Photo, left: Mohammad Javad Zarif Khonsari, Iranian Minister of Foreign Affairs, shakes hands with US Secretary of State John Kerry on 14 July 2014.  In discussions and negotiations, Zarif runs circles around Kerry; Iran plays multidimensional chess while the US Secretary of State plays tiddlywinks. 
JOHN BATCHELOR SHOW
 
Co-host: Thaddeus McCotter, WJR, The Great Voice of the Great Lakes; and author, Liberty Risen.
Hour One
Monday  16 March 2015 / Hour 1, Block A: Thomas Joscelyn, Long War Journal senior editor, & Bill Roggio, Long War Journal and FDD, in re: Boko Haram joins ISIS.  May have paid for the deal, but it's a real arrangement. Threat into Niger and Chad.  Boko Haram has several factions, but all joined except an al Qaeda affiliate.  With the surge of ISIS in Libya, creating a land bridge for supply; AQIM was doing this for Boko Haram.  A connected network.  Tartar((??)) next to Anbar province – ISIS can thereby attack; key terrain area, might choke the capital.  . . . (1 of 2)
Monday  16 March 2015 / Hour 1, Block B: Thomas Joscelyn, Long War Journal senior editor, & Bill Roggio, Long War Journal and FDD, in re: ISIS, Boko Haram, al Qaeda, and kindred (2 of 2)
Monday  16 March 2015 / Hour 1, Block C: Larry Johnson, NoQuarter, in re: 12 Sept 2012: a catastrophe under way in Libya. Today, it's a failed state; Ansar al-Sharia & al Qaeda; now a province of ISIS.  However, in 2012, Libya was identified as a possible [healthy] state.  How did Mrs Clinton;s responsibilities at State rin into Benghazi?  Pat Kennedy was sort of he secretary of the S=seventh floor – "M" – and directly under him was Security; info filter up through Kennedy to Clinton.  Had rejected repeated requests for increased security in Libya:  they saw this as an intell op and that CIA should pay for it, not State.  Since the Achille Lauro event, a protocol had been in place for interagency process to turn on – but Mrs Clinton shut it down!  Mark Thompson in Counterterrorism Bureau: everyone was directed not to contact him, as that would suggest that there was a real attack. To understand this, people need more than a five-second attention san.  email: it was the days before the attack that count as Amb Stevens was running an op; shd have been on SIPERNET or another secret network.  They didn’t take time to classify it.  Turkey and Saudi getting weapons to send to Syrian rebels, but they were going into the hands of Islamist radicals.  Mark Thompson made repeated efforts via Kennedy to get info; he knew that mortars were being fired and that Amb Stevens was missing.  Secure video teleconference.   . . .   There must have been an enormous amt of comms going back and forth. There exists a record of that somewhere.  . . .  The stone wall just came down.  . . .  This Administration claims that it wants to [defer to] Teheran in order to fight ISIS – although this Administration started by arming ISIS.
Hillary Doubles Down on Stupid » Current Affairs | This gets worse by the day.  Just when you think that Hillary has probed the depths of mendacity and foolishness, surprise! She goes to new lows.  For me this is sad. The Hillary I met in person is a kind, funny, intelligent person. I do not recognize that She-Hag that appeared yesterday at the UN and proceeded to shove her feet into her maw . . . And Bill completes the debacle by claiming he’s only sent two emails in his life. Sweet. I am sure that she discussed classified information in her emails. But, her personal server did not allow her to get access on her personal device to the “sgov” server (SGOV is the SECRET internet connection for State). Whoever came up with this idea of creating a server at the Clinton residence in New York should be fired immediately. Awful. [video]
Monday  16 March 2015 / Hour 1, Block D:  Gordon Chang, Forbes.com, in re: PetroChina: corruption probe. Graft.  Zhou Yongkang's gang: a date when they expect to be arrested?  Yup. once you start a purge you can’t stop.  Eventually you run out of people to kill.  He must have some theoretical notion; his second-in-command speaks of changing China's culture ("can’t be done"); Xi may stay around for more days or forever.  Mao: "Revolution is not a dinner party." 
