The John Batchelor Show

Friday 17 January 2020

Air Date: 
January 17, 2020

 
JOHN BATCHELOR SHOW
 
Hour One
Friday 17 January 2020 / Hour 1, Block A: Devin Nunes, CA-22, Ranking Member of House Intell Committee; in re:
Friday 17 January 2020 / Hour 1, Block B: Devin Nunes, CA-22, Ranking Member of House Intell Committee; in re:  Oddest ceremony, where Pelosi and associates were gleefully signing papers and handing around pens; them proceeded in grave, solemn march to Senate and presented a cherry wood box—that was missing material.  Lev Parnas, under multiple federal indictments.
Friday 17 January 2020 / Hour 1, Block C: Brian Yablonski,  Executive director, PERC, in re:  The 22-million-acre Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem: elk, pronghorn, mule deer, all use the largest temperate ecosystem to migrate back and forth. GPS and new tracking devices have given us a much better sense of where the elk herds start and go to during a year.  “Surfing the green wave.”  Migrations cover the eleven Western states in the Lower 48.  Mule Deer 255, a female, migrated 250 mi from south-central Wyoming to Idaho, and then back. Bison.  Habitat loss (development) is the greatest threat. Cattle ranchers are great stewards of these species – but there are economic consequences: elk destroy fences and often convey diseases to whole cattle herds. Todd Wilkinson’s article on migration,  Before Europeans arrived, thirty to fifty million bison migrated as far as Florida.
Friday 17 January 2020 / Hour 1, Block D:  Jeff Bliss, Pacific Watch, in re:  A parody of the Eagles’s famous song from decades ago, “Hotel California”:  this time, a parade of the homeless camped out in California, with no pedestrians, cars going by, trash all around; people wearing blankets and smoking. A line in the revised song:  “Some snort to remember, some drink to forget.”  All driven by substance abuse; the pols have been treating the symptoms, not the causes of the diseases. Conditions have been getting worse, which has caught the attention of some pols.  Fecal contamination of waterways—becoming more urgent in states with large homeless problems.  SF complaining that bankers are taking their business elsewhere—constitutes a major business loss: tens of millions of dollars going down h drain, and billions over time, from the loss of tourism and conferences. “Governor signals that he wants lower traffic fines for [poor] people.” [= $26K PA or less.]
 
Hour Two
Friday 17 January 2020 / Hour 2, Block A:  Michael A Vlahos, Johns Hopkins, in re:  Are we in a civil war?   Today, urban vs rural; red vs blue, globalist vs nationalist. After the glee of the signing ceremony, the Democrats took on the appearance of Dominican priests in an auto-da-fe; delivered the document, then took to the airwaves and condemned the Attorney General as “rogue” and as “a henchman.” Have we passed the point of no return where communication is basically finished?  The clash of world views, the sense of fighting an irredeemable enemy, is no different from our 1860s civil war. We have all the elements of a civil war, but no actual war. An accumulation of old custom and tradition, residual sense of trying for as long as possible to preserve the country that one day in the past we all knew and love; and dread that pulling that asunder could be dreadful and terrible.   We have a suspended moment, could last a year or more.   Keep the flood at bay.   There’s no reconciliation, no basis for compromise; the two sides inhabit completely different realities – greater than at the height of Protestant-Catholic [wars], or than Sunni-Shi’a.  The basic Constitutional erosion: civil war begins when Constitutional order breaks down. It is now breaking down here, but we maintain obsequies as a fig leaf. A continuing basic Constitutional erosion cannot go on forever. We saw this is nth USSR, in France at the revolution. We’re on the road to a breaking point  From the later Soviet Union: Brezhnev, Andropov, Chernenko: no one believed in them – the lack of trust and disbelief in the universities, the corporate world: all toast in the eyes of Americans . . . not a stable norm.
Friday 17 January 2020 / Hour 2, Block B:  Michael A Vlahos, Johns Hopkins, in re:  In the late 1860s,  Thaddeus Stevens, head of the ”radical Republicans.” At the apex of his career he led the impeachment; Democrats wanted to [get rid of him] and overturn the Republican Party.  [“After gains in the 1866 election the radicals took control of Reconstruction away from Johnson. Stevens's last great battle was to secure in the House articles of impeachment against Johnson, though the Senate did not convict the President.”]
Today, the reds are on the defensive and in the weaker position; blue wants to ride roughshod and have [everyone] submit to its will.   Grant, himself, in the 1870s, said, “We’ve got to get out of this.”  By the end of the century, the South was its own [in effect] republic.  If a party prosecutes its relations so that it's a war, feels that it needs to defenestrate the enemy, then it’s undermining the basis for a shared collective belief among Americans in the Constitution—the whole history we’ve had since the Civil War is undermined; neither party can be considered normal.   We’re currently headed to an internecine conflict that will extend for years and years and ensure that the US loses its [pre-eminent ] position that it’s long had in the world. 
Friday 17 January 2020 / Hour 2, Block C:  Richard Epstein, Chicago Law, NYU Law, and Hoover, in re:   
Friday 17 January 2020 / Hour 2, Block D:  Richard Epstein, Chicago Law, NYU Law, and Hoover, in re:   
 
