We tried the new header graphic the other morning. It was supposed to show what we thought might be happening on Monday, but what showed up was the bedraggled green note book with the when the air came out of the Budget and the Government shut down and the SnowCrete that still has everything frozen right where they were last week.

We had hoped for something meaningful to say about the other kind of ICE today, but we are trapped in a sort of limbo between fronts. One of those is the Super Thing coming up this weekend. Miles sent a note to the working groups to remind Patriot and Seahawks fans that we need a group to watch the official NFL Halftime show with Puerto Rican crooner Bad Bunny.

(Spacexmedia,com images of anti-ICE PR crooner Bad Bunny, left, and pro-American values singer Kid Rock, right).

Apparently the politics of migration have sloshed over popular sensibilities in a DEI tilted scheme involving identity in the Caribbean as Cuba is about to run out of oil and may be having a color country adventure 90-miles away from the re-modeled North and South American borders. The Bunny Fellow is said to be encouraging semi-violent bi-partisan messaging in hard contact sports.

The whole thing is breathtaking in scope. We are going to attempt to see if we have ever heard any of Senor Malo Conejito’s tunes. And the title graphic at the top? That was something Vic brought to the morning session and placed it carefully at the four-o’clock position next the tray with the Flat Yank Coffee and assorted muffins.

Miles leaned forward and poked the peeling discolored plastic cover on the note book. “Whatcha got, Vic? There is enough going on right now that I don’t think we need to be digging up old stuff from the wrong ocean.”

There was some modest laughter to that as Holly came in with Brad who apparently have found a decent two bedroom place over on Columbia Pike. That will keep the bunk-room at the old Big Pink tower manageable for the credits we offer to George Mason University Journalism students on Independent Journo tactics. Vic picked up the volume and turned it with two hands so the cover’s image of the Tori Gate was visible.

“See the date? I put it on there after I bought it in the Navy Exchange in Yokosuka, Japan in 1978. It was a day or two before the USS Midway was scheduled to pull out for a extended trip south across the East and South China Seas to the Indian Ocean and the best port visit in Perth, West Australia.”

His eyes rolled as he put the note book down. “What weird about it was I started writing about all the cool Japanese stuff we started with on the cruise but it started t turn into something else when we made a call in the Philippines, then one in Thailand before heading through the Malacca Straits and then down south across the Equator.”

“That sounds like some good liberty,” said Rocket. “But I heard the dramatic seizure of the US Embassy in Tehran and the Collision at Sea of USS Ranger and those adventures in East Africa really got things rolling.”

Vic Laughed. “This book is where everything started. Before laptops and cell phones. It wasn’t a device that told you stuff. You took a pen and wrote stuff on the best white paper. Some of it goes from 48 years ago in Japan and lurches from there into string at the Iranians.”

“And now we may be moving to some kind of resolution.”

“Lurching,” said Miles. “But it certainly seems like it was just yesterday.”

Copyright 2026 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com