May Day 1971

(Woman perched atop a shaggy young man in the May Day protest at the Capital in Washington, DC. Image courtesy “wagingnonviolence.org”).

We were going to go with a tale about the unfolding story of attempts to escalate tension in nuclear relations- there is some disturbing Escalation in progress. You will see us cover it presently, since it is a classic demonstration of profound generational change on this day in May.

Mules is one of the Older Salts of the highest quality. He harnesses his old messaging skills to produce dramatic PowerPoint presentations about places, times and people. He produced one that echoes this morning. It is the 70th Anniversary of the French defeat at their strongpoint at Dien Bien Phu. The terms of reference are unusual to us now, so he clarified. “The French relied on air support to keep the garrison complex supplied, since the roads and rails were too dangerous for transit.”

Attempting to do the same thing with our own military twenty years later makes it a poignant topic. It has echoes in the current campus protests about the situation in Gaza this morning as the Israelis open the offensive against Hamas at Rafah. Splash has been reading up on the events, and jumped in.

He waved a printed copy of a news story that claimed some of the Hamas fighters in Gaza refused to evacuate targets the Israelis were about to destroy. They also refused to move their children. We have no information on what their wives thought.

DeMille frowned from the head of the picnic table “Looks to me like the IDF will take the east side of the Rafah Zone first, then squeeze HAMAS into the seaside corner of the enclave. Then they will eliminate them in response to the 1,300 Israelis killed and taken hostage back in October. If they’re smart, they’ll move fast even at the expense of higher casualties.”

That provoked more frowns of disbelief. We would never have warned anyone in the targets we hit, since we could get hurt doing it. Rocket put his mug of coffee down with a ceramic thump that made one of the robins lurch out of the bushes. “And yet to be seen is the reaction of Iran’s other proxies in this mess. What will they do? Iran already heaved more than 3,000 rockets. How about Hizballah in the north and the Houthis in the south?”

That comment sparked another vigorous discussion about the willingness of True Believers to commit familial suicide. As a group, we had been willing to take risks only to protect ours, so it was a dramatic demonstration of alternate but committed reality.

That followed Mule’s slide presentation with images of gallant North Vietnamese hauling anti-aircraft guns over the hilly terrain with their muscles and determination.

That prompted more recollections since some of the Older Salts had their moments in (or around) Vietnam at the time. The younger ones didn’t, but did recall the times. Ollie laughed at the change. “I only intentionally went to a demonstration once back then. It was the big May Day demonstration in Washington,1971.”

We considered the date, now more than a half-century ago. Ollie lit up one of the irritating Lucky Strikes he keeps in a rolled up sleeve of his t-shirt. “It’s an interesting contrast to the ones in progress today. The old protest I saw began on Monday morning, May 3rd and lasted two days. The DC cops arrested over 12,000 people. In the largest mass arrest in U.S. history.So far, anyway. Participants were kids like we were. They drew their own straggly signs and got to DC however they could, thumbing or driving old cars. Without brand new tents.”

Rocket laughed. “I heard one lady got paid $300 a day last week to participate. That is muchbetter than minimum wage. And one of the important demands was for delivery of quality free food to the encampments.”

Ollie scowled before continuing pensively. “I was not a protestor, though of course my interest was influenced by the proximity of the Draft. I just wanted to observe what it was like. I told my folks I was going to take a trip. Then I threw some stuff in a backpack and hitch-hiked from Grand Rapids, Michigan down to the Capital. No trouble on that leg.”

“On arrival, I saw a crowd of dizzying size and energy, mostly piled up around the Federal Center downtown and the Pentagon on the west side of the Potomac. It was interesting in the scope of it, and mostly peaceful. But then things got violent and the mass arrests started. They were filling RFK Stadium with students and I decided that was enough of the experience and decided to go home before I wound up in a seat on someone’s 30-yard line.”

There were some ironic knowing glances around the Writer’s Section as he continued. “Once I decided to get out, I lifted my thumb and got a ride from a VW van with a group of Vietnam Vets Against the War. They were headed for Chicago or someplace and it was late afternoon when we hooked up. They did not want to drive all night, but we were all short on cash and a motel room for the crowd was too expensive. Near South Somerset, they decided to pull over and sleep in a rest stop by the highway.”

“I did not fully trust them and the pervasive scent of marijuana had me a little unsettled. I threw my sleeping bag over a shoulder and hiked up the hill from the rest area to a straggly tree line where I tried to make a nest under the branches in the chill. They were gone when I stirred after a hungry, restless night. I got another less committed ride west and made it home OK. I never again went willingly near a large crowd of angry people.”

