Photo: 
JOHN BATCHELOR SHOW
Co-host: Mary Kissel, Wall Street Journal, just returned from a whirlwind tour of Australia
 
Hour One
Thursday   17 August 2017  / Hour 1, Block A:  Rick Outzen, who grew up in the Mississippi Delta and was president of the student body at Old Miss; in re:   In the South, we never wanted to talk about what the [civil] war was really about.  We called it the War between the States. We learned that we lost because the North had more fighters; we were like the Spartans – brave and overpowered. Never wanted to admit that the war was really about slavery.
Thursday   17 August 2017  / Hour 1, Block B: Edward Hayes, Esq., criminal defense lawyer par excellence, in re: London is a lot cleaner; o homeless in the streets; police don't carry guns.  Also, the prices are so reasonable. Between the pound and everything else, it was almost cheap Few tourists. Famous old Saville Row tailors have no business. London is for us: we’re older gentlemen, we overdress and we need our sleep.  Great libraries and parks.  A great city is Dublin: fab bookstores and a slow pace.
What strikes me about New York are: the shocking number of disturbed homeless, and the vacant stress on Madison Avenue. 
Nobody moves the homeless on from public areas; why? The mayor It's filthy- they defecate and urinate all over themselves.   DeBlasio.  These people need to be taken care of, need to take medicine. It’s no favor to have them sleep on the street.  And these people who are mentally ill are in fact dangerous.
Dinner in London: superb service.
Thursday   17 August 2017  / Hour 1, Block C: James Bolt, IPA (Institute of Public Affairs), and Peter Gregory, IPA (and 23 years old), in Melbourne, Australia; both hosts of YOUNG IPA PODCASTS; in re:  ‘Roos in Adelaide.  Do they hop by restaurant table? Unh, traffic can be a problem in the morning.  Once I was on a school camp, was told, “Do not go outside!”     Millennials in Australia. By 2030, the preponderance of dollars will be spent by millennials.  Hard for young Australians to get a job, We haven't had a recession in 25 years – a word record.  The last four decades have been a terrible time for employment.  Gummint has changed workplace laws; employers have to pay penalties to hire people on weekends, so they don't hire.; finally has been reduced from 175% to 159% overage! Sixty per cent think govt taxes are  bad for the economy.  Overregulated command economy?  Yes, Canberra, and also state parliament, esp here in Victoria.  Two cafes near my home close at 1 PM on weekends because they can't afford to pay staff thereafter.  . . . Housing drives an economy: all the goods that go into building and running a house, not to mention raising children.  Someone thinks, “We can't accommodate more houses” – which is batty, because there’s so much space!   The cost of bldg in Melbourne is up there with the cost of bldg. in New York, which is ludicrous.  Regulations play the biggest role in the high costs.
Thursday   17 August 2017  / Hour 1, Block D:  James Bolt, IPA (Institute of Public Affairs), and Peter Gregory, IPA (and 23 years old), in Melbourne, Australia; both hosts of YOUNG IPA PODCASTS; in re:  Malcolm Turnbull, head of Liberal Party, similar to US Republicans.  Not esp popular in Australia: he’s not a real economic liberal/free-market guy. He’s rich, lives in a fancy neighborhood.  Lucky in his adversaries: Bill Shorten, Australian Labour Party, not exactly sure what he says. 
James: We gotta loosen red tape across the country. Peter: We’re shackling ourselves with regulations.
 
Hour Two
Thursday   17 August 2017  / Hour 2, Block A:  Dan Henninger, WSJ editorial board; in re: Charlottesville.   In Charlottesville, two groups are slugging it out because of anxieties and not about policies—much like traffic in Santa Barbara. Social media is the new outlet and platform of communication for these white supremacist groups. JB: According to the recent postponing of a protest against a google employee firing, it seems that you can create these groups and protests, do it and undo it in a matter of hours. DH: The metaphor is that we’re fishing out into the ocean, and occasionally you see thousands of fish, and you look away for five minutes and they’re gone. Social media is swarms around ideas, and then they’re just gone. We don’t stay focussed and we wonder why our politics don’t do anything. JB: Is this the new way to move forward and make money, or is this a trend like anything else? DH: There’s a lot of tumult about nothing, and all of this activity at the margins will begin turning people off and realizing that our politics is a zero-sum game. [Notes by Peter Choi] 
Thursday   17 August 2017  / Hour 2, Block B:  Chuck Blahous, Hoover, in re: Health care subsidies. Cost Sharing Reduction (CSR) explained: There are gold, silver, and bronze plans for Obamacare. The Affordable Care Act created CSR, a kind of government subsidy to allow more poor people to go under the silver plan. JB: Your article says that stopping CSR is counterintuitive. If you stop CSR, how could a 64-year-old poor person named Robert benefit from it? CB: Trump thinks he can make Obamacare implode by stopping CSR. One would think that if you stop these subsidies, it would result in less government spending and the poor being even worse off, but in reality, it would help the poor. Imagine that Robert is under the silver plan. When CSR is stopped, his insurer will hike up the price of the silver plan and premium. They limit what Robert has to pay, and the government and taxpayers won’t just stop paying; they have to pay for the rest of the plan, meaning he will have more healthcare credit, and even e able to afford to buy the gold plan. Though these estimates released by the CBO may or may not be accurate, the direction of the logic seems valid. Obamacare seems to be brilliantly designed to push its liberal purpose in every way. [Notes by Peter Choi] 
Thursday   17 August 2017  / Hour 2, Block C:  David M Drucker, CNN and Washington Examiner, in re:  Statues.
Thursday   17 August 2017  / Hour 2, Block D:  Tyler Rogoway: The War Zone at The Drive; in re:  Apocalyptic aircraft. Tupolev 214SR leaves northern airfield on June 2017. Communications-relay aircraft: to go up in air, orbit over specific area for long periods, and eventually trail the presidential aircraft for communications, esp with his strategic forces. Highest=end tech in the Russian air force.  However, suspicious activity over t black Sea,
Maritime incident reported in Black sea on 22 June 2017 at 7:10 GMT.  Incident cannot be confirmed; was GPS interference. GPS degradations, anomalies.
Consistent w observations of a freighter off the Russian coast, captain said his GPS suddenly jumped from his position to a major Russian airport about 35 or 40 km away.
His GPS was spoofed to another point in space in time; twenty other vessels have had exactly the same problem.  Not jammed, but spoofed.
Allegations that Russians, Chinese and Iranians have been developing this. Potentially could slowly spoof an area so that over time it could be ‘way off. Imagine a ring-laser gyro: when it gets a bad signal for weird info, it’ll close off that system, but when the accuracy of e signal shifts over time, it’s perfidious. 
The TU-214SR has been there, above the Black Sea region, for a month.
US may be working on a similar capability at China Lake.
Around Moscow, people cannot use their cellphones: their GPS tells them they’re art an airport forty miles away.
 
