The Horrible No Good Very Bad Week

(I turned on the flat screen when I got home from Willow. They got the little murdering creep. Image capture courtesy ABD News.)

What a week. I am exhausted, drained, wiped out. Last night brought a sort of closure to a very long day that began with some answers and many more questions.

Too many needles, haystacks, suppositions, rumors and circular reporting. We were all yanked right out of one thing and into another. A horror on Monday was followed by an accident in Texas that killed and injured many more than the attack on the Boston Marathon, but somehow it was easier to accept as an act of God, rather than an act of Man.

I was peevish for all the reasons you probably were. I was ready for the one of the first stories on NPR that always run- you know, the one about the Imam who views his flock as potential victims in Big Bad old America, and we got that one out of the way just like clockwork. We hardly even blink when these things come by anymore, I know I don’t.

It is preposterous that every time some jihadi whack job kills some of us we are told that the real victims are the attacker’s co-religionists. It is OK. I believe all sorts of impossible things before breakfast, but still: It was a horrible no-good, very bad week.

It started with Mac’s interment, lurched into terror bombings, exploded into a massive disaster in Texas, and spun into a wild car-jack shoot out with a mad bomber on the loose, and I could barely peel myself out of the Panzer to attend the Spring meeting of the Naval Intelligence Professionals organization.

It was my second outing of the week with the trusty Canon EOS 50D, the big gun of my cameras that makes me feel like Jimmy Olson, cub reporter for the Daily Planet. And yes, I had a couple glasses of white wine at lunch, which required more coffee when I eventually made it back to my desk to discover the Government is loosening the purse strings and spewing out contract opportunities willy-nilly.

It appears that the earth will continue to spin after all.

I had a long-standing engagement with my former Deputy from the budget staff I used to run. He has stayed with the Government even as I became one of the parasitic legion who pray upon it, and it is always interesting to catch up, particularly now that nothing makes any sense.

I was eying the clock, waiting for the precise moment that I could probably still find curb parking over by the Willow. The phone rang. The Other Russian caught me as I was gathering up the contents of my backpack (yes, I carry one too rather than a briefcase these days) and invited himself to Willow.

I told him two or three times that I had a different meeting planned and did not feel in a particularly jovial mood, but my message wasn’t blunt enough.

I didn’t know what he wanted, or rather, I think he seeks to ingratiate himself to my good graces to enhance his business, and since the Willow Bar serves as my unofficial living room, I could think of nothing I wanted less than the company of a Russian go-getter.

Particularly this week.

Jon-without-an-H, bless him, threw himself under the bus and took charge of the Russian so I could catch up on a variety of arcane budget issues and insider crap no one in their right mind would care about, and then transitioned to discussion of the lyrical skills of pianist Vladimir Horowitz and the activities of the Chorale Arts Society and the Broadway Tribute they are going to do at the Kennedy Center on Mother’s Day.

Due to the luncheon, (yes, I ate the rice and the salmon and slathered the dinner roll with real creamery butter and ate the cheesecake) I could not indulge in the specialty burger of the week that Chris the bartender had commissioned. Tracy has given him a fair amount of autonomy in the menu for the bar and patio, and I applaud his creativity, though I do not eat what is on the menu.

Chris was a Marine, and there was some of the ethos of Midnight Rations- MIDRATS- in his creation, which I encouraged my pal to order. I couldn’t eat it, but I did want to see the double-patty-bacon-egg and cheese with BBQ sauce creation replete with hand-cut Willow Fries.

Eventually, Rafael appeared with Chris’s creation:

I watched my pal envelop the burger with gusto. I guess it was a long week in the budget world, too.

Eventually, our visit was concluded. I had only two glasses of wine- perhaps three, though I was still sober.

Sober enough to take great suspicion at the group of young men in hoodies who loitered in the darkness under the portico next to where my car. They demanded cigarettes as I approached the Panzer, and I realized that my gun was in the go-bag in the trunk. I never seem to have things where I need them.

It worked out though. Maybe my gaze seemed deranged enough to give them pause.

I made it home without further incident or altercation, and I flipped on the flat screen to see what I might have missed while at Willow. The unit was instantly bathed in blue light from a hundred cop cars north of here. I was in the nick of time. The mystery was revealed. The perp had concealed himself in a boat in a backyard; there had been an exchange of fire, and the FBI took over from the locals. They had him.

