Photo, left: The Cumulus Radio Network host John Batchelor welcomes the Air Force Academy Superintendent, Lt-General Michelle Johnson, to his studio at WABC in New York.  General Johnson was the Air Force Academy's first Rhodes scholar when she was graduated in 1981, going on to serve as an aide to the president and on the Joint Chiefs staff; in the Refueling Command; and at NATO, among other assignments.
The general and John Batchelor discussed the successful transformation of the Air Force Academy into one of the nation's premiere academic institutions.  They also addressed the hopes of young Americans now intending to apply for the class of 2020. (Photo credit: Nicholas Malone)
JOHN BATCHELOR SHOW
Hour One
Friday  17 April 2015  / Hour 1, Block A: Jim McTague, Barron's Washington, in re: Stock Markets Around Globe Lose Their Footing  Stock markets in the U.S., Europe and China are slammed by renewed fears of Greek exit from eurozone and weak corporate earnings.  U.S. Stocks Crumble
Friday  17 April 2015  / Hour 1, Block B:  Thomas Seibert, Daily Beast, in re: Will Obama Call Armenia Deaths Genocide?
Friday  17 April 2015  / Hour 1, Block C: Gene Marks, Washington Post, in re: Gone In 60 Days: Where Homes Are Moving Fastest This Spring
http://www.trulia.com/trends/2015/04/fastest-moving-markets-2015/
Big Brother!  Should Washington have the right to determine CEO pay? (I'm really against that and so are most of my clients).
http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/04/13/us-usa-election-clinton-inequality-idUSKBN0N421620150413
New Survey Finds a Vast Majority Of U.S. Small Business Owners Want Tax Code Reform to Be a Priority for Congress and the White House
70% of Calif. Small Businesses Could See Rate Changes in 2016
The Way We Live Now The terrible, claustrophobic airplane seat redesign that could soon be how we fly
3 of the most popular tech projects on Kickstarter right now
Why Your Child Needs a Domain Name 
Friday  17 April 2015  / Hour 1, Block D: Nick Ripatrazone, The Millions, in re:  “Praise the Colophon: Twenty Notes on Type.”   Colophon: a statement at the end of a book, typically with a printer’s emblem, giving information about its authorship and printing. You know: the details about the typeface, the typographer, the publisher, the who, what and where of the book’s creation. Nick Ripatrazone researches the colophon’s history and its artistic purpose. He concludes, “I call for the return of colophons. The battle of the book is not to be won or lost in preferences of print or digital. The page will always remain. Letters will always remain.
Hour Two
Friday  17 April 2015  / Hour 2, Block A:  Devin Nunes, CA-22, in re:   No, Farmers Don't Use 80 per Cent of California's Water
Friday  17 April 2015  / Hour 2, Block B:  Daniel Henninger, WSJ WONDER LAND, in re: The Battle of Washington
Friday  17 April 2015  / Hour 2, Block C:  Lt-General Michelle Johnson, Superintendent, Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs, in re: The United States Air Force Academy (USAFA or Air Force Academy), is a military academy for officer candidates for the United States Air Force. Its campus is . . .
Friday  17 April 2015  / Hour 2, Block D:  Hannah Kuchler, FT.com in San Francisco, in re:
Cyber criminals lead race to innovate
Hour Three
Friday  17 April 2015  / Hour 3, Block A:  Joshua Green, Bloomberg Businessweek, in re: Will Hillary Clinton Be the Agent of Her Campaign's Undoing—Again?  Hillary Clinton, former U.S. secretary of state, speaks during the DreamForce Conference in San Francisco on Oct. 14, 2014 
Friday  17 April 2015  / Hour 3, Block B:  David Weidner, Marketwatch, in re: Can Hillary Clinton be trusted to watch Wall Street?
Friday  17 April 2015  / Hour 3, Block C:  Gregory Copley, StrategicStudies director; GIS/Defense & Foreign Affairs; & author, UnCivilization, in re: The Indo-Pacific: Is the Strategic Rivalry Between Budgets or Doctrine?  / Analysis. March 2015 saw the release of defense spending figures for India and the People’s Republic of China (PRC), highlighting the disparities between the two major local strategic rivals for aspects of the Indo-Pacific strategic space. 
India’s $40.4-billion 2015-16 defense allocation continues to be eclipsed by the PRC’s $141.45-billion — figures which do not include defense pensions or other capital works programs for either state — but each power faces unique challenges, unrelated to the other. Significantly, India’s ambitious defense budget, which eclipses the only other “blue water” power in the Indian Ocean, Australia, by some $10-billion, remains only half the Saudi defense spending (which was $80.8-billion in FY 2014-15), and with Saudi Arabia facing no out- of-region commitments. 
