Podcast 360

Updates! The Correspondent’s dinner is a colossal waste of time, and discussions now center on how to fix it. How do you fix it when the news reporters who should be in Baltimore covering riots are ‘the story’ at a glitzy, hollywood style celebrity roast, including the President. How is the public to expect objectivity in its nightly news given that kind of display. NBC Nightly News, as predicted, has reportedly asked Brian Williams to find the door as more evidence of his ’embellishments’ emerge. Williams has done irreparable harm to NBC News. The Comcast-Time Warner deal is kaput. It can only be hoped complaints about customer service at both companies contributed to it. It’s starting to become apparent that the balance of power, when it comes to energy, is shifting in favor of the United States. Fracking made it possible, and today’s technology made fracking so efficient oil companies can scale them up or down at much cheaper costs, and exploration is cheaper as well. With the US the second or first largest oil producer, and controlling as much as ten percent of the world’s oil production, substantive changes in middle east policy are now possible. The new reality also extends to how we deal with countries like Venezuela and Russia, not just the Middle East. Minnesota Congressman Keith Ellison wants to end so called subsidies to the ‘evil’ oil companies. What are subsidies, what tax breaks and loopholes specifically apply here and who really benefits? Meanwhile real subsidies for wind power, ethanol, electric cars, light rail and rail roads that deliver the oil – rather than the Keystone Pipeline – continue. Who benefits? The top selling car at GM is not a gas-electric, or even the fully electric Volt. It’s the Suburban, Yukon and Escalade as people trade in their electric cars for SUV’s, now that gas is cheaper. The war on the car, the individual and independent-government-free living continues. Latest in the struggle is the Southwest Light Rail project now expected to cost Minnesota Taxpayers 2 billion dollars, which shocked and appalled Governor Dayton. The solution? Kill the project. The aging hippie governor and his 60 year old pals at the Hennepin County Council, City Councils and a duchy known as ‘The Met Council’ have a vision. That vision is our return to the early 20th century city utopia, where cars were scarce and trains carried people from residential areas of big cities downtown. Forget that those cities, at that time, were hardly utopias. The last, best hope of these statists is the Millennial generation, which they expect will move into downtown, thus populating the expensive (1500 to 3000 a month) high rise apartments, and drinking in the bohemian bars and coffee shops, and in general contributing to something called ‘the creative class’. Truth is, Millennials are moving to the suburbs and the exurbs because housing is cheaper, and there are yards for their new families. Babies and toddlers don’t prefer sitting in outdoor coffee cafes, riding around on bikes and getting tattoos. Is the statist dream of returning to the early 20th century city doomed? Sponsored by X Government Cars

Podcast 357

Wyoming Breakout. Back home from Road Trip II, 2015. The story of the ‘breakout from Wyoming’, going up and down a big mountain in the middle of the spring snow storm, and outrunning the weather heading east. The objective? Don’t stop until warmer weather and or sunshine, whichever occurs first. In this case, it happened to be Sidney, Nebraska. Then, a day’s drive in the pouring rain through the Cornhusker State, onto Iowa for the final leg home from Des Moines to the Twin Cities. The Mobile Podcast Command Unit 8 performed brilliantly under varying conditions. Email from a listener introduced to us through a knock on the window of Unit 8 at midnight, behind a Casino. Plus some thoughts about the 2016 political cycle in the superb setting of the famous Nepenthe, located in the mountains of Big Sur, California, as we wait for a table, through the magic of audio podcasts. One of the things that kept coming up throughout the trip is this question of whether anyone who isn’t a political operative, or junkie, is paying attention to the cattle call of republican candidates, and the farce of democrat presidential candidates in the current time frame. Farmers let their fields lay fallow, so the soil isn’t fatigued. Creatives know sometimes you need to take a break in order to avoid burn out, writer’s block, and to get to the good stuff, creatively speaking. The media knows nothing of this, and continues to sift, and report and sift, and grind until there’s nothing left. What’s important right now isn’t personalities, the outrage of the day, or some expose. People need time to take a break from all the politics so they can actually do some internal thinking about the things that matter most to them. What are the overarching themes? Has any party developed an overall narrative that motivates real people to work and vote for the candidates? Does the candidate him or herself even matter? We’re not hearing those themes. We’re hearing what this one said about that one and how this one is getting more contributions, and the other one looks good or bad. The most divisive institution in American politics is not Congress, it’s the media. Can people tune it out? Sitting in the beautiful sunshine of Big Sur, staring out at the Pacific makes one think it is possible. Sponsored by Baklund R&D. (Image from California Travels) 

Podcast 355

Nevada and Utah. Live from Park City, Utah in Mobile Podcast Command Unit 8, the Road Trip continues, leaving California and heading into Nevada, and Utah. Thursday was a tough day for the Mobile Unit. Damage was sustained after the driver — tired and hungry — attempted to enter a mall parking lot which inexplicably featured those concrete and steel ‘height regulators’. With damage nominally repaired, the Mobile Unit soldiers on, battered but unbroken. Updates for your weekend. Are you already sick of the Presidential campaign of 2016? What about Hillary’s bags? Is Rand Paul really crazy? Is Marco Rubio’s tax plan really a good idea? It’s Iowa’s fault. Iowa, that has no other reason for anyone to pay attention to it. Iowa, drenched in wind power and ethanol subsides, forcing the whole country to watch as these politicians traverse one end of it to another, just because Iowa has to have the ‘first in the nation primary’ in 2016. As a result, the media valve cannot be turned off. The result? People may just be burned out on political news and coverage, and one wonders whether by the actual election in November of 2016, anyone will have any stomach left for any of it. Is it possible too much coverage will suppress the vote? And, if it isn’t gyrocopters landing on the Capitol steps, its DEA agents who can’t be fired for having orgies, with prostitutes supplied by the cartels. Shouldn’t people who do these sorts of things be fired? Unfortunately, as the head of the DEA testified this week, the civil service employment laws prevent them from even being disciplined. And people say the government is efficient. Tax Day has come and gone, and at the same time one wonders whether the same anti-tax fervor that existed a few years ago, still exists. Touring the country shows people adapting. In spite of a moribund economy, and poor leadership in Washington, they seem to be doing pretty good. (Editor’s Note: Except for Reno, Nevada. They don’t seem to be doing pretty good on the East Side of Reno.) Plus some tips on camping out in Unit 8, emails and one more donation thank you. Sponsored by Ryan Plumbing and Heating of Saint Paul. Also join me April 25th for the SD48 Annual Freedom Dinner. Follow the links for more info.