They warned me that if I voted for Mitt Romney, we’d get an omnipotent police state with no right to privacy, the police breaking into our houses at night, and authority flexing its idiot muscles at every turn.

And they were right.

On Government Radio last night, Melissa Block interviewed the grand poobah of the National Park Service.

Now, like many of you, I’ve been to DC.  Last time I was there, in 1995, you could most certainly go through all the monuments, pretty much 24/7.  There was security there – preventing vandalism, yadda yadda – but they were open.  Because they’re statues and walls and big rocks with things carved into them, and if you prevent idiots from spraying graffiti or chipping off Lincoln’s nose for a souvenir, you’ve pretty much got it covered. 

And to her minuscule credit, Block pointed that out to the NPS poobah.  Who responded “there are people there.  You don’t see them, but they’re there”. 

Which people?  When?  Where?

Well, he answered that; security people.  Who are still on the payroll!

The cutoff in appropriations also apparently forced the Feds to have to rent thousands of barricades, not only to block off open-air sculptures from the public, but to block parking spots on federally-owned roads. 

Which have already been paid for. 

This is Hope and Change.

A lot of my readers, like me, work in IT. 

And if you’re in the Twin Cities and are in the IT contracting community, you may well have heard the rumblings from the Minnesota Health Insurance Exchange project, either at hire time or from people involved in the development process.

Capsule Summary:  It’s been a Bulgarian Goat Rodeo.

And it reflects how things have been going in most every other state involved in the Obamacare Exchanges, and of course at the Federal level.

Megan McArdle breaks down the federal registration site meltdown at a level that’ll make sense to all of you bit-chasers and code-monkeys out there. 

To me, the UX guy?  

That’ll be worth a post on its own.

Four of Minnesota’s five House reps voted against funding veterans benefits during the shutdown (Collin Peterson did the right thing).

Now, their explanation will be that the Democrats’ congressional leadership – Reid and Pelosi – want the whole budget passed, not a bunch of piecemeal mini-budgets – because that’s just not the way we do budgets, apparently.

Of course, the Democrats don’t do budgets at all But I digress.

It’s buncombe, of course; the GOP’s strategy, making the Democrats justify their spending piece by piece rather than having it all jammed down in full tantrum mode – might just show the people that there’s an alternative in DC.

That’d make the Democrats in DC very upset.

So the real question is why do DC Democrats hate taxpayers?

Harry Reid provides one of the enduring memes about The Light Worker’s regime;

Well, it’ll be an enduring meme if I have anything to say about it.

 When jobs that used to be done by a couple of guys in a government car are now done by SWAT teams in full battle rattle:

Miners in Chicken were surprised during late August by groups comprising four to eight armed EPA agents carrying Glock .40 S&W cal side arms in full battle rattle with signs in big letters loudly proclaiming POLICE who stormed into several mines near Chicken in a full out assault to . . . take water samples. The EPA gestapo, and that’s all one can term such a heavy handed goon squad were there to take water samples to see if the miners were in compliance with Section 404 of the Clean Water Act. Something in past years that was done by one or two unarmed State of Alaska DEC personnel along with a representative of the EPA without rancor.

If the situation were not so serious, and the threat to the miners so real, this could almost be laughed off as a joke. However, armed goons with .40 cal Glocks in full battle rattle are not a joke. This event marks a new level of federal oversight on Alaska’s federal lands. Lands which the management of were supposed to be the responsibility of the State of Alaska under the terms of Alaska’s Statehood Compact. This event is an outrage and sets an extremely dangerous precedent for future regulation activities by the various federal agencies in Alaska.

It’s not just a “too many feds” issue. 

The bigger problem is that it’s also a “they think that they need to act, literally, like stormtroopers to carry out their daily business – or at least they want you to think so”.

It may not be the definitive image of the Obama regime – unionized government employees putting up barricades around the World War 2 memorial in the face of World War 2 veterans whose wheelchairs they are scarcely fit to push.

But if I have any say over it,  it will be

A new wave of veterans were forced to move barricades at the WWII Memorial in Washington Wednesday morning to gain access during the government slimdown, a spokeswoman from Sen. Jerry Moran, R-Kan., told FoxNews.com.

