Graphic, above: Makemake (name of an Easter Island god): The dwarf planet's red-tinged surface is apparently covered by a layer of frozen methane, and is bright enough to be seen by a high-end amateur telescope, despite its current distance of nearly 53 times the distance between the Earth and the sun. This diagram shows the path of the shadow of the dwarf planet Makemake during an occultation of a faint star in April 2011, which revealed that it lacked an atmosphere. Several sites in South America, including ESO’s La Silla and Paranal Observatories, saw the star disappear briefly as its light was blocked by Makemake.

CREDIT: ESO/L. Calçada

JOHN BATCHELOR SHOW

Co-host: John Avlon, CNN and Newsweek International

Monday 905P Eastern Time (605P Pacific Time):   Mona Charen, NRO, in re:  The "personal economy thinkers" elected this president; the "national economy thinkers" are not welcome at the White House.   "Debt now, debt tomorrow, debt together" say those who've won twice now.  JB: What if we can't save the economy?  Capital spending says the jobs won’t be there, no inventory, no demand, and we're headed for a recession, anyway.  MC:  The Dems can say that the Republicans caused all this, in any case.

Monday 920P Eastern Time (620P Pacific Time):   Matthew Denhart, Bush Center, in re: Immigration. JB: I'm the product of successful five generations ago; John Avlon: three generations  here.  Choosing America is the most political act thee is. "The citti on a hill."  Conference convening  in Dallas in a few hours, run by the Dallas Fed.  Growth and Immigration is published today; free at URL below.  MD: Pres Bush made a really hard push to reform immigration.  . . . The lesson is that this isn’t a Republican or Democratic issue; it’s a national economic issue.   Pres Bush will address the conference; can livestream via BushCenter.com [.org ?]  Today we'd have much better growth if we had a better immigration policy:  GDP would be $2 trillion higher. First, expansion of labor force; second, more spending money and economy grows; also, see patents or economic publications or business start-ups: disproportionately by new immigrants.

http://www.fourpercentgrowth.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/12/Growth-and-Immigration-Handbook.pdf

Monday 935P Eastern Time (635P Pacific Time):   .Joseph Rago, WSJ & Pulitzer Prizewinner, in re:  Affordable Care Act.   Three hundred days to Obamacare.    If your state doesn’t have a health exchange, the feds do. Two dozen states elect not to set up a health exchange – the regulatory bodies that'll control the health insurance mkt.  Texas & Louisiana, e.g., opt out but have highest levels of uninsured.  Those states most committed to states's rights – "Get the feds outta here" – are inviting the feds to take over payments.   I don't have a lot of confidence in HHS running insurance.   Ohio: $63 mil to set up, $43 mil annually to run it. Will turn these costs over to Washington. It’s not as much the money as it is an enormous logistical path. The governors think, "If we end up with a disaster on our hands, we'll get blamed."  (JR's editorial: "Chris Christie of New Jersey and Rick Scott of Florida are playing Hamlet, haven’t yet decided.")  JA: This is pooling resources, yes?  JR: AN exchange is obviously a useful idea that depends on the execution. Utah, Mass, have an exchange. A transparent clearing house is valuable.  HHS promises to be much more heavy handed, a regulatory entity that does not easily allow markets to function.

Monday 950P Eastern Time (650P Pacific Time):   .Eric Trager, Washington Institute, in re:   The political history of Pres Mohamed Morsi of Egypt suggests that he won't concede anything to the current protests against his recent power-grabbing decree.

Monday 1005P (705P Pacific Time):   . John Fund, NRO, and Taegan Goddard, Political Wire, in re:    Neither side is talking about spending cuts; all are suggesting a reduction in the rate of increase.  We're on the precipice of a recession next quarter.  Democrats have thought this thing out, will not accept any plan that excludes more taxes on the rich, Their one card: If Treasury doesn't change withholding tables in Jan, the [practices] may not change.

Monday 1020P (720P Pacific Time):   .continued.  JB:  Is the Republican Party?    JA: The Democrats have a significant demographic shifts.    JF:  Usually see a bloodbath in the midterms. Republicans withstood the onslaught against the House. Only two presidents have ever successfully transferred power [to the next president].   TA: John Fund is accurate; it'll be hard for Dems to dislodge the Republicans.  Past week at Harvard, conference of campaign managers.  Biggest problem for Republicans was that they ran a really poor campaign, a decades-old strategy; the Democrats ran a current campaign, much more technologically savvy.

Monday 1035P (735P Pacific Time):   . Malcolm Hoenlein, Conference of Presidents, in re:   Cabinet made a decision to rezone E1, a corridor from Jerusalem that by consensus is to remain in Israel, to Ma'ale Adumim, where no one is living. Palestinians agrees to contiguity using bypasses and underpasses.   Also: 23,000 units n the existing block pending a two-state solution.  People have distorted the information.    Israel warned repeatedly that there had to be consequences to the PA's application to the General Assembly. The change: Syrians have been noted: not to be moving chem weapons, but activity highly suspect; the army is on high-alert status, to prepare for the use of chem weapons.  Syria has the world's largest storehouse of chemical weapons, Note; April  2003: a column of 300 tanks of all the major weapons systems and all of the WMD arsenal: transferred from Iraq to Syria.  Russian supervised this.  Obama and Clinton, with "red line," are not speaking to Assad, who's deaf and the devil, but to Putin. Also to Iraq. Unstable region; Amman and Beirut will fall if this gets worse. It’s all interrelated in the Middle East. New sanctions against Iran could have generated some of these deeds. Is this the predicate for intervention?  I think "red line" is an ultimatum; the US has warned repeatedly, has tried to bring in allies. In fact, right now, reliable reports of a different kind of activity in the Syrian storage areas. 

