Another Farm Bailout or Another Stiff Arm? (Hour 1)

Wisconsin from Civic Media.

This is Up North News Radio.

Now, live from our Lake Mesota studio, here's the founding editor of Up North News, Pat Breitler.

Well, hey there Wisconsin.

Good morning.

It is 6 0 6 on this Tuesday morning, April 8th.

2025.

Another beautiful day to have you here up north.

Metaphorically, because the lake was so the studio is on location this week from out here in the mountain west, but we are very happy to have you here for more ever you're tuning in across the civic media radio network or listening on the civic media app.

Catching us later on by podcast.

Maybe you're watching us on YouTube or Facebook.

We appreciate you getting your day started right here.

I got a question for you.

How did you wind up in your office bracket pool?

Yeah, would I even be asking you that question if not for the fact that the courier newsroom bracket pool winner, the winner was a team called the picks from up north.

Yeah, this guy, this guy won the brackets.

I filled out those brackets with absolutely no homework and in about 60 seconds, when I realized the deadline was coming up and I'm like, hmm, I suppose I should enter this or I should pick some games.

So I'm not going to say it was random.

I mean, I at least got a little bit through osmosis here, but somehow managed to win.

But there's something it doesn't feel quite right.

because the person that came in second place, somewhere in the middle of the tournament, left for another job.

So there was no trash talking with this person as we were tied heading into the final game here.

And I won on a tiebreaker of what the final score was going to be.

Florida is your national champion, by the way.

And in doing so, I guess, a pretty exciting end to the game with Houston.

Houston had a chance to go for the shot to tie or win the game.

The player with the ball realized that he had taken an extra step and dropped the ball.

He couldn't go get the ball or he would have been called for traveling and no other Houston player could get close to it to make a shot.

And so Florida ended up winning the game.

So that wraps it up for the college men's basketball season.

But yes, Alicia, I will absolutely take it.

Winner, winner, chicken dinner.

Indeed and she also says a good morning got to see the beginnings of sunrise at 5 a.m.

We are getting close to 4 a.m.

Sunrises hooray More or less, you know, that's why I like daylight savings times like I don't want the sun up at 4 4 30 in the morning 5 30 suns up.

Okay, I can I can definitely live with that But here's here's the problem

it's still so cold and now granted again i'm not back home right now i'm at a place where it's 45 degrees but back in lake wasota it's 17 right now hayward's at 12 degrees hayward i'm sorry amary at 19 wasa was at 19 right now wisconsin rapids 15 degrees lacrosse is at 24 so is green bay madison 19

And in the Milwaukee area, it's 23 at Mitchell and 25 at Radio Park, where we bring in one Greg Bach, who I would, I would, I would dare guess is, uh, yep, there he is in that long sleeve hoodie.

It ain't summer yet.

I'm always wearing a hoodie.

It's

chilly, but Pat, I'm telling you right now, and this is not a smart thing to do.

I refused to wear a jacket because I refused to accept it.

April can be this cold.

I don't like it.

So I wear a hoodie just to cover my sweet arms, but I won't go further.

I will not.

Uh, there, there is definitely a sense of seasonal denial when the temperature just refuses to get normal in the springtime.

And we will talk to meteorologist Brittany Merleau about that in just a bit.

This is normally the part where in a morning radio show, I would say something like, Hey, Greg, did you see that basketball game?

How about those brackets?

And, uh, I didn't.

The VRBO I'm at doesn't even have live TV.

I can stream all this stuff, Netflix and you know, Prime and Apple, but no live channels.

No sports and no, and there was no brewers game yesterday either.

So I've got, I've got zero sports to, to share as water cooler talk to get the day going.

So

I, I,

I fall back on the weather.

Hey, cold enough for you Greg.

Oh God.

I could have just called you mentally.

Hey Pat.

So they're dribbling the ball down the court and then the guy passed it to another guy and that guy's, I like his shoes.

That's the basket.

And boom goes the dynamite.

Boom goes the dynamite.

Oh boy.

I love that.

So yeah, it's it's it's something where I again, I love Wisconsin, but man, the cold in the wintertime is just not

or cold in the springtime.