Bear in mind that these monuments and memorials are usually accessible 24/7, without the need for government workers to be standing around. 

But no matter.  Harry Reid’s passive-aggressive snit must be carried out – veterans be damned. 

The WWII veterans, from Ohio, Kansas and Missouri, arrived at the memorial one day after another group relied on the assistance from elected officials to move the barricades to allow access. Parks police did not prevent the first group from entering, nor did they interfere with Wednesday’s group.

Harry Reid’s kamikaze mission strikes again.

The veterans vowed to make the trek to D.C. regardless of the situation in Washington. When asked how they were going to visit the World War II Memorial when it’s closed, Ian Drake, a WWII veteran, told Fox4KC.com the group will “find a way in, one way or another. We might have to climb or something. It’s no problem. Well work it out when we get there.”

Heavy flak then, heavy flak now.

The veterans are traveling as part of Honor Flight , a program that enables World War II veterans to partake in an expense-paid trip to view the memorial.

“A lot of my old comrades were lost in World War II,” Ian Drake, a WWII veteran told the station. “Eighteen of 100 in my graduating class were lost in World War II, so it’s important for me to show my respect at the memorial.”

It’s not the first bunch of barricades they’ve pushed aside, after all.

Keep it up, Democrats.

…I’d look at the deaths of Vince Flynn and now Tom Clancy within a few months of each other…

…and connect it with all the other top-secret hanky-panky with the NSA, the IRS and the Justice Department…

…and figure there’s a government conspiracy to knock off conservativsm’s few iconic pop-culture figures.

Good thing I’m not paranoid, huh?

(Just in case, though?  Be careful, Gary Sinise, Ted Nugent, Joe Perry, Tom Selleck, Fred Thompson and Angie Harmon).

UPDATE:  Steven Green:  “Is it really possible that Larry King, who’s looked like day-old scrambled eggs for thirty years, outlived Tom Clancy? Stranger things have happened, but this one I’m taking a little personally. “

Bill Glahn – who you need to be reading, by the way – on the Minnesota Orchestra debacle as a bellwether for how Big Art gets funded:

I suspect we will see more of the Minnesota Orchestra-type of dispute in the next few years. Since the financial crisis of 2008, the business models of a whole range of industries are no longer viable. Until we collectively figure out what’s next, the irresistible forces of “we can’t go on spending like this” will be crashing up against the immovable objects of “we don’t want to give up what’s been ours for decades.” A new model will eventually emerge to bring the fine arts to patrons. In the meantime, the adjustment period will be painful for everyone involved.

If there is any good news, it’s that the institutions and industries that go through the adjustment first will be best positioned later on. Those that cling to the failing system loner will end up in liquidation, rather than reorganization.

If you support art (if not necessarily Big Art), it’s an interesting time, in the full Taoist sense of the term. 

For starters, the biggest institution supporting Big Art – Big Academia – is also on the bring of an epochal shakeout.  The era of Big Institutions Who Do Things For Your Own Good as a whole seems to be fizzling, slowly – up to and including that biggest Institution That Does Things For Our Own Good, Big Government. 

I can’t imagine it means good things for Big Public Media – one of the other key patrons of Big Art – either.

So what will the epic restructuring of Big Art mean for art?

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

Liberals claim conservatives are racists.  They might be right,  There is mathematical proof of it, viewed from the Liberal perspective.

For example, what’s 3 minus 3?  Zero?  That’s a racist concept, an Oreo Integer, an Uncle Tom Placeholder.  Black on the outside, White on the inside, valued less than any other number in society, invented long ago by a slave-holding society that ruthlessly oppressed women and gays.  Zero is racist.

But every fiscal year, what do Conservatives want the budget deficit to be?  Zero.  And how do Conservatives plan to implement their hateful agenda?  Zero-based budgeting.

I’ve got to admit, Liberals may have a point here.  No wonder they’re so careful to completely avoid any contact with mathematical reasoning when they make their budget proposals.  Can’t be too careful to avoid the taint of racism.

Joe Doakes

It’s Day One of the Government Shutdown.

