Photo, above: Times of Israel, August 25/26, 2014

JOHN BATCHELOR SHOW

Co-host:  Thaddeus McCotter, WJR, The Great Voice of the Great Lakes.

Hour One

Monday  25 August  2014  / Hour 1, Block A:  Bill Roggio, Long War Journal and FDD, in re: Islamic State fighters assault last Syrian stronghold in Raqqah  Islamic State fighters are reported to be in control of large areas of the Tabqa military airport, the last major stronghold for the Syrian military in Raqqah province.

Monday  25 August  2014  / Hour 1, Block B:  Josh Rogin, Daily Beast, in re: The Free Syrian Army is not impressed with President Obama’s new threat to attack ISIS inside Syria. That’s like ‘tickling’ the terror group, the FSA says—and it's too little, too late.

Monday  25 August  2014  / Hour 1, Block C: Francis Rose, Federal News Radio, in re: Lois Lerner's e-mails are all backed up by the federal govt (in case of an asteroid hit, for example).  DOJ says it's just too onerous to go through everything to find her e-mail.  Federal records expert have expressed surprise at the notion that there was no back-up; everybody is supposed to have procedures and back-ups.  "Isn’t it wonderful that we can now vindicate Lois Lerner?"  Who knows where the DOJ back-ups live; if they were in IRS possession, it'd be odd. Need to find out in whose possession the storage is.  JB:  After all this, no one volunteered that there's definite storage? The leaders of the IRS didn’t know about it?  FR: Custody and lineage are important to learn.  It’s feasible – not reasonable – that the IRS not know.  Todd Park is the Chief Technology Officer of the USA; from Silicon Valley, founded two health care firms before Washington; succeeded Aneesh Paul Chopra. Five years in Washington is enough for a lot of people.  Obamacare? A lot of people on the left truly believe that it's a good thing.  NYT: "The president of the US after years of reluctance has approved . . .

Monday  25 August  2014  / Hour 1, Block D:  Gordon Chang, Forbes.com, in re: U.S. Says Chinese Fighter Jet Confronted Navy Plane  The plane flew within 30 – 20? - feet of a Navy aircraft (Poseidon P8)  in international airspace off the Chinese coast, the Pentagon said.   Fourth incident this year ; it crossed directly in front of the US plane and showed its weapons load – meaning that it was flying blind, which is deathly dangerous.   This Administration is so flummoxed that senior guys are now calling that pilot "rogue" – which he wasn't. China is using destabilizing tactics; proliferating nukes to Iran. Two successive Administrations (Bush & Obama) have signalled weakness. It’s thus our fault.  The world is starting to fall apart; China's bad behavior is among the worst in the world today. China ratchets up its aggression whenever it sees an easy opening.  Challenges in air on land, on sea – clearly irresponsible; similar to the Japan of the 1930s, or the Third Reich.  China is currently a hostile power that cannot be worked with, which is what both Democrats a Republicans pretend they can do [in an effort to slough off responsibility for events]. 

Hour Two

Monday  25 August  2014  / Hour 2, Block A:  David M Drucker, Washington Examiner Sr Congressional correspondent; & John Fund, National Review Online, in re:  Obama’s America Where it’s always September 10th.   If the electorate is confused, it doesn’t much turn out to vote.  How is the president being judged as governing? Not too well – maybe 60% disfavor at present.   Historically low midterm election turn-out is likely – sending a message to this Administration?  In 2006, swing voters went Democratic – a turn in the nation against G W Bush.  Today, we can’t quite see how this will turn out: not good for Democrats, but how good for Republicans?  IIS is here for the long term: represents the aspiration of taqfiri jihadists – first cleanse Dar al Islam (the Abode of Islam), then Dar [al Harb?/al Kafir?]  (the Abode of Chaos/Infidels).

