"Speaker 1 - JED
Hey, everybody, this is the JED's Journal podcast. Listen to it on Apple, Spotify, wherever you get your podcasts. Some of you may be catching this on WJOB, Am and FM. So I won't swear. It's Sunday morning, November 10th of 2024 - the first Sunday after the election of Donald Trump as the next president over Kamala Harris.

They just went wild on Meet the Press. One of the guys I like to listen to is Bernie Sanders. He had two basic explanations for why the Democrats lost so handily. Right now, as you know, they haven't counted all the votes, but it's like 75 million to 70 million. Trump wins in a complete landslide. He's got the house, the Senate, the presidency and the Supreme Court. Eventually he'll get the media. That would be all of the estates. 

Bernie Sanders on Meet the Press this morning said - "listen, people are angry."

What is it like two thirds or 70% of people angry or dissatisfied with the way things are in America? This is ignored by people and the northeast coast and on the West coast. In the middle here, all you have to do is listen to my morning show. I'm going to play three clips. One's a woman, one's MX, and then there's another guy, and they are all pretty much saying the same thing. They're telling you their stories from before the election. They're telling you not only who they're going to vote for, but who's going to win. It's pretty telling.

When Democrats come on the show, I sometimes ask - hey, man, don't you care why people are angry? Why your average union member - Hispanic, black, white, it doesn't really matter at this point - is  dissatisfied and they're going to vote for Trump. Do you care why?

The Democratic Party is supposed to be the party for working Americans. The newest statistics on Meet the Press by Steve Kornacki are that the Democratic Party has moved to be the suburban, college educated voter with over $100,000 in family income. The Democratic party has shifted away from the average working person of all colors.

That's just how it is. Us clamoring on a little radio station in the middle of the country may be telling, but no one's listening. We have a lot of loyal, brave listeners and callers and participants and hosts on what is a 100-year running dialog.  

Our dialogue shows that people are angry and dissatisfied. We've seen it for years. Nobody's listening. James Carville came on Meet the Press and said that this - whatever you want to call it - WOKE - has gone too far.

I agree. Like many others, I have opinions on what woke has done to America. There have been good parts. Sexual predators have been put away through the energy of the awakening. And there's been awareness toward disadvantaged people and businesses.

But your average union worker wants to go to work, come home, go to the kid's little league game, get up and do it again. The coasts are not speaking to them. Upper-middle class voters pay them little attention. I sat with a Hispanic guy last night at my wife's birthday get-together.

"I just got off at four and I came straight here.  coming here. I'm going home after two beers then I'm going to fall asleep for six hours. Then I'll get up and work 12 hours again where it's so loud you can't take a phone call. That's what I do. And if they text me to work overtime on Monday for time and a half, I'll do that too."

That's this person's life. He feels forgotten by a culture that has gone too far.

Now, I told you that I saw it in 2008 with Barack Obama coming in just a couple of, blocks away from where I'm sitting right now in my home office. He held his last rally before he got elected. I worried on air if it had gone too far. Barack Obama, who I remember as Barry Obama at Occidental College when he was there, had reached Messiah level.

We have to keep our judgment. I suspect a similar thing is happening now with Trump. You're listening down the line. That's what this whole podcast is about - so I'll have material for a long time on my radio stations. You know what will happen with the idolization of Donald Trump? I don't.

Maybe it'll mitigate itself. There are plenty of good things that are happening in politics today. Both parties are realizing that working people, 60% or more,  are living paycheck to paycheck.

Then the top 1% of people in America make more than the 90% below. And that gap is growing. It is creating an imbalance. I don't I don't know where it's going to go.

Here in this episode are three phone calls from right before the election. I think it was from Monday, October 28th of 2024. I put them in JED's Joural podcast because it has always bothered me that we don't have any tape from the civil strife of the 1960s. I would love to compare WJOB then to WJOB now. But I don't have tape. We bought the radio stations out of bankruptcy 20 years ago. Everything had been ransacked. If there was any tape from the 60s, it's all gone. So if you guys are listening to this a year, ten years, 30 years down the line, notice to the tone. These are good Region people calling in to my morning show right before the election of 2024. Do they know something?

WOMAN CALLER - I watched the, MAGA rally last night, and I thought it was the most beautiful thing I ever saw in in my life. The guy who did stand up comedy talking about Puerto Rico - it was a joke. Okay, Jim. So this morning, the Trump campaign organization put out a message saying that they had nothing to do with that joke. Okay? And if you listen, you know that fake news is what the New York Times is doing to Trump.

They always put this on Trump. They make him out like, a monster. And all of us following him - we've been called white supremacists. We've been called racists, fascists. My goodness. What even Mayor Adams came out and said, no, that's not acceptable. I don't appreciate, them calling us or a former president these things.

And then you have Joe Biden up there saying, lock him up. Lock him up. That's election interference. And you know what? Any all the people I know, there are so many poor Ricans. President Trump loves Puerto Rican. He loves everybody. I've never seen a man love like him. I've watched every rally. I've been to some.

