Derecho Lite

There is a derecho of sorts sweeping through the world, knocking the old order aside and leaving some astonishing wreckage in its wake. As part of that, I wanted to make a couple corrections. An alert reader tried the Bloody Mary recipe from 02 January of this year. I don’t know why it took that long for him to get around to it- but I inadvertently had a typo (Imagine, a typo in The Daily!) that specified “2 oz. Tobasco.”

This is just wrong. He was not injured, at least not critically, but I strongly urge you to change that to “two teaspoons.” This is offered as a public service to prevent injury due to chemical weapons.

The other one was of the photo that accompanied the recent story about the collapse of the Iraqi Army against the insurgent Loony Sunni forces of ISIS. As it turns out, it was not the dirtbag terrorist I was talking about. It was some other dirtbag terrorist. Sorry. Truth and integrity are important here.

Anyway, we had a minor derecho event last night. It was not as spectacular as the line of wind and rain that smacked us in June of 2012. I was still confined to bed then after the accident, and was disoriented when I rose with the power out. I was lucky the blast of wind did not rip the door off the hinges- that happened shortly after I bought the old unit and not having a door is just damned inconvenient.

The Big Derecho two years ago killed 22 people and left millions without power, so thank heavens for small things. Much smaller things.

Willow had been fun- The Second Greatest Fighter AI in the world (SGFAI) stopped by and the Master Chief and his Trivial Pursuit Partner Deb showed up to join Old Jim and New Steve and Jerry the Barrister at the apex of the Amen corner. It was a fun evening after a long hot day, and you can imagine that we talked about the astonishing intrusion of the US Patent and Trademark Office into our local sporting franchise.

I think the name probably is a slur, and the five people who take it as an offense, and went to the trouble to file suit are just making everyone say it a lot. Old Jim cursed and said he could think of a new name that was much more offensive than that, and he said it. I think maybe we got more attention than usual.

Barrister Jerry lives out by Leesburg someplace, so he normally gets something to eat when he visits. This evening he enjoyed the pork tenderloin, which looked spectacular:

SGFAI’s got the Fish and Chips, and I confess my mouth started to water uncontrollably:

The shrimp, haddock and calamari have a sort of tempura thing happening and I adore the house-made tartar sauce. I think they base it on Duke’s mayo, which is just a superb way to start.

I have been fooling around with sauces. A speedy faux tartar sauce I throw together for my fish-sticks starts with a big dollop of Dukes, sweet relish and finely diced Vadalia onions to do some texture with a sprinkle of fresh dill. The other is a not-bad fresh Thousand Island dressing with basically the same thing, less the onions and substitute catsup to taste. There is nothing better on a Rueben, or a spoonful on the side of a nice garden salad.

I got back to Big Pink with enough time to take an exercise-free plunge- I was proud of myself, since I had actually done the work-out earlier. The cute little gal from upstairs had Bart firmly in her sights- he is the tall, athletic Pole with the Clark Kent glasses, chisled abs and mop of tousled brown hair. Kamil is the stockier guard who splits duty here- another guard from a busier pool was hanging out, waiting for closing time.

We all splashed for a while and then Eileen and I cleared the pool gate to let the young men go on about their evening.

I took the iPad and half a nightcap back to bed after trying to watch the second episode of this season’s Longmire- an endearing Western series with solid characters, even if I can’t really follow the plot that late in the evening what with trying to clear the office and personal email, cook something simple in the skillet and go about my ADD-influenced affairs.

This morning I rose to discover that 7,000 Dominion Power consumers in Alexandria and another few thousand Pepco consumers were out. Nature is powerful- the illusion that mankind can do much to influence her willful ways strikes me as being sort of out of touch.

Of course, there is a lot of that going around these days. But I am tired of talking about it.

Oh, alert reader MS contributed something that he deems works quite nicely, and it is going to wind up in the “Cloak and Dagger Cookbook” as soon as I take it for a test rive. With sweet corn on the verge of showing up in the Saturday Culpeper farmer’s market, I thought you might be interested:

Ingredients:

For the Dressing:

1 small clove garlic

Pinch salt, plus 2 teaspoons

Juice 1 1/2 limes (about 3 tablespoons)

2 teaspoons kosher salt

1/4 teaspoon chili powder

1/4 cup extra-virgin olive oil

For the Salad:

1 cup fresh corn kernels (from about 2 ears)

1 orange bell pepper, diced

1/2 small red onion, finely chopped (about 1/4 cup)

1 tablespoon extra-virgin olive oil

1 (15-ounce) can black beans, drained and rinsed

Kosher salt

Freshly ground black pepper

1 cup cherry tomatoes, halved

1 small hass avocado, halved, seeded and diced

1/4 cup chopped fresh cilantro, leaves and stems

Directions:

Make the dressing: Smash the garlic clove, sprinkle with a pinch of the salt, and, with the flat side of a large knife, mash and smear the mixture to a coarse paste. Whisk the garlic paste, lime juice, salt and chili powder together in a bowl. Gradually whisk in the olive oil, starting with a few drops and then adding the rest in a steady stream.

