The opinions that you may hear us express expressly or otherwise over the public's airways is in no way to represent the opinions expressed or otherwise by our management, producers, sponsors or various members of their staffs or their families or few friends.
Nor should these views express the opinions of the broadcasters, the disc jockeys, the salesmen, the program and music directors and their secretaries and girlfriends and wives and their staff.
Unless, of course, we are willing to assume that we can assume the responsibility that their opinions will not influence anyone else's opinions, or their family and friends and staff.
Well, that's
pretty clear.
Yeah, I think so.
It covers it all.
WMDX 92.7.
This is John and Gordy in the morning.
It's quite a...
Nice morning out there.
It's actually pretty bright.
What happened?
It's usually dark, right?
I mean this time of the morning
They finally remembered to flip the switch today.
Yeah Lights are finally on outside.
This is kind of
crazy.
It's never been this light This early in the morning What happened in my
Did they
forget to turn on the cloud machine?
Yes, the
cloud machine has been on for the last week or
so.
It's spring.
Days are getting longer still, you know?
Days are getting longer.
What song is that?
I don't remember
that.
Whisper is getting longer.
Okay.
Yeah, Whisper is getting louder, I think was the name of the song.
Yeah.
It's really a cool song.
Whisper is getting louder.
Do you have that cute up?
I'm
getting it.
I've never heard of this song or the guy either.
Yeah, Jackie Wilson.
Oh Jackie
Wilson, okay.
Quite the
legend.
Oh,
yeah.
Go ahead.
Let's hear a little bit of that, okay?
Sure.
It starts off with that.
Is this it?
Yep.
Oh, yeah.
There it is.
Yeah, it's
cool.
Jackie Wilson.
Great stuff.
All right.
All right.
It is eight minutes past the hour.
It's clear, clear outside.
It is kind of chilly 30 degrees, but
it's too
cold.
Yeah, it really is.
What do you think the afternoon high?
What is your Samsung WMDX watch say about?
afternoon high I
you know I don't know if I was right yesterday well we'll get to the yeah what did I predict it correctly 42 degrees did it make it up a 42 thank you
I don't recall.
I don't know.
Well, we don't know.
I've asked somebody my age.
That's not gonna work.
Okay.
All right.
High today of 57 degrees according to this WMDX official Samsung watch.
All right.
Well, let's check the
WMDX bar dice.
All right.
Let's see what that does for us.
Okay.
31 currently it says
right here.
and double nickels, 55 for a high.
You know, either way you look at it, mid to upper 50s for today.
Well, it says here 613 is sunrise.
Yeah, it's starting to come up.
Yeah, that's pretty bright.
Okay, 742 sunset this afternoon.
Yeah.
So be prepared for that.
Okay.
Very good.
And you know, today they're bringing out
the plan your parties around that.
Okay.
Today's a big day on the UW campus.
They're bringing out the terrace chairs.
2,000 sunburst terrace chairs are probably already on their way to being set up.
They'll set them up around eight o'clock.
Remember when you
stole that one and do you still have that?
Shh, don't tell anybody.
Nobody holds a garage like the Wisconsin Union.
They really hate it.
If you stole a chair even like 30 years ago,
they're coming to get you.
They're after Gordy now.
They'll be camped out by his house by the gazebo.
Yeah, I took it a long
time ago.
I think it's in Indiana somewhere.
They left it behind.
Yeah, they're pretty tough on that stuff.
Right,
yeah.
But it's a big day, you know, and this is a huge thing.
It's become this thing now, you know.
You know, Salvador is your next trip, man.
That's a serious charge.
Okay.
I think even Trump will get on that one.
Okay.
All right, anyway.
Have to go undercover, I guess.
Yeah, so that happens today.
And, you know, Wednesday here, Mike McCabe will join us a little bit later on.
And Liz Johnson.
who couldn't make it in yesterday because the door was locked in the building.
Had it all planned out and everything
was working well.
I swear it was open before the show started.
Sure it was.
Somebody must have come in and chased the
lock.
Okay, yeah, that sounds like it's feasible, sure.
So
she'll be here in a little while.
If she gutted the door, we'll
talk to her.
OK.
Yeah, she couldn't make it in yesterday.
Our door was locked.
Well, you know, we tried to treat
our guests very nicely.
You know, we offer them some water.
They could sit on the couch for a few minutes.
But, you know, if you can't get in the door,
you know, that's a problem.
It makes it really tough at that point.
I know that happened once, I think, with Mike McKay, I believe.
Did it really?
Yeah, I think so.
Now, wait a minute.
Did we tell her to come in?
Yes, in the back.
We told her to come in the parking lot
door,
huh?
Today we did, yes.
And she's got my phone number now.
She didn't have anybody's phone number.
She was standing out there for like 15 minutes.
Yeah.
Man.
All right, well.
Hope it goes well today.
All right, let's get to the national day calendar.
We'll see what's happening for today.
The 16th day of April.
Everybody get their taxes in on time?
I hope so.
Is it national pathway day?
National banana day?
Okay.
National bean counter day?
National orchid day?
Is it that or is it national eggs benedict day?
Eggs benedict day?
Or national wear your pajamas to work day?
Or is it national bicycle with a friend day?
Which day does not belong, John?
You don't bicycle with a friend.
No?
Dang.
Well, you are correct
for a
change.
You got a shiny new die.
I'm doing pretty well here.
Yeah, you've
been on a roll
lately.
Well, now that you can see all of the
gays.
No, I'm not looking.
I went over here because you looked at me like, oh, is he looking at my monitor?
No, I'm not.
I'm not
looking at it.
That's what you say.
You know, John, back home at my parents' house, I've got a tandem bike.
We could bicycle with friends.
Yes.
You and your
stuff.
You have the biggest pile of stuff.
What's your latest project you're working on?
Well, I was going to try and tell you before we came on the air today, but John kept running his trap.
I found yesterday like the holy grail of vintage radios.
I was going to show you a picture of it.
Really?
Yeah, for it.
It's the Philco Model 90.
It's like the cathedral shape.
It's way bigger than I expected it to be, but I was going to show you a picture.
Where'd you get
that?
It was over in Middleton.
Only $35.
Wow.
A steal.
At what?
Where?
I don't know.
Private owner?
No, no, no.
Just like somebody's house.
Oh,
yeah.
Wow.
You actually went into somebody's house saying,
yeah, I'd love to buy your radio and you bought it for $35.
They had it listed online.
Okay, oh, you went and searched it out?
Sure.
Because
you don't have enough dead tubes around your
house, right?
Yeah, because I have plenty of space in my single bedroom that I have to myself here in Madison.
I don't know how you do.
You have roommates,
some apartment.
The radio isn't reasonably good.
I mean, is it working at all?
Yeah.
I mean, I haven't tried to plug it in.
I don't know if I want to, but... Really?
Oh, I don't want to make it start on fire or anything.
Well, does it have a
rat's nest inside
of it or something?
No, there's nothing living in it.
And there was nothing living in it.
So that's a good sign.
In good shape
on the outside, I mean, in
reasonably good shape.
It probably needs to be refinished, but it's all there.
Yeah,
sometimes they're in houses,
they're
abandoned, and then they kind of get old.
kind of this you know the they separate the wood veneers separate well you should take a
picture of
it yeah put
it on Facebook you
know we'll have a
before and after picture after you get it done
you know though you know the like tough thing about it though what the tuner only goes from 500 to 1500 it doesn't even receive our frequency
That's right.
They
widened the frequency.
They
did.
Sometime in
the 70s.
70s, I
think.
Yeah.
Well, this radio's from 1931.
Well, that's why.
It's a little before the 70s.
That's
why.
All right.
But, you know, not even I can get this station.
I swear we don't have an AM station,
but I
don't know.
They keep telling me we do.
That's
good that we're on FM,
right?
Yeah.
Let's get back to the National Day calendar here just for a moment.
He's begging
us
now.
I'll
skip
through a couple of these.
Let's
highlight a couple.
Okay, well, no, get to all of them.
And then we'll skip it very quickly if it's, you know, something we don't want to talk about.
