Good or Bad for the Jews

"Good or Bad for the Jews"

Many years ago, and for many years, I would travel to Morocco to visit uncles, cousins, and my paternal grandmother. Some lived in Tangiers;...

Wednesday, October 9, 2013

Ozymandias Returns: The Arrogance of Obama

In the 11th grade, I had an impossibly old fashioned English teacher, Miss Petersen. The strongest word she ever used was "Gosh!" This elderly lady loved literature, and most of all poetry. She lived for books, and desperately wanted all of us pampered Baby Boomers to love and appreciate Shakespeare, Milton, Dickens, Hawthorne, Melville, Twain, James, Eliot, and on and on as much as she did. Most of us were too stupid to appreciate the gem we had in Miss Petersen: a high school teacher who today easily could have been a professor of English literature at any university in the world--except, of course, for the political correctness angle, she, after all, was religious and conservative.

Miss Petersen told us that the greatest poem ever written was Percy Bysshe Shelley's "Ozymandias,"
I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them on the sand,
Half sunk, a shatter'd visage lies, whose frown
And wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamp'd on these lifeless things,
The hand that mock'd them and the heart that fed.
And on the pedestal these words appear:
"My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!"
Nothing beside remains: round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,
The lone and level sands stretch far away.
She challenged us to memorize it: not an easy task, even though it is not long--I, for example, kept substituting "ancient" for "antique." She had the poem posted in large letters on the wall in front of where I sat. I spent nearly a year staring at Shelley's words, and eventually managed to memorize "Ozymandias," filing it away in the back of my brain somewhere from whence, to the chagrin of colleagues years later, on occasion snippets of Shelley would erupt such as, "Look on my works, ye Mighty and despair."

Only long after high school did I come to understand Miss Petersen's point. Shelley's little poem is an extraordinary and powerful indictment of arrogance. In about one hundred words, Shelley punctures the hubris of rulers and empire builders. It heartened me, as it would have the late-Miss Petersen, to see the poem have a bit of a "comeback" thanks to the TV show "Breaking Bad," which titled one of its best episodes "Ozymandias." The show's star, Bryan Cranston, by the way, does a terrific reading of the poem--well worth spending the minute or so listening to it.

It is tough to read or hear the poem without thinking about what has been happening in our country the last few days. I watched just a bit of His Mightiness's press conference yesterday. Sickening is the kindest word I can use to label it. He had the Ozymandias "wrinkled lip and sneer." It was all about him. Everything is about him and how he stands up to the "radicals" in the GOP. He derides them for "wanting it all" but gives every indication that he himself also wants it all. (He sounds like Stalin deriding Hitler for wanting Poland.) This is not a man who knows how to lead, or engage in rough-and-tumble but yet restrained "non-nuke" democratic political negotiation. Reagan and O'Neil knew how to do it; Clinton and Gingrich did, too. This man is just a practitioner of community organizer thuggery. As I have written before and others, too, the most blatant example of this thuggery, one not even the MSM can ignore, has been the use and abuse of the National Park police to terrorize and threaten Americans to stay away from the parks and monuments which the American people have paid to maintain. There are, of course, many other examples: his use of the ATF to arm Mexican gangs to give law abiding American gun owners a bad rap; the use of the IRS to crush political dissent; the use of the NSA to eavesdrop on American citizens; and now the Obamacare fiasco to grab control of health care and the infinite amount of sensitive data associated with it. The Park police abuse, however, remains the one that will be the iconic feature of Obama's absurd government "shutdown."

I served presidents from Carter to Obama loyally while in the Foreign Service. Yes, I was a conservative, but when dealing with foreigners I defended the policies of Clinton as much as I did those of Reagan. I, however, cannot stand this presidency and what it is doing to our country. I just hope that one day Obama and his cohorts will come to appreciate that they, too, will suffer the fate of Ozymandias, "Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare/The lone and level sands stretch far away." Assuming, of course, that it is not our country that is covered by those "lone and level sands."

74 comments:

  1. I hope and pray that history will be honest about this regime.

    Think this country will implode by new year?

