Park Service removes handles from water fountains

Pure Obama hate and vindictiveness.  This is nothing to do with money.  There is an alien mind behind this  -- certainly not the mind of a President who loves his people

driking-fountain-recyclingIn what can only be described as an act of spite, National Park Service rangers removed the handles from all sources of drinking water along several popular scenic bicycle and jogging paths.

The paths, running from Pittsburgh to Washington, D.C. on the Great Allegheny Passage and C&O Canal will be closed at Cumberland, Maryland, and in an apparent effort to make it more difficult for the athletes, handles have been removed from all the well pumps along the way, according to the Cumberland Times-News.

This is just the latest example of outrageous conduct committed by the National Park Service since the government shutdown, all apparently in an effort to make Americans feel the pain.

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The real voting fraud



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Is our system broken?

By Rick Manning

Many Americans look at what is happening in Washington, D.C. and ask two simple questions, “Is our system broken, and why can’t these politicians just get along?”

In fact, these are two of the most frequent questions I get when doing radio interviews across the nation, particularly during the call-in portion.

As tough as it is to believe, the system is not actually broken when the Congress is fighting with itself and with the President, in fact, that is exactly the outcome our founding fathers intended when they built it.

There is supposed to be tension between the House and the Senate, and there is definitely supposed to be fighting between Congress and the Executive Branch.

The House of Representatives was given the constitutional responsibility of being where all spending bills must originate.  The Founders wanted the body closest to the people, who faced election every two years, to hold the purse strings of government.   The same House was proportionally elected whereby each Member represented approximately the same number of people, with every state guaranteed at least one House Member.

Until 1913, Senators were appointed by their respective state legislatures, two to a state in staggered six-year terms.  This insulation from the voters was designed to create the ultimate insiders club, to serve as an offset to the constant political demands in the House.

The Senate was also set up to defend parochial state interests as individual senators’ power was directly tied to the desires of the politicians in their home states.  Additionally, one of the great constitutional compromises was to protect the small states’ interests from being overrun by the large ones by offsetting the proportional representation in the House by giving each state equal representation in the Senate.

Just as the House has primary responsibility on money and tax issues, the Senate has sole responsibility in serving as a check on the Executive Branch through the ratification of treaties and the confirmation of political appointments among other powers.

American history is replete with examples of massive, almost heroic long-time congressional battles that somehow lose their passion in the stale retelling in school books.

Tensions leading up to the American Civil War were so high, that in 1856, a member of the South Carolina delegation to the House of Representatives physically beat a Massachusetts senator rendering him unconscious in the wake of a particularly blistering speech attacking aspects of the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854.

A few years earlier, House Speaker Henry Clay gained the moniker, the Great Compromiser, due to his fashioning of a congressional deal between diametrically opposed members of Congress that brought America back from the brink of the inevitable war that was fought out a decade later in places like Gettysburg, Chancellorsville and Vicksburg.

Over the course of time, Congress has been divided over issues like whether the paper currency created to fund the Civil War should be maintained or if the country should return to strictly using gold and silver for its money, how to reintegrate the southern states into the union after the war, whether to enter what is now known as World War I, and many others.

Since the 1970s, there have been seventeen other government shutdowns due to disputes that caused parts of the government to not be funded on time.  And some of these were over what, looking back, were petty issues.

There are those who speak about the good ole days when President Reagan and House Speaker Tip O’Neil had such a good relationship back in the 1980s.  They forget that Tip O’Neil shut down the government on twelve different occasions using the power of the purse.  O’Neil even went so far as to shut it down because he did not like that the Fairness Doctrine had been allowed to expire.

In fact, the abnormality of the past forty years is that the government has not faced a shutdown since 1995.

Our nation’s history is shaped by the great battles that have taken place not just by soldiers on foreign and domestic fields, but in the halls of Congress.  The very soul of our nation’s future is determined through these arguments, which oftentimes get ugly.  They are not for the faint of heart, but they are worth fighting.

Finding a solution when both sides know that the decision creates a tipping point from which there is no return is not possible until one side determines that the battle is no longer worth waging — telling itself that they will return to it again one day, a day that never comes.

Democrats view Obamacare as the culmination of a fifty year fight to have government take over the nation’s health care system.  A fight that has incrementally changed the way Americans receive health care with a quantum shift — pushed over the edge without the aid of a single Republican vote.

Republicans view Obamacare as the final destruction of the private health care system that will inevitably lead to socialized medicine.  A system that is intended to drive doctors out of private practice and into big corporate health entities, where government decides who gets what health care and at what cost, and ultimately the people suffer due to doctor shortages and substandard service.

But at its core, Republicans in Congress believe that government has no business being in the health care business and Democrats desperately want government to control and run it.

Those irreconcilable differences should lead to great debates, shutdowns and a real national discussion over the direction our nation is taking.

Is our national system of government broken?  No, it is working exactly as it should.

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Americans Don't Want A Shutdown and They Don't Want Obamacare

It was not a good week for progressives. Democrats thought they’d be sitting in the catbird seat during a government shutdown, but their own arrogance, World War II veterans, children with cancer and their own words have cost them what they were sure would be a easy victory.

