BZ

P.S.

Thanks, Chris P!

Well, perhaps if he directly told them to “go to hell,” he might.

A corn farmer asked Mr Obama, “please don’t challenge us with more rules and regulations,” when farmers have enough to contend with, via Mother Nature every growing season:

For the specifics, go here:

At Wednesday’s town hall in Atkinson, Illinois, a local farmer who said he grows corn and soybeans expressed his concerns to President Obama about “more rules and regulations” – including those concerning dust, noise and water runoff — that he heard would negatively affect his business. An Illinois farmer gets called on, and he tells Obama that he is a farmer who enjoys growing “corn and soybeans.”

“Mother Nature has really challenged us this growing season – moisture, drought, whatever. Please don’t challenge us with more rules and regulations from Washington D.C. that hinder us from doing that. We would prefer to start our day in a tractor cab or combine cab rather than filling out forms and permits to do what we like to do.”

He had barely gotten the words out of his mouth before Obama was shouting that “we have the Secretary of Agriculture here,” and then proceeded to tell the farmer not to “believe everything you hear.”

The president, on day three of his Midwest bus tour, replied: “If you hear something is happening, but it hasn’t happened, don’t always believe what you hear.”

When the room broke into soft laughter, the president added, “No — and I’m serious about that.”

Obama’s advice: “Don’t always believe what you hear. Contact USDA. Talk to them directly. My suspicion is, a lot of times, they’re going to be able to answer your questions and it will turn out that some of your fears are unfounded.”

And with that said and written, MJ Lee at Politico.com decided to take Mr Obama up on his offer.

Mr Lee wrote:

When this POLITICO reporter decided to take the president’s advice and call the USDA for an answer to the Atkinson town hall attendee’s question, I found myself in a bureaucratic equivalent of hot potato — getting bounced from the feds to Illinois state agriculture officials to the state farm bureau.

Here’s a rundown of what happened when I started by calling the USDA’s general hotline to inquire about information related to the effects of noise and dust pollution rules on Illinois farmers:

Wednesday, 2:40 p.m. ET: After calling the USDA’s main line, I am told to call the Illinois Department of Agriculture. Here, I am patched through to a man who is identified as being in charge of “support services.” I leave a message.

3:53 p.m.: The man calls me back and recommends in a voicemail message that I call the Illinois Farm Bureau — a non-governmental organization.

4:02 p.m.: A woman at the Illinois Farm Bureau connects me to someone in the organization’s government affairs department. That person tells me they “don’t quite know who to refer you to.”

4:06 p.m.: I call the Illinois Department of Agriculture again, letting the person I spoke with earlier know that calling the Illinois Farm Bureau had not been fruitful. He says “those are the kinds of groups that are kind of on top of this or kind of follow things like this. We deal with pesticide here in our bureau.”

“You only deal with pesticides?” I ask.

“We deal with other things … but we mainly deal with pesticides here,” he says, and gives me the phone number for the office of the department’s director, where he says there are “policy people” as well as the director’s staff.

4:10 p.m.: Someone at the director’s office transfers me to the agriculture products inspection department, where a woman says their branch deals with things like animal feed, seed and fertilizer. “I’m going to transfer you to one of the guys at environmental programs.”

4:15 p.m.: I reach the answering machine at the environmental programs department, and leave a message.

4:57 p.m.: A man from the environmental programs department gets back to me: “I hate to be the regular state worker that’s always accused of passing the buck, but noise and dust regulation would be under our environmental protection agency, rather than the Agriculture Department,” he says, adding that he has forwarded my name and number to the agriculture adviser at IEPA.

On Thursday morning, POLITICO started the hunt for an answer again, this time calling the USDA’s local office in Henry County, Ill., where the town hall took place.

9:42 a.m.: Asked if someone at the office might be able to provide me with the information I requested, the woman on the phone responds, “Not right now. We may have to actually look that up — did you Google this or anything?” When I say that I’m a reporter and would like to discuss my experience with someone who handles media relations there, I am referred to the USDA’s state office in Champaign. I leave a message there.

