Podcast 569-Final State by State Round Up

Podcast 569-Final State by State Round Up. Where the state polls stand for presidential candidates right before election day 2016. This podcast does not endorse a candidate. I will not make you feel good or bad about your vote, or non vote. I will not attach ‘indexes’ and ‘percentage probabilities’ to potential wins or losses for the candidates. In Podcast 569-Final State by State Round Up, how candidates fare in each of the states according to existing polls. Partisan and advocacy journalists don’t provide insight on survey research. I do. What you’re getting from the cable news channels and advocacy news ‘websites’ are charlatans pushing their point of view. Fact is, no one knows how the election will play out in any of the so called battleground states. That’s because despite all the best effort, even the best political researchers are challenged to determine who is actually going to show up to vote especially when the polls show a close vote, within the margins of error. Elections are made on who votes. Not the number of signs. Not the number of people who show up at rallies. Not who ran the best TV spots. It’s all about getting the vote out. Once the vote is in, it’s all about counting. Is the election rigged? In a sense, yes. The United States is a representative republic which elects its executive not by the popular vote but through an institution known as the Electoral College. Some states’ electoral slates are proportionally chosen. Some states select electoral slates by party. The electors themselves have already been chosen. They will actually select the President of the United States on December 15th, 2016. In some states the popular vote determines how the electors are ‘supposed’ to vote. In some states it depends on which party’s candidate wins the overall vote. No so called ‘rogue elector‘ has ever been prosecuted for voting outside the state statute guidelines. In the event of an electoral tie, the election will be decided by the US House of Representatives. One thing is true, the republicans are the ones talking about ‘rigged’ elections right now, but if Donald Trump wins the presidency they’ll stop talking about that immediately and the democrats will start talking about things being ‘rigged’. The only thing coverage of these kinds of conspiracies do is reduce the faith Americans and the rest of the world has in the electoral process. In reality, ‘rigging’ a national election is a difficult task, despite what movies and conspiracy theorists say. If you are concerned about your candidate winning the election, the best thing you can do is turn off the TV and get out and help them win by driving people to the polls or making last minute calls, poll watching, or if you’re qualified, volunteering as an election judge. Thankfully we’ll be looking at election night results in the next podcast. Sponsored by Hydrus Performance and Brush Studio, in the West End, Saint Louis Park.

Podcast 561-Pacific Coast Highway

Podcast 561-Pacific Coast Highway. People have been asking for some ‘travel log’ podcasts from the Great Northwest Road Trip 2016 series, so in Podcast 561-Pacific Coast Highway, some travel log audio from Oregon’s coast during a storm, again the angry surf along the Pacific Coast Highway in California north of San Francisco. Most travel sites write about the Pacific Coast Highway south of San Francisco. On this trip I have driven Route 1, all the way from just south of Seattle, through San Francisco to Los Angeles right along the coast. What a long strange trip it’s been. Winding roads, crazy storms, spell binding coastal maritime towns and villages and breathtaking vistas coming down out of mountains. There aren’t enough superlatives to describe the experience of twisting and turning two lane roads in 16 year old Mobile Podcast Command laboring up and down, sometimes in brilliant sun and sometimes in the midst of fog, or heavy wind and rain, all under a full moon during these few days in the middle of October 2016. The biggest challenge has been getting out from under a series of storms that have pounded the west coast, from Seattle to San Francisco. In podcast 561 you’ll hear the wind and rain in Oregon, the surf in Northern California, and a little surprise at the end of the podcast for you midwesterners. I have often said long trips take on a personality of their own and you end up having to just go with the flow. Travelers who try to stick to a schedule, try to see too many things or get frustrated with the ‘trip’ are not good travelers. After thousands of miles through the mountains, plains and coastlines of the United States, I’ve learned to settle in for these long trips and just enjoy whatever goes down. This trip, the heavy rain and fog has been following me all down the coast, which has made it even more of an adventure. From pulling into state parks and RV-Parks in the middle of the night and hooking up to electric, to driving 8 to 15 hours at a time on the PCH, it’s been really fun and educational. If you’re looking for those romantic seaside towns tucked away along rocky coastlines, this is the place. There’s the reason they say ‘The West Is The Best’. Sponsored by Hydrus Performance.

Podcast 556-Defining Freedom

Podcast 556-Defining Freedom. There Is No Liberty Movement in the United States. Got a chance to talk about personal sovereignty on the radio and it was so much fun, I decided to do it as a podcast without the time constraints associated with radio. Plus, I do not have to do all the disclaimers about why I don’t like to take calls on talk radio anymore, and the commercial for my radio show, or the podcasts. I’ve come to the conclusion that I am much more a podcaster these days than a radio guy, although I will always love radio. Truth is, this concept for Podcast 556-Defining Freedom is a good radio show and podcast. With today’s political discourse descending into cartoonish fights, there’s little substance. I believe this is the cause of the rapid decline of the broadcast medium but it also applies to cable television news channels and unfortunately a good many You Tube, FaceBook and Twitter videos. Fighting back and forth about tactical political issues like Donald Trump’s Federal Tax Bill, Hillary Clinton’s Email and who called who a pig, by the way, is not substance but instead a distraction from the vital discussion we should be having; Neither one of the two major political parties is going to do anything about protecting your freedom. No one reads source material these days on economics, or history.  In fact, more than likely they’ll use your precious constitution and Declaration of Independence to take your freedom away. Even more depressing for some to hear; It will be the Republicans that do it. We already know democrats believe in the power of government to do ‘good’ things. Caught up in an ocean of political apologists shouting that if we don’t vote republican we’re going to get Hillary Clinton, we apparently don’t know The republicans are just as likely to limit our freedom as the democrats. While we’re caught up in the right-left political spectrum debate, both candidates are talking about taking more of our freedom away. How do you define freedom? I define it as Personal Sovereignty. The individual supersedes the government. Our right to sovereignty precedes the US Constitution and the Declaration of Independence. So how is it then, that we exist as servants to the government? How is it then, that the government thinks it is the sovereign. Nothing’s going to change until we take our power back. How do we do that? How can we benefit from the break down of the existing two-party system? How can we start a nationwide movement that ends government power over us permanently? Going to meetings and poring over copies of the constitution isn’t accomplishing this. That’s why I say, there is no liberty movement in the United States. Sponsored by Hydrus Performance.