Saturday Pictures

Saturday Pictures

October 12, 2013

(click to enlarge)

When we updated the banner picture we considered using this October 3rd shot, but then thought better about saving white for winter.

Red barn and white barn braving the early season snow together.

See the snow fall, or how peaks cap.

Time to kitchen windowize the garden tomatoes.

View of US Forest Service land to the south -- Dear President has not figured out he owns it -- yet.

US Forest Service land to the east.  Shhhh!

Lower and Upper Mt. Ellis, state properties each, thank God.

Don't look now, but US Forest Service land to the north.

HHS Secretary Sebelius Is A Glitch

Glitches, snitches, stitches, hitches, witches. Stop the equivocation. The damn thing doesn't work, not even when they gussy it up for show. Here is the reportage from Steel City.

Sebelius and Steelers Chairman Dan Rooney were at an enrollment and education event on Thursday at Heinz Field to promote Healthcare.gov, but people who showed up encountered problems in signing up for coverage on the website.

Unable to handle heavy online traffic and riddled with technical glitches, the website has been a source of criticism of the Obama administration and the new Affordable Care Act since its start on Oct. 1.

HHS Secretary Sebelius' ghostly visage at
Pittsburgh Heinz Field

Sebelius, who is making similar trips to cities across the country to spread the word about the website, told the audience of about 100 people that Healthcare.gov was “open for business.” 

“Believe me, we had some early glitches,” said Sebelius, who was introduced by Rooney, a backer of the law. “But it's getting better every day.”

At the back of the room, it was a different story. About 20 people armed with laptops and certified by the government to sign up people for coverage were meeting with uninsured people, answering questions and fruitlessly trying to access the website.

LaKesha Lowry, 41, came to the event to find out about her health insurance options. But the North Side resident said she was not able to access the site, even with the help of a certified application counselor.

“It said, ‘Try again later,' ” Lowry said.

When questioned Sebelius stonewalls.

Asked about the ongoing problems with the website and the fact that people at a government enrollment event couldn't sign up, Sebelius told reporters that she didn't know what problems were affecting service at Heinz Field. The government has made hardware and software upgrades to improve the site, she said, and it is working for many people.

“We're working to ensure it's easy to use,” Sebelius said, noting that more than 13 million people have visited the site, an “extraordinary” level of traffic.

Matt Drudge gets more than a billion page views each month, which means he's managing a visitor load that's about 30 times greater than what is being handled by Sebelius' technical geniuses -- and he is 100 more times more candid in reporting on HHS's performace. 

HHS officials so far have declined to release enrollment numbers for the federal website, saying they plan to provide monthly updates. It was unclear how many people — if any — were able to enroll at Thursday's event.

The place they should have handled sign ups for Obamacare was the "Obamacare and You" event attended by a grand total of two in Greenville, South Carolina.

We get the government you vote for.

Say Yes to Ending Saturday Delivery

When it comes to legislating, having a so-called functional Congress is way overrated. Let's look at an example of what a contention free legislature supplies. It's a you scratch my back, I'll scratch yours disaster. Since the Postal Service was reformed and re-regulated in December, 2006, in a spaghetti mess bill establishing a tangled regulatory morass with something for everyone, designed with insider input, enacted with the unanimous, bipartisan support of both houses of Congress, and vetted and endorsed by the postal unions and virtually all of the industry lobbyists, the Postal Service has racked up $40 billion in losses.  

Fearful of government default? It's already happened. For several years now the Postal Service has defaulted on its obligations to pay into employee benefit funds and has not repaid a single cent of its maxed out debt. 

The MSM blessed "nonpartisan" CBO said the 2006 postal reform bill was a break even proposition. I scoffed. CBO's assessment was a gamed calculation, nothing but cover for big government, big business and big labor interests who are always happy to pass off obligations to others and kick the can down the road. There is a real financial (so far $40 billion) cost for this mess and it is being passed along with interest payments (that will grow massively some day) to our children and grandchildren.

When Obamacare was passed in 2009, I could see the shades of postal reform. It was a spaghetti mess of contradictory provisions, fraught with giveaways to the value takers and restrictions on the value providers, overwhelmingly supported by trade associations and health care industry lobbyists, touted by big labor, pushed by blind allegiance (in Obamacare's case within party) and supported by CBO's specious analyses.  It's bearing out in the same fashion, yet the mainstream message is get out of the way.

