Photo, above: The then-Nigerian president Olusegun Obasanjo (R) and the People's Democratic Party's (PDP) vice presidential candidate Goodluck Jonathan (left) speak during a PDP presidential campaign rally in Ibadan, March 8, 2007. (Sunday Aghaeze/Courtesy Reuters)  See Hour 3, Blocks C & D: Gregory Copley, author, UnCivilization, and editor, Defense and Foreign Affairs Special Analysis,  on Obasanjo/Jonathan rift, governors' defection, National Conference, others to shape Nigeria's politics in 2014
 PREMIUM TIMES reviews issues that might shape the nation's political scene in 2014 in preparation for 2015.   Senate to Investigate Obasanjo's Letter to Jonathan   Nigeria Cleric warns Jonathan, Obasanjo over feud.

JOHN BATCHELOR SHOW

Hour One

Friday  3 January  2014  / Hour 1, Block A: Jim McTague, Barron's Washington, in re: S&P up about 30% in 2014 ;2014 will go up a max of about 10%, will be rocky.  Investors be very wary.  ISM index is now so rosy it's most surprising; unemployment numbers don't mention people who've given up on looking.  French, English an Euro money looking ro safety, security and productivity – will probably invest in US.  Average wage in foreign company is $77K vs US$50K-plus.   Obamacare: hasn’t rally impacted the economy as a whole, nor that it's reduced medical costs.  "There could have been a recipe for chicken sop in there and no one would have noticed it – it’s so long and enormous." Lots of glitches, legal ramifications; will continue throughout the year . Obamacare is well intentioned but disastrous. b  People who deify politicians on the left and right – no longer, incl the left.  Look for a new regime in 2016, 2017.

Friday  3 January  2014  / Hour 1, Block B:  Gordon Chang, Forbes.com, in re:  George Soros, the global financial guru, announces that the numbers issued by China are rotten, and so is the economy.   Suddenly, the intense China-sceptic Gordon Chang is mainstream. Look for defaults in China.  Regime can bear a small number of defaults, but not all that are coming.  Under State oversight, the Peoples Bank of China has made loans that won't be repaid. From 16% to 30% per year increase in credit – while the max possible GDP increase is maybe 2%   Soros says that China needs both political and economic reforms – impossible!  By postponing symptoms, regime makes them worse.  That's what they’ve done, problems are now intractable.   Xi Jinping exhibiting a sort of new-Red Guardism.  Party has been basing its legitimacy on economic growth; cannot do so now, so it shifts to nationalism, thus empowering leftists, which is genuinely dangerous.   As long as Bo Xilai's heart beats, he's a threat to Xi, who's now overseeing a disaster. Kim's killing his uncle: he was fed to twenty-plus ravenous dogs? This story comes from a Party-favoring Hong Kong paper, meaning that someone high in the CCP intends to destabilize the DPRK regime. (North Korea depends entirely on China for support; someone used he HK paper to challenge the legitimacy of ht Pyongyang regime and, thereby, of the hardline pro-Koreans in China.)

Friday  3 January  2014  / Hour 1, Block C:  Robert Langreth, Bloomberg, in re:  ROBOT SURGERY. Unreported Robot Surgeries Open Questions for FDA – A Bloomberg review of reports for operations with Intuitive’s robotic system found dozens of injuries that went unreported for years. Meanwhile, details of other patient problems involving use of the company’s product, cited in legal papers or in interviews with patients, were missing entirely.  [more]

Friday  3 January  2014  / Hour 1, Block D: Carl Zimmer, NYT, in re: Toe Fossil Provides Complete Neanderthal Genome  Scientists say the accuracy of the new genome is of similar quality to sequencing the DNA of a living person.

Hour Two

Friday  3 January  2014  / Hour 2, Block A: Robert Zimmerman, behindtheblack.com,  in re: The second commercial launch on SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket has been delayed three days until January 6 because of an unspecified issue with the rocket’s fairing.  It appears the company wants to do some additional inspections of the rocket, just to be sure all is well. They haven’t been more specific then this, . . . Virgin Galactic has released video of SpaceShipTwo’s second powered flight.

