Photo, above: Grand Central Terminal in New York City. Functional and resplendent architecture. See below: Friday 25 Jan 2013/ Hour 4, Block B:  Sam Roberts, NYT, Grand Central is one hundred years old.  Just published: Grand Central: How a Train Station Transformed America by Sam Roberts and Pete Hamill (Jan 22, 2013)

JOHN BATCHELOR SHOW

Hour One

Friday 25 Jan 2013/ Hour 1, Block A: Jim McTague, Barron’s, in re: 35% of American now receive “means-tested” payments from the federal government. Seven per cent of men in their late thirties are not in the workforce.  What is Big Govervment today and what relation to the jobs shortages?

Nick Eberstadt on entitlements: “At this writing, about 35% of Americans (well over 100 million people) are accepting money, goods or services from 'means-tested' government programs. This percentage is twice as high as in the early 1980s. Today, the overwhelming majority of Americans on entitlement programs are taking means-tested benefits. Only a third of all Americans receiving government entitlement transfers are seniors on Social Security and Medicare. As entitlement outlays have risen, there has been flight of men from the work force. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the proportion of adult men 20 and older working or seeking work dropped by 13 percentage points between 1948 and 2008. The American male flight from work is so acute that more than 7% of men in their late 30s (the prime working age-group) had totally checked out of the workforce, even before the recent recession. This workforce opt-out, incidentally, was more than twice that of contemporary Greece, the poster child for modern welfare-state dysfunction. The share of 30-somethings neither working nor looking for work appears to be higher in America than in practically any other Western European economy . . .  The Department of Health and Human Services reports that more than 12.4 million working-age Americans obtained disability income support from all government programs in 2011. That's more than the total number of employees in the manufacturing sector of the economy."

Friday 25 Jan 2013/ Hour 1, Block B:  Eric Trager, Washington Institute, in re: Mohammed Morsi of Egypt, two-year anniversary in the Arab Spring,  Egyptian opposition supporters are protesting across the country on the second anniversary of the uprising that swept Hosni Mubarak from power, with five people killed in the city of Suez. Police clashed with Pres Mohammed Morsi's opponents in Cairo outside his palace and near Tahrir Square.

Friday 25 Jan 2013/ Hour 1, Block C: . Reed Watson, PERC, in re: ranchers managing wildlife in Montana and Colorado.

Friday 25 Jan 2013/ Hour 1, Block D:  Corey Kilgannon, NYT, in re: the doll in the library, Kirstin of American Doll, and ten years of visiting little girls at their homes. Is there a doll library in the making?

Hour Two

Friday 25 Jan 2013/ Hour 2, Block A:  . Kate Galbraith, Texas Tribune & NYT,  in re: Texas Railroad Commission updates

Friday 25 Jan 2013/ Hour 2, Block B:  . Tyler Rogoway, Aviationintel.com, in re: the death of Sea Shadow, doomed supersecret stealth ship hidden in the Hughes Mining Barge, SAD PHOTOS: SEA SHADOW FINALLY GETS SCRAPPED  "Some awesome but sad pics found and sent over by Aviationintel reader Nicolae Sinu depict a horrific scene - one of the most fascinating vessels of the Cold War, the Lockheed Skunk Works' stealthy Sea Shadow, being scrapped while still cocooned inside her mothership, the equally enigmatic and even more historically significant Hughes Mining Barge (HMB-1). Make sure to read the widely circulated Aviationintel special feature on these two clandestine mechanized warriors and their sad fate here:  aviationintel.   com/2012/05/02/inseparable-to-the-end-two-cold-war-treasures-may-face-the-scrappers-torch/    The “symbiotic” relationship between these two vessels has lasted decades and, in the end, both will be destroyed because the Navy could not find a museum to house them, which is astonishing to me for so many reasons (make sure to read that piece linked above for more!)."

Friday 25 Jan 2013 / Hour 2, Block C:  . Reza Kahlili, author, A Time to Betray, in re: explosion reported at Fordo, deep underground.

An explosion deep within Iran’s Fordow nuclear facility has destroyed much of the installation and trapped about 240 personnel deep underground, according to a former intelligence officer of the Islamic regime.  The previously secret nuclear site has become a center for Iran’s nuclear activity because of the 2,700 centrifuges enriching uranium to the 20-percent level. A further enrichment to weapons grade would take only weeks, experts say. The level of enrichment has been a major concern to Israeli officials, and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu repeatedly has warned about the 20-percent enriched stockpile.  The explosion occurred on Monday, the day before Israeli elections weakened Netanyahu’s political control.

Iran, to avoid alarm, had converted part of the stockpile to fuel plates for use in the Tehran Research Reactor. However, days after the recent failed talks with the International Atomic Energy Agency, Iranian officials announced the enrichment process will not stop even “for a moment.”  The regime’s uranium enrichment process takes place at two known sites: the Natanz facility with more than 10,000 centrifuges and Fordow with more than 2,700. The regime currently has enough low-grade (3.5 percent) uranium stockpiled for six nuclear bombs if further enriched.  However, more time is needed for conversion of the low-grade uranium than what would be needed for a stockpile at 20 percent. It takes 225 kilograms of enriched uranium at the 20-percent level to further enrich to the 90-percent level for one nuclear bomb.

