Season 9, Episode 10 September 8, 2024

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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. On this episode, we'll hear about a variety of things I thought were obvious.

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But first, not the headlines.

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A very strange thing happened in the United States about a month and a half ago. The current president decided he wasn't going to run for a second term. He had already won the Democratic Party's primaries and certainly had enough votes to make him the nominee. But after a disastrous debate with Donald Trump, he was convinced, either by his own consciousness or by others, that he shouldn't run again. In his stead, he recommended his vice president, Kamala Harris. Now, the Democratic National Committee, as well as the millions of people who voted for Joe Biden in the primaries, could have said, in order to preserve democracy, we should have a vote as to who should be the nominee. Granted, it was too late to have the primaries all over again, but there was still the convention yet to come, and perhaps a decision could be made then, giving other candidates the opportunity to gather support and perhaps gain the trust of a majority of voters to become the nominee. That's what normally happens in a democracy. That's not what happened this time. Kamala Harris was anointed to the position of the nominee of the Democratic Party for President of the United States. But by who? Hmm. The argument is that she was on the ticket with Joe Biden, so she should get all of his primary votes, and that's that. This could have been a landmark moment for the Democratic Party. And I'm surprised they didn't take advantage of the opportunity. They could have said, here's our chance to show America and the rest of the world how democracy works. Let's face it, just three weeks earlier, nobody wanted Kamala Harris to be the nominee for president. There were other names in the hat long before Joe bowed out. But the Democratic National Committee never insisted that democracy be carried out. The country's Democrats never got the opportunity to choose what Plan B should be. I don't think I need to point out the irony of that statement. But if Democrats want choice, that isn't what they got here. I refer to the party in that tense because I'm a registered independent. What I've witnessed is a major political party, one that claims to be a champion of democracy, with the candidates that scream from the rooftops that the only way to save democracy is to keep Donald Trump out of the White House. Yet here we are, Donald Trump winning his party's nomination through an organized and legitimate process, and Kamala Harris being thrust upon a pedestal by forces that are still not clear, yet accepted by the followers of the party. I'll point out here that one of the signs that you're living a good life is having options. So was Joe Biden part of the cabal that pushed Kamala Harris into the spotlight? Does he really think she's the right person for the job? Does he believe her to have the authority to command, to negotiate, to make decisions in the best interest of America? Or in the best interest of the party? Or in the best interest of whomever it is that are part of the decision-making process that put Kamala at the top of the ticket. Or did he endorse Kamala to screw over the party that cast him aside? Regardless, Kamala Harris is now the standard bearer of the Democrats. Her climb to the top of the ticket, celebrated by the party power brokers and fully supported by the legacy media, who suddenly find before them a candidate for which the entire country has been searching. As it turns out, she was right under our noses the whole time. But even Joe Biden didn't know what her hair smelled like. At a moment's notice, the reimagination of Kamala Harris began to take shape. The first question had to be, what is she good at? What part of her history can we use to our advantage? Well, that's an easy one. The Biden Harris administration had already been working on it for years. She's a former prosecutor, and Donald Trump's now a convicted felon. So the first thing we saw was Kamala talking about how familiar she is with criminals.

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Predators who abused women, fraudsters, who ripped off consumers, cheaters, who broke the rules for their own gain. So hear me when I say I know Donald Trump's type.