For the salad: Cook the corn, bell pepper, and onions in the olive oil until beginning to brown over medium-high heat in a skillet. Toss in the black beans and cook until warm. Add the dressing and toss to coat evenly. Adjust seasoning with salt and pepper. Remove from the heat and gently fold in the tomatoes, avocado, and cilantro. Serve.

Recipe copyright (c) 2004 Television Food Network, G.P., All Rights Reserved.

Daily Fulminations copyright 2014 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com
Twitter: @jayare303

See You in New York

(Noted Islamist Abu Bakr al Baghdadi in a screen capture from ya Libnan.)

This is about as bad as it gets. A pal with a nose for how things are going- he was a senior intelligence officer in the Emirates a while back and understands the regional alignment- is conceding what we knew as Iraq to the dustbin of colonial history. I remember sitting with him in the humid heat one evening, listening to the call to prayers and sipping a fine Scotch and puffing on a real Cuban cigar. He is a realist.

This is very bad, and we are apparently not going to do a damned thing about it. There are going to be implications for the global commons, and I am going to start thinking about what that means right here.

It seems like that we will do nothing about all this- no one has the will to again commit troops to the fray, and I am not going to argue for that. There will be consequences from this abandonment, though, and we may as well start getting ready for it.

Since we cannot seem to acknowledge who we are at war with- or better and more accurately said, who is at war with us- I doubt seriously that we will be able to mount any effective challenge to the new Caliphate.

I watched one of the execution videos yesterday- everyone knows what is about to happen- why doesn’t anyone do something? If you are to die anyway, why don’t you do something?

Of course we are doing the same thing here. I find the domestic efforts of CAIR to be quite effective at playing to the media- I look on with some admiration for how they are pulling the strings. Taken with the apparent sympathy for the Muslim Brotherhood on the part of Foggy Bottom, and the bizarre support to these murderous thugs provided by our CIA via the Libyan arms trove, I just have no way to believe that this is going to get better any time soon.

I also think I am going to get out of this high profile target area. Remember what the ISIS war commander Abu Bakr al Baghdadi said when we released him from detention three years ago?

“See you in New York.”

Copyright 2014 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com
Twitter: @jayare303

Them

I could not sleep in Arlington, a dramatic counterpoint to oversleeping yesterday at the farm.

I came back up around mid-day to get a decent swim and huddle with some former co-workers about the future at Willow. Old Jim was there, enjoying a tuna slider with hot sauce and the welcome warmth of the day. We solved no world problems, though we did talk about some of them.

I put something modest in the skillet when I got back from the bar and went for a short bonus dip with Bart, the taller of the lean Polish lifeguards of this summer. The upward spike of the temperature after the weekend made the cool water cross the threshold from “freaking cold” to “refreshing.” With all that is going on, it seemed like the right thing to do.

I ate over the skillet pensively in the kitchen. I am deeply troubled, as you might imagine, with the situation overseas and domestically. Hunger eliminated, I padded back to the bedroom to read “The Weed Agency,” a funny but depressing look at a not-so-fictional Federal agency devoted to combatting invasive (and sometimes imaginary) plant species, and the saga of its ever expanding budget over the decades. It is by a fellow named James Geraghty who also has spent too much time in this town.

Safely reclined, my eyes closed and I was down early, long before the scheduled time for the broadcast of “24,” which I am attempting to follow and almost succeeding.

I woke at 0230 and couldn’t get back to a decent REM rest. I would have read, but despite the solidity of The Weed Agency, it was too depressing an account to embrace at that hour. I had raced through the four “Monster International” books and am restless. The supernatural series is akin to the classic sci-fi of my youth- like “Them,” (giant nuclear ants) or “The Creature from Another World” (arctic invaded by blood-sucking creatures) which critics since have labeled as the escapist answer to the Red Scare of the day, which we now know to have been completely true.

With my eyes hopelessly wide in the darkness, I gave up and rose. I went to the living room and turned on Amazon Prime, and selected the episode which I had the foresight to know would have rendered me asleep in my chair in an instant and querulous in a still-lit room at about the same time that I returned to it.

Here is what Hollywood is trying to sell us at the moment, in the context of the writers trying to explain our reality through fantasy: since we cannot tell the truth about much any more, the story line has inverted just about everything. There are a few characters that might be from the Middle East. They are all portrayed in a positive or at least ambivalent light. The terrorists- who control a fleet of deadly American drones- are relentlessly Anglo-Saxon. They are opposed be the equally relentless Jack Bauer, and the American President, an Irish American with early onset dementia.

The terrorists are well dressed and carefully groomed. They are lead by an upper crust British woman, who lives in a stately house in the lush green fields adjacent to London.

