Belt and Suspenders

Raven would have been 90 today, and I pay homage to his memory. I think I blanked out his 98th last year- I was just learning how to walk again, and had other things on my mind, I think. So much has changed since he took his leave with Big Mama a year and a half ago, and life does indeed go on.

In fact, it has flat out run over me the last week or so. A week ago I was humping stuff out of the old unit and into the new one. Less than a week ago I got out from under that awful mortgage. Last weekend I was unloading yet more crap into the garage at the farm, and packing to visit the sprawling river town of St. Louis.

Yesterday, I was realizing that the TSA was going to put its clammy hands on me- and maybe my junk- because of the suspenders I was wearing. I should have gone with the Canadian look: belt AND suspenders, just in case, since I could have shed one of the other (though not both) and kept my pants from descending to my ankles in public. Raven would have approved.

Unfortunately it is all or nothing with the TSA folks.

You know how these things spiral out of control. I had planned on driving out to the Gateway City, because I don’t like the agony of modern flying, and have significant issues with the constitutionality of the Transportation Security Agency regarding my junk. I understand the need for enhanced measures to protect the traveling public, but the way this trip played out, there was entirely too much going on to spend two days on the road on either end of the convention in St. Louis, so flying it was.

I was taking almost nothing, a single carry-on bag, but that naturally meant no booze or weapons, and jeeze, what fun is travel without those?

The suspenders are what put it over the top. I was looking for a loopy country-lawyer look at the conference, so the seersucker suit with jaunty clip-on bow tie was the way I was going to approach it. The trousers are held up by bright red suspenders, which feature two tiny brass clips to adjust the length of the braces.

You know that drives them crazy, and I should have realized it, too. I mean, there is a constitutional right to look as ridiculous as I want, part of the pursuing happiness thing, but the TSA asserts a right to fondle my personal parts if I exercise the right. It is a conundrum.

Mostly the Department of Homeland Security and me have a cordial, if somewhat stand-offish, arrangement. I try to stay away from them, and will do just about anything to avoid circumstances where I have to encounter the National Security State and their prying digits. It simply was not going to happen in the Saint Louis International Airport.

I had a choice. I could have stepped into the men’s room and disrobed so I could unbutton the suspenders from the trousers, but that could leave me with a wardrobe malfunction in line with my fellow travelers, and potentially a more humiliating situation than simply having to “assume the position.”

I could respectfully decline to be searched, citing the 4th Amendment, which reads something like:

“The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.”

I am reasonably confident that my suspenders are covered as being “effects,” since they certainly have the effect of keeping my pants up, though I am equally confident that the TSA would peevishly detain me at least long enough result in missing the flight.

I was thinking about that, and the Yemen Terror Threat, which resulted in the deployment of VIPR teams from TSA to Union Station and other rail hubs on the east coast. You may have heard of them, or worse, actually seen them. The TSA Visible Intermodal Prevention and Response Teams were deployed to look for terrorists on AMTRAK trains and platforms.

Don’t get huffy with me- this is a purely bi-partisan violation of our rights. They were set up in the wake of the Madrid train bombings under Mr. Bush, though they are burgeoning under Mr. Obama, growing from dozens to hundreds in number. Maybe you saw that YouTube clips of the Feds searching a four year old in one of their first outings?

This was not at an airport, by the way. The VIPRs showed up at the train station, established a security perimeter and started searching the prospective passengers.

Apparently the intermodal thing is asserted to include “airplanes, ships, trains and highway vehicles,” though there are not enough VIPRs to shut down I-66 at rush hour and make us assume the position.

I have tried to puzzle my way through the appropriate response to these manifestations of the New Security State, and had an exchange with a pal the other day about how to handle a future encounter with VIPRs away from the metal detector at the airport.

We put up with them there- and I just did it again yesterday- in order to get where we are going. I knew I was going to get fondled because I was wearing my suspenders.

I said the hell with it, and let them put their hands on me. I really wanted to get home.

But if the VIPRs are not between me and a plane or train, what are the magic words to use?

“Officer, are you detaining me? And if so, may I see your warrant? If not, I will exercise my constitutional rights and be on my way?”

