24 May 2010
 
Pacific Coast Time


The Phoenix Suns beat the Lakers last night, 118 to 109, with a ferocious attack on the basket at the end of a game that featured a wobbling three-point lead at the beginning of the 4th quarter.
 
Few people outside Arizona’s Valley of the Sun understood how critical this win was, since it is generally assumed that Kobe Bryant would carry the boys from LA past the Suns. His 36 points, nine rebounds and 11 assists, just one rebound short of a triple-double, was all for nothing last night.
 
The Lakers are still up in the Western Conference Finals, 2-1, with Game 4 set for Tuesday night in Phoenix. I can see the Jumbotron in the US Airways Center from my room at the Wyndham Hotel, in the glittering heart of the redeveloped part of Phoenix.
 
It was pretty cool, watching the game on the flat-screen in the room while watching the postage stamp-sized image in the arena
 
There is a new ballpark- Chase Field- the US Airways Center- the basketball venue- and the convention center clustered around the new Hyatt and the Wyndham, and you would think that things are going pretty well here in the capital of Arizona.
 
Our delegation is sharing a large SUV this trip to rationalize expenses. Time was, we would all have had out own cars and transportation would not have been an issue.
 
Upon arrival, I found I had packed so badly yesterday morning at Big Pink that I was lacking tonic to go along with the vodka. Accordingly, I asked the concierge in the lobby about the closest convenience store. I got some directions I understood imperfectly, and wound up on a march around the inner core of the city and found that the development had concentrated on financial services, sports and parking structures, and we were trapped in a commercial desert.
 
I wandered for about an hour and found nothing open, only the trappings of the modern municipality: large courthouses, the Maricopa County Administrative buildings, and the infrastructure to support the government and entertainment destinations of the suburbs.


(Art Deco Maricopa County Admin Building, former Phoenix Town Hall)
 
There was nothing to support people who might actually live here. With the exception of some other vagrants, I saw no one on the streets, and nothing that looked even vaguely like a convenience store or a supermarket. I wondered if I should have my passport with me. There was a significant police presence whizzing by on the streets.
 
I am not knocking this fine city, mind you. But starting the week in Berlin, there was a real city, full of restaurants and late-night convenience stores right around the corner from the hotel. I sighed.
 
A city that had been blown to pieces in 1945 had been reconstructed twice since then, and Berlin was eminently livable on foot or bicycle. What happened to America’s central cities with the advent of the automobile and the coast-to-coast riots of 1968 still has not been fixed.
 
I had time to think about that last night, since Berlin is nine time zones away from Phoenix, and my body apparently has no idea which one might be the best match.
 
We are here for the annual meeting of the Information Technology alliance of military intelligence, which has become a rock-star event featuring the bureaucrats who control the contracts that support the war against terror, or overseas contingencies, or whatever it is we are calling it these days.
 
The ice-breaking reception last night showed that some of the wind has come out of the sails of the effort, though. Between the pressures on industry, the budget uncertainty and the impact of the immigration law, one gets the sense that these glittering affairs with hundreds of the most innovative vendors in attendance are a doomed.
 
This one was just too far along in the planning process to be killed.


(ADM Denny Blair, Third Director of National Intelligence)
 
Don’t know. That is not the only thing that is not long for the world. There certainly was a buzz about the expulsion of Admiral Denny Blair as the third Director of National Intelligence after the Senate tagged him with the blame for his office's handling of the National Counterterrorism Center. He is gone at the end of the week.
 
Naturally, there was some discussion about whether General Jim Clapper, my old boss from DIA days, might be coming in behind him.
 

(LTG Jim Clapper)
 
They are both talented and visionary men, but Admiral Blair was cut-off in the knife-fight with old politician Leon Panetta at CIA.
 
There was the usual banter about who might be looking for significant work back in the Government, and who might have burned down their bridges.
 
There was a jolly exchange with one of my favorite arsonists in that regard, a beloved colleague who has been saying the Emperor Has No Clothes for several months. Telling the earnest government folks that they are self-important drones is not a career move intended to ingratiate one with the new regime, so there is a certain sense of liberation in the whole change.
 
We have managed to reform the community by adding another 1,000 drones and another level of bureaucracy. Screw it.
 
They say this is a great place to retire, and plant grass and deciduous trees on regular suburban lawns in what was desert just a few years ago.
 
I don’t know, exactly. We are on Pacific Coast Time here, and I would have to borrow the car to find out.
 
Copyright 2010 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com
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