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But she hasn't talked about much else. For more than a month, the vice president, while out on the campaign trail, avoided the media. Meanwhile, the media continued to sing her praises as they discovered new ways to promote her limited contributions to the administration, and also ignoring the administration's failures and Kamala's connection to them. They even stopped calling her the Border Tsar and insisted she never even had the title. The Biden administration turned our border into a welcome mat and put Vice President Harris at the door. They told her to find the root causes of immigration from Central and South America, so she went there to tell them do not come. Meanwhile, the administration is suing Texas for their attempts to stem the flow of illegal immigrants that pour over the border by the thousands per day, totaling over ten million so far. The effort to put as much distance between Kamala and the border was put into action. She never got very close to it to begin with. She acted like she didn't have to. Well, she didn't have to. Fox News was showing the country what was happening. I wonder if she watched any of it. They always seemed to know if it looked like a border agent was doing something wrong, or if the governor put up another barrier, but they never seemed to notice all the people coming in between the designated border crossings, you know, illegally. And then being released into the country on parole, free to roam about for years. Now sanctuary cities like New York, Chicago, and Denver are draining their coffers trying to house, feed, and educate the onslaught of people. Crime is rampant. American citizens are suffering. Shelters are overloaded and understaffed and undersupplied. Hundreds of thousands have been poisoned by fentanyl brought across the southern border disguised as other medications, claiming victims who make one mistake. From the first day of the Biden administration, the border was open, and the mass immigration began. First from Central and South America, then from the rest of the world. Tens of thousands from China, which, without the permission of China's government, wouldn't happen. People from countries that are hostile to the United States easily sent people here, funneled through Mexico, crossing wherever they could with the help of Mexican cartels. Cartels that raked in millions of fees and are still collecting money from indentured servants here in the United States. Hundreds of thousands of unaccompanied minors are unaccounted for, and nobody is holding the Biden administration responsible. All the while, we're told the border is secure.

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We have a secure border, and that that is a priority for any nation, including ours in our administration.

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Not just by the borders are, but also by the Secretary of Homeland Security. Both of them continued to tell us the most bold-faced lie in political history. We, the people, could see for ourselves what was happening, yet the administration insisted we were hallucinating. They figured if they told the lie often enough, we would believe it. Meanwhile, every state in the nation was experiencing what was in the past a border state problem. Suddenly, the whole country knew what it was like to be Texas. The sanctuary cities pretended to like it at first, until the space and money ran out. By then it was too late. Now Kamala has to find a way to distance herself from the trauma she caused at the behest of the Democratic Party. The legacy media have jumped in to help her do that. The most important thing right now is promoting Kamala Harris to make her unburdened by the past. Her own past. In case you forgot or never knew, it's the job of the media to be a watchdog of politics, not the lapdog of a political party. But that's what we have. Save for a few and yours truly. Don't believe me? Well, most news about Donald Trump is negative, and most news about Kamala Harris is positive. Just for fun, I did an internet search for two similar phrases. The first one was Kamala saying stupid stuff. And the other was Trump saying stupid stuff. Before I share the results I found, allow me to point out that Kamala Harris has been in politics for far longer than Donald Trump, so she's got a track record that goes back further. Plus, she's kind of known for saying things that are somewhat existential, or at least repetitive and meaningless. Some refer to her convoluted statements as word salads.

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We celebrate and we honor the women who made history throughout history, who saw what could be so many incredible leaders. For us at every moment in time, and certainly this one, to see the moment in time in which we exist in our present. And to be able to contextualize it, to understand where we exist in the history and in the moment as it relates not only to the past but the future. Have many situations where it becomes clear to me that there are, you know, people of every age and gender, by the way, who see something about being the first that lets them know they don't need to be limited by other people's limited um understanding of who can do what. And I think that's important. And it relates to all people.

SPEAKER_00 12:57

So you might think that Kamala has a longer list of stupid stuff than Donald Trump, even if it's only because she's had longer to accumulate them. And you might be right. But if you do the research, it's not hard to tell which of the two has been more closely scrutinized. 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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I want the truth! You can't handle the truth.

