Media Lies-Travel Truths-Small Town America-Bob Davis Podcast 789

Media Lies-Travel Truths-Small Town America-Bob Davis Podcast 789

To hear Der Spiegel tell it, Fergus Falls, Minnesota is a very special place these days. The town on Minnesota’s prairie is in a deep forest. A city manager carries a gun. The local high school sports iron doors and metal detectors. Moreover the mouth breathing savages that inhabit this place all voted for Trump. Learn more in Media Lies-Travel Truths-Small Town America-Bob Davis Podcast 789.

All Lies

The most noteworthy thing about this story is the fact that it is a complete fabrication. To Der Spiegel’s credit, the magazine is sending a reporter to Fergus Falls.

This time to apologize.

Dark and Dangerous Rural America

Sadly often media lies tell us more truth about biases than their coverage. Especially relevant are the new storylines about the mysterious and the mystical “rural America”. Land of republicans and Trump supporters. Dark and Dangerous. Well spring of public radio’s murder mystery podcasts. Source of the angry and red faced nationalist republican.

Small Town America

Truth is rural America is just as difficult to report on and explain as any urban center. We’ll talk about it in Media Lies-Travel Truths-Small Town America-Bob Davis Podcast 789.

Travel Is The Antidote

More importantly, travel is the antidote for the half truths and fairy tales of the media. I have traveled back and forth across this country, east to west, west to east and north to south many times. There are places I have missed but in thousands of miles of travel over the past few years, I have learned a great deal.

The New Nomads

Moreover many people have taken to converted school buses, RV’s and even Ambulances in search of their own version of America. Here’s to them.

Have A Cup Of Joe

In small towns across the US dedicated to ranching, farming, and mining people aren’t just going to walk up to you and tell you their life stories. Simple observation won’t tell you their stories either. Travel takes you through but you have to stop. Have a cup of Joe and talk to people. Get to know them over time.

Sometimes Working Together…Sometimes Not…Just Like The Big Cities

Finally what I’ve found in these places are all kinds of people living and working together. In some places things are better than in others. Reasons for decline or improvement are often elusive, even to the locals. Whether it’s a mining town or a farm town.

Politics Doesn’t Make The Man or The Town

In conclusion, I am sick to death of reporters telling us politics determines whether we are red or blue. These things don’t take the measure of the people who live in a town, large or small.

Coast To Coast and Back Again

Join me for Media Lies-Travel Truths-Small Town America-Bob Davis Podcast 789. Hear the sounds of some of the places I have visited over the last few years, from a hound dog in Mendocino, California to the total eclipse in Makanda Illinois, and finally overlooking the Pacific Ocean on the coast highway.

I’ve got a few stories of my own to tell.

Sponsored by Reliafund Payment Processors, John D. Scott Personal Injury Lawyer and Ryan Plumbing and Heating of Saint Paul

Media Lies-Travel Truths-Small Town America-Bob Davis Podcast 789

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 37:30 — 85.8MB) | Embed

Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | RSS

Podcast 554-Latest Election State By State Polls

Podcast 554-Latest Election State By State Polls. For you political junkies, which includes me, it’s been a month since the last analysis of political polls state by state, and I promised another one at the end of September, 2016. If you want to compare the two state by state poll podcasts to really get a sense of movement check out Podcast 541. I do not intend to analyze the debate. I will not tell you who won the debate. I will not tell you whether people pay attention to the debates. None of the current state by state polls were taken after the debates so they do not reflect the effects on either candidate of the debates. With this in mind, over 80 million people watched the September 26th debate between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump. The next state-by-state poll roundup podcast at the end of October will show what effect – if any – the debates may or may not have had. The biggest change between this podcast and the podcast in late August is that there are now more ‘toss up’ states — that is states with poll averages for president within the margin of error. In Podcast 554-State By State Polls, I am drawing on data from Real Clear Politics. Follow the link directly to an interactive electoral map of the United States and follow along, or may your own map. The tightening could be knock on effects from Clinton’s bad week of September 11th, or it could just be due to more polls closer to the election, when respondents start paying attention and are more likely to give responses. You’ll have to listen for my conclusions about whether more toss up states mean anything, but for the most part, both candidates are within the margins in 2012 and 2008 in the states they lead, or are trading leads. The big questions remain Florida, Ohio, Pennsyvania, Virginia, and to a lesser extent North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Wisconsin, Michigan, and western states like Colorado, Arizona and Nevada. This is a state by state electoral election, so the national polls don’t matter, and the snap polls on who won the debate don’t matter. All that matters is the candidate’s performance, and get out the vote efforts for them in key electoral states. Listen and learn the state by state strongholds, battlegrounds, advantages and disadvantages, roughly a month out. We’ll come back at the end of October and again just before the election in early November, and see how the campaigning, media, and news events have changed the political landscape. Sponsored by Ryan Plumbing of Saint Paul.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 45:30 — 104.1MB) | Embed

Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | RSS

Podcast 472

Texas. That’s all you need to say. Texas. We start on the Texas Gulf Coast at Galveston and work our way up to Beaumont, Houston, on through central Texas with an eye toward La Grange, Austin, Waco and finally to Dallas. If you woke up in one of these places, even any of the smaller towns along the way, you would know, you could only be in Texas. Along the way, lots of stories from this Road Trip so far, including the drive up the Gulf Coast through Mississippi and Alabama, and Louisiana, ending in New Orleans on Saturday night, where Mobile Podcast Command was forced to break the law, in service of a cup of chicory coffee and a pastry from Cafe Dumonde. Sadly, New Orleans seems like it is still struggling to overcome the effects of Katrina, which is probably why there are suddenly so many parking restrictions, and the parking authorities so vigilant. So out of character for this ‘anything goes’ town. In Mississippi, you pass the beautiful home of the president of the confederacy Jefferson Davis, and one can only wonder what it must have been like to leave this gorgeous home on the beach, move to a place like Richmond, to ‘run the confederacy’; a really bad decision in the long run. Did he ever make it back? Then the gulf coast, with its brand new ‘towns on stilts’…literally the houses, the stores, the cafes are all built on pylons, to withstand floods and perhaps the intense winds of hurricanes, which come every year. The Bolivar Peninsula, and Galveston where I finally found the deserted coast line I have been looking for. Finally central Texas including Houston and finally Dallas. Both of these cities are juggernauts on their own. When you combine Houston and Dallas with San Antonio, Austin and the western Texas cities, you begin to understand why this state is so important, and why it is unlike any other. Sponsored by Hydrus and Ryan Plumbing and Heating of Saint Paul. 

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 37:30 — 85.8MB) | Embed

Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | RSS