I'm sorry.

It's just not working out for me.

Brittany's statewide forecast says, after a kick of winter wind and a few flurries yesterday, now we start the climb into the warmer weekend.

I would add parenthetically, not yet.

Not this hour.

But there is a chance of rain and snow mixed in between.

Here's her state forecast for today, mostly sunny and calm.

Highs in the upper 30s.

up north to the mid 40s in the western and southern parts of the state with a northwest wind at 5 to 10 miles an hour.

For tonight, increasing clouds, lows in the mid 20s up north, upper 20s south, and a light breeze out of the southwest.

And again, she'll have more details on the forecast coming up in just a little bit.

The brewers, as I mentioned, were off.

They are starting a Western swing, first through Colorado, and then through Arizona.

And the Milwaukee Bucks, they are back in action tonight.

They will be taking on the Minnesota Timberwolves as they come to the end of their regular season coming up next weekend.

That'll be the case.

But back to that brewer game for a moment.

At Colorado, that series begins this evening.

Then you can hear coverage on several civic media stations starting at 7.05 this evening, including WRC and Richland Center along the stations in Oshkosh, Racine, Kenosha Park Falls and Hayward, all part of the, at least the boys of summer are playing.

I can't, you know what, Greg, I should have even looked at what the, what the temperature in Denver is where they're going to be playing the game.

Although chances, chances are that

Uh, sometimes Denver is actually warmer than Wisconsin is at the time of year.

So, so maybe it won't be, um, definitely won't be a blizzard.

I hope Alicia says, definitely not a cold person.

I had to wear my car hearts again today.

Yeah.

I got my car.

I was hanging up there, Alicia.

I won't do it.

I won't do it.

I know they're up north further than me and it's a lot colder than, than where I'm at, but still it's just like, it's a principal thing for me.

And that principle leads me to getting the flu then and everyone's like, Yeah, where did that get you?

Right?

I want to see the Wisconsin statistics on like hypothermia.

It's like, you'd think it would be December, January.

And they're like, No, we actually have a lot of people in April, they're just too stubborn to jacket on.

And then we lose them that way as well.

Gosh, so I also wanted to

Make note here that we have some guests that we haven't talked about yet.

Sherida Booker is going to be coming up in just a little bit.

We'll be talking about some of the more popular posts of the past week.

Oh, Mr. Mathers on the text line.

Thank you.

Denver, high today of 72 and a low of 43.

Mr. Mathers, he's

full service.

You know, when you talk to Mr. Mathers and you get information, it's just like the more you know.

Wait, this works for Alicia's comment too.

Alicia puts on YouTube.

I would rather be hot than cold.

See?

It works.

It's a very universal

thing.

I think we just have a segment called, well, so we don't get, we call something else the more you know it, more information.

I won't get sued by NBC, but just a series of live stream comments and then just, especially if there are trolls.

Oh, yeah.

Oh, we could, we could most definitely have a lot of fun with that for sure.

All right.

So I mentioned Sharita Booker is going to be here with some of the popular posts of the of the past week.

Christina Laurie is off this week.

And so that's when we'll get into some of the other news of the day, including three different stories that I'm going to be talking about when it comes to the rule of law.

Which is like this boring sounding concept, you know, we should be able to take for granted the fact that we are a government of laws and that we are We elect our leaders and our leaders adhere to the law But we have had these cases lately and not so lately that offer up that reminder to never take the rule of law for granted So we're gonna talk about oh our old friend Michael Gabelman

You remember Michael Gabelman, don't you, the former state Supreme

Court Justice?

Yeah, we at least reference him frequently on our show because

he had that interesting, shall we say, quote unquote investigation into the 2020 election and he's going to lose his law license.

for a while or suspended.

Yeah, so we're going to have details on how he finally that disregard for the aforementioned rule of law is finally going to catch up with him.

We are also going to be talking about a case out of North Carolina, but it involves the state Supreme Court election, something that we just dealt with here.

And how in that state, it's it's on hold for the moment.

But it's still possible.

that 65,000 voters will have their votes put in the shredder basically because of partisan decisions by courts there about their state Supreme Court election which was back in November and still isn't resolved yet.