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    1. About which previous regime, ever, has history been honest?

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    2. Which brings us to two quote that seem appropriate:

      Taking the State wherever found, striking into its history at any point, one sees no way to differentiate the activities of its founders, administrators and beneficiaries from those of a professional-criminal class.

      Albert J. Nock

      * *************************************************************************

      As government grew in size and influence, the rewards associated with political office grew. Sacrifice and service were displaced with the opportunity for personal spoils. The motivation subtly changed from service to the accumulation of wealth. Mother Theresa quietly morphed into Gordon Gecko.

      Monty Pelerin

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  2. Thank you this essay, it's perfect.

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    1. "Old-fashioned" is rendered as "old fashion". Not much in life is perfect.

      However, it is very good.

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  3. And just to rub our noses in it the NPS allowed a pro illegal amnesty rally on the nat'l mall yesterday complete with scores of security, porta potties, a stage and a jumbo tron. ONLY 200 people were arrested, among them several upstanding congressmen and women...
    I am past digusted. I am now frightened.

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    1. I'm not frightened. I'm pissed off.

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    2. It doesn't qualify as a show of force, if they behave reasonably.

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    3. True, these clowns can be thuggish; but you have gone too far, Babs. Come on back to disgusted.

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  4. I enjoy and respect your blog greatly, but I am afraid that you are mistaken to focus so much on your personal distaste for Obama and his more prominent minions. The problem is the times and the system, not those particular persons. If they were not in power, someone else of the same ilk would be. You cannot expect to be ruled by George Washington, and that expectation is especially fallacious in these times and with this system. Cf. the chapter on "Why the Worst Get on Top" in Hayek's "The Road to Serfdom."

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    1. Point taken. I, however, have written at length over my distaste and even abhorrence for the progressive ideology that has been sapping our country for last 60-70 years.

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    2. Seems you could be saying focus on that national socialist party and not so much on Hitler...

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    3. There has not been a president of obama's ilk, we can only hope another never occurs.

      He is without doubt the most incompetent, unprepared, untruthful person ever to hold the job.

      Having been exposed as a fool and a liar on numerous occasions he is now absolutely petrified by the thought that he could once again be exposed as the worst bargainer in the history of US presidents. That is why he petulantly demands no negotiations.

      I like the Diplomads allusion to Ozymandias, it matches obambi's hubris, but I do believe a better tale to describe the african king is "The emperors new clothes". I look forward to some truthful person, perhaps Joe Wilson shouting out "The african king has no clothes" at some well publicised event, perhaps the State of the nation speech.

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    4. Hillary is waiting in the wings and has the potential to be as bad, if not worse. Remember her senior paper was on Alinsky.

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    5. And America and the West won the Cold War just to be faced with the proxy of our enemy right here at home? I was afraid of this all the way back to the early 1990s. We as a nation need a war to keep from facing ourselves here at home.

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  5. Dip- I too served both Dem and GOP Administrations for more than 20 years, but had to retire b/c advocating such reprehensible policies was just unbearable. It is so bad that I have retired overseas and am just back in the US long enough to rent my house. I cannot stay here and witness the destruction of my country. Physically removing myself from the majority of the direct impact of the USG on my life is my strategy to enjoy life after having spent my professional life in servitude. I have given up reading newspapers and watching the news to maintain my sanity.
    Delilah

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    1. Delilah and Dip:

      Thank you for your service. We truly appreciate it. Peace be with you for the rest of your days, wherever they are spent.

      LibertyGrace'sGrandma

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    2. I stand corrected. LibertyGrace'sGrandma's remark is perfect.

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  6. The use of the NPS police may be a biggest mistake Obama has made. This agency may have had the most benign image in the federal government. It is associated with memories of family trips to Yellowstone and the Grand Canyon and class trips to national historic sites. People are shocked at what the NPS have done. Not only has the NPS trashed a century of goodwill in a week's time, but its activities have caused people to wonder if all government agencies might not be capable of the same behavior.

