Category Archives: Current News

For those rare times when I actually have some original information (or a link with such), or I’m just commenting on news that doesn’t fit another category.

Update on the Victory

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Two other contractors, Justin Ewald and Sibin Peter, were also let go and their systems seized at the same time. I met and worked with both a few times. Justin struck me as apolitical (in the “office politics” sense) and highly competent. However both were Brian’s chief lieutenants, in that he pulled them into whatever project he was involved with–they made him look good. Sibin was also extremely highly paid, having billed the City for over $800,000 in the last five years. (Brian Anderson was well over $1,000,000)

Note that there’s still one other person who was released; I don’t have their full name confirmed so I’m not releasing it yet. This person oversaw contracting for all of PWE, which makes sense. There was rampant employee speculation that a major portion of the scam was that Brian Anderson actually owned the consulting company providing these people to PWE. This might just be BS, but it was widely known among people familiar with the billing modernization project that there seemed to be a great deal of padding going on. One example: just last week UCS was just provided with a $165/hr. contractor to remote-lecture employees on a feature of the new system that they’re already aware of and have been using during tests. She billed the city for 15 hours. The conference was perhaps two hours, and at least one employee reportedly walked out in disgust.

VICTORY!!!!

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I love the smell of napalm at City Hall. I’ll settle for it down the road at 611 Walker and 4200 Leeland.

The people named in the above post, Cymel Ashby and Brian Anderson, along with another person in procurement (name pending), were escorted out of their offices in the above buildings at 4:30 pm today. Their computers were seized by the Office of Inspector General.

This was said to be a very popular action at 4200 Leeland. No word on whether any jigs were danced at 611 Walker, though.

Who’s Minding The Store?

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Updated for formatting and clarity on 6/25

In my December 15 post, I wrote the paragraph:

And now, things are worse than ever. It’s no longer a matter of bad management. Or I should say, just a matter of bad management. Now we’ve got the OIG investigating monkey business in PWE, a utility billing modernization plan that’s over budget and on course to miss its fourth deadline for deployment, yet another fee about to be charged to utility customers, and $25 million in utility overcharges to the same.

I didn’t explain the OIG comment at the time, because I detest the media’s use of “unnamed sources” to make shit up, and I wanted something more to base it on. So here’s an email I got a while back from a fellow worker at the City of Houston. I had to spend some time vetting it… only it’s worse than it looks here, because I had to delete portions that would positively identify the author. I’ve also added a few comments to clear up points that might not be obvious to an outsider, and then I follow with information from multiple unnamed sources. Yay me. I are media now.

Several years ago, I got assigned to work with (FOR) a contractor, which isn’t supposed to happen, but did anyway. I wasn’t the only one. In theory, I answered to a city manager, but in reality, he (Evil IT Contractor) determined all my work assignments and even where I was officed. It took me a year to twig to it, but this guy was a scammer who didn’t really know jack about IT, but could fake it well and was really skilled at playing people around him. Especially Weak Boss (this is a reference to Tommy McClung, former Assistant Director of Utility Customer Service –ubu), who he had totally snowed. Lesser managers (including mine) were intimidated by his influence, especially after he brought a major project to a “successful” conclusion (Read: Drainage. it didn’t quite blow up in the mayor’s face, but it’s still not working the way it should. –ubu )

So [Evil IT Manager] got put in charge of a billing modernization project, overseeing a different vendor (which he effectively chose). I lasted six months of his stress-inducing crap before [redacted]. After that I decided to challenge him openly, in order to be removed from the project. It nearly got me fired (he tried!), but I got moved. Meanwhile he continued mismanaging the project, running off all the competent people, finding new software to spend money on, and three years later, we are trying to determine our NINTH date for “go-live.” (The first was 7/1/2014 –ubu)

Evil IT Contractor got in tight with the City’s overall IT manager, (Charles Thompson — ubu) was promoted to Acting CTO for all of Public Works IT, while still a contractor. Also, he and Evil Manger divorced their original spouses and shacked up together, while he was still a contractor and she was responsible for oversight of his contract. Talking to a coworker, they’ve got him dead to rights double, triple, even quadruple billing for his hours under different contracts.* And yes, the City’s Inspector General is “investigating”… and doing nothing.