I'm telling you, it's the most loving thing. There is no hate for anyone, anyone at all. And the more Puerto Ricans are joining Trump campaign, more Mexican-Americans, more Asian-Americans, more black Americans. And I have lots of black friends. They've had enough of it. This Biden administration. Look what they've done.

High prices for what nobody wants and I'm not gonna vote for that. I want I want clean air, I want clean water and I want an electric vehicle. And we want secure borders. And that means for people to come in legally.

Not these days. People open the border for people unvetted. And then they're giving them $10,000. And you know, Catholic Charities are involved in this, giving them all this money and setting them up. They have hotel rooms, Jim, in New York City full of illegal migrants. And they threw the other people out and they threw our veterans on the streets.

That's not fair. And the people that are that you're talking about working at your your radio station. Oh God bless them. Are they working to get their citizenship here? Are they are they working or are they applying for their citizenship?

JED - Leave that out. But be well aware that Purdue, as a Hispanic serving institution, has a number of people that have been here most of their lives, came here as kids and are basically dreamers. And they're not full citizens because 

WOMAN -Why aren't they applying for their legal citizenship.

JED - It's not that easy, but I think most most are. There's two points to what you're saying. One concerns  the rhetoric that is being used in calling Kamala Harris Antichrist and Puerto Rico floating garbage.

WOMAN - That was a joke. Jimmy Kimmel, right? And Colbert and all? There's their jokes, what they say about other people. They've said it for years.

JED - My point is that what is happening now is very similar to what I saw that happened here at Wicker Park. That everybody's partaking in the magic dust and that all of a sudden it's it's kind of rejecting anything that anybody on the other side might have to say. And to call Puerto Rico an island of garbage, whether it's a joke or not, to call Kamala Harris the first Samoan Malaysian low IQ former California prosecutor -

WOMAN - 
He calls him Hitler. Jim.

JED - It's not just one side. I get that it is a two-sided thing right now. The rhetoric has gotten acceptable. And that is exactly what happened last night. It's like, oh, this is acceptable now.

It is unacceptable in my world. All of these things you said were a beautiful thing. I really like it when people get involved and are passionate about things. But you got to watch what you're saying sometimes. Nobody wants to point that out.

WOMAN - But you know what? If that was on Kamala's rally, nobody would be talking about it? New York Times, Washington Post, that's all fake news. And you know what? There's so many citizen journalists. Nobody is watching CNN, MSNBC or whatever you call it. Rachel Maddow - I don't know what's for that woman. Is something wrong with her head?

Let me just say one more thing before I hang up, please. Sure. MAGA people love everybody. And I am so proud to be a Trump supporter. And I proudly wear my Trump hat. And I am proud because I want to make America great again. And  I want to see every race in this country. I want to see everybody. I want jobs, we want drill, baby, drill. We want our oil back. And you know what? I want to make America great again.

JED - Thank you for the call. We're going to find out in eight days. Tic tock tic tock. One more phone call. Hey, thanks a lot. Hey, you're on the air. Go ahead.

LANE - Hey. Morning, Jim.

JED - What's up man?

LANE -How you doing?

JED - Hey, can you come over and fix my sink?

LANE - Oh, yeah, I guess. Yeah.

JED - How about, Wednesday? Maybe? Yeah, Wednesday. How's that?

LANE - That works.

JED - All right, go ahead.

LANE - Just thought I'd call about Phil.

JED - Yeah, that's a tough one, man Tell people what happened?

LANE - Well, we just lost another member of the Grateful Dead. Phil Lesh, the bass player, one of the founding members. I don't know how he passed. All all I could get was he died peacefully at home with the family around, and, it's just a sad thing. We got two left of the original.

There's Mickey. He wasn't quite the original, but he was there a long time. It's just a sad thing. But, you know, Phil had a good life.  He got a liver transplant in the late 90s, and then he fought prostate cancer and stomach cancer, and he lived to be 84. So he did all right.

JED - I saw some of the tributes over the weekend. It kind of got lost in the heavy politics and all of these big sports things. But Phil Lesh dying at the age of 84 for any Grateful Dead head out there, it's just a sad passing. Can you find his best song that he wrote? Box of Rain. We'll play it on the way out. Would you say that was the best song he wrote?

LANE - Oh, yeah, there's no doubt about it. He didn't write that many. But yeah, that would be the best one. In the early days, Jerry was writing all the songs. Then the guys realized that you get more money when you write songs. So they all started wanting to write songs. I'll get the hold of you Wednesday to fix your faucet.

JED - All right. 219-845-1100. Hey, you're on the air. How are you?

MX - Fake news, JED. I remember making a cartoon about Puerto Rico the mayor was taking of. Going to go back to what Mike said about the politicians in Puerto Rico. Well, during Hurricane Maria, the mayor, Angelo Varese was stealing funds from FEMA, and now he's in prison. So the statement about garbage probably should have been put a different way.

