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All across Wisconsin from Civic Media, this is Up North News Radio.
Now, live from our Lake Minnesota studio, here's the founding editor of Up North News, Pat Breitler.
Hey, that's me.
Hey there, Wisconsin.
Good morning.
It is 6.06 on this Friday morning, February 28th, 2025.
We're just about done with February, which...
Probably sounds about right since I feel like I've missed half the month here on this Wonderful radio show on this beautiful day to have you here up north live from Lake Wasota From wherever you're listening across the civic media radio network And if you are instead watching us on Facebook or YouTube or catching us through the app Or maybe listening later by podcast It all counts.
We're glad to have you here on this Friday morning to keep things rolling as we check on the news and get your day started I got a question for you
in the next round of mass firings by the Trump administration, and there will be another round of mass firings to be sure.
Who should be included in there?
Would we put in, you know, the meteorologists that are forecasting hurricanes for us?
Would it be more medical researchers?
How about congressional staffers?
Because given the behavior that we saw in Eau Claire yesterday,
Maybe Congressional, maybe members of Congress, don't need the staffers that they claim to if they're going to continue running away from constituents who are unhappy about the latest round of mass firings.
We will talk about that and more coming up.
Also on the program this morning, Courier Newsroom, senior political correspondent Kia Vakil is back with us.
We got to chat in Arizona this week at our Courier Newsroom.
Get together.
And we talk a bit about really stripping the chaos of the Trump administration down to its most basic form.
There truly is only one thing at the heart of all of this.
All of the chaos, all of the heartache, all of the unintended consequences, all of the intended consequences are all in service of just one thing.
And I believe it was Don Olmeyer when he headed NBC Sports many years ago who coined the phrase, the answer to all your questions is money.
And we'll talk more about that with Kia coming up this hour.
In our second hour, we have our week in review panel.
With a bit of a change this week, we will of course have former US Attorney Jim Santel
whose program amicus is live every Saturday morning at nine here talking about legal issues on the civic media radio network.
And as usual, we have.
Two veteran journalists, uh, both happen to be from the Chicago area.
Mark Jacob, you're familiar with, he's worked at the Chicago Tribune and the Sun Times.
So we have a print journalist.
We also have a veteran Chicago broadcast journalist joining us this time.
Uh, Jennifer Scholes, he's off, but pinch hitting will be, uh, radio broadcaster, Joe Nesposito from Chicago, who's going to join us to talk about the week's headlines and what would it being Oscars weekend?
We'll talk a little bit about you know how we how we frame today's political theater in terms of best and worst actors and best and worst
people in a supporting role, things like that.
So that all is coming up along the way.
And of course, you can join us at 855-75 Civic, 855-752-4842, which you can call or text.
We get plenty of text messages and happy to get those for you and read some of them up on air.
You can call or text us from the Civic Media app.
And if you are watching us on Facebook or YouTube, put a little something in the comment section and we might put it up here as well.
You can also email us radio at upnorthnewswi.com.
And I have to tell you, since we launched our political newsletter, our Sunday morning political newsletter a couple of weeks back, the email is really getting a workout because we always ask a question of the week.
And last Sunday's question was what to do about the school voucher program.
Do you let it keep growing?
Do you freeze it in place?
Do you trim it back or do you end it all together?
And there were a lot of very heartfelt opinions on the damage being done by the voucher program.
and we'll have some of those in our newsletter that you can sign up for over at our website upnorthnewswi.com.
You get our weekday edition that Christina Laurie puts together and now the new Sunday morning edition that I put together with some of the political themes of the past week or so.
I was putting in the temperatures from around Wisconsin on this Friday morning and keep in mind that I haven't been here since last Friday morning.
When all of the temperatures were single digits below zero That's not the case this morning.
Everything here is 40 plus degrees warmer
than just one week ago.
It's 44 here in Chippewa Falls.
43 in Hayward and Amory.
Wausau is at 39, so is Wisconsin Rapids.
La Crosse is at 46 already this morning.
Green Bay 37.
Madison's at 39.