Nick Danger is a little more quiet than he was in his days in the Fleet. Ollie’s account had him stirred up. “And the ones these days look like smacked asses. What amazes me is how frighteningly insecure they all are. They need the crowds, the attention, the paparazzi, the cameras and their their stories of sacrifice in the press…”

There was a proposal to drink to the doughty Vietnamese who hauled artillery with their hands and backs. We decided not to. Happy Hour is soon enough, and we decided to just drink to the memories of the generations now long gone.

Copyright 2024 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com
www.vicsocotra.com

The Battle of Puebla

Here it is again! It was a surprising as the Kentucky Derby’s arrival yesterday, and a group celebration of a classic event for the Bluegrass state. We had thought the event was long past, but it was not. The nose-to-nose-to nose finish was as exciting as anything we have seen, and that was a perfect lead in to the realization that today is the 5th of May- “Cinco de Mayo!”
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This is an annual event originally celebrated- modestly- in a nation that used to be south of ours. The Border’s location has changed of late, inexorably north, and the holidays of Mexico have become entwined in ours. They even collide in a new one, which in this year combines the Derby-Day-Drinking event with the All-Day-Celebration of Cinco De Mayo.

We started early, having been awake a few times in the hours of darkness purging the residue of the Derby with preparations to celebrate Mexico’s victory over the invading forces of the Second French Empire in 1861. At the time, we Americans were a little pre-occupied with that Civil War thing. We had already been at war in Mexico in 1848, so it passed without much notice here. It ws obscured with the clouds of black powder smoke that issued from Bull Run, just a single day’s march west of our home here by the parking lot at Big Pink.

In case the memory is dim, here is the story in brief. The French saw an opportunity to recreate their vanquished possessions in what became the United States and Canada. They thought the Mexicans would be easier prey, and landed with the troops to enforce the dream of a renewed empire in North America.

(Martial but intellectual visage of ‘GRAL” Ignacio Zaragoza, 1861, Courtesy Alchetron Free Social Encyclopedia).

General Ignacio Zaragoza was subject to the first toast of the full weekend of celebratory quaffing. He led the doughty Mexicans against the French forces at the “Battle of Puebla.” He was victorious in that encounter, which is why we recall it this morning, and placed the Monkey Shoulder and Julips of yesterday with the Tequila of today. Ignacio’s moment of triumph is worth remembering since things did not progress as well as he hoped.

Zaragoza died months after the battle from an unspecified camp-related illness. A larger French force ultimately defeated his successor in charge of the Mexican army at the “Second Battle” fought in the same place as the First one. It was a successful start, that included conquest of Mexico City. But it was not to last. With the conclusion of the American carnage further north and a vast combat-experienced Army and Navy available for deployment, things did not work out much better for the French than it did for Ignatio.

In January 1866, the third fellow named Napoleon (N-III) announced that he would withdraw French troops from Mexico. In reply to his request for American neutrality, Secretary of State William Seward decreed the French flight from the hemisphere would be “unconditional.”

You can see the ambiguity inherent in the celebration, which is now more popular north of the moving border than it is to the south. It is now regarded as a holiday devoted not only to consumption of beverages in groups like this one, but as a larger commemoration of Mexican-American culture. That version of the holiday goes back to Columbia in 1862. Not the one in Latin America, but in Columbia. California.

It was small scale back then, and re-emerged as a major festive occasion in he 1980s. We vaguely remember the emergence due to advertising campaigns by beer, wine, and tequila companies. On this day, Cinco de Mayo generates beer sales on a par with that of the Super Bowl. Down South? It is solemn and relatively low-key with mostly ceremonial military parades or reenactments in the city of Puebla.

In case you missed it, this is not Mexico’s Independence Day, widely regarded by actual Mexicans as the most important national Holiday. That is in September, and we plan on going to the liquor store between now and then to ensure we do not run short. But we are set for today, and hope this brief account gives some context for a day that has become an increasingly global celebration of Mexican culture, cuisine and heritage.

Except in France, of course. They are still restive there. President Macron in Paris recently floated the idea of landing troops in Ukraine, but we do not plan on stocking up for that one. At least not yet. And in the meantime? Pass that jug in this direction, would ‘ya?

