As I noted last night on Blogtalk in response to a question (the last 15 minutes or so of the show) the Feral Government is increasingly being exposed as a pack of animals - cornered animals.
Recognition that The Feral Government has run the ship not aground but rather into an iceberg is rapidly spreading throughout the second-level administration people - along with firms and individuals who are in some way dependent on it.
The inevitable "rats jumping from a sinking ship" process has begun, starting with Peter Orszag, Obama's "budget director":
Orszag, 41, considered leaving his post as director of the Office of Management and Budget in April and stayed on after an appeal from the president, the officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said. Orszag’s decision to leave in July will accelerate the process of picking a successor.
That wouldn't have anything to do with this chart, would it?
Let's see, over $1.5 trillion (annually) on that graph eh? Oh, and for what it's worth, the total this year thus far (as of yesterday) is $727 billion, so we're right on track for another year like last.
Don't give me any of this claptrap about it "not being Obama's" either - the fact remains that Barry took office in January of 2009, and as such not only was the 2009 budget "all his" (into 2010) so was the remaining time in the previous fiscal year - a year in which he spent like mad.
The sort of idiocy coming from the Adminsitration on the budget is infuriating - such as this:
Earlier this month, Orszag announced a plan to force some federal agencies to reduce their fiscal 2012 budget requests by 5 percent to help cut the deficit.
“As stewards of the American people’s tax dollars, we cannot afford to waste money on programs that do not work, that are outdated or that are duplicative of one another,” he said in a speech on June 8 at the Center for American Progress.
Uh huh. Remember this pie chart?
All the pieces of that pie that are worth eating are exempt. Net impact of this alleged "cutting"? Zero.
A band of McChrystal’s profane, irreverent aides are quoted mocking Vice President Joe Biden and Richard Holbrooke, the special U.S. representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan.
McChrystal himself is described by an aide as “disappointed” in his first Oval Office meeting with an unprepared President Barack Obama. The article says that although McChrystal voted for Obama, the two failed to connect from the start.
It includes a list of administration figures said to back McChrystal, including Defense Secretary Robert Gates and Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, and puts Biden at the top of a list of those who don’t.
The article claims McChrystal has seized control of the war “by never taking his eye off the real enemy: The wimps in the White House.”
Why that's positively revolting!
Obama is, of course, not amused. I give McChrystal's odds of surviving this roughly approximating that of standing under "Trinity" and it "all being ok." But if this is any indication of the military's "rank and file" opinion of the Washington DC "establishment" one should be keeping a very close eye on the plans you made for "bugging out" (you have made such plans, right?), especially if you live in a major urban center.
To add to this grand bunch of bogosity in Afghanistan we have this:
The contractors and their truck subcontractors “pay tens of millions” of dollars in what “amounts to a protection racket,” the report said. While the warlords provide the paid- for protection, contractors have “little choice but to use them,” the report said.
The system “fuels warlordism, extortion and corruption and may be a significant source of funding for insurgents,” the report said.
Oh that's nice. So our wonderful "civilian" establishment has "decided" that moving military assets around in Afghanistan is "best conducted" by paying bribes and other forms of "protection money" to the very people trying to shoot our troops, which then, I'm sure, use that money to buy the guns and ammunition that they attack us with.
That's truly impressive, and if true, damn well ought to constitute an actual formal act of Treason, since we are in fact engaged in armed conflict over there, and this most-certainly would count as "actual aid and comfort" to our enemy.
Treason, I remind you, is defined in 18 USC 2381, and provides for, among other things, permanent disqualification for political office along with the possibility of execution. Gee, who knows about this little charade within the government again?
The Pentagon is “grossly out of compliance” with government regulations to oversee private contractors and has “no visibility into the operations of private security companies” working under the trucking contracts, the report said.
Rat, eat thyself? Somehow I doubt it eh? My money is on someone outside of the military chain of command being involved in the "direction" of this little policy tidbit, but we'll see.
Rahm Emanuel, the White House chief of staff, is expected to leave his job later this year after growing tired of the "idealism" of Barack Obama's inner circle.
Ah, the head of the snake. Douchies Maximus Jackassiness, to use a "Roadrunner" sort of latin abuse.
His abrasive style has rubbed some people the wrong way, while there has been frustration among Mr Obama's closest advisers that he failed to deliver a smooth ride for the president's legislative programme that his background promised.
A "smooth ride"? 
You have to be joking me. The first part of a "smooth ride" is having a program in place that actually makes economic and political sense.
That's been lacking since Day #1. Not that McCain had any better ideas - he did not. Both, if you remember, were more than willing to blow trillions on trying to prop up a criminal cabal that had run roughshod in both Washington DC and Wall Street, refusing to do the right thing (that is, forcing those who made bad bets to eat them.)
Being unwilling (or simply being too stupid) to understand and work within the framework of the mathematics that ultimately always wins is just another piece of the pie.
People like Emmanuel think they can force math to do what they want. Witness Illinois and Chicago in particular, where grift, fraud, and voter turnouts exceeding 100% of the registered precinct population have become so embedded in the culture that the city's motto is "Vote early and often."
This is working out real well for Ill-noise, where the "Educators Unions" have managed to rack up salaries of nearly one million dollars for the certain "favored few", and pensions exceeding $600,000 annually - at retirement.
No, I'm not joking. Go look for yourself. Former Niles Township Superintendent Neil Codell is projected to receive over twenty-six million dollars from the Illinois teacher pension plan, free health care (for life) and a $500 monthly stipend for a personal automobile.
Can Ill-Noise and the Chicagoland area, (which incidentally Rahm would like to become mayor of!) pay for this? Bah.
To those who argue that Ill-Noise's state constitution protects the payment of these pensions, I will simply observe that it will be far easier to change the Constitution of the state than to extract the more than $1 trillion that these pensions are underfunded by from Ill-Noise residents, as they both can and will flee to other states before forking over that money.
The infamous Chicago corruption was the icing on the cake for Washington DC. Now we have a military that is openly mocking the civilian "leadership" in Washington DC, we have a MMS that was fully-aware of the fact that BP nearly blew its rig up in February - less than two months before it actually did explode and sink, yet MMS did nothing and continued to rubberstamp every permit request it received, and of course we have the crooks in the banking system that have run roughshod over cities and states with twisted and outright felonious frauds in the derivative and municipal funding markets, yet not one indictment has issued against any of these large financial institutions.
It's all crumbing around our ears folks and the folks on the inside are bailing off before they drown with the rest of you.
Be prepared.
