Tag Archives: Congress

Billion Dollar Airplanes or Schoolbooks?


Posted by Omnipotent Poobah

Anyone who denies there are big flaws in our military’s procurement practices is light on scruples and probably the CEO of, say, Boeing (among others)… or maybe both.

Anyone who believes that if America had no military the world would live in peace and harmony is suffering from dementia. There’s always disagreement over the list of bad guys, but make no mistake, there are creatively evil people out there. Like it or not, America needs a military that can defend and support our interests. The problem is how we buy it.

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Paul Broun: The Sugar Plum Tea Bagger


Posted by Omnipotent Poobah

The concept of government workers is that they lounge on comfy divans while servants fan them and peel grapes in return for fabulous riches and a retirement plan bigger than Bill Gates’. In other words, with the taxpayers all snug in their beds, visions of fairy tales danced in their heads.

OMG, I Agree With Michele Bachmann!


Posted by Omnipotent Poobah
Who's That Behind Those Foster Grants?

TWO BOMB HANGOVER - He's not going to go easily, but should we be the ones to try to make him?

In the midst of the crapstorm that has become life in these United States, I sometimes feel as if I’ve slipped into a parallel dimension populated exclusively by tea partiers, Glen Beck clones, Sarah Palin stand up comedians, and our reigning dizzy queen Michele Bachmann. That’s why when I agreed with one of her statements, I headed straight for the antipsychotics.

Please God, don’t let me die a “dittohead”!

The Maybe I’ll Certainly Run for President in 2012 Unless I Change My Mind Before Deciding to Redecide Again candidate laid into The Messiah™ for leading his uncoalesced coalition into Libya. Not surprisingly she’s against it, though I’m confident she would’ve been for it if Obama had decided against intervention. But this this time? I agree with her.

Doin’ the Tripoli Tango
Obama made a mistake in entering the fray. Michele and I agree there seems to be little compelling strategic US interest involved. As for the humanitarianism angle, there are places that DO involve strategic US interests AND plenty of poor wretches being ground under the jackboots of a dozen Col. Loony Toons and DickTaters. We aren’t feeling particularly humanitarian there, so WTF? The US simply cannot be the world’s cop. There’s an infinite supply of bad people and you can’t wipe them all out without weakening yourself. Even Bush the Lesser understood that, though he sometimes didn’t act that way.

I think Michele’s a little weak on the whole “al Qaeda” is afoot angle and by referring to the fiasco in the making as the “Obama Doctrine” she’s ignoring the fact that one decision does not a full doctrine make. These decisions should and are based on the conditions at the moment, whether they’re good or bad.

Oy VeyNow, we’re  seeing the ghosts of neo-conservatism on Obama. He’s apparently signed a “secret order” authorizing covert support for the Libyan rebels. We’re slow learners about this whole, “let’s have a big freedom party and call all the poor kids over for punch, cookies, and purple thumb votes” thing. See Exhibits A (Iraq), B (Afghanistan), C-Z (dozens of other places where we’ve intervened to no great or lasting effect).

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The Time Has Come for Relaxing Rangle to Relax Somewhere Else


Posted by Omnipotent Poobah
RELAXIN' RANGEL - For Charlie Rangel may be relaxing now, but if justice has anything to do with it, he'll be soon be packing his bags and headed for his Dominican Republic getaway - or the Federl pen, which ever comes first.

RELAXIN' RANGEL - Charlie Rangel may be relaxing now, but if justice has anything to do with it, he'll be soon be packing his bags and headed for his Dominican Republic getaway - or the Federal pen, whichever comes first.

Legislators are as expert as lobbyists and CEOs when it comes to crowding the edge of anti-graft law. For instance, take Representative Charles Rangel. He’s been seated at the top of the political heap in Washington for more years than many can count and his robust girth shows just how well he’s feasted at the table of the powerfully privileged. If he was ever an honest man, those pretensions have fallen away to expose someone who feels it is his natural due to cheat on taxes and take bribes. There are plenty of arrogant CEOs who could learn a thing or two from Charlie and, for a fee directed to a Swiss bank account, I’m sure Charlie would teach them.

In a rare show of bipartisanship, both sides of the aisle agree he’s probably guilty of the accusations accumulated around him. He’s an embarrassment to his party and to the Congress as a whole, yet almost no one has seen fit call him out. Democrats don’t want to call attention to their own party’s contributions to Washington’s grafty suckhole. Republicans want to let sleeping dogs lie so they aren’t reminded of the many Republican scandals already in their rearview mirror and the ticking time bombs that still occupy the overstuffed chairs of the House. You know something’s out of whack when the Party of No won’t even say it.

In short, the entire conversation doesn’t revolve around Charlie’s guilt or innocence, it orbits political calculus. How much to say or whether to say anything at all is determined by the number of seats under DNC control, whether Charlie will spill the dirt he holds on others, or give the opposition a stick with which to heavily beat the majority about the face and neck. There’s nary a water cooler conversation that says dick about the right thing to do…

Unload the crooked sumbitch.

