You're listening to Civic Media.
You can tune into any of our live shows on any radio station across the state with the Civic Media app.
Find us in your phone's app store and listen anytime, anywhere.
From Milwaukee traffic to Northwood's gossip, they've got some thoughts.
John and Gordy in the afternoon.
It's John and Courtney.
Sitting in our sandbox, just waiting to hit sand in somebody's face.
I'm feeling a little aggressive today, I guess.
Better calm down a little bit.
Happy Wednesday!
Yeah, mid-week here and we're trying to make it through.
As you know, it was a pretty devastating weekend and we had a few...
Difficult days Monday and Tuesday, but you know, we're trying to loosen up just a little bit here Trying to keep our sanity Right and trying to talk our way through this in some way shape or form for the next three years And we'll try to come up with whatever solutions we can we need your help We need your help desperately I'm begging you Please please help us
All
Good afternoon, Aaron.
Good afternoon
And boy, it's bright and sunny all across the state.
You know, we're broadcasting from our network headquarters here in Madison, and it's beautiful, but it's still pretty chilly out there.
Temperatures in the, in the, let's see.
Well, Milwaukee, it's 11 degrees.
I
All right, we've got some great comments coming up from Philly DA Larry Krasner.
We'll be talking about Tom Tiffany's recent endorsement by Trump.
Right.
And Rand Paul has a few things about the rights that we assume we have.
Maybe they're up for discussion at this point, you know, carrying guns at protests, so and so.
Through the winter's ice and cold Down Nicolette Avenue A city of flame fought fire and ice Neath an occupier's boots King Trump's private army from the DHS Guns belted to their coats
Came to Minneapolis to enforce the law Or so their story goes Against smoking rubber bullets In the dawn's early light Citizens stood for justice Their voices ringing through the night
should have stood.
And T-Dead left to die on Snowfield Street.
Alex Pretty and...
his chest.
Then we heard the gunshots and Alex pretty lay in the snow dead.
Their claim was self-defense soon.
Just don't believe your eyes.
It's our blood and bones and these whistles and forms against Miller and
Wow.
in the immediacy
You know we've always talked about that here in the show that there aren't enough protest songs anymore We kind of get spoiled with Bob Dylan those many decades.
Yeah, and now at least we have Springsteen coming out with something here.
Mm-hmm
And Jesse Wells.
And Jesse Wells, I was going to say, Jesse Wells is also out there doing this.
And boy, he has an extensive library of issues that we could certainly get to here on the program.
Right.
We've been digging out some old ones from
And we play parts of songs because there are rights that we have to adhere to for these artists.
And when this program that
is being broadcast statewide here, is podcast, then there are different rules for podcasting.
And if these songs are included in that, then the artist deserves some kind of payment as well.
So it's difficult to do
Well, thank you guys for the great show you're providing.
Thank you, Mr. Sommers, for that.
can now listen to it and see it.
I think it's on YouTube, too.
Yes.
And also, I'd just like to alert people, you know, our glorious, I don't know, half brain senator Ron Johnson right now on Forbes, they're running a committee meeting or a hearing.
and watch live Ron Johnson leads Senate Homeland Security meeting.
And guess what it's about?
The Palisades Fire in California.
That's our leader from Wisconsin.
What an idiot.
And I think he's from, and this is my opinion, calling him an idiot in names.
That's me.
But I feel a lot worse in those kind words.
But anyway, and I think he's originally from Minnesota.
What a great guy to have representing the United States.
Anyway, I had to
give my two
cents first.
Keep up the great job.
Have a good day.
Bye-bye.
Well, don't forget about Woody Guthrie and Arlo Guthrie and Johnny Kimbush, believe it or not.
Songwriter for the people wrote songs about people who are in justice.
Yeah It would be you know great to see more people but I've always been a Bruce Springsteen fan I'm even a big fan now because it is time some of these people start coming out and What kind of bothers me though as it seems like it took the killing of a white man for people to start stepping forward which just aggravates me but
The point is we need more of this and we need more people who have power, who have following to come out and start doing
administration's
Right.
So, you know, I have a.
Okay, I'm gonna get to this right away here.
All right.
We heard that Tom Tiffany has been endorsed by Trump.
