Season 7, Episode 8 January 21, 2024

This episode is a little different than usual.  Not the Headlines is an examination of a reporter being in a hurry to ruin her reputation.  In Let's Go Back, we'll hear about the one song ladies want to hear, hiding on Guam, and the Department of Homeland Security.  See you at Podfest 2024 in Orlando!

Transcript

Hello!  Thank you for putting your ear to the Listening Tube!  I’m your host, Bob Woodley.  On this episode, we’ll hear about a kick ass king, the one song chicks dig the most, and a prisoner of a war that was over for a long time….but first, (Not the Headlines)!

The big story this week is about a tragedy near America’s southern border.  A woman and two children drowned in the Rio Grand.  They were apparently trying to illegally cross into the United States at the time, just like millions of people have from countries all over the world since January of 2021.  No, not January 6th.  January 21st.  There are two days of infamy in January of 2021.  The storming of the Capital, and the storming of the southern border.  The storming of the southern border hasn’t stopped yet, and three years later, a woman and her two children are the big story because they died trying to get into the United States by crossing the cold and swift river separating Mexico from Eagle Pass, Texas.  An opinion piece published by CNN paints a clear picture as to who’s responsible for the deaths of these three would-be migrants.  The author, Alice Driver, who’s described as somewhat of an authority when it comes to writing about such issues, wrote her opinion on Monday night or Tuesday morning, as it was shared by CNN at 9:35am eastern time on Tuesday.  The drownings took place Saturday night, around 8 or 9 o’clock, depending upon who’s report you read.  But it was still Saturday night when Alice got a quote from U.S. Representative Henry Cuellar as saying the Border Patrol was denied access to the area of a distress call from Mexican authorities about a woman and two children by Texas officials.  They were denied entrance to Shelby Park, an area the State of Texas has assumed command to try to stop illegal immigration, which is currently rampant.  It’s two-and-a-half miles of rio shoreline.  Henry Cuellar is a Democratic Representative from Texas, and it’s part of his district, so he should know what happened.  If he’s going to make a statement about it, I think we can assume he’s been briefed on the situation.  Representative Cuellar made it clear that the state of Texas prevented the United States Border Patrol from rendering aid, causing the deaths.  Alice had Sunday and Monday to write the story and share her outrage.  She had time to get a quote from another Democratic Representative from Texas.  Joaquin Castro.  She quoted Joaquin as saying, “Texas officials blocked US Border Patrol agents from doing their job and allowed two children to drown in the Rio Grand.”  She added that the account had been confirmed by the Department of Homeland Security.  That’s the same Department that confirmed mounted Sheriff’s deputies were whipping migrants.  That turned out to be untrue, or in another word, lies.  
But this story is true.  We even have the bodies to prove it.  They’ve since been identified.  But they hadn’t been identified by the time this opinion piece was published.  But Alice assumes she knows where they’re from when she says that they likely experienced “harm and privation” wherever it was they began their journey.  If Alice can assume that, then it’s not unlikely that the husband and father came first, got in, then arranged for his family to follow.  He might be in Chicago or New York City or Philadelphia right now and has no idea that the situation there has changed since he was last there.  It’s terrible that it ended in tragedy, and nobody’s denying that.  But what seemed more important to the Representatives from Texas was being the first to place the blame.  Why?  It was the perfect opportunity to bring attention to the fact that the Governor of Texas has usurped the power of the federal government to deny it access to the border at Shelby Park.  The deaths of these three people had to be blamed on the State of Texas in order to sway public opinion against the state’s stringent new border policies and laws.  The best way to do that is to blame the deaths of people on the policies and laws.  And in this case, assert that if not for the procedures of the state, the federal government would have been able to save those three people and the state deliberately denied them the opportunity to help.  Here’s where our writer, Alice, begins to really opine.  “To know that a young family is struggling to navigate cold, swift waters and to do nothing to prevent their deaths is cruel and evil.”  Ohh, let me say that again...eeeeeviiile.
She’s right.  That would be cruel and evil.  She also said the State of Texas should be held responsible for these deaths.  
