Eye-Scanning Tech    (Hour 1)

Transcript

Eye-Scanning Tech (Hour 1)

John & Gordy · Tue Aug 12, 2025

Kathryn Lake

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Like a fine wine aged to perfection until the bottle shatters against the rocks of history.

Two ancient warriors of radio broadcasting take to the airwaves of Madison for anyone brave enough to listen to the unvarnished truth or something like that.

It's John and Gordy in the morning on 92.7 WMDX.

You know, with this major storm that we've got going on here, you got to ask those questions.

Are we on?

And boy, saw some huge bolts of light.

I know.

Thunder and lightning.

Gorgeous.

Rolling across southern Wisconsin.

Yeah.

That's the way it starts

today.

Not real bad out there.

I don't think there's a lot of flooding or anything like that.

Nothing on University Avenue, which is susceptible to new lakes.

Yeah.

Yeah, you make that drive every morning, don't you?

I do.

From Middleton.

Yeah.

Right down the University Avenue.

Yeah.

So I've got the University Avenue report for you each and every morning here.

Good.

That's great.

Yeah, we did get, yeah, we're getting some pretty moderate rain here right now.

Yeah, it's not too bad.

It's not awful.

You know, grab the umbrella before you walk out.

Oh boy, check those windshield wipers.

Picture they're intact.

Take your galoshes and mucklucks.

You've got some gully washers out there.

And for those who are driving those old, old vehicles up there, you know, that aren't electric.

Oh, you got the space car back?

I got the space car.

Well, I've been driving around all week.

So the space

car

has automatic windshield wiper detection of rain.

That must be fun.

And it's unbelievable whether it's heavy or light.

It knows when to move the windshield wipers fast or slow or just stop.

It is unbelievable.

Yeah.

That's

great.

Does it ever startle you while you're driving along all of a sudden?

No, the windshield

wipers

kicked

in.

The only bad thing is I don't have a rear windshield wiper, which I think is a little unusual.

You know, it's so automatic.

The car is so automatic.

I think of just getting some kind of in-car microwave and just enjoy myself.

make snacks just live there sit sit on the seat and let it drive itself why not

yeah well that's good i i didn't know that you had it back from the shop so you've been having all kinds of all kinds of

problems

You

got a brand new car.

Spends

a week and a half in the shop.

Well, it's

because,

again, a recall on a piece that would help recharge the 12 volt battery.

A tiny little battery that sits under the hood.

Without that, you can't run the gigantic battery.

I

see.

covers the entire bottom of the car.

So have other batteries in there, like a couple of nine bolts and some D cells.

I'll find out.

Okay.

Good morning.

That's John Peterson.

I'm Gordie Young and Roscoe Dominic Lee.

We're pushing the buttons and flipping the switches.

Good morning, Tom.

Good morning.

That's good.

Good morning.

92.7 WMDX.

I gotta tell you guys something.

Yeah, please.

All right, I gotta tell you about my day yesterday, right?

Not to make it all about me.

Yeah, no, no.

Let's talk about

you.

What was your day like?

I went to go see a movie yesterday.

Oh, yeah.

I went to go see Weapons, which was that new horror movie that's in theaters.

Yes.

Really good.

Really?

Really, really good.

I would give it a 9 out of 10.

Wow, that is good for a, what, a murder slasher movie?

It is, yep.

95% on Rotten Tomato.

Wow.

It was amazing.

It was amazing.

I strongly recommend anyone that's listening to watch weapons in theaters.

All right.

Well, we'll have to talk to Pete Schwabba

about that.

He's going to be with us a little bit later on.

He's in the know.

He's seen a lot of movies, I think.

Do they

have movies up north?

I think they do.

I think they do, yeah.

Yeah, I didn't go see Naked Gun yet.

Maybe I'll see that today.

Yeah, it's getting sort of mixed.

Good reviews, but

sort of mixed.

You know, a movie like that,

you

either like it or you don't like

it.

Yeah.

A lot of people didn't like the airplane movies, you know, the naked gun movies.

