Photo, above: Geysers of vapor—a couple of hundred kilometers tall and possibly erupting at supersonic speeds—occasionally spew from the south polar regions of Europa, one of Jupiter’s ice-covered moons, a new study suggests. See: Hour 3, Block D, Sid Perkins.

JOHN BATCHELOR SHOW

Hour One

Monday  16 December 2013 / Hour 1, Block A: Thomas Joscelyn, Long War Journal senior editor, and Bill Roggio, Long War Journal and FDD, in re: drone strikes in Yemen, a fragmented nation of 26 million spread over a large territory. Last week, struck a wedding party; this time, seems to be many people.  AQAP different from other aQ groups, but connected. Syria: a new organization, the Islamic Front, endorsed by a Saudi cleric (Dr Abdullah M_, w 250K Twitter followers), who also calls for coordination w  aQ.     Has two tel nos in Kuwait and one in Qatar where people can donate.

Monday  16 December 2013 / Hour 1, Block B: Thomas Joscelyn, Long War Journal senior editor, and Bill Roggio, Long War Journal and FDD, in re: Syria: Geneva II said to be intended in January –we'll see; al Nusrah Front (under allegiance to Ayman al Zawahiri), Islamic Front in Iraq and the Levant (under allegiance to Ayman al Zawahiri), and now the Islamic Front, which calls itself the pure Syrian play (under allegiance to Ayman al Zawahiri). Coca-Cola sets a blue, can, an orange can, a dark red can, a green can on the shelf, so you think you have a choice – but Coke owns all of them.  Turki al Faisal said to be extremely condemnatory toward the US, esp its aid to the FSA.  Saudis providing much of the money to the alQ groups.  

Monday  16 December 2013 / Hour 1, Block C: Francis Rose, Federal News Radio, in re:  2013 year end: Healthcare.com., and food fight between GOP and Dems, now five years old. Until recently, each side thought it didn’t have to get pat this – its base rewarded them but 80% of the GOP electorate was furious; similar for Dems.  Beltway perception: next election will be based on competency, not ideology.  "Mr Obama is not a negotiator, not an executive."  Recall Bill Daley, who's good but gave up after a year.  Sebelius. Dems need to do something.    Obama's horrible year: Even his supporters wonder if he can reboot his administration and save his second term  For President Obama, 2013 will go down as a year of self-inflicted wounds, wasted political capital and missed opportunities that imperiled his second-term agenda and fundamentally changed how . . .  more...

Monday  16 December 2013 / Hour 1, Block D: Larry Johnson, NoQuarter, in re: Robert Levinson, CIA: IRGC would never believe that he wasn't on a major op. The moment he entered Iranian sovereign space he was a goner.  If the Director of Operations is actually working in Iran, the last thing he'd want is to expose the fact.  Levinson may be dead, or someone may want a whole lot of money.

Hour Two

Monday  16 December 2013 / Hour 2, Block A:  John Fund, National Review Online, and David M Drucker, Washington Examiner Sr Congressional correspondent, in re: Christmas Eve in Washington: Harry Reid is a Grinch.  In a post-nuclear-option Senate, GOP in no mood to yield. May stetch ut to the bitter end: defense authorization, budget – under rules changed by Dems.. Can still filibuster; merely that it takes 51 votes rather than 60, and Republicans are quite annoyed; they won’t yield back time as normal.  . . .  John Podesta, Founded Center for American Progress with a lot of G Soros money; brother is a major K St lobbyist. Podesta and Valerie Jarrett are the new power couple.  "The left hand at the White House doesn’t know what the extreme left hand is doing."  John Podesta has  an overarching expansive view of Executive power – believes  that the president may do things that no other Constitutional scholar thinks he may; he's enabling the president's march to the imperial presidency.  He's been at the WH 130 times.  Keystone Pipeline is his nominal jurisdiction; it'll be in a deep freeze for a while.  . . .  New legislative affairs asst: former Chuck Schumer aide. 