It's the last November election that is still up in the air.

And we will talk about another

topic that we've discussed before.

And that is a Wisconsin bride who returning from her honeymoon was taken into custody because she had overstayed her visa back during COVID.

She was doing all the right things to become a citizen.

But instead, like, like so many of those other terrible gang members that they're, you know, rounding up right now, apparently, she must have been one of them because they put her in detention.

No court hearing or anything like that for six weeks and now seven weeks later She's finally back home and her her husband from the they'd met while working in Wisconsin Dells and had said You know that he voted for Trump and he he kind of understood what Trump was trying to get done But he kind of blamed ice for you know rounding up these folks who clearly are not any kind of a danger

But that's the whole mode of what's happening right now.

We found out late last night that a whole lot of University of Wisconsin students, you know, what we would call foreign exchange students, students here on visas, they have had those visas immediately suspended.

13 of them at UW Madison, part of at least 150 nationwide, who again, were abiding by the law.

doing the right thing, jumped through all the right hoops, did all the right paperwork, here to study, to learn about the wonderful things about America and take it home.

One of our best exports was the rule of law, a smooth functioning democracy, not a perfect one, but a whole lot better than in a lot of other countries.

But above all that respect for the rule of law.

And now they're being kicked out, other innocent people are being rounded up, essentially kidnapped or disappeared, and sold to, you know, a torture prison in El Salvador.

There's nothing a rule of law about that.

So we're going to talk about those three different things as it pertains to the rule of law coming up a little bit later.

But coming up next, Sharita Booker is going to talk to us about some popular social media posts, including an ice cream flavor, you're going to want to make sure to not ever try.

This is Up North News Radio on the Civic Media Radio Network.

A

little bit of Julian Lennon who has birthday today.

I'll have that and more of today's history lesson coming up in about 30 minutes.

It's time to visit with Shariah Booker, our social media manager, to see what folks are commenting on in all the places where you can find up north news posts on

Facebook and Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, you name it.

So Sharita, hi.

How are you?

Good.

How are you?

Very good.

Thanks.

Let's take a look at what was popular last week.

It was not all election related, even though that was like the big news story of last week.

But we will start with one election story, a local election story that I'm sure caught some folks for, you know, it's unique status in this one local election in Western Wisconsin.

Tell us all about it.

And history was made.

Shondelle Washington Spivey was elected as the first black and first openly LGBTQ plus mayor of La Crosse.

Shondelle is also the co-founder and executive director of the nonprofit Black Leaders Acquiring Collective Knowledge, and he previously served on the La Crosse School Board.

That post had more than 3,000 likes on Facebook, and Kathleen Conway said, I don't know about others, but as the native of La Crosse, this has me smiling from ear to ear between his win.

Crawford-Twin and Cory Booker's filibuster, I am fired up and ready to go.

And Susan Bray Henning said, congratulations, another step in the right direction.

Wisconsin, let's lead the country back to democracy.

There you go.

And yes, from a purely political standpoint, there were a lot of folks still crushed from last November, who really needed a week like last week with Senator Cory Booker making that 25 hour speech offered and now the new mayor of La Crosse who is no

stranger to civic engagement.

So congratulations to him on his new term.

Let's turn to a little bit of sports here.

Again, more about behind the scenes in sports and something that I guess would be appropriate to call bittersweet as we talk about our Brewers.

Milwaukee Brewers Christian Yellich paid a heartfelt tribute to his late friend and mentor Bob Jueger on the team's first opening day without him.

Yellich showed up head to toe and the customs

custom plaid suit made to look like the one you grew war in the 1989 film major league.

After you guys passing in January, Yelich wrote, you'd always thank me for my friendship, but the pleasure was all mine.

And that post had like some of the most engagement I think we've had in a while, but it had more than 15,000 likes on our Facebook page.

Todd Kemp said, we are so fortunate to have so many classy athletes and Wisconsin's professional sports.

Yelich Yuntz.

Bart Starr, Reggie White, Jordy Nelson, Randall Cobb, this goes on forever.

And Isaac Goodman said, as the Lifetime Cubs fan, the only time I don't like Christian Yelich is when the Cubs play the Brewers.