Spoiler alert: The FBI station chief, a Hispanic American, is a traitor. The protagonist, a Canadian actor, is torn about his tough moral choices as an American agent.

This marked a milestone for Jack Bauer: the 200th episode of rip-snorting improbable action. I expect it to wrap up next week or the week after. I further expect the minor nobility will be expunged and the American drone threat (this is sort of complicated) will be eliminated.

I thought about all that I was expected to believe after I turned off the flat-screen and looked around. Still no sign of dawn. I shrugged. This is nothing as amazing as some of the things we are supposed to believe these days.

Plus, in “24” we actually know who “Them” are.

Copyright 2014 Vic Socotra

www.vicsocotra.com

Twitter: @jayare303

A Week in the 90s

Ah, summer is bearing down upon us- and it will be welcome. They say it will be a week in the 90s- enough to make the coolness still resident in the pool bearable. An hour in the water left me shivering on Saturday, and a quicker swim on Sunday still left me with depressed core body temperature. Some warmth would be a relief.

I ambled on down to the farm in the Panzer after the immersion to cut the lawn and contemplate my navel, and the opportunity was rewarding. I had nearly a month and a half of the Clarion Bugle to go through. I had stacked them up in rough chronological order on the coffee table in the Great Room, mixed a refreshing adult beverage and settled in to read about small town life. I was ready for it after the astonishing developments overseas.

Things were so desperate that Secretary of State John Kerry flew to London to read a poem by Maya Angelou. I am being too harsh, of course. The Conference on ending sexual violence in warfare was long scheduled and worthy in cause, even if a bit incongruous considering the barbaric nature of the behavior of ISIS fighters as they advanced on Baghdad.

Many associates suggested that escape from the Beltway was the only rational response to events, and I agreed. But my eyes opened wide as I went through the pages of the local newspaper. Reading the paper takes me back to another time- maybe the Traverse City Record Eagle circa 1990, a time that evokes the coming summer swelter.

It was small town news- the paper is mostly boosterism for the local business community and a smattering of original reporting. The annual Fireman’s Parade got good ink- an impressive event on May 29th.

The campaign for the Republican Congressional primary- the one that dumped Congressman Eric Cantor was covered in detail- we are in what was his district, after all. It was interesting to read the back-story of the big upset as it was happening- and the fact that Professor Brat was present and Mr. Cantor was not.

The coverage of the mayoral race was equally fascinating. Apparently something called “forensic transcripts” of the incumbent’s phone calls had been in depositions regarding litigation over the firing of the former city manager. Someone leaked them in the weeks before the election, and the outcome of reading the actual blunt and uncensored words of a working politician were enough to scuttle his campaign.

There was another bombshell. A local police sergeant had been suspended during the whole flap over the departure of the same city manager, and was accused of 39 violations of departmental policy.

I knew that a hearing had been held, and only some minor infractions were justified. He had been reinstated in the rank of Captain. I saw on the front page of the May 15 issue of the paper that he was prominently photographed in uniform passing out entrees at the Glory Days Grill at the “Tip a Cop” event supporting the Special Olympics. It was a nice story about something that wouldn’t happen in the urban sprawl up north.

Imagine my surprise when I looked at last week’s edition of the paper. The same police officer is suing the Clarion-Bugle, the holding company that owns it, the editor and the reporter who covered the alleged offenses for defamation.

The claim is for a cool million against the paper, and a separate $350,000 against the reporter and the editor.

I would like to know a lot more about what happened to cause the city manager to get fired. There was word at the time of some report or another she was going to issue that had some allegations of something or other.

Funny about all politics being local. I am going to pay much more attention to the newspaper, and naturally I will report important events in the County.

I am not going to use any names, nor even mention what town I live near, though. Things are smaller in the country, through they certainly appear to be much more personal than they are back in Washington, where all this is just some sort of sport.

Copyright 2014 Vic Socotra

www.vicsocotra.com

Twitter: @jayare303

Made of Brie

This is sort of crazy. It is Father’s Day, of course, and I looked around for the cell phone and realized we interred Raven’s ashes almost two years ago. Still, there is that inclination to grab the phone and do something, check off that box in the phantom “to do” list.

Oh well.

So, with Iraq in flames and reports of mass killings by the Sunni insurgents who have occupied the north, it is gratifying that our Government is behaving with the kind of resolution that we expect. With reports that militants had seized the second largest city in Iraq and seized a half a billion dollars in currency from the central bank, helped themselves to a vast store of US-supplied weapons, and raised the level of hysteria in Baghdad.

The Chief executive visited the village of Cannon Ball, North Dakota, an isolated wide-spot in the highway on the Standing Rock Sioux Tribal Nation. It is the President’s first visit to a Rez in his two terms in office, so I know this was high up on the priority list. There had to be some official business to over the costs of using Air Force One (and Marine One for local travel in California) for the weekend.

