Podcast 451

New Years Podcast 2015 and Heartfelt Thanks. Big thank you’s to listeners, clients and people who have helped me develop the Bob Davis Podcasts along the way. As I review all the podcasts for 2015 I am a little surprised at the breadth and depth of podcasting content. It’s also interesting to note the metamorphosis I’ve gone through, starting with the News Cleanse in the summer of 2014, through to content that reflects more of what is going on in my mind just beneath the surface. The need to go deeper, both personally and on the issues, rather than to chronicle the daily outrage machine has become a hallmark of these podcasts. Add to that the new mobility enabled with Mobile Podcast Command and you have the wrinkles added to these podcasts in 2015. Its hard to believe we started 2015 back in January with Podcast 284 talking about the ‘Polar Vortex’ and end 2015 with podcast 451, which focuses on the lessons of small business, content creation and entrepreneurship. First to thank the clients of The Bob Davis Podcasts, who have become more than clients, but advisors and mentors. Then to family and friends who have provided support in so many ways including my son – who recently appeared on the podcasts with his own content creation effort – and the General Manager of the Podcasts; My Mom. Finally to the subscribers, listeners and contributors to the Bob Davis Podcasts. As I review the podcasts I hope my goal of going deeper on issues with interviews, ‘study pieces’, coverage of the 2016 election cycle that takes you inside events, New Thinking, Walk and Talk Podcasts and talk about the issues that matter to you, the audio book and new radio show, pays off on the promise of what podcasting can be. Thanks each and every one of you for supporting this effort in 2015. Here’s to us doing great things in 2016. Sponsored by X Government Trucks and Ryan Plumbing and Heating of Saint Paul.

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Podcast 446

Media Manipulation. Checking out the news cycle before and after the debates, and in the last few weeks it sure feels like we’re being manipulated. You can’t say anything about anyone these days without a stream of tweets and posts about what’s politically correct, or charges that ‘you’re in the tank’ for this or that candidate. New story lines about Donald Trump are actually laughable. After his comments on the San Bernardino Terror Attack (not the San Bernardino shooting, as Hillary Clinton likes to characterize a terror attack) Trump was a racist, a fascist and a demagogue. Now that a new poll has been released showing Trump breaking through forty percent, with his closest challengers as much as twenty points behind, the story line is its the fading middle class, or dumb white high school only ‘blue collar’ workers who support him. Or, that Ted Cruz is suddenly ‘the nominee’ because he beat Trump by one point in a poll in Iowa. Because people in Iowa don’t know that they’re being surveyed, interviewed and chronicled to death as they ‘pick the next president’. Meanwhile not a vote has been cast. Kudos to the Cruz campaign for working hard in Iowa but let’s not forget Iowa (which is somewhere down there between New York and Los Angeles, for those of you in the media) Republicans voted for Mike Huckabee in 2008 and Rick Santorum in 2012 and gave Michele Bachmann a big boost in the Straw Poll in 2012. Were any of those people the Republican nominee, or even president? At the same time, almost no ink has been devoted to Hillary Clinton’s compulsive lying or Bernie Sanders’ fairy tales about how to fix the economy, or solve all of America’s social problems with another government program. While the pundits and commentariat blabs on and on trying to predict the future, manufacturing is in a recession, government and corporate debt are at record levels, companies are merging to pump up their fourth quarter earnings, Chinese officials admit making up economic numbers, commodities are depressed  and the Fed is about to raise interest rates. Iran has pulled its troops out of Syria because they’re getting their ass kicked by ISIS, which by the way is expanding into Afghanistan where they will get an assist, no doubt, from the guy we had locked up in Gitmo, but let go to get a deserter back. Don’t worry about that right now though, Anderson Cooper is on talking about Carly Fiorina’s dress, Donald’s smack down of Jeb! and the Cruz Rubio rivalry. Hey did the Wild win? Maybe we’re better off with astrologers. As long as its Vedic astrology, right? Sponsored by Pride of Homes and Luke Team Real Estate and Hydrus Performance. 

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Podcast 438

Post Paris Reset. In an odd way there isn’t much to add to the observations in Podcast 437. Almost everything predicted regarding coverage of and reaction to the Paris Attacks has come true. In the aftermath of ‘Paris’, an hour or two spent with cable news yields little new information, but provokes an emotional response with viewers. This emotional response is intensified hour after hour as the same footage is replayed, the crawl at the bottom of the screen details the statements of politicians, while ‘experts’ argue on screen. Conversely, in ten minutes spent on line, one gets an idea of the contours of new developments with the story. Yet, people sit staring at Cable TV News for hours expecting some new development, getting more and more frustrated and angry, or afraid and concerned. This doesn’t advance the story, and doesn’t make it any easier to understand what has happened and what can be done about it. The media is complicit in creating an all-or-nothing, right-left, up or down orientation to every story, especially big stories that get covered and discussed hour after hour. The results are predictable; Politicians are already urging we send hundreds of thousands of troops into Iraq, or to ‘declare war on ISIS’. The only reasonable conclusion that has been drawn is that the Syrian refugee program in the US should be suspended until Congress can determine whether the vetting process is effective or not and even that has become a contentious issue to be argued ad infinitum. Meanwhile we’re no closer to developing a foreign policy that addresses Russia, the Rise of China and Asia, Latin America, the Middle East and terrorism. Politically, we don’t seem to have any idea where we want to be as a country in fifteen or twenty years. Given this philosophical vacuum, the same voices that got us into Iraq twice in the last 20 years are already advocating a continuation of the same failed policies, with predictably negative results. Is this what you want? Best be sure, because you’re about to vote for it. Again. Sponsored by Hydrus, Pride of Homes and Luke Team Real Estate. 

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