The John Batchelor Show

Tuesday 17 November 2020

Air Date: 
November 17, 2020

JOHN BATCHELOR SHOW
 
Hour One
Tuesday 17 November 2020 / Hour 1, Block A:  Sadanand Dhume, Sadanand Dhume, @dhume, AEI & WSJ; in re:, in re: Modhi using his charisma to bld a relationship with Trump, but also common interests; Trump legacy: deepened defense ties, signed on to three foundational defense agreements, and what the Indians liked was what the Trump Adm had no questions about human right. BJP has taken a harder turn in the last four years.
Tamil Brahmin descent:  Kamala Harris’s mother was born in India, moved to California at 19; comes from a small but successful community that’s thriven in the sciences. In irony, the Tamil Brahmins have had to emigrate because of affirmative action limits.
Tuesday 17 November 2020 / Hour 1, Block B:  Sadanand Dhume, @dhume, AEI & WSJ; in re:  The Quad—Japan, Australia, India, US; the political will and diplomatic skill of Pres Biden will determine how this works out. Certainly credit to Pres Trump for strengthening it. Abi, Modhi and Trump have all taken a pro-active stand.  How will they approach China in future? Potential weak link may be Japan because Abe has moved on.   Ladakh. We cannot trust China to become more democratic as it becomes richer; it's a competitor, and the only [language] it understands is power.  If Biden understands this, all will go well; if not, we’re in for a rocky ride. Indian view of Afghanistan: last time a nation left Afgh quickly, the blowback was felt acutely by Indians in Kashmir.   China has signed an economic pact, RCEP, with a dozen-plus other Asian nations, not including India; danger that it may be locked out of Asian markets.  
Tuesday 17 November 2020 / Hour 1, Block C: Bill McGurn, @wjmcgurn, @WSJOpinion,WSJ editorial page & Main Street column, in re:   Children losing a year of school. Teachers’s unions all companionable with the Democratic party since Jimmy Carter. Have a lot of delegates at Democratic conventions, are well organized.  Both for big government.   All genuine education reform begins with reducing the [stranglehold] of the teachers’s unions. Biden has four union members on his transition team. We’ll just throw federal dollars at the unions.  Vaccinations.  
The teachers’s unions are really against reopening schools, irrespective of vaccines; are hiding behind health. Parents are getting a taste of what giving teachers’s unions power over the schools means—private schools and Catholic schools are open now; public schools are not; parents are fit to be tied. In DC there was a special program for high-need kids, about 7,000; the teachers’s union killed the program.  Are trying to destroy charter schools: condemning children to life on the margins. 
Tuesday 17 November 2020 / Hour 1, Block D: Lorenzo Fiori: Direttore Generale Ansaldo Fondazione, in re: Italy is facing the second wave. Lorenzo Speranza: The next ten days will be crucial; goal is to protect Christmas.  A week after the system began to operate, the number folding into high level of risk is increasing.  Campagna, Lombardy, Tuscany, all in red.  Numbers still high, but look stable.  Found that the corona virus has been present in Italy since perhaps September 2019. The official first patient in Italy was in 2020.  Today, no limits on going to work, and students from three to eleven go to school.  Initially, most Italians had not been affected by the virus but were watching; now, it's all around us and people have friends and relatives affected. Generates a sort of distress.
 