I enjoyed them.

Yeah.

You know.

So it's just, you know, there's there's a lot of one liners and people don't like one liners or jokes that build up to a one liner.

Then they won't like that.

Movies at all, but I thought it was an interesting casting so you saw naked.

No.

No, but no, I just I'm saying that you know replacing Who is it the original guy?

That would be

police

squad

and Leslie

Nielsen Leslie Nielsen.

It's hard to replace a guy like that.

Oh, yeah.

Yeah

He was great.

Really?

Yeah.

So funny.

And he would, you know, I've seen a few clips of him lately just because of the new movie coming out.

Yeah.

They throw a bunch of old stuff.

But when he'd make talk show appearances, he'd bring a whoopy kid.

Oh, yeah.

And he

would, he would, they'd get into the interview quite a, quite a ways.

And then he'd, then he'd let it go.

Then he'd just bring it on every time.

It was great.

Which is creative as hell, right?

It's so silly, but yeah, it's an

old joke.

He's an old guy.

He brings in the whooped cushion, but he made it work, right?

Yeah.

And he was just very dry, great sense of humor.

I saw him, we were watching a few other movies over the weekend, and he was in a movie.

And I just didn't watch the whole movie.

I just you know sampled it, but he was in a movie very recent I can't remember what it was, but I thought really was he died

about a 10

10 years 10 years ago or so.

Yeah, and

it's just

wow there.

He is so Working all the way up to that point

Okay,

but maybe they AI generate, you know, you know, what?

No, not this didn't seem to have that budget

Wow, yeah, that

would be

something else Yeah, well, anyway back to the rain.

We've got looks like we're gonna see rain off and on through most of the day rain and showers and high about 77 today So not quite as warm and muggy as we've had lately, but still yeah, we got the showers to deal with

That's right.

There's Pee Wee running down State

Street.

Look out, Pee Wee.

Look out.

You know what happened overnight?

Taylor Swift.

released her new album, her 12th album.

I know you were waiting for

it.

She didn't really

give anybody any warning.

This is kind of a snuck up on everybody.

It's a shocker.

I know

Tom went out and bought it right away.

Suddenly, they were changing the

headlines, the newspapers everywhere.

Trump takes over DC.

That was gone, man.

That's old

news.

That's right.

Baylor Swift has a new album.

And what's

the title?

It's called The Life of a Showgirl.

And since it's her 12th album, she released it, she dropped it, as the kids say.

She dropped it at 12, 12 a.m.

this morning.

And then her website immediately crashed.

Because all the Swifties got online, you know, they didn't know what happens.

Do they not have a life?

I guess

not.

And I

think she, I think she announced it on Travis Kelsey's podcast.

That's right.

Yeah.

That's what I, that's

what I saw too.

Yeah.

They're still together?

My God.

And then she's doing a pre... I guess it's a pre-pre-sell.

It's not just a pre-sell, but it's pre-pre-sell for the album.

I don't know how that works anymore.

It's good that she got out there early.

You know, she has a hard time selling those

albums.

Right.

Oh boy.

Yeah, she's doing well.

She's still with Travis.

Yeah.

I think it was their brothers.

Maybe it was Travis's podcast or his brother.

Jason Kelsey's, yeah, Travis's brother.

I think it was on his podcast.

Yeah, there you go.

Yeah.

Maybe they combined it.

Those of you that are

tracking that.

He's almost as popular.

Yeah.

Okay, well, you know, that's always good to know You know, we always have that discussion at home, you know, it comes to like when is she good or She mediocre And we always get to the point where it's she's got really really good songs.

Yeah great songs.

I think so.

They're just

not distinctive enough.

Mm-hmm.

They just don't have that Uniqueness that you all you hear it

You know, the first few notes, you

know,

it's her coming up.

She

was big in the country world for a while, you know, when she first came out, you know, when she first broke out.

Which shows you just how country country is nowadays.

And then it was a big controversy when she left country music and became a pop star with all the country folks shunned her.

Yeah.

