Season 4 Episode 5 January 22, 2023

Hello! Thanks for putting your ear to season 4, episode 5 of The Listening Tube! I’m your host, Bob Woodley. and I’m glad my personal secrets aren’t in the Obama/Biden administration files! On this episode, we’ll hear about the first politician to get shot, how a ghost got a man convicted of murder, and the Challenger explosion….but first, (not the headlines)…

There are two types of high school student’s in the world: Those who fear something being placed in their “permanent” record, and those who fear something not being placed in their “permanent” record. If you were like me, you didn’t want anything you did to be permanent, as you were known to sometimes make mistakes that may come back to haunt you later. After all, a permanent record sounds very ominous, and back in my day, your permanent record was held over your head as a deterrent. As a kid, you assumed that your permanent record would follow you around for the rest of your life. What they didn’t tell us is that almost all records are permanent, sans the ones that are legally expunged. Knowing what I know now, I’d like to go back and tell the school administration to stick my permanent record where the sun don’t shine, because after leaving high school, I’ve never heard of it again. Exactly where is my permanent record right now? How many people have seen it? How many people have access to it? Does it still exist? What’s in it? If I were able to look back at my permanent school record many years later, would I be proud or horrified? I might be reminded of things that I thought were insignificant at the time, but a teacher felt was important enough to jot down. “Hmmmmm….Robert likes dinosaurs, but only the ones with long necks.” Usually, your permanent record only cast in stone the bad things you did, because most kids didn’t even know they had a permanent record. How do I know that? I asked my wife, who had no recollection nor concern about anything called a permanent record. But there are also kids who know they have a permanent record, and do everything they can to make sure there’s a lot of really good stuff in it. There are kids who take their achievements very seriously, and strive to reach the highest standards, if not exceed them. I don’t know what creates the difference between a young person who has lofty goals and a plan to get there and a young person who has a yearning to go wherever life leads. Is it an economic difference, a social difference, a racial difference? In any case, there are students to care very deeply about the trajectory of their education, and consider recognition of their academic achievement a pathway to success. It’s a very competitive arena, and the stakes are high. As much as I was anxious to keep things out of my permanent record, there are kids who desperately strive to get certain things added to their permanent record. One of those things is being recognized as a National Merit Commended Student. It’s a scholarship awarded to 7,500 high school juniors every March. It provides a financial incentive to our smartest students to pursue college degrees. It’s definitely something a high school student would want on their permanent record. Unlike, “Robert seems to gravitate toward brick walls.” But when the top high school in America didn’t tell the students there that they won the award, nobody really noticed right away. Now, sources as varied as NBC and Fox News are reporting that schools in Virginia kept the information from students and their families that they’d been recognized for a national academic award. At first, it was just the Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology, and the excuse for the omission was a one-time human error. “Oh, I’m sorry. We meant to tell your child they were awarded a national scholarship in time for college admissions, but somebody messed up.” Well, that’s a pretty bad mistake for the top high school in the country. Even a B- student could have done better. But you would have needed more than a dozen B- students to not make the same mistake as the schools in Fairfax County, Virginia claim to have made at 14 schools. Not just one. So now the one-time human error has turned into a full-fledged investigation by the Virginia Attorney General. He’s alleging Thomas Jefferson High School committed unlawful discrimination. And since then, the investigation has expanded to all Fairfax County schools. At issue is why these scholarships were kept secret. It may have been human error if it happened at one school, but for it to happen in all the schools in the county would point to a more coordinated effort. Virginia Governor Glenn Youngkin sums up what he believes is going on, “They have a maniacal focus on equal outcomes for all students at all costs. … The reality is we have a superintendent in Fairfax schools who has explicitly stated that her top objective is equal outcomes for all students regardless of the price." According to WJLA. What they’re saying is that high achieving students are being held back for the sake of the feelings of less talented students. That’s like telling the late, great Eddie Van Halen that he’s not allowed to play guitar better than anybody else. And now two more counties are included in the Virginia Attorney General’s investigation of why the awards were kept secret. Thousands of Virginia students’ academic achievements were hidden from the students and from the parents of the students. It would appear the omissions were made in the name of equity. We’ve heard on the Listening Tube about the difference between equality and equity. Equality is an equal start, equity is an equal result. And what’s even more troubling is that this is only when it was discovered, not when it began. As it turns out, a journalist mom had a kid who won the award in 2020, but was never notified. Her name is Asra Nomani, and her story was published in City Journal. She learned two years later that her son, a 2021 graduate, was recognized by Commended Student by National Merit. This isn’t just about a 25-hundred dollar scholarship. This recognition can also result in other scholarships from private organizations and corporations. These awards can not only change the life of a young person, but our brightest minds can also have a positive influence on our entire society or the whole planet. But the principal of the Thomas Jefferson school, along with the director of Student Services, which is a terrible title for someone who would do this to students, decided to withhold the award recognition for years. Her story points out that other schools often celebrate National Merit scholars. They hold these student in high esteem with ceremonies and press releases. They make a buzz about it on social media. But according to the governor of the state, three northern Virginia counties may have violated the student’s civil rights by concealing the information in the name of equity. A lawyer who’s son also received word of the award too late calls the practice, “theft by the state.” The Student Services director who withheld the information justified the move by saying, “We want to recognize students for who they are as individuals, not focus on their achievements.” He added that he and the principal didn’t want to hurt the feelings of those who weren’t recognized. This was the same principal who in 2020 changed the school’s admission policy to increase diversity. Parents sued, and the case made its way to the U.S. Supreme Court, where the policy was upheld, even though the parents argued it hurt a specific race of students, namely Asian American students. You see, the school administration felt that having 65 percent of the student body be Asian wasn’t right. The Asian students were scoring high on admissions tests, so the test was given less weight in the admissions process, instead giving more consideration to a student’s background. Which is a vague way of saying we want to decide who gets accepted by where they come from. And it doesn’t matter if it’s the big city or the rural roads of America, as long as we can determine if the applicant is Asian, which would now be a disadvantage in the admissions process. Now, I will point out that the story didn’t say if all of the students who’s achievements were hidden are Asian, but that’s irrelevant. What’s important is that achievement is school is now frowned upon and has to be hidden in order to not offend the less gifted, or those of us who are gifted in a way other than academically. Frankly, I didn’t care who got recognized for their achievements when I was in high school. I thought it was great that the persons who got the highest grades, or had the best attendance record, or even who caught the most touchdowns was being recognized for their efforts. It’s not like they were going to point at me during the ceremony and tell me what a failure I was. I’m actually proud of the most successful person of my graduating class. Not only was he the smartest, but he was also the captain of the football team. Today, he’s a successful professional who helps people, and I’m honored to be a part of his high school class. Being jealous or having hurt feelings was never an issue. Perhaps it’s the result of the era of participation trophies and not keeping score in sporting events that led to the expectation that lower achievers would be hurt. Well, now we know what a mistake that was. When we fail to recognize achievement and lower the bar for those who aren’t as ambitious, we hurt everyone, not just the underachievers. But there are those who believe it’s worth the cost. It’s better that everyone be hurt than just a few. But in this case, an attempt to protect one component, that being the students who didn’t get recognized, has led to harm against another component, that being Asian students. Plus, these are exemplary students, so holding them back to create equity has the potential to hurt all of us in the long-term, if we consider the possible contributions to the science and technology taught at the school. But the leaders of the school would rather sacrifice that. These so-called educators are literally preventing academic achievement. But that’s part of the price of the equity agenda. And according to Virginia’s Governor, “The reality is that we have a superintendent in Fairfax schools who has explicitly stated that her top objective is equal outcomes for all students, regardless of the price.” “Now we know the price includes paying $450,000 to a liberal consultant to come in and teach the administrators in Fairfax County how to do this. What it appears happened is that principals in schools decided that they were going to systematically withhold accolades and a path to college admission and scholarships from high-performing students.” So Fairfax schools spent almost a half million dollars on an equity consultant for a reported 9 months of work, and the result is that good students no longer get any credit for being good students. So, if I were a parent there, I’d be outraged, and if I were a taxpayer there, I would be outraged. 

