For our gentle readers in Fly Over Country, I think you can take a certain amount of satisfaction in the fact that our Beltway Cloud Cuckoo Land is about to crash to ground and join the rest of the country. I am not going to whine about it. We have had an excellent decade in the Global War Against Whatever It Was, and unfortunately, now the Piper is hanging around like he wants to get paid and he doesn’t seem to be particularly willing to continue to play unless we come up with the dough.

It is only fair we should find ourselves here, I suppose. You may have seen that the counties around the Federal District have done pretty well. I saw the stats the other day: of the top five Counties in revenue and average income nationwide, three of them are right here, and three of them (Arlington, Fairfax and Loudoun) are in that lofty position.

My own Blue Arlington is still home to tall construction cranes. High rises are going up on the Smart Growth Corridor above the Orange Line of the Metro. Around Big Pink, the luxury town homes are rising to flank the two vast new medium-height apartment complexes.

You would not be far wrong in thinking that despite the housing bubble and all the rest, this area has done pretty damn well in a perfectly lousy decade.

Old Jim and I were commenting on that at the Amen Corner of Willow’s Bar last night. John-with-anH was drinking Happy Red, and we were all over the map, topic-wise. We did not get far into current events before finding some rabbit holes to duck down. I had come across Fairfax Drive from The Madison and a visit to our 93-year-old drinking buddy Mac. I was trying to go over the notes of the last two visits that bracket his intelligence career. I was back in the 1950s at the moment, when he was making Commander and I was still in short pants.

That is the beauty of our ongoing dialogue- we can pick up just about anywhere and go from there and wind up wherever. Jim wanted to talk about something else, which we did not get to, but will at some point. We didn’t talk about the Presidential debates or anything else. We got onto Halloween, since Tracy had the decorations strewn along the bar- crystal cats and skulls and candlesticks and witches.

“My vote, having been cast, will not be influenced by anything except its theft,” I said firmly.

“Wouldn’t want the truth to influence your decision,” Jim growled.

“I made up my mind in 2008,” I said. “But have you seen what is going to happen here? I just read a report by the Bloomberg organization that is pretty scary.”

“About what in particular?” Jim said, waving at Sabrina, who was trying to figure out what her costume should be for the big Halloween party Tracy is going to throw at the end of the month. Dark-haired and dark-eyed Sabrina is going to have a Fortune Teller tent set up in one of the private dining rooms in the back to interview the paying customer and reveal their futures. She saw Jim’s gesture and a Budweiser long-neck appeared magically in his beefy mitt. “You have that dark Gypsy beauty thing going, my dear. Whatever you wear will be perfect.”

“I was thinking some fake facial tattoos and jewels studding my eyebrows.”

“Devastating,” I said, taking a sip of Happy Hour White.

“I can’t think of an appropriate theme for the costume this year. Bloomberg says that 14% of Virginia’s gross revenues are out of Defense. Maybe a pickle barrel and a sign that says ‘will work for contracts….”

“You might want to check out likely highway overpasses for quality living. Sequestration is going to gut the contracting business,” said Jim, not unkindly. Both of us rely on the decimal dust of the grand river of clinking nickels that constitutes the Federal budget, and unless something changes, the automatic cuts that will kick in on the second of January are going to be crippling.

“Maybe something will change,” I said. “This is starting to look kind of personal.” Jim took a long pull on his Budweiser. John-with-and-H looked on with a certain amount of detachment as a Federal employee.

“Don’t look disinterested,” I said. “They are talking about furloughs for the government folks, too. You could even wind up with contractors on the job and government folks being sent home.”

“Well, whatever. Nothing is going to get any clearer until after November 6th.”

We talked about what could happen: unified Congress, incumbent administration, change of this and change of that. We couldn’t come to any conclusions and all the possibilities came with branches and sequels of consequences we could

Meanwhile, the debate will go tonight as Recession appears destined to visit the Rich Counties around the Federal enclave that thus far have not seen bad times. We still have cranes towering over the Wilson Boulevard Corridor, but maybe not for long.

I took out my binder that contained notes from my meetings with Mac, and scrawled a note: “Consult with Fortune Teller on 31 Oct.” Then I closed the book and took a sip of happy hour white.

“Wonder what is going to happen?” I mused.

Jim scowled. “Ask Sabrina,” he said.

Copyright 2012 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com