U.S. Spy Agency Edges into the Light After Snowden Revelations

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Photo Credit: Reuters

Photo Credit: Reuters

There was a time when the U.S. National Security Agency was so secretive that government officials dared not speak its name in public. NSA, the joke went, stood for “No Such Agency.”

That same agency this month held an on-the-record conference call with reporters, issued a lengthy press release to rebut a newspaper story, and posted documents on a newly launched open website – icontherecord.tumblr.com (which stands for intelligence community on the record).

The steps were taken under pressure as President Barack Obama’s administration tries to calm a public storm over disclosures by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden that the surveillance agency and its British counterpart scoop up far more Internet and phone data than previously known.

The NSA’s moves out of the shadows were meant to show that it operates lawfully and fixes mistakes when they are detected, but not everyone is convinced that it is a fundamental shift toward more openness at the intelligence agencies.

Some steps toward openness were unprecedented.

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When Energy Dreams Fall Short

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Photo Credit: AP

Photo Credit: AP

If the energy visions of past years had come true, throngs of Americans would be using switchgrass to fuel their cars and running their homes on electricity from nuclear fusion or carbon-capturing coal plants.

But reality has worked out differently.

Many of the nation’s most ambitious energy projects have fallen far short of their lofty goals, either because they were unrealistically optimistic, took too long develop or were abandoned as markets shifted. EPA offered a reminder of that reality this month, when it made sharp cuts in its production estimates for an advanced biofuel called cellulosic ethanol.

Some experts caution that struggling technologies can still strike gold, making it hard to judge when it’s too soon to stop investing in them.

“When do you know when to cut your losses?” asked Margot Anderson, executive director of the Bipartisan Policy Center’s energy project. “When is a flop a flop?”

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Texas Rodeo to Feature Obama Clown

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Photo Credit: AP

Photo Credit: AP

A Texas rodeo isn’t shying away from controversy — instead, they are doing the opposite and promoting an appearance of a rodeo clown wearing a mask of President Obama this weekend.

“You’ve heard about the controversy surrounding the Obama clown in Missouri,” read an announcement from the Mesquite Rodeo, according to the Dallas Observer.

“This weekend, an Obama clown is a special guest star as the Mesquie Rodeo puts on the grand finale to its 2013 season with non-stop action you will only find in the aptly named ‘Rodeo Capital of Texas,’” the announcement added.

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No, Obamacare Is Not A Good Deal For Young People In The Long Run, Not Even Close

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Photo Credit: LaDawna's pics

Photo Credit: LaDawna’s pics

Progressives are becoming increasingly concerned at the prospect of millions of uninsured young people deciding to push the easy button next year by simply paying a very small fine[1] rather than obtain health coverage. Consequently, they have turned to a new argument to get those under 30 to act against their self interest by signing up for the Exchanges. Now we are being told that Obamacare will be a good deal for young people in the long run since whatever short-term losses they incur in the form of higher premiums will be more than made up later when they are older and get to pay lower premiums than they would in today’s market.

But those making these arguments haven’t offered any analysis to back up their claims. The conceptual point evidently is supposed to be intuitively obvious. As Ezra Klein puts it:

Young people grow old. Healthy people get sick. Rich people become poor. The people overpaying to keep costs low today are the people underpaying 10 or 20 years from now.

As a health policy skeptic, I know that lots of intuitive ideas—such as that prevention saves money—turn out to be false upon closer examination. So when I did some actual analysis of this latest idea, it did not surprise me to learn that this claim is dead wrong. Once the time value of money is taken into account, the average young person will be worse off under Obamacare even if they live long enough to be a near-elderly person who pays premiums that are well below actuarially fair rates.

In the short run, millions of young will be better off without Obamacare

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Egyptians are convinced Obama is backing the Muslim Brotherhood

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Photo Credit: Getty Images

Photo Credit: Getty Images

By Jay Newton-Small

There seems to be something of a disconnect between who Egyptians think America is supporting, and who America actually is supporting in Cairo. In the U.S., story after story has been written about how the Obama Administration has bent over backwards not to call this latest change in government a “coup” and has been relatively muted in its reaction to the deaths of so many civilians – upwards of 1,000 in the last week alone.

