RUSH: Open Line Friday, El Rushbo and Ron in Chilcoot, California. Great to have you on the program. Hi.

CALLER: Thanks Rush. Thanks for taking my call.

RUSH: You bet, sir.

CALLER: Hey, yesterday I had gotten up and walked over to my in-law store here in Chilcoot, a little family store, and my mother-in-law was telling me that they had just shut down a local lake right here in this town, called Frenchman Lake. I go, “What do you mean they shut it down?” Well, because of the government shutdown, they shut down the lake. I said, “Well, that’s not a federal lake. There’s no federal employees out there.”

The campgrounds are run by Thousand Trails personnel. So I said, “Well, that just isn’t right.” So I called my local supervisor and asked him what was going on, and he said that they had had a meeting that morning and because this lake was on federal property, they had to shut it down. They had the sheriff’s department go up there and kick everybody off the lake and was closing up the campgrounds. So I said, “Well, okay. Thanks for the information.”

RUSH: Wait, wait. Who made the decision to close the lake?

CALLER: The federal government.

RUSH: But it’s not their lake, even though it’s on federal land?

CALLER: It’s on federal property, and my supervisor told me that because they had a contract, the federal government had a contract with Thousand Trails to run the campgrounds, they shut it down. So I said, “Well, that just don’t seem right.” So I made some phone calls. I called my congressman there in DC, Doug LaMalfa —

RUSH: Wait a minute. Wait, ba, ba ba ba. How’d you get through. The phone calls are shut down because —

CALLER: Aw, now, here’s what I wanted to tell you. Doug LaMalfa’s phone number was open and running, and an individual answered the phone and I voiced my concerns and asked if they would pass it on to my congressman. They said, “You bet we will.” So then I called my two senators, and you know who they are. You’re right. Their phone numbers were shut down. So I called the White House. Their number was shut down. I said, “That’s odd.” So I called a couple of more congressmen’s in California that were Republicans, and they answered their phone, and I voiced my concerns.

RUSH: Wait a minute. So it sounds to me like if I call a Republican you can get through; if you call a Democrat, they got their phone shut down?

CALLER: That’s what it sounds like to me. But then, you know, this morning I’m watching TV and am noticing all the cemeteries shut down, the Normandy cemetery shut down over in France, and I got to thinking, “Okay, government jobs all shutting down. Why is Obamacare still up and running?”

RUSH: Mandatory spending.

CALLER: Mandatory spending?

RUSH: Mandatory spending does not get shut down in this kind of framework. You know what you really need to do if you really want that lake opened, you need to call Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker. Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker has simply refused to shut down the things in Wisconsin the federal government has ordered shut down. They’re paying for it as well. So there are a lot of parks in Wisconsin that the Feds tried to shut down and Scott Walker said, “Nope.

“You don’t have total authority here because we spend some money on ’em ourselves and we’re not shutting down.” If you go to Arizona, the federal government has shut down the Grand Canyon. You cannot go to the bottom of the biggest hole in the country ’cause they’ve shut it down. The State of Arizona wanted to pay their own money to reopen it. Obviously, it’s a tourist site. The federal government is denying permission for the state of Arizona to open the Grand Canyon.

The AP story on this is fascinating, and there’s no doubt in my mind that the Regime has a war on Arizona. The AP: “Arizona Governor Rejected in Offer to Reopen Grand Canyon — Arizona’s Republican leaders, known for picking fights with the federal government…” Oh, how horrible they are! Is that what Arizona Republican leaders are known for, “picking fights with the federal government”? How about Arizona Republican leaders are known for defending the Constitution in their state, AP?

Anyway, get this lede: “Arizona’s Republican leaders, known for picking fights with the federal government, are seething again, now that the Grand Canyon is closed because of the budget crisis in Washington.” Oh, yeah. The Republicans are seething. It’s all the fault of these Republican hotheads. Yeah. Seething. Governor Jan “Brewer wants the iconic park reopened and has offered to pay for it with state money, but her proposal was rejected Thursday by a park official who said that as long as the federal government remains shut down, such a plan isn’t an option.

“‘I appreciate the support and I thanked them for the offer, but it’s not an offer we can accept,’ said park superintendent Dave Uberuaga.” Why not? Why not, Dave? This has been done before during previous shutdowns, even in Arizona, 1995 and ’96. The Grand Canyon remained open in previous shutdowns in much the same way. The Regime doesn’t want these places open. They’ve got the World War II memorial chained shut. They put a chain on the fence at the World War II memorial.

They won’t let people go to the Grand Canyon. I mean, it’s being done on purpose, and the only reason is because Obama knows that snarky little news agencies or reporters like whoever wrote this, Bob Christie for the AP, are gonna write it and such a way that benefits them. Can you imagine the bad guys here, the seething angry bad guys, are the ones who want to open the Grand Canyon? And the people arbitrarily closing it, they’re the angels? They’re the good people? This is sick.