Season 9, Episode 12 October 6, 2024

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This is the Listening Tube.

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Well, hello. I mean, 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 drought and a flood, the Department of Homeland Security, and some thoughts on Hurricane Helene.

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But first, not the headlines.

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They say all politics is local, and when you live in the nation's capital, local politics has a whole different meaning. In Washington, D.C., you can find an example of how people of differing political parties respond to opposition. One such example is described in a story from The Washingtonian about an eating and drinking establishment with a theme meant to make light of political differences in a fun and lively atmosphere. Their logo, featuring both the blue donkey and a red elephant, expressed the kind of place where ideas were meant to be exchanged, where everyone was welcome, where you could leave your colors at the door if you liked. Political patties is owned by a man and a woman who are both black and have nothing against anybody for their political or social or sexual preferences. Yet one side of the aisle insisted that anything representing the center is unwelcome in this Washington, D.C. neighborhood. It wasn't enough that what was once a sports bar had been transformed into yet another political bar. The real irony is that, according to the story, it's on a street abundant with gay bars. I would have never thought that homosexuals would prefer a sports bar over a political bar, but that's only because of my experience with gay people. It wasn't just that, though. The internet lit up with criticism, not because it's a political bar, but because it's a centrist political bar. The story says locals were keyboard critics, claiming a bar with the symbol of the Republican Party in its logo wouldn't be welcome in the area, even though the logo also included the symbol of the Democratic Party. There would be no peace as long as the red elephant remained in the logo. For leftists who live in our nation's capital, there is no room at the end for anything not in perfect alignment with their agenda. Just imagine you lived on a block with a bunch of Democrats. You know they're Democrats because they have political yard signs supporting Democratic candidates. You're at the farmers market on Thursday and one of the vendors has flags for sale. You see one that simply says vote, and it has a red elephant and a blue donkey on it. You get it home and you take down the one with the pumpkins and put up the vote flag. The next thing you know, your neighbors are knocking on your door demanding you take down that offensive flag. What would you do? Would you take down your flag? Would you come out to the front porch with a shotgun? Would you defend your right to fly the flag of your choice? You know, verbally, without the shotgun. That would be preferable. Would you feel the need to point out that the flag is completely neutral, hoping to pacify them? Hoping they'll say, Oh, okay, as long as you're being neutral. But that's what happened to the owners of political patties. Their only message was, let's have fun together. But that wouldn't be tolerated in today's political climate in the streets of our nation's capital. The owners of political patties did not defend their neutrality. They released a statement that read, Soon after our logo was painted on our building's facade, we realized that the representation of the red elephant was hurtful to the community. And out of respect, we decided to change the logo, removing both the donkey and the elephant. Well, the new logo will include the word political in large blue letters to, as they claim, balance out the red-framed door and windows. The statement from the couple who own the bar went on to say, We view the online backlash that we've recently received to be mean-spirited, especially considering our original and continued intent to be a space that is welcoming to all people, including members of the LGBTQ community. We do not tolerate homophobia, transphobia, racism, or any other form of bigotry. As black Americans, anything else would be antithetical to our very existence. But none of that was enough for the radical left, who focused more on the imagery than the intent. Now you might think that this couple didn't know what they were getting into when they bought the place and decided what they wanted to do with it. Au contraire. Both are well versed in politics, both are lawyers, both have been civil servants, and one is a retired Army Reserve officer. Both are Washington, D.C. natives. Their vision will live on despite the backlash from the progressives, those who work to silence opposing viewpoints. They say they hope to become the sports bar of political affairs. Each table will have a gavel to guide the course of conversation. You can order a drink called the filibuster fizz or the gerrymander martini. The goal is respectful discourse and an exchange of ideas. But just outside, it's a different world where only the ideas of the progressive left are palatable and anything else is poison. The left claims to be protecting democracy while undermining the very foundation of it. I don't personally care what kind of flag you want to fly. As long as it's not some bastardized form of the American flag, I'm okay with it. But you're still free to fly your freak flag or commie flag or flag with a puppy on it. But the left only allows you to fly the flags of the left, and that often excludes the American flag itself. Even neutral isn't good enough for the left anymore.

