Video: Texas burns, Obama fundraises
The video below was released today by Rep. Quico Canseco (R-TX-23). Canseco is one of the 2010 freshmen in Congress, having defeated Democrat Ciro Rodriguez in the west Texas district that stretches all the way from the edges of San Antonio to the edges of El Paso. El Paso is where the president will hold his “official” function today, a speech on immigration policy.
But that speech is not why the president is really in Texas. The speech was only scheduled a week ago. The president’s trip to Austin today for a swank fundraiser was scheduled 79 days ago, according to Matt Mackowiak at the Daily Caller.
The $1,000/person fundraiser, which will be held in the studio where the famed Austin City Limits show is filmed and feature a performance by songwriter Robert Earl Keen, was first reported by the Austin American-Statesman’s Jason Embry on April 8, more than a month before the event.
Then, a funny thing happened.
Last Thursday, six days before Air Force One was scheduled to land in Texas, the White House added an “unspecified” official event in El Paso.
The El Paso event lets the president count the trip as an official function, even though it’s a campaign swing. And in this case, it’s a particularly brazen campaign swing. Thirteen people, 12 of them drug gang thugs, were killed in a firefight on Falcon Lake Sunday. That is the same lake where Mexican drug cartel pirates have harassed Americans for about a year now, and on which those same pirates murdered American David Hartley last year. The president will speak in El Paso, not about border security per se, but about his usual shibboleth, comprehensive immigration reform, paths to citizenship for illegal aliens, and so forth.
The president will not tour the fire stricken part of the state, where the worst wildfires in state history have burned up over 2 million acres. Yet the president is withholding an emergency declaration that would put additional federal funds into the fight to quench the fires. As a net payer into the federal coffers, Texas deserves to get its own money back to deal with the wildfires.
This story carries a couple of shocking aspects. One, that the president is so brazenly calling a fundraising trip an official duty while he shirks his true official duties of helping states deal with disasters and with securing the border. Barack Obama is a constant campaigner, but he is seldom a real president of all the United States. Two, that the local Democrats are evidently so complacent about his behavior toward the state that they will host him for a campaign fundraiser here even while his administration denies the state disaster relief and only treats the border as a political opportunity, not the security threat that it is. To the Texas Democrats and the president, Texas is just an ATM to fund liberals in other states. Do the Texas Democrats feel nothing for their own state, or for the Texans who are dealing with the fires and the border insecurity? Apparently they don’t, and they’re having the president here to spike the football in the faces of everyday Texans.
Update: Also read about the Texas House passing a crackdown on sanctuary cities, and Obama’s pathetic El Paso speech.
Those are fierce fires indeed. …the worst wildfires in state history have burned up over 2 million square miles…
Considering that the whole United States contain a mere 3,537,441 square miles, it is staggering news that the fires already have consumed 56% of it.
Obama is missing a chance to buy the votes of about 20 states by lavishing Federal aid to fight those gigantic fires. Either that, or Texas is even bigger than they claim.
My mistake – that should have read “over 2 million acres.” It’s corrected now.
What are you saying? That this Mulatto Muslim, the son of a Muslim Marxist Father, and an Atheist Communist Mother, doesn’t represent us all? The young boy, who grew up in Muslim Indonesia, attended Muslim Schools, Muslim Mosque. and knelt on his Prayer Rug, facing Mecca, and prayed to a God of MURDER, 5 times a day, until the age of 11, doesn’t represent all Americans? Or, is it all of the Years in a Black Theology HATE CHURCH, listening to his MENTOR, a White hating, Jew Hating, America Hating, Marxist Pastor, that makes you think that he does not care about certain kinds of people? Is it the fact that he has surrounded himself with people full of HATE, his entire adult life: Frank Marshall Davis/Communist. Jeremiah Wright/Racist, Anti Semitic, America Hating Marxist. Louis Farrakhan/(see: Jeremiah Wright) Bill Ayers and Bernadine Dohrn/Unrepentant Domestic Terrorists and Cop Killers. Khalid Rashidi/PLO Recruiter and Terrorist.
