The John Batchelor Show

Tuesday 26 January 2021

Air Date: 
January 26, 2021

JOHN BATCHELOR SHOW
 
Hour One
Tuesday 26 January 2021 / Hour 1, Block A:   Simon Constable: @RealConstable; Barron’s; in re: “Could Nicola Sturgeon try to ban Boris Johnson from visiting Scotland?”  The vaccine isn't being distributed quickly enough; this is extremely slow.   The lockdown this time is really harsh. The end-date keeps being revised.  All this adds up to public displeasure; also, Alex Salmon was accused of misdeeds and Sturgeon was said not to have responded correctly. Ergo, Sturgeon came up with a border closure to deflect attention. Poulati0n is frustrated and annoyed at being locked in.  . . . The army could distribute vaccines very well, but the pols decline to allow that.
Tuesday 26 January 2021 / Hour 1, Block B:   Mailee Smith, @MaileeSmith,  Staff Attorney & Director of Labor Policy, Illinois; in re: Chicago teachers’s union vetoed Biden’s effort to open schools.  WSJ: “Holding students hostage.”  Among other concerns, what about the children’s mental health? Chicago teachers regularly strong-arm the schools, usually for political goals having nothing to do with the children’s well-being.   . . . This is a direct power play.
Tuesday 26 January 2021 / Hour 1, Block C:   Clint Bolick, @lawyer4liberty, Associate Justice of the Arizona Supreme Court; Hoover; author, Unshackled: Freeing America’s K through 12 Educational System;Washington Examiner; in re: Our nineteenth-century school system is deeply broken.  Warehouses in which children are taught. So many technological advances allow us to deliver excellent education to pretty much every student in America. Zip code puts you in your school, at desks lined in rows; from 8 AM to 3 PM. 
      The notion of one size-fits-all school: we favor reforms—decentralizati0n and deregulation.  Schools have autonomy to hire and fire as they see fit. Pay the best teachers more and fire the poor teachers. State-run schools that are similar to charter schools. Also: get rid of the middleman.  School districts absorb fifty cents of every dollar, stifle innovation and creativity. Have money reach the schools not via the state but via the students.  We could deliver the best teachers to the children.   Rich parents have formed educational pods. A benefit of what we propose: the best-performing teachers could double their salary.
Tuesday 26 January 2021 / Hour 1, Block D:   John Bolton: @AmbJohnBolton, American Foundation for Security and Freedom (fasfreedom.com); author, The Room Where It Happened;in re: There are provisions in the Constitution that make sense only if the person being impeached is the sitting president.  There are different examples in England, long ago – Edmund Burke, e.g.— but the US Constitution is clear. What the Democrats get from this: as long as Republicans argue among themselves about Trump, those rifts are harder to heal.  And the more this goes on, the less time spent on China. China is the existential national security threat to the US in this century.  With both Trump and Biden I see no developed strategy. Time is ticking away.  . . .  It was a positive development to invite Taiwan’s foreign minister to the inauguration. Need an interagency review of strategy, have it done in thirty days.   The appointees to Biden’s administration are a reprise of the Obama administration – a sign to China that it’s weak.
 
Hour Two
Tuesday 26 January 2021 / Hour 2, Block A:  Elizabeth Peek, @LizPeek, Fox News and TheHill; in re:  
Tuesday 26 January 2021 / Hour 2, Block B:  Elizabeth Peek, @LizPeek, Fox News and TheHill; in re:  
Tuesday 26 January 2021 / Hour 2, Block C:  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: New Zealand has signed a major trade deal with China. Helps break up Five Eyes (which needs reform). Kiwi population overwhelmingly supports staying in CANZUS.   Australia is much better prepared militarily now than it was in 1940.  Cutting-edge technology across the spectrum.  Replenished navy; hypersonic missiles.  Btw, Japan is really capable.   PRC bellicosity and cruelty, exposed in Xinjiang and Tibet, among other places in China. 
Tuesday 26 January 2021 / Hour 2, Block D:  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:   
 
Hour Three
Tuesday 26 January 2021 / Hour 3, Block A:  Joseph Sternberg: @josephsternberg, @WSJOpinion; Political Economics column; WSJ editorial board;  in re:
Tuesday 26 January 2021 / Hour 3, Block B:  Joseph Sternberg: @josephsternberg, @WSJOpinion; Political Economics column; WSJ editorial board;  in re:
Tuesday 26 January 2021 / Hour 3, Block C:  Hotel Mars, episode n.  #HotelMars.   Anatoly Zak, @RussianSpaceWeb,  RussianSpaceWeb.com; author, Russia in Space: The Past Explained, the Future Explored;  in re:  ISS service module plagued by a leak.  Zvezda. 
Tuesday 26 January 2021 / Hour 3, Block D:  Ken Croswell  @sciam, @ScienceMagazine; in re: The origin of all the gold in the universe.  From the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, January 26 issue:  https://www.pnas.org/content/118/4/e2026110118
 
Hour Four
Tuesday 26 January 2021 / Hour 4, Block A:  Black Earth: The Holocaust as History and Warning, by Timothy Snyder  1/12
Tuesday 26 January 2021 / Hour 4, Block B:  Black Earth: The Holocaust as History and Warning, by Timothy Snyder  2/12
Tuesday 26 January 2021 / Hour 4, Block C:  Black Earth: The Holocaust as History and Warning, by Timothy Snyder  3/12
Tuesday 26 January 2021 / Hour 4, Block D:  Black Earth: The Holocaust as History and Warning, by Timothy Snyder  4/12