Author | Executive | Leadership Coach I Consultant I Speaker I Congressional Candidate ‘22 | USA | Faith | Family | Freedom | Psalm 33:12 | 2 Chronicles 7:14
Santa Barbara, CA
Joined January 2022
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Anyone who wants to transform their business needs to create a culture of innovation and embrace intelligent risk. Pay close attention to this case study: "I didn't get smarter when I went to SpaceX. I got faster. The intelligence was always there. The system was in the way."
A retired NASA engineer who had worked on the Space Shuttle program for 25 years was hired by SpaceX at age 62. He described the first week as the most disorienting experience of his professional life.
At NASA, a design change required 3 meetings, 2 committees, a review board, and 6 to 18 months of documentation. At SpaceX, his new supervisor said "if it works, build it. If it doesn't, change it by Friday."
He sat at his desk after the first day and called his wife. He told her he felt like a man who had been swimming with ankle weights for 25 years and someone just cut them off. He could move. He could decide. He could build something in the morning and test it in the afternoon. The constraint that he had accepted as the nature of aerospace engineering turned out to be the nature of bureaucracy.
Within 6 months he had contributed to more design iterations than he had completed in his last 5 years at NASA. Not because he was working harder. Because the time between having an idea and testing the idea collapsed from months to hours. The same brain. The same knowledge. A different operating system.
He described a specific moment where he proposed a modification to a Raptor engine component. At NASA, the proposal would have entered a queue. At SpaceX, the modification was machined by the end of the day and tested by the following morning. He watched his idea become a physical object in 18 hours. At NASA, 18 hours would not have been enough to schedule the first meeting to discuss whether to schedule a meeting.
He told an interviewer: "I didn't get smarter when I went to SpaceX. I got faster. The intelligence was always there. The system was in the way."
The difference between SpaceX and NASA is not talent. NASA has extraordinary talent. The difference is the time between a thought and a test. SpaceX compresses it. NASA elongates it. The same engineer produces 10x more at SpaceX than at NASA because the bottleneck was never the engineer. It was the meetings about the meetings about the work.
Congrats to the F1 top three and to Antonelli for making history 🇮🇹! 🎉
theepochtimes.com/sports/mer…
Michele Weslander-Quaid retweeted
To get more out of life, DON’T: feel sorry for yourself, fret about what you can’t control, dwell on past, repeat same mistakes, try to please everyone, give up, feel entitled, resent others success. Instead, take clever risks and be relentless! 🌟
Michele Weslander-Quaid retweeted
Joe Rogan is horrified as Steve Hilton reveals where the 330,000 migrant kids Biden lost actually ended up.
ROGAN: “Holy f*ck!”
HILTON: “The way Bobby puts it is that Becerra turned HHS into the largest child trafficking operation in history.”
A caseworker told Hilton they were ordered to ignore obviously fake IDs and get the kids out the door as fast as possible.
Their directive was “Speed over safety.” If something happens to the kids, so be it.
One girl was put on a plane, handed off to three strange men, and forced to work 20 hours a day.
ROGAN: “Oh my God, it’s shocking. That’s so evil.”
The kids were given a hotline to call if they were in danger. The problem was getting anyone to answer.
HILTON: “There were 65,000 unanswered calls to the hotline.”
And the people who flagged it? “FIRED.”
ROGAN: “It doesn’t even seem like it could be real.”
When Bobby Kennedy Jr. previously described what happened to these kids, he called it a “huge, huge tragedy.”
KENNEDY: “One guy pretended to be the parent of 42 children. We have no idea what happened to those kids.”
“There was about 60 kids who were sent to one address. When we looked at that address, it was a container, a steel container in the middle of a parking lot.”
“A lot of them were sent to work at slaughterhouses and picking fruits in the fields. They were slaves.”
“It’s a huge, huge tragedy. My agency [under Biden] was the single biggest child trafficker in the world.”