Maybe when he told us that “We are the ones we’ve been waiting for”, he wasn’t talking to US?
“…where the worst wildfires in state history have burned up over 2 million square miles.”
That should be acres, not miles. 2 million square miles would be about two thirds of the land are of the 48 continuous States.
At 640 acres per square mile, that comes to 3,125 square miles, which is pretty bad.
To help visualize, 2MM acres is a square about 55 miles on a side. About 2 1/2 times the size of Rhode Island, 1 1/2 times the size of Delaware.
I regret the error, but it’s already fixed in the article.
As a lifelong Californian (and a die–hard LAKERS fan) I can honestly say I feel sorry for the great state of Texas.
When we have wildfires here (which we do) the media can whip up a firestorm of coverage and sad-sad people are hurting stories, and then the Governator and his Washinton friends would fly over and drop a few million dollars in aid on the affected cities.
NOWADAYS, “If your not with us you’re against us” isn’t the battle-tested trope of warriors, it the Obama Administrations rating of the states ability to deliver funds and friends on demand.
When Obama said he would be the “President of All the United States”, he LIED. He has thrown Texas and Arizona under the bus, just like his old pastor, his granny, and anyone else who doesn’t do His bidding.
We have located the threat to our democratic republic. When will We The People stop voting “Present”?
Maybe it’s the fact that the majority of these fires have been fought by rural and volunteer fire departments (not represented by Unions) is the problem? Quite honestly, every Dem in Texas should be embarrassed to be giving money to this campaign rather than contributing to the Volunteer Fire Departments and the local organizations that are working on the rebuilding.
It’s a good thing that Texas doesn’t wait on Washington to solve our problems like New Orleans still is. The only good I can see in Obama’s visit today is the chance for me to shoot some great daytime skyline footage of the city free of the usual air traffic.
Now, what would be useful would be Obama having to drive his motorcade from El Paso to Austin (10-12 hours) through the Ft Davis Mountains and the Permain Basin…. and all of that country where electric cars and high speed rail is about as useful as …… oops, this is a clean family blog.
Maybe it’s the fact that the majority of these fires have been fought by rural and volunteer fire departments (not represented by Unions) is the problem
You may be on to something, kd iver.
The One is not likely to give any money or pay any attention to the “bitter clangers”.
Well, the Campaigner-in-Chief has his “historical” reasons for denying Texas disaster relief funds, you know.
Funny all of a sudden, you want Government help.
hardly, they are merely pointing out another example, among billions, of lefty hypocrisy
besides, texans dont ask for help
“Texans don’t ask for help”? Rick Perry just did. Why was he denied? Probably because real disasters are happening in other parts of the union. Not just a few homes and grass fires. Plus, those folks should have insurance. Why should we foot the bill for repairing their home? Pay your own way. Oh, just in case you forgot, Rick and plenty of ignorant Texans post the idea to “Secede”. Really? How about keeping by his side while he cuts all your teachers out of a job.Or, runs us into a huge financial shortfall. What did he say during his campaign? Fiscal responsibility? Who is left holding the bag now? We are. Remember, he refused federal money when they tried to give it to us a few months ago. He is a big looser flip/flopper that has left us broke and with fewer teachers. Keep voting him in.
As long as you don’t mind if we keep the $1.2 Billion that we contribute to the federal budget.
“Not just a few homes and grass fires.”
You just invalidated your whole comment. Thank for playing.
You said it not me: “other parts of the union” SEIU, Teachers, GM, etc. etc.. Obama needs to shower them with emergency $.
When the minions are through with the heavy lifting, they will be placed beneath our boots.
Libs be forewarned, obama is not your friend. When you will need him the most he will laugh at you and go play golf.
