The John Batchelor Show

Tuesday 4 August 2015

Air Date: 
August 04, 2015

Map, left: Russia and the Arctic: Strategic Resources Exploited Using Existing and  New Infrastructure on the Siberian Northern Sea Route (NSR) Update  Sept 2014: The Barents Observer reported that Russia's "Northern Fleet is sending soldiers and firepower to the New Siberian Islands" (between the East Siberian Sea and the Laptev Sea, map above) in order to "protect offshore oil and gas resources in the area and keep an eye on the growing number of ships sailing along the Northern Sea Route [NSR]." -- an article by Keir Giles published by the Defence Academy of the UK
JOHN BATCHELOR SHOW
Co-host: Larry Kudlow, CNBC senior advisor; & Cumulus Media radio
Hour One
Tuesday  4 August 2015  / Hour 1, Block A: James Pethokoukis, columnist & AEI, in re: 
Tuesday  4 August 2015  / Hour 1, Block B: James Pethokoukis, columnist & AEI, in re: The data I use are from CBO, Mark Feldstein (economist), and other open sources.  It's not true that incomes have been flat for decades – an effort to discredit free-market policies  they’re up by 40% or 50%.  :Soak the rich" and one-percenters: not true that only the rich got richer in these decades; rather, everyone's better off than they were in the 1980s. But the case that it's inequality over everything else is simply not true; large media are complicit in wanting more regulation more taxation, more spending.  Amazing that the Democrats have been in power over this period while the Democrats continue to blame George Bush.  Looks as though capitalism in on trial for he foibles of he Obama Administration.  Someone has to 'fess up that the worst recovery in seventy years has been under Pres Obama.  LK: I'm a supply-sider but worry about the bottom 20%, about entitlements that diminish one's intention to work, and the like.  In the UK, a landslide for the conservatives. 
Tuesday  4 August 2015  / Hour 1, Block C: James Pethokoukis, columnist & AEI, in re: Scott Walker, Jeb Bush and Marco Rubio; supply-siders? Yes - wants 4% growth target, originated by Bush and adopted by [other] GOP candidates.  Can Scott Walker sell the American people on this? Conceivable? They all believe that taxes, regulations, and prosperity driven by new ideas and entrepreneurs' taking a risk.  Also: school choice, education reform, charter schools. The American Federation of Teachers lost a fight with Chris Christie of NJ.  Marco Rubio had a tax program with Mike Lee with which Larry Kudlow was dissatisfied: the bz side was good, the $1.5 bil tax credit was not. I saw him in Stamford, CT, a few weeks ago; he never mentioned his tax plan.  Rubio would eliminate all corp taxes, and eliminate taxes [on? relating to?] schoolchildren. People can draw their own conclusions on Donald Trump; you make the case for you.   Limit tax credits to families with seven or more children . . . Growth, innovation, entrepreneurship: slash the corp tax budget. Mrs Clinton could throw the entire GOP a curve ball if she [simply took up Pres Obama's current budget on which he's not taking action]. Kiddy table on Thursday: What plans to keep the US as a pre-eminent, technologically advanced nation as it was in the XX Century – no "decline; China rising"; rather, let us stay the pre-eminent economic and military superpower of the next 100 years. The whole country is thirsty for leadership that can do this.  Mr Trump's cap reads: Make America great again!
Tuesday  4 August 2015  / Hour 1, Block D: Larry Kudlow, CNBC senior advisor; & Cumulus Media radio, in re:  Joe Biden is a wonderful person whom I like a great deal and respect enormously for  his personal courage.  However, I'm not sure why he's running except because of Mrs Clinton's criminality.  Biden made the famous budget deals with Boehner, is well liked in the Senate. he has no staff or fundraising operation.  Not easy. I doubt Pres Obama wd get involved in a Biden-Clinton contest.  Dunno if Joe Biden has the discipline . . .  My personal belief, without proof: Valerie Jarrett has from Day One done all she could to sabotage Mrs Clinton's candidacy .   Thursday: let the GOP ignore Clinton and Trump – get your message out.
Tuesday  4 August 2015  / Hour 2, Block A: Stephen F. Cohen, NYU & Princeton professor Emeritus; The Nation.com; author: Soviet Fates and Lost Alternatives: From Stalinism to the New Cold War, & The Victims Return: Survivors of the Gulag after Stalin; in re: Russia and the Arctic; Sweden. NATO says that in 2014, there were 500 NTO aircraft scrambles in response to Russian military violations over Euro airspace.  French MPs have visited Crimea; Italian parliamentarians may visit in October; eke Germans.  Moscow may receive a delegation from progressive Eurocrats. A helicopter/aircraft carrier: to be returned to France?  Dispute. Teleconferences between ____ Four, Mariupol, village (Shirokine): France and Germany demanded that both Kiev and Moscow withdraw forces from fighting in that village.  Kiev refuses to acknowledge Moscow in the Donbass.  The essence of the Urkr crisis is a civil war in Ukraine, has been that for centuries – division 'twixt those who feel affinity to Russia, and those who feel affinity for the West. Now unfolding in Ukr a second civil war: Pereshenko, Yatsieniuk, and White House, on one hand – and an ultranationalist group named Right Sector.  Want an ethnically cleansed, purified Ukraine with no Russian influence.  . . . "Resume the offensive against the East and make no compromise with Moscow, esp the Minsk Accord." Ergo, which Kiev are we talking about? 