Alice begins to blow her own horn bit, letting you know that she’s been writing about immigration for years, including the Eagle Pass crossing, where there is also a legal port of entry.  She says Governor Abbots policies are among the worst she’s seen, putting the lives of innocent people at risk.  Alice says we can learn a lot from the migrants; stories of people who she says are fleeing “war, famine, drought and the effects of climate change.”  I’m sure we can learn a lot.  It’s your job to tell their stories, Alice.  But you cannot claim asylum in the United States because of drought and the effects of climate change.  Even if you could, the one reporter who has spent more time than anybody at Eagle Pass since what has become a catastrophe began, Bill Melugan, says that of the thousands of people he’s spoken to who’ve illegally crossed the border, not a single one of them claimed they came because of climate change.  Maybe Alice found one.  I’ll give her the benefit of the doubt.  That’s more than she gave the Governor of Texas, alleging his ignorance has put him on a “warpath to criminalize and dehumanize migrants.”
Well, Alice, entering the United States outside of a designated port of entry is already a crime.  A crime that’s not being enforced by the Biden Administration.  And your use of the term dehumanize is indicative of the regard in which the Biden Administration has for the safety of immigrants.  More on that in a bit.  
Alice’s story goes on to vilify the Texas Governor for the amount of money he’s spent on trying to stop thousands of people a day from coming across the border.  Four point six billion dollars on Operation Lone Star and the cost of shipping the immigrants to other parts of the country.  That’s a lot of money, for sure.  I wonder if that includes the costs incurred by the state of Texas to defend itself against the federal government when the Biden Administration sues Texas to remove the barriers it puts up.  That’s right, folks.  Whenever Texas does what it can think of to stem the tide of humanity from overwhelming the staff there, the federal government tries to stop them.  I’m not sure what that looks like to you, but to me it looks like the Biden Administration is purposely keeping the border as porous as possible.  What the end-game is, I don’t know.  So far, it’s cost the state of Texas more than 4.6 billion dollars, according to Alice.   She really did her research that Sunday, the day after three people drowned in the Rio Grand, just across from Eagle Pass, Texas, where the Border Patrol wasn’t allowed to help them.
She must have been might proud when CNN shared her opinion with the disclaimer that the opinion was hers alone and not necessarily that of CNN.  She might have been the first person to publish a story and opinion about the tragic event that happened a mere 59 hours earlier.  With quotes and confirmation from top government officials.  It’s too bad she and those congressmen didn’t wait to find out what really happened.  That’s why this story has become a “Not the Headlines” story.  The headline given to Alice’s story and opinion about the event was, “Opinion: Abbott’s war on migration has led to another tragedy in Texas.”  This headline is about as useful as “Bidenomics leads to wealth glut.”  We now know more about what really happened, although many news outlets who jumped on the story and blamed anti-immigration policies, as they call them, are reluctant to follow up for some reason.  Probably to save face.  The tragedy that took the lives of the mother and two children happened around 8pm, an hour before the Border Patrol agents showed up to help.  At the time of the Border Patrol showing up, the Mexican authorities had already got the victims out of the water, and a few other survivors.  There was nothing the feds could have done to save them, nor the Texas officials.  But the federal government wants to assert it’s control over the area so that immigrants will be let in again, so it’s blaming the deaths on Texas officials.  One could argue that if it wasn’t for the policies of the Biden Administration, that mother and her children wouldn’t have been there in the first place.  But let’s assume, for a moment, that these three deaths occurred because of Governor Abbot’s policies.  In fact, let’s go ahead and say that if he could have, Governor Abbot would have shot these three people with an AK-47 from the bow of his yacht if he didn’t think the Biden Administration would charge him with murder for doing so.  It’s not hard to imagine when you read the way Alice writes about him.  You’d think the people of Texas elected a James Bond villain.  The truth is, he’s fallen way short of Bond villain status, even if you blame him for three deaths.  Bond villains have bigger plans.  