Photo, left: VE Day - photo of London; can’t find Moscow on google, but Moscow was at least as celebratory - despite the unspeakable horror of the Nazi siege of Leningrad and the massive loss of life during the war.
JOHN BATCHELOR SHOW
Co-host: Larry Kudlow, CNBC senior advisor; & Cumulus Media radio
Hour One
Tuesday 31 March 2015  / Hour 1, Block A:  David Malpass, Encima Global, in re: [LK: foreign profits are lousy because the rest of the world in is recession, but domestic profit are good.  I'd by {certain} TIPS]. "Cloudy with a chance of slower growth." It’s been slow for six years – best was 2.4%, which is very weak. Now, the nominal growth, incl inflation . . . there's less GDP going around. Yellin explains: What did you expect after such a deep financial crisis in 2008" – ergo, the Fed is blaming it on 2008, which I don’t buy..  Ben Bernanke's Brookings blog:  How low real interest rats are – because of economic slow growth worldwide and low inflation; so it’ll probably continue in this sluggish pattern.  DM: I basically agree: Europe and Japan have basically changed their monetary policy omitting booms & busts, so inflation rate is slow. Thus you pay a lot fo future earnings.   Lower inflation and lower growth does not work for other countries, e.g., Brazil . . . .  The QE monetary experiment didn’t work here, and won’t work in Europe and Japan. All of us need lighter regulation and lower taxes. The stumbling block is Pres Obama, who hates overseas profits.
Tuesday 31 March 2015  / Hour 1, Block B: David Malpass, Encima Global, in re: Purchasers are holding back – we have a superovercomplicated tax code, no move to sort it out. This works kinda OK for the US, esp if you have  a job, but not for other countries.  Biz capX – barely above the prior peak in late '07, early '08.  We’re not getting heavy-machinery-building.  Business isn't hiring enough people, drawing them back into the labor force – so we could afford all the Federal expenditures. Coming: Burwell decision on Obamacare; if it wins, that'll open t he door; also, Paul Ryan will weigh in with a tax-cut plan, probably in June.  DM: my guess is that govt will get bigger faster than you can bring in slow-growth changes. CFPB – Consumer Finance Protection Board – has got out from under checks and balances.  The Fed holds $4.5 trillion in assets – will do so for a decade or more!  LK: Why doesn’t the Fed just let their bond purchases run off? That'd be an orderly way out. If they keep reinvesting the interest, that'll mess up the money mkt.  DM: will buy a trillion dollars in bonds just to keep up  - they love the power.  The world may slow down underneath them.
Tuesday 31 March 2015  / Hour 1, Block C: James Taranto, Wall Street Journal, in re: We're ready for Hillary. Two young people headed to Iowa to prepare for Mrs Clinton's announcement.  Will set up HQ in Brooklyn, New York; will announce in April. On the debate stage, not votes, just repartee; O'Malley is good and Jas Webb is ferocious. She'll be well prepared and have little to say.  There'll be constant polling that may reveal "anyone but Hillary."  I think Ted Cruz set a new gold standard of announcement speeches at Liberty University  everyone else will look staid and dull and boring in comparison.  Hillary was all those on TV recently, revealed that she'd wiped her email server clean and looked shifty. Doesn’t have her husband's political skills and won only by five points.  GOP has an embarrassment of riches, each with a weakness. Jeb Bush is strong except for his family name. Committee to Unleash Prosperity.  None of these fellows has clear specifics yet; the debates will be v important and natl security will play a strong role – a big weakness for Hillary.  Note James Baker – always been anti-Israel. HRC will have no choice but to go left. Min wage is popular. Obamacare: tweet on the fifth anniversary of its signing and she fully endorsed it. Has made noises about income inequality; will have to make Elizabeth Warren-type sounds, plus women's issues & culture wars.  LK: The big issues will be take-home pay, economic growth and the Mideast mess – I think she's damaged goods.
Tuesday 31 March 2015  / Hour 1, Block D: LouAnn Hammond, DrivingtheNation.com, in re: unveiling of the Cadillac CT6 on Tuesday at a Brooklyn GM auto show.   Luxury vehicles make up 50% of the profit. The CT6 is a beautiful care, going up against Mercedes, Audi, BMW, Lincoln; working on a fifteen-year plan. Pres Johan de Nysschen says, "We have to get it working within ten years."  I saw the unveiling, magnetic ride control (my fave tech), 13 types of materials to bld the car; it's taken the engineers a long time to bring it forward. Johan de Nysschen was the president of Audi; brought all of Cadillac to New York for the pinnacle of premium.  CT6 may come n at $60K, top out at $90K.  LK: I had the hybrid Escalade half a dozen years ago – was the worst car I've ever driven; spent as much time in the shop as it did on the road. LAH: It'll have diesel gasoline, twin turbine, hybrids, many options. 