10:40 a.m.: A spokeswoman for the Illinois Natural Resources Conservation Service calls me, to whom I explain my multiple attempts on Wednesday and Thursday to retrieve the information I was looking for.

“What I can tell you is our particular agency does not deal with regulations,” she tells me. “We deal with volunteers who voluntarily want to do things. I think the reason you got that response from the Cambridge office is because in regard to noise and dust regulation, we don’t have anything to do with that.”

She adds that the EPA would be more capable of answering questions regarding regulations.

Finally, I call the USDA’s main media relations department, based here in Washington, where I explain to a spokesperson about my failed attempts to obtain an answer to the Illinois farmer’s question.

This was their OFFICIAL response, via email:

“Secretary Vilsack continues to work closely with members of the Cabinet to help them engage with the agricultural community to ensure that we are separating fact from fiction on regulations because the administration is committed to providing greater certainty for farmers and ranchers. Because the question that was posed did not fall within USDA jurisdiction, it does not provide a fair representation of USDA’s robust efforts to get the right information to our producers throughout the country.”

I say: what a bunch of multi-syllabic, unhelpful, unmitigated, ignorant, specious, no-load, political BULLSHIT.

What NOW, Mr Obama?

This does NOTHING for that farmer.

And that is only a PORTION of the problem with Big Government, sir.

The ball’s in your court, sir, to utilize a euphemism in which you’d likely be familiar. But God forbid if any backspatter, attributions, responsibility, accountability, commitment or duty actually fell upon you or your administration.

We can’t have actual Leadership, after all — can we?

BZ

P.S.

You, Mr Obama, wouldn’t know a leader from a manager from a knowledge worker from an American farmer from a toadstool. You might want to open, for example, any book by Peter Drucker.

Frankly, you look like a buffoon.

With a poorly-thought-out stunt like that, you axed whatever voters you may have had left in any future campaign. You are a public figure and, as such, subject to questions that, in truth, were neither rude nor “creepy.”

And to intimate it may have been “borderline sexual harrassment“? You really want to play that card?

BZ

The birthday — that was predominantly ignored by the DEM/MSM?

The 100th birthday of Colt’s Model 1911 semi-automatic pistol. (1911 Centennial commemorative here.)

1911 to 2011. A “game changer” of the highest order. The handgun of issue during WWII.

I personally carried one of these guns, in Condition One, in my holster, whilst working for my department in 1981. The holster I mounted placed a black leather Safariland strap between my hammer and the frame.

I carried my Colt 1911 Series 80 with hammer back, left-frame thumb safety up. All said, it was a tidy, thin and easily-carriable handgun — with a big hole at the end.

I carried that gun for only a year, until I replaced it with my Sig-Sauer P220, in .45 caliber, European release, and then expanded the magazine carriers on my belt. I carried four magazines on my Sam Browne in double pouches, horizontally, to be loaded by my left hand, throat-down for faster insertion.

There’s nothing wrong with carrying a Colt 1911 in Condition One.

When I hired onto my department, I purchased three specific things back then:

1. A Honda CB750;

2. A pair of crocodile cowboy boots;

3. A Colt 1911 Series 80 handgun;

I should care to point out that the .45 ACP round is uniformly excellent.

But that, of course, is another post for other days.

Happy birthday, thusly, to the Colt 1911!

BZ

P.S.

And, of course, Colt still manufactures (much to the chagrin of Leftists and Demorats) its guns in the United States of America.

Except that you’ll have to wait until next month to find out what it is.

Obama will unveil his economic strategy in a speech right after Labor Day.

And it won’t be a concrete bill. It’ll be another speech.

Whilst The One takes another vacation.

Yep.

The People are his Number One Priority.

Right. It’s such an amazing priority that he necessitates another vacation. After all, hell, you can still collect your federal and state Free Cheese, eh? Right?

BZ

P.S.
He’s got His. The rest of you can go to Hell.