[ABCNEWS.GO] After manning a machine gun on a combat helicopter as a U.S. Marine during the liberation of Kuwait, Antonio Romo came back to the United States traumatized by the death and carnage he saw. How about a law that sez if you wore the green you're fast-tracked for citizenship regardless of how you got here? Walking into the recruiting office should legalize you.
He says he turned to alcohol and narcotics to try to quiet the nightmares, and made multiple suicide attempts. With addiction, he fell into dealing, and was arrested for selling cocaine. And after getting out of prison, Romo was deported in 2008 to Mexico, from where he had migrated to Lynwood, California, illegally at age 12.
Today he's part of a group of dozens of U.S. military veterans, most of them former legal residents but noncitizens, who were deported after criminal convictions and who for years have tried to convince multiple administrations to let them return. They acknowledge committing serious crimes such as felony drug dealing, but argue that they did their time and being kicked out of the country amounts to being punished twice.
Now these veterans are pinning their hopes on the new administration of Donald Trump, and their cause presents a sharp conflict for two of the new president's stated priorities: Trump has promised to support the military and veterans; at the same time, he has also moved to ramp up deportations of immigrants in the United States illegally — particularly those convicted of crimes.
Posted by: Fred ||
03/10/2017 00:00 ||
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#1
I'm not buying this.
1) Being a door gunner during Gulf Storm means you really didn't see shit
2) Sounds like this guy already had a love for booze and drugs and did nasty shit
3) There are already programs for fast tracking citizenship for people that serve and aren't citizens
4) This idiot didn't try those programs and decided to be a drug dealing fucktard and now is bemoaning his life choices
#3
#1 I'm not buying this. .....
100% - quite a bit of door, not much gun
There was short period of intense fighting but I'm not aware of any significant numbers of PTSD cases resulting from the conflict. It was Operation Desert Souvenir Hunt for me on Failaka Island.
Posted by: Bangkok Billy ||
03/10/2017 7:54 Comments ||
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#4
Bangkok Billy, I like that one.
Posted by: Whiskey Mike ||
03/10/2017 11:31 Comments ||
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#5
Wasn't there a program to provide amnesty/citizenship to aliens who served in the military?
[FREEBEACON] The Internal Revenue Service has located 6,924 documents potentially related to the targeting of Tea Party conservatives, two years after the group Judicial Watch filed a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit for them.
I'd like to request a search for documents related to IRS targetting of organizations supporting Israel next, please.
The watchdog group intended to find records regarding how the IRS ...the Internal Revenue Service; that office of the United States government that collects taxes and persecutes the regime's political enemies... selected individuals and organizations for audits that were requesting nonprofit tax status.
The agency will not say when it will make the documents available to the public.
"At this time, the Service is unable to provide an estimate regarding when it will complete its review of the potentially responsive documents," the agency said. "The Service will begin producing any non-exempt, responsive documents by March 10, 2017, and, if necessary, continue to produce non-responsive records on a bi-weekly basis."
Tom Fitton, president of Judicial Watch, is calling on President Trump to clean house at the agency.
"The corruption at the IRS is astounding," Fitton said in a statement. "Our attorneys knew that there were more records to be searched but the Obama IRS ignored this issue for years. President Trump needs to clean house at the IRS as quickly as possible."
Posted by: Fred ||
03/10/2017 00:00 ||
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[FOXNEWS] Nearly two months into the Trump administration, the IRS ...the Internal Revenue Service; that office of the United States government that collects taxes and persecutes the regime's political enemies... commissioner House Republicans once threatened with impeachment remains on the job.
John Koskinen's continued tenure may be surprising, considering how aggressively Republicans went after him under the B.O. regime. But despite a sustained push by congressional Republicans to oust the IRS chief before his five-year term expires this November, President Trump so far has made no move to do so.
Just last week, Koskinen was seen in the Capitol and told Fox News he was there to meet with "old friends." Asked if he intended to stay on as commissioner during the Trump administration, Koskinen simply said, "They haven’t talked to me."
A White House official, asked about the commissioner's future, also told Fox News on Wednesday they had no personnel announcements "at this time."
House Republicans aren't giving up their quest to show Koskinen the door.
"President Trump should fire Commissioner Koskinen and replace him with someone that will bring integrity and competence to the IRS," House Judiciary Committee Chariman Bob Goodlatte, R-Va., told Fox News on Tuesday.
Just days after Trump took office, Republican Study Committee Chairman Mark Walker, R- N.C., along with 53 other House Republicans, also wrote a letter asking the new president to remove Koskinen.