And now Xavier Becerra, the man who presided over all of it, wants to be governor of California.
Steve Hilton is running against him.
Gorgeous photo by Pascal Debrunner taken in the Swiss Alps! 😍
unsplash.com/photos/wildflow…
Michele Weslander-Quaid retweeted
Foams are ready to be shipped to the studio in Texas for the first scene of the grand liberty arch. The first figure on the right is George Washington. The composition will be sculpted from life and made human. This is just an armature.
Michele Weslander-Quaid retweeted
Recursive Self-Improvement
A retired NASA engineer who had worked on the Space Shuttle program for 25 years was hired by SpaceX at age 62. He described the first week as the most disorienting experience of his professional life.
At NASA, a design change required 3 meetings, 2 committees, a review board, and 6 to 18 months of documentation. At SpaceX, his new supervisor said "if it works, build it. If it doesn't, change it by Friday."
He sat at his desk after the first day and called his wife. He told her he felt like a man who had been swimming with ankle weights for 25 years and someone just cut them off. He could move. He could decide. He could build something in the morning and test it in the afternoon. The constraint that he had accepted as the nature of aerospace engineering turned out to be the nature of bureaucracy.
Within 6 months he had contributed to more design iterations than he had completed in his last 5 years at NASA. Not because he was working harder. Because the time between having an idea and testing the idea collapsed from months to hours. The same brain. The same knowledge. A different operating system.
He described a specific moment where he proposed a modification to a Raptor engine component. At NASA, the proposal would have entered a queue. At SpaceX, the modification was machined by the end of the day and tested by the following morning. He watched his idea become a physical object in 18 hours. At NASA, 18 hours would not have been enough to schedule the first meeting to discuss whether to schedule a meeting.
He told an interviewer: "I didn't get smarter when I went to SpaceX. I got faster. The intelligence was always there. The system was in the way."
The difference between SpaceX and NASA is not talent. NASA has extraordinary talent. The difference is the time between a thought and a test. SpaceX compresses it. NASA elongates it. The same engineer produces 10x more at SpaceX than at NASA because the bottleneck was never the engineer. It was the meetings about the meetings about the work.
Michele Weslander-Quaid retweeted
Was ordering my dad's military records and found this letter in my papers with his death certificate. I wrote this to my stepfather in 1985, when I was 32 years old. I was still on active duty and couldn’t come home for Father’s Day, so I sat down and tried to put into words what this man meant to me.
He had served in the U.S. Army from 1936 to 1962, through World War II and Korea, earning four Bronze Stars and two Purple Hearts. But none of those medals are why he was my hero. He was my hero because he stepped into the life of a little girl whose biological father wasn’t there and showed her, every single day, what a father was supposed to be.
My Daddy died in December 1994. When we were going through his things after he died, I opened the top drawer of his dresser and found this letter. He had kept it there for almost ten years.
I can’t tell you what it did to me to realize that something I had written all those years before had meant enough to him that he kept it in that drawer until the day he died.
I’m sharing it today for all the men out there who are stepfathers. Never underestimate what you mean to a child who may not share your blood. If you show up, love them, teach them, protect them and give them a good man to look up to, you can change the entire course of that child’s life.
The word “step” never mattered to me. He was my Daddy. He was my hero. And all these years later, he still is. I have redacted my name from the original letter for privacy.
Michele Weslander-Quaid retweeted
Hillsdale College has been selected by @DeptofWar as one of five newly named Distinguished Military Colleges that will teach America's future military officers.
The Corps of Cadets initiative will prepare the next generation of officers for lives of leadership, character, and service to our country. Hillsdale is honored to answer the call.
Read more about the program at bit.ly/4AK7nRL.
Michele Weslander-Quaid retweeted
Update
David here. Words can’t express how thankful I am for your prayers, letters of encouragement, and donations to cover medical expenses.
