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UN monitors shot at trying to get to Syria massacre
Today's Headlines
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Page 6: Politix
2 23:42 JosephMendiola [2] 
8 21:46 RandomJD [2] 
9 17:00 JohnQC [1] 
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Europe
Live Webcast Of Obama Proposing More Spending As The Solution To All Of America's Problems
Actually, we are not sure just what the president will discuss in his 10:15 am address on the economy, but our suggestion that the president will suggest more spending as the cause solution to all of America's problems seems like a fair guess. That or blaming Merkel for the epic NFP miss last Friday. We are not sure what the shot keyword is today (aside for thingamajig of course), but we know what isn't: $15,734,596,578,458.59. That's was US Federal debt as of close on Wednesday: another fair guess is that it will receive exactly zero prominence in Obama's latest sermon.
Posted by: tipper || 06/08/2012 10:36 || Comments || Link || [2 views] Top|| File under:

#1  Because we all know what he does works so well.
Posted by: newc || 06/08/2012 12:10 Comments || Top||

#2  This one would go under "Bottom Stories of the Day."
Posted by: Mike || 06/08/2012 13:32 Comments || Top||

#3  I was sort of hoping for a repeat of this.
Posted by: Pappy || 06/08/2012 14:47 Comments || Top||

#4  So I'm broke and the answer is to go out a max out my credit cards. That just doesn't make any sense.
Posted by: JohnQC || 06/08/2012 16:46 Comments || Top||

#5  "The private sector is doing fine".

That is sooooo gonna hurt him. Roll it up into a nice ad, and beat the shit outta him. Remember Bush 41 "not knowing how a scanner works" buying groceries?
Posted by: Frank G || 06/08/2012 16:56 Comments || Top||

#6  Mr. President! Mr. President!

Please explain to the plebes once again, how this is Europes fault.
Posted by: The Press Corpse || 06/08/2012 18:10 Comments || Top||

#7  I love how his solution to solve the economy is the throw a press conference. Thats just ducky.

Then add in government doesn't spend enough, its close to our credit downgrade anniversary.

It was very passive, back seat presentation. I mean, did he just now notice? Has he been up for two days and thought this was a good idea? If this was to capture the news cycle, something they are supposed to excel at, then how wrong are they getting the tough stuff...
Posted by: swksvolFF || 06/08/2012 18:14 Comments || Top||

#8  So I'm broke and the answer is to go out a max out my credit cards. That just doesn't make any sense.

Sure it does! If you don't intend to ever pay it off. As long as the bank can't find us, they'll just charge it off, and *poof* the debt is gone like magic. Right?
Posted by: RandomJD || 06/08/2012 21:46 Comments || Top||


Home Front: Politix
Leaked Emails Endanger Obama Nominee
President B.O.'s ambassadorial nominee to Iraq appears to have conducted a lascivious extramarital affair with a Wall Street Journal news hound while the duo were stationed in Iraq, according to a collection of often-explicit emails posted on the website Cryptome earlier this week.
Reporter canoodled with the source, eh?
The emails raise questions about the administration official's fitness for the ambassadorship and whether he may have traded access to sensitive information for sexual favors.

The 2008 emails between Wall Street Journal news hound Gina Chon and former National Security Council member Brett McGurk, Obama's nominee to be the next U.S. ambassador to Iraq, expose a torrid love affair that unfolded over a period of several months.

Chon did not respond to request for comment. The State Department had no comment.

One source on Capitol Hill with knowledge of the nomination confirmed that the State Department had acknowledged the emails came from their system. The explicit details contained in the missives indicate that McGurk, who was married at the time, dangled unprecedented access and information before Chon in return for a series of increasingly intimate sexual encounters. McGurk is now married to Chon.
That doesn't fix the problem. Who's he sleeping with now, and with what favors in return?
McGurk was nominated by Obama in March to be the next U.S. envoy to Iraq. He served as an adviser to the last three U.S. ambassadors to Iraq, and later played the role of chief negotiator in the 2008 agreement that permitted U.S. troops to remain in that country.

