The McChrystal Imbroglio.

Should a capable general be fired over a "they said that he said" article in Rolling Stone? The latest report is that the general will arrive at the White House with resignation letter in hand.

Perhaps General McChrystal has been asking the President to answer the Four Essential Questions of Strategy, as stated by Thomas Ricks, author of Fiasco:

• Who are we?
• What are we ultimately trying to accomplish?
• How will we do it?
• What resources and means will we employ in doing it?

Do we have clear answers to these questions regarding Afghanistan?

Pointless, Valueless Theater.

Tony Hayward, CEO of BP, is not an Oil Man. His pedigree is finance, serving in the corporation's Mergers and Acquisitions department for the majority of tenure at BP. In today's testimony to Congers, it was very clear that Hayward was not there to answer questions specific to his expertise, but was summoned so that Congresscritters could look good to the "little people" by ranting at him. Not that they understood the significance or triviality most of the technical questions they threw at him. If we were offered a seat along side the Critters, we would have asked the following questions:

1. When you became CEO of BP and directed a "laser-like focus" on improving safety, at that time were you made aware of any drilling, production, refining, or petroleum transportation activity that was operating with unacceptable bounds of safety, regardless of whether they met federal oversight requirements? For example, were you told that the overall approach to drilling procedures could allow operations with an amplified risk of failure or accident? Were there operations that you unilaterally halted because of safety concerns?
2. As CEO you receives safety briefings that were at the highest level, with little technical detail for evaluation. Basically, you are given "red light - green light" status reports of safety initiatives. Who in the BP organization does have the responsibility to evaluate the technical criteria to assess whether BP operations were improving in safety? What reports were you getting from these personnel about the state of drilling safety?
3. What conditions did you place on your subcontractors, Transocean and Haliburton, in decision-making for safe practices on the rig? Did either have veto power over procedures directed by BP personnel?
4. What are the experience requirements for BP rig managers? Does a single BP manager have authority for rig operations?
5. What direction or guidance were you given by MMS as part of your improved safety initiatives? Did you solicit input from MMS for this? If so, what was their response?

These hearings can be quite valuable in determining the structure of risk manangement and decision making for operations of BP and the other producers in the Gulf, and the interaction of MMS. Or they can be useless theater.

Calling Gene Kranz!

There are Oil Men who know what to do. We don't care who they work for or where they live, pound on their doors and get them in here!

Yup, Never Let a Crisis Go to Waste.

The Wall Street Journal comments on how the Administration used the good name of oil engineering experts to push ideology.

The Failure of Risk Management.

Nansen Saleri, former head of reservoir management for Saudi Aramco, provides a non-hysterical, apolitical, and sober analysis of oilshore oil drilling in the shadow of the Deepwater Horizon accident. His claim is that the principal failure that lead to the catastrophe was that of effective risk management. Saleri also reminds us that shutting down offshore drilling may actually increase the risk of another oil spill from much more vulnerable oil tankers.

Dim-Bulb Debbie Strikes Again.

Michigan's Junior Senator, Debbie Stabenow continues to embarass her state. We are not inclined to ad hominem attacks on congresscritters. But we'll suspend our restraint for this one, extraordinary moment: Debbie Stabenow is a Chucklehead. She believes that the power, dignity, and solemn gravity of her office should be used to call for the Commissioner of Baseball to overrule the umpire who denied a Tiger pitcher a perfect game:

MACKINAC (ISLAND) (sic)– U.S. Senator Debbie Stabenow (D-MI) today made the following statement urging Major League Baseball Commissioner Bud Selig to invoke the “Best Interests of the Game” clause to declare Armando Galarraga’s performance perfect.

“Last night’s performance deserves its place in the record books. It is clear that Commissioner Selig should make an exception in this case and invoke the ‘best interests of the game clause’ to reflect Armando Galarraga’s perfect game for the Detroit Tigers.” – U.S. Senator Debbie Stabenow.

Will some human, animal, vegetable or mineral, take up votes and by opposing this twit, end her Senatorial career? Please?

The "Competence" Theme Snowballs.

Tom Coburn's appearance on a recent Morning Joe says it all. But if you need additional ammunition, read Peggy Noonan's recent WSJ column. But to be fair, this is problem is beyond Mr. Obama or any president. It's a loss of vision by our leadership - and the electorate - of what constitutes conscientious stewardship of our Republic.

Bonding Over Brookies.

