Who wins when bureaucraps try to mess with some WWII vets?
The Sun Herald reports:
GULFPORT -- Ninety-one World War II veterans were greeted at Gulfport/Biloxi International Airport with an enthusiastic welcome by their neighbors Tuesday evening. Water cannon plumes arched over the runway on their approach, and they received a salute by Marines and U.S. Navy personnel, city leaders and thousands of others at the terminal who came to the Gulfport-Biloxi International Airport to welcome them home.
The veterans returned about 7:45 p.m. from Washington aboard the sixth Mississippi Gulf Coast Honor Flight, after a day of viewing the World War II memorial and other monuments, and basking in the spotlight of national media attention.
Nearly 200 veterans and their guardians were met with barricades earlier Tuesday as they arrived at the World War II Memorial. The federal government shutdown closed all national parks, but it didn't stop the veterans from visiting the memorial created in their honor.
U.S. Rep. Steven Palazzo met them at the memorial with a plan to move the barricade. Palazzo, who cast votes that helped lead to the shutdown, and U.S. Reps. Richard Nugent of Florida, Louis Gohmert of Texas and Spencer Bachus of Alabama walked through the crowd of more than 100 veterans from Mississippi and Iowa, as well as onlookers and reporters, to cut the yellow police tape and move the barricades to let the veterans enter the memorial they had flown from Gulfport to see.
Palazzo spokeswoman Laura Chambers said the National Park Service refused to move the barricades and said Palazzo and other congressmen would have to move them at their own risk.
"They would not remove the barrier, but they would not stand in our way. We still don't know if there will be repercussions," Chambers said. "The congressman said it's better to ask forgiveness than permission."
"This is the best civil disobedience we've seen in Washington in a long time," U.S. Rep. Bill Huizenga of Michigan said in front of the Mississippi Tower of the World War II memorial.
The entire Honor Flight group was able to view the memorial, though the water fountains were turned off.
Park Service spokeswoman Carol Johnson said the agency closed the memorial again after the Honor Flight veterans left.
She said it will be up to the National Park Police how to react if veterans keep trying to visit the memorial erected in their honor.... Rest of article
The Ace of Spades provided more coverage:
Before we go any further, let us note once again how contrived it is to shut down entryways to a wide open space out in the middle of a park.
This is not a building, like a museum, that has doors and staffers and guides. This is ****ing scenery.
And yet the erected artificial barriers to block people from walking through outdoor scenery.
Voila! Now we can pretend a memorial standing unsupervised out in the open is a "National Park" or "Open Air Museum" and close it to pedestrian traffic (and people can in fact just walk through this thing in their normal transversing of the city).
Now, that out of the way: They then took the next step.
When they were informed that the Honor Flight was on the way, and that they should make one exception for the veterans of WWII and open up the artificial barriers they had erected to make a political point, they refused.
"Palazzo, a Gulf War Marine veteran who has participated in all five of the Honor Flights, blames the White House for making it harder on veterans and playing politics. “At first I thought it was a huge bureaucratic oversight,” Palazzo told The Daily Caller, “but having talked with the officials I can’t help but think this was politically motivated. Honor Flights, which bring WWII veterans to the nation’s memorials, are planned a year in advance and cost anywhere between $80,000 to $100,000. How low can you get with playing politics over our nation’s veterans?"
There are no "schedule hours" for scenery. The monument does not close on weekends, or at night.
Because it's scenery.
It is a feature of the landscape.
And yet these See You Next Tuesdays attempted to create a fake "entryway" into a landscape feature so they could block it off and say "the Building is closed."
And then they doubled down.
Note The Lack of Walls and Gates and Barriers: From @slublog, here's what we're talking about.
Look at the gigantic "entrance" -- I don't know if you can call it an "entrance" when it's just a huge area of No Walls out in the middle of a grassy lawn.
Think about all the work it took to turn an open air landscape feature into a blocked off Instant National Park Which Is Now Shut Down You Guys. Rest of post
Think we are being too hard on the bureaucraps? Here is what the government's own website says:
The public may visit the World War II Memorial 24 hours a day. Rangers are on duty to answer questions from 9:30 a.m. to 11:30 p.m. daily and to provide interpretive programs every hour on the hour from 10:00 a.m. until 11:00 p.m.
