The Bob Davis Podcasts

Podcast 582-Bob Davis Podcasts Radio Show-57

Podcast 582-Bob Davis Podcasts Radio Show-57. Hillary Clinton’s Tribe Throws a Temper Tantrum. The Electoral College will soon gather in respective state capitols for the purpose of choosing the the next president of the United States. In a last ditch attempt to influence the outcome of this final hurdle for Republican President-elect Trump, democrat supporters are hurling unsubstantiated charges regarding Russia, Wikileaks, Fake News and Hacks. I separate and break down very different story lines behind it all in Podcast 582-Bob Davis Podcasts Radio Show-57.

New protests say the Electoral College should be abolished because it isn’t ‘democratic’, all while they try to influence electors to vote for Clinton rather than Trump. ‘The Electoral College’ is our last line of defense, they shout. Perhaps the most absurd assertion of all; ‘This is how Hitler came to power’. I also break this down in Podcast 582-Bob Davis Podcasts Radio Show-57. The Electoral College for all its faults is in fact a democratic process. Getting rid of the Electoral College as an institution would be a very complex process involving amending the US Constitution.

The so called ‘Russian Hack’ is actually a constellation of assertions and claims, circumstantial at best, from shadowy sources in the US Intelligence Community. Suddenly very entertaining ‘Fake News’ stories on the Internet require complex rules and warning labels from social media in what amounts to a George Soros funded violation of our First Amendment rights under the US Constitution. If you can’t make baseless assertions about child sex rings at Pizza Restaurants in Washington, you can’t make baseless assertions about Russians ‘hacking’ the US Election to put Trump in the White House.

What about the Hitler comparisons? How did the Nazis come to power in Germany in the 1920’s? How did Hitler come to power in the early 1930’s? How are these factors different from the Representative Republic known as The United States of America? Attempts to intimidate and influence Electors to comparisons of Trump to Hitler and Republicans to Nazis, fevered assertions about the wily Russians as Hillary Clinton’s Tribe Throws A Temper Tantrum.

We’re living through an age of disruption as technology destroys centralized processes, including a massive, sclerotic Federal Government. Forget Republican and Democratic. There are really two poles now. Tyranny and Liberty. Which do you choose? Sponsored by Ryan Plumbing and Heating of Saint Paul, X Government Cars and Hydrus Performance.

(Editor’s Note: Since this show was produced and posted, the Washington Post is reporting Director of National Intelligence Clapper, and FBI Director Comey have ‘signed on’ to the assessment of the CIA regarding Russian “intervention in the US Election for the purpose of influencing its outcome”. This assessment remains classified and is therefore not public and one should read the statements of Clapper and Comey on this matter for more details.)

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 48:19 — 110.6MB) | Embed

Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | RSS

Podcast 581-Disruption

Podcast 581-Disruption. The 1950’s and 60’s Are Never Coming Back. Disruption is Radical Change with profound effects, usually Permanent.   I’ve tried to determine the root of the feeling we all seem to have that something is wrong. It comes down to a major disruption of our business, industrial, governmental and cultural processes.Podcast 581-Disruption started out to be a podcast about the industrial revolution and the 1950’s in the United States. It’s a theme I return to regularly, especially when I talk about technology.

The Industrial Revolution caused disruptions from the time it began until it peaked in the 1950’s through the 1970’s. We’re in the early stages of a technology revolution on a scale the world has never experienced. I call it the second industrial revolution. It is a technology revolution and will cause profound disruptions.

Some call what we’re living through the fourth industrial revolution. I use the term second industrial revolution because I think breaking the Industrial Revolution into parts minimizes its impact. We’re in the early stages of a disruption as significant as the Industrial Revolution has been overall. What I call the Second Industrial Revolution will have more impact on humans and the planet than the first. The effect of both concepts should not be underestimated.

One of the cultural effects of the ‘turbo’ into the future is longing and nostalgia for the past. The Post World War II period in American History appears to be one of those times when the world could be easily explained, people understood their roles, people of different races didn’t mingle and The United States was number one with a bullet. The problem with this idea is, the late 1940’s, 1950’s and 1960’s only exist in perfection in dreamy memories and pictures of Marilyn Monroe. Pretty pictures, faded with time. A time when ‘everyone’ was working. When small towns were strong, and big cities were booming. Yet even then, the beginning of the decline of one age and the dawn of a new were in the making.

