Category Archives: Political Arrogance

Same ol’, same old.

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Some of my readers have asked when I’ll restart my blog. It’s a good question and one that I still can’t fully answer. Call it writer’s block, or call it disgust, or call it boredom of the “same old, same old.”

My politics have not changed. I’m still conservative, much more so than some whom I thought were also conservatives but who turned out to be nothing more than opportunists for personal power. I’m still a Ted Cruz supporter although I like Carson and Jindall, too.

Not much has changed. Trump still leads. Carson, Cruz and Fiorina follow. Jeb Bush continues to crater showing more and more that he’s nothing more than a democrat masquerading as a ‘Pub.

Trump continues to be in the lead. He still continues to be in the lead since his first public denouncement of illegal aliens and open borders. He was right and people flocked to him much to the surprise and fear of the GOP establishment.

Could I vote for Trump? I don’t know. I do not believe Trump has any core values other than the advancement of Trump. But—that is also true of most politicians. Nothing new there. The real question is if Trump’s goals and agendas are sufficiently in sync with ours? If so, great. But I’m still concerned that Trump is nothing more than a supporter of the current crony politics in Washington.

So, what it there to write about? Very little. I did see this piece from FOX News this morning. It could be prophetic.

Carson leaps in N.H. – In a new Boston Herald poll of New Hampshire GOP voters, Ben Carson took second place to frontrunning Trump at 16 percent, a 12 point jump from the Herald’s August poll. Carson also made gains in favorability, topping the GOP pack at 69 percent, a 14 point jump from August.

“I think the question is, whether when people begin to fall by the wayside …where their support goes and whether somebody emerges as the leading alternative to [Donald Trump]. Now, that could be Ben Carson, which would make sense in a way because after all, another constant in this cycle so far on the Republican side has been the enchantment with outsiders. And I don’t mean people who have been sort of outsiders within the system, I mean complete outsiders which is what Trump is. And it’s also what Ben Carson is.” – Brit Hume on “The Kelly File” Watch here.

Brit Hume, whom I once liked, is nothing more than a poster boy for the business as usual GOP establishment. Given that, when he speaks about the growing popularity and power of the outsider candidates, you can tell he’s worried. The establishment (note: lower case ‘e’. I do not capitalize the name of organizations I despise,) is now pushing Rubio as the establishment choice. He’s marginally better than Bush except for his support of illegal aliens and amnesty.

So, the jury is still out whether I’ll return to blogging. If I do, it won’t be with the frequency I once maintained.

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Bits ‘n Pieces

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Missouri Secretary of State, Jason Kander

Jason Kander, our democrat Missouri Secretary of State and scion of the Kansas City democrat political machine, has announced he will run against Senator Roy Blunt in 2016. Kander received the endorsement of the entire Missouri democrat team as well as from the KC ‘Red’ Star. Surprise, surprise!

Attorney General Chris Koster, who is readying to join Kander on the statewide slate in his own run for governor: “Every day, Jason Kander uses the lessons he learned serving in the Army in Afghanistan to do what’s right for Missouri. He doesn’t care who gets credit for an idea, he just wants to get the job done for our state. We need that approach in Washington, which is why I am supporting Jason Kander for United States Senate.” — PoliticMO Newsletter, February 19, 2015.

So it will be Turncoat Koster running for Governor teaming with Kander running for Senator. All in all, Kander has a better rep than Koster. Still you have to wonder, in this ‘race of the Double-Ks’ who is helping whom?

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An idea whose time has come? Missouri already has a Voter-ID law on the books. There are a number of acceptable forms of ID listed on the Missouri Secretary of State’s website.