Getting back to postal, into that game of value degradation and financial destruction comes Jon Tester, the junior senator from Montana. He's a heck of a hard-working dude, fighting for his constituents, uncovering a constitutional right not previously known. 

"It's in the Constitution that we have to have a Postal Service. It's worked well for this country for centuries, and the fact is when it comes to our senior citizens, when it comes to rural America, it's absolutely critical. So I'm one of those guys who, when they say ‘cut service on Saturdays,' says ‘no' and wants to know what other options are out there."

I live in Montana, check. I'm 60, or a senior now, check. We live outside the city and beyond city services, i.e., rural, check. Jon Tester is saying no on my behalf. Isn't that grand?

I know it is hard for a working senator, cum dirt farmer, to find time to consider actual facts, but let us try. Here is a copy of a magazine delivered to my rural mail box yesterday, October 11, 2013.  See the date?

Sterling two week delivery performance in rural America.

Yes, the cover says September 30 2013. I know, that's not the actual publication date. Standard magazine industry practice is to post date publications at least several days to extend shelf life and account for mail delivery so the actual publication date was more like September 27. That's two weeks to delivery, so now I have the opportunity to read the President's Cup Preview and peak ahead to an event that ended 6 days back.  

Tardy and inconsistent delivery service is not isolated. This is the Postal Service as it actually operates. Rational people, even seniors in rural areas, don't depend on the Postal Service for rapid or day certain delivery. What no Saturday delivery means is mail that is already late and unpredictable would be no more unpredictable and, in some cases, a bit later. The alternative is to throw billions of 6-day delivery dollars a year down a financial hole that gets bigger and more impossible to escape every year.

Want a functional Congress?  Be careful of what you wish for.


[Note: Much has been made of the Postal Service "prepaying" for its employee's post retirement health care benefits. In the unanimous 2006 bill the benefit payments were goosed up (with no means provided for the Postal Service to actually fund the goose) to help give CBO basis for gaming its faulty financial assessment. If the Postal Service held to only making actuarially sound contributions (the so-called normal cost) the accumulated post 2006 deficit would still be on the order of $30 billion.]

  

Facebook On Fire

We've been pinging Facebook more often than usual the last week or two. Here's a sampling, with commentary following each.

Edit

Grady Foster
October 2 at 9:05am near Bozeman · 
The House of Representatives is taking up 5 separate spending bills today, proceeding like it was done for a couple of hundred years, before we descended $17 trillion into debt. My, isn't that horrible?

And avoided sucking the future away from generations to come.

Grady Foster9 hours ago near Bozeman

Better than 9 out of 10 people who crow about how horrible and dysfunctional is Congress think their last vote for the House and Senate was spot on.

People love their letter carrier, hate the Post Office.

Grady Foster shared Drudge Report's photo.10 hours ago

And the government is going to provide you lower cost medical care. 

Obamacare website cost more than FACEBOOK, TWITTER, LINKEDIN, INSTAGRAM...
'How can we tax people for not buying a product from a website that doesn't work?'
$634,320,919

Surprised the enrollment system doesn't work? We blogged in April HHS bureaucrats responsible for this mess couldn't tell the Sports section from the Style section in the Washington Post (both start with S). You don't want to trust these people with a major computer system or your health. When you can't get real time treatment for your disease, Dear President will send regrets.

Grady Foster shared a link.
10 hours ago

Happy days are here again The skies above are clear again So let's sing a song of cheer again Happy days are here again

Obama’s national debt rate on track to double
www.washingtontimes.com
President Obama likes to say that raising the nation’s borrowing limit “won’t add a dime” to the federal debt, but he neglects to mention that the government already has borrowed the equivalent of more than 60 trillion dimes since he took office.

Nothing like a good tune to set you straight. For LIV's out there, "Happy Days" was FDR's campaign song. Roosevelt ended the Great Depression by entering WW II? So, how do you think that Dear President and Hillary will end the Great Recession?

Please Do Tell Dear President

An open letter:

Dear President, 

National forest is to the left of us, national forest is to the right. National forest is straight ahead of us, it's a sight, sight, sight.

Gallitan National Forest
 Ranger Districts.

