ALLIES: Turkey purges NATO military envoys after failed coup.

In a classified military dispatch seen by Reuters, 149 military envoys posted to the alliance’s headquarters and command centers in Germany, Belgium, the Netherlands and Britain were ordered on Sept. 27 to return to Turkey within three days.

Most were dismissed from service on their arrival, arrested and imprisoned, according to a Turkish military official at NATO and two farewell letters sent by departing Turkish officials emailed to colleagues at NATO and seen by Reuters.

One of those letters wrote of a “witch-hunt” of senior air force commanders serving overseas.

It wasn’t a failed coup; it’s a successful purge.

DIPLOMACY IN LATE-STAGE HOPE AND CHANGE: “It’s hard to know what he means… other than perhaps: You Americans are so weak compared to us Russians.”

From the comments: “You Americans are weak. Thats his message, and its on CNN which is what everyone abroad considers the official US news media. This is a calculated insult that works very well on third parties. Consider what China did to humiliate Obama. Thats had repercussions already. It is used to undermine US guarantees. Those guys know precisely what they are doing.”

YOU CAN IF THE PRESS COOPERATES, WHICH IT IS DOING: The Hill: Top Clinton aide in leaked email: ‘Can we survive not answering questions’ from press?

GEORGE SHULTZ ON “SMART DIPLOMACY:” The Danger Of Empty Threats.

SINGULAR? The Obamacare problem that Democrats don’t want to talk about.

NEWS YOU CAN USE: Have a Note 7? Here Are the Best Phones to Replace It.

NOBEL PEACE PRIZE UPDATE: Russia orders all officials to fly home any relatives living abroad, as tensions mount over the prospect of a global war.

TAXPROF ROUNDUP: The IRS Scandal, Day 1252.

WELL, GOOD: White House Sending THAAD to ROK As “Soon As Feasible”

The US military is to deploy a Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) counter missile battery to the Republic of Korea (RoK) as quick as possible, the White House said on 10 October in response to an official protest.

“The United States is working with the RoK to deploy this system as soon as feasible in order to more safely defend our RoK ally and US military personnel deployed to the region from the North Korea nuclear and ballistic missile threat,” read the statement. A written petition decrying the deployment, created in July, garnered enough signatures (more than 100,000) to warrant a response.

The petition called the looming THAAD deployment “a controversial move that will likely … escalate tension in the region, by provoking North Korea, China, and Russia into a spiralling arms race in the region that is already heavily militarised”.

THAAD is a purely defensive weapon which can only shoot down hostile missiles after they’ve been fired. Its presence in South Korea might be politically uncomfortable for Pyongyang and Beijing, but THAAD makes a North Korean first strike less inviting and ought to reduce military tensions in the region.

Kudos to the Obama Administration for making the right call.

WHEN THEY’RE AFTER FUNDAMENTAL TRANSFORMATION, THEY DON’T LET THE LAW STAND IN THE WAY: Germany Knowingly Let in Migrants with Fake Passports. “The German federal migrant agency has admitted that they are letting in migrants even when they have full knowledge that the passports and documentation they carry have been forged. A new report suggests that the German agency in control of migration, the Federal Office for Migration and Refugees (BAMF), knew that passports used by migrants who flooded into the country last year were fake – but let the migrants attempt to claim asylum anyway. . . . According to German law, the penalty for forging documentation – especially passports and travel visas – is five years in prison. So far, no migrants have been arrested.”

ACCOUNTABILITY: ‘Whole bunch’ of facts don’t support Obama’s claim that many VA bosses were fired over scandal.

IT’S ALL ABOUT THE GRAFT: Report: Clinton Foundation donors got rich off Haiti relief efforts while Haitians live in squalor.

“BAD LUCK:” Innovation Falls, and Retirees Pay the Price.

Growth-wise, the world seems to be in a little bit of a rut.

Oh, sure, we’re OK. We just don’t seem to be going much of anywhere. Global production has recovered somewhat since the catastrophe of the financial crisis, but it didn’t bounce back entirely. Instead, we’re staggering along at a noticeably lower rate of growth, both abroad and at home.

What’s going on? One theory is that this is simply the aftermath of a financial crisis. We had a lot of malinvestment, and now we have a lot of fiscal and monetary problems to work out, and as with a bad illness, it’s going to take a little time for us to get back to 100 percent. A more worrying theory is that this may be the new normal because of the developed world’s aging populations. And that’s especially bad because when the population is aging, that’s when you need growth the most.

Most developed nations have made enormous promises to their elderly populations — promises that they could continue to live in the style to which they had become accustomed during their working years. Those promises were easy to fulfill when the ratio of workers to retirees was, say, five to one. As that ratio collapses, it gets harder and harder, because each worker has to devote a larger and larger fraction of their income to supporting another nonworking adult.

A simple numerical example may illustrate how important growth rates are to an aging economy.

The problem is, the policies that are conducive to growth offer insufficient opportunities for graft.

POLL: Trump falls into tie with Clinton among Utah voters.

The Deseret News writeup adds that “16 percent said they would skip the election if Trump and Clinton were their ballot choices.”

But the big news might be Gary Johnson pulling 14%, which if that holds on election day would be by far the best performance statewide for an Libertarian Party presidential candidate.

HMM: Deadly small plane crash near Connecticut aerospace factory may have been intentional.

The FBI is now investigating whether the Tuesday crash in Hartford was intentional, law enforcement officials told The New York Times.

The Piper PA 34 crashed near a Pratt & Whitney around 3:40 p.m., on its final approach to Hartford-Brainard Airport. Officials said the small plane took off from the airport’s flight school.

The pilot — who was treated for serious burns — has not been identified.