Like your politicians are garbage because now this guy's spending five years in the pen taking FEMA funds during Hurricane Maria. But I do have to say something. And one of them is Hitler. Okay. And as I talk to you. I'm going to be playing this video of a guy from Auschwitz. Now, my father, I didn't know what he did in World War two when he walked like he pulled his leg along.

He got wounded in the Rhineland. He crossed the Rhine River with Patton. Punched through the Siegfried Line, got wounded in the Rhineland. He went in three days. So the people in the concentration camps, I never knew he had two bright stars in a Purple Heart. He went into the concentration camps. My uncle was in Patton's tank battalion, a scar across his neck. But to call somebody Hitler is why Kamala is losing right now. You could call him Orange Man. That's funny. But when you bring up Hitler - That's why she's falling in the polls. There's still a lot of people that are sons like I am. They see my dad's records. I found them when my mom was dying.

I had to look for records. And I found these old yellow papers. And there is my dad, two bright stars, Purple Heart. And one time in a shower. And we had to show our nuts to butts. And I said, what happened here, dad? He said, never mind. So this Hitler thing that Kamala is doing is completely wrong.

JED - I appreciate you and understand what we've talked about before.  Your family has given to service for America. Cverybody understands your deep emotional moment here. But that's inaccurate. It was Trump's former chief of staff who brought up the Hitler thing.

That was John Kelly who brought that up. Democratic strategists are going with that. They're pushing the message out that John Kelly said Trump said that Hitler had good judgment.

MX - Never said it, Trump said.Let me tell you another story.  The guy two doors away from me when I hit the wall, he said one thing to me. His wife always said he was in the Third Army, but he never said nothing. I walked in his garage - He was about  my dad's age. And he said Schwarzkopf couldn't make a pimple on Patton's behind. Actually, didn't say behind. He used a different word for behind.

My neighbor. He says it's 2009. And during that Schwarzkopf thing, and he fought under Patton and he said Schwarzkopf couldn't make a pimple on Patton's behind. All right, I know this one.

You know what? This John Kelly is as bad as that other general. That's why John Kelly got fired. There's a lot of fake news going around here. You can't be calling people Hitler because that is the most hideous thing that ever happened. I watch it, I watch my uncles. I used to sit here and they closed the door and they would talk, but I didn't know what they were talking about with my dad.

But I could go with a whole big diatribe about this while, like marching over the hill and kill them.

JED - We gotta move on. Thank you for your call. Hey, you are on the air. How are you?

CALLER -It's kind of weird. So let's say the guy that made the Puerto Rico joke was saying that Puerto Rico politicians are pile a floating pile of garbage. He's referring to the politicians that run the place and not the island. So he was trying to be funny. And obviously you don't think it was funny.

JED - I understand comedy and all that. What I'm saying is, I think that the rhetoric has gone too far.

CALLER - My point is that you hear these comedians just use the most vulgar stuff on the planet, and Oh, it's funny. Sold out shows. People are getting too sensitive.

JED - Hey, I'm bringing it up. That's a question for you to answer. I'm the host. You got it. You know what you're doing. You're being me right now.

CALLER - I mean, you can have Dave Chappelle go down to the hard Rock casino. You'd be able to if you got four tickets, you'd be able to sell four tickets twice over face value on eBay. And all you're gonna hear is gay slurs. And 95 Edwards dropped. And everybody think it's funny. You know what I'm saying?

JED - They were calling Kamala Harris the Antichrist.

CALLER - .Because she was throwing people out of her rally for saying Jesus is Lord and told me to go down to the little rally down the street. Yeah, I heard that one.

JED - Here's what the New York Times says - A comic kicked off the rally by dismissing Puerto Rico as a floating island of garbage, mocked Hispanics as failing to use birth control, Jews as cheap and Palestinians as rock throwers. They called out a black man in the audience with the reference to a watermelon. Another speaker likened Vice President Kamala Harris to a prostitute with pimp handlers.

The third called her the Antichrist, and Tucker Carlson, called her the first Samoan Malaysian low IQ, former California prosecutor ever to be elected president." I mean, that's just what was said. And you can either defend it or you can say that was too far, or you could say people are too it's too sensitive. But that's the reality of the situation.

CALLER - Yeah. Well, I know one reality. That dude had that place packed last night and that is downtown New York City. Yeah, that place was packed and I think he is going to shock. I think when these votes come in, the country is going to be shocked. I think some of these blue states, oh, I think it's either going to be terrible or maybe it's going to be terribly, terribly close.

JED - It's weird because all you gotta do is win Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania and you could have like over 300 electoral votes when everybody thought it was going to be so close, either Trump or Harris. Quite frankly, there's a way for her to win with like 292 pretty easily and Trump to get 312.

CALLER - I agree. I kind of think it's going to go hard one way or another. I'm not like you and saying, oh, it's going to go hard to Trump. I don't have a feel like I did in past ones, like in 2016. I'm like, yeah, Trump's going to upset. And here it goes. By the way, did you watch the bears ending last night? I'm so glad I watched the Trump rally and not the Bears.

