The John Batchelor Show

Monday 29 June 2015

Air Date: 
June 29, 2015

Photo, left: A ballot voting against Themistocles, son of Neocles, under the Athenian Democracy (see ostracism). This text is an example of the epichoric alphabet.
JOHN BATCHELOR SHOW
Co-host:  Thaddeus McCotter, WJR, The Great Voice of the Great Lakes; and author, Liberty Risen.
 
Hour One
Monday 29 July 2015 / Hour 1, Block A: Thomas Joscelyn, Long War Journal senior editor, & Bill Roggio, Long War Journal and FDD, in re:  Al Nusrah Front confirms that it's part of al Qaeda. No evidence that it would break, despite conflicting story lines: parties  [Turkey, some UAE, etc.] interested in portraying it as "moderate" for regrettable political reasons. The Army of Conquest in al Q has been on the march this year. Video refers to Saib Quttb, the progenitor ideologue.  This is "honest propaganda" in that it accurately conveys some requisite info.  US has had a schizophrenic policy: used to Al Nusrah cooperates with all sorts of other armed groups, which causes  [exceeding careless] analysts to say "They’re moderate."  This is madness.     ___, one of the numerous al Q operators inside Afghanistan – despite Washington's claims that they’re all gone – is wanted everywhere, a mountain-warfare expert, genuinely active leader.  Al Nusrah in the Levant, al Qaeda in the Islamic Mahgreb, in Saudi Arabia, in Pakistan – all over, and all the same guys. 
[all articles from Long War Journal:] Jihadists attack Malian base near Mauritanian border   The assault comes just days after rebel Tuareg groups signed a peace deal with the Malian government. 
Islamic State uses US-made anti-tank missiles in Hasakah offensive  THREAT MATRIX  The Islamic State again shows the use of the US anti-tank missile system, after previously doing so near Palmyra and Damascus. Other jihadist groups, including al Qaeda, have also publicized the use of TOWs in the past.   Islamic State claims responsibility for massacre in Tunisia as death toll rises   
Monday 29 July 2015 / Hour 1, Block B: Thomas Joscelyn, Long War Journal senior editor, & Bill Roggio, Long War Journal and FDD, in re: attack in Tunisia; at least 38 Europeans dead – representing a big part (15%) of Tunisia's GDP. The Islamic State has issued a statement claiming responsibility for yesterday's ISIS massacre in Sousse, Tunisia. " Officials later identified the gunman as 23-year-old student Seifeddine Rezgui." The death toll has risen to at least 38 people and Tunisian authorities say the victims were primarily British, German, and French citizens. AQIM high-profile killings are vs soft targets.  Al Q says it’ll go after security svcs, govt forces and harder targets. The Sousse attack could be anywhere on the Mediterranean coast.  Same time, attacks in Kuwait City (ISIS) and in France (not claimed by ISIS).  / Missile to pierce armor on Russian tanks. Cornet and other systems that jihadists are getting their hands on.  Probably got some from Syrian groups, maybe via Qatar or Sudis – but they're US-made weapons in jihadist hands.
Monday 29 July 2015 / Hour 1, Block C:  Gordon Chang, Forbes.com, in re: China tells Japan that it's ships are not welcome in the South China Sea!!  Beijing upset; but four days ago a Japanese patrol plane was exercising with a Philippines craft, and also with India.  Ergo, , Japan and India are there at the same time. China stares, eyes wide. Next move may be to put military assets on the invented reefs, then a South China Sea ADIZ.  Note that under Mao and Deng, China and Japan had excellent relations.    China need an enemy for its weak leadership?  Got a bear in Shanghai and Shenzen: was volatile, up and down. Looks as thought the Chinese govt races in and buys shares to prop u the markets.  When the Shenzen market became the best-performing in the world, the Communist party took credit; now that it plummets, oops, the Party is responsible.  reduction in benchmark interest rates and . . .  poured in liquidity. This mkt fall is a bad time as growth is at 2%, plus Greece, plus overwhelming debt.  Foreigners have run for h=the exits; Beijing has ne tactic left: build more ghost cities!  What'll they do on the Indian border, in the Senkakus, in the ocean?  Since nationalism is the very last possibility, look for aggression.  Margin debt inc 5X in 2014 – now almost $400 billion; margin calls today and more coming, Exposure.  Foreigners removed money fro ETF, investment funds, which triggered big money in China. What’s left are the retail investors, who'll be flat outta luck.  
http://www.wsj.com/articles/asian-shares-fall-as-greece-unravels-1435540973?tesla=y Analysts saw the PBOC’s moves as a reaction to the massive stock market decline.http://www.wsj.com/articles/peoples-bank-of-china-cuts-rates-1435397932
China’s Xi Puts Up a Stronger Front After a successful month selling his vision of China abroad, Chinese President Xi Jinping has turned his attention back home, where the sales job is tougher.
zerohedge.com/news/2015-06-27/   Margin Debt Could Get Even Worse  
It gets even better from there.  Macquarie believed that the brokers should have enough capital available to push margin lending higher from here as reported by Bloomberg"We think that the peak should be somewhere around RMB 3 trillion and at the current run rate (ie +16% month-on-month) the market would reach that level around September."
