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Militant leader gunned down in southern Thailand
Today's Headlines
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Page 6: Politix
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6 13:47 rjschwarz [2] 
4 21:17 lord garth [1] 
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5 20:59 magpie [4] 
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-Lurid Crime Tales-
Obama's Cyber Chief: Susan Rice Gave 'Stand Down' order in response to Russian Meddling
[Daily Caller] Former President Barack Obama’s cybersecurity czar confirmed Wednesday that former national security adviser Susan Rice told him to "stand down" in response to Russian cyber attacks during the 2016 presidential campaign.

Michael Daniel, whose official title was "cybersecurity coordinator," confirmed the stand-down order during a Senate Select Committee on Intelligence hearing held to review the Obama and President Donald Trump’s administrations’ policy response to Russian election interference.

Rice’s order to Daniel was first reported in "Russian Roulette," a book published in March that details Russia’s meddling in the election.

In the book, authors Michael Isikoff and David Corn reported that Daniel was developing strategies to respond to Russian cyber attacks on U.S. companies and political campaigns. He proposed using what’s known as denial of service attacks to take down Russian propaganda news sites and to attack Russian intelligence agencies.
Posted by: Besoeker || 06/21/2018 09:04 || Comments || Link || [3 views] Top|| File under:

#1  Unchecked "Russian meddling" of the election appears to be a component of the Trump-Russian collusion narrative.
Posted by: Besoeker || 06/21/2018 9:12 Comments || Top||

#2  Why try to stop it when you can blame it on Trump?
Posted by: Abu Uluque || 06/21/2018 9:29 Comments || Top||

#3  Why try to stop it when you can blame it on Trump?

Or you instigated it.
Posted by: Skidmark || 06/21/2018 10:05 Comments || Top||

#4  So, Susan "Benghazi" Rice was in favor of Russian meddling in our elections? The Dems did far more to corrupt the election process than the Russians could ever dream of.
Posted by: JohnQC || 06/21/2018 10:16 Comments || Top||

#5  Anyone surprised?
Posted by: Rex Mundi || 06/21/2018 14:27 Comments || Top||

#6  What command authority does the national security advisor legally have? How is the person referenced in her down line chain of command?
Posted by: Blossom Hupager6063 || 06/21/2018 20:44 Comments || Top||

#7  Another ValJar choice gift.
Posted by: NoMoreBS || 06/21/2018 23:51 Comments || Top||


210 page RICO complaint filed in US District Court 0n 15 June 2018 against the Clinton Crime Syndicate
Well, perhaps the worm is finally turning - to wit:

https://www.scribd.com/document/382227003/Soros-Bill-and-Hillary-Clinton-John-Podesta-and-Others-Named-in-RICO-Case

Posted by: Lone Ranger || 06/21/2018 03:09 || Comments || Link || [1 views] Top|| File under: Tin Hat Dictators, Presidents for Life, & Kleptocrats

#1  Is plaintiff Gary J. Byrne the former Secret Service officer of the same name who wrote about serving in the Clinton White House? Breitbart interviewed him before the election.
Posted by: trailing wife || 06/21/2018 8:04 Comments || Top||

#2  If you don't like reading at the SCRIBD site as I don't, here is an alternative cleaner copy: Non-SCRIBD Copy.


Byrne, a former uniformed SS officer and U.S. Air Marshall feels like he was wronged in a RICO criminal way, by the Clinton cabal.

Depending upon how far this case gets, it should be interesting to see what this case reveals. Byrne, a non-lawyer is dealing with a bunch of lawyers who have been at this much longer than him. Hopefully, he has some political connections and monied backing on this.
Posted by: JohnQC || 06/21/2018 9:50 Comments || Top||

#3  The discovery process should be entertaining
Posted by: Blossom Hupager6063 || 06/21/2018 20:46 Comments || Top||

#4  for a private citizen to bring a RICO against the multiple defendants named, that citizen must show that he has been harmed and that the harm came from one of the defendants named

Mr Byrne alleges being pestered, insulted, ridiculed and slandered but I couldn't find any evidence that he suffered significant monetary or physical harm (its 200+ pages and I quit reading about about page 15)