Monday  16 December 2013 / Hour 2, Block B: John Fund, National Review Online, and David M Drucker, Washington Examiner Sr Congressional correspondent, in re: Who had a good year in Washington, who had a bad year (not allowed to say the president)?  DMD: Paul Ryan had a good year as he [landed on his feet], loves being chairman of the budget committee; heading to Ways and Means?    JF: Good year – Chris Christie and Ted Cruz.  Christie is the leafing anti-Washington spokesman, the most voluble governor, candidate for 2016.  Ted Cruz has "White House fence fever." A most-admired conservative; "I warned against Obamacare."

DMD bad year: the CMS and HHS teams (not the prez; "Nobody's madder than me.")  Major govtl disaster of a sort never before seen in my lifetime.  JF: anyone within hailing distance of designing, releasing Obamacare, must have the biggest headache.  The Edsel of the Twenty-first Century – Edsel, new Coke, even the Titanic doesn’t approach it.  No one knew in advance how bad this'd be.

Monday  16 December 2013 / Hour 2, Block C:  Bruce Webster, andStilliPersist, in re: Fifteen thousand people ____; the govt may not even know how many are cut out.  . . .  HHS, CMS: not transparent.  . . .  MITRE. Obscurity through security. How many thousands of contractors have worked on this project?

Obamacare and the Cold Equations  There's a famous 1954 short story by Tom Godwin called “The Cold Equations." In it, a young girl stows away on a rocket ship taking plague vaccine to a colony world deep in space; her goal is to pay a surprise visit to her brother, who's on that world. Unbeknownst to her, the ship — which travels at sub-light speeds only and was dropped off by a faster-than-light ship that has long since departed — has a very tight fuel budget. The girl’s presence on the ship means it cannot reach its destination and keep the colonists from being wiped out unless the ship’s mass — already planned for to the last ounce — is reduced back to acceptable limits. Various options are considered, including the pilot sacrificing himself, but none will work except one: jettisoning the young girl through the airlock. As the pilot notes:

Existence required order, and there was order; the laws of nature, irrevocable and immutable. Men could learn to use them, but men could not change them. The circumference of a circle was always pi times the diameter, and no science of man would ever make it otherwise. The combination of chemical A with chemical B under condition C invariably produced reaction D. The law of gravitation was a rigid equation, and it made no distinction between the fall of a leaf and the ponderous circling of a binary star system. The nuclear conversion process powered the cruisers that carried men to the stars; the same process in the form of a nova would destroy a world with equal efficiency. The laws were, and the universe moved in obedience to them. Along the frontier were arrayed all the forces of . . .

Monday  16 December 2013 / Hour 2, Block D:  Gordon Chang, Forbes.com, in re: Thos Friedman wrote a "letter to Xi Jinping" – "Maybe your system is frailer then I thought" – basically pleading with Xi not to expel NYT journos.  Also: execution of  Kim Jong-eun'  uncle, he who had a lot of allies, some of whom have been in China.  Xi is a billionaire; all the members of he Standing Committee are likely to be. Now, however, the Red element is dominant; Xi trying to out-Red Bo Xilai?

A reckless manouever by a Chinese ship; cannot do so without orders from Beijing. Clearly an attempt to intimidate the US to get it out of the South China Sea and away from the Liaoning.  Very poor policy; expect trouble ahead.  Sign of weakness by Xi, since it’s obvious that in the long term this will not work out well for China; means that internal problems are severe. JB: "Frail? No – the ash heap of history"

A US warship, the USS Cowpens guided-missile cruiser, threatened a Chinese naval vessel before being forced to manoeuver to avoid a collision, China's state-run Global Times newspaper said. The United States made a formal protest after the Dec. 5 incident, which occurred in the South China Sea, claiming the ships were in international waters. Tensions have been high since Beijing declared its air defense identification zone in the East China Sea.

