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Hi,
young!
The Stone Age didn't end because of a shortage of stones.
So how do you say croissant in French?
Go.
You are
correct,
sir.
Here they are.
It's John and Gordy.
Just want to tell you both good luck.
We're all counting on you.
Catherine just texted in.
She said, no, the haze is bad.
right.
I don't
I'm looking at sunshine here.
But yeah, it is a little hazy in the distance.
OK.
Right.
All right.
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Well, this is a situation with taxes.
You know, the president himself
excuse me he's pulling out his political sharpie ready to read off drawly blind
right and I hear this Democrat I forget who it was I wish I could he was on MSNBC yesterday afternoon saying that basically if we do what they're talking about doing in California New York and such that we're no better than they are and then we should just
okay my question to him would be um
If we lose the midterms, we might as well just back it in.
right.
In my opinion.
That's right.
So is he just saying we're, you know, gonna wait till then and then just take it on the kid, I guess.
But I don't see us going too much further if we don't win the midterms and turn them into a late dot.
We have to fight back at least.
All right.
Thanks, Dick.
Thanks for that call.
Also, there's a discussion about the Fed raising or lowering, rather, the interest rates now.
It's not because he's being forced to do that by Trump.
And it has nothing to do with inflation.
Get this.
It has everything to do with hiring, being so low now.
And I just mentioned how many jobs were created, and that was extremely bad, very, very low.
So now the Fed might have to lower the interest rates just to try to...
tweak getting more hiring out there.
So one way or another, it's going to happen, I suppose.
The song does mention the boogaloo boys.
Yes, it does.
And, uh, that was way back in the seventies.
So,
Yeah, good point, Chuck.
Now we were also...
Checking in with Mike flood on his comedy tour at his town halls It's off
It came as a bit of a surprise to me that Republicans are actually...
hosting town halls after the catastrophe that the last bunch were in the midst of the doge cuts.
In fact, back in March, the NRCC, which funds House Republican campaigns, told members to stop doing town halls.
Nebraska Congressman Mike Flood hosted a town hall in Lincoln last night.
It didn't go well.
Your governor, Jim Pillon, and your legislature.
This bill protects Medicaid for the future.
8.4 million dollars a day to illegally detain people how much does it cost for fascism how much do
taxpayers have to pay Why are you covering up the Epstein files?
We've had we've had this conversation before
In case you didn't hear, they were chanting tax the rich.
A similar scene occurred last week when Wisconsin Republican Brian Steele hosted a listening
session.
South East Wisconsin has not been represented by you.
President Trump seems to run South East Wisconsin.
All of this is getting through to Republicans, but they are trying to spin it because anyone who shows up to criticize them doesn't count.
Should this sort of response from voters that we saw last night at that town hall, should that worry Republicans?
No, and I think I need to correct one thing that you said is you talked about he had a town hall with his constituents.
I wish that were true.
As we know, the Democratic Party buses in a lot of people from outside his district.
Yes, Democrats bust the people in.
Republicans can't keep pretending that their constituents aren't feeling the consequences of their toxic agenda.
But there's no evidence that anyone there was faking it.
to ask, why does it seem like when you make your voting decisions, they're based on capital rather than the working class?
Billionaires and corporations got their tax issues enshrined in the law forever, but the working class gets a no tax on dips or overtime that only applies to some of us, and now we wind up in a situation where we are.
With
all due respect, sir.
now more than ever represents the heart and soul the working class
the way he was going through his papers to find that that line that now more than ever they represent the working class Wow
And you know, here in Wisconsin, we protested act 10 way back in about 2011.
And at that time we had millions protesting at the Capitol over, over time.
And it was just huge, huge crowds day after day after day.
And the same excuse was used back then that we bust people in.
We bust people.
You know the thing is The Koch brothers had a bus that went through Wisconsin Picking up conservatives so they could come down here and protest at the Capitol.
Yeah, so we didn't bust them in they bust them in
And they said, but we bust people in from Illinois.
Why would we bust people in from Illinois?
Why did Illinois even care about Act 10 up here in Wisconsin?
They didn't.
So, uh, you know, all this, all this blaming the Democrats for busting people in.
It's such an old argument.
