Photo, left: The almost-nascent Kurdistan, now under military attack by Turkey as the latter pretends to be bombing ISIS - with approval of the Supreme Leader and the American White House. 
JOHN BATCHELOR SHOW
Co-hosts: Mary Kissel, OpinionJournal at WSJ. Malcolm Hoenlein, Conference of Presidents.
 
Hour One
Thursday  13 August  2014 / Hour 1, Block A: Edward Hayes, Esq. (criminal defense attorney par excellence), on Mr Trump and the GOP.  ("We do policy. Yankees are in a losing streak, Mets doing well, Nationals chasing Mets, and Toronto.") The crisis on the streets of homeless people, many mentally deranged: NYPD cannot solve this unless it's authorized by Mayor DeBlasio to act a bit more aggressively – at least to oblige them to take their antipsychotic medications. "Man tries to rape a woman on the subway in midafternoon in Park Slope."  The victim and a Good Samaritan took the fellow to the police precinct! No cops to be found outside.  The mayor's policy is horrible and hurtful; people unwilling to care for themselves yet the police forbidden to address this.
Thursday  13 August  2014 / Hour 1, Block B: John Roskam, Institute of Public Affairs, exec dir [www.ipa.org.au ], in re: Climate change is generally attached to govt mandates. A millennarian argument. The Liberal Party (conservatives, in Australia).  Tony Abbott, prime minister, has committed the country to a GDP-reducing CO2-reduction program, cst $4 billion to 10 billion per year; will make zero change to the climate.  "The death-spiral is irreversible."  UN Conference on Climate Change. "If you make it big enough, then anything not as bad will be greeted with relief."    This is a challenge for the Right around the world. Anti-cheap energy, anti-freedom of speech and religion.  No effect on the world temperature: really, evidence has to be the basis for policy.  Am called a "deny-er" – which I find highly offensive; and thereafter, all insults are water off a duck's back.  As humanity o sabot to take a leap forward, it leans backwards into superstition.  Australia has recently gone through an unprecedented economic boom, got used to affording everything – but the money is soon running out.
Why Tony Abbott's climate 'strategy' is several different kinds of stupid.   Jack Black rips into Tony Abbott. Tony Abbott and climate change?    https://twitter.com/SputnikInt/status/630982027257339904
Thursday  13 August  2014 / Hour 1, Block C: Gov Scott Walker (WI), in re: The presidential candidate Governor Scott Walker of Wisconsin joins to discuss tax and immigration policy. Tax policies – grow economy and wages.  My first priority is – a whole slew of things. We did every kind of common-sense conservative reform in Wisconsin – regulatory, tax, entitlement, all kinds of reform.  You do not get political capital by hoarding it – you get it by investing in it. We need to close down Obamacare, the regulations that are a wet blanket; approve Keystone Pipeline right away, lift ban on oil export.  The longer you wait, the longer you wait. Do what's right for the next generation. Securing the border is much bigger than just immigration: public safety, natl security, even sovereignty. Drugs, people-trafficking. I was in Israel earlier: 500-mi fence, with technology -  has reduced terrorist activities by over 90%.  On legal immigration and related laws: if we enforced current laws, that'd go a long way and be cost-effective.  Immigration overall has been a very good thing. My great-great grandfather was a miner who came from ___, moved to the Midwest. We just need to give priority to legal immigration. 
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Thursday  13 August  2014 / Hour 1, Block D: Gov Scott Walker (WI), in re: The Animus River, the arsenic. lead, and massive toxicity flowing into the Navajo Nation and Hopiland and downstream . . .  I was a Boy Scot and Eagle Scout; I want clear land, air and water; I also want it balanced.  To add insult to injury, in Colorado and New Mexico: if there were a private business, they wouldn't only be fined, they'd be imprisoned, The EPA will just roll along. I say, take the power and enforcement and send them back to the states, where people have to live with the results.  Clinton: it's either illegal or incompetent – either one disqualifies her to be president of the United States. Join us at ScottWalker.com
The increasing troubles of Hillary Clinton's tenure at State, now said to be a focus for the DOJ.  The issue of transparency and trust in the executive branch now and in the future.