Plans that call for the destruction of entire civilizations or whole countries at the very least.  Plus you need a much higher death count than a paltry three.  If not millions or thousands, you need at least hundreds of people losing their lives.  Innocent people, too, not just military people.  If only there was a way to make sure hundreds or more people died while trying to cross the border, the Biden administration could surely get public opinion to sway in it’s favor, so that millions of people could cross the southern border into the United States without fear of being stopped by some diabolical plot by the state of Texas.  Well, the truth is, hundreds of people have died trying to get here across our southern border, but the Biden Administration can’t blame the state of Texas for those deaths.  That’s why we don’t get press releases about them within hour of them happening. 
 So, why are three deaths getting headlines, when according to a story in El Pais, written by a man named Luis Pablo Beauregard, death is common among migrants illegally crossing into the United States.  He says they are “discreetly reported in the local press.”  In other words, the national press doesn’t pass the news along.  It’s so common, the big news channels don’t have time for it.  In the meantime, hundreds of deaths have occurred among people trying to cross the border, and people who crossed the border but succumbed to heat or exhaustion.  All of them tempted by the Biden Administration’s ignoring of immigration laws.  The story says the United Nations has “described the U.S.-Mexico border as the deadliest land route for migrants,” and that last year, 686 died as a result of attempting to reach the United States.  So, more than 686 died doing the same thing the mother and two children were doing.  Yet the mother and children died because the federal government couldn’t get there to save them.  Where were they for the other 686 who died?  Can we get a quote from a Congressman from Texas on that?  
The only supervillain here is the Biden administration.  President Biden’s hand’s off approach to immigration has led to hundreds of people losing their lives just trying to get in without any barriers.  Now they blame barriers for three deaths, and try to make it a major story.  Sadly, many media outlets peddled the line, blaming the people who are trying to protect our borders for killing innocent migrants, while ignoring the hundreds that have already been lost.  We’ll never know how many people died trying to get to the United States long before they got to the border.  Some peoples journeys have begun half a world away, and there are no statistics for how many heard the siren call and never made it to the beach.  Not to mention the thousands of people who die each day in America by fentanyl poisoning thanks to the drug’s infiltration through our southern border.  But it seems like the Biden administration is alright with it as long as they can bring 7-thousand people a day in to replace them.  The left accuses the right of dehumanizing immigrants.  Meanwhile, they dehumanize the kids of American parents who are lost to fentanyl poisoning by simply replacing them with illegal immigrants.  The juice is worth the squeeze, as they say.  But is it?
While Alice pointed out how much money Governor Abbot of Texas has spent trying to keep people from swimming across the Rio Grand to enter the United States, she didn’t say anything about the cost of keeping them here.  For those who’ve been allowed to stay in the United States until their asylum hearing, which is now about four years away, thanks to the wave of people coming to America, the American taxpayer is heavily invested.  It’s even more if you live in a self-designated sanctuary city.     
The largest hospital in Denver, Colorado recently stated it couldn’t continue to operate under the current conditions.  About 8000 patients made 20,000 hospital visits in a year.  Every one of these patients recently entered the United States illegally.  They averaged two and a half visits each, for the which the hospital has not been paid.  Those 8,000 patients cost 136 million dollars to treat.  I agree that’s nowhere near the billions spent by Texas to try to protect the border.  But that’s just one hospital in once city.  
The Governor of New York recently included two point four billion dollars in her next budget to provide for homeless shelters in New York City.  Migrants are coming by the thousands, and they’re running out of places to put them.  The New York Governor recently said, according to the Associated Press, 
“Until we see a change in federal policy that slows the flow of new arrivals, we’re going to be swimming against the tide.”
