Photo, left: Eritrean train station.
JOHN BATCHELOR SHOW
Hour One
Friday  14 August 2015  / Hour 1, Block A: Elbridge Colby, Center for a New American Security & Foreign Affairs, in re: proposing steps to be taken immediately by the UN and the US to deal with Russian aggression:  We need a force from multiple alliance members to discourage potential air, infantry, other invasion; turn the region into a sort of porcupine lest Russia think of attacking.  A defensive redoubt that could be resupplied or reinforced. Might need the same force in Asia or Middle East, so this would be a temporary step. /   Step Up to Stand Down  The United States, NATO, and Dissuading Russian Aggression. This past June, U.S. Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter announced that Washington would pre-position heavy military equipment in eastern and central Europe, a move that would allow the United States to respond more quickly and effectively to Russian aggression toward NATO’s exposed eastern member states. Once deployed, the equipment would serve as a physical sign of commitment of the U.S. willingness to protect NATO allies, and would facilitate further movement of U.S. forces into the region in the event of an attack against NATO frontline states by Moscow. Positioning U.S. military equipment forward is a welcome step, but it does not go far enough in deterring potential Russian aggression and coercion, not least because these deployments represent only a modest force in the face of the power and capabilities Russia could bring to bear in the event of war in the area . . .  [more]  (1 of 2)
Friday  14 August 2015  / Hour 1, Block B: Elbridge Colby, Center for a New American Security & Foreign Affairs; in re: NATO-Russia Founding Act of 1997: allowed NATO to expand into the former Warsaw Pact – but no forward deployment of nukes, or substantial deployment of troops – under current strategic conditions [as of 19970] (2 of 2)
Friday  14 August 2015  / Hour 1, Block C: Liz Peek, Fiscal Times, in re: No president in our country’s history has been more concerned about his legacy than has Barack Obama. How ironic that people might someday best remember our first African-American Commander in Chief for having inspired the candidacy of Donald Trump. 
Six years of Obama forcing unpopular policies down Americans’ throats; six years of lies and misdeeds by unaccountable bureaucrats; six years of lame growth and resulting wage suppression; six years of appeasing our enemies and facing down our friends; six years of dividing the country – they have all taken their toll. 
Related: Donald Trump’s Curious Clinton Connection
People are angry and are willing to champion a bombastic billionaire best known for insulting people as our next president. Trump’s “campaign message” is vitriol unleashed – towards our enemies, undocumented immigrants and anyone else who crosses his path. His supporters see him breaking free of political correctness, or correctness itself for that matter, and they love Trump for voicing their outrage. They view him as the perfect antidote to President Obama.
Friday  14 August 2015  / Hour 1, Block D:  Francis Rose, Federal News Radio, in re: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/veterans-denied-health-care-computer-glitch_55c4cc45e4b0923c12bc8d04; and Francis's new commentary on the VA: McDonald’s VA Web concept reveals real customer service challenge  Secretary of Veterans Affairs Bob McDonald has taken a lot of heat since he took over the beleaguered agency a little over a year ago. And while he’s made some missteps (most notably partially blaming one of his customers, a member of Congress, for the problems at the Denver hospital construction site, and misstating his military service), he’s done many things that will wind up making a veteran’s experience better when that vet deals with the agency.  Francis Rose Francis Rose One of those is the hiring of a Veterans Experience Officer, Tom Allin. Allin’s appointment is a step in the right direction for America’s veterans, for two reasons:  Allin comes from the very competitive fast-food and fast-casual dining industry. What does that have to do with VA, you may ask? There are very few businesses today where establishing brand trust and loyalty are more important than fast food. With so many choices, businesses in that space depend on returning customers to build their bottom lines. VA is in the same spot, in many ways. Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman John McCain’s (R-Ariz.) new bill to let all vets into the VA Choice program in essence creates competition for the VA health care system. If the Army Corps of Engineers can get the Denver hospital project back on the rails and completed, you can expect more competition for VA’s Office of Construction and Facilities Management. These are only two places where pressure is coming for funds that currently go to the VA, to go other places. So earning veteran loyalty and demonstrating VA’s commitment to serving its customers is more important than ever. Veterans (and Congress) now have a name and a job title that they can hold accountable. If Allin and McDonald can’t point to concrete examples of how the agency is better at serving veterans, and how they’ve ended at least some of the problematic examples of poor service, Congress, . . . [more]
Hour Two
Friday  14 August 2015  / Hour 2, Block A:  Dan Henninger, WSJ, in re: http://www.wsj.com/articles/donald-trump-the-kingmaker-1439419482  Donald Trump has achieved the most coveted role in American politics—presidential kingmaker. Whichever man or woman occupies the Oval Office in January 2017, history will note that the man who enabled it was Donald Trump.  The path to ordaining Hillary Clinton as president is worn and beaten: Mr. Trump, like Ross Perot in 1992, would run as a third-party candidate and default the second member of the Clinton family into office with less than 50% of the popular vote. Bill Clinton got all of 43%. Mr. Trump could pay a high reputational price for this. Holding open the back door to the White House for Hillary Clinton will fracture post- Obama America into ungovernable divisions, but . . . whatever.
