There is more medical stuff on the horizon this morning, the two-week check from the vascular surgeon that has proved a distraction lately. Things appear to be going well and the staff is generally upbeat. The usual coverage of the remarkable events of this Spring continue to spew across the Big River here and make coherent reporting a challenge.

We had anticipated a discussion of Section 702, a bit of legislation so important that Congress decided to exempt themselves from liability to it. What is it? Another curious feature of the Tech Age. It is about renewing provisions of the FISA- the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.

FISA was formulated to address abuses in warrantless communications intercepts in the Nixon Administration. It was initially limited to the government’s use of electronic and other surveillance techniques against American citizens with a possible connection to international malefactors. Like technology, it has changed over the years and requires periodic reauthorization for powers that neatly sidestep the Bill of Rights provisions requiring a court-ordered “just cause” warrant to monitor citizens.

It is hung up at the moment. The House version of the Act exempted Congress from the provisions of Section 702, which is normally an indication of potential issues. But it is hung up at the moment. With Congress back in town, there will be more to come on the matter. But that is not all that is going on. We could drone on about 702 issues, or any of the bullets in the slide above. But there is something that just popped up, and we at lest need to touch on it as a matter of potential interest to all of us who live- and swim- here in the Swamp.

The news we wanted to get out popped up suddenly, since it has been kept fairly low key. We were startled when we read it in the context of the multitude of other issues in progress here and overseas.

Here is what we read, and it caused Happy Hour to commence shortly before lunch. “The 75th Anniversary NATO Summit is scheduled for 9-11 July in Washington, DC.” The impact of the headline was clear. The meeting will obviously be a potential target for terror of some kind, be it Russia, Iran, Hamas or any of the other upset people, foreign and domestic.

We looked for locational information to help us avoid any Summit-related activity.

The venue, lodging and logistics information is sequestered to hamper anyone planning on disrupting the meetings. We welcome safety and security for all participants, of course. But that means unexpected delays could pop up for all of us not in the know. Splash had mentioned being tempted to attend the demonstration across the River on a January 6 day a few years ago, and was pleased he decided to sit at home instead rather than the DC Jail.

The NATO thing? We will avoid but it is something to keep in mind, a little more than two months from the “now,” and three months “before” whatever is supposed to happen on 05 November. We will not broadcast any information about the Summit, since Section 702 may be renewed by then and we have been warned by the Legal Section here at Socotra House to be on our best behavior.

We will endeavor to do so, since there could be paycheck implications for all Socotra employees and the company has a foreign sounding name, you know? But in this year, just when we thought things couldn’t get much stranger, we find more odd stuff piling up out on the Patio. Right here.

Copyright 2024 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com

(This image might be one observed in the heavens above San Francisco, California. It is what is called a “contrail,” or the vapor cloud produced by operating jet engines in the rarified atmosphere high above. It was news this exciting week! Image YouTube screen capture).

Morning, Fellow Travelers! We appear to have survived another extraordinary celestial event in good order, which is a relief. Now, we can get back to our business, the one more efficiently conducted on the other side of The Big River to the east of our parking lot.

We were all traveling together this week, immersed in scientific observations on the flat screen in the HQ complex of Socotra House. The Experts helped keep us calm in the face of a mild dimming of the solar rays. It was much shorter than a similar phenomenon that occurs every day with some reliable predictability. The Experts assure us things are perfectly fine in this occasional occurrence, and we must immediately change our social ways here on Earth to influence the behavior of a large glowing object some 73-million miles away.

This is a historic moment but nothing new. Before we adopted things like “numeric analysis” to account for some of the activities around us, it was simpler to attribute such moments of visual drama to the wrath of vengeful Deities. Those times have not quite passed. There were a few somewhat half-hearted attributions to divine intervention, or to the more modern equivalent of self-inflicted climate change. There were calls for mercy (and funding) until the merciful arrival of cocktail hour on Monday when the volume increased.

