Tuesday, October 21, 2014

Barker's Newsbites: Tuesday, October 21, 2014


T*U*E*S*D*A*Y...


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9 comments:

William R. Barker said...

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/10/19/u-s-humanitarian-aid-going-to-isis.html

While U.S. warplanes strike at the militants of the so-called Islamic State in both Syria and Iraq, truckloads of U.S. and Western aid has been flowing into territory controlled by the jihadists, assisting them to build their terror-inspiring “caliphate.”

(*CLOSING MY EYES*)

The aid — mainly food and medical equipment — is meant for Syrians displaced from their hometowns, and for hungry civilians. It is funded by the U.S. Agency for International Development, European donors, and the United Nations.

* WE'RE THE MAJOR FUNDER OF THE UNITED NATIONS... (AND THE ECONOMIC BACKSTOP FOR EUROPE...)

(*SIGH*)

The aid convoys have to pay off ISIS emirs (leaders) for the convoys to enter the eastern Syrian extremist strongholds of Raqqa and Deir ez-Zor, providing yet another income stream for ISIS militants, who are funding themselves from oil smuggling, extortion, and the sale of whatever they can loot, including rare antiquities from museums and archaeological sites.

“The convoys have to be approved by ISIS and you have to pay them: The bribes are disguised and itemized as transportation costs,” says an aid coordinator who spoke to The Daily Beast on the condition he not be identified in this article. The kickbacks are either paid by foreign or local non-governmental organizations tasked with distributing the aid, or by the Turkish or Syrian transportation companies contracted to deliver it.

(*CLAP...CLAP...CLAP*)

At a minimum, the aid means ISIS doesn’t have to divert cash from its war budget to help feed the local population or the displaced persons, allowing it to focus its resources exclusively on fighters and war-making, say critics of the aid.

October 21, 2014 at 10:57 AM
William R. Barker said...

* TWO-PARTER... (Part 1 of 2)

http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/panetta-clashed-with-cia-over-memoir-tested-agency-review-process/2014/10/21/6e6a733a-5926-11e4-b812-38518ae74c67_story.html

Former CIA director Leon E. Panetta clashed with the agency over the contents of his recently published memoir and allowed his publisher to begin editing and making copies of the book before he had received final approval from the CIA, according to former U.S. officials and others familiar with the project.

Panetta’s decision appears to have put him in violation of the secrecy agreement that all CIA employees are required to sign and came amid a showdown with agency reviewers that could have derailed the release of the book this month, people involved in the matter said.

The memoir, which is almost unfailingly complimentary toward the spy service, which he led from 2009 to 2011, was ultimately approved by the CIA’s Publications Review Board before it reached store shelves. But preempting that panel — even temporarily — carried legal risks for Panetta and his publisher.

Other former CIA employees have been sued for breach of contract and forced to surrender proceeds from sales of books that ran afoul of CIA rules.

* BUT NOT POLITICAL INSIDERS. NOT PARTY BOSSES.

“If he doesn’t follow the specific protocols, then why should there be any expectation for anybody underneath him to do so?” said Mark Zaid, a Washington lawyer who has handled more than a dozen cases involving authors and the CIA’s review board.

* AS IF PEOPLE LIKE PANETTA GIVE A DAMN! HELL... AS IF OBAMA GIVES A DAMN!

The Obama administration has come down aggressively on others accused of failing to comply with their secrecy agreements, including the former Navy SEAL who bypassed the CIA and Pentagon in publishing his account of his involvement in the operation to kill Osama bin Laden.

(As defense secretary, Panetta publicly scolded ex-SEAL Mark Bissonnette. The Pentagon sued Bissonnette to recover the proceeds from the book, and that legal fight remains unresolved two years later.)

The CIA also has a long history of zealously enforcing its secrecy agreements, including against its highest officials.

* HIGHEST CAREER OFFICIALS... (THERE'S A DIFFERENCE!)

* TO BE CONTINUED...

October 21, 2014 at 8:05 PM
William R. Barker said...

* CONCLUDING... (Part 2 of 2)

Former director William E. Colby was forced to pay $10,000 in a 1981 legal settlement after a version of his memoir was published in France without agency approval.

