Season 7, Episode 9 February 4, 2023

On this episode, we’ll hear about the limits of patience in art and war, old timey limits on immigration, and the outer limits of our solar system.  The Epilogue examines why change may not always be right.  But first, Not the Headlines look at women and the housing market.

Transcript

Hello!  Thank you for putting your ear to the Listening Tube!  I’m your host, Bob Woodley.  Politics is like a Van Gough.  Nothing is only one color, and some things aren’t the color they appear to be.  On this episode, we’ll hear about the limits of patients in art and war, old timey limits on immigration, and the outer limits of our solar system…...but first, (Not the Headlines)!

Just when you thought the world was ruled by old white guys, a story on Axios tells us that women are ruling men in a very important category.  We already know women mature more quickly than men.  If not physically, then certainly emotionally.  And with that emotional advantage, women also become more financially responsible.  After all, we men make it easy for them when we spend our money on dinner and drinks and the movie tickets, popcorn and condoms, most of which dry up in our wallets.  Meanwhile, women are putting their money in the bank.  And women are spending that money on real estate.  More single women own and live in their own homes than do single men.  Oh, but it’s not just single women who are knee-deep in the housing market.  The story says that about a third of women with partners, most of whom I’ll assume are men, bought the home on their own because they had a stronger financial foundation to start with.  
This almost applies to me, as my wife had owned homes before she and I got married.  The home we bought together is the first home I’ve owned.  But she could have easily bought a home on her own, while I would have had to try some sort of squatting scheme in the hopes the rightful owners would simply give up and let me stay there.  What’s funny is that we bought the house before we got married, so all of the paperwork has her name listed as what her surname was before we got married, so when the tax bill comes every year, it looks like I’m still living with some single chick.
Speaking of single, the story cites a Lending Tree’s assessment of data from the census (https://www.lendingtree.com/home/mortgage/single-women-own-more-homes-than-single-men-do/) as saying single women own almost 13 percent of owner-occupied homes, compared to only 10 percent for single men.  Now, you might think that 13 percent isn’t that much more than 10 percent.  But when you count it all up that turns out to be 2-point-71 million more homes owned by single women than single men.  And the gap is increasing.  Single ladies added 70-thousand homes between 2021 and  2022, the year lending tree used for the study.  
Now, these are national averages, so the results could be skewed by population density or some type of social anomaly.  But it doesn’t seem like it.  Single women out-own single men in 47 states.  Only three, Alaska, and the two Dakotas have higher single man home ownerships, so perhaps population density is a factor, but there are other states where people are pretty spread out, like Colorado, Kansas, and Martha’s Vineyard.
So, in what states are women really leading the pack when it comes to home ownership?  Well, the third highest, according to the story, is Mississippi, where more than 800-thousand single women own and live in their home, about four percent more than single men.  Coming in at number two, Louisiana has more than 1-point-two million single ladies owning their home, almost 4-and-a-half percent more than the men.  And the number one state where single women own the most homes is the also the number one state on the stripes of the American Flag:  Delaware.  Yes, tiny Delaware, home of the most powerful old white guy in the country at the moment, is where the highest percentage of single women own and live in their home.  They beat the guys by 5.89 percent!  And unlike the 800,000 in Mississippi or the 1-point-two million in Louisiana, the women of Delaware own less than 300,000?  Well, I guess there just aren’t as many single households in Delaware as there are in Louisiana and Mississippi.
Illinois was the northern most state to make the top ten.  Not all the single ladies tend to be choosy when deciding where to buy, as this is a nationwide trend, but there are pockets the ladies seem to prefer.  And they’re not those tiny pockets that come on women’s bluejeans.  Like, why do they even put ‘em on there? The southern states!  Where Florida, Alabama, and South Carolina join Mississippi and Louisiana in the top ten. 
