Season 7, Episode 4 December 10, 2023

On this episode, we'll hear about the Toledo War, Lebensborn babies, and a secret spy satellite.  Not the Headlines talks about a budget cut in San Francisco and a Philadelphia identity crisis.  The Epilogue explores Blame.

Transcript

Hello!  Thank you for putting your ear to the Listening Tube!  I’m your host, Bob Woodley.  The gold bars in my closet are made of soap!  On this episode, we’ll hear about the first Protestant Christian, a battle over Toledo, and blame….but first, (Not the Headlines!).

A story from TV station KTVU in northern California points out that the mayor of San Francisco has recently called for mid-year budget cuts of 75 million dollars.  They quote the mayor as saying,  "The reductions leave intact basic city services and priorities so we can continue making progress on hiring police officers, expanding shelter beds, advancing behavioral health initiatives, and cleaning up our streets."  It seems like the mayor has some clear-cut goals, and anything else is unnecessary.  Basic city services are non-negotiable.  You gotta keep the streets paved and the traffic lights on.  Hiring more police officers could be a problem, as the “defund the police” movement is still stinging many of the cities that believed such foolishness and did so.  Expanding shelter beds is a result of the Biden administration’s unwillingness to control illegal immigration along the country’s southern border.  In hindsight, it would have been more economical to control the border before you had to buy more beds.  As far as advancing behavioral health initiatives go, well, that’s a pretty vague phrase.  Also, I’m not sure it’s the responsibility of any municipal government to pay for such things, as I’m not clear on what behavioral health initiatives are, or what they hope to accomplish.  The American Medical Association says behavioral health generally refers to mental health and substance use disorders, life stressors and crises, and stress-related physical symptoms.  What could have gone wrong in San Francisco to create the need for the city to pay for such services?   Cleaning up the streets sounds to me like a basic city service, but the mayor of San Francisco has found herself having to cut 75-million dollars from the budget to pay for it.  Then again, maybe the streets of San Francisco are dirtier than the streets in your town.  After all, homelessness is rampant because of the cost of real estate in the city by the bay.  Oh, wait, the correct description has been changed to the unhoused, which my word processor tells me isn’t even a word.  I’ve seen the terms homeless and unhoused use by the Associated Press, so even they don’t know what to call it anymore.  Anyway, getting back to San Francisco, the streets may be dirtier than most because of the encampments of those who have nowhere to live.  Tents lining the sidewalks in certain neighborhoods.  When I say certain neighborhoods, I’m referring to those level enough to pitch a tent.  There’s nowhere to go to the bathroom, nowhere to get rid of the trash, except the street next to the sidewalk where you live.  Yes, it may be much more expensive to clean the streets of San Francisco than it would be where you live.  So much more that other things had to be cut from the budget.  
The story notes some positives of the cuts, other than the services we’ve already heard about.  There will be no layoffs.  Some vacant job positions won’t be filled (That’s right, Helen, you’re not going to get anyone to help you even though Larry said you would), and some programs that haven’t started will be delayed or eliminated.  The money’s that were earmarked for those programs will be diverted to existing programs.  
One of the programs being cut is the office in charge of implementing reparations for black residents of San Francisco.  In case you’re not familiar, a KTVU story from March of this year tells how San Francisco supervisors backed reparations, but deciding on what they should be was still being debated.  On the table is a lump-sum payment of 5-million dollars to every eligible person.  But wait, there’s more!  Also under consideration is a guaranteed income of at least 97-thousand dollars a year, which would go on to your heirs for 250 years, the elimination of personal debt, and the ability to buy a condo that was once public housing but has since been fixed up...for the price of one dollar.
All great ideas if you’re one of the eligible persons, not such a great idea if you’re one of the persons who will be paying for it.  But, I guess it doesn’t matter anymore, as without an office for implementing the reparations, there won’t be any.  There was never a plan to pay for it anyway.  Even the committee that made the recommendations said they weren’t responsible for figuring out how to pay for it, and apparently, nobody else was, either.  Was the San Francisco mint just supposed to stamp out some extra Susan B. Anthony’s?  
What’s telling is how the liberal government dangles the possibility of reparations over society without any way to pay for it except to print more money, which leads to higher inflation, which is how we got to where we are right now in the first place.  All that covid money flying around did more damage than good.  In the midst of it came the George Floyd death, Black Lives Matter, Defund the Police, and the promise of reparations and student loan forgiveness.  While George Floyd is still dead, the man who was convicted of killing him has been stabbed in prison, Black Lives Matter spent millions on Southern California real estate for it’s leaders and demanded police departments be defunded while a New England chapter is now endorsing Donald Trump for president, and nobody got anything from reparations or student loan forgiveness.  The latter two of which require taxpayer money to fund.  
So, what it looks like now is the end result of a big scam.  A scam perpetuated by liberal city leaders with the help of state and federal support, to use the George Floyd tragedy to create a frenzy that resulted in chaos, poverty, inflation, and homelessness, all the while promising debt relief and reparations, but ultimately producing nothing.  No debt forgiveness, only more debt.  No reparations, only a deeper hole from which to climb out if you can.  And that climb keeps getting harder.  When we lower education standards for colored people, we cheat them out of the education needed to operate in today’s world.  It only leads to minorities falling further behind, unable to contribute in the workplace, and more reliant on government subsidies.  Thus insuring who rely on the government will continue to vote for those who promise to subsidize their existence.  Even though the promises continue to come up empty.  It almost seems like it was part of the plan all along.  Make promises you know you can’t keep, then create the environment that justifies cutting from the budget that which you never planned to fund anyway.  Meanwhile, everyone suffers for the sake of an unrealistic ideal disguised as fair and equitable.  The only thing equitable about it is the misery it spreads.

