Wounded Warrior

I picked up my date for the service only a few minutes late. I did not want to keep him waiting, but had to stop by the office to retrieve the phone I had left next to the keyboard when I fled the office on Friday.

My date was Mac- he is still a little wobbly as he recovers from something a little like pneumonia, but he is progressing nicely, and is just reluctant to walk too many steps, or climb too many stairs. He was tempted to not attend the service, but I volunteered to drive and pick him up at The Madison with plenty of time to get out to Leesburg, to the St. James Episcopal Church on Cornwall Street.

Kurt’s memorial is the second event in the trinity that will see him to the next world. The first was the event, of course, the second being the high church ceremony to mark his passing, and the third the internment at Arlington. Military funerals these days, like that of my pals Rex and John, are of necessity in two installments. The Old Guard who defend the gardens of stone, and who see the warriors to their rest are a busy lot, and there is a wait between the necessary closure of the service and the physical internment of the remains.

There may be a time for healing in there, someplace, though this is as bad as it gets for the family.

Mac enjoyed the drive, and it was a fine day for it. The precision German machine hugged the highway as we roared through the construction zone for the new Metro extension to Dulles, and out the Access Road and eventually onto the Greenway to Leesburg. Loudoun County is now an exclusive bedroom enclave for the capital, and the quaint old center of Leesburg was jammed with gawkers and weekend day-trippers.

We were in somber dark suits and ties, in stark contrast to the wanderers. We were on a mission, and it is one that you ought to think about joining.

We rolled up to Saint James Episcopal Church in plenty of time for the service. I let Mac out of the Hubrismobile so he did not have to walk far, and tucked the car up the block before walking back.

It was funny, I thought. The last time I had been in St. James was with Kurt’s father for the memorial for Bill Hatch, one of Mac’s old friends. He had been a long time daily-farmer-cum-naval officer who drove Rt. Seven each day to arrive at seven in the morning. After milking the cows, no less.

There was a marked difference in this ceremony, though. Bill had a long life, and a full one. Kurt’s ended suddenly. He had died in the bomb-blast detonated by the cowards in Iraq. Kurt survived it only temporarily, and was tortured by severe Post-traumatic Stress Disorder.

He took his own life two weeks ago, unable to cope with the demons that had been loosed on his consciousness with the force of the blast. Like thousands of other young men and women we have sent overseas to fight for us. Like them, Kurt was a Wounded Warrior.

The church was packed with people in uniform and in mufti. Mac and I sat under the personal flag of General of the Army George C. Marshall, a parishioner of St. James when he was not winning America’s wars or rebuilding a ravaged Europe.

I am not much for organized religion, but as a Catholic observed to me, the high-church flavor of the Episcopal rite harked back to the Catholic services of his youth. Kurt’s cremains were brought solemnly into the church borne by two sailors, and the service of The Burial of the Dead and A Service of Celebration and Thanksgiving for the Life of Captain (Select) Kurt William Juengling began.

The ceremony was almost overwhelming in its grace and time-polished majesty.

“I am the resurrection and the life he who believes in me, though he die, Yet shall he live, and whoever lives and believes in me shall never die.”

That is John 11:25-26, I found, and that is how the service  began. It is an Easter liturgy, one of hope of the resurrection. The triumphal message is intended to blunt the grief, and even as irreligious a guy like me had tears streaming at the strains of Amazing Grace and Eternal Father.

There were good words spoken, of healing and the certainly that his battle is done, and he is at peace. Kurt will be sorely missed by his friends, but most by his wife and his children and his parents. The kids looked a little lost at it all, and his mother’s eyes were filled with red with crying.

The Celebrant had a few words outside those stipulated in the liturgy. He reminded us that Kurt was a combat casualty, who ultimately died of his wounds. There are many others who face the same daunting challenge. Those who have not been cognitively damaged have had pieces of them blown apart. We need to be there for them. I set up an allotment this morning.

It is not enough, but it is something that Kurt’s parents support, and now so do I.

You might want to think about a contribution. Our kids deserve it:

Wounded Warriors Project
www.wounded warriorproect.org
PO Box 758517
Topeka, KS 66675-8517
1-877-832-6997

Copyright 2011 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com

The Alford Plea

I am bustling around trying to get organized for the memorial service, since I have confirmation that my 91-year-old-date will be ready for pick up at his residence over in Ballston at 12:45.

The man we will memorialize was blown up in an IED attack in Iraq last year and struggled with PTSD since returning. He took his own life two weeks ago, unable to cope or re-engage with his wife and two kids. His Dad is an old shipmate of ours, so it is important to show solidarity for his memory an the other wounded warriors.

It means a trip to Leesburg, but that in inconsequential for me, though a bit of a haul for Mac. But it is to convey the understanding that we know this was a combat death, albeit delayed, and not some character flaw.

It is really sad. We talked about it at Willow the other night, about the tragedy of the extended adventure in Iraq, along with a zillion other things.

“Did you see the President’s motorcade?” I said, to no one in particular. “It was amazing. There must have been fifty vehicles rolling through Zumbrota, Minnesota. It was a great YouTube video.”

“He has the same thing on Martha’s Vineyard to take the girls to the book store,” said Old Jim from the apex of the Amen Corner. “Funny how out of place Imperial Washington is when it travels to the real world.”

“The vacation entourage is supposed to be 150 people,” I said. “And they brought two mobile cell towers with them so they can yack on their phones. I don’t begrudge the President some connectivity, but the whole thing seems sort of excessive, given the times.”

“No wonder we are out of touch,” said Old Jim. “But that is not the only strange stuff that is going on.” Elisabeth-with-an-S was behind the bar, and walked over to give me tulip glass and swirl some cool crisp happy hour white into my glass. As you know, she is actually a credentialed attorney, and only biding her time on the other side of the bar until something suitable comes along.

I asked her how she was doing, and if she liked the picture I took of her when Mac and I were there.

“Didn’t have a chance to look,” she said. “Been here all day, and the free time on break I was following the Memphis Three.”