"The consideration of the impeachment of IRS Commissioner John Koskinen in the House in late 2016 was a clear indication that Congress and the American people have no confidence in Commissioner Koskinen or his ability to discharge his duties," Walker wrote, nudging the president by citing statutory language giving him authority to strip Koskinen of his title. Doing so, he claimed, would "restore the credibility" of the federal tax authority.
"We have not received a response to our letter," an aide at the Republican Study Committee told Fox News. "We understand, however, the administration remains busy putting its team in place, and we look forward to its response."
A White House spokesperson told Fox News they received the January letter and "are currently reviewing it."
Posted by: Fred ||
03/10/2017 00:00 ||
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#1
Accounts Receivables operational reorganizations requires careful planning, especially in an Org staffed by Zero. I am sure Obama built many layers of his people and to have the right personnel to handle deep state will need to be chosen and managed closely. Bannon and Priebus are trying to get a handle on the CIA, FBI and Justice Department at the moment.
#2
Bannon and Priebus are trying to get a handle on the CIA, FBI and Justice Department at the moment.
Yes, and every time they begin to make a little progress with the Klingons, a new diversionary squirrel jumps out of a hole. Snowden's job before NSA? Ah yes, now I remember.
#7
Perhaps the IRS has a grim future when the new tax plans come out and Trump wants Koskinen as exhibit A on how the IRS was used as a political weapon.
[DAILYWIRE] In a remarkable and revealing experiment about the impact of gender in the 2016 election, two self-described "liberal" professors joined forces to put on an "ethnodrama" based on key moments of the presidential debates between Donald Trump ...New York real estate developer, described by Dems as illiterate, racist, misogynistic, and what ever other unpleasant descriptions they can think of, elected by the rest of us as 45th President of the United States... and Hillary Clinton ... former first lady, former secretary of state, former presidential candidate, sometimes described by her supporters as the smartest woman in the world, usually described by the rest of us as a crook... , in which actors of the opposite sex played the roles of the two candidates, exactly mimicking their every move and intonation. The results of the gender swapping experiment stunned both professors and the mostly liberal audiences who attended the performances. Obviously the data were flawed.
NYU reports that while both professors say they "began the project assuming that the gender inversion would confirm what they’d each suspected watching the real-life debates: that Trump’s aggression--his tendency to interrupt and attack--would never be tolerated in a woman, and that Clinton’s competence and preparedness would seem even more convincing coming from a man," the result of the gender reversal was almost exactly the opposite. You mean Hillarity was still wooden and condescending and Trump wasn't?
Many in the audience were "shocked" to find the male version of Hillary to actually be harder to admire than the real Hillary, while the female Trump seemed to "shine" in moments they'd remembered the real Trump "flailing or lashing out." The overall experience for many Hillary voters was both "bewildering and instructive." "Flipped my blinders from verticle to horizontal, by golly! Now the sun don't get in my eyes. I'm kinda not as happy she won...
Maria Guadalupe, an economics and political science associate professor at INSEAD, first had the idea for the project after watching the second debate between Trump and Clinton. For help, she approached educational theater professor Joe Salvatore, who specializes in plays called "ethnodramas," which are theatrical adaptations of real life events documented in media artifacts, interviews, transcripts, journal entries, etc. "Whuddya mean, 'She din't win?'"
In an interview with NYU published Feb. 28, Salvatore explained how surprised he and his colleague were by their reactions to the female Trump (renamed "Brenda King," played by Rachel Whorton) and the male Hillary ("Jonathan Gordon"/Daryl Embry). "I din't know nobody who voted fo him!"
"We both thought that the inversion would confirm our liberal assumption--that no one would have accepted Trump’s behavior from a woman, and that the male Clinton would seem like the much stronger candidate," said Salvatore. "But we kept checking in with each other and realized that this disruption--a major change in perception--was happening. I had an unsettled feeling the whole way through." "I'm gonna go demonstrate someplace! Where's my pussy hat?"
Salvatore noted that at one point he turned to Guadalupe and, in reference to the female Trump, said, "I kind of want to have a beer with her!"
The two minute video at the link is really worth watching.
Posted by: Fred ||
03/10/2017 00:00 ||
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The overall experience for many Hillary voters was both "bewildering and instructive.
No self awareness that their own gender prejudice that they project on others was in full play during the election.
#2
theatrical adaptations of real life events documented in media artifacts
Isn't that what we have now?
"All the world’s a stage,
And all the men and women merely players;
They have their exits and their entrances;
And one man in his time plays many parts"-WS
Liberal in this case meaning just slightly to the left of Benito Mussolini.