 So as we watch society collapse all around us due to the lack of government, and await the hordes of crazed bandits, hungry for human flesh, that will doubtless be descending on society, people are asking me “what sort of collection of firearms do you recommend for a post-shutdownpocalyptic world?”

Let me make sure I’m clear here; I’m no expert.  Far from it.  But if I had to bet my life on it – and with the government shut down, I do – I’d bank on the following.

The Task At Hand

With the government shut down, we’re naturally all completely on our own.  There is no law enforcement out there; picking up 911 will at best get you a dead line, and at worst an insane reaver on the other end of the line shrieking for your intestines on a stick.

So what do you need?  Well, for my two cents, you really need four basics:

• An absolutely reliable battle rifle
• A solid combat shotgun
• A defensive handgun
• A “working” gun, useful for foraging as well as defense in a pinch.

We’ll go through each of the categories below.

Battle Rifle:  While this past year has brought a lot of attention to the AR15, this is (IMO) not an ideal weapon for a post-apocalyptic world.  The AR (like the M16 on which it’s based) is a fine rifle, but it is also widely known as an incredibly temperamental piece that is very prone to jamming if you don’t keep it immaculately clean, and sometimes even then.  And since you’ll be too busy scraping for food to keep your rifle clean, this might be a matter of life or death.

The point of a battle rifle is to never, ever, ever, ever jam, and to not run out of ammunition until  your oppponent runs out of attack.  No matter how many of them there are. 

So I recommend an AK-series piece:

The classic AK47

It’s a little heavy, and its accuracy drops off at 100 yards or so – but be honest, not only are you probably not that great a shot even at a rifle range on a clear day, but the odds that you’ll get a clean shot at a horde of bandits beyond 100 yards are pretty nil anyway.  And with the AK, you can dip the bullets in toothpaste and roll them in dirt, load the magazine, and the gun will still work.  And in a post-collapse world, that’s all that’s going to matter. 

Added bonus – its ammunition (7.62mm Communist) can actually be found, unlike the AR’s 5.56mm round.

Combat Shotgun:  One of the benefits of every police department in US being awash in DHS counterterror money is that they all went out and bought M4 Carbines and H&K MP5 submachine guns to replace their good old Remington 870 Express police shotguns. 

Which means they are on the market modestly cheaply these days.

It’s not as “tacti-cool” as an M4, but it’s short enough to use indoors, its reliability is every bit as legendary as the AK, and there is no better close-in weapon in the world for when a gang of cannibalistic bandits breaks into your family perimeter at 4AM and you need to, er, organize your community. 

Defensive Handgun:  Let’s call a spade a spade; for the time when you absolutely need a handgun to defend yourself against an immediately, lethal threat to your life, any gun you have is better than any gun you don’t have. 

But when you’re facing a ravenous cannibal in a dark alley while you’re dumpster-diving for oats, there is no substitute for the best man-stopper there is – any handgun in .45 ACP caliber. 

A Colt 1911, a Kimber Pro-Carry, an HK45, a SIG P220, or even a P250 with the conversion kit?  A Paraordinance 15/45?  Take your pick.  There is no substitute. 

Working Guns:  These are the guns that you use for dealing with varmints and foraging for small targets of opportunity to throw in the stew pot.  For this, I recommend the Taurus Judge revolver…

….which has the huge advantage of firing both the .45 Long Colt cartridge (not to be mistaken for the .45 ACP above) and .410 gauge shotgun shells – making it useful for dealing with large varmints like wolves and bears, as well as rodents and fowl that haven’t been already hunted to extinction and stripped to the bone by ravenous refugees. 

Your mileage may vary, of course – but this is intended as a starting point.

Except that with the government shut down and the ravenous mobs of bandits and reavers already dominating the streets, the time to start was yesterday.

Oops.  Sorry about that.

(more…)

(SCENE:  MITCH Berg is leaving the gym.  He runs into Avery LIBRELLE, who is walking into a group Twerking class. MITCH tries to duck behind a shoulder press machine, but LIBRELLE sees him).

LIBRELLE:  ZOMG!   Tom Emmer did an ad for a remodeling company!

MITCH:  Right.  And his manager says it’s a mistake – a testimonial that was never intended for broadcast, that got broadcast!  And if you’ve seen the production value, it sure seems plausible…

LIBRELLE:  It ain’t the crime!  It’s the coverup!