But you might want to be careful about what you say if you challenge measures meant to promote equity, or a variety of other subjects if a bill proposed in the U.S. House of Representatives becomes law. Odds are, it won’t, because it was introduced by a Democrat, Sheila Jackson Lee of Texas. Lee says the bill is meant to stop white supremacy. To do that, she proposed a law that will punish people for what they say if what they say leads to a hate crime. It’s called the “Leading Against White Supremacy Act of 2023.” News outlets like the New York Post and Fox tell the story. The only left-leaning source I could find was Yahoo News, and they made a subtle attempt to argue that it’s reasonable. I’ll just tell you what it says, and we can make up our own minds. So let’s take a look at it. The Fox News story says that under the law, if it becomes one, a "person engages in a white supremacy inspired hate crime when white supremacy ideology has motivated the planning, development, preparation, or perpetration of actions that constituted a crime or were undertaken in furtherance of activity that, if effectuated, would have constituted a crime." Now, I’m not a lawyer, but I would interpret that as meaning that if I were to say something that inspired someone else to plan or actually commit a crime that was later deemed to be a hate crime, then I, too have committed a hate crime. The bill goes on to make sure that it’s clear that saying it on social media is just the same as speaking it out loud, or writing it down on paper. White Supremacy ideology has certainly led to some ugly chapters in the history books. There’s no scientific proof that one race is superior to another, despite some of the physical differences that seem to permeate each of the ways we categorize ourselves. And I would maintain that it’s not right for anyone of any race to declare superiority over another. But Lee’s bill is just a bit more precise. It goes on to say that it would be a crime for anyone to published material advancing white supremacy, white supremacist ideology, antagonism based on ‘replacement theory,’ or hate speech that vilifies or is otherwise directed against any non-White person or group, if it was read, heard, or viewed by a person who engaged in the planning, development, preparation, or perpetration of a white supremacy inspired hate crime. I’m sure the Representative from Texas has good intentions. She is a Black woman, and has probably been subject to racism and maybe even worse, racist violence. So I would think that she would be able to recognize racism. Oddly enough, she doesn’t seem to recognize the racism in her own bill. When you make a federal law, it should apply to all Americans. But this law doesn’t. To be clear, you don’t have to be white to be a white supremacist. I know that sounds odd, but it can happen. So even a person of color can be charged with a crime that inspires another to commit a hate crime. But, that hate speech or hate crime must be directed at or victimize only a non-white person or group. In other words, hate speech and hate crimes targeting white people are not covered by the bill. So it would be alright if you posted anti-white opinions that led to a crime against a white person or group. Now, I know a crime is still a crime, regardless of skin color, but the events leading up to the crime that are also covered in this bill, such as planning and preparation, only apply if the victim is not white. So, if one of you heard me telling this story, and it enraged you to the point that you planned to cause harm to Representative Lee, I could be charged for inciting your behavior, even if you didn’t see you plan through. But if what you heard me say enraged you to the point that you planned to cause harm to me, that would be ok, because I’m white. 