I am reasonably confident that would make the VIPRs peevish. It certainly is an interesting country these days, wouldn’t you agree?

Copyright 2013 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com
Twitter @jayare303

Earning the Shirt

I am waking in St. Louis, which is strange, but no stranger than the last week or so of morning waking with uncertainty of location, and the continuing news that the Bad Guys are going to try to smack us, somewhere, somehow.

I have notes from the summer of 2001 that are eerily similar to all the word of impending terror attacks. the difference is that then we did not know what these bastards were capable of doing. I suspect a Mumbai-like thing, is in the offing this next time, and I am keeping my head on a swivel, to the extent that the chronic arthritis permits me to move it, and the limited mobility of the bad legs that will not permit me to run away.

Left Coast Guy and I “earned the shirt” last night. It was a classic liberty adventure by two now old sailors. I quite forgot about the threat of terror, and concentrated more directly on street crime, of which there appears to be an abundance- room key access to the lobby, room key access to the elevator, major infrastructure installations all located on the 5th floor, high above the streets where many residents of St. Louis reside without benefit of permanent lodging.

This is a very interesting place. I wandered awkwardly around the downtown for a few hours yesterday in the early afternoon. The Gateway Arch and the Old Courthouse were on the menu, including the space where Dred Scott filed suit to be declared not property, but citizen.

He was denied, and the Union unraveled three years later. The courthouse where the legal saga began is an interesting place.

So there was history of a most unsettling kind, and the kind of gritty urban reality of the midsection of the nation. I belong to a non-exclusive organization called “The Dive Bar T-Shirt Club.” It is sort of fun- new shirts arrive once a month, and the one that last appeared (the subscription just expired) was for a place called “Jimmy and Andy’s Neighborhood Tavern.”

The gray shirt appeared in the pile of crap that slowly has migrated to the farm- I do the laundry down there in protest against the low-water high-tech machines recently installed at Big Pink- and some of the assorted clothing never actually got to the washing machine.

That this shirt should have appeared in the one day I was down in Culpeper is something of a mystery. I looked at it in amazement when it surfaced, and resolved that if, ins’hallah, I actually made it to St. Louis yesterday I would stop by the place and not be a poseur.

I experimented with “working from home” by actually “working from St. Louis,” and it didn’t seem to make much difference- it was a slow August day back in Washington, maybe due to the terror threat. Of course, I am not sure who the terrorists are back there. I am sure you saw Secretary Hagel’s note that imposes an additional 20% reduction on higher headquarters staffs. That is above and beyond the sequestration and furloughs, so God only knows how we will respond to the next assault by the bloodthirsty Sunni extremists.

(The view from the downtown side of the old Courthouse complex.)

Anyway, in the course of limping around the town, I went to the bluff over the mighty Mississippi and marveled at the arch. Then marveled at the old Courthouse, the structure of which, under the Romanesque dome, over the last two centuries. There were plaques to Mr. Mark Twain, and statues to Mr. Dred Scott, and it was a little overwhelming.

(Mr. and Mrs. Dred Scott. The sculpture is on the river façade of the old courthouse. Photo Socotra).

Taken with the general disintegration of the downtown and the broad swath of red brick semi-abandoned industrial buildings that surround the river and the downtown, reminded me a lot of Detroit.

So, the whole living-in-hotel thing was tepidly familiar- setting up the computer, communicating with folks virtually. The people here are nice, if very large, and the population is about equally divided between black and white, and like I said- nice, if not badgering for handouts or some scam or another over in the public spaces. There is a free dinner and drinks event each afternoon- mildly heated hot dogs, baked potatoes, and some crap I would not eat on a bet but did anyway, and then Guy arrived from the Left Coast. We talked about the conference we are supposed to attend today, and then I asked him if he was willing to help me Earn the Shirt.

We caught up in the cab to the West End, where J&A’s is located, and it was exactly as advertised. It is a dive. Storefront style, inconspicuous. The Cabby had a hard time finding it. J&A’s has survived a century of operation because it stayed off the radar.

I was smoking a cigarette on the sidewalk in front when Ron the bartender waved and said “It’s OK, you can smoke in here.”

