The Listening Tube with Bob Woodley Media Jive Talk and Politics from the Crayon Box.

SPEAKER_01 0:00

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, I'll have a chat with the founder of Crayon Box Politics, Carl Abel.

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Plus, we'll hear about Jive Talk in Not the Headlines.

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On last week's program, I did something I rarely do when I talked about sports. I'm not doing it again, but the subject does involve one of the subjects of last week's story, Bill Belichick. Coach Belichick is now leading the North Carolina Tar Heels, but what also draws attention to him is his 24-year-old girlfriend. Bill is closer to 100 than he is to 24, but okay. So when I saw a headline that said, Bill Belichick's 24-year-old girlfriend issues demand to U.S. government, I thought, hey, I just talked about that guy on my podcast. I'm sure being Bill's girlfriend opened some doors, but does she really have enough clout to make a demand of the United States government? No. Nor did she do what the headline in The Spun and shared by Yahoo News suggests. It turns out she's from Maine, and her father was a fisherman. She's worried about the fishing industry in her home state and the lifestyle and heritage of the fishing community in Maine. She asked President Trump to do what he can to help. Much of the misery brought upon by the fishing industry in Maine was brought about by overregulation by previous administrations. Knowing that President Trump is an advocate of eliminating regulations that inhibit commerce, the young lady, Jordan Hudson, may have seen this as a great opportunity to bring attention to the plight of the industry of commercial fishing in Maine. But the way the headline was written, you wouldn't know that.

SPEAKER_01 2:19

Similar, but different.

SPEAKER_00 2:28

ICE has arrested nearly 75,000 people with no criminal records, data shows. No, when it comes to general arrests, most people don't have criminal records the first time they're arrested. But the headline tries to make you believe that this is somehow an aberration. What you learn when you read the story is that 75,000 is one-third of the total arrested. Still a high percentage as compared to the average. The data the story cites is immigration and customs enforcement arrests from the day of Trump's inauguration until October 15th. So that no matter how you feel about it, it's because of Donald Trump. The story describes the data as confirming that nearly a third of the people arrested by ICE agents were not the target of the initial action. The story goes out of its way to make it clear that the administration said they were only going after the worst of the worst. Clearly, if you have no criminal history, you're not so bad. The story never uses the words illegal alien, nor the more promoted term undocumented immigrant. The story only uses the term immigrant when referring to the people ICE targeted because of the specific person and who were not targeted but are still here illegally. The article provides no distinction between them and those immigrants who are in the United States legally. The story is literally written to lead you to believe that ICE agents are arresting legal immigrants. What the data the story cites actually tells us is that for every two illegal aliens that ICE looks for and finds, they also find one illegal alien they weren't looking for. NBC wants you to think that's a bad thing. So does the Associated Press. A story with the headline, Records Reviewed by AP detail online monitoring, arrests in New Orleans immigration crackdown. So, like NBC, they get data and then interpret it in a way that pushes an agenda, with a headline that makes you suspicious of what our immigration officials are doing. They have a mandate to keep our borders secure and make sure everyone who's in the country is allowed to be here. But the media and the left make it seem like they're doing something wrong and violating the Constitution and acting like Nazis. But they're doing what we pay them to do. The AP aims to create doubt. The headline itself is somewhat self-serving, proclaiming that the AP looked at records and discovered the obvious. The government monitors online activity, and they make arrests of people who aren't supposed to be here. That really isn't news. But the headline wasn't the reason for the story. The reason for the story was to criticize the administration's efforts to rid the United States of illegal immigrants, millions of which were allowed in by the Biden administration, straining our housing, education, and health care services and raising prices for American citizens. The AP also used the same argument as NBC and other legacy media that not all of those arrested by immigration officials have criminal records. Sure, they were the targets, but when the Democrats let millions of illegal immigrants into the country, you're sure to find more of them than what you planned. But this AP story goes further, pointing out that the government is monitoring social media sites to keep an eye on anti-ICE activity, as if ICE is doing something illegal. They quote local officials as complaining that the federal guys aren't sharing information about their plans and activities. Yeah, no shit, Dick Tracy. Why would they tell you anything if you're complaining to the press about not being told anything? You'll be the first one to blow their cover, especially if you're already accusing the feds of targeting people based on having brown skin. A racist politician accusing immigration agents of being racist. Classic left maneuver. Accuse the opponent of what you're doing. The Associated Press is sure to give voice to those who promote their agenda. They quote Rachel Tabor, whose organization shares reports and videos of immigration activities as saying they can monitor me all they want. We are not doing anything illegal. Well, neither is the government. Beth Davis, a spokesman for another New Orleans group that instigates federal operations for the joy of it, says that they feel threatened by a bunch of community organizers that have nothing other than phones and whistles, blows my mind. Beth should be thankful that she lives in a country where her mind isn't blown by a 38-caliber bullet passing through her skull after it passed through the whistle in her mouth. This week in 1996, the Oakland, California School Board passes a resolution officially declaring evonics. Originally described in 1973 as a language or dialect. I'm going to look that up.