China is now caught in a debt trap from which there is little possibility of escape.  . . .   Electricity is still the most reliable indicator of Chinese economic activity.  Electricity and rail traffic . . .  GDP is growing at maybe 1%.   . . .   A long-term Party toady in the US suddenly turns coat (see WSJ op-ed, Shambaugh, on capital flight).
http://www.forbes.com/sites/gordonchang/2015/03/15/why-china-wont-manage-the-great-debt-escape/
 
Hour Two
Monday  16 March 2015 / Hour 2, Block A:  John Fund, National Review Online, & David M Drucker, Washington Examiner Senior Congressional correspondent, in re: . . . Mrs Clinton is rusty, clunky. She looked at her notes and fidgeting; were I a Democrat, I'd think this is someone who could be taken.  She appeared to answer a question without really answering – steered one question into another – a skill.  . . .  Security is the biggest problem . . . unless she can assure all of us that her server was secure and she never discussed anything of interest to Moscow or Beijing on her [mobile phone]. 
Hillary Clinton Criticizes Republicans for a ‘Trifecta Against Women’'    Hillary Rodham Clinton scolded congressional Republicans on Monday for mounting a “trifecta against women” by delaying the nomination of Loretta E. Lynch for attorney general by tying it to stalled legislation on human trafficking.  Mrs. Clinton weighed in the matter in a succession of tweets after she was honored at the Irish America Hall of Fame luncheon.
@HillaryClinton   Congressional trifecta against women today: 1) Blocking great nominee, first African American woman AG, for longer than any AG in 30 years… The bipartisan human-trafficking bill has stalled over an abortion provision that Democrats find objectionable. Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the majority leader, has said that Ms. Lynch’s nomination would not be considered until the legislation moves forward. The comments came as Mrs. Clinton looks to turn the page on the controversy surrounding her use of a private email account during her time as secretary of state.
Mrs. Clinton, who has not yet said officially if she will run for president in 2016, was also critical of Republican senators last week. At the beginning of her news conference about the emails, she said that the 47 Republicans who sent a letter to Iran regarding nuclear negotiations were “out of step with the best traditions of American leadership.
Quite a Record. The Wonder Woman of Cover-Ups   Cheryl Mills was one of Clinton's top lawyers during his 1999 Senate impeachment trial. At the time, a White House colleague, speaking to the Washington Post, praised Mills’s loyalty to the Clintons: “If something’s on the other side of a brick wall and the Clintons need it, she’ll find a way to get to it: over, around, or through.” The Post noted that Mills had “endeared herself to the Clintons with her never-back-down, share-nothing, don’t-give-an-inch approach,” the same style prevalent today in Hillary’s e-mail controversy.  [more]
Monday  16 March 2015 / Hour 2, Block B: :  John Fund, National Review Online, & David M Drucker, Washington Examiner Senior Congressional correspondent, in re: When people focus on Jeb Bush they focus on the white sheep [?] of the Bush family.  . . .  Bush fatigue.  No one's flocking to any candidate; we don’t even have a real campaign yet.  No one's spent a dime and no debate yet. What Hillary has that Jeb doesn’t is that she's the first woman to run seriously while Jeb is [merely] the third Bush.  Boomers and X'ers.   one candidate found his voice: Marco Rubio – he knows exactly why he's running and what he'd do.  Bush is sewing up all the media and donations – that's a year-2000 campaign.  Now, there are social media plus ready access to pools of cash as well as lots of donations from [across the populace] via social media.  Hollywood High says, "Persuade me in two words"  Clinton: "woman candidate"; X'ers: "X'ers."
