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.
All across Wisconsin from Civic Media.
This is Up North News Radio.
Now, live from our Lake Wasota studio, here's the founding editor of Up North News, Pat Breitler.
Well, hey there, Wisconsin.
Good morning at 6.06 on this Thursday morning, March 20th, 2025.
And it's another beautiful morning to have you here up north, live from Lake Wasota all across the Civic Media Radio Network.
And whether you're listening...
on the app or watching us on social media or by podcast.
However you get us through the app, all of it's much appreciated.
Nice to have you here.
My question for you is this.
Do you have one of these yet?
He said pointing to his I voted sticker.
Yeah, early voting is underway and I did my part Yesterday heading up to the beautiful town hall here in Eagle Point in Chippewa County and filling out my absentee ballot in person sealing it up in the little envelope handing it back to my town clerk and it will be counted on Tuesday April 1st election day and you can do the same thing There is still time for early voting.
It's gonna run throughout next week as well, but in all cases you've got to
work with your local clerk because they control the hours and the access to in-person early absentee voting.
So head over to myvote.wi.gov to learn how to contact your clerk's office and get that ballot filled out.
Coming up on the program today, we'll be talking a lot about one of the races on the ballot and that would be for State Supreme Court.
Last night,
I was prompted to put that in my notes because of a story about Elon Musk giving donations to Republican members of Congress.
Not just any Republican members of Congress, but the ones who are most diabolical in doing the bidding of Elon Musk and his buddy Donald Trump in undermining the United States Constitution.
And tops on that list is Wisconsin's Derek Van Orden.
who got his 30 pieces of silver from Elon Musk, the world's richest man.
Elon Musk maxed out a donation to Congressman Van Orden for demanding and being the first in Congress to demand the impeachment of a federal judge.
So there was that for starters.
We'll say a little bit more about that coming up.
We'll talk to Joseph Pecky in a bit about Brad Schimmel.
back to the Supreme Court race here.
Brad Schimmel, oh, what did he do this time?
I've got two different things here.
One is he was rehashing the old trope about voting irregularities in Wisconsin's largest city.
So I was making note of that last night while watching the big Grand Ole Opry concert.
We'll talk about that in a sec.
But then this morning in the Journal Sentinel,
comes a lengthy new column from Dan Bice.
And it gets into a lot of detail about the many, many, many times that Brad Schimmel has not had the kindest things to say about women with whom he disagrees.
A little bit about a man or two that I can see, but for the most part, if you are a woman who is not of the far right wing,
You are, you are either dumb, you are imbalanced, you are not sophisticated, you are nuts.
We'll go through all the details on that.
So we've got a lot to say about the Brad Schimmel race for state Supreme Court, but Derek Van Orden also definitely falls into the crosshairs as well for what he's been trying to do to undermine the US Constitution.
We've got more as well.
We've got on this Thursday.
That means Luke Mathers will join us.
later on in the show.
And we will be joined by meteorologist Brittany Merlot to talk about the weather.
And oh, we have our state capital update as we often do on Thursdays at 730 with state Senator Jeff Smith and new state representative Vinnie Mares.
So we'll talk to them coming up in just a little bit.
But back to the weather.
Not a flake of snow here in Chippewa Falls, but the school district canceled classes yesterday.
having heard the local weather forecasts about just how bad things could be, and not a single snowflake fell.
All day long, the radar showed that it was, you know, that there was snow potentially out there, but it never hit the ground here because temperatures all day long were around 36, 37 degrees.
But the same cannot be said for folks south of us, folks south of us.
Uh, they got hit pretty hard.
Uh, let me, let me look at some of the snowfall totals here by and large in the five to nine inch range, uh, from lacrosse all the way up to privates.
Uh, you had lacrosse with eight and a half inches, Nielsville with nine inches, Warrens with nine inches.
And it was a very defined line on the snow.
Uh, one example would be on I 94 as you leave Eau Claire and head to Southeast.
You, uh, you get to Osio.
which is, you know, 20 miles down the road, and they got an inch and a half of snow.
You go just a little bit further down the road to Hickston, seven inches of snow there.
So, yeah, there was very, very, it was as predicted in that there was a belt of snow that got hit pretty hard.
but then for the rest of us either just some some rain, but certainly a lot of wind and it continues to be windy out there at the bus stop this morning.
