Morning! We glanced in the mirror this morning and saw everything reflected back in a weird amalgam of shifted shapes. Attempting to unscramble them took the first cup of coffee on a new week. Slow on getting to the laptop, we found a cool set of headlines on one of the sites the group scans in the morning with the second cup of coffee.

For fairness, the name of the outfit in question is “Zero Hedge.” Their writers are not directly partisan, though they do seem to favor things like “sound currency” and “responsible government,” whatever that might be. We enjoy their assessment of issues in finance and the national economy. It being Cyber Monday, we had resolved to hang out with the laptops and look like we were doing on-line shopping in honor of Cyber Monday, having failed to actually get up and leave the apartment on Black Friday.

We therefore attempted the innovative lazy approach to convey it by simply copying the bullets, thinking we could offer our profound insights after they did the actual work in thinking about it. Instead, we started a Cyber Day by discovering our attempts to copy the headlines also included embedded links that made our pages disappear- Blink!- into their advertising.

So, the easy way out turned into more work. Here is our interpretation of their quick take on what is happening as we start the rush toward Christmas:

Polar Vortex weather to kick butt all the way south to Alabama!
Early December frigid weather coming our way. Fill propane tanks.
Chinese protest Covid lockdowns. Iranians refuse to sing anthem!
Two interesting demonstrations against the Autocrats while WEF praises Chinese system for us…We have opposed Iranian regime since 1979.
EU accuses DC of making a fortune from Ukraine War
That EU situation we didn’t pay much attention to during GWOT may have spawned a cash laundering system that made billions for edge-players in Ukraine (and here), shifting foreign aid into cash accounts…
“Politico” site sours on Ukraine support.
The smart folks over at the site just woke up after a decade of shady deals…
Wagner Group sends bloodstained sledgehammer to EU Parliament.
This is a mercenary group Mr. Putin uses for dirty work. “Wagner doesn’t sound Russian…”
Taking a clue from “Brexit,” others contemplate EU exit…
Estonia is already making moves to get out of Europe!
Others looking at options…
“Greater Idaho” moves closer to referendum!
Two more counties in eastern Oregon say they have had enough of Portland politics…Orexit?
Consumer Economy has collapsed.
Malls are ‘Ghost towns’ for holiday shopping on Black Friday. With
Rail Strike looming, this could be a lean holiday shopping season.

The stuff that didn’t make the bullets? We talked about Congress coming back, but they are still trying to unpack from the holidays, get downtown, and start making deals. We have an idea how that is going to go, but you do, too.

Oh, you asked about why there are a bunch of old pictures of sailors at the top of this? Other generations have had their challenges, some of them bigger than our current ones. Dad did those images in a series of sketches of his buddies in the training command, late in WWII. Some of the others were from a deployment his squadron made from NAS Gross Isle in Detroit out to Indiana, flying those hot new single-seat Skyraider aircraft. His drawings changed to other themes after he got married and found a job drawing and sculpting post-war automobiles.

Just a teaser on that matter is this one he did after joining George Romney’s design team at American Motors:

Metropolitan, Rambler, Nash and Hudson. Remembering those days is enough to take you back to the Looking Glass of modern America, rising from one big War into prosperity that continued up until our Next Big One. We will see how that goes, but the glass seems a little murky at the moment, you know?

Copyright 2022 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com