DeMille sighed. This was supposed to be a sort of wrap-up week to get the old business out of the in-basket and get set for some holiday routine for next week. And let the Transition sort itself out. Then, apparently Mr. Elon Musk got out of bed around 0400 local and sent a five-word Tweet on X.

“This bill should not pass,” and we think he was talking about the Budget compromise. The new Administration chimed in favorably to that and the day went from there.

The compromise bill which was supposed to pass was billed as having no junk, just an extension of previous spending. Apparently there was a bit more. One example was the revelation that the Department of Agriculture had been one of the government spigots used to dispense Dr. Fauci’s taxpayer dollars to the well-connected EcoHealth organization. That was the organization he used from the NIAH to fund the Wuhan Labs in China.

So, that was part of the Budget Fight that caused the melt down of the interim deal yesterday, leaving Speaker Johnson with 48 hours to figure something else out.

We took that as an indication of the kind of excitement we will have in the New Year of Calendar 2025. Kristina had one of those “local/seasonal” assignments in her journalism seminar about “Victorian Mass Messaging” and the example was about Dicken’s and his “Christmas Carol,” published today in 1843.

To give some perspective, her TA said that was about the amount of time Victoria needed to found Hong Kong as a gem in her imperial Diadem and for it to turn into a well-ordered satrap of the Mandarin. We made a note on how long these things can take as we approach our bi-and-a-half centennial

There is some interesting national-local stuff Melissa had about the Department of Education, and whether it will be disestablished and the housing market will reflect the departure of some and opportunities for re-sale, depending on what the Fed is doing with the interest rates and who is supposed to benefit beside the Congressional members who need a pay raise so they won’t be playing the market they are supposed to be regulating.

Which led directly to Kristina’s item about the homeless options here in our Fifteen Minute County. because of the concern for the woman who uses the bus shelter over on Rt. 50:

The Boomers are off in something that looks like those small-group sessions down in Mission Planning on several aircraft carriers when the word came that the Israelis had hit port and energy infrastructure in Sana’a, Yemen’s capital.
If you haven’t been following the junior partner in the proxy war, the Houthis are the Iranian proxy group in a place for which we have great fondness.

The Chairman’s first encounter was on Socotra Island, which then was a placid and peaceful place adjacent to one of the busiest shipping routes on earth, the one linking mighty oceans with a short-cut through the Suez Canal.

Considering the remarkable recent events in that neighborhood, we think one of the things the new Administration is something like what we helped build in Israel. An American Iron Dome.

There will be plenty of cash to spread around on that program, you know?

House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) was buzzing about a ‘Plan Bee,’ to whatever the other one was. The Senate was at work, too, and approved the $895 Billion 1,800-page FY-25 National Defense Authorization. The House passed it last week, two months late due to the fight over prohibition sex-change procedures on children in the VA system.

It summed up a lot about what they someday may call the Biden “Absentee Administration” when whoever has been running the nation may be called back to answer some questions about how they did.

Copyright 2024 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com