Photo, left:  Zumwalt-class destroyers are a class of United States Navy guided missile destroyers designed as multi-mission stealth ships with a focus on land attack. The class emerged from the previous DD-21 vessel program. The program was previously known as the "DD(X)". The class is multi-role and designed for surface warfare, anti-aircraft warfare, and naval gunfire support. They take the place of battleships in filling the former congressional mandate for naval fire support, though the requirement was reduced to allow them to fill this role. The vessels' appearance has been compared to that of the historic ironclad warship.
The class has a low radar profile; an integrated power system, which can send electricity to the electric drive motors or weapons, which may someday include a railgun or free-electron lasers; total ship computing environment infrastructure, serving as the ship's primary LAN and as the hardware-independent platform for all of the ship's software ensembles; automated fire-fighting systems and automated piping rupture isolation. The class is designed to require a smaller crew and be less expensive to operate than comparable warships. It will have a wave-piercing tumblehome hull form whose sides slope inward above the waterline. This will reduce the radar cross-section, returning much less energy than a conventional flare hull form.
JOHN BATCHELOR SHOW
 
Hour One
Friday  11 December 2015 / Hour 1, Block A: Caitlin Webber, Bloomberg Intelligence, in re: Imagine ban on Muslims: How different would America be? - CNN.com  If a Donald Trump-like ban on Muslims had existed in the past, what cultural ... to the United States, but tourists and students seeking temporary visas. ... The Islamic Circle of North America celebrated the announcement,
Friday  11 December 2015 / Hour 1, Block B:  Liz Peek, The Fiscal Times, in re: Liz Peek, in re: Don’t look now, but Marco Rubio is taking down Obamacare. Unhappily for him, the process by which the GOP presidential candidate is undermining the healthcare law does not lend itself to soundbites and easy campaign slogans. But, the damage Rubio is inflicting on President Obama’s program is nonetheless severe – possibly fatal.
Republican backers for some time have griped that Congress has failed to do away with the unpopular program. Efforts to defund Obamacare and numerous votes to repeal it have come up short. What Rubio is doing, though, exposes the underlying flaws in the healthcare program. At the end of the day, Obamacare was sold to Americans as a way to “bend the cost curve” on spiraling healthcare costs, rather than as the giant entitlement program it actually is.    Related: Obamacare Is Now on Life Support
Friday  11 December 2015 / Hour 1, Block C: John Tamny, RealClearMarkets, in re: U.C. Davis professor Eric Rauchway's history of the Great Depression is remarkable for its gullibility, lack of nuance, and total worship of an economist (John Maynard Keynes) whom he plainly doesn't understand.  Rauchway's omissions about the 1920s and '30s reveal him as either very dishonest, or as a very lousy historian.   Book Review: How the Very Gullible Describe the New Deal In 1920 and 1921, the U.S. economy contracted. The recession was massive; far greater than the contraction that revealed itself from 1929-30. Most, however, are unaware of the downturn that took...
Friday  11 December 2015 / Hour 1, Block D: Harry Siegel, New York Daily News, in re: http://www.nydailynews.com/opinion/harry-siegel-trouble-trump-haters-article-1.2460763  So, we agree that Donald Trump is a bad guy: a racist, fear-pushing confidence man.  Now, let’s talk about what Trump is not: an agent of ISIS. The second coming of Joe McCarthy. Or the next Republican presidential nominee, let alone the next American President.  His supporters are scared for a lot of reasons, many of them ugly. But to write them off as irredeemable haters and suckers would be a huge mistake, adding to the fears and frustrations his campaign is already feeding on.
 