* COLBY WAS A CAREER FEDERAL OFFICIAL INVOLVED IN BOTH INTERNAL AND EXTERNAL NATIONAL SECURITY AND ANTI-CRIME EFFORTS. AGAIN... THIS IS A DIFFERENCE OF KIND - NOT DEGREE. (AND THE REPORTER/EDITOR SHOULD KNOW IT!)

More recently, a federal judge ruled in the CIA’s favor against a former officer who, under the pseudonym Ishmael Jones, had submitted a book that was harshly critical of the agency. Jones published the book without permission after large portions of his manuscript were rejected. At the time, Panetta issued a news release saying “CIA officers are duty-bound to observe the terms of their secrecy agreement with the agency.”

* AGAIN... FOLKS... OBAMA AND HIS KEY PEOPLE ARE SCUM OF THE HIGHEST ORDER... BEYOND WHAT WE'VE SEEN FROM PREVIOUS ADMINISTRATIONS. THESE PEOPLE DON'T EVEN PRETEND NOT TO BE HYPOCRITES. THESE PEOPLE DON'T EVEN PRETEND TO HOLD THEMSELVES TO THE LAWS THE REST OF US MUST ABIDE BY. READ THE NEWS AND YOU'LL SEE IT DAILY SHOVED DOWN YOUR THROAT!

That agreement requires current or former employees to submit any agency-related material that they “contemplate disclosing publicly.” Authors are prohibited from showing their work “to anyone who is not authorized to have access” until they have secured “written permission to do so.”

The language is interpreted to mean barring the sharing of drafts even with a co-author or editor, prompting other senior CIA officials, including former director George Tenet and former acting general counsel John Rizzo, to wait to deliver their manuscripts to their publishers until they had received explicit permission from the review board.

“The rules are quite clear, and I followed them,” Rizzo said.

* SEE WHAT I'M SAYING...?!?! UNDER BUSH, TENET HAD TO ABIDE BY THE LAW. UNDER OBAMA... PANETTA DIDN'T FEEL ANY SUCH NEED.

Panetta was reportedly paid $3 million for his book, and it was promoted as a title for the fall book season. It was released Oct. 7. One person with inside knowledge said that “Worthy Fights” went to press in August while there were still unresolved disputes with CIA. The final approval from the review board came on or around Sept. 1, according to that person and others familiar with the negotiations who spoke on the condition of anonymity.

* MEANING... BASED UPON THE LAW AND PRECEDENT THE FEDS SHOULD BE SEEKING TO TAKE THAT $3 MILLION FROM THE FORMER HIGH-RANKING OBAMA OFFICIAL - YET THEY'RE NOT.

A review copy provided to The Washington Post bears date stamps of Aug. 11 on each page, as well as markings indicating that it had gone through three copy-editing cycles by that point. That bound copy was delivered to The Post on Sept. 12.

* THOUGH IT MAY APPEAR THE AUTHOR IS TRYING TO BORE YOU ON PURPOSE... THESE ARE THE SMOKING GUNS! THESE ARE THE DETAILS WHICH PROVE THE CASE!

October 21, 2014 at 8:06 PM
William R. Barker said...

http://nypost.com/2014/10/20/plunge-protection-behind-markets-sudden-recovery

Someone tried to rescue the market last Wednesday. And it’s becoming a regular occurrence.

The details of last Wednesday morning are these: At the same time the Dow was off 350 points, the S&P index was down 43.80 points, That was an enormous decline in just 11 minutes of trading and it was an indication that Wall Street was not having a good day.

Then, someone (or something) started buying S&P futures contracts en masse. Twenty-one minutes later, the S&P index had regained 30 of those lost points and was back at 1,861.

Maybe you’ll believe that there was some manipulation going on if you knew that a guy named Robert Heller, who was a member of the Federal Reserve’s Board of Governors until 1989, proposed just such a rigging as soon as he left the Fed.

Look it up. Oct. 27, 1989, Wall Street Journal. Headline: “Have Fed Support Stock Market, Too.” By Robert Heller, who had just left the Fed to head up the credit card company Visa.

“It would be inappropriate for the government or the central bank to buy or sell IBM or General Motors shares,” Heller wrote. “Instead, the Fed could buy the broad market composites in the futures market.”

