The mistakes of Biden 2020 – 2024

This blog will document all the mistakes, wrong decisions of Biden.

washingtontimes.com

America may soon face unlimited illegal immigration

By Mike Howell and Lora Ries|Jan. 11th, 2021

America may soon face unlimited illegal immigration – Washington Times

ANALYSIS/OPINION:

Unlimited illegal immigration — that is what a Biden administration wants, and that is what it will be able to get after Jan. 20.

This is perhaps the most important domestic policy issue at stake for America as we face single-party leadership in both chambers of Congress and the White House. And it couldn’t come at a worse time for our country as Americans struggle to keep businesses open and regain a public health footing from the ongoing effects of the COVID-19 virus.

President-elect Biden has a long record of calling for unlimited immigration. In 2015, he was recalling a conversation he had with a former president of Singapore about what separates America. He stated that it was “an unrelenting stream of immigration — nonstop, nonstop.” He had previously expressed this desire to the National Association of Manufacturers, where he said that the “constant, unrelenting stream” of immigrants into the U.S. was the basis for our economic strength. He emphasized that he wanted “not dribbling” amounts, but “significant flows.”

With the left in control of the U.S. Senate, the Biden administration has a Congress available to rubber-stamp its most radical immigration agenda items. And make no mistake: the left will not waste this political opportunity. Its leaders understand that mass immigration historically transfers into more leftist voters.

It’s no coincidence that the Open Borders lobby has found a permanent home with leftists. It means pure political power. Look no further than California as exhibit A.

So what can the Biden administration do with a House and Senate controlled by the far left? First, it can seek to legalize all illegal aliens within the U.S., with token exceptions for some hardened criminals.

Keep in mind that the U.S. doesn’t even know how many illegal aliens are here, in part because the left has opposed any effort to try to better understand that number. The Biden team claims it is around 11 million, but other estimates top 22 million. Such an amnesty effort would not make any attempt at assimilating illegal aliens into the U.S. mainstream – adopting our language, culture, and patriotism.

Second, the borders would be open and overrun. Promising amnesty has already resulted in a run on the border, or the “Biden Effect.” Once the wheels start moving towards the largest amnesty in our history, the Border Patrol would be overwhelmed by illegal aliens seeking to get their claim to the most prized passport in the world — and all the government benefits that come along with it.

Couple this green light with stand-down orders to the Border Patrol and Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and you have a recipe for absolute disaster without any limiting principle. A recent Gallup poll found that over 158 million adults would migrate to the United States if they could. With a Biden presidency and a leftist-controlled Congress, what will be able to stop them?

Third, scarce resources would be directed away from current Americans and towards amnestied immigrants. This means it would be open season on the buffet of federal government welfare programs, as well as the continued strain on America’s job availability, education budgets, health care costs, and public safety resources.

Translation? Americans forced to compete for employment opportunities as wages decrease, crowded schools with burgeoning non-English speaking students, rising health care costs and increased COVID-19 spread, and more gang-related crime as Americans have seen from the ruthless MS-13 where they have taken hold.

But as Joe Biden says of illegal immigrants, “We owe them.”

Americans are directly impacted by immigration policy in many important aspects of our lives — jobs, the economy, education, health care, crime and national security. Americans and lawful immigrants want our immigration laws enforced and our borders secured.

Yet we are on the verge of having neither. With the White House and Congress under single-party leadership, it will be up to the American people to frequently and loudly voice their opinion that open borders and amnesty are wrong for America.

• Mike Howell is senior adviser for executive branch relations, and Lora Ries senior research fellow for homeland security, at The Heritage Foundation.

Forced diversity in A Wrinkle in Time

It’s Official. ‘A Wrinkle in Time’ Is A Disastrous Adaptation Of The Book

Twin brothers from the book are missing entirely from the movie, which may be a blessing, considering that political correctness probably would have dictated they be played by a Native American dwarf and a disabled transsexual.

Madeleine L’Engle’s classic young adult novel “A Wrinkle in Time” is the latest victim of diversity-deranged stunt casting in which no respect is paid to the race or sex of existing literary characters. But that’s only one reason why this frustrating fiasco is such an embarrassing failure. Director Ava DuVernay (“Selma”), who has no feel at all for the material, seems more interested in promoting colorblind multi-culturalism than producing an entertaining adaptation that is worthy of its much-beloved source.