Analysts Cutting Price Target   Investors have started to pull out of the market on concerns the government could be looking to rein in this debt-fueled rally.  Meanwhile, more and more analysts are also sounding louder alarms about the over-heated China market.  For example, citing concerns like valuations and high margin debt, Morgan Stanley just lowered its price target for the Shanghai benchmark in a report Thursday.  http://blogs.wsj.com/chinarealtime/2015/06/29/perhaps-china-market-has-too-few-investors/?mod=chinablog&mod=chinablog
Goldman Sachs investment strategist Ha Jiming, also speaking late Friday, was among the few who addressed the turmoil. “The market falls so much and there are actually so many people here. My respect goes to all of you,” Mr. Ha said, triggering a thick applause from the audience.  He said Chinese households actually remain under-exposed to equity, with two-thirds of their wealth in property and bank accounts, compared with Americans who have about around 31% of their wealth in property and banks because many people hold much of their wealth in stocks directly or through investments like retirement accounts.  Mr. Ha, who said class A shares appeared overvalued, called on Chinese investors to look more carefully at corporate performance as a judge for stock values, rather than blame regulators or any “superficial phenomenon.” The Goldman official said his heart had skipped a beat on Friday – apparently due to the market fall – as he recalled that a key point of the Communist Party’s 18th Congress in 2013 was a pledge to allow the market policies to play a “decisive role” in China’s economy.
Monday 29 July 2015 / Hour 1, Block D:  David Davenport, Hoover, in re:  Whaddya call a Supreme Curt that's neither right nor left, that's anything it wants?  It's unpredictable, a tad lefter than expected, but with Kennedy and Roberts moving back and forth . . .  Why do Conservatives change more on the Court than others?  Robert Bork: "Once you get on the Court, all the Constitutional winds blow leftward." ("On the Court and in law schools.")  It would've been logical to return the matter to the states, but . . . What is it about the vetting process that sends justices on to the Court without a fully-formed Constitutional philosophy?  Increasingly younger judges are being appointed since they have less of a record and can more easily survive the Congressional interrogations. . . . disparate impact: if you give benefits to richer, the poor can sue, and vice-versa; and if you w=award benefits to the middle, both can sue. Founders said the judiciary would be the weakest of the branches; that's not playing out in 2015.
Why Has Chief Justice Roberts Moved from Umpiring to Batting on Healthcare?   Could someone please remind Chief Justice John Roberts of his opening statement to the Senate Judiciary Committee in his confirmation hearings in 2005?  That’s when he described his all-important judicial philosophy by saying:  “Judges are like umpires.  Umpires don’t make the rules; they apply them…I will remember that it’s my job to call balls and strikes and not to pitch or bat.”  I ask because his majority opinion in the King v. Burwell case this week is the second time he has rewritten the Affordable Care Act (ACA) in order to save it, moving out of the umpire’s stance directly into the batter’s box.
In King v. Burwell, the Court needed to decide whether the phrase “an Exchange established by the State” meant just state or could include federal exchanges.  Justice Roberts, writing for a 6-3 majority of the Court, found the language was ambiguous, which permitted the Court to look more widely at the purpose of the law and decide its purposes would not be accomplished if state didn’t also mean federal.  In his sharp dissent, Justice Scalia said, “Words no longer have meaning if an Exchange that is not established by a State is “established by the State.”
The general view around Congress had been that the language had simply been a mistake.  Indeed, the Court acknowledged that the ACA “contains more than a few examples of inartful drafting.”  The Court cited a few reasons for this, including debates behind closed doors and the use of a “reconciliation” legislative procedure that limited debate and amendments.  I could add a couple more:  passing a huge overhaul of a major system like healthcare without sufficient care (Nancy Pelosi’s famous, “but we have to pass the bill to find out what’s in it”) and slamming it through on a straight party line vote.  As the old car repair commercial used to say, you can pay me now (preventive maintenance, getting it right) or you can pay me later (repairs) and this law has been paying later.