I think it’s only fitting that the country can afford to send the president to Texas to undercut any border integrity that they may have sneaked in under the Justice Department’s radar, but can’t afford to offer some disaster relief. Maybe AirForceOne can jettison it’s unused fuel over the fires on the way in, as a way of promoting the president’s desire to raise fuel prices.
this could be brilliant
make the fires, like all government entities, twice as big and 1/2 as effective
Republican party is apposed to cutting the billions in tax breaks that the oil industry currently receives. Speaker BONER said it himself. They don’t need the money. But, democrats pounced at the idea of eliminating the tax break. Republicans said… never mind. Then, you say obama is trying to keep gas up? Really – Stop watching FOX – it’s not news. It’s entertainment.
And yet MSNBC, ABC, CBS and CNN are not news and are not entertaining.
Your comment is incoherent. If companies get to keep more of their money, they can pass lower prices on to consumers. If you make them pay more taxes, they have to raise prices. Therefore Obama wants to keep gas prices high. Duh. Not to mention denying almost all drilling permits and making fracking so expensive it;s not economically feasible to do. Yeah, that’s the Dems. But you guys want that, don’t you? So people have to “live more lightly on the earth” and stop using their cars so much and spewing so much carbon and etc.? You should be happy the Dems raised gas prices.
I have a coworker whose brother is part of an Arizona crew that has spent considerable time in Texas fighting the fires on the Texas/Mexico boarder. Before they were committed they were instructed on how to identify which individuals and what vehicles to steer clear of so as not to get crossways with Mexican drug cartel members. These he did see whenever he was in or near towns along the boarder. If effect these cartel members are in control since the police can’t contain them.
Obama, do your job, and that job is not campaigning or personal fund raising!
The president will speak in El Paso, not about border security per se, but about his usual shibboleth, comprehensive immigration reform, paths to citizenship for illegal aliens, and so forth…Barack Obama is a constant campaigner, but he is seldom a real president of all the United States.
But but…just last week, vote-pandering to Hispanics at a lavish White House party, Obama told the cinco de mayo* crowd that you don’t ever want to “get between Michelle and a tamale.” But, he added, “she moves”, so she can eat tamales !
That sounds real presidential to me ! No problemo !
As for border security, the Obama administration’s most substantive policy thus far has been Eric Holder screwing with Arizona’s attempts to protect its own.
(*a couple of years ago, early May, Obama was in Los Angeles pandering to Hispanics, May 4, and referenced “cinco de quatro”)
“quatro”
cuatro
Memphis has massive flooding, Texas has overwhelming fires, …now, it appears that a plague of leftists has descended upon the South.
I always thought that they would ride in on four separate horses. I didn’t realize it would be one horse that was black, white, red (certainly if you read Stanley Kurtz)…and pale. At least by comparison.
About a week before the November 2010 election, Obama spoke over Latino radio station Univision and told his audience they needed to “punish our enemies”.
“If Latinos sit out the election instead of saying, ‘We’re going to punish our enemies and we’re gonna reward our friends who stand with us on issues that are important to us,’ if they don’t see that kind of upsurge in voting in this election, then I think it’s going to be harder and that’s why I think it’s so important that people focus on voting on November 2.”
Referring specifically to Republicans such as Senator John McCain, who formerly supported an overhual but now are stressing border security and supporting strict immigration laws like Arizona’s anti-illegal immigration measure, Mr. Obama said, “Those aren’t the kinds of folks who represent our core American values.”
Enemies, apparently, are any and all Americans desirous of enforcing current immigration laws on the books.
Texas has told the feds in oh so many ways to go pound sand.
So Texans would be enemies.