It's 35 in Milwaukee.
It's 38 degrees at Radio Park and Racine where we find one Greg Bach standing by having helped fill in so admirably.
Wally was away in the Desert Southwest.
Mr. Bach, good morning.
Thank you so much.
And how are you?
Good morning, Pat.
I hope you worked hard.
I worked so hard at that retreat.
Oh, there was so much work to be done.
Oh, wait, you saw the video.
I saw the video.
He went to a baseball game.
It's true in a fortunate coincidence.
The retreat ended Wednesday at noon.
And
everybody started heading for the airport to fly home.
I chose a later flight and snuck over to see the, uh, the brewery spring training facility, which I'd never seen before
in
American family fields and saw a split squad game with the brewers taking on the Dodgers, lovely little stadium.
And again, it's a little stadium.
It's not a major league park by any stretch, but a nice place to watch a game provided that you are wise enough to pitch seats in the shade and the.
The, the nice young man at the ticket booth, see that I can do that now at my age.
The nice young man, uh, told me where to find the shady seats.
So he sold me a good ticket and, uh, the, the one thing that isn't changed.
I mean, the ballpark is smaller, but the prices are not.
It's still
cost you like 14 bucks for a beer.
And yeah, it's a little unpriced to decide, but I did get a, oh wait, I didn't bring along, let me reach out here to go get it.
got my official Brewer Spring training
camp.
Oh, that's so cool.
Because it says Brewer Spring training on the side here.
So yeah, there's no shortage of potential souvenirs that you can get.
So, so yes, along with all the work and I'll talk about some of that with Kia Vakil coming up, there was that little bit of time for a getaway to see my first spring training game.
It's been on my bucket list for forever.
And then that was followed by a late flight.
I got in at 2 30 a.m.
yesterday.
So
I
would not have been a good candidate for doing a radio show yesterday.
So
thank you to Todd Alba and everybody else who filled in this week.
And then finally woke up yesterday morning at about 8.45, which you know how weird that is.
Yeah, when you're so used to a really early.
wake up time and suddenly you're looking and I'm going, wait a minute.
I have a meeting at nine o'clock.
So there was a quick effort to wake up in time for a meeting where I did not have my camera on.
I'm like, I'm sorry.
I'm just here.
That's all you're going to get.
This is a meeting with Pat Grillo.
Tell me what you need.
I'm just very, very
tired.
Just to let you know, our boss, the very handsome and capable Luke Mathers, just dropped a one word response with,
what?
Oh, that would, yes, because I had the audacity to go to a baseball
game
while I was at my work retreat.
I'm glad you got to do it.
That's awesome.
I've been trying to get out to spring training for years now.
It just does not, it doesn't work.
It doesn't work on my schedule.
No, I just had assumed that, you know, I just didn't think it was ever going to happen after years of thinking about it.
And so it was, like I said, a happy coincidence that I could get to do that.
And
then come on back and pick up where we left off and where we left off is chaos.
I was going to
say
we're
just going to use that
word for
four years here.
Just chaos.
Yep.
That's exactly where we are.
Oh, well, we'll, we'll recap the latest on the circus in a bit here.
Uh, it is Oscars weekend.
I did see, uh, a couple of different stories about Conan O'Brien getting set to host that, which I focused on more than the movies because again, I'm getting to that point now where I don't, I barely see a handful of movies during the course of a year, much less all the Oscar nominees, but, uh, and I think, I think you're mostly in the same boat or do you, you have a good handle on
what you think will win on Sunday night.
No, I basically, I take my guesses off of what wins the golden globes and just kind of what the buzz is, but I don't get a chance to see a lot of these movies.
I don't have a lot of time to see them.
And some of them just also don't seem interesting to me.
So I'm like, you know, I'm, for me, Conan hosting is like, come on, Conan hosts the Oscars and he's getting the Mark Twain prize.
I mean, it's Conan's year.
My goodness, it is good for him.
I'd rather talk about that.
But, uh, yeah, I mean, I'm, I'm, I'll, I'll be happy for whomever.
