Just Pawns In The Obama Shutdown

Obama Shutdown Holds Up Death Benefits To Fallen Warrior's Families

(Left to right) Pfc. Cody J. Patterson, Sgt. Patrick C. Hawkins, 1st Lt. Jennifer M. Moreno and Special Agent Joseph M. Peters, killed by an improvised explosive device in Afghanistan on Sunday. Photo: U.S. Army



Marine Lance Corporal Jeremiah M. Collins Jr., 19, killed Saturday while supporting combat operations in Afghanistan’s Helmand Province.

The Obama Administration has fallen to a new low, if that were possible. It is now denying death benefits to the families of fallen warriors killed in action.

The five families of the men and women pictured above received the horrible news this weekend that their loved ones would not be coming home. To rub salt in that wound, they were also informed that the normal $100,000 death benefit they were to receive would be 'on hold' because of the Obama shutdown.

That money is designed to cover transportation to Dover, DE where all coffins are unloaded, funeral expense and living expenses covered by a warrior's paycheck until the military’s survivor benefits kick in.

Remember that 83% of the government is still in operation, including 15 servants for the Obamas (down from the normal 93). And Camp David and the president's golf course are still operating.

As of October 4, 2013 and the shutdown, the federal government spent $1.1 billion in salaries for federal employees. “At the same time, it took in $25.68 BILLION in tax revenues.

Somehow the money can't be found to pay death benefits to the families of men and women who gave all, and this president and his minions think nothing of trying to exploit this for political purposes.

And this can't be laid at the feet of the House Republicans. Just before the shutdown went into effect the House and Senate passed and Obama signed a bill to see to it that our  military would be paid and that full  benefits would continue to be honored.

Not only did the president deliberately renege on that, but he refused to answer any questions from congress on the matter.

In his press conference yesterday, Speaker John Boehner said that the House had already passed a bill to allow the Department of Defense to fund whatever is necessary, including the Death Gratuity, for the Military. Democrat Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid has refused to allow a vote on the bill, including it in the pile of 8 other bills the House has passed to fund parts of the government that he's simply sitting on.

According to Boehner, the House is going to pass yet another bill to fund the death benefits, and pass it on to senate - where Harry Reid will either allow it to come to a vote or simply stick in the pile.

But there is a slight up note in this disgraceful episode.

West Virginia Senator Joe Manchin has been working with the Fisher House Foundation to at least ensure that the families can receive enough to cover funeral expenses and some needed funds for now.

The Fisher House generously okayed an advance grant to the the families to cover flights, hotels and other incidentals for family members until they receive reimbursement from the government.

As for our president - I think it best to censor myself here. But I don't mind saying at all that it's an embarrassment that in a society with what is supposed to be a free press, this isn't headlines nationwide.

(H/T, Maggie's Notebook)

VIDEO parody of COPS – National Park Service: Government Shutdown Edition!

The Thin Blue Line at the BarryCades,protecting our monuments and memorials from vicious tourists and WWII vets...these are their stories.


Funnneee! Co-created by SooperMexican and  Matt Dawson of the Morlock Revolt.

Veterans? Wounded Warriors? No! Illegal Aliens? Si!

As part of the Obama shutdown, all kinds of parks, museums and memorials have been shut down out of sheer vindictiveness, even places that are privately funded...even places that have never been closed before under any previous government shutdown.

The Obama Administration deliberately denied access to the World War II memorial, the Marine memorial and the Vietnam Wall to veterans of those conflicts. The vets were able storm the World War II and Marine Memorials (with the aid of those bringing them there from the non-profit Honor Flights and some Republican Congressmen who helped tear down the barriers)even though th ebarriers were wired shut and the vets were threatened with arrest.

But there's one constituency that's getting VIP treatment when it comes to access. A rally for open borders and amnestia is going to take place on the National Mall on Tuesday even though the site is closed due to the government shutdown, and organizers for the "Camino Americano: March for Immigration Reform" were seen setting up a stage and equipment on the supposedly closed area:

Susana Flores, a spokesperson for the rally, confirmed for the Washington Examiner that the Park Service will allow the event to take place under the group's rights granted by the First Amendment.


Of course, it couldn't be because the Democrats see political advantage in allowing this when no one else is allowed to use it....could it?

About 30 members of Congress are expected to attend the rally, including House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., and Sen. Robert Menendez, D-N.J.

The event is hosted by several immigration activist groups, together with the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) and the AFL-CIO.

Oh, wait..of course it is.

So the Obama Administration is now picking and choosing who can use and have access to spaces and facilities the public owns according to whether the Obama Administration favors the group seeking access.

Some animals are just more equal than others, as Orwell said.

This Is Who Obama Tried To Keep Out Of The WWII Memorial

It's worth looking at an example of the kind of person President Obama, in full tantrum mode, tried to shut out of the WWII memorial .