SPEAKER_01 8:44

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

SPEAKER_03 8:48

You can't handle the truth.

SPEAKER_00 8:53

Since then, the definition has changed a bit. Oxford language calls ebonyx a combination of ebony and phonics, American black English regarded as a language in its own right rather than as a dialect of standard English. Merriam-Webster calls it African American English, but also points out that the word ebonyx is plural in form but singular in construction. Britannica, which is not a dictionary but an encyclopedia, goes a bit deeper into the origins of Ebonics, pointing out that it has many similarities to American Southern English. Some examples are double negatives, i.e., I ain't seen none, as well as a lack of subject-verb agreement, as in he do and where he is. There are other examples as well, but many are moot simply because of the lack of slang words in the examples. Slang words are constantly changing among all languages and dialects. So six seven.

SPEAKER_02 10:10

Can I get you something? Take me up. I'm sorry, I don't understand. Cutty stay can't hang.

SPEAKER_01 10:21

Oh, Stewart is. I speak judgment. Oh, good. He said that he's in great pain and he wants to know if you can help him.

SPEAKER_02 10:30

All right, would you tell him to just relax and I'll be back as soon as I can with some medicine?

SPEAKER_01 10:37

Just hang those blood. Sugar to catch up and rebell out a minute.

SPEAKER_02 10:41

What it is, big mama. My mama raised no duck. It's a duck, a wrap. Jump to wanna help.

SPEAKER_01 10:54

Java's dude don't got no brands in it. The listening tube will return at the speed of sound. Send email to thelistening tube at outlook.com.

SPEAKER_00 11:12

My guest this week knows how to find the information we could all use to help us make more informed decisions about who we support in the voting booth. He tells me he's creating a place to get it. Carl Abel spent some time with me in the listening tube. Let me begin by saying I never met a Marine I didn't like. So don't screw it up, okay?

SPEAKER_03 11:37

Because I got I got a really long, I got a very long streak going here.

SPEAKER_00 11:43

So uh now how long was your active duty in the Marine Corps? I did 20 years in the Marine Corps. Actually, 20 years and 30 days. 20 years and 30 days. Now you started crayon box politics after retiring. Was that after you retired from the Marine Corps?

SPEAKER_03 12:01

Well, I started the podcast uh before I got retired from the Marine Corps and spent several years kind of towing the line of what I could and couldn't do when it came to political commentary. But uh I I really went full bore once I retired from the Marine Corps. So uh we've been officially an LLC since August, but officially raring to go on the political commentary stuff since about January of this this year.

SPEAKER_00 12:28

So is the name Crayon Box politics meant to establish an image of a diverse collective? Well, what what's what's the inspiration for the name?

SPEAKER_03 12:40

I had watched a video to answer your question. The short answer is yes. It's intended to identify or call out the fact that we are not just the red and the blue that the media would like us to identify as a Democrat or Republican. Reality is that we are a spectrum uh with regards to policy and policy understanding, policy decisions. So I got all of that from when I watched a YouTube video by um a Filipino uh creator who talked about Philippine politics as a box of crayons and how it's multicolored and all the all the different candidates wear their favorite colors. So you wind up with this rainbow of candidates that's on the field. But I also wanted to tie it into my Marine Corps career, specifically kind of call out the fact that I'm a Marine, which is tied to the a joke that was made by um some Air Force individuals back when I was a recruiter, which is that Marines eat crayons because we're not that smart. So I naturally took that insult and I turned it into a positive and said, hey, guess what? Yep, we eat crayons. They're they're delicious, and my favorite flavor is blue. Um, hence how we got to crayon box politics, because I wanted to bring all of that together in order to um provide just a one-stop shop of, you know, this is what what politics should be and it should not be an us versus them uh scenario.

SPEAKER_00 14:08

So then what is the mission of crayon box politics?