ACCEPTABLE FORMS OF VOTER ID:
  • Identification issued by the state of Missouri, an agency of the state, or a local election authority of the state
  • Identification issued by the United States government or agency thereof
  • Identification issued by an institution of higher education, including a university, college, vocational and technical school, located within the state of Missouri
  • A copy of a current utility bill, bank statement, paycheck, government check or other government document that contains the name and address of the voter
  • Driver’s license or state identification card issued by another state

If you do not possess any of these forms of identification, you may still cast a ballot if two supervising election judges, one from each major political party, attest they know you. – http://www.sos.mo.gov/elections/govotemissouri/howtovote.aspx

This new effort will add a Constitutional Amendment to give more teeth to the existing law which has a number of exceptions that still allow people to vote without proper ID. The existing law is a good first step, but, reviewing the documented acts of vote fraud in St. Louis and Kansas City, it isn’t enough.

Missouri House endorses voter photo ID requirements

By MARIE FRENCH, Associated Press, Feb 18, 6:21 PM EST

JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. (AP) — The Missouri House is once again pushing forward with a Republican priority to require photo identification at the polls, after similar measures were stymied by the Senate or courts in recent years.

The House gave initial approval Wednesday to a proposed constitutional amendment that would go before voters in 2016 and also endorsed a bill that would institute the voter photo ID requirements if the constitutional amendment is approved.

Both measures need a second House vote and also would also have to pass the Senate, where Democrats have previously blocked the proposed photo ID requirements.

Supporters say the requirement is needed to ensure the integrity of the election process. Rep. Rick Brattin, R-Harrisonville, said the measure would protect individuals’ voting rights by making sure someone does not try to vote for another person.

“It ensures that someone did not take their vote and steal what is rightfully their vote,” Brattin said.

If you read the full article at the website, you will see, as usual, democrats, abetted by MO Secretary of State Jason Kander, protesting the measure because it would make their continuing vote fraud schemes more difficult.

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Have you heard the term, Social Justice Warrior? It’s all the vogue on university campus across the country and in other segments of society (see my post concerning the SFWA and the Hugo Awards.) Social Justice Warriors have become the progressives’ front-line troops in their battle against free speech and expression.

Social Justice Warriors Come to Campus

By Robert Weissberg, February 19, 2015

Since the late 1960s, radical students have periodically taken over the university president’s offices to propose a laundry list of “non-negotiable” demands. Early takeovers tended to be about their school’s cooperation with the military during war in Vietnam; today, however, “social justice” is the aim so let’s call these office occupiers Social Justice Warriors or SJW’s.

Back in February 2014 a group of 30 Dartmouth students commandeered the president’s office to  announce a “Freedom Budget”:70 specific calls for greater diversity, eliminating sexism and heterosexism, an improved campus climate for minorities and gays, banning the term “illegal immigrant,” offering a class on undocumented workers in America, creating a professor of color lecture series, and harsher penalties for sexual assault, among many, many others.

More recently, Clemson University SJW’s demanded that the school provide a “safe” multicultural center for students from “under-represented” groups, employing more administrators and faculty of color, a more diverse student body, mandatory sensitivity training for faculty and administrators, and increased funding for students organization catering to under-represented groups.

Then there are the University of Minnesota students who seized the President’s office to demand a bigger budget for the Department of Chicano and Latino Studies Department, removing all racial descriptions from university police reports, offering gender-neutral bathrooms at all college facilities and, of course, recruiting more faculty and students of color.

Fortunately, this is the U.S., where such political histrionics are greeted with mild amusement. Ironically, school officials typically welcome “meaningful political dialogue and change,” the need for “hard work” to achieve progress and then conclude by thanking the Social Justice Warriors for their assistance in moving forward. Though police may remove protestors, criminal charges, let alone violations of campus rules, are rarely pursued and the moral buzz for these SJW’s may last weeks. In fact, I suspect some warriors honestly believe that their achievement will burnish their resume when applying to a second-tier MBA program. Imagine if these SJW’s tried this in Russia or China?

Such incidents are easy to pooh-pooh as the politically-correct version of Animal House. But that said, they nevertheless offer important insights into today’s college activist’s thinking and why university administrators tolerate the foolishness.    