Donald Trump isn’t going to crown himself the next Republican president. Reversing Mr. Trump’s negatives with voters beyond his affinity group would make the loaves and the fishes look like child’s play. But Mr. Trump just did something unique in presidential politics: He delivered 24 million prospective voters to the Republican Party in its Aug. 6 primary debate on Fox News. It is a mind-boggling number. In 2008, wunderkind Barack Obama debated Hillary Clinton—favored then as now—and 10.7 million watched, less than half Thursday’s audience. The earlier, happy-hour GOP debate Thursday had six million viewers. The next day, I walked by a bar in hip Williamsburg, Brooklyn, which still had its chalkboard sign on the sidewalk: “Watch the DEBATE here!” Folks, if they are promoting Republican debates in Brooklyn bars, we’ve entered another dimension. . . . [more]
Friday  14 August 2015  / Hour 2, Block B:  Harry Siegel, New York Daily News. in re: http://www.nydailynews.com/opinion/harry-siegel-architecture-segregation-article-1.2323734
Friday  14 August 2015  / Hour 2, Block C:  Gene Marks, Washington Post, in re:  In a poll this week (after the debates),  41% of small-business owners preferred Trump as their president.  Why is that?  http://www.latinpost.com/articles/71292/20150811/donald-trump-president-run-small-business-hillary-clinton-jeb-bush-election.htm   I've got some specific reasons!  /  Why Was Small Business Missing from Last Week's Republican Debates?  / Five Ways a Trump Presidency Would Affect Your Business and Mine   /  How Google could swing the 2016 election  /Yelp tells customers how long ER wait time is
Friday  14 August 2015  / Hour 2, Block D:  Paul Vigna, WSJ, in re: Anthony Murgio, a Florida man who was charged last month by federal prosecutors in Manhattan with running an illegal bitcoin money exchange firm and is thought to have information about last summer’s hacking attack against JPMorgan Chase, seemed to be taking the unfolding criminal case against him in stride during a court appearance on Monday morning.  Mr. Murgio, 31, made small talk with the two federal agents in the hallway of the federal court in Lower Manhattan, while waiting to appear on those charges before the United States magistrate judge, James C. Francis IV. At one point, he even rushed to see if a woman who had fallen in the hallway was hurt and needed help getting up.  But when he appeared in court, Mr. Murgio said nothing, letting his lawyer, Gregory W. Kehoe of the big law firm Greenberg Traurig, do the talking. The hearing was brief and the judge allowed Mr. Murgio, who has run a number of less-than-successful businesses since graduating from Florida State University, to remain free on $100,000 bail.  Mr. Murgio posted the bail a week ago after his arrest on July 21 in Tampa after spending a few nights in the Pinellas County jail while he and his family secured the money.  Both Mr. Murgio and his lawyer declined to comment after the proceeding in federal court.  Federal authorities contend that Mr. Murgio’s company, Coin.mx, allowed online criminals illegally to exchange the digital currency bitcoin for cash as part of a money-laundering scheme. Mr. Murgio could be sentenced to up to 20 . . . [more]
Hour Three
Friday  14 August 2015  / Hour 3, Block A:  Theo Emery, NYT, in re: The Roanoke Island Colony: Lost, and Found?   Under a blistering sun, Nicholas M. Luccketti swatted at mosquitoes as he watched his archaeology team at work in a shallow pit on a hillside above the shimmering waters of Albemarle Sound. On a table in the shade, a pile of plastic bags filled with artifacts was growing. Fragments of earthenware and pottery. A mashed metal rivet. A piece of a hand-wrought nail.  They call the spot Site X. Down a dusty road winding through soybean fields, the clearing lies between two cypress swamps teeming with venomous snakes. It is a suitably mysterious name for a location that may shed light on an enigma at the heart of America’s founding: the fate of the “lost colonists” who vanished from a sandy outpost on Roanoke Island, about 60 miles east, in the late 16th century.