Copyright 2024 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com

Generations

There is other stuff to ruminate about this morning, in fact a swirl of the big messaging machine that has many of us in an uproar. A congressman from Texas just got indicted for something corrupt, which he and his wife deny. We don’t know if that is a reflection of the old corruption which has been around forever and the new corruption, which is systemic to the way things work across the generations of humans who share the planet.

That prompted the discussion that follows. When did our current system emerge? It wasn’t this way when we started service to our government, and we are pretty sure it was not permitted when we left. But look at us now- we seem to have had some sort of generational change imposed upon us, and we tried to figure out when it started.

That discussion got us onto the topic of “generational change,” and how long those things take. Second Clinton term? There was something like agreement on some things- budgets and welfare- that are unthinkable now. Others point to a shorter time frame, partially defined by the four-year increments of the American Presidential terms.

We argued about it until Splash produced his white-board and black marker and outlined the equation with which we started this morning. , one things then to a less on the system in which we were raised. We are just glad we could clear up the dispute on the duration of generations. We really don’t need to drone on about it.

As Splash noted in his presentation after a sip of Monkey Shoulder single-malt, “Just follow the equation-defining character “T” and you get the answer, plain as day.

What was the question again? Oh, right. We were trying to figure out the term “generation” and its direct application to whatever one of those things we seem to be occupying at the moment. Specifically, the discussion pivoted on the matter pertaining to the last “generation” of human chronology we are entering. Some of the generations are epic enough to have their own names, as the folks at the website “MyEnglishTeacher.com” point out in the table below:

You can see the teachers range widely around the 20-30 year range, with some memorable ones only lasting a little more than a dozen years.

This is more complicated than it used to be. We used to assume “twenty or thirty” years as being reasonable generational span for our species. There is now a progression of them. Our parent’s generation, for the most part, has transitioned to eternal rest. But their lives were a common reference point all our lives.

Here is where some of the confusion reigns. We never met either of our biological grandfathers since they both passed at the beginning of the big break point of the second War. Our grandmothers lasted to almost ninety, which put the extent of their lives to nearly three generations longer than that of their first husbands.

So, that is one aspect of the issue. We were still breathing at breakfast, so we presume there to be other ones on the horizon. Our kids, bless their hearts, are active and vibrant. So, that is the one after the one we live now in the shadow of the one-or-three generations our parents shared. So, that could be a fourth, and their kids, those saintly grand-kids, are a fifth or eighth just in relation to where we currently reside.

Beyond those assorted generations, we have only vast swathes of “past” and “future” where our parents now reside and our grand-children’s children may- should there be any- have their turn in history’s spotlight. We wonder about the name for that generation.

The process used to be shorter and fairly simple. As humans, we get gestated by nice people in places like Detroit. They raise us with some turmoil to child-bearing age of our own, and then work with wild abandon to repeat the process which then assumes a life of its own.

Let’s attempt to be precise. In population and demographic theory, “generation time” is considered to be “the average period between two consecutive generations in the lineages of a population.” In our species Homo Sapiens, that generational time typically has ranged between 20 and 30 years. Adding to the confusion, there is a wide variation based on gender and society that accounts for a nearly 1/3rd disparity in the average.

Historians get dragged into the fight, of course, even the ones who share our generation. They have all the generations that preceded our times to play with and for which to account. Those scrupulous professionals sometimes use the generational periods to place events in chronological order by converting generations into discrete periods of years to yield rough estimates of time’s relentless march.

The existing definitions of generational time this fall into two categories: those that treat generation time as a renewal time of the population and those that focus on the distance between the individuals of one generation and the next. There are three commonly-used formulas to account for the vriation.

The first is one is major change as a species, or “the time it takes for the population to double as a factor of its Net Reproductive Rate (NPR).”

That is subject to change, of course, and we will be hearing more about it as India surpasses China in total population and the old imperial populations of the West no longer have exploding population bombs. Instead, there will be new ones described in Dramatic Population Declines (DPDs). We reached out to Dr. Paul Ehrlich about his earlier predictions of doom, but he claimed to be unavailable due to finding himself Suddenly Out of Town (SOOT).

You can see the complexity, and that is a little longer than any of the time or generations we are likely to enjoy. Or as short as the duration of a suborbital rocket path. But it is a useful place to start, even if not particularly helpful from a personal standpoint.

A second useful average would be the difference in age between parent and offspring, which naturally comes into play with the generational passing of modest gee-jaws and vast estates.

