Thursday 19 November 2020
JOHN BATCHELOR SHOW
Colleagues: Sebastian Gorka, America First radio, and Fox; and Malcolm Hoenlein, Conference of Presidents
Hour One
Thursday 19 November 2020 / Hour 1, Block A: Victor Davis Hanson: @VDHanson; Hoover Institution, and The Case for Trump,in re: Anti-Trumpers’s intemperate language of condemnation, accusing the president of being a dictator or a Nazi. They’re in an echo chamber, leading to the Mueller investigation, or impeachment over a phone call about Ukraine (despite Hunter Biden’s extraordinary deeds), or a Yale psychiatrist declaring Trump “crazy”; or a TV person, Christiane Amanpour, comparing Trump’s deeds to Kristallnacht.Her hyperbole draws attention to her. They use the word “coup,” scaring US allies, and ahistorically. New Yorker: “Will Trump burn the evidence?” — what evidence? Are they still prosecuting discredited investigations? . . . Silicon Valley market cap of $4 trillion; the whole interior of the country has suffered under globalization. Kamala Harris got zero vote; Bloomberg got no delegate. They outspent Trump by about 2.5 times; are frustrated not to be winning handily.
Thursday 19 November 2020 / Hour 1, Block B: Victor Davis Hanson: @VDHanson; Hoover Institution, and The Case for Trump,in re: CA21 and CA25 races: harvesting votes is new to America. David Valadao (CA21) lost the previous election by 400 votes, with ballots coming in for weeks after election day. We’ve never had two elections at the same time whose results will decide the course of the US Senate. If Democrats win, they’ll stack the Supreme Court, take away the filibuster, “things with the Second Amendment that we can't believe,” and create changes that will [significantly alter American life].
Thursday 19 November 2020 / Hour 1, Block C: Richard Epstein: @RichardAEpstein, Chicago Law, NYU Law, Hoover Defining Ideas, in re: Climate 21 Project, Biden: either cancel Trump’s decisions on climate or go a new direction. Report prepared by people who have a good chance of being influential in the Biden adm. Get rid of coal, nat gas. Co-chairs: Obama higher-up and colleagues, 17-person steering committee. “We have to do this on day one.” Law and order, and defunding the police, were critical in the just-past election. “We can't deal with climate change unless we deal with racism” – perhaps valuable, but not science, is politics. Forest fires, global warming, sea levels. Politicization of forest management to the point where we can't be effective stewards of forests. Al Gore in An Inconvenient Truth:Apocalypse in 2015. Note that the energy for electric cars is not storable; wind farms require massive tonnage of steel to build. Solar panels have to use hundreds or thousands of acres, then ship the energy long distances.
Thursday 19 November 2020 / Hour 1, Block D: Richard Epstein: @RichardAEpstein, Chicago Law, NYU Law, Hoover Defining Ideas, in re: In any red state, the bluest part is universities. Does Biden have the moxie to forgive student debt? There are several routes; if yes, the families that paid back the debt would find themselves paying for those who didn't. No use spending money to send someone to college who winds up unable to earn a living. We don’t need to expand the college population since many are better off going to a good trade school. Elizabeth Warren thinks [the public purse] is a bottomless barrel of funds. “I belong to no organized party; I’m a Democrat.” — Will Rogers.
Hour Two
Thursday 19 November 2020 / Hour 2, Block A: Sebastian Gorka, @SebGorka, America First radio, in re: Rudy Giuliani, Sidney Powell, Jenna Ellis and a barnburner press conferec today on the specifics of electoral fraud; then my program immediately had Steve Scalise as a guest. If things continue, Pelosi may have a margin of three or four sets. “Defund the police” is the worst election slogan ever devised, and it’s Pelosi’s. Not one state house of the fifty was flipped from GOP to Democratic. Operation Warp Speed: two vaccines at the ready to deliver, each with efficacy of over 90%. Remarkable that these could be developed, and never before in the history of modern medicine with such speed. Potentially FDA approval in weeks or days; it bespeaks having a businessman as president. Japanese: “Victory disease” causing you to make ill-c0nsidered decisions. Zero pragmatism in the Democratic party just now Schumer ; hostage to its own radical elements. The trouble Biden got in to with his fracking comments. . . . [Run major things] with a diploma in gender studies?
Thursday 19 November 2020 / Hour 2, Block B: Sebastian Gorka, @SebGorka, America First radio, in re: BDS (boycott divestment sanctions) movement is merely a rebranding of anti-Jewishness. Iran.
Thursday 19 November 2020 / Hour 2, Block C: Hotel Mars, episode n. #HotelMars. Shane Stone, @newscientist, Shane Stone at the University of Arizona, and David Livingston, The Space Show, in re: Where did the water on Mars go?
Thursday 19 November 2020 / Hour 2, Block D: Hotel Mars, episode n. #HotelMars. Shane Stone, Shane Stone at the University of Arizona, and David Livingston, The Space Show, in re: If we had an unlimited budget, let’s get humans on Mars [to check more closely]. Polar caps: all the history of Mars is laid down in these polar caps.