The Gallitan National Forest is north, east and south of our home, in view, when looking out the picture windows or hanging out on our wraparound porch or deck. The Bridger Range, the Crazy Mountains, the Madison Range, the Gallitan Range and the Abasarokas are USFS properties. Cooke City is surrounded by the national forest. Bozeman's water supply comes primarily from Bozeman/Sourdough Creek and the Hyalite Reservoir, flowing out of Gallitan National Forest. 

We are not unique in Montana, where the Federal Government owns 29 percent of the total land. We may not be your subjects quite to the extent of Alaska (60 percent federal ownership) or Idaho (61 percent), but we also are also not quite the ignorant flatlanders that you made us out to be, during one or your petulant piques, earlier this year.

We have a simple question Dear President. That is, when are your US Forest Service rangers going to catch up to their dear colleagues in the National Park Service in the race to implement the federal government shutdown? We are scheduling a little get together. For the comfort of our guests we want to schedule for a date before homeward passages will be barricaded, the water supply cut off and views verboten. 

Please do tell, Dear President, please do tell.

Sincerely,

Bozeman Comrade

In Heaven There Is No Beer

But this is not heaven, particularly for brewers who need to get nanny state regulatory approval for beer packaging and labeling.

The government shutdown reveals a federal bureaucracy riddled by ridiculous regulatory apparatus. Brewers can't pop a top without checking in with the Treasury Department's currently shuttered Alcohol, Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau (TTB). 

TTB Shield, View Purloined
During Government Shutdown

Tony Magee, owner of Lagunitas Brewing Co. in Petaluma, Calif., posted messages on his Twitter account this week ripping the shutdown.

"(Expletive) Feds are gonna shut down the already incompetent .Gov while hundreds of small breweries, including us, have labels pending. Nice." That was followed with "Wanna regulate? Perform or get out of the way."

Lagunitas Chief Operating Officer Todd Stevenson called the TTB shutdown a "headache." He said the company was planning to submit an application to package its autumn seasonal Hairy Eyeball in 22-ounce bottles instead of 12-ounce bottles but can't move forward.

Little did we know that control freak Michael Bloomberg's beverage size control regime was already alive and well within the bowels of the federal government. Like we need to pay someone (the compensation cost for the typical federal employee is over $100K per year) to decide whether it's OK, for every brand, concocted by every brewery, to market a 22-ounce can? The boys who pick up a cold one on the way home from work can and do decide on size for themselves.

As is so typical, the regulatory regime sticks it to the little guy and favors the big businesses that Obama loves so much,

The closing isn't expected to have much effect on industry giants such as MillerCoors or Anheuser-Busch. They can continue to produce existing products as usual. But the shutdown poses a huge problem for craft brewers, who build their businesses by producing quirky, offbeat flavors and introducing new seasonal beers, sometimes as often as every quarter.

Rotators are brewery versions of the daily special. Looking ahead, don't go to your bar or bistro and expect innovation and variety, only limited selections of pre-approved packages, just like health care. You get the government you vote for.  

Oh Say, You Can't See

Can you imagine George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln or Teddy Roosevelt putting up traffic cones and crime scene tape to gratuitously impede distant views of a National Monument? Ah, but Barack Obama is progressive, different. Since he had already closed the Washington Monument your vindictive president resorts to shutting off views out in real America in order to punish the people and press his politics.

It's time to turn over Mount Rushmore to South Dakota. The states can handle the parks, monuments and memorials respectfully and responsibly. 

Mount Rushmore Sculptor Gutzon Borglum wrote,

"We believe the dimensions of national heartbeats are greater than village impulses, greater than state dreams or ambitions. Therefore we believe a nation's memorial should, like Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln and Roosevelt, have a serenity, a nobility, a power that reflects the gods who inspired them and suggests the gods they have become.

"As for sculptured mountains - Civilization, even its fine arts, is, most of it, quantity-produced stuff: education, law, government, wealth - each is enduring only as the day. Too little of it lasts into tomorrow and tomorrow is strangely the enemy of today, as today has already begun to forget buried yesterday. Each succeeding civilization forgets its predecessor, and out of its body builds its homes, its temples. Civilizations are ghouls. Egypt was pulled apart by its successor; Greece was divided among the Romans; Rome was pulled to pieces by bigotry and bitterness much of which was engendered its own empire building.