Now this really irritates me a whole lot.
It's not a surprise.
Well, it's not a surprise at all.
But what is happening here is Tom Tiffany has been running a campaign.
We've talked about it here.
He's been running a campaign that kind of mirrors the whole campaign that Trump
had, he put together.
He's doing the exact same thing.
And to whatever extent there was a primary, Dan Schaefer said, it's essentially over now, there is absolutely one person that everybody's going to focus in on, it's Tom Tiffany.
But the thing here is Tom Tiffany is going to hand over Wisconsin to Trump.
To federal control, that's the problem I have with this.
Really?
You know, Tiffany Beck's Trump's takeover of Congress because he was there and he let it happen.
He didn't fight back.
He backed higher insurance costs for the ACA.
Now we're paying more as we live paycheck to paycheck.
He didn't care about the farmers getting hurt with this trade war.
So there's a bailout coming, but that's not because of Tiffany.
And he also wants to bring ice to Wisconsin communities.
Now here's a list I put together.
Tiffany backs a federal food stamp audit.
He backs a federal Medicaid audit for fraud.
A federal review of Wisconsin voter rolls wants a federal requirement to prove citizenship to vote, which is aimed at women, really.
Wisconsin will be absorbed into the hydro-like authority that we know as the Trump administration because of what Tiffany has done in Congress.
We can't let this guy off the hook.
He has a horrible record and he thinks he's going to run Wisconsin.
Not like that.
He's going to give us over to the federal government, essentially.
Yeah.
All right.
Well, anyway, we had to get off my chest.
I'm just
this.
Stay up to date on the latest news and information for your local community and Wisconsin by signing up for our free email newsletter.
Visit civicmedia.us slash email to get
You know, I just went on a little rant about Tom Tiffany, but you know, he is, he's the worst candidate, one of the worst candidates.
And I said this about a few other Republican candidates in the past.
Yes, it's true.
Full confession.
But you know, Tom Tiffany is, is one of the worst ever.
I mean, this guy did away with all the mining laws and rules and regulations we had
in the
I mean, gave away our minerals.
This guy is a train wreck waiting to happen.
This is what he said.
This is a quote.
As governor, I will work with local, state, and federal law enforcement to keep Wisconsin safe, just like I would imagine it's safe in Minneapolis, and to remove criminal illegal aliens.
Oh, really?
Oh, you mean like in the rural communities, in the farm?
businesses out there.
Cooperation is how you avoid tragic consequences.
Deporting illegal aliens is how you make America safer.
Explain that to the dairy farmers, all right?
Explain that to the farms out there that need labor and with reform, with immigration reform, we could help that labor.
We could stand behind them so they can't be exploited.
See, the problem here is we're not doing the job we should be doing, or Congress isn't doing the job they should be doing, and we should demand it of them to have reform.
We need to protect the people that are in this country, even on the visas that they have currently on these farms.
Now, of course, you know, ICE is going after even people with visas.
So we have to somehow reform the system so we can have labor, have their rights protected, and also have them here legally.
And we're really hurting ourselves.
We have a little... Oh, here, I've got this.
This is Justin Wolfers.
If we do away with all these immigrants, if we draw the line like Tom Tiffany wants to do as governor, or Trump wants to do as our dictator, then we're really shooting ourselves in the foot later on in the next 10 years.
This is Justin Wolfers.
He's warning us about U.S.'
's future.
If we do all of this, and this is cut 404, if we could hear cut 404, this is Justin Wolffers talking about the future of the US if we keep people out of our country.
What are the foundations of prosperity, economic prosperity, shared prosperity, equitable growth?
Look across countries and ask yourself, why is the United States rich in the country of my birth, Papua New Guinea poor?
And the answer turns out to be what we call
institutions, the rules of the game, the rules of economic and political life, the fact that we respect the rule of law, that we have contestable elections, that we have contracts that we respect.
And the thing is, those are the things the president is undermining.
He's attempting to take away the independence of the Federal Reserve.
He's tried to undermine how much federal
economic statistics reflect reality.
He's tried to overturn an election.
He's snatching people up off the streets.
He is calling CEOs and telling them what to do.