She lost a whole bunch of listeners.

But gained a whole bunch more.

Oh, yeah.

Slightly more, I guess.

Yeah, she's done all right for herself.

Yeah.

Good for her.

I'm waiting for the AI version of a singing Trump doing his pop

song.

That's what I'm

thinking.

Find one like that.

There's so much out there.

So many AI documentaries, projections of what the future would look

like with

Trump.

As the king this is this is an amazing thing.

I didn't expect that out of AI But you know, there are some really good pieces of production produced by AI that predict the future do this little science fiction thing and

It's

it's some of it's working out really well And I think it's great because it documents this time.

So we'll go back to some of those Yeah, you

know

where we just kind of winced another AI generated

Yeah.

Thing with, you know, actors and everybody appearing at it, but, you know, no one gave permission and they're in there.

But it's just, it documents this moment.

It's a snapshot in time for all of us.

Thanks for sharing.

That's

kind of profound.

Well,

let's get to a would you rather, because everybody's waiting on the edge of their chair to find out what Tom and I can help out.

Honestly, okay.

Let's do it.

Let's see if there's any more reverb in

this.

I

think we're all out of reverb.

I don't think we can go any

more.

He took it all.

Yeah.

Well, I can't even... That second word, I can't even hear it.

I'm hearing it less and less now.

I know.

I know.

Alright.

Yeah, I was serious when I made that, too.

That's

why I laugh.

It's just amazing that you actually... Well, that's good.

I tried, you know.

It was worth a shot.

But it was one of the first things you've done.

And we're good with it, we're going with it.

Yeah,

that

was the first few weeks.

Alright.

First question, would you rather live in the world of Lord of the Rings or

Star Wars, I think I know John's answer

I'm leaning towards Star Wars.

Yeah, why?

Well, Lord of the Rings is fantastic.

I love I love to live in Hobbiton But

you know,

I just I mean it's such a beautiful place.

Yeah, you know, you just kind of open this thing up for me, but I

played Lord of the Rings.

We watch it over and over and over

again.

Really?

Wow.

Only because it just takes me into that world.

It is just so fantastic, so well done.

It looks so real.

You just fall into it.

And it's a great escape.

It's how I escape this weird

trumb land that we're in right now.

Yeah.

So I need Lord of the Rings.

Yeah.

I'm

going more and more about

you.

Don't I would?

Maybe too much, right?

Well, I'm gonna go with Star Wars.

I enjoyed the

first two or three.

I think Star Wars, too.

I think it might have... I want to see C3PO.

Like the future.

See, I

like those little... little...

Puppets

little

creatures.

What are they?

I

can't remember.

Do you remember?

E-Walks.

E-Walks.

Nice.

Yes.

E-Walks.

All right.

Yeah, you love it.

Next question.

We got a minute.

All right.

Next question.

Which shoe would you rather wear every day for the rest of your life?

Pink Ugg boots or pink Crocs?

Which one guys?

We got to

make this quick.

Ugg boots.

Ugg boots.

Ugg boots.

They

don't

make

tap shoes.

No, no tap shoes.

No tap shoes.

Not

allowed what about you did not pink I'd say pink rocks all right good enough, okay?

Would you rather?

You need a closing.

Come up with a new close.

But it has to have reverb, right?

It's got to have a lot more.

Try delay this time.

Lots of delay and reverb.

Combine them.

All right.

We're just getting going on a Tuesday morning.

We will take a brief pause here for the cause from our beloved sponsors coming back with more.

Kathryn Lake

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.

Visit civicmedia.us slash email to get started.

Yeah, it's Johnny Gordy in the morning, 92.7.

And this is where I always say, check us out on the Civic Media app and text us or voice note us.

We'd love to hear from you because we take audience participation on this show seriously.

Do we?

Yes.

Oh,

OK.

How seriously?

I mean,

if if no, really, they they.

They are very serious about, you know, expecting a certain level of audience participation on this program.

And we're going to follow through on this if it kills.

So you wanted me to go down that road.