Ron had a buzz going himself, and was drinking shots of Jaegermeister behind the bar. Left Coast Guy and I decided on vodka, and he got a decent burger with some sort of dill infused cheese and the rings- looked good. The ashtrays were not clean. The bums that came in were grifters, but left peacefully.

Ron gave us a verbal tour of the place- the cigar store front to the speakeasy was long gone, as was the Police Station next door that had protected the place against the Volstead Act, and it had, in it’s time, been a polling station as well. The steel line that was used to hang the curtain between the booze and the voting booth was still there.

The juke box is from the future and doesn’t fit. The flat screen TVs are a welcome update. The graffiti in the men’s room was great- like a trip to ancient Pompeii.

Everyone had a mild and pleasant buzz. We stayed for four or five drinks, until the cabby we had contracted with swung by to pick us up and deposit us back at the hotel. Key access to front door. Key access to the elevator.

Urban America. We earned the shirt.

Copyright 2013 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com

A Little (Fellow) Traveling Music, Part 317

I am thumbing my nose at al Qaida on the Arabian Peninsula today, and defying their plans to interrupt my plans.

Accordingly trusting my posterior to the tender ministrations of the TSA and a United Airlines regional subcontractor. I am confident in the multi-layered security at Dulles will preclude any interference with my travel plans. All I have to do is get there, and I think I may just drive myself.

I had planned on driving the whole way, but Jiggs walked into my new poolside unit, demanding fresh-brewed Dazbog Coffee, and told me candidly I was insane. I had to agree with him, since the Verizon FiOS installer was perched on my footstool routing fiber-optic cable across the ceiling.

I got through the chaos without major travail, though Jiggs was highly critical of the Pond Hill Farms single clover honey sweetner in my Dazbog.

“I thought you were in the friggin’ Navy,” he growled. He is an Academy grad, you know, and we enjoy the service banter.

By the time I confirmed that the internet actually worked in the new unit, it was time to get in the pool and then get on down the road to the farm to leave a key for Don-the-Builder, check the Mouse Occupy Movement in the mailbox, and download the Panzer of the last of the crap.

On the way, I found something else that provided me a unifying field theory to recent history. No surprises, just a neat way that the slowly revealed history of the Soviet penetration of FDR’s New Deal is laid out in a remarkable new way.

http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Peace/2013/08/03/Breaking-History-Part-1

The link above is to something that I had been thinking for several years in a more inchoate manner. I was off on a tear awhile back about the topic of Soviet penetration of the United States Government in the 1930s, 40s, and 50s, which was a cause celeb amongst our Progressive brethren during the decades of contempt for the Red Scare, Tail Gunner Joe and the pathetic defense of traitor Alger Hiss and his ilk.

(Noted fellow traveler, senior government official and Soviet Agent, Mr. Alger Hiss. Shifty eyes, don’t you think?)

I recommend the marvelous memoir of Whittaker Chambers: “Witness” as a relevant document of the period. He was a committed Commie for the first part of his life, and his revelations were so extraordinary that right-thinking people spent the rest of their lives trying to bury the evidence of treason at the highest levels of the American Republic.

Alger Hiss was not alone. Harry Hopkins in the White House and Harry Dexter White at Treasury were equally committed agents of the Soviet Union, though I am sure they would have sniffed primly and explained they were just bringing about the necessary reforms and the fact that they happened to agree with Uncle Joe Stalin was just coincidence.

This new appreciation of history brings things into a focus that I had not considered. The debacle at Pearl is part and parcel of a Soviet influence operations campaign to apportion American war aid to the red Army, and to permit MacArthur and his 151,000 troops to be starved into submission at the hands of the Japanese.

That FDR’s closest advisor on foreign policy was a committed Red is no surprise. I just had not thought it all the way through. I have an associate who is researching the nature of clear and unambiguous warning provided by the Brits and Dutch on Japanese intentions to attack Pearl.

