Join us for a riveting discussion that spans topics from Florida’s unpredictable character to Gen X’s political awakening. Listen as Dana discusses the intricacies of a racial texting scandal, the involvement (or overreach) of the FBI, and a commentary on selective service’s mishaps. Concluding with an insightful look at Gen X’s influential role in recent elections, this episode is a rollercoaster of humor, critique, and nostalgia that you won’t want to miss.
Dana Lash’s Absurd Truth Podcast, sponsored by Kel-Tec.
SPEAKER 03 :
It’s his life mission to make bad decisions. It’s time for Florida Man.
SPEAKER 01 :
All right. Why do people think they can get away with this kind of stuff? This is an Okaloosa. So a Florida man is in big trouble because he was like, he woke up and thought, you know what would be smart for me to do today? To impersonate a federal agent and then put flashing blue lights on his car and run them. Okaloosa County Sheriff’s Office arrested a dude for doing just that. His name is Salvatore Grooney. 69 years old. That guy’s 69. He looks a lot older than that. Wow. Faces multiple charges, openly carrying a firearm, impersonating a federal agent, possession of a firearm during the commission of a felony, unlawful use of blue lights. I did not know that was a crime. What if I just wanted flashing blue lights to like you annoy me in traffic and just flash them? I don’t know. An unlawful use of a badge. So someone called him, reported him to the sheriff’s office. They said a guy in a New York City shirt and jeans stopped his vehicle, said he’s law enforcement. And the caller was like, I don’t think so. And then it went from there. And he said that he claimed to be with the Office of Naval Intelligence. And then he said he worked for Navy Criminal Investigative Service. And then he showed a card for the Office of Naval Intelligence. And they said that it looked fake. And the photo added after it was issued. And so he was, you know, caught by the cops and detained. But can I just say, why in the world? First off, those people who are in those positions, that’s… They don’t pull over like people for traffic stops, number one. Number two, why do you think that it’s smart to impersonate a federal agent and then act like you’re going to do a traffic stop and you walk out in just like a T-shirt and jeans in your random civilian car, right? Like what does it matter with you? So this guy has a ton of charges against him and he is still in custody as you would think. Let’s see this. Florida main hero. He saw a dog in distress and he jumped into the canal to save the dog. Yes, Flager County. Deputies responded to a report of a dog in distress and they encountered a citizen in a kayak who was trying to rescue the dog. They were trying to get the dog to safety and they said that it got out of its yard and jumped into the canal. Deputy Wolf. Of course, his name is Deputy Wolf. Come on, Deputy Alex Wolf dove off the kayak. rescued the dog and it was turned over to animal control in good health and it was eventually returned to its owner bless his baby heart and they did not know how long this dog was struggling to get out of there it was really hard for the dog to get because it looked like it was kind of like a flooded like a swampy kind of area so it was the dog couldn’t get like solid ground they said that um uh they were able to re get get it back home and the owner was very happy but oh my gosh deputy wolf saved the dog can you imagine just the look oh a little I got to tell you, I’m torn on this one. If someone’s like Dana, there’s a kangaroo that’s loose. There’s maybe a 15% of me that’s like pet. And the other is like, did you see that video where it knocked that dude out? A kangaroo was on the loose in Volusia County. It was finally captured. It was spotted this week. Remember, this is the kangaroo that got out of its enclosure after this incident with a bear. And then they kept seeing it in different parts of the area. Well, they finally got it. It didn’t pose a threat to anybody. But the owner of the kangaroo was cited for an expired Class 3 license over a year, improper caging, failure to notify police. uh florida wildlife and fish and wildlife and conservation because they have to report the escape within 12 hours so that was thankfully they were able to get the get the kangaroo and he was okay but i love that they still had like they had all of these videos of this thing where you could see him in the wild you could see him in the trees it’s funny our partners over at caltech the p15 Caltex P15 is the lightest, the thinnest, the finest striker fire double stack 9mm on the market. And I have them. I know because they make the metal version, metal frame, which has the beautiful walnut wood grip panels. They also have the polymer version, gator grip texture. In the P15, you’re not losing any stopping power. You’re not giving up any concealability. The