Near the other coast of the United States, the city of Philadelphia is also dealing with problems created by the current economic and social climate.  So, in order to help reduce crime, the city has enacted a ban on ski masks, but only in certain places.  The list of places where a ski mask cannot be worn includes public spaces, parks, schools, public transportation or city-owned buildings.  Yahoo News shared a story by the Hill that says only two of the 15 votes were against the measure.  The penalty is a 250 dollar fine.  But, it you wear one during a crime, the fine jumps to two-thousand dollars.  That’s a pretty expensive fashion choice!  It’s like committing a crime in Beverly Hills with a gun that doesn’t match your shoes!  If you think that was funny, wait until you hear this sentence from the story:   “Ski masks and other face-covering masks are a popular fashion statement, especially among young Black men in the city, raising concerns that a ban could further criminalize daily life.”
So, covering your face is a fashion statement.  Well, they say fashion is cyclical.  I guess the young black men in Philadelphia are bringing back the seductive look of slave women in ancient Persian harems, with their nose and lips covered so that they may seduce you only with the depth of the soul in their eyes.  After all, if there’s one thing young black men in Philadelphia have in common it’s that their eyes are like two pools, with the type of pool reflected in the color of the iris.  And as you look into them, you wonder if there are any frogs in there, and if there are, will they cause any brain damage.  And the answer is yes, there are frogs jumping around inside the head of one Philadelphia council member who said she could not in  “good conscience vote for something that I feel criminalizes and marginalizes young Black men.”  I kinda feel like “somebody needs to tell her…”
It’s not a fashion statement, lady.  If they were wearing old-fashioned hockey masks, a la Jason from that one movie, would that be a fashion statement, too?  
“Tonight on ‘Urban Fashion’!  The new concert craze of attaching razor blades to your clothes!”  There’s blood everywhere, but it’s just a fashion statement.  And because it’s a fashion statement of young black men in Philadelphia, you shouldn’t criminalize it.
The Philadelphia police have a different take on it.  They say criminals are wearing ski masks to disguise their identities while committing crimes, making it nearly impossible to identify them with enough certainty to hold up in court.  There was a time, not too long ago, that wearing a mask of any type in public drew curiosity.  Regardless of the reason for it, wearing a mask in public wasn’t common until we were forced to wear masks by mandate of the government and private institutions.  The riots of the summer of 2020 we filled with law-breakers who were dutifully wearing masks to protect their fellow rioters from contracting Covid-19.  While Covid-19 is mostly behind us, there are some who still prefer to protect themselves with a medical-type mask.  We’re certainly far enough from the pandemic that wearing a ski mask when it isn’t cold out is probably a sign that somebody doesn’t want to get identified while doing something illegal.  The story says a lawyer for the ACLU claimed there was no evidence that ski masks caused or encouraged violence.  I’m sure gun advocates were happy to hear that argument.  Because neither guns nor ski masks cause or encourage violence, only the ability to use them does.  But both are associated with and are often accessories to crimes.  Now, you might be thinking, “But Bob, if they can outlaw ski masks, why shouldn’t they outlaw guns?”  Well, the only way you can defend yourself with a ski mask is when you’re doing something illegal.  The same ACLU statement went on to say that, “Giving police the authority to stop civilians without suspicion of unlawful activity is unconstitutional.”  That statement is 100 percent correct.  What the ACLU fails to recognize is that wearing a ski mask in Philadelphia when it’s not cold out is suspicious!  You are obviously trying to conceal your identity!
Imagine two cops sitting a squad car.  They’re looking across the street at a convenience store.  One of them says, “Is that guy skiing?”  
and the other cop says, “No.”
“Huh.” says the first cop.  “I wonder why he’s wearing a ski mask into that 7-11.”
The other cop says, “I’ll be he’s got pretty eyes.”
Sounds ridiculous, doesn’t it?  It’s about as ridiculous saying young black men are being criminalized for a fashion statement.  Hiding your identity is not a fashion statement.  Just ask Michael Jackson.  Michael was once questioned by police in Simi Valley, California when a man wearing a disguise, accompanied by a child, was reported by a jewelry store there.  It turned out to be the one and only Michael Jackson, who was briefly taken into custody where the police sat him down real nice and explained to him that it was against the law to disguise your identity in Simi Valley.  And now it’s against the law in Philadelphia, too.

