Season 11, Episode 5 March 30, 2025

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This is the listening tube.

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Hello. Thank you for putting your ear to the listening tube. I'm your host, Bob Woodley. I welcome any government official to add me to their next group text. On this episode, we'll hear a 1906 viewpoint on women's sports, saving daylight, and a planetary alignment to put a little more air under your feet. Plus, a hat tip to a reporter.

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But first, not the headlines.

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Hey, did you hear about the two astronauts who were stranded in space? They went up there for what was supposed to be an eight-day mission and ended up stuck there for nine months. If you didn't hear about it, it's because right now the legacy media doesn't want to talk about it. You would think that a story like this would not just be big news, but a great human interest story. A story about humanity and risks we take for knowledge and adventure. The American spirit overcoming obstacles to bring home our fellow humans. Sure they weren't in any danger, but damn, all that time stuck on the International Space Station. But they finally got back to Earth and were greeted by dolphins after Splashdown. What a great story. But Legacy Media has a problem with it because the guy who built the rocket ship and the space capsule that got them home is Elon Musk. And right now, left-wing media would rather not say anything complimentary about Elon Musk. I'll admit I'm a space cadet, so I might pay closer attention to stories about our space program than others, but the media missed an excellent opportunity to bring Americans together. They let it go by rather than promote the former left-wing darling who changed parties and now works for the federal government, rooting out fraud, waste, and abuse. But because those on the left don't like that it's happening, or how it's happening, Elon Musk is now an enemy of progressives. The same progressives who proudly bought Teslas. Now they're lobbing Molotov cocktails at them. Funny how a man changing political parties can change the political party itself. The Democrats were the champions of electric cars because of the less harmful effects to our environment. Now they pollute the air by catching them on fire. But the left wing of the political party that turned on Elon hasn't changed a bit. The left wing of American politics is violent. Always has been. From the Ku Klux Klan to Antifa, antisocial behavior and violence are promoted by Democratic leaders and mouthpieces who are looking for attention. Chuck Schumer threatened Supreme Court justices. Jasmine Crockett called for another to be hit on the head, as well as for Elon Musk to be taken down. Maxine Waters called for Republicans to be accosted in the streets and in restaurants. The killing of George Floyd, which in reality was a local incident, led to violence all around the country as progressives and agitators latched onto it as a reason to wreak havoc on Democrat-controlled cities, while the city leaders let them in the name of social justice. Those riots were neither social nor just. In the end, they accomplished nothing for society, leading only to further division. Five years later, division is still winning. In part because the media will promote the violence, but not the humanity.com has this headline. Federal jobs were seen as a gateway to the middle class for black America. Then came Doge. So this week the cuts are disproportionately affecting black people. While last week the cuts were disproportionately affecting military veterans. Let's take a look at both of those claims. For the sake of comparing apples to apples, we'll compare each category to the general population. A story on PBS.org says that 6.1% of the general population are veterans. Veterans have an advantage when seeking federal jobs because of their service in the military. That advantage helped project the number of veterans in federal government jobs to a whopping 30%. When it comes to black people, who make up about 12% of the overall population in America, hold an average of 19% of federal government jobs. But the USA Today's story goes deeper. It says that certain departments have even higher proportions of non-white employees. Examples given include the departments of education and housing and urban development, which boast 36% black employees. The Small Business Administration is 33% black, and both the Social Security Administration and the Treasury Department are 29% black. All of those ratios are at least double and as much as triple the general public. So when the media claims that federal government layoffs are affecting black people disproportionately, that's correct. But only because the number of black government employees was disproportionate to begin with. Additionally, even the worst-case scenario, such as the departments of housing and urban development and education, of which 36% of employees are black, the majority of those affected are still white. 64% of them. What's not taken into account here is what color skin the affected veterans have. We can assume that the ratios are similar to the general population, but that might be incorrect knowing what we know about the distorted ratios among government workers. If the number of government workers wasn't disproportionate to begin with, the layoffs would not be disproportionate either. So who's really affected the most? Well, white people. And that makes sense because a majority of Americans are white. Those ratios too are changing, but that's where they stand right now. But the media wants you to believe that what the government is doing is somehow racist. Well, not just somehow racist, but intentionally racist, with a goal of disproportionately affecting black people. That's clearly not the case, but by putting the idea out there, the media hopes to sow doubt and discontent and even civil disobedience. Since the general public didn't come up with the idea all by themselves, we'll give them a reason to complain. As I mentioned earlier, this story had two different headlines. First, civil rights leaders say doge cuts show a bias, with a subheading adding black workers hold a higher percentage of federal jobs. Knowing what we know now, I think it's safe to say the civil rights leaders who claim doge cuts show bias are wrong. And while black workers may hold a higher percentage of federal jobs compared to the private sector, they don't hold a higher percentage than white people. But that's what the headline was meant to make you believe. The other headline was a bit more vague. Federal jobs were seen as a gateway to the middle class for black America. Then came doge. It still blames the Department of Government efficiency for depriving black people of opportunity, as if only black people were affected. We know that the majority of those affected were white. What the story doesn't mention is that federal jobs were seen as a gateway to the middle class for white people too. The headline makes it seem like only black people were lifted out of poverty by the opportunity to serve in the public sector. I'm a white guy. I have relatives who do or have worked for the government at various levels. It makes me wonder what goes on inside the editor's office when they're trying to come up with ideas for a story. Did somebody say, We need to find a way to make Doge Cuts racist? Then somebody else says, We have the numbers, but we'll have to find a way to exaggerate their meaning to make it look racist. Then the editor says, Do it. I kind of feel sorry for the writers of the article because they were able to dig up some good stats, but then had to write the story in such a way as to promote the agenda of the left by making it a story about race. Unless they take pleasure in that, then I don't feel sorry for them at all. This isn't a black or white issue. We know the numbers. But even in the private sector, black people make up 13% of the non-government workforce, but again, are only 12% of the population. So that means that black people not only have a higher proportion of government jobs, they also have a disproportionate amount of private sector jobs. Huh. Are there any conclusions to which we might arrive based on those statistics? If the story was written well, it could make you believe that black people have more opportunities than white people. Do you think that's true? A well-written story might convince you that the private sector is bigoted compared to the public sector. But that would only be from a black point of view. To a white person, it may look like the government is more bigoted than the private sector. As for the private sector, because 13% of it is black, 1% more than the general population, one could conclude that that makes white people 1% lazier than black people. Or black people 1% more ambitious than white people. Depends on how you look at it. When it comes to college admissions, the Supreme Court said we're not supposed to look at it at all. The Trump administration is also taking skin color out of the equation when it comes to any federal law or regulation. But the First Amendment gives the media the right to talk about it as much as they want. And they will as long as there are people who rely on the comparisons. And comparisons is all they are. Statistics and numbers dug up and swirled around to meet the need of the message. We're taught to believe that math is absolute. Two plus two equals four. Putting numbers in front of somebody is a good way to give your argument credibility. But for every positive number, there's a negative number. I know it's hard to fathom, but even infinity goes in both directions. When you combine the variables of mathematics with the variables of the English language, you can make anything seem possible.