In case you don’t know the lingo, Heller is proposing that the Fed or government purchase stock futures contracts that track — and can influence — the major indices.

These contracts are cheap and a government could turn the whole stock market around quickly — but probably not permanently.

Wow! Doesn’t that seem a lot like what happened Wednesday at 9:41 a.m., when S&P futures contracts were suddenly and mysteriously scooped up?

Let me allow Heller to finish his thought because it’s important to anyone who believes in free and fair markets.

“The Fed’s stock-market role ought not to be very ambitious. It should seek only to maintain the functioning of the markets — not to prop the Dow Jones or the New York Stock Exchange averages at a particular level,” he continued.

But times change and so does thinking. In recent weeks, we’ve discovered that the CME Group, the exchange in Chicago, has an incentive program under which foreign central banks could buy stock market derivatives like the S&P contracts at a discount.

It’s not that these foreign banks need a break on the price of their trading. But it does show that there is a back-door way — through foreign emissaries — for the Fed and the US government to prop up stocks like Heller suggested, and — maybe — not get caught.

October 21, 2014 at 10:56 PM
William R. Barker said...

* TWO-PARTER... (Part 1 of 2)

http://dailysignal.com/2014/10/21/president-obama-evolves-marriage/?utm_source=heritagefoundation&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=dailydigest&mkt_tok=3RkMMJWWfF9wsRokua3LZKXonjHpfsX56%2BorWa6zlMI%2F0ER3fOvrPUfGjI4CTcVnI%2BSLDwEYGJlv6SgFQrLBMa1ozrgOWxU%3D

President Obama has evolved on marriage.

Again.

(*HEADACHE*)

After supporting marriage as the union of a man and a woman until just before the elections of 2012, Obama announced back then that he supported democratic efforts to redefine marriage — but he didn’t think judges should redefine marriage.

Now, just before the elections of 2014, Obama has announced that he thinks there’s a constitutional requirement to redefine marriage to include same-sex relationships.

(*JUST SHAKING MY HEAD*)

“Ultimately, I think the Equal Protection Clause does guarantee same-sex marriage in all 50 states,” Obama [now tells] the New Yorker.

* NO... IT... DOESN'T.

* IT DIDN'T WHEN IT WAS WRITTEN (CLEARLY) AND THEREFORE IT DOESN'T NOW.

This is a case study in how liberals “evolve” on policy.

First they embrace a policy change.

If they can’t convince a majority of Americans to vote for their preferred policy, they discover that the Constitution requires their preferred policy.

So, according to the Obama of today, the Obama of early 2012 held an unconstitutional view of marriage. Or, perhaps, it wasn’t unconstitutional back then but it is now.

(*SMIRK*)

But this isn’t how the Constitution works.

Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, explained earlier this month what the Equal Protection clause of the 14th Amendment means in the marriage context:

"It is beyond dispute that when the 14th Amendment was adopted 146 years ago, as a necessary post-Civil War era reform, it was not imagined to also mandate same-sex marriage…. [It is a] preposterous assumption that the People of the United States somehow silently redefined marriage in 1868 when they ratified the 14th Amendment."

* YES. OBVIOUSLY!

"Nothing in the text, logic, structure, or original understanding of the 14th Amendment or any other constitutional provision authorizes judges to redefine marriage for the Nation. It is for the elected representatives of the People to make the laws of marriage, acting on the basis of their own constitutional authority, and protecting it, if necessary, from usurpation by the courts."

* EXACTLY. STATE BY STATE.

* TO BE CONTINUED...

October 21, 2014 at 11:13 PM
William R. Barker said...

* CONCLUDING... (Part 2 of 2)

Indeed, during the Supreme Court oral arguments over California’s Proposition 8 — a state constitutional amendment defining marriage as the union of a man and a woman — this same point came up. Justice Antonin Scalia asked Ted Olson, the lawyer arguing Proposition 8 was unconstitutional, a simple question: “When do you think it became unconstitutional? Has it always been unconstitutional?”

* PAY ATTENTION, FOLKS... PAY ATTENTION! (RE-READ THE ABOVE AND THEN CONTINUE WITH READING THE PARAGRAPH'S BELOW!)

Scalia had proffered some possible dates: “1791? 1868, when the Fourteenth Amendment was adopted? Sometimes – some time after Baker, where we said it didn’t even raise a substantial Federal question? When–when–when did the law become this?”