Let’s Go Back liner

1520
Martin Luther burns his copy of the papal bull Exsurge Domine.   Luther is credited for starting the first Christian religion other than Catholicism.  The Lutheran Church.  After he burns his copy of the document that was a rebuttal to his 93 Theses that criticized the teachings and administration of the Pope’s domain.  The Pope thought Exurge Domine would bring Luther back into the fold.  Instead, he was excommunicated the following year.  Today, there are all kinds of Christian religions; Lutheran, Baptist, Mennonite, Reformist.  It was Martin Luther who first questioned the need for the church itself as an organized entity.  He found more wisdom in the Holy Scripture than in what would become the Vatican was preaching.   According to World History dot org, the phrase, “the just shall live by faith” is the one that opened his eyes to a different way in which one could worship and someday enter the kingdom of Heaven.  

1836
The Toledo War unofficially ends.  Before the Gaza Strip, which has been in the news a lot lately, there was the Toledo Strip.  I think I may have found the origin of the Ohio State/Michigan college football rivalry.  Because of the state of map making in the 1700’s, a border dispute arose in the 1800’s.  The border between Ohio and Michigan, according to the Northwest Ordinance of 1787, is a line running on an east-west line through the southerly bend or extreme of Lake Michigan until it intersects with Lake Erie.   The problem, as told in a story on History dot com, is that the Lake Michigan actually extended south a few miles more than was shown on the map.  The dispute became official in 1803, when Ohio became a State.  The State Constitution had a measure specifically claiming the territory, which is a narrow strip of land stretching from Lake Erie to what today is the border of Indiana, regardless of what any future surveys of the area might show.  And, as luck would have it, two surveys done in the 1810’s had conflicting results. 
By the 1820’s, the Michigan Territory had settled the area and even built roads, established a local government and collected taxes.  Back in Washinton, D.C., an effort to make Michigan a State was blocked by the representatives from Ohio because of the dispute.  Back in the Michigan Territory, the 23-year-old Governor passed the “Pains and Penalties Act” which made it illegal for any Ohio officials to attempt to exercise jurisdiction in the 468-square mile strip of land.  Arrests were made by a Michigan posse.  The Ohio flag was torn down and burned.  A Michigan militia intercepted an Ohio border survey team and fired warning shots, arresting nine of them.  There were several incidents were violence was but a heartbeat away, as Wolverine Militiamen occupied the strip.  
The issue would ultimately be resolved in the Nation’s Capital.  In it’s bid to become a State, Michigan surrendered the Toledo Strip to Ohio.  As part of the compromise, Michigan awarded 9-thousand square miles of land between Lake Michigan and Lake Superior.  Now referred to as the U-P, or Upper Peninsula, it was at first dismissed as a barren wasteland until the discovery of copper and iron ore deposits.     