JED - My heart is still being trampled on. Thanks for the call. 

MONT quote - “the more and more that the Democrats, mainstream media, refer to Trump as Hitler and call the rally at Madison Square Garden reminiscent of a Nazi rally is just ridiculous.”

JED - Hey, everybody, it's Jed. This is the JED’s Journal podcast. I hope that you will go to Apple or Spotify and listen to it when you're driving around or on vacation or whatever. Today's November 9th. It's four days after Donald Trump was elected president for the second time over Kamala Harris.

It was a little surprising how the Republican majority became a super majority, both here in Indiana and in America, as the Republican Donald Trump has the House, the Senate, the presidency and the Supreme Court. This cut from my show is from a few days before the election. It was actually the day after Donald Trump's big rally at Madison Square Garden.

The the rally at Madison Square Garden was certainly a feel good experience for followers of Donald Trump, similar to the rally right before the election, similar to when Barack Obama came through in 2008 and he had his last rally just a couple of blocks from where I'm sitting right now. That was at Wicker Park in Highland, Indiana. There was a lot of feel good there amongst Democrats. I remember coming on the air the next day going, “I just wonder when it goes too far.”

I said, “hey, all the people there were partaking of the magic dust.” I wondered out loud if problems would come from that kind of cult like leadership in America. And I pointed some of the similarities out to the Madison Square Garden rally of Donald Trump. And as you're going to hear with Mont, he didn't really like it.

Donald Trump is coming into office right at this point in 2024, and we really don't know what he's going to do. But he's going to do something. I'd like to get some of these phone calls and some of this tape into our vault and on this podcast and into my blog so we can kind of look at a couple of things.

1. What did all the pollsters miss in America? There was a red wave of Donald Trump supporters that pushed him into office fairly convincing even though all polls showed it a dead heat of even Trump behind.
2. Are there clues now from supporters about what Donald Trump is eventually going to do. There's plenty of things that could happen. When you listen to this in the future, you’ll have the answers. We don’t right now. 

It sounds like Mont and I aren’t getting along in this clip from my morning show. But that’s not the case. Mont calls my show on a regular basis. His office is right next to mine here at Purdue. Mont knows that it helps when people candidly tell their opinion, whether you like it or not. It helps the show move along. So here's Mont and me a few days before the 2024 election of Donald Trump.

I open with a little talk about me giving blood. And then we go into the phone call and, I'm Jim Dedelow. I’m JED. And this is JED's Journal podcast. Apple Spotify wherever you get your podcasts. I hope you like it.

From right before the 2024 election on JED in the Region on WJOB am 1230 and FM 104.7. 

JED - I want to say thanks to a number of folks at local 697. I went out there and gave some blood on Friday and, ran into, D.J. who is the new president at local 697?

Kurt. Lesnick was there forever. Now it’s DJ who was greeting people as as we came in. I also ran into Jorie Richards. Jorie and I were laughing that I bought WJOB in 2024, and that's when he started with the Indiana Plan, and it was brand new.

The Indiana plan is - how do you get the word out to disadvantaged communities about work in the trades? You can make a lot of money. I got to see a bunch there in the beginning and I was like - how are you going to get into these high schools and tell these kids - “hey, man, you can get a job and make a lot of money.”

And if there's ever been an institution that has just started up a program and was successful, it's the Indiana Plan Jorie ran it and the DJ ran it. Now it’s Emmanuel.

I just had a lot of fun going out to 697. I gave the max and they always take it because I have the kind of blood that you can give to anybody. But the woman said - “you know, you've been here half a dozen times here, to local 697. And you need to drink more water. Okay?

“What do you mean? I need to drink more water?”

She goes - every time you come here, we can’t find your veins. That's a pretty good sign that you're not drinking enough liquids.”

Now my dad drinks a ton of water, and he swears by it. My wife drinks a ton of water. She swears by it. My sister who works here, also. But I don't like drinking water. I played golf with Jeff Tharp, the Times Athlete of the year. Remember him? We have similar bad habits. His is Miller Light. Mine's Bud Light. In other words - He likes goat urine. And I like the King of beers. But, we agree on one thing - we both don’t like drinking water. When I was growing up, you played football. They wouldn't even let you have water.

Anyways. AHey, you're on the air. How are you?

Mont - Good morning, Jim, how are you this morning?

JED - Doing all right?

MONT - Did you get a chance to watch the Joe Rogan Trump podcast while you were playing golf, watching your sports and changing your grandbabies diapers?

JED - I saw some clips and coverage of him keeping all those people waiting while he did Rogan. i

MONT - They weren't as pissed as at Kamala's rally in Houston that was promised to have a Beyonce concert. And then Beyonce came out and spoke for two minutes and walked off stage. I bet you the Trump supporters weren't as pissed as that.

JED - There's a lot of scheduling problems, It's craziness. Trump's campaign, it's craziness. Kamala Harris's campaign, craziness and people trying to land money. And just here it is, you know, put it on the air. It's crazy rhetoric too. But anyways, what's on what's on your mind?