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And if that wasn't enough.

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Just a couple quick ones before I move on. I found some recent screenshots on my phone that I forgot to mention last week. One is a story from March 17th on ABC News. It says, on Saturday, President Trump invoked the Alien Enemies Act for the first time since World War II, granting himself sweeping powers under a centuries-old law to deport people associated with a Venezuelan gang. First of all, the president did not grant himself sweeping powers, as the story says. Those powers already existed. And as the story makes clear, those powers have been in existence for more than 200 years. And by the way, just because a law is old doesn't mean it's obsolete. The entire Constitution of the United States of America is old too. But we still go by it. ABC News clearly lied when they said the president granted himself sweeping powers. A CNN story for March twentieth asks the question, so what is stagflation anyway, and why is it so scary? It says it's a three-minute read, but I'm not wasting three minutes of my time on CNN's definition of stagflation. What were they writing during the Biden administration when inflation, not stagflation, was at nine percent? Weren't they telling us that there was no inflation or that it was transitory? Now they want you to be afraid of stagflation, and if you don't already know what it is, CNN will tell you. But the headline wants you to believe it's scary even before you read the first paragraph. That's not information, that's manipulation.

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Let's go back through the listening tube for this week in history.

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This week in 1789 in New York City, the United States House of Representatives holds its first quorum and elects Frederick Muhlenberg of Pennsylvania as its first House Speaker. Today, Fred has a college named after him: Muhlenburg College in Allentown, Pennsylvania. Muhlenberg was my first home away from home. Upon turning 18, I bolted from my little hometown to the big city of Allentown and rented a room in a frat house for the summer. The former site of Sigma Phi Epsilon is now an environmentally sustainable building, which I talked about on a past episode of The Listening Tube. Although I never went to school there, I was the disc jockey on duty when the college radio station, WMUH, upgraded from mono to stereo. I'll bet that information isn't even in the record books there. Sadly, I lost my ability to hear in stereo five years ago, but I still remember what it sounds like.