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Well, that can't be right.

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There's been a lot of talk about price gouging, especially by grocery stores. So how do you calculate what price gouging is for grocery stores? If profit margins go up 1%, is that price gouging? Because grocery profits have barely moved more than 1 or 2% over the last six years and are currently at less than 2%. When you look at grocery store profit margins, there clearly isn't any price gouging going on. Yet that seems to be a talking point for Kamala Harris and many down ticket candidates for office in the current election cycle. We certainly can't deny that grocery store prices have gone up. I recently noticed that a jar of name brand mayonnaise was about six bucks. That's a lot for a jar of sandwich condiment. But it takes eggs to make mayonnaise, and egg prices are way up from where they were a few years ago. And that's just one example. But just because the price of mayonnaise went up, that doesn't mean the grocery store is making a larger profit when you buy it. It's costing more to put that jar of mayo on the shelf. More to make the mayo, more to make the plastic jar, more to transport the ingredients to the mayo factory, and more to get it to the grocery store for you to pick up and buy. None of that is the result of price gouging by your grocery store. It's the result of the policies of the current executive branch of the US government. The same government that's telling us that our economy is the most healthy in the industrialized world. Oh, have you heard that the rate of inflation in the European Union has dropped below 2%? As you may recall, that's been the goal of the current American administration for the last three and a half years. Haven't got there yet. While Harris and other Democrats cry about a fictitious demon, the reality is that more than 47 million people in the United States are now living with food insecurity. 13% of US households were food insecure in 2023, according to a story in Grocery Dive last month. That's up a bit from the year before, and 4 million households more than in 2020. If you average it out, a million more households became food insecure every year since the last election. The story points out that income isn't always a factor in food security when it says low-income food insecure households purchased fewer calories overall and had lower nutritional food purchases than low-income food secure households. So there are low-income food secure households. It made me wonder, what then exactly is a food insecure household? 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.org, the U.S. Department of Agriculture defines food security as access to enough food for an active, healthy life for all members of a household, if it can eat an adequately nutritious diet without resorting to using emergency food supplies, scavenging, stealing, or other measures. So even though a family may be able to afford healthy food, it may not be available. Almost 60% of food insecure families get assistance from programs like SNAP. But SNAP emergency allotments ended in February of 2023. In June of that year, the USDA made SNAP online purchasing available for those still in the program. Several grocers participate in the program, but a lot of these food insecure households don't have a grocer near where they live. Inner cities have become fresh food deserts. Grocers and other retailers have moved out of high crime areas in recent years, stranding the people who live there with no place to buy fresh groceries. Nowhere to buy nutritious food. Not only have food prices continued to increase, but the availability of food has been diminished for many areas. Criminal activity has deprived entire communities of the opportunity to live a healthy lifestyle built on a healthy diet. High transportation costs have made everything, including groceries, more expensive. The recent work stoppage by longshoremen along the United States East Coast will surely have a ripple effect somewhere down the line. The economy under the current administration is so fragile that events that may have been irrelevant in the past are now creating waves in the economic fabric, causing uncertainty, worry, anxiety, and a general disappointment in the state of the country. The land of plenty has become a place where your ability to get nutritious food may depend upon where in this great land you live. But rest assured, when somebody tells you to vote for them because they're going to stop price gouging on groceries, they're asking you to help them solve a problem that doesn't exist. Even if the problem was real, the only solution brought forward by the conspiracy theorists is price fixing. Not only does price fixing not work, it goes against everything a capitalist society is built upon. Bottom line, Kamala Harris wants to use Marxism to solve a problem she made up.

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You can hang your hat on that.

