years. In that time, the Heir's not heard of any simple but substantive argument to the contrary, that jurisprudence is ever used in a meaningful way. In fact, the Heir's 85% sure that this set of measures to prevent gun violence that was just signed into law will only get overturned in the Supreme Court a year from now. We've gotten to the point where anybody is opposed to any law for any reason can always go to the Supreme Court to get that law overturned. So the Supreme Court he doesn't see as much different than the House Of Lords in the UK, or the Council Of Elders in Iran. If we're so concerned about Democracy supposedly being on "life support," those same voices claiming such have fallen silent where the Supreme Court is concerned. The Heir doesn't think that codifying those things the Court strikes down or adding Justices is the answer. He sees that as just nibbling around the edges and not getting to the real heart of the problem. So this past Friday afternoon was the beginning of the end of the Supreme Court with respect to an emerging coalition of citizens and scholars now favoring an outright abolition or at least a severe overhaul just to restore a sense of checks and balances, and it's only a matter of time before elected and appointed officials start climbing onboard as well.

The Heir has added Johnny Depp to his "enemies list." The list doesn't contain Woodward or Bernstein, but it does contain Cosby and Manafort. Until the trial came to an end, the Heir didn't pay close attention to it, so he hasn't formed a personal opinion of Amber Heard herself. But he does believe her when she said Depp abused her. He tuned into the Insurgent News Network regarding the Depp trial, and while he was satisfied with actual analytical attention given to the trial, he was -not- happy by the lack of moral outrage or a call to action. So now he's going to add Edward Scissorhands along with Fat Albert to the proverbial Pretador Bonfire. He doesn't believe people should buy or rent these items if they're outraged by the lack of morality in today's society stemming from well-connected celebrities getting a get-out-of-free-jail-card, or concerned about the wrong messages being sent to our young people as a result.

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.