There is a certain eerie consistency to all this. Benghazi did not cause Mr. Obama defer his campaign fund-raising trip to Las Vegas the day after the attack, after all, nor did it cause him to visit the White House Situation Room that night while the attacks were actually in progress to find out what was up.

We still don’t know- nor may ever- what the reaction was on the part of the White House senior staff to the fact that the arms transfer facility run by the CIA had been overrun, and two Agency staff were killed defending it, with ten others wounded. Nor of Ambassador Chris Steven’s death and that of information officer Sean Smith, who were killed at the Mission itself. National Security Advisor Tom Donilon might have been unaware that Langley was working with MI-6, The Turks, the Saudis and the Qaratis to funnel weapons to the Syrian jihadis through southern Turkey.

I can understand it is hard to pay attention to all the stuff that a President might be held accountable for, but as it turned out, he wasn’t, so no big deal.

Secretary Clinton is a bit different. I heard her talking about her book on Friday, when the President was en route the Rez. She said the Accountability Review said the responsibility was hers, of course, but the actual blame was on some people several layers below her in the chain of command.

According to reporter Sy Hersh, knowledgeable sources told him that “The consulate’s only mission was to provide cover for the moving of arms. It had no real political role.”

So there we are. According to Hersh’s sources, a classified annex to the official report indicates an agreement to handle the details of the transfer operation was inked with Turkish Prime Minister Erdogan in early 2012.

My vague understanding of foreign relations is that this sort of stuff is handled by the State Department, which suggests to me that Secretary Clinton’s testimony to the Senate and House Foreign Relations Committees in January of last year might be construed as perjury.

It is possible it is a matter of nuance. When specifically asked by Sen. Rand Paul about the arms transfer, she acted surprised. “Turkey?” she said. “I’ll have to take that for the record.”

I suppose it is possible she didn’t know about the arms transfer deal her Department worked out and had the President sanction. If so, one might wonder who actually was the Secretary of State at that time.

Anyway, as Rev. Jeremiah Wright might say, the “pigeons came home to roost” as the Sunni ISIS rebels swept over the Syrian border carrying those same weapons and started rolling toward Baghdad, which is now being defended, in part, by the Iranian al Quds Force. Can you imagine?

The President is on top of this one, of course. The most advanced communications in the world support Air Force One on the western swing that occupies the long Father’s Day weekend. The First Couple is staying with Ambassador to Spain James Costos and designer Michael Smith on the President’s third visit to The Valley this year. It is Michelle’s first trip, and her first vacation in nearly three weeks.

Mr. Obama attended a Democratic fundraiser at a private residence in Orange County’s Laguna Beach Saturday morning, and later spoke eloquently at UC Irvine’s graduation ceremony at Angel Stadium in Anaheim. He talked about Global Warming.

No kidding. I can’t make this stuff up. Global Warming. He referred to people who disagree with the importance of the issue as believing the moon is made of cheese. I wonder: could it be brie?

Later, returning to Rancho Mirage by helicopter and motorcade, he got around the plush Sunnylands golf course at the former Annenberg estate in three hours and forty minutes. Military aides were positioned to get the word to him immediately if anything important came up.

As a taxpayer, would it be too much to ask that the President at least look interested?

Copyright 2014 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com
Twitter: @jayare303

Gluten Free Friday

I have achieved a new summit: I have written not one but three stories I can’t do anything with this morning. I will have to put them aside. At this rate, I will still be at the keyboard late this afternoon and miss crucial pool time.

Anyway, the traumatic news of yesterday morning didn’t sit well on top of the troubling news from Iraq. If you haven’t run into the unifying field theory for why all this is happening, you might want to peruse Seymour Hersh’s “Red Lines and Rat Lines.” I have not always found his reporting to be salubrious, but I have always respected his integrity and the accuracy of his sources.

http://www.lrb.co.uk/v36/n08/seymour-m-hersh/the-red-line-and-the-rat-line

Between that and the anguished situation with my former colleagues I was dyspeptic enough that dramatic action seemed to be required. I called up Old Jim and asked if he could re-arrange his schedule and accommodate a late lunch at Willow. He allowed as how he could manage that, once the fierce dark clouds did what they promised to do, and we found ourselves presently at the Amen Corner long before the usual time.

It was interesting to watch the place transition from buttoned-down lunch-time to the slack period of a Friday afternoon. Some late diners lingered over plates of the Lunch Counter specials- Friday’s special- last time for this cycle is the mega-tasty short rib Steak and Cheese on Kate Jansen’s delicious home-baked roll.

It was too late for that, and Jim opted for a Budweiser and I for a crisp sauvignon blanc. Dante was handling the afternoon trade and asked if we wanted one check or two, something that had never been asked in the seven years we have been hanging out at the place. Jim gave a curt “no,” and then the conversation drifted over to the morning set-up sous chef, who was sitting next to Jim. His birthday it was, and having come off shift, he was celebrating in earnest and way ahead of us.