According to the article I read yesterday the audience was drawn from NYC academia (faculty, admin and students) with all the stereotypical prejudices. I was surprised that there was any confusion after the fact. I expected a fully blown narrative spin to be in place.
[ABCNEWS.GO] The organizers of Boston's St. Patrick's Day parade have scheduled an emergency meeting for Friday to reconsider their vote to bar a gay veterans group from participating. Faith and *%! Begorrah!
The South Boston Allied War Veterans Council, which organizes the parade, and representatives of OutVets met Wednesday, said Ed Flynn, a council member who voted to allow the gay veterans' group to march.
Posted by: Fred ||
03/10/2017 00:00 ||
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[NYPOST] Utah could soon have the strictest DUI threshold in the nation after state politicians on Wednesday night voted to lower the limit for a driver’s blood-alcohol content to 0.05 percent, down from 0.08 percent. I see the 18th Amendment is back.
The measure heads to Utah’s governor, who has said he supports the legislation.
If Republican Gov. Gary Herbert signs the bill, it would take effect Dec. 30, 2018 -- an unusual effective date for Utah laws that would ensure the harsher standard is in place before alcohol-laden celebrations on New Year’s Eve.
Supporters of the legislation said it would save lives by keeping people off the road if they’ve been drinking. A mix of politicians, including Democrats and libertarian-leaning Republicans, opposed the measure. Some cited concerns that it could hurt tourism as the heavily Mormon state grapples with its reputation as an unfriendly place for drinkers.
The proposal would mean that a 150-pound man could get a DUI after two beers, while a 120-pound woman could get one after a single drink, according to the American Beverage Institute, a restaurant trade group that opposes the bill. A number of factors, including how much food is in someone’s stomach, could impact how much a drink will raise someone’s blood-alcohol content.
American Beverage Institute managing director Sarah Longwell said in a statement Wednesday night that the proposal will do little to make roads safer because more than 77 percent of alcohol-related traffic deaths in Utah come from drivers with a blood-alcohol content of 0.15 and above. "Utah politicians missed an opportunity today to target the hard-core drunk drivers who cause the vast majority of drunk driving fatalities and instead decided to criminalize perfectly responsible behavior," Longwell said.
Lawmakers in Washington are considering lowering the limit for blood-alcohol content this year, while a similar proposal recently died in Hawaii’s Legislature.
Across the country, the blood-alcohol content limit for most drivers is 0.08, but limits vary among states for commercial drivers or drivers who have had a past DUI conviction.
Rep. Norm Thurston (R-Provo), who sponsored Utah’s measure, said it’s important because a person starts to become impaired with the first drink. He notes a number of foreign countries have blood-alcohol content thresholds at 0.05 or lower.
Posted by: Fred ||
03/10/2017 00:00 ||
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Utah is where I started brewing my own beer. The state owned and licensed liquor stores only sold 3.2 and you couldn't buy a mixed drink in public. Order one and they would bring you the parts.
[WASHINGTONTIMES] Stung by recent election defeats, Democrats are leading the charge to lower the voting age to 17, with a little help from liberal billionaire George Soros ...the secretive Hungarian born Ernst Stavro Blofeld-like billionaire who seems to fund every horrible progressive organization you can think of... In Caliphornia, an impregnable bastion of the Democratic Party,, Democratic politicians introduced this week a landmark bill, ACA 10, that would give the Golden State the nation’s youngest statewide voting age by lowering the threshold from 18 to 17 in the name of reversing the slide in voter turnout. How about nine? Doesn't have as many digits, y'know.
"Young people are our future," said Democratic Assembly member Evan Low, the measure’s sponsor. "Lowering the voting age will help give them a voice in the democratic process and instill a lifelong habit of voting."
The proposal comes as the most ambitious of a host of efforts to chip away at the 18-year-old voting age as Democrats seek to bring into the fold younger voters, who traditionally support more liberal causes and candidates than do their elders.
"It is a transparent ploy to pad the Democratic vote," said John J. Pitney Jr., American politics professor at Claremont McKenna College in Claremont, California, referring to the California bill.
Mr. Soros is on board: His Open Society Foundations is among the left-wing philanthropies backing FairVote, which has expanded its advocacy for reforms such as a national popular vote in order to exert downward pressure on the voting age.
That's fine for state and local elections, but would those votes be counted for presidential contests, given the national age limit is eighteen?
Posted by: Fred ||
03/10/2017 00:00 ||
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18 was implemented because we were drafting some to go serve in a war. The amendment should have said those 18 and over in service rather than the whole lot. Given the infantilization of so many today, probably better to move it back to 21 with the exception of those serving.
