Season Three, The Tenth One

Welcome to season 3, episode 10 of the Listening Tube! I’m your host, Bob Woodley. On this edition, we’ll hear about climate change, the Berlin Wall, and the endless cycle of American politics. But first, (not the headlines)!

Now that it’s November, there’ll be a lot of focus on the upcoming holidays. People will be gathering and celebrating together as much as their budget will allow. With inflation the way it is, a lot of people are cutting back on frivolous expenses, maybe traveling less or pinching pennies in other ways, unsure of what the future holds. If you live in a climate where the weather gets cold, you might be worried about how much it will cost to heat your home this winter, and depending on what kind of fuel you use, you might even be wondering if it will be available as the winter drags on. But celebrate we will, as somehow, humans love to gather and party. That’s why there’s one consumer product that hardly ever suffers from the effects of a poor economy: Alcohol. Now, I know President Biden says our economy is great, but the street-level reality doesn’t agree. Prices are up on everything because the price of fuel is up. And even though alcohol prices are up, too, people will still find a way to incorporate it into their holiday festivities. I have nothing against alcohol, as I’m a consumer myself. I like Miller High Life, and Crown Royal for special occasions, like when the Dolphins win. But I’m old now, and I’ve learned a lot of the lessons of alcohol consumption. I know now that I’m fortunate to have learned those lessons without having to sacrifice my life. That’s not the case for many young people today. A CDC study cited by MedpageToday says 20 percent, or one out of every five deaths of American people between the ages of 20 and 49 can be directly attributed to excessive alcohol consumption. By directly, the study means only those deaths caused by alcohol poisoning, motor vehicle accidents, and homicides. For those over 35, but not yet 50, the second-leading cause is liver disease, and then motor vehicle crashes. Overall, an average of more than 140-thousand Americans die every year because of excessive alcohol use. The factors used to come to the results were focused on deaths only attributable to the use of alcohol, and not secondary effects. For example, if you died with a hangover, it wasn’t counted. So, when you’re partying this holiday season, please be careful about your alcohol intake. I don’t want you to become a statistic. While alcohol kills thousand of Americans every year, and other drugs like opiates and fentanyl add more misery for friends and family of the victims, it’s only fair to point out that nobody has ever died from an overdose of marijuana. There is no justification for our federal government to classify marijuana a a Schedule 1 drug. It does not belong in the same category as heroin, cocaine and fentanyl. There’s also no reason why alcohol is not more tightly controlled. The government propaganda against marijuana, going back to the black and white film “Reefer Madness” is finally beginning to be seen through. Individual states have already recognized the folly of the federal classification, yet our representatives in congress have been slow to adapt to the facts. One of the arguments opponents of marijuana us is that it’s a gateway drug. Well, I got news for you. Nicotine and alcohol are the real gateway drugs. Both of which are legal for those over a certain age. There’s also some confusion about whether or not marijuana is addictive. The National Institute on Drug Abuse says the answer is no. While they claim there is something called Marijuana use disorder, which they describe as a type of dependency, but not addiction. Even those who develop a dependency get over it after about two weeks without marijuana. So, it’s basically the same as going through caffeine withdrawal. It’s probably easier to quit smoking marijuana than it is to quit drinking coffee. And no one has ever died from marijuana poisoning. Based on addiction and mortality rates, marijuana should be available at the local convenience store, and alcohol should be a Schedule 1 drug along with LSD and cocaine. From a political standpoint, the conservatives are blocking the liberation of marijuana restrictions, while the liberals seemed like they were willing to make some progress on the subject. However, neither the Obama nor Biden administrations have made any progress, despite the power to do so. If the Republicans take control of congress as a result of the Tuesday election, we can be sure there will be no movement on realigning our priorities in relation to our recreational drugs. Marijuana will remain prohibited by the federal government, while alcohol will continue to kill more than a hundred thousand people a year. Most of them will be young people who will pay with their life for a mistake. 

