The John Batchelor Show

Tuesday 30 June 2015

Air Date: 
June 30, 2015

Photo, left: Puerta de Viru, Tallinn, Estonia
JOHN BATCHELOR SHOW
Co-host: Larry Kudlow, CNBC senior advisor; & Cumulus Media radio
 
Hour One
Tuesday  30 June 2015 / Hour 1, Block A:   James Pethokoukis, columnist & AEI, in re: . . .  Plenty of mainstream Dem economists are talking about major tax increases.   See AEI table of real income, by group, for the last six Administrations.  Top 1% captures 58% of total, bottom percentages capture [something negligible]. Taking more of a very small pie.   We have the best engine under the hood yet this is all we can do? No!  Problems unfixed for the past decade. 
Tuesday  30 June 2015 / Hour 1, Block B: James Pethokoukis, columnist & AEI, in re: When we calculate 401(k) market gains & the middle class – esp cops, firefighters, teachers: once they start to tap their 401(k) it's counted; while merely accruing, not included in calculations.   The larger the city, the bluer. Tammany Hall was fought by Franklin Roosevelt; still, a Democratic machine exists; oddly, that tends to choke off growth.  One reason more people don't move into major cities is that living there is very expensive; and it's hard to build there. A lot of highly-educated young people wind up in other cities, not San Jose, San Diego, and New York. Lots of cities are one-party states; San Francisco is, and is doing great (because Silicon Valley is there).  The Dem mayors are preventing their cities from reaching their full potential. GP has given up on cities, looking to suburbs and exurbs.  GOP must have an urban policy.   Enterprise zones, tax-free-zones.
Tuesday  30 June 2015 / Hour 1, Block C: Jennifer Rubin, Washington Post, in re:  Kasich and ___ are called moderate but in fact are conservative within the realm of the GOP.  Equally, Jeb Bush and Rick Perry.  NJ Gov Christie gave an announcement speech all about himself, nothing on policy, no script, long and rambling.   If he were to win, it'd be on policy.  Itemizing the GOP field a built-in prejudice in the Republican party for governors.  Marco Rubio peaks beautifully, but cf. Pres Obama: lank of experience.  Among the most articulate on foreign policy is Rick Perry – the most underrated in the race, esp his mil background.  Kasich has worst of all health services, doctors fleeing. Mike Pence also took federal money but negotiated to utilize it well.   Imagine seventeen GOP candidates in Iowa, then New Hampshire.  Could help the local economies. When it comes down to it, it'll reduce to a dozen or fewer.  Theoretically, all could go to the convention and have an open convention.  Irony is that the GOP was trying to shorten the process to avoid eating each other alive.  Probably be a candidate who has a strong existing base and broad appeal. Backroom deal??
Tuesday  30 June 2015 / Hour 1, Block D: Lanhee Chen, Hoover,  in re: King v Burwell.  If the GOP had a plant to bridge and extend insurance to 6.5 million peope, might that have changed Justice Roberts's mind?  Might have, had it been proposed much earlier.  Republicans never came to a point of saying, Here’s our plan. Justices were concerned above all about  practicality, not constitutionality.  Republicans's error.  Ergo, Obamacare is the law of the land and will be for at least some years if not forever.  What can we do to make it easier for our governors, an off-ramp?  Medical device tax repeal: Senate has 60 votes? House has enough.  Employer mandate is highly unpopular, incl among Democrats.  Republicans need to think strategically.  How to roll back Obamacare when a Republican is in the White House? As time marches on, Obamacare takes a toll – jobs, premiums, younger people signing up is way shore=t, and Medicaid is exploding as doctors run from it – really negative in the next few years.  Biggest is impact on premiums, certainly for 2016, and the impact on labor markets – loss of 2.5 million jobs by 2020.
 
