Island Dweller sent this communication by some primitive form of “electronic mail,” which was most refreshingly quaint:

Most illustrious Czar

The following excerpts were taken from a recent blog on Michelle Obama’s White House garden. For some reason, this struck me as illustrative of so much of this administration: taxpayer support for personal pet projects, window dressing to make some program that is having trouble appear to be operating just fine, and the unreported or barely-noticed labor of a small army of underlings being made to appear the work of an Immaculated One. Please enjoy the article’s excerpts.

Obama Foodorama blog
Friday, 10-11-13
Washington, DC – The first government shutdown in seventeen years has had a dramatic impact on First Lady Michelle Obama’s world-famous Kitchen Garden on the South Lawn, currently bursting with more than thirty kinds of vegetables, including Presidential pumpkins awaiting harvest just in time for Halloween.
In the eleven days since the shutdown began on Oct. 1, the pounds and pounds of ripe organic bounty have gone to waste. The vegetables filling the 1,500 square-foot plot are now rotting away on the vines and in the boxed beds, thanks to the mandate for “minimal maintenance” placed on the skeletal crew of National Park Service gardeners who remain on duty at 1600 [Pennsylvania].
The First Lady has been credited with a national spike in home and school gardening, but her Kitchen Garden is to a backyard plot as a Bentley is to a VW Bug. It is usually curated with obsessive precision, a masterpiece of living installation art. [Emphasis added]

Yeah, I know this is the White House, but let’s stop claiming credit as the Master Gardener here and give credit where it’s due – to professionals (on the government payroll, by the way), and “volunteers” from other agencies who really tend the garden, rather than the First Lady.

Right now, gardeners are allowed just two activities: Watering and removing trash . . . Also off limits: Trimming, fertilizing, transplanting, and mowing the grass . . .
What is standard practice in the average citizen’s home garden typically does not go on in Mrs. Obama’s vegucation showcase. Mature plants are routinely socked into the beds to keep the garden looking lush and full. These are grown in a National Park Service greenhouse that East Wing aides only half-jokingly refer to as “top secret,” or donated by a certain local farmer who has offered growing advice.

Before the shutdown, brown and yellow leaves were immediately whisked away. Diseased or bug-infested plants were removed rather than treated.

(Absolutely – the czarina and I do the exact same thing here at the isba).

But hard times have arrived, thanks to Mr. Boehner and the shutdown/slimdown/whatever:

The stepping stone pathways can barely be seen between the bed boxes….

Calamity!

The First Lady’s plot, which the East Wing says had a start-up cost of less than $200 for seeds and other amendments, has grown “thousands of pounds” of food in the last four years, according to Kass (spokesperson).

Yes, some of the food has been given to a local food bank or otherwise donated to the less fortunate – however, a pretty good percentage, grown with the labor of the NPS and WH staff (not the First Lady, despite what the MSM says) remains at the WH.

Just like so much of this regime – a false front on a pet project – or a multibillion-dollar medical administration system – that a little digging (no pun intended) discloses isn’t quite as it seems.

ID

The White House garden is alleged to have cost $180, which was funded from private sources at no cost to the tax payer.

What a surprise then that within weeks of its unveiling, photos emerged of government-paid landscapers and gardeners operating rototillers, weeding, raking, and tending this garden. Some claims exist that these guys do this work in their spare time, but since eyewitnesses spotted them performing this work during normal working hours, it probably isn’t true.

Let us say it is true: that the garden more than pays for itself (it is true that the White House kitchens use produce from the garden, which offsets purchases at food suppliers) and that the small platoon of caretakers do this work on their lunch hour at no cost to taxpayers.

So why then was the garden falling apart during the shutdown? Well, there are three possibilities:

1. Political theater, like nearly everything else. But no one has been calling attention to the garden, which makes for bad theater.
2. The whole idea this garden pays for itself is a lie, which is possibly the case. We will know if this is true: now that the shutdown is over, we can see if the caretaking resumes.
3. Michelle Obama has become bored with the whole idea and is letting it die. Certainly if this is the case, we will see it continue to get worse.

Either possibility is a bad admission of failure.

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.