Season 9, Episode 3 July 21, 2024

On this episode, we’ll hear about dust bowl temperatures, kitchen debates, and pine tar, plus the elephant in the room.  Not the Headlines looks at electric cars and Gretchen Whitmer. 

Transcript

Hello!  Thank you for putting your ear to the Listening Tube!  I’m your host, Bob Woodley.  As it turns out, I will not be Donald Trumps running mate.  I’m not even sure he got my text.  On this episode, we’ll hear about dust bowl temperatures, kitchen debates, and pine tar, and the elephant in the room.  But first, (Not the Headlines!)

A recent story on wards auto dot com has a chilling story all about how the Biden administration is putting even more strain on the American consumer than we thought.  Actually, the story didn’t say that, but I am, based on what I read in the story.  It’s all about how much more expensive it is to repair an electric car than it is an internal combustion one.  Statistics have already shown the falling interest in electric vehicles, which has the auto industry’s heads spinning.  They don’t know what to do, because  the president has issued thresholds for electric car sales, as have at least two or three individual states.  The rules were softened a bit in May, according to a story in Politico, allowing more of a mix of electric and liquid fuel hybrids, but still meant to keep the same pollution-reduction goals.  But every time the rules change, auto manufacturers have to reconfigure everything to adjust as best they can.  That can leave workers in the lurch and unions unsure of what’s going to happen to the rank and file.  It’s no wonder Joe had to march with striking auto workers;  he’s done a lot to give them the willies.  This whole electric car experiment is failing, and now we learn that they also break down at a higher rate, according to the wards auto story.  
It says that we’re led to believe electric cars break down less frequently because they have fewer moving parts.  That could sound perfectly logical to a mechanical engineer, but maybe not a computer programmer.  As with all new technology, electric cars are still experimenting and trying to learn how to incorporate technology and the driving experience.  That’s led to a lot of problems.  Problems with the programs themselves failing, problems with the absence of controls we’re accustomed to having, and problems with the new functions themselves.  Electric car drivers take their car back to the dealer for repairs three times more than those who own a gas-powered car.  The gas/electric hybrids fare better, which is probably one reason the Biden administration relaxed the mandates.  
When it comes to reliability, EV’s have public relations issues.  A story on arstechnica dot com says because of reliability issues, EV’s have almost 80 percent more complaints than gas cars.  Batteries, charging, and electric motors are all problem areas.  Kinks are still being worked out of a lot of models, and the story cautions against buying the first kind of a new model.  Many of these repairs can be much more expensive than a fuel injector or a muffler.  
But it’s not just the reliability issue.  It’s also a time issue.  And I’m not talking about the time you sit reading or playing solitaire on your phone while the car is charging at the convenience store.  I’m talking about the time you spend taking your electric car back to the dealership.  
Getting back to the software issue, there are three problems that seem to bring the most cars back to the dealer for examination.  A lot of people don’t know what the symbols mean on the dashboard.  They know what a blinking left arrow means, and might recognize the symbol for a battery, but nobody is yet accustomed to the signal that there is a baby or small dog still in the back seat.  Another issue, which, I should point out, should have been covered by the salesman at the dealership, is a warning that there’s traffic crossing behind you.  I’m familiar with this one.  My wife’s tank has that so-called safety feature, but it’s not electric.  There’s nothing more irritating than sitting stationary at the edge of your driveway, waiting for traffic to clear so you can back out, and every time another car goes by, which you saw coming even before the last car went by, the car has to warn you with a series of loud chimes that an older person might mistake for opening the door while the key is in the ignition.  Except now there’s no key in the ignition, because it’s in your wife’s purse.  But you still have to check to make sure your door is closed properly.  Meanwhile, you miss an opportunity to back out, as here comes another car, and the warning blares again, as if to say, “are you still there?”  Yes!  I’m still here because of you, otherwise I’d be on the freeway by now.  
So, while it may be petty things that steal your time and skew the statistics to make electric cars look bad, the other variable to consider is the cost of repairs.  After all, the time you spend waiting to get your car back is also the time somebody else is getting paid to look at it.  Plus the cost of parts.  And sales tax, depending upon where you live.
I found it very difficult to find good apples-to-apples comparisons when it comes to the cost of repairing and maintaining regular cars and electric cars.  After some searching, I found a Forbes magazine article that quoted a woman who is an industry analyst for a company called CCC Intelligent Solutions who said, “The challenge, really, is finding apples-to-apples comparisons.”  But the article did point out some reasons why electric cars are more expensive to maintain and repair.  To begin with, with such new technology, training mechanics, if you even call them that, technicians might be a more accurate term, is a challenge and an expense.  That expense is going to be passed on to the early consumer.  Driver assistance systems are much more abundant in EV’s than in gas cars, and the sensors are in places that get damaged in collisions.  That’ll cost more.  Plus, electric vehicles have large, heavy batteries, adding momentum, wearing on breaks, causing more damage in collisions.  To make up for the heavy batteries, lighter, more expensive materials are used in other parts of the car.  And if that wasn’t enough, the battery may have to be removed before any body repairs are spray-painted, adding time and cost to the repair.  One thing’s for sure, the era of the driveway mechanic will end with electric cars.  While that’s been the goal of the auto industry for a long time, there will be little left to do for ourselves if electric cars are ever the dominant mode of transportation.  At least for awhile.  We humans tend to adapt to our surroundings pretty well.  
I still say we should just skip right over the electric car era and go straight to hydrogen.  After all, two-thirds of all the water on the planet is hydrogen.  It’s the second-most plentiful element in the universe.  We’ll be able to find it wherever we go.  Even it it’s just down to the hydrogen car store.

Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer is a rising star in the Democratic party.  Some are even wondering how they can put her in charge instead of Kamala Harris without upsetting women of color, a large part of the voter base.  But Gretchen has certainly earned the recognition she has in her party.  She was voted Democratic MVP of the Michigan House of Representatives.  Moving to the state Senate, she became the first woman leader of the party.  Wikipedia says she describes herself as a progressive Democrat.  She was national co-chair of the Biden campaign beginning in March of 2020, and was on the short list to be Biden’s running mate, which eventually became Harris.  Whitmer has even been parodied on Saturday Night Live.  But not for advocating for a black woman instead of herself as V.P., as it could have.  Instead, her support of a DEI running mate endeared her to the progressive left.  And just to prove her allegiance to the party, she, along with her Secretary of State, have taken it upon themselves to open up a whole bunch of voter registration sites.  According to an NBC News story, federal offices of Veterans Affairs and the Small Business Administration were tapped as voter registration sites at the direction of the Governor and her sidekick, Jocelyn Benson.  Every story I could find about this lawsuit was written by a liberal for a liberal publication.  All I wanted to know is, ‘how many new sites would this add?’  None of the stories I found about it had that number.  What most of them said is that this is just Donald Trump laying the groundwork for being able to dispute Michigan’s election results if need be.  Taking the opportunity to sew the seeds of doubt just in case.  Maybe that’s true.  Wanting to get as many people involved in the electoral process should be welcome.  But the Republican National Committee argues that the Governor and Secretary of State don’t have the authority to designate new registration sites.  Only the Michigan legislature can do that, according to the suit.  So, it doesn’t matter if the idea of more sites is good or bad when the protocol is outside the boundaries of the law.  Plus, there are already plenty of ways for people who want to vote to register.  The right argues that opening up new locations at the last minute simply opens up more opportunities for fraud, and the RNC shouldn’t have to dedicate funds to observe the new sites.
It’s interesting to me that the state of Michigan would be opening up new ways for people to register to vote.  As you may recall from the Listening Tube Season 3, Episode 2, https://www.buzzsprout.com/1940478/episodes/11257895-s3-episode-2 It was Michigan’s Secretary of State who filed a lawsuit to stop her from being required to remove dead people from the voter roles.  It was September of 2022 when I told you about 26-thousand dead people on Michigan’s voter’s list.  A research foundation filed a lawsuit to get her to purge the list, which is her job.  Instead, he counter-sued to have the case dismissed.  A spokesperson said at the time that the foundation’s lawsuit was an attempt to undermine democracy.  Maybe in Hell, but not in Michigan.
Anything Governor Whitmer and her Secretary of State do together that has anything to do with the election deserves to be closely examined.  Gretchen might not have a lot riding on this year’s election, but she’s looking ahead.  How far ahead has yet to be determined.  

Let’s Go Back liner

1793
Alexander Mackenzie reaches the Pacific Ocean becoming the first Euro-American to complete a transcontinental crossing of Canada.  I’ll bet he met some really polite people along the way.

1935
The dust bowl heat wave reaches its peak, sending temperatures to 109°F (44°C) in Chicago and 104°F (40°C) in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.  Climate Change!  Said nobody.