Never heard so many whiny racists all in one place. One guy says Arizona is trying to take care of their own. But Obama won’t let them. But, then Perry is asking for help. Well, why can’t we take care of our own? Do we have to extend welfare to every scooter riding, mobile home living, fox watching person that cries for it? Entitlement because I’m white is no longer a good reason. I think the only reason Rick Perry cried secede was to appeal to the tea baggers. Well, let’s pretend that it worked. So, let’s do like racist Arizona and “take care of our own”. I don’t think you realize how 1930′s you sound. Sorry, blacks are allowed to share our water fountains. Every time you protest as you are protesting, you sound racist. But some, SOME, of you actually are. For the rest, I am sorry you were gently bundled. I realize that the broader the statement – the narrower the mind.
God Bless
Stawman argument. Replace “our own” with “American citizens” and drop the pathetic racist/teabagger talking point and come back with well thought out arguments that might mean something. Insults are the sign of failure.
One guy says Arizona is trying to take care of their own. But Obama won’t let them.
In fact, Eric Holder’s interference with Arizona’s attempts to enforce current immigration law within its own borders is despicable and a baldfaced extension of his boss’ routine pandering to the Hispanic vote.
‘Cause, let’s face it, without the Latino vote (preferably illegals, many legal Latinos, aka American citizens, advocate enforcing immigration law), the convicted felon vote and the dead goldfish vote, promoted in 2008 by organizations like ACORN, democrats are toast.
That’s all they got. A string of leftist cliches. No thought. No logic. Just stream-of-consciousness memes.
I keep wanting to give lefties the benefit of the doubt that they can actually defend their positions, but the stereotype is true, they don’t think, they just emote.
It isn’t whiny to ask for and expect even-handed administration of the laws.
Uhhh… Who are these democrat politicians in Texas that Obama is coming to meet? We can deal with them in time.
No one has yet to comment, at least to my knowledge, that the Israel-Gaza border is safer for the Israelis than the Texas-Mexico border is safer for the Americans. The Israelis had enough sense to not wait for comprehensive immigration reform until they built a fence to protect themselves. But then they didn’t have to worry about political capital to build their fence, only survival.
I don’t have the exact transcript yet.. but the quote on how hot and windy it is in El Paso today has to be priceless. This is a very mild spring day for us. So… if he can’t take the heat….. leave!
“Never interrupt your opponent when he is in the process of making a mistake.” – Bonaparte
This is a rare opportunity. Texans are all too aware of the fires and the gang-warfare. Obama will be touting the wrong thing there. Keep talking about the problems. Maybe some big, Texas, Democratic donors will decide that maybe the well-being of their State will come before their Party finally. If they do, the optics of the fund-raising could be really bad. Really, really bad.
Are there no latinos getting burned out in Texas? Is the Texas Republican party brain dead? Get video of 5 or 10 latinos mixed in spanish and english complaining about how they have been denied emergency disaster relief by this administration and do a small commercial buy on univision and a big blast on the Internet. Watch the “latino outreach” team and the “punish your enemies” team in the Obama administration end up in a death match.
“Two pols enter, one pol leaves”, now all we need is Mel Gibson.
To the clowns who keep mocking the Right for “wanting government funds now”, you totally misapprehend the purpose of government and how FEMA works.
The purpose of government is to do those things we cannot do for ourselves as individuals. Primarily, this is public safety and roads. An individual homeowner cannot fight big fires alone, so we have fire departments. FEMA exists, and “disaster zone” laws exist, for handling natural disasters too large for counties or States to handle alone.
Please stop making it all politics all the time. This massive wildfire, and these gangs across the border, are hazards to real people. Do not play politics with people’s immediate safety.
The wildfires clearly fall into the category of massive natural disaster. Obama is clearly withholding aid, because Texas is a Deep Red State.
He did the same thing during the oil platform explosion. He interfered with the efforts to stop the damage, because the South is all Red.
Using the Federal Government’s power to punish the other side because they support the opposition to your Party. To allow people to die, to refuse to protect them, is grotesque. To even think, “They deserve it.”, is unbelievably vile.
I thought Liberals were supposed to be all caring and such. Seems they are only caring about those who give them power, and the rest be hanged.
