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Here is the latest news brought into your own living room.
You'll be hard to satisfy with anything left.
Let's
get on top of it all for
a
while.
The talk is cheap.
Cab, cab, cab.
Always gossiping.
It's the John and Gordy show.
This is high-five front.
And that's the way it is.
We'll do it live.
On
92.7 FM, WMDX.
Take it away, boys.
All
But this one finally hit the mark for me.
This is very much like reading the old Fantastic Four comics in the mid-60s, which I just sold, by the way.
It was a fun movie.
It's done in a retro style.
You know, the way we visualized the future would be someday.
The rocket ships look.
really cool
you know their automobiles look really cool the way we wish they'd looked yeah back then but anyways it was a fun movie really well done I thought my kids were a little less overwhelmed by it I thought it was a good movie they thought well it could be a little more exciting
We saw it in one of the theaters at the Marcus Theater, and I have to tell you this.
This is really surreal, and I think I was on an acid trip at the time, but I wasn't sure.
Why do you say that?
They have the previews, right?
Sure.
After the previews, Greg Marcus comes on.
He's the president and chief executive officer of the Marcus Corporation.
Sure.
And he always introduces, you know,
everyone
kidding.
I'm
it
is.
We'll just get into some of the other topics here because I know we have Jim Centell at 735, so stay here for that.
Smithsonian Whitewashing.
Oh boy.
Yeah.
I've got a cut here that I think you should be interested in.
It's from Douglas Brinkley.
You're familiar with him?
Yes.
He's the historian and professor of history at Rice University.
All right.
And he says, yeah, they're going to whitewash history.
The president complained that they currently focus too much on how bad slavery was.
Well, you think?
Okay.
And lack.
optimism about the country's achievements.
You know, the thing here is, when you look at all these events of history, of the United States, how we came out of those events is, I think, the achievement, isn't it?
Okay, right?
These are achievements But but for some reason because it doesn't say this is an achievement or isn't some kind of you know television show whatever Trump has not noticed that so anyway, this is Douglas Brinkley talking about all of this.
Let's check it out
at Rice University, Douglas Brinkley.
Doug, you know, I haven't been to the Smithsonian recently, so I'm not quite sure what it's like in there, what the exhibits are like.
Have you been in the past couple years?
Yes, I'm there all the time.
And in fact, you know, I'm afraid what President Trump's trying to do is whitewash history.
He's really aiming to undo slavery.
He doesn't want us to follow the timeline of our country.
And that happened.
If you go to Smithsonian and look at black American history, you'll see things that how do you object?
to, you know, Chuck Berry's Red Cadillac or Harriet Tubman's hymn book or, you know, Romaine Bearden, The Great Painters, you know, works on the Great Migration.
I don't know what the beef is, except there seems to be a not liking of true Black history.
And it seems to be aimed at the Biden and Obama administrations to the degree that Joe Biden had signed an executive order saving as a national monument, Springfield, Illinois, where you had the
of the lynching and the riot of 1908 or.
putting a spotlight on Tulsa riot of 1921, just the decimation of the black community there, or dealing with lynchings that took place in the south of black people.
It seems to me President Trump wants to whitewash all of that in some kind of patriotic fervor as he bangs his drum marching to America 250 on July 4th.
I wonder when Donald Trump talks about not having any celebration of success.
in that statement saying the Smithsonian doesn't celebrate anything other than the bad stuff.
Do you get that sense when you go there?
Is there a celebration of the successes of this country?
Oh, it's a monument really towards black entrepreneurship and black greatness.
I mean, you study and look at Muhammad Ali, he was the greatest.
And there he is at the Smithsonian.
You take a look at, you know, the story of a newspaper like the Chicago Defender that was able to advertise what was going on, not just in Chicago, but around American race relations and promote the great singers of, say, Bronzeville, Chicago, South Side, people like
Sam Cook, Nat King Cole, Quincy Jones, Diana Washington.
The list is long.
I'm a Hala Jackson.
So that's what they're doing.
It's largely celebratory, but you can't just skip the slavery part of it because it's painful.
They do a TikTok timeline.
You walk through on the first floor and understand how black American history has had a different variation than white American history and it's educational and it's very best.
And by the way, President Trump should go to some.
He should go visit incredible civil rights museums in cities like Memphis and Birmingham, Montgomery.
Everybody's come to grips with this.