I, it's almost comedic at, at a point, but let's, you know,
yeah,
Well, your last statement, John, we lean on, you know, I lean on you to help me understand how I get my brother, your brothers and CJ to feel safe to say,
Yeah, we were robbed.
We were lied to.
We were wrong, but because we were lied to.
How do we make it a safe atmosphere for the CJs and Eric and your brothers to feel okay saying, you're right, we got screwed.
Sorry.
We shouldn't have done that.
We shouldn't
That's a good point.
You know, we've tried to do that on this show.
You know, when we've had CJ on, we have a fairly nice discussion.
Last time we'd even talked politics.
And I think that's one of the ways we can start doing that, but also trying to identify with them and understanding that they have been sold a bill of goods.
They believe all this stuff.
And if we can just keep giving them examples over and over and over again, that maybe we can convince them otherwise.
And that's all we can do, you know, that that's it.
And we're trying
to do
Well, and I think one of the other things is the, you know, this Epstein files things is not going away.
They're not going to let this go.
This can't just be pushed off of the headlines.
Like, you know, they've done all the other things that.
that have come along.
So they have to deal with that.
They have to come to some sort of reality about that, that, you know, why is he hiding these files?
Why won't they let these go?
Why won't they get them out there?
So now they're having a strategy session
with
very strange that they keep buying into all this stuff and now they're coming right out and saying, well, we're going to figure out a way to deceive everybody.
Okay.
And we're having a big dinner and we're going to strategize.
Come on.
They're telling you what they're doing.
Yeah.
Um, well, we can only, you know, give you examples here and that's why we play these cuts for you.
You know, we're not going to, we're not going to paraphrase.
is anything they're saying.
We're gonna give you the stuff they're saying.
That's
morning.
You're listening to Civic Media.
Stay up to date on the latest news and information for your local community and Wisconsin by signing up for our free email newsletter.
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started.
Shore Drive.
Beautiful Chicago.
Gorgeous.
I love driving around in Chicago.
I know people think I'm crazy, but I love driving around in Manhattan too.
Now that's crazy.
I mean, they are really good drivers down in Manhattan.
You have to be a good driver.
And I was shocked.
I was shocked.
I mean, it was just solid cars.
But because it's solid cars, you can't, if you have to get in the left turn lane, it's, it would be normally tough to do or impossible to do, but they have it down.
They slow down, they let you in, they make, they make these moves so you can work with them so you can work with them.
I mean, it is just, it is magic.
I was just stunned by how good people drive in Manhattan.
So I
Wish we had that here.
Well,
Our friends Jim and Sarah can help you out there.
If you have hearing problems, they've helped John out.
They helped me out.
They can help you out too.
Madison Hearing Aid Center, you can go to MadisonHearingAidCenter.com, get an initial hearing test there, and then set up an appointment.
Call them at 608-249.
4077.
That's 6082494077 Madison Hearing Center, 4706 Cottage Grove Road in
Well, you know, Madison for some reason just spiked in that wildfire smoke.
You are pretty much the highest in the state.
You've
unhealthy levels once again.
is, I know, 151 back in the red level, especially south of you too.
So this morning it is like a thick foggy patchy smoke kind of nastiness out there in certain areas.
And I worry because today we've got a pressure system moving in and it's going to kick up those winds in the northern part of the state, but it doesn't look like it's going to be moving too much by Madison area as a temporary high pressure builds in over Milwaukee today.
So my fear is it keeps the wildfire smoke by Milwaukee and Madison
chances are there, but otherwise this wildfire smoke, it should, I swear, clear
out of here.
pressure system is way on the East Coast.
So it's like it is just hanging on to Wisconsin and it's frustrating isn't
Seriously, they're up there with a big fan pointing right at
Oh my goodness.
So let's hope that this high pressure system weakens this little temporary one over Milwaukee and then the winds start to kick back up.
If it doesn't, you'll be stuck with a little wildfire smoke today.
for sure by later we are going to see it move because we're looking at drizzle possible late tonight and overnight and then some thunderstorms small ones tomorrow morning
clear by the afternoon temperatures in those mid 80s both today and tomorrow and then we've got more storms moving in possibly midday tomorrow again overnight
Then it turns hot and humid as we go into Friday and Saturday near 90 degrees, feeling like the mid 90s to upper 90s.
And then a cold front hits us on Saturday and into Sunday, sparking more showers and storms and those could be strong with severe.