“Evil IT Contractor” is Brian Anderson, of various consulting companies. Evil Manager is Cymel Ashby, COH employee. Brian’s been paid over $1 million by the city since arriving — see the Adi Dajani, a left-wing, virulently anti-Israel Muslim who supports Ben Hall for Mayor. Scroll down to the first March 17 post, and note it says “edited.” It disappeared for over a month shortly after posting, without any mention whatsoever. I’m assuming a lawsuit got threatened, or a DMCA abuse occurred — the new version says nothing of the criminal investigation. Maybe I’ll find out when mine gets hit by a takedown…

One person in UCS procurement has been let go, though it’s not clear if its due to this, and he was only a contractor himself. And Tommy McClung resigned in April. Susan Bandy is resigning at the end of the year, but whether it has anything to do with this or she just decided to call it a day isn’t clear. She and Dale Rudik (Director, PWE) were said to be highly upset over the failure of the project so far (which is about 50% over budget — so far), but nothing has happened; it appears that the Mayor is willing to run out the clock and not provide ammunition for any of her potential successors, such as Bill King or Ben Hall.

By the way, since two of the people questioned are the Evil Manager and Evil IT Manager (according to my multiple unnamed sources!), I’m not revealing anything to the subjects of the investigation that they don’t know.

Edit: Look at Brian Anderson’s LinkedIn page. He’s rarely in a management position for more than two years.

* Ubu: I personally viewed an entry in SAP in which Mr. Anderson submitted FOUR requests for a week’s payment, all dated the same day. Only ONE had the required timesheet attached. Countersigned by Cymel Ashby and Tommy McClung. There are no dates on the three other requests to indicate what the specific days worked were. So just who is minding the store?

New Director

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The mayor just announced the new director of PW&E.

Moments ago the Mayor announced Mr. Krueger as the new Director of the Public Works and Engineering Department. Confirmation by City Council is anticipated as early as late July.

Very Respectfully, 

Daniel R. Menendez, P.E.
Deputy Director
Engineering & Construction Division

Menendez was the interim director for the last couple of days.

Frankly, the mayor should have announced a new ITD director. The website rollout is totally botched. As I write this, the city’s front page is HTV. I don’t mean it’s redirected there, I mean it is HTV.

Once again, ITD fubars a project. No surprises there.

So Long, and Thanks for all the… Grief? (Updated)

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I have yet to see it on any news outlet in Houston, but the word at the office is that Director of Public Works and Engineering Michael Marcotte has tendered his resignation to Mayor Parker. The effective date is in two weeks. According to multiple sources, the Mayor was not happy with unspecified job performance issues and requested the Director vacate his position.

What prompted this action now? The City is embroiled in multiple controversies, as the new mayor puts her stamp on the city. A hefty water rate increase, a drainage “fee” initiative that has her tacit approval, upheavals at Metro; now would not seem to be the time to throw more fuel on the fire. All of those involve Public Works in some way. Yet the fact remains: Marcotte is out.

Several questions immediately occur:

  • Is Marcotte supposed to take the fall for the rate increase?
  • What was the mayor unhappy about?
  • Who else, if anyone, will be following, if the mayor is unhappy?
  • Did Marcotte balk at some demand involving the rates, cooperation with Metro, backing the initiative?

Taking the fall doesn’t make sense. There’s no way that Parker can shift the blame for needing the rate increase onto Marcotte; not while she was the controller and silently oversaw the vast expansion of debt funding from capital projects into everyday operations and maintenance. So what is going on?

Perhaps we’ll hear when the usual 3:48 pm Friday evening press release goes out, but I’m not holding my breath.

Update: My view of Marcotte is probably not that well informed; I don’t interact with him in any way. Still, my impression is that he’s an even-tempered administrator who doesn’t rush to judgment, isn’t prone to arrogance, and listens to his managers. He’s been a loyal soldier publicly, whatever he’s had to say privately. He’s tried, within budget constraints, to see to it that his employees are compensated as well as in the private sector.

If I had to take a wild guess, I’d say that the rift probably had to do with the rebate program, and/or contract administration and code enforcement. The latter areas have always given me a queasy feel when I’ve dealt with them; contract inspectors sometimes act like they’re working for the contractor, not the city. There’s nothing I can specifically point to as wrong-doing (or I’d be publishing it, screw OIG), but the creation of the rebate program risks letting the rot spread. Not to mention, it removes funding from the utility system and hands it to slumlords.

Who are these “Engineers” of whom you speak?

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Well, I’ve said any number of times (though mostly not here) that the drainage fee was coming back. Sure enough, it has.. There were several things I thought were very interesting in today’s uncritical article.