Even if this bill were to pass the House and the Senate, and the President signed it, I doubt it would get through the Supreme Court, as the bill that claims to fight racism is in fact racist. 

Let’s go back liner...

1570

James Stewart, 1st Earl of Moray, regent for the infant King James VI of Scotland, is assassinated by firearm. He becomes the first head of a government to be shot and killed. So, gun violence against political leaders goes back to the year 1570, more than 400 years. There have been many political leaders since then who have suffered the same fate. People like Abraham Lincoln, Benizir Buthto, President McKinley, President Kennedy, Shinzo Abe and others. Under Representative Sheila Jackson Lee’s bill, I could be found guilty of a crime just for mentioning these deaths if Benizir Buthto or Shinzo Abe are killed because the assassin heard me say this, but it wouldn’t matter if Presidents Lincoln, McKinley or Kennedy were killed. Because they’re white.

1897

Elva Zona Heaster is found dead in Greenbrier County, West Virginia. The resulting murder trial of her husband is perhaps the only case in United States history where the alleged testimony of a ghost helped secure a conviction. Wait, what?

Look that up liner…

This is a strange story, indeed. The cause of death was at first as “everlasting faint” according to a story on Mentalfloss dot com. It was later changed to “complications from pregnancy.” But the victim’s mother suspected that her daughter was murdered by her husband, and the mother prayed for weeks that the spirit of her daughter would come to her and tell her what really happened. It appears the mother got her wish, as the daughter came to her in dreams and explained how she was killed by her husband. The mother then went to the local prosecutor and convinced him to reopen the case. The body was exhumed and re-examined more thoroughly. What was discovered was that the victim had been strangled to death, and her neck was broken, just as the mother claimed was described to her by the apparition of her daughter. Now, if you’re law savvy, you might be thinking, “But Bob, you can’t use second-hand testimony in a trial. That’s hearsay.” And you would be correct. But the prosecution didn’t rely on the testimony of the ghost. They presented a case using the facts at hand. It was the defense who used the ghost story to try to show the mother as unreliable, damage the credibility of the case. It didn’t work. The mother held fast to her story despite a badgering defense. Many people believed her account of the apparition. Additionally, the husband took the stand in his own defense, and, according to the Greenbrier Independent, his testimony, manner and so forth made an unfavorable impression on the spectators. It took the jury one hour and ten minutes of deliberation to return a guilty verdict. The convicted husband was sentenced to life in prison, which turned out to be about three years, as an epidemic invaded the prison in the spring of 1900.