From the department of irony, this week in 1916
In San Francisco, California, a bomb explodes on Market Street during a Preparedness Day parade.  Ten people died and 40 were injured, because nobody anticipated a bomb at the Preparedness Parade.  So, what exactly was a Preparedness Parade?

Look that up liner….

Wow, what a tangled web we weave...Preparedness parades were organized in support of America’s entry into World War I.  Or, the Great War, as it was known until World War II came along.  President Woodrow Wilson wanted to remain neutral, but world event eventually changed his mind.  In the meantime, a movement advocating preparedness for what may unfold was gaining ground.  Leading the way were two men, former President Theodore Roosevelt, and Army General named Leonard Wood.  I recognize that name because an Army post in Missouri is named after him.  Anyway, back then, the labor leaders were the ones who were isolationist.  In other words, San Francisco was a land of America First values.  It was okay back then.  Union workers and business leaders were all allowed to be America first people.  Now, we can’t decide which viewpoint is America First.  Conservatives and Liberals are really starting to split hairs when it comes to dividing up the voters.  Bottom line, those who wanted to be prepared for war were attacked by those who didn’t want to be prepared for war.  That means that those who didn’t want to be prepared for war were prepared for war, while those who wanted to be prepared for war were not prepared to be attacked.
On who’s side do we need to be on today?  America first policies are often equated with isolationism, but they aren’t the same thing.  Labor and business get along more often than some might want you to believe.  
There are some who benefit from war, and supporting preparedness may be interpreted as supporting the makers of war machines.  As an Air Force veteran, I can tell you that the mission is deterrence, not war.  
From the first time primitive man recognized a thundercloud and took shelter, the realization that preparedness is the key to survival became permanently etched among the lessons of history.  A much later lesson was that in order to prevent war, you must be prepared for war.  Is it too soon to start having Preparedness Parades again?  Asking for a friend...  

1959
At the opening of the American National Exhibition in Moscow, U.S. Vice President Richard Nixon and Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev have a “Kitchen Debate”.  This kitchen was at an exhibit in Moscow, and was a cut in half open plan of a house in America, complete with dishwasher and other amenities Americans were familiar with and some that had not yet hit the market.  In fact, upon seeing all the gadgets, Khrushchev asked, “Don't you have a machine that puts food into the mouth and pushes it down?"
Perhaps the role of women in the kitchen was the biggest difference between the two ideologies.  While Nixon claimed that these advances in technology were helping to improve the lives of housewives, Khrushchev countered that Nixon’s capitalistic attitude toward women does not occur under Communism.  I’m sure that won him some points among American woman.  Those, who, in 1959, weren’t busy operating their manual, not womanual, but manual, ringer on their clothes washer and making sure the pots weren’t cold when it was time to eat.  
Nixon was the winner in the long run.  Both claimed that the other’s grandchildren would live under the opposite system.  One of Khrushchev’s grandchildren became a naturalized U.S. citizen.

1974
Watergate scandal: the United States Supreme Court unanimously ruled that President Richard Nixon did not have the authority to withhold subpoenaed White House tapes and they order him to surrender the tapes to the Watergate special prosecutor.  It would lead to the President’s resignation.

