I've been following the story of the WWII veterans who visited Washington to see the memorial that was erected on the National Mall to honor them. Since the "government shutdown" — which isn't really a government shutdown at all — national parks are all closed. This includes the memorials on the National Mall.
When faced with police barricades, these veterans pushed through and visited the memorial anyway. I thought, what a perfect example of the People taking charge of government.
Of course, it wasn't to last. Washington wasn't going to stand for being told what to do by the People they are supposedly there to "represent". After all, in order for the the shutdown sham to work, the People have to feel the pain. They need to know how much "their" government is doing for them and how much all of that doing costs. They have to be made to realize that digging an ever-expanding hole of debt for future generations is the only way for them to live comfortably in their every day lives. A full service "federal family" — as the feds themselves like to call it — takes a lot of phony Federal Reserve notes. If Washington cannot continue to print them, borrow them, and extort them from the People in ever-expanding quantities, then you can't have the privilege of seeing your memorials. It's federal tantrum time. Wahhhhh!
Never mind the fact that you built those memorials with your taxpayer dollars. Never mind the fact that those memorials are there to "honor" the very people who heroically put themselves in harm's way for a government who claimed they were doing so for their "freedom". Never mind the fact that for many of those elderly men who made the pilgrimage to D.C. to view the memorial, this may be their last opportunity to do so.
What's the reason for this? We don't have park police on staff to guard the memorials? Yet, we have plenty of park police to man the barricades. We have plenty of money for Homeland Security, and the TSA granny gropers at the airport. We apparently had plenty of money for a new war venture in Syria, didn't we? Um, excuse me... "limited strike". Yeah. Right. Until the People spoke out and said, No!
This really puts the lie to the entire shutdown sham. If Washington were really concerned about saving money, they would put an end to the most costly ventures that are endless black holes for funding, that have accomplished exactly the opposite of their stated intent. The never-ending wars on nouns. Terror, drugs, crime, cancer, poverty — you name it. There is no success in anything the government ever undertakes. At least from the standpoint of the People. In fact, I believe that I might argue successfully, that none of these social "war" programs were really ever meant to be successful. They were really intended to be exactly what they've become: huge honeypots of federal spending with no real end in sight.
ObamaCare is another perfect example of that. There is no way this program could ever work. Common sense dictates that if you have limited resources that you attempt to stretch to cover even more people, two things will happen: A degeneration in the quality of care, including rationing, and much, much higher costs. Already we are seeing the results of higher costs as companies are dropping health plans, cutting back workers, and even laying off people to avoid the costs. And it's all at a time where the economy is at a breaking point, due to the deliberate outsourcing of our jobs to foreign countries because of unfair trade agreements which put the United States at a strategic disadvantage.
To make matters even worse, the feds have been working to provide amnesty to more illegals — even to the point of providing hotel rooms for some while they await the amnesty bill's passage. Does this sound like a fiscally-concerned government to you? Or does it sound a lot like a government that is doing everything they can to work against the People they supposedly "represent"?
Now, we read from WNWO-TV, that the feds are threatening to arrest the veterans if they show up and attempt to see the memorial.
Honor Flight of Northwest Ohio has a trip scheduled to depart from Toledo next Wednesday, October 9.
"We will make the call this Friday to determine if the flight is still a go, or if we will have to re-schedule," Armstrong explains.
He says they are considering going ahead with the trip even if the government is still on shutdown, but when he called the parks service, he was told they would face arrest. "I said, are you kidding me? You're going to arrest a 90/91-year-old veteran from seeing his memorial? If it wasn't for them it wouldn't be there. She said, 'That's correct sir.'"
When Armstrong asked for her name, he says she did not give it to him and then promptly hung up the phone.
99% of veterans on Honor Flights have never had the opportunity to see the memorial that is devoted to their service.
Through October, the are over 35,000 veterans scheduled to visit the site, more than 900 in the next five days alone.
It may all be waiting in limbo if the government can't complete their job.
"Their job" is to get out of the way and leave the People alone. But that isn't going to happen until the People get furious enough to put an end to Washington's tantrums and tyranny.
I am deeply embarrassed and ashamed of the pathetic excuse for political "representatives" we have running our country. I am, equally, saddened by what our country has become. America was, at one time, the greatest country in the world. We were the envy of the world. People would jump through massive hoops to be a part of this nation. Economic opportunity, the promise of a brighter future, the breath of the air of freedom — it's all gone now.
We are laughed at, ridiculed, and despised around the world. We allow foreigners in without any effort on their part, who have no intention of assimilating into our culture, and who do not respect the principles upon which our country was founded. Why should they, after all, when our very "leaders" who have been allowed to govern us, are, themselves, hostile to those values? This, my dear readers, is the price you pay when you leave government to the professionals.