1967

The United States, United Kingdom, and Soviet Union sign the Outer Space Treaty in Washington, D.C., banning deployment of nuclear weapons in space, and limiting use of the Moon and other celestial bodies to peaceful purposes. You know who didn’t sign the treaty? China. Because in 1967, nobody thought China would ever have the capacity to get to space. In 1967, China was still an agricultural region, and most of the people there rode bicycles. Today, China has it’s sights set on world domination, and are working to perfect how to control the population of the world with experiments on their own people and the minorities they wish to eliminate.

1977

The first day of the Great Lakes Blizzard of 1977, which severely affects and cripples much of Upstate New York, but Buffalo, NY, Syracuse, NY, Watertown, NY, and surrounding areas are most affected, each area accumulating close to 10 ft of snow on this one day. Climate change! Said nobody.

1978

The Great Blizzard of 1978, a rare severe blizzard with the third-lowest non-tropical atmospheric pressure ever recorded in the US, strikes the Ohio/Great Lakes region with heavy snow and winds up to 100 miles an hour! Fifty-one people died. The National Guard was called into action. The General in charge said the effect on transportation was equal to a nuclear attack! Climate change! Said nobody.

1986

Space Shuttle Challenger breaks apart after liftoff, killing all seven astronauts on board. It wouldn’t be the last space shuttle tragedy, but it was the first. I was a big fan of the space shuttle program. The chow hall in my Air Force basic training squadron had a mural on the wall of a space shuttle. The first one, Columbia, had gone up for the first time just five months before I got to basic training, and I couldn’t help but wonder how long that mural was up there before the general public even knew we had a space shuttle. The second mission happened while I was in basic training, and the entire base stopped whatever it was doing to watch the launch. Challenger was the second shuttle to go into orbit, and the fatal flight was the 25th space shuttle mission. The tenth for Challenger. I had a space shuttle photo on the wall of my room in the barracks. I sent out Space Shuttle themed Christmas cards last December. I had a Space Shuttle pin on my Member’s Only jacket. And on this day in history, 1986, I was doing a radio show on American Forces Network in West Berlin. It was just before 6 pm in West Berlin when the phone in the studio lit up. Phones in radio studios don’t ring, you know. So I answer the phone, and it’s the First Sergeant calling from his office at the other end of the building on Saargemunerstrasse. He asks, “Are you on net?” meaning the network feed we got via satellite from the United States. I had a song playing at the time, and said so. “What’s on net?” he asked, so I put the network feed in cue so I could hear it without it going over the air. It was someone talking about the launch of the space shuttle. So I told the Sergeant that net had the space shuttle launch, and he screamed into the phone, “Take net!” So I turned down the song and turned up the network feed, and as I was wondering why, if they wanted me to air the space shuttle launch on the radio, isn’t it on the log? About 40 seconds later, the announcer said that the space shuttle Challenger had exploded moments after liftoff. I was stunned. I turned around and flipped a switch that would keep the radio station on the network feed. I walked out of the radio station, crossed the street to my room in the barracks, and cried. I cried for the shuttle program, I cried for the families of the fallen, I cried for America. I know some of the other guys on my floor could hear me, but I didn’t care. Most of them were Army guys anyway, and they didn’t have the personal connection to the space shuttle that I did. After I was all cried out, I decided I would go out and have a few drinks in honor of our fallen astronauts, as well as drown my sorrows a bit. I got out of my Air Force uniform and put on some civilian clothes and stepped out into the hallway. Suddenly a bunch of the Army guys appeared from their rooms, obviously concerned with my well being. When I assured them I was alright, and I was on my way out to mark the occasion with alcohol, one of them said, “Do you know what NASA stands for?” Knowing that the obvious answer wasn’t the correct one, I said, “No, what?”

