Podcast 319

Minnesota Caucus 2016. Get the week officially started – after President’s Day – with updates. The Minnesota Caucuses will be held March 1st, which is the closest possible day to the so called ‘first four’ collection of primaries and caucuses that garner so much national media coverage. Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada and South Carolina are the only states that precede Minnesota in 2016. So, the opportunity for Minnesotans to influence the state and national process is just one year away. What are you doing NOW to organize your precinct and prepare for the caucuses? Is the feud between Minnesota Governor Mark Dayton and Senate Majority Tom Bakk real? After Dayton tried to push through very large pay raises for his commissioners, igniting a firestorm of Republican opposition, Bakk surprised everyone by suggesting the Governor slow down, break the raises into parts, and discuss his plans with the legislature. Dayton says Bakk ‘stabbed him in the back’. Is old Crazy Eyes back? Or maybe he never left? Should the people of the state, through their elected representatives, have some say over pay increases for state officials of over thirty five thousand dollars a year, in one case? You betcha! Meanwhile, as to whether or not those state agencies are getting the job done; A few years and about 37 million dollars ago they were going to consolidate the state’s drivers’ license and vehicle registration system. Brought in HP to get the job done. HP has been fired and paid off, and the story is, it was very difficult to work with state employees on this project. So the state IT people have taken over the job and now say it will take longer and cost maybe 93 million dollars, when it’s all said and done. And they wonder why we question raises? Got poor service from Comcast? Forget complaining to the company, complain to the FTC which is considering the Comcast/Time Warner Merger. Some analysts say the company’s poor customer service may be a factor in whether the FTC approves the merger. Lots of hot air about electric cars these days. Now supposedly Apple is building one. No one ever asks where the power is going to come from and how much its going to cost when we’re all driving electric cars. And after NASA falsified weather station reports to make it look like the planet is warming – when it didn’t in 2014 – now they say we could have the worst droughts in one thousand years. Oh yeah, when? We don’t know when, but you know, it’s gonna happen. Is Russia controlling the weather? Or are international agencies interested in creating a world organization to do just that? Oh, Hell no! Sponsored by Ryan Plumbing and Heating of Saint Paul

Podcast 276

Dead Cops. Encouraged by craven politicians, protesters demanded dead cops, and now they have two in New York City. After warning the world, “I’m putting wings on pigs today” via Instagram, a criminal assassinated two NYPD officers as they sat in their car, killing himself in the subway minutes later as police closed in. Dead are officers Wenjian Liu and Rafael Ramos. ‘Protesters’ took to Twitter to celebrate the shooting, ‘protesters’ in Ferguson, Missouri took to the streets shouting ‘pigs in blankets’. The head of the Police Union in New York said there was blood on “many people’s hands, and those that incited violence on the streets under the guise of protests , that tried to tear down what New York City Police Officers did every day. We tried to warn, it must not go on, it cannot be tolerated. That blood on the hands starts at the steps of City Hall”. As New York Mayor Bill De Blasio arrived at the hospital where the dead officers were taken, police turned their backs on him … an extraordinary gesture. Even Al Sharpton seemed confused as he issued a statement condemning violence and expressing sorrow at the murder of two police, apparently oblivious to the fact that protesters at one of his rallies recently chanted, “What do we want? Dead Cops! When do we want it? Now!”. Well protesters, be careful what you pray for. The upshot of all this? One of the reasons protests have been orchestrated by the left recently is they’re losing. They’re losing the house and senate, they’re losing governorships and state houses all over the country, as Americans move to the right. Now, by advocating killing cops, they’re losing the people. More importantly, most of the progressive policy ‘victories’ in past years are failures. Obamacare remains unpopular. While progressives gained power saying government would help people, the people do not think it is fair, or trust it. Despite three intense years of effort to control firearms, Americans continue to support the 2nd amendment, as carry laws spread to Washington DC and even Chicago; and the courts uphold them. Americans do not support legislation on Climate Change, and continue to believe the economy is not recovering. The media’s credibility is in a shambles after the Rolling Stone’s debacle on campus rape as is the President’s attempt to federalize sexual harassment rules on campus. The murder of these two NYPD officers will only increase support for law enforcement. People who think the country won’t survive two more years of President Obama should take note — and heart — that the progressive left is losing. They protest because its all they know how to do when they lose, and their policies fail. Pour it on. Sponsored by X Government Cars

Podcast 269

Torture. Budget. Washington struggles with the release of a damning Senate Intelligence Committee Report on Enhanced Interrogation Techniques, and democrats appear to be willing to shut the government down over language in the budget bill concerning Dodd/Frank. These issues show how the contours of ‘partisanship’ and the causes of ‘gridlock’ will change after the new congress is sworn in, in January 2015. The Senate Intelligence Committee investigation and report was conducted and written wholly by democrats, offers no suggestions on what to do about what it called torture in the future, or for curtailing the CIA when it runs amok, and none of the accused parties were interviewed for have had the chance to defend themselves. As former Democrat Senator and Senate Intelligence Committee member Bob Kerry suggests, this does not bode well for the objectivity of the report or win any friends at the CIA. Even President Obama has been put in a difficult situation, since current CIA Director Brennan is furious that the report paints a one sided picture of what happened at the agency after 9/11. Maybe it is a good thing this information is released now, maybe not. One thing is for sure, neither party has come up with a foreign policy that addresses asymmetric warfare going forward. Libertarian, Interventionist, Neoconservative, Neoliberal, or whatever you want to call them, these policies aren’t going to be effective in future conflicts where it is likely potential state enemies of the US will use asymmetric methods because they strike at our weaknesses. On the budget front, Democrat Senator Elizabeth Warren threatens to block passage of the budget bill because of changes it makes in Dodd/Frank regarding how derivatives are regulated. Which party is ‘obstructionist’ now? What will the minority party do after Republicans take over the majority in Congress? Expect a return to ideas like increasing gas taxes and ‘rebuilding’ America’s ‘crumbling infrastructure’, and to the idea that – since we can’t prove ‘inequality’ hurts the economy – we now have to deal with the ’empathy gap’. This is the idea that the working poor are just unfortunate and that we have to have laws to make the economic system ‘fair’, since hard work and brains have nothing to do with success. The founding documents talk about being created equal and having unalienable rights to life and liberty … not a ‘fair’ economic system. What you do with your liberty is your choice, rich or poor. The good news? All of these stories will be swept from television screens because of the storm-of-the-century in California. Finally, out of nowhere a movement we can all get behind, or in front of. “Free The Nipple”. Sponsored by Baklund R&D