TheFrontPageCover
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Pompeo: Iran Attacked Those Tankers
National Security Desk
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Monday Top News Executive Summary
Media Editors: HEALTH-CARE CHECKUP: “President Trump said he’ll be rolling out a new health care plan in a couple of months, saying it will be a key focus in his 2020 reelection campaign,” according to The Hill. Republicans failed to pass health-care reform even with congressional majorities, so this plan will be geared toward rallying the troops for the 2020 elections. If successful, we can only hope that Republicans have finally learned their lesson.
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FUNDING FIGHT RESUMES: “House Democrats are set to move funding for most of the federal government this week, even as lawmakers have struggled to reach a budget caps deal. The two packages, known as ‘minibuses,’ will cover nine of the 12 individual appropriations bills that Congress needs to pass by Oct. 1 in order to avoid the second government shutdown of the year.” (The Hill)
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IRAN DEFIES: “Amid increased brinksmanship with the United States, Iran announced Monday its intention to exceed the low-enriched uranium stockpile limit it agreed to in the 2015 nuke deal — unless certain demands are met by the pact’s remaining signatories within the next 10 days. More provocatively, the Islamic Republic’s Atomic Energy Organization spokesman warned Iran could enrich uranium up to 20 percent — just a step below weapons-grade level.” (Fox News)
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ALLIES TAKE NOTE: “The United Kingdom will send elite forces to the Gulf of Oman to protect its warships amid rising tensions with Iran, according to the Sunday Times. The planned deployment follows Thursday’s attacks on two oil tankers, which the U.S. has blamed on Iran.” (Politico)
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COLLUSION DELUSION: “The United States is stepping up digital incursions into Russia’s electric power grid in a warning to President Vladimir V. Putin and a demonstration of how the Trump administration is using new authorities to deploy cybertools more aggressively, current and former government officials said.” (The New York Times)
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IMPEACHMENT LETDOWN: “MoveOn.org kicked off a nationwide campaign to impeach President Donald Trump Saturday with a series of ‘#ImpeachTrump’ rallies and a ‘Day of Action’ meant to inspire the far left to pressure Congressional legislators to undertake impeachment proceedings. … But if their intent was to create the impression that hundreds of thousands of Americans stood at the ready to impeach President Donald Trump, the effort failed miserably. Across the country, turnout was sparse, even in dedicated leftist strongholds.” (The Daily Wire)
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AFRICAN MIGRANTS: According to the Associated Press, African migrants are a burgeoning source of illegal immigration. They are emigrating from places like the Republic of the Congo, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Angola, and Cameroon. “The explosion in immigration to the United States from sub-Saharan Africa coincides with a steep drop in the migration flow across the Mediterranean to Europe after European countries and two main embarkation points — Turkey and Libya — decided to crack down.”
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DIVINE JUSTICE: “An atheist group has dropped its attempt to strip American pastors of their tax exemption for housing. The Freedom from Religion Foundation will not appeal an appeals court decision that said the federal government is allowed to exempt priests, pastors, rabbis, and other religious instructors from paying taxes on the housing they receive, ending an eight-year legal battle.” (The Washington Free Beacon)
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POLICY: Building the new privacy and security layers of the Internet (American Enterprise Institute)
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~The Patriot Post
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1,000 days of continuing resolutions in 10 years
by Mackenzie Eaglen and Rick Berger
{ aei.org } ~ Former Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis said a year ago that military had operated under 1,000 days of debilitating continuing resolutions (CR) over the past decade... Yet another continuing resolution looms again this fall. Even as Congress moves ahead with its spending bills for the Defense Department, the odds remain low that both parties can agree to an overall spending level by the start of the fiscal year still. Only about 37 legislative work days remain before September 30. This means that federal agencies, including the U.S. military, will almost certainly begin another year under a spending freeze at last year’s budget levels. The result? The military’s advantages continue to shrink. According to Mattis, “I cannot overstate the impact to our troops’ morale from all this uncertainty. The combination of rapidly changing technology, the negative impact on military readiness resulting from the longest continuous stretch of combat in our nation’s history, and insufficient funding have created an overstretched and under-resourced military.” Continuing resolutions negatively impact the military in three main ways. First, because CRs freeze individual appropriations accounts at last year’s levels, tens of billions of dollars will be misaligned. For instance, though the difference between the 2020 requested level of $750 billion and the 2019 spending level of $716 billion is only $34 billion, the actual effect of the CR is greater because the additional funding is misaligned compared to the budget request—and often at a lower level. This misalignment negatively affects all accounts, but particularly creates problems for troop training and maintenance of equipment and facilities—the core of military readiness. Near-term readiness is perishable and must be constantly maintained for the “fight tonight” or it is lost. It takes longer to rebuild readiness than to maintain it. As the former commandant of the Marine Corps explained, troops “rely on the hard, realistic training provided by these exercises to develop the individual and collective skills necessary to prepare for high-end combat, while simultaneously building the experience and leadership of the non-commissioned officers, senior non-commissioned officers, and junior officers who will lead” forces into harm’s way. The commandant continued that “although some effects can be mitigated” when training is delayed or canceled because of budget instability, “the experience lost by these units at a critical time in their preparation cannot be recouped.” Or, put another way by Secretary Mattis last year, inadequate and delayed budgets are why the military “can have young officers getting promoted to major that have not had the same flight hours that you have expected during your tenure on this committee, that a lieutenant or captain would have had. They have not had the opportunity because we have not funded for it, the aircraft are not available, the spare parts and the maintainers have not been there.” Time lost is future readiness thrown away....