SPEAKER_03 14:12

The the mission, our mission is um it's it's morphed over time. Uh initially the mission was just to get my name and my my political philosophies out there into uh the the nether, so to speak, because I do have a desire to run for office. But over time, what I've found is that as I've developed these points of view and as I've I've done the research, I've discovered that we as Americans aren't very smart in the way that our government works. Uh, we're also not very smart in the the data that is coming out of our government. And it's not it's not a hit on us. Like we're not stupid, we're just not smart in it. And the reason for that is because of the fact that the government data is on various different sites. And in order to get a solid understanding of what is going on uh in the United States with regards to policies and politics, you have to know exactly where to search, what to search for, what keyword to find, and you have to know, depending on your state, where you're going and what type of bills are what and the definitions and all that good stuff. So, what the mission of Crambox Politics is now is to be that civic data point to allow for uh the ingesting of all of these different data sources and make it a one-stop shop for Americans to go to in order to find out who their senator is, whether or not their senator is a bipartisan voter, or if they are more of a scribble all over the coloring page type of representative. Do they represent their district or do they not? What does this bill actually say in layman's terms? Because I don't know if you've ever read a bill. These bills are beyond belief complicated. And even the the representatives and the senators that write them have no idea what they say 90% of the time. So we are in the process of using Crambox Politics to develop an artificially artificial intelligence-centered platform that's going to allow for the average Americans to run searches and to get the information and easily digestible, easily understood, something that's written at American level and is accessible to everyone. Shouldn't the media be doing that? Yes and no, but if you I mean, if you look at our media, right, and you go all the way back to the birth of our nation, um, media outlets have generally aligned with a specific electorate or a specific group of voters. There was a time in our history where the party, each individual political party had its own newspaper and they published their ballots in the newspaper. And that's how you would get your ballot. You would get it, you pull it out of a newspaper, you'd write, you check off who you're voting for, and then you'd walk that down to the polling place. And in some instances, you'd get beat up for it because you had the wrong color paper in your hand. The reality is that our media is always going to have a bias towards one candidate or another. You're not going to have that sort of unbiased point of view type situation. I mean, even NPR, which strives for the telling the story as dry as possible to make it seem like I don't care about it. Like that, those, even those organizations, it's the way that they tell the stories impact how the viewer um actually gets that information. What Cranbox Politics is doing is we're not telling a story so much as we are giving the raw data and the raw information to the public.

SPEAKER_00 18:00

Was there a single occurrence that inspired you to do this, or was it a collection of issues over a long period of time?

SPEAKER_03 18:08

Yeah, so I've wanted to be a politician since I can remember. I mean, I used to tell my grandmother that I was going to be president one day. And as I grew, sometimes those childish ideas, those childish desires, they go away as you grow older. But for me, what happened is that that desire to be president morphed into a desire to be politically active. Because what I've seen throughout my time in the Marine Corps and what I've seen through my travels is that there is a problem in the way that our policies are written. There's a problem in the way that our laws are enacted that creates an imbalance. And there's also this tendency for Americans to become disassociated with the process. And so I would say that over my time in the Marine Corps, over my travels, over my experiences, I have developed and honed that desire to be president into a desire to be politically active.

SPEAKER_00 19:08

So you're you focus a lot on the data rather than the stories that follow the data. So from your point of view, then, what are the rest of us missing when it comes to the data that that isn't being explained to us by other sources? We hear the news, but you know the data behind the news. So what what is the news not telling us about that data?

SPEAKER_03 19:37

The short answer is it depends on on your news source. And it depends on how that news is or how that story is being told, right? It's it's not a one-stop, like, hey, the media isn't telling us about X, Y, and Z. But what they're not saying is they're not, the news isn't out there reading the big beautiful bill. Um, they're out there telling you the highlights and the things that either A on the Democrat side are bad or B on the Republican side are good. So you're not really getting that full, full feel for it. And I use the Big Beautiful bill because um Representative Marjorie Taylor Green out of Georgia voted for this bill in the House. And then when it gets to got to the Senate, after she had already cast her vote in favor of it, she decides to go ahead and read it and discovered that there is a moratorium on the state's ability to enact artificial intelligence regulations. And she goes, What had I known about this, I wouldn't have voted for it. Well, Miss Green, if you voted for it, you should have read it. I think that those are those are the things that we need to be able to have that ability too, right? And I go back to the data point. The reason that Crambox Politics is working to not tell a story with the data is because I don't want to influence how you see what is being said or what is being written or what is being processed. I want to give you the tools to use your critical, and I'm not talking you specifically, but in general. I I want to give you guys, you us, the Americans, the tools to utilize our critical thinking skills in order to make the decision whether or not this is good or this is bad, because everyone has a different situation, everyone has a different walk in life, everyone has different experiences. So I'm not going to tell you how to think about something. I want you to know that it's there so you have it to think about.