This is Nicholas Oresko of Cresskill, NJ, sitting with Medal of Honor recipient Sergeant Dakota Meyer, whom readers of these pages might be familiar with. Master Sergeant Oresko, the nation’s oldest Medal of Honor recipient,  passed away last Friday, October 4th at the age of 96, surrounded by family, veterans and military personnel.

 Here's what Master Sergeant Orezco did in World War II during the Battle of The Bulge  to earn that Medal of Honor, according to his citation:

M/Sergeant. Oresko was a platoon leader with Company C, in an attack against strong enemy positions. Deadly automatic fire from the flanks pinned down his unit. Realizing that a machinegun in a nearby bunker must be eliminated, he swiftly worked ahead alone, braving bullets which struck about him, until close enough to throw a grenade into the German position. He rushed the bunker and, with pointblank rifle fire, killed all the hostile occupants who survived the grenade blast.

Another machine gun opened up on him, knocking him down and seriously wounding him in the hip. Refusing to withdraw from the battle, he placed himself at the head of his platoon to continue the assault. As withering machine gun and rifle fire swept the area, he struck out alone in advance of his men to a second bunker. With a grenade, he crippled the dug-in machine gun defending this position and then wiped out the troops manning it with his rifle, completing his second self-imposed, 1-man attack.

Although weak from loss of blood, he refused to be evacuated until assured the mission was successfully accomplished. Through quick thinking, indomitable courage, and unswerving devotion to the attack in the face of bitter resistance and while wounded, M /Sergeant. Oresko killed 12 Germans, prevented a delay in the assault, and made it possible for Company C to obtain its objective with minimum casualties.

Yes. this is an example of the kind of patriots our president chose to vent on. Needless to say, with the help of a few friends and some Republican congressmen, the vets didn't put up with it, even when they were threatened with arrest, even when barriers were put in place and wired shut to try and keep them out.

The Marine vets, not to be outdone did the same thing when this president tried to shut them out of the Marine Corps Memorial:

 

Both of these sites are normally not barricaded, and even in previous shutdowns they were accessible.

But that was before Before Obama.

These episodes say a lot about the character of the current occupant of the Oval Office.

Financial Expert Stuart Varney Explains The Shutdown 'Obama Wants The Market To Go Down...'

FOX business channel's Stuart Varney explains the shutdown, the debt ceiling, and what it means to average Americans in easily understandable terms. (H/t, The Noisy Room)

Government Shutdown And ObamaCare Roundup

It's the first official day of the government shutdown and of ObamaCare's rollout..here are some worthy reads on the matter:

The Other McCain: Fear And Loathing In Moocher Nation:"People who don’t currently have health insurance are likely to believe that ObamaCare will “help” them, if they think of it as a something-for-nothing giveaway — “Free Stuff!” — but as P.J. O’Rourke once observed about rent-control policies, the problem with something-for-nothing is that you quickly run out of something and end up with a whole lot of nothing. Demand for anything worth having will inevitably exceed the supply, and this is why we have prices. Attempts to evade the market mechanism of prices, whether through mandates or subsidies or some other government regulatory apparatus, tend to produce market distortions and shortages.

Federal and state governments have been interfering with the market mechanisms of the medical industry and health insurance for decades, and have “succeeded” in the way such interventions usually do, by making everything more complicated, and more expensive for everybody except for those who get health care “free.” Of course, someone must pay for “free” health care, and the transfer of this cost from the recipient of treatment to taxpayers has consequences.

If people need “free” health care because they are able-bodied but unemployed, wouldn’t we have more jobs and better jobs if the economy were prosperous and growing? And if we had lower taxes and fewer regulations, wouldn’t the economy be more healthy?

Furthermore, wouldn’t the economy be stronger overall — wouldn’t there be more demand for goods and services — if people had more incentive to work harder, work more efficiently and work longer hours, in order to make themselves so valuable as workers that employers would compete to hire them, offering health-insurance benefits as a bonus to secure their services? Yet if we establish a system where people receive health insurance whether they are working or unemployed, whether they are efficient and diligent or unproductive and slothful, haven’t we thereby removed a basic incentive to hard work? And, when you think about it, haven’t we removed an incentive to good health?

Have another donut, fatso! Don’t worry about the consequences, because the government will pick up the tab for your heart medicine, your diabetes treatments and therapy for your bad knees.

Also, they’ll pay for your Viagra, because fat guys need love, too."

PJ Media Despite Three-and-a-Half Years to Prep Obamacare, A Fiasco Takes Shape: "The facts, whatever the PR turns out to be, are that the administration and the press have failed Obamacare tests for three-and-a-half years. Admittedly, they have had assistance from the law’s opponents, who have inexplicably failed to highlight easily understood and financially crippling design flaws which — if conveyed to the public — would have caused the program’s meager popularity to crater.

Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius has had since March 2010 to prepare for open enrollment’s October 2013 rollout. Besides churning out thousands of pages of regulations, what have she and her army been doing?

