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Politics : Mainstream Politics and Economics -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: koan who wrote (54102)	10/3/2013 1:06:44 AM
From: average joe	1 Recommendation Recommended By Thehammer Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 85487

What about this Mother Koan? Viva the shutdown! Like Atlas Shrugged in reverse… By James Delingpole Politics Last updated: October 2nd, 2013 233 Comments Comment on this article Wow! It's eating some more bamboo. Bad news, everyone: the panda cam at Washington zoo has fallen victim to the US government shutdown. (H/T Jacob Rees-Mogg in the blindingly good speech he gave in Manchester yesterday at an Adam Smith Institute discussion on the Nanny State; H/T also Eric Worrall) Where before, US taxpayers (everyone else too: thanks US taxpayers!) were free any time of day or night to watch the pandas do exciting things like pacing around, sleeping and chewing bamboo on special government-funded spy cameras, now all they see is a black screen and an error message. Sad, isn't it? But I don't mean sad as in "Oh no you can't see the pandas." I mean sad that Western civilisation has reached such a pitch of decadence that we consider it normal, acceptable even, for the government to confiscate our earnings through the tax system and squander it on fripperies like panda-viewing web cams. Or, indeed, on policing nudity or illegal banana-slug-eating in America's National Parks. There's another area on which the US government seems to think it has an unalienable right to splurge taxpayers' tax dollar whether they like it or not. You or I might think one of the main points of sequestering a wilderness zone like Yellowstone Park would be so visitors could get more intimate with nature by skinny-dipping in a cooling stream, perhaps under the influence of alcoholic beverages. But the park rules say no – and there's a whole army of uniformed government employees just itching to enforce them. Is this really what government is for? Really? The Founding Fathers certainly wouldn't have thought so: ( H/T BarbB) "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.–That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed…" Where, exactly, does the prevention of slug-eating, or nude-bathing – or controlling admittance to the Lincoln Memorial and the Statue of Liberty, come into that? And by what token, pray, is it a wise and proper and measured act of government to threaten World War II veterans trying to visit the national war memorial with arrest? An open air monument which requires no policing: this isn't in the public interest, these are the petulance and bully-boy tactics we've come to expect from the Obama administration. Don't get me wrong: if I were on a trip to DC or Wyoming or New York right now, I would be absolutely livid at finding most of their star attractions closed because of the government shutdown. My ire, however, would be directed at a system so sclerotic and statist that leisure zones such as monuments and national parks and zoos are still run by government employees when they should have been contracted out to the private sector long ago. What does the US think it is – the Soviet Union? If it does, I could certainly see the logic: culture is good for the people, therefore it is the job of a benign, nurturing Motherland to edify and educate her children by running museums, galleries, parks and zoos as if they were government departments. But if it still thinks of itself as the Land of the Free then, really, this latest shutdown should give it pause. One thing it might have noticed, for example, is that it finds itself enacting a curious inversion of Atlas Shrugged. In Atlas Shrugged, you'll recall, the private sector shuts down and the entire US economy collapses. But in the revised Obama version, what happens is that the public sector shuts down and what the US begins to realise is how amazingly well it can survive without the meddling of, say, the looters of the Environmental Protection Agency Well, we can but dream…. Tags: Atlas Shrugged, EPA, Obama Administration, panda, shutdown blogs.telegraph.co.uk

To: koan who wrote (54102)	10/3/2013 10:30:58 AM
From: Brumar89	4 Recommendations Recommended By FJB Jorj X Mckie longnshort Thehammer Respond to of 85487

Obama barrycading* out of pure spite:* For no other reason than spite, Barack Obama ordered the open-air World War II Memorial park closed and barricaded. In doing so, he intentionally shut the door on veterans visiting -- for perhaps the last time in their lives -- under the " Honor Flight" program. Now, for those who aren't aware, this memorial is in an open-air park, it was paid for with private funds, and it is unattended. According to its website, it is open to the public 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. That is, until the Obama administration doesn't get its way. That's when this kind of disgraceful idiocy occurs: Again, out of pure spite, Barack Obama ordered the open-air memorial barricaded to prevent access. He also ordered the arrest of veterans entering the grounds. How do I know Obama's actions were motivated by pure spite? Courtesy of John McCormack, here's the barricade around the World War I Memorial: So we know as a matter of fact, not speculation, that the barricades were intended to spit in the faces of veterans visiting the Memorial for perhaps the first and last time in their lives. Earlier today, Judicial Watch filed a Freedom of Information Act request to get to the bottom of this outrageous act on the part of an administration that is completely out of control. Governor Sarah Palin also called for civil disobedience. This is why I liken Obama to a petulant six-year old throwing a temper tantrum when he doesn't get his own way. directorblue.blogspot.com

To: koan who wrote (54102)	10/3/2013 11:06:59 AM
From: Wharf Rat	Read Replies (4) \| Respond to of 85487

LMAO. Getting Squishy around here. "We have to get something out of this. And I don't know what that even is." Marlin Stutzman and post-policy nihilism By Steve Benen - Thu Oct 3, 2013 9:03 AM EDT Associated Press Rep. Marlin Stutzman (R-Ind.) For many of us, to remember the last time Republicans shut down the federal government is to think of then-Speaker Newt Gingrich. Specifically, the far-right Georgian admitted in November 1995 that he closed the government in part because President Clinton hurt his feelings on Air Force One -- the president didn't chat with Gingrich during an overseas flight and then made the Speaker exit at the rear of the plane. It was a moment that captured the entire fiasco quite beautifully. A petulant, out-of-control Republican leader shut down the government largely to spite the president who made him feel bad. We don't yet know if a similar moment will come to define this Republican shutdown, but I'd like to nominate this gem as an early contender. "We're not going to be disrespected," conservative Rep. Marlin Stutzman, R-Ind., added. "We have to get something out of this. And I don't know what that even is." Go ahead, Republicans, tell us another one about how the shutdown is Democrats' fault. I've long argued that congressional Republicans are now defined by a post-policy nihilism, but even I'm surprised an elected GOP member of Congress would say this out loud, on purpose, and on the record. The quote is just ... perfect. "We're not going to be disrespected" helps capture the extent to which Republican lawmakers are acting like a street gang, hurting the country deliberately out of some twisted sense of self-serving pride. "We have to get something out of this" reinforces the way in which GOP officials are holding the country hostage, expecting a ransom to be paid. And "I don't know what that even is" makes clear that Republicans are being driven by a mindless radicalism. There's no meaningful policy goal in mind; there's no substantive motivation; there isn't even a strategic end goal. There's just a primal instinct and a right-wing id causing a national crisis.