MITCH:   What coverup?

LIBRELLE:  They had to wait for Aaron Rupar at the City Pages to cover it before they’d comment!

MITCH:  Aaron Rupar?

LIBRELLE:   Yes.

MITCH:  Aaron RUPAR?

LIBRELLE:  Yes…well…

MITCH:  Spill it.

LIBRELLE:  OK.  He’s just repeating what Sally Jo Sorenson writes.

MITCH:  And?

LIBRELLE:  Like usual.

MITCH:  We’ve talked about this before.

LIBRELLE:  I know.  Anyway – This probably violates campaign finance laws!

MITCH:   Says who?

LIBRELLE:   Sally Jo Sorenson.

MITCH:   Huh.  Well, on the one hand, pretty much everything you do, and everything you don’t do, violates one campaign finance law or another.  Campaign finance laws are mainly designed to protect incumbents.  They make campaigning a niggling, nonsensical regulatory maze, full of arbitrary restrictions on free speech.

LIBRELLE:  But it keeps money out of politics!

MITCH:  No, it doesn’t!

LIBRELLE:   Yes it does!

MITCH:  How?

LIBRELLE:  It’s the law!

MITCH:  Right.  So the Alliance for a Better Minnesota, which alone outspent the GOP candidate in 2010, doesn’t spend money?

LIBRELLE:  That’s different.  Unions are The People.

MITCH:  Oh, for the love of…

LIBRELLE:  The laws keep big money from influencing campaigns.

MITCH:  Clearly they work wonders.

LIBRELLE:  Of course!

MITCH:  So here’s a question:  who’s paying Sally…

LIBRELLE:  …whoah, look at the time.  Gotta get to class! (LIBRELLE dashes into room).

(And SCENE)

I’ll be using this post to catalogue the observed problems caused by the government shutdown.

12AM:  …

Scenario 1:  Obama wants the shutdown.  

The government shutdown will be a bonanza to Obama.

Pro:  It’ll draw attention – with the aid of his Praetorian Guard, the media – away from the mounting disaster that is the Obamacare rollout, to say nothing of the IRS, NSA and Fast and Furious scandals.  With the aid of his lackeys in the media, he could actually play it into a big win, a la Clinton vs. Dole in 1996.

Con:  This isn’t 1996. Back then, this was a pretty trivial country, awash in a boom.  This country could still get away with fripperies like electing Jesse Ventura, for crying out loud.  Now, people are hurting, and seeing the way government behaves with the money it’s borrowing from our grandchildren is galling at least.  And the only people it’s going to affect are those who are never going to vote Republican anyway.

Scenario 2:  Obama Doesn’t Want The Shutdown

Pro: Remember “sequestration?”  Despite the best efforts of Obama’s Praetorian Guard, which tried to portray it like Operation Barbarossa gathering on the Atlantic seaboard, either do most of you. Obama counted hard on “sequestration” to do for him what the 1996 shutdown did for Slick Willie.

That didn’t work, did it?

Con:  John Boehner could screw up a third date with a drunk Lindsay Lohan.

And even if Boehner and the DC establishment don’t screw the pooch, the media will, will will be out there working overtime to represent, and misrepresent, for Obama at every turn.  If there’s a low-information voter to be convinced, the MSM will be there to carry whatever meme Media Matters and Organizing for America need carried.

Discuss.

Joe Doakes from Como Park writes:

“College Enrollment Falls As Economy Recovers.”

Sounds as if young people are opting to skip college to go straight into the workforce, snapping up all those outstanding jobs at great pay and benefits.

Except the article doesn’t say that.  The article talks about sky-high tuition and student loans, it talks about demographics, it talks about colleges that overbuilt, but the notion people are working instead of studying is handled with this line:

“But the number of Americans turning 18 hit its recent peak in 2009, and will continue to decline through 2016. High school graduation rates appear to have leveled off, and job prospects have improved, making school a less attractive option.”

Really?  Where are all these great jobs?  Why isn’t Obama getting more credit for creating them?

Joe Doakes

I think it qualifies as a “Dead Skunk Bounce”.