Author: Vic Socotra

Casual Congress

(Attached are pictures of General Charles Brown, nominee for Chairman of the Joint Staff and serving Senator John Fetterman. AOL will still not let us embed the images). The United States Senate is the premier legislative body on this planet. They tell us that all the time, and it is worth remembering. Well-dressed members will […]

Arrias and his Muse: Country Lane

Cruising in an Auburn roadster, Sliding down a twisting country lane, Speckled sunlight through the elms, In the distance lumbers a huge coal train. With a sultry blonde by my side, We drive beside a lazy river, A stand of towering cottonwoods, In the breeze their leaves gently shiver. She’s wears a broad straw hat […]

More Fun With Elections

This was a challenging morning in terms of data flow. We were up early and made an attempt to screen the incoming overnight message traffic. There are at least a couple news stories in play, all of them connected with the election circus that is supposed to culminate next year some time. There were charges […]

Visits to Hanoi

(For reasons best known to AOL we can’t just drop the carefully assembeled picture in this place. Instead, we must attach it with digits from someplace else). Big morning here in DC! Which we are not in, or at least not exactly, the Patio being on the Western side of the Potomac. We are still […]

Arrias on the World: What Happens Next?

There’s a minor cottage industry that has sprung up in the last 12 months in which various foreign policy mavens play Nostradamus and forecast “How the War in Ukraine will end,” some with a good deal of detail, some with a very broad hand waving at a map of the world. Of course, using the […]

Quo Vadis

It did not take long, did it? The packaging was prepared during what used to be the Regular Order period in budget formation for the vast, sprawling, incoherent budget of the United States of America. Who benefits from all this madness? Without the Budget, or at least “a budget,” a lot of stuff has to […]

Legal Legerdemain

We have some strange stuff going on in the current Legal Circus. It is an entertaining show, since the performers are engaged directly in the struggle for the Oval Office. That will drag on through next November. Not the month around the corner, mind you. The one after that (by year). Part of the excitement […]

RUE DE L A CHON

AUTHOR’S NOTE: I was writing to a squadron buddy 43 years ago. I was stuck in a Snake Ranch, the term used for officer housing at the Yongsan Garrison in Seoul, Korea. It is an odd letter, transferred in some ancient Word format via Government Xerox machines a couple times and then tucked away someplace […]

Arrias and His Muse: Fall Is Come

A distant moan, a growl, the treetops shake, A rafter of turkeys wander out of the trees, Pecking through the grass, feathers ruffled in the breeze, Dawn approaches, the Dismal Swamp awakes. The deer disappear, under the still-green leaf, Fat they’ve all grown through summer’s dog days, Soon trees’ will be dressed in a multi-hued […]

Seasonal Transition

So, here we are in the season of transition. It is still hotter than hell in afternoon when the sun cuts the arc over the parking lot at Big Pink. It bathes the western-facing units on the north-south wings by the Big Road with warmth and light. It also brings up the prognosis for what […]