President Barack Obama may warn that carbon dioxide is causing global warming, but his flight to Paris to join other world leaders at the United Nations climate summit emitted more CO2 than driving 72 cars for a year.
Obama’s Paris jaunt will send more CO2 into the atmosphere than 31 American homes‘ energy usage for an entire year. The president’s trip is equivalent to burning 368,331 pounds of coal or 797 barrels of oil, according to the Environmental Protection Agency’s carbon footprint calculator.
Just one leg of the president’s Sunday trip to Paris emitted 189 tons of CO2 after travelling 3,855 miles and burning 19,275 gallons of jet fuel, according to Daily Caller News Foundation calculations based on past presidential flights. Obama’s return flight to Washington, D.C., would double the amount of CO2 burned to 378 tons — more than 72 cars driving for a year.
Obama has been criticized for past plane rides in the name of fighting global warming. Earlier this year, Obama flew down to the Everglades for Earth Day and was hammered for potentially damaging the fragile eco-system and costing taxpayers more than $866,000.
World leaders will meet Monday in Paris to kick off the U.N.’s 21st attempt to get countries to sign onto a global agreement to cut carbon dioxide emissions. Obama wants signing a climate treaty to be a part of his presidential legacy, and administration staff have been working tirelessly to convince other countries, like China, to agree to emissions cuts. (Read more from “Obama’s Trip to the UN ‘Global Warming’ Summit Emits More CO2 Than Driving 72 Cars for a Year” HERE)
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.png00Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2015-12-01 01:09:532016-04-11 10:55:37Obama’s Trip to the UN ‘Global Warming’ Summit Emits More CO2 Than Driving 72 Cars for a Year
US President Barack Obama Thursday delivered a Thanksgiving message in which he compared modern refugees to the pilgrims whom the holiday celebrates, urging Americans to open their arms to the potential immigrants.
“Nearly four centuries after the Mayflower set sail, the world is still full of pilgrims — men and women who want nothing more than the chance for a safer, better future for themselves and their families,” Obama said in his weekly address, referring to the boat on which the pilgrims arrived in the New World.
Thanksgiving was first celebrated by the group after fleeing religious persecution in England. For many Americans, it has become a family-oriented day marked with an enormous meal of roast turkey, an assortment of side dishes and a slice or two of pie.
“I’ve been touched by the generosity of the Americans who’ve written me letters and emails in recent weeks, offering to open their homes to refugees fleeing the brutality of ISIL,” Obama said, referring to the Islamic State group.
Immigration has taken center stage as an important issue ahead of the 2016 presidential race but reached fever pitch following the deadly Paris attacks earlier this month. (Read more from “Obama Compares Syrian Refugees to Pilgrims in Thanksgiving Address” HERE)
Obama recently lashed out against the idea of giving preference to Christian refugees, describing it as “shameful.” “That’s not American. That’s not who we are. We don’t have religious tests to our compassion,” loftily added the American president.
Accordingly, the administration is still determined to accept 10,000 more Syrian refugees, almost all of whom will be Muslim, despite the fact that some are ISIS operatives, while many share the ISIS worldview (as explained below).
Yet right as Obama was grandstanding about “who we are,” statistics were released indicating that “the current [refugee] system overwhelmingly favors Muslim refugees. Of the 2,184 Syrian refugees admitted to the United States so far, only 53 are Christians while 2,098 are Muslim.”
Aside from the obvious—or to use Obama’s own word, “shameful”—pro-Muslim, anti-Christian bias evident in these statistics, there are a number of other troubling factors as well.
For starters, the overwhelming majority of “refugees” being brought into the United States are not just Muslim, but Sunnis—the one Muslim sect that the Islamic State is not persecuting and displacing. After all, ISIS—and most Islamic terrorist groups (Boko Haram, Al Qaeda, Al Shabaab, Hamas, et al)—are all Sunnis. Even Obama was arguably raised a Sunni.
In this context, how are Sunnis “refugees”? Who are they fleeing? Considering that the Obama administration defines refugees as people “persecuted by their government,” most of those coming into the U.S. either aided or at least sympathized with the jihad against Assad (even if they only revealed their true colors when the time was right).