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Got a question for you. Have you ever read the full small type user agreement you accept when you sign up to use an app or a streaming service? I'm going to go out on a limb here and guess that you haven't, unless you're a lawyer. Most people don't and don't feel the need to read it, as after a while you just take for granted that it's all just boilerplate stuff. You know how they'll use your personal information and that you can't demand a refund if your internet service goes down. Most of us don't have a problem with that, and we gladly agree so we can proceed with our lives. We never suspect that such an agreement would ever amount to anything. As it turns out, legal agreements can have unintended consequences. An article I saw on CNN Business over a month and a half ago told a story about a woman who died after eating at a restaurant at Walt Disney World in Orlando, Florida. The man's wife sued Disney because where they had dinner assured them they were preparing her dinner in a manner that would not affect her peanut allergy. They asked and were assured several times. The woman ended up having a deadly allergic reaction a short time later while still on Disney property. Aside from Disney lawyers claiming they couldn't be sued because they don't own the restaurant on their resort, Disney also claimed that he couldn't sue because the man was a subscriber of Disney Plus. You might be thinking, but Bob, what does that have to do with anything? Well, it all goes back to that user agreement you confirmed when you signed up for the service. If you read it, you'd know that by agreeing, you give up all rights to sue the Disney Company or any of its subsidiaries, and that all disputes may only be brought before arbitration. In other words, if you want to watch commercial free Disney programs, you give up your right to take Disney to court. Even if your wife dies from the food served at Walt Disney World. As I already said, this story is from a month and a half ago. I didn't have room for it on the program. It may be an isolated incident. For whatever reason, I didn't use it. But then I read another story about a similar situation. Even though it's an older story, the report just came out a few days ago. Ironically, also from CNN Business. In this case, a man and his wife were in an Uber when the driver ran a red light and got T-boned. The couple claimed serious physical, psychological, and financial damages. Those physical damages included broken bones and surgery and resulted in diminished abilities. But because the wife's phone was used to make an order using Uber Eats and the user agreement was confirmed, the wife gave up any rights to use a court of law to resolve any dispute with Uber, even if it was riding in an Uber car, which has nothing to do with Uber Eats food delivery service. By agreeing to use the service, they also agreed that any dispute can only be brought before arbitration, not the courts. When the couple tried to sue, a lower court agreed they could, but Uber got the decision reversed on appeal. Uber's terms of service were enforceable. This couple never imagined that by getting food delivered to their home, they were giving up their rights to use a legal avenue to address a grievance. Neither did the man who became a widower while at the happiest place on earth. These user agreements can contain just about anything, and we'll happily check the correct box to proceed without even thinking about what the secondary consequences might be. It's clear that the companies themselves aren't in a hurry to relinquish the power to make you sign anything they want you to sign. You just gotta have that app. I'll check this box with the hope that I can watch the original jungle book one more time. But if you get backed over by an ESPN satellite truck after a football game, you can't sue because you signed up for Disney Plus. If you get run over by a driverless Uber car, you can't sue because you had food delivered to your house once. The Uber court decision came down in late September, and they're happy with the court's view. Since then, the Disney case has taken a turn. Disney has decided to not enforce the user agreement with Disney Plus against the man whose wife died. Oh, but the man also bought tickets to the Epcot Center and by doing so made the same agreement to give up his rights. It seems Disney is very good at covering their ass. But to their credit, they issued a statement giving up their right to arbitration. The case will now be allowed to go to court. That doesn't mean Disney won't fight it. Clearly, there needs to be some legal controls over what can and cannot be included in an agreement to stream a movie or get a burger brought to the door. This is a matter that deserves the attention of all three branches of our government. The executive branch needs to lead on it, the legislative branch needs to take meaningful action, and the judicial branch needs to make it clear that American citizens can't be forced to give up constitutional rights for the privilege of dinner and a movie. An old report said dust up to six inches or about 15 centimeters deep covered the roads outside of towns. Rural roads were even worse. Last week in Indiana, drought conditions were eased when rain from the remnants of tropical storm Helene blew in. More on that later in the program. But still today, 1.5 million Hoosiers are living in a drought area. And according to drought.gov, that's almost 65% fewer than last week because of hurricane spray. This week in 1993, the Great Flood of 1993 ends at St. Louis, Missouri 103 days after it began, as the Mississippi River falls below flood stage. The flood itself lasted more than three months. 