The range of opinion from the various Experts was remarkable. The data stream was accompanied by the announcement- or leak- of a new project to save civilization quite in keeping with the topic of solar diminution. It was startling, since this one used to be a conspiracy theory but is now validated Science. The Experts have determined that adding chemicals to jet fuel would enable their contrails to block the solar rays and preserve civilization by destroying what used to occur below them. Or what might occur. We are a little unclear on this angle of our joint trip, but hopeful the Experts know what they are doing, like the recent pandemic.

We are fairly sure there was no referendum about the project for those who (currently) live under the contrails. But the Experts assure us we should fund the project even if we were not asked about it.

That naturally was part of the dramatic events involving the brief moment of darkness this week. It was not as dramatic as the longer lasting darkness which occurs each day, but it was a little unusual and our leadership hastened to assuage our concerns.

We took a poll by the parking lot to determine the most influential information about the Science of the matter. We will not attribute the gratifying remarks to the Member of Congress who saw fit to utter them publicly. That could be interpreted as a personal castigation against an otherwise long-serving public servant of impeccable credentials.

In brief, those credentials are impressive. On the record are degrees from Yale, the renowned Ivy League bastion of knowledge, and from the University of Virginia’s rigorous Law School. In Texas, there was election to serve as a Judge and as a community civic servant before election to the House of Representatives, the cash register of the American government.

Service in Congress was likewise connected to the well-being of NASA projects underway in the District. In the 110th Congress, that included a position of influence on the House Science Committee and as Ranking Member on the Subcommittee overseeing national space policy and NASA operations. NASA’s budget for Fiscal 2024 was nearly $26 Billion dollars, so you can imagine there is a lot of expertise to be distributed.

To the Member helping to lead us, this week was an irreplaceable moment for public commentary. In remarks in the District, the explanation helped clarify the landscape in which we travel together. “The moon is a planet largely made of gases,” was a ley point, which could affect our future residence there. Also referenced for authenticity was a tribute to the landing of Astronaut Buzz Aldrin on the surface of Mars.

As you can see, we are in good hands going forward. We do not yet understand if NASA has a role in the contrail cloud-seeding project, but we are assured that the Experts are confident that blocking the rays of the sun can only have positive effects on Baghdad by the Bay. What could possibly go wrong with Experts like this guiding us on our mutual journey?

Copyright 2024 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com

(Here’s the nitrogen cycle. Insert the EPA logo somewhere in the circle at random the way they do).

Sorry to bother you on an already busy morning, but here is another way things work these days. It is something that would have come up as “news” back when our budget system worked. It might have started in the Agriculture Committees, House and Senate, and been a matter of some controversy. since it directly affects a whole industrial segment and all American consumers.

These days, a non-elected Federal agency theoretically responsible to the Executive Branch makes a finding, announces a public comment period no one has heard about, with immediate implementation. That is how the system now works. Here is a sample, not dissimilar to the other startling ones like remote control car shut off. It was not reported on the legacy media, but on Substack by dr. Robert Malone:

EPA Threatens Locally Produced Beef
Mission Creep: Proposed EPA Rule Shuts Down Small Meat Producers
ROBERT W MALONE MD, MS
APR 08, 2024

EPA Threatens Locally Produced Beef

In Another Blow to Decentralized Natural Meat Production, EPA Rule Indirectly Shuts Down Small Meat Producers via Clean Water Act Overreach

American’s Will Lose the Choice to Buy Local Meats

On January 23, 2024, under Biden Administration guidance, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) proposed a new rule that will bring 3,879 meat and poultry products (MPP) processing facilities under their jurisdiction. This was swiftly followed by an abbreviated comment period which closed on March 25, 2024, and then immediate implementation of the rule change. All justified by wastewater levels of Nitrogen and Phosphorus coming from animal meat processing, mirroring the WEF agenda to minimize Nitrogen runoff from European farms which has sparked the widespread farmer protests throughout the European Union.