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The 1900s.

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He said, Let woman rather confine herself to the lighter and more graceful forms of gymnastics and athletics, and make herself supreme along these lines as she has already done in aesthetic dancing. Let her know enough about the rougher sports to be the sympathetic admirer of men and boys in their efforts to be strong, vigorous, and heroic. While ladies have been in tennis and competing in swimming, gymnastics, and bicycling events for years now, some younger women have taken to playing much rougher sports, such as basketball. Today, women play basketball. Women box with each other. High schools have girls' wrestling teams now. But they still can't and should not be forced to compete against men. But if they want to, that's fine. There was a time when I wouldn't go out with a woman unless she was able to kick my ass, out drink me, and I could take her home to meet my mom. I know those are pretty high standards. But you gotta set the bar somewhere. This week in 1917, the United States takes possession of the Danish West Indies after paying $25 million to Denmark and renames the territory the United States Virgin Islands. So, the United States bought the Virgin Islands from Denmark. Huh. You know what else is controlled by Denmark? Greenland. So let me get this straight. Denmark will let go of Caribbean Islands where the weather is almost always warm and sunny, but they hesitate to let go of an island covered in snow. I know that's a simple way to look at it, but come on. Maybe President Trump will trade back the Virgin Islands for Greenland. Wouldn't hurt to ask. This week in 1918, Daylight Savings Time goes into effect in the United States for the first time. Invented by Germany and originally called wartime, daylight saving time seems to become less popular every year. But I'm going to go out on a limb here and say most of the people complaining are people who have early morning television programs. They're worried that once or twice a year they might show up an hour early or an hour late for work. Personally, I like the idea. I enjoy having more light in the evening during the summer. There are places in America that don't observe daylight saving time. The state of Arizona, as well as the Indianapolis, Indiana area, don't bother with it. Although I claim I'm not into time, man. The truth is incorrect clocks bother me. I don't wear a watch. If you ask me what time it is, I might ask you if you mean what time is it now, or what time was it when you asked me? Suddenly they don't care what time it is anymore. Daylight saving time, standard time, double four time. Although time is based on the movement of our planet in relation to the sun and moon, it's still a human concept, so we can reinterpret it any time we like. There's no guarantee a bunch of guys sitting around a conference table in Greenwich, England have the final say in how time is kept. Time is as fleeting as it is constant. So perhaps Tommy Chung was correct when he declared, No, I'm not into time, man. This week in 1933, the Civilian Conservation Corps is established with the mission of relieving rampant unemployment. There are to this day places near where I live that were built by the Civilian Conservation Corps. Some of the places have monuments to the men who did the work. Places like the Pennsylvania Grand Canyon were made accessible to the general public because of the work done by the Corps. So who were these men? According to PAConservativeHeritage.org, they were unmarried men from relief families who were between the ages of 18 and 25. They planted nearly three billion trees and built more than 800 parks around the country. They built the roads to get there. They upgraded state parks and made whatever improvements they could to land. And owned by local, state, and federal government. They improved fire prevention methods, and people still today, more than 90 years later, enjoy the fruits of their labor. The Civilian Conservation Corps was created by President Franklin Roosevelt, the Democrat who was tasked with getting the country through the Great Depression. Today, the Civilian Conservation Corps would be challenged in court. It would be illegal to create a program solely for men. That's sexist. Nor could you require that they be unmarried. What? You're telling me that I have to give my heart and soul to somebody else in order to qualify for a government program? That's outrageous. And to limit only men between the ages of eighteen and twenty five as eligible? What are you trying to start an army? First you give 'em picks and shovels, and then what? You gonna give them guns? An idea like the Civilian Conservation Corps would never even get off the ground today, let alone get through a government committee. The sterilization of our federal government and the lawfare that is now so invasive of the democratic process has made it impossible for a program like this to ever happen again. Just imagine if President Trump wanted to prevent wildfires in the western United States. We know that maintaining the underbrush is a great preventative measure. But to do so requires physical stamina and isolated work areas and communal living. The best way to get the job done is to hire single men who don't mind living in tents and bathing in the nearby creek. But it's illegal to be that specific when hiring for any job, be it the public or private sector. That's where we get the phrase, blah blah blah is an equal opportunity employer. So even though you know exactly who you need to get the job done, you're not allowed to say so if it means a particular age or sex of the applicant. That means that one of the great social programs brought to us by the greatest, longest serving Democratic president in the history of the United States of America, a program that literally dug the country out of the Great Depression, would not be allowed today.

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Well, that can't be right.