Speaking of drugs, and I only call them drugs because we know their chemical compounds, even though marijuana is a plant that grows out of the ground, drugs like alcohol and cocaine need additional processes to exist, it turns out that glycine levels have a role in how mice are effected by cocaine. Cocaine use promotes the growth of a bacteria in mice stomachs that thrives on glycine. As the glycine levels drop, the mice became more sensitive to the cocaine. Their sensitivity went back to baseline when glycine was added to mouse systems. So as it turns out, our digestive systems are directly related to how our brains react to drugs. The research suggests that amino acids might be used as governors on how drugs can control us. One of the study’s authors said in an article on interesting engineering dot com that “…”for neuroscience behaviors, people are not thinking about controlling the microbiota, and microbiota studies usually don't measure behaviors, but here we show they’re connected. Our microbiome can actually modulate psychiatric or brain-related behaviors.” These studies only explored cocaine. However, if you’re a marijuana user, this gastro-neuro connection just might explain the munchies. 

Let’s go back liner.

1775

The United States Marine Corps is founded at Tun Tavern in Philadelphia by Samuel Nicholas. Once a Marine, always a Marine. 

1837

In Alton, Illinois, abolitionist printer Elijah P. Lovejoy is shot dead by a mob while attempting to protect his printing shop from being destroyed a third time. He never claimed to be an abolitionist, preferring to call himself an emancipationist. Both titles are anti-slavery, but the label of abolitionist was also associated with social unrest, and Lovejoy wanted no part of that. But he was fiercely anti-slavery. Highly intelligent, an ordained minister and journalist, as well as a publisher, his printing press was his most important tool. He had been threatened by pro-slavery groups with tarring and feathering if he kept printing stories critical of slavery. He had recently moved to Illinois from Missouri to escape harassment there. But when a mob from Missouri found out he was hiding a printing press in a garage owned by someone else, they endeavored to destroy it. They fired shots into the garage, and the men inside returned fire, killing one of the mob. It seemed as though they retreated after that, but when Lovejoy opened the door for a peek, he was immediately struck by five bullets. Trials were held, but nobody was found guilty of killing either the mob member or the Reverend. Lovejoy was buried in an unmarked grave for fear of vandalism. Today, a monument stands 110 feet tall in Alton, Illinois. He’s remembered as a martyr for the anti-slavery movement and the freedom of the press. After all, it wasn’t just his opinions that led to his death, but also his ability to influence people through the writing in his publications. Twenty-four years later, this week in... 

1861, Jefferson Davis is elected president of the Confederate States of America. With that, America was in the midst of a civil war. It lasted until this week in...

1865, when the CSS Shenandoah, the last Confederate combat unit to surrender, does so. Prior to its surrender she and her crew circumnavigated the globe on a cruise during which it sank or captured 37 vessels. Yes, the American civil war encompassed the many parts of the world. Some confederates will never surrender, still clinging to a hope that society will somehow reverse course and go back to the antebellum, but for the people of the time, it was later in the same week of 1865 that Major Henry Wirz, the superintendent of the Andersonville Prison Camp in Georgia, is hanged, becoming the only American Civil War soldier executed for war crimes.

1871

Henry Morton Stanley locates missing explorer and missionary, Dr. David Livingstone in Ujiji, near Lake Tanganyika, famously greeting him with the words, “Dr. Livingstone, I presume?”.

1872

The ship Mary Celeste sails from New York, eventually to be found deserted near the Azores, off the coast of Spain. The lifeboat was gone, but nothing was disturbed, from the shipment of alcohol aboard to the Captain’s quarters. The last entry in the ship’s log was 10 days prior to discovery, but no explanation was found for the absence of the crew and passengers. No one who left New York on that voyage was ever heard from again.

1898

Beginning of the Wilmington Insurrection of 1898, the only instance of a municipal government being overthrown in US history. Wilmington, North Carolina’s duly-elected city government was a mix of white and black politicians. The Southern Democrats would have no part of it. Two-thousand of them, all white men, stormed City Hall, expelled both the white and black city leaders, destroyed black-owned property, and killed dozens of people, if not hundreds. 

