Podcast 458

Not George Washington. With the Iowa Caucuses less than a week away, political prognosticators have finally gone off the rails. This week’s poster child for idiocy goes to the talk show host who claims Texas Senator Ted Cruz is ‘The New George Washington’. How is the ‘endorsement’ of candidates from personalities, talk show hosts and commentators different from endorsements that come from governors, senators and candidates who are exiting the race? How has the endorsing of candidates by talk show hosts hurt talk radio? Ted Cruz is Not George Washington, but that fact doesn’t stop charlatans from saying so. Why do they do it? It’s a desperate quest for something called ‘relevance’, which is yet another example of the talk radio cesspool. This podcast has been steadfast in not supporting any candidate for president in 2016. The penchant commentators have this year, to influence voters to support candidates based only on polling data, is shameful. Moreover, participation in primaries and caucuses is very low. The result of primaries and caucuses this spring and summer have more to do with the nominating conventions for both mainline parties than the general election. Despite this fact, talk radio and the media are already making predictions and issuing endorsements for the presidency? The victors in the first few primaries or caucuses, at least on the republican side, are usually not the nominee. The only reasonable conclusion is that commentators are manipulating their listeners and voters for their own gain; a sad feature of a presidential cycle already off the rails. You can imagine how the real election will be reported. This podcaster is not going to endorse anyone for president, since all of them are more like Nucky Thompson than anything approaching George Washington. Sponsored by Pride of Homes and Luke Team Real Estate and Hydrus.

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Podcast 450

Beware The Soothsayers. So much of our media these days is caught up in predicting the future. Weather, economics, sports and especially politics, isn’t so much about fact as it is about predictions based on opinion and poorly supported ‘fatcs’. Without a real basis in science or proven facts, we’re constantly told what the ‘future will bring’. It’s a wonder news anchors and ‘commentators’ don’t wear brightly colored head dresses and look into a crystal ball. One of the reasons we are ill served by a modern media possessed of the greatest technology for informing known to man, is its executives exhort their on screen ‘actors’ and so called ‘journalists’ to use opinion and hearsay to ‘predict’ what ‘will’ happen, rather than just report the facts around an event, or ‘the news’. For instance, lower prices for gasoline was going to ‘act like a tax cut’ and we would have economic growth. The Christmas retail shopping season might be a little down, but it would still be good. Donald Trump would be a flash in the pan, and would ‘collapse’ as soon as voters ‘came to their senses’. This is the time of year astrologers make their predictions for 2016, which are about as accurate as the wild ‘predictions’ made by the cable news services, round table discussions, commentary pieces distributed on line, and most of the rest of the media conglomeration complex, especially talk radio and the cable news channels. What do you think would happen if they stopped making predictions? There’d be a lot of dead air. In fact most of what is being broadcast and written these days is little more than fortune telling, and not very good fortune telling at that. In a late night podcast by the fire, as we labor under a winter storm watch in the upper midwest (at least a foot of snow ‘predicted’ with the ‘storm’ starting Monday night), time to air some concerns about what we are being told, and talk about the antidote to it. Sponsored by Hydrus Performance, and by the Mobile Podcast Command Unit of The Bob Davis Podcasts. 

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Podcast 442

God Isn’t Fixing This. In the wake of the San Bernardino shootings we’re left as confused as ever, and the media treats every single shooting as a one-off single story, rather than a series of shootings in an ongoing struggle. It makes talking about it difficult, yet this is what people are asking about, as 24 hour coverage drives home the media favorite story-line of the moment. Everyone followed the President as he climbed aboard the ‘workplace violence and guns kill people’ train, but surprise! That train derailed just outside the station when facts surfaced suggesting something more sinister and dangerous. We’re still being told, “avoid the rush to judgement”, and “it may still be a workplace violence issue”. Trouble is, like the Fort Hood shootings a few years ago, evidence shows the San Bernardino attack was premeditated, with detailed preparations including, legally obtained weapons, even with California’s ‘assault weapons ban’, stockpiles of ammunition, pipe bombs, communication with people on terror watch lists, destruction and cauterization of communication and social media links before the act with similarities to attacks in Paris and Boston. While the ‘thoughts and prayers of the nation’ are with the victims, guess what? God Helps Those Who Help Themselves. There is a war being waged for our minds and the minds of our attackers. It is waged though propaganda and media. The weak succumb to its charms, and the fears it generates. Only the strong will protect, persevere and prevail. Are you strong enough? Are we strong enough? Clearly our leaders aren’t that strong, because if they aren’t mealy mouthing thoughts and prayers, they’re trying to pass gun control legislation or spend more money on mental health research. What’s that you say? Strategy? Foreign Policy? Addressing the problem? Expecting real leadership is apparently too much to ask of the denizens of Washington. We depend too much on our leaders to show us how to be strong, but it seems as though we’re going to have to show them how to be strong, because apparently they can’t do it. These kinds of terror attacks are a cancer that is spreading, and it will get worse. Its causes took decades to develop. It can’t be solved with a campaign slogan or some rant on a talk show. Sponsored by Pride of Home and Luke Team Real Estate and Hydrus Performance. 

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