There was no apparent sense of urgency to the Watertown Ambulance as it rolled away, nor was there any as I gathered up my crap and padded back down the hallway to bed. What a week.

Copyright 2013 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com

Crowd Sourcing

(Crowd Sourced image capture of Suspects 1 and 2 near the finish line at the Boston Marathon.)

Sorry, I have been hunched over the computer, streaming NPR for information about “Suspect 1” and “Suspect 2” since before 0500 this morning.

The answer was apparent throughout- name and age is always the first thing they get, and apparently they had a body- and a wallet- in possession but could not bear to get around to the first priority element of information.

I don’t know if they are going to kill him or not. You know who I am talking about. This has been an electric morning for an old crisis junky. It is hard to figure on this side of the screen, though we have gone from knowing nothing except a remarkable night of bloodshed, 7-11 robberies, car-jackings and random explosions to- maybe- almost everything.

I am not going to try to encapsulate the story for you- the narrative is being revised and filled in as we all stumble along.

The broad brush? Yes, Chechnyan terrorists, a brother act, ideal profiles for recruits to the radical Islamic cause: 19 and 20 years of age. Many questions about how long they had been here in the States- first reports a year or so, later amended to as much as a decade, with stops around the ‘Stans.

One of them apparently a Golden Gloves boxer. How did these guys get so twisted so fast from that path to this one?

Certainly they come from a receptive culture to violence. Chechnyans have been on the cutting edge of spectacular acts of terror and brutality for a decade- just ask Mr. Putin who rode his muscular response to them to absolute power in Russia. Chechens were the first movement to use women to belt-bomb airliners. The first hi-jacking of a whole theater in Moscow that resulted in a disastrous gas attack by Russian security forces. That whole school, all those kids under the Kalashnikov. A bloody and sincere bunch, and Islamic to the core.

That was a problem. The media had been peddling the narrative that this must somehow have been some Patriot wing-nut white guy. I don’t know why. Tim Mcveigh was certainly a white guy, but I would normally lean to the percentages: Saudi nationals hijacked the airplanes on 9/11, Major Hassan gunned down his fellow soldiers at Fort Hood, Muslim extremists tried to knock down the Twin Towers the first time, Khobar Towers…Nairobi…Dar es Salaam… oh hell, I would run out of time this morning if I tried to type out the number of bombings by jihadis against the West- London and Madrid- and Times Square…oh hell, you get my drift.

NPR managed to claim yesterday that the Boston attack occurred because Hitler’s birthday is in April. They really wanted a Right Wing terrorist. I have heard about bending over backwards, but this is ridiculous.

We will know a lot more by the end of the day, but this is worth pointing out. This may be the first national security/law enforcement investigation conducted by crowd sourcing the multi-media of the event.

That is something altogether new. Certainly the story as told this morning shouldn’t be much of a surprise.

Muslim extremists bomb the homeland! What a freaking surprise!

The question I am not going to get to, and the answer you may already know, is whether they are going to kill the remaining little shit before they get him in custody. I certainly hope he is around to answer questions, but I guess I will have to wait and see.

I would certainly hate to pre-judge the conclusions, you know?

Copyright 2013 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com

Nuts

(Associated press image of the mushroom cloud at the fertilizer plant in West, Texas.)

Some maybe-informed people say that the explosion down in West, Texas, a little town of 3,000 people, was the equivalent of a three-kiloton nuclear detonation.

The estimate of casualties is all over the map, and highlights the problems of the vulnerability of infrastructure all over the country. Available evidence suggests this is an industrial accident, enhanced by strong winds, and is neither unprecedented nor of the magnitude of disasters that have happened before. Not that it is any comfort to those who died, nor those who were badly hurt.

The most recent analogy might be the PEPCON disaster in Henderson, Nevada, in 1988. Two died in that one, though the string of explosions injured hundreds. Cause was an errant welding torch, and the inadvertent massive overstock of highly flammable material created by the Challenger disaster. Analysis of the incident suggested the inventory of propellant for the Space Shuttle program that was piling up was the proximate cause.

Nothing will equal- insh’hallah- the magnitude of the explosion in Texas City back in 1947. Over 500 sailors and firemen were literally vaporized as two merchant ships went up in the single most massive explosion in US history.