I'm trying to think if there's any long shots or like, you know, another Ki Hui, Kwong, who are like, Oh, he's got to win.
Cause I mean, Adrian Brody is one already and he's favored to win.
Um,
well, I predict that we will be much, much more thorough and entertaining.
on Monday when we talk about who did win rather than guessing with lists that I don't have in front of me from movies that I did not see.
So all I say at the front end is I'm hoping for a good show because I've learned now that much like say the Grammys for example, I'm not going to hear all that music, except a lot of it will be for the first time at the show.
And I was really happy with the Grammys this year.
So same goes with the Oscars.
If it gives me great
ideas on what I should watch next.
That's fine because we now live in an age where before it's like, oh, it won the Oscar, but it was in the theater six months ago.
I'm never going to see it again.
Now you can see pretty much anything
anytime.
Now it is on stream streaming before you even realize it's like out in theaters.
Yes,
exactly.
Today, let me give away part of the history lesson because it's part of today's daily newsletter from Christina Laurie.
Today is National Pancake Day.
Are you going to do a Todd did yesterday for national toast?
They make some pancakes.
He made, he made toast yesterday on the show.
Pat and like ASMR to two.
He's like, it's crunchy.
It's crispy.
And like.
He's a wacky fellow.
He's a wacky fellow.
Yes, he is.
I appreciate the fill in.
And I do like his more colorful moments.
But no, I mean, what you can do maybe with a knife across some crispy toast, but how are you going to do that with pancakes where it's really smooth?
Like you can't hear the butter.
You can't hear the syrup.
All you can hear is if anybody's chewing with their mouth open like.
That's
just real
pancake.
Yep.
So we are learning from the newsletter that pancakes date all the way back to 600 BC.
The ancient Greeks had pancakes that they would make.
And we also have some recommendations on where some of the best pancakes are found in Wisconsin.
So head over and get our newsletter, UpNorthNewsWI.com and Luke Mathers puts, Todd also burnt the toast and it was all I can smell in my office all day.
Good job, Todd.
Love it.
All right, when we come back, we'll talk about some of the news of the day on Up North News Radio Live from Lake La Sota here on the Civic Media Radio Network.
You're listening to Civic Media.
Stay up to date on the latest news and information for your local community and Wisconsin by signing up for our free email newsletter.
Visit civicmedia.us slash email to get started.
When
I think of Michael Jackson's album Thriller, I don't think of this song.
But there, you know, we keep thinking of Thriller and some of these other, you know, beat it or whatever.
No.
The one with Paul McCartney, not so much, but it's there.
And Thriller is part of today's history lesson coming up in 30 minutes here on Up North News Radio.
Where are my manners, Greg?
Uh, it's Friday.
I kind of lost track of the time.
What's, what's happening at laughing tap this
weekend?
Oh, the laughing tab.
We have more haunted El shaky here all weekend, but I'm sorry folks.
Early shows are sold out and the late show on Saturday is on its way to being sold.
So if you want to come to the late show, get your tickets now laughing tap.com because I think there are less.
I think.
20 tickets left, maybe 30 tickets left.
But it's great.
He's been on Comedy Central.
He's been on the late night shows.
He's gonna be really fun.
Three shows, one tonight, two tomorrow.
And then, oh my goodness, March is just full of performers.
It's crazy pants.
So they should go to a website and learn more about who's coming
up.
You really should because, like I said, Mohanad's tickets are probably gonna be gone by today.
Hurry Cundabola returns in two weeks.
Jeffrey Asimuth, we just,
added a sixth show for him on Sunday at 4pm.
So if you want to see Jeffrey, who's blowing up on the internets, go to laughingtap.com, get your tickets right away.
All right, good.
Go do that.
Yeah, go do
that.
Go do that.
Go get some laps.
After the show, after this show.
Good.
And then come back.
Yeah, yeah, I mean, come on, priorities people.
Yannis, out of Tacupo scored 28 points last night for the Bucks as they beat the Denver Nuggets, 121 to 112.
The Bucks will next play tomorrow in Dallas.