SPEAKER_00 21:41

Well, Carl, I do uh I kind of do the same thing on this program, except I explain to people why the stories were written the way they were written, and get, you know, behind the message that they're trying to send rather than just giving us the raw information and And letting us make up our own minds about it. Is there so much information out there about our government that people have simply given up on trying to follow all of it?

SPEAKER_03 22:14

There's, I mean, there's a ton of information that that's available to us. Uh, there's just in in Congress alone, the Library of Congress, the the amount of data that exists, the ability to find a bill that's currently been introduced in the House and identify, you know, hey, this is a really good bill. And then you look back at it and you can see that iterations of those bills have been introduced over the last three, four, five decades. And they just sat there. The understanding of what that process looks like. I mean, Schoolhouse Rock did a great, a great job of teaching us, you know, I'm just a bill, just an ordinary bill. But what they didn't teach us is, you know, what goes into writing a bill? Um, what happens if a bill makes it into the house but doesn't get to the Senate? What if a bill gets introduced but is never voted on? How many committees does it go through? What is that process? Why does it go to these committees? All of those things are available to us with an understanding of what website to go to, what API to call, what search terms to use when you're pulling this information. So the the knowledge is there. It's just a matter of figuring out how to tap into it.

SPEAKER_00 23:31

Do you recall what the bill was in the schoolhouse rock episode of I'm Just a Bill? I don't. I really don't. You got me there. Well, it was all school buses must stop at railroad tracks.

SPEAKER_03 23:53

I didn't know that. How did I not know that?

SPEAKER_00 23:55

That's so what data do you look for when you want to know what's really going on?

SPEAKER_03 24:04

Um, it depends on, again, a number of things. But for me specifically, I'm looking at my representatives. So my senator, my congressman, uh, if it's at the federal level, if it's at the state level, I'm looking at my state assemblyman, my state senator, I'm looking at my municipal leaders, and I'm looking at how they voted on a specific topic. And I I do that because my belief is that we have a system of governance that feels polarized and feels tense because we the voters have failed to do our due diligence. And so I put that on on me, right? If I'm gonna say, hey, it's the voter's fault, I'm a voter, therefore those fingers are pointing at me too. Mind you, I have the luxury of being retired, so I have the ability to follow this stuff every day. But I'm looking at my representatives, the people that I elected into office, because I want to hold them accountable. But I'm also looking at, you know, hey, this bill that's running through the through through Congress right now or through the state assembly right now, what impact is that going to have, not just on me, but also my my community, right? Because a lot of Americans, we do this thing where if it doesn't affect me, it doesn't matter. But if you look at how does this affect my community, and you look at it from that perspective, you start to see that those things that don't necessarily affect you actually do affect you. You just haven't thought about that all the way through. And so I look at how those things are going to affect us. And then what I'll do is from that point of view, I'll take that and I'll look at my representatives and I'll be like, hey, you know what? My representative is passing this bill without reading it. Therefore, they don't really care about their seat, they just care about the money. So next election cycle, they're out, right? So that that's that's what I look for um when I'm looking for that stuff. But a lot of that depth and scope will change depending on the information that I'm trying to glean from the data that's available.

SPEAKER_00 26:04

If I may ask, uh from where are you speaking to me today?

SPEAKER_03 26:09

I am speaking to you from uh the lovely Maysville, North Carolina.

SPEAKER_00 26:14

And you touched on this already a little bit, but if the federal government data is anything like federal legislation, it's often not easy to understand and may contain unintended consequences or intended consequences disguised as something other than what it appears to be. Bills often have catchy names that describe something other than what's actually in it. Uh the Affordable Care Act would be an example. It is not affordable. The Inflation Reduction Act didn't reduce inflation, and the big beautiful bill is vague and won't go into effect until January. What are some steps interested people could take to help sift through the clouds and get to the substance of an issue that they might want to consider when deciding how to vote?