In 2011, he led failed talks aimed at prolonging the U.S. troop presence.
A ringing endorsement!
The recently unearthed emails reveal that McGurk's extramarital relationship with Chon began during the arduous 2008 negotiations over the U.S.-Iraq security agreement--the sensitive details of which McGurk often hinted at over his unclassified exchanges with Chon.
Perhaps if he had put more effort into his work...
McGurk expressed pride in the clandestine relationship more than four months after the fact, when he resends to Chon the series of sexually charged emails and brags about his prowess.

"Cleaning out my emails and this is my all time favorite--from my first message to you through our Chinese dinner to the blue ball banter and then my coming over to hook up with you for the first time on June 23, [2008]--a night the world should celebrate!" McGurk wrote to Chon on December 13, 2008. "I am so fucking smooth!"

The news hound-source relationship began in earnest on June 20, 2008, after the pair met at a dinner party and traded a set of flirty emails.

"Thanks again for the dinner conversation," McGurk wrote to Chon. "I'll tell you what I know, if you can teach me something about cars."

Chon responded in kind, attempting to lure McGurk away from his State Department handlers for a one-on-one schmooze session.

"It would be good to get together on a more casual basis without public affairs people, if you know what I mean," wrote Chon.

From that point, Chon and McGurk engaged in an increasingly erotic back-and-forth in which Chon attempts to extract insider information and McGurk pontificates about his "blue balls," a term that refers to sexual frustration.

McGurk--who is rumored to be the senior U.S. official caught on video receiving fellatio on the rooftop of Saddam Hussein's presidential palace--offers to throw his weight around in order to get Chon into a high level powwow with U.S. and Iraqi political bigwigs.

"Turns out I totally have rank to get you in here, but it would not be fair for a master negotiating tactician like me--to intimidate and inexperience and innocent negotiator like you," McGurk writes. "My strategy is to break you down (day by day) until Friday when I will have achieved maximum leverage. Plan on dinner tomorrow around 8."
Posted by: Fred || 06/08/2012 00:00 || Comments || Link || [1 views] Top|| File under:

#1  Reporter canoodled with the source, eh?

Nothing new there. CNN was blowing Saadam pretty much forever.

Hey, is this Coach McGurk from "Home Movies"?
Posted by: SteveS || 06/08/2012 0:18 Comments || Top||

#2  Images of the actual e-mail messages available at http://cryptome.org/2012/06/mcgurk-chon/mcgurk-chon.htm

I have no real problem with a horndog Alpha male being posted to a shithole like Iraq - maybe a jerk is exactly what you need in dealing with an entire nation of jerks.

The questions are:

1. Can he recover his gravitas after his awkward missives have been publicized?

2. Dose he have the emotional maturity to subordinate his own demon urges to the needs of his diplomatic mission?

3. Did he display an outright pattern of dishonesty in his prior official roles?

This guy was appointed to the National Security Council by George W. - so he appears to be a professional bureaucrat, not a completely political hack.
Posted by: Lone Ranger || 06/08/2012 1:07 Comments || Top||

#3  So that's what passes for romance today? Need to beef up the entry exam.
Posted by: Perfesser || 06/08/2012 5:45 Comments || Top||

#4  Sounds like what the Brits call a prat.
Posted by: phil_b || 06/08/2012 8:22 Comments || Top||

#5  One wonders who leaked the e-mails and why. That's at least as important as that this guy resembles POTUS 1992-2000.
Posted by: Glenmore || 06/08/2012 8:31 Comments || Top||

#6  McGurk the jerk-off.
Posted by: OmuluqueHapsburg5085 || 06/08/2012 11:27 Comments || Top||

#7  The explicit details contained in the missives indicate that McGurk, who was married at the time, dangled unprecedented access and information before Chon in return for a series of increasingly intimate sexual encounters.