In other words, the feds went out of their way to block access to the park.
19 comments:
It is not contrived to shut down the WWII Memorial.
When hundreds if not thousands of people tour a monument each day, the park service has to clean up behind them each day so there won't be permanent damage.
There is also a kiosk at the park that is operated by the service where there is a computer program to find information about those who served , their rank and where they served.This is a important feature that could be broken.
We have a park service for a reason and when they are not on duty protecting our parks and monuments, those parks and monuments can be damaged, even unintentionally.
This political ploy on the part of the very ones responsible for shutting down our parks by furloughing those whose jobs it is to keep our parks beautiful was the height of hypocrisy and gall.
You may be right, 7:08, but there are 533 people in DC who wish they would have been on one end of that barricade.
Judging from what I've seen. An incompetent Congressman who couldn't get good press any way other than this publicity stunt. Honor Flight is doing great things, but the operation has always screamed political PR stunt to this Coastie.Doing the right things for the wrong reasons, Honor Flight.
October 2, 2013 at 7:08 AM = laughable
Democrats in the House voted against funding the Veterans Administration, the District of Columbia and National Parks, including the Holocaust Memorial Museum and Smithsonian.
And you want to talk about games? Let’s see,
1) the White House now claims that it needed to erect barricade at the WWII Memorial to keep out visitors, including the WWII veterans, because parks service personnel know how to perform CPR. The WWII memorial is open 24 hours a day, but only staffed part of the day, which means that for much of the time it’s open there are no parks service personnel there at all. Such much for the bogus CPR defense.
2) Obama and the Democrats also have shut the Lincoln Memorial.
and here’s the kicker: the Lincoln Memorial was open during the 1995 “shutdown”. Hmmmm.
And by the way, the AP got busted yesterday when they did this big interview with a man who was talking about how the gov slowdown was affecting him—he was id’d, by picture id, as a union boss guy. another oops
And while the Dems are trying their best to scream about the guv slowdown, they are feverishly at work on trying to shove immigration bill thru.
and one last thing, Harry Reid, on the Senate floor, declared that they do not serve their constituency, they are there to serve government. 'We Support the Federal government. That's Our Job. That's What We Do.'
Call it a publicity stunt if you must 8:21 AM but screwing with the vets is a damn stupid move by the Kenyan.
Nothing will get vast swaths of this country more pissed off faster than disrespecting veterans.
None of you empty trash or clean your floors, do you?
And, you all leave your computers on the back porch,too,apparently.
And, then there's the toilet areas to consider.
Have any of you yahoos even been to the Washington? Have you never noticed how those areas look in the morning as opposed to late afternoon.
I can just hear the spin for what would happen if the parks weren't closed ( which is automatic , jerks) and we have to spend tax dollars to repair the damage.
If you don't have a clue how government works, please shut the hell up!
8:51 am doesn't for sure or else would know that " voting against" was part of the "cover" for the extremists. Vote against those things or vote to kill Obamacare.
Kingfish - Did you see this?
http://www.wnd.com/2013/09/new-mayor-sets-sights-on-black-nation/
October 2, 2013 at 10:07 AM = perpetual apologist Dem troll
10:49 am=apologist Tea Party troll
REAL conservatives as opposed to Tea Party anarchists know this shut down is STUPID because they can add and subtract!!!!!!
WWI memorial has no barricades from Barry. White House knew WWII vets were on their way, put barricades up for it. Hmmm. Smile…smile for the camera!
Minnesota’s Obamacare exchange, unencrypted file to wrong person, left 2,400 people’s private information out there, including social security numbers, names, addresses, as well as other personal data.
Britain’s Serious Fraud Office is investigating Serco, a British company. It overbilled its government clients $80 million for criminal electronic monitoring devices (around 1 in 6 of the criminals were already in prison, had left the country, weren’t required to wear a device, were dead). UK’s Ministry of Justice asked the Fraud Office to consider criminal charges against the company. WHY IS THIS RELEVANT? In July, US Dept of Health and Human Services gave Serco a $1.25 Billion contract to review and process paper insurance applications for….Obamacare’s federally operated state exchanges.