Tuesday  4 August 2015  / Hour 2, Block B: Stephen F. Cohen, NYU & Princeton professor Emeritus; The Nation.com;  author; in re: Capital Journal Daybreak: WSJ/NBC Poll Results, a Busy Week for ...  At the start of the year when Vice President Joe Biden said he . . . . for her activism for a free Ukraine, offers for Brookings a personal reflection on . . . ; Biden welcomes heavy weapons-free zone proposal for Ukraine ... ; Vice President Joe Biden on Friday welcomed Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko's proposal to create a 30-km ... ; Readout of the Vice President's Call with Ukrainian President Petro ...  ; Russian President Vladimir Putin is having a change of heart on the Kremlin's wholehearted support for Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad and may "give up on him" in the future, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan was quoted as saying Monday.
The Chersonesus site is historically significant as the location where the Kievan Rus ruler, Prince Vladimir, was baptised in 988 CE. He then established Christianity as the religion of the region. On the 1,000th anniversary of Vladimir’s passing, Putin addressed a crowd of religious representatives, saying, “The entire Orthodox world celebrates the baptism of Rus. The significance of this event, of the moment when people found faith and spiritual support, cannot be overemphasised. It is obvious that the baptism became the key turning [point] in Russian history, statehood and our culture.   [more]
French MPs to make historical visit to reunited Crimea ; Italian lawmakers announce plans for Crimea visit in October  ;   Izvestia: German deputies could visit Crimea following example of French colleagues  ;  Russia Beyond the Headlines‎ : Following the trip of several French parliamentarians to Crimea, deputies of the German . . .
"To end conflict in Ukraine Russia, US must come to negotiating table" — LukashenkoByelorusian President Alexander Lukashenko believes that for ending the war in Ukraine there should be an agreement between the United States and Russia. "Russia and the United States must come to the negotiating table to end that war," he said. "This is the main thing. Everything else is of secondary importance."
He remarked that in the early days of the conflict possibly the Americans’ involvement would be redundant and far less effort would have been required for a settlement. "Now the situation is very different and it has not become simpler," he said
Moscow backs Europarl group’s initiative to lift sanctions from MPs  It's time to look into this issue substantively, in defiance of the US stance and the most anti-Russian-minded members of the EU, the chairman of the lower house’s international affairs committee says.  Moscow is ready to receive a delegation from the European Parliament to discuss substantively their initiative to lift sanctions from parliamentarians, both Russian and European, the chairman of the lower house’s international affairs committee said on Tuesday. Media reports said earlier that Europarl members from the Progressive Alliance of Socialists and Democrats party urged Russia and the European Union to establish a political dialogue and strike parliamentarians off the ‘black list’ imposed over the events in Ukraine.  http://tass.ru/en/world/812408
Russia-France Mistral dispute  Russian specialists will dismantle equipment on Mistral warships in September — source  This regards the telecommunications and control equipment supplied by Russian manufacturers
He said the universal character of that equipment . . . adding it could be used on other Russian naval ships. Telecommunications and control systems for the two helicopter carriers were designed and manufactured by the Sistemy Upravleniya corporation.   The Mistrals are used for the transportation of troops and landfall operations and are also used as command ships. Each of them can carry up to sixteen heavy-duty or thirty-two light helicopters and up to 900 soldiers with armured cars and amphibious assault boats.
The €1.12 billion contract for the construction of two Mistral-type helicopter carriers for the Russian Navy was signed in June 2011. Under the contract, Russia was expected to receive the first of the two warships, the Vladivostok, in the autumn of 2014. However, Paris suspended the ship’s handover to Russia at the very last moment over Moscow’s stance on developments in neighboring Ukraine.
Russia has submitted a revised bid for vast territories in the Arctic to the United Nations, the Foreign Ministry said Tuesday. The ministry said in a statement that Russia is claiming 1.2 million square kilometers (over 463,000 square miles) of Artic sea shelf extending more than 350 nautical miles (about 650 kilometers) from the shore.