Finally, Scalia asked, “50 years ago, it was okay?” And Olson responded: “I–I can’t answer that question.” And Scalia then pounced: “I can’t either. That’s the problem. That’s exactly the problem.”

* FOLKS. DO YOU UNDERSTAND WHAT YOU JUST READ? IF NOT... (*SIGH*)... REACH OUT TO ME PUBLICLY OR PRIVATELY.

And as Chief Justice John Roberts pointed out at the time, "I’m not sure that it’s right to view this as excluding a particular group. When the institution of marriage developed historically, people didn’t get around and say let’s have this institution, but let’s keep out homosexuals. The institution developed to serve purposes that, by their nature, didn’t include homosexual couples."

As former Attorney General Ed Meese and I argued last month in The Washington Post, in a system of limited constitutional self-government, the people and their elected representatives should be making decisions about marriage policy. While there are reasonable arguments on both sides of this debate, there is nothing in the Constitution that requires the redefinition of marriage — unlike, for example, the case of interracial marriage. Judges should not insert their own policy preferences about marriage and declare them to be required by the Constitution.

Citizens are, of course, free to redefine marriage policy to include same-sex relationships, but so too should citizens be free to retain in law the historic definition of marriage as the union of a man and a woman — as citizens in a majority of states have done.

Nothing less than the future of our society and the course of constitutional government in the United States are at stake. And as Obama’s latest evolution shows, we’re not only redefining marriage, we’re redefining our Constitution — making it a living, breathing, evolving document.

* MEANING... NO LONGER THE LAW OF THE LAND... BUT RATHER A THIN EXCUSE TO ATTEMPT TO LEGITIMIZE THE DECISIONS OF MEN IN A MOMENT OF TIME ABSENT THE CONSTRAINT OF THE CONSTITUTION.

October 21, 2014 at 11:14 PM
William R. Barker said...

* TWO-PARTER... (Part 1 of 2)

http://buchanan.org/blog/ebola-ideology-common-sense-7035

* BY PATRICK J. BUCHANAN

Growing up in Washington in the 1930s and ’40s, our home was, several times, put under quarantine. A poster would be tacked on the door indicating the presence within of a contagious disease — measles, mumps, chicken pox, scarlet fever.

None of us believed we were victims of some sort of invidious discrimination against large Catholic families. It was a given that public health authorities were trying to contain the spread of a disease threatening the health of children.

Out came the Monopoly board.

Polio, or infantile paralysis, was the most fearsome of those diseases. The first two national Boy Scout jamborees, which were to be held in Washington in 1935 and 1936, were canceled by Presidential Proclamation because of an outbreak of polio in the city.

Franklin Roosevelt, who had apparently contracted polio in 1921, never to walk again, appreciated the danger. In the 1930s, ’40s and early ’50s, there were outbreaks of polio in D.C. Swimming pools were shut down.

The Greatest Generation possessed a common sense that seems lacking today.

We read that five new Ebola cases occur every hour in Liberia, Guinea and Sierra Leone, that thousands are dead and thousands more are dying, that, by December, there may be 10,000 new cases a week of this dreadful and deadly disease.

Yet calls for the cancellation of commercial airline travel from the affected nations to the United States are being decried as racist, an abandonment of America’s responsibilities to Africa, a threat to the economies of the poorest continent on earth.

Where once we suffered from infantile paralysis, now we suffer from ideological paralysis.

"How could we consider such a thing!"

[Unfortunately...] there appears to be no Salk or Sabin vaccine to cure our condition.

Exhibit A is the befuddled response of some in public service is the case of Amber Joy Vinson.

Nurse Vinson was among 75 health care providers who treated Thomas Eric Duncan, the Liberian who brought Ebola into the United States.

At the Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital where Duncan was treated, Vinson had been among those in closest contact with the patient.

Two days after Duncan’s death, Vinson was allowed to fly to Cleveland to visit relatives. She then prepared to fly back to Dallas. Before boarding, she called the Center for Disease Control, and said she was running a fever of 99.5. Yet... she was given clearance to fly commercial back to Dallas, where she was admitted to the hospital with symptoms of the disease.

* SO MUCH FOR THE CDC...

