Obama's government shutdown kabuki thwarted by determined octagenarians

Honor Flight is a great organization that puts together tours for aging veterans so they can visit, at no cost, the memorials in Washington that commemorate their valor. The focus, obviously, is on World War II veterans, who are getting up there in years and are running short of chances to make the visit. So, with an Honor Flight sponsored group of Mississippi veterans scheduled to make a visit to the World War II memorial Tuesday, a Mississippi congressman asked the administration to let the veterans visit the memorial. The White House and the Park Service said "fuck you" and put up barricades to keep the veterans out.

The World War II memorial is a pretty open space:

It would take some doing to keep folks out, I think. The Park Service Police, apparently did not have what it takes, as the wheelchair-bound, octagenarian WWII vets kicked over the barricades and went in anyway. Apparently, it was awesome.

Thanks to The Daily Caller for the picture. Lots of pictures at all those links, by the way.

Now, can we please dispense with the horseshit that the memorials in Washington need to be "closed"? Most are in open areas -- the Lincoln Memorial, Jefferson Memorial, WWII Memorial, Martin Luther King Memorial, FDR Memorial, the Vietnam Memorial -- all of them are walk-by, wide open. None of them have Park Rangers there to explain shit to you. All of them are patrolled by the Park Service Police. Well, as a police force, the Park Service Police are "essential" and are still on the job. So why go to the monumental effort (pun intended) to close off these otherwise open memorials? Simple. Barry, in a fit of petulance, wants to make the shutdown as painful as possible in visible ways, because otherwise, most people won't realize the federal government went home. For most people, a federal shutdown is positive. Big-government Barry can't have that. Thus, the attempt to keep aging veterans from visiting an open-air memorial. Glad they refused to take that shit. Government works for us, damn it, not the other way around.

Hat tip to Ace, Buzzfeed,  Twitchy and The Daily Caller for covering this before me.