TSA Manual: Obama ‘Transparency’ Only For Terrorists, Not Americans

Obama promised the most transparent and open administration ever.  For Americans, he has utterly failed to deliver anything remotely close:

From Newsweek back in July of this year:

As a senator, Barack Obama denounced the Bush administration for holding “secret energy meetings” with oil executives at the White House. But last week public-interest groups were dismayed when his own administration rejected a Freedom of Information Act request for Secret Service logs showing the identities of coal executives who had visited the White House to discuss Obama’s “clean coal” policies. One reason: the disclosure of such records might impinge on privileged “presidential communications.” The refusal, approved by White House counsel Greg Craig’s office, is the latest in a series of cases in which Obama officials have opted against public disclosure. Since Obama pledged on his first day in office to usher in a “new era” of openness, “nothing has changed,” says David -Sobel, a lawyer who litigates FOIA cases. “For a president who said he was going to bring unprecedented transparency to government, you would certainly expect more than the recycling of old Bush secrecy policies.”

What we’ll find is that Obama is FAR worse than Bush ever was.  Obama took Bush secrecy as his launching platform and then flew off to Mars with pathological and paranoid secrecy of his own.

How about this one?

From the Associated Press, just three days 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.

That’s right: Obama had a workshop on openness that was closed to the public.  He doesn’t actually want an open administration; he merely wants to have the appearance of one.  So we had a workshop on gimmickry on how to spin the truth and conceal reality.

And Obama’s paranoid secrecy gets even more pathetic and absurd from there.  He just got through invoking executive privilege for his freaking SOCIAL SECRETARY! Do you know how ridiculous that is?

Michael Scherer of Time points out how utterly a insane this paranoid invocation of executive privilege is in his article:

But Gibbs’ justification for Rogers’ absence — invoking the separation of powers — nonetheless raised some eyebrows among legal scholars. “I’d completely fall out of my chair if they invoked executive privilege with regards to a social secretary arranging a party,” said Mark J. Rozell, a public policy professor at George Mason, who recently wrote a book on executive privilege.

The writer at American Power notes:

I mean, c’mon, does the Social Secretary sit in on White House domestic and foreign policy briefings? It would sound simply absurd, but given the unprecedented corruption of this regime, nothing can be taken for granted.

Invoking executive privilege for a social secretary is beyond ridiculous.  Unless you think that the number of White House plate settings in the color “mauve” is highly sensitive confidential information that needs to be protected.

So let’s just let it be known: the Obama administration clearly has no intention of applying Obama’s promises of transparency and openness to the American people.

So who IS Obama going to apply his promises of transparency and openness to?

I’m glad you asked:

In a massive security breach, the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) inadvertently posted online its airport screening procedures manual, including some of the most closely guarded secrets regarding special rules for diplomats and CIA and law enforcement officers.

The most sensitive parts of the 93-page Standard Operating Procedures manual were apparently redacted in a way that computer savvy individuals easily overcame.

The document shows sample CIA, Congressional and law enforcement credentials which experts say would make it easy for terrorists to duplicate.

The improperly redacted areas indicate that only 20 percent of checked bags are to be hand searched for explosives and reveal in detail the limitations of x-ray screening machines.

The most terrorist-friendly administration in American history just got even friendlier.

On the bright side, at least conservative can’t say Obama isn’t being “transparent” and “open” anymore.  Terrorists are being allowed to learn everything they want as the veils are lifted.

What’s Worse: A Third Bush Term, Or A First Jeremiah Wright Term?

Honk your horn (or whatever the internet equivalent is) if you have had it up to your gills with the Democratic talking point, “A third Bush term” talking about John McCain’s run.

I’ve got the perfect knee jerk response for you: “Well, what’s worse, a third Bush term, or a first Jeremiah Wright term?”

You don’t like that one, Democrats? Well, then stop the nonsense comparing Bush’s two terms to a McCain presidency!