So we're not looking at, you know, beautiful summer weather.
Unfortunately, I would say Friday is the best
See that's what's
That meteorologist of yours is one smart person.
I mean of course the Canadians have set up fans.
This is the way they're saying
I wanted to comment your friend Catherine called with thoughts about how can you open the minds of people like CJ who just don't seem to get it in terms of how they may be harmed by what's going on in this administration.
And I just wanted to offer the fact that our Kennedy Jr.
has on Tuesday demolished 22 projects totaling 500 million that we're using this MRNA technology for vaccines.
and so okay given that out the window they go um and he also fired his vaccine recommendation panel um and some of these vaccines some were for for covid some were for other respiratory illnesses but some of the vaccines were cancer vaccines specifically they were working on a colon cancer uh pancreatic cancer geoblastoma i mean really serious cancers that that don't have much chance of survival um produce slim
And there was a guy quoted in this newspaper article.
His name is Mike Ulsterholm.
He's a University of Minnesota expert on infectious diseases and pandemic preparations.
And he said, I don't see a more dangerous decision in public health in my 50 years in the business.
And I would also note that this
mRNA technology.
Was it awarded a Nobel Prize, the people who came up with it in 2023?
Wow,
Okay, what, you know, he's going, it's like that guy in the movie, you know, you're going the wrong way.
Yeah, so, you know, I just hope they would see it for their own benefit if nothing
How did we do?
And there?
Not too good.
Apparently you're not an American citizen.
That's true.
And according to your boss, you're not a Soviet citizen either.
Well, the boss isn't always right.
But he's always the boss.
Do you never worry?
Would it help?
It is 7.35, hazy sunshine this morning, highs in the mid-80s this afternoon.
And Mike McCabe joins us in just a moment.
But first, let me remind you, this portion of the show brought to you by Virlo Mattress.
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Of course the students sleep during the
I haven't
to see
Good!
Eyes are burning a little bit.
Yeah, it's pretty crummy.
Well, I think I might have gotten soap in my eyes in the shower, but I'm going to go ahead and blame it on the haze.
this
It's cooped up too much.
I know.
That's
So here we are, the doomed baby boomers.
You know, I've talked about this on the show so many times and so disappointed in my generation.
We really had it going, you know, the sexual revolution.
By the way, you had a great list of everything that the 60s and 70s turned out.
That was fantastic in your article.
But anyway, we had all these great movements, you know, sexual revolution, women's lib, anti-war protests showing, you know, what we can do if we got together and protested something on the campuses mostly.
They weren't DEI yet.
They weren't using DEI to break up these protests.
And now the baby boomers have turned into billionaires and selfish
sons of God.
a
Okay.
So what's your point?
But my point is now that we have made, we have soured Gen Z, our kids.
We have soured them on our generation.
And thank goodness, maybe this is enough.
to push them and change the US again.
And you talk about it in your article about them now being that the generation we need to count on to
change everything.
Every younger generation sours on older generations.
That's the nature of generations.
And it's why there's always generational change.
And I really wrote this article
because I've been talking, you know, to a lot of my peers.
I was born at the very tail end of the baby boom, so I'm barely a boomer, but I kind of fit in at the very back end of it.
But I talked to all these boomers who are extremely depressed, and they really feel like they've let all the rest of the generations down, and that they've failed, and that, you know...
And I guess I wanted to say, oh, lighten up.
And think about the fact that the Baby Boom Generation brought about the Clean Air Act and the Clean Water Act and Medicaid and Medicare and the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act.
And I go on and on and on.
I probably offered another half dozen or dozen
that were the doing of the Baby Boom Generation.
The boomers brought along generational change because people, when they were young in that generation, were feeling like there was too much conformity.
They felt stifled by a society that was so very different than the society we live in today.
So the boomers changed the world.
They dramatically changed America.
But the nature of...
the way.
Human nature being what it is, that brought a pretty powerful backlash and a push to sort of reverse a lot of those changes or a lot of those advances.
And now, yeah, of course Gen Z, like all younger generations is gonna look at the older generations and say they didn't know what the hell they were doing and we gotta change the world because that's what younger generations do.
