Summer is coming. Peak Road Trip season in the United States. In Road Trip Summer Travel Adventure In US-Podcast 624 we consider some road trip ideas, past and future.
Do You Travel Well?
Travel requires a bit of zen. A ‘let it come’ attitude. Excitable, exacting and difficult people don’t always travel well. There will be delays, bad food, wrong turns and unmet objectives. Those moments are usually when the magic happens. If you can let it happen. You want an objective, but you don’t want to over plan.
Weekend Road Trip or Mega Road Trip?
My preference is for the mega trip. Across the northern United States, down the Pacific Coast Highway to Los Angeles. Down through the mid south all the way around Florida, along the gulf coast, back up through Texas, Oklahoma, Missouri, and Iowa to Minnesota. On those long trips you feel like you’re sailing. You forget what ‘home’ is, and let go.
So Much To See
Truth is, there are so many places to see within a day’s reach. All too often those of us who prefer the mega road trip forget the gems just around the corner. State Parks, small towns, little bits of forgotten history.
In The Blood
Most people I know who love long road trips have it in their blood. They remember warming up the wagon in the cold light of dawn in Illinois, or Massachusetts for the big escape to warmer Floria around Christmas time. Rock City, brand new freeways, Stuckey‘s, Travel-all and Howard Johnson’s.
What Is It About Road Trips?
You don’t need much money. Camping or staying in cheap motels. Alone or with friends or family. You see. Pass through. Learn. Butte, Montana. Duluth, Minnesota. Lincoln City, Oregon. Bizbee, Arizona. Mountains. Beaches. Deserted highways in the middle of the night. Everyone who travels comes back with great stories and memories. There’s no right or wrong. No arguing about whether Rapid City is better than Great Falls.
Enjoy
In Road Trip Summer Travel Adventure In US-Podcast 624, just some thought starters for your next trip. Whether you’re pulling a vintage trailer, driving a brand new SUV, rolling in style in some kind of massive motor home or sporting the ten year old Subaru, there’s nothing like the call of the open road.
In Podcast 604-We Don’t Need No Stinking Principles. He is known as Milo. A self described agent provocateur. A guy who took it to the left using the left’s tactic. A person who could cause left wingers to spontaneously combust. Taken down by the right. Another personality raised up to do people’s thinking for them. Someone to speak for so called conservatives.
These days videos and articles by personalities suffice as arguments. Someone getting the best of you on FaceBook? Don’t like someone’s tweet? Bam! Throw up the Milo video and the other guy is toast. Want to say something about politics? Post someone’s video or article about what you think. It’s the ‘What He Said’ method of political discourse. Of course the bigger they are the harder they fall.
Suddenly a heavily edited video tape from the near past emerged. Milo allegedly appearing to condone pedophilia, Goodbye Breitbart. See ya later Book Deal. Forget about taking the purple at the Vatican Conclave known as ‘CPAC‘. Post that Milo video now and you’re a pedophile too. There’s a vacuum in the market for ‘What He Said’ videos and articles. Don’t worry. Plenty of future Milo’s into the breech, boys.
Principles Over Personalities
We’re urged to put principles over personalities. What principles? What are the principles of the republican party? Free markets. Oh wait. We’re talking about trade protection. Republicans and so called conservatives are for Freedom too. Oops! Not if you’re taking about increasing NSA surveillance of people we don’t like. The GOP is for lower deficits and ‘smaller’ government. Oh wait. We’re going to have a trillion dollar stimulus package and cut taxes. So. Yeah. Before people can support principles over personalities a political movement has to have some principles. Neither the republicans or the democrats have any. Welcome to Podcast 604-We Don’t Need No Stinking Principles.
Business Unfriendly
Also in Podcast 604-We Don’t Need No Stinking Principles. A new study ranks the most business friendly states. Vermont and Minnesota lead the least business friendly states. Nevada, Texas and South Dakota lead the most business friendly. The biggest problem according to the study is that the least business friendly states seemingly have no intention of addressing the thicket of taxes and regulations that prevent the formation of small scalable businesses. A little principle here might be useful. Of course most of the time its republicans in states like Minnesota that often are the first to propose more government solutions to problems created by too much government.
