Photo: Robert Louis Stevenson's classic example of disordered mind.
JOHN BATCHELOR SHOW
Co-host: Thaddeus McCotter, WJR, The Great Voice of the Great Lakes; and author, Liberty Risen, @ThadMcCotter
 
Hour One
Friday  12 May 2017 / Hour 1, Block A: Dan Henninger, WSJ editorial board, in re: Some puzzling aspects of the call for an independent prosecutor.
Friday  12 May 2017 / Hour 1, Block B:  Jeff Bliss, The Bliss Index and Pacific Watch,  in re: Janet Napolitano has been going to Sacramento to beg for money – while it comes to light that $175 million was put in a slush fund used for, inter al., lavish farewell parties for departing employees.  Napolitano has explained that she had no idea.  Some emails discovered seem to contradict that.  She’s been telling parents, students and legislators that the California university system hasn't enough money to function; after the slush fund was revealed, she demurred:  “Oh not $175 million – just $38 million.”  
The Central Valley aquifer has been sucked dry; electorate has been resisting preservation and innovation in the matter. 
Friday  12 May 2017 / Hour 1, Block C:  Liz Peek, The Fiscal Times & Fox, in re: American infrastructure spending: streets in bad shape, water mans are a century old – hurts individuals and also US competitiveness. Elaine Chao spoke at Milken Conference of $200 million, leverage it through public-private partnerships (“P3s”) and others in order to move forward.  We spend <2.5% on infrastructure, which is really not enough – transportation capabilities and more.  This is privatizing with . . . .  Huge pension funds looking for fairly safe investments that nonetheless yield a little more than, for example, Treasurys.  . . . Let the private mkt, the quest for a return, to play a role in decision-making, which will tend to ensure that only profitable, that is, well-designed and –run, projects will be put in train,
Friday  12 May 2017 / Hour 1, Block D:  Andrew McCarthy,    , in re:  Andy has known Jim Comey for many years, always liked and respected him; didn't much care for  how he’s handled he recent matters.  FBI director isn’t like a case agent handling a single big case – it’s a big job, and Comey was very good at it.   His deputy, McCabe, is very capable; It's imperative that the president move quickly to replace Comey with someone who’ll steady the ship in a time of tumult.
The call for a special prosecutor: can we assume that the Russians won't acknowledge his subpoenas?  that Vl. Putin won't appear?  In any case, what’s under discussion with the Russians is not a criminal offense.   You need to have a crime t look in to before you assign a special prosecutor. Even a conspiracy needs to have in it intent to break a federal law.  Unseemly is not illegal.  Even if the Trump administration agreed to appoint such a person, that might be tantamount to admitting some kid of guilt. Lead to a sprawling investigation of everything with on a large radius. These things often go on for years and can paralyze and administration trying to govern. In any case, nobody’s even proven collusion yet.
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John Batchelor:   Human brains, olfactory part:  While homo sapiens can't go head to head with a dog, we can smell a trillion different odors and distinguish among them!
Hour Two
Friday  12 May 2017 / Hour 2, Block A:  Michael E Vlahos, Global Security Studies, Johns Hopkins University; Strategy and Policy Department, US Naval War College, in re:  Two conflicting ideas, each side sure it's right. Turns out to be a basis for civil war. No compromise, no surrender. Here, we have two kings; One is Clinton and one is Trump.  Civil wars are always existential and always welcomed.  All about who will have and hold legitimacy: who owns virtue, (the civil religion), what is right and true.  Also, when one group of brothers sees the other one as The Other. Because it’s between intimates it becomes extremely bitter.  The proximate issue is identity – who has the right and authority to define how you should think and believe.  Each side demands submission by the other (art of the existential equation); nether side can accommodate.  The defining moment occurs when one side tells the other: I will not submit.  Thereafter, it’s a matter of who makes the first violent move. David Armitage, History of Civil Wars: “Sing of civil war” [quotation]  The failure of America as a redeemer nation has corroded it [centrally].   . . . Civil Was south was crated and maintained by latifundio-style oligarchs with a slaveocracy vision.   Today, those elites are seen in the US in the [coastal elites] who tell us how to think.  The Democrats’s conduct is a natural response to the ruling elites, [in effect a rebellion against that tyranny].
Friday  12 May 2017 / Hour 2, Block B:   Michael E Vlahos, Global Security Studies, Johns Hopkins University; Strategy and Policy Department, US Naval War College, in re:  Civil war II; Jeff Davis.  Finish quotation from Seventeenth Century poetry.   Caesar’s assassination.  Shakespeare: Mark Anthony’s funeral oration over the Caesar’s body.  Spanish civil war: tore Spain apart for sixty years as there was no way to reach reconciliation.  Same in the US in 1860 – no figure to bring the country together; same today – no Teddy Roosevelt or the like. I despair. 
Friday  12 May 2017 / Hour 2, Block C:   Gene Marks, small business columnist for  Washington Post, in re: The Silver Tsunami:_ a generation owns 2.3 million businesses (by baby boomers), employ 25 million people . Intend to sell, but have no plan how to do so.  What about the 25 million employees? Consider also the tax bases. 
Bozeman, Montana: mountains, lakes, and young people starting businesses.  Robotics, tech – No, 1 of the least-populated areas nationally.  Can go anywhere if you have fiber-optic Internet.  The 98-yr-old man opens a start-up: in Ohio, a nee consulting bz in Dayton.  How to start?  “Just start doing it!”
Amazon needs to learn how to find Mr Shaw in Kolkata, selling books.
AliPay (by AliBaba, pushing to enter the US market more) currently aiming esp at Chinese visitors in the US. Biz2credi: loan approval rates from big banks is at an all-time high.  All looking fwd to easing of Dodd-Frank.  Netflix for kids’s clothing, n Michigan:  ____ Tots. For $45/mo you get five outfits; then a month later, return them and get a new supply .
Friday  12 May 2017 / Hour 2, Block D:  Gene Marks, small business columnist for  Washington Post, in re: Groupon: for only $450, we’ll put on q private parade in honor of  your mother; four of you in a great hotel.  US spends $23 billion PA on Mother’s Day.
Ransomware: launches an app, locks your machine and network – today, including the English Natl Health Svcs, demand for payment in Bitcoin.  Back up daily!
DHS considering banning Americans from bringing laptop back to the US, incl all of Europe. 
“Your boss is much more stressed than you are”: lower-level employees are in fact more stressed-out that are supervisors.  Yelp: stock down 18% this week; still popular among consumers. Google is affecting Yelp — reducing traffic with its own review site.
 