So let's go grab that hole and I had to drop through.

Sure.

Phone lights are open.

6-0-8-8-7-9-8-2-5-5.

I just never heard you talk so seriously about the serious participation of the serious callers.

Well, we take them very seriously, even though they can't take us very seriously.

Well, they can call in and joke around, too.

They don't have to be serious, right?

Oh, yeah.

They can have some fun.

They can be humans.

Call and have some

fun.

Have some

fun.

There you go.

That's some of the bottom

line for me.

Boom.

Okay.

Mic drop.

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Okay.

Yeah.

That's great.

Um, you know, we've often,

yeah.

All right.

Yeah.

I know.

I'm seeing another sugar dealer Swift make the announcement

with

Travis.

Um, we have Matt on the phone.

Oh, we have

Matt on the phone.

Sure.

Let's

take Matt.

Matt, what do you got?

Matt from Middleton.

Yeah.

Good morning.

Morning guys, it's raining again.

Thank you

going on here.

I know

Summer ever

it is I

just wanted to ask like your opinion on this because Is it even worth trying to keep America America together after this MAGA show?

Well,

yeah, I

mean, I think

it's worth

being better off without the red states honestly

Yeah,

if we had a bridge or something to each blue state, that would be a fantastic idea.

Maybe a portal of some sort.

Yeah, well, I, I, I agree.

But you know, we got to bring it all back.

You know, it's a reconstruction and that's maybe what the Democrats will have to call it.

You know,

well, the reason I think we can't do that and the union has failed miserably is because you now have this 28% white nationalist Christian fanatic

group

that

no longer want, they don't even want to share the country with us.

They literally want us out.

Yeah.

That's true.

How do

you get back from

that?

That's

a

great question.

Yeah.

I don't

know.

A lot of this stretches the imagination to a point where we can imagine coming back from this, but.

I don't know.

Uh, we're gonna, that's our big story, by the way, the takeover of the US in micromanagement of this administration, uh, or Trump anyway, not the, even the administration so much.

It's just Trump.

He's controlling everything.

Cause he gives us an opportunity by breaking everything, right?

He's tearing it all

down,

breaking it all.

And then he's going

to fix it.

So the way we rebuild could be better, but not if we have to drag these neanderthals with

us.

Well, yeah.

You know, it's almost it, you know, the media kind of fell in place on this for some crazy reason.

I don't know how, but, you know, Trump made all these threats about the tariffs and big high tariffs on other countries.

And then they settled for lower tariffs, but still high tariffs.

And everybody's going, oh, what a relief.

It wasn't a relief.

It was it was a distraction.

It was it was a con.

Well, I'm going to do this at this high, high point, and then they bring it down lower, but we're supposed to be happier if we're bringing it down low.

You know, it's all just a

shell game.

Yeah, it's a distraction.

Well, Mag is a big cop out.

It's all smoke and mirrors because they know they can't compete with China.

China actually invests in their country.

They have long term strategic thinking.

America is a clown show.

We're stupid.

We look stupid in the entire world.

We're proving we're stupid.

So instead of trying to invest and compete, we're just going to make most of the Americans poor and impoverished.

We're going to go back to slavery.

Could be we've lowered the age We're lowering the age

as we continue down

this path.

That's right lowering the bar every day.

Yeah.

All right, Matt.

Thank you for that

positive message Thank you.

Let's go to mark right now mark.

What do you got?

We got about a minute.

Go ahead

Involuntary servitude is actually allowed under the 13th Amendment if we've convicted somebody of a crime and with Trump's new

militarized police force who knows if they were actually going to be following actual law enforcement procedures in washington dc or whatever the hell else he decides to activate the military against the citizenry i mean he is actually the anti-actually what the anti-federalist warned us about the president could become the supreme court enabled with their whole executive you know it immunity thing that biden should have actually nobody should actually done all this stuff that that uh... trump would be in a

in a cell of little ease, like from the Tower of London and,

uh,

dress up, beg along with him.