But Roberts apparently does not want the ACA to pay too much for its repairs by returning it to Congress to get it right.  So twice now, he has essentially rewritten the bill to fix it himself.  In the first case, the Court having found that Congress lacked power to pass the ACA under its commerce clause power, Roberts reinvented its basis as a bill valid under the taxing power.  This time, he reinvented State Exchange (capital letters) to mean state and federal.
It is not the role of the Court to fix another branch’s mistakes.  So why is Roberts willing to do this?  I believe it is a misguided calculation that he has to engage in a little judicial activism in repairing the law in order to avoid a perception of even greater judicial activism by invalidating the law.  He seems to be so concerned about lowering the volume on controversial Supreme Court decisions that he is willing to be a judicial activist in order to protect the Court’s reputation against charges of judicial activism.  It makes no sense, in the same way that the officer who said “We had to burn down this village in order to save it” made no sense in Vietnam. John Roberts turns out to be another disappointing judicial appointment for conservatives: moving strike zones, saying words have no obvious meaning, and rewriting the law to fix Congressional errors.
Image: This courtroom artist rendering shows Michael Carvin, lead attorney for the petitioners, right, speaking before the Supreme Court in Washington, Wednesday, March 4, 2015, a the court heard arguments in King v. Burwell. (AP Photo/Dana Verkouteren)
Hour Two
Monday 29 July 2015 / Hour 2, Block A:  David M Drucker, Washington Examiner Senior Congressional correspondent, & John Fund, National Review Online, in re:  Predictable tragedy of the republican Party – when Mr Trump speaks. It depends on attracting a sizeable Latino vote in 2016; has two excellent candidates - Cruz and Rubio – and Jeb Bush, who speaks Spanish.  Univision ended contact with Trump, and today, NBC did, too.  The longer Trump is in the race and the more debates he may qualify for: he's prone to saying outrageous things; unless the others gang up against him, he'll trail them around like a ball and chain.  Note that NBC dumped Trump and keeps Al Sharpton.  Trump has spread a lot of cash around.  GOP needs to say "He does not speak for us; He may run in our primaries, but he as a Dem till 2009 and he's not ours." [John Fund just back from Greece.]  Tsipris made a TV address: "Remain calm."  His response to the Grexit crisis is to raise taxes. Syriza Party s a collection of multiple left parties.  What's disturbing is: "Stay calm; and, btw, from now on you can get €60 from your ATM." In future, from Denver to the federalist Society, "We no longer accept anyone who's not nailed down to principles." No more Court appointees who claim the federalist Society is some ugly stepchild.
Republicans look for a gay marriage off-ramp  
The grand project of European Union bureaucrats — bringing the united continent under ever tighter centralized control exercised from the EU capital of Brussels — is the real sick man of Europe. http://www.nationalreview.com/article/420446/greek-banking-crisis-too-little-democracy-too-much-bureaucracy
Monday 29 July 2015 / Hour 2, Block B: David M Drucker, Washington Examiner Senior Congressional correspondent, & John Fund, National Review Online, in re: Four new GOP candidates – Jindal, Christie, Kasich, and Trump – oops not Trump.   . . . Even George Pataki doesn’t support expanding Medicaid. Kasich:  His Ohioans see him as a summertime solder. Kasich wd need Bush to collapse, but for VP Ohio is so critical he can make a good case. Jindal, twice elected in Louisiana because he's strict about cuts in education and welfare; is skilled in charter schools and in federal payments. Jindal needs to stop pretending he's an antiestablishment DC-hater and go on about his conservative; needs to speak on solutions on domestic and foreign-policy views.  Jindal is a perfect case of bad timing: oil price shock, and the unfortunate SOTU response where he [fluffed it].
Monday 29 July 2015 / Hour 2, Block C: Malcolm Hoenlein, Conference of Presidents, in re: Cairo bombing.  The Iran "deal."  Car bomb attack kills Egypt's top public prosecutor.  " Judges and other senior officials have increasingly been targeted by radical Islamists opposed to President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi and angered by hefty prison sentences imposed on members of the now-outlawed Muslim Brotherhood."  This occurred just as Egypt appointed an ambassador back to Israel and Israel's just-assigned representative was in Cairo.  Important to note that there has been no Egyptian protests against these. 
Egypt prosecutor Hisham Barakat killed in Cairo attack  Egypt's public prosecutor, Hisham Barakat, has been killed in a bomb attack on his car in ...
