Friday 7 July 2017
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JOHN BATCHELOR SHOW
Hour One
Friday 7 July 2017 / Hour 1, Block A: Liz Peek, Fiscal Times and Fox News; in re: Trump
Friday 7 July 2017 / Hour 1, Block B: Thaddeus McCotter, WJR, the Great Voice of the Great Lakes, in re: Russiagate.
Friday 7 July 2017 / Hour 1, Block C: Richard A Epstein, Chicago Law, NYU Law, Hoover institution; in re: the Supreme Court anent Trinity Lutheran Church vs. Comer [head of Missouri Dept of Natl Resources], 7-2 decision. Establishment of Free Exercise Clause. Church applied for money to help resurface its playground with poured rubber (old tires); the state refused on ground that it mayn’t fund a religious institution.
Three possible actions between church and state: 1. A wall of separation between church and state, and each is stronger therefor. Blaine Amendment in Missouri takes more or less this position.
2. What? Religious people are part of the country, pay taxes, are as much entitled to playground help as is any other citizen. 3. It's so complex that we must do what Sotomayor said —pay ________. . . . Danger that you’ll pay more to Group A than Group B.
Wearing religious garb: the situation demands reasonable accommodation. It turns out that if you have smart people and don't go grandstanding, it works well. When people start posturing, such as in the matter of transgender bathrooms, it all blows up. Religious Freedom Restoration Act.
Friday 7 July 2017 / Hour 1, Block D: Jim McTague, Barron’s Washington, in re: jobs report [222K; remember that we needed 275K a month to catch up? Gave up on that years ago].
Hour Two
Friday 7 July 2017 / Hour 2, Block A: Michael E Vlahos, Johns Hopkins, in re: The Thucydides Trap and the Trent Affair. Is war between the US and North Korea (or China), for example, inevitable? “It's situationally dependent.” (1 of 2)
Friday 7 July 2017 / Hour 2, Block B: Michael E Vlahos, Johns Hopkins, in re: The Thucydides Trap and the Trent Affair. Is war between the US and North Korea (or China), for example, inevitable? “It's situationally dependent.” (2 of 2)
Friday 7 July 2017 / Hour 2, Block C: Gene Marks, Washington Post small business column, in re: Small business in the US and elsewhere. (1 of 2)
Friday 7 July 2017 / Hour 2, Block D: Gene Marks, Washington Post small business column, in re: Small business in the US and elsewhere. (2 of 2)
Hour Three
Friday 7 July 2017 / Hour 3, Block A: Patrick Chovanec, Silvercrest Asset Management, in re: Russian infrastructure outside main urban areas is almost primitive. Road between St Petersburg and Moscow is a two-lane blacktop heavy with truck and local traffic. However, very good Internet connections almost everywhere. First visit was in 1989; things have much changed. Petersburg has one large crane right now (not a huge bldg. spurt), consonant with the city’s determination to keep its architecture as traditional as possible. Norwegians do a lot of bz with Russia, love it there – but don’t keep assets in Russia as they’ll be taken away.
Friday 7 July 2017 / Hour 3, Block B: Patrick Chovanec, German: Angela Merkel runs a country that wants to dominate the future. Nordstream 2: natgas pipeline under the Black Sea to Germany (bypasses Ukraine). German bz wants to engage with Russia. Merkel did support EU sanctions vs Putin. Russia needs a banker; need trustworthy courts. (This is how Taiwan was used – to help confidence in investing in China.) Sweden has been moving toward joining NATO. The white nights of Petersburg.
Friday 7 July 2017 / Hour 3, Block C: Robert Zimmerman, BehindtheBlack.com & author, Capitalism in Space; in re: China’s Long March 5 failure. . . . Google’s Lunar X-Prize: $20 mil to first privately-funded lunar lander that’s also a rover and can travel 500 meters. Finalists. India and Israel: Modi visits Jerusalem; now also have space agreements . . . incl joint dvpt of atomic clocks for GPS. . . . Qatar provides much of the world’s helium supply, which now cut off in the present blockade. North Korea’s space program? Not exactly a space program.
Friday 7 July 2017 / Hour 3, Block D: Robert Zimmerman, BehindtheBlack.com & author, Capitalism in Space; in re: The success of the Twenty-first Century: commercial space. SpaceX: three launches from two space ports on opposite coasts in two weeks. Their tenth launch of the year, putting SpaceX ahead of everyone except the US, itself. Air Force soliciting bids from Space X and ULA for a five-sat launch contract. . . AMC No 9, Luxembourgeois, broke into at least two pieces, maybe more. Video at BehindtheBlack,com link: One dot becomes two or three. Geosynchronous orbit, so this adds to debris at that altitude. Balloon company of Arizona did first flight test of “Stratellite balloon” for reconnaissance or surveillance. Launched up only seventeen hours in its test. Had a KFC Zinger sandwich on board.
Note: Dear reader, if you happen to enjoy Bob Zimmerman’s segments, for him to continue his work please consider offering a modest donation to his operation, BehindtheBlack.com, which is distinctly not profitable.
Hour Four
Friday 7 July 2017 / Hour 4, Block A: Steve Morton, DarkCity.fm, in re: Sean David Morton, purported psychic, was a late-night radio fixture for years on the Art Bell show Coast to Coast AM. He is also, according to prosecutors, a serial fraudster, and now a fugitive. On June 19, Morton was set to be sentenced in federal court after being convicted on over 50 counts of fraud related to a tax scheme [training students on how to cheat on taxes], but failed to appear [on grounds of “Constitutional blasphemy”]. If the maximum penalty were applied to each of those counts, the sentence would total 650 years, though prosecutors were recommending only 87 months, or about 7 years, and probably out early on good behavior in a white-collar crime sort of prison. At this point, it seems reasonable to conclude if and when Morton is apprehended, his sentence will wind up being far greater than prosecutors’ original recommendation. He claims to be a diplomat representing an imaginary country, also a citizen of the Republic of California.
Strangely, Morton called in to his own internet radio show yesterday afternoon to update his audience on the ongoing situation, only to make unusual claims about ‘misunderstandings’ and paperwork errors, that the case was being moved to the Supreme Court and that the judge presiding over the case in lower federal court was ’not a real judge’. https://ufowatchdog.blogspot.com/2017/06/wanted-felon-morton-broadcasts-on-run.html Amelia Earhart’s disappearance: now there appear photos that suggest that she and her navigator, Fred Noonan, made a crash landing outside the Marshall Islands and were detained by Japanese. Fairly convincing. FBI analysis found that a barge was carrying something 38’ long – the length of her aircraft. A monkey warehouse in Arizona desert: Planet of the Apes facility?
Friday 7 July 2017 / Hour 4, Block B: Dr Henry Miller, Hoover, in re: Amazon buys Whole Foods.
Friday 7 July 2017 / Hour 4, Block C: Robert L. O'Connell, Fierce Patriot: The Tangled Lives of William Tecumseh Sherman (4 of 4)
Friday 7 July 2017 / Hour 4, Block D: Robert L. O'Connell, Fierce Patriot: The Tangled Lives of William Tecumseh Sherman (4 of 4)
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