The new rule involves a major shift in the technology-based effluent limitations guidelines and standards (ELGs) for the meat and poultry industry, threatening their livelihoods by forcing them to add water filtration systems to their facilities.
What does this mean to small meat processing facilities? It’s been reported that the initial cost to install a water filtration system bringing them into compliance be $300,000-400,000 with a minimum of $100,000 annual maintenance. This would force many small meat processing facilities to shutter their doors.

As someone else noted in an advertising campaign, “No rules, just right.”

– vic

OK, we gotta start with it, right? It was pretty cool for those who were under the path of the total eclipse yesterday. It did not arrive at noon like the literary version. It got a little dim here around three pm here in the capital. The larger astronomic events served as a tipping point with a personal care visit, the onthly cleaning crew, a physician appointment and a thoroughly unsettling burst of unsolicited gastrointestinal malfeasance.

The few moments of dimness passed without further untoward incident, and the eys of the world turned from the heavens back to the madness to which we have become accustomed. We could start the litany that has now become routine and lost some of the startling aspects that had suggested this was all highly unusual, and in fact at distinct variance with the way things used to work.

The practical truths have been overwhelmed. We all knew war was brutal and a thing to be avoided. Despite the common sense, one of the headlines in the news was whether the Mullahs in Tehran had uranium enriched to 84%, with only 6% more to go for fissionable weapons grade capability. .

So there is that matter, which connects through ancient religious strife to others of long standing. We took a look at some aspects of that collision over a few drams of Monkey Shoulder Single Malt last night, looking over cruise notes from a Mediterranean adventure nearly a half century old. It was a markedly different and bi-polar Mediterranean world in those days.

Through legal if somewhat subterranean maneuverings, we had obtained the services of an Israeli driver named Sri. He was of a certain age, and his tales of actually participating in the fighting that surrounded the establishment of the new state on old ground. Some of the vehicles shot up in 1947 were not removed and touched up with Rustoleum anti-corrosion treatment to keep memory alive. We were attempting to visit places mentioned in the Bible, since our little party was all at least nominally Christian. Our driver was a Jew, and to reach some of the holy sites, we had to climb from the stones of the Second Temple past the solemn gold spire of the Dome of the Rock, revered by the third- and newest- of the three Patriarchal faiths.

The account of that little adventure was fun and is included in our book “Last Cruise of the Cold War.” But there was something powerful simply in the proximity of all the holiness still in conflict.

The Eclipse was useful as a means to distract us from an astronomic interaction between an object some 235,000 miles away passing before a much larger one 73 million miles at the center of our solar system, you know? Some of the pundits on the flatscreen covering the event were fun to see, since what was about to happen could not be captured on a teleprompter the day before. There were kids and giggles and astonishing images as the shadow passed northeast toward us from Eagle Pass here in the United States. And then on the screen we were back to coverage of cries of “Death to America” from Dearborn, Michigan, of all places.

We remember when Mayor Orville Hubbard was cited for his racial politics in the time adjacent Detroit was immersed in flames. Considering the changes just in our brief lives, we may see something as profound before the next total Exclipse a couple decades hence, you know?

Copyright 2024 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com

(Cartoon by M.E. Baslin, drawn and published in 1979 onboard the USS Midway (CV-41). The image accompanied a continuing series of stories about a hard-living and equally hard-knuckled detective named Nick Danger and his lovely assistant Matilda. As far as we know, it is the only detective story transmitted by official Navy message at the time).

Morning, Gentle Readers! Something extraordinary is in progress this morning involving a dozen of the Old Salts and some tales of days under distant skies. We will run one of the stories this morning, since it belongs to us, but it is only part of how life was lived under distant skies atop moving waves. News this morning? The Intel Community geeks here in town made a formal leak to their usual legacy sources. “Something Bad might happen!” That was the entire body of the alert, and provided no indication of what, where or when, except “something” and “soon.”

That has nothing to do with the total eclipse scheduled for tomorrow, so we will defer this morning to a fairy tale, or what the Salts call a “Sea Story.” The longer version of what it was like to be inducted, trained and deployed with the war in Vietnam in progress is a fun romp we are still coordinating. So here is this part of it. There will be more to come!