Taxing Robots
Robots and AI are nothing more than sophisticated tools. People think nothing of using the wheel or a wrench but break out in a cold sweat when confronted with the feared robot. Bill Gates has a solution for all that. Tax Robots. Employees are usually the biggest cost center for businesses. Its natural to want to cut those costs as much as possible. Cutting costs and freeing human capital to do better things is a natural part of human progress. Let’s slow it down by making robots more expensive. Principles? Lots to talk about in Podcast 604-We Don’t Need No Stinking Principles.
On this week’s Bob Davis Podcast Radio Show, we’re back in a news rich environment. The release of the CIA Report on ‘Russian Hacking‘ adds to the latest tempest in a teapot. A skeptical President Elect Trump got a briefing from top intelligence officials in the Obama Administration last week. What does ‘Russia Hacks The US Election’ mean to you? Does it mean the Russians managed to get control of voting machines and change votes in key states. Decidedly no.
In Podcast 588-Russians Coming! The story goes, the Russians, under order from President Putin, hacked into the DNC through John Podesta’s email, gaining access to the server for months. The Obama administration also has been told by its US intelligence employees that the Russians were responsible for the release of sensitive material from the DNC severs to Wikileaks. Oh, and the Russia Today network put a new TV show on critical of Hillary Clinton. The Russians also apparently employed a number of Internet trolls in service to Donald Trump. Or something like that.
The subliminal message here is Americans have lost control of their political process and therefore should have no faith in its outcome, which oddly seems like the original goal of Russia’s alleged interference. Proving the Russians hacked into the DNC is hard enough to prove. Proving it had any effect on the election is quite another. One should never say never and skepticism should be the first approach for people who want to believe the Russian Hack story and those who do not. Still, there are reasons why this is one story that may never be proven. Find out why in Podcast 588-Russians Coming!
While Trump supporters remain skeptical, Clinton supporters have latched onto the Russian Hack story as the new grand conspiracy theory in all that ails America. However, if you’re looking for a smoking gun you may be waiting a long time. Like the famous WMD in Iraq story, when a president asks the intelligence community to ‘prove’ something, a ‘report’ will be issued. Reports issued because a president wants one, usually include a ‘preponderance‘ of evidence.
Remember how the CIA managed to convinced Congress and most of the people in the country going to war against Iraq was necessary? While the left attacked Bush and the CIA for its ‘preponderance of evidence of WMD’s in Iraq’ finding, suddenly they’re ready to believe the ‘Russia Hack’ story. Even though we all know how the WMD story turned out for George W. Bush, the left wonders how else Hillary Clinton’s loss could be explained. It had to be the Russians.
2016’s presidential race heralded a tectonic shift in politics in the United States and perhaps the world. How politics is conducted. How it is reported on. How races are measured and predicted. Considering this shift, is it impossible to suggest people in the great lakes region in 2016 reached the point where they were just fed up with politics as usual? Maybe the cozy relationship between big government types, Hollywood and Wall Street just got to be too much for the little guy? Bernie Sanders thinks so. Senator Sanders has called Clinton out for choosing to hang with Gentry-Liberals rather than campaigning in Wisconsin and Michigan in the final stretch when it might have made a difference.
Foreign involvement in the US political process is nothing new. During the effort to ratify the US Constitution, in an effort to support arguments for an indirect election of the President through the Electoral College, The Federalist talked about foreign involvement in US Presidential elections. Historian Barbara Tuchman wrote a book about British subterfuge to get the US into World War I. The Soviets attempted to influence US politics through the creation and promotion of the American Communist Party from the 1920’s on. During those early decades of the twentieth century, some American intellectuals thought the Soviets had solved the problems of industrialization. Some Americans were happy to move to the glorious Soviet Union.
Will the new president plan a reorganization of the United States’ far flung fleet of intelligence agencies? The OSS was originally tasked with the collection and interpretation of strategic information. After the National Security Act of 1947, the newly formed CIA took up the job with some additional responsibilities. Federal agencies tend to grow and morph from their original mandate as time goes on. The United States now has scores of intelligence agencies. Are we sure our Congress and President knows what these agencies actually do? Are we sure that our government can actually supervise intelligence services that have a long history of making serious mistakes?
What is this story obscuring right now? As we argue about the ‘preponderance of evidence’ linking a spear phishing scheme to the DNC servers, a scheme that succeeded because DNC officials who should have known better did not follow security procedures, politicians in Washington, our State Capitols and City Councils are stealing us blind.
