Category Archives: Political Commentary

How NASA Will Do SLS Affordably

The usual buzzphrases:

5) Lean, Integrated Teams with Accelerated Decision Making

4) Right Sized Documentation and Standards

3) Risk-Informed Government Insight/Oversight Model

2) Robust Designs and Margins

1) Evolvable Development Approach

[In reverse order, ‘cuz I pulled them off Ed Ellegood’s Twitter feed]

As I tweeted him back, those tricks never work. Not on a cost-plus program where you have to spread the pork.

The Scandal That Still Isn’t A Scandal

It’s really long past time for a special prosecutor:

So now the wheels have come off the official explanation for Fast and Furious. Of course, that explanation never made much sense in the first place.

For one thing, the ATF had no authority to track the guns once they were in Mexico; for another, nobody bothered to inform the Mexicans of this intrusion on their national sovereignty.

Further, we now know that a host of federal agencies (including the ATF, the FBI and IRS, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the Drug Enforcement Administration and, very probably, top officials at the Department of Homeland Security) were all in the loop at various levels, as was the White House.

So calling “Fast and Furious” a cockamamie operation gone wrong just isn’t going to cut it anymore.

There are two possible explanations. The first is that the anti-gun Obama administration deliberately wanted American guns planted in Mexico in order to demonize American firearms dealers and gun owners. The operation was manufacturing “evidence” for the president’s false claim that we’re to blame for the appalling levels of Mexican drug-war violence.

If this is true, then Holder & Co. have got to go — and the trail needs to be followed no matter where it leads. For the federal government to seek to frame its own citizens is unconscionable.

A second notion is that the CIA was behind the whole thing, which accounts for all the desperate wagon-circling. Under this theory, the Agency feared the los Zetas drug cartel was becoming too powerful and might even mount a coup against the Mexican government. So some 2,000 weapons costing more than $1.25 million were deliberately channeled to the rival Sinaloa cartel, which operates along the American border, to keep the Zetas in check.

Of course, there’s a third explanation — that both scenarios are true, and that those in charge of Fast and Furious saw an opportunity to shoot two birds with one Romanian-made AK Draco pistol.

Any administration defenders have a better explanation?

MSM Sheep

…ignoring the scandal of the century:

The Gunwalker conspiracy is the kind of story that journalists dream of breaking their entire careers. It is now in the palms of their hands: a story in which they can make a difference, take down the evil and corrupt, and ensure justice is served.

Instead of reporting, however, they are complicit. They have chosen to acquiesce to a clear and obvious evil, an aberration of our most basic values. They are no longer watchdogs, but docile sheep.

When it’s a Republican scandal, they’re watch dogs. When it’s a Democrat scandal, they’re lap dogs.

Maybe This Is Why She Wants To Suspend Elections

Beverly Perdue is having some campaign finance oopsies:

While none of this implicates Perdue at this time, the investigation apparently is zeroing in on someone inside her campaign, which could prove quite damaging when she’s up for election next year, assuming we still have them at that time. To no surprise, other North Carolina Democrats could soon be lining up to face Perdue in a primary.

Meanwhile, pathetic defenses of her that she was just kidding around have been shown to be nonsense.

And Iowahawk has been unrelenting in the mockery:

#BevPerdueSurefireOneLiners “What this country needs is a huge mass grave for counterrevolutionaries. [chirp chirp] I mean, NOT!”

#BevPerdueSurefireOneLiners “Don’t you just want to torture my opponent with battery electrodes? No? Um, I was only joking. Ha ha! Ha.”

#BevPerdueSurefireOneLiners “What North Carolina needs is concentration camps. Who’s with me?”

#BevPerdueSurefireOneLiners “I once shot a dissident in my pajamas. What he was doing in my pajamas, I’ll never know.”

To which I add: #BevPerdueSurefireOneLiners “Hey, those eggs we need for the omelettes aren’t going to break themselves.”

Disquieting Heroic Fantasies

Thoughts on Barack Obama’s delusions about himself:

I have written before about Obama’s deep, almost desperate, need to portray himself as the opposite of what he is, to conceive of himself in a way that is at odds with reality. We have seen it in all sorts of areas, including claiming himself to be a voice of civility, portraying himself as a champion of bi-partisanship, lecturing others about profligate spending, and saying he is the only responsible “adult” in Washington. Now we see this habit in a new arena – this time, the president as Obama the Stoic, a man so committed to “pressing on” for the cause of social justice he just doesn’t have time to feel sorry for himself. Indeed, he has now decided to sermonize to others not to complain, not to grumble, and to “stop crying.”

This is akin to John Edwards hosting a weekend seminar on the importance of marital fidelity.

The question is: does he believe it himself, or is he just trying to fool us? Either way it is, as he says, disquieting.