Conceptually, progressives had hoped a government shutting down would send ripples of panic throughout the country, putting pressure on Republicans to give in to their demands. It didn’t. The vast majority of Americans who don’t work for the government, went about their lives as if nothing had happened.

Having learned from the sequestration battle, progressives knew the shutdown needed visible effects, not just theoretical ones. With the closing of public tours of the White House as their guide (and still in place, therefore unavailable to them now), Democrats closed open-air national monuments that are routinely open and unstaffed 24/7, 365 days per year.

The reason they did this is obvious – so media around the world would broadcast tourists upset their vacation plans were ruined by mean Republicans. What actually happened reinforced the old joke: If you want to make God laugh, make a plan.

While tourists were upset, the real story happened at the World War II Memorial. Members of the Greatest Generation weren’t going to let some flimsy gates stand in the way of them paying tribute to their fallen brothers. Nearly 70 years after storming barricades erected by other governments, they again stormed ones erected by their own.

Progressives tried to reinforce the barricades, but the next day they were stormed again.

Attempting to deny veterans in their 80s and 90s their last chance to visit a memorial to themselves, coupled with the threat of arrest, was too much for progressives and they caved. Veterans flown to Washington on “Honor Flights” will be allowed to visit, marking yet another victory for the brave men and women who defeated the forces they battled long ago.

A Park Service ranger told the Washington Times what we’d all suspected: “We’ve been told to make life as difficult for people as we can. It’s disgusting.”

Speaking of disgusting, the second PR disaster for progressives this week was committed by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, and it’s even more telling of their nature.

During the gun control debate, progressives repeated the mantra “If it only saves one child’s life, we have an obligation to act.” This child was theoretical, and would be “saved” only in the abstract from some future potential event that could, might, maybe happen. It was a weak argument then, but the “logic” behind it was turned on them.

Dana Bash of CNN asked Reid, who personally had refused to allow a vote on a bill to fund the National Institutes of Health that includes clinical trials for cancer treatment for children, why not just allow a vote on that to help those children?

Reid’s answer was as heartless as it was unsurprising. He said, “Why would we want to do that? I have 1,100 people at Nellis Air Force base that are sitting home. They have a few problems of their own.”

Reid tried to explain away this callous response as a gaffe; that of course he cares about children with cancer. But it was no gaffe. He didn’t just say, “Why would we want to do that?” he equated those children with people who to that point had had two days off of work, saying, “They have a few problems of their own.” Bed sores and “video game thumb” do not equal terminal cancer.

And remember, you don’t participate in clinical trials on a whim. You do so because it’s your last resort. These children are dying. Conventional treatment hasn’t worked, and this is their last hope. Harry Reid and his fellow Democrats are denying that last hope out of obstinacy.

The monument strategy didn’t work. Maybe a body count, especially one with children, will.

If that sounds harsh it’s only because it is. Individuals never have mattered to progressives; they are about the collective. Individuals are replaceable, interchangeable and expendable to progressives. Not those in power, naturally, but the faceless masses and “great unwashed.” History tells this tale clearly.

Under the “progressive” umbrella are fascism, socialism and communism, differing only by a few degrees. The early 20th century infighting between these groups was over which was the standard bearer and which would lead under the progressive banner – and not over ideological differences. And no political philosophy had a higher body count in the last 100 years than the progressive movement.

Hundreds of millions were slaughtered or sacrificed for “the greater good” of the progressive Utopia. What’s a few more kids?

Reid hasn’t backed down on this. He’s still denying those children their last hope, but he’s exposed now. If children die while he’s obstructing their care, he and his fellow progressives in politics and the media will try to spin their deaths as Republicans’ fault. The truth is different, but he’s fine with that. To put it more bluntly: Harry Reid doesn’t WANT children to die of cancer, but he can live with it if it advances the cause.

This was no “gaffe,” this was accidental truth-telling from an unprepared politician so comfortable in the knowledge that the media would have his back that he was thrown by a simple question he should have been prepared for.

On Friday, an Obama administration official was quoted by the Wall Street Journal saying, “We are winning…It doesn’t really matter to us” how long the shutdown lasts “because what matters is the end result.”

This has been the progressive way since its inception – the agenda is what matters, not the individual.

Imagine this: If progressives are willing to obstruct World War II veterans visiting their memorial, if they’re willing to refuse funding for children with cancer to avoid something as simple as a one-year delay in Obamacare or having to live under it themselves, what won’t they do? Remember, they’re taking over all of health care, slowly but surely. If they get it, what’s to stop them from blocking funding for any health care for anyone to get their next dream program in place?

Once you cede power to the government, you aren’t likely to get it back. A political movement willing to sacrifice children to the cause, a political philosophy with hundreds of millions of bodies behind it, will think nothing about adding a few more to the pile.

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For more blog postings from me, see  TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, GREENIE WATCH,  POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC,  AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, and Paralipomena (Occasionally updated) and Coral reef compendium. (Updated as news items come in).  GUN WATCH is now mainly put together by Dean Weingarten.

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