About websites being shutdown for theatrical reasons:

Your Czarness:

Also shut down are the SEC webpage that allows one to file and to track corporate filings and the USGS webpage that allow one to look up seismic data for a specific address or latitude and longitude.

The other webpages of their websites are up: just the ones that the public most frequently uses are blocked. I don’t know about the SEC webpage, but the USGS webpage is simply used to access an existing database. The database is only infrequently updated and, since it is existing, requires no added expense to operate.

Both these webpages have presumably been paid for by previous taxpayer dollars, so blocking access to them is not a cost savings.

What a Country! / erc

Same for APOD, one of our favorites here at the Castle. Astronomy Picture of the Day is hosted on a NASA.gov server, but is run by two cool guys who are not remotely government funded. Yet it, too, is shut down.

Also commenting is Island Dweller, whom the Czar is happy to admit some relief in reading.

Most illustrious Majesty:

Dear Leader and his cult of cronies have again painted themselves into a corner, borrowing a page from Herbert Hoover.

The Hoover administration-era Bonus Army march on DC, and the current national embarrassment over curtailed access to the open-air WWII, Korean War, and Vietnam War memorials in DC are not quite circumstantially the same. However, if DL and his uneducated, unfeeling minions continue to pursue their present course, they risk further alienating a voting bloc that is already greatly upset with them, and run the risk of upsetting the general public as well.

Needless to say, Herbert Hoover didn’t win any voters out of the veterans he threw out of their shantytowns they had erected in DC during the impasse of the Bonus March. I doubt any of those mens’ opinions were changed by Hoover’s actions (which resulted in several deaths) in breaking up the protest. What it certainly did do was settle, then inflame, the opinions of others who until that time were undecided about how they viewed the March – and the marchers.

Veterans are currently a definite minority in this country, and our numbers are getting smaller daily. However, public opinion can generally be said to be on the side of the veteran, in particular those who served during WWII and to a lesser extent the Korean and Vietnam Wars. The administration’s heartless and idiotic actions relating to the denial of access of these veterans to all three memorials is only going to further inflame public opinion against itself. I know access to open-air memorials all over the country is being restricted, which pisses off a bunch of people – but there is something visceral about denying access of a man or woman to a memorial for their comrades, good friends, who bled and died for their country, and whose memories are seared into the consciousness of these veterans.

I very strongly suspect the outcome of the administration’s handling of the “memorials” fiasco is going to return to deeply bite DL’s hopes in 2014 squarely in the backside – particularly if frequently brought back to the attention of the voting public by veterans’ groups, the Republican Party, and political conservatives.

Politicians (not statesmen) – Ignore or anger the veteran at your peril. Just ask Herb.

ID

Damned straight, ID. In fact, this is part of the secret message encoded in another post of ours when we said:

Historically, when veterans get together at the National Mall and refuse to leave, it ends badly for the President.

Island Dweller claims the prize. Norway. Which will soon be warm, beautiful beachfront property perfect for relaxation.

The Czar of Muscovy

Божію Поспѣшествующею Милостію Мы, Дима Грозный Императоръ и Самодержецъ Всероссiйскiй, цѣсарь Московскiй. The Czar was born in the steppes of Russia in 1267, and was cheated out of total control of all Russia upon the death of Boris Mikhailovich, who replaced Alexander Yaroslav Nevsky in 1263. However, in 1283, our Czar was passed over due to a clerical error and the rule of all Russia went to his second cousin Daniil (Даниил Александрович), whom Czar still resents. As a half-hearted apology, the Czar was awarded control over Muscovy, inconveniently located 5,000 miles away just outside Chicago. He now spends his time seething about this and writing about other stuff that bothers him.