"I want, somewhere in America, on or near the Rockies, the backbone of the Continent, so far removed from succeeding, selfish, coveting civilizations, a few feet of stone that bears witness, carries the likeness, the dates, a word or two of the great things we accomplished as a Nation, placed so high it won't pay to pull them down for lesser purposes.

"Hence, let us place there, carved high, as close to heaven as we can, the words of our leaders, their faces, to show posterity what manner of men they were. Then breathe a prayer that these records will endure until the wind and rain alone shall wear them away."

Yes, their visage endures for posterity until the wind and rain shall wear them away, or until Barack Obama becomes Dear President of the United States.

September Top Posts

Thank you loyal readers!  We surged out of the summer doldrums in September, beating our previous best month, page view wise, by 21 percent.  To date, Along the Gradyent's top ten September posts are as follows.

1. It is gratifying when a post offering useful suggestions is widely read. With the budget impasse coming, we wrote a piece advising During the Shutdown Go to Mount Vernon.  At the time we posted, little did we know that Obama's National Park Service would try to shutter the operation by lawlessly Barrycading Mount Vernon's privately owned parking lots. Cheers to the Mount Vernon Ladies Association for thwarting the attempt. We are pleased to offer advise on getting down to George's place, and visiting numerous other places of interest in DC and Alexandria not owned or patrolled by Obama's Federales.
2. Go to was a popular theme again, underlying the No. 2 post Please Visit the BMW Championship: It's for the Caddies. When yours truly was completing high school, we pulled a Noonan and were blessed to receive the caddie scholarship.  Because the Western Golf Association sponsored Evans Scholar Foundation is the charitable beneficiary of the BMW Championship, we encouraged readers to attend the golf tournament.  The tournament was a smashing success with attendance of more than 130,000 for the week, and a magical 59 shot by Jim Furyk in the second round. Next year the tournament moves to Cherry Hills in Denver.  That's a long day's drive from Bozeman. Hmmmmm.  
3. Failing to note that we had not even a single hurricane of intensity one through five, Prince Al climbed on his Gore box to insist we need a category six to classify 'canes of increasing intensity. We inquired Calling Al Gore: What About Cats 1 Through 5?
4. In Declining Median Incomes we shared data illustrating that our friends who support Dear President the most have fared the worst under his economic regime. 
5. We enticed prospective attendees to the BMW championship with the possibility of hostilities breaking out as Tiger and Sergio were paired for the first time since their dust up during the third round of the Players Championship and Garcia's racial dig at Tiger a couple of weeks later over in Europe.  Alas, no fireworks ensued.  Their meeting was marked by icy indifference.
6. On September 11, 2001 we lived in Arlington, Virginia two neighborhoods up from the Pentagon and worked across the river from the site of the plane crash in Washington, DC. In September 11, 2001; We Remember we recounted our experiences during that horrible day and remembrances honoring victims in years since.
7. In Educate the Dream we blogged on the importance of providing a high school education to immigrants, no matter where they come from and regardless of how they got here.
8. We said Barack Pays For Golf Access in Montana. What we really meant was access to the Golf Channel. Obama's spending stimulus keeps on giving, providing cable television and high speed internet access to Ted Turner's ranch and gated developments and high brow private country clubs further south in Big Sky.
9. On the occasion of its success evacuating personnel under attack from the Washington Navy Yard, we recognized its heroism, bravery and effectiveness over the years in Kudos to the US Park Police Helicopter Crew.
10. It ain't about lollipops. Suckers! blasts Obama for falsehoods he spread concerning the badly misnamed Affordable Care Act.

Thanks again to all our readers!  

The Myth of Financial and Economic Armageddon

Don't believe the fairy tale stories reported in the media of financial and economic free fall resulting from the tussle between the House of Representatives and the President, and the resulting so-called gridlock and dysfunctional government.  There are always short term fluctuations to be sure, but the dollar has actually strengthened since the Republican House was elected in November 2010 and has been fighting to reduce deficits and slow the growth of the federal government debt bomb. Here are the data.

Obama's NPS Holds Tourists Hostage

It's ironic that Barack Obama prattles on about how Republicans are holding a gun to the head of the American people when Dear President is using his armed US Park Police and Rangers posses to actually hold tourists hostage.

US 212 closed due to
winter weather conditions.