That has some wrinkles within the species, since many demographic models are oriented to female-based biologic systems better described as the “mother-daughter distance.” In shorthand, that is often expressed as the average age of mothers when they deliver their daughters.

One could naturally also derive a father-son generational difference, or an even simpler (and hence less accurate) one that does not take sex into account. Men are useful in that regard, as we often note these days. But despite the controversy over ‘identification” issue, only biological women can work the miracle of generational creation. Don’t hesitate to correct us if we are wrong on that.

The three-letter word factor (“Sex!”) has always added a certain mystery to our lives. But we are relatively confident that going with rough definition of twenty or thirty years per generation, we have been here for the better part of four or six generations.

Which strikes us a generation longer than things used to last, but what the heck. When you are having a good time, why not go with it?

Copyright 2024 Vic Socotra

www.vicsocotra.com

Our Non-Government (of Organizations)

We bitch a lot about how we have arrived in this precarious position in a nation once considered th emost powerful on our wobbly Globe. Things have been teetering with increasing motion of late, and we thought it might be useful to do a quick iteration of the steps that have brought us to a time when our Government- the one most of us served- is not our servant, but an active opponent.

Most of our discourse starts with an assertion that something untoward has occurred in the miasma of our Domestic Affairs. Accordingly, let’s get that part out of the way, as we do with the official Disclaimers section of the Daily that keeps us safe from legal ploys: “They want it this way.”

That is two words longer than the old explanation, which went something like ‘Follow the money.”

There is wisdom in old words, and not much more complex than that. Many- if not most- of the ways to quickly and easily pile up money rely on practices that could be considered as “unfair.” By that we mean conduct that most people- be they Kings or in Congress- have codified as “illegal.”

That is a mutable concept, of course, and only limited to a generation’s ability to scheme their way around the laws of their parents adopted to prevent what they desire, Easy money..

See? Our generation’s version of that- which will become illegal once our opponents in Government connect the dots for our Grandchildren’s generation- are things called “Non-Governmental Organizations,” better known by their generic abbreviation of “NGOs.”

That term is deliberately non-threatening and naturally deceptive to ensure that they can continue across generations with plausible deniability. Remember when President Nixon shipped the jobs that once supported Detroit and Cleveland to Wuhan Province, China?

If you do not, that is the sort of timespan these machinations take to progress. We call our Midwest cities the “Rust Belt,” now, and a question about what the consequences of donating our industrial base to a bunch of Communists probably would not have been a winnable argument then. And one that we simply have to deal with as an unredeemable “fact of life.”

That sort of activity, had it been revealed as a plan in which a small number of people in China and the US made an enormous amount of money at the expense of hundreds of thousands of hourly workers who spend their hours here in America.

That is one of the larger schemes only coming to maturity now, but it has brought about an economic system never debated in our Government. Or anywhere else. In the media today there is a flurry of discussion about an extraordinary amount of taxpayer cash being shipped to Ukraine. The reason for the transfer is in consonance with good intentions to resist Russian depredations.

So far, so good, right? What is not discussed in the allocation of public funds is where they are going. The new form of government we serve has an unwritten form of constitution. The Ukraine money will, in large part, be allocated to the crisis of the moment. We are not supposed to let those go to waste, and a significant chunk of the money (the unwritten Article 2) is going to wind up as donations from several unaccountable Ukrainian entities to the people who authorized the transfer of the cash in the first place.

In the case of Ukraine, this has now been going on for most of a new generation. It now has traditions and practices that will have to be made illegal in order for the system to adapt a new legal means to accomplish what was not.

You can see how this system has grown over time. It is now an alternate form of governance in which the people who pay the bills are never presented with them, only debited for the full amount. Please don’t take this as a castigation of fine organizations like The Red Cross or Purple Heart. But the path of donations- and appropriations- that permit their good works has also evolved to a vast system of interlocking organizations contributing to other organizations and individuals. And hence our Non-Government of Organizations.

To succeed, the overlap and duplicity of functions that conceals the destination of public funds is inefficient. But the terms “efficiency” and “good” do not appear in the unwritten rules. The only ones who actually understand the process are the ones it is designed to enrich. The rest of us- the ones who pay the bills- are not in the decision loop.

So, following this stream of cash helps reveal how we got to a system that is wildly expensive, dreadfully complex, and based on a foundation of falsehood. It started with decent expectations to overcome the natural selfish inclinations of our successful species. Over the generations, the system has created an inefficient but lucrative larder for those who not only follow the money, but put it in their pockets.