It's 28 here on Lake Wissota, 23 in Hayward, 25 in Amory, 27 in Wausau, Wisconsin Rapids is at 26 across 28.
Green Bay 31, Madison 30, Milwaukee 33.
and at Radio Park in Racine, it's 34 degrees and I am led to understand that the snow is still falling, falling and falling in the greater Kenosha area, not far from where we find.
Mr. Bach, good morning.
That is correct.
There's little bits of flakes coming down right now, and we're seeing very, very little, just almost like the aftermath of a snowstorm.
But in Kenosha, when I woke up this morning, I got out of the car, cars were covered, snow was coming down pretty hard, but not sticking as much as it's just kind of a road hazard right now.
Yes, it is.
So folks continue to be very careful.
Again, I'm happy that we didn't have to deal with it here, but folks really got a got a final present on the final day of winter.
Happy first day of spring.
We made it.
I know it doesn't quite feel like it yet, but we made it to spring and and and the Brewer season opener is a week from today.
Oh,
baby, I love some baseball.
cannot wait.
Thank you, Gary, for the note on Facebook, getting back to the elections and early voting my vote dot wi.gov.
Again, my vote dot wi.gov to again, learn more from your local clerk about early voting.
And I do I love
early voting.
We went up there after Sherry was done with work.
We have just this beautiful town hall built in the the 1930s.
It was a WPA project back in the day.
You know, it's been a dance hall for
Oh, Lord only knows how many weddings over the years and other picnics and celebrations.
And it's just always it's nice to be in there.
You truly feel the whole civic duty thing when you're in there because our voting booths are just these little cardboard pieces of cardboard,
you know,
with the flag on them, you know, on three sides, go corrugated cardboard, and you just get your little marker and you fill it out on the card table there.
And it's it's as Norman Rockwell as it gets up here, you
know,
Do you?
Yes.
Oh, that was good.
I actually was going to say, it looks like you not only voted, but you also got yourself a haircut.
I did.
I did that.
And I also
cleared it out further.
I saw that.
I saw that
yesterday, but I couldn't interrupt you.
I'm like, oh, stuff's happening.
Yeah.
Stuff is happening.
Now, the beautiful bookshelves that are going to be behind me along this wall continue to sit at my feet in these
six very
heavy boxes from IKEA.
But we've now moved all the other stuff out of the way so that perhaps as early as this weekend, we can start to put that together and probably take video of it along the way just in case it becomes exhibit A in a divorce trial or something like that.
I'm sure we'll be fine.
It's been a while since we had to build furniture together.
When we were first married, our first entertainment center, and we built a couple of other small pieces along the way where we realized that that's really not the team building exercise that we excel at the most.
Ours is more like our team building exercises.
Puttering up river on a pontoon.
That's really good at that Perfect my way to know your strengths.
Yeah, my wife invested a long time ago in these DVD like cabinets like or Nate
they
weren't just like small and cheap they were something and I'm the guy who put stuff together and I try to do it.
It took me seven hours
and then she tried and it didn't look good and then she put one on her own and it didn't look good and so finally it was just at the pandemic when lockdown happened me and her brother who was living with us for a few weeks we put one together and it looked beautiful like oh this was definitely something that needed two people
Yes.
Yeah.
Uh, there's very little that you should be doing yourself and this kind of thing.
So that's where again, the team building comes into play and it turns out my, my bigger challenge may actually be the thing you can see behind me.
There's a chair rail running along the middle of the wall.
Oh, you can get rid of that.
And if I, well, if I want to anchor it the shelves to the wall, then I'm, I have to decide either to remove part of the rail, but not all of it because then you got this little.
dead space in the wall where the shelves aren't, or leave the chair rail there and secure the shelves with a longer bracket.
And I don't know if that's a thing or not, but I may have to find out.
Yeah, well, we will more great tales of HGTV radio to come in the days ahead.
I did watch the first two hours of the three hour live celebration of the Grand Ole Opry's 100th birthday, which was really nice.
And again, I again, I'm not the world's biggest country music fan.
There's a lot that I like.
I'm just I don't listen to it constantly.
And there are there are things I don't like that.
would get some country music fans mad at me.
For example, there was a lot to be said about honoring George Strait.
I happen to think George Strait.
Oh, you gasped.
Go ahead.
Say your words.
Look at that.
He's carrying me to say the words.
Yeah.
George Strait.
Boring.
Boring.
Well, folks, that was fun.
