Season 7, Episode 6 January 7, 2024

Snowfall Special!!  Early release!  This episode starts by pointing out the obvious in Not the Headlines, examines the overuse of a political tool in Let's Go Back Through the Listening Tube, and points out the not so obvious in the Epilogue.  Happy New Year!

Transcript

Hello!  Thank you for putting your ear to the Listening Tube!  I’m your host, Bob Woodley, back again to batter your auditory senses!  On this episode, we’ll hear about Senator Hattie Caraway, when an impeachment meant something, and the legality of protesting…..but first, (Not the Headlines!)

As I’m sure you know, there’s been a war going on in Israel and the Gaza Strip.  It’s been going on for two months now, and little by little we learn more about what happened the day Hamas attacked the people of southern Israel.  What we’re learning isn’t pretty.  In fact, it’s so disgusting that the mainstream media can’t even tell you about it.  They can use general terms, but the details are so gruesome, so sinister, so inhuman that to describe to you what actually happened that day would violate the FCC rules on decency.  There’s no way they could possible show it to you.  And there’s plenty of footage to show, because Hamas invaders were wearing body cameras.  But even without the actual footage of what happened, there was plenty left behind to demonstrate the occasion.  A two-month investigative report by the New York Times lays it out in great detail, and I don’t recommend reading it.
I’m not going to describe to you all of what I read about how Hamas used sex as a weapon of terror.  I was so disgusted by what I read that it nearly turned my stomach.  In general terms I will tell you that reports are now coming in that show women were not just gang-raped by Hamas terrorists, but they were tortured and mutilated while being raped.  Women’s body parts were cut off and tossed around like toys while they were being raped.  Their faces and other parts of their bodies mutilated while being raped.  Women were found with their legs spread, faces unrecognizable, some with bullet wounds in their vaginas.  Up until then, they lived through it all.  I don’t advise you to read about all that happened.  If you have any humanity at all, it will hurt you in a way you’ve never been hurt before.  I’m not sure I’ll ever be the same after reading what happened to those women that day.  I even had an inner battle with myself about doing this segment.  I considered not doing one at all, because it was so hard to continue to think about it.  I wrestled with how graphic I should get, as I don’t want you to have to wrestle with the feelings I experienced.  But this is Not the Headlines, and I knew you might not hear about it otherwise, for obvious reasons.  But it’s a part of the story that needs to be told.  It needs to be told to all the so-called Pro-Palestinian protesters around the world and on America’s college campuses and in large cities everywhere.  If you know somebody who’s pro-Hamas, I endeavor you to find out if they know about what was done to these women in southern Israel.  If they don’t know, tell them.  If they don’t care, walk away and never go back.
In the haste to gather the bodies and follow Jewish funeral procedures, much of what would have been evidence, such as DNA samples, was not collected.  Many of the perpetrators of these vile crimes might never stand trial.  Regardless of how you and I might feel about war, no matter how we might feel about vengeance or getting even or even genocide.  No matter how we might feel about the Jews or the Palestinians, or Zionism or anything, for that matter, the people who committed these war crimes, the monsters who were able to mutilate and torture another human being in such a way, the heartless vessels without souls who were able to commit such violent and gut-wrenching acts without remorse, must be vanquished from the earth.