So lay that against the act of terror in Boston- or don’t. They are not dots that can be connected even indirectly, though there are those who are trying, but the two events are feeding into a very strange brew of coincidence and political polemic. In fact, I have not seen the like of this collective angst- terror letters, rumors of impending terror- for a decade.

Some dots do not connect. Others do. Like everyone else, I am intensely curious to see where these disparate paths are going to lead us.

The one bunch of people I feel a little sorry for are the North Koreans. They worked so hard to get our attention, the information operations campaign so well choreographed, only to see us drop them in a New York second.

It has got to be driving them nuts.

Copyright 2013 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com

Boston

(Curious montage of the pre-explosive phase of the Boston Marathon attack. I have no idea if this is related to the actual operations but it certainly is curious. Montage courtesy “Based Heisenburg:” http://basedheisenberg.tumblr.com)

My brother ran Boston last year- making the field at his age is a pretty impressive thing, and I am very proud of him. According to the race clock in the images of the bombing, he would have been done for twenty minutes when the attacks happened.

Me? On my best day with the best time, I was only able crack four hours by a minute or three. For me, that was a mark of achievement, not a pathetically slow time. But I would have been there only minutes before whatever scumbag set off the murderous blast.

The spin on Boston is truly amazing. The BBC this morning was swamped with complaints of cultural relativism from around the world. The general thrust was why should the three causalities in the Beantown attack completely overshadow the routine reporting of a dozen killed elsewhere in bombings in Afghanistan, Iraq and the continued madness in Syria.

One of my local correspondents is slightly hysterical over the apparent detention and search of a Saudi student’s apartment in Revere, a little coastal town on the way out to Beverly where I spent a couple summers back in the day. I still remember the train stops: Beverly, Swampscott, Marblehead, Revere.

If there was something to that connection, there is no reporting of it.

From an objective standpoint, the tactics are a muddle of every crack-pot ideologue of the last thirty or forty years. The methodology seems almost textbook IRA from the Ulster and London campaigns- unless the pressure cooker bombs were actually left in black backpacks rather than in the trash cans, which the sole picture available suggests.

The recipe for the pressure-cooker IEDs is a standard in Afghanistan- but also appeared in Inspire, the al Qaida glossy magazine, which the media breathlessly reports was linked to white supremacist web sites.

I don’t know what to think, except there is naturally a great deal of IRA presence in Boston, but the Boyos rarely operate here, to avoid damaging funding streams and donations. The guy who sat between me and Old Jim confessed to coughing up $500 a year in tribute money to the IRA- but I discount them as prime subjects, unless there is a new rogue branch that is tuning up for an attack on the London Marathon net week.

A pal wrote to say that this had been intended for the NYC Marathon, which got whacked by Sandy, and the Boston fall-back was not expected.

I have no idea, except that the most logical candidates for an attack (calculate the fixation with the Big Apple on the part of the jihadis) have not been mentioned at all.

In fact, the whole thing is curious. Major Hassan’s attack at Fort Hood was mysteriously re-categorized as an incident of “workplace violence,” a bizzare characterization of a jihadi act of terror. The failed attack on Times Square with a defective car bomb….well, you know. The authorities seem determined to avoid tagging anyone in particular with this heinous act, even the most logical suspects. Like Benghazi, I imagine that would undermine the narrative that al Qaida is on the run and the threat to the homeland is over so we can get back to the important work before the Senate, I forget what that is.

I guess we will just see what information they dribble out over the next few days and weeks. I am as prepared to believe it was some domestic idiot as someone else, I know first reports are always wrong, and I will avoid a rush to judgment here at Big Pink. This being a local crime, someone will have to get pinned with the crime, unlike events overseas.

I will never make the cut for Boston, not with the leg as screwed up as it is, but my brother’s involvement makes this chillingly personal, just like 9/11.

In the wake of all that, some moron sent me one of those pictures you should not have to look at unless you have been warned. In a scrum of confusion, a young man, a runner, apparently, is hunched in agony. He is fit, or was until a moment before. There is a good six or seven inches of naked tibia protruding from the remaining flesh of his right leg.

I have had leg muscles in my time that were conditioned to run the same distance, less the last hundred feet. Taut, responsive and tough was the musculature of that leg, at least until shredded by ball bearings unleashed at high velocity.