We stopped putting much confidence in numbers provided by the Government some time ago, since now virtually all official activities are devoted now to sustaining the system as it actually exists. Anything else would be like, illegal, you know?

Copyright 2024 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com

Weather Report: Dress Rehearsal

Yeah, let’s start with the “all the stuff listed above is actually going on. It is all in the process of unfolding. The major story of this installment of our annual life is a curious one, since it evokes old passions of campus life. We are not quite sure wha the pro-Hamas encampments actually means, since it appears to represent a sundering of the traditional base of one of the parties. There is a distinct opinion floating around that the arrays of identical tents and professionally-produced signs of protests actually means this is something else.

A trial run for something larger and later this year? Based on testimony from law enforcement officials, many of those arrested on the property of Ivy League institutions are not actually students in those places. They are instead a relatively small and intensely focused group of professional participants, and this is a dress rehearsal for what they will attempt to do as we get closer to Election Month later this year.

You can see some of the issues being worked on in this iteration. Next time the tents will look like they were dragged out of personal garages, for example, and the signs will look a little more hand-made to demonstrate sincerity. So, despite the momentary emotion, there are still some things being worked out by repetition. What will be the backdrop for them?

We have mentioned the NATO Conference coming to the National Capital Region in July. That will be a possible highly visible venue for demonstrations, or at least the opportunity to refine lessons being learned now. The Democratic Party Convention in Chicago is the next month, in Mid-August, and contains a legacy of another convention held there in 1968 under Mayor Richard Daily.

All the Boomers in the circle remember that panoply of pandemonium and symbols. This one could feature some of the same, or even incorporate the violence of 2020’s Summer of Love, provided by BLM and Antifa.

We hasten to note that some of the current emotion is artificially amplified. We hope that people will adopt a more traditional approach to this election cycle. “Vote Early!” if you wish, but preferably not more “Often.”

So, we hope something approximating our electoral traditions returns. It might not, of course. We will just have to take it as it comes, and at least enjoy the rehearsal!

Copyright 2024 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com

LawFare Chapter #134

(Rep. Adam Schiff, House Member from California’s 30th District and a leading candidate for election to California’s vacant Senate seat, left by Senator Diane Feinstein’s passing. He began the campaign with years of solemn accusations about the guilt of a former President on a number of largely imaginative and novel legal cases investigated over seven years. None of which have resulted in a conviction. What had been a bit of entertaining political shenanigans had a brief interlude of raucu laughter when it turned out last weekend that Rep. Schiff himself may be a felon, and has been for a few decades. Image courtesy YouTube).

Correct us if we’re wrong, but a recent former President is currently facing something close to a hundred felony charges for a variety of allegations of misconduct. There is one thing in common across the four (it may be five this morning) major actions against him. They are shoe-horned into expired misdemeanor violations pertaining to papers some testimony indicates he never saw or witnessed.

One of the most amusing aspects of this is the often-expressed Virtue of those who are accusing him of all sorts of stuff. The most concrete manifestation of that is the fines imposed (so far) which amount to something north of a half-billion dollars. In English, that is another way of saying “5,000 million!” It is appropriate at this juncture to direct you to the Disclaimer Archives for an iteration of the many things for which we independent contractors are not responsible. That includes legal advice, and we are not disbarred. We came by our perspective by not going to Law School.

So, we attempted to take a look at the complexity of the situation. The Department of Justice has been revealed in sworn testimony to have met with prosecutors involved in all the cases. DoJ people helped coordinate charges and court agendas to keep the legal saga alive and in the media through the campaign and the November Election.

In progress now? The individual nuances are focused on the “Hush Money” case in New York, which is (as best we can decrypt) an expired misdemeanor charge about a bookkeeping error now resurrected and boot-strapped onto more than 30 felony counts allegedly conducted outside the jurisdiction of the court.

We were going to leave that matter alone, having commented on DA Alvin Bragg before. But something just broke that made the entire circle burst into guffaws that echoed across the parking lot at Big Pink. It turns out Adam Schiff has his own problems. We assume they will go away pretty quickly, since they are of no particular value to anyone participating in the national election. But since it will be a meme of short duration, innocence and guilt being determined first, not last, we thought it would be worth a quick mention on the behavior of our virtue-signaling class.
Our Politicians.

We have some vague sympathy for those who start out in the political game. Former Speaker Pelosi has been in the game for more than thirty years, and on her salary of $194K a year, has piled up a net worth of only around $270 million. We have been assured she never shared impending legislative actions with her stock-broker spouse. It is hard when you start out in the game, though.

