Podcast 177

Malaysian Flight 17 shot down over the Ukraine. Get ready for a weekend of recriminations and wild statements in the rush to judgement. What are the main facts you need to know? “The thing on the border with the children” is turning out to be a liability for the President and Democrats. New polling data shows most Americans want these illegal aliens, cute as they are, returned home. Will the border crisis help, or hurt democrats at the voting booth in November. US companies moving abroad to avoid high corporate taxes in the US? What’s a president to do? Easy! Make it illegal! Then make it retroactive. Oops, the Medtronic execs who just moved to Ireland will have to move back to the US. What would be easier? How about lowering the US corporate tax rate to a level competitive with Ireland, and Hong Kong and the Netherlands. Maybe then companies would move here! In what is certainly to be viewed as bad news for the ‘Warmists’, the NOAA reports there are no sunspots right now. This is a condition usually associated with solar minimums and … wait for it … cooling periods! Maybe that is why there has been no warming for 17 years. Sponsored by Baklund R & D

Podcast 154

Updating top stories for the week ahead. Former VA head Shinseki says he didn’t know about incompetence, corruption and coverups at the VA and so the President didn’t know either. Yet as many as 18 detailed reports have been placed on Shinseki’s desk – maybe the President’s too – since 2008. Was White House Press Secretary Jay Carney’s resignation announced the same day as Shinseki’s to draw eyes and ears away from the ‘When and What did you know’ question? The White House announces it has negotiated the release of a US soldier held since 2009 by Taliban, but he is referred to as a ‘Prisoner of War’. Is he? Did the US pay too high a price for the release of Army Sergeant Bowe Bergdahl? And what were the circumstances of his capture. Why was Secretary Hagel’s announcement of his release treated with stony silence by the troops in Afghanistan? This was political convention weekend in Rochester (republicans) and Duluth (democrats). While the democrats came out of their convention unified, the same might not be said of the Republicans. Looking ahead to primary season, one wonders what possesses the brains of  Republican insiders. El Nino, Oprah and George Clooney. Sponsored by Ryan Plumbing and Heating of Saint Paul