The image published at the top of this edition first appeared in the daily edition of the Midway MultiPlex, the daily press summary captured in the Carrier Intelligence Center (CVIC) on USS Midway (CV-41) in 1979. It was an epic period that delivered all the adventure I had hoped for when I signed on. This string of stories featured some memorable moments in the initial specialty training phase at the Armed Forces Air Intelligence Center (AFAITC) at Lowry Air Force Base just outside Denver, Colorado.

The stories told were distant but excitingly familiar, having followed the equally remarkable accession phase of Navy life administered (in my case) by SSGT Ronald C. Mace, USMC. He almost succeeded in getting rid of me, but it seemed more logical to simply shut up, stand tall, and become whatever it was he desired. It seemed less painful.

Memories of AFAITC? They are better covered by others, but the class to which I was assigned was in the six-month segment of 1978 that had snow, skeptical Air Force personnel and attractive local ladies. At the end of it came the mysterious process of initial operational orders. Most of the jobs were in Aviation squadrons, the majority of which were assigned to the dozen (or so) operational carriers in The Fleet. One of the instructors- it might have been Geno Spatafore- whispered that the Midway air wing (CVW-5) had an upcoming vacancy in a Fighter Squadron (VF-151) that could use an Ensign of my somewhat elliptical talents. I nodded, since “adventure” was a component of “employment” I found useful. No intent on a career, just the urge to see something interesting in our spinning globe.

I recall some of the confusion that attended closing out the little apartment, getting packed, and making arrangements for transportation to Yokosuka, Japan. The orders were on paper and handed out at the schoolhouse. I had never had orders to an operational unit, so I read them carefully. There was a provision for a “two week leave” period contained in the other gibberish, so in order to accomplish one of my long term objectives, I decided to depart Colorado for Japan post-haste and take my leave out there.

There was a petty officer at a desk in the middle of someone else’s night when passage across the Pacific was complete. I explained to him that I was taking my leave upon arrival and would check back when complete.

You are already aware of the number of erroneous factors that went into my solitary decision making. The squadron was not onboard NAS Atsugi. They were embarked in Midway, operating in the local area, and naturally expected me to appear. I should say “appear immediately.”

I enjoyed the ten or fourteen days knocking around a distant nation, and fell in with some members of the Chief’s mess from some military amalgamation in the local area. An introduction to risky business! On one muggy morning, I found myself seated backward on a little turbo-prop aircraft and starting on what would turn out to be the adventure of a lifetime.

Flying aboard a moving ship is a remarkable experience we all share. Better-informed Ensigns would probably not be facing immediate non-judicial punishment for being Absent Without Leave (AWOL) upon successful recovery. The Squadron Executive Officer was seated down front in a place known as “Ready Two,” and I was ushered to a position in front of him with the squadron arrayed for an All-Officer’s Meeting.

I thought my arrival was in accordance with the written orders, and simply a matter of misunderstanding. The VF-151 management was of a contrary opinion, and while I might have an argument in my favor, squadron consensus was that it would be much more fun to roast the newly-arrived AI with the prospect of time at Leavenworth. I do not recall who I was supposed to be relieving. He had shrugged and departed a week or two earlier. It was the least comprehensive but most accurate turn-over in all the ones I saw in the next couple decades.”

So, that was how that began. The carrier was off to something- maybe Team Spirit in Korea- and we were off to an adventure that featured a couple stops in Hong Kong (Vietnamese Boat People looking up from their rickety craft), 8 brief trips to Subic Bay, Perth Australia in another part of Davy Jone’s locker, Mombasa, Kenya, Pattaya Beach, Thailand and an anonymous point in the North Arabian Sea Dean Whetstine and I named “GONZO Station.”

The name stuck. It was completely in accordance with the other assorted lunacies that include quality time in the Barrio Baretta, the Night Train to Nairobi, Kenya, and the shimmer of Kilamanjaro’s snow-clad flanks in the distance to the south of the tracks. Seoul, Korea, was in the mix, and the temples and trains around Tokyo.