Okay.
You want to find out about National Pathway Day?
Nope.
Okay, then I'll just skip through it.
I just clicked it.
All right, National Banana Day.
Oh,
we like our bananas are a
good source of.
What protein and potassium
I think we covered this didn't we where the bananas are supposedly in short supply the
that's right.
Yeah,
we might run
out of banana trees Don't know about that, but it's a It's a low calorie snack that offers a boost of fiber
potassium.
Yeah
and vitamins with B6 and vitamin C leading the way and also provides a healthy gram of protein, too.
Add a banana to your morning cereal or grab one with your granola,
okay?
You know, it does taste great with cereal.
Yes,
absolutely.
Cheerios, I would suggest with Cheerios
or
unsweetened shredded wheat, mini
shredded.
Well, actually, I don't know if this is true or not, but my favorite, let's call it a fact about the potassium in bananas.
There's a radioactive isotope of potassium.
Found in like trace amounts and bananas, and if you had like a dump truck full of bananas, there would be enough like radiation surrounding that to trip like a detector if you were going through like a security checkpoint Wow,
I wonder if it becomes even more active as the bananas age Because you know, I you know, I feel like there was some kind of
Presence every time you go by the banana department in woodmines because
you just feel certain energy
There's a certain energy level.
Oh, give me a break.
There's so many bananas in there and there's
so many old
Now I know it's radiation Okay, okay
That's a myth
Alright,
then
it is.
If I didn't mention it before, I'll mention it now.
It's National Bean Counter Day.
Oh, yeah, because bean counters are
accountants.
That's true.
That's true.
So salute your accountant today, okay?
It's probably something to do with Tax Day
being yesterday.
Tax Day, I would assume.
So they're all
tired today.
Yep.
National Orchid Day.
Anybody raise any orchids?
No, no one cares about orchids.
Okay.
National Healthcare Decisions Day.
So, you know, decide about things.
National Wear Your Pajamas to Work Day.
Does anybody
do
this?
That's dumb.
That's really stupid.
Shows a picture of a guy dressed as, well, he's got a suit jacket on.
But
his gym.
Yeah, he's wearing- Could you aim the bottoms?
Yeah, that's dumb.
Okay.
And one more here at National Eggs Benedict.
Oh, I like eggs Benedict.
That's good
stuff.
Oh, I know.
That's good stuff.
Okay, we will get to opening the history books, right?
Gonna do that, Sam?
Do you have any history to share
with us today?
Sure, I've got a couple
things.
Okay, and also in our
seven o'clock
hour, Milwaukee Film Fest
tickets.
Is it dead?
Okay.
We'll continue with John and Gordy in the morning.
Grab
your
banana and join us.
Is
it dead?
Is
it dead?
Is it dead?
Is it dead?
Is it dead?
Come Mr. Tali Man, Tali Mi Banana.
92.7, John and Gordy in the morning.
Just a little bit later on, we're going to be talking about Trump closing down around 30 embassies around the world.
We're going to talk about it because Earl Ingram had an interview with former Mayor Tom Barrett, who was an ambassador.
And he's going to talk about his impressions of closing down a embassy.
Anywhere in the world.
Interesting
point of
view.
Yeah, why would anybody
do that?
How many embassies can there be?
How many countries are there in the world?
30 seems like a
lot.
Well, no,
30 doesn't seem like enough.
I mean,
that's
just the beginning.
30.
They're just embassies.
They're
closing.
Yeah, 30.
They're closing down.
Anyway, that's the rumor so far.
And we've got Tom Barrett's opinion of that, his appearance on Earl Ingram's show.
Okay.
We'll find out more about that.
622, 30 degrees currently, highs today in the mid 50s.
It's time now for producer Sam to step up to the microphone and tell us exactly what happened on this date in history.
Do you
Feel like opening the book, or are you gonna
go with the electronic?
Okay, open the book.
Okay.
Oh, God.
Oh, here we go.
That's ridiculous.
That's just ridiculous.
It's so smoky in here.
That's stupid.
This is just
dumb.
Smoky?
Are you telling me that the book is like self?
Igniting now?
I
don't know.
I
don't know.
Gravy.
It's
moldy.
There's radioactivity.
The
dust
in there.
Yeah, pollen.
A
lot of history gets recorded in this book.
Yeah,
I know.
Well, like what?
What do you got?
Yeah.
Well, today in 1943, LSD, LSD's hallucinogenic properties were discovered.
It was first synthesized like five years earlier, I believe.
And there was a researcher.
What?
Turn your,
turn your speaker
off on your mic.
laptop.
You're not paying attention at all, are you,
John?
He was hallucinating on his own.
It was truly important, you know.
Okay, so somebody invented LSD and they discovered
it?
Well, they first made it like five years before.
Nobody had the idea to taste it until 1943, though.
I just got to read this journal entry.
Last Friday, April 16, 1943, I was forced to interrupt my work in the laboratory in the middle of the afternoon and proceed home, being affected by a remarkable
restlessness combined with a slight dizziness.
At home I lay down and sank into a not unpleasant intoxicated-like condition characterized by an extremely stimulated imagination.
In a dream-like state with eyes closed, I found the daylight to be unpleasantly glaring.
I perceived an uninterrupted stream of fantastic pictures, extraordinary shapes, and intense kaleidoscopic play of
colors.
In Basel, Switzerland, Albert Hoffman.
That was guy's name.
Albert Hoffman.
Swiss
chemist.
For me, it sounded a little musical.
I mean, you could actually take some of what he wrote there and put it to music.
Really nice LSD song.
So that was way back in 1943.
That's a lot earlier than I thought.
I didn't think they started messing around with that till the early 60s.
Timothy
Leary.
Not for fun, I suppose.
Not until everybody marketed it in the 60s.
It was very popular.
It was originally being investigated as a...
like for medicinal stuff and similar chemicals to it.
So that's how it started out.
I thought it was a military thing, you know, that you would use
on the enemy.
Like
brainwashing?
Well,
kind of.
Well, you know, try to get information from your enemies if you captured them and they were prisoners, you'd give them this stuff and they, like a truth serum almost.
But I could be wrong.
Okay, back to you Sam.
Sounds like a good
spy thriller to me.
Let's do it.
Uh, right.
What else?
Uh, let's see.
Today in 1962, Walter Cronkite became the CBS Evening News anchor.
That's the way it is.
He held that post for a long time.
Almost 20 years, I think 1981, he retired.
Yeah.
Long time.
He was great.
He
was great.
Well, he had a history show.
Remember
it was a
half-hour history program
after yeah his retirement from being evening I
don't know I think so I think that's what happened, right?
Yeah,
he had and you
were there remember
that you were there.
Yeah, that's the way it was.
Yeah, yeah, okay
Well, I have no memory of him like being alive Okay
Today in 1963, Dr. Martin Luther King, he wrote his letter from a Birmingham jail, one of his most famous writings.
There's not a lot else to say about
that.
We
don't have too much to add to that.
Any birthdays for today?
We do have
some
birthdays.
OK, let's get
to that.
You didn't know what to say, did
you?
No, I really didn't.
It was historic in that it got a lot of airplay and it started to, yes,
it
really, it brought the civil rights movement into the public awareness, I think.
Yeah.
OK.
You were 11.
Yeah.
10 or 11.
Yeah.
I know.
It's amazing.
Anyway, birthdays.
It's Wilbur Wright's birthday.
Oh, Wilbur Wright.
Charlie Chaplin has a birthday today and also Karim Abdul-Jabbar.
Karim has written, what, 20 books or something?
Is it that
many?
Yeah, quite a lot.
He's
really... But he's got, you know, he's got these email...
political statements he sends out
every day.
Like a newsletter?
Yeah, a newsletter.
Like 10 points he always makes.
10 things he's interested in.
And he's a huge jazz fan.
He has an amazing collection of jazz.
And thankfully he's liberal.
Okay.
Center for the birthdays?
That's all we got.
There's
so many people that are sending us pictures of orchids.
Orchids because it's
Day to
celebrate.