    Tax and immigration polices.  The still-unexplained and growing EPA disaster on the Animas River is an example of how imperiously the EPA has conducted itself under the Obama Administration: Thoughts on the EPA mission in a Walker Administration. (1 of 2)
http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2015/08/13/exclusive-scott-walker-lays-out-plan-to-secure-border-stop-immigration-insanity-in-new-interview/  A week after Charles Schumer declared his opposition to the Iran deal, the White House attacks on Schumer create turmoil in Washington and New York. (2 of 2)
 
Scott Walker's Labor Economics  by Mary Kissel, WSJ.  The good news is that Scott Walker is looking to advisers to educate him on the issues he will have to address if he wants to be elected President. The bad news is that on the economics of immigration the Wisconsin Governor is listening to Alabama Senator Jeff Sessions.
In a radio interview Monday with Glenn Beck, Mr. Walker said, "the next president and the next Congress need to make decisions about a legal immigration system that's based on, first and foremost, on protecting American workers and American wages." He went on to say, "I've talked to folks, I've talked to Senator Sessions and others out there." At the "forefront of our discussion going forward," he says, must be what legal immigration is "doing for American workers looking for jobs" and what it "is doing to wages."
By all means let's have that discussion on jobs and wages. Because Mr. Walker seems to be taking his cue from Senate hearings Mr. Sessions held recently to spread a whopper: that Americans with degrees in STEM subjects (science, technology, engineering and math) can't get jobs because foreigners are stealing them.
Mr. Sessions is the Senate's leading crusader against any immigration, legal and illegal, and his latest targets are H-1B visas for skilled workers. Practically speaking, these visas are the only way U.S. companies can bring foreign talent to work in America, and more are going to STEM specialists.
The Senator calls claims of a skilled-worker shortage a "hoax." But the numbers suggest otherwise: The U.S. Citizen and Immigration Services announced last week that it received a record 233,000 requests from American business for the 85,000 H-1B visas available.
This unmet demand is why a bipartisan group of other Senators -- including Mr. Sessions's fellow Republicans Orrin Hatch, Marco Rubio and Jeff Flake -- have introduced a bill to make it easier to hire high-tech workers. But it's going to be hard to pass the Senate with Mr. Sessions chairing the immigration subcommittee and his ally, Iowa Republican Chuck Grassley, chairing Judiciary.
Their argument is that America's high-tech companies are looking for workers to exploit. But the two Senators rely almost entirely on anecdote and a misleading measure of the job market. Mr. Sessions claims there are only six million high-tech STEM jobs in the U.S.
But a new study from the National Foundation for American Policy (NFAP) -- a pro-immigration think tank -- shows how phony this six million figure is. It notes the National Science Foundation's "Science and Engineering Indicators 2014," which reports that the number of college-educated workers who say their jobs require a least a bachelor's degree in a STEM subject is 16.5 million. That's almost three times the Sessions figure.
The same NSF publication found that only 5% of Americans with a degree in engineering or computing or math were involuntarily working outside their chosen fields in 2010, the most recent year for which statistics are available. The figure is only 1.4% for those who earned a master's degree in math or computer science in the last five years.
The NFAP concludes that Mr. Sessions's data "would exclude every American recipient of the Nobel Prize in the past 100 years who worked as a professor, which would be classified as a post-secondary teacher, and the CEO of Apple, since management positions typically do not count as a STEM occupation under government classifications."
As for jobs overall, in 2010 the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco concluded "there is no evidence that immigrants crowd out U.S.-born workers in either the short or long run." It also found that the long run effect on the income of Americans is small but positive.