And the absolute horror of the situation, the white house announced that they would actually have to survive with only 15 people caring for the house and the Obama family---down from 90 people. Poor FLOTUS said she couldn't send out as many tweets because of the shutdown (twitter is free and unless you're paying someone to do it for you....)
Kick down the Barry-cades.
Oopsie, here's another Serco boo boo.
less than a year ago, Seedco agreed to settle a civil fraud lawsuit “for faking at least 1,400 of 6,500 job placements under a $22.2 million federally funded contract with the city.” Seedco forked over a $1.7 million settlement in December 2012. Fed’s have press release on it at http://www.justice.gov/usao/nys/pressreleases/December12/SEEDCOSettlmentPR.php
Guess who hired Seedco a few months later? Yep, that’s right, they are now your local federal Obamacare “navigator” workers.
So, please, step up and hand over your name, address, ss number, medical history, etc.
Stand firm, Repubs. Right now is the best you have looked in years because you are fighting for us. You shrink and give up, we give up on you.
Some ‘essential government employees’ in the retro media (formerly the main stream media) were real sketchy on the reporting, talking about kids with cancer allegedly being turned away from National Institutes for Health clinical trials.
and for the rest of the story….. Barry and Reid are now killing the “Research for Lifesaving Cures Act”. Obama said he would veto it. So lets see. Veterans, children with cancer.
Keep it up, Repubs. Item by item going thru the process shows exactly what Barry, Reid, and the rest of the dems are made of.
and just to put this in a real clear perspective: Barry dispatched seven furloughed folks to the WWII monument to block access with the barry-cades. It must be real important because that’s 2 more people than the state dept had in Benghazi.
Keep it up?
You are willing to hurt a still struggling economy and risk destroying the full faith and credit of the US and make sure the GOP is not a national party in this decade over funding Obamacare when it's very simple to change parts of Obamacare to get a decent PRIVATE insurance plan?
Losing our bond rating wasn't enough for you?
You're worried about " Barry", but not worried about a guy born in Canada whose father fought with Fidel and divorced Rafael Theodore's mother? Of course, Rafael's dad didn't like Fidel either and so managed to get himself and his family tortured. Trying to bring down government seems to run in the family.
The only barricades that should be up are barricades around the Capitol....with the President and ALL congressmen/congresswomen kept inside...with no pay...until they reach an agreement. (Biden needs to be kept barricaded 24/7 for the good of the whole country.)
Coastie @10/2, 8:21a - what possible 'wrong reasons' could there be for taking WWII veterans to D.C. (at no cost to the veteran)
to visit the WWII Memorial and Arlington National Cemetery? 'Screamed political stunt' WHAT?
The time,money,organization, and dedication it obviously takes to plan an Honor Flight has to be enormous.
It was my privilege to be a Guardian on this sixth (and originally final) Honor Flight. The veterans were, rightly so, treated like royalty. The Honor Flight crew and medical staff (much better trained than any park service personnel)were wonderful.
To see the joy - and, yes, tears - on the faces of these veterans is something that will stay with me for the rest of my life. And by the way - I'm not a coastie, but live in the Jax metro area.
There were so many applications for this final Honor Flight that an encore Honor Flight has now been scheduled for November. Pray for their safe flight and, hopefully, there will be no barricades to impede their visit.
Political PR stunt indeed.
http://blog.gulflive.com/mississippi-press-living/2013/10/honor_flight_announces_5k_with.html
THANK YOU, 3:53, for making me aware of this article. Though I will not be able to participate in this 5K fundraiser, my check will go out in tomorrow's mail.
For those of you who may not want to search for the article, here's what it is about:
The MS Gulf Coast Honor Flight organization is currently short of of contributions to fully fund the Encore/final Honor Flight scheduled for November 5th and an Honor Flight reunion (11/23)which is for all WWII veterans, guardians, volunteers, and sponsors from all seven Honor Flights. $15,000 is needed to ensure that every veteran who wants to participate is able to do so.
To raise funds for these missions, a 5K Walk/Run will be held Saturday, October 19 at the Air National Guard Combat Readiness Training Center in Gulfport.
Registration fee is $25...$20 for vets, retirees, & active service members. Congressman Palazzo is the race's honorary chairman.
Checks should be made payable to:
MGC Honor Flight/Kiwanis
Div. 14 Foundation
2000 24th Ave.
Gulfport, MS 39501
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