The Shutdown Has Jumped the Shark

 

  National Park Service Blocks Access to Roadside Pull-Overs (Gannett)

 

From Gulag Bound

This has gone beyond absurd. First we have the spectacle of WW II veterans being denied access to the WW II Memorial, an open air monument that never closes and is never specifically attended by anyone except the normal Park Police patrol. The patrol goes on by the way. It took added manpower to erect barriers to the monument. More insane still, the Park Police erected barriers to parking lots on federal land that serve the privately-managed and funded Mount Vernon home of America’s first president, George Washington. Finally, they shuttered a privately-owned and financed museum resting on park land in northern Virginia. This was the first time the museum was closed in 40 years.
 

Now we have this outrage: the National Park Service has erected cones blocking entrance to roadside pull-overs where travelers can otherwise view Mt. Rushmore. This is unprecedented. And orders for these outrages come directly from the White House Office of Management and Budget. Obama has spent money to enforce this insanity where money was never spent before. In doing this, our president – can we even call him that? – is telling America “buzz off!”

What’s more, South Dakots’s Democratic Senator, Tim Johnson, is defending the action! Nothing about the safety factor, nothing about denying public access to roadside pull-offs that have never been denied access before. Johnson spokesman Perry Plumart said, “The best way to restore access to all national parks, including Mount Rushmore, is for Speaker Boehner and the House to pass a clean continuing resolution and end the government shutdown.”

This deliberate, costly effort is all to make Republicans look bad. Meanwhile, in response to Republicans helping WW II vets access the memorial, Obama megadonor Bill Maher, the obnoxious leftist TV talk show host said of the vets: “They’re the greatest generation – nobody said they were the brightest generation.” The entire leftist infrastructure, from Obama on down, has to be relegated to the trash heap of history, where communists and all their sycophantic copycats belong.

 

For their part, I hope Republicans don’t back down. They are doing the right thing for a change. Obamacare is an unmitigated disaster and this President needs to learn that there is limit to the abuse he can dish out beyond which we will say “enough.”