MONT - That crazy rhetoric is kind of the theme of the day right now for the end of this election season. The more that the Democrats and mainstream media refer to Trump as Hitler and call the rally at Madison Square Garden reminiscent of a Nazi rally. It’s just ridiculous. I actually sent you an article this morning.

Kathy Hochul, governor of New York, is out here saying that Trump's sold out Madison Square Garden rally is a white flag of surrender. Where do these people get off that this gaslighting is actually being effective? I just hope they keep it up because it's driving more people away from their party and wanting to vote for Trump.That's what my personal belief is.

JED - Here's what The New York Times says, by Maggie Haberman. And I get her slants are sometimes one way, but she's fairly respected.

“Donald Trump's closing rally at Madison Square Garden was a release of rage, a vivid and at times racist display of the dark energy animating the MAGA movement.

MONT - Now listen, Jim, it's the same old rhetoric, Jim. He's racist. He's misogynist. This comment by the comic about Puerto Rico being a floating island of garbate. It’s misunderstood. That comment about Puerto Rico was in reference to the politicians. They're the two Democratic politicians..

JED - The comic dismissed Puerto Rico as, quote, “a floating island of garbage.” 

MONT - They’re corrupt, the Democrats who run the island. The comic was taken out of context. It's always taken out of context. And it's perfectly fine when it's against someone like Trump.They're saying exactly what they're going to do. The Department of Education is going to be gone after January. 90% of federal workers, they're going to be learning how to code or mine coal. Okay. That's what's going to happen because they're saying it right now.

JED - Let’s read some more from Maggie Haberman in the New York Times.

MONT - The Times is not as respected as you think it is. The reason I brought up the Joe Rogan Podcast this morning is because the guy has already 30 million hits. I haven't looked at it this morning. We had 30 million hits in a day and a half, people watching it. This is the change.

It’s the change occurring with the mainstream media right now. They are becoming increasingly irrelevant. And the more and more they call him Hitler, or they call the rest of us deplorables and, you know, Nazi followers and all that kind of stuff. Just like your guest host guest on Tuesday calls us all the time. Tha drives people away from these channels and into the people who are doing the legitimate work journalism, like Joe Rogan, who gave a three hour interview.

Can you imagine giving a three hour interview, JED?

JED - The only one who I got close to an hour with was Andrew Dice Clay. He wouldn’t get off the interview. I said after that - no more celebrities. That was the longest interview of my life. 50 minutes. I've never done an hour interview.

MONT - So you feel an era is ending with mainstream media.


JED - The -

MONT - The era is ending. No paper of record.

JED - I'm hoping what is happening in terms of media is that what I do every day will become the method going forward, as it has been in the past. People can communicate with each other and understand that we're all Americans pushing for the same kind of land of opportunity. But the media is just a reflection of what's out there. And people are divided.

MONT - You're rhetoric right now is very deep and very divisive. And so is the rhetoric on the left. To share with you what I shared with a boss one time who said I was defensive. I said, if you would stop attacking me, I'll stop being defensive.

JED - I thought I said divisive. 

MONT - Okay, well, I said defensive. So you know tomato, you say tomato. 

JED - So say you are a minority who has been here 20 years and you’re not a citizen. There's several hat walk into this building on a regular basis. They have been here since they were three years old. They hav college degrees from Purdue here. And they're in the workforce, but they're still weren't born here and not full citizens. Do you round them up?

MONT - Let me ask you a question, Jim, before I answer my answer for you. If someone was illegally living in your house, would you allow them to stay? If someone broke into your house and said, hey, I'm living in your spare bedroom now, are you going to kick them out? It's the same thing, right?

JED - I'm asking you literally. There’s one woman and one man who walk by our offices in this building. They just got STEM degrees and are productive members of the Region. But they're not full citizens. They weren't born here. Should we round them up?

MONT - They broke the law or their parents broke the law, and they should not benefit from that illegal act. So should there be programs for people who aren’t born here who don't even speak Spanish anymore or something like that? Should we make special accommodations? Let the legislature make some new law. But let's have it voted on.

Let's not have one party decide - hey, we're going to spend all this money and work with these NGOs illegally to bring these people to break our laws and then give them $10,000 in cash and free housing. This could be divisive to people who served in the military, who are veterans, who are living on the streets right now.

Jim, you do see how underserved populations that are native to this country could be a little jealous of what the new, illegal migrants are getting from our federal government? You can see that right?

JED - We're we're not talking about people that just came over in the last year and are here illegally. I'm talking about people that have been here a long time. That's the danger. And that's what I look at at this rally last night. The rally last night was a point in history, very similar in my mind to what happened here at Wicker Park when Barack Obama came. I said it then and now - people are partaking in the magic dust. And I think there's just a little bit of danger in all of this.

MONT - It is the awakening of the American people we’re watching.