Although movies featuring original characters whose physical attributes have been unspecified elsewhere are legitimate equal-opportunity roles for any actors, deviating from already established characters turns a project into either a sort of alternative-reality racelifted remake (the black-cast versions of “Annie” and “Steel Magnolias”), a re-imagined novelty (“The Wiz”), comic exploitation (“Blacula”) or a display of randomly colorblind inclusiveness (a black Human Torch in the most recent “Fantastic Four”). All of those swaps are distracting enough to seem like gimmicks, even if an appearance-miscast actor gives an otherwise adequate performance.

Teenage Meg Murry and her mother, both white like the rest of their family in the 1962 “A Wrinkle in Time” novel, are portrayed in this film version by black actresses Storm Reid and Gugu Mbatha-Raw. Dad is played by Caucasian Chris Pine. Because Meg’s precocious younger brother Charles Wallace is played by Filipino-American Deric McCabe, this results in the absurdity of the character now being identified as adopted, presumably because it would be hard to believe he could be the product of Mbatha-Raw and Pine’s union. Twin brothers from the book are missing entirely from the movie, which may be a blessing, considering that political correctness probably would have dictated they be played by a Native American dwarf and a disabled transsexual.

The irony of making changes like these to a book in which Meg herself states that “like and equal are not the same thing at all” apparently was lost on those responsible. (Then again, the line does not appear in the movie, possibly because the filmmakers knew they had sabotaged said theme.) Also, it’s unfortunate that the film eliminates the novel’s references to Christianity that resulted in it being banned from some libraries. Inclusion apparently has its limits.

Changing Meg and her mom’s race may have been DuVernay’s attempt to promote the illusion of a universe in which such changes don’t and shouldn’t matter, but that aim is subverted by moments that take on unintended meanings in this new context. Meg’s white friend Calvin (Levi Miller) twice mentions that he likes her hair, which is a huge explosion of curls. Coming from a white boy to a black girl, the compliment has a different implication than if both teens were white. Similarly, when Meg is shown a vision of an idealized makeover of herself that she could become if she gives in to nefarious temptation (a scene not in the book), the fact that her doppelganger’s hair is unnaturally straight and flat comes off like a racist insult to the hair she was born with.

While “whitewashing” conversions of any character to Caucasian are routinely criticized (such as white Natalie Portman’s recent “Annihilation” portrayal of that novel’s half-Asian lead), changing any white character to black apparently is supposed to be regarded as a refreshing redress of historic racist wrongs. That kind of mindset makes it easy to see why the source of pure evil in “A Wrinkle in Time” never is referred to as The Black Thing or The Dark Thing, as it is in the book.

The basic plot sends Meg, Calvin and Charles Wallace on a quest to find her long-missing dad, with the help of three supernatural beings. But the screenplay (by Jennifer Lee and Jeff Stockwell) contains so many annoyingly unnecessary deviations from the novel that it almost could be mistaken for an unauthorized pastiche that attempts to alter just enough details to avoid a plagiarism suit.

A female character known as the Happy Medium in the book is now male (Zach Galifianakis). Calvin’s abusive mother is now an abusive father. Meg’s father has been missing for four years instead of two. A character transforms into a flying green leaf-creature instead of a winged white centaur. Instead of taking place in an imposingly grim office building, an encounter with the evil “man with red eyes” (Michael Peña, known here simply as Red) takes place on a sunny, umbrella-crowded beach.

The movie completely ignores L’Engle’s creepy description of the book’s main villain as an oversized, disembodied brain. Even the ending is altered — mild spoiler alert — by having Meg rely upon another character’s feelings toward her, instead of triumphing solely by expressing hers toward him.

Also new is the idea that Meg’s mother is given more credit than her father for the scientific theories that led to “tessering,” or instantaneous space-time travel. In the book, dad and a half-dozen cohorts are the ones who were working on that project, while mom only has doctor degrees in biology and bacteriology … which apparently didn’t make her enough of a credit-deserving superwoman for today’s #TimesUp audiences.

