Photo, left: Martti Ahtisaari, one of the distinguished actors on the world stage in the Twentieth, and now the Twenty-first, Centuries.
JOHN BATCHELOR SHOW
Co-host: Larry Kudlow, CNBC senior advisor; & Cumulus Media radio
Hour One
Tuesday  15 September 2015  / Hour 1, Block A:  Bill Whalen, Hoover Institution, in re: The GOP is using a 2012 playbook. It's like playing the market: don't panic when there's a difficult correction.   Fiorina: has responded to regrettable remarks by the businessman from New York, used them in a successful ad. Yes, it's her moment, also Carson's and Trump's. At some point, they'll have to show more substance, esp Fiorina. Trump doesn't have a plan; Carson and Fiorina, barely.  The polls right now want to know not plans but approach.  WSJ headline tonight: HP to cut up to 30,000 more jobs as it whittles down its services group.  Her cutting jobs while CEO is what critics are using to attack her, but she can use this headline to her benefit. "Leadership means sometimes having to make hard decisions."  . . .  They all don't have growth program  . . . "Larry, you're trying to have a rational discussion with voters who're mad as heck and not interested in having [tough, rational decisions] today. That'll come later down the road."
Tuesday  15 September 2015  / Hour 1, Block B: Bill Whalen, Hoover Institution, in re:  Mrs Clinton's plummeting polls: cannot be stopped as long as there's current uncertainty. If the FBI does not come up with clear criminality she can proceed? Yes. . .  . That 71 to 42 is not only about email; it's . . .   I don't think she ever recovers from the honesty problem, only that women can see her as the [least worst]. Trump has alienated women to a fare-thee-well.  The GOP will have to divorce Donald Trump.   Can you see Trump sitting with the GOP and saying, "Oh yes, put this in the teleprompter"?  Mrs Clinton seems slower this year.  In 2008, her campaign had too many cooks; in 2012, bad structure.   Were I in the debate tomorrow I'd want to talk about the awfu Iran agreement. Hllary piloted the frst parts fo the Iranian negotiation – I'd pin that on her, consistently have "Hilary" and "Iran" in the same sentence. Bill McGurn wrote: speak not of Trump but of policy and Mrs C. Carly Fiorina will appear in top-tier CNN Reagan Library debate The stage is set for the CNN Reagan Library Debate next week in . . . 
On Sanders's polls surging
•    Bernie Sanders leading Hillary Clinton in New Hampshire poll
•    Sanders wrote in the email, "Yesterday, one of Hillary Clinton’s most prominent Super PACs attacked our campaign pretty viciously. 
•     "They suggested I’d be friendly with Middle East terrorist organizations, and even tried to link me to a dead communist dictator.
•    "It was the kind of onslaught I expected to see from the Koch Brothers or Sheldon Adelson, and it’s the second time a billionaire Super PAC has tried to stop the momentum of the political revolution we’re building together."
•     The pro-Clinton super-PAC Sanders is referring to is Correct the Record — an opposition research and strategy group founded by perhaps Clinton's most aggressive operative, David Brock. 
Tuesday  15 September 2015  / Hour 1, Block C: John H. Cochrane, Senior Fellow, Hoover Institution; in re: We turn from a happy topic – turmoil amid the Democrats and Republicans – to a grim topic: Federal Reserve decisions pending. Fed moving a quarter point doesn't matter to normal people. They're desperate to do something then fun up a flag saying, "Leave us alone!" Fed's first job is to control inflation – none. A bit on unemployment – not a problem right now. Ergo they needn't do anything. The economy is pretty stable on its own. Leave interest rates alone. "Growth slowdown."  Last night, John Batchelor and I heard Fred Smith, founder of FedEx, speak.   . . . tens of thousands of little regulations that constitute sand in the gears. The NLRB: It's OK to unionize not only a fast-food franchise, abut all the way in to the mother company.  the question is: Are employees of independent franchises in fact employees of the HQ?  But franchises put up the money; the NLRB is trying to obviate that.  Make Uber drivers employees of Uber instead of subcontractors.  The EPA was OK with fracking, but now will stop it based on methane. "no cost-benefit analysis." Economic regulation is only about stopping growth – transfer money from A to B, stop competition. Sustainable and renewable are the magic words in Washington but nuclear and _ are forbidden. Only solar and wind; we'd have to have wind farms the size of Texas and California combined. Profoundly unscientific – almost religious.  We're emitting more carbon dioxide now than we were in 1970, but otherwise our water and air are better.
Markets May Be Telling the Fed to Wait on Rate Rise. It's Time to Cut the Red Tape! I'm upset that the presidential candidates, all of them, rarely mention a huge problem: the quiet cancer that kills opportunity—regulation. The accumulated burden of it is the reason that America is stuck in the slowest economic recovery since the Depression. 
Tuesday  15 September 2015  / Hour 1, Block D: Doug Rivers, Senior Fellow, Hoover Institution; in re: Fred Smith spoke at a dinner last night; is anxious about the present economy. Fred wrote out bz plan for FedEx in graduate course at Yale.  He's a jolly, self-effacing man. Worried about bz taxation not only on US but around he world. He's an optimist, but concerned.  Lowering bz taxes is the single best thing we could do for the economy. To have immediate cash expenses as a tax deduction: write off expenditures as they occur. (Full-cash expensing) We've seen tremendous expansion of regulations, which affect small businesses the worst. I think that was a warning. He's usually very optimistic, was less so last night. The single biggest weakness in the economy is absence of strong bz expenditures,  We need the lower cost of capital.  Otherwise we'll fall further and further behind.  Where are the Congressman? Obamacare repeal, energy bills? My take was, pass the bills.  If the resident vetoes them, then the president's Party gets damaged.