Hour Two
Tuesday 17 November 2020 / Hour 2, Block A:  Joseph Sternberg: @josephsternberg, @WSJOpinion; Political Economics column; WSJ editorial board;  in re:  Boris Johnson; all eyes on December 3, when lockdown is to end and not be extended . . . Tolerated with a limit.  Full- court press to make sure BoJo doesn’t waver. Melodrama at No. 10: Dominic Cummings has been axed, while PM’s fiancee’s voice is loud; and Allegra, a communications director.    Reflects big divisions and uncertainties in the govt and in BoJo’s mind: how do you balance public health with the economy?  What's the best approach to Brexit? Prepare for extremely gloomy virus numbers. Once pandemic is over, 22% of doctors intend to leave the NHS, having seen too much death. The UK has a real resilience problem right now.
Tuesday 17 November 2020 / Hour 2, Block B:  Joseph Sternberg: @josephsternberg, @WSJOpinion; Political Economics column; WSJ editorial board;  in re: BoJo is definitely trying to “save Christmas,” albeit without the rowdy office parties; and no one can imagine police invading homes on Christmas Day to check on parties.  
Tuesday 17 November 2020 / Hour 2, Block C:   New World Report.Joseph Humire @jmhumire, @securefreesoc, and Senator Maria Fernanda Cabal @MariaFdaCabal, in re: Peru’s congress selects centrist lawmaker ; elder statesman to become the country’s third president within days.  Highest flu disaster and economic  catastrophe—and political crisis from the long shadow of corruption. Tumultuous situation, demonstrations: man grievance is corruption Dangerous because it puts forth the possibility of a strongman to come to power and move to socialist policies.  “Permanent moral incapacity.”  Colombia has the same story of violence and corruption.  Same Brazilian company trying to bribe in Colombia as did in Argentina???  It has close ties to Chavez/Morales; seems to be orchestrated.  
Tuesday 17 November 2020 / Hour 2, Block D:  New World Report.Joseph Humire @jmhumire, @securefreesoc, and Senator Maria Fernanda Cabal @MariaFdaCabal, in re: Hezbollah, aluminum nitrate, threats to Jew: a most credible threat; from an anonymous tip from UK; sent to Brazil and capitals of Triborder Area, esp Paraguay and ___; also Chile. “Technicians” arriving in Caracas by the planeload.  Mohammed Hamdar caught in Peru in 2014 with nitroglycerine, now released from prison. 
Gideon Rachman on Biden’s having said, “America must lead”; Rachman says, Let America merely participate, as the world has moved on.  Colombia is among the US’s best partners; let the US help us with our economic barriers so we can be of more help to the US.   A lot of Latin American countries are weak just now, and need commercial exchange preferences.  Trump was prioritizing: “Growth of Americas” program. Will Biden cede Latin America to China, Iran, or Russia to “keep the peace”?  That doesn't work out.
 
Hour Three
Tuesday 17 November 2020 / Hour 3, Block A:  Liz Peek, @LizPeek, Fox News and TheHill; in re: The US economy after the election looks surprisingly like the US economy before:  was 6.9% unemployment, which is _____.  Hiring will continue at a pretty good clip; NFIB small bz routinely surveys, has been and still is pretty optimistic. Good numbers for November, and  down number for unemployment.   A small downdraft in consumer sentiment.  Neither GOP nor Democrats have been optimistic.  Am worried that small bz owners will look at ramping-up of regulations under Biden, and increase of minimum wage, which will slow growth, All this is secondary to covid. Positive that we’ll have a gridlocked Congress. The markets are saying that they know we like to spend money.  Intact; housing (highest optimism ever in bldg new homes); other industries doing very well. Salubrious effect of rising home prices. Am basically bullish, but somewhat concerned.   Vaccines factored in to market yet? Don’t know.    Normality by Q3 of 2021.
New York was overbuilding boutique hotels: over half are seriously in arrears; one Hilton owner just handed the keys to the bond holders. Tourism in New York has been very badly hurt—dunhh. Data that 300,000 city dwellers have moved to Long Island, Westchester, and much farther afield.  
Tuesday 17 November 2020 / Hour 3, Block B:  Liz Peek, @LizPeek, Fox News and TheHill; in re: Mrs Pelosi was rebuked by her own party; now in doubt if she can continue effectively as leader of the Democrats. With 213 for the GOP, there’s not effective majority.   Bien’s multi-trillion-dollar bill probably won’t get through.   Biden is the best of all possible worlds, as nothing untoward can go forward. Changing labor laws in a profound way would seriously hamper growth in parts of the country. A brake on Joe Biden. He stayed in his basement rather than offend the far left or the center or right of his party. He has an establishment tether on what he can do.  He calls himself a “transactional” and “transitional” president. His campaign mgr has been named deputy chief of staff.  
Tuesday 17 November 2020 / Hour 3, Block C:  Bill Whalen: @Hooverwhalen, @HooverInst,Area 45 blog, and the Goodfellows videocast in re:  Cheyenne.  
Tuesday 17 November 2020 / Hour 3, Block D: Scott Powell, Executive Vice President, Investor Relations & Chief Financial Officer of Volition America, Inc. (VNX), Volition.com; in re: Blood test at Texas A&M, currently in veterinary tests.   High 80s success in curing certain canine cancers.  Also in Taiwan National University hospital: lung and colorectal cancer early detection.  Working on a test for after someone tests positive for any flu, discern who’s most vulnerable going into crisis.  
 