Only three games left in the men's college basketball season until the conference tournaments for the Badger men.
That includes being at Michigan State on Sunday afternoon.
The broadcast found on some of these civic media stations will start Sunday morning at 11 30 the Marquette men's basketball team is at Georgetown tomorrow night and the Badger women's hockey team opens up their conference tournament the first round of the WCHA tournament hosting Bemidji State tonight and tomorrow afternoon and then Sunday afternoon in need if needed in a best of three series
Hey, Up North News is having its first ever live event that we'd love to have you attend.
It is a forum all about the Wisconsin State Supreme Court race.
If you head over to UpNorthNewsWI.com slash Supreme, you will find out more about how we're covering the Supreme Court race with three amazing panels of guests who are going to be joining us.
Those panelists include former Lieutenant Governor Mandela Barnes.
Now we have our friend Melissa Baldoff from Climate Check.
Joseph Peckie will be there.
Dan Schaefer from the Recombobulation Area and Civic Media Political Editor.
There will be State Senator Kelda Roy's on a panel about reproductive rights along with an OBGYN, a woman from Chippewa Falls sharing her abortion care story.
We'll have somebody from Planned Parenthood there as well.
There's a panel on education that will include the lead plaintiff in a lawsuit challenging the legality of the voucher program.
We'll have Heather Dubois-Bornan from the Wisconsin Public Education Network there, state representative Francesca Hong, who's the ranking Democrat on the Assembly Education Committee.
We'll have a representative from WEAC there.
Todd Alba will be moderating that education panel.
So education, reproductive rights.
jobs in the economy, three different panel discussions.
That's coming up on Wednesday, March 12th at the Overture Center in downtown Madison.
We'd love to have you there.
Head to UpNorthNewsWI.com slash Supreme to learn more.
Tickets are free.
And I think we're going to have a good enough attendance that we can also put out a live stream option as well.
Details still to come, but we're very excited to have that first live event taking place.
As we
Turn our attention briefly to the mess that has been the layoffs throughout the federal government by the Trump administration.
It's important to note, as you can see in our own comment section already on the show, that a lot of these firings are predicated on the fairy tale that basically every government employee whose job doesn't touch your life directly must be wasteful.
It must be a waste of your money.
There's a comment this morning saying that you need to look deeper into the folks who have been cut.
None of them are essential workers.
You're just another partisan hack.
That's exactly the kind of fairy tale that we're talking about.
And the good and put that in quotation marks, heavy quotation marks, the good thing about this whole episode.
is it's reminding people that our tax dollars actually pay for a lot of essential things with people that do not touch our lives on a daily basis.
But you're sure as hell gonna miss them when they're not there anymore.
Whether it's time to sign up for certain benefits or programs, whether it's the people who, I don't know, forecast severe weather for our area, and so much more.
The medical researchers, the humanitarian aid, that's all been done.
And then, of course, the cuts that are coming to things like Medicaid.
Congressman Derek Van Orden and every Wisconsin Republican this week voted for a Republican budget proposal that would make tremendous cuts to Medicaid.
You know, the thing that they said they weren't going to cut while they were busy fighting inflation.
Well, yesterday, a whole lot of people gathered in Eau Claire hoping to talk to a staffer for Congressman Derek Van Orden.
The staffer's name is Brian Westrate.
And he's not just any staffer.
He's the former chair of the Eau Claire County Republican Party.
He's the former chair of the Third District Republican Party.
And now he's on the federal payroll as a staffer and had apparently agreed to meet some members of a group called Indivisible Chippewa Valley.
And they were going to meet at a conference room in the public library in Eau Claire.
The conference room holds 24 people and Westray apparently somehow found out that something like a hundred people had signed up to They were that they were interested in attending Westray canceled saying well, I don't want to disturb the library patrons Well about a hundred people showed up anyway, and then many of them went right down to van Orden's Eau Claire office Which is where Brian Westray was
and they handed over some notes and letters that they created up at the library talking about the impact of these cuts and that would be all fine and good except that then Van Orden's office put out a statement that talked about that the folks with Chippewa Valley Indivisible had engaged in unprofessional conduct that they were looking to ambush the congressmen and things like that.
