So, here we go on a busy week. It has been a helter of skelters lately down here at The Farm. Moving tomorrow. Bewildering in fact, looking at the assorted estate debris that has surfaced over the last few weeks. We have inflicted some of it on you already, and we apologize. We don’t even really know if we are selling the place or not. There is so much uncertainty in the market now, interest rates climbing with each meeting of the Federal Reserve. We were edging into that matter with what we thought was going to be the lead story on this week when things are actually changing.

We had a couple drinks late yesterday and talked about when the corruption in Washington DC really got started. There has always been a certain shake to the Government’s plumb back-side, no denying. But we like to think the modern moment was when Congress started outsourcing the Budget, and had been building on old writings to see what we thought twenty years ago when the process started in another mid-term election twenty years ago. We thought it would be fun to look at the beginning of it while applying the lessons-learned that have brought us to this current perilous state of debt and entitlements. That is going to have to wait, though we intend to get to it.

It would have started like this, lifted from the Chairman’s old laptop:

“I was pleased to finish my tour as the Staff Director without getting fired by Act of Congress. That hasn’t been the case for all of us that have served there. Of course, it would be a significant display of hubris to put myself in the same class as the legendary Martin Hurwitz. Marty ran the General Defense Intelligence Program with a fist of iron between 1977 and the issuance of the Conference Report of the Intelligence Oversight Committees in 1991. He can tell the story of those times better than anyone else, if he cares to. But I did get to sit in his chair.”

That was a curious lead-in, and it led to detailed discussion of budget details. That is agony expressed in English. We don’t have time to get into it today, although our intentions were good. We intend to do some sitting when the moving crew arrives tomorrow. And some moving that will include the miles between The Farm and the pleasures of returning to the Big Pink Building up in Arlington.

Today, management has directed us to go take care of acquisition issues involving tobacco and cash. So, we will get on with direct action and venture off the property. We may have something for you tomorrow, but that will involve sticking in one place while turning the planet around on its axis and forcing the sun up and down again. So bear with us. This is going to be an interesting week and filled with the spirit of our title’s two words. We would prefer to do it in song, one whose words you might recall from the title this morning. 1968 is when it showed up, from the pens of those delightful mop-tops in London:

When I get to the bottom, I go back to the top of the slide
Where I stop, and I turn, and I go for a ride
Till I get to the bottom, and I see you again
Yeah, yeah, yeah!

We were singing it down by the Fire Ring. And we might do it again tomorrow. Stand by for heavy seas! Meanwhile, we have to get moving if we are going to get back to the top (for a while!)

– Vic

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