Posted by: lord garth || 06/21/2018 21:17 Comments || Top||


Baltimore Finally Asks The Feds To Help Them With Their Murder Problem
[Hot Air] With the heat of the summer upon us, the murder rate in Baltimore, Maryland is once again climbing back up. Still not as bad as the previous two years, but it was a late spring and the gangs have started making up for lost time. This past weekend five people were killed and seven more injured in various shootings around the city. Knowing that things are only going to get worse as we move into July and August, the Police Commissioner and the Mayor announced this week that a "summer surge" of law enforcement was coming and they are requesting help from federal agencies to battle "the worst of the worst" among Charm City’s violent criminal element.
Posted by: Besoeker || 06/21/2018 02:03 || Comments || Link || [0 views] Top|| File under:

#1  Why not, it worked for Chicago.
Posted by: Skidmark || 06/21/2018 3:17 Comments || Top||

#2  Baltimore doesn't want to spend the money to deal with this problem. It cuts too much into their grafts.

Rather what they are apparently trying to do is shift the responsibility and cost to the feds.
Posted by: Seeking Cure For Ignorance || 06/21/2018 3:46 Comments || Top||

#3  Simple. Get rid of know nothing liberals.
Posted by: Eohippus Sproing7694 || 06/21/2018 5:44 Comments || Top||

#4  They have made it so difficult for law enforcement even the Feds will have restrictions.Thankless waste of time and resources.
Posted by: Dale || 06/21/2018 8:17 Comments || Top||

#5  Providing federally funded body bags would be 'help.'
Posted by: Besoeker || 06/21/2018 8:20 Comments || Top||

#6  "...Keep in mind, however, that anything the Federal Government could realistically do to make the situation better isn't wanted. Just send money - graft don't steal itself, ya know."

Mike
Posted by: Mike Kozlowski || 06/21/2018 9:25 Comments || Top||

#7  Is black Mussolini girl still in charge of the prosecutor's office?
Posted by: M. Murcek || 06/21/2018 9:50 Comments || Top||

#8  Yep. New Mayor and Police Chief. Same tribals
Posted by: Frank G || 06/21/2018 9:53 Comments || Top||

#9  One solution to the murder problem is to kill a whole bunch of people.
Posted by: SteveS || 06/21/2018 11:22 Comments || Top||

#10  Whatever happened to the state of Maryland?
Posted by: Anguper Hupomosing9418 || 06/21/2018 12:39 Comments || Top||

#11  ....the same thing that happened to the city of Baltimore?
Posted by: Procopius2k || 06/21/2018 16:50 Comments || Top||

#12  A Republican governor, Democrat mayor.
Posted by: Threarong Grereling4499 || 06/21/2018 17:18 Comments || Top||

#13  I always hated those "Motor Gently" license plates. Loved to watch Michigan drivers run them off I-68
Posted by: M. Murcek || 06/21/2018 20:13 Comments || Top||


Home Front: Politix
Trump to propose merging Labor, Education departments, report says

[Samuel Chamberlain | Fox News] The Trump administration will propose merging the Labor Department with the Education Department as part of a larger effort to reorganize the federal government, The Wall Street Journal reported late Wednesday.

The formal announcement is planned for Thursday morning, but the Journal reports that any planned reorganization must be approved by Congress.

The reported proposal is a revival of long-held conservative ambitions dating back at least two decades. In the 1990s, Republican lawmakers proposed merging the Education and Labor departments with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC). The new agency would have been dubbed the Department of Education and Employment, but such plans never got off the ground.

According to the Journal, the Education Department is one of the smallest agencies of the federal government, with approximately 3,900 employees. The paper reports that its workforce has shrunk by 10 percent as the result of a hiring freeze instituted by President Trump soon after he took office.

The department was one of three government agencies Republican presidential candidate Rick Perry promised to eliminate during the 2012 campaign. The proposal was overshadowed when Perry, now the secretary of energy, forgot the name of one of the agencies during a televised debate.

The Labor Department has a reported 15,000 employees and has a variety of responsibilities, including compiling employment statistics and enforcing federal wage laws.
By way of the WSJ
Posted by: Seeking Cure For Ignorance || 06/21/2018 03:35 || Comments || Link || [2 views] Top|| File under:

#1  Before your time, there was Health, Education, and Welfare (HEW) before the empires were built.
Posted by: Procopius2k || 06/21/2018 7:32 Comments || Top||

#2  As long as he gets rid of good sized parts of each hack bureaucracy in the process, I'm fine with it.
Posted by: Raj || 06/21/2018 8:53 Comments || Top||