1907

Jesús García saves the entire town of Nacozari, in northern Mexico. He was a brakeman on a train that supplied the mining town. Realizing the train car loaded with dynamite was on fire, he powered the train at full speed, in reverse, a distance of three miles out of town before it exploded. Jesus, died in the explosion. After the heroic deed, they renamed the town Nacozari de Garcia. He was honored with a statue and streets in Mexico are named after him. Mexican railroad workers recognize him annually with Railroader’s Day.

1911

Many cities in the Midwestern United States break their record high and low temperatures on the same day. What’s now referred to by the National Weather Service as the Great Blue Norther, was a large area of low pressure that rampaged through states from Oklahoma to Illinois. Temperatures that were in the 70’s and 80’s farenhight dropped to the teens in a matter of hours. Both Oklahoma City and Springfield, Missouri set record high and low temperatures on the same day, and those records still stand today, more than 110 years later. The cold front was accompanied by rain, freezing rain, sleet and snow, sometimes within minutes of each other. One person in Chicago died of heat stroke the day before the cold front came through, and the next day, two people froze to death. If something like that were to happen today, it would instantly be blamed on “climate change” and environmentalists would be up in arms, while politicians declare the need for more control over our sources of power. The fact is, there has always been climate change. Since the Earth was created, the climate has been changing. It will continue to change. Certainly, we should be good stewards of our planet, and use the resources we have wisely. But it would be folly to think that the climate is static and man has control of it. If climate change is irrelevant, we should focus on how we’ll adapt, not on how to control what we can’t control.

1919

The first Palmer Raid is conducted on the second anniversary of the Russian Revolution. Over 10,000 suspected communists and anarchists are arrested in twenty-three different cities. Of the 10-thousand arrested, 35-hundred were held, and 556 people were expelled from the country. Jewish and Italian immigrants were particularly targeted, as well as labor activists. All of the twenty-three cities were in the United States of America. The Palmer Raids are named after U.S. Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer. Today, people with the same ideals as those who were arrested and deported are in charge of many of our government agencies, as well as top positions in the current administration. Our federal government has become more socialist over the last hundred years. Too many people are reliant on government hand-outs. The welfare system is where it started, and that system has grown to such a degree that fraud is rampant and it’s become a way of life for multiple generations of families. The latest example of socialism in our government would be student loan forgiveness. It’s clearly a re-distribution of wealth, but in this case, money is being taken from the working class to be given to the college educated, even though they may be making as much as 125-thousand dollars a year.

Ask not what your country….

1943

World War II: the Soviet Red Army recaptures Kiev. Before withdrawing, the Nazis destroy most of the city’s ancient buildings. Today, Ukraine is in turmoil once again, but this time the invading Russian troops aren’t there to force out Nazi’s, even though that was the justification for the invasion. Russian forces are having a much harder time of it against Ukrainian forces using weapons supplied by the west. The current invasion never quite made it to Kiev, and now Russian forces are pulling back, even in the east, where the bulk of the offensive originated. Ukrainian President Zelinski has shown himself to be a worthy leader, while Russia’s tyrant Putin finds himself in a very precarious position. Even his tightly controlled media is beginning to turn on him, reporting battlefield casualties, at the risk of their own freedom. But the truth can’t be hidden forever when funerals are being held all over Russia, and untrained people with antiquated equipment are being forced to serve as cannon fodder on the front lines. Putin still as one ace up his sleeve, though. Nuclear weapons. Should he decide to use them, and he’s already laid the ground work propaganda to justify it, I would hope that his own inner-circle would be wise enough to overthrow the dictator and end the fighting in Ukraine. Let’s hope it doesn’t have to come to that. 