I did not have dreams about it, but it was a powerful image. At least I have not had the dreams yet. Maybe it is still too raw.

Copyright 2013 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com

The Day After

The pictures are posted, the toasts have bee raised. The haunting sound of the highland pipes covered the retreat of hundreds of officers and Sailors from the grave site. Mac’s earthly remains were given over to the soil, and to the patient presence of his beloved Sara V., better known as Billie.

There are a hundred or so pictures I took, posted of the event on social media. Pictures are not reality, of course, but the pageant, dignity and tradition displayed is clear enough from those images. I have been to far too many of these funerals and will probably attend only one more, one in which I do not anticipate a speaking part. This was one for the ages, and is going to stand in my memory for all of us.

The haunting sound of Amazing Grace and Scotland The Brave were the last echoes of the official ceremony. Mac had been a piper in his youth, and this completed another circle per his detailed instructions. The Piper is a physicist in his day job, by the way, and a good man. But his day trade is just as relevant as his skill on the pipes.

But of course there were a lot of good women and men there that gray afternoon to say farewell and Godspeed. They paid tribute to a man whose like does not come along very often, and who stood as an icon of his age. And a very good friend to many.

The world being what it is, we did not know of the latest outrage until we got to Willow to join family and friends to celebrate what will stand in my mind as the finest example of a private interment at the Nation’s place of ultimate honor.

Mac would have been proud, I think. Now we have to turn back to the events of the world we have all made, and it will be another grim bit of business. Mac would have had something to say about it, but his cares are not now of this world.

We are on our own.

Copyright 2013 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com

Showers, Followed by Showers

(Mac chats with Elizabeth-with-a-Z, 2005).

“What do you want me to do? Win World War Two again?”

– Mac to Grandson, Outer Banks Shower’s Family Reunion Quote of the week, 2012.

It has been a marvelous weekend, filled with camaraderie and family, and it was an honor to be part of the gathering of the far-flung Showers clan and assorted admirers and friends.

Last night featured the money quote of a Showers Beach Week on North Carolina’s Outer Banks- the sort of ultimate come-back to trump the contentions of a younger and confident generation to the wisdom of another.

The family had secured the Williamsburg Room on the second floor of the luxurious new Arlington clubhouse of the Army-Navy Country Club. The season was starting, late on a Sunday afternoon, golfers coming off the course and the place coming alive. The old clubhouse, the one whose central core went back to the founding days of 1924, is fully gone, and the new contour of the ridgeline now resembles what it must have looked like then the Civil War Arlington Line snaked across the highlands. The outlines of the earthworks of Fort Richardson that now nestle the ninth green on the clubhouse approach are much more dramatic.

The property was part of the Nauk Neighborhood, whose immediate progenitor had been a Freedman’s Village established at the end of the war. It is still true that the defining event in the life of the Boomers is World War Two. When we say “the War,” or “after the War,” as a marking point for some event in the social life of the nation, that is the defining moment.

But not here. The War still will always refer to the years that the Union Army surged across the River and constructed an astonishing ring of forts, protected firing positions, sunken roads, and all of them bristled with guns from the Arlington highlands.

(Mac’s sister, in from Iowa and looking spirited at 96 years young.)

Anyway, nice view from the new clubhouse, where the gathering of the Clan was just about complete. Mac’s big sister was there, alert and vibrant with the same spirit of life that Mac always had. She was almost a dead ringer for her little brother, and with a walker just like his, and the same bright eyes that have seen nearly a century of life in These United States.

Mac’s kids were there, and their kids, and a few of yet another generation crawling about with tiny trucks and jets, and some new arrivals still clinging to their mothers. Truly a multiple generational celebration of Mac’s life, and pretty damned impressive.

Tom the son-in-law brought in an extraordinary case of fine wine that had been a favorite of Mac’s, whose traditional wine of choice had been Gallo Hearty Burgundy, a vintage I recall vaguely from Mom and Dad’s adventures in fine wine, and which I despise to this day. Mac’s tastes evolved over time, and if he did not have this precise vintage before, it was from a winery of which he would have thoroughly approved.

(Two of the most beautiful granddaughters ever share memories).

So, Saturday at Willow as the critical mass of family increased. An afternoon in the Gardens of Stone to survey the place of eternal rest for our pal, and his reunion with his beloved Billie. Now, this afternoon is the main event.