Monday 1050P (750P Pacific Time):   .   Gordon Chang, Forbes.com, in re:  There's much speculation about why North Korea is trying to orbit a satellite now, so soon after the catastrophic failure of the same launcher on April 13 of this year.  Nobody thinks the North’s technicians have had time to fix the flaws that led to the explosion that occurred approximately 90 seconds into the flight.  We may never know why the North Koreans chose this time to launch, but we do know that when they launch they'll also be furthering the Iranian missile program.  Teheran needs a launch vehicle for the nuclear warhead it soon will produce, and the North Koreans need a successful test for their best missile customer.  For more than a decade, Pyongyang and Teheran have run what is essentially a joint missile development program. Iranian observers, for instance, were present in the North for all four of its long-range missile tests, those in 1998, 2006, 2009, and this April.  One more point.  Yesterday, Japan’s Kyodo News reported that Iran had started stationing personnel in North Korea in October at a military facility close to the Chinese border. The Iranians, from the Ministry of Defense and associated firms, are there to develop stronger cooperation on missile and nuclear programs, according to an unnamed Western diplomatic source. 

Monday 1105P (805P Pacific Time):   . Reza Kahlili, author, A Time to Betray,  in re: new secret nuke site revealed in Iran,  Two high sources in the intell program said: IAEA is totally on the wrong track, regime is very close to its goal of having multiple nuclear warheads; are working at sites not known to the West.  Kerman Province (copper and coal mining): tunneling: North Korean engineers working there; tight collaboration in many work. Code: Fateh 1 ("Victorious" in Farsi).  Mining right at the facility; IRGC is managing; turn ore into yellowcake, then enrich. This is the second such site – first was under a medicine factory. Masking technology on several sites; a certain kind of Canadian asphalt reflects signals to confuse satellite.

Monday 1120P (820P Pacific Time):   . Natasha Singer, NYT, in re;  NASA and privacy of contractors compromised by a stolen laptop and poor security protocols; complain to Supreme Court.

Monday 1135P (835P Pacific Time):   . Richard Epstein, Hoover, in re:  drone wars, the law, and the friction ahead about targeted killings of foreigners and citizens by robot control. 

Monday 1150P (850P Pacific Time):   . Richard Epstein, Hoover,  continued  

Monday/Tues 1205A (905 Pacific Time):   . Mona Charen, NRO, in re:  The "personal economy thinkers" elected this president; the "national economy thinkers" are not welcome at the White House.   "Debt now, debt tomorrow, debt together" say those who've won twice now.  JB: What if we can't save the economy?  Capital spending says the jobs won’t be there, no inventory, no demand, and we're headed for a recession, anyway.  MC:  The Dems can say that the Republicans caused all this, in any case.  

Monday/Tues  1220A (920 Pacific Time):   . Matthew Denhart, Bush Center, in re: Immigration. JB: I'm the product of successful five generations ago; John Avlon: three generations  here.  Choosing America is the most political act thee is. "The citti on a hill."  Conference convening  in Dallas in a few hours, run by the Dallas Fed.  Growth and Immigration is published today; free at URL below.  MD: Pres Bush made a really hard push to reform immigration.  . . . The lesson is that this isn’t a Republican or Democratic issue; it’s a national economic issue.   Pres Bush will address the conference; can livestream via BushCenter.com [.org ?]  Today we'd have much better growth if we had a better immigration policy:  GDP would be $2 trillion higher. First, expansion of labor force; second, more spending money and economy grows; also, see patents or economic publications or business start-ups: disproportionately by new immigrants.

http://www.fourpercentgrowth.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/12/Growth-and-Immigration-Handbook.pdf

Monday/Tues  1235A (935P Pacific Time):   . .Joseph Rago, WSJ & Pulitzer Prizewinner, in re:  Affordable Care Act.   Three hundred days to Obamacare.    If your state doesn’t have a health exchange, the feds do. Two dozen states elect not to set up a health exchange – the regulatory bodies that'll control the health insurance mkt.  Texas & Louisiana, e.g., opt out but have highest levels of uninsured.  Those states most committed to states's rights – "Get the feds outta here" – are inviting the feds to take over payments.   I don't have a lot of confidence in HHS running insurance.   Ohio: $63 mil to set up, $43 mil annually to run it. Will turn these costs over to Washington. It’s not as much the money as it is an enormous logistical path. The governors think, "If we end up with a disaster on our hands, we'll get blamed."  (JR's editorial: "Chris Christie of New Jersey and Rick Scott of Florida are playing Hamlet, haven’t yet decided.")  JA: This is pooling resources, yes?  JR: AN exchange is obviously a useful idea that depends on the execution. Utah, Mass, have an exchange. A transparent clearing house is valuable.  HHS promises to be much more heavy handed, a regulatory entity that does not easily allow markets to function.  

Monday/Tues  1250A  (950P Pacific Time): Exeunt. Sid Perkins, in re: the miniplanet Makemake (Easter Island god) has no atmosphere at 7.7 billion miles from Earth.

..  ..  ..

Music (using New York City broadcast times)  

 9 hour: Appaloosa, Cowboys & Aliens, Assassin's Creed

10 hour: The Taking of Pelham 123, Assassin's Creed, Tomorrow Never Dies

11 hour: Assassin's Creed, Babylon AD

12 hour: Appaloosa, Cowboys & Aliens, Babylon AD