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One from the New York Post called Kamala Harris's Worst Word Salads and Gaffs Through the Years, published in July of this year, and another by Fox News with the headline The Most Awkward and Embarrassing Kamala Harris Word Salads of 2022. There was a third by Fox News from 2021. Other than that, the first page of results included fact checks and explanations of Kamala memes, all stories in support of the candidate. My search on Yahoo, replacing Kamala with Trump, resulted in five solid pages of stories about stupid stuff Trump said. The list began with a Daily Beast story called The Dumbest Stuff Donald Trump Has Ever Said. Next was N.Y. Mag's The Six Most Bizarre and Baffling Trump Rally Rants. Then Raw Stories, The Top Twenty Stupidest Things Donald Trump Said in Twenty Twenty. The New Civil Rights Movement.com chimed in with Trump's Ten Most Hilariously Stupid Things He Said in 2019. Still on page one, the last item is from CNN, called Donald Trump's Most Ridiculous Claim Maybe Ever. A CNBC story from 2022 about Trump saying stupid people refuse to support a big lie. A 2015 story asks if Trump called Republicans dumb in 1998. A story from 2019 in TheWeek.com recalls six absolutely absurd things Trump has said in the past 24 hours. A CNN story called The 65 Most Outrageous Lines from Donald Trump's Longest Campaign Speech Ever, published in 2019, is on page four, followed by another CNN story from 2018 called The 41 Most Unreal Donald Trump Quotes of 2018. And sure, Donald Trump has said some s off the wall stuff, often thinking out loud or wondering why something is the way it is. He often kids around as well, but the media doesn't find anything funny about him, so it all goes down as Donald Trump saying something crazy. On the other hand, only two news organizations even bothered to list all the stupid stuff Kamala has said in the past three and a half years. Fox News and the New York Post. Even though I just played a sample of stuff that no legacy media company covered, we should all know about the weird stuff that comes out of Kamala's mouth, but most of us don't because the legacy media won't repeat it in order to protect her. Otherwise, there would be more than two items listed in a search for Kamala saying stupid stuff. Clearly, the media is biased. More than biased, the legacy media and most unconventional media as well are advocates for the progressive left wing of the political spectrum. Why? I don't know. Why would the legacy media carry water for a political party that aims to take away our First Amendment rights? A political party that has already tried and succeeded in taking away our First Amendment rights. Mark Zuckerberg confirmed it. Elon Musk exposed it when he bought Twitter.

SPEAKER_03 17:57

Photos, videos were posted on a campaign site. Taking campaign photos and videos at gravesites is forbidden under federal law. You, of course, served at Arlington Cemetery in the Old Guard, so I know that this is uh a sacred place for you. Bottom line, though, I guess, Senator, is it ever appropriate to make campaign content at military gravesites?

SPEAKER_01 18:20

He didn't take campaign photos there. These families, Gold Star families, whose children died because of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris's incompetence, invited him to the cemetery and they asked him to take those photos. Because as they told me yesterday, when I spoke to Kelly Barnett and Darren Hoover, the parents of Taylor Hoover, who has Arkansas ties, they don't get to go to the beach on Labor Day. They don't get to have barbecues. This is their one chance to have a memory of their children to commemorate their service and to honor their sacrifice. They wanted President Trump there. They wanted to take those photos. You know who the families also invited? Joe Biden and Kamala Harris. Where were they? Joe Biden was sitting at a beach. Kamala Harris was sitting at her mansion in Washington, D.C. She was four miles away. Ten minutes, she could have gone to the cemetery and the and honored the sacrifice of those young men and women. But she hasn't. She never has spoken to them or taken a meeting with them.

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They did meet with them during the dignified transfer. They were with them at the dignified transfer.

SPEAKER_01 19:16

Her and her and Joe Biden's incompetence, those 13 Americans were killed in that.

