The John Batchelor Show

Tuesday 3 December 2013

Air Date: 
December 03, 2013

Photo, above: File photo of Islamic Jihad members in Gaza preparing to launch rockets (photo credit: CC BY-SA Amir Farshad Ebrahimi

JOHN BATCHELOR SHOW

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

Hour One

Tuesday  3 December  2013 / Hour 1, Block A:  Larry Kudlow, The Kudlow Report, CNBC; and Cumulus Media radio; and David Davenport, Stanford & Forbes.com, in re: minimum wage are an attempt by the federal govt to redistribute money: attempt at equality of outcome, rather than equality of opportunity. Our book: the New Deal is still the model for US domestic policy today. Obamacare represents another peak in the bldg of the New Deal.   . . .

Tuesday  3 December  2013 / Hour 1, Block B: David Davenport, Stanford & Forbes.com, in re: Obamacare's Inept Rollout Reveals What Makes Us American  The original 2010 law did not provide; the IRS issued a patch. President has no unilateral power to change the law; the Oklahoma challenge: ACA allows subsidies only where the state exchanges are in play we have few state exchanges, so the IRS can’t do a fix. Section 131 of ACA: Subsidies and tax penalties only in states that create their own exchanges.  Pres Obama's presser on 14 Nov:  the president was winging it – a man making it up as he dribbles down the basketball court.  At he news conference today, he was down, but said in essence "you can’t stop me." Administratively, he'll do whatever it takes to keep this thing alive. Barring something like this OK decision, which has severe consequences, he can go pretty far.  . . .  Even if the GOP takes the Senate in 2014, can't see how it can end Obamacare.

Tuesday  3 December  2013 / Hour 1, Block C: Scott W. Atlas, Yahoo!Finance, in re: Obamacare Is Misguided: Let’s Prioritize Specialist Care and Technology. Medical technologies and how Obamacare affects them. Shifting into the government as the insurer: restrict available treatment, diagnostic tests, care.  Dumbing-down of specialist care: less of an incentive to go into medicine – people go into medical care partly because of interest in innovation, ne technology; when these are excluded, it'll wind up with a low-tech system.  Comparable policies to exchanges: limits, excludes, the best doctors and facilities. Dr Atlas's specialty was neuro-imagery; expect less and less availability.

Tuesday  3 December  2013 / Hour 1, Block D: Rich Lowry, NRO, and author, Lincoln Unbound, in re: Bad-Faith President He knows honesty is dangerous. President understands that he website is a failure; Dems looking at exceedingly unhappy polls; however, the president is dug in. They picked the 30 Nov date out of a hat; strategy was to make he site superficially better, then roll on. Launched on 1 Oct knowing it had grave flaws, rather than lose momentum.  Reid and Obama may have wildly divergent views at some point: Reid needs to keep the legislature whereas the president may view that as an appurtenance. President cleverly says, in effect: once the website works adequately, you'll love the ACA [not].

Hour Two

Tuesday  3 December  2013 / Hour 2, Block A:  Michael Ledeen, FDD, in re: Iran. Syria.  . . .   Would Pres Obama like to go to  Teheran as a hero and peacemaker? Absolutely – the ayatollahs would produce the crowds; Mao/Nixon may  well be the model.  Supreme Leader is making war with Saudi Arabia; wants the US to back away from Israel, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, and the Supreme Leader is getting that.  Any such mtg will be more than six month: need to adjust he agreement, then the six months' clock starts ticking.  Iranians get about as much time as hey want.   Syria: Russia, the US and Iran can’t deliver because al Qaeda doesn't back off; neither will the Kurds. 

Tuesday  3 December  2013 / Hour 2, Block B: Rachel Swarns, NYT, in re: "The Working Life", a new column by Rachel Swarns, debuted in today's New York Times. The column will focus on work, the workplace and the New York City economy, focusing on the city's non-recovery from the Great Recession. Today: Marianne Scarino, who once earned $160,000 a year, has since been laid off twice, has burned through her savings and has struggled to find work. Subsidies will stave off the death spiral. Administration will pay off the insurers to keep them in the system? Insurers have played a shameful role from the beginning: they went along with the game looking for a payoff in big subsidies.

Tuesday  3 December  2013 / Hour 2, Block C: Drake Bennett, Bloomberg Businessweek, in re:  What Erik Prince of Blackwater (Xe) learned about the business of war.    . . . “However much I had to put up with, in terms of the assault from all sides, from the lawyers and the bureaucrats, pales in comparison to guys who lost their lives, who were maimed, either active-duty military or contractors,” he says. “I’m just providing a cautionary tale to the next guy dumb enough to run to the sound of the alarm bell. Because the government can drop you on a dime and leave you hanging.” For Prince, who in less than a decade took an obscure military training facility, Blackwater USA, and transformed it, with government contracts, into a billion-dollar company before selling it in late 2010, even score-settling is a public service.  . . .

Tuesday  3 December  2013 / Hour 2, Block D:    Robert Zimmerman, behindtheblack.com, in re: Tenth anniversary of Dr. David M. Livingston's radio Space Show, on which Bob Zimmerman has probably been the most frequent visitor.