Who Are Trump's Supporters? When Donald Trump announced he was running for president on June 16, the idea seemed faintly ridiculous. The Washington Post said that he faced “an uphill battle to be taken seriously by his rivals, political watchers and the media.”
Hour Two
Tuesday  15 September 2015  / Hour 2, Block A: Stephen F. Cohen, NYU & Princeton professor Emeritus; The Nation.com; author: Soviet Fates and Lost Alternatives: From Stalinism to the New Cold War, & The Victims Return: Survivors of the Gulag after Stalin; in re: Martti Ahtisaari, a man of impeccable integrity and a consummate problem-solver, was quoted in the New York Times.
Also: http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/sep/15/west-ignored-russian-offer-... Martti Ahtisaari said the failure to consider the Russian offer had led to a ‘self-made disaster’.  Ahtisaari held talks with envoys from the five permanent members of the UN security council in February 2012. He said that during those discussions, the Russian ambassador, Vitaly Churkin, laid out a three-point plan, which included a proposal for Assad to cede power at some point after peace talks had started between the regime and the opposition.  But he said that the US, Britain and France were so convinced that the Syrian dictator was about to fall, they ignored the . . .  “The most intriguing was the meeting I had with Vitaly Churkin because I know this guy,” Ahtisaari recalled. “We don’t necessarily agree on many issues but we can talk candidly. I explained what I was doing there and he said: ‘Martti, sit down and I’ll tell you what we should do.’ “He said three things: One – we should not give arms to the opposition. Two – we should get a dialogue going between the opposition and Assad straight away. Three – we should find an elegant way for Assad to step aside.”  . . . A Russian pessimist thinks things can't get worse; an optimist knows they can.  A new front in the new cold war has now opened up in Syria.
Tuesday  15 September 2015  / Hour 2, Block B: Stephen F. Cohen, NYU & Princeton professor Emeritus; The Nation.com;  and author, in re: . . .   If Syrian refugees and their neighbors continue to pour in to Europe, and Europe is unprepared politically, culturally, economically, to absorb many hundreds of thousands (or more), that will lead inevitably to the rise of nationalist, right-wing parties, which in turn will end the Transatlantic Alliance. Thus the influx of migrants/refugees into Europe is an American national security matter.
Tuesday  15 September 2015  / Hour 2, Block C: Stephen F. Cohen, NYU & Princeton professor Emeritus; The Nation.com;  and author, in re: [continued]
Tuesday  15 September 2015  / Hour 2, Block D: Stephen F. Cohen, NYU & Princeton professor Emeritus; The Nation.com;  and author, in re: [continued]
Hour Three
Tuesday  15 September 2015  / Hour 3, Block A: Lara M Brown, George Washington University, & Salena Zito, Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, in re: Surging popularity of Ben Carson and Carly Fiorina. http://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/16/upshot/signs-of-hillary-clintons-troubles-in-charts.html  There wasn't a hand that Joe Biden didn't shake in Pittsburgh's Labor Day parade, even those holding Bernie Sanders or Donald Trump signs. After his rousing speech championing middle-class, blue-collar workers — the men and women marginalized by today's economy, polarizing politics, charges of racism and elite disdain for their way of life — the vice president sprinted along the eight-block route of the country's largest Labor Day parade, followed by chants of “Run, Joe, run!” and “Give it a go, Joe!” 
Beaming as he shook all those hands and took hundreds of selfies, he probably aged the lives of dozens of Secret Service agents. He also absorbed and reflected the energy of the working-class crowd. Whether Biden runs for president or not, his ability to unite authentically with people fills a void that politics hates — the dreaded vacuum created by a bad candidate. In one afternoon, Biden did what none of the . . .  [more]
Syria conflict will displace another million people, says UN official   Humanitarian chief in country says unless political action is taken to stop fighting, ‘human train’ will continue through winter.
Tuesday  15 September 2015  / Hour 3, Block B: Lara M Brown, George Washington University, & Salena Zito, Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, in re:
Tuesday  15 September 2015  / Hour 3, Block C:   Robert Zimmerman, behindtheblack, in re: Whiskey tastes strange after being aged in space  Whiskey that was aged for three years on ISS was taste-tested this past week in Scotland, and the testers all found the taste “completely unlike anything they have ever tasted before.” The space whiskey had a much smokier quality, with flavors akin to cherries, prunes, raisins, and cinnamon, he said. He also noted that the whiskey’s aftertaste was “pungent, intense, and long, with hints of wood, antiseptic lozenges, and rubbery smoke.” This was in contrast to the Earth-aged whiskey, which had richer flavors more characteristic of whiskey drinks. The space whiskey still had strong flavors, but they were strange, Lumsden said — and not particularly good. He still has yet to figure out why. “That I haven’t been able to work out yet,” he said.  This is not the same Japanese whiskey that was recently sent up to ISS. That is a second experiment, along the same lines.
Tuesday  15 September 2015  / Hour 3, Block D:  Kori Schake, Hoover & Foreign Policy, in re: Make America Great Again - and Open Our Doors to Syrian Refugees. A Republican loyalist calls out her own party on America's tepid response to the refugee crisis.
Hour Four
Tuesday 15 September 2015  / Hour 4, Block A: Reagan: The Life, by H. W. Brands (part 5 of 12)
Tuesday 15 September 2015  / Hour 4, Block B: Reagan: The Life, by H. W. Brands (part 6 of 12)
Tuesday 15 September 2015  / Hour 4, Block C: Reagan: The Life, by H. W. Brands (part 7 of 12)
Tuesday 15 September 2015  / Hour 4, Block D: Reagan: The Life, by H. W. Brands (part 8 of 12)