1944

Franklin D. Roosevelt elected for a record fourth term as President of the United States of America. No American President had been elected to more than three terms prior to this. While there were many who believed F.D.R. had already been in office for too long, the Great Depression and another World War in Europe convinced many Americans that stability was an important factor in their vote. Roosevelt would die 11 weeks into his fourth term, and the call for term limits got louder, especially by Republicans who argued that too long of a time in office will lead to tyrannical rule. That led to the 22nd Amendment, limiting the president to two terms in office. Today, many people support term limits for our representatives in congress as well. While most, if not all newcomers to congress have great aspirations to improve the lives of their constituents, it seems the longer they’re in congress, the more they get caught up in the partisan bickering that leads nowhere. The only reason to not have term limits in congress is that we need people there who know the ropes, and the longer you’ve been serving, the better equipped you are to maneuver your way through the myriad rules and procedures of decorum. But term limits for congress doesn’t have to be as restrictive as those of the president. Perhaps a cap of five terms would generate a fresh supply of new faces and ideas, while keeping a healthy number of qualified leaders in the chambers. It’ll never happen, though. Why would congress create a law that limits their ability to become career politicians? Is there a way for the people’s voice to be heard? After all, our congressional representatives are supposed to represent us, the constituents. 

1965

Cuba and the United States formally agree to begin an airlift for Cubans who want to go to the United States. By 1971, 250,000 Cubans made use of this program. America still welcomes Cuban refugees, and many of them have made their way to Mexico to cross over America’s southern border, along with people from dozens of other countries from around the world. The Biden administration still won’t get a handle on the crisis. Instead, they proclaim the border is secure, while no top administration officials have even gone to the border to see for themselves. They don’t acknowledge the problem, because they don’t see it as a problem. Defending our nation’s borders is the responsibility of the federal government, and this administration has failed miserably to protect us from criminals, known terrorists and fentanyl mules parading across our southern border, causing confusion and distraction of our border patrol to the point where they are understaffed and over-extended. 

1969

National Educational Television (the predecessor to the Public Broadcasting Service) in the United States debuts the children’s television program Sesame Street. It’s now one of the longest running television shows in the world, helping millions of kids learn the basics about numbers, letters, words and social interaction. Jim Henson’s muppets are the stars of the show, with a cast of human characters that have remained fairly consistent over the years. Since it began, Sesame Street has compiled 205 Emmy Awards and 11 Grammys. Despite the success, there have been critics of the show. Hispanics and women had concerns about how they were depicted on the program, and in May of 1970, the state of Mississippi stopped showing the program because of it’s racially integrated cast of children, saying only that Mississippi was “not yet ready for (that).”

This week in 1970, during the Vietnam War, for the first time in five years, an entire week ends with no reports of American combat fatalities in Southeast Asia. Prior to that, Americans had to become accustomed to nightly death counts on the network news. This was the first time the realities of war were brought into living rooms via television on a daily basis. Needless to say, most of them didn’t like it, but it was the duty of the media to tell the story. Protests were common, anti-war sentiment was high throughout the conflict. A week without a body count was a welcome respite from the horror stories of the previous five years.

1975

The 729-foot-long freighter SS Edmund Fitzgerald sinks during a storm on Lake Superior, killing all 29 crew on board. Made famous by the song by Gordon Lightfoot, it is perhaps the most memorable of any ship to sink in peacetime. 

1975

United Nations Resolution 3379: United Nations General Assembly approves a resolution equating Zionism with racism. Zionism, or the belief that there should be a designated homeland for Jewish people, is not a race, and the resolution is repealed in December 1991 by Resolution 4686. Ironically, it was Israel that demanded the original resolution be repealed.

1983

United States Senate was bombed. No people are harmed, but an estimated $250,000 in damage is done. It was one of three bombs set off by the Armed Resistance Unit, a far-left radical group. The other two were at Fort McNair and the Washington Naval Yard. Six people were tried for the bombings, four of them were women. On his last day in office, President Bill Clinton commuted the sentences of two of them.