“That is a strange thing. I didn’t recall the original trial, but it was something about murdered Cub Scouts and Satanism, right? It sounded horrible.”

Elisabeth nodded. “The case had everything. Coerced confessions, contradictory DNS evidence, all sorts of stuff. The three of them became quite the cause celebe.”

“Well, yeah, but that is what I didn’t understand from the news on the radio. Didn’t they plead guilty and then were let go? That doesn’t make any sense.”

“It is a seemingly contradictory deal,” she said. “That is why I find it professionally interesting, and I get to follow the legal reasoning.”

“Like Spiro Agnew and the nolo contender plea?”

“Sort of. Judge Laser vacated the convictions of the three, including the capital murder charges. The three then declared their innocence, were found guilty an allowed to walk free.”

“You got to help me, Councilor. How does that work?”

“It is a thing called the ‘Alford Plea,’ which is a legal mechanism by which defendants are allowed to maintain their innocence, and are only pleading guilty because they consider it in their best interest. The judge ordered a new trial, then he sentenced them to time-served. The prosecution didn’t think it was worth going through the motions to do anything else, since a lot of evidence has disappeared over the years and witnesses have changed their minds about their testimony.”

“Let me get it straight. The three Cub Scouts are still dead, the convicted murderers are walking free and no one did it?”

“Essentially. The only DNA evidence left is connected to one of the kid’s stepfathers, so this is going to go into the Cold Case bin. An Alford Plea means that someone is going to be responsible, for the record, but both sides acknowledge that it probably didn’t happen that way.”

“It’s creepy,” I said. “How do you attorneys live with yourselves?”

“We tend bar,” She said, topping up the happy hour white. “But look at it this way. I am waiting for a chance to get into the public interest side of the law and do the right thing.”

“I know one thing that would be in the public interest,” I said. “You may be too young to remember, but after the Savings and Loan collapse in the ‘80s and early ‘90s, hundred of those bastard bankers were indicted and a lot of them, including Charlie Keating, went to jail. He got a dozen years in the slammer for fraud.”

“I am old enough to remember precedent,” she laughed, her chestnut ponytail swinging merrily. “That is what we lawyers do.”

“Well, Keating got his conviction overturned with plea bargain.”

“I think he still did some hard time, though. I don’t recall whether it was an Alford Plea or not that got him off with time served.”

“One thing is for sure,” growled Old Jim. “Not one person of any consequence has paid a damned thing for the aftermath of the credit crisis and the real estate melt-down. Not one indictment and not one day of jail time.”

“Maybe that’s because we haven’t reached the aftermath yet,” I said. “Maybe everyone got an Alford Plea already. Or maybe it’s only just begun.”

“I remember a song by that name,” said Elisabeth brightly. “It was popular back before I was born.”

“Ouch,” I said.

“Carpenters. 1970,” said Old Jim with a scowl. “When things didn’t make any more sense than they do now. And we had only got started on things.”

Copyright 2011 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com

Purple Dragon

Admiral Mac drove over to the Willow in his golden Jaguar- first trip out since he took ill earlier in the summer. We agreed to meet and resume our informal discussions of the latter part of his time in the Navy, and specifically the events that surrounded the capture of the USS Pueblo and his involvement with the PURPLE DRAGON.

You remember that, right? It was the beginning of the summer and the world did not look nearly as stupid as it does at the moment; before the Debt Ceiling Crisis and the disintegration of Europe’s finances- and ours.

I remember reading that the stock market was 30% overvalued, and that Ben Bernanke’s Quantitative Easing Two was going to end in the middle summer, and that was going to trigger a collapse, and I went ahead and invested anyway.

I am a moron. I should have picked short term paper and put the money under my mattress. Damn.

Anyway, I wrote “PURPLE DRAGON” at the top of the page of my little leather bound notebook.

Mac looked over at me. “You want to get right into it, don’t you?”

“You have to stay focused,” I said, looking with admiration at the glow on Elisabeth-with-an-S’s face. “Hey, you are back! How was Michigan?”

“Crystal Lake was a hoot. We had the best time. There is nothing like the Traverse City area in the summer. I got a sunburn- that didn’t happen to me when we went to Aruba last winter!”

“It is a special place,” I said. “I love it up there when it isn’t snowing.”

“Wait,” she said, pouring me a glass of happy hour white wine. “I got you some stones.”

“What? Petoskey Stones?”

She stuck out her tongue and shook her ponytail. “No, silly. Crystal Lake stones.” She disappeared into the service pantry and rummaged in her back-pack.

“I wish she wasn’t in a committed, loving relationship,” I said. “And that I was forty or fifty years younger.”

“You and me both, said Mac. “You know I am going to be 92 a week from today?”

“It’s amazing,” I said. “I don’t think I am going to get there.”

Elisabeth emerged from the back with five pebbles, ranging in declining size from a fifty-cent piece to an elongated dime. Mac looked on, poking one and identifying them in turn:

“Breccia, Jaspilite, Limestone conglomerate, Rhyolite and Quartz. Typical upper Midwest collection. Didn’t have those in Iowa, where I grew up.  Just sandstone and limestone.”

Then we talked about the banking crisis on the Great Depression, and the Doc showed up, and John-with-an-H left abruptly and Old Jim plopped down, a bit miffed that two very elegantly-coiffed women had occupied his normal place at the Amen Corner. Satchel came in, a surprise, but she had heard that the Admiral was going to come out, and like me, she is one of his groupies.

Mac finished his first Virgin Mary with deliberation. Big Jim makes them with plenty of olives and a wedge of lemon, so they are almost a meal instead of a drink. Doc was expansive. He not only ordered the Gruyere Cheese Puffs, Spring Rolls and Pollyface Farms Deviled Eggs for the bar, but explained that what Mac was drinking was not a Virgin Mary at all, but something else.

“You know what they call in in England,” he said. “No vodka means it is a Bloody Shame.”

“You crack me up, Doc,” I said.