If we have a Federal Government which will only support Blue States, or only Red States (or counties or cities), then why have a Federal Government at all? Why not just break up the USA into several separate parts? West Coast. Flyover. Great Lakes. NE. South. Texas.
Perhaps the time HAS come to dissolve the Union. Perhaps it really is time for a divorce. The gap between Right and Left, small-government and big government, producers and non-producers, ants and grasshoppers, has just become too great. Perhaps we can no longer live under the same roof. I think it is time we had this discussion.
The fall of America. Peaceful dissolution. I can live with that.
In the last day I have started to think that the time has come for the US to breakup. I have to agree with you.
“The fall of America”… you call yourselves Americans? You think you are ready for this? This sounds like a terrorist web site you copy/pasted from. Are you sure you are not part of the problem? Don’t do much, just go back and read some of your posts. You mention hanging of people. We have had terrible presidents in the past. Heck our own W could not put two sentence together – & I like him!!! This guy is educated well beyond most of us here in Texas & we bash him. We say he is dumb. Well, we are a red and racist state – as a majority. Call it weak but it rings true. If you really want to break up the union, go to a Taliban web site. They share your ant-America views. You worry about Latinos in America? They were here first. More over, I look at my gardener and housekeeper and don’t feel intimidated. If you want to curtail the violence across our boarder, have the republican party pass an assault weapons ban. Latino drug pushers are mainly using American made weapons (Jobs in America) and providing drugs to us Americans, their biggest customer. Oh, one other thing, when you look at anyone over 55 in your family… I know you have someone that is of that age, think of taking their Medicare benefits and slashing their coverage. Why? Because the republican party wants to keep sending BILLIONS of dollars in tax breaks of OUR MONEY to the wonderful oil industry. Most of that money is going to the Arabs. That fact may be a distraction to your assault on our little peasant labor force. Sorry, let’s keep buying American!!! In order for that to happen, we would have to get off the middle eastern oil. That does not sound good does it? We can’t do it. We are as addicted to oil as Kentucky is addicted to federal money. Why do you think that Dick Chaney moved Haliburton out of the USA and over to the middle east? Oh- they don’t talk about that in fox or talk radio. Really though, you have to think of that just for one second. No one will know you put thought into it. Just be bold and analyze the facts. Drop the attacks look it up. We used to benefit as a country when we went to war. Now we don’t because our war money now goes out of the country. Be an American first -
“comprehensive immigration reform”
An oft repeated cliché by this President.
Either enforce the law as it stands or change the law.
I would remind all those with short memories and weak brains (aka the typical Obama voter
) that shortly after the SB 1070/Arizona law controversy broke, Barack Obama refused to take Jan Brewer’s (aka the governor’s) phone call. And, on a previous visit to Texas, Obama refused to meet with Governor Perry to discuss “the border”.
It’s my way or the highway for this president.
While, apparently, that litany of Executive duties & responsibilities outlined in Article II of the United States Constitution has been shortened to…”campaign, campaign, campaign”
A couple of Texas expressions are à propos relative to Obama’s speechifying today in el paso…
“All hat and no cattle.”
“Don’t piss on my boots and tell me it’s raining.”
My wife and I were driving north on I-35 when the vampire in chief and his 10 mile long secret service project shut down everybody during the Austin rush hour on I-35 South. This enabled him to make a few extra million for his reelection campaign and totally screwed over a few thousand drivers who were commuting to their south Austin homes. I waved to their ‘royal’ procession with both middle fingers raised.
Obama motorcades tie up traffic wherever he goes to campaign, at times hugely inconvenient to locals. That happened last week on his 3rd (!) fund raising trip to NYC in one month. Imagine clearing hugely congested streets in NYC, in the evening.
His motorcade in El Paso
The Mexican flag is appropriate. The other crowd he religiously represents is unions.
The rest of us, not so much.
