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 562-Father Son Debate Recap

Podcast 562-Father Son Debate Recap. Live from Los Angeles, California. Time for a father and son recap of the last debate between the presidential candidates in the 2016 election cycle. Mercifully, at least this part of the process is completed. Now its the beginning of the final stretch of campaigning for Donald J. Trump and Hillary Rodham Clinton for the White House. In Podcast 562-Father Son Debate Recap, you’ll hear the differences between how the younger generations see this election versus their parents. My view is, while Trump was more disciplined in this last debate in Las Vegas, he still doesn’t tell anyone exactly how he will do these wonderful things he wants to do. More frightening is the fact that Hillary Clinton knows exactly how to do what she wants to do. Both candidates offer state solutions to all that ails the nation. One wants to offer ‘free’ college and health care, the other will grow the moribund US economy by getting our allies to pay the US for their defense. The problems are much more complicated than that. Moreover, solutions that aren’t state oriented are more challenging to foster. We’re living in an age when more people in the US are getting used to ‘free’ stuff from the government. Building walls, getting allies to ‘pay’, ‘free’ college and ‘fixing’ ObamaCare are only going to add to the deficit and deepen our fiscal and social problems. This is why I say the current two-party system, stepped in old thinking, has produce two of the most ill suited candidates in modern history, perhaps in all US History. My son, Andrew Davis, has some slightly different views and he presents them quite well. All in all it was probably as substantive a debate as we’re going to get from Trump and Clinton. Our analysis touches on the debate, the style of the candidates, some of the current state by state polling, foreign policy, aid to allies and foreign trade. Sponsored by X Government Cars.

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Podcast 561-Pacific Coast Highway

Podcast 561-Pacific Coast Highway. People have been asking for some ‘travel log’ podcasts from the Great Northwest Road Trip 2016 series, so in Podcast 561-Pacific Coast Highway, some travel log audio from Oregon’s coast during a storm, again the angry surf along the Pacific Coast Highway in California north of San Francisco. Most travel sites write about the Pacific Coast Highway south of San Francisco. On this trip I have driven Route 1, all the way from just south of Seattle, through San Francisco to Los Angeles right along the coast. What a long strange trip it’s been. Winding roads, crazy storms, spell binding coastal maritime towns and villages and breathtaking vistas coming down out of mountains. There aren’t enough superlatives to describe the experience of twisting and turning two lane roads in 16 year old Mobile Podcast Command laboring up and down, sometimes in brilliant sun and sometimes in the midst of fog, or heavy wind and rain, all under a full moon during these few days in the middle of October 2016. The biggest challenge has been getting out from under a series of storms that have pounded the west coast, from Seattle to San Francisco. In podcast 561 you’ll hear the wind and rain in Oregon, the surf in Northern California, and a little surprise at the end of the podcast for you midwesterners. I have often said long trips take on a personality of their own and you end up having to just go with the flow. Travelers who try to stick to a schedule, try to see too many things or get frustrated with the ‘trip’ are not good travelers. After thousands of miles through the mountains, plains and coastlines of the United States, I’ve learned to settle in for these long trips and just enjoy whatever goes down. This trip, the heavy rain and fog has been following me all down the coast, which has made it even more of an adventure. From pulling into state parks and RV-Parks in the middle of the night and hooking up to electric, to driving 8 to 15 hours at a time on the PCH, it’s been really fun and educational. If you’re looking for those romantic seaside towns tucked away along rocky coastlines, this is the place. There’s the reason they say ‘The West Is The Best’. Sponsored by Hydrus Performance.

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