And

that, uh, I'm just wondering what happens when the, and Jane Piro gets pulled over for drunk driving.

Oh

yeah.

Yeah,

that'll happen.

Her little speech yesterday was something else.

Mark, thank you for

that.

Thanks a lot, Mark.

It is 29 minutes past the hour.

It's John and Gordy on a Tuesday morning.

Rain showers out there coming back with idiocracy right around the corner.

A little police squad here.

WMDX Madison, Wisconsin.

As the 21st century began, human evolution was at a turning point.

Intelligence continued to decline until humanity was incapable of solving even its most basic problems.

The inner machinations of my mind are an enigma.

No!

You dense, irritating miniature beast of burden!

Idiocracy.

You're the smartest guy in the world.

You're pretty dumb sometimes.

And we're

recognizing it day by day by day.

Yep.

Wow.

Idiocracy is coming up right here in WMTX.

John and Gordy in the morning.

What a strange rainy day today.

Mm-hmm.

You know, this rain

never showed up on my radar on

my

app this morning.

Are you kidding?

No, it's weird, isn't it?

I saw it on...

Radar.

Well, I know it's not everybody else's radar apps, but mine.

Something's wrong with your radar.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I almost wore shorts today thinking, oh, that's a nice... God,

don't go there.

I actually wore a shirt.

This is the first time I ever wore shorts in my life.

Oh, what, in your life?

Really?

I always wear... I always wear pants.

Well, that's good.

Yeah.

I got a shirt changed again.

See, I wore shorts yesterday.

Did you?

I did.

Wow.

I

didn't notice.

No, not

here.

I didn't wear

them here.

Yeah.

No.

Yeah, you

don't want to walk around the office.

I don't think I'd go out in public.

Yeah.

Okay.

636, yes, rain showers off and on today, but more on than off and some thunderstorms in the mixed highs around 77.

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I can't wait for that.

Okay.

Yeah.

I'll tell you more in about 10 minutes.

Right.

Set your chronometer.

Okay,

okay

over to you John Peterson.

All

right, so let's go to Idiocracy

here.

We've got a few stories and this ought to please everybody you know the big story after seven o'clock We're gonna be covering the Trump's control over the DC police and everybody else and these expanded that

tip my

hand here, but he's expanding it to New York

Chicago LA wherever he chooses.

He's thinking it was so easy in DC.

I can do this everywhere.

So anyway, knowing that this headline at WMTV channel 15 had the story yesterday.

Okay.

Ice is going to purchase AI technology that scans people's eyes from several feet away.

Oh, great.

Yes.

And, uh,

I'm not going to describe it.

I'm going to let channel 15 take that.

Let's go.

All right.

ISIS newest tool for deportation is eye catching, a technology allowing agents to capture someone's iris from 10 to 15 feet away just by using the camera on their iPhone.

With an app that would match the iris with a photo they already have.

The iris is the part of your eye that everybody sees.

Color has stripes in it, these sorts of things.

And they are unique to an individual.

US Immigration and Customs Enforcement has issued a notice to purchase an AI technology from a company that uses iris recognition for enforcement and removal operation.

In general,

it's

quite accurate.

Steve Beatty is a computer science professor

with MSU Denver.

Yeah, you can do it from quite a distance away, depending upon the magnification of your device.

The iris system captures over 265.

On

a

government contract database, ICE says it's considering two of the company's products.

one that can identify offenders based on their iris and another that provides that data on a mobile app.

The innovation is how that it's much less expensive that it can be done on less expensive devices such as phones.

The

technology compares the iris scan to other existing photos like a criminal database photo or even a social media account.

Facial recognition companies have trolled essentially have scraped the internet for photos.

Biometric scanning is not new to Colorado.

but it is regulated here.

The way that we saw facial recognition working was with one to identify and match, right?

versus profiling.

That's two different

things.

Democratic rep Jennifer Bacon co-sponsored a law in 2022 that required police agencies to share how they plan to use facial recognition and required it not to be the sole reason for an arrest or investigation.

Arvada police is one of the agencies that use it.