That’s a refreshing voice to hear, as it indicates those who have been repeating the same talking points about immigration are finally starting to point out the obvious.  Until now, the leaders of the sanctuary cities were simply crying for more money to support the influx, never addressing the “root cause.”  They looked in other countries for the root cause, when it was at the southern border the whole time.  But now, New York’s budget will also need 35 point 3 billion dollars for education, including prekindergarten programs for all the new kids, many of whom will have to try to learn English.  That’s in addition to the 2.4 billion just for, according to author Maysoon Khan, “would earmark $2.4 billion for short-term shelter services, health care and pay for larger-scale emergency housing centers that have been set up to deal with the influx of asylum seekers. It would also be used to pay for legal assistance to help migrants through the asylum and work-permitting process.”  If you’re a New Yorker, that’s your tax dollars at work.  That’s just this year’s budget.
In Chicago, estimates are 255 million dollars for 2023, just for shelters and basic amenities, of which there currently are not enough.  People are sleeping in police stations and on the streets, as they are in New York City.  
The massive shift in migration has also created a massive shift in the flow of money.  If you’re one of the people who rely on government subsidies, you’re suddenly not on the bottom rung anymore.  Monies that were going to programs to help those already here are now being spread much more thin---ly.  Hmmmm.  The economic cost will far exceed the multi-billion dollar effort put forth by the Governor of Texas to try to stop the flow of migrants in the first place.  Instead, they blame him for giving them free rides to their cities.  Do they really expect all of those people to stay in Texas?  Hell, half of them probably don’t know where they want to go once they get here.
I was just reminded of a time when I was about 14 years old.  I was at a phone booth along side a two-lane highway by my dad’s apartment.  I went there to see him, but there was no answer at the door, so I went to the phone booth to call him.  As I was calling, a big black Cadillac pulls up, and a woman gets out of the car.  She opens the back door of the car, and in the back seat are two young girls, probably a little younger than I.  They were pretty girls, dressed in frilly dresses that now remind me of an old- Spanish style.  They were smiling and seemed happy and inviting.  She asked me a question in an accent I hadn’t heard before.  “Would you like to go to Chicago?”  I was in Paxinos, Pennsylvania.  
I must admit that for a fleeting moment, I thought about getting in that big, beautiful car with the pretty girls.  I still had the phone in my hand when I said, “I’m calling my Dad.”  She closed the back door, got in the car and it drove away.  Most of the people entering the United States today got in that car.  They have no idea of what fate lies ahead of them.  Getting in that car may have changed my life in wonderful ways I could not have even imagined.  It could also have led me into a life of servitude and forced prostitution or starvation.  I had the same angst as any 14-year-old, but I wasn’t desperate enough to get in the car.  Most of these migrants are forging a river just to get to the phone booth.
So they get dispersed around the nation by the federal government and the state government of Texas.  But it’s only those who get moved by the state of Texas who are deemed to be political pawns.  Meanwhile, the cost of supporting the migrant crisis continues to build while states demand the federal government pay for it all.  That means we pay for it all.  
But none of that matters to the woman who was in a hurry to make a name for herself and took the risk of getting it wrong.  It doesn’t matter that she did.  It only matters that she’ll still be quoted and promoted by those who believe in the narrative.  Well, let me quote Alice’s completely false statement that says, “Abbott’s policies prevented the federal government from exercising its constitutional power to save a mother and her two children.”  No, they didn’t, Alice.
The headline of Alice’s piece on CNN dot com said, “Opinion: Abbott’s war on migration has led to another tragedy in Texas.”  To Alice’s credit, she probably didn’t write the headline.  But it is an opinion, that’s true.  Calling Texas Governor Abbot’s policies a war on migration is at least an exaggeration.  He’s not waging a war and he’s not against migration when it’s legal.  The part of the headline that says it’s “another tragedy” is certainly true, but saying it happened in Texas is not true.  The tragedies that we’ll never hear about are the bulk of the disaster of having a porous U.S. border.  The untold stories of what happened to people before they even got to the Rio Grand is likely to be the most tragic of all.
None of it was caused by the state of Texas keeping the hapless Border Patrol from doing its job in Eagle Pass, Texas.  