30,000 square miles of land in the Midwest United States was flooded. People died. Was it climate change that caused the great flood of 1993? Of course it was. The climate changed because of a volcanic eruption in the Philippines two years earlier. According to Wikipedia, the ash from the volcano produced excess cloud condensation nuclei. That event, coupled with some other factors more local to the affected area, such as above normal rain and snowfall in 1992 and early 93. Spring storms came along while the soil was already saturated. The Mississippi and Missouri rivers began to spread out, unable to drain all the water entering the rivers and its tributaries. Parts of Iowa got two feet of rain in August alone. The Mississippi River crested almost 20 feet above flood stage on August 1st, with enough water flowing by to fill the St. Louis baseball stadium to the brim in 70 seconds. I drove by in late August on my way from where I lived in Port Waineme, California, to Canton, Ohio for the 1993 Pro Football Hall of Fame induction ceremonies. I had made my reservations more than a year in advance, and I had two tickets to the Hall of Fame game. As I approached the flooded area of the country, I couldn't believe my eyes. I got to the Mississippi River long before I got to the sign that said Mississippi River. Much to my surprise, the interstate was open and operating, and I was able to zip right through. But the sight of so much water, where I had only seen land before, was a sight to behold. Like many parts of Florida recently, large amounts of sand were deposited by the flood waters, covering farmland and streets alike. Damage estimates, calculated in 2023, added up to about thirty billion dollars. I'll talk about the more recent flooding in just a bit. This week in 2001, U.S. President George W. Bush announces the establishment of the Office of Homeland Security. What is now the Department of Homeland Security was the result of the terror attacks less than a month earlier that destroyed New York's Twin Towers, damaged the Pentagon, and crashed an airliner into the ground in Pennsylvania. Thousands of lives were lost on that day, and still today people are dying because of the attack. Pennsylvania Governor Tom Ridge was chosen to be the first head of the department. Its mission, as we understood it back then, was to ensure nothing like 9-11 ever happened again. The official announcement states, the mission of the office will be to develop and coordinate an implementation of a comprehensive national strategy to secure the United States from terrorist threats or attacks. The office will coordinate the executive branch's efforts to direct, prepare for, prevent, protect against, respond to, and recover from terrorist attacks within the United States. In order to carry out its mission, the Department of Homeland Security absorbed 22 agencies into itself, including the U.S. Customs Service, Immigration and Naturalization Service, Federal Emergency Management Agency, the Coast Guard, and the Secret Service. It is now the third largest department of the U.S. government. Today, the Department of Homeland Security is led by Alejandro Majorcas. Under his direction, led by the President, our homeland has become anything but secure. It's the responsibility of the Department of Homeland Security to secure our borders. They have not. They didn't even try until recently. For three and a half years, people from all over the world have poured across both our southern and northern borders at a record pace, each year outpacing the last. When states like Texas tried to stop the flow, the Biden administration would sue to have the barriers removed, using tactics like environmental protection laws to justify their lawsuits. Millions of people, more than 10 million, with some estimates as high as 20 million, who have no right to be here without being vetted or even having a piece of identification, are now living in the United States in violation of our laws. Yet the person who's running for president, the current vice president, says people who cross the border illegally shouldn't be considered criminals. We now know that tens of thousands of them are criminals, but our Department of Homeland Security simply lets them go, sometimes with an appointment for a hearing to which they never show up. Major cities across the country have spent billions of dollars to feed, house, and educate those who came here illegally. Homeless shelters can't handle all of them. So the government gives them hotel rooms and cell phones and debit cards with money already loaded and ready to be spent. For what? Why? The only answer we ever get is that the immigration system is broken and Congress won't fix it. I guess that means Secretary Majorchis doesn't have to do his job. Majorcus did have time