How a Former Audi Guy Plans to Spend $12 Billion Reviving Caddy  - Johan de Nysschen was plenty skeptical when General Motors Co. asked him to run Cadillac. De Nysschen helped make Audi a real contender in the U.S. and had recently joined Nissan’s Infiniti. Why jump to Cadillac, a brand that actually sold fewer vehicles last year despite a boom in luxury automobiles? De Nysschen spent hours on the phone with GM President Dan Ammann to make sure this was no vanity project. The clincher: GM agreed to invest heavily in Cadillac, eventually budgeting $12 billion for the next five years, or more than a quarter of the sum being spent on new models companywide. Ammann & Co. also pledged to give de Nysschen enough time and people to get the job done as part of a plan to split Cadillac into a company that’s now based in New York. GM is counting on Cadillac to drive profits in the next decade. Luxury cars make up just 10 percent of the 100 million cars sold globally every year but haul in 50 percent of the profits. GM will be less able to rely on fat truck margins to keep it solidly in the black because tightening fuel economy standards in the U.S. could
Hour Two
Tuesday 31 March 2015  / Hour 2, Block A: Stephen F. Cohen, NYU & Princeton professor Emeritus; author: Soviet Fates and Lost Alternatives: From Stalinism to the New Cold War, & The Victims Return: Survivors of the Gulag after Stalin; in re:  dragoon . . .   Run major weapons systems by road through Eastern Europe.  US troops now to hold (via the 173d Airborne).  Jeb Bush indicates that he'd lean forward on Article V. "There needs to be clarity in Moscow that we'll" defend the one alliance, NATO, that  . . .   BBC on Russian volunteers in Eastern Ukraine. 
What Poroshenko, Merkel, et al., agreed on has been gutted, so . . .  Germany, Italy and France are against this anti-Minsk campaign, and only Washington can have done all this [destroy Minsk II]. Last week 48 members of the House voted against sending weapons to Kiev.  The War Party has a calendar. An imminent re-examination of the front line. New Russian offensive to defeat Kiev.  . . .  What's astounding is that there seems to be an intentional push toward real war and there's no opposition in the US.  This has never occurred before.  / Strobe Talbott asked for the Javelin weapons system.  Using Article V is a call for war.
 
US WAR PARTY  Top Republicans visit Ukraine in push for arms  Top Republicans met .with Ukrainian leaders in Kiev on Monday to offer their support and intensify pressure on President Obama to provide the . . .    US Congressman urges Obama to provide arms to Ukraine.   Jeb Bush: Go to war if needed to uphold NATO | WashingtonExaminer.com   Jeb Bush said in an interview on Monday that the U.S. should be willing to use military force 
Tuesday 31 March 2015  / Hour 2, Block B: Stephen F. Cohen, NYU & Princeton professor Emeritus & author, in re:  Gen Wesley Clark ["who can always be counted on the take the most militaristic, pro-war, anti-Russian statements] has just returned form the front, given a remarkable speech at the Atlantic Council: "War will start between Orthodox Easter and VE Day" – an effort by Obama to spoil Russia's sacred secular holiday, the seventieth anniversary of VE Day.  Is the plan to provoke Russia into an invasion – huge troops, parachutists, tanks, horror? this is what Washington sounds like to Moscow.  One piece of wisdom that 's prevailed in Moscow: not allow itself to be provoked into an actual invasion – but now that may no longer hold.  . .  . This is about introducing major weapons systems.
US Forces to Hold Exercises in Ukraine  The United States plans to send soldiers to Ukraine in April for training exercises with units of the country's national guard. Ukraine'sInterior . . .    US army personnel to train National Guardsmen in Lviv region
Tuesday 31 March 2015  / Hour 2, Block C: Stephen F. Cohen, NYU & Princeton professor Emeritus & author, in re: The Rada has voted against Minsk II. Gen Clark recommended: We must prepare, must arm; prepare Pope AFB with an airlift of lethal weapons – drones, missiles, night vision ; defeat T-90tanks coming across the Donbass. Says he Russian invasion that stopped at the Debaltsevea pocket was a "failure," but intended to take the whole oblast, and Mariupol.   Says the Russian war plan will 1. Use terror with Spetsnaz disguised as Russian workers – this has already been done, were the GRU; 2. Volunteers: Spetsnaz as volunteers; 3 Then call for peacekeepers (Russian mil); 4 De-escalation with Russia in charge.  Clark says Putin has planned this ab initio, while Putin was still serving Yeltsin.  / Is this the best thinking in Washington?  Clark has the ear of Congress. He's a spent political and military figure; while running NATO nearly got us in a world war in Serbia.  The only thing that'll save the current Kiev regime is a war with Russia. 