Simply put, some 98% of all refugees belong to the same Islamic sect that ISIS does. And many of them, unsurprisingly, share the same vision—such as the “refugees” who recently murdered some 120 people in France, or the “refugees” who persecute Christian minorities in European camps and settlements. (None of this should be surprising considering that Al Azhar—the Sunni world’s most prestigious university of Islamic law, which co-hosted Obama’s 2009 “A New Beginning” speech—was recently exposed as teaching and legitimizing all the atrocities that ISIS commits.)
As for those who are being raped, slaughtered, and enslaved based on their non-Sunni religious identity—not by Assad, but by so-called “rebel” forces (AKA jihadis)—many of them are being denied refuge in America.
Thus, although Christians were approximately 10 percent of Syria’s population in 2011, only one percent has been granted refuge in America. This despite the fact that, from a strictly humanitarian point of view—and humanitarianism is the chief reason being cited in accepting refugees, Obama’s “compassion”—Christians should receive priority simply because they are the most persecuted group in the Middle East.
At the hands of the Islamic State, which supposedly precipitated the migrant crisis, Christians have been repeatedly forced to renounce Christ or die; they have been enslaved and raped; and they have had more than 400 of their churches desecrated and destroyed.[i]
ISIS has committed no such atrocities against fellow Sunnis, they who are being accepted into the U.S. in droves. Nor does Assad enslave, behead, or crucify people based on their religious identity (despite Jeb Bush’s recent, and absurd, assertions).
[Listen to Restoring Liberty’s recent interview with the author:]
Obama should further prioritize Christian refugees simply because his own policies in the Middle East have directly exacerbated their plight. Christians and other religions minorities did not flee from Bashar Assad’s Syria, Saddam Hussein’s Iraq, or Muamar Gaddafi’s Libya. Their systematic persecution began only after the U.S. interfered in those nations in the name of “democracy” but succeeding in only uncorking the jihadi terrorists that the dictators had long kept suppressed.
Incidentally, prioritizing Christian refugees would not merely be an altruistic gesture or the U.S. government’s way of righting its wrongs: rather it brings many benefits to America’s security. (Unlike Muslims or even Yazidis, Christians are easily assimilated into Western nations due to the shared Christian heritage, and they bring trustworthy language and cultural skills that are beneficial to the “war on terror.”)
Finally, no one should be shocked by these recent revelations of the Obama administration’s pro-Muslim and anti-Christian policies. They fit a clear and established pattern of religious bias within his administration. For example:
•When inviting scores of Muslim representatives, the State Department is in the habit of denying visas to solitary Christian representatives.
•When a few persecuted Iraqi Christians crossed the border into the U.S., they were thrown in prison for several months and then sent back to the lion’s den to be enslaved, raped, or murdered.
•When the Nigerian government waged a strong offensive against Boko Haram, killing some of its terrorists, Secretary of State John Kerry fumed and called for the “human rights” of the jihadis (who regularly slaughter and rape Christians and burn their churches). More recently, Kerry “urged Tajikistan not to go overboard in its crackdown on Islam.”
•When persecuted Coptic Christians planned on joining Egypt’s anti-Muslim Brotherhood revolution of 2013, the U.S. said no.
•When persecuted Iraqi and Syrian Christians asked for arms to join the opposition fighting ISIS, D.C. refused.
•When the UN Security Council held a meeting to discuss the genocide against Christians and other minorities, although “many high level delegations from UN member states addressed the Security Council meeting, some at the Foreign Minister level, the United States failed to send … a high ranking member of the State Department.”
Most recently, as the White House works on releasing a statement accusing ISIS of committing genocide against religious minorities such as Yazidis — who are named and recognized in the statement — Obama officials are arguing that Christians “do not appear to meet the high bar set out in the genocide treaty” and thus likely not be mentioned.
In short, and to use the president’s own words, it is the Obama administration’s own foreign and domestic policies that are “shameful,” that are “not American,” and that do not represent “who we are.”
