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JOHN BATCHELOR SHOW
Co-host: Larry Kudlow, CNBC senior advisor; & Cumulus Media radio
 
Hour One
Tuesday  12 April 2016   / Hour 1, Block A:  Phil Izzo, WSJ, in re:   jobs, the Fed, and the direction of the economy.
Tuesday  12 April 2016   / Hour 1, Block B:   Phil Izzo, WSJ, in re:  . . . The only group in the world who’s spending is the American consumer. This is not enough to grow the US economy, create the needed jobs.  . . .   The combination amounted to a double-shot of adrenaline for an oversupplied market, driving oil prices to their highest point this year. The price of U.S. oil jumped 4.5% to $42.17 a barrel, its highest price since November.
For weeks, oil markets have been preoccupied with the likelihood of an agreement being reached Doha. Helped by speculation of a deal led by Russia and Saudi Arabia, the world’s two biggest producers, oil prices have recovered by almost one-third from the lows earlier this year.
Tuesday  12 April 2016   / Hour 1, Block C:  Dr Scott Gottlieb, Hoover, AEI, in re:  . . . Medicare requires two different cardio-thoracic specialists to be in the same room at the same time– lest they be obliged to compete with each other for paid work!  Meanwhile, there’s a simple, mechanical solution to a cardiac condition that kills armies of people, but Medicare forces many of the feeble and diseased to undergo vastly more expensive and dangerous surgery because our bureaucracy is so slo-ooow and out of date.  Medicare prefers open-heart surgery to a noninvasive device. One face of Twenty-first Century barbarism.  (sigh)  http://www.wsj.com/articles/warning-medicare-may-be-bad-for-your-heart-1460416455
Tuesday  12 April 2016   / Hour 1, Block D: Larry Kudlow, CNBC senior advisor; & Cumulus Media radio; in re:
 
Hour Two
Tuesday  12 April 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: Poroshenko in hot water: he’s American-backed in every way; has had a lousy April; is under death threat by the Right Sector.  Meanwhile, jihadists are offering to blow up civilian nuclear plants – remember Chernobyl.  Belgian constabulary are focused on this;  and it's not so much a matter of vetting the refugees pouring in, but that the terrorist networks are present and well established across Western Europe. The number-one existential threat to all of us.  Hollande suggested a Grand Coalition with Russia, which has really good intell, but Washington and others prefer the new cold war.  Even if Russia and the US coordinate in Syria, the larger matter is not addressed. 
Tuesday  12 April 2016   / Hour 2, Block B: Stephen F. Cohen, eastwestaccord.com; in re:  . . .  Yatseniuk is gone. Saakashvili is in Odessa.  Poroshenko claimed that in the nonbinding referendum of last week, “Dutch voters voted against European values” – egad. Nonbinding, but EU needs unanimity. We’re at the second anniversary of the outbreak of war  - now have near-destruction of eastern Ukraine’s economic base.  . . .    Whatever happens to Poroshenko, the current regime is simply not sustainable. Can Ukraine remain one country, or even two? . . .  Netherlandish doubt about who shot down the plane, MH 17,  filled with Dutchmen.
Tuesday  12 April 2016   / Hour 2, Block C:  Stephen F. Cohen, eastwestaccord.com; in re:  Most of the people who died on MH17 were Dutch. A turning point. At that moment, NATO got what is seemed to want: to move its mil hardware to Russia’s borders, but to quadruple that.  First time since 1941 German invasion that hostile neighbors have been on Russia’s borders. Think about what that means to Russians.   . . . Maidan snipers killed about a hundred people – turns out not to have been on orders of Putin but in fact the opposite: done by the very local Right Sector.   Recall the people burned to death in Crimea – neither Kiyev nor Washington will investigate.  . . . Poroshenko isn’t the cause but the symptom. And he’s ours.  McCain met Saakashvili when he was a law student and has backed him ever since. McCain went to Georgia, “We're all Georgians now.”  Repeated the stunt in Kiyev – “We’re all Ukrainians now” – photographed standing next to an overt neo-Nazi.  Oops. 
The Ukrainian radicals promised to shoot the Ukraine's president given a recent offshore scandal.
The Right Sector claimed that if a new revolution started, President Petro Poroshenko would not manage to escape from the country, "an execution in a dark vault would await him". The Right Sector spokesman Artyom Skoropadsky said that the execution "would be carried out by a group of young Ukrainian military men or members of the National Guard".
 http://www.pravdareport.com/news/world/ussr/ukraine/12-04-2016/134145-poroshenko-0/#sthash.S7D88lfG.dpuf   ;  Saakashvili – who served as Georgia’s president from 2004-2013 – has sat in Odessa’s gubernatorial chair since May 2015 after Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko appointed him in the hope that Saakashvili would replicate many of the anti-corruption and pro-business policies that marked the early period of his presidency.
http://georgiatoday.ge/news/3285/Saakashvili-Eyes-National-Role-as-Ukraine’s-Political-Crisis-Intensifies   (3 of 4)
Tuesday  12 April 2016   / Hour 2, Block D:  Stephen F. Cohen, eastwestaccord.com; in re: The European Commission will propose this month granting visa-free travel to Ukrainians despite a Dutch referendum vote against an EU-Ukraine agreement partly motivated by hostility to migration, a senior EU source said. Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker promised Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko in March that the EU executive would put forward the eagerly awaited proposal in April, offering Ukrainians the most tangible benefit of closer ties at a time when a free trade deal has not yet borne fruit for their economy. "It may look as if we're ignoring the Dutch voters, but we have to keep our word to Ukraine, which has met the conditions," the source said.
The proposal must be approved by a qualified majority of EU member states and by the European Parliament to take effect.   http://www.reuters.com/article/us-netherlands-eu-ukraine-idUSKCN0X70SJ   (4 of 4)
 
