Podcast 428 – Twila Brase

Twila Brase. A hybrid ‘double header’ podcast, from the road. First, a promised airing of the interview with Twila Brase, co founder of Citizens Council For Health Freedom. Twila talks about how Obamacare might or might not be repealed, the health of Minnesota’s ACA Exchange ‘Mnsure’, the future of health insurance, health care under the next presidency and the politics surrounding this issue. This weekend, Mobile Podcast Command headed to Chicago for a high school reunion of sorts. This podcaster is the product of a revolutionary ‘vocational training program’ at one of the Chicago Area’s biggest high schools. At the center of this program was a student run real radio station (and today a TV station and web presence as well). For us, it was the only reason we even bothered to show up everyday at a high school teeming with thousands of students (about a thousand for each year at the time). There was a lot of talk this weekend about how ‘the program’ brought together kids from all different parts of the high school social spectrum, but really, it was a bunch of outcasts from every high school ‘caste’. Oddly enough it was very much like John Hughes’ masterful portrayal of big city high school life “The Breakfast Club”, except this was a radio station, rather than a detention hall. As the podcast says, “I don’t go to reunions, I go to reunions for my high school radio station, because I didn’t graduate from high school, I graduated from the radio station.” So in the second half of this podcast some observations about life, living your life on the air, and how wonderful it is to hang out with people who know you so well from those formative years. Life is certainly no bowl of cherries, as the saying goes, but one wonders whether we really do change from the time we are 16 or 17, to when we go back home for that big reunion. It’s great to be able to celebrate others’ success, life, and remember those who have passed. It’s also really great to get back on the highway, Sponsored by Ryan Plumbing and Heating of Saint Paul, Pride of Homes and Luke Team Real Estate. 

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Podcast 425 – New Thinking Part 1

New Thinking Part 1. These days, politics is one emotional appeal after another. The media refers to politicians like Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders as ‘populists’ but in fact they are demagogues; Using emotional appeals and often stimulating people’s long held prejudices and biases to gain support for their campaigns. In 2016 we’re going to see the ‘new rules’ of politics come into play with a vengeance. Most of the action will take place on the so called ‘small screen’ which means your television and especially your smart phones, social media, news websites where viewers watch a video, or part of a video and move on. A strange and symbiotic relationship between media, polling and politics have turned American politics into a freak show. Outrageous characters and weekly ripples in story lines mean more eyeballs. Media moguls and the candidates are laughing all the way to the bank, to the Capitol and the White House. Meanwhile increasingly angry voters become frustrated, losing faith in the outcome of elections, voting and the government itself. Moreover, the worst invective is often heard at meetings where the same politicians and charlatans troop through and tell people what they want to hear. It’s time for a reboot of American Political Thinking. It doesn’t start with politicians or personalities. It starts with individuals, communities, and values. It means researching and thinking about the concerns of your community, developing ideas about issues, talking about those issues, and creating effective political organization around those ideas, not the rhetoric of some pol who will forget about you and your concerns the minute he is elected. A new America is being created.  A new way of thinking is being created, whether you want it or not. If we don’t change the way we think about politics, taking it back to the blocks and rebuilding it, we’re doomed to being controlled by personalities — demagogues — more interested in power than the people. I’m starting a new series of podcasts, which will bear the ‘New Thinking’ title. I’ll do them when the spirit moves me, or I encounter a person or situation I think will help build a new way to think, talk and DO politics in this country, because what we have right now, isn’t cutting it. Sponsored by Baklund R&D, Pride of Homes and Luke Team Real Estate. 

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PODCAST 423

Republican Crack Up. A Republican Majority struggles to nominate a successor to Speaker Boehner. Moderate leadership is losing its grip because 40 ‘insurgent’ ‘freedom caucus’ Republicans refused to support top candidate Kevin McCarthy. Amid controversy over McCarthy’s Benghazi Hearing comments, and allegations of an affair, the collapse of order in the election of a new speaker, the candidacy of Donald Trump and the terrible performance of moderate candidate for the Republican presidential nomination, Jeb Bush, one must wonder whether the moderate leadership is finally losing its grip. They have no one to blame but themselves. The moderate leadership of the Republican Party seems more and more out of touch with an increasingly frustrated and angry base. ‘Going along to get along’ seems to be the wrong course of action. What does the base want? Can the Freedom Caucus lead the house? Those are turning out to be much more complex questions. In a free wheeling stream-of-consciousness podcast, we discuss the underpinnings of Republican rank and file political philosophy and find … none. Senator Ted Cruz recently suggested what is needed to change America is a ‘grassroots’ movement, only without organization, there is no movement. Without philosophical underpinnings, there is no organization. Republicans, tea partiers and others on the right might suggest a ‘freedom caucus speaker’ might lead them out of the wilderness. Lead them where? To What? How? Uh….yeah. Thus, the best opportunity to elect a Republican President in years begins to fade, with a moderate leadership that can’t even run an election for speaker of a house it controls, and a rank and file that wouldn’t recognize, or vote for Ronald Reagan today. With this kind of comedy in progress, Democrats never had it so good. Sponsored by Ryan Plumbing and Heating of Saint Paul and Pride of Homes.

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