I really don’t want this to be a political blog.
The reason I write this blog on almost an every-day basis is because I love my life in Downtown Memphis. Before I moved down here, I never had such a large group of wonderful friends. I never had the ability to walk to so many places I enjoy… and in many cases know the owners of those businesses. I write this blog to chronicle my life Downtown and show how much fun I am having down here, and to make people aware of upcoming events in my neighborhood.
It’s worked, too. Several times a week, I get “Hey Paul, I read your blog” when I go out. I love it when people tell me “I never would have known about _____ if not for what you wrote.” That’s why I keep going after 13 years. By my count at least 14 people have decided to move Downtown because of things I have written on my blog, including at least three from out of state.
I fully intend to keep informing people about my neighborhood. First and foremost that is the purpose of this blog. It is how I serve the community.
However, we are living in very unusual times.
General Mike Flynn, the disgraced former National Security Adviser, is exploring a deal to turn state’s evidence, I have read, to avoid spending the rest of his life in prison for crimes related to his ties to Russia. The government will only cooperate if his testimony lands them a bigger fish than himself. The main fish he might lead them to are Tillerson, Pence, or Trump himself. I’ve also seen evidence possibly implicating Ryan, McConnell, Don Jr., and Ivanka. Oddly I haven’t seen anything implicating Eric yet. Nor Betsy DeVos, although she’s too stupid to be of any use to the Russians, I would suspect. Thankfully I have not seen any evidence against James Mattis, the one reasonable adult in Trump’s Cabinet.
We may be looking at a case in a year or two’s time where President Trump is either successfully impeached and removed from office, or he resigns, and the presidency falls to Orrin Hatch (fourth in line of succession as president pro tem of the Senate) because Pence and Ryan are under indictment. I thought that was insane when I first heard it, but the more I read, the more possible it looks. I can’t NOT comment on this stuff in my blog. We have never seen anything like this in 241 years of American history. The Founding Fathers tried to build a Constitution that would grow with the country, but they never could have foreseen this coming.
So here’s the deal I’m making with my readers. I will comment on the Trump-Russia thing as I see fit, but I will always do it at the end of my posts. When you reach the point when I start talking about politics, you can choose to keep reading or not. If you choose not to, I promise you won’t miss news about Saturday night’s promotion at the Redbirds or who is playing live music at the Ghost River taproom today or which movies will be in the Orpheum’s summer film series this week. Fair enough?