“Need another seven astronauts.” was the reply. If comedy is tragedy plus time, one could argue that not enough time had passed. But I had to admit, that was a good one. I certainly don’t want to minimize the suffering of the astronauts and their families, but I, too was traumatized by the event, and in hindsight, it marked a turning point in my life that has had far-reaching consequences. I have a souvenir of Challenger’s first flight, and I came upon it in an interesting way. About a month after the Challenger explosion, I traveled from West Berlin to Amsterdam with some friends. I had been there once before. One this day, I was at a place called the Bulldog Palace. The Bulldog Palace was divided into three sections: the coffee and tea bar, the juice bar, and the alcohol bar. I was sitting in the juice bar when a woman walked up to me and asked if I was an American. I told her I was, and she said she knew I was because I had a space shuttle pin on my Member’s Only jacket. She asked if she and her daughter could sit at my table. Her daughter was in the coffee and tea room, and she would go get her. I invited them to join me. I learned that they were from Texas, and the daughter was suffering from some sort of neuro-muscular disease. Their house had been robbed, and they took everything. She got a large settlement from the insurance company. She told me that she decided that instead of buying everything they had before, she would show her daughter the world while she still had a chance to see it. The place in Texas where they live was Houston, home of the Johnson Space Center. She worked in a hotel near the Johnson Space Center, where many of the employees would spend their spare time at the bar there. One of the customs NASA had was creating commemorative pins for each space launch. Pin-on buttons for the celebration. After the launches, the NASA people would come to the bar, eat, drink and be merry, and leave the souvenirs behind at the end of the night. That’s when the woman I met in Amsterdam would add them to her collection. When she decided to take her daughter on a trip around the world, that collection of NASA memorabilia went with her. After spending the afternoon with her and her daughter, she told me about the collection she had with her, and that she brought it to share with friendly people she met along the way. She told me where they were staying, and invited me to come by the next morning to look through her collection of space-related souvenirs and choose one that I would like to have. The next morning, I went to her hotel, and she unveiled to me a collection of NASA memorabilia that could only be improved if it had actual moon rocks. There were buttons from various space shuttle missions, skylab, and other NASA achievements. But the one that caught my eye was the one that said, “Go, Challenger. First Flight.” It’s a blue and white button, about two inches in diameter, and it has the mission number on it. On the back it has an orange sticker with the manufacturers information. It’s one of my prized possessions. After the second shuttle disaster, the program sort of fizzled, and NASA changed it focus. But today, the focus has returned to exploration of the moon. That exploration includes figuring out how to use the moon as a launchpad for further exploration, as well as trying to establish as permanent human presence on our beloved satellite.

Phone and email liner

There are a couple things going on in Washington, D.C. right now that deserve some recognition. Not because they’re good things. No, these are things you don’t want in your permanent record. And unlike the permanent record from grade school, this permanent record is paper trails and news reports, which are much less likely to end up in a dusty file cabinet. They involve two politicians, one new one, and one with decades of experience at being a politician. But both have extensive experience at lying to voters. I’ll begin at the top and work my way down to the scummy bottom. The former being President Biden, and the latter being newly-elected Representative from New York, George Santos. George, if that’s he real name, has already been sworn in, and speaks for the people of New York’s Third Congressional district, which includes Long Island. But not long after he won the election, The New York Times took a deeper look at his claims of education and pedigree, as well as his religion and sexuality. As it turns out, practically nothing he claimed to be is true. He told people he graduated from Baruch College, and that he was a star of the volleyball team. The school has no record of him. He’s since admitted that he never attended post-secondary education. One report says he took those claims from a resume of a supervisor he once had and claimed them as his own. He told people he worked for Goldman Sachs and Citigroup, coveted positions, indeed. In reality, he worked with those firms while employed by another, lesser-known company. He claimed to have a Jewish heritage, which might be seen as an advantage in his district. But he isn’t. After being elected, he admitted to the New York Post that he never claimed to be Jewish. But because he learned that his family on his mom’s side had a Jewish background, he said he was Jew-ish. Not Jewish, but Jew-ish. Sure, and I’m Pol-ish because I stand up straight. Why all of these lies weren’t discovered before the election is a mystery. You would think that at the very least, his opponent would have tried to verify his claims, if not dig up some dirt. Why was it not until after the election that the New York Times became the first publication to investigate his background? Where was the entire vetting process when it came to George Santos? Wait, there’s more. He claimed to be gay, and he might be, but one report says he was married to a woman as recently as 2019. Plus, he’s the subject of a fraud case in Brazil, his father’s home country. The case was dropped, according to the New York Times, over a decade ago when they couldn’t find George. Well, lo and behold, he resurfaces in the United States of America, in the House of Representatives, having been elected on a long list of lies. For his part, Santos says he “uses a poor choice of words,” and that he’s embarrassed and sorry for having embellished his resume. “I own up to that,” he said. “We do stupid things in life.” As for resigning the seat he won through those embellishments, he says no. The House Speaker says there’s really nothing he can do about it, and the New York State Republican Party, of which Santos is a member, has said that they won’t work with him. George Santos, from all appearances, is a fraud and a liar, and according to authorities in Brazil, a thief. Authorities in America, specifically the Republican Party, need to recognize that he also stole an election by deceit. The House of Representatives needs to rid itself of this vermin before it breeds.