John, Mark
Middleton is sending us
stuff.
Beautiful pictures.
And Sherry, where are you?
Sherry,
Sherry.
Catherine says Peterson is in a weird mood today.
I know.
What's going on with you,
John?
You won't even believe what I got coming up next, okay?
I mean, we're
talking about
bananas
and
you played the Deo song.
I'm getting it ready.
And that's
what
I was doing
here.
I was gonna ask, are you like, you had some tooth work done yesterday?
Are you still loopy from whatever they gave you?
No, actually, it's, it's shocking.
You know, you normally give you shots to work on your teeth, didn't have to do it.
You know, I had the, you know, just the nitrous oxide, the placement of the crown, the fake crown, until like,
Got the good one in, and they just popped it off my tooth.
They put the new one in, no shots, no nothing.
Are you
kidding
me?
It was amazing.
Completely painless?
Yes.
That's amazing.
Yes.
Maybe it wasn't even
attached
in the first place.
629 coming up next, Idiocracy.
A little bit later, we'll talk to Liz Johnston from Serenity's Spies, Pet Spies.
Okay, coming up on John and Gordy.
you
As the 21st century began, human evolution was at a turning point, a dumbing down, until humanity was incapable of solving even its most basic problems.
Just doing my civic duties.
No!
You dance, irritating miniature beast of burden.
We can duck
and
cover.
There's a ball of shelter
right there.
There's no way to survive this, you idiot.
Idiocracy.
For the smartest guy in the world, you're pretty dumb sometimes.
We're just doing our civic duty
here, right?
I like the addition that's kind of
nice.
635 and 30 degrees, highs today in the mid-50s, this portion of John and Gordy in the morning, along with producer Sam.
is brought to you by Virlo Mattress of Madison.
Wake up and sleep better on a Virlo Mattress.
A lot's changed, John, since 1958.
You
know
that.
Well, yeah.
But some things have remained constant throughout Virlo's history.
They're still direct to consumer and provide superior products at unbeatable prices.
Virlo Mattress, two Madison locations east and west.
And you can find out more by going to Virlo.com.
Should we play this thing?
You found this.
This is your dog,
right?
This is my first big border collie.
He was gigantic.
He was like 70 pounds.
They don't get that big.
But each of my border collies have found a song that they sing to.
Our new border collie is two years old.
She hasn't picked a song out yet.
We haven't played enough music, I guess.
But my second border collie used to sing to the TV theme of Batman.
What was the TV theme?
What was the name of that was speed speed.
OK, I named him after speed racer.
Yeah.
And the first one, of course, Mickey loved the banana boat zone.
And if we could just I got to play this banana day.
And.
Believe me, he is listening to every lyric in that song.
So here it is.
Okay.
I know, but he loves it.
Sure, he loves
it.
He
actually goes the whole song, and just when there's a pause and he goes, day, is it day, is it day?
When that happens, he pauses, and he waits for that to happen, and then he chimes in.
He just
loved that song.
That's
crazy stuff, isn't it?
Yeah, it is.
Well, it's National Banana Day, so it fits right in.
Perfect.
Well, he was singing right along.
Thanks for sharing that.
Well, yeah,
sure.
It's something.
OK, it's a idiocracy
time.
Oh, it is not.
OK.
Yeah.
It's just a great way to
introduce it.
Kind of dozed off there for a second,
didn't you?
thinking
about
that dog and the bananas.
Well, you know, it's so sunny.
I'm just basking in the in the warmth of the sun here.
Yeah.
So nice.
Isn't it?
It is.
All right.
I have a kind of a bone to pick with Mike Johnson, the speaker of the house.
You know, he just says really horrible things and he says it in a very calm, peaceful, religious way.
And that's what bothers me more than anything.
You know, he's brutal.
Cold ruthless and yet, you know, he's very religious and I guess he's carrying out God's will here But anyway, Mike Johnson claims wrongly that 51 billion dollars is lost in fraud and abuse Okay, so this is cut 124.
Let's listen to what Mike Johnson has to say
No one has talked about cutting one benefit in Medicaid to anyone who's duly owed.
What we've talked about is returning work requirements.
So for example, you don't have able-bodied young men on a program that's designed for single mothers in the elderly and disabled.
They're draining resources from people who are actually do that.
So if you clean that up and shore it up, you save a lot of money and you return the dignity of work to young men who need to be out working instead of playing video games all
day.
All right.
I just want to pause here because
Medicaid wasn't designed as a work program.
It was designed to provide healthcare.
And Republicans tried to do this before, but it was determined by a court that it wasn't the purpose of Medicaid.
So they couldn't do it.
They couldn't add a work requirement to it.
Now they're going to try again to do this, and hopefully it'll get stopped in the courts because that's not why the program was developed.
Okay, all
right, let's continue.
We have a lot of fraud, waste, and abuse in Medicaid.
Just one tiny example.
The estimate is $51 billion a year and Medicaid is lost to fraud.
That's unconscionable.
We now have, with the doge efforts and with new algorithms and with new oversight responsibilities and opportunities, we have the ability to carve that out.
We have a responsibility to do it.
That estimate by some people, some estimates say that is very low.
It's actually much higher than that.
No, it isn't really.
Let's get into a little bit of the history here.
While back the GAO, the Government Accountability Office, issued its report on federal agency's improper payments estimates for physical year 2024, very current, and identified $162 billion in payment errors.
Errors.
That's errors.
Keep in mind that
It's not improper payments.
Just errors.
It's just errors.
And that's what the fraud and abuse is.
For example, of the 2024 Medicaid improper payments, 79% were the result of insufficient documentation.
It's not fraud.
It's not abuse.
Where a state or provider missed an administrative step and does not necessarily
indicate fraud or abuse.
So they're twisting this into some kind of pretzel to sell it to make these cuts then require a work requirement.
It is not a program requiring work.
And that is... That's a basic and I'm really driving this thing home.
I guess so.
Yeah.
So anyway, that's... Just to make it clear, yes.
Just to clear that up.
Again, you know, they always replace fraud and abuse with programs they don't like.
If they don't like it, it's fraud and abuse and that's what Elon is very, very, very guilty of.
Well, we haven't heard much from him lately.
Yes, after Wisconsin, they kind of put him in the back of the room and told him not to wear the black hat or that black jacket anymore.
And it's all a show, isn't it?
I mean, that's what it's all about.
Don't do this, don't wear that.
Unbelievable.
policy is getting so messed up and screwed up.
Now let's get to Casey Hunt.
She's a reporter.
She's very good.
She anchors his own program.
I think she's fantastic.
And she got into it with Peter Navarro, advisor for the president.
And he loves tariffs.
He just loves those things.
And Casey Hunt got very, very frustrated with him and his answers.
So let's get to this little back and forth.
So we've got a graphic that shows other recent trade deal negotiations.
Okay, we can put it up for viewers.
With Central America, 16 months.
The USMCA, 15 months.
South
Korea, 14 months.
Australia,
14 months.
We tried to
do it
with the UK.
Our strongest allies were
paused after three years and seven months.
How can you do any single one of these in 90 days, let alone all
of them?
Hang on, you're missing the whole point.
Let me explain the kind of deals like the renegotiation and NAFTA and all of that That's governed by a by a set of rules and laws that will make take time to do that what we're gonna do is We have the ability to come up with a deal
Jameson Greer, Howard Lutnick, Scott Bestow, whoever's sitting in the room with Japan or South Korea, the boss is going to be the lead negotiator, and we can get that done.
And one of the things we're going to do is you're seeing all those law firms that are giving us like a hundred million dollars at a crack of free legal advice.
We're going to hopefully have them very much involved in all of this, and we do stuff in Trump time, which is to say as quickly as possible.
So do you think we can get it?
deal done?
Yes, we're going to get those things done very quickly.
Wow, Trump time.
I didn't know there was Trump.
There is Trump time now.
There's enough.
They got rid of deal like saving time, central standard time.
It's all Trump time now, right?
That's what it's all about.
It's a new one.
Isn't that amazing?
Yeah, we have these separate deals going on.