And let's ask this question. If more people, even people with skills such as those on H-1B visas, are bad for an economy, why is the high-growth state of Texas working overtime to get people from other parts of the country to move there? Under the Walker-Sessions model, shouldn't that depress wages and take jobs from those already there?
Economists call this the lump of labor fallacy, which holds that the amount of available work is fixed. If one person gets a job, another loses it. But the addition of new workers into a market, especially skilled workers, can increase the productivity of companies in a way that expands the supply of work for everybody.
Republicans used to understand this basic economic principle, but the politics of immigration is turning some of them into economists for the AFL-CIO. The irony is that Mr. Sessions's view of labor economics requires believing that the most innovative U.S. companies aren't built on smarts or innovation but on the exploitation of cheap foreign labor.
Mr. Walker is right that the GOP needs to focus on raising the incomes of average Americans, but the way to do that is with policies that increase growth and improve upward mobility. Zero-sum labor economics will do neither.
 
Hour Two
Thursday  13 August  2014 / Hour 2, Block A: Jonathan Schanzer, former terrorism finance analyst at Treasury; in re: Turkey and the Kurds. Neo-Ottomanists. the heirs of the Ottoman empire. The minorities have been the social mortar for a century: Yazidis, Kurds, Christians, Jews, Mandaeans, Alawi. Us now using airfields. Incirlik [pron: injure-lik]. In the effort to "degrade and defeat SIS," Turkey has been an outlier – a dangerous double game. Suddenly last month a suicide bombing in Eastern Turkey by a Kurd perhaps associated with ISIS. Erdogan finally decided to join the US, opened Incirlik.   As it turns out, Turkey is not fighting ISIS, is killing Kurds, and has dragged the US in.  And the US does not currently have full access to Incirlik: Turks have obliged US to ask Turks first – always with strings attached – and as part of a circumscribe NATAO. Turks using bombing runs to kill Kurds because of its own politics – is fighting Assad via a proxy.    Turkey is providing aid to ISIS.  Meanwhile, only the Kurds have helped the Yazidis.  The Obama Adm has left the Kurds in a weaker position by getting in bed with Turkey. Turkey is worried about Iran, working together in some ways.   Economic payday en route.  The entire region is convuls ing. Russia: also complicated relations.
http://www.defenddemocracy.org/media-hit/schanzer-jonathan-the-perils-of-joining-turkey-in-the-fight-against-isis/
http://jcpa.org/article/turkey-attacks-kurds-islamic-state/
The Turkish military campaign against the Islamic State (IS) and the Kurdish Kurdistan Worker’s Party (PKK) fuels suspicions as to the real motives behind the sudden involvement of Turkey in a conflict it carefully managed to distance itself from for more than four years.
Out of the 1,302 people arrested in Turkey, in what officials have described as a “full-fledged battle against terrorist groups,” 847 were accused of links to the PKK and just 137 to Islamic State.
The Turkish Air Force has turned its fire mainly against Kurdish PKK militants in Northern Iraq and PKK shelters, bunkers, and storage facilities in the Qandil Mountains where the PKK high command is based.
Concerned by the renewed Turkish military campaign against the PKK, Selahattin Demirtash, the leader of Turkey’s pro-Kurdish opposition People’s Democratic Party (HDP), accused Erdogan of launching airstrikes on Kurdish targets in order to prevent the Kurds from unifying areas they control in Syria.
Many Turks believe that by reviving the confrontation with the PKK (and the HDP) Erdogan is undermining the support enjoyed by the HDP in view of possible repeat elections.