Hour Two
Tuesday  30 June 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:     This is now a contest between nuclear-armed nations. Pres Putin initiated a phone call to Pres Obama; we're told that it turned on Ukraine and hat Pres Obama demanded that Russia remove all Russian troops and eqpt from Ukrainian territory; that Russia bring Iran to the negotiating table; that Mr Putin cease backing Assad.  Fourth: that Mr Putin not respond in any aggressive or provocative fashion to Ash Carter's announcement that the US would re-position armor et all for a 5,000-man brigade on the Russian border.  See the Atlantic Council website: clearly close to the war party in Washington. An upshot: Russia and China have moved closer to develop Eurasia in the 21st Century. Keeping the twain apart is a challenge to the US. In Germany, references to the German businessmen who do not support Merckel's views are derisively called Putinversteers.  The Ukrainian crisis is as the epicenter of the new cold war.  The hone call is said not to have made Putin look good in Moscow; it was not a diplomatic call.  Obama spoke to Putin in "a tone of ultimatum."  [Oops.]  Recall that Obama's words were preposterous, since the parties to Minsk 2 included Kiev, which has flagrantly violated it.  ecy Kerry visited Sochi to speak with Putin for four hours, and swore that the US now supports Minsk 2 – but was immediately repudiated by VP Biden.   Escalation began almost a year ago. We’re now in a fully, multidimensional cold war with Russia. Sen Mc Cain is an architect and proponent of this. 
NATO/BREEDLOVE  http://www.atlanticcouncil.org/blogs/natosource/putin-not-done-in-eastern-ukraine-nato-s-top-general-says
Russian President Vladimir Putin is not done in eastern Ukraine, NATO's top commander said on Thursday, cautioning that Russia has been building up supplies on its border with Ukraine and keeping its military options open.
U.S. General Philip Breedlove, NATO's supreme allied commander, said the border between Ukraine and Russia was "wide open," allowing free movement of equipment and supplies. Force levels on Russia's side of the border had not changed much in recent months, Breedlove said, but U.S. military officials had observed in Russia a "stocking of important supplies, ammunition, etc, to levels that would support operations." Inside Ukraine, where pro-Russian separatists are battling Ukrainian forces, Breedlove said "we see a force that has been trained, that is led by Russian leadership, ... and is ready to do whatever mission is required of it in the Donbass (region)." "I don't think Mr. Putin is done in eastern Ukraine," Breedlove told reporters, and Kiev, despite Moscow's hopes, was still looking to the West for support.
Tuesday  30 June 2015 / Hour 2, Block B: Stephen F. Cohen, NYU & Princeton professor Emeritus, and author; in re: . . . All the elements of the 40-year Cold War are returned, and then some. Today's cold war is more dangerous because there are no rules. We used to have red lines , meetings, emergency phone lines, a lot of diplomacy. None now – recall the White House repudiating Secy Kerry. UFA: Shanghai Cooperative organization, plus BRICs + South Afica and Iran, all on July 8 and 9. They may set up a new bank and a new defense organization.  The powers of the 20th Century are edging off center stage; these countries are collaborating and taking over.  Washington has pushed Russia out of the ambit of the West, so it's gone where logically it had to go: China, India, Eurasia. The German businessmen don't want to lose out of the rising economies of the East.  . . .
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/jun/28/the-guardian-view-o... / #Azov regiment gives #Ukraine a bad name – Canadian Defense Minister  / sptnkne.ws/wFe pic.twitter.com/G1ldBwmFG4
Telephone call:  http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/26/world/europe/putin-breaks-silence-with-call-to-obama.html   “President Obama reiterated the need for Russia to fulfill its commitments under the Minsk agreements, including the removal of all Russian troops and equipment from Ukrainian territory,” the White House said.  The Kremlin said Mr. Putin agreed to have his deputy foreign minister, Grigory Karasin, talk with Victoria J. Nuland, an assistant secretary of state, about the fulfillment of the Minsk accord
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/24/world/europe/nato-returns-its-attentio...
“I don’t think we’re in the Cold War again — yet,” said James G. Stavridis, the retired admiral and NATO military commander, now dean of the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University, who served on a destroyer as a “thorough seagoing cold warrior” when the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991. He added, however, “I can kind of see it from here.”  The rising tensions between NATO and Russia coincide with a sharp decline in the United States military presence in Europe: to 64,000 troops now, including just 27,000 soldiers, from more than 400,000 at the height of the Cold War. Other nations’ militaries have shrunk, too. Britain now has a smaller army than during the Crimean War in the mid-19th century.  “There’s a hope this is all a bump in the road and with a little bit of tweaking we can get back to the status quo,” the former American ambassador to Russia, Michael McFaul, said in a telephone interview. “In my view, that’s naïve. Putin’s not going to change his position, and he’s not going away. You’ve got to be in this for the long haul.”     http://www.salon.com/2015/06/25/we_restarted_the_cold_war_the_real_story_about_the_nato_buildup_that_the_new_york_times_wont_tell_you/  The inimitable (thank goodness) Tom Friedman on the same day’s opinion page: “This time it seems like the Cold War without the fun—that is, without James Bond, Smersh, ‘Get Smart’ Agent 86’s shoe phone,” and so on.
Tuesday  30 June 2015 / Hour 2, Block C: Stephen F. Cohen, NYU & Princeton professor Emeritus, and author; in re:  . . . US is placing armaments within a hundred miles of the Russian border. See Walter Pincus in the Washington Post.  A Soviet leader; "My assistants keep saying,  ' You can't do this or that, because it's not simple.' "  General: "You’re right – it's simpler than that."  Obama is the commander-in-chief, controls purse strings, could stop all these provocations immediately. The problem and solution are in the White House. 
http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/06/26/us-ukraine-crisis-military-idUSKBN0P61AR20150626 Stepan Poltorak spoke alongside visiting Canadian Defense Minister Jason Kenney as Kiev military chiefs reported intensified attacks by separatists in the east, despite a ceasefire, with another Ukrainian soldier killed.
"There is a threat still because the military groups of the (separatists)... and Russian troops continue to build up their forces, bringing additional equipment and ammunition and of course their plans are not peaceful," Poltorak said.   JOHN MCCAIN WAR PARTY CHIEF   http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/the-russia-ukraine-cease-fire-is-a-fiction/2015/06/26/5cf0cde6-1a9d-11e5-93b7-5eddc056ad8a_story.html?hpid=z4
Britain's Defence Sec. Michael Fallon: Britain to step up training of Ukrainian armed forces reut.rs/1BMRj2n pic.twitter.com/2mqZFvHSu1  "We are doubling up our training of Ukrainian forces. We've already trained around 650. By this autumn we will have trained nearly 1,000," he told reporters.  Britain now has 75 trainers working at six sites in western Ukraine and that number will increase "a little" under the expanded program, Fallon added. "This is not designed to be escalatory or provocative. This is helping to save lives," Fallon said.  Fallon said Britain would also contribute to the cost of providing 200 secure communications devices to Ukraine's military.
Tuesday  30 June 2015 / Hour 2, Block D: Stephen F. Cohen, NYU & Princeton professor Emeritus, and author; in re: Military maneuvers conducted last year, known as West 2013, were apparently the first large-scale Russian exercises since 2000 that did not feature the simulated use of nuclear weapons. This hints that Moscow has gained more confidence in its conventional capabilities. As these capabilities continue to improve, Russia is likely to rely less on its nuclear weapons. But this shift will significantly alter the Eurasian security landscape.
If Russia becomes able to project military force in the same way that the United States has projected force in Kosovo, Iraq, and Libya, Moscow will likely become more assertive in its foreign policy. This will affect NATO policy in turn. The alliance, owing in large measure to US dominance in conventional military power, has been able in recent years to reduce (though not eliminate) its reliance on nuclear weapons. But if Russia begins to close the conventional weapons gap with the United States, some NATO countries might argue that nuclear deterrence should regain some of its former prominence.
2010 RUSSIA: THREATS FOR WAR FIGHTING  http://carnegieendowment.org/files/2010russia_military_doctrine.pdf
Text of newly-approved Russian military doctrine
Text of report by Russian presidential website on 5 February
["The Military Doctrine of the Russian Federation" approved by Russian Federation presidential edict on 5 February 2010]
I. GENERAL PROVISIONS
1. The Military Doctrine of the Russian Federation (hereinafter the Military Doctrine) is one of the fundamental strategic planning documents in the Russian Federation and constitutes a system of the views officially adopted in the state on preparations for armed defence and on the armed protection of the Russian Federation.
2. The Military Doctrine takes account of the fundamental provisions of the 2000 Military Doctrine of the Russian Federation, the Concept for the Long- Term Socioeconomic Development of the Russian Federation for the Period through 2020, the Russian Federation National Security Strategy through 2020, and also the relevant provisions of the 2008 Russian Federation Foreign Policy Concept and the Russian Federation Maritime Doctrine for the Period through 2020.
8. The main external military dangers are:
a) the desire to endow the force potential of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) with global functions carried out in violation of the norms of international law and to move the military infrastructure of NATO member countries closer to the borders of the Russian Federation, including by expanding the bloc;
b) the attempts to destabilize the situation in individual states and regions and to undermine strategic stability;
c) the deployment (buildup) of troop contingents of foreign states (groups of states) on the territories of states contiguous with the Russian Federation and its allies and also in adjacent waters;
d) the creation and deployment of strategic missile defence systems undermining global stability and violating the established correlation of forces in the nuclear-missile sphere, and also the militarization of outer space and the deployment of strategic nonnuclear precision weapon systems;
e) territorial claims against the Russian Federation and its allies and interference in their internal affairs;
f) the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, missiles, and missile technologies, and the increase in the number of states possessing nuclear weapons;
g) the violation of international accords by individual states, and also noncompliance with previously concluded international treaties in the field of arms limitation and reduction;
h) the use of military force on the territories of states contiguous with the Russian Federation in violation of the UN Charter and other norms of international law;
i) the presence (emergence) of seats of armed conflict and the escalation of such conflicts on the territories of states contiguous with the Russian Federation and its allies;
 