He's obviously a phenomenal talent and an even better person.

I love this for him.

Bob Uker was definitely beyond just one of one.

Oh, gosh, yes.

And I got to say as well from a fashion standpoint.

That is a good-looking suit that Yalich is wearing in mimicking Bob Yooker's outfit from the movie.

I know not everybody will agree, but as somebody who grew up looking at the JCPenney catalog every year from 1970 to 1980, I mean, you saw that suit everywhere.

So to me, it looks perfectly normal.

Christian, you go ahead and feel free to wear that suit anytime, anyplace.

You mentioned Mr. Baseball.

It'll be just fine.

Yeah, I think it looks pretty dapper.

Yeah, it does.

All right, we often talk about food in this segment and unique Wisconsin food.

And so let's tell folks all about this new flavor that was sprung on folks last week and their reaction to it because I'm rather intrigued by it, aren't you?

Yes.

So Madison's Chocolate Shop had one of the most memorable April Fool's Springs last week with their new flavor announcement, which was Friday Night Fish Fry Fudge.

They described it as a sweet, salty blend of vanilla ice cream, tartar sauce ripple.

fried wildlife pieces and bud chunks.

Come

on, you gave it away.

You said it was an April Fool's drink.

I would have loved to have heard some people like, they're not serious, are they?

Okay.

I would like to mention something that I saw on April Fool's that was pretty weird.

And I didn't realize that it was April Fool's yet, but I drink this soda called Alipop and it's like a prebiotic soda, love sugar, like a healthier version.

And they came out with new flavors and the flavors were ranch and chipotle ranch and something like that.

I'm like,

That's really disgusting.

Like who's going to drink ranch flavored soda when you read the bottom of the print like it's like, oh, this is April fools.

I'm like, uh, how did I not

register that?

Well, it's because that people do do.

There's so many combinations that do come up, you know, and people go, okay, well, maybe somebody's liking that.

And I would like to think that there's one person out there at least saying, huh, vanilla ice cream, tartar sauce.

little walleye pieces and fudge chunks.

Yeah, I'd go for that.

Maybe there's two.

It's Wisconsin.

Maybe there's three people out there that are intrigued by that.

But no, it doesn't exist.

Although, hey, stop into that chocolate shop in Madison and ask them about it.

Maybe they'll whip you up something.

You never know.

So for other posts about some of the other Wisconsin food that's out there, the stuff that really exists, check us out on all of our social media posts.

Sharita Booker puts them all together.

Sharita, thanks for catching up.

Have a great day.

I love that it actually did rope somebody in who thought that could be a valid flavor out there.

Of course it could be.

Make the confession, Greg.

It was me.

Because we live in the world we live in.

Right.

And there's no...

Come on you think there's in somebody out there who would try that something like hey I just keep on thinking and I found the clip the episode of friends where Rachel makes an English trifle But it's got meat and custard.

I just think of I just think of someone eating that loving and she's mean like What's not to like custard good?

Jam good eat good like this good ice cream good I love that you know what I mean like I could see someone making it I can see someone loving it

See, and you, you went to friends for the reference, you know, where I have expected you to go and I'm not, I'm not trying to stir up the pot here pun intended.

I thought for sure you'd take this out on Mathers and go, you see, this is what Top Chef has been doing to this country.

They're giving you all these ingredients and all these other cooking shows.

They're like, here you go.

Here's, here's some marshmallows and here's some asparagus.

Go.

I

mean, okay, so, so.

So first of all, Luke Mathers is listening to us currently.

And he's like,

I know he's laughing at the Joey clip.

So you see, if I

can make six 30 in the morning, I'm happy.

But yeah, honestly, yes.

A show like top chef and all those shows, like I, I, if I ever watch them, especially a show like chopped, um, I'm always like, all right, you're going to take strawberries and you're going to take a tenderloin and you're going to take mint sprigs, make it work.

And then I'm interested, but

Yeah, we live in a world where someone would definitely make fish fry ice cream.

Well, what it is, it's essentially a word generator.

I mean, when you see some of the names of bands nowadays, it's like, you totally used a random word generator to come up with that fan name.