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    1. Well, that is it exactly. I ask myself if the NPS is willing to drive people and busineses off their legally leased land, arrest Viet Nam verterans from peacebly viewing their memorial, block privately funded enterprises from doing business, attempt to shut down the fricken ocean... What else is the Federal Gov't willing to do? Stop school children from riding on a safe road? Uh Oh they have done it in the Smokey mountains. Denying the events and saying that they were a cock up, like denying death benefits to service members families. Who is going to get fired because of that? No one, that is who because the gov't thought this would be one more way to tighten the screw.
      I fear the gov't.
      Do you remember the chant "Four dead in Ohio"?
      Will we now be chanting?

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    2. All agency LEOs have been tasked with ticketing and removing people from all federal lands. Not good this weekend is pheasant opener on MN.

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    3. "Not only has the NPS trashed a century of goodwill in a week's time, but its activities have caused people to wonder if all government agencies might not be capable of the same behavior."

      Good!

      Consider: should the civil service be abolished? Is what we have now even worse than the spoils system?

      That's a policy question, but there's a constitutional one, too: Is the Pendleton Civil Service Reform Act (of 1883, since amended) even consistent with the first sentence of Article II of the Constitution?

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    4. Here is a great Mark Steyn article about the Park Service debacle:

      http://www.ocregister.com/articles/park-530734-government-national.html

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  7. There's probably more people traipsing through the (closed) national forests and wildlife refuges here than ever before, because they're pissed off about the Halfrican Queen telling them they can't.

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    1. Halfrican Queen......how cleverly descriptive. Well done.

      I am now visualizing a pair of panties around the ankles of the blasted statue, surely depicting the ease with which Assad, Putin, Morsi, AlQaedaLibya and Loubani have had their way and thoroughly disgraced the sneering, preening incompetent.

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  8. If I were near the closed ocean, I'd get all civil disobedient about THAT, too.

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    1. I went to the ocean here in San Diego. My favorite one: the Pacific. It was open.

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  9. Dip,

    I understand your appreciation of "Ozymandias", and agree that it's quite good. But for me it does not surpass Yeats' "The Second Coming", if nothing else for the latter's combination of description and prophecy. Really is there a single couplet anywhere that captures the degradation of our time like this does:

    The best lack all conviction, while the worst
    Are full of passionate intensity.

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    1. it is a great one especially relevant his note that, "Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;"

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    2. We're definitely slouching toward Babylon.

      That's one of my favorite poems. Never thought I'd be living it.

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    3. Mr. Bork thinks we're slouching toward Gomorrah. It would be most unlike him to be mistaken.

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  10. It seems your President has forgotten what he read from the teleprompter in 2006:


    "The fact that we are here today to debate raising America’s debt limit is a sign of leadership failure… that we now depend on ongoing financial assistance from foreign countries…. And over the next 5 years, between now and 2011, the President’s budget will increase the debt by almost another $3.5 trillion.


    Increasing America’s debt weakens us domestically and internationally. Leadership means that “the buck stops here.” Instead, Washington is shifting the burden of bad choices today onto the backs of our children and grandchildren…. I therefore intend to oppose the effort to increase America’s debt limit."

    He also does not seem to understand the principle of "the Separation of Powers" in using/directing a police agency to act as the National Park Police have done. In our system there is a principle of the "Office of Constable" answerable to the crown and the law and [supposedly] free of political interference.

    Good luck.

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    1. Whoops. Name should have read David from Oz

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    2. Fear not, we knew it was you.

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    3. With respect to the National Park Service specifically there is much wrong here but *not* the separation of powers.

      We don't have an office of constable, nor any other executive officer not answerable to the president. "The executive Power shall be vested in a President of the United States of America." Article II, first clause, Constitution of the United States.

      That is why he's responsible for every reprehensible action by every park ranger.

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  11. Ever since our Narcissist-in-Chief ascended the throne (no, not the porcelain one, the OTHER one) in blog comments far and wide I have been referring to him as Ozymandias-on-the-Potomac. The malignant degree of arrogance immediately brought the Shelley poem to mind as an apt descriptor of our clothes-less emperor.