Showers this morning, the meteorological version, and the weather guessers are saying things will dry up in time to accommodate the scheduling of Mac Showers this afternoon.

(Mac and Billie prepare for the Big Trip).

Copyright 2013 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com

The List

(Spring is here at Refuge Farm. All photos Socotra.)

Is ten o’clock the neighborhood covenant on the discharge of shotguns?

I glanced at my left wrist to check the time, but of course why wear a watch down on the farm? When I arced back through the kitchen with the little bits I needed for the project, I checked the clock. It was a little after ten, suggestive that is the hour that marks the time appropriate to start blasting, while allowing the neighbors to sleep in.

I was on my second pot of coffee and all was right with the world. I had motored down to the farm, minutes ahead of the imposition of HOV-2 rules on the former passing lane on I-66. It was just enough to get by, and was able to be in the appropriate lane as network time turned over 14:59:59 before the restrictions kicked in.

It is sort of amazing what the people who chose to live out here have to put up with. In order to be in Haymarket before the highway constricts like a clogged arterial artery, they must start work- not the commute- by 0600.

I shuddered, and then got on with the increasingly pleasant drive as I swerved around the corner at RT 29, and drove down the hill at Buckland Mill where George Custer came a whisker of not being alive to be killed at the Little Big Horn. Everyone from the fifteen minutes when this was the most dangerous place on earth is dead. We have to remember for them, just as we are trying for Mac, whose merry band of brothers has left us now, too.

(Barn, with Bluesmobile).

I surveyed the property and had time to re-attack the company email, do time cards and start the massive load of laundry left over from the malarial chill-and-fever cycle. I started the Bluesmobile and ran it for about an hour to stay on top of the battery I just replaced- I have a trickle charger around someplace similar to the one that keeps the truck happy. Add to list.

It occurs to me I have to get the little black vehicle up north to have it checked out and seasonally adjusted- maybe next weekend. Add to list. I puttered, and found the project that was not going to get better without rapid and personal intervention. This is not going on the list. It is a current action item, since it is a clear falling hazard, and I am not doing that.

(A porch plank stages a revolt. Two carpenter’s nails give up the ghost.)

And later, the darkness coming on, I got as far on e-mail as I could stand and cooked up a mélange of local food from Croftburn Farms.

I did the best simulation of dancing I can do these days as I simmered. One of the best things about the farm is the lack of communal living. I can crank the music up as loud as I like and bother no one.

After I cooked, I was sitting out back looking up at the stars. The Big Dpper pointed the way North for the slave who was bold enough to follow it, bright and enticing. The heavens were doing the stately rotation that ignores our little lists. The Russians pulled in next door sometime in the full darkness. I could hear Biscuit the Wonder Spaniel barking in joy, announcing her presence to the darkness and some other dog further up the road toward Summerduck Run Farm.

I called out to her, and heard the muffled voices of the Russians telling her I was here. Then silence under the brilliant stars, unchallenged by the lights of the Imperial City, not a single political spin in their orbits.

It is funny. In a town where politics is business and vice versa, people get in the shower thinking talking points, and don’t stop until they collapse in their fancy eiderdowns at night, dreaming of more talking points and loopholes and concerned citizens in expensive suits.

I read for a while, never did get to any television. I mean, what is the point?

I had been so warm that when I went to bed I left the windows open and the fans on in the great room.

With the windows open, and the predictable happened. Upper thirties and chill when I threw off the covers to my personal paradise and padded out into the darkness.

(Plank drilled out and two deck screws driven in to bring the curling tongue of contempt from the lumber to heel).

There is one project to accomplish before I feel good about heading north for the All-Mac weekend preceding his interment at Arlington on Monday: I need to drill out a plank on the front deck that is curling insouciantly at one end. Two good screws to replace the nails that could no longer oppose the inexorable upward separation. Should be fairly straightforward.

I have said that before. Actually, it is the only talking point down here that means a damn thing and it is not going on the list. I am just going to do it.

(OK, so it is not perfect. But there is a joint I repaired last year whose screws have backed out, need to be re-secured and Dremeled to cut off the protruding screw-head nice and flush before I fall on my ass again and tear up the semi-repaired leg. Meanwhile, the garden seems to getting along perfectly well without me. I wonder what the hell is growing out there?)