The book’s three supernatural “Mrs.” characters — Mrs. Whatsit, Mrs. Who and Mrs. Which, who transport Meg and company through space-time — are as multi-culti as the rest of the cast. Mrs. Who is Mindy Kaling, whose parents are from India. White Reese Witherspoon’s age and red tresses directly contradict the book’s description of Mrs. Whatsit’s “sparse quantity of grayish hair.” And Mrs. Which, a shimmer who takes the form of “a figure in a black robe and a black peaked hat, beady eyes, a beaked nose and long gray hair” clutching a broomstick in the book, is embodied here by Oprah Winfrey in disco glitter mascara and lipstick. Because of course.

It’s probably rude to criticize a 14-year-old for being lifelessly dull even when she tries acting defiantly spunky, but Reid is missing whatever charisma would have been required to make Meg appealing. Like everyone else here, she seems to be going through the motions without much involvement. Pine is saddled with what may be the movie’s most cringeworthy not-from-the-book dialog, however. At one point, he tells Meg, “I wanted to shake hands with the universe, when I should have been holding yours.”

A yellow brick backyard pathway and an otherworldly twister (neither from the book) presumably are attempts to evoke “The Wizard of Oz,” which is like slapping Ferrari decals on a 1971 Pinto. Also, forget about giving what should have been called “A Waste of Time” a pass because it might be good enough for kids. “A Wrinkle in Time” is so unconvincing, uninvolving and unlikeable that expecting even small children to enjoy it seems cruelly condescending.

No Asylum. Period.

A caravan of more than 7,000 Central Americans is descending on the United States. Like millions of foreigners, they want to live in the U.S. But these people are doing it their way—refusing to participate in our extensive legal immigration process.

Most will probably attempt to claim asylum when they get to the border. None should get it, for multiple reasons.

Under federal law (8 U.S.C. 1101(a)(42)), to be granted asylum, an alien must prove that he faces persecution, or has a “well-founded fear of persecution,” in his native country “on account of race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group, or political opinion.”  Yet media interviews with those marching toward the border leave little doubt that the vast majority are coming for economic reasons. That doesn’t fit within the statutory requirement for asylum.

While asylum may be granted to those fleeing persecution, the applicable immigration statute (8 U.S.C. 1158(b)) doesn’t require it. Rather, that decision is left to the discretion of the attorney general or the secretary of homeland security.

Attorney General Jeff Sessions pointed this out in a June immigration decision involving an illegal alien from El Salvador who sought asylum in 2014.  “Asylum is a discretionary form of relief from removal,” Sessions noted, “and an applicant bears the burden of proving not only statutory eligibility for asylum but that she also merits asylum as a matter of discretion.”  In fact, immigration law directs that the official determining whether an alien is entitled to asylum make a “credibility determination” about the alien’s claim.

This is important because people often make false asylum claims to get into the country, then disappear into the heartland with no intention of ever showing up for their  hearing.

None of those in this latest wave of caravaners—including those who might meet the “persecution” requirement—has sufficient basis for a discretionary grant of asylum. In footnote 12 of his June opinion, Sessions reminds all “asylum adjudicators” that a “relevant discretionary” factor in deciding to grant asylum is whether the alien, while en route to the U.S., “passed through any other countries” where they could have asserted asylum.  Were there “orderly refugee procedures…in fact available to help her in any country she passed through” and did the alien make “any attempts to seek asylum before coming to the United States[?]”

It’s a crucial question—and one fully in keeping with the procedures of the European Union, which pro-amnesty advocates love to cite as an enlightened entity. The Dublin Regulation requires those seeking asylum in the EU to assert their claim in the first EU country they enter.

The U.S. has such an agreement with Canada, but Mexico has refused to enter into such a pact. Mexico’s refusal, however, in no way prevents the U.S. from enforcing such a requirement under its own immigration law and the discretionary authority granted to the attorney general and the secretary of DHS.

And Mexico does, in fact, have a very generous asylum law, passed in 2011.  Indeed, it is broader than the U.S. law.  As the Center for Immigration Studies explains, in addition to the U.S. categories of fear of persecution due to race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group, or political opinion, Mexico also grants asylum to those who have fled their native countries because they are “threatened by generalized violence, foreign aggression, internal conflicts, massive violations of human rights or other circumstances which have seriously disturbed public order.”

This refugee/asylum law, administered by Mexico’s Commission for Refugee Assistance, is available to every alien in the caravan. By the way, the law suspends all proceedings to remove or deport any asylum seeker until the commission reaches a final decision in that person’s case.