On a lighter note, it’s almost always a bitter-sweet occasion when a politician’s term expires or he or she is simply voted out of office, and the winners and losers have to switch residences.  The White House gets a new family every eight years at most, and practically every state has an executive mansion, where the Governor resides.  Three of the four that don’t are New England states.
But when the votes are counted and the results are in, the wheels are set in motion.  Plans are made for when to pack up and move either into or out of a mortgage-free, government maintained residence.  Packing and moving companies are summoned.  Moving like a well-oiled machine, they tear everything down in one place and recreate it in another.  All the things are moved by other people, the people themselves are probably moved by somebody else, too.  Once they get in the car.
The big difference between moving from a private home to an elected home is that there’s already stuff there, and there really isn’t much room for your stuff.  There are statues everywhere, paintings of people dressed in period clothing on the walls.  Plaques commemorating things that happened generations ago.  God knows what you might find in some of the drawers.  Especially if the change of residence is also a change in political party.  Some of your more wealthy governors choose to stay in their private homes instead of the executive mansions available to them, but most make the move for however short their stay might be.  Since the executive mansion is already furnished, the new governor probably has to keep his original residence anyway, because that’s where all his stuff is.  Then, when the next person wins the election, the old homestead will still be there, waiting for life to happen again.
When you’re moving out of an executive mansion, you have to be careful about what you take with you.  You have to leave all of the statues and plaques behind.  You can’t take the paintings home with you.  Even certain gifts that you received while in office are the property of the people, and must be accounted for, logged, and properly stored for posterity.  Those items are a part of the official record of your term in office.  Oh, and if you’re leaving the White House or the Senate, try to not take any top-secret files with you when you move back home.  Depending upon which political party is in charge, you could get in trouble for it.
Sometimes politicians leave something behind for the next occupant.  Maybe a personal note in a desk drawer, or a holiday decoration, or computer keyboards with the letter W missing.  In the case of the state of Louisiana, the current governor plans on leaving behind a chicken coop, chickens included.  According to the Louisiana Illuminator, the chicken coop was built by the current governor shortly after he took office in 2016.  The poultry-loving politician paid for the set up with his own money, and the eggs helped feed the first family of Louisiana ever since.  Governor John is fond of his chickens, and was known to feed them himself and visit with them, as the story says, on particularly stressful days.  He planned to take the chickens, coop and all, with him when he moved out of the executive mansion after eight years of residency there.  But the incoming Governor, after touring the grounds, asked if they could stay.  Governor John agreed, and the coop, with two fenced-in grazing yards, one on each side, will stay, along with the chickens.  
The outgoing Governor plans to keep raising chickens as a private citizen.  When asked if he’ll miss his current flock, he said, “Yeah, but I’ll get some more.  Every now and then you have to get new chickens anyway.”  No word on if he’ll be reimbursed by the state of Louisiana for the cost of building the chicken coop now that it will be the official property of the people, nor how the chickens may feel about it.  The transfer takes place  tomorrow, January 8th.

Let’s Go Back liner

1776
Thomas Paine publishes Common Sense.  I highly encourage common sense wherever applicable.

1915
The United States House of Representatives rejects a proposal to give women the right to vote.  Five years later, the 19th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution would be ratified, giving women the right to vote.  Twelve years later, in….

1932
Hattie W. Caraway becomes the first woman elected to the United States Senate.  Born in Tennessee, she came to represent the state of Arkansas, or as it was pronounced the only person from Arkansas who I met pronounced it, Aurkansaw.  Her late husband was a Senator before her, so she kind of had a running start when she was appointed by Governor to fill the remainder of her late husband’s term.  But she went on to get elected in her own right, not once, but twice!  She was active in the Agriculture Committee, which was important to her state, and she was the first woman to chair a committee.  The encyclopedia of Arkansas dot com says she didn’t say much, as she didn’t want to waste the taxpayer’s money on printing speeches in the Congressional Record.  She is quoted as saying,  “My philosophy of legislation, and really on life, is to be broad-minded enough to consider human relationships and the well-being of all the people as worthy of consideration, to realize that all human beings are entitled to earn, so far as possible, their daily bread, and to try to prevent the exploitation of the underprivileged.”
She didn’t always come down on the side of all human beings, though.  In 1938, after more than six years as a Senator, she voted against legislation to outlaw poll taxes and lynching.  Senator Hattie considered that unconstitutional.  