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This week in 1970, President Richard Nixon signs the Public Health Cigarette Smoking Act into law, requiring the Surgeon General's warnings on tobacco products and banning cigarette advertisements on television and radio in the United States, starting on January 1st, 1971. I'm old enough to remember cigarette commercials on television. Plus, I'm also an advertising nerd, so I even remember some of the ads themselves. Winston tastes good like a cigarette should. Some would rather fight than switch. Every guy wanted to be like the Marlborough man. Many radio and television programs were sponsored by cigarette brands in the decades prior to the 1970s. There are fewer smokers today. People have become more aware of the dangers of smoking. Many places have restrictions on where you may or may not smoke, including laws and ordinances. Sadly, the one thing that's shrinking the number of smokers is that more of them are dying than taking up the habit. I smoked cigarettes for more than forty years. I got to the point where I couldn't laugh out loud without coughing. I love to laugh. I think it's been about seven years since I quit. I don't know. It might be longer. I no longer desire to smoke a cigarette, but there was a time when I couldn't imagine myself without one. This week in 1972, actor Charlie Chaplin returns to the United States for the first time since being labeled a communist during the Red Scare in the early 1950s. It wasn't long after World War II, and there was a fear that communists from Russia or China were trying to infiltrate our government. Naturally, they would try to do that with the help of the media, which at the time was the movie industry as well as the new television networks. Senator Joseph McCarthy led the charge to purge commies from the ranks. Charlie Chaplin was among those accused by the Republican of conspiring with the Soviet Union. Today, the Hollywood celebrities who are sympathetic to socialism are voluntarily moving out of the country. They have nothing to fear, and nobody cares what political values they have. There is no Senator McCarthy today, and in fact, the original Senator McCarthy was eventually censured by his colleagues. Today, the red scare comes from the left, not the right. It's the Democrats who keep crying wolf about how President Trump is Putin's lapdog. It was the Democrats who created the whole Russian collusion hoax. The Democrats seem to have a deep-rooted fear of Russia, but don't seem to have a problem transferring that fear to the rest of us when it suits their needs. This week in 1976, the Jovian Plutonian Gravitational Effect is first reported by British astronomer Patrick Moore. What in the world is the Jovian Plutonian gravitational effect? I'm going to look that up.

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He's gonna look it up. He's really gonna do it.

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You can't handle the truth. Of course. British astronomer Patrick Moore was the most visible of all the British astronomers at the time. He had his own television show about space. When he told you something, you were inclined to believe it. That's why when he got on the radio and told listeners that the planetary alignment of Jupiter and Pluto would affect gravity here on Earth, people had no doubt it was true. He even noted the day and exact time this phenomenon would happen and how it might affect those of us who live here. So it was precisely at 9.47 a.m. Greenwich Time that Patrick Moore encouraged people to go outside and jump in the air for the opportunity to stay up there a little longer than you normally would. And people did. They went outside and jumped into the air to experience this odd planetary effect. Hundreds of people then called the BBC to confirm that they had indeed stayed up in the air longer than normal. There was even a report that a woman and eleven of her friends wafted from their chairs and orbited gently around the room, according to Wikipedia. But soon people began to realize that the moment of 9 47 a.m. was also on April 1st, 1976. The whole thing was a hoax, but it just goes to show that if the right person tells you something, you'll believe it.

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The listening tube will return at the speed of sound. Send email to thelistening tube at outlook.com.

