L.A. County sheriff announces inquiry into secret societies of deputies and their matching tattoos

Los Angeles County Sheriff Jim McDonnell has launched a comprehensive inquiry into secret deputy cliques and is looking into whether gangs that condone illicit behavior are operating within his ranks, he said Thursday.

McDonnell’s announcement at a meeting of the Sheriff Civilian Oversight Commission comes two weeks after allegations surfaced that as many as 20 deputies at the Compton Station have matching tattoos featuring a skeleton holding a rifle.

A Compton deputy recently admitted under oath that he was inked with the skull logo in June 2016, about two months before he was involved in a fatal shooting, The Times reported.

Watchdogs said the revelations were alarming given the department’s long history of secret societies that promoted excessive force and enforced a code of silence.

More:

https://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-sheriff-tattoo-oversight-commission-20180726-story.html

Steve "Big Short" Eisman Is Now Shorting Tesla

Elon Musk's week just got a lot worse…

Having sent lewd photos to one critic and threatened legal action to another critical blogger, we wonder what billionaire Musk will do now that Steve "The Big Short" Eisman is explicitly shorting Tesla stock.

"Elon Musk is a very, very smart man but there are a lot of smart people in this world and you’ve got to execute. He’s got execution problems," Steve Eisman tells @BloombergTV https://t.co/7ImyoqxZ5K pic.twitter.com/o40AF7sPVC

— Bloomberg (@business) July 27, 2018

The Neuberger Berman Group money manager who famously predicted the collapse of subprime mortgages before the 2008 financial crisis blasted Musk on Bloomberg TV this morning:

"Elon Musk is a very, very smart man but there are a lot of smart people in this world and you’ve got to execute. He’s got execution problems…"

"He's nowhere in autonomous driving, as far as I can tell, and big competition is coming in his space next year."

Tesla's bonds and stocks have faded notably…

…as investors question its viability amid massive cash burns…

• not helped by the news that Musk recently asked some suppliers to return a portion of part payments to help the electric-car maker to turn a profit.

https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2018-07-27/steve-big-short-eisman-now-shorting-tesla

'Specific threats' force Facebook to increase Zuckerberg's family security allowance to $10million a year, as billionaire CEO sees his company suffer biggest stock-market wipe-out in American history

Facebook has announced a $10million allowance for the Zuckerberg family

Last year Facebook gave the CEO $7.3million for his home and personal security

2017's allowance for Zuckerberg's security and air travel was the largest budget for a Fortune 100 company CEO

The boosted allowance was filed on Thursday 'to address safety concerns due to specific threats'

Also on Thursday Facebook's stock market value plunged 19 per cent, wiping $119billion off the company's value

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-5997721/Facebook-approves-10million-allowance-Zuckerbergs-security.html

Authored by Rand Paul, op-ed via Breitbart.com,

Clear evidence concerning the bias of multiple, high-ranking current and former intelligence community officials should make us think twice about letting retired intelligence officials keep access to classified information, especially if they become talking heads on television after leaving public service.

There is a great danger that vital, secret details may be revealed on television, even inadvertently.

John Brennan is no stranger to this problem.

In 2012, John Brennan leaked information to former counter-terrorism officials, who retained a security clearance, about an underwear bomb-making plot in Yemen.

Brennan revealed to these former officials - turned talking heads - that the underwear bomb plot never threatened the U.S. “because Washington had ‘inside control’ over it,” according to Reuters.

After Brennan’s briefing, one of the call’s participants, Richard Clarke, went on ABC and broadcast the government implying that there was a Western spy inside the Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula bomb-making group.

John Brennan’s careless leak to former intelligence officials turned television commentators helped compromise an operation and risk the life of a double agent, and who knows what other objectives it also hindered or outright prevented. This is exactly why former intelligence officials who are now talking heads on television should not continue to have a security clearance.

Allowing people like John Brennan and other retired intelligence agents to have a security clearance and appear on television presents a danger to operatives in the field, and it’s a danger we can avoid.

https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2018-07-27/and-paul-rages-john-brennans-security-clearance-danger