We could start with reports of the hundred rockets fired at Israel from Lebanon to contribute to the Passover season. But that sort of thing has become a sort of tradition. Here is the jumble of other reporting on a week transitioning to Spring.
– Vic

It is past the tipping point this week, so there is merriment as we slide toward the weekend!

We got to “half-way” sometime around the second margarita yesterday at the famous El Paso Cafe. Nice place for lunch near the new corporate HQ here in Arlington. It is a little better than most neighborhood Mexican places across the nation. It was good enough that someone from the second Bush White House got the First Family to have a meal there. We laugh about it when we go, since the Staff knows we are not showing up in armored limousines. While merry in demeanor, we committed no offenses that could be considered “misdemeanors.” It was daylight when we went in, but not when we left:

Screenshot 2023-04-06 at 8.49.58 AM.jpg
Those aspects demeanor could have occurred during time limits assigned to the crime. Back then, they might have been “bookkeeping” errors. We are pretty sure that all those papers we are supposed to retain can be trashed after what- seven years? Maybe we need to keep them forever, which could account for some confusion in Presidential record maintenance.

So there is some of the uncertainty this morning, walking in political terra incognita. It is an “unknown land” in our political affairs. Crafting the weather pitch for this week occurred before the mid-point. We decided to go with proven strategies. We think the way to start is to say “Good morning! All this stuff is going on…” Then, we would sit upright and mention something else as a distraction. Maybe the murder of Bob Lee, the cyber entrepreneur stabbed on the street of San Francisco. His death reflects some of the random chaos about money in our new age.

Some of the events in that category may reflect the impact of a “new world order” the Chinese, Russians, Iranians, Brazilians and some other folks have been talking about. They apparently want to replace the “dollar” with something else. Candidates at this moment are “rubles” and “yuan,” and you can imagine there may be consequences to changing what we call “money,” since cash itself seems to be on the way out. Part of it makes perfect sense, since our $23 Trillion The term for some of the players in this frenzied activity has been around for a while. We called them “BRICS,” like the rectangle of hardened earth that can be used in construction. Brazil, Russia, India, China and someplace that starts with an “S.” We are not sure about that one- Senegal maybe? In any event, it is all going on.

Events over the course of the day gave us two narratives about what was happening in near real time. The indictment itself is interesting from several aspects. From one somewhat dyspeptic view, the arrest over an offense dated to 2017 was interesting. It was not deemed to be an imprisonment-level offense when it occurred, nor when the statute of limitation expired on the original offense. The key to the current storm is the contention that the misdemeanor was committed in order to justify elevation to “felony” in the 34 charges announced yesterday. All of them require “bootstrapping” the original minor expired offense to commission of a few dozen more serious crimes. There was some controversy over whether time limits would render the new more serious charge also expired, since New York Prosecutor Alvin Bragg did not specify what the exactly the additional crime might have been.

A pal wrote to express support for the “concerned citizen” position. We remember our parents being members of that faction back in the 1950s. They worried about all sorts of reasonable public policy issues. Public debt, taxes, schools and public safety used to be some of them. There was a correction to some of the areas that produced others. Remember the controversy about “Three Strikes” and “mandatory sentencing” that resulted in places of incarceration outsourced to the public sector? The most recent bumper-sticker on that matter is “defund the police.” That is part of the “school-to-prison pipeline” we have heard about. We grew up with the “don’t do the crime if you can’t do the time” as a sort of reasonable approach that worked for a while. Because of disparate impact, of course, we now are encouraging the former while ignoring the latter.

Our society has been a successful one. It was filled with plenty and blessed with free mobility. It can hardly be described as “perfect,” but it was something we took a great deal of pride in serving and protecting. We expect the unique strengths of our system to lurch back to some kind of “reform” that will attempt to set things right. Normal things, in which people who intend to do harm are apprehended and incarcerated. Like we said, we have seen this before and are in the process of seeing it again with a new cast of characters.

The best part was the interview with “Stormy Daniels” we saw this morning. We mean no disrespect to her, or course, except to note the news of any potential relationship with her might be worth a non-disclosure agreement, just in case it came up at dinner some evening. So, with that as a perfectly reasonable basis for old controversy, It is possible that this will turn out to only be another brief spate of media activity from the Narrative Development Section. Based on the preliminary scheduling, they intend to keep this going through at least December of this year as two other matters play out- the Georgia matter about “finding votes,” and the “6Jan” series of events that is said to represent an attempt to overthrow the government of the United States.

We took a poll here about “How Serious Is This Stuff?” There is a little fatigue in the personalities involved, since we have been hearing about formerly minor expired offenses resurrected to shape the future. As a practical matter, we would prefer to worry about the stuff that hasn’t happened yet. There could be some excitement there, since one of the Kennedy clan announced he was going to run against the incumbent Chief Executive. A Kennedy-Biden primary contest might be fun, and we would not have to learn anything new to feel strongly about.

So, this week provides a backwards vista as the future remains cloudy with a chance of rain. It is in keeping with the Weather Report, you know? The last time we were in the Holy Land, we kept good notes on what the heavens were bringing to the trip. That way, we would be well prepared to deal with “yesterday” in case it happened again. And tomorrow could just take care of itself.

Copyright 2023 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com