Hour Three
Tuesday  30 June 2015 / Hour 3, Block A:   Mary Anastasia O'Grady, Wall Street Journal, The Americas, in re:  No Good Patriot Goes Unpunished in Colombia
Tuesday  30 June 2015 / Hour 3, Block B: Francis Rose, Federal News Radio, in re:  
http://www.militarytimes.com/story/military/benefits/veterans/2015/06/29/gibson-va-accountability-problems/29469943/   The Veterans Affairs Department's top deputy is confident that his months of accountability efforts are helping to clean up operations throughout the agency, even if firings have been fewer than what most outsiders have wanted.
Sloan Gibson, who served as acting VA secretary for two months after Eric Shinseki resigned last summer, said he understands lawmakers' frustrations with VA workers who retire or resign before administrative reviews are completed. But he also said he does not think that sends a bad message to other employees.   http://atr.rollcall.com/florida-congressman-announce-bid-for-rubios-senate-seat/?dcz=
2.  Rep. Jeff Miller, R-Fla., will run for the Sunshine State’s open Senate seat, according to a source with knowledge of Miller’s plans. A second source said the announcement could come next week. Miller will be the third Republican to officially enter the contest to replace Sen. Marco Rubio, who is vacating the competitive seat to run for president. Miller will be the third member of Congress in the race. Florida’s Senate race is a top Democratic target as the party looks to net the five seats necessary to ensure Senate control. President Barack Obama carried the state twice.
Sec. of the VA tells @ScottPelley about his mission to reorganize the troubled agency, Sunday cbsn.ws/1CAR4Chpic.twitter.com/TyRZv95TgT
Tuesday  30 June 2015 / Hour 3, Block C:   Sohrab Ahmari, WSJ, in re: The Iranian Diplomat Who Repudiated the Regime  When the Green Movement was crushed in June 2009, Hossein Alizadeh realized that Iran’s leaders can’t be trusted.
Tuesday  30 June 2015 / Hour 3, Block D: Markos Kounalakis, Hoover, & McClatchy Newspapers, in re: Problems in Greece Show European 'Union' Is Falling Apart
 