A small geography lesson is in order. Cooke City, Montana (elevation 7,835 feet) is a tourist town located four miles outside the northeast entrance to Yellowstone National Park. There is one road into and out of Cooke City. To the west the road out travels down through Yellowstone National Park, then outside the park to Gardiner Montana on US 89, continuing down Paradise Valley towards Livingston and points beyond. Leaving Cooke City to the east is US 212, the Beartooth Highway, which crosses the Abasaroka Mountains, Beartooth Pass, (Elevation 10,947 feet) and the Beartooth plateau, before dropping down to Red Lodge Montana, then on to Billings. Due to continuous extreme weather conditions, the eastern route is closed in winter, i.e., most of the year in these parts. Typically, the Beartooth Highway closes in mid-October and opens in late May to early June.

Green Line is Yellowstone NP Border, Red is Beartooth Highway, Yellow are alternate roads.

Early season snow storms this year have closed the Beartooth Highway since September 24, and shut down the Chief Joseph Highway bypass as well, giving tourists in Cooke City no way out because they are blocked by Obama's NPS thuggery.

The most recent storm dropped between 10 and 14 inches of snow, preventing road travel to the Chief Joseph Highway, which can be used as an alternate route out of Cooke City. And Yellowstone closed Tuesday because of a congressional budget impasse that caused the federal government to shut down. Locals can travel through along the still-plowed roads of the park to Gardiner with special stickers they apply for from the park. Tourists, however, are unable to traverse the stretch, barring a medical emergency. “We're trapped,” said Bill Anderson, of Wichita, Kan., one of about 15 tourists in Cooke City. “It's nuts.”

How can it be nuts?  This is the policy of Dear President of the United States. Don't dare call him nuts, lest the plethora of useful idiots on the left label you extremist, racist and bigot.  Just say it's time to turn national parks over to the states. We've had enough of this.

Obama Closes Ocean, Changes National Park Service Culture

Virtually overnight, Barack Obama has changed the National Park Service culture from one of serving the people to that of sticking it to the people -- a remarkable transformation.

After Barrycadding the open air plaza that is the WW II Memorial, blocking bicyclists from riding into the District of Columbia, unlawfully shutting down private parking at the foundation owned and operated Mount Vernon Estate, refusing the state of Arizona's offer to pay to keep the Grand Canyon open and blanketing the National Capital Region with unpaid police officers who are issuing $85 tickets to motorists parking in vacant unmetered parking spaces, the latest is that Obama's National Park Service is issuing orders to shut down the ocean.

Charter guides received a message from the National Park Service this week informing them that they are not permitted to take clients fishing in Florida Bay until the feds get back to work. That means that more than 1,100 square miles of prime fishing is off limits between the southern tip of the mainland to the Keys until further notice.

The ocean is for them, not you.

The closing affects not only fishing guides, but anyone with a license to conduct business in the park, including tour operators and paddling guides — anyone with a Commercial Use Authorization permit, said Dan Kimball, superintendent of Everglades and Dry Tortugas national parks.

You got a hick bully in the Oval Office. It's catching, working its way down and through the bureacracy through Obama's OMB enforcement arm. Good choice American People!  From here on out I will be an advocate of turning all National Park Service properties over to states and local government. They get the job done. They, unlike Obama's NPS, will be good and faithful stewards.

Read more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/2013/10/03/3668028_p2/shutdown-day-3-food-distributor.html#storylink=cpy

Government Shutdown Activities: Colonial Williamsburg

Colonial Williamsburg visitors interacting 
with period actors/interpreters.

If you have driven to the DC area, it's only a couple more hours to Colonial Williamsburg, a privately operated historical attraction that Barack Obama's National Park Service doesn't own or control, and hasn't tried to close down -- yet. It, like Mount Vernon, the attraction we first recommended for stranded tourists, is an amazing historical exhibition --  fascinating, entertaining and instructive. Colonial Williamsburg is made up of about 20 blocks of preserved and restored Colonial Americana, with the Governor's Palace and the Virginia colonial Capitol (George Mason, George Washington, Thomas Jefferson and Patrick Henry served there in the 18th century) thrown in for good measure. Guides and period actors/interpreters abound. Visit only if you want to be astounded by our roots, the founding of our country, and the people behind it.

The Colonial Williamsburg web site sums it up,

Colonial Williamsburg is open during the government shutdown.

