Tuesday 10 May 2016
Photo, left: Members and associates of the Algonquin Round Table: (l-r) Art Samuels, Charles MacArthur, Harpo Marx, Dorothy Parker and Alexander Woollcott
The Algonquin Round Table was a celebrated group of New York City writers, critics, actors and wits. Gathering initially as part of a practical joke, members of "The Vicious Circle", as they dubbed themselves, met for lunch each day at the Algonquin Hotel from 1919 until roughly 1929. At these luncheons they engaged in wisecracks, wordplay and witticisms that, through the newspaper columns of Round Table members, were disseminated across the country
JOHN BATCHELOR SHOW
Co-host: Larry Kudlow, CNBC senior advisor; & Cumulus Media radio
Hour One
Tuesday 10 May 2016 / Hour 1, Block A: James Pethokoukis, columnist & AEI, in re: Congratulations to the candidate from New York, Mr Trump. Congratulations to the candidate from New York, Mrs Clinton. / Trump’s tax policy: several different propositions have been put forth so far. We may not know on taxes or trade till after the election – cf. Nancy Pelosi, you have to pass the bill to know what’s in it.. . . A discussion in the Trump camp on tweaking the tax plan; originally scheduled to got o 28% (from his initial 25%); not need the carried-interest reduction other than the corporate rate, but if you drop the corp rate to 15% you don’t have to worry. You cd almost call this radical tax reform. The Tax Fdn is not revising its scorecard for Trump.
JP: It may not lose a billion a year, but so what if its $700 mil a year? He wants dynamic scoring – that’s not realistic; it’s a ruse to fool supply-siders and Republicans to think he’s a free-market, pro-growth plan, which he has not held for the first 68 years of his life.
Yesterday was the 117th birthday of Friedrich Hayek: One of his excellent features was his humility – if you speak of Hayekian humility, am not sure you'd see a lot when the GOP frontrunner promised tax cuts, . . . proposes to grow the economy twice as fast as it’s ever grown
LK: He might say that central planning ought to be thrown out the window. His brilliance is in his free-market views; the free movement of prices inside free mkts would be the best gauge of growth. Unfortunately, Hayek was right abput free markets, but Hayek was a pessimist, thoght that over time the socialists would win the battle.
Tuesday 10 May 2016 / Hour 1, Block B: James Pethokoukis, columnist & AEI, in re: For every one American who’s lost a job in the US, ten or twenty people have gained economically from global trade. Is Trump a mercantilist – a Nineteenth Century promoter of local production? No, what he should talk about is not the phantom overseas jobs taken over but overseas robots is training Americans to do the jobs of the future, Not “I’m bringing back steel and coal.” Not retrograde economic nostalgia. He’s being called a pro-growth supply sider for the last day and a half. I do think there are some unfair aspects, so tear down foreign barriers so we can export. China, Japan, and others break the rules: they counterfeit, steal IP, hack into our systems. Trade protections often damage the home country more than the foreign country. Recent presidents have done a poor job of negotiating with China; also, floating rates are dangerous, and we need more currency coordination.
At the end of the day, the Great Trump Trade War will be for Hollywood intellectual property.
LK: Yes, auto production won't return here entirely, but Trump wants to incentivize corporations to bring their HQ here and by that will be bringing in trillions of dollars if we have a more competitive tax and regulatory regime. Onerous regulations need to be rolled back.
JP: I have no confidence in what the Trump economic plan is – he just wants to get to the end of a 45-second TV interview, hasn't thought it out.
Tuesday 10 May 2016 / Hour 1, Block C: Bill Whalen, Hoover, in re: . . . The Charlie Cook Poll; all add up to 270 to be US president. Two aspects of the Electoral College: Cook pol changed Georgia from “likely GOP” to “lean GOP”; the second; Quinnipiac, battleground: Ohio, Pennsylvania an Florida -”Push” = an even break. In May 2012, Mr Romney was in an excellent position.