“It’s like my kids say, take the “F” out of “way” and there you are.”

I looked at him in bemusement. “There isn’t any “F” in “way.”

“Precisely. I don’t know why I let them get away with it. No effing way.”

Satchel was hungry and went for the Halibut sliders, and the two elegant ladies split a Heritage Tomato salad with goat cheese substitution due to lactose intolerance.

Old Jim passed a note down the bar, scrawled on the inside of a Willow napkin. Paige handed it to me. I opened it up, just like High School transformed to the bar: “Those women have not stopped talking since they got here.”

I looked over at him, and said: “I Jon-with-no-H and the lovely Bea were here, they wouldn’t be in your place.”

Jim scowled. “Damn right. They shouldn’t be taking that relationship to a new level.”

“There is only one direction on that,” said Big Jim. “Down. Shaah.”

The food arrived and I walked over to ask the ladies if  I could take a picture of the Heritage Tomatoes. They were quite gracious about it after I demonstrated my bona fides on the matter by showing them the library of Willow dishes on my cell phone. Handsome looking salad, and that is when I got clued into the laco-intolerance thing, which was more information than I really needed, but useful, I suppose.

Anyway, the food came out and we got completely sorted out on the status of Doc’s security investigation, the rise of petty fascism in our once-fiercely independent nation, the disintegration of our economy, stock market and institutions, and the imminent Fall of the West.

I turned to Mac as he finished his second Bloody Shame. “OK, now about PURPLE DRAGON. How did it start and how did you get involved with it? It saved many lives in Vietnam?”

The admiral dabbed at his lips with one of Willow’s blindingly white cloth napkins.

“I would tell you why the Vietnamese know the ARC LIGHT B-52 missions were coming, and why they were ineffective and how the North knew when to launch barrage SAM missiles to shoot down them down, but that is going to have to wait till the next time, Vic. The problem is that you can’t stay focused. You can walk me out to the car, though.” He rose from his stool and put the napkin on the bar.

“This was pretty successful. And I feel well enough that I may let you drive me out to the funeral in Leesburg on Saturday. If you are up to it, that is.”

Copyright 2011 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com

Pandora’s Box

(Pandora’s Box missile launch system. )

It was the best of times and the worst of times…wait a minute; that has been used someplace. Let me try it a different way. It was a good day tinged with the sepia of coming change. Someone said it had been the best day of the Washington summer, which is to say it was like the upper Midwest under sun with low humidity.

The downside, of course, is that if that was the best, then everything else is on the downward slide. But traffic was light, with a lot of people out of town, and the count-down to the end of the pool season has begun.

I make it about seventeen days until Martin and Adam go back to Poland, then four weekend days with the rag-tag American crew, and then the pool furniture goes back in the basement and the green tarp shrouds the glittering blue water.

“I am not ready for it, Doc. I feel like the summer just got going and now it is about gone.” He took a sip of his Shastafarian Imperial Porter and looked thoughtful. Anyone with eight kids gets pretty good at that, I suppose.

“I would like to have one thing gone,” he said with a scowl. “That’s what I wanted to talk to you about.”

“I am all ears,” I said, taking a sip of happy hour white. “Things may be changing here, too, what with Big Jim moving on to a real career in the teaching business. I don’t know if we will continue to get preferential treatment here at the Amen Corner of the Willow Bar.”

Doc looked at the Guerrier warm cheese puffs that Nick was devouring. “I may need to get something to settle my stomach,” he said. “My son just got back from Afghanistan, and we are doing a family dinner when I get home.”

“I am so happy for you, Doc. I don’t know how you endure the time your kids are deployed. Did you hear about the latest awful thing that is out there?”

Doc ordered the Jumbo Lump Crab & Artichoke Dip with toasted baguette off the $6 bar menu from Jeanette, the cute new bartender with the appealing Tinkerbell tattoo on her biceps. “No,” he said. “That might require another porter. What is it?”

“A Russian company is marketing a CONEX-box based missile system they are calling Pandora’s Box. It comes in one of those sea-land metal shipping containers you see on the break-bulk cargo ships and driving around behind semi-trailers. Completely anonymous, but it carries a four-pack of the Novator Klub-K 3M-54TE missiles. The roof of the container folds open and the multiple launch tubes swing up for rapid fire.”

Doc looked at me with the fish eye. “Which does what?”

“Well, Klub is a cruise missile with 300 mile range and delivers a 450 pound payload with excellent accuracy. They say it is one of the deadliest cruise missiles in existence.”

“And in a 40-foot CONEX box, you could launch from a cargo ship or an ordinary semi-trailer at a rest stop on the interstate, right?”

“Bingo,” I said and finished the Chardonnay in the tulip glass. “Imagine one of those gigantic cargo ships unloading them in Baltimore or Long Beach.”

“Wouldn’t Customs and Border protection catch them?”

“They don’t look at everything, and that would only apply to the ports where they have officers. It wouldn’t be hard to get them in some other way. The Russians think there is quite a market for them. Hey, Jim!” I called out. “Can I get another wine and could you get some celery with that crab dip? I am cutting carbs these days.” He nodded back at me from the register down the bar.

“I have some real problems with CBP,” I said. “That jerk in Detroit who hassled me about coming back from Canada after an hour and a half visit to the casino in Windsor. It got confrontational as he looked at my passport and started asking me  bunch of questions that I thought were insulting. I didn’t want to do the slow burn with him, so I took out my retired ID and told him I was a retired Federal officer with 27 years service.”

“Something like that is happening to me,” said Doc.

“Well, it didn’t work for me. In fact, it went downhill from there,” I said. “We had a glare-off until he proved to me that the guy with the gun gets to act however he wants. Petty fascist. We have grown a lot of them since 9/11.”

“That is exactly my beef with the Office of Personnel Management.”

“What’s up with that?” I said.

“Well, I had a secret clearance when I retired from the Navy, but it went inactive. Turns out a contract I am on requires one, so I filled out the SF-86 paperwork to have an investigation done.”