Most evidently, the Social Justice Warriors totally disregard the costs associated with their self-righteous crusades. Everything is single-ledger accounting. Will the tooth fairy fund Dartmouth’s proposed $3.6 million dollar Triangle House, the “safe haven” for LGBT? Yes, high-school dropouts may believe that government benefits are “free,” but youngsters admitted to top colleges? No wonder the U.S. sinks deeper and deeper into indebtedness — even among the smart, costs are invisible. Picture a Warrior taking Econ 101 and hearing for the first time that there is no such thing as a free lunch. What a shock!

The shallowness of these demands is breathtaking and suggests that these activists are just winging it. The Dartmouth students are surely among America’s brainiest but why do they denounce “ableism”? Are they suggesting that acknowledging variations in ability is morally wrong and if differences are to be abolished (hopeless anyhow), how would society function? Why must the campus offer gender-neutral bathrooms? Keep in mind that in a few decades such folk may be among our national leaders.

Particularly troublesome is how these presumptuous, self-centered warriors think that if they think something is good, it must be good, so case settled. For example, they glibly assume that academically challenged black and Chicano youngsters really benefit by attending schools that would never admit them in a merit-based admission process.  Have these young do-gooders considered the downside of this generosity — schools will fake the numbers by creating easy-to-pass courses in dubious ethnic-studies departments, steering them to easy grading instructors or just tolerating rampant grade inflation. Or, more important, that these in-over-their-head youngsters may be better off in community college acquiring well-paying skills like welding?

Closer to home, have these SJW’s calculated the link between achieving their vision of “social justice” and tuition? Attracting minority students, addressing their academic deficiencies, creating a nurturing environment and all the rest costs money, and this will inevitably push soaring tuition even higher and, since there is no Santa Claus, a college education will be yet further beyond the reach of many poorer students while saddling graduates with yet more debt. In effect, these idealistic protestors are demanding a tax on those who are not members of their version of “under-represented.” Imagine if these SJW’s had to hold jobs to pay their own tuition?

Do these Social Justice Warriors realize that their demands will require administrators to break the law to achieve this multicultural Utopia? That is, under today’s judicial guidelines it is almost impossible to admit students solely on the basis of race or ethnicity. California, Michigan, and Washington (among others) have state laws explicitly banning racial preferences.

Why do schools tolerate such idiocy, including ignoring violations of campus policy? The answer is that no matter how imprudent the demands, they help drive the university’s bureaucratic expansion, and in today’s campus life, size matters. A symbiotic relationship exists between the children’s crusades and yet more bureaucratic bloat. Universities are not the profit-driven private sector. Absolutely everything, everything in every one of these SJW catalogues entails spending more university money, hiring more personnel, and creating yet more rules and regulations and the apparatchiki to monitor and enforce them.

It is a long article and I urge you to follow this link to the website and read the entire piece. It may be an education for you; make you aware of another insidious attacks against our liberty by ‘progressives.’ Joe Stalin and Adolf would be proud of them.

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It’s a new month!

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Today, if you haven’t yet noticed, is the first of July. Across the state line in Kansas, newly passed legislation comes into force. One of those is open carry. It is now legal to carry a weapon openly in Kansas. Are there restrictions? I don’t know. That is one reason why I won’t be open carrying when I cross the state line.

But the local news media has noticed. One TV station is already in the process of whipping up mass hysteria, just watch the biased video. So far, no one is biting.

Open carry law now in effect in Kansas

Posted 11:30 pm, June 30, 2014, by , Updated at 05:56am, July 1, 2014

KANSAS CITY, Kan. — A new gun law in Kansas will go into effect Tuesday that will let owners openly carry guns in public.

It will be legal to openly carry a gun in a holster, in your hand or a rifle on a sling.

Captain Rance Quinn with the Kansas City Kansas Police Department says the sight of a gun is scary for a lot of people. Police said they will still respond to calls about people with guns, but the way they handle it will be much different.

“They may make a consensual interaction with the person, ‘Like hey, how are you doing today. I see that you are exercising your right to bear firearms. Is there anything I can do for you today?’ Or something along those lines,” said Capt. Quinn.

The state already has roughly 90,000 gun owners with permits to carry concealed firearms.