Look if we're going to do another round of layoffs
Let's start with congressional staffers who can't handle a little bit of heat.
And I say that as a former lawmaker who has taken my share of heat.
If you can't stand the heat, not only get out of the library, get out of the federal payroll.
You're making these tremendous cuts to people's lives.
You can take some time and hear about them for a few minutes.
Keva Keel is next.
You're up
north.
All right, we continue getting back on track on this Friday morning with Courier Newsroom, senior political correspondent Kia Vakil.
Kia, how are you?
Hey Pat, I'm doing well.
How are you?
I'm all right.
It was really great to see you and the whole Courier Group in Arizona.
We're just in a different era now, so I'm in a work from home mode.
It feels like you got to get everybody under the same roof, not just for, you know, three-dimensional purposes, but, you know, there's something, it makes you feel like you're all back on the same team.
I mean, you always know who you are, but it's better when it's in person.
Yeah, I mean, for all the benefits of, you know, remote work and work from home, there is nothing like, you know, being around people in real life, you know, and so, you know.
I know you know we work with amazing people but to actually be around you know 60 some of them and get to talk to them and meet some of them for the first time in some cases it's you know it's it's a privilege and it's great and you know I wish it were possible to do
more often.
It's really enjoyable, but we did have business that we took care of and I wanted to touch on a little bit of that before we got to the week's headlines Because they are related now you actually were one of the moderators or leaders of one of our very last discussions together before we all parted ways and It's something we've talked here a bit about and we're gonna talk about it again and that is the difference between what Trump is doing
of substance and the stuff that Trump is doing as a distraction.
Now, you talked about it in the frame of, you know, how journalists should approach this and know the difference, but the same...
does have to be said for listeners readers and viewers everywhere of and you see it on social media people are they have such anxiety or such rage all the time and you're the you're the one preaching as much as anybody else that there is a balance to be found here
yeah i mean look we all live through the first trump administration the second one is already crazier than that there is no shortage of
News and outrage and horrible horrible things they're doing and it is too much for any of us to take in and Process you know in our brains and so some of what they're doing is like deeply genuinely harmful some of it is just stunts or trolling You know when you see them just you know post vile videos on the internet That are not actually you know advancing a harmful policy directly
you think about, is that something that is worth the limited resources and capacity as a reporter to cover or as an audience member to take in?
Is it worth being psychologically angry at a video that, you know, or is it worth actually paying attention to, say, cutting 800 billion dollars in Medicaid funding over the next decade, which will strip healthcare from millions of people, including pregnant moms, newborn babies, you know, there's a difference there.
And so,
It's really, really difficult because, you know, they flood the zone and they, you know, it's not all distraction.
It's not all outrage bait, but a lot of it is.
And under that is a real, you know, several things they're doing that are genuinely harmful.
And so the way I thought about it and talked about it is we should focus on the impacts and the outcomes, not on the process, not on, you know, chasing every single outrageous thing, not on debunking every single lie, because there's not enough journalists in the world to do all of that.
But we can go cover when a national park staffer is fired because of Elon Musk and Donald Trump.
We can go cover when a worker who inspects our food loses their job and there's a salmonella outbreak.
We can go cover when schools don't have the resources they need and parents can't get the support they need.
focusing on the actual impacts and the priorities that they're engaging in policy-wise, that's the job we should be doing.
And as an American, as a person living their day to day life, that's what I would hope people are able to focus on more.
And let's go back two steps then because we're talking about the impact and we should talk about the impact as much or more than the process of doing it.
But then the step before that is basically the question.
Why?
Why do they want to cut so much from Medicaid?
Why do they want to fire so many people?
And they say ostensibly it's, you know, waste, fraud, abuse, but that's not the actual answer.
And so the why they're doing the process that leads to the impact is what is
the Trump presidency in a nutshell.
And that's a great point.