#2
Now, life's an unfortunate accident;
Just something to tax, a contaminant.
But franchise that tissue
To vote for your issue,
And pregnancy's suddenly sacrament.
#13
Tax payers, like property tax payers before there was centralized income tax mechanism...sounds like the original system of the founding fathers, seems like they understood the perils of the entitlement state to the Republic.....smart bunch of old white men after all!
[Breitbart] During a speech at the Brookings Institution on Thursday, President Bill Clinton stated, "we have to find a way to bring simple, personal decency and trust back to our politics."
While speaking about former Israeli PM Yitzhak Rabin, Clinton said, "Finally, I think, somehow or another, we have to find a way to bring simple, personal decency and trust back to our politics." Clinton then discussed Rabin’s negotiations with the Palestinians, and how the Palestinians trusted his word more than a written contract, Clinton asked, "Can you imagine someone saying that today, in the world we’re living in?"
Clinton further said, "[I]t always comes down to two things, are we going to live in and us and them world, or a world that we made together? Is it going to be one set of rules for us, and another set for everybody else, or are we going to find a way to live through the same rules?"
#7
Really, this from Bill Clinton, the same guy that ducked his Secret Service detail on numerous occasions for a flight on the private jet to the secret bimbo isle of very young girls? That Bill Clinton? What a immoral man, and what a blessing we were saved from that messy family.
[WASHINGTONEXAMINER] A bipartisan group of politicians is trying to stop the Defense Department from killing about 8,500 goats and pigs a year in medical training exercises designed to prepare troops for combat. Obviously we want to have more politicians teaching in our military medical courses.
Rep. Hank Johnson, D-Ga., and Rep. Tom Marino, R-Pa., introduced a bill on Tuesday that would require the military to use only "human-based methods" to train service members to treat injuries sustained on the battlefield and end the use of "live tissue training," in which troops stab or shoot pigs and goats to simulate the treatment of combat trauma, by Oct. 1, 2020. My personal opinion is that if you've never seen blood you're not entitled to an opinion on bandaids.
Johnson told the Washington Examiner he intends to raise the issue during debate on the fiscal 2018 National Defense Authorization Act and hopes to use the must-pass bill as a vehicle to ban live-tissue training. He said simulators offer better combat training than live animals, are more humane and are ultimately more cost-effective. If you've ever had a CPR course and then a few months or years later administered CPR you know it's not the same. If you haven't, you're still eligible to become a politician.
"It may cost more for a simulator than for a live animal in terms of initial outlay, but you can only use that animal once, you can use the simulator repeatedly. So over the course of time, it's better," he said.
Posted by: Fred ||
03/10/2017 00:00 ||
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Hank "Guam might tip over" Johnson is a known imbecile. What's Marino's excuse?
Posted by: Frank G ||
03/10/2017 0:41 Comments ||
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And a lot of turkeys don't make it through Thanksgiving.
#11
Speaking from personal experience, no simulator can compare to actually working on live tissue. These 2 pols are morons - this training has saved lives. What is the cost of that???
Posted by: Bangkok Billy ||
03/10/2017 8:16 Comments ||
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#12
Same dust up years ago using dogs for Special Forces Medic (Dog Lab) training at Fort Bragg many years ago.
[RT] Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky is one of several Republicans who have vowed to vote against the GOP’s bill to repeal-and-replace Obamacare ... aka the Affordable Care Act, an ineptly designed and worse executed piece of legislation designed to bring 17 percent of the U.S. economy under the direct control of the government. The previous iteration, known as Hillarycare, was laughed out of Washington. This stinker was passed on a party-line vote without being read... . Instead, he has introduced legislation that would simply repeal the Affordable Care Act. Unfortunately, Obamacare has sufficiently distorted the healthcare economic structure that you can't just repeal the damned thing, anymore than you can outlaw HMOs and PPOs and the other artificial structures that add to healthcare costs and go back to Blue Cross-Blue Shield, the original market distortion. Costs won't lower (at least not quickly) without the Rube Goldberg mechanism in place. Nor will they get rid of the hideous tort law industry.
House Republicans published their Obamacare replacement legislation, entitled the American Health Care Act, on Monday. Their 123-page proposal, which is supported by the Trump administration, would give power and decision-making back to the states, restore the free market to health insurance, and provide $10 billion a year from Congress to the states to subsidize Medicaid and ensure continuing coverage, the bill’s architects said. Tax credits toward health care would be available immediately, grow with age, expand with family, and transfer with employment.