Why wouldn't you do it with food as well?

There you go.

It's

all right.

We will cover more of the day's news coming up after this break, the Midwest Farm Report coming up next for many of you.

And then we will return this is up North News Radio on the Civic Media Radio Network.

I'm Pat Critelaw.

Sometimes I surprise myself what I can find for the bumper music there.

This was the offspring who Greg tells me I accidentally put the outfield in at one point.

It could happen, you know, you need to put in the Rolling Stones, you put in the Monkeys, you know, it happens.

Anyway, on this day in 1994, the offspring released their breakthrough album, Smash.

Thanks to the success of singles like that one come out and play, it sold over 10 million copies worldwide to become the best selling independently released and distributed album of all time.

Yeah, you know, all that in 1994, which again, was not 21 years ago.

It was 30 years ago, 31 years

ago.

That album is a defi, like that album and the Soundgarden super unknown, like those, those, those albums both had so many singles on rock radio.

They were like the, just the underlying everything of my high school experience for like two years.

I heard those songs all the time

because kids, we

didn't have iPod back then.

That's right.

That's right.

Let's see from Shizu talking about unique flavors.

So try some, try some Japanese folks, Greg.

I mean, they like teriyaki soda.

And also says also some of my friends and I would read the Culver Signs as the whole thing for one item.

While I, while I dinner mint chocolate chip.

It makes total sense when you read it all together, right?

Like

That's, that's your new flavor right there.

The Japanese, I mean, they have the, like you could talk about Japanese candies and sweets for decades, but their world, the Kit Kats, the Kit Kats they have over there.

Oh my God.

So, so terribly delicious.

Oh my God.

The Kit Kats are different.

Yeah.

They have different layers.

Like they have matcha and they have like, like all these different, like.

almost like lighter flavors of Kit Kats where like here we're like birthday cake cookie dough.

Very American flavors where they're like, you know, flowers, you know what I mean?

Like it just, it just feels different.

The, the, the, the Kit Kat game over there.

I get it.

I get it.

Again, we like what we like and we like the things that make us, you know,

tickle the 400 pound mark on the scale, sometimes if we could, if we could get away with it, we would.

The morning newsletter is out from Up North News, sign up at our website, upnorthnewswi.com.

Christina Laurie puts that together for us.

And among the stories this morning, the real reason behind the referee shortage in Wisconsin, there's a lot of sports where a lot of adults who would have been referees have decided they're not going to be refs anymore.

And you can probably guess what it is, but you want to hear some of the comments.

You want to read some of the comments about it and the civility that has really been lost in kids' sports of all things.

We talked about National Beer Day yesterday, and that's not for everybody.

And today's newsletter...

Talks about the places where you can go to get beverages that are non-alcoholic, but are still unique and tasty So we've got that story in there and another one about advocating for our national parks and supporting them as they face unprecedented cuts in funding and service so all of that in our newsletter sign up for it end up with news wi.com Where I am out here in Idaho they

And not not too far from Salt Lake City.

There's a very large Mormon population here, alcohol, coffee, things like that are not not readily available in these spots.

And they love what I don't know if they call them dirty sodas here, Greg, but you know, we've talked about this before the places that they just specialize in unique blends of soda.

Yeah.

You know, and it's not just, it's not just, you know, putting a squirt of orange syrup into a Pepsi.

I mean, they get

they get really crazy here with some of the flavors.

And I may have to stop in this week and try one of them.

So a dirty soda is just like a soda with flavoring in it.

Yeah, that's right.

Okay.

Okay.

It's like a soda stream.

Oh, yes.

Yes, exactly.

Kind of like that.

So again, a little bit in our newsletter on our website, up north news wi.com.

Okay, I want to pass along three stories here.

And the thing that they have in common deals with the the rule of law.

and the respect for it because, again, it's a cornerstone of democracy in America or any place that people serve because they won in free and fair elections.

They promised to abide by the Constitution.

They passed laws.

People abide by the laws.

If they don't, there are penalties.

And so here are three examples of where you thought we could take that for granted in this country, in this state, but you can't.

First one.