RUSSIA WAR PARTY  How Ukraine rebels rely on Russians  Who are the Russian "volunteers" serving with pro-Russian rebel forces in eastern Ukraine? The BBC's Olga Ivshina obtained a rare interview.   Russian Tanks and Fighters Enter Eastern Ukraine, Says Kiev  22 Russian tanks crossed into Ukraine's separatist-held eastern territories over the weekend, as pro-Moscow forces continue to seep into . . .    22 Russian tanks enter Ukraine on March 28.  Charter 97.
Tuesday 31 March 2015  / Hour 2, Block D: Stephen F. Cohen, NYU & Princeton professor Emeritus & author, in re:  The war window is April 12 to May 9. Where's the opposition? None visible here so far.  Last week Katrina van den Heuvel (my wife) and I were in Washington to speak with Congressmen to encourage discussion and Congressional hearings.  The Dems say they lack the power to do so. (Hah.)  Rand Paul said he saw Nuland and Obamistas in Ukraine handing out cookies and egging on the opposition.  Gen Clark and the Atlantic Council are nobodies; Russia knows this; a fierce debate in Russia on what to do. Is the clock approaching midnight? Should they act now?   
NATO WAR PARTY  NATO chief: convoy of US troops tests skills and bridges  BUCHAREST, Romania— NATO's supreme commander in Europe said Tuesday that a convoy of U.S. troops crossing eastern Europe is . . .   Exercise will test NATO's new quick-reaction team  STUTTGART, Germany — NATO will begin testing the readiness of its new “spearhead” reaction force on Wednesday, marking the start of a . . .    Former NATO Chief Clark Predicts New Offensive in Ukraine  The Russians and Russian-backed forces in Ukraine are poised to launch a new offensive, probably between Orthodox Easter and before V-E . . .   German military no longer standing at ease as security fears grow
Hour Three
Tuesday 31 March 2015  / Hour 3, Block A:   Salena Zito, Pittsburgh Tribune-Review & Pirates fan, in re: Click here for link  Ohio governor Kasich seriously considers presidential run   COLUMBUS, Ohio — Republican Gov. John Kasich said Monday he'll decide soon whether to make a run for the White House in 2016, saying he knows he would need to act swiftly to raise money and organize a campaign.  He said he's trying . . .
Click here for link:   Martina White made history Tuesday night by winning a special election for a Pennsylvania House seat — the first time a Republican won an open General Assembly seat in Philadelphia in 25 years.  White, 26, became the 120th Republican in the House, part of the largest GOP majority in the state since 1958 and including a state Senate that increased its majority in historic numbers in 2014. Down-ballot races matter. These elected officials are the most attuned politicians with whom average people ever interact; they focus on voters' core values, and are far removed from the harsher rhetoric of national politics.
Tuesday 31 March 2015  / Hour 3, Block B:  Seb Gorka, Marine Corps University, thegorkabriefing.com & Breitbart, in re:  Taqfiri jihadists.   http://thegorkabriefing.com
Tuesday 31 March 2015  / Hour 3, Block C:   Jeff Gerth, Propublica, in re:  Private Emails Reveal Ex-Clinton Aide’s Secret Spy Network  Emails disclosed by a hacker show a close family friend was funneling intelligence about the crisis in Libya directly to the Secretary of State’s private account starting before the Benghazi attack.   Starting weeks before Islamic militants attacked the U.S. diplomatic outpost in Benghazi, Libya, longtime Clinton family confidante Sidney Blumenthal supplied intelligence to then Secretary of State Hillary Clinton gathered by  a secret network that included a former CIA clandestine service officer, according to hacked emails from Blumenthal’s account.