JED - And in 2008 there was a good feeling amongst Barack Obama and all of his many supporters. I was there 30ft from him. Now I didn't go to Madison Square Garden, but I've looked at it and it's kind of similar to what Obama did. Obama was three nights before the election. And with Trump it’s similar.

MONT - Jim, I was right there with you with President Obama when he won. I said, look, this is a good thing for America. Anyone in this country can grow up thinking that they can become president. That was a great thing. But Obama and all of those really radicalized far left Democrats like Pelosi and Harry Reid and all those people, they destroyed this opportunity. They’re causing the division.

Who was the first person to actually start to marginalize conservative Republicans? Who was it? I think it was Obama and Michelle Obama and Hillary Clinton who called us a basket of deplorables.

JED - We talked about that. It was a phrase that cost her the election. Do you agree that Puerto Rico a floating island of garbage?

MONT - I would say the people who run Puerto Rico are a bunch of garbage. Yeah, I would agree with that. And that's exactly what that comment was referring to, not the people who live there, not the people who are, you know, doing day to day jobs there. He was referring to the leadership, which is a pile of garbage.

JED - Are Jews cheap? Comments like these were part of the rally last night. It was as if people took away the guardrails and they said what they were thinking. I'm going to say the same thing about what I saw last night and what I saw at Obama's rally in 2008 when I stood there and I came on the air the next day - people are partaking of the magic dust. We lost our sense of ability to analyze what was going on. Ultimately, all of the partaking of the Obama magic dust resulted in a cancel culture and other issues.

A similar thing happens when you laugh at Puerto Rico as a floating Island of Garbage. These are really real things.

MONT - The comic was clearly referring to the leaders of Puerto Rico, Jim. 

JED - Kamala Harris is the Antichrist. Tucker Carlson say she's the first Samoan Malaysian low IQ former California prosecutor. These are real things, Mont.

MONT - She is low IQ. Have her go on Joe Rogan for three hours. She would melt down in a puddle of piss.

JED - So in your mind, it's okay to say these things?

MONT - Well, it's perfectly okay for the other side to call us deplorables, to tell Christians that they aren't invited to her rally. That's perfectly okay. It's perfectly okay to call us Nazis and Nazi sympathizers. Perfectly okay.

JED - Not here it’s not. It wasn't okay.

MONT - Jim, you have a host on Tuesday that referred to it as a hoax. Nazi sympathizers can be have their own opinions. Okay, but in general, Trump was not okay.

JED - It was okay to call people a basket of deplorables. All I'm saying is that Trump’s rally last night was like Obama’s in 2008 at Wicker Park.

MONT - People that have government jobs are not going to be okay. Might as well sell their McMansions in McLean right now because their time is done. They're leaving. I love it.

JED - All right. Gotta go. Thanks a lot, Mont. (Hang up)

In 2015, I was just like -  just say it, man. Whatever you're feeling and whatever your anger is or whatever your racist thing might be, not that that conversation right now had anythin necessarily racist. But whatever it is, just say it. It was like people were on the cusp of saying it but couldn’t say it. There were guardrails. 

Just like now at Madison Square Garden and just like 2008 in Wicker Park here in Indiana. It can be  a runaway train. We have to understand that we're all Americans, not just Barack Obama supporters and that is really what kind of happened last night at Madison Square Garden.

Are we going to round up as suggested students that come in here. Purdue Northwest is an HSA. That is a Hispanic serving institution. It's like 28% Hispanic.

I remember 15 years ago when they put my wife's picture on the front page of the website for like two years to tell everybody, hey - it's okay if you're Hispanic and you don't know if you're going to college or whatever. Come here. And she talked to a number of people and recruited them. We did our part, a very small part. 

Now do these students come to school wondering -  will I be rounded up and sent back to Mexico where my parents were from? I haven’t been there since I was three years old.

Is that where we're headed? I have the same concerns I had that night at Wicker Park in 2008 when Barack Obama spoke around Halloween. Everybody, let's not get carried away.

Barack Obama had a lot of good things that he was saying. But I saw firsthand that we were losing our bearings. And I think that's happening now. How is it okay to say those things? It's not okay then and it’s not okay now. Anyways, I'll be right back on the voice and face of the Calumet Region.

9:12am on Memorial Day.

I'm sitting on the back porch. 65 degrees with a wispy breeze through the many trees that populate our small slice of heaven. Pretty soon they'll all drop their leaves and as I pull and pull again on a plasic rake, I'll curse every last one of them. 

Time and place. This is what I've been thinking about lately. Anyone associated with 100 and a half-year-old WJOB has had to deal with a decent amount of tragedy lately. Midsummer it was my high school football coach, John Friend, who went on to be the athletic director at Purdue Northwest for several decades. Coach Friend was instrumental in briniging WJOB to the campus of Purdue Northwest, where we still are. 