to put out a statement about border security on September 30th, about a week ago. Here's the first line. In June, the Biden Harris administration took decisive action to strengthen our nation's border security and deter irregular migration. Well, there it is in writing. They waited until June of the final year of the presidential term to pretend to do something. Gee, that doesn't look at all like it was an effort to win votes in the upcoming election. At least the action was decisive. Even if the statement was vague. Have a good time trying to deter irregular migration. Irregular migration? Is this guy even serious? That statement is as empty as Maorkis' suit. He goes on to pat himself on the back by stating that in the past year, more people were removed and returned than during any year since 2010. Well, that just means you let in more than during any year since forever. But in the same paragraph, he brags about how the administration has taken new and innovative steps so that migrants don't have to pay smugglers and put themselves in danger. What he doesn't say is that our government just puts them on airplanes and flies them over the smugglers right into American airports. No real ID needed unless you're an American citizen. Then the last half of the statement is Alejandro lamenting how much easier his job would be if Congress would fix immigration laws. Why should they if you're not going to enforce the laws we have, Mr. Secretary? Then he goes on listing how many more agents and officers would have been added to his department if that terrible border bill that couldn't get through Congress had got through Congress. Almost nine thousand more people added to various departments under the umbrella of Homeland Security. The sad fact is he only needed them to more quickly process the wave of illegal immigrants he was allowing to come into the country. How do we know that? As the Secretary points out, the bill would have also added ten thousand more beds to detention facilities, where they would stay until the 9,000 new personnel were able to process them in. The statement doesn't mention that the bill would also keep the border open until a certain number of people crossed it illegally per month. What a joke. Created to protect our nation from terrorists, the Department of Homeland Security has become a doormat for the world thanks to the doormat of a secretary. Instead of keeping us safe, recent customs and border patrol numbers show that 13,000 people who were convicted of murder in another country have been allowed to enter the United States. Tens of thousands of people convicted of sexual assault have been let into the country as well. I would hope that if anybody other than Joe Biden and Kamala Harris were in charge, Alejandro Majorcas would have been fired by now. The fact that he hasn't been fired means his bosses think he's doing a bang up job. If this is what Homeland Security looks like to Kamala Harris, then she should be fired too. At least Joe had sense enough to get out while the getting was good. The anniversary of the Office of Homeland Security is now nothing more than a grim reminder of how inept the Department of Homeland Security has become. And I didn't even mention the screw-ups of the Secret Service. Also, under the watch of Alejandro Majorcas.

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The recent hurricane that tore into the big bend of Florida and erased communities all the way up to North Carolina has certainly altered the future of local cultures and customs. The very topography of the affected area has been altered, and in some places the streets may never be the same again. Property lines will be in dispute. Some properties might no longer exist. Hundreds have died, more certainly have yet to be discovered. Still others will perish as a result of this catastrophe. Months, perhaps years of rebuilding lie ahead. Many will move to new places to start over, leaving fewer to do the rebuilding. I was stuck behind a car today with North Carolina plates. The driver clearly didn't know his way around here. I'm guessing they were just here to avoid North Carolina. Anyone who lived in Pennsylvania in nineteen seventy two can tell you you're not safe from hurricanes here. That one was called Agnes. Helene didn't make it that far north, but Pennsylvania's not immune. We learn a lot about ourselves and our neighbors when these kinds of disasters happen. People always seem to rise up to meet the challenge. Volunteers do what the professionals sometimes can't. Individuals find strengths they didn't know they had. Leaders emerge. Faith is restored. There's light at the end of the tunnel. But we also learn a new level of humility and a renewed appreciation for life's little pleasures. Thousands of people suddenly found themselves without everyday luxuries like running water and electricity and access to the internet. For more than a week now. Suddenly the war in Ukraine and the battles in and around Israel are nowhere in sight for people along the path of destruction. Inflation is irrelevant for the moment as there are no businesses left, nowhere to shop for things you need, nowhere to spend your money if you had access to it. Banks were closed too, ATM machines were inoperable. You couldn't