The Colonial Williamsburg Foundation is a privately funded, not-for-profit organization and is not affected by the federal government shutdown. All activities and events will go on as planned.

As with Mount Vernon, when we lived back east we purchased annual passes at Colonial Williamsburg and visited repeatedly.

Here is the Foundation's overview,

Tropical Storm Karen

As of late yesterday, Karen was predicted to grow into a hurricane, and make landfall as a tropical storm all the way into Georgia, continuing as a tropical depression up into Virginia.

Oops, Karen is weakening, not intensifying.  

POORLY DISORGANIZED TROPICAL STORM KAREN WILL CONTINUE TO MOVE
SLOWLY NORTHWARDS TONIGHT. SWELLS AS RESULT OF KAREN ARE STARTING TO GET INTO THE COASTAL WATERS THIS AFTERNOON. THE ONSET OF TROPICAL STORM FORCE WINDS WILL BE SLOWER THAN PREVIOUSLY EXPECTED REACHING THE COASTAL WATERS LATE TONIGHT AND SATURDAY MORNING.

Didn't mean to say a hurricane after all.  And when it hits land it will be a depression, not storm anymore. As for the last two days, forget about it.

Those climate scientists, they are magicians who understand what's going on with 95 percent probability.  If you don't believe that, just ask them.

Update 10/5:  Dudes and dudettes, storm is not even gonna make it to land, will be downgraded to a tropical depression off the Louisiana shore.

And Saturday evening...

WATCHES AND WARNINGS
--------------------
CHANGES WITH THIS ADVISORY...

ALL TROPICAL STORM WARNINGS HAVE BEEN DISCONTINUED.

SUMMARY OF WATCHES AND WARNINGS IN EFFECT...

THERE ARE NO COASTAL TROPICAL STORM WARNINGS OR WATCHES IN EFFECT.

INTERESTS ALONG THE NORTH-CENTRAL GULF COAST SHOULD CONTINUE TO
MONITOR PRODUCTS ISSUED BY YOUR LOCAL NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE
FORECAST OFFICE AT WEATHER.GOV.

Sunday Morning, BYE BYE Karen!

Obama Administration Spends to Avoid No Spending

Barrycades are popping up throughout the DC region. NPS is putting fences at road crossings and comically blocking trail access points in open park areas. Locals are laughing at the impositions all the while walking, running, biking or rolling around the barriers and pushing the barriers asunder, even though busting a barrier is now a capital crime in the District of Columbia.

The Obama administration attempts to shut down DC to bike riders.

The Weekly Standard pictured the NPS reinforcement of barriers surrounding the open air plaza at the WW II memorial earlier this week.  While adverse publicity has forced Obama's OMB (orders issue from OMB which is the president's operational arm) and DOI thugs to cut off the plastic ties, the picture exposes the absurdity of putting up the barriers in the first place.  

Weekly Standard picture of RentACades

Lack of funding is the excuse for blocking off the WW II Memorial. But as I've noted, the Memorial is open air plaza, not normally staffed, a place with steps and pillars designed for walking around. Volunteers are there virtually around the clock to answer questions and help visitors -- not salaried park rangers.  So when the Obama administration runs out of money, what does it do?  It leases protection.  The Barrycade is a RentACade -- dial 888-276-2618 or go to http://www.rentaguard.com/rentacade/.  NPS is paying a vendor to supply materials to block off a site where access is costless.  That's presidential spite for you. “It’s a cheap way to deal with the situation,” an angry Park Service ranger in Washington says of the harassment. “We’ve been told to make life as difficult for people as we can. It’s disgusting.”

Meanwhile, open space abutting the WW I DC Memorial, around the corner and down Independence Avenue from the WW II Memorial, remains unbarricaded.

File picture of DC Veterans WW I Memorial on Independence Avenue

The last living WW I veteran died a couple years back at age 110 -- no living infirm visiting veterans for the Obama administration to block.

Lawless Move: NPS Barrycades Private Mount Vernon

Barrycades at Mount Vernon

I've been advising tourists to go down to Mount Vernon during the Federal Government shutdown. Mount Vernon is open and welcoming. It's privately owned and privately funded. The Mount Vernon Ladies Association is clear, stating that " Mount Vernon does not accept grants from federal, state or local governments, and no tax dollars are expended to support its purposes."

