Don’t Detroit America; We need to tell the story of Detroit — and of its opposite, Texas.

Michigan Central Station From Time
Detroit's main train station, opened in 1913, has not been used since 1988
 

NATIONAL REVIEW ONLINE "People and businesses didn’t just move from Detroit, they fled. And what they were fleeing was liberalism, the accumulated detritus of 50 straight years of Democratic leadership. They kept fleeing until there was so little left for city leaders to tax — so little business left there from which to extract revenue — that Detroit was forced to declare bankruptcy.

"Detroit is the Left’s Ground Zero. And it was caused not by a terrorist strike or an invading army but by a combination of union greed, government incompetence, bad policies, broken promises, outright corruption, and a lot of bad faith."
Not a failure of capitalism, but a failure to practice capitalism.

United Artists Theater
This spectacular Spanish Gothic theater, built in 1928, was closed in the 1970s.

 Looks much like undersea photos of the Titanic

Our Peevish President

Storming the Barry-cades

It’s within his power to avoid the ludicrous scenes of this “shutdown.”  

..."The more important point to grasp here is not that the various heavy-handed antics in which the Park Service has seen fit to indulge itself since last Monday are unimaginable absent a shutdown, but that almost none of them had to happen because of the shutdown. The offending behavior has, in other words, been a choice — a deliberate ploy contrived and prosecuted by a man seeking to make a public point."...

More to the point:

....“It takes federal action to close the sites,” this website’s editorial noted, “and none to keep them open. This is not what an inactive government looks like, but a spiteful one.” An anonymous Park Service ranger confirmed that malice ... Staff, the employee said, had “been told to “make life as difficult for people as we can. It’s disgusting.”....

National Review Online

 

 Who Do Students At University Of Colorado Blame For Gov Shutdown?

 

Petulant, vindictive and...tacky! Obama’s Park Service Removes Handles From Water Fountains In Park Frequented By Joggers And Bikers…

"Doesn’t get any more spiteful than this."

Comment to this post by xerocky

"What a very very small man this 'Obama' is."

Expunging Oswald: JFK and liberalism’s descent; Now we have "Punitive Liberalism"

“He didn’t even have the satisfaction of being killed for civil rights. It’s — it had to be some silly little Communist.”
— Jacqueline Kennedy, Nov. 22, 1963

George Will  "Hitherto a doctrine of American celebration and optimism, liberalism would become a scowling indictment: Kennedy was killed by America’s social climate whose sickness required “punitive liberalism.”

"That phrase is from James Piereson of the Manhattan Institute, whose 2007 book “Camelot and the Cultural Revolution: How the Assassination of John F. Kennedy Shattered American Liberalism” is a profound meditation on the reverberations of the rifle shots in Dealey Plaza.

"The bullets of Nov. 22, 1963, altered the nation’s trajectory less by killing a president than by giving birth to a destructive narrative about America."....

Via Rush Limbaugh: George Will on the JFK Assassination and the Advent of Punitive Liberalism
" 'Punitive liberalism preached the necessity of national repentance for a history of crimes and misdeeds that had produced a present so poisonous that it murdered a president," and that's what they created.  Punitive liberalism.  Punish.  We're going to punish people.  We need, as a nation, to repent for our sordid history of crimes and misdeeds that had been so bad and so noxious that they created an aura and a universe and an atmosphere and a culture capable of killing the most popular beloved president ever."....

Name the names now!

American Thinker   "We, the people, demand that our elected representatives compel the White House  to release the names of those who came up with the idea to withhold the military death benefit, and those in the White House who authorized this heinous act. In military matters the buck stops in the Oval Office. Until Jay Carney tells us who these folks are, and who in the White House authorized that choice, the American people shall irrevocably hold our Commander in Chief, B.H. Obama, personally responsible for this horror.
....
"We, the people, demand that our elected representatives compel the White House  to release the names of those who came up with the idea to withhold the military death benefit, and those in the White House who authorized this heinous act. In military matters the buck stops in the Oval Office. Until Jay Carney tells us who these folks are, and who in the White House authorized that choice, the American people shall irrevocably hold our Commander in Chief, B.H. Obama, personally responsible for this horror. "....Emphasis added

 

Obamacare Angles For Starring Role On Primetime TV

Deadline   "Will Obamacare become plot fodder for CBS’ Hostages and Under The Dome? A $500,000 grant awarded this week to USC Annenberg Norman Lear Center’s Hollywood Health & Society program certainly suggests it’s a possibility. In the latest push to get Tinseltown to promote President Obama’s Affordable Care Act, the decade-old program has received the money from the private California Endowment to give Hollywood producers, writers and execs details about the newly launched health insurance initiative."....

French journalist is prosecuted under 19th century press law for questioning Islam during a radio debate

UK Daily Mail   "He was summoned to court under strict press laws which date back to the 19th Century following a complaint from a pressure group called the Collective Against Islamophobia in France (CCIF).
‘In seeking to undermine liberty of expression, a sacred principle of our civilisation, the Collective against Islamophobia in France (CCIF) takes the risk of appearing like a menace to democracy,’ said Mr Rioufol.

We Are The Nation: The poster by the Collective Against Islamophobia In France, which Mr Rioufol referred to in the radio debate

....
"A spokesman for CCIF said it had a duty to challenge ‘Islamophobia’ and the
press laws were a logical way of challenging journalism it objected to."

The Park Police; Another Obama Scandal. Did anyone notice?

Weekly Standard
“We are a nation that has a government—not the other way around.”
—Ronald Reagan

"The conduct of the National Park Service over the last week might be the biggest scandal of the Obama administration. This is an expansive claim, of course. Benghazi, Fast and Furious, the IRS, the NSA, the HHS mandate​—​this is an administration that has not lacked for appalling abuses of power. And we still have three years to go.