But there was a problem. In order to complete my obligated service, I had a total of four years to serve. Between Pensacola, AFAITC and VF-151, only three years were completed, leaving me with twelve more months before I could honorably get back out on the street as a civilian. That is why most first-tour assignments were three years in duration, not two.

A distinguished young officer named Jake Jacoby was handling the JO assignments. I called him up from my evening to his morning looking for options. He had one, he said jovially. “One year at Yongsan Garrison in Seoul with CNF-K and you are all set and even with your YG-77 comrades.” I wondered what a J2 Indications (INDIC) Officer might be, and over the next 14-month one year tour, I found out.

There came an offer to proceed from the Land of the Morning Calm to the sun-drenched shores of Hawaii for another three years of adventure, which turned into five with a wife and two great kids. And a somewhat longer adventure that turned out to be exactly what the Doctor ordered!

– Vic

Well, we have stumbled into what we used to know as the weekend. Welcome! Now, Saturdays represent not a break from daily labor, but a change in routine brought on by changes to programming time changes on the usual channels. The Friday evening shows are re-run on days like this, which adds to the usual disorientation.

The low-down stuff? Not routine, and in fact so daunting that the time (or channel) of the reporting on what has just-passed and what is-coming is a little immaterial. The recent past? New York, or actually the Jersey Shore got a quick shot of Earth’s energy with the 4/8 Richter scale eruption. It was a bit of a revelation, since there had not been one in that neighborhood in more than a century.

There was a fair amount of excitement on the Legacy Media about an event that lasted nearly a third of a minute. We were embarrassed as a group out on The Patio. The careers we followed had directed lodging in two distant and somewhat eccentric places subject to such seismic interruptions on a regular basis, and failed to even notice this relatively mild one.

We don’t know if there is anything on the schedule for today, which starts a little raw but mostly clear here in the Old Dominion. There is the likelihood of an Iranian response to the killing of senior IRGC personnel in Syria. The Israelis killed four or five of the senior leaders at a meeting with Hezbollah officials near their Consulate? Embassy? In Damascus, Syria, where part of the latest (and long lasting) segment of the social-religious war continues.

We had a ruminative chat about it, since there are some reflections in the event of the dramatic change in our global landscape. We recall having a little satisfaction when the announcements came about an earlier attack in January of 2020 next door in Iraq. In that one, an American drone carried a bomb that killed Iranian Major General Qasem Soleimani near the Baghdad International Airport. Some of us were old enough to recall when that chapter in relations began back in 1979 with the seizure of the US Embassy in Tehran, 45 years ago.

The Iranians who died in the current event would have been little boys back then, and we wish we could have pointed out that this is a sometimes painful business in which to embark. There was more past-present-future aspects to this. As noted, the Iranians say they will kill some other people in response, possibly today. The abrupt and anguished American departure from Iraq has resulted in the inadvertent death of a group of children, and the one in progress now involves the tragic demise of a group of aid workers from a mostly peaceful group known as “The World Central Kitchen.” They were trying to alleviate despair and instead found their own.

There is, of course, more to the story. The new wrinkle in unconventional warfare is the emergence of unmanned remote-control vehicles. These devices dramatically reduce risk and cost to attackers . It is a trend of considerable duration. The assassination of the commander of Iran’s Quds Force, one of five branches of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionarymilitary, was part of this cavalcade of combat chaos.

Latest reporting? Apparently the Iranians sent a note to the Foggy Bottom Bureaucrats warning them not to interfere. That is an event of similar magnitude to what will occur in our heavens on Monday. We are determined to maintain a peaceful presence here, but like everything else that is an evolving process.

We have a plan in place to defend any of the food trucks here in Arlington. We view this as a humanitarian issue, you know? We will accept to warnings from anyone on the matter!

Copyright 2024 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com

There is a bunch of stuff to talk about this morning, but we suspect you are getting as tired of hearing of that phrase as we are of saying it. We are in the weeks of real and dramatic change in our seasonal alignment. The Chairman had directed a general cleanup of the headquarters campus and then marched forthrightly away in search of something more entertaining.