Messier notes how strained the pilot’s voices are, indicating that this test flight was “one wild ride.” I have put the video below the fold.
Read more

Friday  3 January  2014  / Hour 2, Block B:  Seb Gorka, FDD, in re: Egypt police air deadly blast 'confession'
Aljazeera.com ‎- 3 hours ago 
Son of senior Brotherhood member among seven arrested over Mansoura police station bombing claimed by Sinai group.   Five killed in clashes between Egyptian police, Muslim Brotherhood protesters   Egypt riot police clash with Muslim Brotherhood supporters ahead of referendum  [more]


 Friday  3 January  2014  / Hour 2, Block C: John Markoff, in re:  Japanese Team Dominates Competition to Create Generation of Rescue Robots.    By Sci-Fi Standards, Newest Robots May Disappoint   The Darpa Robotics Challenge is more than a showcase for a new generation of robots. It is also an attempt by the federal government to push technology forward, to create machines that can perform dangerous tasks in humans’ place. 

Friday  3 January  2014  / Hour 2, Block D:   Tim Fernholz, Quartz.com, in re:  On Christmas Eve, Americans remember the Grinch, who stole all the Christmas gifts from the Whos of Whoville. Thus, Quartz now takes a moment to remember the people in 2013 whose attempts to liberate others’ property for their own purposes merit comparison with the Grinch. (Note: Unlike the Dr Seuss character, who is overwhelmed with remorse and returns the goods, most of these thieves did not apparently experience sudden cardiac expansion after their deeds.)

The Great Belgian Diamond Heist. Takings: $50 million worth of uncut diamonds.   At first glance, you think this February caper might make a good movie, but not enough goes wrong to really sustain the plot. With precise timing, thieves cut through an airport fence in Brussels in June, drove onto the tarmac and arrived at a plane just as uncut diamonds were being transferred from an armored car. Threatening the guards and porters with assault rifles, the thieves were able to make off with 120 bags of jewels without firing a shot. Experts say it has all the markings of an inside job. While some of the diamonds have been recovered andarrests have been made, no one has been convicted yet.

The Excellent Electronic ATM Robbery. Takings: $45 million   You know that dream you have where money just pours out of ATMs for the taking? These hackers made it a reality by lifting withdrawal limits on big accounts and equipping bagmen with copies of their linked debit cards. The bagmen made the rounds of ATMs in cities around the world, withdrawing $2.4 million in New York City alone. Law enforcement caught up to the crew, indicting eight men, including a ring-leader who fled to the Dominican Republican and was killed there in suspicious circumstances.

The Big Bitcoin Bonanza. Takings: 4,100 bitcoins (around $2.7 million as of this writing) Bitcoin’s wild ride and debates about its viability as a future currency took center stage once again this year. One thing to remember, though: Bitcoin isn’t more secure than any other store of value. That was driven home in November, when an unknown hacker was able to gain access to a cloud-hosting service and make off with 4,100 bitcoins stored there by unwitting users. That’s just one example of bitcoin theft—others include a Chinese exchange that simply went dark while holding onto millions of dollars worth of users’ bitcoins, and plenty of individuals whose computer security was not so tough as they thought.

Read about more great heists in 2013 here. 

Hour Three

Friday  3 January  2014  / Hour 3, Block A:  Peter Berkowitz, Real Clear Politics, Dec. 31, in re:  "10 Roadblocks to Mideast Peace" Monday night, in a painful concession engineered by U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, Israel released 26 Palestinian terrorists, many convicted of murdering civilians. Undertaken by Israel as a goodwill gesture to advance peace negotiations, it was the third of four such prisoner releases.  Meanwhile, on Sunday, the Knesset Ministerial Committee for Legislation voted to annex Jordan River Valley civilian settlements (a provocation that will not become law), and the Finance Committee approved an additional appropriation of approximately $17 million for settlement activity. Days earlier, in advance of a move sure to be denounced by Palestinians and bound to increase tensions with the Obama administration, an Israeli government official said that soon after the prisoner release Israel would announce the building of 1,400 new houses in the West Bank. In so doing, the Israeli government went to considerable lengths to achieve peace while simultaneously proceeding with a political agenda that undermines negotiations.  Ambivalence is by no means restricted to the government. Here in Israel's frenetic cultural and commercial center, numerous conversations -   [more]