Last year they used a positive identification to identify a person in distress.

We know that AI shows up to help make things easier.

but we have to differentiate between when AI is used as a tool to help make things easier.

But at the federal level, the facial recognition is not regulated the same way.

No, and that's why the state's worried about it.

Yep.

That's why we're all worried about it.

What does it come to?

It's just

scary advanced

technology.

It's going to tap down everything in this country.

We're afraid to do everything.

That's it.

There's a lot of fear.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Looking over your shoulder.

Yeah.

I mean, this is dangerous stuff.

This, this is outrageous.

And this is what I worried about when they had the LA protests as well because of these, these cabs had a 360 cameras in them.

So they scanned the entire crowd around these burning vehicles during the protests.

and that's why they burned them because they had the 360 cameras in them and facial recognition would come in very handy in this case if ICE had this technology.

I don't know if they had it at the time or if they were using it in LA but this is going nationwide apparently and now they got another way to keep us in line.

What about wearing sunglasses?

Can they

scan your eyes?

No, irises.

Probably not.

I'm just wondering with

regular glasses

because

there is a reflective nature to it so

they

can't get

an exact read, right?

I think we should come up with John and Gordy sunglasses.

Protect you from, you know, we can make some money on this.

Anti-iris sunglasses.

Oh, that's perfect.

Yeah.

Let's workshop that.

Put that on the list.

That's going to be at

the John Hickory gift

shop.

You

can make a few bucks out of it anyway.

It doesn't work.

They don't

work.

They'll look cool.

Just like the spirally X-ray glasses.

Well, really, if you're wearing sunglasses, I mean, there must be some ways you can protect yourself.

You know, we should just have, like they add mirrors to glasses,

right?

Oh, yeah.

We

should

have mirror

glasses.

We should

have mirror spiral.

Yeah.

Right.

We should have spirals.

And so people can recognize the John and Gory anti-Iris glasses.

OK.

Oh.

Put that on the list, Dom.

We'll work on that.

OK, all

right.

While we're talking about authoritarian government's strongman, this was asked of Grok, what type of government does the Trump administration resemble by its actions?

I

thought

this is an apropos for the moment here.

Okay.

Based on, this is Groknow.

Based on its aggressive executive orders, loyalty tests for officials, mass deportations, regulatory rollbacks, and challenges to judicial oversight, the Trump administration resembles an authoritarian regime prioritizing executive power over democratic checks and balances.

This echoes illiberal democracies like Hungary under

Or by all right now he continues or it continues rock rock if left unchecked Trump's authoritarian trajectory could lead

to eroded civil liberties, you think, suppressed dissent via media crackdowns and loyalty purges, economic turmoil from unchecked tariffs and deregulation, weakened global alliances, and potentially rigged elections mirroring declines in Hungary or Turkey, risking the de facto one-party state with lasting democratic backsliding.

There you go.

That's a mouthful.

Yeah.

Okay.

Didn't sound anything like you wanted.

Words valid.

Yeah.

Well, you know, it's one way of describing it.

Yes.

And another way of owning the libs.

Turn this into authoritarian state.

What a way to own the libs guys.

Wonderful.

Hey, CJ, I hope you're happy with this.

We haven't heard from

CJ.

And

they'll have, they'll have CJ's iris as well.

So think about that.

And my

mega friend in Milwaukee.

Maybe we could also develop some contact lenses.

Maybe that would work just as well.

You know, that way.

That might be

a little too technical for John and Corey in our production line.

Got a lot of workshop

to do at

least.

That would be my guess.

Why don't we get to...

What?

Uh, it is 645.

Okay.

As soon as we do this, then we'll get to a three minute cut from Merit Rachel Maddow talking

about being a

dictatorship.

Okay.

Um, Dom, you got some music here.

We want to talk about our listener appreciation party brought to you by Downdren's Distilling in Cottage Grove.

Mark this date on your calendar, September 6th, three o'clock.

It's going to be the ultimate WMDX listener appreciation party and you are invited.