Passing through another country without seeking asylum undercuts any claim made upon arrival at the U.S. border.  For example, a Honduran who claims he was forced to flee due to political persecution has no compelling reason to go further than Mexico. He obviously has no credible reason to fear he will be persecuted by the Mexican government. Thus, ignoring Mexico’s asylum process is prima facie evidence that a claim for asylum in the U.S. is bogus.

That is why the Departments of Homeland Security and Justice should use their discretionary authority to categorically refuse asylum to all those in the caravan.

The only reason for these aliens to delay asserting asylum until they reach the U.S. is that they have no credible claim of being persecuted and simply want to get into America for economic or other reasons that don’t meet the requirements of U.S. asylum law.

Enforcing this discretionary rule would encourage the Mexican government to return to their native countries all Central and South Americans who illegally enter Mexico on their way to the U.S.  Right now, Mexico is not only shifting this problem to the U.S., it is encouraging illegal immigration by accommodating these caravans.  There also seems to be involvement by American open border activists according to the Capital Research Center, which points to organizers from Pueblo Sin Fronteras or “People Without Borders” who are “embedded in the caravan.”

The U.S. should continue to grant asylum to refugees with legitimate persecution claims.  But it must act to stop – before they get into the country and into the administrative hearing process – those who would assert false asylum claims. And that includes everyone in this current migrant caravan.

A threat to humanity and freedom



US begins flying deportees to Mexico City

MEXICO CITY (AP) — U.S. immigration authorities began flying deportees deep into Mexico Thursday in an effort to discourage them from trying to return, U.S. and Mexican officials said.

The first of twice-weekly flights from El Paso, Texas, to Mexico City left Thursday with 133 deportees aboard, all men.

ICE spokeswoman Nicole Navas said the flights will accommodate up to 136 men and women but no children. Deportees fly from throughout the United States to Chaparral, New Mexico, for a short bus ride to El Paso.

The flights are not voluntary, unlike a previous program to deport Mexicans arrested by the Border Patrol during Arizona’s deadly summer heat. Mexico’s National Migration Institute said the flights will last six months, taking place every Tuesday and Thursday, and the Mexican government will pay for returnees’ travel from the Mexico City airport to their hometowns. A total of 6,800 people are expected to be returned under the program. Special accommodations are being made for minors traveling alone, Mexico said.

Under a two-month trial last year, more than 2,300 Mexicans returned on 18 flights. The U.S. and Mexico agreed in April to make the arrangement permanent.

ICE has long flown home deportees who are from countries that don’t share a land border with the U.S., most commonly Central Americans. Mexicans, who account for the vast majority people living in the U.S. illegally, are traditionally sent by plane or bus to a city along the 1,954-mile (3,145-kilometer) border with Mexico.

Thursday’s flight marks the beginning for regular air travel to Mexicans who are deported, a welcome development for authorities in Tijuana and other Mexican border cities who have complained they are getting overwhelmed by unemployed newcomers.

It comes as House Republicans are resisting the broadest changes to U.S. immigration laws in nearly three decades. The Senate has approved a plan that would offer a path to citizenship for an estimated 11 million people living in the U.S. illegally.

President Barack Obama has backed the proposed overhaul, while at the same time increasing deportations. His administration topped 400,000 deportations during the 2012 fiscal year.

 

• A very welcome development, good news indeed.

After the KO, it’s all downhill for pacquiao

COMMENTARY | To many fans, the image of Manny Pacquiao falling face-first to the canvas and staying there, motionless, for an uncomfortably long period of time was quite jarring. To see a pound-for-pound elite fighter, one of the best of this era, knocked completely unconscious is always upsetting.

RICOA chocolate shorts ad falls flat on face.

However, what happens to the fighter, himself?

 

Fighters are bred to be the bravest of the brave, literally putting their life on the line to earn their living. The biggest fallacy among fans and media is that any fighter is afraid of another– especially at the elite level. Sometimes certain fights don’t make sense from a business perspective, but that by no means is an indication of fear. A fighter just doesn’t become a world class pugilist by having any sort of yellow streak among his character traits.