way that they’ve engineered this thing is awesome. And with the P15, you get that striker fire reliability, nice trigger pull, tritium fiber optic front sight, fully adjustable fiber optic, two-dot rear. And it comes with two standard capacity magazines. You’ve got a 15-round mag with minimal pinky extension, a flush-fit double-stack mag that holds 12 rounds for extra concealability. And it’s made with American materials by American workers in America, in Florida particularly. America needs more companies like Kel-Tec. Innovation Performance Kel-Tec. Learn more about the P-15 at Kel-TecWeapons.com. That’s K-E-L-T-E-C-Weapons.com. Tell them Dana sent you. So the media and this, I guess it started with the FBI. I saw this from CNN. CNN had a piece yesterday. Out of nowhere, racist texts about slaves and picking cotton sent to black people as state AGs, colleges and police probe their origins. These text messages went out and it said something like, greetings, whatever someone’s name was. You’ve been selected to pick cotton at the nearest plantation starting November 7th. Please be ready at 8 a.m. sharp with your belongings. That says our executive slave catchers will pick you up in a brown van. Be prepared to be searched once you’ve entered the plantation. You’re in plantation group 7. It looks like a – I can’t say what it’s called. It starts with a sh, but it’s a naughty word for poo, post. That’s what it seems like. It’s like a giant troll. And they said that these authorities now are investigating them and the NAACP is involved. And it was apparently some were sent through what I’ve never even heard of this company text now. I don’t know what they are. And they said it’s they believe it’s a widespread coordinated attack and their trust and safety team is on it. And they said that the texts have psychological and emotional impact. And I’m looking at this thinking, do it wise. So then you have the FBI. The FBI made a statement about it yesterday. The FBI quote. FBI statement on offensive and racist text messages. The FBI is aware of the offensive and racist text messages sent to individuals around the country and is in contact with the Justice Department and other federal authorities on the matter. As always, we encourage members of the public to report threats of physical violence to local law enforcement authorities. Uh, what? in the world. What in the juicy Somalia hell is happening with this? The FBI is going to investigate the FBI. I mean, aren’t they not handling child sex abuse cases properly? Didn’t they get slammed for that? Aren’t they being criticized for not finding all the missing kids that came through at the border? Nobody knows where they are. I mean, I’m just asking for some friends, right? Because why? First off, I don’t understand how this is something that the FBI has to get involved in. CNN, would you believe it? I don’t even know how many people received them. Do you know? Did they ever actually say, Cain? They never actually said. They just said some people got them through text now. Is that all the people? They don’t say what services, they don’t say what type of phones, they don’t say anything. I mean, there literally is a 2,000-word story on CNN, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, oh my gosh, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31 paragraphs with no fewer than like six pull quotes about this. And I’m just wondering why – I mean they have attorney generals condemning the messages, vowing to root it. But who sent – how do you even know? We don’t know anything about it. How many people even got them? Was there a – was it a particular one service person? Ohio’s attorney general said that they are looking into it. He said other people have no First Amendment right to your phone and free speech doesn’t protect telephone harassment. So I am just trying to wrap my head around this. I mean, you got Letitia James in it. I mean, all of it. I’m just wondering. It seems like it’s either a troll or probably a Democrat that did it. Just saying. Now, Dave Yost, who got in on he’s a Republican, and he said he was investigating it. I don’t know. It just seems like it’s like super. And is it harassment if you get one text? Because I got tons of political spam. That’s harassment. So does that mean I can bring suit against all of the Republican Party for spamming the hell out of me for the past three months with no fewer than like 50,000 texts a day for money? Because I will totally do that. I’m just saying because I was aggravated. Does this necessitate bringing in the feds, Cain? I mean, it’s… What? It sounds like it was a troll.
SPEAKER 04 :
It sounds like it was the FBI creating a problem that only the FBI can handle.
SPEAKER 01 :
Yeah, it kind of does sound like that too, doesn’t it?
SPEAKER 04 :
It’s like trying to create relevancy.
SPEAKER 01 :
Hmm. Imagine.
SPEAKER 04 :
I think they know what’s on the horizon.