But I don't think that that means that what the baby boom generation did was not if not revolutionary it was certainly evolutionary because we live in a tremendously different world than America was in the 1940s or 1950s and and and we shouldn't forget that but we also should make way for generational change and I guess my point in the article was that unfortunately the
the forces that are most powerful today want to take us back.
They want
to
take us back to the 1940s or 50s or the 1920s or the 1890s.
And America is always at its best when it's thinking about tomorrow, when it puts yesterday in the rearview mirror, and it thinks about how should we reinvent ourselves?
That's when America is at its best, is when we're reinventing.
And that's what Gen Z, I think, that's the challenge for Gen Z is to reinvent
the world again and to think anew and that means some old institutions are going to crumble and they are going to collapse and old ways are going to go away.
hope.
Let's hope because this is a moment that calls out for reinvention and we ought to be thinking about that, planning for it, fighting for it.
And instead we're kind of wringing our hands and saying, oh, we've failed and dug on it.
All of those things that were done made it very different to America.
And we're all living in a world that has, you know, is the result of gender equality and greater racial equality.
all of those things and Medicaid and Medicare and all those things that were put in place by the baby boom generation.
We take all those things for granted now.
We shouldn't take them for granted, but we should be thinking, okay, what's next?
How do we imagine the modern day equivalent of those things that were all done back in the 60s and 70s?
We couldn't wait for tomorrow to happen and see the future like that.
But instead, we've been held back.
And I've always said this from the past, at least, in the last three or four decades, I thought the Republicans, because they have this tax cut fever and it hasn't let up one bit,
But these tax cuts are money that could go to improving this country, to update this country, to revitalize this country, instead of giving it as tax cuts.
They are a freeloader generation.
The boomers are freeloaders.
They're trying
to have a- Wait a second.
Wait a second.
I think you're painting with too broad a brush there, John.
you said the boomers have become billionaires, a handful of boomers have become billionaires.
And they are seeking to actively rig the system to make themselves trillionaires.
And then there's a whole bunch of people who have actually watched their net worth erode.
actual buying power of their net worth has been declining because we've got such grotesque economic inequality at this moment in our country.
And there are boomers who are not well off.
There are billionaires in that generation and those billionaires want to become trillionaires and they are actively working to make sure that they can do that.
And that's really what brought me to my most recent article that just came out.
this central myth of capitalism that there is this invisible hand that will guide our economy and guide our society in wise ways and you don't need any government intervention.
And of course, that's hogwash.
That is an idea that those billionaires need Americans to embrace.
if they are going to become trillionaires as they wish to become.
That's that whole thing about generational change.
The way I put it is arsonists become architects become preservationists, preservationists become arsonists.
What did the Baby Boom generation do?
But rebel against the conformity and the staleness of American society.
And they wanted to burn things down and a whole lot of things burned.
And then a new construction happened and a new architecture was created.
And those arsonists became architects.
Then of course, in more recent times, boomers wanted to preserve all that they had built.
And they became sort of America's true conservatives.
You know, not the modern day definition of conservatives you see in the far right.
Yeah.
But they wanted to preserve what they had created.
So they became preservationists.
And now, of course, there's a whole lot of people wanting to burn down what was built.
Where do they fit into this picture?
Yeah, and I'm right on the cusp.
Yeah, you're right on the edge.
I'm right on the cusp of...
of Baby Boom and Gen X. And so some people, depending on how you define the generation, some people would put me in Gen X. But to me, those lines are blurry at best.
And look, Gen X was part of that construction because that new architecture that the boomers can lay claim to, that continued all the way into the 1970s, almost to the 1980s.
You had the Americans with Disabilities Act.
And then the fight for...
for gender equality, but then also the fight for marriage equality, where people, even up until very recent years, were troubled by the idea of same-sex marriage.
And today, the vast majority of Americans accept it.
They're okay with it.
And of course, marriage equality became the law of the land.
And I have that line in the article that...
Gay was no longer a synonym for Mary or or or or or
or happiness Yeah, yeah, and it was it was it became it was defined differently And it and it ended up being reflected in our laws, but that's a 21st century advance The the fight for so, you know Gen X was all part of that as well and and so yeah, maybe maybe too many people have overlooked Gen X and and
because so much of the younger generation's wrath is directed toward the boomers.
But look, for younger generations, the challenge is the same as it was for the Baby Boom generation.
