CATCH US IF YOU CAN: Civil Disobedience From Gettysburg Visitors. The National Park Service, generally thought of as good guys in government, is paying a stiff PR price for Obama’s shutdown theater.

JAMES TARANTO: The New Face of Prejudice: A focus group turns into a smear campaign.

The unsurprising part–the part Wilkinson finds “shocking”–is that some of them, specifically the Tea Party and evangelical Republicans, speak in rather harsh terms about the president. If Wilkinson actually finds this shocking, he must be about 17 years old, which is to say too young to remember how liberals (including elite ones in academia, arts, entertainment and journalism) spoke contemporaneously of President Bush.

According to Wilkinson, the Tea Party and evangelical Republicans’ “default position” toward Obama “is essentially abject terror.” In truth, some of the examples he cites are actually quite anodyne: “What is he really thinking?” asks one “Tea Party Man.” Another simply says: “Background.” An “Evangelical Woman” says, “His motives behind his actions,” which would be a tautology if it were a complete sentence. An “Evangelical Man” says: “He wants to fundamentally change the country.” If our theory is right, Wilkinson isn’t old enough to remember that Obama himself said the same thing.

Admittedly, some of the comments are on the truculent side. Each of these is from an “Evangelical Man”: “Not a US citizen. Supports Terrorists.” “I don’t believe he’s a Christian. He’s a tyrant.” “He supports everything that is against Christianity.”

Then again, isn’t it possible that the Evangelical Men are on to something? Obama did, after all, describe as his “spiritual mentor” a so-called pastor whose most famous pronouncement was “God damn America!” That would seem to indicate a theological understanding that is at odds with that of most Christians, especially American Christians. . . .

There must be a word for somebody who does what Stan Greenberg did here, which is to smear and attempt to marginalize a whole group of people, without evidence and based on the color of their skin.

Ideally, it should be a word that carries as much sting as “racist.”

Feeling superior to flyover people is a key tenet of modern liberalism. It’s just gotten more vicious.

TRADE: In blow to Boeing, Japan Airlines makes deal to buy from Airbus.

OUT TODAY FROM THE GOOD FOLKS AT THE INSTITUTE FOR JUSTICE: Clark Neily, Terms of Engagement: How Our Courts Should Enforce the Constitution’s Promise of Limited Government. With favorable blurbs from Randy Barnett, George Will, Richard Epstein, and others. Buy it!

BLOOMBERG: Egypt’s Coming Civil War.

IN POLITICO, a surprisingly positive profile of Dana Loesch. I contribute a rather minor quote.

JOHN HINDERAKER: The Federal Government Can’t, and Won’t, Default on Its Debt Obligations. But someone sure wants to fearmonger about it.

JOURN-O-LISM: MSMers Milbank and Schieffer Mystified, Repelled by Cruz Rise, But Agree to Smear Him. I’m just appalled at the racism. Why do so many people in the media hate Latinos?

THE HILL: Boehner: Obama gambling with economy by refusing to talk.

IT BEGINS: Tom Cotton targets Mark Pryor’s vote on government funding in his first ad of Arkansas Senate race.

Sen. Mark Pryor’s vote for a government funding bill the included health care subsidies for members of Congress and their staff is now being used as an attack line by his re-election challenger.

In Rep. Tom Cotton’s first television ad of his Arkansas Senate campaign, unveiled Monday, a narrator hits Pryor, D-Ark., for supporting a government funding measure without other provisions, including the health care subsidies, attached.

“Mark Pryor cast the deciding vote to make you live under Obamacare,” a narrator says. “But Pryor votes himself, and everyone in Congress, special subsidies so they’re protected from Obamacare.”

There will be a lot more of this.

JACK DUNPHY: Use of Force: Do Critics of Miriam Carey Police Shooting Have a Case?

I think the police acted reasonably here — someone driving wildly and hitting barriers might be a car-bomber, one of the biggest security nightmares. And it’s unfair to judge their instant reactions by what we know later. I should note, however, that the same consideration applies to civilian use of force, but law-enforcement officials often don’t give civilians the same benefit of the doubt that they give police.

AT AMAZON, deals on Bestselling Blu-Ray Players.

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Plus, coupons galore in Household Supplies.

TURNING KIDS INTO HOSTAGES: ‘All about power and leverage’ — feds shut down major roadway, block access to graveyard.

Folks who live in the Great Smoky Mountains have just about reached their breaking point with the federal government.

“It’s almost like they are pushing to see how far they can push before the American people say enough is enough,” said Ed Mitchell, the mayor of Blount County, Tenn. “We were founded on a declaration of independence. And they are about to push the people to the line again.”

Nearly a third of Blount County is inside the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. So when the federal government shut down the park, it also shut down one of the area’s chief sources of revenue.

The National Park Service also closed the Foothills Parkway, a major thoroughfare in the county. The closure came without warning and left the local school district scrambling to get children back to their homes.

If the press covered Obama the way they’d cover a GOP President who did this kind of thing, he’d be toast. But they don’t, because they’re on his team. Just think of them as Dem operatives with bylines and you won’t go far wrong.