1973
The trial of seven men accused of illegal entry into Democratic Party headquarters at the Watergate Hotel in Washington, D.C. begins.  This was a giant step in the direction of something that hadn’t happened in the United States for more than a hundred years.  1868 to be exact, when President Andrew Johnson became the subject of an impeachment inquiry by the House of Representatives.  In May of 1974, Richard Nixon would be the subject of an impeachment inquiry regarding his administrations involvement in the Watergate break in and the consequent cover-up.  Nixon would be charged by the House with obstruction of justice, abuse of power, and contempt of Congress.  Instead of facing impeachment, Nixon resigned.  The evidence was clear, and Nixon took great measures to conceal it.  But ultimately, the truth came out when secret oval office recordings were discovered that revealed the truth.
The country was in shock.  An impeachment inquiry was serious business back then.  The threat of impeachment was enough to cause the President of the United States to resign.  Since then, impeachment proceedings have become more common.  President Clinton face an impeachment over the Monica Lewisnski scandal.  He was able to avoid impeachment through a clever use of phonetics.  The only direct result of President Clinton’s impeachment is that it’s officially okay to have sex in the Oval Office, even if it’s not with your wife.  
Then along came the presidency of Donald J. Trump.  He faced not one, but two impeachments, both of which were nothing more than performative art.  House Speaker Nancy Pelosi proclaiming President Trump to be “Impeached forever!”  She made it sound like it would be tattooed on his forehead.  Even as a registered Independent, it was easy to see that both Trump impeachments were scams.
Now, the current president, the one right after Trump, is also undergoing an impeachment inquiry.  Unlike the Trump impeachment’s, though, this one looks like it has legs.  Although the Democrats keep saying there’s no evidence that President Biden has done anything wrong with relation to his son Hunter’s business and possible influence peddling, there actually seems to be a lot of evidence.  Despite the mainstream media’s help in hushing up the truth, there is an article on msn dot com that logs quite a bit about the President’s involvement in meetings and more, including testimony from Hunter’s business associates, bank records, suspicious activity reports, shell companies, payments from American adversaries, and evidence of policy and favors provided through Biden influence.  
The only thing impeding the investigation is the depth to which the Democrats have infiltrated the Justice Department.  Right now, Hunter Biden can evade a seupena to testify as long as his dad is the President.  Now,  you might be thinking, “But Bob, Hunter’s dad can just pardon him anyway.”  and you would be right.  But if Hunter were to tell the truth under oath, I figure there’s a good chance dad will be in trouble, too.  Right now, the Biden team is trying to juggle what will happen to Hunter and what will happen to Joe depending upon how much the impeachment inquiry might learn.  As long as nobody talks, the investigation will fail to gain traction.  The Biden team is in reaction mode right now, and depending upon what the Republicans in the House can dig up, they may have to throw Hunter under the bus to save the President.  But it isn’t Hunter who’s the subject of the impeachment inquiry, it’s Joe.  So, while the Democrats work to get Donald Tump’s name taken off primary ballots, the Republican’s are working to expose suspected bribery and influence peddling by the current President.  
Even if Trump’s name isn’t on the ballot, people can still write it on there.  But if Joe’s exposed as raking in millions of dollars by peddling influence, it won’t matter if his name is on the ballot.  And right now, he’s all the Democrats have. 

2002
President George W. Bush signs into law the No Child Left Behind Act.  The act focused on four key groups, according to understood dot org:  Students in poverty, Students of color, Special education students, and those who speak little or no English.  It required annual testing, reporting, improvement targets, and penalties for schools that didn’t meet expectations.  The No Child Left Behind act lasted for about 13 years.  It was replaced by the Every Student Succeeds Act in 2015. 
It seems to me that the state of our education has deteriorated since the federal government got more involved in 1980, with the formation of the Department of Education.  

Speed of sound liner

By the way, I’ll be in Orlando, Florida later this month for Podfest 24!  From January 24 through the 28th, you’ll be able to find me there!  Podfest 24 in Orlando!

