Friday 22 November 2013
Photo, above: ATV off track – gamer's image; see Hour 2, Block B, Sarah Maslin Nir, NYT, on For New York City’s Dirt Bikers, There's No Place to Ride
JOHN BATCHELOR SHOW
Hour One
Friday 22 November 2013 / Hour 1, Block A: Ben Protess, NYT, in re: U.S. Investigates Currency Trades by Major Banks From their desks at some of the world’s biggest banks, traders exchanged a series of instant messages that earned them the nickname “the cartel.”
Much like companies that rigged the price of vitamins and animal feed, the traders were competitors who hatched alliances for their own profits, federal investigators suspect.
The group of traders, the investigators say, shared a mission to alter the price of foreign currencies, the largest and yet least regulated market in the financial world. And ultimately, they flooded the market with trades that potentially raised the cost of currency for clients but aided the banks’ own investments.
Friday 22 November 2013 / Hour 1, Block B: Ty Rogoway, AviationIntel.com, in re: LOCKHEED SKUNKWORKS MAKES A PITCH FOR THE SR-72 ! Aircraft of the future: manned, unmanned, stealthy – whatever you want . . . Will do Mach 6, for intell on enemies – and can deliver weaponry anywhere in the world in about an hour. Nobody in it; it’s a robot. It's not stealthy so you can see it coming (albeit not for long). Very expensive; to be used if our satellites are down. Said to be for time-sensitive targets - what it really is, is a hedge against Lockheed's possibly losing the contract for a long-range strategic craft for the rest of the century. See: Chinese PLA's new craft, long-range HALE (high-altitude, long-endurance) is like the Global Hawk; will be scaled up larger. China was 'way behind in design until the US lost an advanced craft – Global Hawk - in Iran a few years ago. Broad area-advanced coastal surveillance: makes our ships and planes visible to China within 2,000 miles of their coast China leaked this to let us know that they’re building to attack the US's Achilles' heels.
Aviation Week’s Guy Norris dropped a pretty huge story Friday about a follow-on of sorts, but not really, to the legendary SR-71 Blackbird. Lamely named the SR-72 for marketing’s sake, this machine will be unmanned, capable of mach 6 speeds, have about the same range and dimensions of the SR-71, and will also be able to carry munitions as a secondary mission requirement. Breakthroughs in hybrid engine and inlet design, some of which are not fully described, will . . . [more]
Friday 22 November 2013 / Hour 1, Block C: Mary Anastasia O'Grady, WSJ THE AMERICAS, in re: What Castro Knew about Lee Harvey Oswald In November 1963, Cuban intelligence officer Florentino Aspillaga was posted in a little hut near a Cuban beach where he operated listening equipment trained on Miami and CIA headquarters in Virginia. On the morning of Nov. 22, Mr. Aspillaga—who would defect to the U.S. in 1987—said that he was ordered "to stop all your CIA work, all your CIA work." He was instructed to "put all of my equipment to listen to any small detail from Texas. They told me Texas."
Did Castro know that . . .
Friday 22 November 2013 / Hour 1, Block D: Peter Berkowitz, Hoover & Real Clear Politics, Nov. 20, in re: "Obama's Slow Learning Curve," Controversy continues to rage about President Obama's announcement at a Nov. 14 press conference that his administration would not compel insurance companies to cancel policies they had changed since passage of the Affordable Care Act and which did not conform to its numerous, costly, and multi-layered requirements.
Much of the controversy concerns the propriety of the president’s declining to enforce a duly enacted law (bearing his signature) whose constitutionality he does not doubt, and whether insurance companies will be able to abruptly change course after three years of preparing to comply with . . . [more]
Hour Two
Friday 22 November 2013 / Hour 2, Block A: Andrew Martin, Bloomberg, in re: Cartel Hits Midwest with Heroin Killing Chicago Youth – In the Midwest, heroin’s re-emergence has been abetted by the marketing ingenuity of the Sinaloa cartel, the Mexican drug organization that has grabbed control of narcotics sales in the region.
The cartel, whose leader once described Chicago as his “home port,” took advantage of the power vacuum left when federal prosecutors sent many top gang leaders to prison, fomenting violence among gang members who serve as the main sales force for Sinaloa. [more]
Friday 22 November 2013 / Hour 2, Block B: Sarah Maslin Nir, NYT, in re: For New York City’s Dirt Bikers, There's No Place to Ride The young man tore down the asphalt, the roar of his dirt bike trailing like a comet’s tail. When it seemed he could not go any faster, he went higher, hauling the bike into a near-vertical wheelie but never slowing down. A dozen other riders crisscrossed his path, their own front wheels aloft to the perfect fall sky.
The dirt bikers were not blasting through the Bronx and Upper Manhattan neighborhoods where, over the past few years, the noisy bikes and riders who flout traffic laws have provoked increasing public ire. Instead, that late October afternoon, they did their tricks on a desolate road on Long Island that ended at a quarry.
The outcry has become even more pitched since Sept. 29, when a pack of motorcyclists was involved in an altercation on the Henry Hudson Parkway with a . . . [more]
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Ruben Diaz Jr., the Bronx borough president, issued an open letter to the police commissioner this summer asking for a plan to thwart bikes and has pushed for laws that would prevent gas stations from selling fuel to bikers.