Bomb kills Egypt's top prosecutor as he drives to work  Car bomb attack kills Egypt's top public prosecutor
Iran: it holds all the cards. Briefing today with Adm officials: will go past the deadline (after 20 months).  Iran is backsliding. WH and State stress that the April parameters will be abided by; that IAEA must have full access to Iranian military sites.   Iran demands that sanctions be lifted fasr and making other demands. Adm & P5+1, esp the French, who've been outspoken; but 100 leaders of French industry are preparing a bz delegation to Iran in September. Fabius in on board; had $3.5billion f trade. See cracks in the system.  These are the same guys who're glad to support BDS.  Note NIAC claiming it’ll launch a big campaign, will set up a 501©(40, the notorious Trita Parsi in Vienna.  This is probably the most important security matter to the US and the world Parchin:  Khamenei insisted no inspectors into military sites; demanded that Iran have warnings, and give reasons for being suspicious before IAEA gets access.  Iran says (for rhetorical coverage): "There are no no-go zones, but you need to tell us a reason to inspect, no random inspection." Four Israelis injured in shooting near West Bank settlement. Gaza flotilla:  turned back safely.
Monday 29 July 2015 / Hour 2, Block D: Malcolm Hoenlein, Conference of Presidents, in re: July 9 s deadline under agreement – a law – where Pres has to present the Iran deal to Congress or else instead of 30 they get 60 days. ..   Within 5 days of signing; clock starts when Congress gets the deal, then have 60 days to act on it . . .  Four ships, three turned back. one Swedish-registered ship continued [Swedish-registered Marianne, with MK and ex-Tunisian president on board, was intercepted by Israel Navy pre- . . .] ; a peaceful boarding, no casualty. Crew looks cheerful.  Found: not one scrap of aid on the ship, which purportedly  was the whole reason they said they were sailing.   "What we learned is that the Israeli navy attacked ___ a100 miles form Gaza.' – This is nuts.  Photos entirely disprove this.   French propose new Quartet-Plus: EU, US, and some Arab states t push talks between Israel and the Palestinians.  French arms sales to Arab nations were $15 bil in 2014. Considering the success of French diplomacy since the revolution, do you anticipate success?
Hour Three
Monday 29 July 2015 / Hour 3, Block A:  Mary Kissel, Wall Street Journal editorial board & host of OpinionJournal.com; in re: EPA Isn’t All-Powerful.  The Editorial Board member Joe Rago on the Supreme Court’s 5-4 ruling in Michigan v. EPA. What’s Next for Greece?  The Editorial Page editor Paul Gigot on the state of the economy and European bailout negotiations.
Monday 29 July 2015 / Hour 3, Block B:  Claudia Rosett, FDD, in re: Nuclear Bargains And State Department Backlogs - Forbes   . . . to submit to Congress under a law called the Iran, North Korea and Syria Nonproliferation Act (abbreviated as INKSNA).
Monday 29 July 2015 / Hour 3, Block C:  Bill Harwood, CBS, in re: SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket destroyed in launch mishap  A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket carrying a Dragon cargo ship loaded with more than 4,000 . . .
Monday 29 July 2015 / Hour 3, Block D:   Seb Gorka, Marine Corps University, in re: Rising Tensions Boost Nordic, Baltic Spending (DefenseNews.com) The proposed deployment by the United States of heavy weapons to the Baltic states in . . .
Hour Four
Monday 29 July 2015 / Hour 4, Block A:  Richard A Epstein, Hoover Institution Defining Ideas, Chicago Law, in re: The Battle Over Jerusalem (1 of 2)
Monday 29 July 2015 / Hour 4, Block B: Richard A Epstein, Hoover Institution Defining Ideas, Chicago Law, in re: The Battle Over Jerusalem (2 of 2)
Monday 29 July 2015 / Hour 4, Block C:  Chris Solomon, NYT, in re: When Birds Squawk, Other Species Seem to Listen (1 of 2)
Monday 29 July 2015 / Hour 4, Block D: Chris Solomon, NYT, in re: When Birds Squawk, Other Species Seem to Listen (2 of 2)
..  ..  ..
The Greek Crisis: Too Little Democracy, Too Much Bureaucracy   The grand project of European Union bureaucrats — bringing the united continent under ever tighter centralized control exercised from the EU capital of Brussels — is the real sick man of Europe.
Greece has closed its banks for at least a week, banned the cashing of checks, halted almost all payments outside the country, and limited the amount of money that an individual can withdraw from an ATM to $66 per day. All of this came after the European Central Bank ended more emergency loans needed to keep the Greek banking system afloat. That move was in retaliation for the decision by the far-left Greek government to reject new bank-bailout terms from its creditors and instead call a referendum on July 5. On that day, the Greek people will be asked to make a choice: either “surrender” and give in to cuts in pensions and higher taxes or refuse and perhaps be forced to exit the euro and go back to a depreciated drachma as their national currency.
