Podcast 480

Brussels Attack & Foreign Policy. After putting off a Foreign Policy podcast two or three times this week, news coverage of the Brussels attack was so bad, it was time. Thus, the Brussels Attack & Foreign Policy Podcast. While this isn’t a discussion about media, one can’t resist complaining about the terrible coverage of this terror attack in the heart of Europe this week. If it wasn’t news anchors and talking heads trying to explain away defense and foreign policy issues with fairy tales and quips, it was the obligatory ‘False Flag Attack’ video on YouTube, within twenty four hours. Meanwhile, a talk show host who rails about “The Sheeple” being stupid and uninformed, endorsed Donald Trump’s presidential campaign with the statement, “He’s dumbing down his language so people will understand it”. The ‘truth’? It’s the international bankers (and other usual suspects) trying to bring in a one-world-government. According to the latest talk radio sell-out, Trump understands this because he understands banking. Hogwash. The main cable news channels are filled with hogwash. The Internet is filled with Hogwash from talk show and political charlatans to You Tube videos detailing ‘proof’ the illuminati is trying to take over the world. How do we know? Because a mind controlled sex slave says she heard Reagan and Clinton talking about it one time at the White House. Meanwhile voters in the United States are in the process of picking the delegates who will choose each party’s nominees for president, and we will choose a president, congress and one third of the senate in the fall. When it comes to foreign affairs, there are no easy choices and no simple solutions. People are deeply uninformed about foreign policy, poorly educated on history, and unprepared to analyze the consequences of rhetorical flourishes on the subject from political candidates. Watching more Fox News and CNN, or more videos on the illuminati take over and satanic sex rituals of the reptilian aliens on You Tube, no matter how slick, or the latest unrelated facts strung together with ominous black and white photos ‘proving’ the latest terror attack was ‘people in our government who want to make you think…(fill in the blank)’ isn’t going to help you make an informed decision. What happens when our presidents and congress make mistakes? Hint: What killed the Republican party wasn’t Donald Trump or Ron Paul. It was the invasion of Iraq and its aftermath. So yeah. Your vote for president is pretty important. Sponsored by Brush Studio, X Government Cars and Hydrus.

Podcast 323

Obama Checks Out. After the President’s White House summit on ‘extremist violence’, a firestorm of controversy erupted when he refused to characterize the ‘extremists’ – the subject of the summit – in language that would actually describe them. Our current problem is, after all, referred to as THE ISLAMIC STATE! The President reminds us lowly peasants we are not to refer to the Islamic State as Islamic Terrorists, or even ‘Islamic’. This is apparently so that the President will still be invited to cocktail parties with the nuanced and beautiful. Obama also took care this week to describe the ‘root’ of the problem in the Middle East as a ‘lack of jobs and democracy’. This is a statement which is patently false, since almost all top Islamists hail from upper middle class families, and are well educated. Critics say the President is never going to be able to defeat the Islamist Threat if he can’t name it. The bottom line? Whether President Obama knows it or not, he has telegraphed to the American people and the world he has checked out. Its clear he just wants to make it to January 2017 with his ‘legacy’ intact. For this, we are grateful. We do not want this president conducting a major war, as long as we can get through the next 22 months or so without being blown to smithereens, burned in a cage or beheaded by ‘extremely violent people’. If you’re upset about the possible threat, channel the angst into the 2016 presidential race, because the next guy in is going to have a lot of work to do. It will fall on the next President and Congress to figure out how to clean up this mess, because the current President isn’t going to do a damn thing about ISIS, Putin, or anything else. Do we really want him to? It seems all the world’s leaders are at a loss to figure out what to do about anything. The EU is on the verge of a financial crisis and is probably in a recession, while its leaders burn the midnight oil feverishly negotiating cease fires that are apparently meaningless to people like Putin. As fighting between Ukrainian government troops and ‘separatists’ in eastern Ukraine intensified, ending in a rout for the Ukrainian troops, German Chancellor Angela Merkel said of the short lived cease fire negotiated just last weekend in Minsk, “It’s not Munich’. Is there anyone in charge these days? Or are they all waiting for their people to tell them what to do? Do they know what to do? (Wait! Don’t answer that.) The real question is what the US role in the world should be, and how this country should handle itself. This is a question that is clearly being left up to the people. Some final updates and conclusions on the foreign policy front to end the week. Sponsored by Ryan Plumbing

 

 

Podcast 234

Market Plunge. If it wasn’t for Ebola, this week’s Market Plunge would be the top story and we’d all be talking about it. Was it really less than a month ago that President Obama said the market and economy had come roaring back? And this week the market gave back all the gains so far of 2014. Will it come back. Analysts aren’t so sure. As the rest of the economies in the world contract, all hope was placed in US economic growth which the fantasy world created by the media hyped. Bad retail sales numbers this week dashed those hopes. Meanwhile the world’s governments and central banks that depend on inflation to wipe away debts, are very concerned about disinflation turning into deflation. Are lower commodity prices a good sign, or a bad sign? In the final analysis, the US economy will probably not be enough to act as a counterweight to fading growth in the Euro Zone and China, even with lower commodity prices. The worry on Wall Street? Faltering demand among consumers. Surprise! While the President touts economic ‘recovery’ the number of Americans on SNAP benefits (in other words Food Stamps) skyrockets, the clearest indication yet that the newly employed are in low wage part time jobs, and those out of the work force may stay out as long as government programs pay them to. Not a good combination, and certainly not one that indicates dynamic growth. What’s going on? Steve Forbes has five suggestions that are pretty good. The upshot? We’re a long way from the kinds of radical reforms that will change the scope, cost and size of the Federal Government and get things back on track. It isn’t gridlock causing the problems, its the people. It’s our politics. How do we put away creaky old Keynesian concepts moderate Republicans, democrats and progressives have championed going back to the New Deal? How do we cut away regulation, spending and taxation and reduce government power, so that new decentralizing technologies can empower the individual to innovate, generate tomorrow’s successes, and power the US out of the malaise we find ourselves in? Yes, there are Republicans afraid of radical change just as there are democrats afraid to reduce the size and power of government. We have to stop expecting creativity, innovation and entrepreneurial instincts from politicians. News Flash! Your congressman is not Steve Jobs. Not by a long shot. Some ideas to consider when thinking about the other major story chronicling the failure of ‘big government’ these days; The economy. Sponsored by Depotstar