Podcast 350

A Cold Day In LA. It might be said that it would be a cold day in LA before The Rolling Stone would have to completely retract one of its biggest stories, but it has happened in the wake of a review of the magazine’s UVa Rape story last year. The magazine blames a ‘fabulist’ story teller — the source — for the mistake. In reality, editors had to know they were publishing a story that did not adhere to any journalistic standard. Sources weren’t identified, or buttressed with other sources. The story of rape-crazy frat brothers sounded good, so what the hell. Let’s publish. Is this indicative of how the rest of the media operates? In California, the big story is drought. What’s not being reported is how the environmentalist elite in control of the state have fought one modernizing water project after another, over the years. Now, while rich Hollywood movie producers and actors water their lawns, the plebes are being charged extra for their water use. People like to decry the ‘fact’ that Congress gets ‘nothing done’ and ‘can’t work together’. Forget, for a moment that none of us are safe from the output of congress when it is ‘productive’, and that the general idea of law making should be to ‘do no harm’. President Obama likes to say Congress won’t work with him, and can’t get anything done either. So how is it the Vice President, Chief of Stafof and other minions at the White House are calling members top tell them the President will veto anything they might ‘produce’ which qualifies the fine print on the ‘Iran Deal’? This is how the President ‘works with’ Congress? Another big story line recently has been the ‘booming’ economy. A new employment report says the economy isn’t booming, in fact. Are we due for another recession? Finally, scientists are about to turn on the largest machine in the world. The Light Hadron Collector has been off for a couple of years, and will soon be back up and running. Get ready for earthquakes, Big Foot sightings, UFO’s and other weirdness. Sponsored by Baklund R&D. 

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Podcast 324

Winter and The Donner Party. Updates on the big stories for your weekend. Yeah, it’s cold people, but can we at least use the real temperature rather than wind chills? Was it really -41 in Bemidji, Minnesota the other day, or did just feel like -41? What does -41 feel like? Now of course comes the cavalcade of idiotic financial media stories about the ‘deep cold’ of 2015, and the ‘economic effects’ of people not being able to get to their jobs. In New England? Vermont? Massachusetts? Minnesota? These people, of course, have no experience with such economy killing cold, right? Another economic fairy tale that has died a horrible death is the idea that cheap gas ‘acts like a tax cut’. In reality it appears that the cheaper price of oil isn’t just due to increasing production, but to slackening demand, which ought to cause some concern. A new economic fairy tale is the idea that increasing minimum wages at Wal-Mart (announced as a Public Relations gimmick) will somehow create ‘wage inflation’ which will be good for the economy. Doesn’t seem to be any decrease of wages at federal agencies like the Internal Revenue Service. The IRS currently boasts over eighty thousand employees, and wants to add ten thousand more, ostensibly to do work related to Obama Care taxation enforcement, except only some 400 new employees will be doing that work. What will the others do? Order out for lunch. Buy new chairs. Go to expensive conferences during the winter in Las Vegas. Whatever. Everyone agrees that green and yellow smoke spewing smokestacks, and rivers that explode into flame are bad; We used to call things like that ‘pollution’. These days apparently there is so little pollution that amateur astronomers are complaining that there’s too much ‘light pollution’, they can’t see the little dipper, even with a telescope. Go ahead, tell me to turn off my front porch light. Demand the IDS turn out the lights at night. Hell, go ahead and turn out the street lights. Just don’t call it ‘Light Pollution’. Because when you do that, we call it ‘Mouth Pollution’ as in, SHUT IT! All the talk is that the new iWatch isn’t enough, Apple is going to build a car. The story has been all over the financial media that last few days. Finally someone has debunked it. Find out why in this podcast. So, it’s cold. We know it’s cold. Just imagine you are a pioneer taking the road less traveled in 1847. You come to a wonderful spot high in the Sierra Nevada’s. You say, “This is good. It’s late fall. It’s nice here. Let’s stay and rest up before we head down into the place that will someday be known as the Golden State”. 4 months later half your party is dead, you’re eating Dad for dinner and you realize … You’re the Donner Party! It’s one of the enduring stories of conquering the west, and it should make all of us happy we have hot coffee, steaks in the freezer and ‘Game of Thrones’ to watch. Sponsored by Baklund R&D. 

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The Bob Davis Podcast

Podcast 319

Minnesota Caucus 2016. Get the week officially started – after President’s Day – with updates. The Minnesota Caucuses will be held March 1st, which is the closest possible day to the so called ‘first four’ collection of primaries and caucuses that garner so much national media coverage. Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada and South Carolina are the only states that precede Minnesota in 2016. So, the opportunity for Minnesotans to influence the state and national process is just one year away. What are you doing NOW to organize your precinct and prepare for the caucuses? Is the feud between Minnesota Governor Mark Dayton and Senate Majority Tom Bakk real? After Dayton tried to push through very large pay raises for his commissioners, igniting a firestorm of Republican opposition, Bakk surprised everyone by suggesting the Governor slow down, break the raises into parts, and discuss his plans with the legislature. Dayton says Bakk ‘stabbed him in the back’. Is old Crazy Eyes back? Or maybe he never left? Should the people of the state, through their elected representatives, have some say over pay increases for state officials of over thirty five thousand dollars a year, in one case? You betcha! Meanwhile, as to whether or not those state agencies are getting the job done; A few years and about 37 million dollars ago they were going to consolidate the state’s drivers’ license and vehicle registration system. Brought in HP to get the job done. HP has been fired and paid off, and the story is, it was very difficult to work with state employees on this project. So the state IT people have taken over the job and now say it will take longer and cost maybe 93 million dollars, when it’s all said and done. And they wonder why we question raises? Got poor service from Comcast? Forget complaining to the company, complain to the FTC which is considering the Comcast/Time Warner Merger. Some analysts say the company’s poor customer service may be a factor in whether the FTC approves the merger. Lots of hot air about electric cars these days. Now supposedly Apple is building one. No one ever asks where the power is going to come from and how much its going to cost when we’re all driving electric cars. And after NASA falsified weather station reports to make it look like the planet is warming – when it didn’t in 2014 – now they say we could have the worst droughts in one thousand years. Oh yeah, when? We don’t know when, but you know, it’s gonna happen. Is Russia controlling the weather? Or are international agencies interested in creating a world organization to do just that? Oh, Hell no! Sponsored by Ryan Plumbing and Heating of Saint Paul. 

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