I nodded. “Yeah, keeping your tickets active is the key to full employment around here. If you did not have to have a current investigation and access none of us would be making the bucks that we are. The system is almost a guaranteed full employment program for retired Spooks.”

“I just wanted a Secret clearance, which isn’t exotic at all.”

“No,” I said. “Back in the day that just required a National Agency Check and took a couple weeks.”

“Not any more. Homeland Security doesn’t honor DoD clearances, either. They call it a “suitability” screen, like you can be OK for DoD but not suitable for a domestic clearance.”

“Weird,” I said. “I thought this was all supposed to be about information sharing.”

“Apparently not. More about not sharing and building little bureaucracies. My case got referred to the OPM, and I got the investigator from hell. It has been three interviews and I don’t know what is happening with it.”

“For a retired officer with thirty years of service this should be a no-brainer,” I said. “What do they think? We are going to start importing CONEX boxes with missiles?”

“I don’t know, but this investigator is driving me crazy. You have been through this before, and I want to know if I have any recourse.”

“To what?” I said. “I saw my file on the desk at my last polygraph and it was like two inches thick.”

“That is what concerns me. The last conversation I had with the investigator- a contractor, by the way- starts out with her asking me if,

Based on the date of your marriage and the birthdates of your first three children, do you think you could be subject to blackmail based on their illegitimacy?”

“I was stunned and insulted. I said: had it occurred to you that I married a widow with three kids? It went downhill from there.”

“Crap. I have my bring-up investigation next year, and I hope it is the last one.”

“Do I have any recourse?”

“To these anonymous people?” I raised my wineglass and drained it. “I don’t think so. Once we opened this Pandora’s Box there doesn’t seem to be any going back.”

Copyright 2011 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com

Unbroken

Sorry about the hacking yesterday. Don’t click on links. We will see if I have to shut this account down. Change your passwords frequently. Take your castor oil. Eat your peas.

I was going to tell you about Doc’s battle with the implacable government today, but we lost another hero. It is purely coincidence that it is a health professional like Doc, in this case a modest dentist, but with the loss of heroes like Mike Rindskopf and Noel Gaylor in the last month, I thought it would be important to share the story of another Great American with you this morning.

Our pal Joe Maz sent the sad news along, and I dug into the story to put some context on it. Here is how it started:

14 August 2011. Major Albert Brown, USA-Ret., 105. Albert Brown, the oldest American survivor of the Bataan Death March, in which as many as 11,000 soldiers died at the hands of the Japanese in the Philippines in 1942, and perhaps the oldest American veteran of World War II, Nashville, Ill. He was 105.

Albert Neir Brown was born in North Platte, Neb., on Oct. 26, 1905, to Albert and Ida Fonda Brown. His father was a railroad engineer who was killed in a train wreck; his mother was an aunt of the actor Henry Fonda. He was the godson of Wild West folk hero “Buffalo Bill” Cody, who often let the boy sit on his lap and tug on the showman’s famous goatee.

Brown participated in the Reserve Officer’s Training Corps in high school and later graduated from Creighton University (Class of ’27) with a dentistry degree. A decade later, at 32, he was called into the Army, leaving a wife and children behind and eventually posted to the Philippine Islands.

Naval Intelligence Professionals Chairman Emeritus Mac Showers was graduating from Counter-Intelligence School at the time, and by alphabetical chance, the first half of his class was posted to Manila and captured at the start of the war.

Communications Station CAST, part of the Navy’s network of radio communications intelligence stations, operated from Corregidor Island in Manila Bay, which was the point from which General Douglas MacArthur departed for Australia. He left Lieutenant General (temporary) Jonathan Mayhew “Skinny” Wainwright IV to surrender to the Japanese.

Wainwright was the highest-ranking American POW of the war, and subsequently awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor.

Mr. Brown was the oldest living survivor of the six-day death march, and he may have been the oldest American World War II veteran. On April 10, 1942, then-Captain Brown was among the approximately 76,000 Americans and Filipinos forced to march 66 miles on the Bataan peninsula to Camp O’Donnell, where nearly four years of hell on earth ensued.

The Japanese had invaded the Philippines two weeks after the bombing of Pearl Harbor. American and Filipino forces were overmatched and retreated into the mountainous jungles of the Bataan Peninsula. After four months of intense fighting, Commanding General Douglas MacArthur fled and American and Filipino forces on Luzon surrendered.

With many already close to death the prisoners were force-marched to Camp O’Donnell, where the POWs were concentrated. The weather was sultry and humid. The Japanese did not provide anything like adequate food or water. Those who stopped on the line of march were killed without mercy. Japanese soldiers fractured the skulls of the POWs with rifle butts and cut off heads.

Prisoners who tried to help fallen comrades were bludgeoned or stabbed. Filipinos who attempted to throw fruit to the marchers were killed.

The nightmare was hardly over when the survivors arrived at the camp, or at the other camps in Japan to which many, including Captain Brown, were later taken.

In three years in captivity Captain Brown was regularly beaten; thrown down stairs, seriously injuring his back; and struck in the neck by a rifle butt, causing a fracture. Brown remained in a POW camps from early 1942 until mid-September 1945, living solely on rice and what protein- sometimes in the form of insects- the prisoner could scavenge.

A strapping six-foot-tall athlete, Brown had lettered in baseball, football, basketball and track in high school. In captivity, he lost more than 80 pounds, and when liberated weighted just over 90 pounds.

It is estimated that more than 40% of the Americans held in Japanese POW camps died, in contrast to a 1.2 percent fatality rate in German and Italian prisoner of war camps. His suffering at the hands of the Japanese Army echoes that of Louie Zamperini, the Air Corps bombardier and Olympic athlete chronicled by author Laura Hillenbrand in her recent best-seller “Unbroken

Promoted to major, Mr. Brown spent two years in an Army hospital after the war. He later moved to Los Angeles, where he bought property and rented apartments. His injuries made it impossible to return to dental work, and a doctor told him to enjoy the next few years because “he had been so decimated he would be dead by 50.”