Monday  25 August  2014  / Hour 2, Block B:  John Fund, National Review Online, & David M Drucker, Washington Examiner Senior Congressional correspondent; in re: Lois Lerner's missing e-mails:  linked to the election of 2010 or 2012.  Lost? unavailable? hard to recover?  Now we hear that everything is backed up.  DMD: Never heard that once; it just never came up.  JF:  There were assertions of that in Congress but not pursued in hearings, and when anyone called the IRS they didn’t get a coherent answer.  In May 2013, this scandal broke & DOJ announced it was investigating, and put in charge of the investigation a major Obama donor; and now we can’t find anyone who's been interviewed.  Looks as though the IRS knows nada, learns everything from news reports.  Egypt is bombing Libya; US has surveillance craft over Syria.  End of summer is normally a good time to relax – but not this year. 

Monday  25 August  2014  / Hour 2, Block C:  Peter Bogucki, Princeton, in re: Neanderthals 'overlapped' with modern humans for up to 5,400 years Neanderthals and modern humans were both living in Europe for between 2,600 and 5,400 years, according to a new paper published in the journal, Nature. For the first time, scientists have constructed a robust timeline showing when the last Neanderthals died out. Significantly, the research paper says there is strong evidence to suggest that Neanderthals disappeared at different times across Europe rather than being rapidly replaced by modern humans.

A team, led by Professor Thomas Higham of the University of Oxford, obtained new radiocarbon dates for around 200 samples of bone, charcoal and shell from 40 key European archaeological sites. The sites, ranging from Russia in the east to Spain in the west, were either linked with the Neanderthal tool-making industry, known as Mousterian, or were ‘transitional’ sites containing stone tools associated with either early modern humans or Neanderthals. The chronology was pieced together during a six-year research project by building mathematical models that . . .

Monday  25 August  2014  / Hour 2, Block D:  Claudia Rosett, FDD & National Review Online, in re:  The U.N.’s Grotesque Gaza Inquiry  An inquiry into Israel’s alleged abuses wins approval from Iran, Syria, and Sudan.

Hour Three

Monday  25 August  2014  / Hour 3, Block A: Malcolm Hoenlein, Conference of Presidents, in re: Egyptian trying to maintain its role as interlocutor; propose a month-long ceasefire, which Israel is inclined to accept and buys time for Hamas.  Estimate of 500 tunnels out of Bedu border towns (there were 1500) to alarm the Egyptians.  Hamas used as an excuse "collaborators" to execute its enemies – including two women who were shot in public, which raised a massive rage worldwide.  Hamas: as people become more and more angry at what Hamas has done – a wholly unnecessary war that devastated thousands of homes – Gazans have grown wroth. One Israeli bombing ripped off a roof and revealed bags and bags of dollars. 

Monday  25 August  2014  / Hour 3, Block B: Malcolm Hoenlein, Conference of Presidents, in re: Twice in the last seven days Egypt has secretly launched air strikes against Libya – Cairo used UAE planes and told Jerusalem, but didn't mention it to Washington.  US says, "not constructive."  The UAE and Egypt don't care. Look to future bombing in Tunisia, again with no information to the US.   Coalescence of interests: UAE, Egypt, Israel, Jordan ("Moscow"); Qatar working with Turkey; Syria; Yemen – so serious as the proxy war of Saudi Arabia and Iran.  Israel is seen as a stabilizing force.  ISIS rolls into a Syrian town in first-rate, US tanks. rolling over he Syrian forces, holding up heads.  Taking the air force base in Raqqah: ISIS deployed suicide bombers including a 13-year-oldboy; parade heads to terrorize opposition.  Mary McGowan Davis will join Schabas in the UN "Human Rights" commission.  She participated in a 2008-9 commission against Israel.  Gabon's ambassador.  Israelis rightfully decline to cooperate in this predetermined report.

Monday  25 August  2014  / Hour 3, Block C:  Gene Marks, NYT, in re: Small business in the US. + Could These Business Owners Be Responsible for the Next Cronut?

Monday  25 August  2014  / Hour 3, Block D:  Rob Gloster, Bloomberg, in re: Want Your Kid to Win the Open? Spend $400,000 on Lessons At 16, Petra Kvitova was already one of the best tennis players in her Czech Republic hometown. With other teens competing abroad, she had little opportunity to advance. “I have two older brothers and my parents didn’t really have money to travel,” Kvitova, now 24 and a two-time Wimbledon champion, said in an interview. “We knew that if I wanted to play better, I had to move somewhere else.”

