The John Batchelor Show

Tuesday 29 January 2013

Air Date: 
January 29, 2013

Photo, above: an elder bazaari from Qom, holiest city in Iran and near the just-exploded Fordow uranium enrichment plant. The onions may be from a farm near Fordow; or his family may live in a nearby village and even now be engulfed in lethal, radioactive gasses. The brutal Iranian regime forbore even to begin rescue operation for a full week after the 21 January explosion, nominally to avoid poisoning the villagers but primarily to prevent every satellite flying above the supposedly-secret processing plant.from identifying exactly where and what it is.

JOHN BATCHELOR SHOW

Co-host: Larry Kudlow, The Kudlow Report, CNBC; and Cumulus Media radio

Hour One

Tuesday  29  Jan 2013 / Hour 1, Block A: :   Larry Kudlow, The Kudlow Report, CNBC; and Cumulus Media radio, in re: Sen Harry Reid wants a short deferral of sequester then a new tax deal. If both Houses don’t vote in favor of changing the sequester, then on 1 March it goes in place.  John Thune said that the GOP leadership is totally behind the sequester. Across-the-board spending cuts of $1.2 trillion over a decade.  fro an economic growth perspective, ltd growth means that the resources stay in private hands, leading to more economic growth.  Keynesians think that the 2009 stimulus was a grand success. I see that it's not. Right now we have a 2% growth rate only by grace of the efforts of the private sector.

Tuesday  29  Jan 2013 / Hour 1, Block B:  Phil Izzo, WSJ, in re:  . . .  Case-Shiller: housing looks sturdy; people end to evaluate their fortunes according to the value of heir home, so consumer confidence is not as high as we wish, but not as bad as formerly. Dow to 15,000 (smile). The areas that were hit the worst during the bust are now starting to recover – are in fact doing the best. Secondary Sources: Jobs and Growth, Tail Risks, Mortgage Fraud

Tail risk is the risk of an asset or portfolio of assets moving more than 3 standard deviations from its current price.

Tuesday  29  Jan 2013 / Hour 1, Block C: . Joseph Rago, WSJ, in re: Chicago rules: You bring a knife, I'll bring a gun.  Rahm Emanuel now seeks to transfer healthcare expenses from the city of Chicago to the Feds; $23 bil transferred. If Chicago can do it, why not Des Moines? Somebody pulls the thread and the whole thing ravels. "It's a social norm that you'll have insurance" say the folks in Massachusetts (DuvalParick proposed a huge tax increase this month, with health care 50% of the state's expenditures).  Andrew Cuomo will transfer all the healthcare mandates to the feds and will look great in 2016, when he'll be running for president. Transfer unfunded liabilities from one ledger to another  - if so, there's no reason for him to want to be president.  No one every thought this wd be for state and municipal workers – the math of this game changes radically! The original debate was dishonest.  Large change to the structure of the American govt. Small-medical-device mfrs have a destructive tax – not on profits, but on gross revenue!  Will be passed on the doctors, hospitals, patients. Making care less affordable.

Tuesday  29  Jan 2013 / Hour 1, Block D:   Larry Kudlow, The Kudlow Report, CNBC; and Cumulus Media radio, in re:  $16, 18, 20 billion according to the Lipper people. Tere;s a lot of liquidity in this economy. US will do 2, 2.5% growth this year [editor: 2.5, Q4 to Q4].

Hour Two

Tuesday  29  Jan 2013 / Hour 2, Block A:  . Michael Ledeen, FDD, in re: Iran, Syria, Hezbollah. P5+1 sanctions; IAEA, inspections regime. Accusations by significant European leaders, esp Hollande: "Iran must cooperate."   Jan 21 huge explosion at Fordow, Iran denies.  Now even the IAEA spokesman, denies: "Bo explosion is consistent with our observations."  Hunh?  IAEA observations are nil – no way for them to see deep underground. Note that the road form Qom to Teheran was interrupted for some time. Story I was told: Explosion in a gas line being run to new secret facility deep underground, serious, lots of destruction.  Fordow is very important, having been a secret uranium-enrichment facility that Iranians thought they'd hidden from the world.   IAEA much later decided to try to inspect it; have seen a little of it, said yes, it was indeed a nuclear enrichment site.  Since ElBaradei left the IAEA, it's got [a tad] better.  Iranians are truly asters of deceptions; it’s a hard story  to cover. If you're trying t make a deal w Iran & it promises to open sites, then there's this secret site that obviously was not going to be inspected, makes it hard to have a credible deal.   Western [secret] dealmakers sure don’t want to hear abt new secret facilities; therefore, no one can agree that this all occurred. Bad for secret diplomacy.