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That’s never happened before. The FBI has never been known to do those things. Right. Yeah. They’re… We all know that they’re completely, completely blameless. So we have this. Then did you guys see what Selective Service did? Wait, you’re like, wait, yeah, Selective Service, they control the draft. The Selective Service X account retweeted this, quote, for all you stupid blanks out there that still believe military service will be voluntary, remember Germany 1936. So then… You know, whenever men, whenever third wave and fourth wave feminists complain about not having control of their bodies. No, you do. Men actually don’t. So Selective Service then tweeted yesterday morning, quote, yesterday in an inappropriate ex post related to a mandatory draft was reposted. on the Selective Service Agency’s X account. We’re investigating this incident to determine how this happened and are proactively taking steps to prevent it from happening in the future. The reposted content was removed when we became aware of it. The content of the repost in no way reflects the views of the Selective Service System. Okay. I just find it offended that that agency is offended. It’s selective service that’s responsible for – I mean your sons, men. Men, it’s not your body or choice. If the government says you got to go fight a foreign war, you got to go fight a foreign war. You literally have zero – you’re not allowed to object. It’s indentured servitude and they’re offended over this. I just feel like I retweeted it and I said I feel like this is one of the first things that Elon Musk needs to look at when cutting government spending because it’s pretty egregious. So what’s happening? That was someone in the State Department or in the Selective Service Department. We know, come on, that was someone in the… In that department. And if you think that can’t happen, let me take you back to this New York Times piece. It’s from September of 2015. Lo and behold. What is the headline of this brilliant piece? Oh, it’s oh, it’s called, quote, I am part of the resistance inside the Trump administration. Oh. Oh. Yeah. The New York Times published an anonymous op ed essay. They noted that it was a rare step for them. And they talk about this person who’s a lefty who is literally trying to gum up the works from the inside. That’s back in September of 2018. You know, that wasn’t the first essay like that that was published by the press, right? There was another one that came out like that. And then, of course, let’s not forget the FBI agents that were texting each other about 2016. Who’s the guy who looked like the evil elf on the shelf? And then that Lisa Page lady? Yes. Yeah. Peter Strzok. Don’t forget those two twerps. So, yeah, I feel like this bureaucratic estates kind of lose in their mind a little bit. Sure as hell seems like it, doesn’t it? It’s kind of I’m just saying it looks seems seems like they’re having some issues here. So it’s not unusual that something like this happened. So this is why I think Trump taking a sledgehammer to all of this stuff is necessary. And he needs to do it speedily, immediately go in. So his plan, and he had… He made this video and then he published a plan where he gets into reissuing the executive order, removing rogue bureaucrats, cleaning out Intel and NatSec, reforming FISA. And this directly affected him and Carter Page in 2016 because they lied in these applications, exposed the abuses of power, cracked down on government leaders who collude with the press because there were a ton of leaks during his administration. Tons of leaks. Purposefully designed to be damaging. Make every inspector general’s office completely independent, separated from the departments they oversee. True. Ask Congress to have this independent auditing system to monitor intel so that they’re not spying. The thing is, that’s a redundancy. And it’s insane that that has to happen because there is literally a legislative firewall. It’s law that is supposed to exist. between, you know, FBI, CIA, domestic and foreign. And it’s supposed to prevent average everyday citizens from being spied upon, which the Patriot Act made a hell of a lot easier. Patriot Act, by the way, was the thing that enabled the FBI to label parents as domestic terrorists because they spoke up in their children’s school board meetings. Never forget that. He says, continue the effort to move the bureaucracy to new locations outside the swamp, ban bureaucrats from taking jobs at the companies they deal with and regulate. And he wants an amendment to oppose term limits on members of Congress. Oh. Oh. Oh. Because, see, I hate term limits because that is the average everyday citizen giving up their vote, their veto or consent to the government.
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And now, all of the news you would probably miss. It’s time for Dana’s Quick Five.
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So I’ve been absolutely obsessed with the story about these stranded NASA astronauts. Remember, SpaceX has to go get them now. So you had Sunita Williams. She and her crew member, Barry Wilmore, she’s 59, he’s 61. They were only supposed to go up there for like, what, 18 days? And now they’ve been stuck up there for five months because the Boeing’s faulty Starliner spacecraft, they thought, they said it was unsafe to return to Earth. She looks gaunt. They had a video of her on September 24th, and her cheeks were sunken in, and she’s been rapidly losing weight. They said she’s undergoing routine medical evaluations, but if you look at her from before she went up and now, it is dramatic. So they put her on a 5,000-calorie-per-day diet. She has to have 5,000 calories a day and they’re monitoring her. And they said that living on the ISS has a greater impact on the health of women rather than men. Interesting. They said that women lose more weight and they lose more muscle mass faster than men do. They said that it melts off you. So ladies, for weight loss, go to space. Just kidding. I swear I was not just like building up for that joke. I promise. Winter storm warnings affect in New Mexico. They’re expecting up to three feet of snow up in the mountains. Already, winter storm warnings in New Mexico. They’re getting some heavy snow and showers in the northern part of Mexico. I sounded like a meteorologist just then, didn’t I? Also, a charity… Oh, no. Oh, Cain. I can’t read this. A charity shop… They thought that what they had was doorknobs and they labeled them as doorknobs with a price and they were not doorknobs. They were sex toys. I’m not going to say exactly what they were. No, cane. But they were not doorknobs.