It was Alger Hiss at State who ran Far East policy in the years of worsening relations, remember, and Harry Hopkins at FDR’s elbow for the end-game of peace in the Pacific. Despite the marvelous work in breaking the Japanese naval codes at Station HYPO in Pearl Harbor, both our allies were ahead of us in terms of exploitation.

Imagine my pal’s astonishment that the de-classified records of the British Empire Desk from the Office of Naval Intelligence from the 1930s and 40s are missing from the National Archives in their entirety.

I was not surprised. Of course the records are missing. The people whose reputations needed to be saved were in a direct position to do whatever they wanted to the historical record. One of them was the notorious and hard-headed Admiral Richmond Kelly Freaking Turner, whose erroneous world view contributed to the failure to prepare properly for the Japanese surprise attack, which should not have been.

The others were the ones working actively for Uncle Joe Stalin. I understand True Believers and Fellow Travelers- there is a lot of that going around these days, but Admiral Kimmel and General Short really were small fries in the game to pin the disaster on anyone except those actually responsible.

The cover up is that the USG writ large was an active dupe of Stalin, and we sacrificed tens of thousands of American and Filippino troops on the alter of the Red Army.

No reference to the present, after all, with the failure of the Administration to grasp the nature of our opponents in militant Islam. They can’t even begin to say the term. Hence, I can understand the over-reaction on the part of new National Security Advisor Susan Rice in shutting down 21 embassies and consulates across the Middle East.

This is her first real crisis in the new job, and having been burned so badly over Benghazi, I certainly understand her panic in dealing with things she only vaguely understands. Pesky enemies are just not cooperating with the agreed narrative that they are in retreat and disarray.

Instead, the Taliban is resurgent in a war we are walking away from, hundreds of detained Jihadis are being jail-broken out of prison in Iraq and across the lands of conflict, and things appear to be deteriorating throughout the entire region of the Arab Spring. If there was a more inept crew handling foreign policy…well, whatever. I am sure they know best.

That put me on a tear this morning, since I consider the influence of the Soviets in the USG during FDR’s long reign to be one of the great unsolved- or at least unexploited- aspects of the history of the war.

Before I got too far down that road, a thoughtful pal wrote back to remind me of inconvenient facts and the tyranny of distance:

“Soviet agents or no Soviet agents, Lend-Lease or no Lend-Lease, there was simply no way to get supplies or reinforcements to MacArthur in the Philippines. The Japanese controlled the sea and the air. And even if we could have gotten aid to him, chances are they just would have inflated the number captured in the end. The British were able to send reinforcements to Singapore via the Indian Ocean. They arrived just in time for the big surrender.”

Which is all true, of course, and the commitment to Russia First actually has a certain sense to it- with the Soviets out of the war, we would have faced the brunt of the German hoards only in the west, and that may have been as catastrophic as the War to End Wars.

So, I take the point. But narrow self-interest would have argued for a direct response to the Japanese. That it did not is interesting, and coincidently, our relations with the Empire of the Sun were managed by known Soviet agents.

How would history have been different if the traitors had been unmasked decades earlier?

I wish my old pal Mac Showers was around to ask. Something to think about in seat 3D on the airplane this morning. Two hours and five minutes airborne, they say. We will see how that goes.

More from the Gateway Arch, the largest single croquette wicket ever constructed.

Copyright 2013 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com
Twitter @jayare303

MC

(The new flag of the Culpeper Minutemen hangs limply below the National Ensign near the Big Ass Rock in the gravel circular drive at Refuge Farm. Photo Socotra.)

I rose this morning at the farm, curiously refreshed, and on the brink of transitioning from One Thing to Another Thing. The move is done, or will be once the Panzer is unloaded and the crap sorted this sunny and quite delightful morning.

It was a marvelous drive down in spritzing rain, but it is always sunny in Culpeper when it is not pouring rain. I stopped at Croftburn Farms Market on the way in to get local veggies, but I had miscalculated and was after official closing. I tried the door when I saw that there was a light on in the back, and sure enough, the pert young lady who emerged told me she had forgotten to lock the door and all sorts of riff-raff were just walking in.

Despite being riff-raff, Angie treated me well, opening up the register and cutting me a piece of their home-made pepperoni and a fresh locally grown salad pepper.