What President Trump's suggesting is some retro, go back to a kind of a time of segregation thinking.
And that's not, we're too advanced for that.
And it's not helpful, and particularly not doing it like that on Truth Social, instead of having an honest dialogue with the good professional curator.
and the director of the Smithsonian in an honest way, if you want to upgrade certain aspects of black history, Tuskegee Airmen or Buffalo Soldiers, go for it.
You're president, it's America 250, but you don't have to be as demeaning as he is, because it makes all of America look bad.
We
and
wasn't it?
was talking about this.
From
just laid it out there for us.
Now I've got something that my sons, they're Gen Zers, and they saw me recording this and they said, oh yeah, that's cat.
It's cat-aboo.
Now that's short for her longer name, Abu Azalala, or something like that.
No one can really say it, so they just call her Cat Abu, and she's an influencer in a podcaster.
And she goes after James Carville on Pierce Morgan's show, and she said, it's time for the Dems to throw out the outdated old playbook.
The old senior hippies out there, right?
So let's check out this little cut of Cat Abu.
I think part of the reason we're in this mess is because of Democrats like James Carville that have been pushing an old playbook that is outdated.
And I was really interested to hear Mr. Carville's names that he mentioned and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who is packing stadiums in red states, by the way.
Like, regardless of what you think about her, that should be something that Democrats
would want to latch onto, that she didn't even pop up in those names is kind of ludicrous to me.
And it's time for Democrats to recognize that the old playbook is thrown out the window.
We need people in power that understand the right, that also understand messaging, and they're not ashamed of their views.
really
party.
I
We really need it.
Hey, it is 718.
Time for us to remind you that our listener appreciation party is coming up Saturday, September 6th, 3 p.m.
at Downedrens Distilling in Cottage Grove.
We're gonna get together with our listeners and socialize and build community and everybody is invited, open to the public and free to get in.
We're also offering a VIP invite for you and a guest that will include
a free tour of the distillery and tasting some of their spirits and a WMDX swag bag now to enter.
All you need to do is text us this word.
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You text us on the Civic Media app.
Get that to us.
We'll select a couple of winners and you and a friend will be able to come to the party and go to the VIP tour of the facility.
Now, the reason why it's flowers, they have an elderberry
I don't know, an elderflower liquor.
Elderflower liquor.
Have you ever heard of elderflower?
No.
Yeah, well, we'll test it out.
19 minutes past the hour.
We'll come back with a check of the weather with Brittany Merlot next on WMDX.
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started.
Good morning, Kurt.
Yeah, good morning, guys.
I'll be quick.
When he, when Arby has him on as a guest,
I cringe.
And if you actually pay attention to car abilities talking, you think you're instantly in a Saturday night live
Yeah,
Good morning, guys.
How's it going over there?
Oh,
We
going on in the weather.
The window is pretty accurate.
It's hard to see the future through it.
So we're going to see what we can see.
But I see sunshine, a lot of it coming through later today.
And just another.
Comfortable day, 78 degrees, probably hitting for highs.
More patchy fog again tonight.
It's fog season.
It is the season, I suppose.
And then tomorrow still staying sunny nice and summery highs in those low 80s high pressure system still in place And then we've got a cold front that is gonna be marching through the state So a lot of us are gonna be cloudy tomorrow Eventually you'll get there and then by Saturday morning maybe a few sprinkles in the forecast But really nothing too crazy at the moment, but it does drop our temperatures.
It will get breezy It's gonna feel like that, you know those fall cold crisp breeze.
That's what's gonna be happening great both
Saturday, Sunday, even into Monday, dropping temperatures to the mid-70s on Saturday, and then my favorite part is 60s on Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday.
coolest day.
the coolest day is going to be on Monday mid sixties.
We're looking at for highs.
Nice.
it'll brighten up.
Overcast at the moment, still unspog in places
course
How's the maintenance?
How often do you have to replace it?
That came with it last time I heard about it.
So this is pretty cool.
We're trying
are you coming up with this stuff?
Does it let bugs in?
Well,
All
for
right.
About 25 years ago, the psychologist David Dunning and Justin Kruger ran a series of experiments to reveal something strange.
People who know the least often have the most confidence in their abilities.
This has come to be known as the Dunning-Kruger effect.
In short, if you're incompetent, you lack the skills you need to recognise your own competence.
And so you overestimate your abilities.
You think you're great when you're not.