I have had much time to reflect. Each breath and heartbeat a gift from God. This is the first time in my life where I have felt old. A pause to catch a breath I didn’t know I needed. Short walks around the block with my bride. Longer looks at my children. I have found myself tearing up uncontrollably for no reason other than simple gratitude.
I met with my surgeon this morning. He told me more about what happened. A miracle. An orchestra of variables. One missing from the puzzle and I would not be here. 100% blockage in the artery known as the “widow maker” — now stented. I have two more arteries with 60% and 70% blockage.
The surgeon wants to see if we can reverse damage to my heart and heal without another surgery. Right now my heart is at about 45% strength of where it should be. I begin cardiac rehab.
The how and why of what occurred is a long story. Pre-Jesus, I lived a very hard life. Drugs, alcohol, and a self-induced cardiac arrest at the age of 21, left me with a bum ticker. For several years, I was a pack a day smoker. And for several years after my spiritual conversion, I worked on daily “sanctification” trying to eliminate vices I still carried.
A severe back injury in 2008 left me restless for a decade, with numbness in my right leg and foot, until I found a radical restrictive diet that helped with inflammation, but may have elevated cholesterol. My career as a prosecutor left me on call around the clock, and my performance was fueled by pots of coffee, which led to arrhythmia, heart murmurs, and prayer that God would provide healing.
The last six years compounded what was already there. Employment termination, public slander, constant lawfare from the BAR, cabin burnt to crisp under mysterious circumstances, and travel that averaged over a hundred flights a year to 49 states, with thousands of meetings. I have felt mild strain and pressure in my chest for sometime. 2021 was especially difficult.
I have generally held the medical profession at arm’s length my whole life. I’ve been to the doctor maybe three times in my adult life. As my heart symptoms worsened, however, COVID-19 hysteria and adherence to protocols that murdered patients was the primary reason I would not enter a doctor’s office.
I knew it was just a matter of time that something would give, but set aside those concerns, praying that our country would see free and fair elections, J6ers would be restored, and that I’d have more time.
And then I didn’t.
I went through a door to “the other side” after dying on the table. In a single moment, I left behind my children, and being a father was an impossibility. Being a husband—gone. I left ambition behind, dreams behind, shame and condemnation behind. Such finality.
After a few minutes of being in the hereafter, I was jolted back by paddles, hearing the surgical team exclaim “we brought him back! David you are back with us….”
It’s with this that I say I won’t be making a public appearance for a while, and won’t be doing social media, or interviews, for the foreseeable future. I believe God wants me to be still, speak less, and not waste anything, including my words.
Just know I read your comments, am so thankful for you, and believe God has a purpose for me down the road.
Lord willing, I will focus on writing and producing Professor’s Record episodes, doing rehab, and nothing else. I’m sorry to disappoint anyone.
Last thing.
Is He (Christ) real?
Yes. So much so, that you realize what grieves Him. Forgiveness is so important. He died for you and me. He forgave you and me. Don’t cheapen what He did on the cross, by refusing to carry a cross of your own. Love the unloveable, forgive the unforgivable, because one day, you are going through that door.
Love you all.
DC
Michele Weslander-Quaid retweeted
Soldiers and police officers often hear “thank you for your service,” and special ceremonies mark their passing. Nurses stand on that same line between life and death, yet they rarely get such a goodbye. That’s why every state now has a Nurses Honor Guard.
Libby Davis, a retired nurse and U.S. Marine veteran, got the idea while volunteering at an American Legion post. “I just got to thinking one day, we needed to do that, something similar for nurses,” she said.
She started the Southwest Alabama chapter in February 2024; the group now has 60 members across seven counties and, by April 2026, had already honored 23 nurses.
During the ceremony, the honor guard files into the funeral in blue capes with red lining and vintage nursing caps. After reading a poem, they share a few personal details from the family—a career moment, something funny, or something the nurse was known for at work.