The new law also gives private businesses the right to prohibit guns in their buildings.

Of course, private businesses has always had the right to prohibit guns on their premises. Whoever wrote this piece certainly was not familiar with eprior Kansas law nor with this new one when it took effect. Still, the comments, for the most part, are positive.

One commenter tried to used the hackneyed argument the cops will spend all their time checking the legal carrying of weapons instead of chasing criminals. I wonder if the commenter stopped to think that those calls would most likely be placed by people like himself who panics every time a weapon is glimpsed.

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The fiasco known as the Mississippi primary continues with more and more allegations of vote fraud and vote buying emerging against Thad Cochran. An initial investigation in one county after the election found at least 1,000 fraudulent votes for Cochran. That discovery is just the beginning. McDaniel supporters are calling for him to run as an independent in the general election.

BREAKING: New Allegations Point to Cochran Campaign in Mississippi Senate Vote Buying Scandal

By: Aaron Gardner (Diary)  |  June 30th, 2014 at 09:15 PM

An audio interview has surfaced in which the interviewee claims that he was to be paid by the Cochran camp to grease voters in the Mississippi GOP Senate runoff election. The audio interview, which coincides with a separate audio recording and batch of evidence produced by the newly launched GotNews.com, a project by Charles C. Johnson, alleges that the Cochran campaign conspired with a Mississippi Reverend to buy the votes of African American voters, who happen to be democrats.

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Reverend Fielder has claimed to have evidence that would prove illegal activity took place in the Mississippi GOP Senate run off election. Furthermore, the evidence he claims he has would implicate the Barbour machine and a staffer to Cochran’s Senate campaign. The motivations of the Reverend are not those of a saint. As is made clear throughout the interview and in the transcript, this Reverend is looking to get paid to provide information, just as he sought to get paid to deliver votes by illegal means. Reverend Fielder claims that Cochran’s people were supposed to pay him approximately $15,000 for his efforts, but failed to do so after the incumbent Senator had achieved victory in the run off.

With all of that said, if the evidence is produced and validated, I don’t know how much longer Thad Cochran will be a Senator.

Even if Cochran isn’t deposed because of these illegal tactics, that does not mean the McDaniel supporters will automatically vote for the GOP candidate. More likely what will happen, if Cochran’s name still appears on the general ballot, they will just skip over the field and either place no vote for Senator, or choose someone else.

The tactics the RNC used in the primary, with the able assistance of Karl Rove and Haley Barbour, has tainted not only Thad Cochran, but the entire Republican party within the state. Mississippi was once a GOP stronghold. No longer, and any assumptions of automatic wins for any GOP candidate have just evaporated.

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Another chip gone.

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Chip? What chip? It is a chip off the stone of GOP solidarity. Boehner and McConnell, in order to preserve their political futures, have started a war they cannot win. In the short term, as the GOP continues to fragment, the only winners are the democrats. In the long term…who knows. The real question is whether, when all the chips have fallen, will there be anything to rebuild—of the nation and the Constitution?

The Ryan-Murray budget ‘deal’ is another chip off that rock of GOP solidarity. Ryan, Boehner and the rest of the Washington establishment are willing to risk everything to avoid confrontation before the 2014 elections. Instead, they have risked the entire country to gain a little time.

What Ryan, Boehner, Cantor, McConnell and the others have done is to increasingly solidify the opposition of conservatives against them. The article below from the Washington Times supports the reports of growing opposition to the budget deal.

All-out war breaks out in GOP over budget

By Jacqueline Klimas and Seth McLaughlin, The Washington Times, Wednesday, December 11, 2013

House Speaker John Boehner of Ohio,joined by House Budget Committee Chairman Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wis., takes reporters' questions, on Capitol Hill in Washington, Wednesday, Dec. 11, 2013, as House Republicans signaled support for a budget deal worked out yesterday between Ryan and Senate Budget Committee Chair Rep. Patty Murray, D-Wash. The budget deal was one of a few major measures left on Congress' to-do list near the end of a bruising year that has produced a partial government shutdown, a flirtation with a first-ever federal default and gridlock on President Obama's agenda. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)Tea party groups and fiscal conservatives wasted no time Wednesday in savaging a bipartisan budget agreement negotiated between House Republicans and Senate Democrats, drawing an unusually angry response from House Speaker John A. Boehner, Ohio Republican.