Hour Four
Tuesday 17 November 2020 / Hour 4, Block A:  Gregory R Copley: Defense and Foreign Affairs; Gregory R Copley, The New Total War of the Twenty-first Century and the Trigger of the Fear Pandemic,in re: The status of the powers—esp US, China, EU – at present. . .  . US is disintegrating as a global strategic power. Two years? Ten years? EU is also moribund. Its recent negotiations with the UK on Brexit—bullying.  UK has much better trade opportunities with Canada, Australia, New Zealand – enormous. The EU , like China, going into totally unproductive policies.   The whole architecture of the world is changing; a scramble for power. Yes, conflict will abound. World moving from a defensive mil doctrine to an offensive one.  Technologies of war-fighting are changing.  
Tuesday 17 November 2020 / Hour 4, Block B:  Gregory R Copley: Defense and Foreign Affairs; Gregory R Copley, The New Total War of the Twenty-first Century and the Trigger of the Fear Pandemic,in re: Ethiopia. 
Tuesday 17 November 2020 / Hour 4, Block C:   Pleasure Bound: Victorian Sex Rebels and the New Eroticism,by Deborah Lutz
A smart, provocative account of the erotic current running just beneath the surface of a stuffy and stifling Victorian London.
At the height of the Victorian era, a daring group of artists and thinkers defied the reigning obsession with propriety, testing the boundaries of sexual decorum in their lives and in their work. Dante Gabriel Rossetti exhumed his dead wife to pry his only copy of a manuscript of his poems from her coffin. The legendary explorer Richard Burton wrote how-to manuals on sex positions and livened up the drawing room with stories of eroticism in the Middle East. Algernon Charles Swinburne visited flagellation brothels and wrote pornography amid his poetry. By embracing and exploring the taboo, these iconoclasts produced some of the most captivating art, literature, and ideas of their day.
As thought-provoking as it is electric, Pleasure Boundunearths the desires of the men and women who challenged buttoned-up Victorian mores to promote erotic freedom. These bohemians formed two loosely overlapping societies―the Cannibal Club and the Aesthetes―to explore their fascinations with sexual taboo, from homosexuality to the eroticization of death. Known as much for their flamboyant personal lives as for their controversial masterpieces, they created a scandal-provoking counterculture that paved the way for such later figures as Gustav Klimt, Virginia Woolf, and Jean Genet.
In this stunning exposé of the Victorian London we thought we knew, Deborah Lutz takes us beyond the eyebrow-raising practices of these sex rebels, revealing how they uncovered troubles that ran beneath the surface of the larger social fabric: the struggle for women’s emancipation, the dissolution of formal religions, and the pressing need for new forms of sexual expression. 8 pages four-color and 5 black-and-white illustrations.   https://www.amazon.com/Pleasure-Bound-Victorian-Rebels-Eroticism/dp/0393...12?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1483319863&sr=1-2&keywords=victorians+lutz
Tuesday 17 November 2020 / Hour 4, Block D:  Pleasure Bound: Victorian Sex Rebels and the New Eroticism,by Deborah Lutz