Robinson: A dysfuctional GOP is failing to govern. Cohen: Why Hillary Clinton needs an opponent
Monday  16 March 2015 / Hour 2, Block C: Malcolm Hoenlein, Conference of Presidents, in re:  Iran's secret weaponization program, plus its depredation of five capitals, plus sent tactical battlefield rockets to Iraq to fight ISIS and, their being not precision-guided, can hit civilians en masse.  Recall Michael Pregent from last Thursday: this is how the Shia militia cleared Tikrit (250K pp) – clear civilians, then offer fighters to come clean or be killed Now they have rockets to turn all the bldgs to rubble.  What’s going on in Anbar province is genocide.  In an unclass version of Clapper's [doctrine}, Hezbollah and Iran  are removed from the terrorist list. Iran is operating from Mexico to Argentina – this drives the Saudis, Jordanians, UAE, and others, crazy: exonerating Iran is insane.  Iran is fighting in Iraq, in Sudan, in Yemen, in many places. Imbecilic statement tat Iran isn’t involved  in terrorist activities.  . . .   Iran never backs off of any of the violent things they’ve said or dine, but see the West back off all the time.  In Brussels:  Five hours of intense discussion, Zarif and Kerry -  "Iran has tough choices to be made" said Kerry in Lausanne and Brussels. Meaning: Parchin and Fordow. Iran never has to back off because the US keeps genuflecting.  Head of Iranian atomic energy dept speaks plainly of no retreat.  UN: working on a text such that [they] may go to the UN for approval to reduce sanctions so Europeans will start trading, then pressure the US to go along.  Will get a framework agreement by 31 March (the third deadline), then on to June 31;  will get the lift-sanctions agreement enshrined by the Security Council.  
New U.S. Intelligence Assessment Removes Iran and Hizbullah from List of Terrorism Threats
The Worldwide Threat Assessment of the U.S. Intelligence Communities, an annual report delivered on Feb. 26, 2015, to the Senate by James Clapper, the director of National Intelligence, removed Iran and Hizbullah from its list of terrorism threats, after years in which they featured in similar reports. The report noted Iran's efforts to combat Sunni extremists.
    At the same time, both Iran and Hizbullah were listed as terrorism threats in the assessment of the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency. (Times of Israel)     
 Kerry: We'll negotiate with Assad in Syria   Kerry acknowledged that a military solution to end Syria's civil war will not work.
Monday  16 March 2015 / Hour 2, Block D:  Malcolm Hoenlein, Conference of Presidents, in re: . . . Israeli elections in hours – Kadima; other parties; 20 undecided. Four polls: Labor is 24-24; Likud: 20-22. Neither got more than a quarter of the vote; in negotiations, he right has an advantage. Arabs parties running on united list for the first time, Need 2.35% threshold.  Tues: exit polls at 4PM Eastern time.  Then the resident will meet with the heads of all the parties and ask, What’s your preference?  Might get a 2-monhth mandate to assemble; if not possible, another party gets the chance.  . . .   A lot to watch on Tuesday Israeli Arab vote (playing a significant role in Israeli courts).  Lots of discussion of the role that US organizations (using tax-exempt dollars) have played in Israeli elections – Paul Begala deeply involved.  US Senate is about to investigate. "Unity govt" means Bibi and Herzog together. ((Yike.))   
An annual report delivered recently to the US Senate by James Clapper, the director of National Intelligence, removed Iran and Hezbollah from its list of terrorism threats, after years in which they featured in similar reports.  The unclassified version of the Worldwide Threat Assessment of the US Intelligence Communities, dated February 26, 2015 (PDF), noted Iran’s efforts to combat Sunni extremists, including those of the ultra-radical Islamic State group, who were perceived to constitute the preeminent terrorist threat to American interests worldwide.
US intell report scrapped Iran from list of terror threats | The Times of Israel   @timesofisrael on Twitter | timesofisrael on Facebook
President Barack Obama, whose bitter differences with Prime Minster Benjamin Netanyahu have intensified in recent weeks, will be closely watching the outcome of Israeli elections on Tuesday, in which Mr. Netanyahu’s power is on the line. A loss for Mr. Netanyahu would sweep aside a figure who has often been a thorn in the side of the White House, arguing loudly against the nuclear deal with Iran that Mr. Obama has been negotiating, and moving aggressively to expand settlements in Jerusalem that the administration opposes.  But White House officials are going out of their way to steer clear of anything that could be construed as a comment on Mr. Netanyahu in the hours before the elections, even when it comes to longstanding matters of American policy.