1911
Ronald Amundsen’s team, comprising himself, Olav Bjaaland, Helmer Hanssen, Sverre Hassel, and Oscar Wisting, becomes the first to reach the South Pole.  Thank goodness somebody finally got there.  Now there’s no reason for anybody to go there ever again.  Yet, people still go.  Why?  To see if the last guy forgot something?  “Oh, hey, while you’re at the South Pole, could you see if you can find my beach towel?  I’m not sure I left it there, but I looked everywhere and I can’t find it, so it’s probably there.”

1935
The Lebensborn Project, a Nazi reproduction program, is founded by Heinrich Himmler.  Himmler was the chief of the Nazi SS, and Germany had a problem with a shrinking population.  Himmler thought it would be a good idea to provide homes for unwed mothers where they could have their babies without the condescending looks of family and neighbors.  In that way, single women would be less likely to have abortions, thus helping to rebuild the population.  That wasn’t the only motive, though.  The Nazi’s were heavy into eugenics, and had determined which physical features were indicative of the Aryan bloodline.  Lebensborn babies were supposed to strengthen that bloodline, creating not just more babies, but the right babies.  Babies that were considered “biologically valuable.”  To move that part of the plan along, SS soldiers and others considered to be Aryan would impregnate women who were deemed to have the preferred attributes.  The plan wasn’t what you would consider a success.  The Holocaust Encyclopedia says it resulted in only about 7-thousand births in 9 years of operation.  

1939
Winter War: The Soviet Union is expelled from the League of Nations for invading Finland.  The League of Nations predated the United Nations.  So, why was Russia not expelled from the United Nations for invading Ukraine?

1941
Adolf Hitler announces extermination of the Jews at a meeting in the Reich Chancellery.  It was a meeting of top Nazi officials.  About 50 of them, according to an account on wikipedia.  No official list of attendees exists, nor does an official record of the meeting.  But we know about the meeting from diary entries of two men who were there.  Hans Frank and Joseph Goebbels.  Goebbels was Hitler’s chief propagandist and an outspoken Jew-hater.  
It was just after the bombing of Pearl Harbor, and the United States had entered the war.  The Jewish hostages in Nazi camps were supposed to keep the U.S. out of the war.  Sound familiar?  But now that the U S of A was in the battle, the Jews no longer had a deterrent value.  Hitler had another plan anyway.  Joseph Goebbels diary entry for the day of the meeting translates into English as:  “Regarding the Jewish question, the Führer has decided to make a clean sweep. He prophesied to the Jews that, if they yet again brought about a world war, they would experience their own annihilation.  That was not just a phrase.  The world war is here, the annihilation of the Jews must be the necessary consequence.”
As you and I know, the Jews didn’t bring about World War I or World War II.  Nor did they bring about the war they’re currently fighting against Hamas.  Although an estimated 6-million Jews were killed by the Nazi’s, it was the Nazi’s themselves who were destroyed.  Hamas is suffering the same fate.

1958
The 3rd Soviet Antarctic Expedition becomes the first expedition to reach The Pole of Relative Inaccessibility in the Antarctic.  Again, my question is, “Why?”  The Pole of Relative Inaccessibility is the point that is farthest from the coast in every direction.  There are discrepancies about exactly where that is.

1972
During the Apollo program: Eugene Cernan and Harrison Schmitt begin the third and final Extra-vehicular activity or “Moonwalk” of Apollo 17.  To this day, they are the last humans to set foot on the Moon.

1978
A chapter of Arab-Israeli conflict ends, and Prime Minister of Israel Menachem Begin and President of Egypt Anwar Sadat are jointly awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.

1981
Arab-Israeli conflict: Israel’s Knesset passes The Golan Heights Law, extending Israeli law to the area of the Golan Heights.  The Golan Heights is an area northeast of Israel, and recognized by most of the world as a part of Syria.  But since the Six-day war of 1967, it’s been occupied by Israel.  So, although it’s the jurisdiction of Israel, only Israel and the United States recognize it as Israeli.  While Israel occupies the Golan Heights, it maintains that it hasn’t “annexed” the territory.    