Let’s go back liner

1510
Henry VIII of England, then 18 years old, shows up at at jousting competition in disguise.  He hadn’t been King for very long, but was a physical specimen unlike most of his time.  King Henry VIII was no ordinary King.  Despite being known for how many wives he had, he was a scholar and an athlete.  It seem like he wanted to remain incognito, but was forced to reveal his identity when another competitor was badly injured, and somebody who knew the King was there in disguise thought it was the King who got injured.  He cried out, “God save the King!”  That’s when King Henry VIII revealed himself, to comfort those in attendance that the King was indeed, still in good health.  It was his friend, William Compton, who was injured.  Bill survived his injuries.  The King is applauded for his jousting before he reveals his identity.

1858
The Wedding March by Felix Mendelssohn becomes a popular wedding recessional after it is played at the marriage of Queen Victoria’s daughter, also named Victoria, and Friedrich of Prussia.  This  might seem hard to believe, but back in the 1850’s, guys like Medelssohn were the equivalent of today’s rock stars, whoever they are.  It turns out the Queen is a fan of this guy, and he uses a part of the music he wrote for a Shakespeare play as the music to which the Princess will proceed to her nuptuals.  
Musically, it’s similar to any march, including the Stars and Stripes Forever March and Bravura.  But this one, played a bit slower than it once was, became synonymous with the entrance of the bride at weddings.  In case the bride wants to milk her special moment to the fullest, the entire movement is a good five minutes long.  By the time the bride got to the alter, the groom will have already considered them married long enough to start hanging out with the guys again.  It was 16 years between when The Wedding March was written and when it was played at Victoria’s wedding.  It’s still played every day somewhere more than a hundred 60 years later.  Let’s see Taylor top that!

1960
The National Association of Broadcasters reacts to the Payola scandal by threatening fines for any disc jockeys who accept money for playing particular records.  I spent 20 years as a disc-jockey on radio stations all over the place.  Back then I was so poor that I would have played your record for a bag of chips.  It’s no wonder that local disc-jockeys are becoming a thing of the past.  The gonglomerates of broadcast companies has taken the local out of radio and replaced it with strange voices that never talk about anything local.  They go on about the most bland and universally understood sound bites and never tell you about the lost dog or the fifth birthday of the kid down the street anymore.  Well, some do.  I work for a group of radio stations that still has live, local personalities during the important parts of the day.  But like newspapers, local disc-jockeys are fading away.  I applaud those who still support it and especially those who still do it.  Most people don’t understand how we create special relationships with our favorite disc-jockeys and radio personalities.  Advertisers who are paying attention know the value.  Radio is still popular all across America.  In fact, it’s America’s number one mass reach medium.  That’s right.  It’s not your phone.  It’s your radio.  Podcasting has filled the gap somewhat, as now listeners can pick and choose which personalities they want to hear.  Perhaps the homoginization of radio by corporations like Iheart media led to the creation of podcasts.  I encourage everyone to find and support radio stations with live, local disc-jockeys.  They’re not technically spinning discs anymore, but you can’t buy the value of having them in the car or in the kitchen with you.  The reason you can’t buy it is because it’s free.  AM, FM.  You can even get it on your phone.  Still not convinced?  My radio group gives away thousands of dollars of free stuff every month.  Listen and find out how yours might, too.

1961
1961 Goldsboro B-52 crash: A bomber carrying two H-bombs breaks up in mid-air over North Carolina. The uranium core of one weapon remains at the site where it landed.  Back then, even before I was born, the United States would fly around with nuclear bombs just in case we had to drop them on the Soviet Union.  Well, there’s no such thing as a routine flight when you’re carrying nuclear weapons.  This flight was experiencing a fuel leak, which got progressively worse in a short period of time.  The next thing you know, the pilot orders the plane be evacuated.  There were eight on board.  Six of them got off the B-52, including the only man to ever get out of the cockpit without the aid of an ejector seat.  One of them would die when he hit the ground.  Two remained on the plane and were killed.  
Both H-bombs came out of the plane before it crashed, as the plane disintegrated as it came down.  The parachute on one of the bombs deployed and it landed safely.  The other did not open, and the uranium core is still about 55 feet below the ground.  That’s how deep it sunk when it hit the ground.  
It you’re thinking about digging it up, don’t.  According to wikipedia, the Air Force bought the land and fenced it off.