All sides were rating the winners and losers in the deal struck a day earlier between House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan, Wisconsin Republican, and Senate Budget Committee Chairwoman Patty Murray, Washington Democrat. The modest deficit-cutting deal had some sweeteners for defense contractors and oil drillers, while air travelers, federal workers and some corporate executives would take a hit.

But most of the passion focused on the politics of the deal, with Mr. Ryan, Mr. Boehner and the House GOP leadership defending their handiwork from attacks from conservative colleagues on Capitol Hill and from outside groups such as the Club for Growth, Heritage Action and Americans for Prosperity. Critics said the agreement effectively raised taxes in the form of higher fees, failed to restrain entitlement programs and permitted new spending in the short term in exchange for vague promises of long-term cuts.

Rep. Jim Jordan, Ohio Republican, said in an interview that Republicans sacrificed their biggest point of leverage — the tough “sequester” spending cuts that were already in force — in the rush to get a short-term deal that did not address the long-term costs of Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid.

“I am against [the deal] from just a basic point that we embarked on a position at the beginning of the year that said, ‘We will keep the sequester in place unless we get to make changes on mandatory spending that will save those program and put the budget on path to balance within the next 10 years,’” Mr. Jordan said.

Added Chris Chocola, president of the fiscally hawkish Club for Growth, “Apparently, there are some Republicans who don’t have the stomach for even relatively small spending reductions that are devoid of budgetary smoke and mirrors. If Republicans work with Democrats to pass this deal, it should surprise no one when Republican voters seek alternatives who actually believe in less spending when they go to the ballot box.”

— Continue reading here.

Unfortunately for fiscal conservatives, Boehner is pushing for a vote on the ‘deal’ as quickly as he can. The vote could take place as early as today and he, Boehner, wants a quick vote to prevent “interference” from conservatives. Heritage Action, Club for Growth and the American’s for Prosperity initiated call-in campaigns yesterday.

The lines are being drawn as more ‘Pubs shift to one side or another. Some will continue to try to sit on the fence, fearing offending one side or the other. Like so many in the months prior to December 1860, they will discover that fence-sitters will be despised by both sides and have support from neither.

Here is some links to addition columns in today’s digital newspapers.

KIBBE: Another Republican budget surrender

The short-term deal will assure long-term overspending — Washington Times

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Budget Agreement Gets Attention from the Tea Party (Video)

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John Boehner rips conservatives for prematurely bashing budget deal, but rushes bill to floor

By PHILIP KLEIN | DECEMBER 11, 2013 AT 5:48 PM(Washington Examiner)

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Budget deal a step backward: Opposing view

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December 11, 2013 at 4:06 pm (The Foundry)

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Boehner’s Outburst Fuels GOP Civil War

The worst speaker of the House and Republican leader in the memory of living men. (PJ Media)

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To say this deal is unliked is an understatement of biblical proportions.

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Rewrite!!

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Obamacare

healthcare.gov

One of the top headlines on Drudge this morning says, “5 million lines of software code needs to be rewritten...". Five million lines of code. You know what that means? A  rewrite of a significant portion of the software.

Before I retired, I was a project manager. I built things for my employer. I built customer service call centers across and outside the country. I built nearly 30 specialized call centers to allow the Deaf and Hard of Hearing use TTYs to communicate with the non-deaf. I created specifications for unique hardware and in the process of all this, was awarded seven telecommunications related patents.

Some of those projects were larger than the one proposed for Obamacare. The expected user base for our systems approached that expected for Obamacare.

My largest budget was under $15million over a three-year project. Obamacare spent over half a billion dollars—and it doesn’t work. In the private sector, everyone connected with that software development project would have been fired in three months—for gross incompetency and failure to meet milestones.