Yesterday we took the younger son and his girlfriend flyfishing for brook trout on the North Branch of the Ausable. The single day's drive was brutal, the sun was penetrating, the air was hot, the water was low, and the fishing was so-so. But the experience was priceless. The girlfriend, being a flyfishing greenhorn, naturally caught the nicest fish of the day. The son, full of pomp and hubris, naturally was skunked. Your correspondent held his own, but acknowledged that his pace to wade a stream was not quite that of the young folk ("SLOW DOWN! Flyfishing is not a scavenger hunt, son!"). Perhaps fishing colleagues would observe our tendency toward the phelgmatic, though. Our heart skipped a beat when a very nice brown cruised through the pool we were working. He was searching for a cool shady spot and was having none of our offerings.

After five hours of hard fishing, we pulled off our waders and paid a visit with Grandpa and Grandma; caught up with local happenings (forest fires, song birds, and variae), then dined at one of the storied dives of Northern Michigan - the Whitehouse Diner in Clare.

A wonderful day spent with people we love!

An Emerging Theme.

Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal was interviewed by ABC News' Jake Tapper about the strange laxidasical behavior by the United States Government regarding the protection of his state's coastal wetlands. Aha! thought Jake, doesn't this contradict his conservative view of limited government? Jindal replied:

“When government grows too big, it doesn't do its core functions properly. Absolutely, I believe in a limited government that is effective and competent in what it does. We need federal government exactly -- we need our federal government exactly for this kind of crisis.”

George Will has also jumped on this theme: asserting that a massive central government that intervenes in all aspects of the nation's life will, by corollary, be competent at the essential functions that are truly of national interest is false. Advocacy for a limited federal government is not simple ideology of Washington "doing nothing". There are roles - such as national defense or the coordination to mitigate an interstate enviromental disaster - that are appropriate for a federal government. Then there is most of the rest of what Washington believes is good value for your tax dollars.

Look for the theme of "limited and competent government" to grow in the public conversation.

Is Big Oil Undermining US Security?

Larry Kudlow has been dogging oil giants Shell, BP, and Total about selling the Pentagon refined petroleum with one hand while paying Iran for the crude with the other. That's money that goes to kill Americans in Afghanistan and build nuclear weapons.

More Bad News About Unicorns.

News reports indicate that they are close to extinction in Italy, too.

Yet Another "Emergency" Spending Bill.

Remember the bill to extend unemployment insurance for which Senator Jim Bunning had the cruelty to ask "who pays for it"? Well, get ready for another "emergency" job stimulus and tax loophole closing (tax and spend for short) bill coming from Congers. Pay as you go? Come on, that is soooo two months ago!

We are heading for a tipping point in cynicism of the people towards their government.

A Time for All Things.

Like Milton in Office Space, Utah Senator Robert Bennett just can't accept that he is being let go. The Nattering Nabobs are mourning Bennett's loss: how could the rabble* turn out such a marvelous patrician and "cut short" a stellar political career?

Because if we accept a Ruling Class, as many in the Beltway do, we are doomed. It's not a lifetime appointment; you serve at the pleasure of the people and the support of your party. Bennett, from what we can discern, has been a fine public servant. But there is a time for all things, and if he has thrived courtesy of the Utah GOP, then may wilt by them as well. Bob, make sure to take your fern on the way out, and tell Arlen Specter he has thirty minutes to collect his stuff. If you choose to run as an independent, you are free to do so. You may want to consult with Joe Lieberman.

*A gushing fan of Adlai Stevenson confessed to him, "Mr. Stevenson, all of the thinking people of America are voting for you!". "Madam", replied Stevenson, "that is not sufficient...I need a majority".

Unicorns No Longer Found in Spain!

Spain announced austerity measures, including a 5% cut in the pay of civil servants. You know, those guys that don't create wealth, just consume it? The Spanish workers, convinced that the government is hiding the unicorns in secret warehouses, have called for a national strike on June 8. Meanwhile there are plenty of free-lance unicorn hunters among the 20% of Spaniards who are currently unemployed.

Like Scrooge and his Third Shadow, we are seeing images of things that could come to pass.

EU to Greece: No More Unicorns for You.

George Will delivered a great lecture at Princeton on "The Dependency Agenda". The end result of what Will describes is now playing out in Greece.

Desert Island Economics Reading.

If you had only one short essay you could read about the financial mess, its causes and its cure, it should be "An Economy of Liars", by the Cato Institute's Gerald O'Driscoll.

Suffering Fools.

George Will has his hands full on ABC's This Week, facing such scintillating intellects as Bill Maher, Al Sharpton, and Katrina Vanderfloogle, as he argues for enforcement current federal law. What magical ordinances will "comprehensive immigration reform" possess such that it will not be necessary to confront people, with reasonable cause, to determine if they are registered legal aliens? It is a pig in a poke, and the Left knows it.