Up North News Radio is concluding
its broadcasting.
I've been canceled.
I've been canceled.
Look, I love Amarillo by morning.
But I don't know that I've really liked anything else.
But let's get to the happy, not the happy part, the I'm not crying.
He's not even a member.
That's
the weird thing.
Sorry.
That
says something.
OK, the I'm not crying, your crying moment was with Randy Travis, who has been racked with a stroke that he's been dealing with for 10 years.
Carrie Underwood was singing his big hit forever and ever and ever and ever and ever and ever.
And she gets up to the audience just in time for him to struggle to get out the.
Amen.
Not a dry eye.
Not a dry eyes.
He sang that last note.
It was a really beautiful moment in a really nice show.
When we come back, we'll unpack some of the news about Brad Schimmel, Derek Van Orden and more, wherever you're listening across Wisconsin on this Thursday morning when you're here, you're up north.
We'll be right back.
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.
Jerry Reed's birthday today.
We'll talk about that in today's history lesson We need more funny songs like we need more funny story songs.
Oh, yeah, what Jerry Reed used to do Jim Stafford Roger Roger
Oh God was his last name King of the road Roger not Nelson Roger
Miller
Roger Miller I Little Jimmy Dickens and do you know who does really well who has really good funny songs Brad Paisley?
He always has
a solid
two on there.
They're not like as, they're not as, as over the top as they used to be, but they definitely have funny themes and jokes in there.
And it's, he keeps that, that old style alive.
Oh, I like that.
Yeah.
Okay.
That, that is good to know.
Tony, weird Al Yankovic, you know, what about him?
Those are, those are story songs.
Oh, oh, yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah, that's true.
I get or or maybe that's his way of saying maybe maybe I would like George Strait more if I listen to the Weird Al version of it.
I don't know.
I don't
think I don't think he's ever covered George Strait.
No, you know why?
Why
the songs are the songs are boring.
You know, we're turning our attention to the news now at 623.
I'm helpless.
I admit it.
I'm just helpless.
That's a guy's book song.
No, that's shameless and it was really Joel and I know that see all right in the journal Sentinel this morning new story from Dan Bice and Joseph Ecke you'll hear from him in just a bit We always record our interviews late on Wednesdays and so this this part will be new and then we'll get into Brad Schimmel talking about you know So-called irregularities in Milwaukee voting coming up in about 10 minutes, but Dan Bice has
collected some of his greatest hits, Brad Schimmels, of attacking the four liberal justices on the Supreme Court and others as well.
Let's see, there was the Save America rally in Hubertus last August, where Schimmel referred to Janet Protasewitz as the least sophisticated justice and dumb as a sack of hammers.
There was, um, him saying that proto, proto say which lies so often that if life were fair, her pants would literally be on fire.
He described justice Jill Karofsky as addled and crazy and said she is clearly angry about something.
That's really the kind of thing you want to say about women with whom you disagree.
He referred to, uh, Rebecca Dalit and Walsh Bradley.
Karofsky and Prosewitz as partisan hacks.
He's called them nuts.
He said that they were driven by their emotions and on the brink of losing it.
Now, it isn't just as Dan Beis says here.
He doesn't reserve all of his criticism just for the women folk, end quote.
He called conservative justice Brian Hagridorn soft-headed.
for occasionally voting with the liberals on some issues where, again, he has the audacity to try to rule in terms of the law rather than what party bosses might want him to do.
Schimmel declined to answer questions from the Journal Sentinel on Tuesday after his Milwaukee rotary appearance.
He later went on to have a spokesperson say, well, he's not looking to win a popularity contest with the current majority.
And the BICE column goes on to list more details about the kinds of things that Brad Schimmel has said about being
dumb, being crazy, being angry, losing control of their emotions.
He accused Karofsky of yelling at the top of her lungs during one case.
Everybody's looked back at the video of the case, and she's not yelling at the top of her lungs, but clearly Brad Schimel must think that's the case when it's a woman that he disagrees with.
Again, this is talking about people that, okay, you disagree with them, but they are
ruling on the law as they see it.
And that takes us to the federal judges that have to deal with President Donald Trump and Elon Musk and what he's trying to do.
And when Trump doesn't like how a judge rules, he would criticize the judge.
He would lob personal criticisms at the judge.
He now calls for their impeachments.
and now many of those judges have concerns about their personal safety.