You see, in the private sector, there exists project gateways. Every few months, a gateway review is conducted—are you on schedule, does the design meet the original specifications, are you on budget (and woe to you if you are over or under budget for that particular segment of the project.)

Fail one of these criteria, and your project is on probation, fail two, you, the manager, are up for review and maybe fired, fail three and the project is killed before it can waste more money and usually, everyone on the project team is looking for a new job. Contractors are out on the street. In addition, at the end of each year of the project, it is reviewed for specification changes, whether the business climate, still needs the project. The project must pass this gateway, too, before any money is allocated and allowed to be budgeted to the project for the coming year.

I once had a three-year project killed after the second year. Why? I was on-time, on-budget, meeting all the project specifications and milestones…but the business climate changed and the project wouldn’t meet its expected ROI, Return-On-Investment. Too bad. Stamp! The project was killed. The company would not pour money into a project that couldn’t pay for itself within three years.

That is the real world, not the fantasyland that is now government. Apparently, the government failed to do any of these project reviews.

Obama is scheduled to have a press announcement later today to explain what he’s going to do to fix Obamacare. I know what he should do but knowing him and the dems, he’ll throw more money down the rathole to fix the unfixable.

He no longer takes questions. It is too dangerous. Someone may ask a hard question such as why a project needed 500 million lines of code or why was a Canadian company chosen on a No-Bid contract? Are there not plenty of US companies with that skill? I’ve managed projects with a comparable customer user base that was one-tenth that amount of code—and my project worked.

I suspect the real reason is that the data collected from people is shared across a multitude of government (and maybe outside companies, Obama favorites?) databases all across the government from the IRS to the FBI to who knows. One bottleneck in that update slows everything—if the transaction is completed at all. It is a rookie mistake by software engineers who don’t understand transaction processing, which, at the core, Obamacare enrollment must be.

Be that as it may, now Obama must “explain” why it failed. He’s already blamed Bush, I wonder who he will blame now? Probably Ted Cruz and the Tea Party.

Tech ‘surge’ to repair Obamacare websites

By JASON MILLMAN | 10/20/13 1:38 PM EDT Updated: 10/21/13 11:21 AM EDT

The Obama administration Sunday said it’s called on “the best and brightest” tech experts from both government and the private sector to help fix the troubled website at the root of the Obamacare enrollment problems.

The unusual Sunday 600-word blog post from the Department of Health and Human Services was the first update in more than a week on the many failings of an expensive website that HHS itself described as “frustrating for many Americans.” But it didn’t specify whom the administration had called in, or when the American people would see clear-cut results on HealthCare.gov.

“We’re kind of thinking of it as a tech ‘surge,’” an HHS official told POLITICO.

The Health and Human Services statement didn’t explain everything that’s wrong, or give technical details about the repairs under way. It outlined some steps being taken to fix the site, including updates with “new code that includes bug fixes.” The department also says it’s installing monitors to catch parts of the website that are proving the most troublesome for consumers. And it also said it had seen some improvements in wait times and consumer access to the website, the online portal to health insurance exchanges or marketplaces the federal government is running in 36 states.

Blah, blah, blah. Words from non-engineers who have no concept what they’re doing. I can tell you right now, they’re going to fail because they never knew what it was supposed to do in the first place. It reminds me of the old programmer’s joke.

IT Manager yells to his programming team, “You start coding and I’ll go see what they want!”

It was never so true as with Obamacare.

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Obama’s Targets

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“Make it hurt!” That’s been Obama’s instructions to his troops when the Shutdown began. He had been planning for the shutdown for some time. The blockages, barriers, and propaganda appeared within minutes of the deadline.

Who are Obama’s targets? Those who have invested the more in our nation—the veterans, the military, the sick, the rank-and-file conservatives, anyone who won’t line up and kiss Obama’s feet.

The Washington Examiner identified six target groups, groups chosen by Obama as his personal enemies. I can only hope he reaps what he’s sown. It will not be what he thinks.