 

But psychologically, a crushing, brutal loss can sometimes affect a fighter and the way he engages in battle. He may be consciously willing to pick up right where he left off, but subconsciously, some doubt has been injected into his game, some hesitation is interfering with his ability to execute his pre-loss style.

 

Even a fighter as accomplished and as supremely confident as Manny Pacquiao could fall victim to this involuntary psychological drama.

 

Recently, Oscar De La Hoya spoke to radio station Power 106 about whether this might be the case with Pacquiao:

 

“…psychologically, he is always going to be feeling that punch. He’s always going to be looking out for that punch. He will be doubting himself [and telling himself] ‘can I do this again’ – even in training, even in training [he will be doubting himself]. History shows this, and I’m not making this up…history shows that it’s impossible to come back [from that kind of knockout]. Can he come back? It’s up to him. You look at Paul Williams [at how he got knocked out]. Back in the day Thomas Hearns knocked out Roberto Duran and he landed face first. You look at Ricky Hatton at how he got knocked out. You look at history in boxing.”

 

Perhaps this is all wishful thinking from De La Hoya, whose promotional company, Golden Boy, is currently engaged in a turf war with Pacquiao’s promoter, Top Rank, but the former 6-division world champ certainly makes a valid point.

 

The most recent example of this came when Miguel Cotto suffered a brutal beating at the hands of Antonio Margarito in 2008. The physical damage sustained in that TKO loss was healed soon enough, but the psychological damage was there. It lingered as Cotto showed subtle signs of hesitance and reluctance to go full-out in a firefight against elite-level opposition for, at least, three years.

 

The specific details of how Cotto was affected by the Margarito beating can be disputed, but there’s little debate that pre-Margarito Cotto and post-Margarito Cotto are two significantly different fighters.

 

Ask Miguel Cotto, though, and he’d likely deny any difference and scoff at the idea that something deep in the back of his psyche was holding him back.

 

Manny Pacquiao would likely have the same reaction to this idea, but nobody will know what’s what until that first moment when the 8-division former world champ gets hit, slightly buzzed, and/or pushed to retreat.

 

Pacquiao’s style depends so much on launching himself into attacks, daringly darting in and out of range to quickly inflict his punishment. Confidence is the key to Pacquiao’s offense. It’s the blind leap of faith that he can launch himself into attack mode, score his shots, and then get out of range.

 

The last time he darted in for the attack, a big right hand was waiting for him and it laid him out. Maybe next time he doesn’t rush in so fast, doesn’t take that chance. If that happens, Manny Pacquiao ceases to be Manny Pacquiao.

 

It can happen..It has happened. And all it takes is that sliver of a doubt to bring down a fighter.

UK not hiring pinoy nurses

MANILA, Philippines – Bad news for Filipino nurses harboring the hope of landing on a job at the United Kingdom.

The Philippine Overseas Employment Administration (POEA) announced on Thursday that the UK has not opened new job opportunities for nurses.

“Except for a few, old job orders in our accreditation database, the POEA has not received nor approved fresh job orders for nurses from UK employers,” POEA Administrator Hans Leo Cacdac said.

The Professional Regulation Commission (PRC) earlier announced that a total of 27,823nursing graduates passed the June 2012 Nurse Licensure Examination.

A total of 60,895 examinees took the examination nationwide.

Considering that the demand for nurses in the UK has remained stagnant for almost two years now, many Filipino nurses were forced to look for other job opportunities in other countries.

Cacdac said, however, there are a few National Health Services trusts and care homes that were able to hire nurses and senior carers in recent months.

He added that other Filipino nurses can also look for other job vacancies in other host countries like Japan, Saudi Arabia and other European countries.

2011 Honda CRV

Thank you God for this durable SUV. I love my CRV.

Barbaric rage

Look at the ugly, barbaric, demonic faces infected by an evil religion that has no tolerance for others. Civilization has no place for this backward idea.

Intolerance

September 12, 2012

U.S. Envoy to Libya Is Killed in Attack

By DAVID D. KIRKPATRICK, ALAN COWELL and STEVEN LEE MYERS

CAIRO — The United States ambassador to Libya, Christopher Stevens, was killed along with three of his staff in an attack on the American Consulate in Benghazi Tuesday night by an armed mob angry over a short American-made video mocking Islam’s founding prophet, the White House and Libyan officials said on Wednesday.