We don’t need “brave” politicians at a time like this. We don’t need equally crooked pols preaching “throw the bum out” while accidentally outing themselves as Charlie’s equals in the fine art of grifting. All we really require is for Nancy Pelosi, or any other member of Congress for that matter, to stand up and say, “Sorry Charlie. It’s time to go.”

That’s an unlikely scenario. More likely, Charley will fester until he pops himself onto the street like an infected, puss-proud zit poked with an ill-turned phrase or testimony from someone who refuses to stay paid off after cashing the checks. Greedy crapulence doesn’t lend itself to wise decision making, and that puts Mr. Rangel at a distinct disadvantage. The first rule in politics is to hide until they find you and then scream, “Do whatever you want to the girl, just don’t hurt me!”

There are two other scenarios. The Messiah of Changinology could stand up and force his semi-obedient Congressional lackeys to act – demonstrating first hand that what he preaches, he practices – the politics of change. Or, Charley could rediscover the lost phrase, “my bad”, take his lumps, and stumble off to his villa in the Dominican Republic wearing an e-bracelet on his ankle.

Yeah, like that’ll happen.

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We Have Met the Terrorists and They is Us


Posted by Omnipotent Poobah
YOU CAN'T CATCH 'EM ALL - How come Amazon can track millions of books, but Obama can't track one loon? Because Amazon doesn't have to track millions of books whizzing around the warehouse at random.

YOU CAN'T CATCH 'EM ALL - How come Amazon can track millions of books, but Obama can't track one loon? Because Amazon doesn't have to track millions of books whizzing around the warehouse at random.

Update The Odds of a Terrorist Attack: 1-in-16,553,385 Departures. In other words, it ain’t very damn likely.

I recently read a commenter who accused the Obamoids of ineptitude by asking why Amazon can track millions of books while Obama can’t track a batshite crazy Jihadist who got caught in-flammable delicto. Fair enough question, though the book metaphor sucks.

Amazon rocks inventory control because they record all books in, check all books out, and the books aren’t silently running tither and yon around the warehouse while they do it.

Even the best intelligence can’t ferret out every lunatic Larry and when it does, the sheer volume of intelligence puts Amazon’s task at the sub-nanobyte level of complexity. Ultimately, it still takes humans to evaluate intelligence and make decisions on where it goes on the to-do list. We have finite manpower, but limitless information. This information overload is partly why the Patriot Act makes the problem worse, not better. Rather than collecting even more, we should be collecting less and concentrating on the most meaningful tidbits.

Swiss Cheese Terror Defense
That’s not to say the status quo is OK nor that the administration and Congress have done a sterling job. However, there are legitimate reasons why our terror defense is as holey as Swiss cheese, some of which have little to do with politics.

Our War of Error president got his weenie stuck in the roller immediately after 9/11 when he and The Black Widow of State™ got briefings on a Qaeda plot the month before it took place. It would’ve been great had they acted on it, but given that the briefing wasn’t particularly detailed or as important as other events on the agenda, it’s understandable. Just because you’re an oafish goober doesn’t mean your mistakes aren’t explainable.

It would’ve been nice if he’d taken responsibility for it happening on his watch, but accountability never was one of his strong suits. But that whole “bring it on” thing really was monumentally stupid.

obama-vs-osamaTo their credit, Obama and Janet Napolitano first admitted to a “systemic breakdown”, but then backtracked to “the system worked“. It’s too early to say if their responses are good or bad in hindsight. But, tying air traffic in knots with contradictory procedural changes doesn’t bode well. Furthermore, explaining afterward that the confusion was all part of the plan looks Bushonian at first blush.

Both administrations were saddled with the monstrous Department of Homeland Insecurity. One of the few Bush decisions I ever agreed with was his initial reluctance to shove half the federal government into a single department while assuming it would work better. Remember, the difficulty of any enterprise is exponential to the number of people involved in it and DHS is the perfect example.

Reacting to a Bozo with his Pants on Fire
Bringing up the rear, as always, is Congress. Joe “Party of One” Lieberman was the brain trust behind the DHS debacle then. Now, his reaction to a bozo with his pants on fire is to attack Yemen! Bush Republicans resisted, and still resist, any attempt to investigate their own party’s possible ineptitudes so they can be corrected while Dems put a gazillion hearings on the agenda and then kowtowed to every ignored subpoena and request for information. Word to the wise, if you aren’t going to use your gavel, don’t cock your elbow

Creating a useful terrorist response doesn’t have a chance in hell, see Republican claims that the latest incident was either caused by unions or because there is no permanent TSA honcho while Jim DeWitless holds up the nomination and responds to Democrats fast tracking it by saying they’re in too much of a rush.

Huh?!

The Dems are no better. It’s not like they stood up to the Chump-in-Chief when he was mucking things up and why are they waiting until now to figure out that 5 months is too long to wait for an essential bureaucrat?

Get on the stick you dicks. And speaking of dicks, The Big Dick™ is still, well, dickish.

To paraphrase the politically astute opossum Pogo, “We have met the terrorists, and they is us.”

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