JOHN BATCHELOR SHOW
 
Hour One
Friday 17 July 2020 / Hour 1, Block A: Adam J. White, @adamjwhitedc). @AEI & @Unprecedential; @AdLawCenter & @GeorgeMasonLaw., Executive Director, C. Boyden Gray Center for the Study of the Administrative State, & Assistant Professor of Law at George Mason University; & Washington Post, in re: Chief Justice Roberts.  The modern administrative state’s flip-flops. impossible to plan our lives around there being a new president every four years, someone who radically changes everything around. John Marshall famously brought the Court together; Roberts does something sort of similar.  Subpoenaing papers [by a local District Attorney] from the president is unprecedented. 
Does John Roberts stabilize the divided SCOTUS? https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/07/16/want-understand-what-supreme-court-did-this-term-these-two-words-are-key/
Friday 17 July 2020 / Hour 1, Block B: Adam J. White, Executive Director, C. Boyden Gray Center for the Study of the Administrative State, & Assistant Professor of Law at George Mason Uniersity; & Washington Post, in re: Little Sisters of the Poor v. Azar - Becket.  “History sometimes seems like one damn thing after another.” 
In August 2011, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) issued a federal mandate as part of the Affordable Care Act. The mandate required employers to provide all FDA-approved contraceptives in their health insurance plans, including the week-after pill, free of cost. Despite the obvious religious liberty issues with a contraceptive mandate, HHS included only a narrow religious exemption—one that did not include religious non-profits like the Little Sisters of the Poor, a Catholic order of nun that runs homes for the elderly poor across the country.  The Little Sisters’ Catholic beliefs about life and contraception meant that complying with the mandate was impossible. The Little Sisters initially tried to communicate their concerns with the federal government. In good faith, they believed that the government would grant them an exemption. After all, HHS already exempted thousands of other secular employers whose plans were “grandfathered” in under the new rule—including Exxon, Pepsi Bottling, and Visa—and even exempted the healthcare programs for the U.S. military. Instead, HHS doubled down, continued to refuse to exempt the Little Sisters, and threatened them with ruinous fines of tens of millions of dollars if they did not comply with the mandate.  Five years of litigation—including at the Supreme Court.
Friday 17 July 2020 / Hour 1, Block C:   Francis Rose @FRoseDC,  Government Matters, WJLA, Channel 7 in Washington, D.C; in re:  Defense Department supports and keeps afloat myriad small and tiny businesses, including subcontractors down four and five levels.   Pentagon is alert to this, is intervening to be sure that they have work and income.  . .  . The push and pull come from middle managers (having twenty or so people under one); working from home means no two hours in traffic each way, no break room or Starbucks, so a lot more gets done.  The grand and the small at DoD. 
-  #SmallBusinessAmerica: DoD Lessons Learned #in-the-time-of-the-virus.
-  NatSec 2020 virtual conference we did this week
-  DoD CMO Lisa Hershman https://www.nextgov.com/it-modernization/2020/07/coronavirus-shattered-myth-defense-workforce-cant-telework-official-says/166867/
-  Deputy Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition and Sustainment
-  Alan Shaffer https://www.defensenews.com/congress/2020/07/14/the-pentagon-wants-a-10b-defense-industry-cash-injection-is-congress-listening/
-  Hershman https://fcw.com/articles/2020/07/14/williams-dod-cmo-savings.aspx
-  Shaffer https://www.nationaldefensemagazine.org/articles/2020/7/13/defense-industry-bouncing-back-as-pentagon-considers-more-aid
-  HASC Chair Adam Smith https://news.usni.org/2020/07/13/hasc-chair-smith-troops-not-ready-to-fight-without-resource-informed-strategy
Friday 17 July 2020 / Hour 1, Block D:   Lorenzo Fiori, Ansaldo Foundation, in re:  Second wave "unlikely" in hard-put-to-it Italy.   In the US, more  young people are testing positive, then they toss off the virus in a few weeks.  Similar in Italy.  Young people conduct themselves in rather less prudent ways.    . . .  In Lombardy, some regions have removed the obligation to wear the mask out of doors, but still must wear it indoors.   https://www.medpagetoday.com/infectiousdisease/covid19/87446
 
