"I don't think that means what you think it means."

Only His Imperial Majesty Barack Hussein Obama would campaign for office on openness and transparency, and hold a "workshop" on government openness--that was closed to the public.

The AP reports:

PROMISES, PROMISES: A closed meeting on openness
By SHARON THEIMER, Associated Press Writer Sharon Theimer, Associated Press Writer 1 min ago

WASHINGTON – It's hardly the image of transparency the Obama administration wants to project: A workshop on government openness is closed to the public.

The event Monday for federal employees is a fitting symbol of President Barack Obama's uneven record so far on the Freedom of Information Act, a big part of keeping his campaign promise to make his administration the most transparent ever. As Obama's first year in office ends, the government's actions when the public and press seek information are not yet matching up with the president's words.

It seems as though every day serves up fresh proof that Obamaworld is all about form over substance.

*

Image of Mandy Patinkin as Inigo Montoya from http://www.mandypatinkin.net/main.shtml

GET OFF MY LAWN!!!

So, via SayUncle, RidefastShootStraight, and Marko, we learn of one Van T. Barfoot, COL, USA (RET). 

Then-Technical Sergeant Barfoot won the Congressional Medal of Honor for, among other things, destroying a Tiger Tank with a bazooka and a tommy gun.

Now, his Home Owners' Association says he has to take his flagpole down.

There is not actually a rule against having a flag pole in his community, but the HOA has decided that his is esthetically displeasing.

The Sussex Square HOA (Glenn Wilson, President:  (804) 741-9160) is obviously made up of fools, poltroons, and/or communists, as well as the usual HOA roster of petty dictators and fascists.

Now, I admit that, as an amateur radio operator I am less inclined than most to HOAs, as they often have rules against antennas, even if used for emergency communications.  I am willing to admit that a community with no governmental authority to tax to pay for maintenance of community property--i.e., club houses or green spaces in a development--will find it useful to form an association to raise dues to pay for same; similarly, a group of neighbors may want to be vigilant, and establish rules, about things like garbage collection, cleaning up after your dog, feeding wild animals, and the like.  (Although regulating bird feeders is getting close to the edge.)

Nevertheless, I am reminded of the story my parents told me of their first month in their subdivision in Ohio, and the first meeting of the nascent HOA.  The self-appointed Napoleon in charge started reading a list of proposed regulations, and when she got to the colors residents were allowed to paint their houses, a voice in the back of the room yelled "I'll paint my house whatever damned color I want!"  Turning around, Dad said he saw an Army bird colonel (OSU ROTC  Defense Logistic Agency?) stomping out with his wife behind him; Dad and Mom got up and followed, and the meeting fell apart.

I'm not sure it was the same self-appointed dictator, but a few weeks later Dad caught some guy dumping "beauty bark" at the base of his trees; upon being challenged, he gestured up the block and said "She had some left over, and said to put it on everyone else's trees, too."

"GET OFF MY LAWN!"

ADDED: A lot of chatter about forming a new political party.  "The Constitution Party", etc.   I think the "'Get Off My Lawn' Party--or maybe Coalition--has a ring to it...

GOOD, TOO! (UPDATED)

As a follow-up to the post immediately previous to this one, the Applebee's Restaurant in Bonney Lake, WA, will be hosting a fund raiser for the families of the slain Lakewood police officers on Saturday, December 12th.

From The Clue Meter

That's your ticket.  Print it out and take it in with you.

Note that, to the best of my knowledge, ONLY the Bonney Lake Applebee's is doing this, although there's certainly no reason why you can't ask at others...

UPDATE:   Walked into the local Lowe's hardware store earlier this evening, and they had flyers posted that they are an "official" collection point for donations for the families, "pay at any cash register."

Good!

Saw a tip on AR15.com, googled it and found this on the Seattle Weekly website:

Papa John's Gives Best Excuse to Order Pizza

By Maggie Savarino in News

Wednesday, Dec. 2 2009 @ 2:36PM

According to the Assistant Chief of the Tukwila Police Department, all Papa John's locations in King, Kitsap and Pierce county will donate 100% of their profits from Tuesday, December 8th and Wednesday the 9th next week to the families of the four slain Lakewood police officers.

