A bipartisan panel has also recommended some much needed contracting reform. Finally!

Keep bashing away. I love it. This stuff, especially cost plus contracting, has been a constant source of frustration for me. I knew I would like having you here.

The poorest 5 billion people of the world represent a huge opportunity for business. It is high time we develop it.

Which means you will help me promote “The Ultimate Resource” next week?

Azar Nafisi, whose book Reading Lolita in Tehran is one of my favorite memoirs, sees her homeland as deep in crisis. Assuming she’s right, we have little to fear from Tehran—its people appreciate both their newfound respect, their lack of basic dignities, and their independence. Direct intervention by Washington could upset this delicate balance that is slowly tipping the country toward eventual reform.

Great book, and I agree with her. I also think direct intervention should be avoided (though I am willing to take them on at the borders of Iraq.) I am not so sure we have nothing to fear. Hope you are right, but the realists have a point about propping up authoritarian regimes. Unstable regimes can act in unpredictable manners, and what comes next might be even worse. That being said, I hope they fall to internal pressure anyway. I am just not so sure it won’t lead to some crisis along the way. I keep my fingers crossed.

What’s worse, the federal agencies, themselves rather opaque to most forms of audit, can’t be bothered to even make sure the people they hand metrochecks out to work for them. Your tax dollars at work.

I hate to be a pain in the butt (not true, but it is polite to say so) but doesn’t that make my point about the military in the discussion we were having yesterday as just a big bureaucracy, no more no less?

Once more fascinating stuff.