Not all the gifts of the technology revolution are good. The gifts of technology can be used for dark purposes as well. Religions that spread like viruses. ‘Conventional’ war on an unprecedented scale. Surveillance and mind control of populations that are supposed to be free, to the point where they ask for laws to control speech. What seems like a dream to some, will be a nightmare to others.

This revolution will not be stopped though. It will flow around any obstacles put in its path. Much of the texture of the sense some have that ‘something’ is wrong can be expressed in fear and hate. ‘Fixing’ whatever is wrong, means going back to a world 60 or 70 years ago? A world that no longer exists. Much of the industrial revolution is based on centralization. Today centralization is being disrupted to the point of destruction by decentralizing technologies. What do we need to prevail, given these challenges?

Dealing with this change is a question of how we conduct our own lives and ensure our own happiness and freedom.  We’re living through the beginning of the greatest disruption in human history. It might be the greatest age of human beings and this country yet. Saying things change isn’t descriptive enough. Disruption means radical change. In Podcast 581-Disruption-The 1950’s aren’t coming back, when are we going to stop complaining about what is being done to us, and start taking charge of our lives and our world. When are we going to start looking forward and not backward.

Sponsored by Hydrus Performance and X Government Cars.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 31:01 — 71.0MB) | Embed

Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | RSS

Podcast 579-Internet Censorship

Podcast 579-Internet Censorship. The news media has a new story-line. Fake News Elected Donald Trump. We have to do something about fake news. It amounts to is censorship of the Internet. A violation of the right to free speech guaranteed by the US Constitution’s first amendment at least in spirt. What IS Fake News? I think of Fake News as False Narratives. Story lines seeded by politicians and corporate PR people. Narratives that are picked up and reported on by journalists who take down quotes for their stories rather than investigate and report. These story lines are picked up by more journalists who quote talking heads. Commentators commentate, more quotes and more stories until the narrative outlives its usefulness and then the whole thing starts over. Examples include explanations of why Trump won the election including, ‘Women voted for Trump instead of Hillary’. Another was the reporting on ‘What the Polls showed’ which usually meant Clinton was supposed to win. Facts in both cases debunked these claims. The definition of ‘Fake News’ we’re actually dealing with now are false stories presented as fact. You see them on You Tube, FaceBook and Twitter. But they are picked up by websites like Breitbart or Huffington Post if they fit a narrative. Since ‘fake news’ elected ‘a person like Trump’, Clinton backers are demanding social media and search engine companies like FaceBook and Google ‘do something about fake news’. In Podcast 579-Internet Censorship, we spend a little time explaining the American Political system, specifically the Electoral College. This explains how Donald Trump was able to eke out an electoral victory in key states, as well as a solid victory among the voters of Ohio, which gave him a victory in the presidential contest, regardless of popular vote totals, fair and square. There is virtually no evidence fake news had anything to do with these tight victories. If Clinton’s voters had actually voted in those states we’d be talking about a Clinton transition and Trump would be on a beach in the Caribbean somewhere. Despite the fact that Clinton has been a proponent of doing away with the electoral college for years, suddenly the hoary old institution is her best friend. We don’t know if anyone voted for Trump based on the Pizza Gate story, we can’t and we won’t. That doesn’t stop the left from putting immense pressure on FaceBook, the supposed culprit here in publishing so called fake news. What does Mark Zuckerberg the head of FaceBook do? He caves. A second story making the rounds in the alt-right community with headlines like, “We told you so” says they’re already censoring the Internet. Finally there have long been discussions in the national security and foreign policy community regarding censoring Islamic Jihad sites that radicalize followers. All three of these stories are being conflated right now online as though some imminent threat to free speech exists. Is there? Or are these companies simply formalizing procedures to suppress violent or illegal content that has been part of their service agreements? As a content creator the idea of ‘warning labels’ is chilling. The idea of some kind of algorithm to be defeated is chilling. That said, wouldn’t such procedures invite work arounds? Wouldn’t censorship invite efforts to defeat algorithms? Personally I don’t concern myself with speech control in countries that don’t have guarantees of free speech. I do care about attempts to limit speech in the United States where free speech is THE cornerstone of a successful representative republic and is constitutionally guaranteed in the first amendment. You can’t stop things you don’t agree with. As a content provider, this concerns me. Sponsored by X Government Cars and by Hydrus Performance.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 43:00 — 98.4MB) | Embed

Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | RSS