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As it turns out, Kamala was not at the dignified transfer, and the network issued a correction later. The press has to defend Kamala at every turn because they put themselves into this rat trap. By not being objective about their coverage of Donald Trump, the legacy media has painted themselves into a corner. The press isn't so much covering for the vice president as much as they're trying to cover their own asses. The result is a scramble to make themselves look like they're still right even after the full pivot from Joe Biden to Kamala Harris. Yet for some reason, Kamala avoids the press. She's done one interview since becoming the heir apparent, a softball interview on CNN during which she spoke for a whopping third of an hour or so. It wasn't what anyone hoped it would be. No real policy announcements. She said her values haven't changed. She falsely claimed that she made her position on fracking clear in twenty twenty, but a reference to her claim shows she only confirmed Joe Biden's stance on fracking. We may never know what was edited out of the interview as it was prerecorded earlier that afternoon. Other than that, we really haven't seen her on television except for clips of her rallies. Now she's begun wearing earbuds on the way past reporters so she can pretend she can't hear them. As I write this, there are no policy statements on her official website, no clue as to where she stands on the issues that are important to the American people. No press conferences at all since becoming the lead candidate for the highest office we have. There was one little gaggle outside of an airplane once, if you want to count that. The only time you hear Kamala speak is when she's reading from a teleprompter. It seems like even the people who put her in this spotlight don't trust her enough to handle the real world. But they want her to be president. She's the current vice president. She could conjure up a press conference in twenty minutes, and every news network would be there at the drop of a hat. But she apparently has nothing to say that isn't scripted. The liberal media breathed a sigh of relief when she got through the interview with Dana Bash without A major screw up. She didn't do any harm was the bar she had to reach in order to consider the interview a success. Getting through something without screwing it up isn't a leadership quality we need in the Oval Office. Keeping her isolated from invasive questions is the only way they can be sure she won't say something stupid. So far it seems to be working. The upcoming debate may open some eyes. We'll see how that goes. In the meantime, the Democratic Party is putting the full force of radio and television to work on behalf of her, and social media activity is rampant. As you know, if you're a regular at the listening tube, I follow the Republican, Democratic, and Libertarian parties on Facebook. I don't see a lot from the Republicans. I see a bit more from the Libertarians, but I see a lot from the Democrats. That might be the algorithms at play, but in any case, I get bombarded with Democrat Party posts. Let's take a look at a few to see what message they're trying to convey. Here's one with a picture of Kamala at a rally podium. The text above it says Democrats believe that healthcare decisions should be between patients and their doctors, not the government. That is why when elected as our next president, Kamala Harris will work to restore Roe as the law of the land. Let's take a moment to think about what would have to happen for that promise to be kept. First, the federal government would have to usurp the jurisdiction of the states, which, according to the Supreme Court, have the right to establish abortion laws. That would require one of two things to happen. Replace enough of the Supreme Court that you might get a majority of them to reinterpret the current law. But first, a legitimate gripe with the current law would have to work its way through the lower courts just to get to the Supreme Court. Or she could get Congress to add an amendment to the Constitution. That would require a consensus of two-thirds of the legislative branch, a signature by the president, and pass review by the courts. In other words, making abortion law a federal issue might sound good, but it's highly unlikely to happen, even if Kamala is president. If you're voting for her solely on the issue of abortion, you're wasting your vote. You'll get more value using that vote at the state level where the laws can be changed. State houses and state senates. Not President of the United States. The very next one is a text-only meme that warns what will happen if Project 2025 is adapted. They keep calling it Trump's agenda, but Donald Trump hasn't endorsed it and even said he hasn't read it. If you want to know what Donald Trump's agenda is, just ask him. He'll be happy to tell you. He doesn't need the Heritage Foundation to speak for him. The following post is a series of photos of the Vice President with groups of smiling, happy people. In one of them you can see part of a multicolored flag that she's waving, and another looks like an ad for a brand of vodka. The text says We're voting for the woman who supports LGBTQI plus rights. The truth is, Donald Trump supports LGBTQI plus rights as much as anybody. A story in Politifact from this past June compares Donald Trump's views on the subject with Joe Biden's. As it turns out, the only difference between the two is in the area of transsexuals. Trump put restrictions on transsexuals in the military and argued against transsexuals participating in women's sports. Trump also wants limits on medical procedures being done to children to change their bodies. As for all the other letters in the alphabet, Trump and Joe pretty much have the same views. The story points out that it was Donald Trump who appointed the first openly gay cabinet secretary. Otherwise, the only difference is Joe flouts it while Donald just minds his own business. And Donald Trump will hire you if you're gay, but he won't hire you because you're gay. All three of the posts we examined amount to nothing. She promises to bring back Roe v. Wade, but she can't. Project 2025 is a false narrative used to distract you from her lack of a platform. And there's really nothing special about her support for various types of sexuality when compared to her opponent. Just like student loan forgiveness, just like reparations for descendants of slaves, the Democrats make promises they know they can't keep. And they promise you things you already have. Like a cost of living increase on Social Security. They talk about banned books. There aren't any banned books in the United States of America. If there is systemic racism, then why are there so many successful black people? The American way has enabled the most successful black people in history, largely through conservative ideals. While social programs may give the underprivileged a way to maintain, the free market gives us the opportunity to flourish. A friend of mine from childhood and