Exciting Times in Space Tonight I'll make another of my many appearances on the Space Show with David Livingston. What makes this particular appearance special is that it will be the tenth anniversary of my first appearance on the show. Ten years ago tonight, on December 3, 2003, I joined David to discuss both the history of space exploration as well as its future — as we saw it then. (If you want to listen to that first appearance simply go to this link.)

For the first half of the show our discussion focused mostly on history, the 1960s space race, and my book, Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8 (now available as an ebook).

During the second half, our conversation began to range far and wide, speculating about the future of manned space exploration and what would be the best ways to jump start the American effort. Though I did not get everything right, what I said then has turned out to have been a remarkably accurate prediction of what has happened since.

To set the context, this appearance occurred only six weeks before George Bush’s January 14, 2004 speech where he announced his vision for space exploration. At the time we did not know what Bush would say, or even if he would propose anything, though there had been a lot of rumors that Bush was about to make a Kennedy-like speech proposing another Kennedy-like NASA mission to explore the solar system. David Livingston asked me what I thought would happen.
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Hour Three

Tuesday  3 December  2013 / Hour 3, Block A:   Francis Rose, Federal News Radio, in re:   ACA website: who's responsible for this mess?  List on New York Times website: Who pays for the roll-out, the troubled website? Considering Which Head or Heads May Roll for a Troubled Website RolloutKathleen Sebelius, the health and human services secretary; Marilyn Tavenner, the head of the Centers for Medicaid and Medicare Services; Mike Hash, the head of the health and human services health reform office; Michelle Snyder, the chief operating officer at Medicaid and Medicare; Henry Chao, the chief digital architect for the website; Jeanne Lambrew, the head of health care policy inside the White House; David Simas, a key adviser involved in the rollout; and Todd Park, the president’s top adviser on technology issues [CIO of the Obama Administration].  . . . Jeffrey D. Zients, the management consultant leading the effort to repair the website, said the website was fixable “but only with significant changes to the management approach and a relentless focus on execution.” He wrote that the website had opened with an “unacceptable user experience” and said that “inadequate management oversight and coordination among technical teams prevented real-time decision making and efficient responses.”  A 30-yr-old man with $30K income can get a subsidy – but will have to pay twice what a 60-yr-old man will pay.  "I spoke with a young woman who needs only catastrophic coverage; can’t see why she should pay to support people at the upper end?

Tuesday  3 December  2013 / Hour 3, Block B:  Reza Kahlili, author, A Time to Betray,  in re: Top Iran General: Nuclear deal can be annulled Major General Mohammad Ali Jafari: head of Iranian Revolutionary Guards – one of the most powerful men on the planet.   Iran is not a nation of laws; it’s a nation of men. Jaffrey is not the Supreme Leader; rather, he's at the top of the pyramid with a gun in his hand.   Warned he US that any military action by anyone will have Israel destroyed – "the annihilation of the Zionist regime."  Then he warned the pols inside the Rouhani govt that any break of rules will result in annulment of the Agreement by Iran: if they see anything they don’t like, they'll break it off arbitrarily.  "The full Iranian nuclear cycle needs to be in place." Khamenei.  Will have two addtl nuclear plants. "Eight years ago 164 centrifuges, now 19,000 centrifuges" – and the West cannot do anything, and all it's done has come to naught.  Iran has completed the nuclear fuel cycle, plus many other things we don’t know about. Over 380 missile sites surrounding a nuclear facility.

Tuesday  3 December  2013 / Hour 3, Block C: Matt Labash, weeklystandard.com, in re: “Hard Sell: Going Door-to-Door for Obamacare”   Following two well-meaning but naïve Obamacare cheerleaders attempting to sign up folks in Florida. Their struggles are hilarious—but ominous. (1 of 2)

Tuesday  3 December  2013 / Hour 3, Block D:  Matt Labash, weeklystandard.com, in re: “Hard Sell: Going Door-to-Door for Obamacare”   Following two well-meaning but naïve Obamacare cheerleaders attempting to sign up folks in Florida. Their struggles are hilarious—but ominous. (2 of 2)

Hour Four

Tuesday  3 December  2013 / Hour 4, Block A: Tested by Zion: The Bush Administration and the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict by Elliott Abrams (1 of 4)

Tuesday  3 December  2013 / Hour 4, Block B: Tested by Zion: The Bush Administration and the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict by Elliott Abrams (2 of 4)

Tuesday  3 December  2013 / Hour 4, Block C: Tested by Zion: The Bush Administration and the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict by Elliott Abrams (3 of 4)

Tuesday  3 December  2013 / Hour 4, Block D: Tested by Zion: The Bush Administration and the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict by Elliott Abrams (4 of 4)

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Music

Hour 1:  Brothers Grimm. Thirteen Days.

Hour 2:  Green Zone.  Defiance.  Star Trek II, the Wrath of Khan.

Hour 3:  The Recruit. The Gears of War II. 

Hour 4:  The Recruit.