Read my keyboard-tapping fingers: John McCain is NOT George Bush.

I have an uncle who says of John McCain, “He’s the best Democrat of the bunch.”

George Bush is often called a “neo-con” (whatever the heck that is); anyone who has called John McCain a “neo-con” has sniffed too much glue for too many years to be susceptible to reality.

McCain has been called “a maverick Republican.” This is a code word to describe a guy who pretty much does his own darn thing.

Dennis Hastert had another nickname for him: “The undependable vote,” who always “allied with Democrats.” The former House Speaker said, “It just seems like everything we did, John was someplace else.”

In a January 31, 2008 interview with the Baltimore Sun, Speaker Hastert went on to say:

“It was McCain-Kennedy, it was McCain-Lieberman, it was McCain-Feingold on campaign finance reform,” Hastert said, noting Democratic co-sponsors. “He was against us on tax cuts and his form of immigration reform was to open the gates and let everybody in.”

Asked if he considered McCain a conservative, Hastert said, “In my opinion, he is not.”

“He is a moderate,” the former speaker said. “In almost everything he’s done, he’s done (things) against what mainstream Republicans thought and he’s allied with Democrats. He was always the undependable vote in the Senate.”

You might get the idea why I – as a conservative – am not exactly jumping up and down in my excitement for a John McCain presidency.

But let me ask you Democrats this: if John McCain really IS just like George Bush, then what the heck did you ever have against Bush?!?! Think about it: either you guys are every bit the lying demagogues I keep calling you, or else you are simply politically to the left of Hugo Chavez, and you deserve to have power the way Barney Fife deserved to have a bullet.

In his eternity-long career in the Senate, nobody EVER referred to John McCain as an arch conservative.

The fact of the matter is, this “third term of Bush” nonesense just proves how irrational Democrats are, and how they are perfectly willing to throw away substance for rhetoric.

Democrats are eager to tie McCain to an unpopular George Bush. Interestingly, the media will not allow any comparison of Senator Barack Obama to the Democrat-controlled Congress, which Gallop polls have said is as unpopular as any Congress has ever been since – well since the last time Democrats were in charge of Congress.

Let me quote a short, delicious piece that chews on that bone:

A new Gallup poll shows the Democrat controlled congress has the lowest approval ratings ever recorded. Only 18% of Americans approve of the job the Democrat congress is doing, and a whopping 76% disapprove. Worse than any Republican congress has ever had.

Almost twice as many Americans approve of the President as do congress. At 32%, President Bush’s approval rating seems stratospheric by comparison.

No congress has been this unpopular since—well, since the last time Democrats controlled congress in 1992 . No congress has ever scored lower, although they came close in 1979 with a 19% approval rating when—no surprise here—Democrats were also in control.

And for good reason…undermining the country and the military in wartime, unconstitutional power grabs, vote fraud, leaking classified documents, over 300 partisan witch-hunt investigations that have uncovered a grand total of zero illegal or unethical acts, a cornucopia of new taxes, even more secretive and unaccountable earmark spending, and corruption that makes Bob Ney look like a Catholic nun.

Now, as we contemplate the failed Democratic Congress that the media will not link to Sen. Barack Obama even though he is the most liberal of them all, I dare say that I can make a far better case for the statement that a Barack Obama presidency would be “a Jeremiah Wright first term.”

Tell me when John McCain called George Bush his spiritual advisor, or his uncle. Tell me how John McCain had a 20-plus year personal relationship with George Bush. Tell me that John McCain titled his book after a George Bush speech.

To the extent that there are superficial policy similarities between Bush and McCain, that is simply true because both men are – at least ostensibly – Republicans. But based on that logic, we could also call an Obama presidency “a second Jimmy Carter term.”

So, if Democrats want to keep talking about a third Bush term, let’s start talking about the possibility of the first presidential term of Jeremiah Wright. And then let’s start re-acquainting the public with the fact that the only thing that could be worse than a Republican in power would be a Democrat in power.