They're not under any specific specific agreement.
So, you know, we could, you know,
Certainly cut through all of it
cut through the red tape.
Yeah, sure
Anyway, it was a great confrontation now.
Let's get to Mike Johnson again.
Okay, this is I'm we're gonna get to a web wisdom here.
Okay This is about Mike Johnson trying to pass the most insane absolutely insane way to pay tax bills and everything else Let's let's listen to this little rant here from the web
Now
let's go through the details.
First part is just extending the existing Trump tax cuts that will cost 3.8 trillion over the next 10 years and they add an additional 20 extra years of tax cuts totaling 17 trillion.
On top of those they have another 1.5 trillion in tax cuts yet to be allocated.
Now, this is where things get crazy.
In the old bill that they were working on, they had two trillion in spending cuts.
Those are the Medicaid cuts you heard so much about.
They actually just removed all of those because they realized those were politically toxic.
So while that might be great, they're not planning on gutting Medicaid right now, it means they're about to explode the debt even more.
And if that wasn't enough, they actually increased spending.
from the 300 level before in the last bill to 521, mainly for defense and border security, of course.
In total, the new house resolution that they're trying to get through has a $7 trillion increase in the debt over the next 10 years.
They're
saving
money there.
About double the size of their previous version in February.
Now this bill is currently struggling to get through the house.
There are some
Republican holdouts who want to guarantee more spending cuts in the bill.
But they are dead set on ramming this insane debt laden tax cut, of course, mainly benefiting the wealthy, all while, of course, they're raising taxes on the lower and middle class with their regressive tariffs.
So less money for the poor, more money for the rich.
Yeah, that's huge.
That's a web wisdom.
Yeah, that's a web wisdom.
And he's right on with the money.
And, you know,
We heard Mike Johnson cut just recently here and he seems to think there's some kind of magical thing going on with algorithms.
Why is he throwing that into the picture?
He's got those algorithms.
He must be right.
He's right there on the spot with his algorithms.
But here, we've got a Republican saying, gee, this is really adding a lot to the national debt, which we're supposed to be paying down, right?
So let's listen to this.
Cut 126.
This is a framework for financial collapse of our country is what this is.
This is a framework for the biggest deficit increase in the history of Congress.
That's what this
framework is.
There could have been promises to cut spending, but there were not.
You believe that the Republican Party in its first hundred days has set themselves up, yes, not only to lose majorities, but also
to frankly enrich themselves in the process.
I don't even know if they want to keep their majorities next year more than they are here to enrich themselves.
The full America First agenda is not just cutting taxes and other pro-growth policies like unleashing American energy production.
It's not just simply giving the president more resources for border security and strengthening our defense.
I would say most importantly
it's putting our nation on the path to balance because if we bankrupt this country, nothing else matters.
That's right.
You heard from mega representative Thomas, Thomas Massey.
Now, and then you heard AOC and I can't remember the other persons.
I think it's a guy, Jody Errington.
Anyway, they all had these comments about the budget.
Now, there's also something to keep in mind.
Not only does it raise and
pretty much bankrupt the country.
There is language in it that says that the House cannot vote to terminate any of Trump's emergency declarations to impose tariffs.
It can't do anything.
It can't touch the tariffs.
It's their job to do something with tariffs, but they're going to give that up to the president.
Yes, yeah.
And they're not going to solve that
any time soon.
No, they're not going to
try to solve anything.
Give it to...
to Trump.
649 coming up right around the corner.
We'll talk to Liz Johnston from Serenity Pet Spa and Salon next on John and Gordy in the
morning.
Yeah, yeah, yeah!
Yeah, yeah, yeah!
Popcorn.
Popcorn.
WMTX, John and Gordy in the morning enjoying a little popcorn.
Mm-hmm.
With our coffee.
Weather is going to look nice today.
It's a little chilly this morning around 30 degrees, but we'll see highs this afternoon about 55.
Seeing early morning sunshine, it's going to cloud up a little bit later on.
And time now for us to welcome Liz Johnston into the studio from Serenity Pet Spa and Salon.
Liz, great to have you here.
Good morning, guys.
We had a little trouble getting you in yesterday.
Little snafu left me out in the cold.
It's
all right.
It's all right.
Well, we have such high security here.
Fields
character?
Yes.
Sam let somebody in the building who brushed his teeth and...
What?
Where are you getting this?
Are you talking about that
time that you were, I just found you out on the street?
Yes, exactly.
And he
still
works here.
Can't get rid of him.
So, first of all, tell us a little bit about Serenity Pet Spa and so on.
You have a couple of locations, but this is really like a world-class thing that you do.
Yeah, it's really interesting.
Tell us about your
business.
Yeah, so I, yes, we currently have two locations.
We have an East and a West.
I have about, I don't even know.
10, 15 total employees.
I
can't keep track from one day to the next.
We have an ever-growing team.
We have some new people this week.
But no, I started Serenity a little over 10 years ago, and I started competing in grooming competitions about 12 to 15 years ago.
I lose track when you get older.
But
yeah, so it all started just with a passion for obviously the dogs and kind of fell into grooming.
And from there,
Just realizing that there's that lack of training in grooming salons and things.
And so I started my own and then I started bringing people in and people just kept coming wanting to learn from me.
And I do still compete all over the country and the world in grooming competitions.
And I teach people and then they get to go compete and I teach seminars and things like that.
all over the place.
There's a lot involved in this.
You're teaching individuals how to do this.
What is it that you're teaching them to do?
This is a really specialized.
Surface that you have tell us what you're teaching them what they have to know
Yeah, so I mean the biggest thing is what I guess is the most overlooked is like a good 80 to 90% of dog grooming is being able to understand the animal being able to actually Understand what they need both physically and mentally to feel comfortable getting you know weird parts of the body touched by a stranger, you
know
You know, we agree to go get a haircut or a dentist or something like that these dogs are like my mom just dropped me off here and I don't know you
So
we really try to like focus on like the first thing I'm teaching my people is like bathing basics.
And which is kind of the easier part.
Obviously kind of everyone can wash a dog, you
know, can
they wash it to different degrees of well?
Yes, I teach them to do it very well.
But they're learning the dog behavior.
They're learning like how to speak the dog, how to tell when the dog is stressed, how when they need a break, how when maybe they're getting a little excited or getting a little aggressive or feeling uncomfortable.
And that's that first step.
because that's what creates safety in the grooming salon.
So when they become a groomer, they can understand what that dog needs and when it's getting pushed too far.
And when that can be that dangerous time that accidents do happen, dogs do get injured.
And groomers get injured also.
People kind of forget that side.
Groomers get injured too.
We've all gotten sent to the hospital once or twice
with a dog bite.
So sometimes it takes some time.
To acclimate the dog to be in there alone, the owner is not there.
They're not present.
So that's kind of an amazing thing.
Yeah,
that's why we focus on kennel free.
So when a dog comes in, we never do dogs like straight through unless it's absolutely some dogs absolutely want that.
Most of them want to acclimate for a second.
We let them hang out with the other dogs.
We let them meet the other people sort of just kind of walk around get there because dogs are such a scent activated animal.
They walk around, they get all the sense of the salon and and then they start getting in the bath.
Then, you know, we kind of do things in stages.
So nothing.
like go, go, go, go, go, especially with these dogs that aren't used to it.
And we're just pushing them through thing after thing after thing that they don't understand.
And it can
be really stressful.
So that's why we do like all the dogs are there for a couple hours.
They have relaxed time.
They have play time.
They make messes.
They get dirty.
They have fun.
They act ridiculous.
So it's like, it also, you know, it keeps my groomers up a little bit too because I mean.
We do this because we like dogs, so we could actually see them having a little bit of fun and playing around and just being goofy.
Can they interact with the other dogs?
I mean, you encourage that, right?
Oh, absolutely.
Yeah, it's kind of like a little mini doggy daycare at the salon.
So yes, there are some dogs that are like, I want nothing to do with this.
And we usually
find like little corners in the salon where we have little beds and they just kind of hang out there.
And like my groomers are always there and they're kind of underfoot.
