Street in Timbuktu, Mali; Mosque in background, under control of Islamist Iconclasts, 2012.

JOHN BATCHELOR SHOW podcast link:

Co-host: John Avlon, CNN and Newsweek International

Monday  905PM Eastern (605P Pacific): John Avlon, in re: domestic politics, re American Crossroas an affiliates to spend $70 million for Republican Senate races.

Monday 920PM Eastern (620P Pacific): McKay Coppins, BuzzFeed, in re: Romney won't talk religion, so the national press corps descends on the annual re-enactment: a risk and an opportunity for the church, and a confusing spectacle for the press.  This LDS Hill Cumorah Pageant is annual, a 70-minute production depicting the Book of Mormon, in Palmyra, New York, on a ten-story stage (750 actors, all amateurs who apply to join) where Joseph Smith said he found the golden plates. Covers a thousand years of history, is a run-down of Mormon theology; 35,000 attendees. More performances on 17-21 July.  Mormon families from all over the world, inlc one from Abu Dhabi. Cumorah: the land of many waters, fountains.

http://www.buzzfeed.com/mckaycoppins/mormons-get-stage-fright-as-their-f...

Monday 935PM Eastern (635P Pacific): Salena Zito, Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, and Lara Brown, Villanova political science, in re: Obama allies tell Romney to "quit whining" about Bain attacks reut.rs/NuQpdR   Sean Trende: they’ve spent $100mil with no change. Will the Polls change? No.  The American people look, mutter "There they go again," and move on. Negative ads have always been with us and always will. They do not move the polls. "I remember William Henry Harrison."

Monday 950PM Eastern (650P Pacific):   John Bussey, WSJ, in re:  manufacturing makes a comeback in the American South, esp high-end, such as Airbus.

Cumorah Festival, Palmyra, New York, to celebrate Joseph Smith finding the Golden Tablets.Annual 

Monday 1005PM EDT (705P Pacific):  Taegan Goddard, Political Wire, in re: Mitt Romney has reached a decision on his running mate, his friends believe, and he may disclose it as soon as this week.  Meanwhile, Sen. John Thune (R-SD) told The Hill that he's been to Boston to meet Romney's senior advisers and has met Beth Myers, who's leading the search for the vice-presidential nominee.  Tim Pawlenty or Paul Ryan? JF: Maybe not Ryan, because his budget is so detailed; at the last minute, I suspect Marco Rubio as  a game-changer and fundraiser.  JA: Romney is wholly risk-averse; ergo, Portman.  JF: In Mass, he picked a female game-changer in the only time in his life he's picked a running mate. JA: OK, and Jindal.   TG: Obama's Bain attacks have knocked Romney off message.  JF: $100mil of oppo advertising that the president has to deal with.

Democrats are "making increasingly explicit threats about their willingness to let nearly $600 billion worth of tax hikes and spending cuts take effect in January unless Republicans drop their opposition to higher taxes for the nation's wealthiest households," the Washington Post reports.  "Emboldened by signs that GOP resistance to new taxes may be weakening, senior Democrats say they're prepared to weather a fiscal event that could plunge the nation back into recession if the new year arrives without an acceptable compromise."  Politico: "The Democratic hard line - asserted by Obama at a private Oval Office meeting with senior party leaders last week - is based squarely on the belief that Republicans will cave on taxes because the GOP has far less leverage than it did after its resounding success in the 2010 elections."

Monday 1020PM EDT (720P Pacific):  Congresswoman Nan Hayworth (NY-19), in re: the joy and exuberance of serving as representative; participation in parades, fireworks displays, dinners, during re-election. The response has been surprisingly positive – maybe 95% of attendees have been generous.  JA: Romney has finally responded to attacks on him at Bain; 18 years down the road, he hasn’t developed a compelling reply.  NH: Profit shows that an enterprise has a been doing something right; the nature of profit is that it's a reward, and leads to more jobs, greater services. If the money is just spent  it grows the economy, or if it’s invested it creates new business, or put in a bank whence it’ll be lent out. JA:  Private equity does include creative destruction, needs to be a more compelling sale than a simple defense of capitalism.  NH: Requires taking risks; enter into decisions with some forethought.

Demonstrators protesting StateSec visit to Cairo.

Monday 1035PM EDT (735P Pacific):  Malcolm Hoenlein, Conference of Presidents, in re: Heavy fighting in the Syrian capital erupted on Monday, while diplomatic efforts to resolve the crisis met renewed Russian resistance. Hosni Mubarak, Egypt’s former president, was abruptly moved from the comfort of a military hospital back to prison on Monday after a public prosecutor ruled that he was fit to serve his time behind bars. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said on Monday that Israel and the United States must “think together, act together” and be “smart, creative and courageous.” She says Morsi told her that Egypt would abide by its treaty with Israel – but more important are the shoes and tomatoes thrown at her motorcade. Muslim Brotherhood has sanitized its HQ: removed all posters and quotations; Secy Clinton seems to have bought this.