This is the most interventionist government of my lifetime.
It's the least conservative government of my lifetime.
When you are the richest country in the world, maybe you're not the ones who should be thinking about ripping down your existing institutions.
It's those who are somewhat behind.
But that's what the president's doing.
That's not going to show up in next quarter's GDP.
What that's going to show up as is in a decade's time, there'll be some companies that were never founded.
There were some entrepreneurs who couldn't afford to go to business school.
There were immigrants with great ideas who ended up staying in their home countries instead.
And so whatever the next generation's Google or open AI is, it may not end up being invented or it may not happen on our soil.
And we will never see that absence.
But our kids will feel it.
Our kids will feel it instead of lost opportunities.
There'll be businesses they never started.
There'll be job opportunities.
There'll be new technologies.
There'll be ways of creating a greener, safer, more prosperous future that simply aren't possible.
But we're not going to see it straight away.
And that, I think, is our current media is not well set up to talk about those issues because there's no number comes out.
There's no news cycle.
There's no Wall Street Journal headline.
But it turns out economic research tells us that's the stuff that matters.
Yeah, thanks for having me back.
I just wanted to say that not only is he all of the things you mentioned, but he is only anti-women's rights And he is also a wolf hater if he gets elected We will not have a wolf left in the state of Wisconsin because he is supported by Hunter Nation who was behind the wolf slaughter in February of 21 that took out 300 and some wolves in one day and he is also behind
that are being there behind all these conscious killings in the state of Wisconsin where all these animals are slaughtered for money every day.
So it's just, you know, these are just things that people have to think about.
He will destroy our environment.
He will destroy our public lands.
He will take all the timbers off the land.
It's just sick me.
Good afternoon, gentlemen.
They call him Toxic Tom Tiffany up
north.
You know, you have all those lakes up there and fishing and you could care less about forever chemicals.
um
in the water
so everybody will be sick up there well if he gets elected which i don't think he has a prayer and um happening but um you won't have able to drink the water that's what the state depends on tourist water fishing he's i don't even know i guess elected but i'll tell you somebody that could write a book on this man
lost
As the 21st century began, human evolution was at a turning point, a dumbing down, until humanity was incapable of solving even its most basic problems.
At no point in your rambling, incoherent response were you even close to anything that could be considered a rational thought.
Just when I think you couldn't possibly be any dumber,
Idiocracy.
For the smartest guy in the world, you're pretty dumb sometimes.
Yeah, thanks guys and thanks for playing the song I text that into as well then earlier on yeah as an opener and Rod Johnson put posted a along with weed post a pretty vile reaction to the murders of Renee good and Alex pretty that you know bringing up the old all these people that were killed by illegally aliens and the Oh, yeah, the Democrats and then I've called them all my reps and said you got a
I called Johnson's office and said, I hope he, every dream he has, he's one of the like sister-fist or, um, tantalists or, from atheists where there is punishments to Greek gods doled out to them that, um, I don't want it to actually happen to him.
But
I mean, if he dreams that's happening to him, that'd be well and good with me, that it is just vile that he's responding like this.
And for Tom Tiffany, never forget the man was probably one of the co-conspirators in the January 6th insurrection.
If he along with Scottie Fitzgerald who arranged the room for the fake electors to meet, you know, they combined to vote against the certification of a couple of states in the election in 2020.
So Tom Tiffany betrayed the citizens of the state of Wisconsin in doing that.
That he's just a vile man, just like Ron Johnson is just a vile man as well.
Yeah.
And an update that Lady Gaga is doing a version of Mr. Rogers song, Won't You Be My Neighbor, I guess.
Oh,
really?
In a commercial at the Super Bowl.
Oh.
I liked a little bit of the production video that they're doing of that, you know, they're coming up with, you know, to do the song.
All right.
Then I guess there's, they're discussing that the recording on that song is actually a little, a little tricky there, Sam, that, and it's going to be interesting to hear that because I always liked Mr. Rogers that, and I was
particularly annoyed with Rush Limbaugh's in the day
when
Limbaugh's was saying that, oh, Mr. Rogers is a threat to this country because he had this message to these kids that they're actually worth something and Rush Limbaugh didn't think that was a good way to raise kids is actually giving them a loving and nurturing environment rather than use the rod and beat them into submission.
