World War II Vets "Storm" Memorial Again 

As I reported yesterday, the Obama Administration, citing the government shutdown, has "closed" the World War II Memorial. The Park Police were ordered to shut it down. This was a vicious, mean-spirited act. 

The memorial is a circular plaza where visitors simply walk around to read the tributes to the men who defeated Hitler and Hirohito. No federal employees are needed to access the plaza. 

Virtually every day members of the "Greatest Generation," men in their 80s and 90s, arrive to see the monument that recognizes their service. The fact that they are being threatened with arrest is disgusting. To add insult to injury, Harry Reid took to the Senate floor to blame congressional conservatives for the fact that the memorial is closed. 

Yesterday a bus load of vets that arrived, showing the same spirit they did on the beaches of Normandy but this time with canes and walkers, "stormed" the plaza. Today another group of veterans was reportedly threatened with arrest. But when they arrived this morning, they found many sympathizers, including conservative congressmen, standing with them. Park Police officers reportedly looked the other way and the vets and their friends flooded into the plaza.

Nonetheless, as many as seven National Park employees erected fences to block access by vets this afternoon. As one observer noted, that is two more "guards" than our diplomats had in Benghazi.

But there is a silver lining here. Americans were willing to commit civil disobedience to thwart the thuggish behavior of this administration, and that is a good thing. 

Comparing Apples & Oranges 

Barack Obama and his horde of media spokesmen are trying to compare Obamacare's glitches to the release of Apple's new iPhone. Here's what Obama said yesterday:
 

• "Like every new law, every new product rollout, there are going to be some glitches... Apple rolled out a new mobile operating system, and within days, they found a glitch, so they fixed it. I don't remember anybody suggesting Apple should stop selling iPhones … threatening to shut down the company if they didn't."

It is indicative of the sorry state of education in American that many of our fellow citizens are falling for this argument. Obama may think it is a good point to compare Obamacare to Apple, but it's not a good point at all. He's comparing apples to oranges. 

Apple doesn't come out with a new phone and demand that everyone either buy it or pay Apple a fine. Apple doesn't insist that you get rid of your current phone because new regulations make it impossible to continue providing it to you. When you buy a new iPhone no one will tell you that you can't get cancer surgery because a panel of bureaucrats is trying to control costs. 

A new iPhone is developed in a collaborative effort with the best and brightest technicians and developers, and it thrives in the free market in competition with other products. Obama and his liberal allies passed the most radical change in the last fifty years and did not seek one Republican vote. It was an exercise of sheer political power, forced on the American people and upheld by the Supreme Court as a tax. 

For Obama to use an example of the free market and private enterprise to support his socialist healthcare scheme is laughable! 

By The Numbers 

The Obama Administration and some liberal bloggers are defending Obamacare's colossal launch failure by claiming that the site crashed because Obamacare is so popular. To prove the point, they released some stats for Day 1 of Obamacare: 
 

• 4.7 million unique visitors to the Obamacare health exchange website. 
• 133,000 phone calls. 
• 104,000 live web chats.

But how many people actually signed up for Obamacare yesterday? The administration isn't saying. 

If the results from the Connecticut exchange (where fewer than 1% of visitors actually signed up) are at all representative, it seems that many Americans didn't like Obamacare once they found out what it was going to cost them. 

Day Two Of The Apocalypse 

From yesterday's hysterical media coverage, you would have thought a government shutdown meant the end of the world. Well, the government shut down yesterday and the sun still came up this morning. Life for virtually every American continued as normal. Meanwhile, House conservatives are doing just about everything they can to keep the government open. 

Before the shutdown, the House and Senate passed a bill to make sure our soldiers would be paid. And Obama signed it. So, the House leadership is trying this approach with other government agencies too -- passing funding bills for individual departments like Veterans Affairs. But Obama and Senate Democrats have rejected this approach.

Try this experiment tonight: Watch the evening news and see if the fact that House Republicans are trying to keep the government open, and that it is Obama and Senate Democrats who are keeping it shut down, is explained at all. 

If you listen to Rush Limbaugh, watch Fox News or read materials like this daily report, you know the truth. Regrettably, most Americans do not watch Fox or listen to Rush. Most Americans -- no doubt including many of your friends and family members -- won't know, as Speaker Boehner insisted, that "Obama owns this shutdown."

Obama, congressional liberals and their media allies claim that it's the "uncompromising, extremist Republicans" who are shutting down the government. In reality, Republicans have made five attemptsnow to fund the government and keep it open. 

It is liberals who are refusing to compromise on Obamacare. In fact, they are so uncompromising they are even defending Obamacare's individual mandate and the special exemption from Obamacare that Barack Obama gave to members of Congress -- both of which are extremely unpopular. 

Second Thoughts On Marriage 

When I met with conservative leaders and government officials in London, they told me that Prime Minister Cameron and his Conservative Party are getting massacred politically because Cameron pushed same-sex "marriage" over the objections of most conservatives in parliament. Now party officials around England are resigning and their fundraising has significantly declined. 

Another result has been the emergence of the United Kingdom Independence Party, a rump conservative party, that is rapidly gaining strength. The next general election in England isn't until 2015. But one recent poll found the Labor Party beating Cameron by 11 points with UKIP picking up 13% of the vote. 

As we left London, a story was breaking about a new book on Cameron's government. In the book Cameron is quoted as saying, "If I'd known what it [the reaction to his same-sex 'marriage' position] was going to be like, I wouldn't have done it." Sorry, Mr. Prime Minister, but "Whoops!" after breaking the institution of marriage just doesn't cut it. 

I share this with you because I know this daily report is read all over Washington by consultants and congressmen and other movement leaders. I know there are some who want to bail on this issue. If they want any idea of how it will play out if they surrender on marriage, just look at the sorry state of England's shrinking Conservative Party.