And that's the real issue here, IMO. Anyone willing to do such a thing needs to be kept far away from sensitive information and from access to other sources.
Posted by: lotp || 06/08/2012 13:40 Comments || Top||

#8  An undercover assignment?
Posted by: mojo || 06/08/2012 16:37 Comments || Top||

#9  dangled unprecedented access and information before Chon in return for a series of increasingly intimate sexual encounters

LOL :) Has the makings of a racy novel.
Posted by: JohnQC || 06/08/2012 17:00 Comments || Top||


-Election 2012
Booker's big mouth ruins relationship with Obama, Cabinet hopes
It's bye-bye, Beltway for Cory Booker.

Newark's mayor, who was gunning for a spot in President B.O.'s Cabinet, lost the chance after he shot his mouth off during a blunderingly honest TV appearance last month, sources told The Post.

"He's dead to us," one ranking administration official said of the prevailing feelings at the White House and Obama headquarters in Chicago.

Booker had been angling for the housing secretary gig in a second Obama term, according to sources in the administration and close to the mayor.

The job was certainly a possibility, given Booker's work in New Jersey's biggest city, according to administration and Democratic Party sources.

Thinking highly of Booker, Obama's campaign asked him to appear on "Meet the Press" on May 20 to act as a mouthpiece, but he proceeded to eviscerate one of the president's key campaign themes.

Booker told a national TV audience the president's attacks on Willard Mitt Romney
...former governor of Massachussetts, currently the presumptive Publican nominee for president. He is the son of the former governor of Michigan, George Romney, who himself ran for president after saving American Motors from failure, though not permanently. Romney's charisma is best defined as soporific, which is probably why he is leading the Publican field. On the plus side, he isn't President B.O...
's record at private-equity firm Bain Capital were "nauseating" and made him "very uncomfortable."
Posted by: Beavis || 06/08/2012 10:46 || Comments || Link || [2 views] Top|| File under:

#1  I kinda like him.

Mayor Booker, dump the Dem's, and come over to 'the dark side'; we have cookies. :)
Posted by: Whiskey Mike || 06/08/2012 21:32 Comments || Top||

#2  Uh, uh, "BOOKER" - THE COLONEL-RANKED COMMUNICATIONS OFFICER FROM "KELLY'S HEROES"???

CARROLL "THE GENERAL" O'CONNOR = D *** NG IT, BOOKER, YOU'RE THE COMMUNICATIONS OFFICER, YOU'RE SUPPOSED TO BE ABLE TO COMMUNICATE ...
... I'M COMING THERE [downstairs], BOOKER!
Posted by: JosephMendiola || 06/08/2012 23:42 Comments || Top||



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Two weeks of WOT
Fri 2012-06-08
  UN monitors shot at trying to get to Syria massacre
Thu 2012-06-07
  47 Die in Hama Countryside 'Massacre' as Clashes Rock Damascus
Wed 2012-06-06
  Armed groups kill 15 Syrian soldiers in Latakia
Tue 2012-06-05
  U.S. Official: Al-Qaeda's No. 2 Killed In Drone Strike
Mon 2012-06-04
  US drone strike kills 10 in NW Pakistan
Sun 2012-06-03
  At least 12 dead in Nigerian church bombing
Sat 2012-06-02
  US drone strike kills three militants in Pakistan: officials
Fri 2012-06-01
  SCAF says it is going to end Egypt's state of emergency after 31 years
Thu 2012-05-31
  Somalia forces capture key al-Shabab town of Afmadow
Wed 2012-05-30
  19 Killed in Syria Violence
Tue 2012-05-29
  Western Nations Expel Syrian Diplomats
Mon 2012-05-28
  MNLA, Ansar al-Din declare Islamic state
Sun 2012-05-27
  Al-Shabaab vows Dire Revenge™ after fall of Afgoye
Sat 2012-05-26
  25 children among 90 dead in Syrian government 'massacre'
Fri 2012-05-25
  Thirteen die in suicide attack in Yemen


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