Um, the why is because they want to cut taxes for billionaires and corporations and they need to somewhat fund that because they do have a, you know, batch of hard line conservatives who don't want to, you know, who only care about tax cuts and don't care about government services.
Um, and so Medicaid is the only thing they can really cut to fund it unless they want to cut defense, which they don't, unless they want to cut.
Social Security and Medicare, which they know is like the third rail of politics.
So Medicaid is the thing.
Republicans have never been known to particularly love government health care or poor people, frankly, to put it bluntly.
They don't care.
Even though a lot of the MAGA base are people who are working class, are below the poverty line.
What the actual presidency is, it's for the Silicon Valley, right?
It's for the culture war, right?
It's for big capital.
Those are the, if you look at the last month, those are the only people benefiting.
It's people like Elon Musk and Peter Thiel who want to gut state capacity and privatize everything.
We're already seeing headlines about SpaceX getting all sorts of government contracts now.
We're seeing Tesla was, you know, due for a huge one that then got canceled after it was reported on because it was so clearly corrupt.
And you're going to see more and more of that.
We're seeing
you know, weird surveillance firms like Palantir are going to get like Pentagon contracts to do surveillance.
And that's because they're just destroying public services and public capacity.
And that's just meant to make like six dudes from
You know the bay area richer while everyone else suffers
right and let let's let's also be clear at least my opinion here that There's a 1a and a 1b in terms of what is priority number one of this administration?
And for folks that say well, it's about shrinking government attacking government.
It's culture wars and all that I would argue
That's a very distant 1b.
It's used.
They're basically using those folks to justify 1a.
This really is all about making the super wealthy more wealthy and less accountable to everybody else, the government and regular taxpayers.
And that's why, you know, they're doing that.
But at the same time, they're also, you know, trying to essentially.
demonize every undocumented immigrant in this country and create vile ASMR videos about deportation flights and attack trans people left, right, and center.
There are not that many trans people in this country.
There are undocumented immigrants pay into social security.
They work.
These are not the problem in America.
And but if they do X, Y, and Z attacking these people every single day, they're hoping you don't notice when they destroy the government and privatize everything and give billionaires huge handouts.
And so that is that is the actual priority here.
And that's always been the priority of the Republican Party.
It's just, you know, now it's mixed with a lot more racism and hatred.
And that's where the
balance again, comes into play that they're not there specifically to persecute the transgender community.
They're not there to
close national parks or at least lead to delays and long lines.
But it is all part of a plan that again helps fund, you know, things for the super wealthy.
The most recent example that I just saw from National Public Radio on Thursday was that they
Trump's talking about replacing the EB-5 visa, which has a job creation requirement for foreign millionaires that want to live here with just a gold card, as Trump calls it.
A gold card and when asked, well, couldn't that just mean Russian oligarchs could move in to this country and get a gold card visa if they, you know, provide so much money?
I mean, Trump didn't even flinch like he's like, yeah, there's some very fine people out there.
That is what
Priority one is that leads to all these other terrible impacts
No, no, no.
It's just, I, it's just all, yeah, of, by and for the very wealthy.
But so now we, we, now that we know what they're all about and we get back to the impacts, again, they, they don't care one way or another about, you know, vaccines and things.
But if, if somebody like an RFK junior, you know, helps, again, shield them, they'll take the hit, which includes, by the way,
the first measles death in this country in over 10 years, a child in Texas.
And, you know, Robert Kennedy Jr.
wrongly said, well, you know, it's not unusual, you know, there are measles outbreaks and deaths, and he was just flat out wrong.
And that's, that's again, where we have to make sure people are aware, not just of the impact that a child died and more probably will.
but that there is a pandemic out there.
It is a pandemic of misinformation and it's going to start killing our kids, Kia.
You know, I'm very grateful to live in a time where vaccines are readily available and where things like polio and measles and tuberculosis are not common, you know, occurrences anymore.
It is
mind-boggling to me that we are in a place where we are going way backwards on this because, you know, a bunch of conspiracy theorists and liars and frauds are convincing millions of people to not vaccinate their children.
Kids are going to die.
