Patterico's Pontifications

6/14/2014

Lois Lerner Emails Were Archived

Filed under: General — Patterico @ 8:40 pm



The testimony is on video.

Oh, also, this:

And this:

Alternatively, I guess you could get them from the NSA. They have everything, right?

President Obama ‘Lights A Fire’

Filed under: General — Dana @ 7:30 pm



[guest post by Dana]

President Obama delivered a speech to UC Irvine’s graduates today in Orange County. His admonition to the class of 2014 was to fight global warming and not allow themselves to be influenced by “a stubborn status quo, people determined to stymie your efforts to bring about change.”

He hoped to “light a fire” underneath the young people so they would then go out and help save our ‘fevered planet’.

“When President Kennedy set us on a course for the moon, there were a number of people who made a serious case that it would be too expensive, that it would take too long,” he said. “But nobody ignored the science. I don’t remember anyone saying the moon wasn’t there, or that it was made of cheese.”

The president also stated that he believed young people have an obligation to act to save the planet because the overwhelming majority of the scientific community has embraced the science behind the warming planet and attributed it to manmade causes.

Further,

“The question is not whether we need to act. The overwhelming judgment of science, accumulated and measured and reviewed over decades, has put that to rest,” Obama said. “The question is whether we have the will to act before it’s too late.”

Climate change deniers were also addressed:

“There are some who duck the question by saying, ‘Hey, I’m not a scientist.’ Let me translate that for you: what that means is, ‘I accept that manmade climate change is real, but if I admit it, I’ll be run out of town by a radical fringe that thinks climate science is a liberal plot.”

And, he compared the potential for innovation and economic opportunities provided by the space race launched during the Kennedy era with those now provided because of global warming.

“We need scientists to design new fuels,” he said. “We need farmers to help grow them. We need engineers to invent new technologies. We need entrepreneurs to sell those technologies. We need workers to operate assembly lines that hum with high tech, zero-carbon components. We need builders to hammer into place the clean-energy age.”

“We can do this,” he exhorted the assembled students, but also speaking to the legions of other graduates streaming from U.S. universities this month to start their careers. “We can make a difference. You can make a difference. And the sooner you do, the better.”

And that’s our president, lighting a fire.

–Dana

Are the Cartels Using the U.S Government to Deliver Their Footsoldiers Into the United States?

Filed under: General — Patterico @ 1:41 pm



The answer is “yes.” As bad as the situation at the Texas border seems, it’s worse than you think. Many of the “children” being given a free pass into the U.S. are gang members:

Border Patrol officials struggling to keep up with the increasing number of minors illegally crossing the Mexican border are not turning away persons with known gang affiliations. Chris Cabrera, vice president of the National Border Patrol Council Local 3307 in the Rio Grande Valley, explained that a Border Patrol agent he represents helped reunite a teenage gang member with his family in the United States. Cabrera notes the young member of Mara Salvatrucha (MS-13), a transnational criminal gang, had no criminal record in the U.S., but asks, “If he’s a confirmed gang member in his own country, why are we letting him in here?”

“I’ve heard people come in and say, ‘You’re going to let me go, just like you let my mother go, just like you let my sister go. You’re going to let me go as well, and the government’s going to take care of us,’” Cabrera says. “Until we start mandatory detentions, mandatory removals, I don’t think anything is going to change. As a matter of fact, I think it’s going to get worse.”

Art Del Cueto, president of the National Border Patrol Council Local 2544 in Tucson, says agents who recognize the gang-affiliated tattoos of minors crossing the border must treat them the same as anybody else. He says these people are afforded the same rights provided to anyone crossing the border.

May I ask why?

Having asked the question, I will provide the obvious answer: Obama is so invested in the idea of allowing illegals into the country that he really doesn’t care if any of them are gang members or even footsoldiers for the cartels. More illegals means a better chance for amnesty — and even if he doesn’t get that, all these people will one day have kids, who will be citizens, who will vote Democrat.

It’s all about the permanent Democrat majority.

TWO MORE POINTS ABOUT THE CARTELS:

ONE: Obama says people are fleeing cartel violence. But this report says that TV stations in Guatemala are broadcasting: “Go to America with your child, you won’t be turned away.” There is a video at the link showing a mother who followed that advice — and she ran into Zetas who threatened her while making the journey with her six-year-old child. She was not escaping cartel violence; she encountered cartel violence while chasing the promise of amnesty for her child — amnesty that she believed had been offered up by Obama.