SPEAKER_03 27:11

It's a complex question because the the short answer is to say just read, right? But when you have a 3,000-page document, you're not going to want to read that whole thing. And so what I'd say is pay attention. Instead of the highlights, actually go to Congress.gov. Um, and if you have the time, pull that pull that bill down and actually read it. If you don't have the time, or if you're someone who is more technologically forward, um, I would say pull that bill down and throw it into a large language model AI for it to pick apart. And then what you can do is you can ask the AI, hey, tell me what this bill does for X, Y, or Z. And it will go find those snippets and create those sources. So again, that's why we're creating the Archivist, which is that AI for word platform, is because artificial intelligence has a very, very good capability when it comes to providing unbiased sourced reviews of DDF material. So you're able, it just it does not go out and search for anything else. You can write your prompt the way that you want it to, and you can make sure that everything is set. But AI has that ability. Uh, and so what I would say is if you're short for time, but you want to know what's going on, make that effort to at least do a copy and paste. If you're short for time and you really just you're not tech savvy, well, that's fine because there's someone in your life that is not short for time or that is so narrow, laser focused on some of these issues, talk to them. Which brings me to like my final point on this matter is you don't necessarily have to read the data. You just have to talk, right? And if you find people to talk to that are opposing to your views or that are somehow tied into it, um, what you'll find is that you, just through these conversations, will become more informed and better capable of making a decision on election day.

SPEAKER_00 29:17

I I it's it's a great idea to talk to other people. And I try to do that very often. What I sometimes find happening is that you have a better chance of speaking with strangers than you do with people you already know. Because if someone already knows you and their political philosophies are opposite yours, they may not want to talk to you. How do you break down those walls and actually reestablish uh uh civilized political discourse?

SPEAKER_03 29:54

I wish I had an answer to that, right? I am one of those individuals who is within my inner circle, I'm very opinionated and I'm very loud and I'm very vocal about the bills and the things that I think are are should be a certain way. Some of my family is is not in that same fashion. My own father and I butt heads all the time over politics. But what I'll say is even those short encounters are enough to develop an understanding of one, the other side of the argument, but also two, uh, an understanding of the argument overall, um, as far as what it means and what those topics are. For me, I I will talk to strangers, I will talk to my family members. It doesn't matter because that's just how I'm wired. And I think that I can blame the Marine Corps for that because you change duty stations every three years and you you're kind of forced to be wired in the mantra of I'm gonna go find friends. It it's there. The trick of the trade in it is getting out from behind our computers or our phones uh and actually going out and talking to people.

SPEAKER_00 31:07

That brings me to a question about people who are apolitical. Are they missing out on the opportunity to contribute or are they on the are they on the more advantaged side of the aisle when it comes to they don't have to care about this stuff?

SPEAKER_03 31:30

So, personal anecdote here saying that you're apolitical is a cop-out. Uh, saying that you're not into politics is a cop-out. And I say that because everything that we do in life is directly tied to politics, because politics is the debate over policy. And policy is what drives everything that we do in a law-abiding society. For us to say, hey, you know, I'm not that into politics, or politics doesn't matter to me because I don't have a voice, well, you're wrong. I mean, Donald Trump won the popular vote in this past the 2024 election by 2 million votes. There were 22 million voters who were on the registered rolls that did not take part in the election in 2024. Those voices were not heard. And because they were not heard, we'll never know how that could have affected the outcome of the elections. The biggest issue that we have is these people that say, Oh, I'm not political, I'm a political. Well, guess what? You need to get involved because if you're not going to get involved, you're gonna wind up with an issue with one policy or another and wonder how that happened. And the answer is it happened because you weren't paying attention when it got passed. Same way that we have Americans that know everything about their quarterback, we should have Americans that know everything about who is representing them in their government.

SPEAKER_00 32:53

To me, it seems like there is a big difference between the transparency of the Biden administration and the transparency of the Trump administration. That's on the surface, what I see in the media. But you dig deeper. What about the data made available? Is there a comparison to be made there?

SPEAKER_03 33:15

Yes. Under the Biden administration and the Trump 1.0 administration and everyone before that, right? What we saw is that there were there were specific norms of publish publishing data and publishing information. And those norms came from independent agencies that were not governed or run by a specific political interest. And they provided an insight into how one, how our economy was doing, how jobs, how the job market was faring, uh, how certain policies were impacting the market in the economy. Um, and they allowed us to have that government insight. So this is what the government sees on a daily basis. What has been occurring under this current administration is that a lot of those data points are starting to go away and not be reported, despite the fact that it's a congressional mandate that they are reported. So what occurs is I don't have the access to the jobs data from October and November. Uh, I don't have the access to uh the inflation data that I would normally have. Um and it's because of the fact that these reports are getting um postponed, they're getting canceled, or they're getting buried under bureaucratic nonsense in order to keep it that information away from the public. Um and it's generally when it's associated with negative reviews or negative aspects that that data isn't provided back to the public.