Yet the question remains: Will Americans take notice and do anything about their leader’s policies—which welcome Islamic jihadis while ignoring their victims—or will their indifference continue until they too become victims of the jihad, in a repeat of Paris or worse? (This story originally appeared at “Exposed: Obama’s Love for Jihadis and Hate for Christians” HERE; reposted in full with permission of the author)
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.png00Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2015-11-23 01:40:362016-04-11 10:55:51Exposed: Obama’s Love for Jihadis and Hate for Christians
By Jack Davis. The House of Representatives Thursday defied President Obama’s threat of a veto and voted, 289-137, to impose new screening requirements on Syrian and Iraqi refugees trying to enter the United States.
The bill was supported by 47 Democrats. Only two Republicans opposed it. The House plan would bar any refugees from Syria or Iraq from entering the United States until the FBI, Department of Homeland Security and Director of National Intelligence certify that each one is not dangerous.
“If our law enforcement and our intelligence community cannot verify that each and every person is not a security threat, then they shouldn’t be allowed in,” said Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis.
“The status quo is not acceptable,” said House Homeland Security Committee Chairman Michael McCaul, R-Texas. “The American people want us to act in light of what’s happened.”
Other lawmakers agreed . . .
The bill comes after Friday’s terrorist attacks in Paris that killed 129 people. ISIS claimed responsibility for the attacks. At least one attacker posed as a Syrian refugee, officials have disclosed. These events created new opposition to Obama’s plan to bring 10,000 Syrian refugees to the United States. (Read more from “House Just Stuck It to Obama With Hugely Defiant Vote – 47 Dems Joined In” HERE)
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House Passes Bill That Could Limit Syrian Refugees
By Deirdre Walsh and Ted Barrett. The House easily passed a bill Thursday that would suspend the program allowing Syrian and Iraqi refugees into the U.S. until key national security agencies certify they don’t pose a security risk.
The vote was 289-137, with 47 Democrats joining 242 Republicans in favor of the bill, creating a majority that could override President Barack Obama’s promised veto. It also faces an uncertain future in the Senate, where Minority Leader Harry Reid said he will try to block the bill.
The high number of Democrats voting against the White House is a clear sign Obama is increasingly isolated in his position on refugees in light of the ISIS terrorist attacks on Paris.
During his trip abroad this week, Obama has offered a forceful defense of the program and derided Republican opponents as being scared of “widows and orphans.”
“We are not well served when, in response to a terrorist attack, we descend into fear and panic,” Obama said in the Philippines on Wednesday. “We don’t make good decisions if it’s based on hysteria or an exaggeration of risks.” (Read more from “House Passes Bill That Could Limit Syrian Refugees” HERE)
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.png00Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2015-11-20 01:03:492016-04-11 10:55:56House Just Stuck It to Obama With Hugely Defiant Vote – 47 Dems Joined In
President Barack Obama is determined to bring these Syrian refugees into the United States by any means necessary, including breaking the law of the land. Half the country doesn’t want them and have openly rejected the refugee placement plan but Obama doesn’t care- he writes his own laws.
National Review reports that The Refugee Act of 1980 says that the federal Department of Health and Human Services’ Office of Refugee Resettlement is supposed to work in cooperation with state and local governments in resettling refugees. There’s been a lot of talk this morning that state governments don’t have the authority to reject refugees from their jurisdiction. But as the law is written, it appears that the feds are supposed to be meeting with and addressing state and local concerns — not dismissing them as xenophobic or “feeding our dark impulses” as the president said yesterday.
(2)(A) The Director and the Federal agency administering subsection (b)(1), shall consult regularly (not less often than quarterly) with State and local governments and private nonprofit voluntary agencies concerning the sponsorship process and the intended distribution of refugees among the States and localities before their placement in those States and localities.
(B) The Director shall develop and implement, in consultation with representatives of voluntary agencies and State and local governments, policies and strategies for the placement and resettlement of refugees within the United States.
(C) Such policies and strategies, to the extent practicable and except under such unusual circumstances as the Director may recognize, shall.