Hour Two
Friday 17 July 2020 / Hour 2, Block A:  Devin Nunes, CA-21; in re:  Cuomo, DeBlasio, Newsom, all fighting for pride of place in 2024, so no one can wear enough masks or [virtue-signal] enough.  Newsom’s “Governor’s Strike Force” raids restaurants. Crashed down on a hamburger joint that allowed an elderly couple who were  unwell in the heat to sit inside; now they all have to go to court to defend themselves.   Some places have painted their windows black against Newsom’s Gestapo.  Astonishing; pointedly similar to the situation in the USSR.  If you work for the government, you're in fine shape; otherwise, you may have to defend yourself from the State Polizei.  Newsom owns wineries and vineyards in Napa Valley—which did not have to close.  Madeira County: small wineries struggling to survive got closed down, whereas Newsom’s wineries did not.  Needless to say, people suspect that he’s playing favorites.   Wineries are closed, but the marijuana shops are going great guns.  An underground economy similar to what occurred during Prohibition. Flabbergasting.  Citizens are outraged, want us to do something, but we have little control over what the governor does, esp including his heavy hand on the schools.  Still no evidence exists that these small  businesses have led to the spread of the virus. 
Friday 17 July 2020 / Hour 2, Block B:  Devin Nunes, CA-21; in re: Peter Strzok and Lisa Page continued to correspond after the 2017 inauguration, even though they knew full swell that the Steele dossier was bunkum.  As Devin Nunes uncovered this, they and the media aimed their guns at Devin.  Dirty cops, dirty foreign govts, fake spies— a panoply. The infamous “midnight run” in which I purportedly arrived at the White House late at night and climbed over a fence to give the president information. Physically impossible, wholly invented.   The Obama Administration used the intelligence apparatus to spy on their political enemies.  Judicial Watch revealed that they had a full-time press operation.  McCabe at FBI HQ knew that he had to shut down Devin.  For the sake of America, we have to clean up the Justice Department. 
Friday 17 July 2020 / Hour 2, Block C:  Chris Riegel, Scala.com, in re: Huawei will be damaged but not sunk by [large-scale] rejection of its PLA-connected 5G.   Japan.  China stomped on Hog Kong; how could they not know that they’d be widely condemned? The calculated that control is more important than world favor; that in the long term they’d make enough money to buy off most countries.
Friday 17 July 2020 / Hour 2, Block D:  Charles Gasparino, Fox Business Network, in re:  The New York Mets were for sale, then not, now are.  Alex Rodrigues, affianced to JLo, vs. Stve Cohen and vs. Sheldon Adelson, all bidding.  Like M&A assets up for bid.  Sheldon Adelson via David Paterson, who works for Shelly, looked into building a casino near there, [an unattractive locale].  Looking at 2023, when downstate NY may have casinos.  Adelson says he’s not in the bidding for the Mets.  . . .  Money raised by J P Morgan; mysterious; “a lot of hat, not many cattle ARod had a falling-out with Jeff Wilpon.  Look at how Wilpons bought out Nelson Doubleday; but their involvement with Madoff led to money being clawed back by financial groups.  Cohen bid around $2 billion is in the lead. Harris and Blitzer have a strong hand, around $1.7 bil; ARod is number three. 
 
Hour Three
Friday 17 July 2020 / Hour 3, Block A: Dan Henninger, WSJ Wonder Land column & editorial board; in re:  Baseball.  . . .  Young people today want to be emotionally safe, to hear nothing that makes them uncomfortable.  To make sports teams the center of what we’re told is a genuine ideological movement—what’s gone on is absurd.  The 1619 Project, yike.  Good parenting would require someone to say “no.”
Friday 17 July 2020 / Hour 3, Block B:  Jeff Bliss, Pacific Watch, in re: Catalina Island, off Los Angeles, had buffalo left there years ago after a movie shoot; now, it’s a large herd wandering free while tourism is ’way down.  Portland ninjas acting out their Hollywood fantasies; Homeland Security in unmarked cars taking them away.  San Francisco giving free drugs incl meth to homeless who’ve been parked in expensive hotels.  City has assigned untrained peple to supervise—turning librarians into pushers!
Friday 17 July 2020 / Hour 3, Block C:  Hotel Mars, episode n.  David Livingston, Space Show, and Jim Bell, School of Space Exploration, Arizona University; in re:  Perseverance, 1,000 kg. A rover with improved wheels. 
Friday 17 July 2020 / Hour 3, Block D:  Hotel Mars, episode n.  David Livingston, Space Show, and Jim Bell, School of Space Exploration, Arizona University;  in re: We have to stay close to the Martian equator to avoid the cold; must be at a low elevation because of the parachute;  cannot land among boulders, or in paces covered in dust. These close off 80% of Mars.  We chose [Jesero]; crater lake, ancient river delta. 
 
Hour Four
Friday 17 July 2020 / Hour 4, Block A: Michael E Vlahos, Johns Hopkins, in re: Successionist, secessionist, and supersessionist civil wars. Successionist is the least-disturbing way to put someone new in power.  Willem, Prince of Orange, marched to London; James Stuart fled; power transfer was undisruptive.  Secession: 1775 and after, and 1860 and after: at least one party in each case intended to secede; ’twas a mirror of what had obtained, created a parallel vision of what existed, Americans build a system similar to English; the South created a constitution similar to the original one but favoring slavery. Supersessionist civil war: fraught with peril; intense, often unrequited, conflict, and cultural angst.  Represents a new way of thinking; e.g., French revolution, reign of terror, and Bolshevik revolution. France erupted with great force, then petered out in three or four years.  In Russia: aristocracy, clergy and tsar: complete overturning of a way of life.  It eventually collapsed under its own [corruption], but has massively damaged the culture till today. American situation is closer to Fourth Century Christianity, which set out to overturn the Greco-Roan civilization. Destroyed gods, literature, learning/science.  Greeks and Romans knew the exact circumference of the Earth; thereafter, people thought the world was flat.
Friday 17 July 2020 / Hour 4, Block B: Michael E Vlahos, Johns Hopkins, in re: We’re entertaining the possibility that the US is in a civil war. Looks as though it’s supersessionist.  Denunciation of people for wrong-think.  No compromise; one side must win. No alternative to a showdown in which one party is expunged, erased, extinguished.  End of Greco-Roman civilization; all that was left was decorative motifs.  For 500 years thereafter, it disappeared, returned only in the Twelfth Century. Imagine if the Church of Woke achieved anything comparable, to forcibly change how people think at the most elemental level. We stand to lose the entire body of Western civilization. This is not hysterical, it's the impending challenge. 
In Russia, after persecution by the tsar’s police, educated young people took up the revolution, Here we see the exaggerated . . .  The forces of civilization are vested in regular people. Called “populist”; is not vested in the elites, who always prevail in revolutions, esp supersessionist ones. Am not optimistic. Hoping that their distaste for current events causes them to take a stand in November.  Once the Bolsheviks took control, they cared not what anyone thought; they did what they did. 
Friday 17 July 2020 / Hour 4, Block C:  Robert Zimmerman, BehandtheBlack.com, in re:  Space
Friday 17 July 2020 / Hour 4, Block D:  Robert Zimmerman, BehandtheBlack.com, in re:  Space
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