But what's less commonly known is the opposites known as the reverse Dunning-Kruger effect.
This is when you become truly competent.
It's when you research, you study and you put in the hard hours and you become acutely aware of how little you know.
Socrates was said to be the wisest man in Greece because he recognised just how little he knew.
If you speak to any expert or professor in their field, you'll notice how nuanced and uncertain their language is, whereas those who know very little are often very confident in what they say.
You see this every day in online debates where the loudest voices are often the least informed, and people with real knowledge hedge their statements, they qualify their terms and admit uncertainty.
Bertrand Russell once said that the trouble with the world is that the stupid are so cocksure and the intelligent are so full of doubt.
The danger is that modern society risks rewarding confidence rather than competence.
We mistake the loudest voices for the best voices.
But of course, confidence is not competence.
And if somebody is walking confidently and loudly towards a cliff's edge, it's better to follow somebody who knows where they're going.
Yeah, absolutely.
It's 29 minutes past the hour.
We're going to check in with the Midwest Food and Farm Report.
And when we come back, Attorney Jim Santel will join us.
Taking your calls and questions, too, if you want to get in on it.
608-879-8255 or just text us on the Civic Media app.
Coming back with more of John and Gordy after
this.
Bit.
This is John and Gordy.
Overlooking State Street a block away from the Capitol on a beautiful morning.
I mean it's a little overcast But you know, it's gonna be a great day today.
We just heard from Brittany Merleau on that Mm-hmm and a great weekend coming up cool temperatures again autumn is
our
Twice before the government in various investigations, South Florida, other places have asked judges, federal judges.
And remember the grand jury is a court system.
It's not a Department of Justice entity.
They've asked the
federal trial judges to release these grand jury transcripts.
You got it just right.
I know all your listeners know.
I know Dom knows it's rule six.
Yeah, the federal rule is a criminal procedure.
Some investigation.
You're doing something else.
And just because America is fascinated by all of this and that there are those people who think that QAnon is somehow going to be revealed in this.
That's not a sufficient basis to overcome grand jury secrecy.
The judge
Judge pretty much lets the government have it once again and says that there are no special circumstances.
He says, interestingly, here's what he's sending off to the world.
He says, the transcript, which apparently is about 17 pages or 70 pages or so, hails in comparison to the investigation information materials in the hands of the Department of Justice.
Wow.
That's basically saying,
Look at 950 Pennsylvania Avenue.
That's Pam Bondi's office.
Go and talk to her if you want to see things.
That's the judge sending America back to the Department of Justice.
And once again, Donald Trump and Pam Bondi and Todd Blanche, maybe not Donald Trump, all these people should know better.
You're wrong.
You're wrong.
You're wrong.
And beyond that, grand jury transcripts are not going if there's anything to reveal here.
Doubt there is, candidly, but if there's any reveal, it's not going to be in grand from the very grand jury transcripts, the very start when the president said, I'm directing Pam Bondi to release all that.
Maybe somebody whispered in his ear and said, Mr. President, that's not where anything interesting is going to be.
Again, another attempt by him to send the shiny object down the street.
So we all scamper after it only, only to find that there's no there there.
This is just the latest story.
now you've got people on Capitol Hill, you've got some of these top Republicans saying that it is tomorrow, tomorrow morning, tomorrow afternoon, when the Department of Justice is going to release all these materials.
I've been found in your reporting that she has said that, but the expectation tomorrow is, and again, I'm sure all the conspirators out there and the people are coming up with wild theories about how this is going to reveal all kinds of things about America, which it won't.
We're just waiting now with bated breath.
If it doesn't happen tomorrow, it makes it all the worse, right?
We just can't get rid of this tragic, horrific story.
And again, it's because Donald Trump has made it that.
Thank you once again, Mr. President.
Well, Congress wants to see everything from this, the entire Epstein files and and unredacted, right?
They wanted everything so they can tell.
what's going on instead of getting redacted files.
This reminds me of Nixon, you know, releasing the Watergate tapes.
but they were edited that 18 minute gap.
And then, you know, he released the transcripts and those had all kinds of redactions to it.
So, you know, it seems like we're going down this road again many years later.
If that is what happens and likely appropriately, any good government, huh, I don't know if the Department of Justice falls in that category these days, but any good officials there would in fact, what do would
would do this.
They would redact the names, identifying information for victims.
There could be some marginal security interests out there we don't know.
