Thursday 11 February 2021

Air Date:

February 11, 2021

JOHN BATCHELOR SHOW
Colleagues: Sebastian Gorka, America First radio and Fox; and Malcolm Hoenlein, Conference of Presidents

Hour One
Thursday 4 February 2021 / Hour 1, Block A: Victor Davis Hanson: @VDHanson; Hoover Institution, and The Case for Trump, in re:   China’s thinking, Give ’em enough rope. This is like what Mao did; “they’ll self-immolate.” Uyghurs, Tibet, Hong Kong, Taiwan. That’s our enemies; as for our allies, they’re uncertain of the US. Macron heavily criticized the woke culture, called the US nihilistic and Bolshevik.
Democrats let a genie out of the bottle. Biden is watching this: passively or wittingly? “If you can't beat ’em, join ’em.  I’ll just ride the wave.” This is all the most radical deeds since FDR.
Somebody will go too far: Jacobins’s executions? Or, as with McCarthy: Have you no decency?  If it gets out of hand, and Kerenskyites take over . . . Mao, after having been dismissed, took over.
People here may say, I need to be woke as an insurance policy.
Thursday 4 February 2021 / Hour 1, Block B: Victor Davis Hanson: @VDHanson; Hoover Institution, and The Case for Trump,in re:  Dr Scott Atlas, on trial in the senate of Stanford University—for what? For serving the president of the US—during a pandemic; and has been denounced by his colleagues.  Before he worked for Donald Trump, he was an esteemed colleague, head of radiology department. He began looking at global data became convinced that he shutdown were destroying people, leading to starvation, deep medical problems, suicide. He proposed careful reopening with masks; but this went against Fauci, in an election year, so it was weaponized. Much of his data came from Stanford Medical School.   I also am being condemned. The people making charges want a long record, an anti-fascist network (familar-sounding?),have students disrupt traffic on San Mateo Bridge.
Thursday 4 February 2021 / Hour 1, Block C: Richard Epstein: @RichardAEpstein, Chicago Law, NYU Law, Hoover Defining Ideas, in re:  Sherman Antitrust, and Clayton Act of 1914.   Amy Klobuchar (a past student of Richard) of Minnesota: applying Clayton Act to to Facebook. “I want to rethink this thing, incl the way we look at existing companies that have been acquired.” Even the break-up of FB is not off the table.” Two kinds of difficulties:  mergers examined by a govt agency; and acquisition: have to reorient the law about nascent competition. Tim Wu. Qualcomm case. Case law. Strong pushback.  . . . Double-marginalization practice.
Thursday 4 February 2021 / Hour 1, Block D:Richard Epstein: @RichardAEpstein, Chicago Law, NYU Law, Hoover Defining Ideas, in re:   Railroads and the automobile industry. Long-haul and short-haul inversions. Sherman Act. Railroads were 85% of the firms on the stock exchange in the 1890s. Theory of conglomerate merger: turns out it doesn't work. Diversification at shareholder, not management, level. Synergies can produce gain; beware of damaging the goose that laid the golden egg.

Hour Two
Thursday 4 February 2021 / Hour 2, Block A:  Sebastian Gorka, @SebGorka, America First radio, in re:
Does Mr Raskin believe that the Republic was at danger at the gravest level? The most awesome power the upper House has is to remove the president.  Today, the first-ever impeachment of a private citizen.  Constitution: impeachment must be presided over by the Chief Justice. When AOC wets, “Yu tried to kill me,” she’s serious, A dementia, a detachment from reality that’s hard to understand if you’re not in the swamp. They actually fear for their lives.  Biden: “Iamthe Democratic Party.” New SecDef called political opponents “enemies”; Jake Tapper said MAGAterrorism. Chris Plante has been speaking of the impending payback since last year.   We were suspended from YouTube because a woman on my radio show said, “Millions of Americans have doubts about the last election.”  Rep Devin Nunes has been suspended from twitter—his professional account—as a Congressman—is also suspended. What? Turns out that the robot made a mistake.
Thursday 4 February 2021 / Hour 2, Block B:  Sebastian Gorka, @SebGorka, America First radio, in re:  Biden has made his first call to the president for life Xi HJinping.
Thursday 4 February 2021 / Hour 2, Block C:  Chris Riegel: @Scala, @STRATACACHE; in re:
Thursday 4 February 2021 / Hour 2, Block D: Conrad Black, @ConradMBlack, publisher, littérateur, biographer, commentator; the National Post; in re:

Hour Three
Thursday 4 February 2021 / Hour 3, Block A: Amit Heumann, and Malcolm Hoenlein, @conf_of_pres, Conference of Presidents,in re: The ICC. The ICC deliberates on inter-State relations; Palestinian are, um, sort of —well, we’ll call it a state. We’ll call it irrelevant.
Amit Heumann is the Director of the International Law Department at the Office of the Legal Advisor, Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs. He is currently legal advisor for the Israeli negotiation team for the Israeli-Lebanon maritime boundary negotiations. Mr. Heumann has represented Israel at many international legal and diplomatic forums and conferences, and he served as Legal Advisor of the Permanent Mission of Israel to the United Nations in New York from 2013-2018.  https://www.jpost.com/arab-israeli-conflict/eight-things-to-know-about-t...
Thursday 4 February 2021 / Hour 3, Block B: Israel Nitzan, @IsraelNitzan, and Malcolm Hoenlein, @conf_of_pres, Conference of Presidents; in re:  Israel COVID-19. Iran.
Israel Nitzan is the acting Consul General of Israel in New York.  https://www.timesofisrael.com/congressman-urges-israel-to-continue-vacci...

Thursday 4 February 2021 / Hour 3, Block C: Susan Eisenhower @eisenhowergroup, and Malcolm Hoenlein, @conf_of_pres, Conference of Presidents, in re: Eisenhower first sees Buchenwald and other death camps.
Susan Eisenhower is President and Chairman of The Eisenhower Group, Inc. (EGI), a Washington D.C. based consulting company founded in 1986. For more than thirty years, the company has provided strategic counsel on business development, public affairs and communications projects. Her fifth book, How Ike Led: The Principles Behind Eisenhower’s Biggest Decisions, was published in 2020 by St. Martin’s Press.
Thursday 4 February 2021 / Hour 3, Block D:  Malcolm Hoenlein, @conf_of_pres, Conference of Presidents, in re:  A one-ton robot in a pickup truck killed Mohsen Fakhrizadeh: “Iran scientist 'killed by remote-controlled weapon'”   The bomb was smuggled in in pieces over many months.  Iranian textbooks: highly anti-Jewish. “Covid was invented by the West to stop celebration of Iranian revolution.” US-led sanctions are a Satanic plot. Supreme Leader doesn’t trust Rouhani.
Hour Four
Thursday 4 February 2021 / Hour 4, Block A: Salena Zito, @SalenaZito,@DCExaminer @RealClearPolitics; New York Post, CNN; Middle of Somewhere column; in re: Woman loses iPhone on a snowy trail while hiking; it grows dark and a great storm is coming. She drives home for four hours, finds it with her iPad. Posts the location on Facebook; a fellow sees this, drives forty minutes, hikes up the snowy trail, finds it.
    Teachers union says schools in Pittsburgh will stay closed till there’s no more Wuhan flu.
Thursday 4 February 2021 / Hour 4, Block B: Salena Zito, @SalenaZito,@DCExaminer @RealClearPolitics; New York Post, CNN; Middle of Somewhere column; in re: All the prospects in PA. John Fetterman, native of York, PA; 6’8”; Lt-Governor of PA.  Sean Parnell. Bill Johnson. Josh Mandell.
  Joe Manchin, WV, chair of the Senate Energy Committee; holds that the Keystone XL Pipeline is essential.
Thursday 4 February 2021 / Hour 4, Block C: Richard Fontaine, @RHFontaine; CEO of the Center for a New American Security, @CNASdc, in re: The Case against Foreign Policy Solutionism.  Biden Adm ambitions; and back through half a dozen previous.  “Getting caught trying: the notion that there are hard troubles afoot in the world; may not reach a full solution, but better to get caught trying.”  NOT. Plunging into something unsolvable can make things much worse. Some people advocated solving the Cold War with roll-back: roll back the Communist presence in Eastern Europe; or let’s just acquiesce. Wiser heads demanded managing it till it went away; took seventy years, but did. The Abraham Accords made some real and genuine progress.  Does “caught trying” in Washington mean you have to go big?  For a Nobel Prize, have to. Each new administration blames the worst on the previous administration.   Pres Obama said that Afghanistan was the smarter war; Iraq was the lesser.  Now Afghanistan is [fearful]; in Iraq, ISIS took over and now still is very much alive, having metastasized.
Thursday 4 February 2021 / Hour 4, Block D: Richard Fontaine, @RHFontaine; CEO of the Center for a New American Security, @CNASdc, in re:   The Case against Foreign Policy Solutionism.  The 2015 JCPOA:  “We’ll get this nuclear deal, open new possibilities”–and of course nothing good happened.  Russia, the recent Navalny affair; mass arrest of protestors in a hundred cities. Dismissing Russia as a second-tier power did not work. Sergey Lavrov, and Vl. Putin: do they practice Getting Caught Trying?  No, they play a fairly weak hand very well. Assiduous use of [diminished] resources. The Middle Kingdom:  get used to having to manage it.