1988
Palestinian Leader Yasser Arafat gives a speech at the United Nations General Assembly in Geneva, Switzerland, after United States authorities refuse to give him a visa to enter New York.

2006
The International Conference to Review the Global Vision of the Holocaust is opened in Tehran, Iran by Mahmoud Ahmadinejad; Nations such as Israel and the United States express concern.

2006
American spy satellite USA-193 is launched.  But we’re not supposed to tell anyone.  So, why is the launch of an American spy satellite listed among historical occasions?

Look that up liner

It turns out that this particular spy satellite isn’t famous for being launched at all.  It was part of a program called Future Imagery Architecture, begun in 1997.  The plan was to build a fleet of relatively cheap satellites for reconnaissance.  The program became, according to an entry in wikipedia, perhaps the National Reconnaissance Office’s most spectacular failure.  But it’s not famous for that, either.  Or, infamous for that, either.  Whatever.  No, the reason it’s famous is because of it’s spectacular destruction.  Turns out, USA-193 malfunctioned shortly after liftoff this week in 2006.  The ground crew lost contact with it.  More than a year later, anonymous U.S. officials reported the satellite was in a deteriorating orbit.  That meant that it was going to re-enter the Earth’s atmosphere within weeks.  That prompted the Federal Emergency Management Agency, the same people who respond to natural disasters, to announce that the satellite had on board hazardous materials.  Specifically hydrazine and beryllium.  The fuel for the satellite was almost a thousand pounds of hydrazine, and there was concern that if the satellite entered the Earth’s atmosphere, it could create a cloud of poisonous gas the size of two football fields.  A decision was made to destroy the satellite before it could re-enter the atmosphere.   Enter the USS Lake Erie.  It would fire a missile and strike the fuel tank of USA-193 153 miles above the Pacific Ocean.  The satellite was traveling at 17-thousand miles per hour.  That’s 4-point-8 miles per second.  The velocity of the impact was nearly 22-thousand miles per hour.  The Department of Defense said “with a high degree of confidence” that the fuel tank was hit.  
Defense officials cataloged 174 pieces of left over satellite orbiting the Earth.  Within a few months, most of them disintegrated as they came back down.  The final piece of USA-193 came home in October of 2009.