  • The assumption that some of the metro sales tax (aka. “general mobility”) funds would be used for drainage and “infrastructure” improvements. In the first place, that assumes that the changing of the Metro guard means a resumption of those payments to COH. Second place, they’re talking about other than drainage if they’re using mobility funds. Third place, I hope they have that much left after paying for lawsuit settlements for breaking the law about open records. Just as Tom Bazan has hounded them about for years.
  • User fee is bullshit, it’s a property tax. Council Member Costello: “It’s a user fee!” Funny, I thought my property tax was a user fee. If I don’t pay it, I’m not going to have use of my land for very long.
  • Note the article’s reference to developer fees where such development “affects density.” In other words, they’re going to make it more expensive to develop inside the city– not only that, but they’ll penalize and discourage the very density growth that they claim to be encouraging (and needing) for MetroRail.
  • Who are these faceless “engineers” of whom the Chronicle speaks? The only one identified by name is the President of this relatively unheard-of “Renew Houston” That’s Edwin Friedrichs of Walter P. Moore, whose online bio reads:

He devises engineering solutions to help build better communities. Some of his signature projects include the Uptown Houston Transportation Master Plan and Streetscape Improvements Program, numerous roadways and facilities at the Texas Medical Center, Sam Houston Tollway Section VII-A, Minute Maid Park, Lake Texana State Park, BMC Software Headquarters, and the Michael E. DeBakey Veterans Affairs Medical Center.

Mr. Friedrichs works to find consensus, both in his professional work and his civic activities, with groups such as South Main Alliance, Rice Design Alliance, Greater Houston Partnership, Houston Achievement Place, and various City of Houston committees.

Well, I’d not expect an un-influential person to be heading this project.. Can you say “Front man”? I knew that you could.

Some other notes:

The $8 billion to improve drainage would come primarily from three sources. First, the “Stormwater User Fee” that is expected to amount to about $5 per month for an average homeowner and $90 a month for an average commercial property owner with 14 units per acre.

In other words, a property tax, by another name.

Second, a “Development Impact Fee” would set up a program by which developers have to pay for the degree to which their projects impact density.

Which will discourage it, as noted above.

Third, a “pay-as-you-go” plan that would take the estimated one-sixth of total city property tax revenues used now to pay for interest costs on debt that has financed infrastructure and drainage projects and apply it directly to new projects. In other words, the city would not incur additional debt to pay for infrastructure as part of the plan and as old debts are paid off, money used to make those payments would be put to drainage and infrastructure projects.

How about we use the money for Police and Fire protection, huh?

But that’s not all, not by a long shot. Other funding:

The city also would continue to use other sources of funds to pay for road and drainage improvements, such as “mobility funds,” or sales taxes, collected by the Metropolitan Transit Authority and redistributed to the city.

So Metro’s going to cough up the money at last? Wonder how that will affect their already documented inability to pay for their current plans?

The proposed referendum includes a provision that would continue the program for another 20 years after 2032 unless City Council votes to modify or cancel it.

Keep that gravy train rolling, baby, hundreds of millions a year in public spending. Construction and engineering companies are lining up!

Parker said she preferred that the referendum focus exclusively on drainage rather than “general infrastructure,” and she also is uncomfortable that the charter amendment would prohibit future mayors from leveraging the revenues to issue debt if such a course were needed.

What, she wants to pile on MORE DEBT? Well, she let Bill White pile on all he wanted while ignoring the warning signs. Personally, I’m also worried about the referendum being used as an end-run around Prop 1 and Prop 2, if not to just “accidentally” repeal them entirely. “Oh, we didn’t realize it said that, but since it does…”

Houston’s voters need to wake up and smell the arsenic. The “non-partisan” nature of city elections means that neither the Democratic nor Republican parties feel any need to score points off the other by, Heaven forbid, actually doing what the voters want, instead of treating them as particularly stupid sheep to be sheared.

Annise Parker is a What?

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No, not lesbian. We knew that.

She’s a conservative?

Methinks the LA Times doesn’t know what the hell it’s talking about. Someone who has silently financed Bill White’s spending agenda is not a conservative, fiscal, or otherwise. Conservatives keep government spending restricted to the necessities, and do not waste time with worthless amenities such as sports stadiums, useless/expensive/dangerous trams, and wind energy schemes that only benefit friends. Nor do they spend a million dollars on consultants just to cover their political butts for the next run. That’s been the last six years, and the controller has fiddled while Rome burned. We will now discover if this was political pragmatism or agreement with the Democratic machine that Bill White has built.

