PODCAST 460

Travel Madness. When is a presidential campaign like traveling? When things don’t go as planned. Which is pretty much what travel is. Live coverage of the ‘Primary’ season in Election 2016 starts with a late trip to Iowa, arriving in Des Moines at midnight, on the eve of the presidential debate that was supposed to happen, except for Donald J. Trump throwing a wrench into the plans. At the same time, this wayfaring podcaster struggles to pull all the nifty new elements added to podcast command together. At the time I did this podcast — 1 in the morning — I had just learned by unlimited data plan did not allow for a hot spot, a system I plan to use to upload podcasts from wherever, whenever. Having purchased a brand new iPhone 6, and as excited as a kid playing with a new video game, I was very disappointed to say the least. Not being one of those people who throw company names around, and complain, I decided to wait until morning and call my friend at the store, which at the time of this writing I have done. Some adjustments later, and guess what? Houston, we have remote upload capability! The election, and all those working to bring this debate to Iowans tonight seems to be going through the same kind of process. You can plan forever, but when things start going wrong you have to just work through the problems. A theme in these podcasts is the fact that the media has gone off the rails covering this election. It seems like the Media has become the story, which may be one of the reasons Trump is pulling the plug. Or at least he says he is pulling the plug. Fox News said this morning they expect only about 1-2 million viewers for the debates here tonight if Trump doesn’t show up, and that’s what’s important right? Not the voters of Iowa, who tend to throw the established ‘prognosticators’ for a loop in every cycle, right? Not the issues, which is what the vaunted Fourth Estate is supposed to be reporting on, right? So, word to the wise. Plan, but prepare to change and adapt. Sponsored by Hydrus Performance, Pride of Homes and Luke Team Real Estate. 

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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. 

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Podcast 437

STFU Media. Most of the time the blog I write to describe each podcast, as long term subscribers to the Bob Davis Podcasts know, is written in the third person. Not this one. In the wake of the Paris Terror attacks I am grateful I’m not getting paid to go on the air, flap my jaws, and spread utter nonsense about a breaking news story no one knows anything about as it breaks. This was the case for the weekend of November 13th, as terrorists attacked a theater in Paris, France. What is the total effect of this cavalcade of nonsense? Nothing will happen. There will be counterstrikes which will be pin pricks. Speeches will be given. Statements of ‘solidarity’ will be issued. There will be pledges to bring the ‘attackers to justice’, but that’s all a bunch of bull. These kinds of attacks benefit the media, the state and the terrorists. No matter what our so called leaders tell you, they’re not going to do anything about anything. Instant experts appear on television to pimp their blogs, books and radio shows. Politicians appear to make strong statements of condemnation or to suggest carefully that we ‘avoid the rush to judgement’, and the terrorists claim credit. Everyone wins, right? Given the stellar examples of US Government competence like the VA, the Obama Care Website, Amtrak, and the Department of Education, do we really believe they are going to be able to protect citizens from a bunch of determined terrorists with Ak-47’s, grenades and suicide belts? I wouldn’t hold my breath. As a presidential election cycle approaches candidates are throwing out one liners as ‘solutions’. It’s always someone else who has to ‘do something’. It’s as easy as pushing a button on your car radio, or switching to another cable news channel for the same nonsense under a different label. Except it isn’t. I’ve done several foreign policy podcasts and I have said again and again the United States needs a new foreign policy, and that it isn’t going to come out of a can or box. No one seems to have thought much about that, least of all the voters. The truth? We’re at the beginning of at least a multi decade struggle for our survival and something tells me, we’re still completely unprepared. Sponsored by Ryan Plumbing and Heating of Saint Paul and Pride of Homes. 

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