On and off for three years, Mr. Luccketti and colleagues with the First Colony Foundation have been excavating parts of the hillside, hoping to find traces of the colonists. As if clues in a latter-day treasure hunt, hidden markings on a 16th-century map led them to the spot on the sound’s western shore, which Mr. Luccketti had previously surveyed. Mr. Luccketti, 66, chose his words carefully as he described the fruits of their latest work. “I’m trying to make sure that I say this correctly,” he said. “We have evidence from this site that strongly indicates that there were Roanoke colonists here.”  In Chapel Hill, N.C., on Tuesday, the foundation will reveal . . .  [more] (1 of 2)
Friday  14 August 2015  / Hour 3, Block B: Theo Emery, NYT, in re: The Roanoke Island Colony: Lost, and Found?   Under a blistering sun, Nicholas M. Luccketti swatted at mosquitoes as he watched his archaeology team at work in a shallow pit on a hillside above the shimmering waters of Albemarle Sound. On a table in the shade, a pile of plastic bags filled with artifacts was growing. Fragments of earthenware and pottery. A mashed metal rivet. A piece of a hand-wrought nail.  They call the spot Site X. Down a dusty road winding through soybean fields, the clearing lies between two cypress swamps teeming with venomous snakes. It is a suitably mysterious name for a location that may shed light on an enigma at the heart of America’s founding: the fate of the “lost colonists” who vanished from a sandy outpost on Roanoke Island, about 60 miles east, in the late 16th century.
On and off for three years, Mr. Luccketti and colleagues with the First Colony Foundation have been excavating parts of the hillside, hoping to find traces of the colonists. As if clues in a latter-day treasure hunt, hidden markings on a 16th-century map led them to the spot on the sound’s western shore, which Mr. Luccketti had previously surveyed. Mr. Luccketti, 66, chose his words carefully as he described the fruits of their latest work. “I’m trying to make sure that I say this correctly,” he said. “We have evidence from this site that strongly indicates that there were Roanoke colonists here.”  In Chapel Hill, N.C., on Tuesday, the foundation will reveal . . .  [more] (2 of 2)
Friday  14 August 2015  / Hour 3, Block C:  Richard A Epstein, Hoover, Chicago Law, et al., in re: The EPA’s Flawed Clean Coal Plan   “On August 3, President Obama and the EPA announced the Clean Power Plan – a historic and important step in reducing carbon pollution from power plants that takes real action on climate change.” So begins the Environmental Protection Agency’s homage to the President and itself. The harder question is whether it is true. On this point, there is a sharp division of opinion between the traditional supporters and traditional detractors of these sorts of measures, with few (if anyone) occupying a middle ground that finds some merit but expresses real concern over the structure and function of the plan. Nonetheless, it is better to back off for the moment from extravagant claims that the end is near if we don’t (or do) embrace this particular plan.  Let’s put aside the EPA’s shaky legal authority and concentrate on the plan itself. A sensible approach divides the regulatory inquiry into two halves. The first asks about the best institutional framework to regulate greenhouse gases (GHGs), most notably carbon dioxide. The second asks how to assess, on empirical grounds, the severity of the carbon dioxide problem that the EPA purports to tackle.