And for a party that claims to care about families and wants to protect children, they don't do a single damn thing to do that.
So
where do we go from here in terms of the pandemic of misinformation and providing factual information on impacts?
And we talk repeatedly and we will in the next hour again about you know the media's responsibility, but let's stick to the politics of this and what what Democrats can do because already Republican members of Congress including here in Wisconsin are suddenly canceling the the town halls that they were hoping to have after the first wave of public opposition
Where's your thought on Democrats stepping into those red districts and saying, Hey, I'll listen to you.
I mean, any Democrat who cares and wants to actually fight back should be doing that.
They should be following Bernie Sanders' lead.
He's gone to Iowa and Nebraska and held, I can't remember the exact term, but something about fighting the oligarchy town halls that drew thousands of people.
Democrats should do that.
They should show up in red districts.
They should show up in their own districts.
They should do nationwide tours.
where they talk to communities affected by this.
They should not be scripted.
They should let people ask questions and they should highlight the misery that is being caused for millions of people by this administration.
And not even just necessarily in red districts, but
Frankly, in every media market that there should never be an opportunity where a media outlet has no choice but to simply play transcriptionist to a Republican member of Congress's talking point because there is no Democrat willing to talk.
You have to be willing to talk and get factual information.
And then the final point that you hit from the end of our retreat together was, okay, a lot of these things that Trump does are distractions, but
put those distractions to use and I've mentioned a couple of times his going to the Super Bowl and the Daytona 500 and people said oh how great that a president finally went well a president didn't go because they knew what a waste of taxpayer dollars it what how expensive that is for taxpayers for a guy that supposedly wants to get rid of government waste
using the money for the things they care about, which is tax cuts for the super, super rich.
And yeah, it's, you know, going to the Super Bowl, going to the Daytona 500.
I mean, Donald Trump doesn't want to actually be president.
He wants to win.
He wants to just have power and be famous and be, you know, the center of attention all the time.
He doesn't care about actual governing day to day, which is, you know, why you see,
you know,
say and if it invites scrutiny and that was the last note I had from you here if it invites scrutiny and I grant you all the golf trips during his first term didn't resonate with a lot of folks but I think if he keeps this up people are gonna now that all these people are being fired there's gonna be that scrutiny that is long overdue for the way that he has no respect for taxpayer dollars.
Yeah, I mean I think we're in a place where unfortunately a lot of bad things are gonna happen because of this administration and that's awful and Just they can completely control power in Washington.
There are some things Democrats can do to fight back They can but what they really need to do what reporters should do as reporters not as you know Pro-democrats as reporters is make sure audit like Americans know who is responsible for this and what they did and why and that's what we're doing at courier because
That's the only way that, you know, to use the phrase you use, pandemic of misinformation.
At this point, the only way I think that sort of stuff gets, we get past that is when, if when bad things happen, people actually know who did it.
Exactly.
Kia Vakil, senior political correspondent for Courier Newsroom.
Great to see you again.
Have a wonderful weekend, Kia.
You too, Pat.
Thanks.
We'll be back with more after this.
You're up north.
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.
That was quite the 70s intro there Wow Not exactly the theme that you heard on on TV itself, but there's the the single version of the loveboat theme by the late great Jack Jones
My mark that is my mistake buddy.
I thought that was the instead Jack Jones loveboat theme.
I figure that was where it was going
I know well, but here's the thing in the 70s and maybe the early 80s, too Some of these TV themes were like so iconic.
They
were released as singles and so they kind of had to
You know, add intros and jazz up the orchestration a little bit.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So anyway, the point being has nothing to do with Jack Jones, rest in peace.
But also the late great Gavin McLeod, who played Captain Steuben, was born this day in 1931, passed away in 2021.
And the thing is, I mean, yes, that was the role that made him truly famous, but he was famous long before then.
To me, he will always be the producer Murray Slaughter on the Murray
Tyler
Moore show.
Yep.
And the guy, I will always go, is that Norman Lear?
No, that's, that's Gavin McLeod.
Whoops, my bad.
Right.
