Podcast 482

The Story Less Travelled. As the pay for play media continues to chatter about what Donald Trump did this week, or Bernie Sanders’ predictions about democrat super delegates switching allegiance to him, maybe it’s time to take a look at The Story Less Travelled. Some percolating stories and issues people really aren’t talking about because they’re arguing about how tabloids post stories, how Internet rumors get started, how Donald Trump is going to make US allies pay ‘us’ for security, or why Bernie Sanders’ thinks Detroit became a hell hole in the last fifty years. There are real things happening in the world, most of which are reported on but not occupying very much attention, because too many pundits, talk hosts, talking heads, editors and managers are doing the bidding of political parties, candidates and their minders. What happens if Saudi Arabia decides to switch their alliance to China and Asia, which will account for the lion’s share of growth in energy consumption over the next ten years? What happens when economic instability due to massive debt and low profits comes home to roost in the banking system? How do you feel about academics going around saying the days of 4 percent and greater economic growth are over, and the solution is a world wide socialism-lite system, with more government and higher taxes? How will future presidents – the people filling your television screen with nonsense right now, and getting accolades from talkers, pundits and so called experts for it – confront a collapsing China, a Europe embroiled in a guerrilla war with thousands of ISIS fighters, and an economic depression. Maybe we should be talking about The Story Less Travelled more than what they want us to talk about. Sponsored by X Government Cars, Brush Studio in the West End, Saint Louis Park and by Hydrus. (Editor’s Note: This is not a ‘transcript’. Each podcast, which is original content in itself, also is accompanied by a short blog about the podcast. This blog is also original content, not a repetition of what is in the podcast, but a discussion of some of the ideas in the podcast. If you want to know what’s in the podcast, listen to it.)

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Podcast 465

A Jeb Bush Event. Live from Sumter, South Carolina The Bob Davis Podcasts joins the Bush campaign for a Jeb Bush Event featuring Senator Lindsay Graham and Governor Bush. Originally planned for a local diner, the campaign had to move the event to the University of South Carolina, which was a shame since the potato soup at Baker’s Sweets in Sumter is amazing. Another feature of this podcast is to set the record straight regarding Jason Lewis’ appearance in Bob Davis Podcast 404, in which he stated he generally supported the President’s Iran deal with caveats. Lewis’ campaign for Congress in Minnesota’s Second District is apparently scaring his opponents so much, they’re excerpting liner notes about his foreign policy views, rather than actually listening to what he said in the podcast. There will be a new editorial note on podcast 404 which everyone can read, clarifying what Jason said. What is amazing about the current controversy surrounding Jason’s view that the country cannot have limited government at home and big government abroad is that when you’re on the campaign trail you hear republican candidates walking right up to the line advocating another war, and apparently Republicans love it. Maybe the 2nd District’s Republican candidate for congress is correct to question this impulse among all the GOP candidates? (You’ll hear it in this podcast too.) How can talk show hosts and commentators compare the current crop of bellicose campaigners with Ronald Reagan who negotiated, and kept the United States out of major military commitments and war for 8 years. Thus, a local congressional district issue dovetails beautifully with what a candidate says on the hustings in South Carolina. In any case, the Reagan era is over and is not coming back. The challenges of our current time are multi-polar, not bi-polar. Even the economic challenges are different. All these challenges will require new and different solutions that can only come from people who are able to consider opinions that might be unorthodox. Also in this podcast, a flavor of night life in Charleston, and some good bluegrass music. Sponsored by Ryan Plumbing and Heating of Saint Paul and Hydrus.

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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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