Friday 14 February 2020
JOHN BATCHELOR SHOW
Hour One
Friday 14 February 2020 / Hour 1, Block A: Dan Henninger, WSJ Wonder Land column, in re: Are the Democrats competent or incompetent? It’s not just the Party; it’s socialism. In Europe, where socialism was installed soon after WWII, socialists have for some years been losing favor among voters. The [shocking] events in Iowa. Voters there were just flipping a coin to pick whom to vote for. Sanders proposes to nationalize the health-care system we’ve already got and other functions, and massively to increase taxes to cover all this. People I met in Azerbaijan, who not that long ago [managed to get the Soviet boot off their neck], are incredulous that Americans are entertaining the thought of socialism.
Friday 14 February 2020 / Hour 1, Block B: Jeff Bliss, Pacific Watch, in re: San Francisco: “Mr Clean,” the fellow responsible for physically cleaning the city, the Public Works Director Mohammed Nuru, had to resign before being arrested by the Feds for accepting a bribe relating to a restaurant in the airport. The mayor has just admitted to having had “a relationship” with him. The streets of Los Angeles: whole blocks covered by detritus, including used needles. This is now spreading to suburbs exurbs, rural areas. Koreatown: a homeless person from another city was shocked at what’s become of Koreatown, Gavin Newsom wants $1 billion to devise a plan for homeless people — but nothing to curb homelessness. No plan in the governor’s office to change things structurally,
Friday 14 February 2020 / Hour 1, Block C: Chris Riegel, CEO, Scala.com, in re: AI. The EU softens on facial recognition; and Huawei is a RICO case. Chris Riegel, #TheScalaReport #ScalaAPS @STRATACACHE
Friday 14 February 2020 / Hour 1, Block D: Michael Ledeen, FDD, Epoch Times, in re: Chinese invasion of IP, but, equally important, is carefully turning—that is, threatening and propagandizing—ethnically Chinese people in the US to spy for Beijing. Meanwhile, US universities are happily selling space to China in exchange for cash.
Charles Lieber, who until recently was chairman of Harvard chemistry department, is under investigation for selling important information to the Chinese government. He spent years working for the Wuhan Institute of Technology. From 2012-2017, he worked as a major technology scientist—chemistry? Bioweapons? Wuhan. A Mr Zhao arrested and [convicted?]. Beth Israel thinks it’s all about sharing, that sharing is wonderful; when Zhao was caught trying to smuggle research out of the country in socks . . . Lee Bollinger, president of Columbia University, has published an op-ed* saying it’s important for the US to maintain control. Eke pres of CIT, & other universities. If your children are attending Harvard, Yale, Columbia, they’re being targetted by the Chinese Communist Party.
* "No, I won’t start spying on my foreign-born students", by the Columbia President, Lee C. Bollinger [— he who invited Pres Ahmadinejad to speak at SIPA in Columbia; then, finding himself under national attack, received Ahmadinejad at the event and introduced him to the audience with rude and vulgar criticism. Bollinger thereby disgraced himself in two fundamental ways: he abjectly invited a ghastly little tyrant to be welcome at a major US university, then violated an immutable law of hospitality. Perhaps expected conduct from a person with the second-worst haircut in the nation.]
Hour Two
Friday 14 February 2020 / Hour 2, Block A: Michael E Vlahos, Johns Hopkins, in re: Regicide and civil war. Charles I. If you don’t get the king first, pick off his counselors then get the king. . . . The dynamics of a country headed toward an irrevocable split are here. Regicide isn't simply the killing of a king you don't like; it's the destruction of [all] that you don’t like, including the legitimacy of the state. In the US, blue has committed itself, used extrajudicial means to defenestrate him; willing to do almost anything to get rid of this man, but what they’re getting rid of is the ability of a constitutional republic to function. Were looking at ways to garrote him even before the election. Refusal to accept the terms of the Constitution, itself.
The ten commandments of a civil war, according to Michael Vlahos. . . . In Pelosi single act of ripping of he speech, she declared him an illegitimate president. Unable to impeach him, they’re going after his counselors, here: the Attorney-General.
Friday 14 February 2020 / Hour 2, Block B: Michael E Vlahos, Johns Hopkins, in re: Lawfare as a legal regicide. Impeachment has been tried several times in the US and always failed. “Cancel culture” is a form of violence. A constant, daily undercurrent of political violence. It’s not just killing the king, it’s killing the spirit of the entire system. Bernie Sanders, favoring large taxes; were he president, that’d [probably] mean a large shift in the Senate; would the blues then settle down and become moderate? No, they have to implement their agenda. England, Seventeenth Century. Our nation was founded by people fleeing that civil war. Armed clashes between federal forces and militia groups. Ukraine civil war video feed: started with nothing violent; at the beginning of the civil war you can’t imagine violence; at the end, you're shooting.
Friday 14 February 2020 / Hour 2, Block C: Richard Epstein, Chicago Law, NYU Law, Hoover; in re: Rent control, esp in California and New York. In New York, as of recently the rent-control laws, enacted after World War II to protect returning soldiers from suddenly-mushrooming rents, are now established as permanent. (1 of 2)
Friday 14 February 2020 / Hour 2, Block D: Richard Epstein, Chicago Law, NYU Law, Hoover; in re: Rent control, esp in California and New York. In New York, as of recently the rent-control laws, enacted after World War II to protect returning soldiers from suddenly-mushrooming rents, are now established as permanent. (2 of 2)
Hour Three
Friday 14 February 2020 / Hour 3, Block A: Tyler Rogoway, War Zone at TheDrive; in re: Twentieth-Century weapons systems. B1B bomber.
Friday 14 February 2020 / Hour 3, Block B: Tyler Rogoway, War Zone at TheDrive; in re: Chinese military airfield being built in Cambodia on a high-end resort? Satellite images: no evidence at all that it’s an air base, certainly not that it’s Chinese. A 10,000-foot runway: normal for military, but also for any very warm climate, where a greater length is needed. Nellis AFB: Chinese have built a copy of it.
Friday 14 February 2020 / Hour 3, Block C: Robert Zimmerman, BehindtheBlack.com, in re: NASA budget and Trump science budget. For $20 billion, we get three flight capsules. Next, over-budget and behind schedule. Also cut telescope funding. Fund Mars sample return mission. . . . Supporting the federal out-of-control bureaucracy. Starliner trouble: NASA somehow to get space capsules made, operated and landed by Americans. Potentially-catastrophic software problem, acknowledged by NASA and Boeing. Wuhan virus will probably delay or shut down some Chinese launches.
Friday 14 February 2020 / Hour 3, Block D: Robert Zimmerman, BehindtheBlack.com, in re: The Sun. Sunspots: I do this whenever NOAA publishes its graft; compare actual sunspots to scientists’s predictions. For seven months, fewer than in more than a century; then in January, an uptick, with a polarity that belongs to the next maximum; ergo, unlikely to see a Grand Minimum in the coming decade. Significant. . . . Discovered a fungus around Chernobyl that eats radiation; sent some into space to see if it’ll help develop radiation-blocking drugs for astronauts. Life is amazing.
Hour Four
Friday 14 February 2020 / Hour 4, Block A: Spillover: Animal Infections and the Next Human Pandemic, by David Quammen
Friday 14 February 2020 / Hour 4, Block B: Spillover: Animal Infections and the Next Human Pandemic, by David Quammen
Friday 14 February 2020 / Hour 4, Block C: Spillover: Animal Infections and the Next Human Pandemic, by David Quammen
Friday 14 February 2020 / Hour 4, Block D: Spillover: Animal Infections and the Next Human Pandemic, by David Quammen
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