According to a source in the security forces protecting Fordow, an explosion on Monday at 11:30 a.m. Tehran time rocked the site, which is buried deep under a mountain and immune not only to airstrikes but to most bunker-buster bombs. The report of the blast came via Hamidreza Zakeri, formerly with the Islamic regime’s Ministry of Intelligence and National Security. The blast shook facilities within a radius of three miles. Security forces have enforced a no-traffic radius of 15 miles, and the Tehran-Qom highway was shut down for several hours after the blast, the source said. As of Wednesday afternoon, rescue workers had failed to reach the trapped personnel.

The site, about 300 feet under a mountain, had two elevators which now are out of commission. One elevator descended about 240 feet and was used to reach centrifuge chambers. The other went to the bottom to carry heavy equipment and transfer uranium hexafluoride. One emergency staircase reaches the bottom of the site and another one was not complete. The source said the emergency exit southwest of the site is unreachable.  The regime believes the blast was sabotage and the explosives could have reached the area disguised as equipment or in the uranium hexafluoride stock transferred to the site, the source said. The explosion occurred at the third centrifuge chambers, with the high-grade enriched uranium reserves below them.

The information was passed on to U.S. officials but has not been verified or denied by the regime or other sources within the regime.  Though the news of the explosion has not been independently verified, other sources previously have provided WND with information on plans for covert operations against Iran’s nuclear facilities as an option before going to war. The hope is to avoid a larger-scale conflict. Israel, the U.S. and other allies already have concluded the Islamic regime has crossed its red line in its quest for nuclear weapons, other sources have said.

However, this information was not revealed for security reasons until several days ago when sources said the regime’s intelligence agency, through an alleged spy in the Israeli intelligence agency Mossad, had learned of the decision to conduct sabotage on Iran’s nuclear sites on a much larger scale than before.  As reported, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad called an urgent meeting Tuesday with the intelligence minister, the head of Iran’s Atomic Energy Organization and other officials to discuss the threat, and now it’s clear the meeting included the sabotage at Fordow.

Several Iranian nuclear scientists have been assassinated in recent years. Last year, saboteurs struck the power supply to the Fordow facility, temporarily disrupting production. And a computer worm called Stuxnet, believed to have originated in the U.S., set Iran’s plans for nuclear weapons back substantially.  The 5+1 (the United States, Russia, China, Britain, France and Germany) hope to resume talks with Iran over its illicit nuclear program. The talks ended last year after regime officials refused to negotiate.

Sources in the Islamic regime previously have revealed exclusively to WND the existence of:

- A secret nuclear site in Najaf Abad.

- A list of Iranian scientists working on a nuclear bomb.

- A secret uranium enrichment site in Khondab, where the Russians and North Korean scientists are helping with Iran’s nuclear bomb program.

- The secret bio-weapons site in Marzanabad, where, with the help of Russia, Iran has mastered production of eight microbial agents, arming its missiles with biological warheads.

- Another nuclear site at Bonab, where, with the help of Russians, uranium enrichment is taking place using laser technology.

Friday 25 Jan 2013/ Hour 2, Block D:  Ken Croswell, Science, in re: the search for Vulcan called off; and is there a moon the size of Earth around exosystem planets? 

18 JANUARY 2013 | SCIENCENOW ScienceShot: So Long, Mr. Spock  by Ken Croswell    Astronomers find no evidence of "Vulcanoids" orbiting close to the sun. Also see: news.sciencemag.    org/sciencenow/2013/01/scienceshot-moons-as-big-as-eart.html

Hour Three

Friday 25 Jan 2013/ Hour 3, Block A:  1493: Uncovering the New World Columbus Created by Charles C. Mann; 1 of 4

Friday 25 Jan 2013/ Hour 3, Block B:  . 1493: Uncovering the New World Columbus Created by Charles C. Mann; 2 of 4

Friday 25 Jan 2013/ Hour 3, Block C:  . 1493: Uncovering the New World Columbus Created by Charles C. Mann; 3 of 4

Friday 25 Jan 2013/ Hour 3, Block D:   1493: Uncovering the New World Columbus Created by Charles C. Mann; 4 of 4

Hour Four

Friday 25 Jan 2013/ Hour 4, Block A:  Sam Roberts, NYT, in re: Grand Central is one hundred years old; 1 of 2  See also: Grand Central: How a Train Station Transformed America by Sam Roberts and Pete Hamill (Jan 22, 2013)

Friday 25 Jan 2013/ Hour 4, Block B:  Sam Roberts, NYT, Grand Central is one hundred years old; 2 of 2  See also: Grand Central: How a Train Station Transformed America by Sam Roberts and Pete Hamill (Jan 22, 2013)

Friday 25 Jan 2013/ Hour 4, Block C:  Fouad Ajami, Hoover, in re: the Obama Foreign Policy.   In Vietnam Vets Hagel and Kerry, Obama Finds Champions of Retrenchment by Fouad Ajami, Washington Post

Friday 25 Jan 2013/ Hour 4, Block D:   Peter Berkowitz, Hoover, in re:  on national security challenges not anticipated by the Constitution and the Authorization for use of Military Force,

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Music

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