We were stuck with dragging digits around to try to make some sense out of the lives that immediately preceded the ones we are currently extinguishing. Let’s try to capture the moment now to balance the magnitude of the changes that confront each new generation in this world. Each one has vast challenge before it passes, and the one in which we exist now has some remarkable and frankly apocalyptic aspects.

We will not attempt to elucidate them all this morning. There is a conflict in process in one or three of the Great Faiths which we do not pretend to understand and is some 1,400 years in progress. It has a curious resemblance to similar schisms since Rome fell from Empire. Some are familiar: Rome versus Protestant, Sunni versus Shia and that sort of thing. Both saw the slaying of many folks over some equally ephemeral issues of dogmatic dissension. We have added disputes over the various hues associated with change- Red, Green and Blue being popular shorthand for the manifestations.

There is some breathless talk of the perils confronting us in proliferation not seen since the previous generation nearly blasted new holes in the atmosphere, and which is a subtext to the images seen above. We are hoping we manage to stumble through this one unscathed, though there is an increasing world stage of drama that evokes the memories of other horrors that spanned our earth. We may lurch into another showdown that represents the simmering cauldron of conflict so vast as to be divided into numerical chapters.

We were looking at the one in which our grandparents struggled. It was known then as “The Great War,” since it was portrayed on a canvas of a scope never before seen. That had to be changed, of course, since another and larger one was only twenty years away.

We followed the two-part struggle with one measured in temperatures. The conflict with Moscow and the West was determined to be downright chilly and frankly cold. Parts of it were warm, like the ones in Korea and Vietnam. We may be inching toward something incandescent as entirely new and revolutionary faiths enter into something that resembles the old religious wars. And some of the ancient players mixed with new.

There was a moment of brief clarity on that. It was called the “Abraham Accords,” a series of bilateral agreements between modern states based on old ideas. That provoked peace and more turbulence between two of the three participant states in old conflicts. This week it includes airstrikes by one side against the other’s senior leadership, even as a secular conflict in Ukraine is demonstrating a fervor that seems religious in the level of furor. The landscape is remarkable, and conflict now spans the circumference of the globe, China to Taipei, Red Sea north to Jerusalem and across the great rivers that sunder the eastern flank of Europe.

We get weary of this conflict, since with each iteration it becomes more complex, with old conflicts jammed up against new ones. We thought it might be useful to look at the generation now almost completely disbursed to memory. The young man who drew the pen-and-ink sketches that frame his journey from war to jet-age peace show the odyssey of his times.

With tens of millions of others, he was swept into uniform, right hand itching to capture the tumult around him filled with roaring propellor-powered aircraft. His release from service meant returning to academic training at Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, New York. The great canvas of post-War life was filled with sleek automobiles and bold designs, like the prim Metropolitan design he helped bring to life at the Nash Company.

That vibrant life had an uneasy collision with basic biology, not dissimilar to the one raging in our society today. We may be edging toward another chapter as significant as the ones we recall with the numerals “1” and “2.” We are inclined to accept that we may see another numeral to describe what will happen in our times. To see how the last generation managed change.

We will likely see how well we do by comparison in fairly short order. But the take away for this morning is that there is room for optimism in our ability to get along and keep the good ideas coming.

There are plenty of bad ones, which we will do our best to ignore. But we prepare for the total eclipse of the sun in a couple days, and the reminder to not look up at the objects dancing in our sky without some basic protection. We think that might get us through.

Or at least get us to the kitchen by lunchtime.

Copyright 2024 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com

You can see one of the plain legacies of this day in the tumult of our time. In the case of this circle of Salts, the Iranian-related unpleasantness has been going on since 1979 and the misunderstanding about the U.S. Embassy in Tehran. That is 45 years we will not get back, though we have advanced to an entirely new level of discourse by periodically blowing up whoever is Chief of Illicit Weapons Supply to the irritable members of the Hamas, Hezballoah and Houthi rebel groups arrayed around the State of Israel.