Copyright 2013 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com

Six Year Old Beans

It has been quite a week. Stark yet dreamlike. I made it to the office for a few hours yesterday, needing to ease back into things. It was such a lovely day and the cabin fever was intense that it was a relief to get back to the office environment.

I had a scrap of paper from Vickie-the-Maid reminding me she required another jug of Murphy’s Oil Soap for next month’s cleaning, and it was one of the things that floated in and out my fevered brain through the fever of the week

The flu- if that is what it was- carried all the overheated thinking down the rapids of fever time, which either vanished down the rabbit hole or stretched out in the night, shivering, watching the illuminated digits of the clock slowly- so slowly- advance across the hours when the powers of darkness are exalted and sleep is the furthest thing away.

Murphy’s Oil Soap floated through couple blood-soaked Steven Hunter novels and a stream of business traffic all weirdly commingled. And the feeling of vague doom- one of the causes of which I discovered this morning.

Coffee! Damnit! I blinked in the darkness of the kitchen. I forgot to get coffee!

I got the Oil Soap on the way home- and a loaf of artisan jalapeno cheddar bread to celebrate the return of appetite- and completely forgot the beans that would enable me to start the day. I normally run out of Dazbog Russian Roast about three quarters of a bag before the next shipment comes in from Denver. I usually remember to have a backup bag of something- Starbucks, maybe- in the larder, but the fever had driven it clean out of my mind, even as I had clutched to the idea of the Oil Sap.

Damn. A morning without coffee? Impossible. I went to the cupboard. No beans. A small box of Gavalia, held in case Raven came, and him in his grave almost a year. It was pre-ground and ancient but….decaf. Worse than useless. Then I remembered. To the left hand side were several foil pouches of hotel coffee, which I used to harvest on all those weeks on the road. There were three from an outfit called “The Gourmet Bean,” a bulk provider to some chain of hotels I obviously spent a week with. Marriot? No idea. When was the last time the Company let me go on the road for a week?

Jesus, I murmured. These pouches have been lurking here since the Bush Administration. Before the housing bubble. Before Hope and Change became just hope they would go away and stop bothering me.

Now, I was going to try to start the day on six year old coffee beans. The earth shuddered under my feet.

I just flinched at the flash of lightning in the fogy dawn, counting in my head the seconds-to-miles to boom. Six. Almost here.

My balcony door was open a crack, and the wind pressed it closed. “Finish the paragraph,” I thought, “then batten the hatches.” Then the blow came, hurling the door open against the end of the long turned-aluminum rod keeper with the latch break and spring on the end to keep it from shattering off the hinges. (It has before. Doors that close are good). Then the chill gray rain came, banishing for now the warm moist tongue of Spring.

What stuns me is the willingness of our elected clowns to forge off in altogether new avenues of idiocy, and I say that in the context of the perfectly serviceable Gun Control Act of 1968, the result of a rational discussion between both sides of the aisle in the wake of the political killings of that sad and unlamented decade.

I think I have debunked the “40% gun sales without background check” number the President throws around. I don’t know- been sick. But the number shows up in all the news reports and “informed commentary” about what we really really need to do RIGHT NOW. The talking points cite a 2004 study, which says no such thing.

That study says they don’t know the percentage- the only estimate came from a phone survey of 250 homes in 1994, with a margin of error that could mean 30% as much as 40%- almost twenty years ago- and four years before instant background checks were required for most sales. Misleading at best, mendacious at worst.

Anyway, I was surprised to discover something the other day while on the way to something else. There are indeed ways to buy guns on the internet without background checks- a few. They are sites that aggregate private sellers and private buyers, which theoretically could result in sales outside the current set of laws. But as with all of this, it has been regulated within an inch of its life already. You cannot mail or ship a weapon except to a FFL holder- which brings almost any non-hand-to-hand transaction into the background check universe. Avoidance would only work with hand delivery, something obviously which would restrict the utility of internet sales.

A hand-delivery network outside the USPS/FEDEX/UPS universe? Maybe a business opportunity for some enterprising soul, but not exactly a Niagara of guns, regardless of what anyone tells you, and not the source of any weapon used in any of the poster horror crimes.