Hour Two
Friday  11 December 2015 / Hour 2, Block A:  Tyler Rogoway, Foxtrot Alpha, in re: Here's Russia's S-400 Missile System in Action, and How the U.S. Would Deal with It ; Here's the First Video of the Navy's New Zumwalt-Class Destroyer Cruising Through Open Sea ; This Head-Cam Video of an F-16 Pilot Streaking Around the Sky Is Exhilarating  ; Russia Launches Cruise Missiles at Syria From Submarine in the Mediterranean  ; One of These Will Be the Next U.S. Marines  Amphibious Combat Vehicle (1 of 2)
Friday  11 December 2015 / Hour 2, Block B: Tyler Rogoway, Foxtrot Alpha, in re: Here's Russia's S-400 Missile System in Action, and How the U.S. Would Deal with It ; Here's the First Video of the Navy's New Zumwalt-Class Destroyer Cruising Through Open Sea ; This Head-Cam Video of an F-16 Pilot Streaking Around the Sky Is Exhilarating  ; Russia Launches Cruise Missiles at Syria From Submarine in the Mediterranean  ; One of These Will Be the Next U.S. Marines  Amphibious Combat Vehicle (2 of 2)
Friday  11 December 2015 / Hour 2, Block C:  Mike Giglio, Buzzfeed News, in re: The Syrian YPG will work with Arab groups who'll be junior partners.   . . . I was embedded with the Peshmerga; other Kurdish groups were fighting with them and it was a question of who got credit.  When the y did finally take Sinjar I was there in an hour and walked around; met up with the PKK, who said they'd been in the front lines and had taken heavy losses.   KRG are uncomfortable with the others' having moved in to their turf – an uneasy alliance.  ;  Air raids credited for Kurds' Sinjar success - Al Jazeera ... - Kurdish Peshmerga fighters who have captured the Iraqi town of Sinjar from ISIL say US-led coalition air strikes were crucial to their success.  ;  Kurdish fighters take control of Iraq's Sinjar - Al Jazeera ...  Kurdish Peshmerga forces have entered the centre of Sinjar after pushing out Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) fighters from the ...  ; 'Tyranny has gone': Kurds and Yazidis celebrate recapture ...  The white battle truck roared through the rubble-strewn centre of Sinjar, its improvised armour scraping against the asphalt, bomb-laden dru . . .
Friday  11 December 2015 / Hour 2, Block D:  Nicholas Wade, New York Times, in re: Grave of ‘Griffin Warrior’ at Pylos Could Be a Gateway to Civilizations   A warrior’s tomb full of precious metals and jewels is expected to give insight into the rise of the Mycenaeans, from whom Greek culture developed.
 
Hour Three
Friday  11 December 2015 / Hour 3, Block A:  Michael E Vlahos, Johns Hopkins, in re: American Boots on the Ground in Syria - National Review ...  The War against ISIS Escalates: American Boots on the Ground in Syria ... However, while I believe the Iraq war resolution still empowers ...;  Killing ISIS: Five Reasons American 'Boots on the Ground ...  The U.S. ground presence in Iraq, which began with the commitment of a mere 300 advisors in June of 2014, has increased to over 3,500 and a . . .    (1 of 2)
Friday  11 December 2015 / Hour 3, Block B: Michael E Vlahos, Johns Hopkins,  in re: American Boots on the Ground in Syria - National Review ...  The War against ISIS Escalates: American Boots on the Ground in Syria ... However, while I believe the Iraq war resolution still empowers ...;  Killing ISIS: Five Reasons American 'Boots on the Ground ...  The U.S. ground presence in Iraq, which began with the commitment of a mere 300 advisors in June of 2014, has increased to over 3,500 and a . . .    (2 of 2)
Friday  11 December 2015 / Hour 3, Block C:  Ann Marlowe, Hudson Institute, in re: https://www.libyaherald.com/2015/12/10/tensions-in-sabratha-over-arrests-said-to-be-linked-to-is/
Friday  11 December 2015 / Hour 3, Block D:   Ann Gibbons, Science Magazine, In Depth, Human Evolution, in re: First modern humans in China  For decades, anthropologists have tried to trace the patchy trail left by the earliest modern humans out of Africa. But they have been stymied by gaps in the fossil record or unreliable dates, especially in East Asia. Now, Chinese anthropologists report 47 teeth of Homo sapiens from a cave in southern China, dated to 80,000 to 120,000 years ago. If the dating is accurate, the discovery pushes back the appearance of our species in Asia by at least 30,000 years, wiping out a long-standing picture in which modern humans swept out of Africa in a single wave 50,000 to 70,000 years ago. But some question whether the dates are accurate. Read the Full Text
 
Hour Four
Friday  11 December 2015 / Hour 4, Block A: A Noble Cause: American Battlefield Victories In Vietnam, by Douglas Niles (1 of 4)
Friday  11 December 2015 / Hour 4, Block B: A Noble Cause: American Battlefield Victories In Vietnam, by Douglas Niles (2 of 4)
Friday  11 December 2015 / Hour 4, Block C: A Noble Cause: American Battlefield Victories In Vietnam, by Douglas Niles (3 of 4)
Friday  11 December 2015 / Hour 4, Block D: A Noble Cause: American Battlefield Victories In Vietnam, by Douglas Niles (4 of 4)  
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