Well, a lot of this was started in part by the Congressman from Western Wisconsin, Derek Van Orden, who was the first sitting member who called for the impeachment of federal judge Paul Engelmayer of New York.
What's the crime that Van Orden deems to be worthy of impeachment?
Having the temerity to insist that presidents have to follow the rule of law like the rest of us Van Orden tweeted in on February 20th, quote, the time for judicial activism is over.
The American people gave Donald Trump a mandate and no politician disguised as a jurist will interfere with it.
Englemare's so-called judicial activism was to say, Elon Musk and his minions who are not government employees.
were to be not allowed access to the database of the United States Treasury, which processes trillions of dollars in payments every year.
Van Orden's unique in being the first, but since then other members of Congress have followed in calling for the impeachment of federal judges who dare disagree with Donald Trump.
So Van Orden is unique in his betrayal of the Constitution.
believing that the president of his party can be above the law and have access to private data that can affect you, your business, your community.
Just imagine Derek Van Orden's reaction if President Biden were to bring in a team of Silicon Valley data specialists and they were going to bring quote unquote efficiency to that same Treasury database.
Van Orden wouldn't be able to get to a TV camera fast enough to demand Biden's impeachment.
He would demand Biden's indictment.
And knowing Derek Van Orden, he would probably be demanding Biden's execution.
That's what makes Derek Van Orden an embarrassment, or to use the term that he's fond of, a clown.
Donald Trump this week called for the impeachment of another judge who tried to halt his most recent batch of illegal deportations.
and it has ramped up concerns among all judges for their safety.
Elon Musk has took note, taken note of this.
Elon Musk has now given the maximum allowable campaign donation to Derek Van Orden and other Republican members of Congress who called for the impeachment of judges.
So congratulations, Derek Van Orden.
You have received your 30 pieces of silver for betrayal to a Constitution that you had sworn an oath.
to upheld.
Uphold.
Joseph Pecky's next.
You're up north.
Welcome
back on this Thursday morning.
Time to talk to Joseph Pecky on this
First day of the, uh, the NTAA men's college basketball tournament and it is the first day.
Don't talk to me about the play in games.
This is, this is it.
This is when it starts.
This is when the brackets really matter is what I'd say.
If I'd filled out brackets and, and if Joe had filled out brackets, how are you feeling about the badgers and, and Marquette?
I think they both have the capacity to make very deep runs.
and they could be out by the first weekend.
And that's both the blessing and the curse of college basketball these days.
The reality is that the transfer portal and NILs have just like they have impacted the college football game, they have impacted the college basketball game.
When Wisconsin is playing their best, they can beat anybody in the country.
When the shots aren't fallen,
they can end up in a rock fight like they did in the Big Ten Championship game against Michigan.
So that's the fun of it.
And
this has
been Bracketology with Joseph Becky.
That's the extent of sports talk for today.
Because otherwise, you know, where we start, we start with the state Supreme Court race.
And I appreciate the diversion before we get into asking ourselves why, why would Supreme Court candidate Brad Schimmel still be raising the trope about how Milwaukee counts its ballots?
Is this is this a dog that still hunts apparently?
I don't know.
But God, is it embarrassing?
Brad Schimmel knows better.
Brad Schimmel is not an idiot.
OK, he he's wrong about a lot of things.
He doesn't share my views of the world in many ways.
But he is not a dumb man.
This is dumb.
To say well, oh, yeah, yeah, of course.
I'll accept the results of the election so long
as
there's no funny business in Milwaukee And then what they always go to is the late-night ballot times boy Scott Walker was looking pretty good in 2018 boy Eric Hovde was looking pretty good in 2024 This is nonsense for two reasons number one.
It's called math Every single person who works in Republican politics knows it's math.
It's why
Joe Hendrick up in Managua was able to say at 9.30, 10 o'clock on election night, Eric Havde is in trouble.
He doesn't have a big enough lead everywhere else to make up for what's gonna happen in Milwaukee.
That's part one.
Part two is the reason that those Milwaukee returns are reported late is because Republican legislators
refuse to update the ballot processing rules.
Right now, city officials, election workers cannot do anything with early in-person or mail-in absentee ballots before 7 a.m.
on election day.
They don't have enough bodies to process them in one day.
It takes time.
There has been a bill, a bipartisan bill.
that Governor Evers would sign in a heartbeat.
I believe it passed one chamber of the legislature, but the other one refused to bring it up for a vote.