We’ll be watching to see just how “conservative” this new mayor is.

Vacar Quits… for some value of “quit”

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It’s a truism that big news that the city government doesn’t want you to hear will always break late on a Friday afternoon. Once again, it’s been proven.

Richard Vacar, who led the Houston Airport System for more than 11 years through several multi-billion-dollar expansion projects, abruptly left the post today, according to an announcement from Mayor Bill White’s office.

It was unclear whether Vacar was fired or left voluntarily. The announcement from the mayor’s office said he had retired.

Hey, he retired so fast, his own staff didn’t know. That happens all the time, right? Seriously, he was definitely shown the door, and the mayor obviously didn’t care if it hit him in the butt on the way out. Special inside knowledge? Nah, just the total abrogation of protocol.

Rorschach suggested that it might be the news leak over the new runway while the Lege is still in session, considering eminent domain bills. I don’t think I buy it.

This has all the hallmarks of MBW in full-blown rage mode. Now Vacar may have wanted the extra runway, and we know he’s the tool of Yellow Cab and the entire airline industry. (Or should I have stopped at “tool”?) But unless there’s a hell of a lot more to this.. as in “Bill, get us this runway and we’ll make damn sure you’re the next jr.Senator from Texas,” I just don’t see White going bonkers over this. In fact, I don’t see him even trying to make that deal unless he thinks such an obvious screw of the public (and our already broken budget) would look good right before he runs for office.

So did he catch Vacar eating babies for breakfast, or what?

Is the real problem that someone has proof that Vacar is as corrupt as we’ve always felt he was?

And is it just me, or is the Chron burying this story under swine flu and knee surgery infections at Methodist hospital?

Yes, Virginia, There Are Still Red-Blooded Texans

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The proof isn’t in this article.

According to police, they were driving a white Pontiac Grand Prix when they fired gunshots at the driver of a truck. Then they exited the freeway at West Gulf Bank.

The truck driver stopped on the West Gulf Bank overpass and got a rifle from his back seat for protection, police said. As he looked over the side of the freeway to see the license plate of the Pontiac, he saw the car’s driver’s side window open and feared the suspects would shoot at him again.

He fired several shots at the Pontiac, hitting the passenger who was sitting in the front seat and another man who was in the back seat.

The front-seat passenger, 17, was taken to Memorial Hermann Northwest Hospital, where he later was pronounced dead.

It’s not that the guy said “Screw this, I’m shooting back!” It’s not that three punks got more than they bargained for. It’s not even the comments. Nope, it’s the ratings of the comments.

CPP wrote:
Gang punks shoot at Bubba & Bubba returns fire: end of story!
4/9/2009 11:13:07 AM

Recommend: (945 thumbs up) (18 thumbs down)

Yeowch!!!!!! I mean, damn.

Virus Attack

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Got the following emails at work in relation to the attack by a virus on the city’s computers. This looks a bit more widespread than “16 computers” as they were claiming to the Chronicle.

PWE Employees,

The City of Houston network is currently experiencing connectivity issues with the following departments/divisions due to a virus outbreak:

* 311 Call Center
* Municipal Courts (Court View Connection)
* Jail Processing Units
* Legal Department
* Parking Management

These departments and divisions have been quarantined and/or isolated by our Information Technology Department who is working diligently to eradicate this problem.

We are asking all PWE users to contact our helpdesk at 713.xxx.xxx, if you experience any problems with your system or if you receive any messages regarding a “Microsoft Installation.” Please do not access Microsoft website for any updates at this time until we receive an “all clear” from Information Technology Department.

If you have a laptop, please ensure your system has the latest updates before your connect to the network.

Thank you for your continued support.

PWE Information Technology Department

The first thing I notice is that the media haven’t said anything about the 311 system. That’s the main call-taking system for non-emergency services. If 311 is compromised, is 911 safe? One hopes they use better security at the HEC, but then, it is the HEC, which has never seemed all that technically savvy.

The second thing I notice is, how do these idiots expect anyone to update their laptop BEFORE connecting to the city’s network? They have to connect to the network to get online! Oh, right, connect to your own network at home and compromise it. Sure. Look, any laptop, anywhere, at any time, is an infection vector because they’re not connected to the network at the time you’re trying to clean it. Since many viruses will spike the update features or spoof AV programs, the odds of an infection never making it back into the network from a hiding place on someone’s laptop are close to nil.