1972
Japanese Sgt. Shoichi Yokoi is found hiding in a Guam jungle, where he had been since the end of World War II.  I arrived in Guam a little more than ten years later.  I was assigned there to be a radio personality on the Far East Network of the American Forces Broadcasting Squadron.  I was there for two years and three months, and got to know the island pretty well.  It’s really not that big.  Twenty-four miles from top to bottom, and shaped like an hour glass, about eight miles wide at the top and bottom, four miles wide in the middle.  You might think there aren’t a lot of places to hide on an island so small, but I found places there where you could sit for days and not know another human being exists unless a ship went by somewhere in the distance.  I loved living in Guam.  The Japanese soldier who hid there for decades probably had a different impression.  
It says a lot about a person’s conviction when they hide in a jungle years after there’s no longer the sound of bombs dropping or gunfire in the distance.  You might think that the sight of a Pan-Am jet coming in for a landing might be a clue that maybe the war is over.  Even if you don’t know what Pan-Am was, it was easy to tell it’s not a military aircraft.  
As it turns out, after he was captured, it was discovered that he knew the war had ended as far back as 1952, twenty years earlier.  There were two others until 1964, according to wikipedia, and they regularly visited each other, but they died in a flood.  All of them were taught to prefer death to the disgrace of getting captured alive.
There’s a village called Talofofo, home to a beautiful waterfall.  That’s where the Japanese hold-out was discovered by two local men.  When Sargent Yokoi realized he had been discovered, he attacked the men, but lost the struggle and was subdued.  Had he not attacked, the local men probably wouldn’t have suspected he was a Japanese soldier in the first place!  The men who subdued him took him home and offered him hot soup.  This surprised Sargent Yokoi, as he expected to be killed.  He was treated at Guam Memorial Hospital to shore up some nutrition deficiencies.  He had been living on wild nuts and some fruit, along with some seafood, amphibians and rats.  He returned to Japan in March of 1972.  Upon his return, he proclaimed, “It is with much embarrassment that I return.”
He wasn’t the last of the Japanese soldiers to continue his mission.  The last Japanese soldier to be discovered from World War Two came in 1974, about 29 years after the war ended.  The repatriation of Teruo Nakamura isn’t as celebrated, as he wanted to go to Taiwan instead of Japan after discovery.  Japan had already declared him dead 30 years earlier.

1978
The Great Blizzard of ‘78, a rare severe blizzard with the lowest non-tropical atmospheric pressure ever recorded in the United States.  It strikes the Ohio/Great Lakes region with heavy snow and winds as fast as 100 miles per hour.  Climate change!  Said no one.

1995
Israeli-Palestinian conflict: Beit Lid massacre – In central Israel, near Netanya, two suicide bombers from the Gaza Strip blow themselves up at a military transit point killing 19 Israelis.  That’s for those of you who think this Hamas/Israeli thing is new...1995

2003
The United States Department of Homeland Security officially begins operation.  I was proud that the Governor of Pennsylvania was tapped to lead the department.  Tom Ridge was the first, and now the current Secretary of Homeland Security is facing impeachment proceedings because of the failures and incompetence displayed at the borders of the United States.  Secretary Myorkas is the equivalent of a toll booth in the desert or a feather at the exit of a parking garage. 

2003
2003 Invasion of Iraq: A group of people left London, England, for Baghdad, Iraq, to serve as human shields to prevent the U.S.-led coalition troops from bombing certain locations.  That’s how you become the subject of a biography instead of an autobiography.

Return at the…

I hope you’ll say hi at Podfest 2024 in Orlando!  I’ll be there to learn how I might better serve you.

Phone and email liner

In hindsight, I got a little carried away talking about the catastrophe at the southern border of the United States, and all the inaction and all the blame and all the death.  Because of that, I don’t have time for the regular epilogue (can’t be right liner).  Well, thanks, because I’m also disappointed.  There’s so much going on in my head about, not what’s happening in the world, but how we’re being told about what’s happening in our world.  There’s a right way and a wrong way to report the news, and I just don’t see it being done the right way very much anymore.  By pointing it out, I hope to provide some insight that will help you be confident in your own perspective.
A while ago, I had a guy come up to me in a bar and say, “I listen to your podcast, and I agree with 70% of what you say.”  I’m okay with that.  I just hope it’s my opinion with which he has an issue, and not the facts that I bring to the program.  I do a lot of research in order to bring you the truth.  I’m just trying to make sense of the world in which we live and share how I see it with you.  I also try to explore how we got here.  Sometimes context help us understand.  I’m not asking you to agree.  And I’m willing to listen to you.

Having said that, I’ll be in Orlando, Florida for Podfest 2024 this week.  Because I’ll be busy meeting people and learning about the podcasting world, I might not have a new episode next week.  It depends on how much work I can get done on a new one, and still participate in the event.  If you’ll be there, too, be sure to say hi!

As for me, I just want to say thank you for putting your ear to the Listening Tube!  The Listening Tube is written and produced by yours truly.  Copyright 2024.  Subscribe today!  I’m your host, Bob Woodley for thou ad infinitum.