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    1. I had not connected the occupant of the Spite House in the District of Corruption with Ozymandias. That is one of my favorite poems also. It fits. Thank you and DiploMad for pointing this out. I don't know if it will be able to remain one of my favorites after this.

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  12. "Hate" is a very harsh word and, I refrain from using it until my anger is almost unbearable.
    However, I do hate this president simply because of the damage he does - the ultimate betrayal of our Armed Forces and, those who have fought in WWII and, the current ones.
    I lived the 'military' life for almost 20 yrs and, it is not an easy one; many harships, separation and, repeated moves almost every two years causing children anxiety among other issues.
    When are americans really going to shout 'enough is enough';making it loud and clear that they demand actions such as change, firing, taking those who have really done away with the rule of law such as the Constitution before it has reached a point of no return?

    I would rather be in a position to 'praise' the first black president, him being successful and, working on behalf of all americans and this great nation. Nothing of that kind has happened; he is a dangerous pathological narcissist intent to destroy everything that is good in the USA almost to a point of a dictator. He is hell bent to get his way; lies and, distorts whenever he opens his mouth. It's quite pathetic.

    He has also destroyed any future hope of trusting another black American to elect to the presidency.

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    1. "He has also destroyed any future hope of trusting another black American to elect to the presidency."

      Surely not. We just have to choose more carefully. And do it so systematically that even bad guys do the right thing out of sheer opportunism.

      Yes, I know: good luck with that. But I don't see that race comes into it.


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    2. If it makes you feel any better (not quite the right word in the circumstances) remember that he follows an intellectual tradition that hates everything your country stands for. They have been preaching hate on race, class and religious grounds for longer than any of us have been alive. Their fellow-travelers in Germany and Russia and too many other countries have murdered by the ten's of millions in order to build their utopia's and the ONLY reason they won't do so in the USA is because of practical limits on what they get away with, not any personal morality.

      We don't hate them nearly enough and I am grateful that their power is sufficiently limited that they will never have the ability to make us hate them as much as they deserve.

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    3. Modine, there is no point in reproaching the man for his parents' presumed behavior.

      M, you also are having no truck with race; hello, brother. However, I think I can reasonably aspire to hating them (whom you don't give a name, but I think you mean something like "the left") about as much as they deserve.


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    4. Left-wing, Socialist, Progressive, Fabian, Frankfurt-school, Communist, Fascist, Maoist, Leninist, Trotskyist, Stalinist, sometimes even Right-wing.... does the name really make that much difference? They are all based around hatred of liberty and the messy "chaos" that it brings, and the worship of some idealized utopia, usually protected by some Platonic Guardians (ie: themselves). They only differ on detail, or so it seems to me.

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    5. No. Names matter. They are how we organize the universe. "Left wing" and its synonyms explicitly favor unlimited government. That hasn't worked out too well.

      (National socialism, fascism, Peronism, and the like are as leftist, of course. The left only claims the contrary for PR reasons.)

      The right, not so much. That is not to say that right is perfect, anymore than America is--but both oppose an barbarism so deep as to appear perfect by contrast.

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  13. This comment has been removed by the author.

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  14. I, too, regarded Ozymandias a favorite. The doom of ruling arrogance which always leads to "trunkless legs of stone" in an empty desert will yet befall the present Ozymandias in the White House. The great monsters of the past century, Stalin, Hitler, Mao and others now lay in their own desert and even the present young generation forgets them and their monstrosities.

    Over 2500 years ago Solomon wrote in Pro.16:18, Pride goeth before destruction, and an haughty spirit before a fall. Despite the compliance of the msm, the entertainment industry, academia and the democrat party, the fall will come. The sleeping giant of middle America is waking up. Let us hope this awakening will be soon enough to prevent much greater calamities.

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  15. My sincere thanks for this post Diplomad Sir.

    A small aside, not long ago I was speaking with the editor of an Arkansas newspaper and the Tea Party came up. Admittedly my understanding of it's genesis was oh, limited I suppose.