So It Begins...

This year, dedicated to the proposition that one should actually catch some fish on Opening Weekend, we set out Friday morning for a preemptive strike on North Branch of the Au Sable River (the always-open Flies Only section). We calculated that landing a brace of trout on Friday would demonstrate to the River Gods that we were no Gee-Gaws and were worthy of their plaudits and favors for Saturday.

Friday afternoon on the North Branch was spectacular. We waded to one of our favorite spots at the tag end of a Hendrickson hatch, and fish from parr to ten-inchers, both brookies and browns, were enthusiastically feeding. After catching a half-dozen or so from both species on a Borchers Special (a size 14 is the go-to fly on northern Michigan streams), the hatch and the feeding suddenly stopped. The early-season "Gentlemen's Hatch" has the quality of a fire hose being opened and closed at half-hour intervals for a few hours in the afternoon. Finally, the hose was closed off for the day, and we switched to offerings of bead-head nymphs. The action was slow. Our colleague retreated to the comfort of cabin or "Spike's Keg O'Nails" (he had taken the hatch full force earlier in the afternoon and was suffering from flyfishing shell-shock) while we committed to further fishing downstream until dusk.

In an hour we were rewarded for our persistence. Squadrons of spinners descended from overhead, Emphemerella Subvaria bombers delivering their payloads of peach-colored egg sacks to the water's surface. We had never experienced a Hendrickson spinner fall this intense, and we will never forget it. Nor will we forget the robust brookie fooled by our Rusty Spinner. With the landing of this beauty we declared Opening Weekend a success. Off to Spike's to tell Homeric tales of the Great Spinner Fall!

Saturday, the "Opener-Proper", was the quintessence of such days with cooler, cloudier, and windier weather. And it fished as such; it was very slow. Where were all of the fish that had made the water boil less than a full day past? An Au Sable Lesson: where there are few bugs, there will be few fish. The was no great hatch this afternoon, and correspondingly few spinners in the evening. The fish appeared content with light underwater snacking. A full-day's fishing yielded a handful of fryers taken on soft hackles and bead-head nymphs. We did catch a moment, looking down the river, where we experienced a spiritual convocation of great fish and great flyfishers past. Another memory, and we thanked God for our lives and this blessed storied place.

No Opening Weekend seems complete without a Damn Cold Rain, and it arrived on Sunday morning. As if the melancholy of facing the last leg of Opening Weekend is tough enough, Sweet Lord, this too? "Perfect for streamers!", was heard in the camp to rally morale for fishing in the cold and wet. We breakfasted on omelets, bacon, toast, and coffee, collected our gear, and then went to visit an Au Sable Shaman for guidance as to how to spend our afternoon streamer fishing the Main Branch. From memory he traced a map of an historic location, where a massive rock with a TU plaque honors the vision of founder Art Neumann. A nearby path led us down to a place with swift runs and deep pools, where, the Shaman said, lay some damn big fish. The river banks towered over us like the cathedral canyons of western rivers. Across the river was the landing of the Ginger Quill Camp where Ernie Schwiebert studied nymphs over Scotch.

After two hours of hard fishing, with only a handful of hits to show for our efforts, this correspondent called it a day, and closed out the Opening Weekend.

Princess Petra.

Our wonderful new addition to our family, courtesy of American Brittany Rescue. Don't you dare try to take her duck away!

Is David Frum Right?

Partly. Frum has criticized the GOP for adopting a Nyet! strategy on healthcare, supposedly fomented by the Radio Talkosphere. Frum noted that the version of Obamacare that was signed is very similar to Massachussetts' Romneycare, so the GOP was a trifle hypocritical in their opposition.

Frum is right to claim that a Nyet! strategy was wrong, but it wasn't wrong for Obamacare. That mess will end up at least as bad as Romneycare, where costs are skyrocketing. But the GOP did fail to understand after the 2004 election that the healthcare problem was a nasty boil that would be quickly coming to a head (yuck, sorry about that). Republicans could have moved a free-market, small government-oriented package of solutions in 2005 (something like the McCain plan of 2008) that would have forced the Dem's hand and preempted the crypto-socialist "solution" that we are now stuck with.

Why was this approach not pursued? Perhaps it was because the GOP believed, as Democrats would have hoped, that such a proposal would have been transmogrified into the Middle-Class Black-Tar Heroin of a massive government entitlement. But the risk should have been taken; at least Republicans would have controlled the process. Ultimately one should ask those visionary ex-leaders of the former GOP House majority, Tom Delay and Dennis Hastert, and George Bush, father of the disasterously underfunded Medicare drug program.