Gen Tantawi is enraged after meeting with Clinton.  She said Israel chd reach out to Turkey and Palestinians; has not been helpful anent Iran. Egyptian situation will get worse for a long time before getting better. Clinton's demand that Egypt remove military for power is setting up a situation just like that in Turkey – a disaster. "Be courageous and creative" – what?? "Israel should let Palestinians have more small weapons." Gaza today: forcible conversion of Christians; very brave people demonstrating against that. Increase of violence all over that subregion; more small weapons is a poor idea.   Iran elected head of Nonaligned Movement. NA: What the Secretary of State said is in effect appeasement.

Hamas today shot missiles deep into the Sinai, created by reverse technology; praised n Egypt. Israel has had to over Iron Dome to Eilat, limits IDF's ability to deal with some of the groups moving around Sinai. Clinton did say the US wd use all it’s power to prevent Iran from using nukes (not from becoming a nuclear power).  US timetable is [slow]. 

Three-and-a-half years ago this Administration said that Israel's amiability was the key to all Middle Eastern peace. Now, things are much worse. The ne lesson they’ve learned is that h Israeli-Palestinian issue, while important, is by no means the core issue – Muslim Brotherhood, Syria, Turkish Islamism, Mali , extremist ideologies and their implementation – these are the problems

India and Pakistan to resume cricket matches after five years suspension following Mumbai attacks.

Monday 1050PM EDT (750P Pacific):   Arif Rafiq, The Express Tribune, World Politics Review and Vizier Consulting  Foreign Policy, in re: cricket, India-Pakistan, a good sign.  Pakistan and US  now at last having discussions on endgame. The Defense of Pakistan Council led a demonstration; from within them, militants killed Pakistanis soldiers in drive-by  shooting. Meek reaction: groups are militant terrorist, and all the jihadists both allied and fighting against the state are part of the monster created since the 1980s; any pol who speaks against them will be endangered, and also fear a civil war. Pak media have been silent. Pakistani Taliban has increased domestic attacks, called Pak soldiers "the devil's agents."

From the Ruins of Empire: The Intellectuals Who Remade Asia By Pankaj Mishra  A surprising, gripping narrative depicting the thinkers whose ideas shaped contemporary China, India, and the Muslim world  A little more than a century ago, as the Japanese navy annihilated the giant Russian one at the Battle of Tsushima, original thinkers across Asia, working independently, sought to frame a distinctly Asian intellectual tradition that would inform and inspire the continent’s anticipated rise to dominance.   Asian dominance did not come to pass, and those thinkers—Tagore, Gandhi, and later Nehru in India; Liang Qichao and Sun Yat-sen in China; Jamal al-Din al-Afghani and Abdurreshi al Ibrahim in the ruins of the Ottoman Empire—are seen as outriders from the main anticolonial tradition. But Pankaj Mishra shows that it was otherwise in this stereotype-shattering book. His enthralling group portrait of like minds scattered across a vast continent makes clear that modern Asia’s revolt against the West is not the one led by faith-fired terrorists and thwarted peasants but one with deep roots in the work of thinkers who devised a view of life that was neither modern nor antimodern, neither colonialist nor anticolonialist. In broad, deep, dramatic chapters, Mishra tells the stories of these figures, unpacks their philosophies, and reveals their shared goal of a greater Asia.   Right now, when the emergence of a greater Asia seems possible as at no previous time in history, From the Ruins of Empire is as necessary as it is timely—a book essential to our understanding of the world and our place in it.

Video still showing Islamist destruction of mosque in Timbuktu.

Monday 1105PM EDT (805P Pacific):  Melik Kaylan, WSJ, in re: Islamists of Timbuktu tear down mosques and destroy archival artifacts. Wahhabists: "My way or the highway." One-size-fits-all Islamism. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timbuktu

Monday 1120PM EDT (820P Pacific):   Reza Kahlili, A Time to Betray, in re: US Navy shoots in the Gulf; Iranian radical threatens the US. Security for an Iranian defector (Reza).

Monday 1135PM EDT (835P Pacific):  Eric Trager, Washington Institute, in re: the attack o HRC motorcade; meeting between Clinton and Mursi; meeting between Clinton and Tantawi

Monday 1150PM EDT (850P Pacific): Jillian Kay Melchior, WSJ, in re: the Christians of China; the underground Catholic Church, and how it survives and prospers; the Party's Patriotic Association church

Monday/Mon 1205AM EDT (905 Pacific):  Michael Klare, The Race for What's Left. (1 of 2)

Monday/Mon 1220AM EDT (920 Pacific): Michael Klare, The Race for What's Left. (2 of 2)

Monday/Mon 1235AM EDT (935P Pacific): Salena Zito, Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, and Lara Brown, Villanova political science, in re: Obama allies tell Romney to "quit whining" about Bain attacks reut.rs/NuQpdR   Sean Trende: they’ve spent $100mil with no change. Will the Polls change? No.  The American people look, mutter "There they go again," and move on. Negative ads have always been with us and always will. They do not move the polls. "I remember William Henry Harrison."

Monday/Mon 1250AM EDT (950P Pacific):  Chris Gadomski, Bloomberg nuclear reporter, in re: San Onofre nuclear plant still off line; troubles, cd be deep troubles, bad construction, poor choices. 

Sankore Mosque In Timbuktu, 2012.