The ballot dump issue is a Republican creation so that they can undermine confidence in our democracy.
That is what's happening here.
And Big Lie Brad jumping on the bandwagon with this BS.
Oh wait, those are his initials.
Isn't that weird?
It's BS, Brad.
Knock it
off.
Yes.
And by the way, yes, it was the state Senate that let that bill die.
And why did they let it die?
They let it die so that somebody like Brad Schimel could say exactly what he said this week to cast doubt on the process and for people to look at big bad Milwaukee.
because we won't help big bad Milwaukee count its votes.
It allows the trope to continue.
And so he has earned everybody of ridicule that he gets for this.
Yeah, or it's it is politically juvenile.
It borders on political malpractice that if he has a campaign manager would let him even talk like that.
It's only going to appeal to the people who are going to vote for him anyway.
Yeah, it's just it's so stupid.
It's like a high school team that has a go-to chant, right?
It's just like it's what you say if you're a Republican, but that doesn't mean it's not nonsense.
It is nonsense.
Yeah, but part of the
another feature of the race, which arguably is worse than the candidate, you know, spouting this kind of BS, is the misleading ads that are coming from a Shimmel ally, in this case one Elon Musk, who along with the
It's got to be approaching $15 million by now.
And some of that money is going for ads that, you know, are under the guise of being pro Susan Crawford ads.
But, you know, then what tag her is so extreme, you know, that it's actually an ad against her.
Even the Journal Sentinel editorial board took a position on this.
I really think it's generous of you that you referred to Elon Musk as a supporter of Brad Schimel.
He's Brad Schimel's sugar daddy.
Brad Schimmel was desperate for outside support and begged outside groups to come in and support him.
Well, Tesla went to court and sued the state of Wisconsin.
And two days later, Elon Musk opened up the wallet.
I've been doing this for a long time, working with reporters in the media.
The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel editorial board is not what it used to be.
It used to be a body that would like
interview candidates and make recommendations.
That's no longer a thing they do.
They would weigh in all the time on stuff.
They very rarely weigh in in the way that they did yesterday.
But I just want to read some of this.
The headline, Elon Musk's despicable disinformation tampers with Wisconsin Supreme Court election.
That is coming out hot.
And it is appropriate.
But it's like pretty surprising that they're doing this.
Elon Musk is paying for a group called Progress 2028 that is falsely presenting itself as a progressive liberal organization and saying that Susan Crawford supports things she has never talked about.
Spending millions of dollars to make people mad about Susan Crawford and it's all a lie.
It is a lie.
And the idea that we're going to let this billionaire come in here as he's supposed to be busy disemboweling the federal government and buy a Supreme Court seat without right lies is shameful.
This has got to stop.
And the only way it stops is if we the people rise up and defeat Brad Schimmel by a healthy margin.
on April 1st.
PSA, you can early vote in person today and tomorrow and next week.
Go cast your vote.
Get that vote in.
And by the way, it is something that you said last week about how the Supreme Court election has become a referendum on the president and on Elon Musk.
That is not just a Joseph Pecky point of view.
That is not just a left of center point of view.
One Donald Trump Jr.
Well, I visited Wisconsin recently and also framed the election as a referendum.
So folks don't feel like, you know, there's anything unseemly about keeping in mind in the voting booth whether you think this is the right track to be on or not because even Don Jr.
says, yep, go ahead, say what you think of my daddy.
I feel
a little attacked like you're equating me with Don Jr.
and I just want to make clear, I said it first.
Don Jr.
may be following my lead.
Yes, the Wisconsin State Supreme Court race is a referendum on the presidency of the Mad King Donald Trump and his Elon Musk doge bags.
merry band of minions firing tens of thousands of veterans crashing the stock market igniting trade wars and uncertainty killing your 401k.
If you are upset about any of that, whether you voted for Donald Trump or not, the clearest way to send a message to Washington and to Mr. Trump and Mr. Musk is to vote for Susan Crawford.
Full stop.
By the way, if you're inclined to vote that way, but you're still just not sure if you're going to early vote to show up on April 1st.
Let me make clear.
Every Trump supporting voter is showing up on April 1st or early.
There's nobody, there's nobody that is on the side of what Elon Musk is doing who says, I might sit this one out.
So, you know, complete, be complacent at your own peril, literally your own peril, economic and other words.
We're the first people in the country.
who get to vote in a statewide election.