He is living with his girlfriend’s uncle at the moment, hoping to save up enough money to marry the mother of his daughter and move up in the world. It was an interesting (though mostly one-sided) ramble through the world of a hard-working 24 year old, and a litany of challenges that I had not been forced to consider for several decades.

At some point Dante and Marc helped him on to his next destination, which was on the verge of being face down at the bar, and things returned to a more sedate and measured discussion. Both Tracy and Kate stopped by to chat, since things were slow at three, and we had to comment on the gluten-free millet bread we sampled Thursday night.

“We are working on the bread, and we might be getting close,” said Tracy. “It is complex. Our loaves have as many as 35 ingredients.”

“That’s amazing,” I said. “The slices we ate last night were rich and nutty and absolutely delicious.”

“Yeah, and without a damn thing on it. I would definitely buy some if you sold it at the bakery counter back there.”
“The problem we are having now is the preservative aspect. We don’t want to add that awful stuff some people put in their bread- like ammonium sulfate or L-cysteine to keep it fresh.”
“Holy smokes,” I said. “I thought gluten-free was supposed to be healthy.”

“Gosh, no!” said Tracy firmly and frowned. “The majority of flours and starches used to make conventionally-sold gluten-free bread are incredibly high in glycemic properties.”

“You are kidding,” said Jim. “That is poison if you have a tendency for Type-2 diabetes.”

“Absolutely,” said Tracy, crossing her arms over her white chef’s jacket. “Turn over a bag of gluten free bread at Trader Joe’s and see what the label says. Rice, even the brown stuff, potato flour and tapioca. Sometimes they contain ‘industrial’ type binders to make it stick together- like xanthan gum.”

“Ick,” I said, taking a sip of wine. “That doesn’t sound very appealing.”

“You have that. We are working to have a healthy, preservative and gluten free mixture, but that means our loaves have more than two dozen separate ingredients to get the texture we want and still have it stay moist for a few days. That is what we are working on today. It’s an oat loaf.”

“I would like to buy a loaf- how much would it cost?”

Tracy pursed her brow, calculated. “That is really the problem. We don’t know. We can do the cost of ingredients, but there are sunk costs in the kitchen and such that we would have to back into the pricing. Say, six bucks for a small loaf and twelve for a large one.”

“That is a lot of money,” I said, trying to think what the last loaf of artisan bread I purchased at the Harris Tweeter. “But I quit carbs and would only buy it for a blue moon event like a really cool grilled cheese sandwich.”

“That is what we are trying for, and to get the price down. This is all experimental cooking at this point. She sighed. It is funny- I need someone to handle all the back-office stuff like payroll and taxes and permits. We are going through that with the new location we are thinking about.”

“What? That is spectacular news!” I said. “A Willow 2? That is huge!”

“Nothing for sure. Brian is looking at some options, maybe in Rossyln. That would give us some leverage when the lease on this place comes up again.”

“You can’t move,” I declared. “This is an institution.”

“The Fish and Wildlife Service is leaving their headquarters across the street at the end of the month. So things do change. Sometimes I feel like this is an institution I feel like I am committed in sometimes.”

“You need someone to handle the business end,” said Jim. “That would free you up to do what you love, and you sure have the passion for it.”

She smiled and said if we were nice and didn’t scare the other patrons she might send out a slice of the gluten-free Oat loaf.”

Jim and I went back to talking about days past, making a concerted effort to stay away from the present, where not that much seems funny. My favorite was his story about the dwarfs- little people, I mean. It was a hysterical tale of a friend who had a phobia about them. Stark fear. So, this one night in Northhampton there’s a traveling circus in town and he and a buddy hired one of the little people to walk into the bar where the phobic was drinking quietly and tug on the hem to his coat and sing him “happy birthday.”

“You know, in that kinda high-pitched voice like the Munchkins?”

I nodded. “I always liked Munchkins, but those guys from the Lollypop League in the Wizard of Oz looked like hard cases.”

“Well, the dwarf finished the song and my pal panicked, fainted and fell off his stool. He broke his leg, and we had to take him to the hospital.”

“Serves him right, I guess,” I said, rubbing the long scar on my thigh where I had done about the same thing without benefit of a single little person.”

At that point Dante slid a plate in front of us with two slices of the oat bread, still warm from the oven. Jim quickly reached for one and tore off a hunk, popping it in his mouth. He smiled. “That is tasty.”

I asked Dante if Willow could spare some fresh creamery butter. I f I was going to eat carbs, I wanted to go all the way.

“Pussy. You ought to take it straight.” In the time it took for the little metal bowls with the whipped unsalted butter to arrive he was starting on the second slice. I loaded up a piece with the butter and tasted it. The lightness of the whip melded marvelously with the nutty rich flavor of the oat loaf. Texture was superb, the consistency moist without being flaccid. “That is fantastic!”

