Podcast 446

Media Manipulation. Checking out the news cycle before and after the debates, and in the last few weeks it sure feels like we’re being manipulated. You can’t say anything about anyone these days without a stream of tweets and posts about what’s politically correct, or charges that ‘you’re in the tank’ for this or that candidate. New story lines about Donald Trump are actually laughable. After his comments on the San Bernardino Terror Attack (not the San Bernardino shooting, as Hillary Clinton likes to characterize a terror attack) Trump was a racist, a fascist and a demagogue. Now that a new poll has been released showing Trump breaking through forty percent, with his closest challengers as much as twenty points behind, the story line is its the fading middle class, or dumb white high school only ‘blue collar’ workers who support him. Or, that Ted Cruz is suddenly ‘the nominee’ because he beat Trump by one point in a poll in Iowa. Because people in Iowa don’t know that they’re being surveyed, interviewed and chronicled to death as they ‘pick the next president’. Meanwhile not a vote has been cast. Kudos to the Cruz campaign for working hard in Iowa but let’s not forget Iowa (which is somewhere down there between New York and Los Angeles, for those of you in the media) Republicans voted for Mike Huckabee in 2008 and Rick Santorum in 2012 and gave Michele Bachmann a big boost in the Straw Poll in 2012. Were any of those people the Republican nominee, or even president? At the same time, almost no ink has been devoted to Hillary Clinton’s compulsive lying or Bernie Sanders’ fairy tales about how to fix the economy, or solve all of America’s social problems with another government program. While the pundits and commentariat blabs on and on trying to predict the future, manufacturing is in a recession, government and corporate debt are at record levels, companies are merging to pump up their fourth quarter earnings, Chinese officials admit making up economic numbers, commodities are depressed  and the Fed is about to raise interest rates. Iran has pulled its troops out of Syria because they’re getting their ass kicked by ISIS, which by the way is expanding into Afghanistan where they will get an assist, no doubt, from the guy we had locked up in Gitmo, but let go to get a deserter back. Don’t worry about that right now though, Anderson Cooper is on talking about Carly Fiorina’s dress, Donald’s smack down of Jeb! and the Cruz Rubio rivalry. Hey did the Wild win? Maybe we’re better off with astrologers. As long as its Vedic astrology, right? Sponsored by Pride of Homes and Luke Team Real Estate and Hydrus Performance

Podcast 445

The Highway Song. As the media cycle repeats on an endless loop, boredom begins to set in. How many more arguments do you want to hear about Donald Trump being Hitler, or Ted Cruz being Ted Cruz, or Hillary Clinton and Benghazi? There is a real world waiting to be experienced. Not the make believe world the media’s twenty four hour a day obsession with American politics seems to be showing us. When there’s a new wrinkle, the Bob Davis Podcasts will break in with an update. Meanwhile this podcast asks, is travel an escape from reality or is travel reality and our lives are an escape from travel? A walk and talk through a ‘warm’ early December evening is designed to stir your memories of travel and your wanderlust. Where have you gone? Where would you like to go? Why? When did you first experience a sense of wonder as you traveled to new places? Was it a road trip with the parents? A first flight to some exotic location in the islands? A ski trip in the mountains? A road trip, with college friends, back in the day? What cities have you visited? Where would you like to visit? New York City? Chicago? New Orleans? San Francisco? Las Vegas? For me its all about the road trip. As I prepare for the big Mobile Podcast Command Winter ’16 trip to Iowa for the caucuses, then onto the mid south, and the eastern seaboard through the North and South Carolina, Georgia, Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana and Texas, my mind turns to the things I see and learn through the screen … the windscreen that is. There’s nothing better for the soul. Sponsored by Ryan Plumbing and Heating of Saint Paul and X Government Trucks

Podcast 444

Trump’s Folly? Midweek news updates. It’s all about Donald J. Trump who has managed to gain complete command of the media battle space on the issue of Jihad in the United States, on the heels of the San Bernardino, California attacks. With polls showing Trump with a commanding overall lead, compared to all the other Republican Candidates, his announcement that ‘Muslim immigration should be put on hold until we know what is going on’ has put him to the right of even Ted Cruz, and forced all the other Republicans into defending the President. Not only is Trump being compared to Hitler, (Ridiculous in its own right, since the greatest progressive in history and democrat President Franklin Delano Roosevelt didn’t waste a second rounding up West Coast Japanese-Americans after the attack on Pearl Harbor by Japan) his latest statement on Muslim Attacks in the US is being described as a ‘brilliant political move’. It all adds up to higher poll numbers for Trump and higher ratings on foreign policy and defense than the so called ‘adults’ in the room, like Lindsay Graham who called for a campaign this week to ‘Tell Trump to Go To Hell’. So much for adulthood. In this podcast, what you need to know, what this means, how to do your own homework and stop asking others to tell you what you’re supposed to think. Bottom line, the moderate leadership nominally referred to as ‘The Republican Establishment’ put George W Bush in office, backed him on the disastrous Iraq War (which did more damage to the Republican Party than Nixon), and continually expects the media to do their bidding for them. News Flash! If you’re a moderate establishment Republican, either serving in elected office or as a campaign consultant, people are sick of your crap and your unwillingness to join the fight. If you don’t understand why Trump is doing what he is doing, you’re dead. If people vote as the polls show, Trump is the nominee. If democrats insist on trying to take all the guns, stop people from saying what they think, and allowing ONLY the politically correct to speak, chances Trump will be President improve drastically. Americans might be stupid, but they see through all this political nonsense. They know, this President, this Congress and the Republican Establishment aren’t protecting them and aren’t fixing what’s wrong. Looks like what voters might be saying is, the time for the so called ‘establishment to get on the good foot, or get out, has come. Establishment Republican Moderates should be afraid. Very afraid. Sponsored by Hydrus Performance and Pride of Homes and Luke Team Real Estate.