So, why are women out-shopping men when it comes to the home in which you live?  Well, lendingtree has a few thoughts on that.  The very first sentence says the data shows that women generally earn less money than men.  But then points out that in 22 metropolitan areas around the country, including the top two, New York and Los Angeles, women younger than 30 earn as much if not more than their male counterparts.  Huh.  But the first sentence just said that women generally earn less money than men.  Then it adds the top 107 metropolitan areas by saying women earn no less than 90 percent of what men make, but it also could be as much as 99 percent.  But that’s only people under 30.  So, is it young women who are buying up all the real estate?  Not necessarily.  Another reason single women own more of their own homes is because they outlive their husbands.  There are vastly more single senior citizen women than men.  Sixty years ago, when a woman wasn’t even allowed to have a credit card in her own name, millions of women got married, and she and her husband bought a house.  Back then they might have paid upwards of 15-thousand dollars for a good one (weee doggies!), and it’s been paid off for a few decades now.  But a few years back, it probably doesn’t seem as long as it’s been, her husband passed away, and now she’s counted not just as a widow, but as a single female home owner.  Sometimes she still wonders why he had to go so soon, but we all know most men die before their wives beCAUSE THEY WANT TO!
I would like to point out right here that since this article compares men and women, and for the purpose of doing so, divides us into those two groups, it is, in fact, sexist.  If the two groups were broken up by race, it would be racist.  Either way, it’s simply a statistical comparison.  Until we get to the part about possible reasons why single ladies rule the housing market.  While the article explores the possibilities from the viewpoint of why women own more, they don’t examine why men own less.  There’s no call to arms about how single men are being left behind in the housing market.  There will be no task force assembled to find the root cause of the decline in single male household ownership!  While the article clearly spells out that in only three states do more single men own their own home than single women, the article follows up the reasons why women are ahead of men with Tips for women homebuyers.  
Allow me to point out something here.  Let’s replace “Women” with “Black People” and “Men” with “White People.”  In that case, we just read an article about how Black people now own more homes than White people.  After spelling out all the reasons Black people are dominating the single-family housing market, you follow it up with Tips for Black Homebuyers.     
Seems to me the single men are the ones who need the tips.  The trend would suggest single women have figured out how to accomplish this goal, while single men aren’t even sure if it is a goal yet, or they only owned a home with their wife and now it’s hers because she lived longer.  Yet it’s becoming ingrained in our media and in our mindset that for whatever reason, women need more help than men.  Here’s a clear case of when Tips for Single Male Homebuyers would have been not just appropriate, but helpful.  Instead, the article makes sure that if there are any women reading this and wondering why they haven’t bought a house yet, here’s how you can, but don’t tell the men.  While it boasts of single women’s accomplishments in the real estate market, it still minumizes it.  It talks about the pay gap and then tells us how much tighter it is than we’re generally led to believe.  It says evidence doesn’t support theories like women being disproportionately rewarded homes in divorce settlements, and that just because single women own more homes than single men, doesn’t mean they’re better off financially.  It says more needs to be done to make the economy more gender-equitable.  But they don’t offer tips to single men who might want to buy a home, and the first possible explanation the article offers as to why single women are more likely to own their home, and after all the statistics are laid bare in word and graph form, citing evidence they call “relatively sparse,” is that, “single women are more willing than single men to make sacrifices to become homeowners.”  Let’s switch the genders to races again.  Now it says, “Black people are more willing to make sacrifices than White people to become homeowners.”  None of that is true, of course, regardless of which color is listed first.
So, why is it okay to write one sentence, but not the other?  Just as racism is racism, sexism is sexism.  
By the way, the real reason more single women own a home than single men is because women want to make sure they always have a place where they can sit down and pee.  Men can pee anywhere. 