6 groups targeted to make the shutdown look worse

By ASHE SCHOW | OCTOBER 7, 2013 AT 4:22 PM

A partial government shutdown just wasn’t going to hit people the way the Obama administration needed it to, so officials resorted to some unprecedented acts to make Americans feel the pain, as Conservative Intel’s David Freddoso notes:

Most people — even the poor in state-run safety net programs — don’t have that many interactions with the federal government agencies affected right now by the shutdown.

So it’s a challenge to make people notice that your agency is vital to the survival of the Republic. The feds have to apply a lot of force and behave in unsubtle ways to make you angry with Congress.

1. Veterans

No group has been more visible during the shutdown than veterans. Memorials were closed, and House Democrats voted against bills that would restore funding to veterans programs.

A short list of some of the monuments closed (note that veterans moved barricades to see their monuments anyway):

» World War II Memorial

» Normandy cemetery

» Vietnam Veterans Memorial Wall

» Iwo Jima Memorial

Just 4 percent of employees at the Department of Veterans Affairs have been furloughed, according to Government Executive magazine, making it even more odd that the department’s funding wasn’t restored.

2. Lake Mead, Nev., property owners

Suddenly, owning a home on federal land causes homeowners to be kicked out of their domiciles.

Ralph and Joyce Spencer, an elderly couple who own a Lake Mead cabin, were forced out of their homes by park rangers saying they had to leave until the federal government reopens.

The Spencers have owned their home since the 1970s, and fellow Lake Mead resident Bob Hitchcock, who’s owned a cabin on the lake for 26 years, said he wasn’t told to vacate during the previous government shutdown that occurred under the Clinton Administration.

3. Cancer patients

House Democrats also voted against a bill to restore funding to the National Institutes of Health, a federally funded medical research center.

Yes, there is privately funded cancer research still occurring, but saying no to cancer research of any kind is probably not a winning strategy.

NIH is an agency within the Health and Human Services Department, which furloughed 49 percent of its employees, according to Government Executive.

4. National Guard and Reserve units

House Democrats (noticing a pattern?) also voted against funding that would allow members of the National Guard and Reserves to return to work during the shutdown.

Democrats say the reason they won’t pass piecemeal funding bills is due to GOP “cherry-picking” parts of the government to fund instead of funding the entire government.

5. Tourists

Imagine saving up to visit the nation’s capitol or the Grand Canyon. The family is packed up and ready to fly — or drive — cross the country to see the sites and have a great time.

Then the government shuts down. No worries, how can the government shut down open-air monuments? Well, apparently they can — and did.

The Grand Canyon National Park is closed. How does one shut down a giant canyon? Apparently with gates and barricades similar to those veterans crossed to see their monuments.

Gov. Scott Walker, R-Wis., refused to allow the federal government to close state parks in Wisconsin, since the state had the authority to operate the parks and provided most of the funding for them.

Mount Rushmore is also closed. Cones have been placed along the highway to keep tourists from pulling over and snapping pictures of the monument. Because it’s apparently cheaper to pay people to set up cones than it is to … not do that.

Across the country, in D.C., the Lincoln Memorial is closed. Note that this monument was not closed during the 1995-96 government shutdowns. Barricades were also set up outside the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial.

The National Parks Service attempted to shut down Mount Vernon, George Washington’s home. Problem is, the site is privately owned and operated by the Mount Vernon Ladies Association. Also, NPS tried to shut down the Claude Moore Colonial Farm, which hasn’t received federal funding since 1980. Oops!

The NPS is on a roll, actually, when it comes to closing down privately owned businesses.

6. Taxpayers

One thing that isn’t closed during the partial shutdown: tax collection.

“The IRS will accept and process all tax returns with payments, but will be unable to issue refunds during this time,” the IRS website said.

Every day we hear of more villainous acts by the federal government and their surrogates. The National Park Service seems particularly apt and eager to oppress the public. Over the weekend the NPS issued 21 tickets to people wanting to see the Grand Canyon. They must appear in person before a federal Judge.

