Podcast 504

Choices. A companion to the ‘slipping into summer’ podcast for the political junkies. Choices. The Choices we make, politically, As the primary season draws to a close, Memorial Day Weekend is a good place to take stock of what has happened in this tumultuous and unpredictable 2016 Presidential Preference Primary and Caucus season. In Podcast 503 there was some discussion of an uneasy feeling seeing FB posts from politicos about the weekend’s conventions and promotions of party unity. This gets explored a lot more deeply in Podcast 504; Choices. Republican presidential preference primary and caucus voters have settled on Donald J. Trump as their choice for nominee of the republican party. While it remains to be seen whether Trump actually gets to the RNC with enough delegates to clinch the nomination, or whether some other fate befalls the New York Developer and Realty Television Star, it’s significant that republican and so called ‘conservative’ voters have settled on three major pools of thought. The ‘Trumpist’ pool which seems to be about winning the argument, the evangelist and self-described ‘constitutionalist’ pool represented by the Cruz supporters and the establishment pool, which is about the status quo. There’s one other pool, but it’s really a puddle; The Libertarian pool which is the only group that actually wants to reduce the size, scope and power of government. On the democrat side, is an establishment political operator who can only be described as a Statist (with a capital S) and a self described Democratic Socialist, really a socialist and also a STATIST. So, voters have settled on a political insider who is also a statist, a socialist and a populist statist, with second choices that include politicians who claim to be ‘conservative’ but are also going to make sure ‘The Government’ operates more efficiently. Sigh. What are the takeaways? These are the people the voters – who have been exhorted to get involved – have chosen. Of these three or four, one will be President of The United States. In November the voters will choose a president, a congress and a third of the US Senate, as well as a slew of statewide and state legislative and local officers across the country. What will it mean? What will happen? The media keeps trying to tell us, but we cannot know the future. We’re just going to have to wait and see. Takeaways for political junkies on Memorial Day Weekend. Sponsored by Brush Studio, in the West End, Saint Louis Park.

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Podcast 296

MYSOTU. What started as a courtesy to Congress by President Washington has morphed into an irritating media spectacle, bordering on – no wait, it has become – obscene. It is time for every American to use whatever media you can, to deliver your own State of The Union Message. Line some chairs up, invite friends over, have the postal worker down the block join you, so you can use him as an example during your speech, make sure everyone wears a suit, add klieg lights and cameras for effect. If you have a teleprompter or two laying around, throw them in as well. (Editor’s Note: I invited congress to join me, but they had other things to do, so my State of The Union Address is delivered from the Broadcast Bunker.) The media machine cannot be without a story, and beheadings are getting old, so the new story line is the President is pugnaciously at least, thumbing his nose at Congress. Somehow this is viewed as new behavior, though he has been doing it all along. The results? President Obama lost the House and then the Senate is a series of historically bad election cycles for The President’s party, yet analysts think somehow, now that Republicans are in charge in Congress, he’ll get different results. Moreover, the President’s restless flying around the country and making speeches, offering candy and popcorn to the masses is now considered something called Populism. If you are a media commentator and you say the word ‘Populist’ and another word like, ‘Electorate’ in the same sentence, people think you’re smart. Populism? What’s that. Nothing, really. Nothing that can be defined as a real political philosophy or ‘policy’ per se. Using the standard definitions, your dog could be a ‘Populist’, and probably a pretty good one. The ‘Populist’ President wants to raise taxes on the rich, give it back to the middle class, if the middle class sops perform tricks and jump through rings of fire to get tax ‘credits’. Thanks! Meanwhile, he wants to increase spending by something like 7 percent, to add to an already massive public debt, the largest ever accrued in one administration in history. But hey, we got a baseball cap and a beer can insulator, right? Republicans? They’re going to fix it all so it works, don’t you know that? What it comes down to is Statist, versus Non Statist, and there are an awful lot of Statists in Washington right now. The good news? The Bob Davis Podcasts SOTU is mercifully short. The post SOTU party awaits. Sponsored by X Government Cars.

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