Insert standard disclaimer here: “I am not a Republican. I am opposed to the mentally ill being illegally in possession of firearms, I am opposed to murder, and particularly that of innocents. I am also opposed to the folly of “gun free zones.” Should I ever find myself in a situation where some deranged man wants to make himself famous, I want to be able to shoot back. This is an increasingly dysfunctional society in which my generation has worked mightily and tirelessly to undermine the institutions that used to keep us generally on a civil keel.”

Unilateral disarmament has never worked to make anyone safer that I am aware of. If you can think of one, don’t hesitate to let me know.

Anyway, as usual, this is a tempest in a teapot, but no good crisis should be left unexploited to solve a myriad of issues for the public good, right? I will be very interested to see what sort of amendments pop onto the current legislation.

Apparently the “compromise” fronted by the pro-gun Senators from PA and WVA was actually written by Chuckie Schumer, who has previously questioned the legitimacy and enduring properties not only of the Second Amendment, but the First. His towering New York arrogance has always irritated me, and surpasses the Social Follies of the Mayor of New York City, which makes him that more threatening to what I like to think of as my way of life.

So, I trust him as far as I can throw him.

This has all- I repeat all- been previously regulated and the laws are on the books. There might be a case for further restricting what are clearly commercial sales by individuals to other individuals unknown to them- but that is as far as I can go.

If I choose to give a weapon to someone in my family, or to a friend I know, that is nobody’s business but ours, and off the counter. Not interested in asking Mr. Schumer if it is OK with him.

Naturally, this is will all be waiting on the next crisis, ready to go. Our rights- as amended by the Gun Control Act of 1968 and augmented by the Brady Act of 1994, matched with the existing requirement for Instant Background checks- should be plenty.

As we knew from the beginning of this crisis, and the one before that, and the one before that, the problem is mental illness. Everything that happened at VA Tech, Aurora and Sandy Hook was illegal on so many counts already that it hardly seems necessary to pile on new rules. Why don’t we try enforcing the ones on the books?

Unless, of course, this isn’t about that Sandy Hook at all, but rather something else. The number of guns purchased since 2008 suggest I am not alone in that belief.

But in his usual soaring rhetoric, Vice President Smokin’ Joe Biden, a man who famously lives in his own space-time continuum, says that we don’t have the resources to enforce what is already the law. So, the answer must be more laws, right?

Let’s get past this, shall we, and start talking about how we more effectively loot our children and grandchildren to pay for our fat retirements?

I gotta stop drinking really old coffee. Maybe they didn’t control caffeine back then.

Copyright 2013 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com

Seersucker

It hit ninety yesterday. I responded to the amazingly brief duration of the Spring- all of it apparently occurring during the period of my late confinement and greeted the summer in shorts and aloha shirt.

I explored the bounds of what my body was going to permit. I found I could sit upright for hours at a time. Progress.

My usual mental dyspepsia refuses to rise, since I have the real thing still gnawing at me.

I can’t bring myself to flog any of the usual suspects this morning. Oh, I could, I suppose, but my heart just isn’t in it. The frailties of our public officials are manifest, whatever side of the aisle they happen to be on, the President continues to do whatever it is he believes simulates governing, and Mr. Bernanke has inspired the Japanese Central Bank to start a race to the bottom that could shake Europe and Beijing and Washington before it is done.

In other words, nothing new.  The natural heat is pouring in from the open door- I put up the screen yesterday so I could bask in warmth that was not caused by my malfunctioning central nervous system.

I am not ready yet to get out, and yet I have more than a touch of cabin fever. I can sense the lining of my gut still coming to terms with two soft-cooked eggs. Slow progress is better than none, I suppose.

That is what the President says, anyway, and I guess I will go with that. I wonder if it is time to drag out the seersucker suit and white bucks?

Copyright 2013 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com

Resurrection

There may be something less interesting than one person’s encounter with the course of a bad case of flu. It doesn’t even interest me that much, and TMI about the matter does neither of us any favors.

What does not destroy you, in my experience, anyway, does not necessarily make you stronger. I find it makes you weaker and more suspicious. But I feel resurrection of the Goddess at hand.

She is rising. I sat out late night in the gentle breeze that only last week was raking my skin with claws. I was looking at the iPad’s dim glow with some photos of the big Memphis Blues Gala at the White House.

