Podcast 549

Hillary’s 911. Finally the mainstream media is picking apart the vagaries of the Clinton response to her health scare in New York on September 11th, 2016. After months of harping on the republicans with Trump this and Trump that, suddenly the former Secretary of State is the lead story, and it is not flattering. After Democratic Presidential Candidate Hillary Clinton had to leave a 9/11 memorial event, and collapsed on the street before she got into a van, every news source, advocacy media, You Tube Video, Podcaster, and blogger including yours truly, is speculating on what her problem might be. The answer? No one knows. No one knows no matter what they tell you. No one will know whether Hillary Clinton becomes President, or loses the race to Donald Trump. In the short term the video from this weekend is damaging enough that one would expect future polls – state by state polls – might dip in favor of Donald Trump. On the other hand, don’t count your chickens Trump supporters. First, there’s always the sympathy vote, and second democrats might conclude that Clinton would make a better president on her worst day than Trump on his best. In a race characterized by high negatives, the two worst presidential candidates in a long time continue a comedy of errors, lurching from one rhetorical flourish to another, up to and including Clinton’s latest health scare. Either way, voters will have to make a choice in November to vote for one of the mainline candidates – unless she drops out and don’t count on that – or one of the so called independent candidates. Meanwhile speculation continues with social media denizens and yes, conspiracy theorists armchair and otherwise, telling you she’s an alien, suffering from Parkinson’s Disease, a cancer victim, a stroke victim, a victim of brain damage and anything else that can be ‘proven’ by slow motion video, short cuts of her responses to question, speeches on the campaign trail and whatever people can get their hands on. None of it proves anything other than, we don’t know. We won’t know in the near future and we may never know. We’re still going to have to vote. As predicted the democrats have trotted out pictures of FDR in a wheel chair, campaign staff are crying ‘mea culpa’ in response to questions about who knew what and why the media wasn’t told about ‘pneumonia’ and on and on. Yep. Hillary’s 911. All Hillary All The Time. One more necessary breaking news political podcast in this worst-election-in-memory-and-maybe-in-all-history podcast. Sponsored by Brush Studio at the West End and Ryan Plumbing and Heating of Saint Paul.

Podcast 533-Matt Stevens

Podcast 533-Matt Stevens. Heads up for the North Metro Tea Party alliance as an Elk River man alleges serious campaign finance violations by officers of the North Metro Tea Party and Political PACs associated with it. In Podcast 533-Matt Stevens, the man who filed the complaint tells why he did it, and details his charges. As of post time I contacted the Minnesota Campaign Finance Board, and North Metro Tea Party Officials who were not available, although Jake Duesenberg posted a note on his FaceBook page which I include in this podcast. It was pretty late, and Matt’s tweets had been gathering steam all day. At issue is the ongoing fight in Minnesota House district 35 between incumbent Republican and Speaker of the Minnesota House Kurt Daudt and his primary challenger Alan Duff. The primary is August 9th. Is this a dirty trick by the Daudt Campaign to blunt Duff’s challenge? Or is this is a question of competency as it pertains to political neophytes who have come into the process through Tea Party meetings. It’s all in the hands of the Minnesota Campaign Finance Board now. See for yourself, here’s Matt’s twitter feed, where you’ll find the tweets and links to the documents detailing his allegations, in a letter to the campaign finance board. If you’re interested here is one source detailing the campaign regulations/guidelines related to 501C3 corporations similar to the Tea Party which is an organization devoted to education, not a political action committee. It’s important to note that I know many of the principles in this story personally and they have always been gracious to me, and good to me. I do not know Matt Stevens, but most of the people I talked to the night of this podcast have a favorable impression of him. The fact is, we don’t know whether the allegations are true or false, we don’t know the motivation, and we don’t know whether the Tea Party officials made a mistake or there is no ‘there, there’, to turn a phrase. It’s all up to the Minnesota Board of Campaign Finance and it’s going to be a big story, so here is the first interview of record on the subject. We’ll see now what happens. Sponsored by X Government Cars.

Podcast 532

What I think of Election 2016. Getting emails and calls from people political analysts would consider ‘low information voters’ asking what I think and who they should vote for. So in this podcast I am going to tell you. First thing? When you consider the low quality of all reporting on election 2016 everyone is pretty much a low information voter. In 2016 the country is facing decisions on major issues in economics, immigration, trade, foreign policy, military, diplomacy, social issues and more. Almost no one fully understands the contours of these issues well enough to discuss them. Instead what we have are tribes of people who are very emotional about these issues. They know the latest meme. They know all about the latest scandal and the latest ‘story’ evolving concerning who said what about who, and the reaction to it, but when they’re asked to discuss any of the key issues of our time with clarity and depth, as they say in the windy city; “fergitaboutit”. Who do I think should be president in 2017? None of them. Repeat. None of them. If you include the so called independent candidates and the mainline party candidates they’re nothing but placeholders. Someone needs to lay out what the potential outcome of this election will be, regardless of who wins the office. I start – repeat start – to do that in this podcast. I realized about twenty minutes in, this is going to take more than one ‘talk’ podcast (with no editing) to lay out all the possibilities and outcomes. Bottom line? None of the potential outcomes bode well for the future of the United States. We’ve had a series of placeholder presidents, and it looks like we’re about to have another. Meanwhile, the country is getting closer and closer to what I call a ‘clarifying’ event that will wake people up from their media induced hypnosis, and reinvigorate the political process. Maybe. Maybe not. Meanwhile, if you expect to get information from television and radio, and from the standard websites these days, I feel sorry for you. If you guess you’ll find “the truth” on You Tube’s conspiracy channels, and the Drudge Report, guess again. In What I Think of Election 2016 you’ll get my read at the present time, which sets up future podcasts specifically on the issues in the hope of giving listeners to the Bob Davis Podcasts a little more substance and depth than you’ll find anywhere else. Meanwhile, it’s on to the motorcycle rally at Sturgis from here. Sponsored by Hydrus Performance and Brush Studio in the West End, Saint Louis Park.