Tuesday  29  Jan 2013 / Hour 2, Block B:  . Gretchen Morgenson, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist who writes the Market Watch column for the Sunday "Money & Business" section of the NYT, in re: Making Them Pay (and Confess)  Mary Jo White, the new head of the Securities and Exchange Commission, has a chance to scuttle the practice of letting companies settle cases without admitting fault.

Tuesday  29  Jan 2013 / Hour 2, Block C:  . Samuel Tadros, in re:  Attack last night on the Semiramis Intercontinental Hotel in Cairo near Tahrir Square. A sense of anarchy; 80 million people nationally. trouble at Port Said and two other cities on the Suez canal; spread to other cities. 1, Public anger vs the Muslim Brotherhood, attacks on their various HQ; then Port Said and the soccer match killings; 3, continuation of Cairene violence, that starts again every few months for two years.  Kids throw bottles, police react, it cools down for a while.  In a sense, on 28 Jan 2011 the police was destroyed: 125 police stations burned to the ground, 125,000 prisoners freed – lawlessness, inability to enforce law and order; and when they do, because of their own lack of training and brutality, it usually devolves into a bad story. Collapse of security.  Pp living in Tahrir Square for two years; could now be called a street mob.   Ranges from deep commitment to democracy to soccer hooliganism. "Black Bloc" anarchists (started in Germany in the 1980s, were at WTO mtgs; maybe 200 members) cutting off roads and bridges across the Nile. Citizens now used to living under anarchy. Quite frightened.

Chief of Egypt’s Army Warns of ‘Collapse’ as Chaos Mounts. The chief of staff, Abdul-Fattah al-Sisi, on Tuesday warned of dire consequences if the country’s political forces failed to reconcile, reflecting growing impatience from Egypt’s most powerful institution: someone shot at a ship in the Suez Canal – cd affect world shipping and oil around the world, Army immed deployed along he canal.  Morsi travelling overseas;

Tuesday  29  Jan 2013 / Hour 2, Block D:  Jeff Bliss, The Bliss Index, in re: Republican Assembly Leader Connie Conway, R-Tulare, liked Brown's focus on fiscal responsibility, which had him "channeling his inner Republican," she said. Then again, the optimism of any State of the State speech usually doesn't have a long shelf life. "Everybody is upbeat and positive today," Conway said on the floor of the Assembly after Brown's speech. "But then reality gets in the way down the road." One in five California children lives in poverty." On a per-capita basis, California is  the poorest state in the nation.  Cutbacks so severe, restoration not possible.   University education renders college unavailable to many. Dark clouds on horizon.   Three-tiered university system: Research universities; Cal State; community colleges.  Club 33: private elevator; address is 33 Royal Court – or else Disney named it after the first 33 __. Very exclusive. Costs $25K to join. Jeff Bliss has dined there.

