(Charlie Brown Tree with magnificent decoration)

The ‘net has been alive this morning. I put up the artificial tree this year in an attempt to get with the holiday spirit. Put some lights on the bushes outside to go with the cheesy shiny wreath on the outside door.

It is nice in the evening, and should be merry against the snow that is supposed to come in around the time I am due at a command performance company Christmas party at 1930 out in the wilds of cold, dark Fairfax. I don’t want to go. For goodness sake, that hour is nearing my bed-time these days!

We all have small groups of correspondents- I maintain connections with others out of habit from DoD and spook days. One of them goes further back and includes three other guys from high school and college. That blew up this morning when our resident Marxist started reciting the talking points about Flynn being turned and that the Logan Act was going to bring Mr. Trump to justice.

One of the other ones- a college prof, college room-mate and relatively recent convert to Trumpism- fired back with a caustic critique of the recycled ’60s Marxist clap-trap.

I did not want to jump into that, fearing ill-feelings with guys I have liked for a long time. The Trumpist was still agitated and called me on the phone to blow off steam. He doesn’t know how things work down here in the Swamp, and I walked him through what I thought about how this happened- the Sally Yates Logan Act justification for the FISA Warrant (along with the ill-famed Steele dossier which might have been partly funded by the FBI in addition to the DNC and Clinton Campaign).

Sleazy Strzok may have signed the request to surveil the incoming President Elect’s team. Samantha Powers at the UN may have signed the request for unmasking of the Trump team’s names so a vast number of Swamp-dwellers could leak them. The hit team used the fruit of the surveillance pounce on Flynn in an ambush interview just four days after taking office (without benefit of counsel) and provide his recollections of his talk with the Russian Ambassador. since they already had the transcripts, it was easy to find discrepancies.

There may also have been some sensitivity on Flynn’s relations on behalf of the Turks, sans the paperwork identifying him as a lobbyist for a foreign power. Flynn should have known better, but maybe he didn’t really understand how things really work now in Washington. He might not have understood that he had been well-and-truly swizzled by a corrupt and out-of-control Special Counsel and a legal pit-bull named Andrew Weissman. You know, the one who directed the pre-dawn raid on non-violent offender Paul Manafort’s home.

Voila! A felony inditement offense! Proof for sure of a process offense even if there was no actual crime. Amazing what a nascent STASI can accomplish!

We then wandered through the assorted regional contingencies around the world that we dealt with most of our professional lives, and it left me a little unsettled. I heard General Keene, former Deputy Army Chief of staff echo my opinion that we are seeing the beginning of a confrontation between Shia Iran and a Sunni coalition that includes Isreal.

This has always been a high-elbows town, but of late, with all the Agencies weaponized to serve the agendas of the Swamp- and the Progressives who largely populate it- we appear to now have the determination to start any political discussion with the complete destruction of your opponent. It seems- well, a little unseemly.

It has been a remarkable journey we have taken from the Civics we were taught back in High School (They don’t do that any more, do they?) to seeing what is going on around us now. Throw in a looming war between Sunni and Shia and that malevolent fat kid with the bad haircut and nukes, it is enough to make one positively dyspeptic. I have a suspicion this is not going to end well for anyone.

I was so tempted to put this in a Socotra, but I think I will keep my public powder dry for the moment. ‘Tis the season,’ after all, and we are all doing a certain amount of self-censorship. Plus, the rot here is very deep indeed- and it being dry rot, it could go up in a roar of flames.

Oh, the LA fires? They used the term “man caused” this morning in relation to the fires- not lightning. We have become conditioned to using euphemisms like Janet Napolitano (another famously corrupt official now in academia) “Man caused disaster” for the never-to-be-said “act of terror.”

Vic