#3  Good plan. The teachers' union is a huge problem. Let Labor Dept. handle it. Oh, wait...
Posted by: M. Murcek || 06/21/2018 9:24 Comments || Top||

#4  Second EPA to the BLM.
Posted by: Skidmark || 06/21/2018 10:07 Comments || Top||

#5  Brilliant. You can make a lot of the bureaucracy go away without actually dissolving a federal agency. The latter has been tried in the past and always failed.
Posted by: Iblis || 06/21/2018 10:54 Comments || Top||

#6  Funny, I read EPA to Black Lives Matter at first.
Posted by: rjschwarz || 06/21/2018 13:47 Comments || Top||


Government
Do nothing Senate blocks Trump's spending cuts
[Wash Times] Senators voted Wednesday to block President Trump’s $15.4 billion spending cuts package, with lawmakers saying it trimmed the budget too much.

Brushing aside administration promises that the cuts were chiefly to money that was never going to be spent, the Senate voted 50-48 to keep the bill bottled up. Two Republicans ‐ Susan Collins of Maine and Richard Burr of North Carolina ‐ joined Democrats to defeat the package.

The vote was a blow to Republicans who had promised more fiscal responsibility after passing a $1.5 trillion tax cut last year followed by a $1.3 trillion spending bill in March.

Mr. Trump, stung by criticism after signing the spending bill, vowed to return with cuts.

But with Congress already working on the 2019 spending bills, Democrats said any moves to lower government funding would sour the chances for bipartisan cooperation.
Posted by: Besoeker || 06/21/2018 02:28 || Comments || Link || [2 views] Top|| File under:

#1  On the other hand, they can appropriate, but he doesn't have to spend it.
Posted by: Procopius2k || 06/21/2018 7:33 Comments || Top||

#2  As Procopiuus2k said, that’s the bottom line.
Posted by: trailing wife || 06/21/2018 8:30 Comments || Top||

#3  "Gentleman, we have to protect our phony baloney jobs!"
Posted by: AlmostAnonymous5839 || 06/21/2018 9:24 Comments || Top||

#4  would sour the chances for bipartisan cooperation

Now THAT'S funny!
Posted by: Bobby || 06/21/2018 9:47 Comments || Top||

#5  Two Pubs, Burr and Collins didn't vote for the bill. Two abstained from voting, probably Flake and McCain.

How much money routinely disappears across various agencies? For example, how much money disappears due to fraud and corruption in Medicare/Medicaid, SS, and welfare? There's much room for improvement.
Posted by: JohnQC || 06/21/2018 10:10 Comments || Top||

#6  Flake needs to move on and resign now, McCain needs to hurry up and resign or die. Get real conservative in there. And McConnel and Cornyn the swamp turtle twins, they need to retire or be primaried HARD.
Posted by: Squinty Elmuse7861 || 06/21/2018 23:24 Comments || Top||


Democrats demand end to firing delinquent government workers, union reforms
[HotAir] As we’ve recently discussed, President Trump signed a series of executive orders which seek to ease the process for firing delinquent government workers and institute reforms in how government worker unions operate inside of federal offices. The National Treasury Employees Union has already gone to court to try to stop these reforms and HUD ran into problems when it tried to evict the union from its offices.

Yes, it's been a rocky start on the reform trail. But now the Democrats in the Senate are getting in on the act, demanding that the reforms be canceled. 45 of them signed on to a letter demanding that the President rescind the orders and put an end to the madness of removing workers who spend their time watching porn on their government computers while being paid on the taxpayer dime.

A group of 45 Democratic senators on Tuesday demanded President Trump rescind his controversial recent executive orders that seek to make it easier to fire federal workers and severely curb the influence of federal employee unions.

In a letter to Trump, the senators, led by Sen. Chris Van Hollen, D-Md., blasted the orders, arguing they "undermine the foundations of our civil service system."

"The recent executive orders undermine the decades-old rights of federal employees to fair representation in the workplace," they wrote. "These orders significantly reduce the extent to which federal agencies will negotiate collective bargaining agreements with their workforce. Instead, federal agencies or outside panels will impose workplace policies without good faith negotiation.

I understand that the Democrats have had trouble settling on a cohesive campaign messaging strategy for the midterms, but is this really the hill they want to die on? Let's stop and consider precisely what it is that Van Hollen and his colleagues are calling for. Under current rules, even the most egregious violations by federal workers can almost never result in an immediate dismissal. Management is forced to issue letters suggesting how the worker might improve their performance and establish a "review period." And the employee always has the right to appeal through a process which the department's management has zero control over. Even in the generally rare cases where someone does get fired, they can frequently have it overturned and be returned to their old positions. And if they are put on leave while the process plays out they almost always receive their full pay and benefits, sometimes for years.