But as soon as that's done, as soon as they're ending those black marks or pages redacted, you know once again that that's because we have not yet not, and I believe this, but the mantra will be, see, we still don't have everything.
We're demanding the release of everything.
Nothing wrong with Congress in camera without releasing this, seeing everything as long as they don't turn around and speak to CNN or Fox News and say, this is what I've got.
They can look at this as long as the privacy interests are contained there and there's no disclosure.
But then again, at some point, Congress becomes responsible then for the possession and the privacy and the status of all these documents.
Oh my goodness, when is this going to end, right?
Yeah.
Attorney in the District of Columbia.
didn't go well for him and eventually had to withdraw the nomination there.
The president did.
So they brought him kind of across the street of main justice.
So when you fail in one Senate appointment, in one presidential appointment, what you do is you get a high level job inside the Department of Justice that apparently doesn't need Senate confirmation.
So he's been in charge of this group that's trying to figure out how the Department of Justice has been weaponized.
Remember this, against Republicans.
And so he's in charge of that group.
In that connection, he and his office, which again, an office I do not recognize at all, part of the mantra of this administration as well.
He is now pursuing various people, including Adam Schiff in California and Letitia James, who again, listeners will recall, she is the Attorney General State of New York.
She is the one who got that hundreds of millions of dollars civil judgment against him for fraud.
She's been, she's shut down all kinds of his operations.
She has been one of his principal litigation adversaries.
So now it's time for Ed Martin to come in on behalf of the president and go after the president's adversaries, including Letitia James.
James, he shows up, he shows up in this comical
way in front of her home, apparently, or townhouse in Manhattan, I think it is.
And there's this exchange.
And again, so many things wrong with that in terms of policy and practice.
You don't have leadership doing investigations.
Reason why Todd Blanche never should have spoken to Ghislaine Maxwell.
He's showing what is the point of standing there other than to, again, just get the attention of the media in an embarrassing way.
the back news backstory on this is that apparently this may have even been too much for Pam Bondi and Todd Blanche who said, Ed, what are you doing?
How's you stalking Letitia James?
No, come back to Washington.
If you want to open up the file, investigate that.
Again, there's no there there, but this is what we do now.
This is Donald Trump's retribution.
Let's all say it together.
As he said in the campaign,
He wore the trench coat, you know, the Colombo trench coat.
He's outside walking around.
He's with some other guy.
I don't know who it is who wanted to find out if, uh, if they call them, uh, stoops, uh, the stairways up to their apartments.
Are those stoops?
Then they call them stoops here.
I never grew up.
I never saw stoops, but is that a stoop?
Yeah.
That was an amazing
If that's the level of the how we describe cement when it comes to manhattan you know, this isn't go again.
The only saving grace is that they will never be able to again, again, I assume it's r
to ascend what kind of a signal?
Well, yeah, you're invoking Colombo.
Of course, repeatedly said, if I'm old enough to remember, I'm confused about that.
Just one thing bothers me about that, right?
And so if Ed Martin is following those footsteps, don't look for anything serious to come out of this.
But for the fact, once again, here's a serious point, my friends, and that is this.
We've always said the
Prosecution isn't the point.
The investigation is the punishment, right?
You put anybody through these hoops where they've got to produce documents, they've got to provide information, the investigation of all these people, including people who cannot afford it with lawyers.
That's the punishment.
And that's what Donald Trump and his minions do these days on behalf, apparently, of the people of the United States of America.
Really, Mr. President, really, I'm Madam Attorney General, an abuse, absolutely an abuse of the Department of Justice.
and did their business when they worked for government.
Now it's cosplay for everybody, you know?
I mean, everybody's dressing up like something, their idea of what that department should look like.
Right, Pam Bondi?
We have Kristine Aum.
Caroline Labott.
Yeah, Caroline Labott.
I never thought we'd be saying that, but it's nice when they're not grabbing the news items, headlines rather.
They don't appear to be in that category.
But interestingly, what we've got is this is the season
when justices go out to these judicial conferences.
And our, our justice, her name is Amy Coney Barrett, she's from the seventh circuit, just visiting in Chicago this past week.
That's a very interesting thing to say about the judiciary, obviously defending
the role of the Supreme Court.
Significantly, you know, she again, she appears in front of this is not it's not a non public event, but it's basically lawyers and judges getting together and conferencing in Chicago.
They do that once a year.