It deals with our our friend former Supreme Court Justice Michael Gabelman you recall I Felt like Greg was getting the laugh track ready or just his own one-man laugh track just at the the mention of Inspector Cluzo over here Yeah, there we go He was given the job of quote-unquote investigating the presidential election in 2020 which again

There's a way to do it.

There were there were recounts.

There were audits.

There were court challenges.

No problems were found.

And yet, Robin Voss announced the hiring of former Justice Gabelman at the Republican State Convention in 2021.

So how much on the up and up did you think this investigation was going to be in the first place?

Well, since that time, it has cost taxpayers something like two and a half million dollars and multiple court cases.

multiple court cases, not of any irregularities in the election, but in Gableman's conduct, the times where he threatened to jail local officials like local mayors, if they didn't come in and testify in secret before him.

And his conduct in court, when he was accused of, you know, not not adhering to state rules and laws on things like public records, and things like that.

Well, it led to the Office of Lawyer Regulation deciding to hold a hearing as to whether he should face discipline.

And Gabelman would not even come in for a deposition for that at one point.

Well, it appears in this story in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel by Molly Beck that Gabelman has reached some kind of a deal And in it as part of this deal he could lose his license to practice law for three years The deal heads to a court-appointed referee who must approve it before it is reviewed by the Wisconsin Supreme Court

As part of the agreement, Molly writes, Gabelman acknowledged she could not successfully defend himself against the allegations against him.

Gabelman served one tenure term in the Supreme Court and for all intents and purposes, I don't want to go back too far, but when you say, why are Supreme Court races in Wisconsin?

Why are they so negative, so dirty, so expensive?

It actually starts with Michael Gabelman.

and his run for a state Supreme Court seat several years back in unseating Justice Louis Butler.

It was a campaign with clearly race-baiting ads where he could have and should have faced discipline from the rest of the state Supreme Court, but the conservatives on the court didn't want to take that step.

And so Gabelman

Again, when there's no consequences, you're just going to keep doing the same thing over and over again.

And that's what Gabelman did again and again with this investigation of his that did not abide by the rules.

He believed the rules didn't apply to him until they did.

And now after so many negative headlines, he and Robin Voss are on the outs.

Gabelman has supported people who challenged Robin Voss in the primaries and

for all of Gabelman's antics.

It looks like it is finally caught up with him to the point where he is probably going to have his law license taken away for at least a three-year period.

So there's one case where the rule of law, it gets treated casually, shall we say, but in the end, justice prevails.

Then there's the whole rule of law part about, you know, rounding up people on the streets.

Well, let's say it again for the kids in the back here who are waving their red mega hats right now.

You and so many other people supported Donald Trump doing whatever it took to round up people who were in this country who were undocumented and were committing crimes and causing other trouble.

And few people would disagree with that.

But that does not mean that you suspend due process.

It does not mean that you do not, you know, respect the rule of law.

And you certainly don't just, you know, round up people on the streets and disappear them.

And next thing you know, they're in another country, even if they don't have a criminal record, or they're in a detention center in another state, even without a criminal record, and stop, spare me the, well, they're here illegally, so they're committing a crime.

That is at best a civil offense.

At best it is a misdemeanor.

And yet you have no problem with all the expense it takes for law enforcement to round up people who were here on visas.

Maybe they overstayed because of COVID, but still followed the process as anybody can do COVID or no COVID to say, yep, I'm still here and I would like to apply.

You don't have to approve it, but I'm going to go through the steps to apply to become a citizen.

And yet we had the case of a Wisconsin woman, Camilla Munoz, who had been here as an exchange student, a college student, I should say, from Peru.

She was working in Wisconsin Delz.

She was newly married.

She and her husband came back from their honeymoon.

She was detained by ICE.

And she was just released from detention after seven weeks, six weeks of that, without any court hearing whatsoever.

When she finally got that hearing, it was quite clear that she had no business being in detention.

She's not a criminal.

She was doing the right things to stay here.

But again, because this new administration is just has no respect for the rule of law, it just goes to tell you that again, yeah, you might think something like that isn't going to happen to you.

But if they'll invent things like this to take care of people who don't look like you,

How long will it be before they take steps to try to either detain or at least try to, shall we say, influence people who disagree with them?