Do you really want to go out before the nation's voters, most of whom have to work in the real world for companies that fire you on the same day that you massively screw up, and demand those "rights" for these people? Particularly when the voters you are addressing are the ones paying those salaries, that doesn't sound like the best strategy ever.

And what of the unions? Those are not government organizations. They are private labor groups who represent the workers and collectively bargain for their incredibly generous compensation and retirement packages. (Retirement plans which almost none of those private sector voters get any more.) They're being allowed to use government office space and resources which are paid for by the taxpayers. And some of those union officials hold what are technically considered "government jobs" with taxpayer-funded salaries while they spend all of their hours on "official time" doing union business. Do you think the public is going to be on your side or the side of the guy who signed the order trying to rein them in?

On second thought, just go ahead and go with that, Democrats. I'm sure it will work out marvelously for you.
They can't have this end. It will cut off supporters and graft payments
Posted by: DarthVader || 06/21/2018 00:00 || Comments || Link || [4 views] Top|| File under:

#1  As expected, by both parties. Don’t forget to vote in November.
Posted by: trailing wife || 06/21/2018 8:33 Comments || Top||

#2  "We've got to protect out phony baloney jobs..."
Posted by: M. Murcek || 06/21/2018 9:53 Comments || Top||

#3  Does seem like this sort of thing won't sell well at the ballot booth.
Posted by: rjschwarz || 06/21/2018 10:29 Comments || Top||

#4  They can't have this end. It will cut off supporters and graft payments

And their power, which is strongly rooted in their control of the organs.
Posted by: charger || 06/21/2018 19:14 Comments || Top||

#5  You might even put a stop to featherbedding or having the wages of imaginary workers pocketed by their supervisors. Nope, never happen.
Posted by: magpie || 06/21/2018 20:59 Comments || Top||



Who's in the News
41[untagged]
7Islamic State
4Taliban
2Commies
2Govt of Syria
2al-Qaeda in Mali/Nusrat al-Islam wal Muslimeen
2Boko Haram (ISIS)
2Govt of Iran Proxies
2Govt of Pakistan
2Houthis
2Sublime Porte
1Arab Spring
1Hamas
1Tin Hat Dictators, Presidents for Life, & Kleptocrats
1al-Nusra
1Palestinian Authority
1Salafists
1TTP
1Abu Sayyaf (ISIS)
1Govt of Iran
1Thai Insurgency
1Tin Hat Dictators, Presidents for Life,
1Govt of Saudi Arabia

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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.
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Two weeks of WOT
Thu 2018-06-21
  Militant leader gunned down in southern Thailand
Wed 2018-06-20
  Taliban kill 30 Afghan soldiers and take base in first major attack since ceasefire
Tue 2018-06-19
  Philippine airstrikes target ISIS-linked militants near Marawi
Mon 2018-06-18
  Houthis say Saudi-led forces bogged down outside Hudaydah
Sun 2018-06-17
  Israeli Air Force Attacks 'Leader of Gaza Cell Behind Burning Kites'
Sat 2018-06-16
  Kurdish-led forces claim 15 Turkish soldiers, rebels killed in Afrin
Fri 2018-06-15
  US claim drone strike kills Mullah Fazlullah
Thu 2018-06-14
  Taliban supreme leader offers direct negotiations with the United States
Wed 2018-06-13
  ISIS corpses litter Euphrates after Syrian Army wipes out terrorists trying to cross
Tue 2018-06-12
  34 militants killed in NDS Special Forces operation in Nangarhar
Mon 2018-06-11
  Austria Is Shutting Down Mosques And Ejecting Imams
Sun 2018-06-10
  Wasserman Schultz Refuses To Respond To Accusations She Attempted To Shut Down Awan Probe
Sat 2018-06-09
  Iran Facilitated Passage Of 9/11 Attackers, Iranian Politician Says
Fri 2018-06-08
  German-Jewish teen found raped, murdered; Turkish refugee suspect arrested, Iraqi refugee suspect fled to Iraq
Thu 2018-06-07
  Syria opens Homs-Hama highway after near 7-year closure due to war


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