Phone and email liner
Epilogue music

There have been a lot of protests lately.  You know, it wasn’t so long ago that protests were few and far between.  America could go through an entire generation without a major protest.  There were protests during the Vietnam war.  Some led to violence and death.  Some people still refer to it as the Vietnam conflict.  I’ll bet those people weren’t among the protesters back then.  
Protesting was kind of a tool of last resort for the most part.  If you wanted something done, you contacted your local government official at whatever level was warranted, and you sought results based on your argument.  If you could find enough people who agreed with you, a change occurred.  If not, then you had to accept that the rest of the world was just too stupid to see it your way and you moved on with your life.  Or, maybe you staged your own little personal protest and paid your bill in pennies or started a letter-writing campaign.  Large-scale protests were only used when a majority of the people had a beef with the government.  The writers of the American Constitution were prepared for this type of occasion.  The First Amendment clearly states what freedoms have the people and what restrictions have the government.  It begins with restrictions on the government when it states that “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof;”  but that’s a different subject.  The First Amendment goes on to say Congress shall make no laws “abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press, or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.”
Huh.  It doesn’t say anywhere that protesting is protected by the Constitution.  You may peaceably assemble.  It also says that no law shall be made to abridge the freedom of speech.  If you put peaceably assemble and freedom of speech together, you have a protest!  Without fail, there will be somebody shouting something, often with electronic amplification.  There may be chants, with leaders and followers taking turns repeating the same slogan over and over.  Sometimes there will be questions and answers, i.e., What do we want?  (Insert noun here!) When do we want it?  NOW!  There might even be singing…
soundbite
So, while protesting isn’t protected by the Constitution of the United States, the ingredients for protesting are.  But there’s another ingredient required by the Constitution of the people protesting, and that is to petition the government for a redress of grievances.  The final line of the amendments says that Congress shall make no law abridging the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.  It does not say ...or petition the government for a redress of grievances.  So, in addition to assembling and speaking, you must also petition the government for redress, or the opportunity to right that which is wrong.  You must also make clear what your grievances are so that they may be addressed.  
The authors of the Bill of Rights in the United States Constitution obviously put a lot of thought into how to address the basics with clearly written statements that are in some ways very specific and meaningful while still covering large swaths of right and wrong, allowed and not allowed and so forth.  It was meant to be clear, with little room for interpretation.  That it still applies today, more than two-hundred years later, is a testament to the mastery of its creators.  
While America is a nation of laws, all of which are derived from the Constitution, we like to think we’re also a nation of freedom.  And we are for the most part.  But Americans aren’t as free as we think we are.  When I was in West Berlin, there were public parks where you could play frisbee naked.  Try that in Pennsylvania, and you get arrested (according to a friend of mine).   Anyway, if you read the First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States, it doesn’t say you’re free to do whatever the hell you want just because you have an issue.  I think the author put the word peaceably ahead of the word assemble is demonstrative of the importance of assemblies to be peaceful.  It seems to me that the definition of peaceful has been pushed past the limit protected by the First Amendment.  That’s why the press had to come up with the phrase, “mostly peaceful protest.”  They’ll call it that while standing in front of the burning wreckage of what was a neighborhood.   If it’s violent, it’s not protected by the First Amendment.  
Sound bite from Nora
Regardless of how passionate you may be about a cause, there are limits to what you can do to promote it, and limits to how you can condemn it.  I know there are antagonizers who make peaceful demonstrations violent on purpose.  That’s why the “petitioning the government for redress” part is so important.  Without a clear grievance to be addressed, the assembly has no meaning.  When it’s diluted by outside organizers and tributaries, the message becomes vague and muddied.  While violence can often bring attention in today’s media cycle, it rarely brings results.  It may bring knee-jerk reactions like the kind that accompanied the riots of the summer of 2020, but most of those measures have since been readjusted to practical levels if not outright abandoned.  
But does the lack of violence mean an assembly is peaceful?  If a crowd gathered on your street and began speaking through bullhorns about the evils of circumcision, would you find that peaceful?  What if you were trying to watch Big Bang Theory, or The Simpsons?  Or what if you were listening to The Listening Tube podcast, and I said something witty and you had to rewind it because there was now a guy with a guitar singing a song about the evils of circumcision.  That doesn’t sound very peaceful to me.  
I only use circumcision as an example because I personally witnessed such a protest in front of the Capitol Building in Washington, D.C.  How’d you like to be a teacher on a 5th-grade field trip that day?!  Imagine little Jose and little Shaniqua telling their moms about it when they got home.  That circumcision song was kinda catchy.  The kids sang it on the bus all the way home.  Little Jimmy took a selfie with a poster in the background that has a penis on it.  Dad gave him a high-five, mom just rolled her eyes.  
