Wesley Pruden wrote this in the Washington Times Yesterday:
President Obama is not a bad poker player, but the man with all the chips always starts with the advantage (and he gets all the aces). He has closed Washington down as tight as he dares, emphasizing the trivial and the petty in making life as inconvenient as he can for the greatest number. It’s all in a noble cause, of course. Access to most of the memorials is limited, and often in curious ways. The Lincoln Memorial is easy to reach, with the streets around it remaining open. But the Martin Luther King Memorial is made difficult to reach, relegating it, you might say, to the back of the bus. Not very nice.
The Park Service appears to be closing streets on mere whim and caprice. The rangers even closed the parking lot at Mount Vernon, where the plantation home of George Washington is a favorite tourist destination. That was after they barred the new World War II Memorial on the Mall to veterans of World War II. But the government does not own Mount Vernon; it is privately owned by the Mount Vernon Ladies’ Association. The ladies bought it years ago to preserve it as a national memorial. The feds closed access to the parking lots this week, even though the lots are jointly owned with the Mount Vernon ladies. The rangers are from the government, and they’re only here to help.
“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.”
On Tuesday morning, seven National Park Service employees were seen erecting and tending to a barricade around the World War II memorial in Washington, D.C. One NPS employee was operating a forklift. There usually aren’t any NPS employees working at the World War II memorial.
A couple hours later, when an Honor Flight of World War II veterans arrived, accompanied by Democratic and Republican members of Congress, the fences blocking the memorial were easily moved away, allowing the veterans to enter.
But the barriers are still at the memorial, and they’ve been reinforced, wires have been used to tie the fences together. Meanwhile, the barricade in front of a memorial to World War I veterans a couple blocks away is still easy to get around.
The Cemetery in Normandy, France-
Tourists travelling to Omaha Beach to pay their respects to the 9,387 military dead at the Normandy American Cemetery and Memorial will find it closed, a victim of the U.S. government’s partial shutdown.
The site overlooking the D-Day invasion beaches is one of 24 U.S. military cemeteries overseas that have closed to visitors since Monday. Ten more cemeteries in in France, as well as others in various European countries as well as Mexico, Panama, Tunisia and the Philippines, will remain closed for the duration of the shutdown.
They can see the German graves but not the American’s. Some are attempting to approach the grave sites from the very beach many died on. The cemeteries are maintained by the American Battle Monuments Commission, set up after the First World War, not the federal government.
Sports Broadcasts for the Troops Overseas-
Overseas troops who typically look forward to watching NFL games and the baseball playoffs provided by the American Forces Network, will get little if any service due to the shutdown. A notice on the AFN page reads:
“GOVERNMENT SHUTDOWN. Due to the government shutdown, the Defense Department can only provide limited overseas television, radio, print and web services.”
President Obama has visited the Navy-run presidential retreat Camp David in central Maryland only 32 times, but it is being kept open during the government shutdown for his entertainment and security at the same time the Pentagon is cutting sports coverage to hundreds of thousands of troops around the world.
Seems a little heartless doesn’t it. The President refuses to give aid and comfort to our own troops.
As a French commentator stated this morning: The United States needs another Thomas Jefferson and needs to return to the morals of it’s founders!!