Kate Jansen stopped by as the place was starting to fill up with people eager to start the weekend. We talked bread strategy for a while as the level of chatter increased. The sun had come out and flooded through the window adjacent to the Corner. Life was looking up, and I forgot about all the stuff that had got me spooled up in the morning.

I decided to go home and take a nice long swim. I was paying the check when something else happened. Tracy stopped by and gave me the end of the oat bread.

“That was enough for our experiment,” she said. “Why don’t you make a nice grilled sandwich when you get home and see what you think.”

I smiled broadly. “Tracy O’Grady,” I said. “You are the greatest.” I turned and reached out to shake Jim’s hand. “And as for you, keep the little people away from me. I can’t afford to fall again!”

“Happy Birthday,” he said, laughing.

“That is so fifteen minutes ago,” I said, and actually whistled as I walked into the sunlight to see if I could find the car.

Copyright 2014 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com
Twitter: @jayare303

Friday the 13th

I can’t quite grapple with this morning. I am disturbed enough about the events in Iraq that I am having flashbacks to the Ford Administration’s sad end, and then the disaster that was Jimmy Carter.

Some of this current nonsense is directly attributable to a painfully incorrect view of what was happening in Iran, and my entire career in uniform- originally an act of protest- wound up circling around the decision to abandon the Shah and his family to the tender mercies of the Ayatollah.

The Pahlavis now live in Mclean, I think, and they may have got the best deal of all of us.

We have a sort of perfect storm this morning that has me way off track. Apparently last night several dozen former colleagues were informed that their services were no longer required in a spectacular day of “reorganization” that lead directly to the cell phone going off early and often. The torrent of woe has only lately abated.

So it was not until I tried to gather my scattered thoughts that I noticed the date. OMG, I thought. No wonder.

By the time I got back to considering the serial string of frankly amazing stories of late, I found myself considering some other artifacts of the Ford Administration, prompted by News and Weather on the Eights. I heard that Sgt. Bergdahl is owed $300,000 in back pay for the time he was gone. I am not going to characterize what happened to him- I don’t know- and besides, that is a matter for military justice, which often is exactly a variation on the old oxymoron “military intelligence.”

Three hundred grand would certainly provide a useful start to a new civilian life, and I wondered whether he is actually entitled to it. Something nagged at the back of my mind from Jerry Ford’s unexpected time in the Oval Office. I had to look it up. Operation Homecoming brought back 531 personnel- mostly aviators- who had been shot down and held as long as eight years in Hanoi.

Two of them were mentioned frequently as being willing collaborators with their captors, as some have alleged Sgt. Bergdahl to have been; a Marine Colonel and a Navy Commander. Both claimed that they were simply exercising their first amendment rights and had come to the conclusion that the war was wrong.

There was some understandable resentment on the part of other POWS who had been mercilessly tortured, but both were permitted to retire with honorable discharges and nothing was done to them. In fact, Governor “Moonbeam” Brown appointed the Marine to a vacant position on the Orange County Board of Supervisors. He lost in the campaign for re-election, which opened several old wounds, but that is another story.

There the comparison peters out, since both were shot down while serving with honor, if not distinction. Maybe a better comparison would be with Sgt. Jenkins, the soldier who defected to North Korean, or between Bowe and Bob, the Marine PFC who was captured near Da Nang in Quang Nam Province in 1965.

Bob was reportedly released along with the others in 1973, but he did not return to the US until 1979. He was accused of collaboration, working as a mechanic for the Vietnamese. There was controversy about the stories he told of others held behind, but after an extended court marshal at Camp Lejeune, He was found not guilty of desertion and “solicitation of U.S. troops in the field to refuse to fight.”

He was found guilty of violation of Articles 104 and 128, Uniform Code of Military Justice, to wit: “communicating with the enemy” and “assault of an American prisoner of war interned in a POW camp.”

He was sentenced to reduction in rank to Private, a dishonorable discharge and forfeiture of all pay and allowances, which includes any veteran’s benefits. He was awarded no time in the stockade. I don’t know whether that was fair or not, nor do I know what will come out of any court marshal that might be convened for Sgt. Bergdahl.

And really, there is so much going on that has such astonishing strategic implications that I may just go to Willow early this afternoon and let the world mind its own affairs for a while.

I need to process this a little better. The fate of one American soldier is important, and I am glad he is alive and finally home- or at least in Texas, which is no exactly home but beats the hell out of Helmand Province.

Now as to what is happening fifty miles from Baghdad, now that is something that scares the crap out of me. More on that tomorrow.

Copyright 2014 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com
Twitter: @jayare303

1975

(Image grab taken from a propaganda video uploaded on June 8, 2014, by the jihadist group the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL)- or Syria, (ISIS) depending on which part of the new Caliphate you prefer. Photo AFP/Getty Images)

Being a voting member of Virginia’s 7th Congressional District is a liberating feeling. It represents a profound step in getting out of Washington. Things are getting very strange up here- not that they aren’t normally pretty strange, but they are downright surreal this morning. I have got that ‘70s feeling, but I am not preparing to head for a disco to address it.

