(Former Vice Chief of Naval Operations Robert “Bob” Burke. Official Navy photo).

This bright morning, Legal had their Intern come down with a Memo from Jasper, our chief Legal Beagle. It is a weekend, so he did not want to come to the office, and you can imagine anyone with a nose in the maelstrom of legal winds blowing has had just about enough of that deranged professional stuff for this week. There was discussion about making a motion to say we should ignore direction from lawyers due to the considerable confusion on the impact of New Law in all our lives.

The new messaging is about Bob, shown above, who is accused of taking to a couple people about Navy contracting issues as part of a post-retirement civilian employment deal. We are unaware of how people running an institution with an annual budget (FY-24) of almost $256 Billion could avoid talking about contracting, or who with, but these are curious times. It is our opinion that nuclear engineers clumsy enough in conduct to be perceived as attempting to steer contracts to favored unofficial recipients might have been cautioned to be a little more careful.

No one seemed to be doing that very well last week, but this is a new month and a new slate.

We have all been yammering about the News From New York, or Florida, or the Gun charges against members of an important family, or the Bribery proceedings against a sitting Senator who we last saw standing up. You understand our general befuddlement, since all this was swirling around the old Fat Leonard scandal that previously enveloped some people we know and respect. And apparently hundreds more.

Consequently, we asked Melissa to seek guidance from Jasper on how he wanted us to handle the latest legal news.

That left Splash in a confrontation with her about prioritization. He was of the opinion that Happy Hour should be moved up to accelerate deliberations. He muttered something about “Speedy trials” and wandered in the general direction of the wet bar on The Patio.

Melinda had time to kill, with Jasper enjoying the First Day of June off campus and is awaiting review of her last attempt to pass the Virginia Bar Exam. She told us her Boss just want us to just stop talking about court stuff since it only gets people agitated.

‘What about the political stuff? There is some messaging that resembles what we used to call ‘News.’”

“You mean the announcement from Senator Manchin over in West By God?”

Rocket grimaced “Yeah. We heard he had left his party, and wondered if that meant that with everything else going on, control of the Senate would switch since Majority Leader Schumer only has a one-vote majority to deal with.”

DeMille gestured for silence. “This morning it turns out nothing change. Manchin is just changing a “D” in his title to an “I,” and we understand he will continue to caucus with Schumer, so no change. It may be that he wants the flexibility to run for President in case there is a need for anyone not under indictment or sustained medical care.”

There was general nodding, since as a group, we understand the peril in that. Some of the people running around are insisting we stop with potentially troubling analysis of their system’s current manifold madness.

Meat was fidgeting near the table, hoping to get up and give his quick pitch on the marketing strategy for the new publication and go back and either take a dip in the pool on this fresh new June day or schedule a tee time. He rose with some drama, glanced at his watch, and made a grand gesture, sweeping upward.
“I spoke to the people in Bangalore. They have successfully published an electronic version of our new book “A Little Traveling Music.” My presentation this morning is a bit of a preliminary announcement, since we have threatened non-payment of the full contract to India, pending hard copy receipt here of both the hard and soft copy editions.” The tablet finally lit up with a small but vivid display:

“But the e-edition is available now at Amazon Kindle. https://www.amazon.com/s?k=vic+socotra

He paused as passed the tablet around to see the tiny image. “We had hoped to be able to give the Kindle edition away for free, but the team in Bangalore said that meant they wouldn’t make enough to pay for dinner, so we compromised on a digital price less than three bucks.”

We Section is pleased, since that means the Marketing Department is going to be generating some of the morning production effort leaving us more time for interesting things. Meat assures us that once the books ship around the planet in a physical presence, we will all be wealthy and happy regardless of which continent we are on, what legal troubles we are in, or who is elected to manage our lives.

We took a quick poll, and the result was conclusive. Most of us are in favor of something called “lunch.”

Copyright 2024 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com