Podcast 575-Surviving Thanksgiving

Podcast 575-Surviving Thanksgiving. How to maintain your sanity through Thanksgiving and the rest of the holiday season. As the final curtain is drawn on election 2016 the phrase “it’s all over but the shouting” should read, “It’s all over but for Political Junkies and others who can’t let it go”. Whether it is the cast of a broadway play, members of the alt-right paying homage to their leader, or Kanye West it seems sometimes as though people have lost their minds and are intent on making fools of themselves. Prepare for the toughest challenge of the political season: Your family at the Thanksgiving Day Table. A News Cleanse might be just what the doctor ordered. The Thanksgiving experience sets the tone for the rest of the holiday season. Podcast 575-Surviving Thanksgiving provides some simple ground rules so you don’t end up in a screaming match with your crazy uncle. If you are the crazy uncle these rules apply double. Back in the day people gave thanks at harvest time for surviving one more year. Today we give thanks for the new flat screen TV and stuff more of that cheeseball into our mouths. My favorite holiday is the fourth of July. No one cares what you do, or what you eat, or how much beer you drink and there are fireworks. Fireworks! At Thanksgiving it’s dark, winter is coming and we’re stuck with people who may just say things to see what happens. The culprit at Thanksgiving is High Expectations. People get very emotional. They want everyone to be happy. If you start in about Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump, everyone is not going to be happy. Among strategies for avoiding arguments or falling victim to relatives who like to poke at you, I mention techniques for changing the course of the conversation abruptly. Just bring up the Hollow Earth theory, Planet X, The Mandela Effect, the new Paul Is Dead theory, Time Travel, the Trumpets of Jericho and the idea that the world actually ended in 2012 and we are living in a computer. These are like conversational ‘in case of emergency break glass’ tools. Use them wisely. And have an excuse that allows you to leave early. Sponsored by X Government Cars, Ryan Plumbing and Heating of Saint Paul and Hydrus Performance.[powepress]

Podcast 386

Conservative Movement RIP. The last podcast in June before a short Hiatus, also announces News Cleanse 2015. The time is ripe. While travel broadens the horizons and raises the energy of the traveler, it seems staying glued to the television 24/7, hyper vigilance with news websites, social media and those email newsletters in everyone’s in boxes is making people more ignorant, as opposed to more informed. At the end of a week that saw two rulings by the Supreme Court go against the right, it’s clear the ‘last resort’ of the courts is not a solution for a ‘movement’ that is increasingly dependent on those same courts, Fox News and Talk Radio because it is too unorganized and ignorant of tactical politics to influence congress. A court that overreached in 2000, has been very sensitive to public opinion ever since and is loathe to do anything that might upset certain groups which are well organized and ready to march. Meanwhile, on the right, there is always another outrage playing on the twenty four hour cable channels and talk radio. You can be sure at the end of the day the right will do nothing…nothing about any of it. Given this reality, these court decisions are a surprise? Even with an open political system in Minnesota, Congressman Eric Paulsen recently suggested the biggest problem with the right is lack of engagement. That is, people to carry the water. What happens? The same people who have stood up to help year after year are the people representatives see, not to mention the lobbyists, operatives and big money donors. The so called grassroots movements that were ignited with the passing of the ACA have failed to mature, failed to organize, and are fading. Meanwhile millennials are entering the adult world and the political process and they have very different ideas than grandma and grandpa. It seems almost academic to ask whether the conservative movement that started with Murry Rothbard and Barry Goldwater, might have peaked with Reagan; The truth? Its bleached bones are visible in the desert, like the opening shot of a Breaking Bad episode. “Conservatives” these days can’t decide what they are and what they believe, much less build an organization and thus a real movement around some over arching theme, because there isn’t one. What’s left is a republican party that gets 38 to 44 percent of the vote in any given year, versus a democrat party that gets 38 to 44 percent of the vote in any given year, slightly different totals and majorities because of gerrymandering congressional districts, and a big fight held in the media — a circus, really — day after day. No wonder there are twenty or more running for president on the republican side. This doesn’t preclude a republican president, but it does mean a continuing drift toward a country where control of all social and economic interaction is in the hands of the state, whether the head of that state is republican or democrat. And that is exactly what we don’t need. It’s a tough message for people on the right to hear, but it’s the cold, hard truth. Sponsored by Baklund R&D