We looked at that problem in the context of this still-unfolding Spring season. There are some violent earthquakes in places like Taiwan, where more than an thousand were injured and nine killed in recent seismic activity. There are other forces in play, including reports of Americans being present on Taiwan-held territory on the little islands of Quemoy and Matsu, well in sight of the Chinese mainland. When we first heard of those places we were still in elementary school. We may be hearing about them again, maybe in the same report as other border conflicts.

Let’s put this in context. ISIS-K elements deployed 4 young men to Moscow to shoot up a concert. They managed to shoot and kill more than a hundred Russian civilians. We do not know enough about how they got to Russia, but a comparison with the most vibrant number of Newcomers here in America. It is said that 37,000 Chinese Newcomers have crossed the border in the last year. That number is a startling reminder of the scope of the numbers we are talking about. The number is composed mostly of military age young single men.

By comparison, the Table of Organization and Equipment (TO&E) for a US Army Division runs between 10-15,000 soldiers. So you can see we have a mounting issue, and its resolution is likely to be abrupt and not to our liking. That is the way things seem to work now, with policies being imposed without much debate or discussion and with consequences that are likely to be spectacular.
So, let’s get to the big story of this day in April as one signifying our changing world and the challenges confronting us all. Yes, you probably have been talking about it before the eggs came out of the kitchen.

April 4 marks National Burrito Day, so it’s time for all right-thinking burrito lovers to unite and seek out the best deals to celebrate the food holiday all day long. We are not sure if there was a proclamation issued across the River, but like recent Days of Visibility, that may be a matter of some confusion even for those who are empowered to issue those things.
For this morning, we take strength in tradition, and the fundamentals that have sustained us longer than the Iranians. Burritos first became popular thousands of years ago in what is now Mexico. The exact origin is unclear, but scholars suggest the dish first appeared as a way to wrap and transport food but is now a tasty way to combine several filling proteins and toppings.
Forward!

Copyright 2024 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com

Gentle Colleagues,

Just a quick note on the continued disintegration of our grand Republic. We periodically report on some of the craziness in Washington that demonstrates our government no longer operates in accordance with the principals contained in our founding documents. Here is the latest that showed up this morning. It is a part of a spectrum of conduct and activity that is, frankly, unconstitutional and now treated as normal. You will feel something familiar about it because this is how things work. For example, the 2nd Amendment says a certain right to own a certain category of things “shall not be infringed.” The Constitution has a process for changing provisions that have become obsolete. The process was designed to be rigorous and require discussion.

In order to avoid such inconvenience, all manner of controversial things become law without discussion or attribution to those who made it law. Here is the latest. It is like the back-door gun registrations, elimination of gas stoves, gender confusion and the host of other socially virtuous acts that would not survive ten minutes of debate. Headline?

“World Economic Forum (WEF) Provision Sneaked Into Omnibus Bill Will Ration Beef Consumption in U.S.”

Legal experts are raising the alarm over a WEF provision that was snuck in the recently passed omnibus bill that will severely ration America’s beef supply to the public. That omnibus was passage of six of the old appropriations bills debated, modified, and eventually passed for enactment by the President. They were lumped into emergency bills to authorize spending for a year that is already halfway gone.

The provision is modest by current standards. $15 million has been allocated to electronically track livestock, raising fears that the new system could be weaponized by the government to limit beef consumption, as per WEF guidelines.

Scott.net reports: American cattle rancher Shad Sullivan told The Epoch Times that he fears that the electronic tags will be the end of the small rancher.

“They are going to use it as a taxing mechanism to eventually control the livestock,” Mr. Sullivan said. “In the European Union, they used these measures under the guise of climate change lies to limit the cattle supply, and if they do that here, it will destroy our industry.

“If the tag mandate is implemented it will be the key to open the door to the gas chamber for independent ranchers.“

This is now how it works, folks. And part of the reason we live in a continuing crisis. It is easier for those who wish to determine what is best for us and they are not asking. They are telling.

– Vic