And now the last one is the one that really takes the cake, and that's what is happening in North Carolina.

The North Carolina Supreme Court is made up of five Republicans and two Democrats.

One of the Democrats, Alison Riggs, was running for reelection in November, and she won very narrowly.

She won by just 734 votes.

But there were recounts and challenges, and she won by a narrow margin.

The Republican who lost, however, did not concede.

Appeals Court Judge Jefferson Griffin did not accept the will of the voters.

He's been fighting in court ever since.

And he knew that there were enough Republican judges on courts that he could get it to the point where it is right now, where last week, in a thunderbolt decision by the North Carolina Court of Appeals, the two far-right judges overruled the one Democratic judge and said, it is possible, it is okay to possibly throw out 65,000 votes despite no demonstrable fraud on the part of those voters.

and then setting up an arbitrary deadline for those voters to come in and prove who they say they were.

And that's because in North Carolina, it says that you have to show an ID when you register to vote, either show a driver's license or give the last four digits of your social security number.

But it had already been shown in court that it's likely that a lot of these 65,000 voters did give proper ID, but there were data entry mistakes or get this.

Women's names changed after getting married and the court said all those voters who did nothing wrong Are suddenly not voters and that some 65,000 votes shouldn't be counted.

It is stunning and again It goes against anything in terms of the rule of law When you look go out of your way to find a technicality to invalidate an election now for the moment and only for the moment

Those 65,000 voters don't have to do anything.

The full North Carolina State Supreme Court on Monday put a temporary stay on this while the case is still working its way through the courts.

But it is not out of the question that this Supreme Court, with its five Republican justices, will restart the 15-day clock for tens of thousands of voters to have to jump through an extra hoop for their votes to count.

Now, that might not be what you and I call a poll tax, but it's in the vein of making voters do more than simply exercise their right to vote, just because someone in power doesn't want their votes to count.

That, boys and girls, is an activist court.

That's what activist judges really do.

It's not the lawfare that conservatives love to use when they lose in court, because again, for them, every assertion is actually a confession.

This is an attempted heist of voting rights that must not be allowed to stand.

We will keep you updated on any other stories like these that deal with the disregard for the rule of law in this country.

We will have today's history lesson coming up after this.

You're up north.

Welcome to today's history lesson for this eighth day of April.

We're Dan Hagen from WJFW Newswatch 12 in Rhinelander is playing that mythical cowbell for us along with Blue Eister Colt.

Mr. Hagen, how are you?

I got a fever and the only prescription is more cowbell.

Boy, it sounded just like you hit the button.

Greg, can you hit the button on that?

Let's compare his impression of Christopher walking to the real thing.

Oh, sure.

Hold on.

Let me just stop that audio, pull this audio up, and there we go.

Guess what?

What?

I got a fever.

Oh, no.

And the only prescription is more cowbell.

There you go.

A catchphrase was born 25 years ago today.

This is the 25th anniversary of the cowbell skit on Saturday night.

Why voted the number one sketch of all time.

I could believe that

to

the

sugar, to the

sugar and many people

of SNL, like people are like, Oh, what about the bees?

They hated

them.

No, no, no, no.

Yes.

Exactly.

Well, it's

a little girl's tiny shirt in that sketch.

Yeah.

And I guess I read that somewhere this week that he, you know, that was actually like the seventh time he had pitched that skit and kept getting rejected.

But Christopher Walken was hosting that week.

He thought he'd be perfect for the part.

The rehearsal went so, so, and then he got the idea before the live show to go with a much smaller shirt.

Yeah.

And he was

also, he also played the character different too.

He was much more like in the moment, but he just went way over the top in the actual.

A broadcast.

That's how you got to do it.

Yep.

That's the way it goes.

All right.

Let's see.

We mentioned Julian Lennon earlier.

That's because today is his birthday.

He is 62 years old.

Dan, do you know who Julian Lennon is?

Okay.

That's

correct is his birth name is actually John London.

John Charles Julian Lennon, first child of John Lennon and his first wife Cynthia.

Also on the birthdays today, John Schneider Bo Duke from the Dukes of Hazard.