Act,
Oh, yeah, definitely.
And we're still kind of working our way through that.
I mean, her name has been changed.
We kept it the same for a long time.
Then we changed it to the married name.
And then we hyphenated it.
And, you know, it just got complicated and it's different at the DMV.
It's different on her papers for the house.
I mean, you know, it just
It's a nightmare just to keep track of it, and then they want to throw in now a verification of your citizenship in order to knock you off the voter rolls.
Essentially, that's what they want to do.
So yeah, it's a bad thing.
and Tom Tiffany is all for it.
He really hasn't thought any of this through.
You know, he wants to cut property taxes, but you know what?
Property taxes are high because people have refrendums in order to pay for their public schools.
So if you've got property taxes, how do you pay for those schools?
Now, you don't want to fund public schools, right?
You don't want to do that and you're going to cut taxes and you're not going to really spend any money.
Then I don't know where we're going to go.
He doesn't make any sense at all.
He's a scary individual, and that's my rant on that.
But we are in idiocracy right now.
We are.
So let's get to this.
This is wild stuff.
We mentioned this on the program a while ago, but Medi Hasan picked up the topic and even had an interview with Zoran Mamdani.
Oh, really?
And this is really interesting about...
the B'day controversy.
So
let's listen to this.
The Fox News anti-left rage bait machine went into overdrive bidets how dare he that's a rich man's fantasy They said and total hypocrisy they said given the Democrats criticisms of Donald Trump's White House renovations They even cited an anonymous but prominent New York City Democrat saying he's been mayor for a minute And now the socialist thinks he's flush with so much cash.
He can buy bidets
Second, Fox seems to think Mamdani is buying, I don't know, Japanese Toto toilets, or these kind of hotel-style posh bidets, which can, quote, run as high as $2,000.
I
just mentioned that, you know, we might install a few bidets in crazy mentions.
You know,
water gun that
you
hook on the side of the toilet.
We actually got a lot of bidet companies who reached out to us to offer their help and installation.
I'm sure they do.
We're fine.
Well, the economy could help be helpful.
We're not in the pocket of big bidet.
See, he's not in the pocket of big bidet.
Third, politics aside, hand bidets are a good thing.
You should try them.
All Americans should.
I promise you, you will not be disappointed.
they were outraged more
right,
to use the term
everybody,
Remember that 2016 I
Now
Well, what about those paid agitators, by the way, as he was giving this speech, right?
The people with these
pre-made signs they all look the same right yeah right right these are paid agitators sitting behind him with signs that were made for them obviously they're getting paid they had clothing on that said Trump on it obviously they're paid agitators sitting behind them I'll tell you man what about those paid agitators 403 let's listen to this
get
Rolling Stone reports that two-thirds of Melania's New York crew requested their names not be added to the film credits.
Another source said they wish they'd had the foresight to remove their name from the film said, I'm much more alarmed now.
Apparently they finally saw the movie.
and don't want anything to do with it.
And early signs are that it's not going to do well at the box office, apparently.
But they've spent like $35 million to promote it.
Well, I hope they
Francis yeah it's a it's a suburb of Milwaukee and he writes if where is it well yeah we got to get that here it's there it is even there we go even a movie about John and Gordy
would have been way more interesting than the movie about Melania.
Any discussions of a movie?
For us?
We have been thinking about it.
A little documentary on John and Gordy, history.
Yeah.
You're listening to Civic Media.
Find the latest news, information and archives of all your favorite shows on the Civic Media website, civicmedia.us.
Hope it's the same near you.
We have this from Terry director Brett Ratner.
Yeah, who made the documentary Melania has been accused of sexual harassment and also has been mentioned in the Epstein files.
So yeah, he might want to lay low at this
You know, as a major snowstorm hit much of the United States and Minneapolis erupted in violence after the ice shooting of a protester.
First Lady Melania Trump and Brett Ratner, the director you just mentioned, held a private screening of Melania at the White House.
A lot of names I don't recognize were there.
They had 70 VIP guests, including the Queen of Jordan.
Apple CEO Tim Cook, he was
Yeah, exactly.