Rep. Schiff has parlayed his time in the circus to a modicum of fame with his google-eyes and accusations of felonious misconduct against those who have richly earned punishment. We confess to have enjoyed his flamboyant time in the spotlight.

It was back in 2000 when he was elected to the House from California’s 30th District. A married man with two kids, he did the logical thing to stay legal. He purchased a one-bedroom condo in California as primary residence for the four members of his household. He registered to vote, and then looked for a place to live in the DC area while he performed the People’s business.

He was learning his trade swiftly. He purchased a nice place in Maryland in 2004, and liked it so much that he declared it his “primary residence’ on the purchase. And on the three times he re-financed by 2009 when the public business started to produce decent income throughput and mortgage fraud was no longer required to supplement his Congressional check to produce an adequate living wage.

We cannot demonstrate how many lies are wrapped up in this now-ancient history. We don’t know if the California condo he visited periodically was still a “primary residence,” since that would seem to be a primary or if he lied on his mortgage application that the condo was a “primary residence,” which at least would have kept his voter registration and public service legal. Instead, the inconvenience of traveling back to the condo periodically forced him to purchase a nice three-or-four bedroom house in Maryland in 2003.

He listed it as a “Primary Residence” on his application, which, if true, would invalidate his oath of office and false official statements under oath. He then refinanced the Maryland house three more times until 2009, when presumably the stock-market insider trading benefits kicked in.

We do not expect this matter to be visible for long, and have already imagined what the brush-off is going to be. “Nothing to see here, move on!” That will be shortly followed “That was a long time ago!’

We will not dredge up the similar denials about other matters that have disappeared from view as the LawFare campaign slogs toward the next election. But one thing to which we are looking forward is Rep. Schiff’s look of google-eyed innocence before the cameras. Before we get back to the important national security issues associated with the execution of perfectly legal non-disclosure agreements for which the period of alleged violations has expired.

Or whether the possession of classified documents specifically cited in the Presidential Records Act are treated the same as classified materials removed without permission and stored next to the blue Corvette in the garage.

Chapter #134. Is this a great country, or what?

Copyright 2024 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com

Sweet Judy Blue Eyes

(Judy Collins is one of two singers who defined her generation. We will not address the other guy who still fronts the Rolling Stones since his story is harder and quite different. Judy’s tale is unique, and has inspired audiences with sublime vocals in boldly vulnerable songwriting, personal life triumphs, and a firm commitment to social activism.” At the start of a remarkable career some six decades ago, she evoked the idealism and steely determination our Boomer Generation assumed against social and environmental injustices. Her creativity remains a constant, with her latest album “Spellbound,” released in 2022, marking the first time in which she composed all the songs she sang. Image from the Dakota Show last week. Still lovely).

We are not going to make an attempt at laughter, or even essay some mild irony about the conditions that come with life on our planet. We often joke around about some of the plentiful pitfalls of life in our species. Some of them are deep and unexpected, like the periodic headlines we get about otherwise healthy people suddenly keeling over as a result of (fill-in-the-blank) administered by the victim or their government.

So, we are NOT going to do that, although we may actually take a moment and burst into song. That is the effect that the woman pictured above had with her voice on our lives. It goes back aways, and we are pleased to note an anniversary that has nothing to do with the departure from this life, but the celebration of one well-lived.

(This would be the part where one of us would clear their now musty throat and begin a rising hum of vocal vibrations about ships or loves won or lost. Pay it no mind).

Judy Collins is the current owner of those vocal chords, and she changed some of our lives and unquestionably for the better.

We were fortunate to have our time on the planet coincide with hers. She would have just been turning a dozen years in age when we arrived in 1951, a bit late to her party. But we joined with mirth.

With characteristic optimism, it was been announced a few months ago that Judy would be performing to commemorate her 85th birthday. We have been attempting to wrestle with similar (if starker) observations, though naturally ours are a little darker than hers. We are a dozen years behind her, and some of our allegedly legendary Boomer cohort is falling off the train and onto the tracks. OJ Simpson reminded us of that sobering fact just a couple weeks ago.

Jusy is here this morning to remind us of the joy of life, and the delight of sweet vibrations of the morning air. She had established herself in the first wave of the folk music craze of the early 1960s. Companions in that segment of the parade? There were men and women marching along together. Some of them include Phil Ochs, Tom Paxton, Bob Dylan and Joan Baez. Judy lived well and was lucky. Her life at 85 still includes life, love and lyrics.