He started that role when he was 18.

What?

And and today is his 65th birthday.

Wow.

Princess Buttercup Dan, you know Princess Buttercup?

Princess

bride?

Becoming a hey Dan, do you know this?

Oh, absolutely.

Absolutely.

It's really Dan because of you because you the things like It's the pop culture of youth we think everyone knows

Yes, what it actually is Dan that when we get right to the it's not

Oh my gosh, you're so young.

It's when we hear you not know these things.

It's our moment of, oh my God, we're so old.

And we watch

way

too

much

TV and movies.

Oh, yes.

You know what?

Go off on a little tangent here.

Robin Wright, by the way, Princess Buttercup is 59 today.

She was also Jenny in Forrest Gump.

She was Claire Underwood in House of Cards.

She is amazing.

And she's 59 today.

But talking about we watch way too much TV.

I'm watching my my grandsons this week and they're spending a lot of time on their screens looking at videos, you know, and I'm looking in on them and they're funny.

They're slapsticky, you know, but they're funny.

And I'm like,

You know, this is no, how much Gilligan's Island did I watch as a kid?

Yeah, how much Hogan's heroes and Bugs Bunny cartoons.

This is just their TV.

That's

exactly what I told.

I was at lunch with some of my friends and they were doing they were complaining about their kids and their screens.

And I'm like, you know, our parents complain the way about the things we watch too, right?

And their parents complained about them and they will then complain about their children.

Why would you just accept this is how it is?

Yes.

So, Dan, what was yours?

What did you get yelled at about?

Well, I didn't hear that question, so I'm going to go off my own rant.

This, I feel like the shows nowadays are like higher dopamine now.

They're like higher frequency, and they're more addictive, you know?

That's just my old man take, I guess.

I can go with that, but I was asking what you got yelled at for watching.

Was it screens?

Was it a certain show?

What do you look back down and go, oh, I watched way too much of that?

My mom had to hide cross country ski tapes from me.

Okay,

all right.

Okay, dude.

You are you are so unique.

I just love that.

Matt Healy, lead singer of the 1975 is 35 years old.

He

sucks.

Happy birthday to Marty Schreiber, former Wisconsin governor.

He's been on the show previously.

Today he turns 86 years old.

Happy birthday, Marty.

Yes.

Just a great guess.

The doors first single break on through to the other side, entered the charts on this day in 1967.

Now, do you know how far this thing went up the hot 100 or the singles charts in the US?

I'll tell you all the way to

the top.

No.

It went to number 126.

This is a classic case of a song that got popular, not as a single, but through playing the albums, you know, year after year.

Their next single, Light My Fire, did go to number one.

So it just goes to show you that, again, there's still room for albums to play that way.

On the National Day calendar today, it's National Be Kind to Lawyers Day.

It is Zoo Lovers Day, and it is Empanada Day.

I don't know if empanadas are regularly available in Rhinelander, but I'll tell you what, you find a good one.

You wish that restaurant or food truck would stick around all the time.

Does it

close the taco?

Is that the idea?

I guess.

I don't know.

I'm no expert on the differences.

I just know when I've had them, I really like them.

I

know.

And what you got happening in Rhinelander, tell us a story of news or personal

Pursuits that you can share with us in a you know less than a minute.

Well, I saw the doors movie by Val with star and Val Kilmer and that was

Oh

I don't know if I enjoyed it.

I know Val Kilmer's an excellent job, but the nonlinear storyline kind of had me tripping without any hallucinogenic

Assistance Yeah, it's kind of like watching fiction, you know, it's like wait a minute was I just watching what am I?

Yeah, I

I need a I need like a label put on nonlinear movies so that I don't have to you know work so hard to watch them You can you can catch Dan in much more grown-up settings on news watch 12 weekdays across Ryan on Rhinelander television Man, thank you so much appreciate it.

You're such a great sport.

Have a wonderful day

Always fun.

See you guys.

All right when we come back in our second hour We're gonna talk to Hans Brayton Moser and Mike strut Mike struts from the National Farmers Union about

as tariffs and their impact on Wisconsin farmers.

You're up north.