If you don't like what society looks like, reinvent it and take us and break new ground and take us to a new place.
Instead,
I think we've got these retrogressive forces that are trying to take us backwards all the way to the 1890s.
We
morning.
You're listening to Civic Media.
Find the latest news, information, and archives of all your favorite shows on the Civic Media website,
Boomers may have made some wonderful changes to the world, but they also pulled the ladder up behind them.
That's the issue.
Newer generations can't get a word in edgewise and they've lost all hope and being able to do so.
And, you know, I see that all the time and we're hearing about that all the time that
You know, they did many pulled up that ladder behind them and generations now are having a very difficult time buying homes, getting cars, being able to afford an apartment.
It's beyond them.
now.
No question.
The boomers brought about a lot of...
social change, a lot of social equality.
Didn't do so well on economic equality.
And I guess I wouldn't say that the boomers all pulled the ladder up behind them, but they allowed the ladder to be pulled up behind them.
You know, a few at the very top did the pulling, the billionaire class.
They did the pulling, but the...
Baby boom generation didn't do a good enough job of preventing that and so economic quality It was not one among the boomers great achievements and and and now we have we have really grotesque economic inequality in this country.
Yeah that invisible hand keeps
keeps giving us all the finger.
Yes it does
and in relation to the ag bill that is kind of in limbo forever at this point no one's bringing it up I'm surprised that farmers throughout the country aren't angry and bitter about this I mean they're losing their labor force because of immigration and now the ag bill is completely
invisible to this administration.
They're a little distracted while they're filing bankruptcy.
People probably haven't heard, but there has been a recent spike in farm bankruptcies in this country, a pretty dramatic percentage increase.
And that's on top of what happened over the past several
decades where four million farmers were put out of business by changing US agriculture policy.
Four million farmers were put out of business.
that were going out of business in Wisconsin.
The thing that aggravates me coming from a farming background is that so often people say, well, farmers just weren't farming smart enough or they couldn't compete or they kind of blamed the farmers.
When in fact it was
really savage policy that put them out of business.
And I write about the contrast between the U.S.
farm economy and the Canadian farm economy.
In Canada, farm bankruptcies are so rare that they don't even...
measure them anymore because they don't even have an ongoing statistic for them because they are so exceedingly rare and here it's something of an epidemic and it's because they have a sensible supply management system that we used to have.
that kept our farm economy stable and kept those four million farmers in business.
Why did that go away?
Yeah, why?
Because big agribusiness wanted it to go away.
They wanted fewer farmers who were operating on a much bigger scale, who were dependent on them for seed, for chemical fertilizers, for chemical pesticides.
And they also wanted a glut.
They wanted to subsidize overproduction.
So we went from modulating the food supply to keep farmers in business and keep
prices reasonable for consumers, that's what Canada does to this day.
We went to a system that still subsidizes, they marketed it as let's wean farmers from government assistance, let's wean them from subsidies.
Farming is as heavily subsidized today as it ever has been, but now they subsidize overproduction because they wanted a glut of corn and soybeans so that they could then
turning some of that into things like fuel and sweeteners, high fructose corn syrup, right?
Thank you, Boomer.
Thanks for that.
And
so, yeah, they consciously wanted that glut and they also wanted that glut so they could dump cheap food on foreign markets and commandeer their farm economies.
And they put foreign countries,
farm economies on ice and put a whole bunch of people out of business there so that they could take over those markets and become supermarket to the
interject here.
That was conscious policy.
We've been disrupting their markets even
Yeah,
I don't
I don't know if those protections are have con gone down or been taken away through the EU agreement that they have for tariffs I don't know that I can't believe that no one's writing about that right because every every market has to protect their their farmers their Their economies and they rely on them
We can't let down.
I mean we can't let them down.
We let
in public policy We let them on Santos of the world the ADMs the cargills We let them dictate agricultural policy and we and we're now we're now reaping that harvest Yeah, and it's a bitter harvest because we've got four million farmers who've been put out of business We still are seeing a surge in farm bankruptcies to this day and and
We had a system that yielded an abundance of wholesome food at reasonable prices and kept farmers in business, and we abandoned that system.
But they could come back because they're there in Canada today.
They are.
And farm suicides are almost non-existent there, and it's a big problem here.
look
long.
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