SPEAKER_00 30:32

I created the listening tube because I didn't like the way the news had changed into something else. The media has proven itself to be less than trustworthy, especially when it comes to the Trump administration. But I saw something I liked this week. Jeffrey Goldberg, editor-in-chief of the Atlantic, was somehow included on a group text with high-ranking government officials about plans to attack the Hoody rebels in Yemen. As you may have heard, those attacks were carried out, crippling rebel communications and armaments. Less than a hundred people had been killed. The barrage continues so far about two weeks. But ten days in, Jeffrey Goldberg spilled the beans. He let it be known that he had been watching the conversation the whole time. He said he wasn't sure if it was real. But then the bombs started dropping. What a thrill it must have been to be able to get an inside look at how that sausage was being made. A reporter's dream come true. All the years of making contacts, all the years of trading phone numbers with people who might come in handy later, finally paid off. This reporter was able to go where no reporter has gone before. He must have thought he hit the lottery when he realized who was on that group chat. All the top people in the Trump administration, sans Trump himself. This conversation was going on outside of the president's view. That's why when the president was asked about it shortly after the story broke on Monday, he didn't know about it. The president was caught flat footed, and I'm sure he wasn't happy about it. In fact, I wouldn't want to be the first person on the other side of the door when he left the podium that day. So the first question is, how did this happen? Well, initial reports seemed to lay the blame on the shoulders of the president's national security advisor, Mike Waltz. According to a story on CNN, Waltz created the group, which included the Vice President, Defense Secretary, and the Secretary of State, among others, and unfortunately, Jeffrey Goldberg. Which leads me to wonder why Mike Waltz would have Jeffrey Goldberg on his contact list. Mike Waltz is the National Security Advisor, and Jeff Goldberg is an anti-Trump journalist. Did they meet up at a recent Chamber of Commerce mixer? I could understand why Pete Hegseth might have Jeff Goldberg in his contacts, because Secretary Hegseth was also a journalist of sorts. But initial reports all seemed to lead to Waltz being the errant party, and he admitted as much. As for Hegseth and the rest of the people included in the group text, they should have double-checked to make sure only authorized people were included before participating in any conversations. Using a publicly available app to talk about war plans was also a huge mistake. Secure as it is, cabinet-level officials have other secure means of communication at their disposal which should be used at all times. I'm no expert on how our national security apparatus works, but there seems to be a special issue with something Secretary Hegseth added to the conversation. Not just that he added it, but how it must have been done. It seems that there are protocols and protections in place to prevent top secret documents from being transmitted on outside channels. Yet somehow Pete was able to do so, or so it's being alleged. Someone CNN calls a former senior defense official says you can't forward a classified email to an unclassified system. You would either have to print it out or type it up. So he had to have done it, or somebody would have had to have done it for him. If that's the case, then that's a punishable offense. Heggseth denies any secret documents were sent. Jeff Goldberg took screenshots of many of the posts. And he's showed them in two different document dumps. Naturally, Democrats are screaming to high heaven about this breach of security, and rightly so. It may seem a bit hypocritical after leaving the border open for four years and allowing a Chinese spy balloon to fly over the country, but they do have a point. Republicans too are sounding the alarm over this major faux pas. We'll see how it all works out, but that's not why I'm telling you any of this. I just want to point out that Jeffrey Goldberg kept his mouth shut for ten days of bombing. He clearly knew enough about the plans. He'd seen the conversations leading up to the attack. He witnessed the pros and cons of the operation, the political ramifications, and potential fallout. They discussed whether the attack is supportive of President Trump's agenda and what kind of signal it would send to other entities in the Middle East and Europe. This clearly wasn't an exercise that was taken lightly, and it must have been fascinating for Jeff to watch it all unfold. And then turn on the television to watch it all come true in real time. Imagine all the bar bets he could have won with that kind of inside information. But he didn't take advantage of it. He didn't brag about it. He didn't blab it all over social media. He watched it happen. There will be some who condemn him for his inactivity, calling it compliance. They'll claim his silence was approval, that he should have done something to stop the attacks. But that's not what journalists are supposed to do. Had Jeffrey spilled the beans too early, he would have relinquished his title as a journalist for one of activist. Many so-called journalists have become activists. A few like Don Lemon, Joy Reed, and Jim Acosta have lost their jobs because of it. And Goldberg is known as an anti-Trump writer for a liberal publication that President Trump has publicly ridiculed. But Goldberg played this well. Every day he waited, he got more of the story, and a very righteous reason to put on display not only the inner workings of our federal government and their decision-making process, but also shed light on a major security breach. Jeff's only moral dilemma was how long to wait. As noted earlier, if he exposed it too soon, he would have interfered with the mission. But if waited too long, he may have been accused of some type of crime against the government for concealing his awareness of the mistake, or perhaps spying, or espionage, depending on what, if anything, he did with the information. Considering the embarrassment of those involved, it seems likely that Jeff timed it just right. There are hundreds of left-wing people in the field of journalism today who would have not done the right thing. And they would have got support from their colleagues for being an activist instead of a journalist. They would be called brave and praised for standing up to the Trump administration. Jeff Goldberg is currently enjoying a little bit of time in the limelight, but he's not the type to make the story about himself. But in this case, the story pulled him into it. I have to give credit to Jeff for doing what a journalist is supposed to do.

SPEAKER_01 39:09

Sincerely, the listening tube.

SPEAKER_00 39:15

The listening tube is written and produced by yours truly. Copyright 2025. Support the show.

SPEAKER_01 39:23

Hey, if he says something smart, you can support the show from the homepage.

SPEAKER_00 39:31

Or send a text.

SPEAKER_01 39:33

You can text the listening tube from the homepage. If he says something stupid.