1983
George Brett, batting in the top of the ninth inning for the Kansas City Royals against the New York Yankees, has a game-winning home run nullified in the “Pine Tar Incident”.  Whether or not you’re a baseball fan, this story has a lot of intrigue.  Baseball is a game of rules, and knowing the rules can sometimes give you an advantage over your opponent.  The manager of the Yankees, Billy Martin, noticed that the pine tar on Brett’s bat was a bit excessive.  Pine tar, which was used to improve a batter’s grip on the bat, was not supposed to extend beyond 18 inches from the bottom of the bat’s handle.  When Brett hit the 9th inning homer to give the Royals the lead, Martin brought the bat to the attention of the umpire.  After consultation and a measurement of the pine tar using the width of home plate as a ruler, the umpire pointed the bat at George Brett and called him out, nullifying the home run and giving the Yankees a one run win.  With that, George came barreling out of the dugout like an enraged bull, straight for the umpire.  It took several men to restrain Brett before he could do any physical harm to the ump.  The game was far from over, despite what the Yankees thought.
The Royals protested the decision.  The protest was upheld by the American League president who said the spirit of the pine tar rule is to keep the baseballs from getting all marked up, increasing the number of balls needed for each game.  There is no strategic advantage of having pine tar extend beyond the 18 inches enumerated in the rule book, so the decision was made to finish the game from where it left off.  Two outs in the top of the ninth with the Royals leading 5 to 4.  The hero and villain of the game, George Brett, had been retroactively ejected from the game for his outburst after he homer was overturned, as were two Royals coaches and pitcher Gaylord Perry for giving the offending bat to the bat boy so he could hide it from the umpires.  No word on if the bat boy was suspended.  The game would be finished where it started, at Yankee Stadium, 25 days after it was thought to have ended.
The Yankees weren’t just going to give up the win, though.  They announced a two dollar and fifty cent admission to the last four outs of the game, which was promptly met with two lawsuits.  But that’s what the Yankees wanted.  Stretch this thing out as long as possible, and maybe somewhere closer to the end of the season, it’s be decided that there’s no reason to finish the game based on each team’s respective playoff chances.  A judge in the Bronx Supreme Court issued an injunction that the game couldn’t be resumed until the lawsuits played out.  In response, the American League appealed the injunction.  The decision by the appellate court had two words:  Play Ball.  The Yankees announced that anyone who had a ticket stub from the original game could attend the end with no additional charge.  The Yankees weren’t done trying every last trick they could think of.  Before resuming the game, the Yankees pitcher threw the ball to first base, challenging that George Brett never touched the base while running off the homer.  The ump denied the challenge.  Then they threw the ball to second base, arguing that neither Brett nor the man who was on first when the home run was hit had touched second base.  That challenge was also denied, and the runners called safe.  Yankees manager Bill Martin went onto the field to protest.  After all, how could these umpires know if they touched the bases or not?  These weren’t the same officials who did the original game.  Well, the new crew chief whips out a notarized statement signed by all four of the original umpires stating that everybody touched all the bases they were supposed to touch.  Billy was out of ideas.  The Yankees were playing the rest of the game under protest.
As for the rest of the game, the first Royals batter struck out to end the top of the ninth, then the Yankees went three up and three down to end it in the Royals’ favor, 5 to 4.  Neither team made it to the postseason that year.
It wasn’t until 2010 the Major League Baseball made the pine tar rule less susceptible to interpretation.  From then on, if you have an issue with a player’s pine tar, you have to bring it up before he uses it, not after.

Phone and email liner

  As you may have heard, former President of the United States, Donald Trump, was the target of an assassination attempt on Saturday, July 14th.  He was just getting started on a speech in western Pennsylvania when he got winged off the right ear by a rifle bullet.  My stepdad was shot multiple times in Vietnam, including getting winged off the ear.  There’s probably nothing more likely to make you take an internal look at your mortality than having a bullet come that close to going through your brain.  Getting shot in the legs, as my dad said, burns like hell, but it isn’t gonna kill you unless you bleed out.  We didn’t know the extent of Donald Trump’s injuries until he stood back up.  You could tell he purposely went to the floor after grabbing his ear, so it didn’t appear the shot knocked him down.  There’s a big difference between getting shot off the ear and getting shot into the ear.  Some say it was the slight turn of the former president’s head that saved his life.  Still, I was embarrassed for my state.  I grew up in Pennsylvania, spent many years living in other places, and came back.  Been her for awhile again now.  In Pennsylvania, some might consider me a liberal, even though I consider myself slightly conservative.  For the record, I’m a registered Independent.  
The attempted assassination of Donald Trump has had the residual effect of revealing the true feelings of many who have been floating along under the radar, so to speak.  You know, the people you see every day, and assume they’re as level-headed, or at least as empathetic, as you.  You never expect the nice lady at the cafeteria to be someone who wishes the bullet would have been on target.  Beginning Monday after the shots were fired, so were a number of people who felt the need or obligation to opine about the poor aim of the shooter, indicating a desire for more accuracy, to put it nicely.  Just in surrounding communities near where I live, several people have lost their jobs because of social media posts that brought shame and revenue damage to organizations, businesses, and political parties.  Well, one particular political party.  For the record, the Libertarian Party published a statement that clearly blamed the language being used by the Democratic Party for the assassination attempt.  Claims that Trump is a “threat to Democracy” or that he’ll “undo the Constitution” or that he’ll make abortion illegal nationwide, none of which is true, are the catchphrases that keep the emotions high and the logic low.  Meanwhile, the conservatives are looking at each other asking, “Do liberals even realize it’s practically impossible to do those things?”  Now, the former president was almost killed, an innocent man was killed, others injured, hundreds traumatized, and all of us descent folks who live in Pennsylvania have to contend with the fact that it was one of us who tried to take out Donald Trump.  I’ll assume he won’t hold the entire state responsible for the acts of one young adult.  I’m not worried, if he can forgive J.D. Vance, he can forgive a whole state.  What I’d like to know is what was said when Joe Biden finally got a call through to Donald Trump after the incident, later that night.  Was Donald Trump all, ‘naw, don’t worry about it.  The doc got it bandaged up. I’m okay.’ or was it,

Bugs bunny sfx  this means war!!!!