It even includes plain words, unadorned with anything but the passion of her times and the joy of engaged love. Title of her autobiography? “Sweet Judy Blue Eyes,” of course.

The review of her birthday shows is what reminded us of the pervasive genius of her voice and her perceptive observation of our times. Like the number of this year’s shows, we have two of her songs that are queued up and always at the ready. We stumbled on to become first ‘young’ and then ‘old’ Salts. So, the first tune to spring loose of the two is “So Early in the Spring.” It speaks of loss and dedication, the strains of which you may recall from long ago:

So Early In the Spring

So early, early in the spring
I shipped on board to serve my king
I left my dearest dear behind
She ofttimes swore her heart was mine

My love, she takes me by the hand
“If ever I marry, you’ll be the man”
A thousand vows, so long and sweet
Sayin’ “We’ll be married when next we meet”

And all the time I sailed the seas
I could not find one moment’s ease
In thinkin’ of my dearest one
But never a word from her could I hear

At last we sailed into Glasgow town
I strode the streets both up and down
Inquiring for my dearest dear
And never a word from her could I hear

I went straightway to her father’s hall
And loudly for my love did call
“My daughter’s married, she’s a rich man’s wife
She’s wed to another, much better for life”

If the girl is married that I adore
I’m sure I’ll stay on land no more
I’ll sail the seas ‘till the day I die
I’ll break the waves rollin’ mountain high

We won’t attempt to do both of Judy’s old songs that live in our minds this morning. This one sums it up for us pretty nicely, and is normally the first one we attempt to croak around the Writer’s Circle.

In the meantime, we wanted to remind you of a life worth celebrating for honest beauty and good and loving times. And those eyes- so beautiful and blue!

Copyright 2024 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com

Too Big To Fail

(Cartoon image from Carlson in 2009 about another unsustainable moment in our sophisticated national financial system).

We have heard those words before. We think it was around the big real estate collapse back in 2008. We had one of those surreal mornings back then when someone mentioned the Zillow prices on the condo we owned then had fallen by a hundred grand, seemingly overnight.

It actually took a couple days, but we were not paying enough attention to determine if it was twenty or thirty grand every twenty-four hours.

That is not dissimilar to the numbers that floated by last week in what we call the tyranny of Here-And-Now. Those were the numbrs that said each of us “taxpayers”- they carefully did not say “citizens” on that- was each on the hook for an equivalent of that slug of cash for our share of the National Debt.

We squirmed around and tried to figure out how we would pay our “fair share” of the IOU’s run up to cover the debts incurred by other people for other important things. There was some laughter about that, since some of us get Medicare and Social Security without blushing, but you can see how the situation is exemplified by the perspective on where the cash is coming from and where it is going.

Most of us could come up with the necessary amount, though it would probably take a couple working days to have it in a digital package. Longer, if it had to be in stacks of actual currency. The people at Feakonomics have informed us a trillion dollar stack of currency bills- denomination unspecified- would be about 67 miles in height. Our national debt this morning is therefore, (35 x 67= 224.5 miles).

The Moon is reported reliably to be about 251,000 miles from Earth, so regardless of denomination, we have a quarter million miles of dollars before we can walk there in any comfort.

We should quote what they said about some of the New York financial institutions in the last time a major fiscal bubble inflated and burst: “We have to bail them out. They are too big to Fail!”

We appear to be in the same situation this morning, though the scope, like a walk on dollar bills to the lunar surface, seems a little unlikely. We are no longer speaking about an old and venerable financial institution. We are talking about the one that really used to be too enormous to permit to collapse. And yet it is. Imagine that- we are outspending our income (“taxes”) by another trillion every hundred days. That amounts to an additional ten percent of the total debt every year. We would take that as a decent investment opportunity, though recall bitching about numbers only slightly bigger when we had to pay it ourselves in the Carter Administration for our first house.

We hear the word “sustainable” fairly frequently these days. It is a magic word that is momentary in duration while promising some eternal steady state. We went to the Tax Foundation to do a quick check on numbers. They claim to be non-partisan in orientation, and we were hoping to hear an answer for how we might at least begin to slow the pace of the juggernaut’s advance.

The silence on that matter, as they say, is “deafening.” The latest statistics from the Infernal Revenue System are from 2021 due to the size of the stacks of cash involved. There are some microscopic adjustments that accompany the mountain of IOUs: at a Trillion every hundred days, those numbers are $12 Trillion dollars ago. Back in the immediate aftermath of the Covid panic, the top 1 percent of taxpayers income rose from 22.2 percent in 2020 to 26.3 percent in 2021.