Let’s go back liner

1852
The Hermitage Museum in Saint Petersburg, Russia, one of the largest and oldest museums in the world, opens to the public.  Catherine the Great started the collection she bought it from a Berlin art merchant who had accumulated hundreds of paintings from such artists as Rembrandt, Raphael, and others not named after Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, for Frederick II of Prussia, who then decided he didn’t want to pay for them.  The museum has grown over the years, and now occupies six buildings, holding about a million items in the numismatic collection alone, along with two million other pieces, most of which is stored away.  It’s a very busy place, as wikipedia cites Art Newspaper as listing the Hermitage Museum as the 10th most visited in the world, with nearly three-million visitors in 2022.  There must have been a lot of anticipation for the public opening of the museum in 1852, as it had already existed for 88 years before the public was allowed in.  In the advertising business, that’s called “creating a sense of urgency.” 

1910
The Boy Scouts of America is incorporated by William D. Boyce.  Boyce learned of Scouting while in London, and even cut short an around the world trip to return to London to learn more about the scouting program.  He didn’t just start the Boy Scouts of America, he also started the Lone Scouts of America for boys who lived in rural areas and didn’t have enough other boys around to start a troop.  Boyce was already a millionaire newspaper publisher and adventurer.  He wanted young boys to learn how to be self-reliant.  Especially city boys who he thought didn’t have the opportunities to learn how to live off the land or survive the wilderness for any length of time.  In addition to self-reliance, Boy Scouts also learned citizenship, resourcefulness, patriotism, obedience, cheerfulness, courage and courtesy.  Many of the traits some people claim are lacking in today’s youth.  Boyce thought it was by learning these traits they could turn boys into men.  Boyce insisted that all boys be welcome regardless of race.  That all changed a week ago in 2019, when the Boy Scouts, now called Scouts BSA, began admitting girls to the organization, much to the displeasure of the Girl Scouts.  The Girl Scouts, known as Girl Guides in most countries, does not allow boys to join.

1917
The Congress of the United States passes the Immigration Act of 1917.  As it is today, immigration to the United States has always been a hot-button issue.  Beginning in 1894, literacy tests were a convenient way to limit immigration, and every bill that included a literacy test from that point on was vetoed by the sitting president.  Grover Cleveland vetoed a literacy test in 1897, in 1901, Theodore Roosevelt was okay with it, but such a bill never made it to his desk.  The US Senate passed a bill including a literacy test in 1906, but the House didn’t agree.  A literacy test was passed in 1912, but vetoed by president Taft.  Then in 1915, President Woodrow Wilson’s veto put a temporary stop to the latest proposal, only to be overridden by congress.  Also known as the Asiatic Barred Zone Act, the Immigration Act of 1917 forbade immigration from nearly all of south and southeast Asia. It didn’t last long, though, as it was replaced in 1924.  The restrictions on immigration from Asia was still included, though, as were quotas on immigration from Eastern and Southern Europe.  The 1924 legislation also created the U.S. Border Patrol, and established rules that allowed entry into the United States only after obtaining a visa from a U.S. Consulate in another country.  The number of immigrants was capped at 165-thousand per year.  For comparison, under the Biden administration, more than 165-thousand immigrants enter the United States illegally every month. 

1917
The current constitution of Mexico is adopted, establishing a federal republic with powers separated into independent executive, legislative, and judicial branches.  Today, there’s a fourth branch of the Mexican government:  the cartels that are controlling the flow of people coming from all over the world and making their way to the border of the United States.  Millions of dollars in fees, sex trafficking, drug trafficking, murder and extortion have made the Mexican cartels who control the routes the most powerful branch of the Mexican government, and their employee of the year for the past three years is the President of the United States, Joe Biden.  

1924
The first state execution in the United States by gas chamber takes place in Carson City, Nevada.  That’s right!  It’s been one-hundred years since America began executing those who have earned the distinction with a mere vapor.  Execution by gas is thought to be more humane than other forms of capital punishment.  Gone are the days of the guillotine and the simple hangin’.  Old methods that were just as much for spectacle as they were for justice.  More dignified ways were devised like the electric chair, which came along in 1889, after a battle between direct current proponent Thomas Edison and Alternating Current proponent George Westinghouse.  AC proved to kill more swiftly and therefore more humanely.  
Before lethal injection was developed, gas was considered the least likely form of capital punishment to be considered “cruel and unusual” which is unconstitutional.  While it can now be considered unusual to kill someone for committing a crime, it’s always the cruel part that seems to be the focus of capital punishment opponents.  It’s pretty easy to argue that killing somebody, regardless of how you do it, is cruel.  But for some, it seems like a fitting punishment regardless of how cruel or unusual.  Personally, if I had to choose how I would be executed, I’d go for the guillotine.  The only thing cruel about the guillotine was the crowd that gathered to watch.  So, how many people have the United States executed with the gas chamber?  

