Colombian Prostitutes

Gee, I would have expected them to be much more attractive. They wouldn’t be worth the money or risk to me. Now I think even less of those secret service agents.

[Update a while later]

Mark Steyn has some caustic and appropriately snarky thoughts:

Cartagena’s most famous “escort” costs $800. For purposes of comparison, you can book Eliot Spitzer’s “escort” for $300. Yet, on the cold grey fiscally conservative morning after the wild socially liberal night before, Dania’s Secret Service agent offered her a mere $28.

Twenty-eight bucks! What a remarkably precise sum. Thirty dollars less a federal handling fee? Why isn’t this guy Obama’s treasury secretary or budget director? Or, at the very least, the head honcho of the General Services Administration, whose previous director has sadly had to step down after the agency’s taxpayer-funded public-servants-gone-wild Bacchanal in Vegas.

All over this dying republic, you couldn’t find a single solitary $28 item that doesn’t wind up costing at least 800 bucks by the time it’s been sluiced through the federal budgeting process. Yet, in one plucky little corner of the Secret Service, supervisor David Chaney, dog-handler Greg Stokes, or one of the other nine agents managed to turn the principles of government procurement on their head. If the same fiscal prudence were applied to the 2011 Obama budget, the $3.598 trillion splurge would have cost just shy of $126 billion. The feds’ half a billion to Solyndra would have been a mere $18 million. The 823-grand GSA conference on government efficiency at the M Resort Spa & Casino would have come in at $28,805.

Chaney-Stokes 2012! Grope . . . and Change! Red lights, not red ink.

Go read the whole thing.

A Rebuttal To Jim Dunstan On Space Property Rights

[Note: this is a guest post by Alan Wasser, Chairman of the Space Settlement Institute]

As the Space Settlement Initiative says, the settlement of space would benefit all of humanity by opening a new frontier, energizing our society, providing room and resources for the growth of the human race without despoiling the Earth, and creating a lifeboat for humanity that could survive even a planet-wide catastrophe.

Unfortunately, it seems clear that, as things stand now, space settlement will not happen soon enough for any of us to see it, if it ever happens at all. The US government has now officially decided not to go back to the moon, philanthropists cannot afford it, and there is nothing else on the moon or Mars that could be profitable enough to justify the cost of private enterprise developing safe, reliable and affordable human transport. Continue reading A Rebuttal To Jim Dunstan On Space Property Rights

Random Thoughts

“Obama ate a dog” edition. This is like a permanent employment act for people like Jim Treacher and Frank J. And of course, the inevitable Dogs Against Obama web site.

[Late morning update]

Just when did the presidents stop eating dogs? Treacher’s having way too much fun with this.

[Update a few minutes later]

Why Barack Obama identifies with the dog eaters. The rest of us are just bitter, clinging to our provincial American cuisine.

Biting Commentary about Infinity…and Beyond!