Someone performing as Sebelius has in the private sector would have been fired at least a year ago, when it become obvious that her implementation plan — having already missed critical deadlines almost two years ago – was still hopelessly behind."

Edward Isaac Dovere and Reid J. Epstein/Politico Government shutdown: President Obama holds the line: "President Barack Obama started September in an agonizing, extended display of how little sway he had in Congress. He ended the month with a display of resolve and strength that could redefine his presidency.

All it took was a government shutdown.

This was less a White House strategy than simply staying in the corner the House GOP had painted them into — to the White House’s surprise, Obama was forced to do what he so rarely has as president: he said no, and he didn’t stop saying no."

Nick Gillespie Welcome to the Age of Unlimited Government! :"It’s a telling coincidence that the latest scandalous revelation about the National Security Agency (NSA) is hitting the front pages just as the enrollment period specified by the Affordable Care Act (ACA, a.k.a. Obamacare) is getting started.

Each of these things underscores different but related aspects of the virtually unlimited state that has ruined the peaceful slumber of libertarian-minded Americans for decades. Whether we’re talking about surveilling citizens without any sort of serious legal oversight or forcing them to participate in economic activity in the name of health care über alles, the answer always seems to favor the growth and power of the state to control more and more aspects of our lives. Is it any wonder that a record-high percentage of Americans think the federal government is too powerful?"

Dana MilBank, WAPO In Congress, a not-so-brief case of delusion over government shutdown : "I almost shut down the government.

As I waited outside a meeting of the House Republican caucus in the Capitol basement Monday afternoon, I put down my briefcase next to a flowerpot and walked around the corner to catch lawmakers as they exited. Minutes later, an aide to Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.) came bounding down the hall toward me, calling out, “Is that your bag?”

The Capitol police had identified it as a suspicious package and isolated it. Had I not claimed the briefcase, they may well have evacuated the Republicans from their strategy session — and I would have been responsible for them failing to come up with a final plan to avert the shutdown.

As it turns out, the Republicans didn’t need help from me to blow things up."

Michelle Malkin Obama Lied, My Health Plan Died : "Like an estimated 22 million other Americans, I am a self-employed small-business owner who buys health insurance for my family directly on the individual market. We have a high-deductible PPO plan that allows us to choose from a wide range of doctors.

Or rather, we had such a plan.

Last week, our family received notice from Anthem BlueCross BlueShield of Colorado that we can no longer keep the plan we like because of “changes from health care reform (also called the Affordable Care Act or ACA).” The letter informed us that “(t)o meet the requirements of the new laws, your current plan can no longer be continued beyond your 2014 renewal date.”

In short: Obama lied. My health plan died."

Sean Trende The Politics of the Government Shutdown : "With the government having lurched into its first shutdown since the 1990s, many commentators are focusing on the potential ill effects that it might have for Republicans. Almost all of these analyses use the shutdowns of 1995-1996 as their starting point. While I don't think this development will be great for Republicans, many of the concerns are likely overwrought. Here are four points to ponder:

1. While the GOP’s tactics are similar to those employed in the mid-’90s, the goals are different. The earlier budget debates were broad in nature and dealt with the scope of government. The 104th Congress, led by Newt Gingrich, believed that they were the culmination of the realignment supposedly begun by Ronald Reagan, that Bill Clinton’s election was a fluke caused by Ross Perot’s candidacy, and that they had been elected with a mandate to shrink the size and scope of government dramatically."

Jay Cost/Weekly Standard Roll It Back: "Obamacare remains decisively unpopular with the American people, and most Republicans are staunchly committed to its repeal. And why shouldn’t they be? The ideological core of the bill runs contrary to the vision of limited government, market-based solutions, and individual choice that has formed the foundation of the party’s economic program since the statism of the First New Deal. Moreover, the party’s purpose is to win elections, and Obamacare still looks like a winning issue for the GOP.

Against the airtight ideological and political arguments for Republican repeal efforts, Democrats and their liberal allies in the mainstream media have resorted to variations on a single theme: Opposition violates our sacrosanct political traditions. The Supreme Court upheld (most of) Obamacare; the president won reelection; ergo, continued efforts to undo the health law, especially those to defund it, are in grossly poor form. As Harry Reid so gracefully tweeted last week: “We will not bow to Tea Party anarchists who deny the mere fact that Obamacare is the law.” According to Reid, the effort to defund this particular law is tantamount to opposition to the concept of law itself.

The position that leftists have adopted here is absurd, for two reasons. First, the notion that Obama’s reelection in 2012 was a plebiscite on the relative merits of Obamacare is wishful thinking. American elections are rarely, if ever, plebiscites. Politicians work to make elections about a whole host of things; more often than not, electoral campaigns scrupulously avoid the big issues of the day. It is much better, from the politicians’ perspective, to turn the election into a contest of personalities or valence issues, those on which the public concurs."