It's a seven circuit judicial conference.
And of course, the reason why her presence is so significant is she is the one who wrote this major decision at the end of this term.
Once again, giving Donald Trump pretty much what he wanted on the national injunctions.
And so lots
there will be talking about it more on Saturday, but you've got other justices, including Elena Kagan, going out to California and talking about how bad it is that the shadow docking continues to show
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You know, I worked with the census at one time and they call it.
the decennial.
And that means 10 years.
So if you go five years, it's not decennial anymore.
And you really can't, you know, redistrict at that point either.
So I don't know why this is so confusing to some people in the government, but they can't do this.
They shouldn't be able to do this.
Right, Jim?
Again, it doesn't always come out timely.
There's always challenges.
But we take a look at America.
It's in the Constitution, believe it or not.
James Madison wrote it in, as you know, got to count people in America every 10 years.
And among other good reasons that we're doing that is it enables us to draw lines for Congress, right?
And even internal states enables you to tell where your population is.
and draw lines based upon, well, and that's the point.
What do you base it on?
And typically it's been things like, well, I've got a river here, a mountain there, maybe some major metropolitan areas, but you don't do this gerrymandering, which comes, believe it or not, out of a founding father named Eldridge Gary, way too much information there.
But the bottom line is that we've got it happening again in Texas.
And the reason for doing it in this five year period and not the 10 year period is because Donald Trump
I got out of Sharpie, apparently, once again, and said, hey, let's take a look at some of those maps.
We'll figure out a way to redistribute some population, and we'll also probably get rid of some Democrats along the way, probably resulting in five, count him, five new seats.
in the House of Representatives based upon the political composition of these new districts.
And it's causing, again, nationwide impact because people are saying, gosh, this is just the most brazen form of politicization of what should be a non-political process.
You're effectively disenfranchising people by doing it.
Democrats have done it as well.
Just to be very clear on this and equal opportunity thing to do.
It has passed the House in the Texas legislature in Austin.
Apparently today, maybe tomorrow, the Senate will pass it as well.
Five redrawn districts, five redrawn areas there.
And Greg Abbott, the governor, has promised he's going to sign it.
And then we got him with the election coming up November of next year with all these different districts there.
And basically removing, if you will, by virtue of what they've done, major congresspeople like Al Green, others out there who will have to figure out where they land
He is turning back and saying, you know what?
We've got five.
I can meet your five if we're playing poker.
I can meet your five and raise you, maybe one or two.
The change there, the difference in California is that you do have
While refreshing is this, you've got an independent commission that's drawn these lines.
Not to say it's perfect, not to say it's some partisan, but you've got by design.
people are not going to be political.
And so in order to do this, you've got to basically remove that nonpartisan status.
Again, the legislature doing that and saying, let's go to the people and have them endorse this.
There's a bit of a campaign underway now about whether or not this referendum there in California will pass, presumably it will.
But you've also got people there in California saying, you know what?
We're lying down with wolves here.
We're jumping in the hole along with the Republicans.
This is not what we are about.
Even my former boss.
Eric Holder out there as a champion to bring gerrymandering to a close is now saying, let's do it.
We have to preserve democracy.
Trump is going to play this way.
We need to respond again, legally lawfully, but doing something that's not probably in the best interest long term, cross the board of Americans voting.
next year.
Well you know I always find myself shouting at the TV when I hear a Democrat describe all of this and uh and yeah well you know Democratic states also gerrymander.
The answer to all of that is that yes they do gerrymander but Democrats want to get rid of gerrymandering.
The other party does not want to get rid of it.
That's the defining moment.
We have to bring that often.
You know they say oh but your state is gerrymandered like Illinois.
Well yes
but they want to get rid of it.
We want to change the system, so it's fair.
They don't.
Okay, and I think fighting fire with fire in this case is more than called for.
Thank you, Jim.
That's going to do it for us.
Coming up tomorrow, Savannah Tome Olsen will join us with the news update also rocker with the Maxink preview and Pam Yankee.
It's all coming up tomorrow and more chances to win Brewer tickets to Free Ticket Friday for Brewers.
Stephanie Miller's next.
That's it for us.
Well, we're gonna have more adiacracy too.
Oh, yeah.
Cancel all coming up.
Hey, we'll see you at Madison Night Market tonight.
Definitely with a new t-shirt downtown State Street.
Join us.
See you there.
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