Look that up…


The gas chamber had a good run.  According to a story in the Washington Post by Randy Dotinga, 600 sinners were executed by gas in the United States over a 75-year stretch. 
For the last 25 years, gas chambers were either unused or removed.  As it turned out, execution by gas chamber is not humane.
But that hasn’t stopped Alabama from trying to find a more humane gas to use in executions.  And they thought they found it in nitrogen.  All it took was a man who was convicted of a contract killing in 1988 to find out.  That’s the great thing about America.  We’re so caring and compassionate that we even try to find ways to kill people without hurting their feelings or making them suffer.  So nitrogen sounds like a good idea.  After all, nitrogen is, according to techie scientist dot com, the gas that makes up almost 80 percent of the air we breathe.  It’s a part of all living beings.  It’s odorless and tasteless and colorless, just like pure water.  Hell, knowing all that, you might even wonder how it can kill anyone!  It’s non-toxic and non-combustible!  Only thing is, it doesn’t support life, and too much of it, which must be more than 80 percent of the air, it seems, can be fatal.  Not just for humans, but all kinds of living organisms.  Therein lies it’s value for the Justice system of Alabama.  To see how well it works, just last week the state of Alabama used nitrogen gas to execute said killer from 1988.
Usually, when an execution takes place, the press writes about the last meal of the condemned, and who his last visitors were, but not this time.  I would imagine that the last meal of the Alabama inmate would have been a stack of flapjacks.  A big stack.  Ten of them.  But true to the end, the prisoner proclaimed, “Warden, take back four of these flapjacks, I gotta stay huungry for Auburn!”  Then after he ate the remaining six flapjacks, he was fitted with a gas mask.  No need for expensive gas chambers anymore.  Just strap that mask on good and tight.  Turn on the gas, and wait for it to replace the oxygen in his blood stream.  So, did it work?  Yes.  He died.  Was it cruel?  Probably.  Was it swift?  No.  Was it unusual?  Well, it’s the only time it’s been done, so...yes.  One hundred years after the first execution by gas, we’re still trying to perfect it.  We’re not even close.  That’s why I’d choose the guillotine.  Sadly, though, guillotine is not an option in any of the United States.  You can’t even get it done in France, and that’s where it was made famous.  
Three states now offer the option of death by nitrogen, but for those states that have capital punishment, lethal injection is the preferred method.  You can still choose electrocution in South Carolina, Tennessee, and Virginia.  But if you want to go out in true historic fashion, you might consider making Utah your state of jurisdiction.  In Utah, you may select to be executed by firing squad.  But to protect the health of the marksmen, you may not be shot with a cigarette hanging out of your mouth.         

1958
A hydrogen bomb known as the Tybee Bomb is lost by the United States Air Force off the coast of Savannah, Georgia, never to be recovered.  So, that’s at least two nuclear bombs that are currently lost in the eastern half of the United States.  We talked about another incident that happened in North Carolina in the last episode of the Listening Tube.  https://www.buzzsprout.com/1940478/14347765-season-7-episode-8-january-21-2024.mp3?download=true  Turns out there are six nuclear bombs or cores that have gone more or less missing.

1978
The Blizzard of 1978, one of the worst Nor'easters in New England history, hit the region, with sustained winds of 65 mph and 4 inches of snowfall an hour.  Climate change!  Said nobody.

1979
Pluto moves inside Neptune’s orbit for the first time since either was discovered.  Well, discovered by us, anyway.  It’s very presumptive to assume we’re the first to discover either of them.  They’re so far away from Earth that it’s entirely possible some other civilization discovered them first.  They may already have names that we can’t even pronounce.  Plus, we don’t even consider Pluto a planet anymore.  When I was in school, there was rumor of a tenth planet out there beyond Pluto.  Planet X.  X being the roman numeral for 10.  But now there are only eight planets recognized in our Solar system.  But for people my age, if you named it like a planet, it is a planet.  It’s not some XB dash 243yk malarky.  Pluto.

1982
Ugo Vetere, then the mayor of Rome, and Chedli Klibi, then the mayor of Carthage meet in Tunis to sign a treaty of friendship officially ending the Third Punic War which lasted 2,131 years.  Kinda puts things in perspective, doesn’t it?  North and South Korea are still technically at war, and have been since the 1950’s.  World War II lasted a paltry 6 years.  Hell, we were in Afghanistan for 20 years, and the Soviet Union was in there for a decade before the United States.  The wars in Ukraine and Gaza may turn out to blips on the radar in the grand history of war.  
War is a strange tool, indeed.  Wielded by those who have the power to do so.  Condemned by those who don’t have the power to stop it.
The United States seems to have found itself in a bit of a pickle.  Our military is supposed to be a deterrent to war.  Have a powerful military, and others won’t pick on you.  But there are forces at play who are treating our military as if it’s a game of whack a mole, which, by the way, I have always been very good at.  But right now, it seems like we’re not deterring anything, and the Commander in Chief just doesn’t have the reflexes to respond to whatever pops up.  And there’s stuff popping up everywhere.  Every time we fail to whack the mole is like putting in another quarter, making the game last longer.  The only way to end the game is to whack the moles every time they pop up, and be quick about it.  