The second email I received Friday said this:

PWE Employees,

Due to the recent virus outbreak that has occurred in various areas in the City; the PWE IT staff is working diligently to ensure the safety of our user community. We are in the process of deploying the necessary security updates to your computer.

We are asking you to shut down your computer before leaving for the day. If you see the option to install updates and shut down please do so.

If you have any questions or concerns, please contact the help desk at 713-xxx-xxxx.

Thank you for your continued support.

PWE Information Technology

I don’t envy our IT people their job right now… I’ve been fighting an unrelated (I think) virus infestation for the last few days, which I wasn’t able to solve until I junked the major commercial solutions and went to Brand X online. (Specifically: AVG antivirus, and I returned to Zone Alarm for my firewall. Screw you Norton, you couldn’t solve it, and left dozens of tracking cookies you were supposed to remove.)

It will be interesting to see if the city can get the problem solved by Monday.

Quick, While Nobody’s Looking…

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Carolyn Feibel reports at the Chronicle’s Politics blog, that the city quietly added $60 million to its debt obligation last Friday, in order to pay its obligations on HPD pensions. Amazingly, this was reported as if it were good news.

The city refinanced a portion of its pension obligation – $400 million of it, to be exact. Previously, the city had issued a $300 million promissory note to the Municipal Employees Pension System in 2004, using the Hilton Americas-Houston as collateral. That lowered the unfunded liability left over from the Brown administration. On paper, that is. But the White administration deferred both payments and interest, so the eventual obligation grew to $341 million.

Now, the city has refinanced that old obligation, and paid off the $341 million owed to the municipal pension fund. The old obligation would have cost 8.5 percent interest if the city had stuck with it. The new bond issued Wednesday is worth $400 million, with a 6.29 percent interest rate. The extra millions will be used to pump cash into the police pension, as well.

This article is pitched as good news, but what it really says is that the Cits just borrowed an additional $59 million to finance the police pension fund and $41 million just to pay the deferred interest on the previous $300 million debt. The last sentence of the quote makes it obvious that the first sentence is misleading. Worse, the math doesn’t add up. Here’s what happened, if we cut out all the smoke and mirrors.

Continue reading →

The Mob Has Spoken

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Tom Bazan had a neat suggestion for an editorial cartoon, so I took his suggestion and ran with it. This isn’t exactly what he asked for, but I like it. The result:

If you want to take your own shot at captioning this picture, here it is (click on it for the link to the full size, or just use the thumbnail):

One More Question

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Herschel Smith over at the Captain’s Journal has a few questions about the National Security Force being proposed by Obama. They’re good questions, like (paraphrasing):

  • If it’s just as well funded, where’s the money going to come from?
  • If it’s just as well equipped, does that mean tanks, bombers, Strykers?

I’m tempted to make jokes about this organization, such as, “hey, if he wants a civilian defense force, Blackwater’s for hire!” I’ll pass on the snark for once. However, I do have a few questions that aren’t on Herschel’s list, that I’d like to see answered first.

  • What is the purpose of this force?
  • What will it’s training be like?
  • Where will it be deployed?
  • To whom does it answer?
  • What type of people will be recruited?

There are two kinds of security. Internal, and external. Internal security involves police-type work and enforcement of the law on people who don’t want to obey it. External security involves imposition of a national will on another group of people, whether that will is “don’t shoot your neighbor” or “don’t shoot us.” They’re similar in some ways, but different in others. Given the level of combat in Iraq until recently, a “civilian” force would be nothing more than a collection of targets and hostages. I can’t imagine deploying a super-sized LAPD SWAT team to Iraq, and being nearly as effective against insurgents and Iranian-supplied RPG’s, mortars, AK-47’s, IED’s etc., as the military was.

It’s not just a matter of gear, it’s also training and mindset. The military has over 200 years of experience in getting tens of thousands of people performing widely different tasks, and operating on the same page. One of those reasons is military discipline. You disobey an order in the military, your butt can end up in the slammer. (At least.) You don’t obey it in a civilian job, you can be fired. Whoopee. If I’m a civilian security force member, I have to know that the guy next to me can quit at any time; he might not do it in the middle of a fire-fight in Bosnia, but he’s not exactly the Marines when all hell breaks loose This isn’t to say that there aren’t cultural and human imperatives to support a fellow security force member in a tight spot, just that these are MUCH weaker in a force that has no “institutional” memory and little power to punish deserters. If the force does have the power to punish, not just fire, deserters or those who disobey orders, then it’s not civilian. It’s just a military force in disguise. Therefore, I believe this should not be called a “civilian” force, but what it really is: a “quasi-military” force.