I began working at Burger King on the same day when we were in high school. He would eventually own that Burger King, as well as a number of other restaurants. We both had the same opportunity at the start. He saw that job as a stepping stone. I saw it as a freaking nightmare. But that's okay, because today we're both happy and married to beautiful women, with whom we went to high school. A story published August 10th on independent.co.uk is the reference for a one-sentence line in the Kamala Harris Wikipedia page that says, under the tab of higher education, at some point during her college life, she worked at McDonald's. The story references the vice president as telling Drew Barrymore that she had a job where she did the ice cream and french fries. She's been claiming lately that she did work at a McDonald's while in college. Among the other jobs listed are Mailroom Clerk for California Senator Alan Cranston, chaired the Economic Society, led the debate team, and joined Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority. She also completed a summer internship at the Federal Trade Commission, worked as a tour guide at the Bureau of Engraving and Printing, and participated in anti-apartheid protests at the South African Embassy and National Mall. Yet her current claim to fame is her job at McDonald's. I'll bet it sucked being the guy on call when Kamala didn't show up. Maybe she only worked there because all of her sorority sisters did too. Hardly a backstory worthy of the Oval Office. All those other things she did seem to take a back seat to the McDonald's job, though. I wonder why. Anyway, Snopes.com says the odds of anybody working at McDonald's during the last fifty years is pretty good, but there are no photos, employment records, or statements from family or friends to verify her claim. Maybe she gave it a shot one day, and failed at both ice cream and French fries, so she never went back. If that's the case, then her claim to have worked at McDonald's is as fake as her accent when she speaks in different parts of the country. I completely understand how it can be an advantage if you speak in a way that's similar to those with whom you are speaking. And yes, I said it that way on purpose. Speaking with a fake dialect might get you through buying a bag of weed in a new town or getting out of a speeding ticket as long as you're not from the other side of the Mason Dixon line. But when everybody already knows what you sound like, there's no other way to describe it but pandering. Meanwhile, her people are telling her she crushed it, and the people walking back to the parking lot are asking, where'd she get that accent? Normally, people don't do that. It's the equivalent of Donald Trump saying, If I'm elected, I'll nick shisel on tips, boy. But all we hear from the legacy media is justification for such a low bar as once having worked at McDonald's and finding the phrase code shifting to describe and give credibility to her habit of changing her accent depending upon her audience. This candidate is so fake that I'm surprised one of her internships wasn't at a factory that makes mannequins that say whatever you tell them to say. She claims her values haven't changed in her brief conversation with CNN, but she hasn't really made anything but campaign promises, and many of them seem to be in conflict with what she said before. But she won't put any of her platforms in writing and insists her views haven't changed. She has to keep her options fluid because her opinions change like the breeze of pop culture. All she seems to know is what's popular at the moment. Yet she still can't describe it or form her own opinion and express it without it being written and displayed on a teleprompter. Most of the press is happy to let her skate through to the election without answering very important questions about policies, both domestic and international. Other than some subtle tax issues, Kamala seems to have the same standards as Joe Biden. And her behavior and statements indicate she would be more to the left than Joe, who claimed to be a centrist, but often wasn't. If Kamala had the guts to appear on as many press conferences and impromptu press gaggles and casual Q ⁇ A's as Donald Trump, it would at least let us know exactly how she feels. Assuming you believe anything she says. Freakin' Donald Trump will stand there and answer whatever question you may have. If you have a legitimate question about any policy, foreign or domestic, he'll tell you exactly how he feels about it, what might be done about it, or what he thinks might be responsible for it, or whatever the case may be. There's no mistaking where Donald Trump stands on an issue. With Kamala Harris, what we get are a lot of campaign speeches with little substance, and a flock of spokespeople parroting whatever they're told to parrot, some of which contradicts the rest and is hardly ever clear and concise. She hides from even the friendly media who are now doing everything they can to promote her. It's clear that the less we know about Kamala Harris, the better her chance of winning the election. Look, we know who's running the Conservative Party. He's running for president. What we don't know is who's running the Liberal Party because it isn't the person who's running for president. A vote for Donald Trump is a vote for Donald Trump. We know that. A vote for Kamala Harris is a vote for what's behind the curtain. A vote for Kamala Harris is only symbolic. You're giving up your influence in the direction of our country to a mysterious group of people who are pulling the puppets strings, and Kamala Harris is the puppet. If you think she's in charge, you're sadly mistaken. If you want her to be in charge, try to find a solid policy of hers with which you agree, and tell me how it will make your life better. Because if it does, then maybe you are too dependent on the government. It's the goal of the Liberal Party to make people dependent on the government. Social programs which were initially intended to help those in dire straits have become lifestyles. I'm all for helping those in need, and America is the most generous place in the world. But our system of government is not a socialist system, and that's what we're becoming, and that's what we'll become under the direction of the current Democratic Party and the Progressive Agenda. Joe Biden and Kamala Harris and a whole host of liberal talking heads ramble on about how Donald Trump is a threat to democracy. The truth is today's Liberal Party has gone too far into the arena of socialism, and that's an actual threat to democracy. It's nothing new. Several European countries with democratic processes chose socialism. Take a look at the results. If you like what you see, you're in luck, because the United States of America does stuff way better than anyone else. So you can bet that the American version of socialism will be the greatest display of love and understanding and subsidies since San Francisco in the late 1960s. But this time it'll be government-sponsored. In other words, your tax dollars at work.