spend money with cash or credit card. But cash was still more valuable than that piece of plastic in your wallet. In times like these, a credit card isn't worth the plastic it takes to make it. Hurricane survivors are reportedly getting checks from FEMA for seven hundred fifty dollars to help them recover. Meanwhile, Vice President Harris just issued a statement that says the following The people of Lebanon are facing an increasingly dire humanitarian situation. I am concerned about the security and well-being of civilians suffering in Lebanon and will continue working to help meet the needs of all civilians there. To that end, the United States will provide nearly one hundred fifty seven million dollars in additional assistance to the people of Lebanon for essential needs such as food, shelter, water, protection, and sanitation to help those who have been displaced by the recent conflict. This additional support brings total U.S. assistance to Lebanon over the last year to $385 million. In case you don't know, Lebanon is the home base for Hezbollah, the terrorist group that runs the country and is attacking Israel. So it would appear we're funding both sides of the conflict the vice president is so concerned about. But unlike Kamala Harris, I'm going to bring the focus back to the people in the United States who are suffering through an even more dire humanitarian situation because of a hurricane. But most of these people in the Path of Helene aren't thinking about money right now. They're thinking about where their next meal might be, how long it might take to taste food again, where they'll sleep, or how to stay safe without any shelter. Imagine your own neighborhood with nothing left but most of the people. You have no homes, you have no tents. There isn't even a place to sit because the entire surface around you is still wet. The barren landscape around you is all you have, and you're just standing there, looking at all the other people just like you. Maybe you're one of the lucky ones, maybe you're a single man with no ties to the area. You have the option of picking yourself up and going somewhere else. You'll have to walk, of course, because there are no surviving cars or roads or bridges. But if you're a mom or dad with kids, your ordeal is a much more complicated problem. You're not Moses able to split the flood waters and guide your people to safety. I can't imagine what it would be like if my neighborhood was suddenly wiped off the map and I was left standing here with my beautiful wife on a barren landscape void of any shelter or sustenance. It's a horrible feeling until you realize that since you have nothing left but each other, the only logical next step is to have sex. Right now you might be thinking, Come on, Bob, what the hell? But hear me out. You don't know if you'll survive. If you do, it will be because help arrives. That may not happen for days. In the meantime, there's no access to food or entertainment or anything else that's remotely pleasurable. You're stuck there. Sure it might be uncomfortable if the neighbors can watch, but when all is said and done and help finally arrives and we're all rescued from certain death, everybody else is gonna wish they did what you did. I'll admit there were few places that we know of where this might have happened. We'll find out nine months from now. But for those who don't even have the option of making the best of a bad situation, those who may not even hear this for a week or a month from now because they just got back in touch with the rest of the world, let me tell you now that the rest of the world, or at least the rest of the United States, has been very aware of your plight, and is hoping and praying for you and your loved ones who may have been in the path of this deadly weather event. There are those who will try to use this tragedy to advance an agenda. I've said this before on the listening tube, and I'll say it again. The climate has been changing since the formation of the planet. Is it getting warmer? Yes. Is it because of modern man? I'm sure our presence here has an effect on the climate. Is man's effect on the climate the cause of recent weather events? We don't know, and man's existence on Earth is but a blip on the radar of the history of the planet. The Earth is a very resilient place. It's endured multiple ice ages and the breakup of the supercontinent to create the map as we know it today. Of course, in the grand scheme of things, it's a wonder life exists at all, considering all of the variables that must exist for life to occur. The fact is, the Earth is going to do whatever it wants, regardless of what humans do while we're here. Typical humans, we think we're the center of the universe. We're just hitching a ride on a speck in the sky. Sure, it would be great to think that ten thousand years from now we'll still be watching reruns of the Big Bang Theory, but the fact is we don't control any of it, despite what the television tells you. But let's assume humans do exist ten thousand years from now. Odds are the planet has gone through a variety of changes, from too hot to too cold at least once or twice. Humans are resilient too. We are, after all, a product of the Earth. 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.