Posted by: Fred ||
03/10/2017 00:00 ||
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The previous iteration, known as Hillarycare, was laughed out of Washington. This stinker was passed on a party-line vote without being read...
And now, who do you think is insisting that everyone read the newest incarnation of ObamaCare which is ObamaLite before it is passed? None other than Nancy Pelosi.
[National Review] Now that the media-Democrat complex has been caught in its own web, there is some serious skullduggery underway. It’s revisionist history, Soviet style. You know, the kind where the bad stuff gets "disappeared."
The New York Times is disappearing its claim that Obama investigated Trump. For four months, the mainstream press was very content to have Americans believe -- indeed, they encouraged Americans to believe -- that a vigorous national-security investigation of the Trump presidential campaign was ongoing. "A counterintelligence investigation," the New York Times called it.
As I contended in a column this weekend, it was essential for the media and Democrats to promote the perception of an investigation because the scandalous narrative they were peddling -- namely, that Trump-campaign operatives conspired with the Putin regime to "hack the election" -- required it. Russia obviously did not hack the election.
Russian intelligence services may have hacked e-mail accounts of prominent Democrats, although even that has not been proved. And there is even less evidence of collusion by the Trump campaign in that effort -- as one would expect, in light of the intelligence agencies’ conclusion that the Russians sought to hack accounts of both major parties.
AP via Instapundit
Attorney General Jeff Sessions suggested Thursday that he would be open to the appointment of an outside counsel to review actions taken by the Justice Department during the Obama administration.
Conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt asked Sessions in an interview if the new attorney general would consider designating an outside counsel "not connected to politics" to take a second look at Justice Department actions that provoked Republican ire in the last eight years. Those include the Fast and Furious gun scandal and the decisions against bringing criminal charges over Hillary Clinton's email practices or the Internal Revenue Service's treatment of conservative groups. No wonder Loretta Lynch urges violent counter-revolution
#2
During the republic period of Rome, after a console finished their term they were put on trial to account for their behavior during their term. Basically like an impeachment trial of the old president when the new one took over.
This was done to keep them honest (or sneaky) and most were found clean.
It may not be a bad idea to put the entire previous administration and his lackies on trial after every election the way things are going.
President Trump did promise he would downsize the government by attrition.
[WASHINGTONEXAMINER] A senior staffer at the Environmental Protection Agency resigned from the agency Thursday amid concerns that many of agency's programs will be shuttered under the forthcoming Trump budget.
The founder of the EPA's environmental justice office, Mustafa Ali, resigned Thursday, saying he has never seen such a concerted effort to roll back programs with a track record of helping disadvantaged and low-income communities.
The office addresses environmental challenges facing low-income communities, such as the lead-contaminated water crisis that dominated the headlines last year in Flint, Mich. Ali had served as senior adviser on environmental justice issues, after founding the office in the 1990s.
The news was first reported by the environmental news website InsideClimate.
Posted by: Fred ||
03/10/2017 00:00 ||
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Environmental Justice
*snort* fire the entire division
Posted by: Frank G ||
03/10/2017 0:44 Comments ||
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programs with a track record of helping disadvantaged and low-income communities.
This is the EPA, why are they doing shit like this? Precisely programs like this are why the EPA long ago exceeded its mandate. This is precisely why the EPA needs to be rolled back. It's creating new jobs for itself outside of its role in society.
Posted by: Herb McCoy7309 ||
03/10/2017 0:59 Comments ||
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The office addresses environmental challenges facing low-income communities, such as the lead-contaminated water crisis that dominated the headlines last year in Flint, Mich.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
[FOXNEWS] Nearly two months into the Trump administration, the 
Hillary Clinton
[ABCNEWS.GO] The organizers of Boston's St. Patrick's Day parade have scheduled an emergency meeting for Friday to reconsider their vote to bar a gay veterans group from participating.
[NYPOST] Utah could soon have the strictest DUI threshold in the nation after state 
the secretive Hungarian born Ernst Stavro Blofeld-like billionaire who seems to fund every horrible 
[Breitbart] During a speech at the Brookings Institution on Thursday, President Bill Clinton stated, "we have to find a way to bring simple, personal decency and trust back to our politics."
[National Review] Now that the media-Democrat complex has been caught in its own web, there is some serious skullduggery underway. It’s revisionist history, Soviet style. You know, the kind where the bad stuff gets "disappeared." 
[WASHINGTONEXAMINER] A senior staffer at the Environmental Protection Agency resigned from the agency Thursday amid concerns that many of agency's programs will be shuttered under the forthcoming Trump budget.