In a statement confirming the four fatalities, President Obama said he strongly condemned the killing — the first death of an American envoy abroad in more than two decades — and had ordered increased security at American diplomatic posts around the world.

The attack at the compound in Benghazi was far more deadly than administration officials first announced on Tuesday night, when Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said one American had been killed and one injured.

Mr. Obama’s statement did not disclose details of the attack. The ambassador, Christopher Stephens, arrived in Libya earlier this year after serving as an envoy to the Libyan rebels who overthrew Libya’s leader, Mohamar el-Qaddafi last year. The other three killed were not immediately identified.

‘“While the United States rejects efforts to denigrate the religious beliefs of others, we must all unequivocally oppose the kind of senseless violence that took the lives of these public servants,” Mr. Obama said, calling Mr. Stevens “a courageous and exemplary representative of the United States” who had “selflessly served our country and the Libyan people at our mission in Benghazi” and, as ambassador, “supported Libya’s transition to democracy.”

“The brave Americans we lost represent the extraordinary service and sacrifices that our civilians make every day around the globe. As we stand united with their families, let us now redouble our own efforts to carry their work forward,” the statement said.

The killingsthreatened to upset Washington’s relations with the new Libyan government that took over after the ouster of Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi and sour American public opinion about the prospects of the democratic opening of the Arab Spring.

Mr. Stevens, a veteran of American diplomatic missions in Libya, served in Benghazi during the uprising against Colonel Qaddafi, and he was widely admired by the Libyan rebels for his support of their struggle.

The news of his death emerged on Wednesday after violence spilled over the American consulate in Benghazi and demonstrators stormed the fortified walls of the United States Embassy in Cairo.

Few details of the events in Benghazi were immediately available, but the killing of the ranking American official in Libya raised questions about the vulnerability of American officials at a time when the profound changes sweeping the Arab world have hardly dispelled the rage against the United States that still smolders in pockets around the region.

Tuesday’s violence came on the 11th anniversary of the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, and were inspired by Egyptian media reports about a 14-minute trailer for the video, called “Innocence of Muslims,” that was released on the Web.

Earlier, an unidentified Libyan official in Benghazi told Reuters that the American ambassador in Libya and three other staff members were killed in Benghazi “when gunmen fired rockets at them.” It was not clear where in the city the attack took place. The Libyan official said the ambassador was being driven from the consulate building to a safer location when gunmen opened fire, Reuters said.

In a message on Twitter, Deputy Prime Minister Mustafa Abu Shagur of Libya said on Wednesday that he condemned “the cowardly act of attacking the U.S. consulate and the killing of Mr. Stevens and the other diplomats.”

Agence France-Presse quoted the Libyan Interior Ministry as saying Ambassador Stevens and three staff members were killed when a mob attacked the consulate in Benghazi. Al Jazeera’s English-language Web site said Mr. Stevens died of smoke inhalation after a mob set fire to the building.

In Italy, the Corriere della Sera newspaper Web site showed images of what it said was the American Consulate in Benghazi ablaze with men carrying automatic rifles and waving V-for-victory signs, silhouetted against the burning buildings. One photograph showed a man closely resembling Mr. Stevens apparently unconscious, his face seeming to be smudged with smoke and his eyes closed.

Mr. Stevens arrived in Tripoli in May 2012, as United States Ambassador to Libya, according to the State Department Web site, after serving two previous terms in Libya since 2007 as an American envoy before and after the 2011 revolution that overthrew Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi.

Mr. Stevens, conversant in Arabic and French in addition to English, worked at the State Department since 1991 after a spell as an international trade lawyer in Washington. He taught English as a Peace Corps volunteers in Morocco from 1983 to 1985, the State Department Web site said. The immediate cause of the anti-American outburst was the trailer of an amateurish, American-made video, which opens with scenes of Egyptian security forces standing idle as Muslims pillage and burn the homes of Egyptian Christians. Then it cuts to cartoonish scenes depicting the Prophet Muhammad as a child of uncertain parentage, a buffoon, a womanizer, a homosexual, a child molester and a greedy, bloodthirsty thug.

The trailer was uploaded to YouTube by Sam Bacile, whom The Wall Street Journal Web site identified as a 52-year old Israeli-American real estate developer in California. He told the Web site he had raised $5 million from 100 Jewish donors to make the film. “Islam is a cancer,” Mr. Bacile was quoted as saying.