And that's another step of that behavioral learning is that my groomers understand pack behavior in that kind of daycare type setting.
So they can watch for dogs that are getting a little bit too, you know, carried away, a little too excited and the dogs that want their space so that they can give it to them.
You have a lot of regular customers.
Oh
yeah.
Yeah.
All of our dogs are on regular rotation.
So we try to also make it busy or easy for that busy people.
Like I'm too busy to remember to make appointments for my own head.
So everything's just on rotation.
It's like, oh, your dog needs to come every four weeks, six weeks.
You know what day and time works for you.
We just auto book it and then they don't have to worry about it and they just show up.
when the text message tells
them
to
show up with the dog again.
So yeah, yeah, keeps the dogs looking good.
I think you mentioned in our discussions that sometimes, you know, it just doesn't work out, you know, where you don't get to actually, you know.
give them a bath or trim them, they're just getting acclimated.
And then they come back again another time in order to acclimate themselves even more or familiarize themselves with the surroundings.
Is that right?
Oh, absolutely.
We actually have a full behavioral rehab program, especially with your rescue dogs.
I think I was just talking to one last night.
She booked a couple of weeks out, but she's going to be coming in next week just to let her dog acclimate.
Because she doesn't know the history on this dog.
She doesn't know if it's ever been to a groomer.
She doesn't know if that groomer was a good trained groomer.
or if it was one that maybe traumatized them.
So, yeah.
Liz, we're out of time here, but we're gonna have you back again.
And maybe come back on a regular basis and talk about some ideas as far as dog grooming and other things.
We appreciate you coming in.
If people wanna find out more, then go to your website, which is.
It's serenitypetspaMadison.com.
Thank you very much, Liz Johnston.
appreciate it.
We'll see you again soon.
Coming up in our seven o'clock hour Milwaukee Film Festival tickets and Mike McCabe on John and
Gordy.
When the chips are down and democracy's back is up against the wall, two radio veterans step up to the microphone to right the wrongs, standing for truth, justice, and just because.
Hey, are they ready to go yet?
It's John and Gordy on 92.7 WMDX.
WMD X Johnny Gordy in the morning 92.7 beautiful beautiful Wednesday morning
706 right now 31 degrees highs today in the mid fifties along with producer Sam behind the controls We've got Mike McCabe coming up in about a half hour
And right now, we have Milwaukee Film Festival tickets to give away.
These will get you into one of the films of your choice at the Milwaukee Film Festival, which is going on April 24th through May 8th.
So it's a general admission ticket?
Yes, it is.
And you'll be able to go to the film hopefully that you'll want to go to.
Yeah.
And...
if
it's not sold out
if it's not sold out
that's right yeah
some of them do sell out so you'll have your choice but in any case again the festival runs from April 24th through May 8th at the Oriental Theater and the Downer Theater downtown Milwaukee so now it's the time to text us the word Milwaukee text the word Milwaukee which
will we take this time around, Sam?
It's a mystery, Gordy.
Okay, you're gonna keep that a
secret.
It's a secret, yeah.
Okay, you can text us, yes?
Speaking of the festival, tomorrow we're gonna have in the artistic programmer of the festival.
find her name quick here.
Kara Ogburn, she's going to be talking to us about some of what's actually playing at the festival.
So you have some idea of what you're getting tickets for.
Excellent.
All right.
So just text us the word Milwaukee.
You can do that on the Civic Media app.
It's free to download and free to use.
Just text us the word Milwaukee and Sam will make a selection and we'll tell you who that is in the next 20 or 30 minutes.
OK.
All right, uh, boy, big news, you know, uh, some Republicans are attempting to have town halls and it's not working out for them.
We were watching on CNN this morning, just a minute on the monitor.
Marjorie Taylor Green is, uh, you know, she's a, she's an unfortunate representative.
Well, why do you say
that?
I mean, she's, you know.
What a mistake that was to ever think that she could, you know, be in the house.
But anyway, she had a town hall.
Right.
And a few people disagreed with what she was saying.
And some protesters there.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Well, a lot of people are protesting, even at the town halls of Democrats host.
Sure.
And they've been asking, they asked the questions, they get answers.
No big deal, no one's taste, except now, Marjorie Taylor.
Green had a couple of people tased and her town hall
rested too.
Yes, yes, they were they were hauled out and and and she she told them that they were brainwashed by the news Brainwashed by the news.
Well, maybe they were listening to the John and Gordy show and they heard Doug's comments about the John and Gordy taser contest Finally got what they wanted
He put
them all together that all makes perfect
sense now.
Yeah
But,
you
know, I, who knew,
right?
You
should be brainwashed by the news.
Well, Marjorie Taylor Green, apparently.
You know, it's those algorithms that Mike Johnson.
That's
what it is, the algorithms.
Yeah, you got it.
It's so good.
They're so, so good with algorithms.
Anyway, yeah, that's what's happening.
And Chuck Grassley also had a few people that were angry with him.
Yeah.
You know, Chuck Grassley has to talk to the farmers an awful lot and the farmers not happy with what's happening.
Not at all.
Republican party.
and Trump, so they got angry as well.
So I'm sure we'll probably have clips of that tomorrow.
Margaret
Taylor Green thing, I can't wait to get clips for that.
All right, let's get to something that happened on Earl Ingram's show.
He talked to former mayor and also former ambassador to Luxembourg, Tom Barrett, the other day.
And if you haven't heard already, Trump is proposing
closing nearly 30 US embassies and consulates around the globe.
Now this is really, really a bad idea.
We're there.
We're answering questions.
We're there to help.
And now we're just going to pull out stakes.
That's it.
Gone.
Any reason for closing
down 30 embassies?
I don't think they have a reason for it.
It's just more isolationism.
I think the isolationism.
That's what it's all about.
So let's go to the, uh, uh, a caller called into Earl Ingram show and asked Tom Barrett a question.
This is 162, 162.
All right.
Got it.
Here we go.
Professor, what's your reaction to all of this?
I'm sorry.
Is it 163?
Look at the description.
Okay.
That's 163.
Sorry about that.
Now we're going back to school.
They're not accountable.
Well, I did that this morning and I got the numbers mixed up.
Go ahead.
That's more of a general statement.
The question poses right there at the top question for Tom Barrett.
What is your reaction to reports that the Trump administration is looking to close the embassy in Luxembourg?
So my reaction is the happiest person in Luxembourg.
If that happens is the Chinese ambassador to Luxembourg.
Why?
Because they are ready to just step in and fill any gap.
And I saw this throughout Europe.
I saw this throughout international organizations.
When the United States pulls out, China moves in.
It's that straightforward.
And so if President Trump thinks his main rival is China, taking these steps that allow China to move in is insane.
It's just insane.
And that was one of the major issues we faced in our embassy in Luxembourg was the Chinese investment in Luxembourg, the economic ties.
And to the point where in my final week, I was visiting with Luxembourg officials and I said, I want you to watch a video.
It's a Michael Buble video.
I like videos.
Believe it or not, I like Michael Buble.
Save the Last Dance for me.
It's a tango number and stuff like that.
That's how I view our relationship with Luxembourg.
We were there for them in World War II.
We saved their country.
We've supported them economically.
We have huge financial ties.
And now they're being wooed by China.
Donald Trump is just opening up a huge barn door to let China drive in all over the world.
You know, Tom, I always say to people at the root of this is this America first.
believe that Donald Trump has and we should lock out everybody else is really insane when you only make up 4% of the global population.
What he's doing is isolating us and we can't win that battle if we only make up 4% of the global.
I agree with you.
I agree.
And insulting the people that have been our allies for 80 years.
It just doesn't make any sense to me.
It really doesn't.
So, you know, they were right on top of this thing.
This is like breaking news.
I'm a little worried that the United States is going to follow the course of China about like four or five hundred years ago when they kind of closed themselves off from the rest of the world.
And then the little thing called the Industrial Revolution happened and China was once, you could argue, the most powerful nation in the world for most of
Human history for like 2,000 years.
It was probably the most powerful country in the world And then they closed themselves off from the rest of the world.