We're inviting everybody to come to Doundrens Distilling and Cottage Grove to socialize and build a community.

So bring your work tools.

We're going to build something.

We're going to have some good drinks there and a fun time.

And you can bring the kids.

They have an outdoor facility there for, you know, playground for the kiddos.

We're even giving you a chance to win a VIP invite to the party.

And if you get a VIP pass here, you and a guest will get a free tour of the distillery, including a tasting of some of their spirits and a WMDX swag bag.

So to enter...

Well, just listen up here because here is the key word and you're going to want to use the Civic Media app to text in to win.

We'll select a couple of winners a day here and we'll let you know if you get the VIP passes.

The key word is Maple.

Okay, Maple.

M-A-P-L-E.

Maple because they have a Maple syrup liqueur.

Oh, perfect.

That sounds...

tasty.

Yeah.

Okay.

So that is the key word.

You can text us before eight AM here.

Maple is the key word.

Use your civic media app.

All right.

You know,

Matt, Matt chimed in, he texted us.

He said, uh, we'll all start wearing masks in public, like in V

for

vendetta.

Ooh, dystopian has arrived.

All right.

You know, that's, that's.

I can visualize that, you know.

Yeah, I really can.

Me

too.

Now, we don't have time to get to Rachel Meadows warning.

We'll

do it after the break.

Don't worry about it.

I've got it covered, man.

You do?

Okay.

All

right.

Good deal.

How about this?

This is a knife company and this is the owner of the knife company lamenting the tariffs that we have.

This is cut six.

Look for cut six and let's play it.

Okay.

a Montana business man.

Let's listen.

Okay.

This Trump supporter is finding out the hard way.

Josh Smith runs Montana Knife Co.

He voted for Trump, probably thinking that America first would help small manufacturers like him.

But instead, he just got hit with a $77,000 tariff just for buying a machine from Germany that he literally can't get in the US.

He really thought the guy who's bankrupted multiple casinos was going to help him in his small business.

What a moron.

Only two companies in the world make a blade grinding machine that he needs.

Yeah, and they're both in Germany.

Thanks to Trump's EU tariffs, Josh has to pay an extra 15%.

But wait, it gets better.

He used to buy his steel from a US based company in New York, but that company went bankrupt and now his steel comes from Sweden.

Okay.

So you're getting the idea that he's not real happy about the tariffs at all.

Another big fan of

Trump.

Alright, we will continue with more idiocracy on Chana Gordy in the morning after a few well-chosen words and phrases from our devoted sponsors.

Kathryn Lake

Stay with us!

Man, take this crazy pad.

Man, it's a mad pad.

It is.

We're hurry.

We're at mad here.

WMDX.

It's John and Gordy sitting here in the morning on State Street, a

block

away from the capital and the capital city of Madison.

That's it.

Seven minutes before the top of the hour, rainy start.

This morning we'll see showers off and on highs in the mid to upper seventies.

In our next hour, Pete Schwabbo will join us.

Going to talk some movies and some media with Pete.

I want to remind you our keyword this hour and up until 8 a.m.

is Maple.

If you want to get in on our listener appreciation party with a VIP pass, we'll be giving those away this week.

And next week, Maple is the keyword that listener appreciation party is coming up September 6th, 3 p.m.

at Doundren's Distilling.

Okay,

all right, you know, I just want to let everybody in on a little secret here Okay,

I do

a lot of research for this show.

Yes,

you

do

and Every once in a while I find an interesting story out there.

Yeah, and when it comes to maybe Doing the story on the air here.

Yeah, I reconsider What seemed you have second thoughts what seemed funny and you know eclectic and interesting

Last night it doesn't

come across that

way.

First thing in the morning I have a story here on Star Trek character histories that I find to be a nightmare like the Klingon history and I have an interview with a guy who speaks Klingon and he was teaching his baby Klingon as the first language.

Now I'm you know, I'm sitting here thinking do I really want to play this?

Well come on you can't

I'm gonna save everybody that That horror really no, okay, maybe down the line somewhere.