Great Lakes Reveal a Fatal Flaw
in Climate Change ‘Science’
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Trump’s Expansion of Health Reimbursement Accounts Improves Health Care Choices
by Robert Moffit.
Trump's 'secret' agreement with Mexico revealed
by Zachary Halaschak
{ washingtonexaminer.com } ~ President Trump teased the media this week when he dangled a one-page document he said contained a "secret" deal with Mexico in front of journalists... Now that document has been released in full. The document is written in the conditional tense and references “the Joint Declaration of the Governments of the United States and Mexico of June, 7, 2019.” It says the two countries agree to begin discussions to “establish definitive terms for a binding bilateral agreement to further address burden-sharing and the assignment of responsibility for processing refugee status claims of migrants.” “If the United States determines, at its discretion and after consultation with Mexico, after 45 calendar days from the date of the issuance of the Joint Declaration, that the measures adopted by the Government of Mexico pursuant to the Joint Declaration have not sufficiently achieved results in addressing the flow of migrants to the southern border of the United States, the Government of Mexico will take all necessary steps under domestic law to bring the agreement into force with a view to ensuring that the agreement will enter into force within 45 days,” the document reads. Mexico released the full text of the page on Friday, three days after Trump first showed off the paper. “You would freeze-action it, you would stop it, you would analyze it,” Trump taunted reporters as he left the White House for a trip to Iowa. “I'm going to let Mexico do the announcement at the right time.”Journalists snapped photos of the document illuminated by the sunlight and some of the words were able to be made out. Earlier this month, Trump threatened a 5% tariff against Mexico if it didn't reduce migrant crossings. The tariff was averted after negotiations between the two parties in Washington..
scumbag/liar-Hillary And scumbag-Adam
Schiff In Trouble After What They Did
Back In 2017 And It Gets Worse
by JonDougherty
{ rightwingtribune.com } ~ With all the phony outrage now taking place within the garbage ‘mainstream media,’ the Democratic Party, and far too many Republicans... regarding POTUS Donald Trump’s comments to scumbag/liar-Clinton water boy George Stephanopoulos earlier this week — that he would consider “looking at” any political opposition ‘dirt’ on an opponent that came from a foreign source — it became necessary to dig through our archives and those of responsible media sources to point out just how ridiculously hypocritical the outrage really is. Flashback No. 1: That time when scumbag/liar-Hillary Clinton, shortly after she lost to Trump, told The Daily Show on Comedy Central that, eh, you know, getting political dirt from foreign sources is so what happens, “you know,” and anyway, what’s the big deal?As reported by Rowan Scarborough at The Washington Times, Daily Show host Trevor Noah actually brought up the “Steele Dossier” — which cited sources that had links to the Kremlin — as it was just becoming known to Americans post-election. “It’s part of what happens in a campaign where you get information that may or may not be useful and you try to make sure anything you put out in public arena is accurate,” she said. “So this thing didn’t come out until after the election and it’s still being evaluated.” “When Trump got the nomination of the Republican Party, the people doing the dossier research came to my campaign lawyer, and said, would you like us to continue it,” she said. “He said yes. He is an experienced lawyer. He knows what the law is. He knows what opposition research is.” Flashback No. 2: In July 2017, just a few short months after POTUS Trump was inaugurated and special counsel Robert Mueller had been appointed and the second phase of “Spygate” — the operation to depose the president — had begun, then-House Intelligence Committee ranking member scumbag-Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) actually said it was “inappropriate” for scumbag/liar-Clinton’s campaign to have received foreign political dirt. “If you are looking for an example of a campaign coordinating with a foreign country or a foreign source, look no further than the DNC... https://rightwingtribune.com/2019/06/15/hillary-and-adam-schiff/ .
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Pompeo: Iran Attacked Those Tankers
National Security Desk: Two oil tankers were attacked in the Gulf of Oman off the coast of Iran Thursday, and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo laid the blame squarely on Iran.
“The Islamic Republic of Iran is responsible for the attacks that occurred in the Gulf of Oman today,” Pompeo declared Thursday. “This assessment is based on intelligence, the weapons used, the level of expertise needed to execute the operation, recent similar Iranian attacks on shipping, and the fact that no proxy group operating in the area has the resources and proficiency to act with such a high degree of sophistication.”
Moreover, Pompeo added, “This is only the latest in a series of attacks instigated by the Islamic Republic of Iran and its surrogates against American and allied interests, and they should be understood in the context of 40 years of unprovoked aggression against freedom-loving nations.”
That unprovoked aggression may come with consequences. Pompeo said, “These unprovoked attacks present a clear threat to international peace and security, a blatant assault on the freedom of navigation, and an unacceptable campaign of escalating tension by Iran. … Iran is lashing out because the regime wants our successful maximum-pressure campaign lifted. No economic sanctions entitle the Islamic republic to attack innocent civilians, disrupt global oil markets and engage in nuclear blackmail.”
In any case, Pompeo concluded, “The international community condemns Iran’s assault on the freedom of navigation and the targeting of innocent civilians. … The United States will defend its interests and stand with our partners and allies to safeguard global commerce and regional stability.”
As for where this fits in the chronology of recent events, The Wall Street Journal editorial board observes, “The assault on the tankers validates the U.S. decision the past month, met with skepticism at the time, to send the aircraft carrier USS Lincoln into the Gulf along with destroyers and cruisers, in the expectation that Iran was planning an attack in the region. Indeed it was.”
And a footnote: One of the responding U.S. Navy vessels was the USS Bainbridge. Students of history will recall that the Bainbridge also hosted the SEALs who killed the Maersk Alabama hijackers. Seems like the Revolutionary Guard is playing with fire — especially considering they’re literally caught on video released by U.S. Central Command.
~The Patriot Post
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