It took a year to develop a contract for a private media company to move onto the Purdue campus. Finally, I signed the contract and the contract went to the black hole of lawyers in West Lafayette. They sat on the contract for two months. I started to become paranoid that they weren't going to okay the deal of us moving onto Purdue grounds. If you're a longtime listener, you'll remember that I several times took it to Mitch Daniels when he was governor of Indiana. After two terms as governor, Mitch left to be president of Purdue. I figured that maybe he had a long memory and wouldn't sign the deal. 

"Coach, I'm gonna pull my offer to move to Purdue. I'm tired of waiting," I told coach Friend. "This is ridiculous." 

Coach Friend put his hand on my shoulder. "Jimmy - I'm gonna tell you something you need to remember, even after I'm gone. There's a right way and a wrong way and the Purdue way. You sit tight and have some patience." 

Two days later the deal was signed. Why do think that was?

That was ten years ago. Coach Friend was still alive then. I'd interview him once in a while, but one of the many things I never got to in life passed me, and him, by. I had always planned to do a series of interviews with Coach Friend and Leroy Marsh. Between the two of them, they were the only football coaches in the first 53 years of Munster football. That would have been a good podcast. I never got to it. Coach Friend died over the summer... followed by Jeff Bridges... then Pedro and Tatiana. It's been a tough stretch.

... Switching gear... As you know by now, I own and operate one of the oldest radio stations in America - WJOB am 1230. I am proud that my wife and I rescued it from bankruptcy and returned it to what it has always been, which is the glue that holds together the Calumet Region. We talk, listen to each other, do a little news, cheer for high school sports, then go to bed and do it again the next day. It's been that way for a century. 

But there's always been a piece missing from the media mileu for northwest Indiana - a TV station. We get our TV from a city and state that could care less about us. There's a good half dozen TV stations in Chicago and they take for granted that people in Indiana are gonna watch one of them. There's three quarters of a million of us. 

When Covid hit in 2020, everyone went home from our studios at Purdue and I operated WJOB by myself. I got a waiver from the University to come into the building to broadcast. I was many times the only person on campus. It could get lonely, sitting in the chair and talking and singing and telling jokes and interviewing Infectious disease specialists and broadcasting the governor's address and then doing it again the next day. Once a week a woman would come by to clean. Every morning the mailman would put something in the mailbox. 

One day the mailman dropped a check off from the federal government. A few days later he brought one from the state of Indiana. There was only one caveat - you had to keep your people working. So I got everyone on a Zoom and told them - "Here's what we're gonna do. We're gonna build a TV station."

Complete internet silence. Several dazed looks on a screen. Finally, Ben Tomera, a longtimer at WJOB, spoke for everyone - "You're crazy." 

Let's stop for a moment. I'm trying something different today. It's Labor Day. Leaves on the ground and squirrels running up and down all the trees. They're noisy. So is the weedwhacker two lawns over and the constant crickety creek crick of all of the grasshoppers. An single-engine airplane just went by on its way to Lansing airport. So, just because I have enough time to notice all of this, I'm writing out a script that I will soon read to you in my own voice, not an AI voice. Truth be told, I'm kind of hoping that AI advances to the point where I could just write the script and then a facsimile of me could read it to you, but we're not they're yet. 

We've actually tried that. I read three minutes into an AI program and then the program read something back in what was supposed to my voice. The AI version of me didn't sound right. It was too polished. You should see me right now sitting in thermal pants, no socks, a faded sweatshirt, unshaven, wild hair and crazy eyes. I look like an old man typing in the back yard. We all age. It always ends horribly. 

Ultimately, I'm actually writing out a blog and then reading it it to you later. What I'm trying to tell you is that it is quite a struggle to fulfill what I see as my position in the time and place continuum. Twenty years ago, my wife and I bought the local radio station, resurrected it, and made it sturdy enough to make it to cross the 100 mark. It's been a lot of fun and work. But WJOB is alive and in its second century. 

Now, I'm laying it on the line to build a TV station for northwest Indiana. We took the PPP money and money from the state and built a TV station - JEDtv. I'm JED. That was my badge for 18 years at the Chicago Board of Trade. We chose that as a name. It's as good as any. 

JEDtv is actually one of the most advanced distribution systems of any local media in America. We broadcast from studios at Purdue or at a game or press conference or wherever - and then we send it to the cloud, which is really Miami, and then Miami streams the content to eight different locations. Don't ask me to diagram it. It's Labor Day, for crissakes. 

A few months ago an old associate from the Board of Trade called me. 

"JED," he said. "How the hell could you afford to build that entire streaming video platform?  I just priced it out and it's two and half mil - without content."

It turns out that when build a streaming video platform, you can get decent prices during a pandemic. We didn't know this at the time. We just called people up and got prices and then paid to get it done. And here we are - JEDtv. It's built. You could go right now and watch it. But don't do that yet, at least not until I'm done writing, er, reading this script. 

So we've been doing this JEDtv thing for about three years, and it hasn't really hasn't taken off for news and talk. People are just too loyal to their Chicago TV statiopns. We are NBC Channel 5 people. That's because my wife's dad - Gonzalo, also known as Shorty when he was a foreman at Inland Steel - watched NBC Channel 5. So every night Alexis turns on the local news at five and Lester at 5:30. Everyone in the Region chooses 2, 5, 7, 9, 11, Fox, etc. They don't turn to us for news and talk. 