I'll just slip it in and you won't even know it

All

right.

Okay.

Well,

okay.

What else you got?

In place of that, let's get to Rachel Maddow warning everybody

about the

dictatorship.

All right.

I've been saying that for like four or five months that we were under a dictatorship.

Trump was already acting that way.

He was already.

the dictator in his head, and I recognized it first.

I was the very first broadcaster in American history to have recognized this dictatorship.

Oh,

I hate to take

too much credit.

Maybe I don't mind taking too much credit.

Anyway, here's Rachel Maddow and let's listen to what she had to say.

Life has not stopped and none of our personal lives have stopped.

But also, at the same time, life in the United States is profoundly changing, is profoundly different than it was even six months ago.

Because we do now live in a country that has an authoritarian leader in charge.

We have a consolidating dictatorship in our country.

And it sounds melodramatic to say it.

I know.

I mean, it's secret police, right?

A massive, anonymous, unbadged, literally masked, totally unaccountable internal police force that apparently has infinite funding but no identifiable leadership, and they act in ways designed to instill maximum fear and use maximum force.

I mean, when you imagine an authoritarian country, what you imagine is masked secret police breaking people's car windows and snatching people off the streets and out of church parking lots and courtroom hallways and taking them away with no charges, no notice, no paperwork, no explanation, not letting them see lawyers and then moving them secretly to what are effectively black site prisons where they won't tell you who's there and where no one's allowed in to see what's going on.

Frame everything as immigration enforcement.

because for immigration enforcement, not only is all force justified, but maximum force is preferred.

And they're trying to make it into a national entertainment to threaten to feed immigrants to alligators in South Florida.

They're making them eat off dishes on the floor, like their dogs, the Chrome Detention Center in Florida.

The Republican Party wants to sell t-shirts about that.

And if you think it's...

Only about immigrants take the president's own word for it when he says the home groans are next and then he starts musing publicly about which Americans he intends to strip of their citizenship.

Protests must be criminalized.

Media must be intimidated into saying and doing what the leader wants or they must be shut down, or both.

Universities must be intimidated into saying and doing what the leader wants or they must be shut down.

or both.

Law firms must be intimidated into not opposing him and saying and doing what he wants, or they must be shut down.

And for institutions like that, it's not just the boldest or most strident critics of the president who must be shut down.

It's the most mainstream, right?

It's the most prestigious, the most credible.

because that's what's so dangerous about them.

There can't be any source of authority.

There can't be any source of authoritative statements of fact that compete with what the leader insists must be the new truth.

And so government departments will be stripped of their experts and he will fire his way through them until they tell him things that he wants to be told.

My question is fiscal.

With 450 million FEMA dollars being reallocated to open alligator Alcatraz and 600 million taxpayer FEMA dollars being used to now open more concentration camps and ICE burning through 8.4 million dollars a day to illegally detain people, how much does it cost for fascism?

How much do the taxpayers have to pay?

We have total clarity now on what Trump's intentions are for the country.

But I mean it when I say we.

The country gets it and is more against it than they've ever been.

And opposing this administration and what Trump is trying to do is turning out to be the story of the century.

And

you know, one of the things Rachel Maddow and one of the things we're really talking about here are brown shirts now taking over our government.

They are the police state that we were warned about way back when.

And that's happening now.

I was bringing it up yesterday about the brown shirts and my friend, mega friend Milwaukee said, you're talking about brown shirts.

Do you mean the law enforcement in DC?

He's okay with this.

Yes, it's law enforcement.

Are you for the criminals?

That's his response to me.

Oh man.

They're not worried.

Well, this is Trump's private army.

Yeah.

He's declared, you know, really?

Exactly.

The

brown shirts.

Yes.

They're all in.

And the shocking thing is he's not even worried about any of this.

No,

I don't know.

Okay, it is 6.59.

Got news and a weather update coming up.

And in our next hour, Pete Schwabba will join us.

Stay with us for more of John and Gordy on WMDX Madison.

Kathryn Lake

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