    "Well Arkie, if you'll get into our archives and read some posts from 2008, paying attention to the names of the people who organized the protests against TARP, you'll see the very same names are now heading the active membership positions of our local Tea Party."
    ___________________

    Your mentioning your teacher Sir, takes me back. Thank you.

    Arkie

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  16. @dip and @delilah:

    Yes, thanks from a former junior colleague.

    @everyone:

    The closure of the WWII Memorial and opening the mall to a demo for "immigrant rights" (only illegals; nothing of those who came here playing by the rules) is just typical of this arrogant maladministration.

    In normal times, the WWII Memorial is accessible to any pedestrian and many a wheelchair-bound person, and doesn't even have an attendant. Yet somehow, we have money to put up a barry-cade against a groups of elderly men and call out all the services when activists dear to the O's heart occupy the national mall. And these people DARE to accuse a responsible opposition of mere political grandstanding! I actually wrote to Sen. Barbara Mikulski (I live in Deep Indigo Maryland) about this, and suggested that the next time they accuse the Jumboes of politicking with the shutdown, they ought to prove the Jackasses the Party of Integrity and resign en masse.

    This rally for illegals' rights was highly upsetting for me. For six years, I administered our immigration law, including sending back a case in which I thought a woman was using fiance petitions to help a Chinese criminal gang import its enforcers. Both of my grandfathers, my wife, and my daughter-in-law were all legal immigrants, as are many of my neighbors. I'm even willing to concede that there are cases of people illegally entering where there may be extenuating circumstances that might justify granting some kind of status. But I scream when "immigrant" becomes synonymous with "illegal". I wrote a scathing letter to one advocacy group for doing that, and told them I felt that their terminology insulted my family.

    If it benefits the Alinskyite cause, the O and his crew seem to cry, "f**k the law"! I cannot bear to see the country I love and served going down this way.

    @Swamp Woman and Cascadian: Good description! But I fear that the tailor's dummy (NOT statue--too dignified) wouldn't notice if its panties fell about its ankles. It would ruin the photo-op pose.

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  17. Yes, it's true: in some remote age O. will be as dead and forgotten as, um, O. Such befalleth alike the tyrant and the defender of liberty.

    On a human time scale that's irrelevant, like the fact that someday the sun will burn out.

    Let us be of good cheer. The fight is on. They're going to do their worst anyway, so let us do our best.

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    1. "Let us be of good cheer. The fight is on." Absolutely a6z!

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  18. The regime's actions and the fact of the mild reaction by the public are evidence of the success of the Gramscian march.

    My hope is that the regime overreaches which in their arrogance they well might do. It will probably be something that looks to them as a small thing that becomes the the trigger.

    It really is sad what the next black presidential hopeful will have to overcome.

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  19. You write well, Diplomad. I am relieved that Prime Minister Abbott is in office here in Australia - we have yet to see exactly what the Senate has in store.
    I have always regarded Obama as a poseur and a typical Leftist. I followed the election campaign in 2012, and got very worried when O was re-elected.

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  20. I feel jealous of the crazy anti-Bush protesters back when... at least they could claim that they were being lied to. The problems I have with Obama are about things to which he admits or openly aspires!

    -reader #1482

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  21. Anonymous at 2:23 p.m.
    You are ever, ever so wrong in your last paragraph. Millions of us would gladly march to the moon and back to see Dr. Ben Carson as our president. Or the great Allen West. "Black" or "white" is meaningless. The only color that is loathsome is red -- as in communist. And Obama is a Red to his core.

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    1. I agree with your politics, but you might want to review your physics.

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  22. . . .frown
    And wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command

    Only thing Shelly fails to mention is the amphora ears.

    (photo):
    http://coxrare.files.wordpress.com/2013/10/ap4390590200971.jpg

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  23. Two questions.
    1. Is the White House built on Federal land?
    2. If it is and people are being evicted from houses on Federal land why is your President still residing in the White House?
    I think I know the answer but the principle should be equally applied.

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    1. The equal application of principle is precisely what this administration stands against.

      On principle.

