Podcast 585-Goodbye 2016

Bob Davis Podcasts Radio Show Number 59.

In Podcast 585-Goodbye 2016 Guest Andrew Davis and I have a father and son discussion of some of the big takeaways from 2016 and a look ahead to 2017. This isn’t one of those big stories of the year countdowns that populate the media at the end of every year. Just some thoughts about the year from both of us. What we have seen and what we thought was significant.

Of course in the United States, the big story of the year was Election 2016. Father and son talk about the winners and losers this year and how to stay informed going into 2017. The biggest loser of 2016 was traditional broadcast and cable television news and what is generally referred to as the mainstream media. This year though, you could add broadcast talk radio to the list. The biggest offense for these outlets was the penchant for predicting the future, picking a winner and endorsing a candidate.

From the media perspective the biggest winner was social media and You Tube. According to a recent study by Pew, more people got their news from social media and You Tube than ever before. This is a tectonic shift away from broadcast radio news and news delivered over traditional sources like broadcast television and cable television. This shift has provoked efforts to control what news and links people see and hear on social media sources.

In Podcast 585-Goodbye 2016, the biggest surprise in 2016, for traditional media and politics in 2016 was Trump’s Electoral Victory. For political elites inside the beltway and those who believed what old line traditional media told them, the emergence of Donald J. Trump in the primaries, his nomination as the Republican presidential candidate and his electoral victory was a shock. The biggest factor in politics in 2016 were the misconceptions fostered by terrible reporting and analysis.

Late in the election season the Clinton campaign and the White House introduced the idea that the Russians somehow ‘hacked’ the US election. While a convenient explanation for bereft democrats, even at this late date proof of a Russian Interference is lacking. Moreover, proof the alleged Russian intervention resulted in actually effecting the outcome of the election is even more elusive. Father and son disagree on this topic. This disagreement that carried over from the radio show to intense discussions with friends well into the evening.

With change back on the front burner in 2017 our discussion turns to how to get good information. There will be a need to evaluate the performance of the Trump administration and arguments against its initiatives. With so called fake news, opinion journalism rather than good investigative journalism, having good sources is more important that ever.

Once you have goos sources, you also need context. Good sources include source materials such as reports, think tank studies, documents, and live video. Context comes from reading history, source documents, non fiction books on various topics and your interests. Both of us caution against pop culture books which are nothing more than the same type of rehashing and alarmist coverage you see in social media, cable news and talk radio. They are designed to persuade, rather than inform. Certainly one can say think tanks have biases, which are usually fairly obvious, but reliance on source material from different parts of the spectrum and academic interests gives you the background and context to understand the biases without being manipulated.

Finally, the big issues in 2017 to watch will be the Trump Team’s transition, foreign policy issues including the South China Sea, ISIS, Europe, Russia and China, foreign trade, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Israel’s role in US foreign policy, United States Economic policy. Politically what the 115th congress does and how it does what it does will be significant stories in 2017. Supporters of the new President will be hard pressed almost from day one to defend his actions, and the opposition is treading through brand new territory. Both sides will need objective facts.

Finally, we have a little fun with the millennial obsession with smart phones and the hand wringing over ‘so many’ celebrity deaths in 2016 and thank the sponsored, supporters and listeners to the Bob Davis Podcasts throughout 2016. Happy New Year. See you in 2017.

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Podcast 544

Podcast 544-Self Definition. How would you describe yourself to someone you did not know? Are you defined by how you look, what kind of job you have, what kind of car you drive? Are you defined by material possessions? Do you define yourself according to the political spectrum as being of ‘the right’ or ‘the left’. A question that started out in Yoga class has been resonating with me all weekend. Time for Podcast 544-Self Definition. In a daily Yoga practice the question of how one defines themselves has to do with attaching yourself to how you do certain poses, how you look, how strong you are in comparison to others. Reaching a deeper practice requires the student to let go of those kinds of hard and fast definitions of themselves. In this podcast I expand on this idea to fit into society in general. Asking how we define ourselves certainly isn’t an original thought of mine, it came from my fantastic Yoga Teacher, Angela T. But expanding it to society as a whole is an interesting exercise. We’re living through a period of change, with new tools and new ways of doing things people could only imagine just twenty years ago, and thirty years ago the things we think of as everyday weren’t on anyone’s mind. All kinds of changes are taking place due to these new tools, yet many of us remain in the old world, deeply attached to outmoded perceptions and ideas about who we are. Historians like to name ‘eras’ well after they have passed. For example, historians refer to the United States just before the Civil War ‘antebellum’. Historians refer to the period between World War I and World War II as the ‘interwar’ period. People living in those times did not think of them as ‘antebellum’ or ‘interwar’, just their time. How we define ourselves has a big impact on whether we are resistant to change, which we all are to some degree or another. Big changes are underway now, and will gather momentum in the near future. Given the advances we see almost everyday, more change is on the agenda going forward. Hanging on too tightly prevents us from seeing solutions, using ideas, and being happy. How do you define yourself? In this podcast I share how I have defined myself in the past, how it effected me, and how I think about these things today. Sponsored by Karow Contracting.

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Podcast 543-Bob Davis Podcasts Radio Show-41

Podcast 543-Bob Davis Podcasts Radio Show-41. All new content for this week’s radio show. I devoted some time in Podcast 541 to the state by state polls. So, for the radio show, rather than excerpt segments from that podcast, given the fact that new polls are being taken almost daily, I decided to do an all new radio show with updates where applicable for the state by state polls. As I said in previous podcasts, the election of the president in the United States is not a popular vote affair. When you vote for an individual candidate, you are voting for a slate of electors, already chosen by the state parties, controlled by state election law. These are the people who actually vote for the president. While no elector has ever been prosecuted for voting their conscience so to speak, there have been faithless electors. And as much crap as the electoral system takes, there have only been two elector incidents in our history. Both of these happened in the early days of the republic (1796 and 1800) when the system called for the ‘runner up’ for president to be the vice president. Florida in 2000 was not an electoral college issue, since the electoral college had not voted. Florida in 2000 was a local vote counting issue that was litigated all the way up to the US Supreme Court, which ended up deciding the issue for George W. Bush. The US is a representative republic, not a direct democracy. Both parties want to tinker with the electoral college. Hillary Clinton has said we should amend the constitution to abolish the electoral college. Republicans want to tinker with it by pushing something called the ‘National Popular Vote’ which is essentially slaving all fifty states’ electoral votes to the popular vote in that state. Currently 29 states require the electors to vote for the winner of the popular vote. If the 2016 cycle leaves us with any impression, it is that mob rule in politics is not a good thing. My preference is to go back to letting the electors be the electors, and by the way, to letting state legislatures appoint US Senators as well. So, given the electoral factor in the US presidential election, focusing on national popularity polls is pretty much a waste of time. At this time, State by State polls do not paint a pretty picture for Republican Donald Trump, or even for the Republican effort to hold the US Senate. Republicans don’t like to hear bad news but there it is. Can Trump pull it out? Yes, but listen to the podcast to find out where he has to put his efforts in the next few weeks before the election. Whether you think of the starting gun as the primary season, the conventions, Labor Day or two weeks before election day, the Republicans are the underdogs at this point in time and they have their work cut out for them, all in this brand new Podcast 543-Bob Davis Podcasts Radio Show-41. Sponsored by Ryan Plumbing and Heating of Saint Paul and Karow Contracting.

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