We have a thug occupying the Oval Office.

Not a bad president. Depending on your ideological point of view, we’ve elected men who were cheats and crooks, those who were arrogant and clueless, and many others who were stunningly mediocre. But never a genuine thug.

Until now.

Make no mistake. Once it was determined that a government shutdown would occur, the Obama administration’s game plan was simple, and best described not by me, but by a park ranger tasked with implementing part of it. "We’ve been told to make life as difficult for people as we can,“ he explained. "It’s disgusting.”

How disgusting? Breitbart News has compiled a list of the Obama administration’s efforts. They include shutting down the WWII memorial on the DC Mall, a move that not only denies veterans in their 80s and 90s perhaps their final chance to see it, but one required an extra-normal effort to erect “Barry-cades” at the normally open-air, unstaffed facility. After these intrepid souls, many of whom faced enemy fire, removed the barricades and visited the memorial, sometime between Thursday night and Friday morning, the Barrycades were re-erected – and reinforced with wire.

Thus, the same president who folded like a lawn chair during his “red line” debacle vis a vis Syria and Vladimir Putin, stood firm against America’s Greatest Generation, many of whom have waited up to two years to book a flight to see the memorial erected in their honor.

Perhaps just to show that Obama wasn’t singling out the heroes of yesteryear, the Armed Forces Network has been partially shut down as well. It will continue to broadcast news, but entertainment programs, including Major League Baseball playoffs and NFL Football games, will be blacked out. Thus, today’s Americans in harm’s way are considered as contemptible as their older counterparts.

That contempt for our military heroes extended to the Normandy American Cemetery and Memorial, where than 9,000 military dead are buried at the Omaha Beach cemetery. That would be the same Omaha Beach where 2,400 Americans lost their lives in less that 24 hours on D-Day. That facility,  along with 23 others throughout Europe, Mexico, Panama, Tunisia and the Philippines have also been closed.

As was the Vietnam Veterans memorial, where veterans of that war moved past the erected Barrycades, until U.S. Park Police arrived, asked everyone to leave, and put the Barrycades back in place.

As pathetic as this blatant spitefulness is, it doesn’t stop. Catholic priests who work for the military have been banned from celebrating Mass during the shutdown, even if they do it on a volunteer basis. If they violate this edict, they face possible arrest.

The rest of the list contains a number of other despicable efforts, but two more are worth mentioning. One, because the administration actually realized what was envisioned as the ultimate parody of this transparent effort to induce as much unnecessary misery as possible, and the other because it is a testament to how far they are willing to go to abuse their power.

The first effort is in regard to the iconic sculpture of four Americans presidents on the side of Mt. Rushmore. Last week, this photo was disseminated on Facebook as a joke. It shows two helicopters holding a tarp that blocks the view of that sculpture. By October 1, it was no longer a joke. According to the Argus Leader, a South Dakota newspaper, the Parks Department “placed cones along highway viewing areas outside Mount Rushmore this week, barring visitors from pulling over and taking pictures of the famed monument.”

The second effort is far worse. Charter boat captains on the Florida Bay were told that fishing boats have been banned from taking anglers out into that particular section of water, one that comprises 1,100 square-miles of open ocean.

We have a thug in the White House.

In 1971, the media was more than happy to tell America about Richard Nixon’s “Enemies List.” It was described by former White House Counsel John Dean as one compiled in order to “use the available federal machinery to screw our political enemies.” Forty two years later, Barack Obama has complied an Enemies List of his very own: millions of Americans who will be inconvenienced at best and, as he indicated when he threatened to veto funding for the National Institutes of Health that offers children with cancer last-chance experimental treatments, deadly at worst.

On the other hand, a bill guaranteeing furloughed federal workers back pay was passed unanimously in the House ,and is expected to sail through the Senate. The president has indicated support for the measure as well. Thus, whenever the shutdown ends, the government leviathan will emerge unscathed. No doubt the unemployed Florida fishermen and children with inoperable cancer will be delighted by the news.

Understand I have nothing against federal workers per se. Many of them are hard working individuals who serve this nation very well. But whether we need 2.1 million civilian workers whose average wage is $81,704, when the nation’s 104 million private-sector workers earn an average of $54,995 is another story altogether. Moreover, does Congress need more than 11,000 personal staff members and an additional 2,492 Committee staff members, most of whom will continue getting their health insurances premiums subsidized by as much as 75 percent? Should the area surrounding Washington, D.C. be home to six of the nation’s ten wealthiest counties? Counties that have become virtually immune to the economic vicissitudes that affect the rest of the nation?

Barack Obama undoubtedly understands what this concentration of power ultimately means. So does Congressman Louie Gohmert (R-TX) who along with a group of his fellow Texans, came to the World War II Memorial in Washington last week – armed with wire cutters. "The president is trying to inflict the most amount of pain and suffering,“ he said. "This is not some bureaucratic mistake. This is Chicago thuggery. You try to make people hurt so they don’t resist what you tell them to do in the future.”

The future is short. Within the next 10 days, the argument will shift from a government shutdown to raising the debt ceiling. The president, along Treasury Secretary Jack Lew, the Democrat Party and a thoroughly corrupt media have [begun](http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2013/10/05/obamasrecklessdefaultfear-mongering120217.html' all out press to make sure the American people do not resist raising the debt limit. "As reckless as a government shutdown is … an economic shutdown that results from default would be dramatically worse,“ Obama said on Thursday. On the same day, Treasury released a statement, also warning of the brutal consequences of such a default, characterizing it as "a financial crisis and recession that could echo the events of 2008 or worse.”

No doubt a default would roil the economy. Yet the only way a default occurs is if this president and his administration makes it happen. America can only default if the nation stops making interest payments on the debt. Right now, those interest payments amount to approximately 7 percent of collected tax revenue. Thus, we have more than enough money to keep making those payments – unless the president orders Lew to stop making them.

It is critical that Americans know the truth about this, because the media fear-mongers are out in full force, aiding and abetting our president in his effort to use the full faith and credit of the United States as a bargaining chip – to further erode the full faith and credit of a nation already drowning in unsustainable debt. Debt engendered by out-of-control spending that either gets addressed while we have the chance to address it ourselves, or when the rest of the world decides once and for all that we truly are a nation of spendthrift deadbeats.

As for how Obama himself will handle this, we already know the rest of that story. During the last debt ceiling battle, he threatened seniors, veterans and those receiving disability payments. "I cannot guarantee that those checks go out on August 3rd if we haven’t resolved this issue,“ Obama warned. Note he didn’t threaten non-essential government workers, the more than 24,000 Congressional staff members (the above totals were a partial list), or the 1701 people who work at the White House, including three in-house calligraphers, who earn between $85,953 and $96,725. He targeted the elderly, the infirm and those who defended this nation.

That’s not what a president does. That’s what a thug does.

Is there a tipping point for the American public? It is hard to say. But it is heartening to see a Bloomberg National Poll showing that 61 percent of the nation endorses the notion that Congress is right in demanding spending cuts in return for raising the debt ceiling. Perhaps they have finally made the connection between macro-economics and personal finance. Maybe they’ve finally figured out that if one can’t spend far more than one earns and continually throw the remaining debt on a credit card, neither can the nation. Maybe that realization is being buttressed by the recognition that a president more than willing to throw a temper tantrum that results in making life as miserable as he can for ordinary Americans has something going on that transcends politics. Maybe they’re just beginning to realize that behind the media-fueled facade known as Hope and Change, is a small-minded, self-involved, self aggrandizing individual who will stop at nothing to get his own way.

Maybe they realize that for the first time in the history for he republic, we have a thug in the Oval Office.

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