Hour Three
Friday 17 January 2020 / Hour 3, Block A: Fred Starr, American expert on Russian and Eurasian affairs; former president of Oberlin College; in re: In 1992, the Soviet Special Forces break through the Azerbaijani Popular Front and destroy a lot of the capital, Baku”: Gorbachev angered and insulted by Azeris and the former head of the KGB and then head of Azerbaijan because a whole group of leaders around h USSR who ere asserting the rights of their home cultures.  Gorbachev fired Aliyev in the late 1980s; then the Berlin war fell, Armenia made claims against Azeri territory.   Led up to the 20 Jan massacre by the Red Army, with  pogroms committed by Armenians; 170 killed and 800? injured. The end of Communist rule in Azerbaijan.  . . .  Today, the entirety of Central Asia is moving past Communist rule and into productive independence.
Friday 17 January 2020 / Hour 3, Block B:  John Tamny, author, They’re Both Wrong, in re:  Walmart has spent billions on raising wages and training its workers.   . . .
Friday 17 January 2020 / Hour 3, Block C:  Tyler Rogoway,  The War Zone at the Drive; in re: Iranian shootdown of the Ukrainian civilian plane.  SAM-15 has its own radar, locked into a regional system IRGC’s error.  Road-able systems, not the top-trained guys running it.  . . .  The hour before sunrise is the tensest, most hair-trigger time for the air-defense men. Diego Garcia is just beyond the range of Iranian missiles; a fall-back to maintain capable Cruise missiles.  Pre-positioned ships filled with munitions and weaponry.  One of two such squadrons.  Currently deploying two B-52s at DG; was going to be six.  Afghanistan: upgrade of the Hellfire missile: a secretive weapons system dvpt in the last few years.  Is an AGM114 Hellfire, configured with large, swordlike blades that fling out just before hitting target (extremely accurate), with no munitions. It’s a blade-bomb!  People in the back seat can be relatively unharmed. Brutal. Specifically for very high-level targets.
Friday 17 January 2020 / Hour 3, Block D:  Tyler Rogoway,  The War Zone at the Drive; in re: China has replicated Nellis, a major US air base, in the Gobi!   Golden Helmet Drill: copies Top Gun – they refine tactics, and fight against the aggressor force. 
 
Hour Four
Friday 17 January 2020 / Hour 4, Block A: Robert Zimmerman, BehindtheBlack.com, in re:   Proxima Centauri is closest to its sun; currently is closer to us than Alpha Centauri
Friday 17 January 2020 / Hour 4, Block B: Robert Zimmerman, BehindtheBlack.com, in re:   Proxima Centauri is closest to its sun; currently is closer to us than Alpha Centauri
Friday 17 January 2020 / Hour 4, Block C:  1781: The Decisive Year of the Revolutionary War, by Robert Tonsetic, Noah Michael Levine;  Audible Studios (Publisher)
Friday 17 January 2020 / Hour 4, Block D:  1781: The Decisive Year of the Revolutionary War, by Robert Tonsetic, Noah Michael Levine;  Audible Studios (Publisher)
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