Dem starts with 246 Electoral College votes, the Republican with __.
Georgia from “likely” to “lean”; another has Hillary ahead in three states. But Qunnipiac shows Trump even in Ohio, Florida, Pennsylvania.
LK: I’m a fan of Bill Whalen and of Charlie Cook. The volatile nature of this election [suggests] that it’s not meaningful till the fall. A double gender gap: Mrs Clinton gets few men’s votes; Trump, few women’s votes. Trump gets white votes, Mrs Clinton gets not-white votes.
JB: Dems have won 242 Electoral College votes six times in the last elections -
WW: . . . looking at he 50 States is like a game of 520-card pick-up.
LK: On RealClearPolitics site, you do not see the Hillary landslide. I do not see the Hillary landslide others speak of.
JB: The primaries continue; Sanders has just won West Virginia. His vote is firm, solid, passionate.
WW: Mrs C is 68 going on 69; this is her last campaign – it's hers, by hook or by crook; which is how all the GOPs have run for years.
LK: I read that half the Sanders voters will shift to Trump. . . . About half the Arizona vote is Hispanic. Georgia: Dems talk about this, but it has a growing Hispanic and northern-state-import population
WW: Exaggerated because of coal; in fact, 10 to 15% say they’ll go to Trump.
. . . Reagan broke away in the final weeks. Nobody saw it coming; in the last ten days.
http://thehill.com/blogs/ballot-box/presidential-races/279341-poll-clinton-leads-trump-by-4-points-nationwide ; http://cookpolitical.com/presidential/charts/scorecard
Tuesday 10 May 2016 / Hour 1, Block D: Christopher Nixon Cox, OC Global Partners, LLC (and worked for the rights of New York State small business owners in Albany on a pro bono basis); in re: Clinton of New York vs Trump of New York; and here’s Christopher Cox of New York: Is Trump demonized, embraced, an object of curiosity, in China? My Chinese friends support him, say they discount some of his pronouncements, and are glad that his discussion centers on trade, not geopolitics. Weibo chat rooms, et al., all more in favor of Trump. Interesting phenomenon for someone who spake such harsh words. LK: Good news for me is that Rump quit threatening a 45% tariff on Chinese goods, but he won't let go of the fact that he’s going to do something about how many trade rules the Chinese have broken. CNC: Even People’s Daily (the Communist Party’s paper) is pro-Trump.
.. . In the last 12 hours US sent Navy craft to one of the [fake South China Sea] islands, and China has sent out a retort. Of course, China rejoiced when Trump said he didn’t want to support Asian military operations as much. If it takes 50 or 100 years, eventually China will take Taiwan [!]. Lee Kwan-yu: “Mao can paint China red but the rains will wash away the red.” . . . LK: I'd guess that Trump will pour $1 bil to $2 bil into the military budget. He'll have to take aggressive trade steps, also in military affairs. It may not be so easy for China. CNC: But Chinese tremble at the notion of . . . http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2016/05/2016-donald-trump-china-f...