Hour Four
Tuesday  30 June 2015 / Hour 4, Block A: Rukmini Callimachi, NYT in Senegal, in re:  incredible story on how one woman in the US was groomed to join ISIS.
Tuesday  30 June 2015 / Hour 4, Block B:  Ann Marlowe, Weekly Standard, in re: complicated police procedural/murder mystery set in a remote combat outpost in Nuristan --- and a spot-on portrait of the post-9/11 Army by a lawyer-turned-soldier.  http://www.weeklystandard.com/articles/afghan-tale_978607.html
Tuesday  30 June 2015 / Hour 4, Block C:  James Taranto, Wall Street Journal, in re: Lois Lerner for president. Mrs. Clinton’s email deceit gets worse.
Tuesday  30 June 2015 / Hour 4, Block D:   Robert Zimmerman, behindtheblack.com, & author, Genesis, in re: Announcement: The Fifth Anniversary of Behind the Black   This week I celebrate the fifth anniversary of this website. My first post here took place on June 27, 2010, but I consider the beginning of Behind the Black to have occurred during that entire first week as I figured out how I wanted to do it.
To commemorate these past five years I am seriously considering ending the automated Google ads that presently appear on the site. Several months back I ended the Yahoo ads, which I found annoying to my readers and not very profitable to myself. I have found Google to increasingly be the same, distracting to readers while paying me too little for the privilege of providing that distraction.  If I remove these ads, however, I will need to replace that income somehow. I am therefore requesting once again that my readers consider contributing to the website, either with a one-time contribution or a regular subscription, as outlined in the tip jar to the right.
 
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