He, and here's a guy who, I mean, as, as Murray, he was so sarcastic, you know, and he was just subversive and snarky.
And I didn't think he'd pull off being this lovable captain.
He did.
Oh, he was.
He
did
great.
Yep.
Yep.
Absolutely.
Gavin McLeod born this day in 1931.
The number one song this day.
How can it be?
How can it be this long ago?
21 years ago.
The number one song on this day in 2004 was by Usher, Ludacris and Lil Jon.
Yeah.
Okay.
All right.
Yes.
Anyway.
Yeah, that's the song.
Hey
Pat, Pat.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
On this day in 1983 was the final episode of MASH.
The episode was titled Goodbye Farewell and Amen airing on CBS.
It was a two and a half hour finale.
Listen to this statistic.
121.6 million viewers.
It remained the highest viewership of any TV broadcast until Super Bowl 44 in 2010.
It is now this episode is number 12 on the all-time viewership list.
The 11 above it are all Super Bowls.
That doesn't count.
That's it.
That's how big this was.
I mean, the next closest show on the list was the 1980 episode of Dallas when we learned who shot JR.
And the finale of Cheers wasn't too far behind that, but they paled in comparison to the MASH finale.
Wait, so the first 12 are all Super Bowls and then MASH?
the first
11, and then MASH is number 12.
I don't think that should count.
Well, and it doesn't if you do just the top TV shows.
Yeah.
But if you go by broadcasts, not only are you throwing the Super Bowls in there, but there's also a few other things in there like live news events that are in that list as well.
So it depends on how you parse
the list.
Man.
The number one song this day in 1970 was by Simon Agarfunkel.
If
this ain't
a turn around from Ludacris and little John and Usher.
But Bridge Over Troubled Water would be the number one song for six weeks, 55 years ago.
On this day in 2013, Pope Benedict resigned, the first pope to do so since the year 1415.
Wow.
On this day in 1983, U2 released their third album, War, which was their first to sell over a million copies in the US, including this single.
This is like a, this is my favorite U2 record.
Is it?
Yeah.
It's a top 10 for me.
I love this record from start to finish.
We mentioned earlier that Michael Jackson's thriller would be in today's history lesson because on this day in 1984,
It won eight Grammys, including Album of the Year, so more from that album coming up in a bit.
Cindy Wilson of the B-52s is 68 years old today.
This is the anniversary of the birth of the late Gilbert Godfrey Reed, born this day in 1955 and gone too soon three years ago.
Other birthdays today include Country singer Jason Aldeen is 48.
The lead singer of Train, Pat Monahan is 56 today.
And then one more song for you.
The number one song this week in 2009 was by Flo Rida and a then unknown singer named Kesha.
They both went on to make a few bucks after this.
Yeah, you know, just they did well for themselves.
Those kids, they got a little bit of
talent
there.
We did mention that today is National Pancake Day.
So go enjoy some flapjacks.
I know absolutely nobody who actually refers to them as flapjacks on first reference, but
no, no, it's still out there.
You say it as a joke.
I'll take some flapjacks.
You're like, you are from Merrill.
Stop talking like that.
This is National Science Day.
If it hasn't been canceled yet by Robert Kennedy or something like that.
Today is National Chocolate Souffle Day.
It's National Snowshoe Day, which really should have been earlier because the snow is just about gone here.
This is National Floral Design Day.
It's National Essay Day.
a little essay today and today is customized wheel and tire day something that I have never gotten into but again everybody's got their own hobbies
and
likes
yeah
you know but that that is not where I would put my time and attention no
you
can always tell when somebody has like okay you really wanted to work you wanted your tires to look just so
the moment by the moment it's like it's like oh your tire pressure is down I'm like what I paid how much for these
Yeah, thank you.
We're not gonna decorate it further.
Yeah coming up next our weekend review panel former U.S.
Attorney Jim Santel and Chicago veteran media figures Mark Jacob and broadcaster Joan Esposito Mark or Dan Schumacher as well here on Up North News Radio live from Lake Wissota on the civic media radio network back after news
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