That matters.
People are going to watch that.
It would be one thing if that was the case in like Indiana, which is not a state where you can say, as goes Indiana, so goes the nation.
Here in Wisconsin,
as goes Wisconsin, so goes the nation.
We are the tipping point state.
We were the closest state in 2024.
We can send a message.
We got to show up.
We got to show out.
We got to support Susan Crawford.
Maybe we make it a referendum on Ron Johnson as well.
I don't know how he missed this last week, but as I was looking back at headlines late last week, Ron Johnson said the VA isn't in trouble with all these cuts.
He says the VA might have been overfunded.
So there's what Ron Johnson thinks of veterans health care is, you know, you guys are the bloat in the waste.
I don't think a lot of vets would take kindly to that.
I don't know what the wait time is at the VA.
but it's not good.
It is usually in the months that it takes to get an appointment.
And the notion that the most powerful country in the world who owes what we owe to the men and women who wear our country's uniform and put their lives on the line for us, that they can't get medical care when they need it, that they can't get mental health support when they need it.
They gotta wait months.
And Senator Johnson has the audacity to say, what are you talking about?
They're all fat and happy over at the VA.
There's probably too many people.
You would laugh at it if it wasn't so deeply insulting to those who have served and their families because Republicans like Ron Johnson love to wrap their arms around veterans when it's convenient and when they want to feel patriotic.
but when they actually want to make good on the debt we owe people, they're unwilling to pay it.
And that is infuriating.
And by the way, I will have more to say about this in the next segment in today's history lesson where we talk a bit about the anniversary of the Iraq war and the folks who were wounded there.
So stick around for that.
So that was Ron Johnson.
Tammy Baldwin on the other hand is busy warning that the potential for Medicaid cuts is real.
Again, for all the times that Democrats tried to tell people they're coming for your healthcare,
And people said, I don't know about that.
Well, between the VA and Medicaid, it's pretty darn real, Joe.
I'm going to see Senator Baldwin in a couple of hours, actually, at one of her hands-off Medicaid events.
She's all over the state this week, Northwest, Southeast, everywhere in between, listening to folks who benefit from Medicaid, who work for a living, who are able to live a life
of work and dignity and fulfillment because of Medicaid.
She's going to be talking with some folks, all kinds of stories, people whose children can't get all of the support they need through employer sponsored coverage, people who have some mobility challenges, and some of the chairs that they need allow them to leave the house and go work a full-time job, including us like civil engineers.
Medicaid is a lifeline for more than a million Wisconsinites.
and to my Republican friends, Medicaid also supports 30,000 businesses across Wisconsin.
That's how many businesses bill Medicaid each year.
If they take the wrecking ball to Medicaid in the way that they are suggesting they will, it will have a devastating effect on families, it will make everyone else pay more for healthcare,
and it will cripple Wisconsin businesses and the people who work at those businesses.
This does not make sense.
It is not the right move.
Even if it wasn't to pay for tax cuts for rich guys and corporations, Elon Musk doesn't need another tax cut.
But people who rely on Medicaid, they need that support.
Because if the dollars go away, it doesn't mean the needs go away.
It just means the rest of us are going to end up paying even more for it.
That's bad policy and it's terrible politics.
And I'm jumping a couple of moves ahead on the chessboard here, but it does remind me that when these things inevitably happen, we're going to be told, oh, but we're going to put money in a health savings account for you and you'll have the power to go get your health care wherever you want.
Uh, we're going to radio is not
a meat.
Radio is not a medium where everybody can hear my eyes rolling out of my head, but they
did.
Nope.
But that, but that's the preview of what we'll be talking about in the not too distant future.
Joseph, Becky, thank you so much.
Enjoy the games this weekend and we'll, and, uh, oh, you're, you're off next week.
Enjoy a little time off and we'll talk to you in two weeks.
We'll see if they let me back in the country.
Uh, let's see if they do.
All right.
We will learn today's history lesson.
Talk about that anniversary of the Iraq war and, uh, have a bit of a birthday greeting to the Republican party and what happened in Ripon, Wisconsin on this day, all those years ago.
Coming up
next.
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.
Hi, neighbor.
Hi, neighbor.
It's time for today's history lesson.
Hey, not so loud.
I'm sorry, that wasn't very neighborly of me, but the guy next door.
Sorry, Pat.
It changes his shoes when he comes in.