I don’t know how we are going to get through this news cycle and maintain a straight face. I was galvanized yesterday afternoon when I talked to a colleague who is still working for the Government and he commented, with no small amount of wonder, that the term “mass beheadings” had become a common phrase in his daily meetings.

I told him that it had been around a while in the civilian contract community, though we used it in the context of a metaphor about downsizing. He said it was no metaphor and it was happening right now in Iraq.

If you haven’t been paying attention, and God knows I would prefer not to, al Qaida is indeed on the run, just as we were told before the last election. The problem is that they appear to be running toward Baghdad, and the US-equipped Iraqi military was hurling down its weapons and running just ahead.

This blipped my scope when the insurgents took the storied town of Fallujah a week or so ago- the Marines fought there so hard in the second one that there might be a cruiser named USS Fallujah some day.

But not today.

The situation this morning, Eastern Standard Time, is too horrific to joke about. There are reports of Iraqi officers running away after telling their troops to stand firm. A squadron of US Blackhawk helicopters fell into the hands of the hands of the ISIS insurgents yesterday when Mosul fell- and a bank heist that netted the bad guys $429 million dollars and a pile of gold bullion.

A relative handful of rebels – estimated between 3-5,000- is kicking the crap out of more than 30,000 Iraqi Army troops.

It feels a lot like 1975, and the run up to the Fall of Saigon.

The speed with which the rebels are advancing may slow as they approach areas with higher percentages of Shias, and we should not forget that this is also a struggle between the two dominant strains of Islam, with the Saudis favoring the Sunnis and the Iranians favoring the Shias.

In any event, we are not going to intervene to slow down the offensive. The folks downtown have declined Iraqi requests for airstrikes, though we have helpfully offered more military equipment, which will be speedily turned over to the al Qaida affiliated revels.

Oh, the weapons and cash that are driving this? Before they became self-funding, the ISIS fighters benefited from the kindness of strangers.

It is evident to me that much of it came out of Benghazi in that bloody stupid mistake. The ‘phony scandal’ aspect is true enough. The real scandal is not about a video, and not about manipulated talking points. It has been laying out there in plain sight for more than a year. It is about a weapons transfer program to transfer weapons out of Qaddafi’s arsenal to the “moderate” Syrian rebels.

The operation was supposed to be a “two-fer,” taking weapons out of the Mahgreb and placing them in the hands of people who would take down the oppressive Syrian regime.

It does not appear to be working out that way. Al Qaida is indeed on the run, but not the direction we were told.

It feels a little like 1975 again, only that time we were not shipping arms into Haiphong.

Copyright 2014 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com
Twitter: @jayare303

Blunt Trauma

(Eric Cantor concedes in Richmond. Photo Steve Helber/Associated Press).

I did not vote yesterday. I used to live in the wrong congressional district, and my registration is still in Arlington, though the primary residence is down toward Richmond at the Farm. The Democratic primary was yesterday, and I was concentrating on other matters. I thought briefly about walking over to the Senior Assisted Living Facility across the street and casting a vote anyway, but it seemed like it was going to be a done deal despite a crowded field seeking the nomination to run for the certain win for the seat to replace that marvelous long-term public servant, Jim Moran.

It is hard to concentrate. I have gophers under my porch. Extremist Sunni Rebels have seized the oil-rich town of Mosul. The Bluesmobile needs an oil change. The EPA is going to shut down a third of the electrical generation capability of the nation. Is my hair too long? Five Green Berets were killed in Afghanistan by “close air support” delivered from a B-1 Lancer bomber at 25,000 feet. Should I walk over and vote for someone loony in the Democratic primary?

The campaign here featured the candidates running to the left. The strongest candidate, a Volvo Dealer, former Lt. Governor and Ambassador, announced he was a proud Progressive, and questioned gun rights and some other hot button issues. He is what passes for a ‘moderate’ in Northern Virginia. Some of the other candidates were way out there on the fringes, including some impressive War on Women candidates running against a non-existent Tea Party opposition in NoVA and come remarkable Greenie candidates who advocated an immediate program of de-industrialization.

We don’t have any industry up there except the production of CO2 by the (unfortunate) continued respiration of the political classes, so I figured the outcome was whatever the Arlington Democratic Party decided it was going to be. I doubted if they needed my input, and glancing at the “to do” list of things that never seem to get done, decided to do something else.

Imagine my surprise when the word began to spread that there was another primary, and it was happening at Refuge Farm. I kicked myself. The way the politicos have Gerrymandered the state into reliably safe districts for the people who did the ‘Mandering, the 7th Congressional District is as predictably Red as the 10th in Arlington is Blue.

On the “to do” list was changing my voter registration to the farm. I was thinking I could get around to that before the general election in November. The candidate down there was a heavyweight, not just in the quiet rural country north and west from Richmond, but up on Capitol Hill. Rep. Eric Cantor was- is, actually for another few months- the Farm’s congressman, and the number two Republican in the House leadership after the Speaker.