They stopped trading with people.
They stopped kind of exploring They just kind of kept to themselves and then they got sort of colonized.
Yeah.
Yes.
Yeah, I don't want that to happen here
isolationist policies You know, we have these long-standing alliances with all these countries around the globe and now we're just cutting it off
And that would allow, of course, China to step in.
And they've been all over the globe trying to put their foot in and try to help those other countries out financially.
How do you think this trade war is going to affect any of this?
I mean, it's just going to make it even tougher on everybody.
It would.
And the thing here is, and the reason they gave for doing this, it's to cut the State Department budget by almost half.
What is wrong with... They're making these ridiculous cuts all over the government.
It just doesn't make any sense.
It's mind boggling why we keep cutting really good areas of our budget.
Well spent money just willy-nilly.
It doesn't matter to these people.
We need these embassies We need to have some presence around the globe in order to help and be there and listen to them and maybe we can help them financially as well I mean we're the global power in this world.
We were anyway.
I'm sorry.
I think that's coming to an end So anyway, this is this is really a big issue and I think this is going to this hit the fan pretty much yesterday And so we'll see where this
This eventually grows.
Trump just wants to be in control of everything.
He
wants more power, he wants more
money, and he wants total control.
He doesn't want to, you know, have ambassadors get in the way of what he wants to do with all these countries.
Just a major charge.
Yeah.
Elon, of course, you know, his doge teenagers are saving now
$150 billion that is that that is down dramatically from the $1 trillion that he estimated before so he kind of gets you on the hook right we're gonna save a trillion dollars and then of course it keeps going down and on the down then it kind of give well $150 billion it's pretty good huh and then they walk away and they make believe like you know oh well that seemed that seemed good that seemed good
No, it doesn't seem good at all.
Now, let's get to the big story here is is disappearing people off the sidewalks of America.
Oh boy.
I'm just like, you know, this is stunning.
This is stunning information.
It's just awful to understand or even think it's possible to just take people off the sidewalks and make them disappear.
And my son came up with this yesterday.
This is very quick.
Trump's executive order that he signed a while ago.
gives him the ability now to declare martial law on April 20th, that's Easter, Hitler's birthday.
And this also allows, martial law allows him for deporting American citizens to El Salvador if he wants.
So this gives him the ability, he's talking about it now of course, wondering, well gee, I think, can I send Americans to El Salvador?
Well,
Marshall
Law, once
he declares that, he can actually do this.
Yes.
Who's going to stop him?
So where are we going to hide, Gordy?
Where are we going to go?
Sam, you can join us.
Are we going to go to Canada?
Yeah, we can stay away in my VW.
Excellent.
We're going to have to join some militia group, I think.
Start packing.
Yeah.
Okay.
Coming up next we'll talk to Brittany Merloge at the latest on this fabulous day weather wise.
And shower heads.
I want to go for a clip for that.
And also Mike McCabe will be joining us in about 15 minutes.
All coming up on John and Gordy in the morning right
here.
92.7 as the palm trees sway in the breeze, the coconuts are falling to the ground, and the banana trees are propagating.
Okay?
I'm not talking about
it anymore.
Help me please.
We're seeing sunshine out there this morning and it's going to be...
Beautiful day all day long maybe some clouds moving in later highs in the mid fifties this portion of John and Gordy in the morning brought to you by our friends at Verlo mattress of Madison wake up and sleep better on a Verlo mattress You know a lot has changed since 1958, but some things have remained constant throughout Verlo's history They're still direct to consumer and provide superior products at unbeatable prices Verlo mattress two locations in Madison east and west
Go to Virlo.com for more information.
And now it's time for us to welcome in our chief meteorologist, WMDX, Brittany Merlo.
Good morning, Brittany.
Hi, Brittany.
Good morning.
How are you guys
doing?
It's unbelievable.
I mean, it was sunny so early in the morning.
It's just fantastic.
This is a nice looking day so far.
Yeah.
Now, don't break our mood, whatever you do.
Okay, I'll try my best.
The pressure's on.
The pressure's on, right.
High
pressure.
Yes, you're right.
High pressure is on.
It's fantastic.
It's got everybody smiling and feeling like that song we just played.
Just relaxed.
I mean, the winds are finally calmer.
There's no clouds out there.
We've got the only bad thing I'm going to say is maybe take your allergy meds because that tree pollen is very high today.
So I've already had the runny nose.
I've already been sneezing.
So just get ahead of that if you can.
But otherwise today, comfortable highs in those mid fifties.
Um, gosh, I mean, I don't really want to talk about tomorrow really if you don't want any bad news, but do have rain on the way
for tomorrow.
Yeah.
Yes.
Okay.
Yes.
Not until tomorrow.
We'll still be mild.
We'll still hit 60 degrees.
Those winds will get breezy out of the south and we'll see some showers and storms by the afternoon.
Those will continue into the evening and then we get a little break Friday morning.
It'll be partly sunny, still very comfortable at about 60 degrees and then more showers and storms possible again in the evening.
But at least it moves through during the week because it clears on out of here for the weekend.
We're still looking dry both Saturday and Sunday.
Okay.
It's a big high pressure system builds up north.
It's keeping the rain down to the south, but we do have a chance of some more rain moving in by Sunday night potentially.
So overall, though, a gorgeous weekend, a comfortable one.
Today's gorgeous.
Just those allergies are coming out.
Yeah.
But the winds are going to die down.
But we still have the burn bands in effect.
Is that correct?
Yeah.
Yes.
So you're still in a high fire danger today, even though the winds are calm.
We've still got that dry vegetation.
We've still got the dry air out there.
So burn bands are still in place for you.
All right.
All right, Brittany.
Well, thanks.
That was really a nice weather forecast.
We'll enjoy today.
Well,
I know it's
great because now I'm going to go and get the seed, the grass seed.
Oh,
finally.
And I'll spread it out there and tomorrow we'll have a nice long rain.
It'll soak
in
perfectly.
You
know,
and then sunny.
And then, of course, you know, the grass seed will propagate.
I'm going to have a great looking lawn this year.
I know.
Perfect.
Wonderful.
Perfect timing.
Hi, Brittany.
Thank you.
Thank you very
much.
You're welcome.
You have a great day.
Talk to you tomorrow.
Me too.
It's Brittany Merlot, our WMDX meteorologist.
All right.
So let's talk shower heads, shall we?
Shower heads?
Yes.
Well, you know, Trump is all about shower heads.
He always has been.
It's a very big concern of his.
Signed an executive order to make sure that shower head freedom.
was there for everyone.
So anyway, let's queue up 158.
This is Sean Duffy talking about that wonderful showerhead freedom act.
Let's hear it.
but the president's talking about shower heads.
You don't have enough water that can come through your shower head because of Biden's regulations.
And so again, fixing small things like that, hopefully he's gonna get the dishwashers.
Wouldn't he do it if dishwashers worked again, where you don't have to wash your dishes first and then put them in the dishwasher to actually get a little heat on them?
I mean, common sense stuff he's doing.
No, 100% sir.
And like, I'm so
glad that we were able to.
Yeah.
So finally so glad
to
straighten that out Yeah, I you know the thing here is I think we're all kind of used to rinsing off the dishes before we put them into dishwashers So no that's not something I'm complaining about and the showerhead thing seriously the they're the ones talking about it They're the ones making a big issue and no one cares and I've got look do we have the
Just ask John, intro, done, we have it.
That hasn't come in yet.
No, it's not ready yet,
I'm still working
on it.
Okay, all right.
But you can
still give us advice.
Oh yes, I'm
gonna give you just ask John advice here on the show because I've gone through the shower head nightmare, the maze of shower heads out there.
And it has nothing to do with the limiter in the shower head at all.
Everybody knows and if you go online of like One of the major Distributors of home products,
right?
Okay, they're always comments people's everybody's taken out the limiter for the shower head Everyone's taken them out because they want that full pressure supposedly right
you sure but
I I tried it I went through like four or five shower heads and not that expensive
But I went through all of those things.