But Brown persevered, attending college again and becoming a private pilot. As a real estate entrepreneur, he bought and rented out properties to the post-war era’s biggest Hollywood stars, including Joan Fontaine and Olivia de Havilland. His circle of friends included western actors John Wayne, Ward Bond and Roy Rogers.

He is survived by his son Graham and daughter, Peggy; 28 great-grandchildren; and 19 great-great-grandchildren. His wife Helen, with whom he spent 58 years, passed on in 1985.

Albert Brown’s story is told in the recently released Forsaken Heroes of the Pacific War: One Man’s True Story by Don Morrow and Kevin Moore (Bedford House). Profits will go to the Wounded Warriors Project and Fisher House.

Copyright 2011 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com

Tone Deaf

(Willow warm Guerierre Cheese Puffs. Photo Socotra.)

“You would have to blame Bush, you know?” I looked with envy at the warm Guerrierre cheese puffs pastries on the Willow Bar. Old Jim, his brother-in-law Nick and his long-suffering bride Mary were seated up the mahogany from me, and making a dinner off the $5 neighborhood bar menu.

“You can’t go far wrong in doing that,” growled Jim. “That idiot drove the country to ruin with his ‘discretionary’ wars and deregulation.”

“No, I mean the buses,” I said. “They are staggering.”

“What are you talking about?” asked Mary.

“The President’s campaign trip on the buses,” I said. He took Air Force One up to St. Paul and then got on a bus caravan to listen to the American People or something.”

“Well, that is a good thing, don’t you think? He has been stuck here in town with all that budget nonsense.”

“Did he actually cancel his vacation on Martha’s Vineyard?” asked Nick. “There was some controversy about his going.”

“No,” I said. “There was an announcement that he was not going to call Congress back to session and that after three days on the buses he is still going to the Vineyard to rest up.”
I took a sip of Happy Hour white, crisp and gratifying to the palate after a long day of proposal writing. “It leads one to think that Mr. Obama is a little tone-deaf.”

“A little?” said Big Jim, walking by to survey the state of our drinks. He freshened my glass and topped up Mary’s champagne. “Like Michele’s African trip. I heard that cost a million bucks. Shaaah.”

“Probably close,” I said. “Air Force Two, a chase plane, entourage, Secret Service and all that. Easy a million, if not more.”

“Well, at least the kids got a chance to go on a safari with their mom, Grandma and two of their cousins. What an opportunity for them to see the animals and promote health and wellness in Southern Africa.”

“They got to meet Nelson Mandella, too,” I said. “I figure it is a chance of a lifetime when someone else is picking up the tab. Like the bus trip.”

“Buses are a tradition in politics. Remember John McCain’s bus?” said my pal the Flight Quack, stepping up the bar.  “Hey, Doc, how are ya?”

“Not so good, but that is why I wanted to talk to you, Vic. But as to the buses, these are something really special. They are no ordinary vehicles.”

(2009 Armored Cadillac. Photo US Secret Service.)

“How come they are not using The Beast, that armored Caddy they fly around with him? The Press could go by Greyhound.”

“Not the way he likes to do it, and the Secret Service insisted. Bush bought The Beast, by the way.”

“It is sort of an entitlement program for the Chief Executives. Makes it easier for the Service to protect him.”

“Yeah, but it is tone deaf. I mean, the country is falling apart and the President rolls up in a Mad Max machine doing a campaign trip on the taxpayers nickel.”

“What do you mean?” asked the Doc, ordering a Shastafarian Imperial Porter, which arrived in that short pot-bellied glass that showed off the rich color.

(The new Presidential armored bus in Saint Paul. Photo AP.)

“They just got two of the most far-out buses ever made. They are bulletproof, chemical resistant, fully wired for secure comms, highly secure and high tech throughout. Solid black, ominous. No logos of hope or anything. The Presidential motorcade with chase cars, ambulance and all the rest of the circus is just going to roll up to small town America and listen to what people think.”

“I know what I think,” responded the Doc.

“It gets better,” I said, and took a sip of wine. “The Secret Service won’t comment on exactly what has been done beyond the armor and the black tinted windows and the run-flat tires. They certainly won’t comment on the mileage, not that it is a factor in security for the most important man in the world.”

“Well so what?”

“They are Prevost buses, the leading brand in North America. They are built in freaking Quebec.”

The Doc frowned. “In this economy?”

“Blame it on Bush,” said Old Jim. “It has worked so far. And wasn’t your police car built in Windsor? I heard all the Crown Vic P-71s were imported.”

“True,” I said. “But I paid for mine.”

Copyright 2011 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com

A Fool With a Plan

(T. Boone Pickens in the doorway of his ranch. Photo Pickens Army.)

“A fool with a plan is better than a genius with no plan, and we look like fools without a plan.”

-Mesa Oil founder, billionaire and unlikely environmental activist T. Boone Pickens

Ack, it’s Monday. Hate it. I looked back on the weekend and realized it had been two working days to the start of another working week.

I recapped it in the darkness from the comfort and privacy of the Big Bed, looking up, waiting for the music to start on the clock radio. So, I got back to town Friday after checking the Crackberry for important updates from the capital at interludes as I poked along the placid blacktop of US-17 on the Middle Neck. It is such a contrast to the chaotic mayhem of the interstate on the Virginia Peninsula to the south.

I was approaching Fredericksburg, and the rejoining of the madness on the four-lane when I saw that the Government intended to drop the big solicitation that very afternoon. I recalibrated the rest of the day. I was in traveling attire, not dressed in my customary summer business garb of gray seersucker, Brooks Brothers suit and white bucks. Rather, I was driving in flip-flops, shorts and a polo shirt. The humidity was tolerable that way, and the German machine purred as if there were no Peak Oil and no crisis of confidence.

The V-8 did not know its day is past, any more than the City of New Orleans was aware that it had the disappearing railroad blues years ago. Things change, like the weather.