Nurses in the room stand for a responsive reading, answering after each situation with her name and that she “was there.”
They carry a white rose for the casket or the family, a symbol of the career, the purity of that work, and the sacrifice the family made. They speak of Florence Nightingale, “the lady with the lamp,” and bring in a lighted lamp that stands for compassion and care.
The tribute ends with a final call to duty: they say the nurse's name three times, ring a triangle, and when no one answers, they release her from nursing duty, blow out the candle, and present the lamp to the family. Families often call afterward in tears, overwhelmed that their loved one was honored that way.
“If you’ve ever been in the hospital, if it wasn’t for those nurses, you would not survive,” Davis said.
“You see the doctor for a few seconds. Those nurses are the ones taking care of you.”
Michele Weslander-Quaid retweeted
Remembering Rone and Bub. 9/12/12 Rest In Peace #NeverForgetBenghazi
Michele Weslander-Quaid retweeted
I reread this every year.
I cry like a baby every year.
Todd Beamer died a father, husband, and hero.
Todd: Hello… Operator… listen to me. I can’t speak very loud. This is an emergency. I’m a passenger on a United flight to San Francisco. Our plane has been hijacked.
Lisa: I understand. Can they see you?
Todd: No. There are three that we know of. They have knives — razor knives, like box cutters. Someone announced from the cockpit there was a bomb. It sounded fake.
Lisa: Your name?Todd: Todd Beamer. United Flight 93.Todd: They killed one passenger in first class. They forced most of us back. Fourteen of us here. Five flight attendants. The guy with the bomb ordered us to sit on the floor.
Lisa: Are you okay?
Todd: We’re going down… wait. No. We’re leveling off. We changed directions. We’re flying east again.
Todd: A guy named Jeremy called his wife. She told him two planes hit the World Trade Center. Lisa, is that true?
Lisa: I have to tell you the truth. It’s very bad. Both towers are gone. A third plane hit the Pentagon. Our country is under attack. I’m afraid your plane may be part of their plan.
Todd: Oh God. Lisa, will you do something for me? Call my wife and my kids. Promise me you’ll call.
Lisa: I promise.
Todd: Our home number is… You have the same name as my wife. Lisa. We’ve been married ten years. She’s pregnant with our third child. Tell her I love her. I’ll always love her. We have two boys — David, he’s 3, and Andrew, he’s 1. Tell them their daddy loves them and he is so proud of them. The baby is due January 12th. I saw an ultrasound. We still don’t know if it’s a girl or a boy.
Lisa: I’ll tell them. I promise, Todd.(Lisa patches in the FBI.)
Agent: Todd, your plane is on a course for Washington. Best guess is the White House or the Capitol.
Todd: I understand. I’ll be back.
Todd: Everyone knows this isn’t a normal hijacking. We have decided we will not be pawns in their plot.
Lisa: What are you going to do?
Todd: Four of us are going to rush the one with the bomb. Then the cockpit. A stewardess is getting boiling water. We’ll take them out.
Todd: Would you pray with me?They pray the Lord’s Prayer. Then: Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for thou art with me.
Todd: God help me. Jesus help me.Are you guys ready? Let’s Roll.
Michele Weslander-Quaid retweeted
9/11: Twenty-five years ago this week, I collected ash in an envelope after a woman told me she was taking ash home in a shoebox so her family would have something to bury.
The woman said she had driven all night and all day to NYC because her sibling had been at the World Trade Center for a business meeting.
That’s when I realized the towers had been turned into a furnace by the Al-Qaeda terrorists.
Americans were jumping to their deaths— some holding hands—rather than be burned alive.
From Fox to CBS, and now as an independent journalist, I have kept that envelope in a safe place, hoping the chance would come one day to analyze it and share it.
Since 9/11 more Americans have died from toxic exposure than died in the attacks themselves.
Never Forget is a solemn pledge.
💡 This is an insightful article by @VDHanson: Progressive Regression