Getting back to the protest in front of your house, the guy with the guitar will say that he as the freedom to speak, and that making him turn down the volume on his battery-operated amplifier is an abridgment of his speech.  In other words, he’s allowed to speak as loudly as he pleases.  So now there seems to be an equinox between your right to listen to the Listening Tube podcast in your home without hostile amplified voices making it nearly impossible, and the right of those assembled to exercise their free speech.  Somehow, while your activity doesn’t infringe on those assembled outside your home, their activity, while infringing on your right to peace, is given more protections under the false notion that protests are somehow the American way.  Somewhere along the line, we began equating peacefully assembling with protesting.  They are not the same.  And neither is effective without a formal petition to the government.  You may assemble all you want, you may speak all you want, but in order to effect change, you have to be able to define your grievances.  The sole act of protesting is not protected by the First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States.  There are not only limitations to protesting, but also requirements and responsibilities that often go ignored by today’s cause warriors.  
The shape and form of protesting has morphed along with the definition.  Those not satisfied with the results of traditional protest have gone to extreme measures to attract attention to their cause.  Acts of vandalism in museums, people gluing themselves to things to disrupt an event, all sorts of forms of protest have caught the attention of the media.  Still, such acts rarely result in anything positive.  Protesting has almost become an art form itself, designed for maximum effect, tugging at emotions, reaching for your soul, hoping to become a part of you.
Most of the kids protesting the war in Israel couldn’t petition to government for a redress of their grievances because they have no idea what it is they’re protesting.  Are they protesting war?  Are they protesting Zionism?  Are they protesting Genocide?  If you said all three, then you don’t really know who’s side you’re on.  Your petition for redress would be denied. 
Now, I may be simplifying what the United States Constitution says, but it’s not so easy in the United Kingdom.  You see, the UK doesn’t have a constitution per se.  Just a very long history of laws and judicial decisions and moral standards that have somehow added up to the way the British administer behavior.  An Associated Press story about how England is dealing with protests by the ironically-named Jill Lawless refers to the British system as a patchwork democracy; describing the unwritten constitution made up of individual laws and rulings for keeping peace and order.  As a result of such a system, protesters have no real legal foundation on which to base their right to protest.  In England, the story says, protesters are being put in jail.  Not for the sole act of protesting, of course.  But for the method of the protests.  In other words, the United Kingdom is enforcing the first amendment to the United States Constitution more thoroughly than the United States.  
Jill goes on to write that hundreds of environmental activists have been arrested for taking part in peaceful demonstrations in the U.K.  One guy got a three-year prison sentence for hanging a sign off a bridge.  She quoted an environmental protester who attended a vigil in London to protest the treatment of protesters as saying, “Legitimate protest is part of what makes any country a safe and civilized place to live.”  There’s no mention of anyone being arrested at the vigil, where they peaceably assembled.  Otherwise, one lady was arrested for holding a sign outside a courthouse that read, “Jurors – You have an absolute right to acquit a defendant according to your conscience.”  Well, it turns out that Great Britain has some strict laws about jury tampering, and she was arrested not for protesting, but for contempt of court.  Similar signs have shown up at other courthouses since then, but no other arrests have been made.  But it would seem there are a lot of Brits who think guilt or innocence in a court of law shouldn’t rely on evidence, but how you feel about it.  They say jurors have the right to acquit based on their conscience.  They don’t say they have the right to convict according to your conscience, only acquit.  That sounds to me like contempt of court.  The only people who benefit from that type of behavior is guilty people.  Feel free to disagree.  
Most of the protesters being arrested in the U.K. are environmental activists.  While America has “mostly peaceful protests,” England has “peaceful but disruptive protests.”  Some examples of which are blocking roads and bridges, dousing athletes with orange powder (my favorite color), and gluing themselves to trains.  The goal is to stop future oil projects from starting.
Jill writes that the British government has responded to the disruptions with laws that constrain the rights of peaceful protest.  Here again we find ourselves at the same question as before.  Does the absence of violence mean the protest is peaceful?  If you spray a building with fake blood without spilling any actual blood, is that peaceful?  Maybe, but it certainly is disruptive.  Measures will have to be taken to remove it.  If you block a street or a bridge and nobody gets in a fight, is that a peaceful protest?  Sure.  But if you’re one of the people stuck in traffic and can’t get to work or get to the hospital in time….it’s not so peaceful to you and may you rest in peace.  
The British government isn’t putting up with it.  In 2022, the story says laws were changed to make public nuisance charges worth 10 years in prison, and gave more authority to police when it came to determining what is disruptive.  Last year, new laws were put in place that subjected demonstrators to searches for a defined list of things including locks and glue.  And now if you block key infrastructure like a road or a bridge, you can go to jail for a year.  Jill quoted the government with the reason for the crackdown, “(to) protect the law-abiding majority’s right to go about their daily lives.”  Well, how dare that law-abiding majority?!  Don’t they know that their right to go about their daily lives is superseded by the protester’s right to block the road?  Well, those British protesters are pretty smart, so they came up with a way to get around the 12-month sentence for blocking a road by peaceable gathering and then slowwwwwwly walking down a particular street.  They’re not technically blocking the road, just slowing it down.  That, too, has been criminalized.
The man who went to jail for hanging a sign off a bridge we heard about earlier was an environmental activist who chose the Queen Elizabeth II bridge for his sign.  Police had to close the highway below for 40 hours.  The judge said he got three years because of the chaos he caused and to deter others from copycat acts.  Was anybody killed or harmed?  Probably not.  That means it’s a peaceful protest!  A liberal headline might read, “Peaceful protester sentenced to three years in prison.”  And you might think,