Yet Egyptians remain convinced that President Obama is backing the Muslim Brotherhood and deposed President Mohamed Morsi. At a lunch at the Egyptian Ambassador’s residence on Thursday, Dr. Mohamed Abou El-Ghar, head of the Egyptian Social Democratic Party, bluntly warned a small gathering of journalists and policy wonks that he fears, “America is losing Egypt…There is a very strong perception that they are supporting the Muslim Brotherhood and they are against other parties,” he said.

The perception began even before the Egyptians elected Morsi, Abou el-Ghar said, when Senator John McCain, an Arizona Republican and 2008 GOP presidential nominee, met with members of the Muslin Brotherhood in February 2012 but not representatives from competing parties. The headlines were: U.S. Warms to the Muslim Brotherhood. It was furthered when U.S. Ambassador to Egypt Anne Patterson criticized Egypt’s military for interfering in July when opponents deposed Morsi. That view has become more widespread since, with the Pentagon’s decision to defer delivery of F-16 fighter jets to Egypt and the Administration’s review of aid to Cairo.

Read more from this story HERE.

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Photo Credit: Bryan Denton

Photo Credit: Bryan Denton

As Egyptians Ignore Curfew, Talk of a U.S.-Brotherhood Conspiracy

By Rod Nordland

The sounds made lately by curfew violators here are mostly not shouts or gunshots, but the clacking of dice on wooden backgammon boards, the clicking of dominoes on cafe tables crowded with hookahs and grumbling fueled by years of upheaval.

When the conversation turns to politics, the predominant topic is a surprise to American ears: the conspiracy between the United States and the Muslim Brotherhood to destroy Egypt.

However crackpot that view may sound, it is widespread among supporters of the military, which ousted the Muslim Brotherhood’s elected president, Mohamed Morsi, last month.

For journalists who ventured out Saturday night in violation of the curfew, the biggest danger was not from police officers and soldiers at checkpoints, but from angry men with a chip on their shoulders and a grudge against Al Jazeera, the Western press and America.

The “people’s committees,” which sprung up in Egyptian neighborhoods as a counterweight to the Muslim Brotherhood, in theory were disbanded last week. But that did not stop self-appointed guardians in the Zaki Street market of the Maadi neighborhood from repeatedly demanding identity documents, letters of permission and, especially, proof of not being affiliated with Al Jazeera, the pan-Arab news network, which is reviled because it is owned by Qatar, a strong supporter of the Muslim Brotherhood.

Read more from this story HERE.

FAA OKs Drones Over Alaska Oil Area

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drones_The FAA has cleared the way for unmanned aircraft, or drones, to fly for the Alaskan oil industry.

The Petroleum News reports approval for two remote-controlled aircraft to fly over the Arctic Ocean is an aviation milestone.

ConocoPhillips requested permission for the drone flights. But the company says it’s not quite ready to put them to use.

Read more from this story HERE.

Razor Sales Dropping Precipitously as World Embraces the “Scruffy Look”

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Photo Credit: Getty Images

Photo Credit: Getty Images

Blame George Clooney, Brad Pitt, David Beckham and the rest of the facial hair-loving celebs. Blame hipster girls fawning over bearded musicians. Blame the modern caveman movement with its paleo diet and DIY ethos.

Whatever you blame, there’s no doubt that scruffy faces — and full-on beards — have been making a comeback. So much so that North American razor sales are way down, and an increasing number of British men are getting — wait for it — facial hair transplants.

Procter & Gamble, which owns shaving giant Gillette, recently announced that its razor sales are falling in developed markets. Energizer’s Schick razor has also taken a recent hit, with sales dropping 10 percent in the last year. Market research firm Euromonitor International predicts that in 2013, shaving products are expected to lose their dominance in the larger male grooming market for the first time ever.