SPEAKER_00 34:47

Is there specific data you can cite as an example or the lack thereof?

SPEAKER_03 34:54

Well the the biggest one I mentioned it early was was the jobs reports. Um jobs reports just aren't coming through on the regular basis like they used to. Matter of fact, Donald Trump fired his um previous labor, I forgot the the exact billet, but she was responsible for publishing um the Bureau of Labor Statistics jobs report every single month and every single quarter. And when it was reported that there was a just a massive discrepancy between the June report and the quarterly report, um, and there was an adjustment made, Donald Trump fired her. And as a result, he put in someone who was favorable to Trump. Well, since then, what we've what what I've been able to view is the data is getting less and less accurate because it's covering down on on less and less um or a smaller and smaller group uh uh or area or sector of the economy. Um, and so as a result, I'm I'm unable to actually get the raw data. So I have to I have to rely on private organizations um like the Rand Institute um or the Cato Institute in order to get that data, right? And ironically, Cato is very right-leaning conservative uh with their their company's agenda, but I have to rely on them to pull the data, which makes it far less, it makes it something for me, is far less um reliable than something that is coming directly from the mouth of the horse, so to speak.

SPEAKER_00 36:39

Well, now uh I would point out that even under the Biden administration, most of the jobs data had to be revised down uh at a later time because they were all overreported. So maybe this lady who was in charge deserved to be fired during the Biden administration, but it never happened. Uh it happened now, and maybe the new guy is just having trouble, you know, getting up to speed. I'm I don't know. I'm not going to opine about that. But a lot of government data was delayed because of the government shutdown. Did it matter?

SPEAKER_03 37:17

To answer that question is that your monthly jobs reports always get revised down. And that's because you your month is a snapshot in time, and you have to you take that with a grain of salt. Your quarterly snapshots are where they go, hey, you know what, this really didn't happen there. We have to move some of these numbers around. And that's historically, that's just the way that it happens with the way that they collect the information. And so as a result, um, you're always going to get those shifts. But the difference between the Biden administration and the Trump 2.0 administration is that those shifts and that that advice that that revising down of the numbers was made public, right? It was made so that the people could see it. Now we don't even get that kind of data. So we can't tell whether or not the information that we're getting from the government is valid and true because the government isn't revising itself. The government isn't providing that clarity to say, you know what, we got this information wrong, but here it is. It's more accurate now.

SPEAKER_00 38:23

And what uh effect did the government shutdown have on the on the data? A lot of it was delayed. Did it matter? Um, a lot of it was delayed, yes.

SPEAKER_03 38:35

Uh but the it matters for a lot of things. Um, and we can put the blame on the the government shutdown as far as why we didn't get the numbers for October and why we didn't get the numbers for November. At the end of the day, those numbers still matter. And even if I don't get them on in October or November, I at least expect to see them when that person comes back into the job. And that's the, I mean, that's the expectation. But we haven't seen that. And matter of fact, we've seen more tightening down and doubling down on the Trump administration's preservation and uh of those numbers and keeping them close at heart rather than providing them to the public. Because if it looks bad on the administration, they don't want it out there.

SPEAKER_00 39:19

What are you keeping your eye on right now?

SPEAKER_03 39:24

I am keeping my eye on the 2026 election season right now. I have a hope that we get some balance between the legislative and the executive branch, but I also have a distinct concern. And that concern comes in the form of what goes around comes around, so to speak. So while this administration has been blowing through political norms and finding loopholes, it's only smart to think that the the incoming president in 2028 is going to do similar actions. And if it is a Democrat, we could wind up seeing us shift all the way to the left and doing things that we never thought America would do all because those norms were broken under Trump 2.0. Um, so I'm watching that with concern and hoping that the pendulum doesn't swing too far left and it gives us the ability to reset ourselves politically.

SPEAKER_00 40:23

You can check out more about crayonboxpolitics at crayonboxpolitics.com. Thanks to Carl Abel for spending some time in the listening tube. The listening tube is written and produced by yours truly, copyright 2025. Thank you for putting your ear to the listening tube. Shout out to some new places tuning in. Thanks for listening. Follow the listening tube at thelisteningtube.com. I'm your host, Bob Woodley, for Val at Infinitum.