I predicted this when I was in 5th grade using a pliers, a glass of water and two leaves.
And you didn’t.
And nor did anyone else.
What are you saying? That this Mulatto Muslim, the son of a Muslim Marxist Father, and an Atheist Communist Mother, doesn’t represent us all? The young boy, who grew up in Muslim Indonesia, attended Muslim Schools, Muslim Mosque. and knelt on his Prayer Rug, facing Mecca, and prayed to a God of MURDER, 5 times a day, until the age of 11, doesn’t represent all Americans? Or, is it all of the Years in a Black Theology HATE CHURCH, listening to his MENTOR, a White hating, Jew Hating, America Hating, Marxist Pastor, that makes you think that he does not care about certain kinds of people? Is it the fact that he has surrounded himself with people full of HATE, his entire adult life: Frank Marshall Davis/Communist. Jeremiah Wright/Racist, Anti Semitic, America Hating Marxist. Louis Farrakhan/(see: Jeremiah Wright) Bill Ayers and Bernadine Dohrn/Unrepentant Domestic Terrorists and Cop Killers. Khalid Rashidi/PLO Recruiter and Terrorist.
Maybe when he told us that “We are the ones we’ve been waiting for”, he wasn’t talking to US?
You don’t know whether to laugh, cry, gag or throw up when Barack Obama tells his Latino radio audience that all Americans who support enforcement of current immigration law:
“Those aren’t the kinds of folks who represent our core American values.”
(That’s you and me he’s talking about.)
ASIF, he knows something about core American values, other than in a hugely superficial and hypocritical way to lull the ignorant, once again, into giving him another 4 years to tear this country apart.
The only people trying to tear this country up are those that want us to break up into regions – dissolve the USA literally. Read what your fellow racists are writing. They would like to have an Aryan Nation. Here is a copy/paste for those of you who want to join.
Aryan Nations is a far-right white supremacist religious organization originally based in Hayden Lake, Idaho. Richard Girnt Butler founded the group in the 1970s, as an arm of the Christian Identity organization Church of Jesus Christ–Christian. The Federal Bureau of Investigation has called Aryan Nations a “terrorist threat”,[1] and the RAND Corporation has called it the “first truly nationwide terrorist network” in the US
Sound familiar? This is what some of you sound like – I’m just saying…
As long as you’re “just saying,” let me be frank.
You are one naive critter! Everybody here knows what the Aryian Nation is, and I doubt you’ll find anybody on this site who would do anything other than utterly repudiate the whole sick, evil bunch of them. We’re not racists here! We’re talking about enforcement of EXISTING BORDER & IMMIGRATION LAWS to protect all of us from jihadists streaming through under the guise of being Mexicans, and illegal Mexicans who are costing all hard working Americans billions in dollars for health and social services to which they have no rights, as we teeter on the edge of complete bankruptcy and damn near 10% of patriotic, law-abiding Americans are out of work. Grow up and wise up, and stop spewing absurdities!
There are some real locos here using a keyboard. You are all scaring me. I think I am going to buy a gun to keep my family safe.
Fox, if you are really serious about any of this I expect you to fight tooth and nail to have our current immigration laws changed. Until then you are just a troll blowing smoke.
You see liberals love our current immigration laws. They get to yell RACIST whenever someone wants the laws of the United States as passed by the Congress and signed off by the President to be enforced.
You see the real racists are the liberals. Race is all important to them. The vast majority of conservatives on the other hand judge people on how the act, not the color of their skin.
The fires and illegal immigration problem in Texas not to mention the floods along the rain swelled Mississippi River. The much hated Bush was severely criticized for doing a flyover of the breached dikes that flooded New Orleans , surveying the human disaster, the tragedy below from the comfort of a window seat on Air Force One, yadda, yadda, yadda. Obama chooses to campaign, ignores the whole scene and there’s a pronounced media silence. Understandable though when you recognize the fact that worshipers cannot criticize their Messiah.