Hour Three
Thursday 19 November 2020 / Hour 3, Block A: Anna Borshchevskaya (@annaborsh) in re: Russians building a seaport on the Red Sea, an expansion of regional authority originated by the deposed Bashir. Hallmark of Putin’s approach: invest not in leaders but in polices and plans. Strategic point: a major crossroads. Russian state pursuing this for centuries. Check Russian PMCs (private mil contractors), another Russian foreign policy tool.
Iraq: proposed withdrawals send a completely wrong msg, and one not wanted by Iraqis. In the last few days, some of the activity was planned by Iraqi militias months ago. For security reasons, US cannot afford to withdraw from Iraq. Note that Saddam Hussein modelled himself on Stalin; his death dislodged Russia, which has not forgot. Oil and gas, arms sales. Russia’s lower House passed laws absolving Putin of . . . what? He’s rumored to be sick, but that’s not much credible. Another bill under discussion to allow Putin to run for president in 2024, again.
Peacekeepers in Nagorno-Karabakh. Geopolitically, another story: Russian commentaries about this criticize Putin for letting Turkey become a bigger player, and for losing hearts and minds of Armenians.
Russia-Sudan naval base, US troop presence in Iraq
Anna Borshchevskaya is a senior Fellow at The Washington Institute, focusing on Russia's policy toward the Middle East. In addition, she is a contributor to Oxford Analytica and a fellow at the European Foundation for Democracy.
• https://www.ft.com/content/6c3ccb03-8e4a-4c1a-8240-d7493f70ef59
Thursday 19 November 2020 / Hour 3, Block B: Simon Henderson, @shendersongulf, Nuclear violations & IAEAreport. Gulf reaction to IAEA report. Eastern Med.
Erdogan “making nice” – an interesting thought; his definition is not like ours. Cyprus, 1974 a war so Turkish forces controlled the north and Cypriots had only the southern portion. Line foes trough Nicosia, the capital. EU calls it one island, one country; trouble is, Turkey declared that the northern part was the Turkish Republic of North Cyprus, recognized by no one. Now, significant for undersea gas reserves. Erdogan hopes he US will ignore; Europeans are quite interested by it but they just play diplomacy, while Erdogan plays both diplomacy and mil force.
G20 in Riyadh virtual summit: The king stopped Saudis from following Bahrain in the Abraham Accords, although MBS wishes to join. MBBS still contaminated by blame for Kashoggi murder, so many leaders may stand back. IAEA report on Iran increasing its nuclear developments. Report is technical in style, but is astonishingly worrying about what Iran is doing: “This answer was unsatisfactory,” or “makes no technical sense.”
Simon Henderson is the Baker Fellow at The Washington Institute and director of the Institute's Bernstein Program on Gulf and Energy Policy, specializing in energy matters and the conservative Arab states of the Persian Gulf.
• https://www.washingtoninstitute.org/policy-analysis/view/latest-iran-nuc...
• https://www.arabnews.com/node/1764931/middle-east
• https://www.axios.com/bahrain-foreign-minister-israel-iran-nuclear-deal-...
• https://www.washingtoninstitute.org/policy-analysis/view/biden-cant-avoi...
• al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2020/11/turkey-cyprus-erdogan-two-state-solution-drilling-east-med.html
Thursday 19 November 2020 / Hour 3, Block C: Norman Roule, @Norman_Roule, in re: Al-Qaeda assassination. Iran-Israel encroachment. Impact of Abraham Accords. Iran File.
Iran’s military is primitive except for missiles. A forever war for Israel heartening to Iran as the rest of the world ignores it. If the US returns to the Iran deal, it can activate snapback.
Norman Roule is a Senior Advisor to United Against Nuclear Iran and a 34-year veteran of the CIA. Before leaving the intelligence community, Roule served as the National Intelligence Manager for Iran at the Office of the Director of National Intelligence from November 2008 to September 2017. Here he was the principal Intelligence Community official responsible for overseeing all aspects of national intelligence policy and activities related to Iran.
• https://www.longwarjournal.org/archives/2020/11/analysis-al-qaedas-deput...
• https://apnews.com/article/donald-trump-iran-hossein-dehghan-only-on-ap-...
Thursday 19 November 2020 / Hour 3, Block D: Malcolm Hoenlein, Conference of Presidents, in re:Pompeo declares BDS to be anti-Semitic
Hour Four
Thursday 19 November 2020 / Hour 4, Block A: Conrad Black, @ConradMBlack, publisher, littérateur, biographer, commentator; the National Post; in re: The rejection of the policy of the Democrats.
Thursday 19 November 2020 / Hour 4, Block B: Conrad Black, @ConradMBlack, publisher, littérateur, biographer, commentator; the National Post; in re: What will be the relationship of Biden and Trudeau, of the US and Canada?
Thursday 19 November 2020 / Hour 4, Block C: Armand Balboni, Appili Therapeutics, in re: Vaccine. Preventative: to diminish the effects of this flu for elders, to be distributed soonest to long-term care homes. Multimodal approach: targets the same machinery that Remdesivir does (for replication), but is a tablet/oral. Need to get it on board early and thereby reduce the severity of illness. Similar path to that of Tamaflu. This is not a silver bullet; it’s building a tool kit.
Thursday 19 November 2020 / Hour 4, Block D: Russell Berman, @RussellBermanSF,director of Stanford's Thinking Matters program; Hoover; in re: Peace in Nagorno-Karabakh.