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  24. I see from press reports that your President intends to replace Ben Bernacke with Janet Yellen. Google her or do a bit of research on this lady. If you think things are "crook in Tallarook" [sorry it's an Aussie saying which loosely translates to "being up sh** creek"] now then you are in for worse to come.

    What are you doing to your great country?

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    1. Dave, we're "fair dinkum" bonkers--or seriously and soberly out of our wits--at this point in our history. It happens to us every so often.

      Also, speaking as a recovering Leftist myself (the recovery started in my teens, and now that I'm a granfather, it's still going on), I think I know something of how this madness works.

      Back in the late 19th and early 20th century, a lot of people in my family tree were fresh-off-the-boat immigrants, and looked down on by just about everyone else bikos venn dey shpokes it vas sounding wery fonny, vorse den your "Strine". Of course, these "greenhorns" never had a chance to own slaves or profit from the transAtlantic slave trade, or the plantation economy of the Old South (indeed, some of the earliest of "our crowd" on American shores actually helped Mr. Lincoln put an end to that peculiar institution). Well, now that we've been in America for a while, feeling guilty about slavery and Jim Crow laws is a kind of docial climbing. It lets us pretend that we're the peers of Old Virginia's tidewater aristocracy or the Boston "codfish aristocracy" who back before they grew a conscience, owned the slaved ships. Hence, we turn out to vote for a scion of East African Muslims who were hunters, captors, and castrators of slaves for the Middle East when America's erstwhile slave owners were still trying to recover from our Civil War. This is how we prove to ourselves that we're not really racists.

      Does this make any sense to you? Or, is this something that can only make sense to someone who's an heir of early 20th century urban European immigrants?

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    2. "calamity Janet" to replace "bubble Ben". Her job is to keep the status quo ante. This puts off the day of reckoning for a while more. Then, the creek, boat and paddle won't matter. Do you have a bit of property there in Oz just in case?

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    3. Hey Whitewall, just the guy I figure to come up with something I can steal and not have my comment deleted (elsewhere, I alluded to "not obvious beauty contestants either/or ...).

      What is it with Democrats and their choices of "Janets"?

      Janet Reno

      Janet Napolitano

      Janet Yellen.

      Seems some sort of pattern here no?

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    4. Please help thyself! A pattern indeed. Little Barry seems to like firm regimented women in his inner circle too.

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    5. Please help thyself! ... ???

      You gotta be kidding me Whitewall !!!

      Looking at a picture of any of the three listed would mine make go into "retraction overdrive" ... I'd look like when I inevitably wound up in the ER to have two belly-buttons ... "innys" definitely not "outties."

      No way could I explainate, "Well, the water Whitewall shoved me into was really, really cold!"

      Great Googly Moogly Whitewall [as Derb might suggest] putting a few Macy's Thanksgiving Parade sized blimps shaped as the Demo Janets north of the Rio Grande would've been far more effective than what either of the Schliemann or Maginot as advertised.

      Just "Bell-Curve" thinking Whitewall, how would you think the Mustang Ranch would do were they to put "any" of the Democrat "Janets" on their advertising brochures?

      I'd frankly prefer 60s era National Geographic. (Leaving aside the probability the 60s era primitives would've been more interesting conversationalists than the nowadays HollyWouldists.)

      Ark

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    6. G'day All,

      Kepha it makes perfect sense to me - actually in 'Strine there would be no gaps between the words. We have our own share of leftist bleeding hearts down here and we just voted them out of office. Some of them haven't quite realised it yet.

      Whitewall there's lots of room down here - 22 million people in a country the size of the continental USA does not make for overcrowding. Mind you lots of it is pretty inhospitable and some of the prettiest places have local residents that aren't all that friendly - saltwater crocs and nine of the most venomous species of snake. It wouldn't take you long to learn the language. Anywhere outside the inner city latte sipping lefty suburbs a "G'day Mate" or "Cripes I'd go a cold beer" is always a good introduction. A close friend of mine is/was a Georgia Boy [now an Aussie] and his use of Aussie vernacular is a treat to be savoured.