Either way, neither of them has revealed what was said, but we can tell from some clues what the tone might have been.  
Let’s go back to a few days before Donald Trump’s rally in PA.  In a phone call with fellow Democrats, President Biden said,  "I have one job, and that’s to beat Donald Trump. I’m absolutely certain I’m the best person to be able to do that. So, we’re done talking about the debate. It’s time to put Trump in a bull's-eye." 

The next thing we know, Trump gets shot.  The Democratic National Committee and the Biden campaign suspend all advertising.  Even busses in Milwaukee with anti-Trump messages were taken off the street.

The day after that, the president goes on tv from the oval office to ask the American people to lower the temperature….

Sound bite

Meanwhile, Donald Trump reveals he’s torn up 20 pages of a speech he planned to give at the Republican National Convention on Thursday.  It’s being re-written as a response to being shot.

Monday night, while the RNC is in full swing, President Biden is in an interview with the top anchor of NBC news.  He puts the president squarely on the spot and asks him if his own rhetoric is partly responsible for the division and hatred toward Trump.  Instead of owning up to the problem he addressed the day before, he deflected blame with the same out of context words and phrases the left has been using all along:

soundbite

Clearly, the formalities are already over.  The guy lived, the phone call was made, the non-disclosure agreement was agreed upon, and now it’s back to the war.  One man’s already dead, but the casualties are only beginning to build up.  Not physical casualties, but reputational ones.  Huh, according to my word processor, I just made up the word reputational.  Anyway, people of all walks of life have made it obvious to the rest which of us values agendas, agendai, whatever the plural of agenda is, over life itself.  When one of them is a firefighter, that’s cause for concern.  When a few of them are professors, that’s deserves administrative action.  When several of them are journalists, and a bunch of them are government employees, and elected officials are also in the mix, that’s cause for replacement.  I already picked on the media last week, so I won’t go down that rabbit hole again right away, but when it comes to government employees, there are a lot of variables to consider, including the Union agreements.  The President of the Teamsters Union spoke at the RNC on the opening night.  That’s the first time in history the person in that position addressed the convention.  Most elected officials have public affairs people to instruct them on how to say I’m sorry somebody got shot, so we didn’t hear a lot of questionable comments from the professional politicians.  It was the amateurs and the over-exuberant staff who let their freak flags fly after the shooting, and they’re getting repercussions for it from others on social media and their employers.  Some are resigning, some are apologizing and hoping to not get fired, some are getting fired.  Businesses are being boycotted because of an extremist or simple-minded employee who couldn’t hide their glee at a Donald Trump assassination attempt and their disappointment at its failure.  
Well, too bad.  Your reaction and comments were not demonstrative of what it means to be an American.  If you prefer the death of a political opponent over the ballot box, then you shouldn’t even be allowed to vote.  You don’t have a clue about what it means to be an American or why you’re blessed to be living in America.  What you do know is that you can’t get arrested for saying stupid shit on social media, but you can lose your job.  And people are losing their jobs.  Even more people are being exposed on social media every day.  I’ve seen the screenshots that were sent around to all who would look.  There’s really no way to verify their authenticity, but it’s not hard to believe they’re real.  They’re popping up on my newsfeed every day.  There’s seems to be an organized effort to expose the people who would choose assassination over democracy, and it’s the same people who say the guy who was the target of the assassination attempt was the same guy they were warning us would end democracy.  The same people who claim to defend democracy but try to force Joe Biden out of the race for president because he’s so far behind in the polls.  It doesn’t matter that he’s won enough delegates for the nomination.  It doesn’t’ matter that he’s been voted for as the party’s nominee.  While you claim to defend democracy, you lament what might have been if the assassin’s aim was true.  
Since you lost your job, maybe the government will make a deal with you.  For minimum wage, you can now work in a mail room dungeon below the Senate floor.  Since nobody else will hire you, you should take it.  Then you’ll be contributing to your country instead of sucking the life out of it. 

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