Podcast 413

Pre Debate Analysis. A Walk and Talk podcast in the late summer, the wind in the trees and a major distraction called ‘The Republican Debate’ going on. The last Republican debate was held the week of the great Motorcycle Rally known as Sturgis, which The Bob Davis Podcasts chose to cover, rather than the debates in Cleveland. Nothing has changed since then. A continuing theme on these podcasts is drawing attention to the problems and opportunities we’re missing while we argue about what Donald Trump said to Ben Carson, or about Carly Fiorina or whether Jeb Bush is going to become more ‘energetic’. Someone asked this week, “When do you think Trump will get out of the race”? Someone also wrote this week that the Republican Debates will be ‘the most important development of the summer’. Really? This serves as analysis in a week marked by the Federal Reserve Interest rate decision and Russian Troops landing in Syria? Surely these two stories are more significant than whether Donald Trump can ‘win’ the debates? With Trump the Republican frontrunner, the real question is how long will it take for the Republican Party itself to finally – and mercifully – self-destruct. What kind of an historical period are we living through? And how does ignoring the real opportunities of this period move the country forward? Who’s fault is it? Due to developments in technology and science, some good and some scary, change is coming. It can be managed, or it can come suddenly and violently; But it’s coming whether you want it to or not. What do you want? Sponsored by Ryan Plumbing and Heating of Saint Paul and Eric and Erum Lucero of Pride of Homes and Luke Team Real Estate.

Podcast 360

Updates! The Correspondent’s dinner is a colossal waste of time, and discussions now center on how to fix it. How do you fix it when the news reporters who should be in Baltimore covering riots are ‘the story’ at a glitzy, hollywood style celebrity roast, including the President. How is the public to expect objectivity in its nightly news given that kind of display. NBC Nightly News, as predicted, has reportedly asked Brian Williams to find the door as more evidence of his ’embellishments’ emerge. Williams has done irreparable harm to NBC News. The Comcast-Time Warner deal is kaput. It can only be hoped complaints about customer service at both companies contributed to it. It’s starting to become apparent that the balance of power, when it comes to energy, is shifting in favor of the United States. Fracking made it possible, and today’s technology made fracking so efficient oil companies can scale them up or down at much cheaper costs, and exploration is cheaper as well. With the US the second or first largest oil producer, and controlling as much as ten percent of the world’s oil production, substantive changes in middle east policy are now possible. The new reality also extends to how we deal with countries like Venezuela and Russia, not just the Middle East. Minnesota Congressman Keith Ellison wants to end so called subsidies to the ‘evil’ oil companies. What are subsidies, what tax breaks and loopholes specifically apply here and who really benefits? Meanwhile real subsidies for wind power, ethanol, electric cars, light rail and rail roads that deliver the oil – rather than the Keystone Pipeline – continue. Who benefits? The top selling car at GM is not a gas-electric, or even the fully electric Volt. It’s the Suburban, Yukon and Escalade as people trade in their electric cars for SUV’s, now that gas is cheaper. The war on the car, the individual and independent-government-free living continues. Latest in the struggle is the Southwest Light Rail project now expected to cost Minnesota Taxpayers 2 billion dollars, which shocked and appalled Governor Dayton. The solution? Kill the project. The aging hippie governor and his 60 year old pals at the Hennepin County Council, City Councils and a duchy known as ‘The Met Council’ have a vision. That vision is our return to the early 20th century city utopia, where cars were scarce and trains carried people from residential areas of big cities downtown. Forget that those cities, at that time, were hardly utopias. The last, best hope of these statists is the Millennial generation, which they expect will move into downtown, thus populating the expensive (1500 to 3000 a month) high rise apartments, and drinking in the bohemian bars and coffee shops, and in general contributing to something called ‘the creative class’. Truth is, Millennials are moving to the suburbs and the exurbs because housing is cheaper, and there are yards for their new families. Babies and toddlers don’t prefer sitting in outdoor coffee cafes, riding around on bikes and getting tattoos. Is the statist dream of returning to the early 20th century city doomed? Sponsored by X Government Cars

Podcast 351

Thanking Contributors. Podcasting from the driveway in Los Angeles, California. Finally, the list of contributors to the Mobile Podcast Command Unit 8! Thanking all those who have contributed to the mobile podcast project, or at least as many as we can find documentation for. If you sent a contribution, and your name is not mentioned, email The Bob Davis Podcasts and you will be thanked. From Los Angeles, the plan is to head north on the Pacific Coast Highway, to NAPA, and points East. We’ll keep you updated as we roll. In thanking the contributors and sponsors, a little radio history and podcasting history in this installment. The Bob Davis Podcasts also just hit another milestone in terms of feeds and audience, which is great news. This is the week Rand Paul announced his candidacy for the Republican nomination for President. A lot of reaction to out of context statements the Senator made in his speech. What’s the reaction to simply finding the text of the speech online and reading it? Pretty good. It looks more and more like the left will try to make ‘Global Warming’ one of the centers of their campaign to take back the US Senate and retain the White House in 2016. How? By personalizing it. Now it’s all about the President’s daughter’s asthma, even though there’s no scientific link to asthma and ‘Global Warming’. If they’re not demonizing anyone who doesn’t agree with the orthodoxy on the issue, look for them to be telling stories about how grandma was killed by Global Warming. In other words, you killed grandma because you didn’t agree with them on the ‘Climate Change Issue’, and by the way, let’s depopulate the planet and get rid of capitalism, because they cause ‘it’ too. Sigh. Meanwhile people continue to rank all other issues and problems has having a higher concern than ‘Climate Change’, especially when you ask them to allocate resources to solve those problems. Hey, isn’t Warren Buffett concerned about the environment? Isn’t that why he opposes the Keystone Pipeline and hauls oil, highly profitably hauls oil by the way, in rickety train cars that are prone to cause fires when they derail? While Tim Cook of Apple decries the injustice Indiana’s Religious Freedom law, and claims the state is ‘closed’ to gay people, Apple does business in countries that actually kill people for being gay. Imagine! And then there’s the drought in California, which continues despite recent rain. Plus some radio history and some new news regarding feeds for the Bob Davis Podcasts. (Editor’s Note: For some reason I referred to Warren Buffett and an ‘Interloper’. I don’t know if that word really describes the sage of Omaha. And, I referred to Fundamentalist Christians as ‘Iconoclasts’. Who knows where that came from, because Iconoclast really doesn’t describe the Christian Right either. Sigh. But I’m not editing those missives out.) Sponsored by X Government Cars