The Turkish military campaign against the Islamic State (IS) and the Kurdish Kurdistan Worker’s Party (PKK), which began in the last days of July 2015, fuel suspicions as to the real motives behind the sudden involvement of Turkey in a conflict it carefully managed to distance itself from for more than four years. As a matter of curious coincidence, the Turkish military campaign began three weeks after the Egyptian military revealed on July 8, 2015 that it had captured Turkish intelligence officers who were actively involved in the guerrilla war waged by the Islamic State in Sinai and inside Egypt itself against the Sisi regime. Four days later, on July 12, the Egyptian military spokesman announced the uncovering of a “terrorist cell” whose instructions were given by the Muslim Brotherhood headquartered in Turkey and whose mission was to destabilize Egypt.1
According to Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu, the immediate reason given by the Turks behind the unleashing of  their military air power was “a synchronized fight against terror.”2 In fact, it began as retaliation against Kurdish terrorist acts against police and army forces and against the IS. The Islamic State was responsible for attacking Turkish outposts in the area and for the suicide bombing perpetrated on July 20, 2015  in the Amara Cultural Center at the Turkish border town  of Suruc by an 18-year old member of the  IS, which caused 32 deaths and more than 100 injuries, all of whom were Turks of Kurdish descent, and the attack on July 23 by the IS of a Turkish border post near Kilis.
Interesting enough, though previous incidents such as the 2013 Reyhanlı bombings, the 2015 Istanbul suicide bombing, and the 2015 Diyarbakır rally bombings were presumably carried out by IS deep inside Turkish sovereign territory– as well as suicide car attacks carried out  by the IS against the Kurdish city of Kobane a month ago using Turkish territory in order to attack the Kurds from their rear– none of these provoked any military response from the Turks. The only reaction was  (at the time ) a denial of accusations that the IS had used Turkish territory to enter Kobane from the Turkish border.
There is no doubt that the PKK’s reaction to the bomb attack in Suruc served as a catalyst for the Turkish decision makers, since the PKK admitted to killing two Turkish police officers  in the city of Celanpinar on July 22. According to the PKK, the officers had collaborated with the IS in the suicide bombing in Suruc.3
However, following the first aerial attacks by the Turkish Air Force on July 24, 2015 (the first against the PKK since a 2013 truce ended a two-year ceasefire), the Turkish government ordered a crackdown on IS and Kurdish militants all over Turkey. After years of condoning the activities carried out on Turkish soil by the IS and other jihadist organizations, partly with the collaboration of Turkey intelligence agencies, the Turkish police force of 5,000 deployed in the operation was very quick to arrest more than a thousand activists and militants all over the country (Istanbul, Ankara, Izmir and in Sanliurfa province, near the Syrian border) in less than 24 hours.
It appeared that out of the 1,302 people arrested, in what officials have described as a “full-fledged battle against terrorist groups” in recent days, 847 were accused of links to the PKK and just 137 to Islamic State, government spokesman Bulent Arinc said.4 Members of the youth wing of the outlawed PKK and a far left group, the Marxist Revolutionary People’s Liberation Party Front (DHKP-C) were also arrested. Turkey has also stated that its operations against the IS in Syria will not include air cover for Kurdish fighters battling the jihadists.
Since July 25, The Turkish effort against the IS and the PKK is no longer confined to Syria nor to the vicinity of the Syrian-Turkish border. The Turkish Air Force  has turned its fire mainly against Kurdish PKK militants in Northern Iraq5 and PKK shelters, bunkers, and storage facilities in the Qandil Mountains where the PKK high command is based. The air strikes came just hours after Turkey’s President Tayyip Erdogan said that a peace process had become impossible with the Kurds. [more]
Thursday  13 August  2014 / Hour 2, Block B: Congresswoman Grace Meng (NY-6; D [Queens]) [pro: mung] Foreign Affairs Subcommittee, in re: The Iran deal: Rep Meng has opposed the deal since July.  I was skeptical from the first announcement, but attended many briefings on foreign affairs.  You were among the first Democrats to state clearly your position and why; that emboldened  others to look more carefully,.  A lot of [unpleasant speech] flying around Washington; thank you for taking a principled stand.  This is not, and should not be, a partisan matter.  Over history, Congress has turned down dozens of treaties.  And the $100 or 150 billion?   Your constituents n Queens: accept that the Adm wants to give that to men who kill Americans in Iraq?  I agree – one of my major reasons for having to oppose the deal. It wakes up in the morning and says, "Death to America!" and is holding four American hostages; funds Hezbollah and Hamas; and in a few years it'll get a lot of major new weapons.   . . .  If I could edit the agreement, Iran would not get any number of billions.   
