"There is also no actual system for hiring the private contractors in place." There isn't? Then what's that contract that SpaceX already has for about $1.3 billion in cargo services that's been in place for over a year?

In those case private contractors didn't design the system. 80% of operational costs are fixed prior to the first preliminary design review. NASA hasn't designed a launch vehicle in over 30 years and has lots all capability of doing so. The only two companies that have designed and built launch vehicles in the last 30 years are SpaceX and Orbital Sciences.

This does NOT cancel manned exploration. At the very least it puts people back on American rockets a full four years sooner than Constellation ever could even in its most optimistic projections. And it does it for almost a third of the cost.

Hell, there's a man putting a purely private space station in orbit. He already has two test habs up there and will be putting the full manned habitat up in 2012 on a Titan V and will be ferrying customers to it using that and SpaceX's Dragon. The people with the experience who are actually doing something are NOT in NASA anymore.