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They were the most doorknob-looking sex toys.
SPEAKER 01 :
Yeah. And they said it was right in the window display. Right in the front window display. And customers were shocked. And they had to explain to the owners, okay, you need to put rubber gloves on before you handle them anymore. And then also, you need to not have them in your front window. Maybe don’t resell them. That’s horrible. An exploding whale. So now there is… It’s Exploding Whale Day on the Oregon coast. It’s actually a thing that they celebrate. That’s horrible. But they said that it’s the month to memorialize the exploding whale. And that’s when they have this big 1970 when they had a huge giant sperm whale on the beach and they blew it up with 20 cases of dynamite. And it sent huge chunks of blubber literally flying all across everything. And it hurt people’s cars and it hit people. Whale blubber fell everywhere. And yeah, so they actually memorialize it every year now, which is kind of fun that they do that. And a naked drunk British tourist was covered in feces after he survived a horror hotel balcony fall. Tuesday was Gen X’s revenge on lefty boomers. Now I said lefty boomers. If you are a boomer, are you a lefty boomer? If you are not a lefty boomer, this is not applicable to you. So I made this point, make hose water great again. How the latchkey kids raised on hose water saved America. And I went over the respondents breaking it down by age and how it was Gen X that made it happen. That was the generation that was significantly, significantly red this election cycle. And I cited a bunch of stuff as well and I talked about how – and I was at the tail end of Gen X, still Gen X nonetheless. I mean I’ve died of dysentery so many times in the Oregon Trail. Please stop. Like I earned my stripes, OK? And Saturday morning cartoons were still a thing, right? The internet existed at the end of my high school but everything else, I did not have social media. It was a very glorious social media-less existence, right? And I wrote – I was a latchkey kid, the product of divorce, one of the famous – favorite pastimes of the previous generation. And it’s true statistically. We rode in the back of pickups and we rode bikes without dorky-looking helmets. We didn’t have helicopter parents. My mom used to – the opposite in fact. My mom used to send me into the store to buy her Marlboros and they didn’t card me. It was a really wild honor system, you know. And we had no idea of this concept of being offended. We would numerically spell boobs on our calculator. 8-0-0-5. You know how to do that. 8-0-0-0-8-5. And if you talk smack, you got your ass kicked. Nobody litigated that beef outside of the playground or outside of the gym, right? We had gum. You remember this, Kane? We had gum that was shaped like cigarettes and you could pretend to puff on it and it would poof out powdered sugar. Yep. Can you believe that? We had that. It was amazing. And we were considered the lost generation, except as Tolkien brilliantly put it, not all who wander are lost. And we’re just practical. Like we are the weird generation. We were raised by – we were somewhat raised by the greatest generation who witnessed the boomer generation’s kind of neurosis. And so we, I think that kind of kept us on the straight and narrow because the greatest generation was our grandparents. It was sort of a saving grace. But for the most part, we were made very self-sufficient and very resourceful and very wily. And we were all comfortable at being ignored. In fact, that’s not a made-up thing. That’s a very real thing. Business Insider, this is an actual headline from some years ago. Nobody is talking about Gen X and Gen Xers like it that way. They want to be left alone. In fact, they didn’t even want to be interviewed for the story, which was the funny part about that. I mean, you guys remember political surveys that would look at all of the demographics and they’d skip Gen X and we’d kind of roll our eyes. We didn’t want to get involved until the left slipped off the spectrum of reason. And when that happened, we kind of… Because we’re raising Gen Z and the Alpha generation. And we had these far-left… you know, neo-tipper gore types that wanted to slap trigger warnings on everything. And they promoted the idea that somehow being offended is more dangerous to society than not being able to afford a house until you’re maybe 40. And that’s not made up. That’s not a made up statistic, by the way. I did bring the receipts. CBS, NBC, Forbes, Wall Street Journal, the average age of the first time homebuyer It’s 40 years old and it’s going climbing higher. The average