I spoke with Matt Edwards, operating partner of the Rain City Pizza franchise of Papa John's in our area, and he said, "There hasn't even been a press release yet. There's three local franchises for Papa John's, and we had a conference call yesterday. We knew we wanted to do something, and we just put out some calls to different police stations and firehouses. The response has been overwhelming. This includes almost 40 locations, as far south as Lacey and as far north as Everett, the Eastside, all the way up to Snoqualmie."

Police officers and firemen have already volunteered to be at the various locations with lights ablaze and ladders up, trying to attract attention for the event. "Many of our locations have already received phone calls to place orders," said Edwards. "I was at lunch today in my logo garb, and I had someone approach me to shake my hand and thank you."

Each Papa John's location will be prepared to take additional donations for the families as well. Visit HERE for the Papa John's nearest you.

And, in case there are any snoops for the FTC here, I don't get so much as a free slice of pepperoni for this, and don't you have something better to do than check up on an obscure blogger applauding a business doing good?

QOTD, 12/03/2009

A result that you're not looking for is not a good search result.

No, actually, that was Scott Rubin of Google, quoted in a CNN piece, trying to wiggle out of the libtard outrage over the fact that last week, if you googled "Obama", your results included what was termed a "racist image" of His Imperial Majesty's wife.


But if you answered "Who were climate researchers at East Anglia University" or "Code Pink talking to Afghan women", that would also be acceptable. 


H/t to Tamara.

Even a Blind Pig...

In an email from Liberty Belle today, describing the delivery of rubber chickens to democratic senators as a warning that "the chickens are coming home to roost in 2010 and 2012 and that the American people will hold them accountable if they fail to listen", she also mentioned this fact:

McCain's Motion:
Today the Senate will vote on John McCain's motion to recommit which will send the bill back to the Finance Committee and force them to figure out how to pay for their debacle without cutting Medicare by a half trillion dollars. Let's push this bill back into committee! When you call and fax our senators, tell them to vote for McCain's motion.

I was not happy when McCain was announced as the GOP candidate  for President; he may boast of his "maverick" ways, working with the Jackass Party against his own, but I consider him flaky at best, a RINO to say the least.  The way his minions treated Sarah Palin confirmed that opinion.

Nevertheless, this motion is a good one and he is to be congratulated.

Word of the Day

"TWAP"

By way of Instapundit, we learn that a new series of posters has appeared in Los Angeles.

In case you can't make that out, it's His Imperial Majesty Barack Hussein Obama in a jester's cap, with the single word "TWAP" below it.

They seem to think the meaning is a deep mystery, but it took me all of 5 seconds to come up with "The Worst American President."

I also have to wonder if this is a set up, because a Google Image search for "TWAP" returned a lot of hits for tags that read "I have xxx and am lost", where "xxx" was replaced with autism, or Alzheimers, or similar conditions.

Here's another blog that seems to be soliciting definitions, but missing (to me) the most obvious...

Dead Dirtbag

Maurice Clemmons shot by Seattle PD officer in the night.

KOMO

Seattle Times

Seattle PI.

Several people have been arrested for providing him assistance.

Outrageous, if true

A post at Rantburg took me to Stormbringer, where I learned of rumors in the Special Operations Community that, far from approving of the killing of the Somali pirates and rescue of Captain Phillips of the Maersk Alabama by US Navy SEALS, His Imperial Majesty Barack Hussein Obama and his minions threw up roadblocks to progress, which were overridden without authority by the commander on the scene, and that the charging of SEALS for the war crime of giving a tango High Value Target a fat lip is in retaliation.

Now, I happen to know from personal experience that Special Operations-types are not above spinning tales, or of tin-foil hat-worthy conspiracy theories.  And it would be really, really stupid for the National Command Authority to engage in petty pissing contests of this nature with the military, especially with the Special Operations community.

Unfortunately,  I have seen little to assure me that this White House is not, in fact, occupied by a bunch of immature, whiny little brats who would gladly bring down the whole nation if it suited them to throw a temper tantrum.

As for three SEALs being "witnesses but not charged", Occams Razor tells me that those charged told the investigators to pound sand, but the other three didn't see what the big deal was; so Petty Office Jones belted the guy, so what?  The politicians in the chain of command took that ball and ran with it...

ICS--In The News

Anyone involved these days in any kind of community disaster or emergency preparedness or response in the US or Canada has been exposed to some degree to the Incident Command System.

The Tacoma News-Tribune has a pretty good article on it in the context of the search for cop-murderer scumbag Maurice Clemmons.