Phone and email liner

There’s an old saying that goes:  If it works, don’t fix it.  A similar phrase says, Let sleeping dogs lie.  The wisdom these old saying imparts is that sometimes the status quo is as good as it’s gonna get right now.  If you try to fix something that isn’t broken, you might make it worse.  The dog is happy where it is right now, nor is the dog disturbing anybody by soliciting pats on the head or wanting to go for a walk.  As long as things are fine the way they are, enjoy it while you can, because we all know that nothing stays the same for very long.  Someday that machine will need fixing, and the dog will want to play, but not right now.
Even if things aren’t the way you want them to be, they might not get any better, or they could get worse.  For example, the federal government and enough states to start a country want to mandate that a certain percentage of automobiles sold by dealers are electric vehicles.  That certain percentage is 66 percent, or two out of every three new cars sold by 2035.  If you’re a young person, 2035 may seem like a long way off.  If you’re my age, 2035 is just two colonoscopies away.
A writer named Jim Henry https://www.wardsauto.com/dealers/dealers-want-hit-brakes-evs quotes Stephanie Streaty, who’s the director of insights for Cox Automotive as saying, “The EV market is growing.”  With a name like Streaty, you should work in the auto industry!  Stephanie says sales are anything but uniform, though, since most of the sales are in the thirteen states with goals similar to those of California.  And of course, California.
Car dealers measure inventory by how many days worth of cars they have on the lot.  I know a local dealer who has a 28-day supply right now, and he’s shooting for a 72-day supply, but he’s having a hard time getting any kind of car delivered to his lot by the manufacturer.  Few of the cars he has are electric, but that’s not the case everywhere.  Cox Automotive says that overall,  2023 ended with lots having a 113 day supply of EV’s, and only a 69 day supply of internal combustion engine cars.  So, while EV sales are continuing to climb as more models are rolled out by more manufacturers, dealers are asking for fewer of them.  But the big auto makers are keeping up with the number of EV’s that will be needed to satisfy the mandate.  That’s why the CEO of an auto group in Nebraska organized a letter writing campaign to President Biden.  Not once, but twice.  The CEO is quoted in the story as saying, “Since the first letter, the evidence continues to mount that these regulations go too far too soon.”   He says demand is softening, rental car companies are going back to gas-powered cars, and there just isn’t the infrastructure for them yet.  “It’s just not a practical purchase for most Americans,” he says.
One automobile broker based in Florida says manufacturers are afraid to say electric cars aren’t going to be a part of the industry’s near future, while telling their investors the opposite.  Another dealer group president says while there are customers who want EV’s, consumers aren’t driving the demand, the mandate is.  The hotel where I stayed in Orlando last week for Podfest 2024 had two reserved parking spaces for electric vehicles to charge.  Over the four days I was there, only two cars needed to be charged.  Luckily for them, the charger worked better than my key card at the pool gate.  That’s not always the case, though, as the story says public charging infrastructure is inadequate and often unreliable.  Not everybody has a garage or driveway where charging can be done at home.  
So, why is the Biden administration in such a hurry to force electric cars on a population that for the most part, isn’t ready to get charged up about it?  Well, the most common argument is that it’s better for the environment.  No exhaust coming out the back of the car, choking pedestrians as they wait at the corner to cross the street.  EV’s just slide down the street leaving nothing behind but some rubber on the road.  The electricity used to propel them is often generated by burning coal, but as long as that’s done somewhere else, it’s okay.  Plus the precious metals needed to create the batteries have to be mined.  There aren’t many electric vehicles creating the strip mines, either.  Those big Uke trucks run on diesel, as do all the land movers.  But all of that is irrelevant if electric cars can save the planet from heating up to the point it kills all of us, right?  Seems to me it’s all an act.  Electric cars aren’t going to help.  Hydrogen cars might, but not electric ones.  So, why the act, then?  Well, it’s a part of an effort to make it look like something’s being done.  It doesn’t matter if it will save the planet or not, as long as we tried, right?  But somewhere along the line, liberal policy makers forgot that we live in a free-market society, where the consumer decides what works and what doesn’t.  Right now, consumers are happy to let the sleeping dog lie, and not try to fix what isn’t broken.  For some, an electric vehicle is perfect, regardless of whether or not it helps the environment.  For most, it’s neither practical nor affordable.  Plus, the story says early data shows EV’s are more expensive to maintain than their gas-powered counterparts.  It almost seems like the Biden administration didn’t think it through before they made the 2035 mandate.  The evidence seems to show they didn’t.  But that’s not what was really important anyway.  What was most important was change for change’s sake.