This week in 1989, the Cold War essentially ended with the Fall of the Berlin Wall. Communist-controlled East Germany opens checkpoints in the Berlin Wall allowing its citizens to travel to West Berlin. And boy, did they. The former checkpoints leading to the American, British and French sectors of Berlin were flooded with Berliners from the Soviet sector of Berlin and the rest of East Germany. West Berliners went in toward the wall to witness the event, and cross over to find relatives that had been trapped outside the Berlin wall since the 1960’s. Other Berliners took it upon themselves to begin the destruction of the wall with sledge hammers and pick axes. Having lived in West Berlin while the wall was still up, I believed that the fall of the Berlin Wall would be the result of the collapse of the Soviet Union, not the catalyst of it. I figured that Berlin would be the last outpost the U.S.S.R. would relinquish, not the first. Before the wall came down, Berlin was the most unique city in the world, with it being divided not only in half between the capitalist west and the communist east, but West Berlin was also divided into occupied sectors controlled by England, France and the United States. As a free state stuck inside a communist country, West Berlin was a great mix of people from many different places and cultures. I made friends from each sector of Berlin, if you count the occasional person from East Berlin who was able to get a phone call through to me to request a song while I was a radio personality there. People in West Berlin were free to travel to East Berlin, or travel across East Germany to reach West Germany, with the proper paperwork. While in the eastern parts, though, there were certain restrictions. We were not allowed to buy groceries, as the eastern bloc countries often experience food shortages. We were also not allowed to take pictures of certain buildings. Specifically any building that had the hammer and sickle emblem of the Soviet Union. We could buy food at a kiosk, and take pictures of Soviet soldiers taking part in changing of the guard ceremonies. At the same time, we were tasked with keeping an eye out for any large troop movements or any suspicious activity by Russian or East German soldiers. Berlin is much different now. It’s once again the capital of a reunited Germany. The fall of the Berlin wall created the environment for the rise of the European Union, the Euro currency, and Germany’s status as a leader in industry, technology and diplomacy among the European countries.

2000

Hillary Rodham Clinton is elected to the United States Senate, becoming the first First Lady to win public office in the United States. She was actually still was the First Lady when she was elected. She would eventually go on to serve as Secretary of State as well, and run unsuccessfully for the position her husband once held, President of the United States. Today, she’s still a leader of the Democrat party, and is often seen in interviews talking about politics. Some believe she’ll run for president again, assuming the Democrat party doesn’t want Joe Biden to run for re-election. Honestly, I don’t see a viable candidate for the Democrat nomination for President in 2024. Perhaps a centrist like Joe Mancin would like to run, but these days, you have to be more of an extremist to get the nomination from the left or the right. Centrists like myself don’t stand a chance, as without all the posturing and rhetoric by the parties, actual work might get done that would benefit all of the American people, instead of just the people who’s votes are trying to be bought. 

Phone and email liner

Well, the American election is this week. To those of us who live here, it’s just a bump in the road of a never-ending cycle of political advertising and propaganda. The day after the election, the analysis will begin anew, with new targets and new agendas and new criticism. Some people will be outraged by the results, some will be elated, and we’ll have to spend the next two years listening to them point out every little thing done by the person who just got elected. Good or bad, depending upon your news source. What I find interesting as a journalist and registered Independent is how both the liberals and conservatives have begun to really lump each other together under derogatory categories. Opposing candidates attempt to pidgeon-hole each other by using words like radical, extreme and dangerous in phrases that are carefully crafted to sound indisputable. The television ads are non-stop, as if by now people haven’t made up their minds already! In fact, millions of people have already voted, even before many of the head-to-head debates even took place. I understand the need for early voting, especially where populations are dense, but if you’re voting before you even hear what the candidates have to say, you’re voting for an ideology, not a candidate. You might not vote for the candidate who genuinely has your best interests at heart. On the contrary, the 24-hour news cycle is there to help us make up our minds way before early voting even begins. Depending upon your news source, you’ve already heard all you need to know. Slam dunk. Straight blue. Or slam dunk, straight red. From an Independent’s point of view, that’s a sad waste of the privilege of the power to vote. Candidates from the middle are often ignored by the major parties because they aren’t far enough to either side of the spectrum. But if your are on board with the committees agendia, is that how you say it? The plural of agenda? Anyway, there’s more than one agenda you have to fall in line with before the money will come your way, and with Political Action Committees and Super PAC’s, it’s the people with the money who control who’s message gets screamed at you the loudest. By that, I mean most often. Advertising is a matter of repetition. When it comes to politics, they only need you to believe it a little less than you believe the other thing. And only for a short period of time, because the day after the election, they start the process all over again. Even though it seems like there’s a flurry of messaging at the end, the mechanics of the messages were put into motion well in advance. I have an example of a television commercial that’s critical of the Republican candidate for Senate. I noticed it because of a source it cited on one of the claims it made. A few episodes ago, season 3 episode 7, I talked about a publication called the American Independent, and how it’s actually not independent at all, but a misnomer for a liberal organization trying to disguise itself as a legitimate news gathering organization. Here’s the audio of the commercial:

