Podcast 319

Minnesota Caucus 2016. Get the week officially started – after President’s Day – with updates. The Minnesota Caucuses will be held March 1st, which is the closest possible day to the so called ‘first four’ collection of primaries and caucuses that garner so much national media coverage. Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada and South Carolina are the only states that precede Minnesota in 2016. So, the opportunity for Minnesotans to influence the state and national process is just one year away. What are you doing NOW to organize your precinct and prepare for the caucuses? Is the feud between Minnesota Governor Mark Dayton and Senate Majority Tom Bakk real? After Dayton tried to push through very large pay raises for his commissioners, igniting a firestorm of Republican opposition, Bakk surprised everyone by suggesting the Governor slow down, break the raises into parts, and discuss his plans with the legislature. Dayton says Bakk ‘stabbed him in the back’. Is old Crazy Eyes back? Or maybe he never left? Should the people of the state, through their elected representatives, have some say over pay increases for state officials of over thirty five thousand dollars a year, in one case? You betcha! Meanwhile, as to whether or not those state agencies are getting the job done; A few years and about 37 million dollars ago they were going to consolidate the state’s drivers’ license and vehicle registration system. Brought in HP to get the job done. HP has been fired and paid off, and the story is, it was very difficult to work with state employees on this project. So the state IT people have taken over the job and now say it will take longer and cost maybe 93 million dollars, when it’s all said and done. And they wonder why we question raises? Got poor service from Comcast? Forget complaining to the company, complain to the FTC which is considering the Comcast/Time Warner Merger. Some analysts say the company’s poor customer service may be a factor in whether the FTC approves the merger. Lots of hot air about electric cars these days. Now supposedly Apple is building one. No one ever asks where the power is going to come from and how much its going to cost when we’re all driving electric cars. And after NASA falsified weather station reports to make it look like the planet is warming – when it didn’t in 2014 – now they say we could have the worst droughts in one thousand years. Oh yeah, when? We don’t know when, but you know, it’s gonna happen. Is Russia controlling the weather? Or are international agencies interested in creating a world organization to do just that? Oh, Hell no! Sponsored by Ryan Plumbing and Heating of Saint Paul.

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Podcast 313

Heroes. What are they, and why are we so hungry for them? In the wake of Brian Williams’ admission and subsequent ‘self imposed hiatus’ from the NBC Nightly News maybe its time to examine what it is about modern society that drives people to embellish and to make themselves heroes, and apparently allows us to accept them at face value. That is, until they are brought down. Are we wired to create and accept heroes? In Greek Mythology Heroes were actually gods. Some believe society is based on hero worship. Our modern media is a brain; a dream machine that mirrors the human consciousness, whether ‘it’ knows it does this, or not. As Brian Williams falls from his perch, new heroes are being created 24/7 by the ‘Borg’. Heroes come in all shapes and sizes; Entertainers who become demigods; Elvis and Michael Jackson, sports ‘heroes’. Movie stars like Grace Kelly and Marilyn Monroe who live forever. More dangerously, people who are supposed to tell us ‘the truth’, like Brian Williams and people we choose lead us, like the President. All are flawed, because they are human beings. Yet we think of them – in their glory – as untouchable; Heroes, demigods. Sometimes actual heroes, like Chris Kyle, are built up, and torn down. Other times it’s just this week’s hero, like Brian Williams. The mechanism that raises them up, continually tears them down, blurring the lines of reality and the dream. Are we asking for this? Is it surprising, considering the myth making that ‘makes’ the hero, that a fair degree of embellishment goes into the myth? Is it getting worse? After nearly 8 years of struggle, is it possible Americans have begun to conclude they are on their own and the struggle is internal? If that’s true, how do we slay our dragons? How might that change the hero creation machine? Sponsored by Ryan Plumbing and Heating of Saint Paul and by Depotstar.

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Podcast 309

Vaccination Politics. As predicted by The Bob Davis Podcasts, whether to vaccinate or not has become a big political issue in the United States. Senator Rand Paul and potential candidate for the Republican nomination for President in 2016 got into a spat about whether people should be required to vaccinate their children against Measles and Rubella. New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, another potential candidate for the Republican nomination for President stepped on a political land mine when he suggested people ought to have a choice whether to vaccinate their children. Ben Carson, yet another presumptive presidential candidate split hairs in his ‘statement’, and you can be sure several others on all sides of the political spectrum will issue ‘statements’ in the next few days on the subject, as an outbreak of Measles in California captures the media’s attention. Berkeley, California wants a 21 day quarantine for all kids who’s parents refuse to vaccinate (the kids are ecstatic … no school for most of the month! Please don’t vaccinate me mom!) and nothing seems to horrify the left in this country more these days than a refusal to vaccinate. Is it possible people have about had it with government interventions? Federal and State Government intrusions into the personal lives of Americans is starting to become almost comic. They want to make you vaccinate your child so he or she can be healthy enough to what? Eat school lunches that wouldn’t have been fit for the Soviet Gulag? That’s healthy, huh! The perfumed princes and princesses walking through the marble hallways of our Federal Government cathedrals in Washington D.C. and the State Capitols might just be out of step with Americans who have a lot of questions about the long term effects of vaccines. You can call them stupid and try to bamboozle them into certain kinds of behavior, and you can even require certain kinds of behavior, but at some point they’re going to push back. One thing people seem to know, ‘Scientists’ are wrong a lot of the time. Doctors and hospitals will kill you if you’re not careful, and there’s nothing wrong with asking questions and taking control of your own health care, or the health care of your children. If the scolds would leave people alone once in a while, they might just make the right decision. What is it about liberty that so frightens the statist? Plus, stories about the General Manager of the Bob Davis Podcasts, getting the flu, Mexican Coke, Coffee (the cure for all that is wrong), and more in a longer podcast. (Editor’s Note: People keep saying things to me like, ‘My run on the treadmill in the morning takes exactly 45 minutes. I would like a 45 minute Podcast’. Ok. Here it is.). And an appearance from MPR Bob at the close. Sponsored by Ryan Plumbing and Heating of Saint Paul and Depotstar.

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