It was not precisely professional, but I went to the office dressed just as I was in the hope that no one would be around to be offended. Sure enough, the computer booted up just at the time that the government transmitted the 277-page document. I sent it to the printer so I could read it in detail over the weekend, and checked the email as I was waiting for the printer-hot pages to feed out of the machine.

Paperless office, my butt.

Two personal emails popped up in the little alert box in the lower right hand corner of my flat screen. The first said that a pal needed to talk to me about a problem with the Office of Personnel Management. The other was an alert that Big Jim has tendered his resignation, effective at the end of the month and will be departing his position behind the bar at Willow.

Both were important, and though not in proper clothing, I realized that I could take the thick binder along with me to Willow. I wandered over there, realizing that the timing of the solicitation was going to completely torpedo any plans for Labor Day, and I began to settle into the resignation that there was not going to be any downtime for a month or more.

I hopped up on a stool at the Amen Corner and slammed the hefty white plastic binder to the bar. Big Jim produced a tulip glass and filled it half-way with crisp amber liquid.

I swirled it and said: “So, you are running out on us.”

He gave me the two-finger gang signal. “Shahh,” he said.

“So what’s the plan?” I said. Old Jim, Mary and some guy I did not recognize appeared next to me and elbowed their way into space for two.

“It is time. Summer is over, and I am going back to teaching. I am tired of driving down here from Ashburn every day. Time to get a career.”

Old Jim looked on with concern. “Where the hell am I going to get a Budweiser if you are not here? And by the way, can I get a freaking Bud?”

Big Jim complied, gracefully scooping a cold brown long-neck from the cooler behind him and twirling it gracefully in an arc across the brown wood in front of Old Jim, with the controlled grace of a stone slid by a professional curler.

“You will be in good hands,” said Big Jim. “I’ll introduce you to Jeanette. She is the one with the Tinkerbell tattoo on her left arm.” He gestured toward a petite blonde in bartenders black shirt and slacks.

“You are a pro, Jim,” I said with admiration.

“Shahh.” He strode off toward the cash register and I turned to look at Old Jim.

“This is my brother-in-law Nick. He planned to be here during the lunacy downtown over the debt crisis. He lives in Ann Arbor.”

“LSA, 1973,” I said, holding out my hand. He took it and responded:

“LSA ’84,” We did a chorus of the Michigan fight song, and got it out of the way.

“It is not going to be the same here without Big Jim, but I am glad he has a plan.”

“You have to have a plan,” said Old Jim. “You should hear Nick’s.”

“I am all ears,” I said. “I feel like we have been fools all summer. The Administration doesn’t seem to have a plan except to generate regulations so they don’t have to actually propose laws, and the idiots on the other side are waving bibles around, like that Rick Perry guy and that strange Bachman woman.”

Nick brightened visibly. “Two plans, neither of them mine. We just need to do something. The tax thing? Easy. I don’t know why the President keeps lumping $250 grand a year in with the millionaires. Warren Buffett, the greatest entrepreneur of the last sixty years laid it out really nicely.”

“I respect the guy,” I said. “There are damn few of those predatory bastards I do. What does he say?”

(Billionaire sage Warren Buffett. Photo Berkshire-Hathaway.)

Nick took a sip of Happy Hour White. “He says that he pays a much smaller percentage of taxes than the people who work in his office at Berkshire-Hathaway. He is one of the top four hundred richest taxpayers, and in 2008, the aggregate income of that group had soared to $91 billion a year. That is an average- an average, mind you, of over two hundred and twenty five million a year. Their tax rate had fallen to 21.5 percent.”

“Christ, I pay over 32%!” I sputtered.

“That is just in payroll taxes. In fact, 88 of the 400 in 2008 reported no wages at all, though every one of them reported capital gains, on which they pay like 15%. Buffet says that is the place to start, and raise taxes on those Americans making more than $1 million a year.”

“Would that make a difference,” I said skeptically. “Didn’t they try this with the Alternate Minimum Rate years ago, and it wound up biting us wage-slaves in the ass.”

“Sure, but we can always fix that later. There were over a quarter million people making a million a year in 2009, and they just should pay the same rates that people who have withholding taken out of their checks do.”

“I could live with that,’ I said. “Like you say, that is a start.”

“It would make it seem like a plan, wouldn’t it? There are nearly ten thousand households who make ten million a year or more.  For them, Buffet says they ought to kick in at least as big a percentage as the people who make a paycheck.”

“Think the Super Congress will do it?”

“No, they don’t have a plan. They are just going to argue and get to Thanksgiving when the automatic budget cuts kick in and then blame the other side,” said Nick. “That is why everyone in the Heartland thinks Washington doesn’t work.”

“Well,” I said. “They have a point, you know.”

“Certainly do,” said Old Jim, and waved down the bar at Jeanette for another Bud.

“What was the other bright idea you had?” I asked.

“Oh, it is that natural gas thing that T. Boone Pickens has been pushing with $86 million of his own money.”

“Oh, I am a member of the Pickens Army,” I said. “That guy has a great plan to reduce the amount of imported oil, transition to more environmental economy, use American resources and reduce by half the amount of money we send every year to people like Hugo Chavez who want to cut our throats.”

Nick nodded. “Yeah. That is around $300 billion a year, and those twits in Congress would have three trillion in savings over a decade.”

“Damn,” I said. “That man is no fool. Why don’t we do that?”

“The Congress and the Administration are the worst of both worlds. They are so smart that they don’t have a plan, and are letting the fools dictate the agenda.”

“That is why I am going back to teaching,” said Big Jim. “Too many plans around here.”

“How ‘bout I plan on having another glass of wine?” I said. “I may be a fool, but I am a thirsty one.”

Copyright 2011 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com

Regulations

(ENS Socotra at left, having received his certificate of completion from NIOBC in accordance with NETC regulations. Photo Socotra.)

It was a huge weekend. It cascaded from bright sunshine at the beach on Friday morning to dark clouds on Sunday. I woke Friday to the sound of a Jodie Call from a formation of naval personnel jogging on the beach below my window at the old BOQ, enough of a flash-back to old times in Pensacola that I sat bolt upright in bed.