Right off the bat, they claim he’d harmed people, which is a terrible thing to say about a doctor who seems to be famous for helping people. Then they say he profited off of opioid addiction. Maybe he did. If you had investments in pharmaceutical companies, you may have. I’m sure many doctors have mutual funds that include drug manufacturers. That’s all you need to make the claim that he profited from opioid addiction. Then they claim that he’ll vote to cut Social Security and Medicare in the audio, as you heard. The video cites the source of that fact on Philadelphia’s Morning Answer in small type under the giant type that screams the claim. It looks official, but Philadelphia’s Morning Answer is a podcast by a guy in Philadelphia. He also talks about sports. And I’m not bustin’ on this guy. He might be a good journalist. So am I. But like me, he’s free to express his opinion, and once he does, someone else can quote him and make it sound like it’s a statement from a verified source. So, if some political action committee wants to quote me as saying that one Republican talked about looking at Social Security and Medicare, and none of the other Republicans agreed, feel free. The next claim, that he’ll raise taxes for working families, seem funny to me, as Republicans really aren’t known for raising taxes, but he may have admitted back in April, before he won the primary, that he supported some kind of tax. Again, the source was a podcast and the left-leaning Washington post. In very small type on the screen, even if you have a giant tv. But then the commercial claims he would cut taxes, but only for millionaires like himself. Exactly what kind of millionaire is Doctor Oz? Is his million dollars any different than the million dollars John Kerry has? What about Hillary Clinton’s million dollars, or George Bush’s million dollars? Since when did a million dollars become a political liability? It seems like you’re only allowed to become a millionaire after you become a politician in order to fit in. But the source of this claim, written on the screen in very small letters, was the American Independent. The very same organization that pays to have a newspaper-looking publication put in my mailbox every few months. Got another one today, in fact. I’ve already talked about this place and what they’re goals are. It’s an extreme left-wing organization disguised as a newspaper. So what they do is write whatever they want in the American Independent, then use it as a source in the television ads to make it look like a legitimate news source and all the credibility that comes with it. Not surprising, a political action committee paid for the ad, and I know the right wing also bends the truth as far as they possibly can. But I always try to read the small print on all kinds of television ads, and when I saw a publication I recently talked about on the program, it opened a can of worms for me. If I had a question about one of the sources cited on a political ad, what does it say about all of the other sources used on political ads? Today, media is such a loosely used term that any political ad can quote just about anybody and make it look indisputable, like it comes from a source you can trust. The problem is, they can get it to work, and they only have to make it look trustworthy for enough of us to believe it. Most people don’t have the time, or simply won’t take the time to dig a little deeper, so what ever’s on the surface will most likely stick. With any luck, it’ll stick until you reach the ballot box. After that, you’re on your own. 

The Listening Tube is written and produced by yours truly. Copyright 2022. Thank you for putting your ear to the Listening Tube. I’m your host, Bob Woodley for thou ad infinitum.