I apologized for the inconvenience, but was thankful that dinner was assured. People are nicer in the country. I doubt if I would have gotten the same reception at the Giant over on Lee Highway in Arlington.

I put thoughts of cooking out of my mind when I swerved across the farm lane to put the driver’s side door up to the mailbox. I peered in before grabbing the mail, and was pleased I did.

Mouse is back in the Mailbox, so all’s right with his world, at least up until the moment I dropped the front side of his cozy nest, exposing him to the elements.

We blinked at one another solemnly. “I am thinking about stopping the mail altogether,” I said. “There is nothing worthwhile that comes to me here except advertising, and based on my recent reduction in circumstance, I am afraid I cannot continue to subsidize your lifestyle.”

Mouse said nothing whatsoever in response, obviously taking his presence as an entitlement. I am sure he was thinking of income inequity- him having so little and me so much- and the fact that something should be done about it. From my perspective, I do not dislike rodents, per se, since we have so many in Congress. Still, I find this system, by which the Occupier is fed with fresh nesting materials by the federal government on a near daily basis, is another example of the progressive state run amok at my personal expense.

I decided to defer action until the morrow, and gave Mouse the opportunity to Do the Right Thing and decamp.

The events of the week continued to roll over me as I mixed a cocktail and set up shop on the back deck. I have not had much time to think about anything else except where the bits of my life fit in a new series of boxes. Once the Panzer is unloaded, I am tempted to fill in the form as “MC,” or Mission Complete. Now the only challenge is getting to the airport for an eight o’clock flight tomorrow morning.

I think the last time I was in St. Louis was a lifetime ago- the regional headquarters of the McGraw-Hill book company was around there, someplace, and my interview went well enough to get hired on as what they called a “College Traveler.”

It sounded better than it was, though it was accurate enough in practice. I got paid to drive around Detroit, and as far north as Flint and south to Toledo. It was a pretty cool job for the first grown-up one, and the first in which I “worked from home,” a truly revolutionary concept at the time, but one that has now come around again, at the end of this phase of my working life.

It is more a question of what to work at, I think, but my mind is stuck on sensory overlead at the moment, and will defer action until my eyes uncross.

St. Louis. Aside from that long-ago job interview, I think I saw my first transvestite there- or at least the first one who was unconvincing enough to tell- teetering down the street on new high heels outside my hotel.

So, I am prepared for about anything as I attend an exciting government-sponsored conference on how to maximize my opportunities as a disabled Veteran.

Anyway, the Panzer-load of crap is calling out for my attention, and so is the Mouse’s dwelling in the mailbox. I evicted him for nearly three weeks last time- let’s see how determined we both are this time.

Copyright 2013 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com
Twitter @jayare303

Full Operational Capability

Forgive me, gentle readers. I have been remiss in contacting you the last few days. I have been quite distracted the last few days.

Reggie, his twin sister Regina, Abdul and whatever that Romanian’s name was helped me out, big time, in relocating from Tunnel Eight to the new digs.

I made twenty-five or more trips between the two units with the Old Lady’s cart, hauling stuff that Regina had not wrapped and packed within an inch of its life, and the husky young men from the District, Sierra Leone and some coastal village in the former East Bloc hauled the heavy crap that I cannot manage. By the time Santosh from Verizon left early this afternoon, my life had been transformed.

I cannot fail to mention Grant, the Realtor, nor the able assistance of Jeff-the-Closer at the title company to get me out from under that gawd-awful sea anchor of a mortgage, and cut my losses on the property I purchased at the very tip-top of the housing bubble, afraid that I would never be able to afford my own home again.

So, as of yesterday about noon, I was a renter again, in a smaller place. I have a load of crap to take to Refuge Farm, and a requirement to be in St. Louis on Monday, but hell, I am moved and I have Internet connectivity. Life is good.

Check it out:

The view from the dining room. The automatic garage doors made a sound like growling beasts. It was a little disconcerting until I figured out what it was.

It is much smaller than Tunnel Eight, but it seems larger with less crap in it.

FMOC. Full Operational Capability.

Copyright 2013 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com
Twittter @jayare303