Many of today’s Democrats, and all of the progressives in the party want change, plain and simple.  It doesn’t matter what kind of change.  A local politician near where I live ran simply on change.  Joe Shmo for change!  A fictitious name, of course, but that’s all the lawn posters said.  Most left-wing philosophers call for change, try to inspire change, assure you that if you elect them, they’ll make changes.  They never say what kind of changes, but I guess you have to elect them to find out.  My local change agent didn’t win, so we’ll have to wait for the next election to get any change, it seems.  In the meantime, we’ll just have to deal with our lives the way they were before the election.  Those sleeping dogs will stay that way, and nothing will get fixed, even if it wasn’t broken.  But since nothing is perfect, the only way to get closer to perfection is through change.  Although it should be noted that change can move us further from perfection as easily as it can move us toward it.  Not every idea is a good one.  For example, I thought it would be a good idea to start a podcast!  The only change it made is that I now have a lot less time to do other stuff.  If that’s a good thing or a bad thing has yet to be determined.  Once again, the consumer will decide.  I think we can all agree that if President Biden mandated that by 2035, two out of ever three people in the United States, or about 75 percent, must subscribe to The Listening Tube podcast, it would be unfair to all the gas-fueled podcasts out there.
Change for the sake of change is not a good strategy.  When a politician’s platform is only described as “change” you have to ask yourself if change is what you really want, and if so, what kind of change?  Then you have to ask the politician what kind of change they mean.  I have yet to hear a reporter ask a politician who campaigns on change what kind of change they’re talking about.  It seems like an obvious question.  If a stranger walked up to me and asked, “How would you like it if I changed your life?” I would have to ask how he proposes to do it before I agreed to it.  Yet, when politicians promise change, party faithful rush to the polls to vote for whatever it might be.  They don’t know what it will be because nobody bothered to ask.  It’s almost like a secret code that only liberals understand.  Although, based on President Biden’s approval numbers, the Republicans might want to adopt the phrase for themselves.  Let me know if you see a “Trump for Change” yard sign in your town.
Realistically, though, change is a catchphrase for liberal values like equity and open borders and world government.  Change is a catchphrase for incorporating liberal practices like not enforcing laws, as is demonstrated by the catastrophe pouring across the southern border of the United States, and leftist district attorneys letting criminals walk free no matter how many times the police arrest them.  Change is a catchphrase for raising taxes to pay for social programs that are only needed because of other liberal policies, creating a vicious cycle of government subsidies for the very rich and the very poor, under the illusion that it will somehow make us all better off.  Meanwhile, the middle class, which both political parties claim to champion, is left to do all the work while the welfare state stays at home watching cable tv and the corporate leaders get rich watching the work get done.
Change isn’t always a good thing.  Today, change often means less liberty, less freedom for the people, and more control for the government.  When was the last time the government made a change that resulted in more freedom?  I can tell you.  December 15, 1791.  Since then, every change made by the government has resulted in more regulation and therefore less freedom and liberty.  That’s not always a bad thing.  A lot of those rules are for our own protection because a lot of us do stupid stuff.  But when a politician’s only promise is change, it rarely means a change for the better.  After all, the United States is already the greatest nation on Earth, and some say it’s only gotten worse in recent decades.  Maybe change is what led to the decline.  While changes in technology and medicine, nutrition and health, safety and communication have led to great advances in society, changes imposed by government and those who promote change have done little to improve upon the government itself.

Cars by Gary Numan

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