Given the time differences, it might have been a good opportunity for the pesky NorKos to heave a couple missiles in the air, but they may not understand the criticality of the Delta Blues to the Republic. The President may be prepping a post-White House career as a crooner, since Mick Jagger forced a microphone on the Leader of the Free world, insisting he do a few bars of “Sweet Home Chicago.”

I dunno. It just seemed a little surreal, like when W urged us to get to the malls and start shopping after 9/11. Anyway, afterward, I slept through the night and woke to All Things Considered. There was some breathless discussion about the dimming of the threat of filibuster to the gun control legislation.

I am OK with that, encourage it even. There was a vigorous debate abut this not so long ago- 1968- and though it was a really, really big crisis, a Congress that still had a shred of civility in it came up with this. It has been on the books since passage the year before we landed on the Moon, at the end of a decade when guns were used as political weapons:

Gun Control Act of 1968:

“(d) It shall be unlawful for any person to sell or otherwise dispose of any firearm or ammunition to any person knowing or having reasonable cause to believe that such person – (1) is under indictment for, or has been convicted in any court of, a crime punishable by imprisonment for a term exceeding one year (2) is a fugitive from justice; (3) is an unlawful user of or addicted to any controlled substance (as defined in section 102 of the Controlled Substances Act (21 U.S.C. 802)); (4) has been adjudicated as a mental defective or has been committed to any mental institution; (5) who, being an alien – (A) is illegally or unlawfully in the United States; or (B) except as provided in subsection (y)(2), has been admitted to the United States under a nonimmigrant visa (as that term is defined in section 101(a)(26) of the Immigration and Nationality Act (8 U.S.C. 1101(a)(26))); (6) who (!2) has been discharged from the Armed Forces under dishonorable conditions; (7) who, having been a citizen of the United States, has renounced his citizenship; (8) is subject to a court order that restrains such person from harassing, stalking, or threatening an intimate partner of such person or child of such intimate partner or person, or engaging in other conduct that would place an intimate partner in reasonable fear of bodily injury to the partner or child, except that this paragraph shall only apply to a court order that – (A) was issued after a hearing of which such person received actual notice, and at which such person had the opportunity to participate; and (B)(i) includes a finding that such person represents a credible threat to the physical safety of such intimate partner or child; or (ii) by its terms explicitly prohibits the use, attempted use, or threatened use of physical force against such intimate partner or child that would reasonably be expected to cause bodily injury; or (9) has been convicted in any court of a misdemeanor crime of domestic violence.”

The Vice President addressed this, saying that there were not enough resources to police the provisions of the law as it is, so obviously what we need is more laws, right? That is where things get a little weird, Everything about all these awful crimes was already illegal under existing law. I have never heard of a prosecution of a straw-purchaser in firearms. It may just be a matter of not paying attention, but there are supposed to be heavy penalties.

Smokin’ Joe though has always considered this a sort of gateway to a better world when his wife Jill would just blast a twelve gauge off the porch. Of course, if he bought the shotgun and let her use it without a background check he might get in big trouble.

It is hard to figure- they must have rooms full of earnest 20-somethings who grind out the talking points for the grownups who have no clue what they are talking about. Of course, not having any real knowledge, the talking points generated by the kids are flawed from the beginning.

The Progressives are better than the right on the social media thing, that’s for sure. Plus, they don’t even have to be correct. That is a huge advantage.

I don’t know if I will get back to this or not. Folks have strong opinions about it, and I have neither the health, resources or interest to stay inside the spin machine. There are valid things to talk about, whether based on legal, constitutional, ethical or purely emotional grounds. It is a person’s right right to feel how they do. But feelings don’t trump an objective look at the facts.

But actually they do, I guess. My stars from the media wars include the male Colorado legislator who made the astonishing recommendation that adult females not carry weapons in self-defense, since they could mistake the intent of a violent assault. Instead, he recommended sagely, the woman could always puke or claim to be having their period to fend off rapists. Seriously. But that just had a deranged misogyny that offended.

I would prefer if my Mom was attacked she was the last one standing, blowing the smoke out of the barrel of her Smith and Wesson.

The most revealing confusion was from an elected idiot who currently represents Pat Schroeder’s old district in Denver. Remember? She thinks magazines disintegrate when fired, when to the contrary, they are almost indestructible. She apparently confused “bullets” with “magazines” and both with “clips.”

Which 20-something wrote that talking point?

How can you have a civil discussion with illiterates?

Copyright 2013 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com