Hour Three
Friday  12 May 2017 / Hour 3, Block A:  Bob Zimmerman, BehindtheBlack.com, and author, Capitalism in Space; in re: Elon Musk and Dragon Capsule; after Falcon Heavy and launch problems, morphed into using Dragon Capsule to get to Mars, use thrusters to land vertically.  BASA; the 2020 launch window will be very busy, that NASA will send two missions to Mars, incl at least one Dragon Capsule. Subsidies, Air Force. ULA (Boeing and Lockheed-Martin alliance).    (1 of 2)
Friday  12 May 2017 / Hour 3, Block B:   Bob Zimmerman, BehindtheBlack.com, and author, Capitalism in Space.    (2 of 2)
Friday  12 May 2017 / Hour 3, Block C: Jerry Hendrix, Center for a New American Security, and Julianne Smith, Center for a New American Security, in re:  The Greenland-Iceland-UK Gap; antisubmarine warfare – which the US does not have.  A NATO war game where an adversary cuts an essential underwater comms cable and, for a pittance, throws an Icelandic election to an anti-American new president who requires the US and NATO to remove bases and cease overflights.  These simple actions badly gum up warfighting capabilities of the entire Western world.    (1 of 2)
Friday  12 May 2017 / Hour 3, Block D:  Jerry Hendrix, Center for a New American Security, and Julianne Smith, Center for a New American Security, in re:  The Greenland-Iceland-UK Gap; antisubmarine warfare – which the US does not have.  A NATO war game where an adversary cuts an essential underwater comms cable and, for a pittance, throws an Icelandic election to an anti-American new president who requires the US and NATO to remove bases and cease overflights.  These simple actions badly gum up warfighting capabilities of the entire Western world.    (2 of 2)
 
Hour Four
Friday  12 May 2017 / Hour 4, Block A:  Anne Gibbons, Science Magazine, on First Peoples’s DNA, esp across Beringia (1 of 2)
Friday  12 May 2017 / Hour 4, Block B:  Anne Gibbons, Science Magazine, on First Peoples’s DNA, esp across Beringia and as far south as southern Brazil.  (2 of 2)
Friday  12 May 2017 / Hour 4, Block C: Hotel Mars, episode n.  David Livingston, the Space Show, and Kate Su, University of Arizona Stewart Observatory, in re: Debris and dust clouds around Epsilon Eridani, a star system ten light-years away. (1 of 2)
Friday  12 May 2017 / Hour 4, Block D: Hotel Mars, episode n.  David Livingston, the Space Show, and Kate Su, University of Arizona Stewart Observatory, in re: Debris and dust clouds around Epsilon Eridani, a star system ten light-years away.  (2 of 2)