Goodness, what a week that just passed! In included First Snow here, big fluffy flakes that came down with gray chill gusty drizzle for a while. It was a seasonal adjustment to the smoking area on the Patio and consequently everything needed to be done in the conference room with the big flatscreen adding low noise to all discussion.

The two guys in the logo above are the cartoons Splash did of our Creative Section Leader DeMille (left) and Vic (right). His last military tour was on assignment to Langley in the predecessor staff to ODNI, so he knows the halls in the Original HQ Building over there, and he pleased that a Navy Flag officer on what he thought might be a colorful twilight tour at CIA got picked up for a second star and a new big job back at the OPNAV staff. It shows renewed interest in how the Pentagon and Langley will get along in the transition times.

DeMille ran poetry in the Daily morning production time, which helped keep us a little grounded with the activity overseas, across our River in the Capitol and right here in the Fifteen Minute County. The was too much with too much nuance to try to capture it all, just levels of urgency and volume. So, DeMille assigned some portfolios for coverage area, sometimes by continent or ZIPCODE.

Melissa had a frown on her pert face. This gig is going to be a great resume bullet but she only had a two hour agreement for meetings, the free lunches and the references. She was originally supposed to watch what the Creative Section but sucked into doing a blurb on the Legal Maelstrom in progress and it is eating up social time. was up to and remind them to keep the Boss out of hot water with litigation.

That is the eggshells thing. There are some determined people in town in the transition. The Post had a story that HHS just rolled out a big new DEI-influenced OrgChart with nine weeks to go. So, you can imagine scope of the bureaucratic mischief in progress at all the Agencies.

So, there is fun to come on many streams. The Overseas stuff is hot and in motion and directly related to what happens here. The stakes in the Ukraine thing are high and may be looking for some solution by the New Year. Or more and more rockets.

The conversation on the Patio was about ranges for the Russian SR-26 road-mobile rockets equipped with conventional MIRVs, and the American and UK missiles they were just given permission to use on Russian Targets.

Part of that got DeMille to tell Vic to go look at some of the literature about the old Intermediate Range Nuclear Forces Treaty. See if he could get a quick history on weapons that were banned back then, but operational and road-mobile now. And in use now in Europe and the Middle East.

So, part of the discussion before Happy Hour got rolling was the latest Russian demonstration of an RS-26 Rubezh rocket that is close to being able to hit New York. Or the Patio.

So, there is plenty of that that military stuff that Splash, Rocket and Vapor are trying to keep track of. Rocket was concerned about how the military Sealift Command is doing in times of severe personnel shortages- the civilian sailors. Beyond the forces currently in missile range, it’s as an area of particular interest.

But it is Melissa who is spending more time with DeMille, talking about the file on the various legal messaging in process. All sorts of turmoil and she is only learning the paralegal profession in an enterprise resembling an open-air ready room, depending on season.

Which is when part of the storm came though, no damage but some Bluetooth or WIFI links pulsed and programming went to reset and the IT staff liaison kid was over at El Paso for lunch. So, confusion and some questioning looks in the conference room with a couple smoke breaks and quick sweep through what precision-targeted long-range high-yield conventional warhead warfare might be like. With escalation always possible.

With only nine weeks left in the Administration, that leaves the question of who is making the decisions in the President’s name? We took a sample group and no one could recall a situation similar historic moment since President Wilson’s incapacitation. That may be a message stream coming up but it may not start until there is a reason for some advantage before their door shuts.

That’s the local national angle, and DeMille just told us to do a wrap-up on what was going on just this messaging day. It had strings in everything. Plus, the chill drizzle out on the Patio gave memory to a breezy topside deck. Penetrating wet chill and the deck and flight jackets and the pastel hoodies under clear rain capes were pulled close when they went out there. We are still trying to figure out the new cabinet picks and the somewhat bewildering news about gay billionaires and cute tough Attorney Generals, but we have the weekend before the madcap messaging starts to get us ready for Monday!

It is Saturday, so Happy Hour will start around game time, and we won’t even bring up the matter of one of our hallowed college teams bidding a ten-million dollar proposal to a pretty good nineteen-year old quarterback. It is better than it used to be for the kids, but it seems like the pros just turned the amateurs into something else, you know?

It seems a little like everything else. And all at once!

Copyright 2024 Vic Socotra

www.vicsocotra.com