Patterico's Pontifications

5/16/2013

Compare and Contrast

Filed under: General — Patterico @ 8:08 pm



Obama:

Bush:

UPDATE: DRJ in comments reminds us of the moment Obama may have decided he had held his last umbrella on his own.

I forgot about that one. Makes sense!

Obama Goes from Bad to Worse to WAAAAAY Worse on Terrorism

Filed under: General — Patterico @ 6:28 pm



Bad: we have terrorists in the witness protection program.

Worse: they fly on commercial airlines and are not on watchlists:

The Justice Department failed to provide the names of some terrorists in the witness protection program to the center that maintains the government’s watch list used to keep dangerous people off airline flights, the department’s inspector general said in a report Thursday.

As a result of the department’s failure to properly share information, some in the witness protection program who were on the “no-fly” list were allowed to travel on commercial flights, the federal watchdog said.

“It was possible for known or suspected terrorists to fly on commercial airplanes in or over the United States and evade one of the government’s primary means of identifying and tracking terrorists’ movements and actions,” the report said.

How could it get worse than that, you ask? I’ll tell you. This is how it got WAAAAAAAY worse:

The government has lost track of some of them.

The U.S. Marshals Service lost two former participants in the federal Witness Security Program “identified as known or suspected terrorists,” according to the public summary of an interim Justice Department Inspector General’s report obtained by CNN.

The Marshals Service has concluded that “one individual was and the other individual was believed to be residing outside of the United States,” according to the summary.

A Justice Department official said in response to follow up questions about the matter by reporters that the pair had left the program years ago and had been accounted for.

Oh, that’s OK, then. They found them, and they know where they are, and they know who the other terrorists in the program are, and there is no chance that any of this could happen again, because now, they are totally on top of the situation.

After its audit, the IG’s office reported “the department did not definitively know how many known or suspected terrorists were admitted into the WITSEC program,” among other “significant issues concerning national security.”

. . . .

The IG’s office notified the Justice Department of these problems and in the middle of remedying them, marshals discovered they could not account for the two missing people.

Justice Department officials on Thursday would not say they knew specifically where the two individuals were.

Oh.

[Patterico does some comic Jon Stewart style mugging for the camera.]

Obama Has Marine Hold Umbrella Over His Head

Filed under: General — Patterico @ 6:08 pm



Hold your own umbrella there, cowboy:

UPDATE: Allahpundit:

Via Greg Hengler, I’m sure this has been done before by other presidents, simply because the optics are sufficiently bad that Team O wouldn’t have tried it without precedent to cite in its defense.

Yeah? Let’s see them prove it.

ABC News Headline: IRS Official in Charge During Tea Party Targeting Now Runs Health Care Office

Filed under: General — Patterico @ 5:55 pm



Let me repeat that, now that you have stopped rubbing your eyes:

IRS Official in Charge During Tea Party Targeting Now Runs Health Care Office

The Internal Revenue Service official in charge of the tax-exempt organizations at the time when the unit targeted tea party groups now runs the IRS office responsible for the health care legislation.

Sarah Hall Ingram served as commissioner of the office responsible for tax-exempt organizations between 2009 and 2012. But Ingram has since left that part of the IRS and is now the director of the IRS’ Affordable Care Act office, the IRS confirmed to ABC News today.

Incredible.

Everything Wrong with Jurassic Park in 3 Minutes

Filed under: General — Patterico @ 7:37 am



This is pretty funny.

The proofreader in me is most amused at the fact that the makers of the movie spelled Tyrannosaurus and Stegosaurus wrong.

Ted Rall’s Cartoon in Opposition (I Guess) to anti-SWATting Legislation

Filed under: General — Patterico @ 7:18 am



Ted Rall compared U.S. soldiers to suicide bombers; mocked widows of terror victims; profited from Pat Tillman’s death; assumed the voice of Iraqi soldiers talking about killing American soldiers; made leftist political hay out of the Nick Berg beheading; lied about lefty blogger vitriol; and sued a guy for making him appear to be a “rude, petty, self-absorbed writer/cartoonist” (which is what he is).

He’s also unfunny — except for the time he called me a “generic warblogger,” which was pretty funny.

I guess what I’m saying is, he’s the perfect cartoonist for the L.A. Times.

Now Rall is (as best as I can discern) mocking an anti-SWATting bill in his typically unfunny and pointless manner:

I don’t get the point, to be honest. Unless the point is that Ted Rall is worried about being outlawed.


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