Hour Three
Thursday   17 August 2017  / Hour 3, Block A: Sean Regan, PERC Montana, in re:  Natural resources in Montana
Thursday   17 August 2017  / Hour 3, Block B: Sean Regan, PERC Montana, in re:  Natural resources in Montana
Thursday   17 August 2017  / Hour 3, Block C: Robert Zimmerman, BehindtheBlack,com and author, Capitalism in Space; in re: Low-Earth orbit, commercial launches, and bit coin.  Russian space:  centralized mgt, sloppy; but Roskosmos is launching mil comms satellites, with some civilian use (Net access).    Two Proton launches in Sept; tied with SpaceX for who gets the most launches in 2017. “Launch vehicle’s late shipment to the launch pad” – what?  Very odd. Structural problem with management set-up. Also, in 2018, Spectre RG, to look via X-ray wave lengths to look at the sky; with Germany. Was to have launches in 2014; now another month’s delay from Sept to Oct 2018. Intl science missions usually are barter deals.  Here, Russia provides launch capabilities and Germany produces the satellite.  Looks as though SpaceX has stolen much of Russia’s bz — not just for price, but for reliability. 
Angara:  can scale up and launch a single rocket or put on side boosters. Vostochny, the new spaceport:  said to take $600 mil to bld a launch pad and have it done by 2022.   Rogozin insists that prices go lower and timetable speed up in order to be competitive. Wants to do up to five launches per annum at Vostochny, for foreign clients.   The centralized Russian industry suffers from the normal non-competitive problems.
Sea Launch was a commercial alliance of Russia, Ukraine and Boeing.  Then the Russo-Ukrainian war began, Russia backed off, went bankrupts; Boeing sued.  Now it’s sold to an independent entrepreneur who plans to resume launches through 2023.  Benefit of putting platform on Equator (maximize efficiency) and launch at time and date one chooses. Polar orbit requires flying over a populated area.  Launching from a plane would be at least as good.
Thursday   17 August 2017  / Hour 3, Block D:  Robert Zimmerman, BehindtheBlack,com and author, Capitalism in Space; in re: Google Lunar X-Prize competition, whose goal is to get a small rover on the Moon, move it 500 meters, and send data both before and after moving. Prize is $30 million.   Five finalists still in.  Deadline extended three mos to March 2018. Google also announced consolation prizes. 
Moon Express (with Rocket Lab; Electron rocket). India, and Israel, both will launch off the same rocket, but still urgently needs fundraising.
Mars:  Mars Odyssey, which has been there for almost two decades; scientists reviewed old data and refine it to look at surface for evidence of hydrogen, looking for water ice. Suggests strongly that there’s water ice across the entire Marian surface, esp at equator.
 
Hour Four
Thursday   17 August 2017  / Hour 4, Block A:  Ian W. Toll, The Conquering Tide: War in the Pacific Islands, 1942-1944
Thursday   17 August 2017  / Hour 4, Block B: Ian W. Toll, The Conquering Tide: War in the Pacific Islands, 1942-1944
Thursday   17 August 2017  / Hour 4, Block C:  Sidney Blumenthal, A Self-Made Man: The Political Life of Abraham Lincoln Vol. I, 1809 – 1849
Thursday   17 August 2017  / Hour 4, Block D:  Sidney Blumenthal, A Self-Made Man: The Political Life of Abraham Lincoln Vol. I, 1809 – 1849
 
..  ..  ..