(Read more from “Obama Just Made Illegal Move to Sneak Refugees Into America” HERE)
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.png00Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2015-11-19 00:24:562016-04-11 10:55:59Obama Just Made Illegal Move to Sneak Refugees Into America
Since his election, President Obama has gone out of his way to praise the tenets of Islam–sometimes even at the expense of Christianity. A few of his greatest hits include:
– “We are no longer a Christian nation.”
– “Since our founding, Muslim Americans have enriched the United States” . . .
Here’s a trip down memory lane of President Obama bending over backwards to make nice with Muslims.
(Read more from “Here’s a Montage of All the Times Obama Praised Islam–Even at the Expense of Christianity” HERE)
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.png00Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2015-11-18 00:45:132016-04-11 10:56:01Watch: Here’s a Montage of All the Times Obama Praised Islam–Even at the Expense of Christianity
On Nov. 12, President Barack Obama said of ISIS: “What is true is that from the start, our goal has been first to contain, and we have contained them.”
On Nov. 13, ISIS-connected terrorists left 129 people dead and 352 wounded in Paris.
ISIS naturally dominated Obama’s Monday press conference at the G20 summit in Turkey. Yet although the president used the words “leader” and “leadership” fourteen times, the concept was, ironically, absent from his remarks. Speaking with as much passion as an instructional video on waste reclamation, he doubled down on his legacy of inaction, infighting, and incompetence.
The first question came from a reporter for Agence France-Presse: “The equation has clearly changed. Isn’t it time for your strategy to change?”
The president responded, “Well, keep in mind what we’ve been doing.” He then delivered a laundry list of international cooperation, targeted airstrikes, and economic pressure aimed at thwarting the Islamic State. The implication: He’s already on the right track. Nothing needs changing.
Not once did he address what was obvious to the reporter and the world: The Paris atrocity has demonstrated that his ill-defined strategy to “degrade” ISIS is a failure, one that has endangered the Western world and that clearly needs to change.
He grossly caricatured those who take issue with his strategy—or lack thereof—as “a few who have suggested that we should put large numbers of U.S. troops on the ground” and implied that his only option was the current course, “unless we’re prepared to have a permanent occupation of these countries.” This rhetoric has become a pattern: When faced with credible criticism, create false choices.
That the president is entirely unwilling to accept the need for improvement or adaptation in the light of this obvious foreign policy failure leads to uncomfortable questions about how insulated from reality the man might be.
There have been few lapses in leadership as maddening—and insulting to the American people—as Obama’s refusal to outline a clear path to victory against a force that certainly has a clear strategy against free nations: indiscriminate bloodshed.
A strategy connects ends and means—what is our goal (end), and how do we get there (means)? It is not clear what Obama’s goal is. Is it to destroy ISIS? Or just to keep their damage to a minimum so that it becomes the next president’s problem?
To be sure, Obama landed some pre-emptive strikes, but they were against Americans who happen to be Republicans:
You know, I had a lot of disagreements with George W. Bush on policy, but I was very proud after 9/11 when he was adamant and clear about the fact that this is not a war on Islam. And the notion that some of those who have taken on leadership in his party would ignore all of that, that’s not who we are.
The president proves more artful at destroying straw men dressed up as GOP presidential hopefuls than he is at targeting terrorists. I suppose he is most afraid of the group that endangers him professionally.
Further, he condemned as “shameful” American governors who have demanded closer vetting of Syrian refugees or refused to accept them from Washington. In light of the fact that at least one attacker in Paris had a Syrian passport, and that high numbers of those entering Europe are neither Syrian nor refugees, the governors’ concern seems prudent rather than pernicious. Slandering them for prioritizing the safety of their own citizens is as galling as it is cowardly.
The president’s clear intention was to use the aftermath of the Paris atrocity to make excuses and launch partisan political attacks. It will be difficult to unify against ISIS behind a man who is more interested in dividing his own countrymen.
Obama’s remarks on Monday morning could have been his “Tear Down This Wall” moment, his “Never Give In.” Instead, we got “I’m Too Busy for That.”