Hour Three

Tuesday  29  Jan 2013 / Hour 3, Block A:  Reza Kahlili, author, A Time to Betray, in re: Fordow.  Jan 21, 2013: explosion in Fordow nuclear enrichment plant northeast o Qom.  "14 members of a North Korean team, at a secret site deep in a mountain and unbombable; entered [Fordow}, began  .. . . . ; at 11:26 AM,, three explosions. A bright red & purple light distorted the image  seen by the camera outside watching."   Regime rescue team said to have got in from a side, used a small elevator. No reports on casualties or dead; yesterday, reports of 200-plus in there. Big story is that 36 North Koreans arrived in Teheran on Jan 15 & 17; visited two sites under heavy security. One has a vast array of centrifuges; other, a new generation of centrifuges. Purpose was higher enrichment than 20%.  There are a lot of missing nationals, incl Russian and Ukrainians.   Iran speaking of retaliation – activity in southern Lebanon, in Bekaa near Israeli border. Missiles being put in place. Sending Qods Force commanders to Lebanon to take over villages.   Radiation poisoning 300 feet down?  Source of info now in much danger; stands by the data.  For a long time, decision not made to get into site. Eight individuals in a sealed room inside? No info on destruction, casualties.   North Koreans started the cascades, then were inside at the moment of the explosion.  [Israel knows the Iran plans retaliation; has deeply fortified its northern border and notified Hezbollah that if there's even one missile from Lebanon, "We're coming for you."

Tuesday  29  Jan 2013 / Hour 3, Block B:  . Reza Kahlili, author, A Time to Betray, in re:  Fordow. (Sayeed Chamfedin Bahrudi?, Iranian spokesman): "Story of an explosion at Fordow is Western propaganda."     Jay Caney of the White House said the WH had no info but didn’t find "that report" [WND's] credible.  The American White House and the Supreme Leader's mouthpiece have almost identical comments, and now Iran has published the WH comment to buttress its own statement.

IAEA in Vienna: "We understand Iran has denied an incident at Fordow. This is consistent with or own observations."  Iran has lied ot the IAEA for twenty years. No IAEA inspections at Fordow; inspector left on Friday 18 Jan.  Today, Reuters switched its story: said in the afternoon that the IAEA  . . .  Early  morning 28 Jan all across Iranian media, not obtrusively, slightly buried.

Tuesday  29  Jan 2013 / Hour 3, Block C:  .Robert Zimmerman, behindtheblack.com, in re: Norwegian scientists admit that the climate has shown no warming since 2000. They then spend a lot of time trying to explain this — and failing — in the context of the theory of global warming. The bottom line remains, however. All the predictions and models of the global warming advocates have been shown to be wrong. Carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has continued to rise, without causing any increase in global climate temperature. To put it plainly: We don’t know what’s going on.

Tuesday  29  Jan 2013 / Hour 3, Block D:   Robert Zimmerman, behindtheblack.com, in re: The robotic refueling demo on ISS successfully did a simulated refueling of a satellite on Friday. Iran today claimed it has successfully flown a monkey on a suborbital rocket flight.  The only sources for this story come from Iranian sources, so I remain unsure whether it actually happened. Salvage in space: DARPA’s project to harvest parts from abandoned geosynchronous satellites.

Hour Four

Tuesday  29  Jan 2013 / Hour 4, Block A:  Mark Schroeder, Stratfor.com, in re:

Malian and Nigerien* troops have retaken the town of Ansongo from militants, France 24 reported Jan. 29. Foreign intervention operations have put considerable pressure on militants in Mali, leading to an observable degradation of the cohesion and operations of jihadist forces. A senior official from the Economic Community of West African States has said the International Support Mission for Mali could involve at least 8,000 military and police personnel, Xinhua reported Jan. 29. The head of the regional bloc's military committee said that 1,318 West African soldiers and 1,500 Chadian soldiers -- more than half of the bloc's planned deployment of 5,550 -- are already deployed to Mali. The ongoing international action to restore order to Mali is putting a strain on the militants in the country.

* Note: from Nigeria is Nigerian; from Niger is Nigerien.

Tuesday  29  Jan 2013 / Hour 4, Block B:  Steve Moore, WSJ.com,  in re:

Jacob Lew for Treasury. Treasury Gets a Citibanker

 

Tuesday  29  Jan 2013 / Hour 4, Block C:  Aaron Klein,WABC, in re:  Egypt Army Chief Warns State Could Collapse
 Residents of this Mediterranean coastal city, Port Said, who are burying their dead from Egypt's wave of political violence, vented their fury.
Egypt's army chief warns of 'collapse of the state' if crisis continues

Tuesday  29  Jan 2013 / Hour 4, Block D:   Aaron Klein,WABC, in re:

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Music

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