Friday  17 April 2015  / Hour 3, Block D:   Liz Peek, The Fiscal Times & Fox, in re: "Hillary's last campaign was too large; this one so far is too small. Maybe we have to look forward to a third campaign in 2020 when she'll get it just right."
Marco Rubio winning the Republican nomination would be like Jordan Spieth winning the Masters. We would be just so darned proud of him. Like the 21-year-old Spieth, Rubio is the kind of clean-cut, hard-working, attractive young man we would like our daughters to marry.  Would we also like him as president? Could he beat Hillary Clinton?
Maybe. Here’s what Rubio has that Hillary doesn’t: authenticity. Hillary could raise $2.5 billion in campaign money – an astonishing number projected recently by The New York Times -- but money can’t buy authenticity. / Related: Marco Rubio—17 Things You Should Know About Him / Upstaged by Hillary’s anti-climactic video announcement that she was running for president, Senator Rubio also threw his hat in the ring on Sunday. More accurately, he posted a tweet with audio suggesting he would make a VERY BIG announcement on Monday at Miami’s Freedom Tower. Unhappily, the recording sounded like it was made in the midst of a hurricane; if he’d actually had a hat, you would have looked for it to land somewhere in Oklahoma. As it was, Rubio was almost inaudible – not the best set-up for his expected launch . . .
Hour Four
Friday  17 April 2015  / Hour 4, Block A:  Michael Quinn, Museum of the American Revolution, in re:  A ground-breaking new museum coming to Philadelphia in early 2017. ... The $150 million Campaign for the Museum of the American Revolution will support . . .
Friday  17 April 2015  / Hour 4, Block B:  Robert Zimmerman, behindtheblack.com, in re: In engineering news, Space X was nearly successful in a spectacular feat to land a first-stage rocket booster onto a barge in the tossing ocean.  In space science news, the first glimpses of the dwarf planet Ceres indicate that its surface is not ancient, suggesting geological activity at some point - also suggesting the possibility of an ocean underneath the surface.
Friday  17 April 2015  / Hour 4, Block C: Michael Vlahos, Naval War College, in re:  Chinese PLA Navy, 2015 report.   Since our last publication in 2009, the People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLA(N)) has made significant strides in operationalizing as well as modernizing its force. Although the PLA(N)’s primary focus remains in the East Asia region, where China faces multiple disputes over the sovereignty of various maritime features and associated maritime rights, in recent years, the PLA(N) has increased its focus on developing blue-water naval capabilities. Over the long term, Beijing aspires to sustain naval missions far from China’s shores.  When we wrote the 2009 publication, China had just embarked on its first  . . .
The Evolution of a Naval Strategy On September 25, 2012, China’s senior leadership officially commissioned the KUZNETSOV-class LIAONING, the country’s first aircraft carrier. Although LIAONING remains several years from becoming fully operational, and even then will offer relatively limited combat capability, this milestone signals a trend in Chinese naval strategy that has long-term implications for the region and the United States. China’s leaders have embraced the idea that mari- time power is essential to achieving great power status. Since the 1980s, China’s naval strategy has evolved from a limited, coastal orientation, to one that is mission-focused and becoming increasingly unconstrained by geography . . .  (1 of 2)
Friday  17 April 2015  / Hour 4, Block D: Michael Vlahos, Naval War College, in re:  Chinese PLA Navy, 2015 report.   Since our last publication in 2009, the People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLA[N]) has made significant strides in operationalizing as well as modernizing its force. Although the PLA(N)’s primary focus remains in the East Asia region, where China faces multiple disputes over the sovereignty of various maritime features and associated maritime rights, in recent years, the PLA(N) has increased its focus on developing blue-water naval capabilities. Over the long term, Beijing aspires to sustain naval missions far from China’s shores.  When we wrote the 2009 publication, China had just embarked on its first  . . .
The Evolution of a Naval Strategy   On September 25, 2012, China’s senior leadership officially commissioned the KUZNETSOV-class LIAONING, the country’s first aircraft carrier. Although LIAONING remains several years from becoming fully operational, and even then will offer relatively limited combat capability, this milestone signals a trend in Chinese naval strategy that has long-term implications for the region and the United States. China’s leaders have embraced the idea that maritime power is essential to achieving great power status. Since the 1980s, China’s naval strategy has evolved from a limited, coastal orientation, to one that is mission-focused and becoming increasingly unconstrained by geography . . .  (2 of 2)