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    7. Ark...."thyself" is a little of my N.C. Quaker heritage coming through. Pictures of those 3 would make one's navel and other things fall off. I suspect the Mustang Ranch would have a lower class clientel with those on their ads. You must mean the '50s and '60s Nat Geos with the well wrinkled pages and greasy finger prints?

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    8. David from OZ...top o' the morning to you. A Georgia boy in Oz? Let's see...G'day y'all? I bet he can take a one syllable word and use it in a local dialect that is a treat to the ears. By the way, I watched on tv for about the tenth time a western picture starring Tom Burlinson back in the early 1980s I guess. If you know the film, do you know what part of your country it was filmed in? I may move there.

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    9. G'day Whitewall. Randy [short for Randolph and a source of merriment down here] married an Aussie girl and settled here. Occasionally his Georgia drawl comes through - usually after a beer or two - and is a delight to the ear. Mind you his rate of speech makes for some looooong conversations.
      The film you saw was probably "The Man from Snowy River" based on a poem by A.B [Banjo] Patterson which you can Google easily enough. It was set in the high country out of a town called Mansfield here in Victoria and about 3 1/2 hours drive from Melbourne. It is stunningly beautiful country with some great trout streams.
      If you go to Google Earth and ask for directions from Mansfield, Vic, Australia to Omeo, Vic, Australia it will bring up the route and there are lots of photo attachments to show you the area. One of my favourite parts of this State.
      Cheers,
      David

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    10. Whitewall?

      I've a "friend" in Cairns, mind, I've spent more time on Aussie ships (even being a 'non-uniformed US sorta feller' once protected [sorta/kinda] by Aussie Marines once from the US Shore Patrol when one a USN CTF pulled in - tho' a while back)

      Aside from the occasional cyclone, the weather is lovely - timing of course, being "everything."

      http://www.bom.gov.au/products/IDR193.loop.shtml

      I've phones addressable with US area codes 202, 793, 662 & 870 but candidly, I'd just go by the radar.

      I'm a little north and there's no radar but any directory assistance for those area codes in the area of Bali ...

      (By the way. I heard ya'll shutdown. has it mattered?)

      Arkie

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    11. David from Oz...that is the very film I'm talking about. Trout streams too? Whew, temptation is overtaking me. Thanks.

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    12. Arkie, I've read about Cairns and sounds nice. Where you are may be a safe place for now. Washington has partially " shut down" and the governing class and leg humpers in their lapdog media are in a dither. On the American side of the Beltway, there are some inconveniences of course but people are beginning to see the fraud and emptiness that is our government. That revelation has got the governing class tied up by the rectum. Maybe they can just fling there collective rectums into the river.

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  25. Here is a very interesting perspective about why BHO could be what he is. I've always thought this about a lot of poor, undereducated people.

    http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2013/10/10/is-obama-locked-in-victim-mentality/

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    1. That article is chilling in its accuracy. Obama always has a "blame the other" mentality. I still wonder where he was hiding the night of the 2012 Benghazi terrorist attack. It seems by his behavior that in some way HE was being attacked because of the lie re AQ that he had just put forth at the convention. Blame a video, blame a lack of State Dept funding, blame anything, just don't deprive me of what I want....4 more years.

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  26. Too bad Obama and his Administration followers are stuck in the "make em pay" modus operandi rather than looking for the magnanimous gesture.
    Consider the potential had this scene been staged:
    A bunch of WW2 Vets outside the Barrycades, unable to enter with NPS "security" ready to pounce. A black limo with flags fluttering pulls up and the POTUS with some WH Marines in full dress get out, walks up to the Barrycades, and tosses them aside. The Marines escort the Vets into the Plaza while Obama approaches the NPS security with hands outstretched...daring them to arrest and cuff him.
    Played out on every news program and viral video site they could get the scene on.
    Obama would have been untouchable by ANY Republican and would have a massive PR win...and ANY Legislation he demanded regarding a CR, Budget, and Debt ceiling limit would have been his for the asking.
    Too bad he is only adept at playing small-ball.

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