There will be endless discussion about who bears the most blame for the Greek crisis: a series of profligate Greek governments that often veered into outright corruption or the euro-zone governments that allowed Greece to borrow at artificially low interest rates while they overlooked the obviously flawed statistics touting the health of the Greek economy. I gave a series of lectures in Greece in May and am certainly not going to defend the magical thinking of many Greeks or their incompetent leftish government when it comes to economics. But let me say something in defense of Greece. Echoing my NRO colleague Andrew Stuttaford, I note that at least the Greeks are letting their people have a direct say in their future — a fitting move given that Greece gave birth to the democratic ideal.
The bureaucrats in Brussels and their counterparts in Europe’s national governments are furious with the Greeks for daring to consult their own people. Daniel Hannan, a British member of the European parliament, sarcastically tweeted, “Calling a referendum is, to Eurocrats, the most offensive thing a politician can do.” Stripped of their veneer, Eucrocrats’ arguments against all referendums amount to saying that referendums are a bad idea because they shift power from small cliques of unelected but wise rulers to an unsophisticated, nationalistic mob that might fall prey to populism, scare stories, and tabloid headlines.
Hannan, familiar to National Review readers as one of his country’s most articulate conservatives, wrote to me today, saying that while the Greek tragedy will cause much unneeded pain, it also provides a valuable lesson about the perils of ever greater political centralization: We can see, in Greece, how the EU project ends: in the almost total control of a country’s affairs by Brussels. Greeks now have a chance — as Britons soon will — to opt instead for independence. We have been told for decades that European integration was necessary to our economic well-being. When the euro was launched, the European Commission solemnly assured us that it would add an extra 1 percent of annual growth to every participating economy in perpetuity. As Sarah Palin might put it, “How’s that workin’ out for ya?”
It’s not as if European voters have been blindly following their Brussels “betters” in pursuing unity at all costs and against common sense. In 2005, a new EU constitution, which aimed to centralize the continent under a “president” of Europe, was heavily rejected, first by a referendum in France, then by a Dutch referendum. Andrew Duff, a Liberal Democrat member of the European Parliament, gave voice to many of his colleagues when he ridiculed opponents of the proposed EU constitution as “an odd bunch of racists, xenophobes, nationalists, communists, the disappointed centre left, and the generally pissed off.” Duff said it was unwise to “submit the EU constitution to a lottery of uncoordinated national plebiscites.” After all, that would be democracy.
The EU shrugged off the French and Dutch defeats and proceeded to produce the Lisbon Treaty, another governing document that differed only in very minor details from the rejected one — but this time, the document wouldn’t be trusted to most voters. The Irish government, however, followed its laws and allowed its citizens to vote on the Lisbon Treaty in a referendum in 2008 — and voters rejected the treaty. EU bureaucrats dismissed the result as the work of “populist demagogues” and forced the Irish — with a combination of threats and virtual bribes — to vote again on the issue. The second time, the EU prevailed. Bureaucrats ignored all warning signals that the EU and the euro were on a dangerous path — and here we are, enmeshed in the Greek crisis. Bureaucrats ignored all warning signals that the EU and the euro were on a dangerous path — and here we are, enmeshed in the Greek crisis. Once again the Eurocrats in Brussels remain defiantly unaccountable. Jeroen Dijsselbloem, the Dutch minister who chairs the Eurogroup monitoring the crisis, just announced that his group would hold “a meeting of the 18” — the Eurogroup without Greece. According to a Greek witness, when Dijsselbloem was asked how such a meeting could make decisions, he answered, “We can do what we like since we are an ad hoc body.”
No one should pretend that the Greek prime minister, Alexis Tsipras, called a referendum out of a sincere belief that the voters should be consulted. The Greek Communist newspaper Rizopastis, which opposes holding a referendum and is urging voters to spoil their ballots, properly points out that he is trying to avoid responsibility for making any decision. Indeed, Tsipris is clearly a shameless, opportunistic politician. He opposed a similar referendum when the former center-left Greek prime minister George Papandreou proposed it in 2011. But for all the perfidy of the Greek government, it is, at least in its moment of crisis, returning to the roots of the democratic ideal: that it is the people, not experts or elites or aristocrats, who should have the ultimate say on those matters that must ultimately be settled politically. Here’s hoping the Greeks wake up their fellow Europeans to the fact that if they want to ensure a prosperous and free Europe for their children, politics is too important to be left to non-transparent Eurocrats. 
John Fund is national-affairs correspondent for National Review Online.