TWO: I told you yesterday about a December 2013 order by a federal judge in Texas, who accused Obama’s Department of Homeland Security of completing conspiracies by the cartels to smuggle children across the border. The judge noted: “Time and again this court has been told by representatives of the government and the defense that cartels control the entire smuggling process.” The judge further noted that the government was completing human smuggling conspiracies, by taking children whom cartels were smuggling across the border, and delivering those children to their intended destination. “In each case, the DHS completed the criminal conspiracy, instead of enforcing the laws of the United States, by delivering the minors to the custody of the parent illegally living in the United States.” The judge noted that a private person would be prosecuted for doing what the government was regularly doing.

My point here is: the cartels know the U.S. Government is doing this. So if they can find willing 16- or 17-year-old footsoldiers — and they can — the cartels can deliver those footsoldiers across the border, with the assistance of the U.S. Government.

I have absolutely no doubt that this is happening. Drug cartels are using Obama’s policies to deliver footsoldiers into our country. It is against U.S. law and it is happening thanks to Obama. He does not belong in the office he occupies.

UPDATE: Here is an embed of the video referred to in the post:

Al Qaeda Affiliated Terrorists About to Get Their Own (Oil Rich) State

Filed under: General — Patterico @ 11:48 am



What could possibly go wrong?

“Baghdad is going to be overrun. The Green Zone is going down,” a U.S. intelligence official told Fox News Thursday.

The comment comes as the security situation in Iraq quickly deteriorates, with large swaths of the embattled country now controlled by a deadly Al Qaeda affiliated extremist group.

As our pal Morgen Richmond put it:

Making matters worse, Obama has not only been refusing to fight the war, but has been sending weapons to the Iraqis — who then surrender and give up those weapons to ISIS.

One day — once again — we will be fighting Islamic extremists wielding American weapons.

Veterans Sacrificed On The Altar Of Green Energy

Filed under: General — Dana @ 10:21 am



[guest post by Dana]

Even as veterans died waiting for appointment times at the VA in Phoenix, millions of dollars that could have saved lives was instead being poured into Green Energy at the facility.

[E]each and every year, from 2009 to 2011, the Phoenix VA Health Care System put in solar panels. The solar panels at the Carl T. Hayden VA in Phoenix cost $20 million.

Disgustingly, this was an official mandate:

In 2009, Obama had signed a Green Energy executive order. Secretary of Veterans Affairs Eric Shinseki announced that “in order to continue providing Veterans with the best health care and benefit services, VA must adapt to climate change.”

South Texas also had Green Energy as their priority:

At some South Texas facilities vets had to wait 85 days for a primary care appointment and 55 days for a mental health appointment with “a worst-in-the-nation, 145-day average wait for new patients seeking specialist care.”

Meanwhile the South Texas Veterans Health Care System installed a 1.7 MW solar PV system.

The Amarillo VA Health Care System had the third longest wait times for mental health appointments in the country. Its Thomas E. Creek office complained of a lack of resources. Meanwhile $10 million was spent on solar panels for a facility that sees 25,000 patients a year.

Hawaii (with the longest wait list) spent between $1 and $2 million dollars on Green Energy projects as veterans died because of obscene wait times. While there was no time to see veterans at these facilities, there was always time to make sure the mandate of Green Energy was met.

But it wasn’t just the VA hospitals that were recipients of the Green Energy treatment and dollars.

The Massachusetts National Cemetery got a 50 kW wind turbine so the dead veterans would have all the sustainable energy they needed.

A VA press release about the cemetery turbine boasted that “under the leadership of Secretary Eric K. Shinseki… VA is transitioning into a 21st century organization that better serves America’s Veterans.”

Shinseki arrived in person at the dedication ceremony to flip the switch on the cemetery wind turbine. Resting in their graves were men who had died because of his policies.

“Nationally, VA continues to expand its investment in renewable sources of energy to promote our Nation’s energy independence, save taxpayer dollars, and improve care for our Veterans and their families,” he said.

Disgraceful. It is reprehensible that the VA’s priority was to invest huge sums of money into renewable energy rather than renewing the energy of dying veterans to ensure that they might live another day.

In Shinseki’s words:

We are investing in clean energy and renewable energy projects at our national cemeteries to reduce our environmental footprint.

The transition toward these renewable energy sources helps VA continue to be a leading example of going green in the federal government.

This was their priority: reduce our environmental footprint by reducing the living footprint of veterans by their deaths. Necessary sacrifices.

–Dana


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