Obama’s remarks in Turkey will be studied in history and foreign policy curricula for years to come as a prideful dereliction of leadership. (For more from the author of “After Paris, Obama’s Abandonment of Leadership” please click HERE)
The Paris terror attacks may have put a clamp on President Obama’s plans to resettle 10,000 Syrian refugees over the next year, as the number of governors saying they won’t take them swells.
At the same time, top congressional lawmakers are urging the administration to halt the plan. House Homeland Security Committee Chairman Michael McCaul called on Obama to “temporarily suspend the admission of all additional Syrian refugees” pending a “full review,” according to a letter obtained by Fox News.
The resistance at the state level is coalescing at a rapid clip. So far, governors in at least 17 states have moved to suspend or restrict the refugee resettlement, including Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Louisiana, Massachusetts, Michigan, Mississippi, North Carolina, Ohio, Texas and Wisconsin.
“Given the tragic attacks in Paris and the threats we have already seen, Texas cannot participate in any program that will result in Syrian refugees — any one of whom could be connected to terrorism — being resettled in Texas,” Texas Gov. Greg Abbott said in a letter to Obama.
Some of these states previously did not object to the refugee plan. But Friday night’s terror attack in Paris, which left at least 129 people dead, fueled fears that Islamic State militants are moving into Europe as part of the wave of refugees escaping the civil war, and could eye America next. Authorities say a Syrian passport found near one jihadist’s body had been registered last month and moved through three countries along a busy migrant corridor known for lax controls. (Read more from “Obama Plan for Syrian Refugees Scrambled by State Opposition” HERE)
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.png00Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2015-11-16 21:06:132016-04-11 10:56:04Obama Plan for Syrian Refugees Scrambled by State Opposition
In any time and place, war is fiendishly simple. It is the ultimate zero-sum contest — you win or you lose.
That eternal truth is so obvious that it should not need to be said. Yet even after the horrific slaughter in Paris, there remains a distressing doubt about whether America’s commander in chief gets it.
President Obama has spent the last seven years trying to avoid the world as it is. He has put his intellect and rhetorical skills into the dishonorable service of assigning blame and fudging failure. If nuances were bombs, Islamic State would have been destroyed years ago.
He refuses to say “Islamic terrorism,” as if that would offend the peaceful Muslims who make up the vast bulk of victims. He rejects the word “war,” even as jihadists carry out bloodthirsty attacks against Americans and innocent peoples around the world.
He shuns the mantle of global leadership that comes with the Oval Office, with an aide advancing the preposterous concept that Obama is “leading from behind.” He snubs important partners like Egypt, showers concessions on the apocalyptic mullahs of Iran, and called the Islamic State the “jayvee team” even as it was beginning to create a caliphate. (Read more from “It’s Time for Obama to Make a Choice: Lead Us or Resign” HERE)
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.png00Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2015-11-15 23:48:082016-04-11 10:56:07It’s Time for Obama to Make a Choice: Lead Us or Resign
With less than a year before his successor is elected and he officially becomes a lame-duck president, time is running short. Obama has moved the ball forward on a number of legacy items already this year. Some have solidified; others remain in limbo . . .
Here are things on Obama’s final to-do list.
1. Finally close Guantanamo. Shuttering Guantanamo is less of a legacy issue and more of a moral one for the president, Stokes said. Since the first days of his presidency, Obama has maintained the prison, where men can be held indefinitely, is a propaganda tool for terrorists. But congressional Republicans say closing it will create more risk than it’s worth, and they — and the realities of what to do with existing prisoners there — have successfully blocked the president for six years from doing anything about it . . .
2. Get the TPP through Congress. Obama already scored a major legislative victory this summer when he persuaded enough congressional Democrats — yes, he was working against much of his own party on this one — to give him authority to negotiate the Trans-Pacific Partnership without congressional say-so on every little detail . . .
3. Ink an international climate change deal. Here’s one place Obama might not need to do battle with Congress. Whatever comes out of a major United Nations summit on climate change held in Paris at the end of this month will likely not have to ratified by the Senate. (Read more from “The 3 Big Things on Obama’s To-Do List, With One Year to Go” HERE)
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.png00Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2015-11-13 01:17:512016-04-11 10:56:11The 3 Big Things on Obama’s To-Do List, With One Year to Go