Photo, left: Cold War threats, 1955. Cold War threats, 2015
JOHN BATCHELOR SHOW
 
Co-host: Larry Kudlow, CNBC senior advisor; & Cumulus Media radio
Hour One
Tuesday  27 January 2015 / Hour 1, Block A:  James Pethokoukis, AEI, in re: LK: early earnings were disappointing - MS, Caterpillar, Freeport-MacMoran & some;  Apple may be the savior: blow-out numbers came in after the close.  I believe that King Dollar lowers the costs for consumers, as it buys more, cheaply.  Many don't believe this, thinking that a weak dollar boosts exports. If a weak currency boosted export then today Argentina would be the center of the world economy.   JP:   GOP caught with no good response to the president, need to challenge the tax & spend and answer anxiety about growth.   Seventy per cent of those who own a 529 college savings plan earn $150K or less.   Imagine looking back from years from now:  how will we pay for all the unfunded entitlements?
LK: GOP will never compete in outspending the Democrats.  GOP needs to show that he only way to bld a business is with capital investment when the business starts, it creates jobs.  Pres Obama doesn’t subscribe to capital  investment.
JP:   Surge in US confidence points to strong start to 2015  The surge in the US Conference Board measure of consumer confidence to a seven-year high of 102.9 in January suggests that consumers started the year in buoyant mood and that the decline in retail sales in December was nothing more than a blip.
The rise in confidence was broad-based, with both the present situation and expectations indices hitting multi-year highs. This reflects the significant boost to real incomes from continued strong employment growth and the plunge in gasoline prices. What’s more, this is no outlier, with all of the other main measures of confidence having also reached multi-year highs. At face value, this survey suggests that annualised real consumption growth in the first quarter of this year may be between 3.5% and 4.0%, following our estimate of 3.5% in the fourth quarter of last year.
In all, after the weak durable goods orders data released earlier today implied that business investment is struggling, this surge in confidence suggests that consumption is having no such problems. The $2 trillion question: Is the CBO overly pessimistic about the US budget deficit?  With the so-called term premium on the 10-year Treasury yield slumping over the past few months, there is a case to be made that real long rates will remain substantially below real GDP growth for quite some time yet.
CBO: This is pretty much as good as America gets
Tuesday  27 January 2015 / Hour 1, Block B:  James Pethokoukis, AEI, in re: I think it’s the opposite: Dems don't want Americans to keep more of their money; rather, Dems want to take the money to put into more programs.  The 2015 economy does not show income going up for most Americans, & this has a lot to do with automation.    LK: . . . I want people to talk about the importance of marriage. I need people to stand up – the Rick Parrys, Scott Walkers, John Kasichs – to speak of the culture of marriage and the damage of family break-up. Get rid of the marriage penalty Maybe OK the earned-income tax credit, which gives advantages from non-work to work. JP: If I see two neighborhoods and one is on fire, I know which one I'll send the fire truck to.   The people having problems are the middle class.
Tuesday  27 January 2015 / Hour 1, Block C:  Steven Malanga, Manhattan Institute, in re: Jerry Brown in California: what did he spend the money on?  He spoke of education but didn’t mention that the teachers's union pension system was essentially broke; after election, he required school districts to pay $3 of 4 billion PA for the next four years.  So the voters did not get smaller class sizes, new school books, more teachers, and the like.  This was replicated in other states.   SM: More and more tax dollars are going to pensions than to bridges and infrastructures.  NJ has one of th4 worst-funded pension systems in the nation, not begun by Christie -  the legislature just gave money away for twenty years. The debt was so huge that Christie accepted legislation that was inadequate.   . . .
Tuesday  27 January 2015 / Hour 1, Block D: Gary Libecap, Hoover, in re: The Misguided Rush to Climate Change Action  In September 2014, the EPA proposed new carbon standards for U.S. power plants that would reduce carbon emissions by 30% by 2030, compared to the levels in 2005. EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy stated that in doing so the United States would turn climate into a business opportunity by spurring innovation and investment through a world-leading clean energy economy.
In November, President Obama and President Xi Jinping of China announced that the United States would emit 26% to 28% less carbon in 2025 than it did in 2005 and China would hold carbon emissions at the level reached in 2030, gradually reducing them thereafter through greater use of clean energy sources. The agreement was called by some a breakthrough between the world’s top two carbon emitters to galvanize efforts to negotiate a new global climate agreement at the United Nations Climate Change Conference, COP21, to be held in Paris in December 2015.
In late November the U.S. Senate along partisan lines defeated a proposal to build the Keystone XL pipeline to bring oil from Canada and the north central plains of the U.S. to the U.S. Gulf Coast. Senator Barbara Boxer of California, one of the strongest opponents of the Keystone XL pipeline, claimed that Alberta oil was especially dirty and a threat to the global climate and populations along its path.
These are heady days for proponents of unilateral energy regulation. There is a rush on climate change regulation within the Obama Administration, California, and the European Union (E.U.), although the October 2014 emissions control plan agreed to by its members was less ambitious than sought by Germany and Nordic countries. In light of this, it is time to introduce some more sobering points to halt this rush. There are important points that should be made far clearer to citizens subject to carbon controls sought by their leaders. Let’s take them one by one.
First, the release of greenhouse gases (GHG) creates a global problem of unknown magnitude. Addressing this global externality requires coordinated action among countries. The actions taken by . . .  [more]
Hour Two
Tuesday  27 January 2015 / Hour 2, Block A:  Stephen F. Cohen, NYU & Princeton professor Emeritus; author: Soviet Fates and Lost Alternatives: From Stalinism to the New Cold War,  &  The Victims Return: Survivors of the Gulag after Stalin; in re:
 