Phone and email liner

Every time something bad happens, several reactions come into play.  The first thing we have to do is figure out how to deal with it.  That may require stopping whatever the bad thing is, such as Godzilla destroying Tokyo, or you throwing various cutlery at your husband.  Once the bad thing is over, we usually wonder what went wrong.  We’ll ponder how just one little variable could have resulted in such a catastrophe.  Like when a gasket blows and your car won’t start or an o-ring fails, and a space shuttle blows up.  
We’ll wonder if there was something we could have done differently that might have prevented the tragedy in the first place.  Maybe that bridge needed a different kind of support.  Maybe we could have had a better exit strategy.  We might realize there were consequences we didn’t anticipate.  
We’ll make excuses.  “Nobody could have seen that coming!”  
“A once-in-a-thousand years occurrence!” 
We’ll search for reasons why something bad happened.  Possibilities will be eliminated.  Causes will be narrowed down.   Data will be anylized until what we know points to the root cause.  Excuses will be made, fingers will be pointed.  People will be held responsible.  Someone may be forced to take the blame.  The thing about blame is, it can lead to a rabbit hole, if you will.  A worm hole, if you must.  Either way, it can go as deep as you want and maybe even come out the other side.  In other words, blame can end where it’s convenient for the argument.  Is there a pothole on your street that hasn’t been repaired since last winter?  You can blame the street department, or the Mayor, or the city budget, or the people who voted for the people who make the budget, like the city council.  Maybe all the industry closed and people moved away and there’s no more tax money to fix the streets.  Nobody remembers why.  Maybe it was because the train stopped going through town decades ago.  Maybe it was because a mall was built in a nearby town.  Maybe it’s because a war began.  Maybe it’s because a war ended.  
There’s a difference between searching for a reason why something happened and searching for someone to blame for what happened.  The main difference would be motive.  Was the terrible thing that happened because of a purposeful act, or was it unintentional?  If you examine what happened and determine there may be a motive, then more needs to be learned.  On the other hand, shit happens.
It is up to each of us to determine how deep we want to go to find some one or some thing to blame.
You can blame your neighbor for the tomatoes that are missing from your garden.  You can blame the grocery store for not having any tomatoes.  You can blame the soil in your garden for not producing enough tomatoes.  You can blame the seeds you planted and the hardware store where you bought the seeds.  You still don’t have any tomatoes, but for some reason, you feel better once you convince yourself it isn’t your fault.  The real reason you don’t have any tomatoes is irrelevant.  As long as we can blame someone or something else, we transfer whatever we may feel, guilt, anguish to wherever we decide the blame should lie.  We can blame it on the garden, we can blame it on the grocery store, we can blame it on the hardware store.  As long as it isn’t our fault.  Once we assign blame, we can wash our hands of the issue.  Finding who to blame is a form of closure.  Once the bad thing happened, and we reacted to it, and the bad thing ended, then we wonder what happened; what we could have done differently, then we mourn the results of the event.  But the event lives on until we find out why it happened and place the blame squarely on someone or something.  Until then, it’s an unsolved mystery, like the origin of Covid-19.  We still don’t know who or what is responsible for releasing a deadly virus into the world.  That’s still an open wound for some, having nothing or no one to blame for it.  Many have made up their minds about where Covid originated, so they know what to blame, even if they may not know exactly who to blame.
Who’s to blame for Jeffrey Epstein’s success as a sex trafficker?  He certainly didn’t make all that money from nobody.  Another open wound for some, as Epstein’s client list has not yet been made public, assuming it’s been discovered.  Somebody knows who to blame, but we don’t.
Sometimes there’s plenty of blame to go around.  Take climate change, for example.  We can blame petroleum products that we burn to create energy.  We can blame air conditioners and cow farts.  We can blame the production of concrete.  We can blame time itself.  Earth’s already been through two ice ages, neither of which was caused by man.  Climate change is a constant presence in our lives.  But if the climate is changing in a way we think is bad, then there must be somewhere to place the blame.  We can’t just chalk it up to natural causes.  There are plenty of ways we may be contributing to climate change, so there is plenty of blame to go around.  The more we can point our fingers at other things to blame, the less responsibility we have to accept.
Blame itself can sometimes cause a mystery.  The one who deserves blame doesn’t reveal himself as the one who caused the bad event.  The public humiliation that can often accompany blame is too much of price to pay for revealing the truth.  With the truth hidden, perhaps someone else will get blamed.  
The blame game is a dangerous game.  To those who’ve been saddled with blame, it’s not a game at all.  Blame, whether deserved or not, can ruin careers and lives.  Sometimes people who get blamed for things go to jail for what they did.  Sometimes people get injured or die by accident because of another person’s actions.  Completely unintentional, but someone needs to be blamed.  It’s compounded with the guilt the person already feels.
I’m all for finding out the truth.  When something goes wrong, when life is lost, we should find out why so that if it was caused by a mistake or an unforeseen variable, we can learn from it.  We can make adjustments; take preventative measures.  But to me, placing blame is an unnecessary exercise.  It can be an exhausting exercise as well.  When you go down the rabbit hole of blame, you realize how easy it is to find a way to blame stuff on other stuff.  There are a lot of tunnels in the blame rabbit hole.  Blame is used to make ourselves look or feel better.  Politicians use blame to deflect criticism and responsibility for their own actions and policies.  Putin’s Price-Hikes!  Blame is used to absolve ourselves of responsibility.  Blame is used to amplify someone’s mistake.  For example:  A coleague of mine was supposed reserve a date at a location for a planned event.  The date wasn’t reserved on time, and somebody else booked that date.  I wasn’t happy about it.  I knew who was responsible for reserving the date.  I could have walked over to her cubicle and said, “Nice goin’, Carol.  Now I have to change my plans because you didn’t do what you were supposed to do.”  I was placing the blame squarely on her.  There was no disputing it!  Did I say that to her?  No, I didn’t.  There was nothing I could have said to her that would magically make the original date available again.  Maybe something happened that was out of her control.  She’s a consummate professional and I’m sure she did her best.  Placing blame would have no impact on the end result.  
So, before you blame something on somebody, ask yourself if the exercise will be worth any net result.  Sometimes it’s best to not place blame, accept what is, and accept that everything doesn’t have to be somebody’s fault.

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