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Friday 22 November 2013 / Hour 2, Block C: Julie Bykowicz, Bloomberg, in re: Throwing-Grandma-Off-Cliff Ads Dim Odds of Medicare Cuts – Lawmakers are “terrified” of the pro-seniors lobby, said Steve Bell, a former Senate Republican budget adviser. “They have everybody on warning all the time,” said Bell, now with the Bipartisan Policy Center, a nonprofit based in Washington. “The 30-second commercial of you pushing grandma in her wheelchair over the cliff is ready to go.” [more]
Friday 22 November 2013 / Hour 2, Block D: Gene Marks, Forbes.com, in re: Why Is 'Sleepy Hollow' a Hit? Sleepy Hollow is a sleeper hit.
“After just four episodes, the new drama is Fox's highest-rated series, and one of network TV’s top newcomers among young-adult viewers,” reported USA Today’s Gary Levin recently. “And its 13-episode first season has already been extended for a second. Original episodes are averaging 12.3 million viewers, including . . . [more]
Hour Three
Friday 22 November 2013 / Hour 3, Block A: Corey Kilgannon, NYT, in re: Visiting the Island of the Dead (1 of 2) Here on a grassy expanse toward the south end of Hart Island, off the Bronx, the trenches are 10 feet deep and as long as a football field. They fill up steadily with the dead — the homeless, poor, stillborn and other unclaimed bodies — delivered by truck and ferry from all over New York City, for unceremonious interment.
The current trench should be filled before Christmas. Then the gravediggers, a cadre of inmates bused over from Rikers Island on Tuesdays through Fridays, will begin sowing the next crop of caskets in a pit, freshly dug and running adjacent, said Capt. Martin Thompson of the city’s Correction Department, which manages operations on the island.
His crews follow a grim arithmetic: up to 1,500 bodies buried a year, organized into 70-foot-long plots that, with caskets stacked three-high in rows of six, can hold about . . .
Friday 22 November 2013 / Hour 3, Block B: Corey Kilgannon, NYT, in re: Visiting the Island of the Dead (2 of 2), in re: Comments on the article. In 1943 my mother's infant son died and was given a Jewish burial, albeit with no marker. A year later, her second infant son died, and the body was given a city burial. This was never described by my mother. Last year I searched the ItalianGen web site and found their death certificates. I then somehow located Melinda Hunt, who generously offered information and encouragement that finally enabled my younger son and me to visit Hart Island and pay our respects. I found the accompanying staff people to be understanding and supportive, given the scope of the system they had to work in. My only wish is that people would stop criticizing and judging others. We all do our best, until we possibly learn a better way. Learning that I had two brothers, and that my parents had lost two sons before my arrival, has changed my life. Thank you, both. CK ; Rye
This is one ugly, undignified, substandard situation from stem to stern. A crematory, with professional workers, not inmates, is clearly called for for the unfortunate people who are now handled by this primitive process. Notice in the 1991 photo, the top row of infant caskets is only about three feet below the grade. The very idea of prisoners' being the last to touch a set of human remains sends a chill up my spine. NYC needs to set a standard and take bids for the professional, dignified disposal of its most unfortunate. With nobody to lobby for the unclaimed dead, their disposal exposes what our culture looks like underneath its facade of forty-eight-million-dollar balloon dog sculptures on display only a couple miles away. The Generalisimo ; NYC
I find it stunning that the Corrections Dept. is responsible for Potters Field considering that the dead pose very little risk to law enforcement or the public, and also because you don't need an army of labor to bury approximately seven people per workday. The article states that the site is a utilitarian burial field with large trenches dug by a backhoe, but the writer fails to answer how many prisoners work on Potters Field and how much the city budget allocates to the prison system based on the 50-cent wages that they did point out. The writer also failed in the opportunity to point out that the 50 cents per hour that a prisoner gets paid to dig holes does not account for the 50 dollars per hour a guard gets paid to watch him. Dignity, respect and humanity are not three words that come to mind with how the NY Corrections Dept. handles the living, so I don't wanna take their word on how they treat the dead. Just wish that when the NYT gets a once-in-a-decade access to report on a story that they wouldn't squander it. It's as if they wait for citizens to do a FOIA request and then just ask them for the details. BFS ; New York, NY
In my experience, Correction Officers (not "guards") watch the inmates even when they are not digging graves, and still must be paid.
Friday 22 November 2013 / Hour 3, Block C: Got That Something! How the Beatles' "I Want to Hold Your Hand" Changed Everything (Kindle Single) by Allan Kozinn (1 of 2)
Friday 22 November 2013 / Hour 3, Block D: Got That Something! How the Beatles' "I Want to Hold Your Hand" Changed Everything (Kindle Single) by Allan Kozinn (2 of 2)
Hour Four
Friday 22 November 2013 / Hour 4, Block A: Our Lives, Our Fortunes and Our Sacred Honor: The Forging of American Independence, 1774-1776, parts 5 – 8; by Richard R. Beeman (5 of 8)
Friday 22 November 2013 / Hour 4, Block B: Our Lives, Our Fortunes and Our Sacred Honor: The Forging of American Independence, 1774-1776, parts 5 – 8; by Richard R. Beeman (6 of 8)
Friday 22 November 2013 / Hour 4, Block C: Our Lives, Our Fortunes and Our Sacred Honor: The Forging of American Independence, 1774-1776, parts 5 – 8; by Richard R. Beeman (7 of 8)
Friday 22 November 2013 / Hour 4, Block D: Our Lives, Our Fortunes and Our Sacred Honor: The Forging of American Independence, 1774-1776, parts 5 – 8; by Richard R. Beeman (8 of 8)
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Music
Hour 1: Pirates of the Caribbean. Assassins' Creed. All the King's Men.
Hour 2: Sin City. Season of the Witch.
Hour 3: The Grey. The Beatles: George Benson. Beatles Baroque.
Hour 4: Girl with the Dragon Tattoo.
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