That can’t be right liner

...but a conservative headline might say, “Demonstrator sentenced for traffic snarl.”  Then you might think, “serves him right, the bloody worm.”   That’s because these people aren’t being arrested for protesting.  They’re being arrested for the ingredients of the protest.  Not the ingredient of peaceably assembling.  In some ways, the right to free speech, but England doesn’t have a constitution to protect it.  The ingredient that gets them in trouble is disruption.  The types of disruption that isn’t protected by the United States Constitution, either, but is often tolerated depending upon who’s in charge of the Justice Department.  In the United States, I can protest that the laws on the books aren’t being applied when it comes to protesters.  In the U.K, that might be contempt of court, even though I’m supporting more law enforcement.  Another protesting equinox.
The bottom line is that most protesting today is a useless form of performative activism that’s simply been overused so much they’re like faded billboards on a dark highway.  They flash by and you might glance, like little Jimmy’s mom did at the penis selfie, then you go on your way, to the next important thing in your life.  Only the eyes of the media stare at it for a bit.
If you feel passionately about an issue of social importance, you have a right to say so.  You also have the right to gather other people who feel the way you feel, and to petition the government for redress of your grievances.  I encourage you to do all of that.  If it was up to me, there’d be a pinball machine in the waiting room of every doctor’s office.  Unfortunately, I don’t have enough support to make that happen.  I could try to organize a vigil for pinball machines, but there’s bound to be opposition to the idea from the billiards lobby, and they’d probably show up and start a rumble, turning my peaceful protest into a mostly peaceful protest.  Believe me, you don’t want to get hit by a billiard ball or a pinball.  So, I’m gonna let common sense prevail, and take my protest off the table.  Maybe some of the other protesters would do well to reconsider why they’re protesting, and if they should be protesting at all.  When a protest is the starting point instead of a last resort, we end up in a world of protest with no real results but chaos and anarchy.  Especially when we’re led to believe that protests are somehow protected by the Constitution.
If there’s a protest about everything, then how do we know what’s really important?  Here’s a question every potential protester should ask themselves:  Is that the hill you want to die on?  If it isn’t, then go home.  That’s the only way a protest will actually begin to mean something again.

The Listening Tube is written and produced by yours truly.  Copyright 2024.  Thank you for putting your ear to the Listening Tube.  Subscribe today on the website homepage.  I’m your host, Bob Woodley for thou ad infinitum.