When Mr. Netanyahu said on Monday that there would be no Palestinian state as long as he was prime minister, a statement starkly at odds with the United States’ position. Josh Earnest, the White House press secretary, was reluctant to respond.  “I have worked assiduously to avoid commenting on the claims made on the campaign trail by American politicians,” said Mr. Earnest, who has fielded numerous questions in the past several weeks about candidates emerging to run for president in 2016. “That rule, at least in this case, applies to Israeli politicians, too.”
Pressed by a reporter to weigh in on a statement that flew in the face of the Obama administration’s approach on a key foreign policy issue, Mr. Earnest said the United States wants a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.  “Well, it is true that our policy is that we believe that the situation should be resolved with a democratic and Jewish state of Israel living side by side in peace and security with a sovereign state and contiguous Palestinian state,” he said. “That continues to be our policy.”
Mr. Earnest declined to speculate on whether the election of a prime minister who did not share that goal would set it back.  “The Israeli people will be responsible for choosing their next prime minister,” he said. [more]
 
Hour Three
Monday  16 March 2015 / Hour 3, Block A:  Richard A Epstein, Hoover Institution, Chicago Law, in re: One of the most anticipated cases of the Supreme Court’s 2014-2015 term is King v. Burwell. In it, the Supreme Court is confronted with what should be a straightforward question of statutory interpretation about the scope of subsidies available under the Affordable Care Act (ACA). Section 1311 of the ACA states that “each state shall, not later than January 1, 2014, establish an American Health Benefit Exchange.” Another part of the law, section 1321, then qualifies that apparently absolute duty by providing that if the state does not “elect” to establish that exchange by January 1, 2014, or if it otherwise fails to meet the federal requirements for an exchange, “the Secretary [of HHS] shall . . . establish and operate such exchange within the state.” The question of whether a state establishes this exchange determines far more than where individuals can buy their health care coverage…   [more] (1 of 2)
Monday  16 March 2015 / Hour 3, Block B: Richard A Epstein, Hoover Institution, Chicago Law, in re: One of the most anticipated cases of the Supreme Court’s 2014-2015 term is King v. Burwell. In it, the Supreme Court is confronted with what should be a straightforward question of statutory interpretation about the scope of subsidies available under the Affordable Care Act (ACA). Section 1311 of the ACA states that “each state shall, not later than January 1, 2014, establish an American Health Benefit Exchange.” Another part of the law, section 1321, then qualifies that apparently absolute duty by providing that if the state does not “elect” to establish that exchange by January 1, 2014, or if it otherwise fails to meet the federal requirements for an exchange, “the Secretary [of HHS] shall . . . establish and operate such exchange within the state.” The question of whether a state establishes this exchange determines far more than where individuals can buy their health care coverage…   [more]  (2 of 2)
Monday  16 March 2015 / Hour 3, Block C:  Bruce Webster, And Still I Persist, in re: Wait! There are more Clinton emails.  . . .  [more]
Monday  16 March 2015 / Hour 3, Block D:   Gretchen Morgenson, NYT, in re: S.E.C. Wants the Sinners to Own Up  In a shift to its policy, the regulator is asking for more than settlements. It wants companies and individuals to admit to their misdeeds.
 
Hour Four
Monday  16 March 2015 / Hour 4, Block A: Why Homer Matters, by Adam Nicolson (1 of 4)
Monday  16 March 2015 / Hour 4, Block B: Why Homer Matters, by Adam Nicolson (2 of 4)
Monday  16 March 2015 / Hour 4, Block C: Why Homer Matters, by Adam Nicolson (3 of 4)
Monday  16 March 2015 / Hour 4, Block D: Why Homer Matters, by Adam Nicolson (4 of 4)
 
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