Hour Two
Tuesday 10 May 2016 / Hour 2, Block A: Stephen F. Cohen is Prof. Emeritus of Russian Studies/History/Politics at NYU and Princeton. He is also a member of the Board of the recently-formed American Committee for East-West Accord (eastwestaccord.com); in re: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3578291/Putin-invades-popularity-league-Russian-president-listed-10-admired-men-world-alongside-Barack-Obama-Dalai-Lama-Jackie-Chan.html (1 of 4)
Tuesday 10 May 2016 / Hour 2, Block B: Stephen F. Cohen is Prof. Emeritus of Russian Studies & American Committee for East-West Accord (eastwestaccord.com); in re: http://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2016/05/06/national/abe-breaks-ranks-obama-meeting-putin-russia/#.VzJon84ijww (2 of 4)
Tuesday 10 May 2016 / Hour 2, Block C: Stephen F. Cohen is Prof. Emeritus of Russian Studies & American Committee for East-West Accord (eastwestaccord.com); in re: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3578291/Putin-invades-popularity-league-Russian-president-listed-10-admired-men-world-alongside-Barack-Obama-Dalai-Lama-Jackie-Chan.html (3 of 4)
Tuesday 10 May 2016 / Hour 2, Block D: Stephen F. Cohen is Prof. Emeritus of Russian Studies & American Committee for East-West Accord (eastwestaccord.com); (4 of 4)
Hour Three
Tuesday 10 May 2016 / Hour 3, Block A: Salena Zito, Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, & Dr Lara M Brown, George Washington University, in re: Donald Trump's Warning to Paul Ryan Signals Further GOP Discord ; Ryan opens door to stepping down as convention chair, if Trump asks ; http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2016/05/09/ryan-reportedly-opens-door-to-stepping-down-as-convention-chair-if-trump-asks.html ; http://www.politicspa.com/pa-sen-toomey-challenges-trump/75280/
Tuesday 10 May 2016 / Hour 3, Block B: Salena Zito, Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, & Dr Lara M Brown, George Washington University, in re: http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/onpolitics/2016/05/10/donald-trump-hillary-clinton-quinnipiac-poll-florida-ohio-pennsylvania/84173448/
Tuesday 10 May 2016 / Hour 3, Block C: Robert Zimmerman, behindtheblack, in re: SpaceX landing on the barge, et al.
Tuesday 10 May 2016 / Hour 3, Block D: Robert Zimmerman, behindtheblack, in re: Blue Origin landing with a camera on the rocket so you can see the descent, et al.
Hour Four
Tuesday 10 May 2016 / Hour 4, Block A: Cast of Characters: Wolcott Gibbs, E. B. White, James Thurber, and the Golden Age of the New Yorker by Thomas Vinciguerra (1 of 4) From its birth in 1925 to the early days of the Cold War, The New Yorker slowly but surely took hold as the country’s most prestigious, entertaining, and informative general-interest periodical. In Cast of Characters, Thomas Vinciguerra paints a portrait of the magazine’s cadre of charming, wisecracking, driven, troubled, brilliant writers and editors.
He introduces us to Wolcott Gibbs, theater critic, all-around wit, and author of an infamous 1936 parody of Time magazine. We meet the demanding and eccentric founding editor Harold Ross, who would routinely tell his underlings, "I'm firing you because you are not a genius," and who once mailed a pair of his underwear to Walter Winchell, who had accused him of preferring to go bare-bottomed under his slacks. Joining the cast are the mercurial, blind James Thurber, a brilliant cartoonist and wildly inventive fabulist, and the enigmatic E. B. White—an incomparable prose stylist and Ross's favorite son—who married The New Yorker's formidable fiction editor, Katharine Angell. Then there is the dashing St. Clair McKelway, who was married five times and claimed to have no fewer than twelve personalities, but was nonetheless a superb reporter and managing editor alike. Many of these characters became legends in their own right, but Vinciguerra also shows how, as a group, The New Yorker’s inner circle brought forth a profound transformation in how life was perceived, interpreted, written about, and published in America.
Cast of Characters may be the most revealing—and entertaining—book yet about the unique personalities who built what Ross called not a magazine but a "movement."
Tuesday 10 May 2016 / Hour 4, Block B: Cast of Characters: Wolcott Gibbs, E. B. White, James Thurber, and the Golden Age of the New Yorker by Thomas Vinciguerra (2 of 4)
Tuesday 10 May 2016 / Hour 4, Block C: Cast of Characters: Wolcott Gibbs, E. B. White, James Thurber, and the Golden Age of the New Yorker by Thomas Vinciguerra (3 of 4)
Tuesday 10 May 2016 / Hour 4, Block D: Cast of Characters: Wolcott Gibbs, E. B. White, James Thurber, and the Golden Age of the New Yorker by Thomas Vinciguerra (4 of 4)
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