The EPA falls short on both counts. I shall take them up in order.  The first point to note about the EPA’s clean coal initiative is that, given its inability to secure any congressional action on the subject, the agency is working solely within the existing statutory framework. That is a big mistake from the get-go. The pollution control scheme put into place under the Clean Air Act of 1970 (CAA), as modified by the Clean Air Act Amendments of 1990, is the wrong way to deal with any form of pollution.  The basic conceit of that statute calls for a division of control over pollution between the national and state governments, all under the banner of federalism. No one argues that pollution should be ignored, so the question is how best to combat it. The usual private law remedies allow individuals to collect damages for their private losses and obtain injunctions against future harm. But the diffuse nature of most pollution makes private actions unwieldy. The correct legislative response is to cut down on the enforcement costs by having government agents use fines or taxes on the one hand and explicit prohibitions on emissions levels on the other to control the loss.  The CAA founders in making the transition from private to public enforcement. Instead of imposing an output regime that taxes pollutants and sets emissions levels, it makes two key mistakes.  First, it leaves too much to . . .  [more] (1 of 2)
Friday  14 August 2015  / Hour 3, Block D: Richard A Epstein, Hoover, Chicago Law, et al., in re: The EPA’s Flawed Clean Coal Plan   “On August 3, President Obama and the EPA announced the Clean Power Plan – a historic and important step in reducing carbon pollution from power plants that takes real action on climate change.” So begins the Environmental Protection Agency’s homage to the President and itself. The harder question is whether it is true. On this point, there is a sharp division of opinion between the traditional supporters and traditional detractors of these sorts of measures, with few (if anyone) occupying a middle ground that finds some merit but expresses real concern over the structure and function of the plan. Nonetheless, it is better to back off for the moment from extravagant claims that the end is near if we don’t (or do) embrace this particular plan.  Let’s put aside the EPA’s shaky legal authority and concentrate on the plan itself. A sensible approach divides the regulatory inquiry into two halves. The first asks about the best institutional framework to regulate greenhouse gases (GHGs), most notably carbon dioxide. The second asks how to assess, on empirical grounds, the severity of the carbon dioxide problem that the EPA purports to tackle.
The EPA falls short on both counts. I shall take them up in order.  The first point to note about the EPA’s clean coal initiative is that, given its inability to secure any congressional action on the subject, the agency is working solely within the existing statutory framework. That is a big mistake from the get-go. The pollution control scheme put into place under the Clean Air Act of 1970 (CAA), as modified by the Clean Air Act Amendments of 1990, is the wrong way to deal with any form of pollution.  The basic conceit of that statute calls for a division of control over pollution between the national and state governments, all under the banner of federalism. No one argues that pollution should be ignored, so the question is how best to combat it. The usual private law remedies allow individuals to collect damages for their private losses and obtain injunctions against future harm. But the diffuse nature of most pollution makes private actions unwieldy. The correct legislative response is to cut down on the enforcement costs by having government agents use fines or taxes on the one hand and explicit prohibitions on emissions levels on the other to control the loss.  The CAA founders in making the transition from private to public enforcement. Instead of imposing an output regime that taxes pollutants and sets emissions levels, it makes two key mistakes.  First, it leaves too much to . . .  [more] (2 of 2)
Hour Four
Friday  14 August 2015  / Hour 4, Block A:  Michael E Vlahos, Naval War College, in re: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/13/world/europe/greece-syria-iraq-migrants-locked-stadium-on-kos.html ; http://www.thelocal.se/20150814/fears-of-retribution-after-ikea-double-stabbings  ;  http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/08/14/italy-can-t-deport-refugees-fast-enough.html (1 of 2)
Friday  14 August 2015  / Hour 4, Block B: Michael E Vlahos, Naval War College, in re: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/13/world/europe/greece-syria-iraq-migrants-locked-stadium-on-kos.html ; http://www.thelocal.se/20150814/fears-of-retribution-after-ikea-double-stabbings  ;  http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/08/14/italy-can-t-deport-refugees-fast-enough.html (2 of 2)
Friday  14 August 2015  / Hour 4, Block C:  LouAnn Hammond, Driving the Nation, in re: http://www.autoblog.com/2015/08/09/carbs-end-game-only-zero-emission-cars-by-2030/
Friday  14 August 2015  / Hour 4, Block D:   Kelsi Singer, Southwest Research Institute, in re: https://blogs.nasa.gov/pluto/author/ptalbert/ Impact craters and Pluto; then impact craters in general as a field.
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