The emails, which were posted on the internet in 2013, also show that Blumenthal and another close Clinton associate discussed contracting with a retired Army special operations commander to put operatives on the ground near the Libya-Tunisia border while Libya’s civil war raged in 2011.   Blumenthal’s emails to Clinton, which were directed to her private email account, include at least a dozen detailed reports on events on the deteriorating political and security climate in Libya as well as events in other nations. They came to light after a hacker broke into Blumenthal’s account and have taken on new significance in light of the disclosure that she conducted State Department and personal business exclusively over an email server that she controlled and kept secret from State Department officials and which only recently was discovered by congressional investigators.  The contents of that account are now being sought by a congressional inquiry into . . .  (1 of 2)
Tuesday 31 March 2015  / Hour 3, Block D: Jeff Gerth, Propublica, in re:  Private Emails Reveal Ex-Clinton Aide’s Secret Spy Network  Emails disclosed by a hacker show a close family friend was funneling intelligence about the crisis in Libya directly to the Secretary of State’s private account starting before the Benghazi attack.   Starting weeks before Islamic militants attacked the U.S. diplomatic outpost in Benghazi, Libya, longtime Clinton family confidante Sidney Blumenthal supplied intelligence to then Secretary of State Hillary Clinton gathered by  a secret network that included a former CIA clandestine service officer, according to hacked emails from Blumenthal’s account.
The emails, which were posted on the internet in 2013, also show that Blumenthal and another close Clinton associate discussed contracting with a retired Army special operations commander to put operatives on the ground near the Libya-Tunisia border while Libya’s civil war raged in 2011.   Blumenthal’s emails to Clinton, which were directed to her private email account, include at least a dozen detailed reports on events on the deteriorating political and security climate in Libya as well as events in other nations. They came to light after a hacker broke into Blumenthal’s account and have taken on new significance in light of the disclosure that she conducted State Department and personal business exclusively over an email server that she controlled and kept secret from State Department officials and which only recently was discovered by congressional investigators.  The contents of that account are now being sought by a congressional inquiry into . . .  (2 of 2)
Hour Four
Tuesday 31 March 2015  / Hour 4, Block A:  Robert Zimmerman, behindtheblack.com, & Bill Farrand, Space Science Institute; in re:  Opportunity - 1. Mission, performance, the marathon: NASA's Opportunity Rover Completes a Martian Marathon / 2.  The current memory challenges  http://news.discovery.com/space/bad-memories-mars-rover-suffers-more-amnesia-events-150331.htm  / 3.   Oppy exploration, the new budget speculation http://www.sciencetimes.com/articles/5107/20150331/nasa-to-cancel-mars-opportunity-rover-and-lunar-reconnaissance-orbiter-s-missions.htm  /  and the new explorations: Rover Opportunity Has Found Some Odd Mars Rocks    Veteran Mars rover Opportunity is on the verge of completing a marathon . . .  (1 of 2)
Tuesday 31 March 2015  / Hour 4, Block B: Robert Zimmerman, behindtheblack.com, & Bill Farrand, Space Science Institute; in re:  Opportunity - 1. Mission, performance, the marathon: NASA's Opportunity Rover Completes a Martian Marathon / 2.  The current memory challenges  http://news.discovery.com/space/bad-memories-mars-rover-suffers-more-amnesia-events-150331.htm  / 3.   Oppy exploration, the new budget speculation http://www.sciencetimes.com/articles/5107/20150331/nasa-to-cancel-mars-opportunity-rover-and-lunar-reconnaissance-orbiter-s-missions.htm  /  and the new explorations: Rover Opportunity Has Found Some Odd Mars Rocks    Veteran Mars rover Opportunity is on the verge of completing a marathon . . .  (2 of 2)
Tuesday 31 March 2015  / Hour 4, Block C: John Nicolson, SNP candidate for Westminster parliament from East Dunbartonshire; in re: Nicola Sturgeon demands end of £26,000 benefits cap  The SNP leader says she wants welfare to increase by more than inflation each year and her party could still vote with Labour even if Trident is renewed.   Tories and Labour hit by early election setbacks  In Scotland the campaign kicked off with former prime minister Gordon Brown leading efforts to win back lost Labour votes in Glasgow, where SNP First Minister Nicola Sturgeon was also campaigning.  Meanwhile, Scottish Conservative leader Ruth Davidson appeared to admit her party could not win a majority in the UK and urged a minority government instead. (1 of 2)
Tuesday 31 March 2015  / Hour 4, Block D: John Nicolson, SNP candidate for Westminster parliament from East Dunbartonshire; in re: Nicola Sturgeon demands end of £26,000 benefits cap  The SNP leader says she wants welfare to increase by more than inflation each year and her party could still vote with Labour even if Trident is renewed.   Tories and Labour hit by early election setbacks  In Scotland the campaign kicked off with former prime minister Gordon Brown leading efforts to win back lost Labour votes in Glasgow, where SNP First Minister Nicola Sturgeon was also campaigning.  Meanwhile, Scottish Conservative leader Ruth Davidson appeared to admit her party could not win a majority in the UK and urged a minority government instead. (2 of 2)
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