I wonder how long it will be before some trigger-happy federal JBT shoots someone for wanting to see one of our nation’s treasures?

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Bits ‘n Pieces

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It’s September and silliness is in the air. From where? From the liberals around the world. In Europe, the EU want’s to limit highway speeds and install governors in every vehicle—including installing governors in vehicles already sold at the owner’s expense.

“In its continuing efforts to outlaw anything remotely fun, the European Union has announced plans to forcibly limit all cars to a maximum of 70 miles per hour. Under the latest scheme proposed by EU bureaucrats, cameras that can read speed limit signs would be installed in all new cars, reports The Telegraph. The cars would then automatically slam on the brakes when drivers exceed the posted speed limit. Owners of existing cars would not be immune. They would be required to have the speed limit mechanisms installed as well. The Intelligent Speed Adaptation plan was proposed by the European Commission’s Mobility and Transport Department. Its purpose is to decrease the number of traffic deaths. Some 30,000 traffic fatalities occur on European roads each year.”

TheDC Morning suspects every one who bought a Ferrari in Europe is probably pretty angry right now. But if the EU wants to save lives, why not just forbid everyone from leaving their house? Or if that’s too drastic, how about banning soccer? — The Daily Caller.

Other silliness comes from the student government at UCLA. They want to outlaw the term, “illegal immigrant.” How about using “criminal alien?” That would be accurate.

“The student government at UCLA unanimously resolved to call for the eradication of the phrase ‘illegal immigrant,’ reports Campus Reform. The UCLA Undergraduate Students Association wants the term “illegal immigrant” banned because, its members say, the phrase is a violation of the human rights enshrined in the U.S. Constitution. Last week’s resolution emphasizes the student council’s desire to prevent journalists, media organizations and various campus partners  from identifying illegal aliens as ‘illegal immigrants,’ explains the Daily Bruin, UCLA’s campus rag.” Add this to the growing stack of evidence which suggests the voting age needs to be raised. — The Daily Caller.

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We have a dichotomy in the US House. We have one story from the Washington Examiner that says the House is about to say, “No!” on Obama’s Syrian war, while over on The Drudge Report, John Boehner is all for it—once again proving he’s Obama’s lap dog.

From the Washington Examiner…

House Republicans poised to say no on Syria

By DAVID M. DRUCKER | SEPTEMBER 2, 2013 AT 9:44 AM

While Congressmen are moving towards non-intervention, John Boehner, is exercising his rubber-stamp, giving his approval for Obama’s War.

Boehner: ‘I’m Going to Support the President’s Call for Action’ in Syria

11:26 AM, Sep 3, 2013 • By DANIEL HALPER

Speaker of the House John Boehner says that he’ll support President Obama’s “call for action” in Syria:

“The use of these weapons has to be responded to and only the United States has the capability and capacity to stop Assad and to warn others around the world that this type of behavior is not going to be tolerated,” said Boehner after meeting with Obama. “I appreciate the president reaching out to me and my colleagues in the Congress over the last couple of weeks. I also appreciate the president asking the Congress to support him in this action. This is something that the United States as a country needs to do. I’m going to support the president’s call for action. I believe my colleagues should support this call for action. We have enemies around the world that need to understand that we’re not going to tolerate this type of behavior. We also have allies around the world and allies in the region who also need to know that America will be there and stand up whether it is necessary.”

The problem will all this rhetoric is the question, “Who really released the Sarin gas that killed those 1,300 people? The Euros, Obama and Boehner are quick to accuse Assad. However, there are also reports that the gas was released accidentally by the rebels, rebels associated with Iran and Al Queda.

When it came to action, the Brits and the Euros quickly changed their minds. Brit Prime Minister Cameron lost his vote in Parliament. France, initially in favor of retaliatory attacks against Assad, has now gotten cold feet.

Of course, facts have never been worth considering when liberals get backed into a corner of their own making. Any out is acceptable, and who knows, maybe they can blame it all on Bush, or at least, the ‘Pubs.

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