She left her family home to join the Prostejov Tennis Club 84 kilometers (52 miles) away, whose owner, Miroslav Cernosek, paid for her training and travel in return for a percentage of future earnings and endorsements. The arrangement worked. Cernosek remains the business manager for Kvitova, who has won $15 million in prize money since turning professional in 2006 and is seeded third at this week’s U.S. Open. The Czech is one young player who found a way to handle the skyrocketing price of becoming an elite tennis professional. In addition to talent and desire, it might cost about 250,000 pounds ($400,000) to develop a winning player from age 5 to 18, according to the British Lawn Tennis Association.

The payoff is huge: The singles winners at the U.S. Open will collect $3 million each of the total purse of $38 million. The International Tennis Federation said it costs $40,000 for a 17-year-old boy to compete on the junior circuit for 20 weeks a year, up 13 percent from 2011. With prices like that, junior players are increasingly dependent on help from parents, national federations, sponsors or investors. “Unless you are a very wealthy high-earner, or you’ve got someone backing your child, it’s almost impossible to afford such expenses,” said Phil Wright, father of 14-year-old British player Marco Daniel Wright.

Portugal MoveThe Wrights moved to Portugal to help pay for their son’s career. At the national level in the U.K., Marco needed to play international junior tournaments to boost his ranking. Instead of attending a West London tennis academy -- where the family was quoted an annual fee of 25,000 pounds ($42,000) -- he now trains at a tennis club in Lisbon for less than one-sixth of that. “Now that my son has become . . .

Hour Four

Monday  25 August  2014  / Hour 4, Block A:  Michael Ledeen, FDD, in re: Save Mickey from the Terrorists   Saudi Sheikh Muhammed Munajid:  “…according to Islamic law, Mickey Mouse should be killed in all cases.” With all the excitement in the Middle East, you probably missed the call for the assassination of Mickey Mouse by a leading Saudi sheikh.  Mr. Munajid doesn’t much like Tom or Jerry either — indeed, he’s eager to extirpate the whole species — but Mickey particularly upsets him, and he wants the world’s most famous mouse taken out.

Saudi Arabia has long been one of the epicenters of radical Islamist doctrine.  Saudis fund a global network that indoctrinates young Muslims to hate the West.  That network is active within the United States.  Saudi-funded textbooks are an open call to violent jihad:

Saudi textbooks teach, along with many other noxious lessons, that Jews and Christians are “enemies,” and they dogmatically instruct that various groups of “unbelievers” — apostates (which includes Muslim moderates who reject Saudi Wahhabi doctrine), polytheists (which includes Shiites), and Jews — should be killed.

So when a Saudi cleric of no small standing — he previously served as a diplomat at the Saudi Embassy in Washington, D.C. — issues such a statement, we should take it seriously, despite the healthy impulse to laugh at him. If Munajid’s followers decide to fulfill his call to mayhem, who should pay most attention?  It all depends on where they think the infidel mouse can be found.  Maybe they will try to track him down at Disneyland or Disneyworld, or even at the Disney studios.  Security experts at the Disney Network should worry, too, since the satanic pictures emanate from there. And of course there are the Disney stores, which sell maleficent idols of The Mouse in order to corrupt little children.  Malls, in other words.

I know it sounds nuts, but they ARE nuts.  If you want to thwart them, you’d best try to see the world through their eyes. No kidding.

Monday  25 August  2014  / Hour 4, Block B:  Henry I Miller, M.D., Hoover & Forbes.com, in re:

Monday  25 August  2014  / Hour 4, Block C:  Olivier Guitta, in re: The Abdullah solution  The Hashemite dynasty's history and established allies make it an ideal candidate for solving Iraq's sectarian quagmire

Monday  25 August  2014  / Hour 4, Block D:  Phillip Terzian, Weekly Standard, in re: When the U.S. Abdicates, Disaster Usually Follows