Russia, the U.S., Canada, Denmark and Norway have all been trying to assert jurisdiction over parts of the Arctic, which is believed to hold up to a quarter of the planet's undiscovered oil and gas. Rivalry for Arctic resources has intensified as shrinking polar ice is opening new opportunities for exploration.  Surprising acknowledgement by State that Russia is not isolated.  In fact, that Russia is critical: AJE News  @AJENews‬   ; Kerry will hold trilateral talks with Saudi Arabia and Russia on Syria. aje.io/myd6 pic.twitter.com/Rg80uNi38x  (2 of 4)
Tuesday  4 August 2015  / Hour 2, Block C: Stephen F. Cohen, NYU & Princeton professor Emeritus; The Nation.com; author.    (3 of 4)
Tuesday  4 August 2015  / Hour 2, Block D: Stephen F. Cohen, NYU & Princeton professor Emeritus; The Nation.com; author.    (4 of 4)
Hour Three
Tuesday  4 August 2015  / Hour 3, Block A:   Salena Zito, Pittsburgh Tribune-Review & Pirates fan, in re: In May, Murray Energy, which sits along the old National Pike here in eastern Ohio, told nearly 1,500 workers at five of its West Virginia mines that their jobs were eliminated.  In Ohio, 249 Murray jobs were gone; nearly 170 employees were out of work in Illinois. Obama to adopt tough limits on greenhouse gases
Tuesday  4 August 2015  / Hour 3, Block B:  Sarah Westwood, Washington Examiner, in re: http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/clinton-aide-may-have-made-favors-for-friends-ig-finds/article/2569447
Tuesday  4 August 2015  / Hour 3, Block C:   Robert Zimmerman, behindtheblack.com, in re: Orion might not be ready for 2018 test flight  Government in action! Last week NASA admitted that the Orion capsule and its service module might not be ready for its 2018 test flight.  Bill Gerstenmaier, head of NASA’s human spaceflight directorate, told members of the [NASA Advisory Council’s human exploration] subcommittee the Orion capsule’s European-made service module, which is being developed by Airbus Defense and Space, will probably be the last piece of the critical test flight to be ready for launch.
NASA and ESA officials, together with contractors from Orion-builder Lockheed Martin and Airbus, have discussed shipping the Orion service module from Europe to NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida before it is finished. European engineers could travel to the Florida spaceport to complete construction of the service module before its integration with the Orion crew capsule, which is to be assembled by Lockheed Martin at KSC’s Armstrong Operations and Checkout Building.
Engineers plan to introduce changes to the Orion crew module after a successful orbital test flight in December 2014. The upgrades include a switch from a monolithic heat shield made of ablative Avcoat material to blocks of Avcoat, a change intended to improve the manufacturability of the thermal protection system. [emphasis mine]
Tuesday  4 August 2015  / Hour 3, Block D: Eli Lake, Bloomberg View, in re: http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2015-08-03/obama-plays-politics-of-fear-to-get-his-iran-deal
Hour Four
Tuesday  4 August 2015  / Hour 4, Block A:  Mary Anastasia O'Grady, Wall Street Journal editorial, in re: http://www.wsj.com/articles/clinton-needs-to-read-up-on-the-castros-1438551451
Tuesday  4 August 2015  / Hour 4, Block B:  Francis Rose, Federal News Radio, in re: http://gazette.com/va-files-containing-personal-information-thrown-in-trash/article/feed/257718?custom_click=rss   ;    http://federalnewsradio.com/defense/2015/08/pentagon-va-say-separate-systems-not-barrier-health-record-sharing/
Tuesday  4 August 2015  / Hour 4, Block C:  Richard A Epstein, Hoover Institution, Chicago Law, in re: In her recent speech at NYU Stern School of Business, Hillary Clinton put forward a suite of proposals for responding to what she termed “quarterly capitalism,” which leads corporate executives to favor short-term income at the expense of sustainable long-term growth. The single most important feature of her speech is what she did not mention—removing or weakening taxes and regulations that shackle today’s overregulated economy. In her uneasy effort to sound like a responsible version of the irrepressible Bernie Sanders, she tried to fuse together two progressive themes: the promotion of economic growth and greater wage equity, especially for workers at the bottom end of the income scale. Unfortunately, Clinton’s proposal won’t work . . .   (1 of 2)
Tuesday  4 August 2015  / Hour 4, Block D: Richard A Epstein, Hoover Institution, Chicago Law, in re: Richard A Epstein, Hoover Institution, Chicago Law, in re: In her recent speech at NYU Stern School of Business, Hillary Clinton put forward a suite of proposals for responding to what she termed “quarterly capitalism,” which leads corporate executives to favor short-term income at the expense of sustainable long-term growth. The single most important feature of her speech is what she did not mention—removing or weakening taxes and regulations that shackle today’s overregulated economy. In her uneasy effort to sound like a responsible version of the irrepressible Bernie Sanders, she tried to fuse together two progressive themes: the promotion of economic growth and greater wage equity, especially for workers at the bottom end of the income scale. Unfortunately, Clinton’s proposal won’t work . . .   (2 of 2)
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