The ceremony was brisk and efficient, and by ten the Navy had 23 new intelligence specialists, and I was on the road, preparing for a conference call taken at the wheel. I hate I-64 and I-95, home of the most ill-mannered of American drivers, and so I bailed to cut over at Yorktown to US-17, a much more relaxed, if slower, roadway.

Driving past the field where Cornwallis had to surrender to Washington’s rag-tag Continentals always gives me some perspective on things, though the pace of change seems to have got out of control.

A couple hours later I was peering suspiciously at the pump at the Wawa fuel plaza near Tappahannock. I was in the Bluesmobile, ferrying it back from the Beach where my son has been using it for the last five months. It is a big-block Ford V8 police engine, which I suspect could burn fish oil, but in the Hubrismobile I am vulnerable.

Apparently the Feds have permitted the oil and gas people to start peddling something called E15- a blend of gas that has fifteen percent ethanol content by volume. Testing on the impact to our vehicles isn’t complete, and there is evidence that it could damage engines threaten performance, void warranties and confuse consumers- notably me. Didn’t matter, they issues the regulations anyway.

I do not want to trash the engine on my German run-about, which will be the last high performance car I own, so I am hyper alert to what is going in the tank. I don’t trust everyone to have things labeled properly, so check and see if one of these things is on the pump:

(Helpful label at the pump. Image DOT.)

I know why the EPA jammed this through- they want to use more corn or something, which is part of the complicated scheme to reduce foreign oil imports by using more corn, the production of which requires the import of foreign oil to agricultural states with early primary elections.

It is complicated, I know.

That’s why we have all those experts making new rules and regulations.

Speaking of agriculture and corn, I was surprised to hear The Department of Transportation has been busy, too. New regulations are being formulated that will mandate DOT ID numbers for all motorized farm equipment and that all users will have to obtain a commercial driver’s license.

Most of these vehicles never travel on public roads, but would mean that anyone who drives a tractor or operates any piece of motorized farming equipment would be required to pass the same tests and complete the same detailed forms and logs required of semi-tractor trailer drivers.

Any impact on family farms? Jeeze, Louise, what on earth are they thinking? It will impact as many as 800,000 Americans with additional paperwork and fees. I am glad I am not a small business these days.

Wait a minute. I might be one of them, like it or not, depending on what happens to the economy.

The last thing I heard out of the Hampton radio station was David Allen Coe warbling the perfect country western song: “I was drunk the day that Momma got out of prison….”

I punched “seek” on the dash of the police car and discovered that the centerpiece of the President’s Health Care program was declared unconstitutional by two out of three of the judges of the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals.

I don’t know when my son migrated the pre-sets on the radio to C&W, but it was OK with me. It was sort of refreshing not to listen to the commentary on what has been going on the last few months, and just listen to songs about cowboy wannbees who cheat, are cheated on and are drinking to either remember or forget.

The court’s majority decision ran to three hundred pages, and apparently contained this gem, read gravely by the announcer on the Richmond NPR outlet:

”In sum, the individual mandate is breathtaking in its expansive scope. It regulates those who have not entered the health market at all… The government’s position amounts to an argument that the mere fact of an individual’s existence substantially affects interstate commerce, and therefore Congress may regulate them at every point in their lives. This theory affords no limiting principles in which to confine the Congress’s enumerated power.”

This by no means ends the matter, of course, which will continue the fun in our fractious system. I am confident that it will proceed apace to the Supremes, where the legacy of the Bush Administration’s appointments may result in another spectacular demonstration of the consequences of what the Framers devised in the implementation of the separation of powers.

Who knows; the Roberts Court leans right by a 5-4 whisker, and I expect that will be the ultimate legacy of the mad dash to ram the legislation through the Congress in the first chaotic months of the Administration.

Do you recall the “Cornhusker kickback,” the “Louisiana purchase” and the “Florida flim-flam?” They were all part of the grand deal that was orchestrated by White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel to secure the support of Ben Nelson (D-NE), Mary Landrieu (D-LA) and Ben Nelson (D-FL) and beat the GOP filibuster in the Senate.

Nebraska got a “permanent exemption from the state share of Medicaid,” worth about $45 million in the first decade of the program, not that it seems like much money these days. We have progressed so far on our drunken binge that you have to be impressed. Florida got a deal to grandfather Medicare Advantage enrollees in Florida, or about five billion bucks, which still doesn’t seem like much compared to what Mr. Bernanke has been throwing around.

The Louisiana deal was a piker in comparison, at only about two hundred million to the taxpayer.

It did cost more than Mr. Jefferson’s original Purchase, but never mind. Times are hard. Maybe we could sell it back.

Copyright 2011 Vic Socotra
www.vocsocotra.com <http://www.vocsocotra.com/>

Rhymes With Orange

(AOL is hosed up this morning, gentle readers, so imagine that attachment 1 goes here for important foreshadowing.)

It was so delightful a day yesterday that it was hard to believe that the market had lurched into near panic again. I wasn’t panicked; I was preoccupied with sending frantic e-mails about some rare new business with the government customer, and traveling across the District to Joint Base Bolling-Anacostia to attend a meeting detailing the technical specifics about it.

There was construction on I-295 both ways, nasty delays, so once the meeting was done and the notes in hand, I put the top down and took the Hubrismobile over to the old Navy side of the base to use that exit to hook up with South Capitol Street and avoid the freeway.

The gate was torn up, coned-off, and drove around the athletic fields to try to find whatever temporary gate might be available. I was listening to NPR on the radio, and the news from the market was bad, but not as plain flat-out weird as the news from Britain.
America has been focused intensely inward these last few weeks, between the lunacy of the debt ceiling and the Treasury downgrade and the collapse of the market. That would be enough to get anyone’s attention, but we are an intensely navel-gazing culture anyway. It takes a lot to get our attention.