She is the second nurse at that hospital to come down with Ebola.

* TO BE CONTINUED...

October 21, 2014 at 11:26 PM
William R. Barker said...

* CONCLUDING... (Part 2 of 2)

According to CBS Medical Correspondent Dr. John LaPook, “Nurse Vinson did in fact call the CDC several times before taking that flight and said she had a temperature, a fever of 99.5, and the person at the CDC looked at a chart and because her temperature wasn’t 100.4 or higher she didn’t officially fall into the category of high risk.”

Would not common sense have told that CDC apparatchik to tell Vinson not to fly at all, but remain in Cleveland, stay in touch with CDC, and monitor any symptoms to be sure she was not coming down with the disease that just killed her patient?

* Y*E*S...!!! THE ANSWER IS CLEARLY "YES...!!!"

In dealing with contagious and deadly diseases, common sense says to err on the side of safety. Public safety must come before political correctness. Community and country come ahead of any obligation to the people of West Africa.

* APPARENTLY NOT...

(*SHRUG*)

Indeed, is not the first duty of the government of the United States to protect the lives, liberty and property of the citizens of the United States?

* I'M AFRAID THAT'S NOW HOW PRESIDENT OBAMA SEES IT.

Traveling to Africa decades ago, Americans were given a series of shots to avoid contracting indigenous diseases. Travelers to the United States were questioned about diseases to which they may have been exposed in third world countries. Now we have a government that considers it discriminatory to put troops on our frontiers to halt the invading millions from across the Mexican border, and the mark of a cruel and cold people to send back lawbreakers who have broken into our country.

The two nurses who came down with this disease after close contact with Duncan are being cared for in quarantine, as is the NBC crew, one of whom contracted the disease. And rightly so.

As for U.S. aid workers in Africa, they are heroic. But before bringing these good and brave people home, we ought to be sure they are not bringing back with them the Ebola they have been fighting.

If that means quarantining them for 21 days, so be it. If that means no commercial flights to the United States from the three most affected countries of West Africa, and no admission to the USA of any travelers whose visas show they have been in those countries in recent days, then it ought to be done.

Else... political correctness is going to end up killing a lot of us.

October 21, 2014 at 11:26 PM
William R. Barker said...

http://davidstockmanscontracorner.com/wall-street-is-one-sick-puppy-thanks-to-even-sicker-central-banks/

Last Wednesday the markets plunged on a vague recognition that the central bank promoted recovery story might not be on the level. But that tremor didn’t last long.

Right on cue the next day, one of the very dimmest Fed heads — James Dullard of St Louis — mumbled incoherently about a possible QE extension, causing the robo-traders to erupt with buy orders. By the end of the day Friday, with the market off just 5% from its all-time highs, the buy-the-dips crowd was back, proclaiming that the “bottom is in.” This week the market has been energetically retracing what remains of the October correction.

And it's no different anywhere else in the central bank besotted financial markets around the world. Everywhere state action, not business enterprise, is believed to be the source of wealth creation — at least the stock market’s paper wealth version and even if for just a few more hours or days.

Thus, several nights ago Japan’s stock market ripped 4% higher in the blink of an eye after the robo-traders scanned a headline suggesting that Japan’s already bankrupt government would start buying even more equities for its pension plan.

(*SNORT*)

And that comes on top of the massive ETF and equity purchases already being made by the BOJ.

* FOLKS... I ONLY WISH I HAD ADVICE FOR YOU...

(*SHRUG*)

* I DON'T. I HAVE NO IDEA WHERE TO PUT MY MONEY OTHER THAN WHERE IT'S IN NOW.

(*SHRUG*)

At the same time that the private sector has been stagnant, the public debt has continued to soar, and is now 50% higher than the already bloated levels of 2008. Moreover, with a triple dip all but certain, and virtually no growth in nominal GDP in any event, there is virtually no chance that the aggregate debt of the euro-zone nations will not soon catapult past 100% of GDP. In that context, it is plainly evident that the real agenda of the Brussels bureaucrats and the Draghi gang in Frankfurt is to monetize the public debt, not ignite a miracle of private economic growth and rising corporate profits.

On this side of the pond, the equity market puppy is just a sick.

October 21, 2014 at 11:52 PM

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