Thursday  13 August  2014 / Hour 2, Block C: Robert Satloff. Washington Inst for Near East Policy, exec dir; in re: Voting down the deal. A NO vote doesn't trigger that much – all it technically does is restrict the president from certain waiver authority on sanctions on Iran. Calm down, exhale. A no vote does  not mean war in the Middle East.  Before the US has to do anything, Iran has to fulfill certain obligations – mothball centrifuges, decrease . . .  End of sanctions by the UN and the Europeans – huge benefits to Iran if it stays in.  It's hard to see how war becomes the default alternative to this deal.  The Iranian strategy is to slowly, incrementally bld a bomb – they're on the edge of validation of their nukes and gaining legitimacy. A very serious problem is that this agreement gives enormous assets, a huge windfall, to Iran that will go to terrorists, and cost not dollars but lives. Incumbent on this Adm to say how to limit Iran's ability to take over chunks of the Middle East and limit their atrocities and evil.    Iranian officials are mocking the US.  Interdicting Iran's weapons-supply to Hezbollah
http://www.washingtoninstitute.org/policy-analysis/view/clarifying-a-no-vote-on-the-iran-nuclear-agreement
http://www.washingtoninstitute.org/uploads/Iran_ExpertStatement.pdf
http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2015/08/iran-deal-congress-better-alternative/401222/
Thursday  13 August  2014 / Hour 2, Block D: Michael Pregent,  Veterans against the Deal Exec Dir & former US army intell officer & sr intell advisor to Gens. Petraeus & Odierno; in re: Iraq, Iran veterans. We have huge issues with the nonnuclear parts of this deal – the IRGC is killing Americans and wreaking havoc widely.   Wouldn't you rather deal with an Iran that doesn't have nuclear weapons? But the immed consequences includes letting Soleymani can travel to Russia to broker an arms deal – and this is suppose d to be a partner. His budget will double or triple.   Army Staff Sgt Robert Barker of Montana: joined the mil at age 30 after 9/11; was killed by a weapon that Soleymani trained Iraqi Shia to use and he directed the weapons use against Americans.  Most regrettably, Secy Kerry disgraced himself in describing events.  Two Qasem Soleymanis, but the one who kills Americans is very active.  Iranian influence in Iraq: 20,000 Iranians on border to enter Diyyala; already getting weapons for oil guarantees; acting as though the sanctions already lifted. JB: we could use some of that money on a drone on Soleymani.
 
Hour Three
Thursday  13 August  2014 / Hour 3, Block A: Malcolm Hoenlein, Conference of Presidents; in re: ISIS uses mustard gas against Kurds Russia docks ships in Iran on the Caspian for joint exercises. Jointly constructing new nuclear power plants.  US complains about Soleymani's going to the Moscow Kremlin.
Thursday  13 August  2014 / Hour 3, Block B: Emily Landau, Inst for Natl Security Studies (INSS) in Tel Aviv; in re: letter about 29 nuclear scientists. Siegfried Hecker travelled several times to North Korea, wrote about negotiations In Nov 2010 with two other Stanford scientists, was invited to see the nuclear project at Yangbyon, and a brand-new, modern uranium enrichment plant.  Very familiar with deception and illegal projects, he should know better than to sign a letter in favor of the Iran deal. Verification provision: 24 days' notice is so blatant – a para 75 has no time limit where the IAEA presents evidence to Iran and then waits indefinitely for a response – as long as Iran wants, with huge time to clear up the evidence.  Clearly, Iran will not allow entry; also Iran's past work on nuclear program:  we heard repeatedly that this issue would be cleared up in context of the deal – it was not. It was kicked down the road; and the accompanying language is ambiguous or worse; the PND.   Zarif has just said, ""We've upheld the NPT but the other side has not."  This is outrageously inaccurate – no one has clearly challenged
Thursday  13 August  2014 / Hour 3, Block C: Robert Zimmerman, behindtheblack, in re: DARPA awards phase 2 space plane contracts  The competition heats up: The second phase contracts in the development of a reusable space plane have been awarded by DARPA.