Within that aggregate ttal, the share of federal income taxes paid by the “one percenters” rose from 42.3 percent to 45.8 percent. If you haven’t been counting, that means every one of us lucky ones also carries a couple other people along on the strength (and thickness) of our individual wallets.

Which actually means, of course, the 1% of taxpayers are not a hundred grand in debt, but an additional 54.2% of the total, since more than half of us are paying nothing. We understand that is the thing we hear about called “Equity.”

If you loosen some of the responsibility, just to play that “fairness” angle, the top 50 percent of all taxpayers paid 97.7 percent of all federal individual income taxes, while the bottom 50 percent paid the remaining 2.3 percent.

That is the principle of “progressive taxation.” It always seems a little fairer in the initial concept phase than when the government person is actually going through our wallets or purses.

That is the part where paying for one or two other residents of our nation turns into three or four. It is obviously not sustainable in terms of keeping the enterprise going. With that being self-evident, the strange part is that no one- none, zero- are talking about what we might do to avoid a stunningly ugly collapse that could leave half of us without sustenance.

It strikes us that someone might propose collecting a little more from those who are currently paying nothing while spending a little less on benefits for everyone. We hear a lot about saving “democracy” these days, which is another of those peculiar aspects of life in our United States.

The people who rebelled against the English King had an extended chat in their convention about the potential inherent tyranny of majority rule in which the majority could vote themselves benefits produced from other people’s income. Their answer was to dilute that power through a representative form of government governed by a set of agreed and universal principals.

They called it a “Constitutional Republic.” They embedded similar leveling factors in the three branches of the government so constituted: Executive, Legislative and Judicial. Institutions like the Electoral College- the one we often hear about reforming to the “popular vote” was intended to balance the raw power of the larger colonies with the smaller ones- say, New York versus Delaware- to ensure that the people of Manhattan could not eternally rule over the citizens of Wilmington.

We are on the verge of a quarter Millennium into this experiment. It has had its moments, both good and bad, but generally has produced one of the ore successful periods in the history of our Species. We have now arrived at the moment when the two wolves turn to one another over the back of the sheep and discuss what might be on the menu for dinner.

The bill is coming due, and is now headed for our table. It might be time to look around and see who our dining companions are likely to be, you know?

Copyright 2024 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com

Red Cows and the Third Temple

Some of us from the Socotra House Writer’s Section have stood at the base of the Second Temple in Jerusalem, and walked uphill past Al Aqsa’s stately Dome of the Rock on the way to pay our respects to the Church at Manger square.

A correspondent for “AllIsraelNews” named J. Micah Hancock was there as well, only more recently. He had some amazing things to report, more amazing than the rest of the lunacy abroad in our spinning world. He was not at Temple Mount, instead traveling to Shiloh in Israel’s Samaria to see the Red Heifers that have gone viral and set alight the web with rumors, conspiracy theories and religious prophesy.

The Red Cows? They are from Texas, but that would only add complexity to the story that includes theories about the Third Temple, the wars of Gog and Magog and a climax featuring Armageddon. That last part naturally will include the coming of the Anti-Christ.

Don’t get us wrong. With all the shouts about the End of the World, this could be equated to a Zionist, Gaza, Muslim or Evangelical outburst. It is a unique demonstration of ecumenical unity. Even Muslim commentators have joined the uproar over the arrival of the red heifers to Israel.

Marking the 100th day of the Gaza War, Hamas spokesman Abu Obeidah said Jews “bringing red cows” to Israel was a contributing factor to the Al-Aqsa Flood on October 7. We guess “flood” is a synonym for something else, but Legal warned us in a strong email to not get in front of anyone else’s hallucinations or face potential legal sanction.
The unanimity of opinion about the arrival of the Red Heifers in Israel is a sign that Jews will soon try to rebuild their Temple. That could include the destruction of the Dome of the Rock on Temple mount in preparation for the return of the Messiah.

Just wanted to ensure you were up to speed on the latest swirl of old religion, new fervor and current frantic affairs.

We understand that construction of the Third Temple is going to be pretty spectacular, and just wanted you to be aware of the developments. If the Red Cows are back in Jerusalem, it could be an indication something is going to happen.

– Vic

Copyright 2024 Vic Socotra
www.vicocotra.com