Speaking of breeding, I’ll now focus my attention on the one who claims to be a heterosexual. In fact, he’s so macho he drives a vintage Chevrolet Corvette convertible. It’s green, like money, and it’s kept in a garage next to classified documents. 

For Your Eyes Only music

But this American version of James Bond has classified documents at several locations, and just like a movie audience, the viewers still don’t know why or what they say. That’s because President Biden, Joe Biden, claims even he doesn’t know what’s in them! But we have to back up a bit to the origin story. In a previous installment, our hero was just a lowly vice-president of the United States. He had access to classified documents and briefings. But then hard times befell him, and he was relegated to an office building funded in large part by the Chinese Communist Party called the Penn-Biden Center, which opened about two years after Biden, Joe Biden, became a private citizen, following decades of public service in the United States Government. Citizen Joe had an office there, which, I guess is standard if your name is on the building. Citizen Joe stopped hanging out there, at his own think-tank, around February of 2019, when he began campaigning for President. So, fast-forward to November of last year, six days before the mid-term elections. Classified documents are discovered in Joe’s office, and they’re from the time he was vice-president, and he has no authority to have said records, and they’re not being kept in a secure facility, and there’s no record of who’s had access to them all these years, and the folder in which they’re found says, “personal.” This apparent breach of the law by our President was discovered six days before the mid-term election, and was kept from the American people, in much the same way the Hunter Biden laptop was kept secret prior to the last election. I’m beginning to sense a trend here. Oh, but there’s more. You see, even before the discovery of the first set of unsecured documents was revealed, a second set of unsecured classified document was discovered in the Biden family garage in Delaware. But when it was revealed that the first set of documents were discovered, they didn’t say anything about the second set of documents, even though they already knew. More documents, classified documents, have been found in other locations on Biden property since then, and none of it is from his time as President. The White House is being very tight-lipped about the whole situation, and the Attorney General has appointed a special council to investigate. The White House brushes it off as “some files that were inadvertently misplaced.” The scary part is, that may be true. These files from the time Joe Biden was Vice-President Biden are from the same time that his son Hunter was peddling his father’s influence around the world. I’d be willing to bet that any classified records that Joe Biden had in his possession were hidden by him to protect Hunter, and possibly himself, from criminal prosecution. But because he’s now the President, we may never know what those records contain. The White House Press Secretary says they’re “confident that a thorough review will show that these documents were inadvertently misplaced and the president and his lawyers acted promptly upon discovering of this mistake.” Well, OK, so the White House has admitted it broke the law, but continue to call it a mistake. Whether or not is was a mistake is irrelevant. You don’t have to know you’re breaking the law to break the law. Joe Biden had no legal authority to be in possession of those classified documents while he was a private citizen. To have classified documents stored in unsecured areas, several unsecured areas, is a violation of the law regardless of how it happened. Now, the FBI has to investigate how they got there, how long they’ve been there, how many times they were moved, who had access to them, and other questions. Why did Joe Biden have those documents? What is in them? What is he hiding? Why hasn’t the FBI raided all of his properties to look for more? Meanwhile, Joe Biden is silent on the subject. No questions will be answered. This, from the candidate who claimed he would have the most transparent administration to date. Yet every time we turn around, we find out that pertinent information has been kept from us just prior to an election. Well, I hope there’s an investigation that gives us an idea of what was in those classified records. Maybe then we’ll have a clearer understanding of why they were not part of the Obama archives, but hidden away in closets and garages where Joe Biden abandoned them, perhaps in the hope of them never being opened again. 

The Listening Tube is written and produced by yours truly. Copyright 2023. Thank you for putting your ear to the Listening Tube. I’m your host, Bob Woodley for thou ad infinitum.