age of homebuyers just last year was 56, a record high. In fact, it’s up. It’s so – the elevated mortgage rates, everything. And previously it was – I mean it used to be the average age was 49 years old. Now it’s 54. All of this is why Gen X – all of this and more is why Gen X mobilized because we weren’t – we were kind of a silent generation to vote Democrats out into oblivion. And it wasn’t just a rejection of the far-left regulated insanity of these Marxists, the stuff that’s like DEI, the lawlessness and the disorder of an open border and restorative justice. It was a direct rebuke of the policies we had to grow up under, of the leftist boomer policies that destroyed the family unit during our formative years. And that’s true. I can cite you numerous studies. We’re called the divorce generation. Wall Street Journal, 2011. Having survived their own family splits, Generation X parents are determined to keep their marriages together. We have a lower divorce rate than boomers do. It was incredibly, incredibly shaping of our formative years. These policies also completely robbed us Our children’s ability to buy a house and this established hedonistic movement. It grew to rob our daughters of fair play and treatment in sports. It birthed the third and the fourth wave feminist movements that abuse our sons as toxic for simply embracing masculinity. So that’s what that was. It was a giant middle finger to the lefty boomer policies that made our formative years, both there was a silver lining, it was good and bad. And that was the consequence of the left going too far. It was a consequence of the left pushing too hard, taking too much. People who just wanted to be left alone, you wouldn’t leave them alone. Audio soundbite nine. Now you have this simple jack on MSNBC. talking about this exact topic. Listen.
SPEAKER 05 :
Yet it was the hip hop and Hulk Hogan generation, the F your feelings latchkey kids who came up on Dynasty, Dallas and The Apprentice, who were the lone age group that voted in a majority for Trump. A majority of Gen X voted to turn America into an autocracy and to condemn our kids and grandkids to a far right Supreme Court, probably for the rest of their lives.
SPEAKER 01 :
The fun thing about Gen X is we understand what the hell the word autocracy means. We didn’t spend our time growing up talking to ourselves in the mirror into a hairbrush like Joy Reid clearly did because we spent our time reading books and doing cool stuff and kicking ass. That’s what we did. And we were tired of it. You know, you don’t get to barge in and tell us we have to use certain pronouns and then disenfranchise us and then rob our kids of actual equality when it comes to playing sports, tank the economy and drive up divorce rates. You don’t get to do that. without any kind of pushback. That’s not what an autocracy is. Do you realize the absolute stupid irony of this broad talking about autocracy while lamenting the results of a free and fair election? Someone take the vodka from under her desk, please. You can’t ignore Gen X anymore as much as Gen X would like to be ignored. Gen X isn’t you and they don’t want to be. And that’s the truth of it. It was Gen X’s revenge and trying to set it straight for Gen Z and Gen Alpha so they don’t have to suffer with the consequences of these horribly hedonistic, indulgent policies that kicked off with the greatest generation’s kids, the leftists. And I’m going to say it one last time. I’ve always said lefty boomer. There are conservative boomers that have been just as screwed over. But unless you’re a lefty boomer, this doesn’t apply to you. But by God, I’m not going to pretend that that generation and the leftist policies that blossomed in it did not happen. Just like I’m not going to pretend that Joe Biden, if he fell down, couldn’t get up without assistance. But that’s the truth of it. And I dare say, I keep seeing studies that say Gen Z and Alpha, like they might be more. Gen Z is, they’re a smart aleck generation. Why? Because they were raised by Gen X. We don’t claim millennials. Millennials, you know who they are? They were our stepkids or our stepsisters and stepbrothers or half-brothers and half-sisters from our parents’ second and third marriages. That’s who they are. Those are the children from the boomers’ second family, the lefty boomers’ second family, the late bloomer boomers. That’s who they are. So we don’t claim them. We don’t know them. I don’t know you. I don’t know you.
SPEAKER 02 :
Thanks for tuning in to today’s edition of Dana Lash’s Absurd Truth Podcast. If you haven’t already, make sure to hit that subscribe button on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.