 

"Even so, consider the actions of the National Park Service since the government shutdown began. People first noticed what the NPS was up to when the World War II Memorial on the National Mall was “closed.” Just to be clear, the memorial is an open plaza. There is nothing to operate. Sometimes there might be a ranger standing around. But he’s not collecting tickets or opening gates. Putting up barricades and posting guards to “close” the World War II Memorial takes more resources and manpower than “keeping it open.”

 

"The closure of the World War II Memorial was just the start of the Park Service’s partisan assault on the citizenry. There’s a cute little historic site just outside of the capital in McLean, Virginia, called the Claude Moore Colonial Farm. They do historical reenactments, and once upon a time the National Park Service helped run the place. But in 1980, the NPS cut the farm out of its budget. A group of private citizens set up an endowment to take care of the farm’s expenses. Ever since, the site has operated independently through a combination of private donations and volunteer workers.

 

"The Park Service told Claude Moore Colonial Farm to shut down."....

....

"It’s one thing for politicians to play shutdown theater. It’s another thing entirely for a civil bureaucracy entrusted with the privilege of caring for our national heritage to wage war against the citizenry on behalf of a political party."

They all work for Obama.

Democrats to America: We Own the Government!

Ann Coulter

"In the current fight over the government shutdown, Republicans are simply representing the views of the American people.

"Americans didn't ask for Obamacare, they don't want it, but now their insurance premiums are going through the roof, their doctors aren't accepting it, and their employers are moving them into part-time work -- or firing them -- to avoid the law's mandates.

"Contrary to Obama's promises, it turns out: You can't keep your doctor, you can't keep your insurance -- you can't even keep your job. In other words, it's a typical government program, but this one wrecks your health care."....

Tired of being told they couldn’t, school board OKs student-led prayer

OneNewsNow   "Even though they were warned there could be trouble, a Kansas school board nevertheless voted to allow student-led prayers and even use of the school's public address system to do so.

"At its meeting on September 23, the school board in Liberal voted unanimously (7-0) to allow student-led prayers at all school activities and to provide access to the school's public address system. According to the Leader & Times newspaper, the item was added “spontaneously” to the agenda near the end of that meeting.

“ 'We do live in a democratic society, and I personally feel like our community would support that decision, regardless of the rest of the world,” said board member Nick Hatcher, who introduced the idea."....

Hat tip to: Liberals Tired of PC Crap
"Well, in the city of Liberal, Kansas that is…

Urban Legend: Obama Administration Threatens To Arrest Military Chaplains For PRAYING During Govt. Shutdown

Snopes calls it a mixture of true and false

MIXTURE:

	TRUE: Contract priests are prohibited from conducting religious functions on U.S. military bases during the federal government shutdown.
	FALSE: President Obama ordered that military priests be arrested for holding Mass during the federal government shutdown.

...."Therefore, a subset of Catholic military personnel who are stationed at bases that have no active duty Catholic chaplains and are instead being staffed by contract priests will have to go elsewhere for religious services for the duration of the shutdown — if they wish to attend Mass or take part in a baptism, for example, they will have to go to local churches or other off-base locations for those functions. (U.S. military personnel stationed in some parts of the world may not be able to find local English-speaking priests, or any priests at all, however.)

"It isn't true, however, that "President Obama ordered that military priests be arrested for saying the Mass during the government shutdown...."  Read more.

Alan Caruba; The Absent Superpower

Warning Signs   

"Just as in the past, the threat of Islamic fanaticism looms large again and just as in the past we are seeing its most potent instrument of conquest, terror, being used. From 9/11 to the slaughters in Sudan’s Darfur region, the attacks in Nigeria, and tumult everywhere the Muslim population reaches a tipping point, the headlines are a reminder of its former history. Islam and bloodshed are synonymous."

....

"What is astonishing and dismaying is that Obama recently said that the world is more stable now than in the last five years. What world is he talking about?

"His foreign policy failures in the Middle East are ceding much of it and the African Maghreb to militant Islamists."

National Park Service Gone Wild; Fed-up Vacationers Fight Back

Rosslyn Smith  "Top of the World is a residential development around Lake in the Sky in Blount County, Tennessee.  It borders Smoky Mountain National Park.  Foothills Parkway, a national scenic parkway managed by the National Park Service, is the only major road  to the development.  There are school children in this development.  As part of the shutdown, Bambi's Brownshirts have barricaded Foothills Parkway, effectively stranding this community and its children.  
....
"Can you imagine the outrage among the media/government complex if this had happened under a Republican President or a Republican governor.  They'd be accused of being anti-public education and child endangerment."  Read More

National parks invaded by fearless family vacationers

"It turns out families on vacation are enjoying America’s national parks even without the government’s blessing. Families are throwing orange cones aside at Mount Rushmore, ignoring barricades at Zion National Park and taking grinning selfies next to signs in the Badlands announcing the National Park Service facility is closed. ...determined dads driving straight over traffic cones or throwing them aside to clear the way for the family vacations they’ve been planning long before a government shutdown was announced."

 

Defying government shutdown, national park visitors play ‘catch me if you can’  “We’ve gone from ‘this land is your land, this land is my land,’ to the government saying this land is its land,” writes University of Tennessee law professor Glenn Reynolds in an e-mail. “President Obama said that government is just a word for the things we do together. Apparently that includes kicking WWII veterans off their memorial.” 

UPDATE: How's this for pure arrogance? Obama demands Boehner stop the shutdown.