I think you're right.
Yeah, I think they're agitators.
Now, you heard in the last break that there is maybe a solution to paying for PFAS pollution in our water.
The point here is the Republicans have been holding this up.
They have a little pool of money to pay for putting in new wells and helping people deal with PFAS in their water, but they're not releasing it or letting the governor release the money because they're asking for, and this is what they're asking for, a complete pass
for the people who put the PFAS in the water.
In other words, they're not holding them accountable.
They want a pass on the businesses so they don't have to pay for cleaning up the water.
That's what they want.
It covers not standing for it.
I don't know why the Democrats can't make this absolutely clear.
Each and every day of the year here, we would take care of this problem and allow people to drink healthy water again.
This is just outrageous.
Can
I mean, seriously, when your water is a little colored in and you go, oh my God, I don't want to drink that, right?
I mean, that's when they flush the fire hydrants, right?
But I tell you, these people have to live with this kind of pollution.
every day in its dangerous cancer-causing pollution.
And the Republicans are holding it up because they want to give a pass to the people who put the PFAS in the water in the first
Well, if you want to have some fun, I would hardly urge your producer to do some checking of the reviews of millennia's documentary.
I recall that Roger Ebert's efforts were something along the lines of, it's as painful as running through a field of Legos while you're suffering from intermittent diarrhea.
Oh my god.
Oh, that's
That's
So there's some other reviews similar to that.
I wanted to refer back to this.
You were speaking of Tom Tiffany's love of this save act, which was about trying to tackle voter fraud, which you know is a very, very small problem.
Election fraud is a problem, but voter fraud is not.
And
it was by saying that everybody's got to show, you know, got to show your IDs.
And for women, that's a problem because their IDs.
change because they take their husband's name.
Well, it's really interesting how many women do 90% of Republican women adopt their husband's last name.
They want to do that.
It's 66% of other women adopt their husband's last name.
And the result of this is that it comes from the old historic common law doctrine that said that a woman's legal identity is merged with her husband.
And it used to be that women couldn't own property or sign contracts or sue or they were legally
and it was all through their husband.
I would argue that there's some problems that are gonna be occurring out of this.
They were talking about up to 60 million women may be affected by this if they have to go through this song and dance to prove who they are at the voting booth.
And guess who was saying it's not gonna be a problem?
Carolyn Levitt, you know, the sharp legal mind of Carolyn Levitt who said that, oh, the Democrats are just fear mongering this.
We will note that Karen Levitt,
Caroline Levitt uses her maiden name, not her married name.
Her husband's last name is Richio, R-I-C-P-I-O.
So she uses her maiden name, but hey, it's not going to be a problem for her.
It's just going to be a problem for the other women who have chosen to take their husband's name.
What a crock.
What
an incredible crock, you know?
Geez, if it's so easy, Caroline, then why don't you take your husband's name, honey?
Yeah.
Good
luck to the women as they head to the voting.
Oh,
documents, please.
Documents, please.
No, that's not going to work.
Sorry, you can't vote.
good luck to us all.
Take care.
Hard to follow, Joe.
She is so good.
Here's proof that we will never know real jobs numbers going forward after he messed with that agency But I kind of off the subject today, and I'm seeing nothing in the news Amazon and UPS have both announced up to 30,000 people each
gonna be laid off this year.
Wow, yep Yeah, you're at the negative negative 60 grand between the two companies.
So wow, and that's that's not
Good economic is obvious.
But, you know, I've been compiling a list of all the jobs that are being lost in this country.
We're not getting the reports on this.
It's not appearing in the newspapers often enough.
Major corporations are letting a lot of people go, not simply because of AI, but because there aren't any job openings.
They're getting rid.
They're downsizing.
It's all...
It's all happening because of what has happened with the tariffs.
Corporations are downsized and they can't buy the materials for the price they need in order to expand.
The national news cycle never stops, but it can be hard to find news about your local community.
Civic Media is dedicated to providing quality local and state news coverage across Wisconsin.
With the Civic Media app, you can get notifications about local stories that matter to you and your community.
Find the free Civic Media app in your phone's app store and choose notifications from the menu to tell us what kind of news you want to hear about.