He was fairly confident that he would sail to victory in the primary and yet he didn’t. Reports started to come in last night that he had been beaten handily by a Tea Party candidate named David A. Brat, a college professor who spent a grand total of $200,000 on his campaign. Cantor spent forty times that amount.

(Dave Brat, who was the blunt instrument that took out Majority Leader Cantor last night. Photo Getty Images).

I was just back from Willow and some birthday drinks, and decided to mix myself

A stiff one in sympathy, since there was a mini-riot between Cantor supporters and pro-immigration forces at the venue of what was supposed to be the Cantor victory party last night.

Wine was thrown, which is, in my mind, alcohol abuse. The conventional wisdom around town is that the immigration issue is what dragged Cantor under the bus. He had been making noise that something needed to be done- maybe enforce the law, for example, but also recognize that there is a problem and maybe even provide a path to citizenship for the people that are already here.

There is a certain imperative to the changing demographics, after all, and providing a punching bag to the Progressives must be getting tiresome.

One of my progressive buddies crowed that this meant three things: immigration reform had just turned into Kryptonite for the GOP and was dead. The House might actually still be in play in November, and that the Republicans have seen their last White House for a generation.

That might be true, I don’t know. I do know that the stark difference between country people and city people starts around Manassas and gets really severe. It is positively disorienting driving back and forth from the farm.

The primary was definitely a blunt force trauma to the body politic. It upends all sorts of things, and I have always been a pragmatist in the world of politics. That is not the case with the Tea Party folks, who have an absolute conviction that ideological purity (and losing) is preferable to compromise and victory. I am old enough to remember the Goldwater conservatives and their determination that ideology was number one, and everything else secondary. But that evolved into something else that won them the Reagan White House.

My Left Coast attorney chimed in and said he hoped that Cantor would run as an independent, split the Republican vote and deliver District 7 to the Democrats.

I find his scenario plausible, if Cantor chooses to do that. While the District is registered at least 60% GOP, there are all sorts of branches and sequels possible with a third party candidate.

(John Trammel, who will face the Tea Party in November. He ran unopposed for the nomination. Photo eeiriedigest.com)

It is interesting. Even the Dems down there run a little different than they do up north. On the other side of the aisle, John Kent Trammel is the nominee. He is another professor at Randolf-Macon University (so is David Brat, the surprise GOP nominee) and escaped the primary since no one else bothered to register.

District 7 Dems nominated him for the General Election without competition. A Kentucky native, Trammell lives on a small farm in Louisa County with his wife and seven children. I assume that means he is pro-life. Other hot button issues for him are student loan forgiveness and better access to higher education so there can be more loans to forgive. No conflict of interest there, of course.

So there is all was. Interesting. I dropped a note to the registrar down in Culpeper, and asked if I could change my voter registration to my primary residence. Michele wrote back and told me how to do it. It was a snap, and in the process, I discovered the State of Virginia has tracked the number of times I have voted, and how I did it, either in person or absentee. Cool. I am a pretty good citizen in at least that regard.

It was painless, just a few clicks of a mouse and I was done. I am a now a proud District 7 voter. In November, I am going to vote someplace where it might actually matter.

Copyright 2014 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com
Twitter: @jayare303

Corner of 63rd and Bliss

(The first two pages of Big Mama’s Baby Book. She kept meticulous records. I still have boxes of check stubs from 1949 down in the garage at the farm. Photo Socotra).

It is a birthday today- mine, as it happens, along with a few million other residents of the globe. I would be the one living at the corner of 63rd and Bliss Street. It is the anniversary of Big Mama’s first confinement at Mt. Carmel Mercy Hospital in Detroit. It being a first birth, Raven delivered her into the hands of the gowned personnel and went off to the cafeteria to have a piece of apple pie.

He did not have time to finish it before an orderly summoned him to meet me, and congratulate his bride. I know first impressions are always important, but I cannot comment on mine. Big Mama was crisp and efficient as always, and once she got me to nurse properly, we were- as they say- off to the races.

She is very much in my thoughts this morning. For whatever random reason, the Baby Book is in with a couple other photo albums in the bedroom of the apartment. I will only inflict a couple images on you, but the Book is composed of pictures, once a month at the beginning, all black and white, and continuing through age at lengthening intervals, normally around this date each year.

The book includes the arrival of Spike and Anook, both blinking in their early shots. I presume they each have their own books- that would be the only way Big Mama would have done things- and we probably all graduated to the family collections that filled all those color slide carousels.

It was homage to her that I fed them all though the digitizer so that they would not be lost to those of us who survived her. So, while I will probably celebrate later today, I want to raise the coffee cup to Betty who gave me life and nurture, and to Raven, even it he did not get to finish his piece of pie.

I miss them both.

Copyright 2014 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com
Twitter: @jayare303