DARPA has awarded $6.5 million each to three companies for developmental design work, including Boeing (in partnership with Blue Origin), Northrop Grumman (in partnership with Scaled Composites and Virgin Galactic), and Masten Space Science Systems (in partnership with XCOR Aerospace).  The requirements are that the plane fly 10 times in 10 days, reach Mach 10+, put a 3,000 to 5000 pound payload in orbit, and cost less than $5 million per flight. In this new phase, the companies are to deliver finalized designs by 2016, with prototype development to follow.
NASA considers using Bigelow module for deep space missions  The competition heats up: Rather than build something in-house for gobs of money and decades of work, NASA is considering using Bigelow Aerospace’s largest inflatable modules for its deep space missions.
What has happened is that NASA has signed a joint agreement with Bigelow to study the possibility of using Bigelow’s B330 module as a transport habitat on long flights. The agency really has no choice, as it doesn’t have the funding to develop the necessary large spacecraft for these missions, and Bigelow can provide them to it for much less
Thursday  13 August  2014 / Hour 3, Block D:  Paul Gregory, Hoover,  in re: The Dirty Bomb: A Thwarted Putin False Flag Operation? The Western media has decided to carry the story of a dirty bomb purportedly being assembled in Donetsk by rebel forces with the aid of Russian nuclear scientists. The  accounts in The Times of London,  Newsweek and  Fox News cite Ukrainian intelligence sources, being careful to note that the Ukrainian intelligence cannot be independently verified. Nevertheless, they find the story of a Donetsk bunker full of radioactive waste and the arrival of nuclear scientists from Russia plausible enough to follow up. Most rebel leaders interviewed denied the story, but some boasted of the prospect of a nuclear weapon at their disposal. Rosatom, Russia’s nuclear energy agency, also denied sending scientists to Donetsk. Tight security prevented reporters from visiting the site of the chemical plant where the radioactive bunker is located.  Russian-backed news outlets decry the unprofessional coverage of Western mainstream media, who they claim employ novice reporters to cover the Ukraine battlefield. This, they say, is a false story not worth reporting.  Kremlin propaganda had already been peddling its own dirty bomb story. Its version accused Ukraine, not the Russian-backed rebels. LiveLeak reported that Ukrainian nationalists were caught trafficking in nuclear materials and radioactive substances with the potential to make a dirty bomb. Fascist Ukrainian organizations, they claim, are behind these nuclear escapades.  The mainstream media missed the signs pointing to a Kremlin false-flag operation aimed at blaming Ukraine for having (and using) a dirty bomb. Ukrainian analysts saw through it right away as another typical . . .   [more]
 
Hour Four
Thursday  13 August  2014 / Hour 4, Block A: No Better Friend: One Man, One Dog, and Their Extraordinary Story of Courage and Survival in WWII, by Robert Weintraub (1 of 4)
Thursday  13 August  2014 / Hour 4, Block B: No Better Friend: One Man, One Dog, and Their Extraordinary Story of Courage and Survival in WWII, by Robert Weintraub (2 of 4)
Thursday  13 August  2014 / Hour 4, Block C: No Better Friend: One Man, One Dog, and Their Extraordinary Story of Courage and Survival in WWII, by Robert Weintraub (3 of 4)
Thursday  13 August  2014 / Hour 4, Block D: No Better Friend: One Man, One Dog, and Their Extraordinary Story of Courage and Survival in WWII, by Robert Weintraub (4 of 4)
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