Stay tuned.

DON’T BE EVIL: YouTube blacklists PragerU educational videos

“We’ve worked quietly behind the scenes for months to resolve this, but YouTube’s censorship continues, leaving us with no option but to go public,” PragerU announced Tuesday on its Facebook page.

YouTube is owned by Google, and PragerU states on its website that “in response to an official complaint we filed, Google specialists defended their restriction of our videos, and said, ‘We don’t censor anyone,’ although they do ‘take into consideration what the intent of the video is’ and ‘what the focus of the video is.’”

“There is no excuse for Google and YouTube censoring and restricting any PragerU videos, which are produced with the sole intent of educating people of all ages about America’s founding values,” the conservative nonprofit states on its website.

The videos feature “the best ideas from the best minds and distill them down to five focused minutes,” according to the group, which was founded by conservative scholar and radio show host Dennis Prager.

Shameful.

THIS IS RARE ENOUGH TO BE NEWS: Two Lefties Have Broken With Their Party Narrative. It’s Ruth Bader Ginsburg criticizing Colin Kaepernick’s National Anthem protest, and Eleanor Holmes Norton criticizing Hillary’s “Basket of Deplorables” comment.

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THE ‘SHACKLES’ ARE OFF! DONALD TRUMP ISSUES ‘DECLARATION OF WAR’ ON THE GOP.

Huh — politics used to be so much simpler in the past. I’m old enough to remember when Republican presidential candidates used to declare war on Democrats in the final month of an election.

BILL CLINTON ON VIDEO: Trump’s Base Is ‘Your Standard Redneck’

Either Clinton has lost his common touch, or feels confident enough about his wife’s chances to publicly disdain millions of American voters.

THE BRIGHT SIDE OF INTERNET SHAMING: It’s become so common that it might soon begin to lose its impact:

Yet in a twisted way, there’s a certain kind of hope in the increasing regularity of shamings. As they become commonplace, maybe they’ll lose their ability to shock. The same kinds of ugly tweets have been repeated so many times, they’re starting to become boilerplate.

If you’re a target, it’s not actually about you. You’re a symbol, a faceless bull’s-eye for the frustrations of your attackers. Furthermore, you’re only the hate symbol du jour; the Internet’s sights will be on someone else next week. And as time goes by, the novelty wears off, and the pattern becomes predictable, then maybe it will be easier for victims to accept that at least an Internet shaming isn’t personal. In the end, it’s just a sport.

Now if only the GOP could finally learn to act the same way when the DNC-MSM drops their daily October surprises, they might finally lose a fair amount of their sting.

ERDOGAN ABHORS A VACUUM: Turkey says its troops to stay in Iraq until Islamic State cleared from Mosul.

The United States on Tuesday urged the two governments to resolve the spat, which could affect the planned U.S.-backed assault on Mosul, the headquarters of Islamic State’s self-declared caliphate in northern Iraq since 2014.

“Turkey does not move on orders from others … Turkey’s presence in the Bashiqa camp will remain until Mosul is rid of Daesh,” Deputy Prime Minister Numan Kurtulmus told the state-run Anadolu Agency, using an Arabic acronym for Islamic State.

“Whoever the Mosul population is, Arabs or Turkmen, they have lived together for centuries and will continue to do so. If you change the ethnic structure here, the people there will not allow it … This is our perspective as Turkey. Turkey’s force in the region cannot be questioned,” he said.

Following Obama’s “red line” fiasco, the U.S. doesn’t have enough standing left in the region to settle much of anything.

RAND PAUL AND SCOTT WALKER WERE MY EARLY FAVES, BUT NEVER GOT TRACTION. HMM. Democrats Were Worried About Rand Paul, Leaked Email Reveals: At the same time Democrats were advised to “elevate” Donald Trump.

So when Hillary tells you how awful Trump is, remember that she maneuvered to make him the GOP nominee…

ASHE SCHOW: Rolling Stone accuses U.Va administrator of leaking video, wants trial delayed.

Rolling Stone is accusing a University of Virginia dean of leaking a confidential deposition video relating to a lawsuit against the magazine over a now-retracted article involving a gang-rape hoax at the school.

Lawyers for Rolling Stone, its publisher and the author of the article claim that dean Nicole Eramo, who is suing the magazine for defamation, leaked video of a deposition to ABC News to use in an upcoming “20/20” documentary of the case. The feature is supposed to air three days before the trial.

The magazine requested an emergency motion to disallow the video from the trial, fearing the ABC feature could hurt the defense’s case. The magazine also wants Eramo to be held in contempt. On Tuesday, a federal judge granted the magazine’s motion to bar the video depositions from being used at trial.

“[U]ndoubtedly, many citizens in the Charlottesville Division will watch this sensationalized television broadcast about the University located in their backyard, or will access the program online,” wrote Rolling Stone attorney W. David Paxton in court documents. “In the aftermath, seating an impartial jury in Charlottesville will be difficult, if not impossible.”

Rolling Stone has also requested ABC not use the video in its upcoming feature. Should ABC refuse and the show goes ahead as scheduled, then the magazine wants the case transferred to another district and the trial postponed.

One of the videos in question shows Rolling Stone author Sabrina Rubin Erdely crying during her testimony, which ABC used in its trailer for the show.

Eramo’s attorney has responded by saying the depositions were in the public domain.

“It is highly ironic that Rolling Stone, a media company, is complaining about the media having access to testimony that is already in the public domain,” Eramo’s attorney said. “These depositions were filed publicly with the court for anyone to see. This is little more than a tactic by Rolling Stone to delay the trial.”

Media folks do seem to have different standards for people who are, and who aren’t, media folks.