“The vogue for stubble, the relative non-hairiness of Chinese men, growing acceptance of the unshaven look in the workplace and, most importantly, the ever increasing cost of shaving have all been damaging to men’s shaving and Gillette alike,” Nicole Tyrimou, an analyst at Euromonitor International, wrote recently. “Over the medium to long term, the desire for an unshaven look is expected to continue, especially in Western Europe where increasing unemployment coupled with stubble being in vogue will continue to damage growth of razors and blades.”

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State Dept. Corruption: Egyptian Gov’t Claims Evidence that U.S. Bribed Muslim Brotherhood Officials

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Photo Credit: WND

Photo Credit: WND

A question apparently being raised in next week’s trial in Cairo of Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood leaders facing criminal charges is this: Was the Obama administration paying bribes as large as $850,000 a year to the Morsi government that were distributed by top ministerial level officials to Muslim Brotherhood leaders, with the direct involvement of the U.S. Embassy in Cairo?

WND is in possession of an official document from inside the Morsi government that lends credibility to a report published in Arabic by an Egyptian newspaper in Cairo that lists the charges brought by the current military-controlled government against Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood leaders.

As seen above, WND has obtained official records from the deposed Morsi government in Egypt, with signatures, documenting monthly “gifts” paid to Muslim Brotherhood leaders in Egypt by the former prime minister and foreign minister of Qatar, Hamad bin Jassim bin Jabor Al Thani.

The document was seized from Egyptian government offices in Cairo when the Morsi government was deposed by the military July 3.

As translated by former PLO member and native Arabic-speaker Walid Shoebat, the monthly “gifts” listed in the document amount to bribes paid by the Morsi government to leading Muslim Brotherhood members in Egypt, including an annual payment of $750,000 to $850,000 in U.S. dollars.

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Obama: Assault Weapon Industry’s No. 1 Customer, Buys 600,000 AK-47 Magazines

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Photo Credit: Washington Examiner

Photo Credit: Washington Examiner

There he goes again. President Obama’s anti-gun administration, which recently pushed legislation banning assault weapons and large ammo magazines, is proving again that it is the industry’s No. 1 customer.

On the heels of major purchases of AR-15-styled weapons for agencies like the IRS and millions of bullets used by assault-weapons and similar semi-automatic arms owned by federal forces, the Army has just announced that it is buying nearly 600,000 high capacity AK-47 Kalashnikov rifle magazines.

The gun is popular among collectors and target shooters, and was the weapon of choice used by this week’s Georgia school shooter. But while fans of the gun help keep small weapon accessory companies in business, the Army’s purchase is a major boost for an industry the president and his grassroots campaign, Organizing for Action, has spent the summer attacking.

It’s just one purchase in a string of AK-47 equipment buys from the Feds.

Army officials told Secrets that the 30-round magazines, which would be banned under Obama’s gun control proposals, are going to Afghanistan. But unlike the Pentagon’s controversial purchase of Russian helicopters for Afghan special forces, the Soviet-Russian-styled AK-47 magazines are likely to be purchased from an American firm.

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NSA Officers Spy on Love Interests

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Photo Credit: Reuters

Photo Credit: Reuters

National Security Agency officers on several occasions have channeled their agency’s enormous eavesdropping power to spy on love interests, U.S. officials said.

The practice isn’t frequent — one official estimated a handful of cases in the last decade — but it’s common enough to garner its own spycraft label: LOVEINT.

Spy agencies often refer to their various types of intelligence collection with the suffix of “INT,” such as “SIGINT” for collecting signals intelligence, or communications; and “HUMINT” for human intelligence, or spying.

The “LOVEINT” examples constitute most episodes of willful misconduct by NSA employees, officials said.

In the wake of revelations last week that NSA had violated privacy rules on nearly 3,000 occasions in a one-year period, NSA Chief Compliance Officer John DeLong emphasized in a conference call with reporters last week that those errors were unintentional. He did say that there have been “a couple” of willful violations in the past decade. He said he didn’t have the exact figures at the moment.

Read more from this story HERE.