SPEAKER_04 37:19

The listening tube will return at the speed of sound. Contact the listening tube by calling 570-601-1101 or email thelistening tube at outlook.com.

SPEAKER_00 37:40

I'm sure you've heard me say before that I'm a registered independent. I take seriously my choice to be put into that category. I'll watch the debate between Trump and Harris. I'll still give Harris the benefit of the doubt, but not support until I see more. But as it stands right now, I'm going to vote for Donald Trump for president. He's not in it for himself, as the left would have you believe. He doesn't even keep the paycheck. He's the most transparent candidate in modern history. Just ask him, he'll tell you. He doesn't try to censor us or tell social media to keep things from us. We know he's in charge and he's done it before, and he turned this country around to make it more independent again. There isn't anybody in the background telling him what to do. He knows how to hire the best advisors, and he knows how to delegate authority, and he knows how to make decisions. Donald Trump is clearly the best candidate for president of the United States, and I hope you'll vote for him. If he wins, I'll look forward to finding ways to blame him for the failures of the federal government of the United States of America.

SPEAKER_04 39:04

You can hang your hat on that.

SPEAKER_00 39:08

The Listening Tube is written and produced by yours truly, Copyright 2024. Thank you for putting your ear to the listening tube. Subscribe today or text me from the homepage. I'm your host, Bob Woodley, for Thou Ad Infinitum.