Allah:
Not just the one in Normandy, either. All 24 overseas cemeteries are being shuttered while the shutdown is on because … that’s just the way it is. Presumably it has to do with lack of funding for security. In that case, do the children and grandchildren of fallen American soldiers who’ve flown across the ocean to pay their respects really need to be policed to make sure they don’t vandalize anything? If you’re worried about the locals doing something like that, you could close the cemetery overnight and ask for volunteers to stand watch and call the cops if any opportunistic miscreants swing by during the day. I’m reasonably sure you could find volunteers for a job like that. But once again, the government wants to maximize hardship during the shutdown, not mitigate it.
So if you’re in Normandy right now and hoping to visit grandpa’s grave, I guess this is a lesson to you to be careful about supporting parties that support shutdowns.
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 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.
Legal Insurrection is calling on the GOP to offer a small funding bill aimed at re-opening the cemeteries. No doubt they will, given the play this story’s getting in the news today, and no doubt Reid will instruct has caucus to vote no on it just like he wants them to vote no on restoring NIH funds for kids with cancer. It’s more important to maintain the “no negotiation” posture and deny the GOP any opportunity to ease the consequences of the shutdown than to, say, let the kids of the men who died on Omaha Beach into the cemetery in Normandy. If they can’t impose a hardship on living vets to teach people that Shutdowns Are Bad, maybe they can get ‘em in death.
Would we want the gates to remain open with the cemeteries and memorials left unguarded?
When we stop funding routine government activities, there are consequences.
as an example the ww2 memorial is an open air memorial that is open 24 hrs to the public, and much of the time their are no parks personnel any where, also there is no one their all night long but it is open to the public. the park service on orders from the vindictive small man in the whitehouse were given orders to make it hurt. so a place that normally has no one in attendance suddenly had manned barrycades and feds swarming all over it to keep out octegenerians .
got that? they have to close something normally not manned and put armed guards on it to stop us from going in, spending money not even normally spent on the site. Mysteriously normally unstaffed memorials suddenly teaming with feds to keep us out. Cuz shut down. And no money to pay staff that weren’t there in the first place, so shutdown, with dozens of feds paid to keep us out to show us how horrible it will be without them..
this is bullshit shutdown theatre perpatrated by barry the little man in the whitehouse .
The idea that we can stop paying for government services without any noticeable consequences in the real world is ridiculous. No one will have to resort to theater to demonstrate the truth of this.
@Greg: #1
Do you mean like the “routine” advertising for the obama phone? I still see the commercials for them. Where is the money coming from to pay for the ads, and where is the money coming from to pay for the phones. How many other welfare agencies are still advertising to get people on welfare? How many welfare agencies are there? If we are going to have federal welfare, shouldn’t we have only one agency, so that people can’t sign up at different agencies?
How many grants for stupid studies are still being approved? Why are we still paying rent (or the taxes if the government owns the building) on the thousands of building we aren’t even using? Why not sell them off, or lease them? This would be a good time to get rid of them.
There are a lot of places that can be cut and we wouldn’t even notice it, but there is too much money to be made by some, and too many votes to buy off by giving out the free stuff. I guess the free stuff is classified as “essential” stuff.
@Smorgasbord, #4:
The “Obama Phone” is a myth. There’s no such thing. It’s based on a deliberately cultivated misunderstanding of the “Lifeline” program, a 28-year-old program which provides the poor with a minimal level of phone service. It’s not funded from general revenue, but but by fees telephone companies collect directly from customers for that purpose. It was begun under Ronald Reagan and expanded from land lines to include cell phones under George W. Bush.
The main thing that happened under Obama is that the FCC cracked down on program fraud.
The story was recently thoroughly debunked by the Washington Post. It’s not likely to go away, however. It’s been debunked repeatedly over the 3 1/2 years since the story was first began circulating, but it’s apparently just too good not to periodically resurrect.
@Greg: #5
When a new president takes over, and their administration keeps something that the other administration had, especially if they increase the program, then that becomes the new president’s program. Even though several of George Bush’s budgets were from a democratic house and senate, when he signed the bills instead of vetoing them, they became Bush’s budgets. You can’t sign a bill and blame any problems with it on the other president, even though obama keeps trying. Most conservative radio and TV hosts blamed Bush for the high deficits, even though they were introduced by a democratic congress.
We are broke, and the government is shut down, but the government is still advertising for the phones. This is when they become the obama phone. Will you at least agree that no more phones should be approved, and nobody should be put on any welfare rolls until we can afford them? What about the average 101 federal employees hired per day since obama was elected? Shouldn’t that be stopped too?
Do you agree with Nancy Pelosi that there is no more cutting that the government can do? Maybe they could eliminate the subsidy you and I are going to give them to pay for obamacare. Do you think they should get it when you and I don’t? They can afford it more than the average American can.