But they are turning to us for something, and that is local high school and small college sports. It's booming. We stream all practical home games for 22 affiliates. That's a thousand games a year. For about 700 of these games, we use what is known as a focus cam. Go to a high school football game. Look on the press box. There's this five-lense camera attached near the top. That's a focus cam. It sends the game to us without an announcer and you can watch with just crowd noise and infrequent comment from the PA announcer. 

For the other 300 games, we send out cameramen, producers and announcers and stream the game. We've also partnered with other media companies like the local public television station - Lakeshore Publie Media - and Regional Radio Sports Network, which is run by hall-fame-announcers Paul Condry and Mike Knesevich. By the way, if you're in media and you happen to come across this script slash podcast, you will not go wrong if you interview Paul Condry just for the hell of it. He's an American original. Pay no attention to the fact that he grew up in Hobart and lives in Mishawaka. 

On Friday night, we ran seven streams simultaneously - six high school football games and a studio show from public television. I laid in bed and toggled back and forth between games, searching for the stream that was buffering or wasn't on at all. This was to be expected, by the way. For the past couple of years, every Friday night there would be some sort of technical breakdown and one of the games wouldn't get on the air. This was especially a problem when we were only streaming one game. When the game stream broke down, we had nothing on JEDtv but reruns of me interviewing a school superintendent or singing to passing semis. 

But - if you can believe it - on the Friday night going into Labor Day, we were able to push out seven streams simultaneously. This is a huge credit to Sam Michel, Rob Aguirre, Peter Krukowski, Josh Beauduy, John Mastej and a whole bunch more people including Sonny Santana, who helped build the whole system but on Tuesday morning starts at the Big Ten Network. Our loss is their gain and I'm all right with that. 

There is a slight interruption as I type to you. My wife of 33 years - It was our anniversary two days ago, by the way - just brought the dog into the back yard to join me. On cue, she - the dog, not my wife - crouched in the appropriate position and did her morning business. 

"Clean that up before you come in," my wife of 33 years told me. As a celebration of sorts for such a colossal pile of gooh, another plane just flew overhead on its way to Lansing airport. 

"Can you go to Strack's and get two pounds of meat and a couple of jalapenos. I want to make ground beef tacos," she tells me. 

"Didn't you spend the whole day yesterday making food?" I ask. We had yesterday our two daughters over, a couple grandkids and son in law. We hung out right where I'm now typing, er, talking to you. 

"I just made fajitas and rice and beans and salsa. I want to make ground beef tacos today. Are you gonna go get the meat or not?"

Of course I'm gonna go get the meat. Partly because my wife just related to me that our daughter cried this morning, rightfully so. My wife made a feast yesterday. This is what my Mexican-American wife of 33 years does when she has a holiday. She cooks all day, just like her mom did and her mom before that. At the end of the evening, we packed up most of the food and sent it with our daughter and son-in-law and two grandkids. 

"You take the food. We'll just drop by tomorrow for leftovers," my wife said as they pulled out of the driveway. 

"Okay. See you tomorrow." Everyone waved. 

This, now, will not be the case. My wife slid open the sliding door and related to me. "Oh my god, our daughter cried this morning."

"What's up? Everything all right?" I asked. 

"Yeah. Except that they forgot all the food in the car and it sat in the heat all night and they had to throw it away." 

"I'll get dressed and go get ground beef," I said.

As nice as it is right now, slight breeze, sunshine, the end of summer - and as much fun as I'm having writing out for the first time a script for your enjoyment - I want to get back to time and place. 

I somehow believe that it is my time and place to do something with this media that was dumped in my lap and this morning show that I reluctantly inherited and all of these schools that depend on us to stream their games. I'm not sure precisely what my, our, mission should be, but I suspect that it has something to do with building a sustainable streaming video network for northwest Indiana, one that, perhaps, could last a hundred and a half years. You never know. I'll talk, er, write to you later. I gotta go pick up some ground beef at Strack's. 

I got a haircut the other day at my wife's behest, which how I do most productive things. Left to my own devices, I wouldn't get a haircut... or wash my car, trim my toenails or brush my teeth. I float through life in a fog. Left to my own devices, I would float in a fog indefinitely. I need someone to yank me down to earth, hit me on the back of the head, wake me up from a haze that started in Berkeley and has lasted ever since. 

"You look like Jim from Taxi," the wife said. "Get a haircut. PLEASE."

This is a reference to Jim Ignatowski, a character on Taxi in the 1970s. Ignatowski was played by Christopher Lloyd, who had really wild hair. It is not a compliment to be compared to Jim Ignatowski. When I got home and walked into the kitchen with a brand-new haircut from Great Clips, the wife said - "Finally. My boyfriend's back." 

I didn't have the heart to tell her that I didn't get the haircut for her. I got it for John Friend... (read more)