I took out the limiters, I put them on, and the pressure still is not there.
And the thing is, they don't understand that, Sean.
Duffy doesn't understand.
I'm sure that Trump has never tried to replace the shower head on his own.
And again,
It doesn't matter.
It's your water pressure.
And the thing about shower heads, it's the design of the shower head.
It's the distribution of water inside the shower head that makes a difference of whether it's a powerful force or not a powerful force.
And there are settings, everybody has one of those adjustable shower heads.
There are settings on it that just don't provide the kind of power or shower that you want.
And you use the same one or two over and over again because that gives you that power you want.
It really has nothing to do with the limiters.
These people are making a big issue about this, an executive order for Showerhead Freedom Day.
I'm just ...
Okay, so it's not ... Well, it's because he's overturning something that Biden put into place.
That's why.
Yeah, that's
really ... In a place like
Madison too, it's probably more just the pipes in your house than the shower heads.
I mean, my girlfriend,
she
lives in student housing downtown still, so it's still not the highest quality, but her water pressure is so bad it takes ...
Probably about a minute on her kitchen tap to fill a glass of water.
Wow.
That's
how bad her water pressure
is.
Yeah, and there are shower heads that can't deal with that.
All right.
Well, you're not adjustable.
There's only just, you know, it's one screen, but it makes it powerful even for low pressure.
Okay, that's fine.
What about the dishwashers?
OK, well, you didn't address the dishwasher.
No, I cares about the dishwashers.
Fairly, Sean Duffy does.
Sean
Duffy doesn't like to pre-wash the dishes.
I do it anyway, because, you know.
We're going to rinse them off.
In your dishwashers, there's a trap
in the
dishwasher that collects all
the
debris.
You don't want that to build up, because then it smells like hell.
OK.
So
you want to rinse them off so you don't have that trap filling up with particles of food.
OK.
Coming up next, Mike McCabe, sub-stack blogger on
John and Gordy in the morning.
From the capital to the campus and all across Dane County, we've got Madison Talking, 92.7 WMDX.
On a beautiful, beautiful Wednesday morning, we are having one heck of a time here in the program with idiocracy.
It continues.
Got plenty of sunshine today, highs in the mid 50s.
Gonna be beautiful all day long.
Maybe a few clouds late in the day.
And this portion of John and Gordy in the morning brought to you again by Verlo mattress of Madison.
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Well, again, I'm suggesting everybody get an adjustable bed frame, okay?
That's the way to go.
Like a hospital
bed?
Yeah, just like a hospital bed, no.
Like a hospital bed.
But you don't need the box spring.
No.
All right.
You
love the adjustable frames, right?
I do.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Two long singles.
Yeah.
And you put them together and it's a king-size bed.
You're just
preparing yourself for when your kids put you in a home bag.
See, they won't have to put me in a home because now I have my adjustable bed.
That's it.
All right.
Hey, look who's here, Mike McCabe.
Good morning,
guys.
How you doing?
Good.
Some exact blogger and you have a great blog this time around and tell us a little bit about what you were talking about.
Well, I was talking about how here we are in the 2020s and it feels a whole lot like the 1920s.
Yeah.
And now we actually have a man in the White House who thinks that's a good thing.
Who really looks at the 1920s as a
as a golden age for America, and of course it was an age of isolationism and protectionism and nativism.
Well, he's
actually going back to 1880.
Well,
he often talks about the 1890s as a golden period, and it should be pointed out that there was the bank collapse of 1893,
which
led to a
to a depression, not a recession, but a depression in
the
1890s.
And so the golden age he speaks of was a time of great trauma for many Americans.
And then he often glorifies the 1920s as well.
And I suppose he thinks of the roaring 20s as a time of great economic vigor.
But it was a...
It was an era marked by that isolationism and protectionism and nativism.
And so I quoted a former president who used those three words to describe what is going on.
He first used them in 2011.
And I quote an interview of his from 2011, but he didn't change his mind after 2011.
And by the way, I'm not...
talking about Biden or Obama or Carter or, you know, it's a different president than I'm quoting.
But he said almost the very same words again in 2016, sort of warning the nation.
And I think it was 2020 or 2021, he said it again, but even more with a sharper tongue because he turned the words on his own party and said,
My own party's becoming isolationist and protectionist and nativist.
And he talked about how dangerous that is and how corrosive to the soul it is.
And that was George W. Bush who said those words and kept warning, kept repeating this over and over again.
And so I wanted to quote those interviews.
because they speak so powerfully to the here and now, because here we are.
And I understand you've got that clip.
We
played it and it was just, I played it because I couldn't believe I was agreeing with George W. Bush or the fact that I always thought Bush was the dumbest president we ever had.
And
after listening
to this, this is like, I don't know whether it's comparing it to Trump or not, but I think this is a brilliant comment.
Let's listen to it.
A rational immigration policy eventually passed.
I think there's going to have to be some time.
What's interesting about our country, if you study history, is that there are some isms that occasionally pop up.
One is isolationism, and it's evil twin protectionism, and it's evil triplet nativism.
So if you study the 20s, for example, there was an American first policy that said, who cares what happens in Europe?
What happened in Europe mattered eventually because of World War two there was smooth holly Which is a part of an economic policy which basically said we don't want trade now There was a slow-up barriers and there was an immigration policy that I think during this period argued We had too many Jews and too many Italians therefore we should have no immigrants and my point to you is as we've been through this kind of Period of isolationism protections and natives at nativism.
I'm a little concerned that we may be going through the same period I hope that
These isms pass, which would then allow for a more orderly look in immigration.
He said that in 2011.
That was from a 2011 interview.
So that last line about, I'm a little concerned that we may be entering this sort of phase again.
He didn't say this last week or last year.
He said it in 2011, but he made remarkably similar comments again in 2016.
I linked to it in my latest Substack article.
And then again, I think it was in 2021, he repeated- He
elaborated?
He elaborated, but used these same terms.
But yeah, here we are with an America first policy.
And what do we have but trade policy that mirrors smooth holly?
from the 1920s.
And what do we have but an immigration policy that is an exact reflection of what he described was in place in the 1920s.
And so here we have a regime that is hell bent on returning us to the 1920s.
We're not thinking about where we should go as a country in the 2030s or the 2040s or the 2050s.
They want to sort of return us safely to the 1920s.
And of course, that was a period that led
to the stock market crash in 1929 and the Great Depression that plagued this country for well over a decade.
And I think if sometimes history can, you can take comfort from history because you realize that we have been through these kinds of things before as a nation and we survived.
But man.
why would we want to return ourselves to a time where that led to so much trauma for so many people?
My parents, my dad was born in 1919 and my mom in 1921.
And they grew up through the Great Depression.
And I think anybody who has depression, your parents or grandparents know how shaped they are by that experience, how scarred they were.
by the Great Depression.
It changed the way they thought forever.
And we have a president who sort of nostalgically says, that's the golden age that we want to return America to.
Yeah, and just
yesterday, he wants to close down 30 embassies now.
I mean, just again, isolate us.
Yeah, we are trying to wall ourselves off.
And you know that
that these kinds of impulses are tempting to many people because people flocked to it in the 1920s as well.
When certain conditions arise, then people find it almost irresistible to wall ourselves off, to become isolationist and protectionist, to try to expel everybody who looks a little different or who is part of that other
group and hey, America first, and that's gonna remedy what ails us.
And of course, it led to ruin, it led to absolute ruin for our country the last time these policies range supreme.
And I think we either learn from that history or we are
doomed to repeat it.
Well, it seems like he's kind of romanticized that time period.
Sure has.
And sometimes if you think like that, you kind of eliminate all the negative possibilities that took place at that time, you know, and you think that you can do it better.
If you did that, now I can make this a successful.
economy
in some
way, shape or
form.
And people who are sort of bored with a silver spoon in their mouth or born on third base and they think they hit a triple.
Oh yeah.
Maybe people like that were doing fine in the 1920s.
Maybe they even substantially enriched themselves during the 1920s.
It
was good for their family,
right?
Exactly, but at the expense of so many people who were traumatized by that era.