Friday  3 January  2014  / Hour 3, Block B:  Henry I Miller, M.D., Hoover & Forbes.com, in re: Sen Feinstein's Christmas Folly  I hate to see politicians doing things that are misguided, especially when they are supposed to be representing me.  Dianne Feinstein, the senior senator from California, was guilty of that in a December 20 letter to President Obama, which read in part: “It is my strong opinion that consumers have the right to know whether their food originates from genetically modified organisms.  Your administration should reevaluate the Food & Drug Administration’s outdated policy that genetically engineered food does not need to disclose this fact on required labels.”

DiFi, as she is widely known here in California, is so misguided.  Mandatory labeling of genetically modified, or genetically engineered (GE), foods fails every test: scientific, economic, legal and common sense. Nevertheless, undeterred by facts,  . . .  [more]

Friday  3 January  2014  / Hour 3, Block C: Gregory Copley, author, UnCivilization and editor, Defense and Foreign Affairs Special Analysis (1 of 2), in re: Obasanjo/Jonathan rift, governors' defection, National Conference, others to shape Nigeria's politics in 2014
 PREMIUM TIMES reviews issues that might shape the nation's political scene in 2014 in preparation for 2015.   Senate to Investigate Obasanjo's Letter to Jonathan   Nigeria Cleric warns Jonathan, Obasanjo over feud.  Question of whether or not Goodluck Jonathan is endeavoring to divide Nigeria tso the south-south section, the ultra-oil-rich Niger Delta, can drink in enormous profits yet have no responsibility for the rest of the country.

Friday  3 January  2014  / Hour 3, Block D: Gregory Copley, author, UnCivilization and editor, Defense and Foreign Affairs Special Analysis, in re: Nigeria, plus post-post-colonial Africa: Colonial borders not necessarily relevant today; AU offers to reconsider applications for revised frontiers based on historical and demographic facts.   (2 of 2)

Hour Four

Friday  3 January  2014  / Hour 4, Block A:  Neen Satija, The Texas Tribune, in re: Sinking Land Brings Calls for Pumping Alternative  In Fort Bend County, they call it subsidence, a geological phenomenon in which land above the Gulf Coast Aquifer sinks, and the only solution appears to be to stop groundwater pumping.

Friday  3 January  2014  / Hour 4, Block B:  Jeff Tatersall, American Museum of Natural History, in re:  "In Search of the First Human Home:  When did the savanna give way to the crash pad?"

Friday  3 January  2014  / Hour 4, Block C: Jeffery DelViscio, NYT, in re:  Tracking the Snowy Owl Migration in Real Time  Spotted in states like Maryland, Pennsylvania, Michigan, North Carolina and New York, snowy owls are heading south in what ornithologists say is the largest migration in two decades.

Friday  3 January  2014  / Hour 4, Block D:   Ken Croswell, Physics World, in re:  An international team of astronomers has accidentally spotted the first space  molecules bearing a noble gas, argon. The surprising discovery, in the debris of an exploded star, reveals the element's isotopic composition, confirming long-standing predictions that argon is forged in such doomed stars.    [more]

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Music

Hour 1:    Ghost Rider.  Tomorrow Never Dies.  Skyfall.  Girl with the Dragon Tattoo.

Hour 2:    Star Trek.  Skyfall.  Girl with the Dragon Tattoo.  Pink Panther.

Hour 3:    Green Zone.  Knight and Day.

Hour 4:   After Earth.  Knight & Day

 

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