The video gained international attention when a Florida pastor began promoting it along with his own proclamation of Sept. 11 as “International Judge Muhammad Day.”

In a statement on Tuesday, the pastor, Terry Jones of Gainesville, Fla., called the film “an American production, not designed to attack Muslims but to show the destructive ideology of Islam” and said it “further reveals in a satirical fashion the life of Muhammad.”

He said the embassy and consulate attacks illustrated that Muslims “have no tolerance for anything outside of Muhammad” and called Islam “a total deception.”

Mr. Jones inspired deadly riots in Afghanistan in 2010 and 2011 by first threatening to burn copies of the Koran and then burning one in his church. He also once reportedly hanged President Obama in effigy.

In Benghazi on Tuesday, protesters with automatic rifles and rocket-propelled grenades attacked the United States Consulate and set it on fire, Libyan officials said. Some news reports said American guards inside the consulate had fired their weapons, and a brigade of Libyan security forces arriving on the scene had battled the attackers in the streets as well.

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton confirmed late Tuesday that a State Department officer had been killed in the Benghazi attack, and she condemned the violence. “Some have sought to justify this vicious behavior as a response to inflammatory material posted on the Internet,” she said. “The United States deplores any intentional effort to denigrate the religious beliefs of others. But let me be clear: There is never any justification for violent acts of this kind.”

The death in Benghazi appears to be the first such fatality in a string of attacks and vandalism against foreign and especially Western diplomatic missions in Libya in recent months. Since the fall of Colonel Qaddafi, Libya’s transitional government has struggled to rebuild an effective police force, control the weapons that have flooded the streets and restore public security.

Local Islamist militant groups capitalizing on the security vacuum have claimed responsibility for some attacks, and some reports on Tuesday suggested that one such group, Ansar al-Sharia, had claimed responsibility for that day’s assault.

In Cairo, thousands of unarmed protesters gathered outside the embassy during the day. By nightfall, some had climbed over the wall around the embassy compound and destroyed a flag hanging inside. The vandals replaced it with a black flag with an Islamic profession of faith — “There is no god but God, and Muhammad is his prophet” — favored by ultraconservatives and militants.

Embassy guards fired guns into the air, but a large contingent of Egyptian riot police officers on hand to protect the embassy evidently did not use their weapons against the crowd, and the protest continued, largely without violence, into the night.

A spokesman for the Muslim Brotherhood, the mainstream Islamist group and the sponsor of Egypt’s first elected president, Mohamed Morsi, urged the United States government on Tuesday to prosecute the “madmen” behind the video, according to the English-language Web site of the state newspaper, Al Ahram.

The spokesman asked for a formal apology from the United States government and warned that events like the video were damaging Washington’s relations with the Muslim world. He also emphasized that any protests should remain peaceful and respect property.

There should be “civilized demonstrations of the Egyptian people’s displeasure with this film,” the Brotherhood spokesman said, according to the newspaper Web site. “Any nonpeaceful activity will be exploited by those who hate Islam to defame the image of Egypt and Muslims.”

Bracing for trouble before the start of the protests here and in Libya, the American Embassy released a statement shortly after noon that appeared to refer to Mr. Jones: “The United States Embassy in Cairo condemns the continuing efforts by misguided individuals to hurt the religious feelings of Muslims — as we condemn efforts to offend believers of all religions.” It later denounced the “unjustified breach of our embassy.”

Apparently unaware of the timing of the first embassy statement, the Republican presidential candidate, Mitt Romney, put out a statement just before midnight Tuesday saying, “It’s disgraceful that the Obama administration’s first response was not to condemn attacks on our diplomatic missions, but to sympathize with those who waged the attacks.” Mr. Romney also said he was “outraged” at the attacks on the embassy and consulate.

Responding to Mr. Romney’s statement, Ben LaBolt, an Obama campaign spokesman, said, “We are shocked that, at a time when the United States of America is confronting the tragic death of one of our diplomatic officers in Libya, Governor Romney would choose to launch a political attack.”

David D.Kirkpatrick reported from Cairo, Alan Cowell from London and Steven Lee Myers from Washington. Suliman Ali Zway contributed reporting from Tripoli, Libya.