Tuesday  27 January 2015 / Hour 2, Block B: Stephen F. Cohen, NYU & Princeton professor Emeritus (2 of 4)
Tuesday  27 January 2015 / Hour 2, Block C: Stephen F. Cohen, NYU & Princeton professor Emeritus (3 of 4)
Tuesday  27 January 2015 / Hour 2, Block D: Stephen F. Cohen, NYU & Princeton professor Emeritus (4 of 4)
Hour Three
Tuesday  27 January 2015 / Hour 3, Block A:   Salena Zito, Pittsburgh Tribune-Review & Pirates fan, in re:  The Iowa Democratic Party is in a moment of self-reflection, explained Iowa State political scientist Steffen Schmidt.
“The establishment is in a . . . http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2015/01/25/iowa_democrats_waiting_for_hillary_125382.html
also
http://www.nationaljournal.com/politics/the-rise-of-dark-money-and-the-koch-party-20150127
Tuesday  27 January 2015 / Hour 3, Block B:  Tunku Varadarajan, Hoover, in re: http://www.openthemagazine.com/article/voices/the-odd-couple
Tuesday  27 January 2015 / Hour 3, Block C:   Mary Anastasia O'Grady, Wall Street Journal, in re: http://www.wsj.com/articles/mary-anastasia-ogrady-who-killed-alberto-nis...
Tuesday  27 January 2015 / Hour 3, Block D: Jed Babbin, American Spectator, in re: Why Did We Lose the Wars in Iraq and Afghanistan? | London Center for Policy Research
Hour Four
Tuesday  27 January 2015 / Hour 4, Block A:  Aaron Klein, KleinOnline and Salem Radio Network, in re: Two rockets fired from Syria explode in Golan, IDF responds with artillery fire  Four rockets were fired from Syria on Tuesday afternoon, two of which exploded in open ...
Tuesday  27 January 2015 / Hour 4, Block B:  John Butler, BLOOMBERG ANALYTICS, in re:   Apple - Press Info - Apple Reports Record First Quarter Results  Apple Reports Record First Quarter Results. Highest-ever revenue & earnings drive 48% ...
Tuesday  27 January 2015 / Hour 4, Block C: Patrick Wolf, AEI, in re: Views from private schools: Attitudes about school choice programs in three states /Education, K-12 Schooling ( by Brian Kisida, Patrick J. Wolf, & Evan Rhinesmith) January 21, 2015
Tuesday  27 January 2015 / Hour 4, Block D:   Robert Zimmerman, behindtheblack.com, in re:  New Horizons’ first images of Pluto on the way  On Sunday New Horizon took its first approach images of Pluto, still six months from the actual fly-by.  The images are still being processed and have not yet been released. Note also that these are being taken from quite a distance. They will only be a tease, not the real thing. For that we will have to wait a few more months.   Solar system of ancient Earths found   Worlds without end: Using archived Kepler data astronomers have identified a solar system of five Earth-sized exoplanets, orbiting a red dwarf star about 117 light years from Earth.  The paper describes Kepler-444, a star that’s 25 percent smaller than our sun and is 117 light years from Earth. The star’s five known planets have sizes that fall between Mercury and Venus. Those planets are so close to their star that they complete their orbits in fewer than 10 days. At that distance, they’re all much hotter than Mercury and aren’t habitable.  The important detail from this discovery is that the star is very ancient, more than 11 billion years old, which means these planets are that old as well. In other words, planets began forming the same time as the first stars. Which also means that there has been plenty of time in the universe for other intelligent life to form, besides our own.
Asteroid that flew past Earth has its own moon  Radar images of the large asteroid 2004 BL86 as it flew past the Earth today have revealed that it has its own small moon.  The new images also show a second object positioned close to 2004 BL86. Benner told Space.com that the second object is a moon, with a diameter between 164 and 328 feet (50 and 100 m). Previous studies of the light around 2004 BL86 had already identified a moon orbiting the asteroid, and the new images confirm that discovery, he added. About 17 percent of asteroids in 2004 BL86’s size range have smaller objects trailing along with them.
Boulders and other small-scale features on the surface of the asteroid are coming into focus in the new images, as is the overall shape of the asteroid, according to Benner. He compared the object to another asteroid that made a close flyby of Earth six years ago, called 2008 EV5. It appears that 2004 BL86, like 2008 EV5, has an equatorial ridge around its middle, which makes it look “kind of like a muffin, or perhaps a top,” said Benner, who’s based at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California.  These data are from radar data collected . . .
 
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