The Brits have succeeded this week only to a mild degree. The riots across the North that spread into London were stunning, almost as stunning as the reaction to them.

NPR took the usual muddled position that the shooting of young Mark Duggan had untapped a deep well of racial animosity at first, and the commentators seemed relieved that many of the subsequent rioters in the rapidly tweeting violence were white, so they would not have to address the racial aspect of the trouble and move it over into the “class” bin where the rioters could be termed “protestors.”

Duggan was armed at the time of his death, and someone got off a shot at the Bobbies. The mainstream press is rife with explanations and analysis, from both sides of the political spectrum. You have probably had some of it lobbed into your in-basket. I sat on the fine leather seat of my German car and wondered how to get off the base as I listened to Prime Minister Cameron condemn the criminals, and the NPR manage to include the alternate view that the smash-and-grab looting was actually provoked by the marginalization of oppressed minorities.

We pioneered victim-originated rioting here in America, and I am proud to be a Detroiter, where the modern smash-and-grab movement started in 1967.

Back here in the future, I finally found a gap in the fence with two bored guards and got off base and onto South Capitol, headed the wrong way, which I do not claim to be a metaphor for anything. I did find myself wandering back in memory to that summer when my hometown burned, and the literature of the times. The British connection made it inescapable, and I was surprised that none of the commentary had connected the dots.

Anthony Burgess pretty much nailed this whole thing in his prescient 1962 book “Clockwork Orange.”

I mean, it is all there. The protagonist, Alex, leads his three Groogs (buddies, in Russian-English patois) on nightly rampages of “the old ultra-violence,” hopped up on “milk plus.”

I mean, Burgess nailed it. In the first of the three parts of the book, Alex and his Droogs beat the crap out of pedestrian, stomp a homeless man, loot a newsstand, beating the owners bloody, and steal a car. They interrupt a joy-ride with a home invasion of a country cottage of a writer and his wife, and knock him around and rape the wife.

Remember when we had to coin the term for the assault on personal homes?

There are consequences, of course, since this is a Burgesses’ parable on society. Alex gets busted after another orgy of rape and murder, and is reformed in prison by a novel mind-control program called the Ludovico Technique, which essentially de-fangs the sociopath, leaving him vulnerable to the violence of the streets when he is released. He is even savaged by those who he victimized.

It is too delicious that he is befriended by the socially active writer whose wife was raped (and later died) by the home invasion of the Droogs.

Poor Baby. Anyway, the state restores his original savage personality, and all is right for Alex. Burgess had intended the book to have three segments of seven chapters each, and published it that way in Britain. The last chapter features a metamorphosis in which Alex realizes what a fuck-up he is, and gets his life in order.

It is an odd foreshadowing of recent brain research, which suggests that the male brain does not complete development until the early 20s, which is something any parent of teenage boys already knew.

We did not get Clockwork Orange that way in America. The US publishers thought the upbeat ending did not ring true, and insisted would be ‘more realistic’ and appealing to U.S. audiences. That darker ending gave us Alex the sociopath at the end, and that is what actor Malcolm McDowell gave us in Stanley Kubrick’s masterful film.

The problem with parables is the variability of the future. But as it turned out, both Burgess and Kubrick were right on. In the West we have been living in Wonderland so long that we have come to take the impossible as gospel.

Like, uncontrolled immigration has no consequences. All cultures are equal, and all values and beliefs, however loony, must be respected. Entitlements are a human right. Budgets don’t have to have any relation to revenue.

I don’t know when we turned the keys to the asylum over to the inmates, at least not precisely, but it is easy enough to recognize the consequences of the folly. I don’t know what we do about it at this late date. I don’t have any bright ideas.

I got a joke in the mail from my pal Mac, who has lived enough summers to remember the world before this one, which was no paradise, but made a certain sense.  He remembers the Great Panic of ’29, and the closing of the local bank, and a summer without money and a barter economy in Iowa. The joke goes like this:

“A guy calls his stockbroker and asks him what he should be buying in this chaotic market. Apple? Google? What will hold value? The broker thinks for a moment, and responds:

“Canned goods and ammunition are your best bet.””

I laughed, and then I didn’t. Crap. I am off to Virginia Beach later today, and will not be at the computer tomorrow, so have a great weekend. God willing, and the creek don’t rise.

(Imagine a dance off with a photo of Malcolm McDowell as Alex. Photo courtesy Warner Bros and Hawk Films.)

Copyright 2011 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com

Appetizer

(Butter Poached Lobster Tail & Lobster Ravioli with Creamy Fennel Gratin, Savory & Sherry Lobster Sauce. The Lovely Bea and Jon-with -no-H’s cocktails, courtesy of Big Jim complete the tableaux. Photo Socotra. It did not look like this for long.)

Well, the Government did it to us last night. A “request for proposal” dropped on the classified system sometime around the moment that Jon-with-no-H and the Lovely Bea were about to tuck into their lobster appetizer at Willow. The event could have curtailed the general merriment, but damn the torpedoes, as they say.

We will let the delicate appetizer stand as a metaphor for what is going to happen today, and perhaps provide a last gasp of “eat drink and be merry” as the Government spasms its way to the end of this disconcerting year.

The refusal to panic in the early evening unfortunately had downstream consequences. Instead of relaxing here at the home computer and easing into the morning, we are in full panic mode, fight or flight. There is a double-wrapped package protecting 44 pages of technical requirements that needs to be examined and parsed for obscure meaning, and a technical meeting to attend at Joint Base Bolling-Anacostia in just a few hours.

I was going to tell you about more fun with eTrade panic stock buying with my Day Trader buddy, and the astonishing announcement of Mr. Bernanke that interest rates will stay at near zero for years and years, and the collective idiots who have been named to the Super Congress panel that is supposed to chart a course out of this mess.

But this story on this morning will just have to serve as an appetizer. Jon and Bea pronounced the lobster “excellent.”

That is likely to be better than this day, but eat drink and be merry, you know?

Bon appetite!

Copyright 2011 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com