Hour Three
Tuesday  12 April 2016   / Hour 3, Block A:   Dr Lara Brown, George Washington University, in re: http://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/paul-ryan-hopes-put-rest-rumors-presidential-bid-n554761  ;  http://www.politico.com/blogs/2016-gop-primary-live-updates-and-results/2016/04/john-kasich-trump-vice-president-221827
Tuesday  12 April 2016   / Hour 3, Block B:  Harry Siegel, New York Daily News, in re: Here’s the lowlight reel from Mayor de Blasio’s terrible, horrible, no good, very bad week — one that suggests still worse weeks to come: http://www.nydailynews.com/opinion/harry-siegel-ugliest-face-bill-de-blasio-article-1.2593872
Tuesday  12 April 2016   / Hour 3, Block C:   Robert Zimmerman, behindtheblack, in re:  SpaceX Falcon 9 re-entry landed on a barge – first time ever.
Tuesday  12 April 2016   / Hour 3, Block D:   Robert Zimmerman, behindtheblack, in re: Collapse and fall of Russian space?
 
Hour Four
Tuesday  12 April 2016 / Hour 4, Block A:  The Fellowship: The Literary Lives of the Inklings: J.R.R. Tolkien, C. S. Lewis, Owen Barfield, Charles Williams by Philip Zaleski and Carol Zaleski, PART II OF III.  (Segment 5 of 12)
Tuesday  12 April 2016 / Hour 4, Block B:  The Fellowship: The Literary Lives of the Inklings: J.R.R. Tolkien, C. S. Lewis, Owen Barfield, Charles Williams by Philip Zaleski and Carol Zaleski, PART II OF III.  (Segment 6 of 12)
Tuesday  12 April 2016 / Hour 4, Block C: The Fellowship: The Literary Lives of the Inklings: J.R.R. Tolkien, C. S. Lewis, Owen Barfield, Charles Williams by Philip Zaleski and Carol Zaleski, PART II OF III.  (Segment 7 of 12)
Tuesday  12 April 2016 / Hour 4, Block D:   The Fellowship: The Literary Lives of the Inklings: J.R.R. Tolkien, C. S. Lewis, Owen Barfield, Charles Williams by Philip Zaleski and Carol Zaleski, PART II OF III.  (Segment 8 of 12)