Well that's not enough for the petulant, grubby, power mongering presidency of Barack Obama. The National Park Service sent its jack booted rangers and maintenance workers down to Mount Vernon to shut down all the foundation owned parking -- Barrycades is what the barricades have come to be known. Barrycades appeared as if from nowhere to block off publicly accessible areas that are unstaffed and have never been shut down for any reason (including many previous government shutdowns). Obama's move is not only ridiculous.  It's lawless.

Now let me talk about the law for a second here.  Mount Vernon parking spaces are accessed through National Park Service land, but Mount Vernon has secured access and use through legally enforceable easements. Easements are all about. Here in Montana, for example, many public roads are built on private land, but landowners have through one means or another granted public access through and along those roads. The private owners have no right whatsoever to deny the public access through their property on those roads.  

Current Parking Situation at Mount Vernon,
Courtesy of www.thecollegepolitico.com

An easement is every bit as much of a property right as what is commonly thought of as ownership.  The owner of property who has granted an easement has no more right to eject or interfere with users of an easement than a landlord has to willy, nilly evict or interfere with the quiet enjoyment of leased property by a tenant. The NPS Barrycading was a lawless move, but what else would you expect from the most lawless administration since Richard Nixon occupied the White House?

The Mount Vernon Ladies are a cooperative crowd. Their parking is open and available to all, including those looking for a place to anchor a hike or begin a bike ride along at the southern terminus of NPS's Mount Vernon trail. Cooperativeness just makes them an easy target in the world of Obama. 

Confronted by the Mount Vernon Ladies Association, the National Park Service has backed down, removing the saw horses and police tape from the entrances to all but a distant satellite lot that fills only during the heavy summer tourist season.  

The barricading of the parking lots at Mount Vernon comes at the same time the National Park Service has blocked off many other public monuments, memorials, and parks. They’ve even blocked off small parking lots that are otherwise unmanned. In fact, every parking lot along the George Washington Memorial Parkway has been barricaded.

That includes a parking lot with a mere 3 spots located on the parkway between Mount Vernon and Old Town Alexandria.

At the moment there is no word on when the government shutdown will end, when the National Park Service will remove their barricades, or why the barricades were really necessary in the first place. Hopefully those answers will all become apparent soon.

Petulant twits carrying out Obama's will -- NPS, you are totally losing my respect dudes.

The creepy presidency continues.

What Is It About October 3rd?

October 3, 2012

October 3, 2013

Starry, Starry Night

Happy 68th Don McLean.

Overcoming Barriers

A little bit of anarchy is a very good thing.

WASHINGTON — Wheelchair-bound elderly veterans pushed aside barricades to tour the World War II Memorial Tuesday morning, in defiance of the government shutdown which closed all of the memorials in the nation’s capital. 

The four bus loads of veterans — visiting from Mississippi as part of a once-in-a-lifetime Honor Flight tour — ignored National Park Police instructions not to enter the site as lawmakers and tourists cheered them on. 

“We didn’t come this far not to get in,” one veteran proclaimed.

They weren't alone.

As Rep. Steve King, R-Iowa, distracted a Park Police representative, other lawmakers and their staff helped topple the metal fences. A bagpiper on hand for the event led the men past the crowd and into the heart of the memorial, attracting a large, applauding crowd. 

“This just means so much to me,” said Alex “Lou” Pitalo, an Army vet who also served in the Pacific during WWII. “I waited 70 years to get a welcome like this. And to get to see this and to have all those people clapping … I’m just so happy. This was amazing.”

Veterans and their escorts broke through the Barrycades and crime scene tape at the WW II Memorial.

The WWII Memorial is an open plaza with steps and pillars. It's granite. It is never closed for any reason and seldom is there any official presence. More personnel resources are needed to close plaza off than to leave it alone. There is no reason to have closed it off this week to begin with other than advancing Barack Obama's power, ego and cause. The spite presidency continues its work. 

Promoting the Shutdown

Furloughed, nonessential DC federal government employees get discounts, free drinks and free food and extra-long happy hours to drink themselves into oblivion -- active federal employees (forgive the oxymoron) too. The deals have spread into the wealthy counties in Maryland and Virginia. And later, to work off the calories, there are complimentary pole dancing lessons in Alexandria. Party on!