And my parents were changed forever, and they never stopped sort of looking over their shoulder thinking, when's the next depression coming?
Because they lived through it.
And an awful lot of families were ruined, an awful lot of people were ruined.
And here we are going down this same exact path, which is very sad.
Talking with Mike McCabe, sub-stack blogger and author, and Mike in this latest sub-stack.
column you talk about your time in the Peace Corps.
Yeah, I kind of end the column on that
note.
Talk about that
again.
Well, you know, one of the things I mentioned is that I had to learn Bombra, which is a local language spoken in not only in Mali, but in parts of West Africa.
It's known as Jula and Ivory Coast, for example, but it's the same language.
And I ended up sort of learning it well enough to get by.
I spoke it clumsily, but serviceably, as I write in the column.
But one of the things that, you know, this is like 30 years ago that
I
lived there, but I still remember the blessings that you would give if somebody fell ill.
And I could still repeat them to this day.
They're right there fresh in my mind because they came in so handy so many times.
So, you know, you'd say like,
The first one means may you feel better or may you get better.
The second one means may your troubles lessen.
And the third one is may you come back to your old self.
And I just conclude the column that that is my wish for my country, that we get better, that we, that our troubles lessen and that we come back to ourselves, that we return to our, we regain our senses and
and see through America first, and see through the ghost of Smoot Holly, and see through these kinds of backward-looking policies that led to ruin the first time that it transpired in our country, and is gonna lead to ruin again.
So I just closed with those.
Yeah, I still remember him.
Kanoguyake.
Pretty wild.
But he gives you a perspective.
It certainly does give
you a perspective.
Um, you know, a lot of things on the right, uh, their big deal about the tariffs is that, uh, uh, that we're hypocrites, uh, that the progressives, Democrats and liberals are hypocrites because it seems like we're against tariffs and they always give examples.
They've always talked about how we have tariffed China in the past.
So why are we against tariffs now?
Because it's Trump doing the tariffs.
It isn't really, it's always this, this surgical.
Tariff that we put on China because of something they were doing like Obama that talked about tires dumping tires into this country.
He tariffed him.
That's very surgical
They're missing the point that Trump is doing this to every country in the world
even one with even friends even places without people.
Yes,
even even
that So this is their excuse that well, we have done it in the past and we thought tariffs were a good idea Well, no we did it surgically and we did it really all the examples are China.
We haven't done it to the rest of the world really so
they are providing this misinformation that we are hypocrites on it and we aren't.
Tariffs are good if you surgically use them and you don't lash out at even your friends, even your neighbors, country, up and down, you know, Canada,
Mexico.
You can aim for free trade.
You can aim for fair trade.
You know, there are free traders out there who just want, you
know, they
just want.
products to flow and without any barriers or restrictions at all.
And then you can aim for fair trade where you try to create some measures that help control things.
Or you can start trade wars.
That's what we're doing.
Yeah, the trade war.
This is smooth holly revisited.
Yeah.
And George W. Bush hit the nail right on the head.
This is the same as... And what
happened with smooth holly?
Well, anyone?
Anyone?
Anyone?
It
didn't work.
It led to ruin.
749, we're back with Mike McCabe, sub-stack blogger right after this on John and Gordy in the morning.
WMDX 92.7
It's Johnny Gordy in the morning.
We want to send our congratulations out to our winner of those Milwaukee Film Festival tickets.
Thomas from Greenfield will be going to that festival.
We'll have more tickets to give away tomorrow.
We'll talk to Cara Ogburn from the Milwaukee Film Fest, and she'll tell us about what's going on, some of the highlights there.
Yeah, he's pretty glad, you know.
He played his hits and some of the new ones, plus Beatles songs.
So yeah, he's really anxious to...
to go to this concert.
So that's great.
All right.
Right.
No,
you actually you're
you're confusing two different things here.
We gave away to Thomas, the Milwaukee Film Festival tickets.
This was a Peter Frampton winner.
Okay.
I'm getting confused.
We're
getting all these texts here.
Let's talk about the deportation problem that we have in this country now.
This is just crazy stuff.
You know, Trump has been lashing out at MS-13 for a long time.
I guess he wanted the death penalty for some members he thought were part of that group.
And now he is not backing down with this person who was mistakenly sent
El Salvador even though his administration admitted to it and everybody is talking that well you know it wasn't something we should have done and the Supreme Court sided with them saying try to get him back but of course he doubled down I think he's convinced that this is another MS-13 individual and he's not going to back down he's gonna keep that guy there he even convinced the president of El Salvador to keep him there and now he's talking
This is the scary part.
He's been talking about sending Americans there.
You know, really, really, really bad Americans.
Well, you just can't do it.
You can't call them really bad and send Americans to some foreign country to be tortured.
You just can't do it.
But anyway, he's decided to do that.
And my son...
mentioned this to me yesterday, he says the Trump executive order that he wrote a while back gives him the ability now to declare martial law on April 20th.
This is, and then it's Easter, you know, Hitler's birthday, and now he also will be allowed under martial law to deport American citizens if he wants to.
And so he's suggesting it now.
on April 20th, he can declare martial law and do just that.
So we're kind of building up to this, aren't we?
You know, and I can't know what is in this guy's heart or in his head, and I don't want to get in that head.
But my gut tells me that what this is really all about is it's just...
It's it's show.
It's it's for show.
It's for optics He he know he doesn't he's not convinced that any of these people have gang affiliations He slaps that label on them so that he can engage in the theatrics because I think he wants to he wants to get people to self-deport He want he wants people to never come in the first place it is
the nativism that George W. Bush talked about.
It's having an immigration policy that is based on this idea that there are too many of them among us.
People who are different looking or speak with a different tongue.
There's too many of them among us.
Let's make them go away.
Let's make them disappear.
And then you engage in some of this theatrical
behavior to send an unmistakable message to millions of people, don't come or if you're here, leave.
And
I think that's what this is really about.
It's about his desire to cleanse America in this fashion, which of course is also an isolationist kind of mentality that never leads anywhere good.
It never...
leads to prosperity.
It never leads to greater freedom.
It never leads anywhere good.
Because, and the reason I can say that with such certainty is that it's been done before in America, and we have a long history of it, and we see what happens when you have these spikes of this kind of behavior and this kind of
ideology.
Comparing it to the protests that we saw on campuses the Palestinian protests and you know, they're certainly Canceling a lot of visas of the students who participated in it happened here on our campus here at the UW and and now They're pushing very hard on Harvard and Harvard is pushing back just as hard by saying that we're gonna turn down the eight billion dollar Whatever
funding that they were going
to get.
Yeah, that's amazing because they wanted somebody to be on the
the university staff going through the hires, what the curriculum is, it's stunning stuff.
And I think because Harvard is doing this, more colleges are now trying to get on board and maybe
join together with other colleges.
That was an incredibly important action by Harvard.
Yes.
When you think about so many people have kneeled down, so many people have refused to resist, so many lawyers, so many judges, so many universities,
So many institutions and people with considerable power have chosen to kneel down.
And here was an example of an institution that decided to stand firm.
And that's an incredibly important message to send.
Dominoes.
Dominoes and other universities and other colleges are joining
in.
My only point here is that, yes, he's targeting people at the University of Wisconsin.
Madison, he's targeting people all over the country.
But my point is that...
If he targets 1,000 or if he targets 10,000 or if he targets 100,000, that's not his aim.
His aim is to send a message to millions.
Yes.
That's what he's really aiming to do because he wants millions out of here.
The message I want to send is you'd better jump on board.
Absolutely.
I want
him
to
be
a part of this.
Absolutely.
That's going to do it, Mike.
Thanks for joining us.
Mike McCabe.
He's with us every Wednesday.
Tomorrow we'll talk to Kara.
Oddburn from the Milwaukee Film Festival have more tickets to give away and also Judy Davidoff from Ismus will be with us.
Stephanie Miller is coming up next.
We hope you have a great day, John.
Have a wonderful day.
Mike, you have a good day too.
Producer Sam.
Mike, thank you.
So long.