Hour Three

Monday  16 December 2013 / Hour 3, Block A:  Malcolm Hoenlein, Conference of Presidents, in re: The criticism had to do with the announcement in the wake of Congressional action that would have resulted in new sanctions.  Zarif using leverage on the US to try to limit existing sanctions. US Treasury held back on sanctions; this Administration may have e been using sanctions to send a message to Iran.   __ Has used more oil this year; Iran is increasing its production to 850,000 Bbl/day, with China and Taiwan taking much, and insurance companies now can insure the oil again.  European Union has just offered to lift sanctions entirely – Europe  has just surrendered.  Predictable, disturbing; will undermine security.  See reactions in Saudi Arabia and the Gulf.  As sanctions crumble, we'll  lose control.  Persian bazaar: go from one side of the street to the other side, keep getting a better price; Iran has just done this.  In phone call to Kerry, Iran FM says he’s unhappy with US policies

Geneva II is about Syria. . . . In Syria, the temperatures are so low that a rebel commander froze to death. Escalation, incl al Qaeda.

Monday  16 December 2013 / Hour 3, Block B: Malcolm Hoenlein, Conference of Presidents, in re: Who murdered Shlomo Cohen, the soldier driving along the border who was shot? Not likely Hezbollah; maybe a sniper associated with Lebanese armed forces. Lebanese ow are pleading with Israel: "We'll find out who it is and deal with it."  There are also plenty of guys in Lebanon come back from Syria.  Ancient Jewish scrolls in Iraq:  were taken by Muhabarat, Iraqi secret service, stolen from Jews, put in a basement that was flooded; American soldiers were able to rescue the documents, taken to US frozen. Natl Archives did an amazing job of restoration; those that couldn't be saved were buried according to Jewish religious tradition.  Buried in New York with dignity. Further: The Joba synagogue in Syria, probably the oldest in the world, has been plundered by al Qaeda, scrolls being held in  exchange for prisoners of the Assad regime. Rumored that Elijah the prophet was at this synagogue; this has aroused much concern not only among Jews. 

The American Studies Association (ASA): 66% of its 5,000 members voted to boycott Israel. Of all the laces that crush academic freedom, they decided to pick Israel. Larry Summers mocked the deed, called for a reverse boycott. new Nazi salute in Europe; boycotts of Israeli products. UN Information System on the Palestinian Question: interview with Roger Waters, clearly anti-Jewish; also voted to protest Israel.  Part of larger movement to demonize Israel and Jews.

Monday  16 December 2013 / Hour 3, Block C:  Alan Levin, Bloomberg, in re: DRONES. Dream of Drone Commerce Has 24 U.S. States Vying for Test Sites – The idea of drones buzzing the skies, delivering packages and spreading seeds, has set off a race among 24 U.S. states to win permission to open testing facilities to see whether unmanned aircraft can co-exist with passenger jets.  Jeff Bezos wants his drones to be flying automatically to a coordinate, where as current rules require that each drone be human-operated.

Monday  16 December 2013 / Hour 3, Block D:   Sid Perkins, Nature magazine, in re: Nature News about a model for predicting the “habitability zone” around stars for Earth-like planets: Earth is only just within the Sun's habitable zone  Climate model suggests exoplanets that can host life are less prevalent than thought.

ScienceNOW: possible geysers of water vapor from the Jupiter moon Europa: Water Vapor Plumes Erupt from Europa.

Hour Four

Monday  16 December 2013 / Hour 4, Block A: Flight of the Eagle: The Grand Strategies That Brought America from Colonial Dependence to World Leadership by Conrad Black, Part II.   (1 of 4)

Monday  16 December 2013 / Hour 4, Block B: Flight of the Eagle: The Grand Strategies That Brought America from Colonial Dependence to World Leadership by Conrad Black, Part II.   (2 of 4)

Monday  16 December 2013 / Hour 4, Block C: Flight of the Eagle: The Grand Strategies That Brought America from Colonial Dependence to World Leadership by Conrad Black, Part II.   (3 of 4)

Monday  16 December 2013 / Hour 4, Block D: Flight of the Eagle: The Grand Strategies That Brought America from Colonial Dependence to World Leadership by Conrad Black, Part II.   (4 of 4)

..  ..  ..  ..  ..  ..

Music

Hour 1: 10,000 B.C. Madagascar. Hurt Locker.

Hour 2: Alexander. Frost/Nixon. House of Flying Daggers.

Hour 3: Lawrence of Arabia. Green Zone.

Hour 4: Michael Clayton.