So is the plan to deploy a few million heavily-armed, poorly-trained, volunteer targets around the world? That’s going to be popular with the mothers back home…

Or is the National Security force for internal use? Will the act of Congress that authorizes this force permit or bar it from being deployed in the U.S.? If it is meant for domestic use, then it has to be equipped and trained differently from the “lavishly equipped” military. (Ask a soldier sleeping in a tent in Afganistan just how lavish it is…) Lets look at internal use.

Internal security involves the apprehension of those defined as criminals by the government. It will require forensics, detective skills, informants, databases of criminals, and so on. But wait, we already have these in the FBI. Why do we need a large, lavishly equipped force as big as the military to perform these functions? Why do we need three million extra people under arms inside the U.S.? Is our crime problem that bad? Well, you could give the National Security force enough medium or heavy weaponry to suppress violent outbreaks of up to city-wide level. Helluva police force, but otherwise, there’s no point in having it; existing city and state forces, backed up by the National Guard have sufficed. (“But what about Kent State?” screams the audience. Well, what about it? Do we have rioters at our colleges today? If you’re planning on having any, why? And what does Kent State have to do with anything? Four dead rock and bottle throwers no more validates a national security force thirty-five years later, than the Gulf of Tonkien incident would validate our going back to war with Vietnam today.

So, if we assume this force is meant for external use, it will need to have military training, military equipment, and military discipline. You can’t keep the peace if you’re not willing to wage war on those who would break it. And if it’s for internal use, it needs to be equipped to investigate and detain “criminal” elements, plus, at that size, probably it will be used to suppress disorderly elements among the people. So the aim of the force will be obvious from the training and equipment — which we won’t really know until after the force is being formed, will we? So why would we create this big, expensive force, just as Sen. Barney Frank says (paraphrased) “Let’s cut spending on the military by 25%”?

Now the next question is, if you’re going to form this force, to whom will it answer? If it’s civilian, not the Secretary of Defense. If it’s judicial or prosecutorial, the DOJ would be obvious. But that doesn’t fit either. So, if it’s foreign use, it will have to have its own “department” which may or may not be considered cabinet-level. Obviously, if it’s intended for domestic use, Homeland Security would be the right place.

Homeland Security, with its own quasi-military force of 2 to 3 million people. (Why does that make my butt pucker?) Or some new office entirely? (The puckering gets worse.)

And I have to ask, what kind of people will this force recruit? Or will it be “compulsory youth service?” If it’s volunteer, would it be too much to expect that people who think this force is a bad idea from several perspectives would not join it? And if it’s “compulsory youth service” (read: “draft”) would the members be subject to, shall we say, a certain amount of persuasion that they’re doing A Great Thing? Morale boosting along with the training? Hm. Just realized, if it’s compulsory service, there go those pesky problems with discipline in tight spots; you’re not allowed to quit. Maybe that “Q” in “Quasi-military” should be capitalized.

So will this “Quasi-military” forcet have an oath? No, seriously, the military does. The President does. Police Departments do. Hell, doctors have an oath. In the military, every man and woman under arms with the military, takes an oath, although the last sentence is optional. The enlisted oath of office swears that person to obey all lawful orders. But the officers oath is much more interesting.

I, [name], do solemnly swear, (or affirm,) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter. (So help me God.)

Will this “Quasi-military” National Security Defense Force have an oath…. and will it contain that specific obligation? Or will it instead, call upon its members to uphold “the lawful Government of the United States?”

Huge. Freaking. Difference.

So tell me again, what is the point of creating a large “Quasi-military” force that is “as big and lavishly equipped as the military” that the Democratic party wants to downsize?

And why is my butt puckering again?

Chinese Checked

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And some people wonder why I try to never buy Chinese goods. Bad enough that they fix their exchange rate artificially low; they’ve destroyed our heavy industry, what was left of our semi-conductor industry, our textiles; it’s gotten so bad they’re stealing Mexican jobs from the maquiladoras.

But I’m sure President Osama, I mean Obama, will seek better relations with them by fixing that thorny Taiwanese problem. If I were Taiwan, I’d be cozying up to India, Japan, and Russia right now. None of them alone would be enough to save them, but the combination might keep the dragon at bay.

I wouldn’t put money on it. Wonder if I could find a Taiwanese internet bride, really cheap, in a few months? Heh. If I’m lucky, she might like wearing cat ears… “Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Catgirls! Nya?”