I don't know.
Fred Rogers was born 97 years ago today.
Can't believe he's been gone for what, 22 years now.
Fred Rogers born this day in 1928 of Mr. Rogers' neighborhood.
How I like that show as a kid how I
love
that show
now.
Yeah Let's see.
There's there's a birthday today that I have to make special mention of this and that would be my former co-anchor at WEAU TV 13 That would be Judy Clark has a birthday today.
So she knows that and she was recently named a Legend a local legend by the Wisconsin Broadcasters Association.
So happy birthday Judy
Love you, love the fact that for the next hundred days or so, you're older than me.
I remember that every year.
Another birthday, let's see, Jerry Reed.
He was born Jerry Reed Hubbard in Atlanta this day in 1937.
Oh, yeah.
Yep.
Petui!
Jerry Reed, 1937 to 2008.
And who doesn't miss a good Bert Reynolds car chase truck driving movie?
My dad loved Jerry Reed, and he was a truck driver.
So this, yeah.
Yep.
Perfect.
On this day in 1916, Albert Einstein published his general theory of relativity.
Podcasters immediately said it was fake news and junk science back then.
On this day in 1971, the number one song was by Janice Joplin.
Sadly,
Janice Joplin's number one hit came nearly six months after her passing this day in 1971.
On this day in 1985, Canadian paraplegic athlete and humanitarian Rick Hansen began a circumnavigation of the globe in a wheelchair in the name of spinal cord injury medical research.
It inspired a song that was performed by John Parr.
God, so 80s!
That was John Parr saying it.
David Foster wrote it, and it was, of course, used most famously in the movie, St.
Elmo's Fire.
On this day in 1990, Sinead O'Connor released her second album, I Do Not Want What I Haven't Got, with a single written by Prince.
Nothing compares to you that would propel her to stardom.
On this day in 2020,
The weekend released the album After Hours, it would go to number one and this single off the album would become one of the most streamed songs of the year.
When I was doing my recordings this morning, this song on YouTube has 740 million views.
Well, remember that was a COVID year.
We were all inside and getting whatever little entertainment we could.
And internet streaming was big at that point.
Tony and Ashland writes on YouTube about Chris Hansen, the paraplegic going around the wheelchair in a globe.
He did that and caught all those predators.
What a busy guy.
No, Tony, different.
Different one.
Anyway, on the National Day calendar today, first day of spring.
Spring equinox, everybody.
It's today.
It's tomorrow.
It's today.
It is today.
And it's also why today is International Day of Happiness.
We've made it through winter.
There's a lot on the calendar today.
There is, it's National Proposal Day.
Wouldn't that be Valentine's Day?
Anyway, National Ravioli Day, Astrology Day, Bibliomania Day, meaning
You don't just love books.
You love books.
This is National Bach Beer Day.
This is National Storytelling Day and National Oral Health Day.
That and much more.
Mr. Mathers writes on the text line, my niece probably accounted for 100,000 of those streams of blinding lights on the interwebs.
It's a good song.
It was.
It was a very popular one back in the day.
All right, I've got a couple of serious history notes to talk about here.
It was on this day in 2003 that the United States and allies began an invasion of Iraq based on flimsy or flawed intelligence about weapons of mass destruction.
Hundreds of thousands in Iraq died, as did more than 4,500 US troops.
Tens of thousands more were wounded with impacts that affect them to this day.
They were lie.
on a promise to care for them through the VA Health Center.
And as Alicia, who's a veteran, notes, Joseph Peckie is right.
The wait time at the VA is months.
People calling into the crisis lines are put on hold.
Veterans who are suicidal are put on hold because of cutbacks at the VA.
That is breaking a promise that was made to those who took part in the Iraq war and more.
Coincidentally, happy birthday to what is left of the Republican Party born this day in Ripon, Wisconsin in 1854.
Once representing the moral high road of American politics for its origins as an anti-slavery party, the GOP took increasingly sharp right turns in 1964, again in 1980, again in 1994, again in 2016, and again in 2024.
Now, both the Republican and Democratic parties are unrecognizable from their original forms.
One for the better, while one has very nearly traded places with its original foes who would rather risk civil war than give up their extremism.
So here's a birthday toast to the Republican Party and the hope that people who are on the center right, but closer to the center, can once again help their party find its way home.
Much more in the second hour of Up North News Radio after this on the Civic Media Radio Network.
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.
