Trump Indicted

Former President Donald Trump was indicted on criminal charges late yesterday. We don't know what the charges are yet, as the specifics are under seal from a grand jury in New York City. We do know, though, that that grand jury was looking at details related to hush money Trump paid to prostitutes, particularly whether the way he sourced the money and reported it constitutes business fraud or election fraud. Thus the charges are likely related to that. And we're told there are more than 30 charges in the indictment.

This is historic. It's the first time a former president in the US has been charged with a crime— let alone more than 30 crimes. That fact has been trumpeted in headlines of... practically every single fucking media source in the country. That's unfortunate because it carries with it a particular subtext— that because this has never happened before, it's likely inappropriate now. Like the laws of the US are suddenly being rewritten to "get" one guy. The other bit about history news orgs should mention to keep this in proper context is that there has never before been a president who allegedly committed so many crimes as Donald Trump. You don't want to be charged with crimes? Stop crime-ing!

Trump and his enablers in media propaganda and politics are predictably losing their minds over this. Of course, they started setting the groundwork for it weeks ago, knowing it was coming eventually. "What would he possibly be indicted for?" an ally in Congress demanded, expecting the answer to be "Nothing". Oh, people on Twitter had a field day answering that rhetorical question with facts. "I am the most innocent person ever," Trump boasted at a campaign rally several days ago.

Now that the indictment has landed.... "INDICATED," Trump fumed in one of his social media posts last night, continuing his pattern of accidentally (on purpose?) misspelling key words.

This is likely only the first of many indictments for Trump. This one comes from a prosecutor and grand jury in New York City. That's NY state law. There are also investigations in, among other places, Georgia for Trump's alleged election interference there, and the US Department of Justice for... well, basically years of financial and political corruption.

SEVENTEEN Atmospheric Rivers?!

An article in my newsfeed last night caught my eye. "California’s snowpack soars to record high after 17 atmospheric rivers" (Washington Post, 30 Mar 2023).

SEVENTEEN atmospheric rivers?! Ten days earlier I read we'd only had a record-crushing 12. Well, we didn't get 5 more in a week and a half. I can only conclude different sources count them differently. BTW: my explainer on what an atmospheric river is. TLDR: It's a big rainstorm.

The Post article notes that the water content in California's snowpack is at 235% of normal. That's great news as it helps head off prolonged drought. That snow, as it melts, flows into rivers and reservoirs, feeding the state. The water also seeps into the ground, replenishing groundwater levels that were dangerously depleted the past few dry years.

Speaking of drought, the latest from the US Drought Monitor - California map is even better than when I compared charts a week ago. Is California totally out of drought conditions? No. But most of the state is, and with the snowpack in the mountains we're definitely in decent shape for the rest of this year. We're likely good for next year, too, even if next year's a dry one. But the thing is, drought isn't just a this-year-or-next problem. It's becoming a bigger and bigger long term challenge.

Conservatives Won't Define "Woke"-- Because it Would Expose their Fraud!

A week ago I wrote What is "Woke"? Ask an Idiot! about a conservative author/speaker who, in moment that went viral, completely choked when a streaming interviewer asked her to define the term, woke. My use of the label "idiot" was ironic. The woman interviewed, Bethany Mandel, is coauthor of a 2022 book all about woke-ism and its supposed perils. She is also a frequent guest speaker on conservative programs and at conservative events, where she is invited specifically to talk about the subject. It would seem that far from being a (literal) idiot she should be among the world's experts on what "woke" is, right?

Here's the rub: She didn't stumble defining "woke" because she doesn't know. She stumbled defining "woke" because she does know... and she also knows that actually defining would make a lot of people go, "Wait, what's so wrong with that? Being woke sounds like a good idea!"

Indeed conservative media figures all united on a common message by the second day after Mandel's viral choke. Defining "woke" is not possible, they argued. It's a feeling, a mindset, they continued. ...Ooookay, well feelings and mindsets can actually be described. For example, I can define "white nationalism" is and how it describes them.... and I'm not even a book author and frequent public speaker on the topic!

Asking us to define "woke" is a trap, cooked up by the Left, the conservatives contended.

You know what? They're damn right it's a trap. It's a trap to expose their hatred, lies, and misrepresentation.

The truth is conservatives just want buzzwords they can repeat to keep their audiences angry. Angry about what? It almost doesn't matter. In fact, they're deliberately vague. Psychology shows that it's easier for people to stay riled up when they use their imaginations to fill in the specifics of what they're so angry about. Basically everyone's got their own personal boogeymen. Keeping it vague also makes it hard to for opponents to respond. Make a specific counterargument, and the conservatives dodge and say, "It's not about that, you clearly don't understand it!" Yes, that bullshit is bad-faith arguing. Welcome to modern conservative politics.

March a busy month for blogging. Subscribing to the whole person.

At the start of the month I posted some stats about my blogging. February had been a relatively slow month for me; I wrote 51 journal entries for an average of "only" 1.8 posts per day. That's slow-ish because over the past 15 months I've averaged a hair over 2.0 per day. Well, enough about February; what about March?

At the start of the month I predicted March would be another slow month, slower even than February. Wow, was I wrong! Across March I had 67 posts, for an average of almost 2.2 per day. That's not my bloggiest month ever. It's not even in the top 5. I believe it's #7. But it's above my recent average... and well above my goal of 1/5/day. And it's in a month when I didn't have any travel. Remember, travel drives a lot of my blogging.

If I didn't travel in March what did I blog abou? Well, I had a travel blog backlog from February. I finished it off only 18 days late. 😅 But even so, that was only 10 blogs in March out of the month's 67 total. What else was there? Well, I caught up on some TV/streaming blogs, too. Those were another 11. Ten and 11... that's still less than one-third of 67. The rest, a majority, were a smattering of journals about current events, both national and international; food and drink; and other things I thought about.

"So there's no focus to this blog," you may note. "What are we subscribing to?"

There's actually a mistaken assumption in that. When you subscribe to a person's blog, or to someone's Twitter feed, or Facebook, Insta, etc., you're not subscribing to a topic. You're subscribing to a person. Here you're subscribing to me.