UPDATE: From the comments:

Obama’s intended lesson was meant to be, “See how awful life is without your Federal Family?” But the lesson learned–I hope–is, “See how awful your Federal Family can make your life if you tick it off?” We’re not seeing the absence of government; we’re seeing an excess of bad government.

If I were in Congress, I’d be introducing legislation to turn the national parks over to the states.

KARL “CHEF MOJO” BOCK, who blogs over at Bill Quick’s place, has cancer for the second time. If you’d like to help, go here. I donated.

MEN ON STRIKE, RELIGIOUS-INSTITUTION EDITION: How Far Should Churches Go To Appeal To Men? “One question has plagued the modern church over the past few years: how to appeal to men, particularly to fathers.” I think avoiding PC man-bashing, which I understand has become endemic almost everywhere, might do more than changing songs and sponsoring motorcycle rides.

MY USA TODAY COLUMN: Washington Isn’t Working. Plus, a comparison of the political class with the parts of America that do work. “One America can launch rockets. The other America can’t even launch a website.”

CHAOS UMPIRE SITS: Victor Davis Hanson: Obama As Chaos.

Amid all the charges and countercharges in Washington over the government shutdown, there is at least one common theme: Barack Obama’s various charges always lead to a dead end. They are chaos, and chaos is hard to understand, much less refute.

By that I mean when the president takes up a line of argument against his opponents, it cannot really be taken seriously — not just because it is usually not factual, but also because it always contradicts positions that Obama himself has taken earlier or things he has previously asserted. Whom to believe — Obama 1.0, Obama 2.0, or Obama 3.0?

When the president derides the idea of shutting down the government over the debt ceiling, we almost automatically assume that he himself tried to do just that when as a senator he voted against the Bush administration request in 2006, when the debt was about $6 trillion less than it is now.

When the president blasts the Republicans for trying to subvert the “settled law” of Obamacare, we trust that Obama himself had earlier done precisely that when he unilaterally subverted his own legislation — by quite illegally discarding the employer mandate provision of Obamacare. At least the Republicans tried to revise elements of Obamacare through existing legislative protocols; the president preferred executive fiat to nullify a settled law.

When the president deplores the lack of bipartisanship and the lockstep Republican effort to defund Obamacare, we remember that the president steamrolled the legislation through the Congress without a single Republican vote.

When the president laments the loss of civility and reminds the public that he uses “calm” rhetoric during the impasse, we know he has accused his opponents of being on an “ideological crusade” and of being hostage takers and blackmailers who have “a gun held to the head of the American people,” while his top media adviser Dan Pfeiffer has said that they had “a bomb strapped to their chest.”

When the president insists that the Republican effort to hold up the budget is unprecedented, we automatically deduce that, in fact, the action has many precedents, and on frequent prior occasions was a favored ploy of Democrats to gain leverage over Republican administrations.

In short, whenever the president prefaces a sweeping statement with one of his many emphatics — “make no mistake about it,” “I’m not making this up,” “in point of fact,” “let me be perfectly clear” — we know that the reverse is always true. For Obama, how something is said matters far more than what is said.

Though, if anything, his oratorical skills are even more overrated than his management skills.

DAVID BARON, CALL YOUR OFFICE: A Mountain Lion In Griffith Park. “For more than a year and a half, the solitary mountain lion known as P-22 has made himself right at home in Griffith Park within view of Hollywood’s Capitol Records building. By night, he cruises the chaparral-covered canyons, dining on mule deer, raccoon and coyote. By day, while tots ride the Travel Town train and hikers hit the trails, he hunkers down amid dense vegetation.”

Related: Mountain Lion Sightings In DC.

HAL ABELSON: The Lessons Of Aaron Swartz.

OR, FOR THAT MATTER, ANY PARENTS: Should Christian Parents Send their Children to Public Schools? When a kid can be suspended for playing cops-and-robbers, is anyone safe?

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MY USA TODAY COLUMN: Washington Isn’t Working. Plus, a comparison of the political class with the parts of America that do work.

THEY TOLD ME IF I VOTED FOR MITT ROMNEY THIS WOULD HAPPEN. AND THEY WERE RIGHT! Almost all of the shrimp Americans eat is now going uninspected.

SO HOW’S THAT WHOLE SHUTDOWN THING GOING FOR ‘EM? First Obama throws Harry Reid under the bus, now this: Harry Reid Blames Right Wing Media Bias.

Related: Software, Design Defects Cripple Health-Care Website: Government Acknowledges It Needs to Fix Design and Software Problems. “So far, many tens of thousands of people had started the application process but the number of those who were able to create accounts and shop for coverage is likely in the low thousands, according to people with knowledge of the situation and estimates by insurance-industry advisers. The administration has declined to say the total number of enrollees.”

The “low thousands?” After a 3 year buildup and a nationwide rollout? Ouch.

SO A WHILE BACK, I THINK SOMEBODY SENT ME THIS DELTA STATE “FIGHTING OKRA” T-SHIRT. It got set aside and I just unearthed it yesterday. Anyway, whoever it was, here’s a pic: