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Now, for my Lake Mesota studio, here is the founding editor of Upmorth News, Pat Craiglow.
Back with you at 8.06.
Good morning.
It's a Thursday morning, August 7th.
Nice to have you along here across the Civic Media Radio Network.
Parker Olson producing us down in Madison Studio A2.
Meteorologist Brittany Merleau here in just a sec, and then we will be rejoined.
by Todd Alba of the conveniently named Todd Alba show weekday afternoons two to four and Trigvielson senior advisor to the Lincoln project who is visiting family in Lithuania.
And at 75 cents a minute, I can't keep putting quarters into this pay phone for much longer.
So Brittany is going to give us the abbreviated version of a forecast that is going to get hot and a little bit stormy in spots.
Brittany, yes.
Yes, it is.
So we've got the air quality going down the allergies and grass pollen going up.
We've also got the heat and humidity rising.
It's going to turn warm and muggy today.
We're looking at highs in the mid to upper 80s, feeling like the low 90s in some spots.
Mixed skies to start, but then we've got storms starting maybe around three or four o'clock in the afternoon.
Far Southwest kind of headed towards the Madison area around eight and then towards Milwaukee around midnight.
Few of those could linger early tomorrow morning in the Fox Valley and then another late morning round of storms expected by Lake Superior before even more start to spark potentially tomorrow evening.
Tomorrow, of course, we are looking at highs anywhere from the upper 80s to low 90s.
Heat index could reach 100 degrees.
We've got an extreme heat watch right now into far northwest parts of the state, and then we've got severe weather on tap potentially for Saturday and into Sunday.
Guys, what do you think?
Why do we keep joking about me or Todd running for governor?
You think we can get behind Brittany for this?
I mean, wouldn't
people vote for her over us?
Heck yeah.
All right.
Oh, good.
Let's get the draft.
By the way, by the way, Brittany, hot and stormy.
We're Trig V's two old girlfriends at UW River, or you'll be able to click.
Moving on now.
Brittany, thank
you.
Have a great day.
We'll catch
up with
you tomorrow.
Anyway, while there is still an FCC license in place, let me tell you that you can subscribe to our newsletter.
Head over to UpNorthNewsWI.com.
Click Subscribe up in the top banner there.
Trig Vilsen, senior advisor to the Lincoln Project and joining us live from Lithuania and Todd Alba here as well.
You can catch Trig V and Todd Wednesday afternoons along with yours truly when we appear right at the top of the show at two o'clock.
So Trig V, again, thank you for being part of an early morning radio show by it being four o'clock in the afternoon in Lithuania right now.
And let's start with because
You know, we don't get to hear you on this show very often.
And people haven't frankly heard about the Lincoln Project for a while.
So can you give us the quick elevator pitch on what is the Lincoln Project?
And what is it doing like nowadays?
I mean, you know, from the outset, we've really tried to stay on mission.
There have been two things that the Lincoln Project is focused on.
One is stopping Donald Trump.
And the second is pushing back on Trumpism.
and extremism more generally and you know a lot of what we do what people know us for is the ads where Donald Trump gets really angry at us and threatens to sue us or I guess now that he's back in the White House do whatever worse things but what they don't see and you guys know this is
We spend an awful lot of time working and doing ads that are driven as we are now at small subsets of the electorate because elections really end up being about small numbers.
In a state like Wisconsin, you know, there's probably 40 or 50,000 households that typically decide how elections go.
And one of the reasons why I'm excited to be on your show, Pat, and it's kind of like coming home, being a River Falls boy.
is you speak, as does Todd show, right into the heart of where elections in Wisconsin are decided and thereby elections in the United States.
It's in places like Eau Claire County, Richland Center, River Falls.
Those are the places where three or four points matter, and we spend a lot of time targeting ads directly into those voters, quite frankly, not just during elections, but as news cycles and events are unfolding.
And I think part of that, Todd, as a former Republican staffer in the state Capitol, and now a former Republican as well, is that there is still in you, in me, in your former boss, former state Senator Dale Schultz, there is still that kernel of, crazy as it sounds, service.
which is really at the heart of democracy and and an honest government is actually wanting to serve people not just win elections and power and you keep doing your show in the afternoons because you still see that in people in wisconsin i believe
Yeah, I mean, I mean you've you've been with this Pat I always appreciate it when you take time out of your busy schedule to travel with this whether it's Northern Wisconsin State Fair or downtown Eau Claire and Trigby and I have been all over the state as has Jane Matt, Aaron, Greg Bach and I think the key is just listen to people, right?
I mean Bob Euker once told I think Elaine Grindel right before he died or at some point in their career He said don't be looking at the stat sheet all the time Don't be looking at the numbers the games out there call just watch the popcorn guy messing around with somebody in the state
Look at the guys messing around with each other, you know, joking around us, trying to steal base.
That's where the game is at.
And I think the more we just listen to people around the state, we'll figure out what's important to people.
And I heard Joseph Pecky had always been on your show, Pat.
He was on Jane's show yesterday.
And I think he nailed it.
He's like, Donald Trump ran lower in prices and a better economy.
Neither one of those two things have happened.
And we have to, if we want to win, as Trigvie says, keep him earned at that and don't pay attention to the periphery.
So, TrigVee has a newsletter on Substack called Searching for Hope.
And you can get it over at trigvielson.substack.com.
TrigVee is T-R-Y-G-V-E.
And he spells Olsen the proper way, O-L-S-O-N, Parker.
Hey!
With an E-N.
And you can catch Todd's show weekdays from two to four.
But I want to get to the gist of your newsletter there, TrigVee, Searching for Hope.
Because again, in all the work you've done in other countries with groups that have been promoting democracy,
You've had to take those lessons and write about them as they apply here at home.
And I can't get you to sum up, you know, six months worth of newsletters in one fell swoop here.
But what is it that you're trying to convey to either Americans or Americans who are still involved in politics as far as what are the steps that they can do to ensure that we don't see further erosion of democracy?
Yeah, I think the most important one and searching for hope the title It's an ode to my my oldest daughter who unfortunately was still born at 38 weeks and it's buried not far from here in Lithuania Her name meant hope in Lithuania, but it really is deeper than that in the sense that When you think about and this is what I learned from working in 40 countries that those fighting autocrats
The game that we're in, not the one that we know of electoral democracy, but the game we're in is one between autocracy and democracy.
And that is really about one side wanting to impose fury of each other, and the other side trying to impose faith and hope in each other.
And democracy, for it to work, you can't just say that everybody on the other side is evil.
And quite frankly, I was looking at a Facebook post from a friend of mine in River Falls, somebody who I've known since I was three or four, and she's active in Republican politics.
And she got going sort of like Scott Walker at the talking point, Democrats have left Texas and we know how that is in Wisconsin.
The irony in that, and what people have to ask themselves, and I wish she would, is if your side, if the other side were doing it, if Democrats were redistricting in California,
unilaterally to keep Joe, the Congress from becoming Republican, they'd be going bananas, just as Democrats are right now.
And democracy never works unless you can put yourself in the other person's perspective.
And for individuals, and I really, every day I give people three things that they can do from the lessons that I learned around the world.
The most important thing with that
Each of us has to take inventory of what agency we have and say, how can we take that and apply it to this battle that we're in?
And for some, it might be whatever their area of expertise is.
If they know a lot about technology, figuring out a way to use technology to help in the battle.
If they know how to write, maybe it's writing letters to the editor, maybe it's running for the school board and doing something locally.
But everybody has to look at where do I have agency to be part of the part of the solution?
And where can I find hope in what I can bring?
Because that's what democracy is really about.
It's about all of us coming together and being the sum being greater than the parts.
And really, truly, in your newsletter, you do have these calls to action three things you can do today.
And they're always outlined so well.
One of the, well, the one from just yesterday, the democracy building toolbox and why we need it here now.
And those tools include training, institutional strengthening, material assistance, coalition building.
public opinion research technology and information operations.
And then the series that you wrote right before this was about AI and how AI can be can go both ways in terms of helping or hurting democracy.
Can you give me that just again the very short summary of how you think AI should best be approached from the standpoint of strengthening democracy?
Yeah, I can give you I can give you around the edges and I don't know whether I'm supposed to do this or not But I will we're going to through Lincoln Democracy Institute and and and quite frankly I've been working central to working on it We're gonna have some exciting stuff coming out trying to use AI to empower people To be better positioned to to interact in in and around democracy and to to
take control of their agency within their own families and sets of friends the the reality is Having done a lot of work with AI and I never imagined I sort of fell into it I Understand the the notion and they have a people have a right to be leery of it because back when I was working
on democracy building.
The internet was, you know, daily here in Lithuania.
The internet was just coming to four, you know, Twitter, YouTube, all of that.
And everybody was talking about how that's going to empower democracy.
And it hasn't.
In fact, it's been highly detrimental to democracy.
And the reason for that is quite frankly, you have a lot of oligarchs who
have decided that they were going to use technology, their business model is based on, I'm going to take people's information and use it to sell them stuff.
Yeah.
Well, I mean, that's look at what we've seen with Elon Musk just hoovering things up here.
I'll give the last word to you.
You know, it's all about searching for hope is the name of the newsletter.
But I got to tell you, when it comes to AI, I have a tough time seeing the hope in the future.
How about you?
there before I hit the break.
You want to add anything final to his thoughts?
Just this this is why I love travel around trick me because we goof around a lot But he's seen a heck of a lot.
He knows a lot.
He's really connected So look at the sub stack because you'll find hope and that's at the end of the day if we lose that then everything's gone So I appreciate what Trigby's doing and appreciate what you're doing Pat.
Well, and that's why I wanted to make sure that
people don't catch these two on Wednesdays when Trig V shows up on Todd Alba show weekday afternoons.
Trig V safe travels.
Thanks for joining us.
Get out to the beach there.
Enjoy that that sunny day that you finally are getting and that you finally deserve.
And Todd will talk to you this afternoon.
Thanks
but not too often.
No, but not too often.
Yeah, let's not let's not get crazy here.
guy.
No.
Sean O'Malley is coming up next to talk about your money and the markets, followed by Joseph Pecky.
I'm Pat Crightlow.
This is the Civic Media Radio Network.
You're listening to Civic Media.
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The Milwaukee Brewer's winning streak is up to six now after
first sweeping the Washington Nationals over the weekend, and now they have swept Atlanta.
So it was a perfect road trip, six wins.
Where did I see the stat?
Like the first time in MLB history that any team has scored that many runs in sweeping an entire road trip.
This team is a juggernaut right now, beating Atlanta five to four for their sixth straight win.
Andrew Vaughn, home run again.
He's now got a 12 game hitting streak, his career best.
Blake Perkins hit a home run as well.
Jose Quintana, his record is now nine and four on the season.
He went six innings and allowed seven hits, seven strikeouts as well.
Trevor McGill is now up to 26 saves on the season.
The Brewers are now 26 games above 500, something they haven't done for about four years here.
And now they are off today.
They're coming back home.
They start a series against the New York Mets tomorrow, pregame starting tomorrow at 6.35 on several civic media stations across Wisconsin.
Head to civicmedia.us to learn more.
Sean O'Malley is here now to talk about your money and the markets.
And Sean, good morning.
How are you?
morning, Pat.
I'm good.
Thanks.
Let's start talking about the jobless numbers, you know, the non-farm payroll and things like that.
And obviously, as you get into it, we're going to get into what looms larger than the statistics themselves.
And that's the source of the statistics.
But let's start with the numbers that sparked this whole controversy in the first place.
So yeah, the lead-in was kind of from last week's segment when I said, you know, tomorrow morning we're going to get our non-farm payroll numbers.
But we got them and with it we got three surprises.
The first surprise was that the jobs number for July was softer than expected.
They were forecasting around $109,000.
We got $73,000.
Not a great number by any stretch of the imagination.
The second thing was the big surprise.
which was the May and June numbers were revised downward by 250,000, 258,000 to be exact, which means that for May, June, and July combined, only 106,000 jobs are created.
That is incredibly low.
That is very, very, that is a bad economic signal to be really clear.
And the third thing was the biggest surprise.
The surprise wasn't that President Trump had a hissy fit.
It was that he had a hissy fit and he fired the commissioner of the Bureau of Labor Statistics, who is responsible for signing off on the numbers.
Doesn't actually do the calculation, mind you, just lines off on the numbers when they're finalized according to the formula.
And that was the big, the big.
sort of mic drop moment.
It really was and it hits it hit a lot of people real hard who pointed out for starters, this is not somebody who by any stretch was some kind of a partisan appointment.
And yet, now, how are we going to look at these numbers going forward?
And that's the real question.
We've got the interim head who was her deputy, and we'll see what happens.
The concern is that Trump will appoint a Trump loyalist.
If that happens, unfortunately, you are no longer going to be able to rely on the economic data coming out of the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
If that happens, a lot of things could go wrong.
that's going to definitely increase uncertainty in the marketplace.
And we could see the bond market price that uncertainty in by raising yields because they can no longer rely on the data that they're being told with regard to the status of the American economy.
It's funny the reason that this one seems to stick is that look there have been far more high profile people who have been dismissed from their jobs You go all the way back to when James Comey was let go as FBI director I mean that that was scandalous in and of itself and there've been I mean he's fired cabinet officers God knows how many generals but there's something about this particular position that really didn't stick well with people it truly was a case of
shooting the messenger, and it doesn't matter your political stripe.
Everybody knows shooting the messenger.
I mean, you don't do that unless there's something really, shall we say, unsavory about you and how you want that message to sound in the future.
Markets don't take well to that.
You know, Trump himself posted that, you know, the economy is roaring.
That's a lie.
The economy is lumping by.
What is still up is the stock market.
But we already talked about that when we had our discussion about leading economic indicators.
The only thing that was positive of those leading economic indicators is the stock market is up.
So basically, this is an economy that works for the wealthy, which kind of goes hand in hand with Trump's presidency.
This is a country now run for the billionaires, by the billionaires on behalf of the billionaires.
And that's really it.
We're talking to Sean O'Malley, finance and economics expert, Hudson, Wisconsin native, long career on Wall Street and is back here in Wisconsin to visit with us weekly to talk about your money and the markets and the markets have been rocked by uncertainty.
We'll get into more of this after the break, Sean, but the short version is that tariffs are still ever-changing and providing
no certainty to global markets near as I can tell.
That there is.
So we'll talk about that.
We'll talk about the numbers at the opening bell, and then we will be visiting with Joseph Pecky after that, talking a bit about Wisconsin politics.
And I would love to tell you that we have these stories of substance to talk about in Wisconsin politics.
I don't.
I have Wisconsin legislators sending sternly worded letters to Canada about wildfire smoke and I've got Derek Van Orden posting pictures on Twitter of a naked man in a sex toy.
because he thinks that's funny.
What's the other one that I have?
I've lost track.
Joseph Peck is going to help us find anything of substance through the weirdness.
That's coming up after we check the opening bell with Sean O'Malley.
That's coming up in just a moment.
But first, let me tell you that live from Lake Wissota, thanks for making this the place to spend part of your mornings powered by Up North News.
This is the Civic Media Radio Network.
Joseph Ecke is waiting in the wings where we will talk Wisconsin politics and a sigh of relief that gubernatorial candidate Bill Barian no longer is sounding like he'd wanted tax goods from other states coming across state lines.
I think he has properly had an explanation of tariffs and we'll talk about that and some other weirdness in the news coming up with Joe in just a sec.
First the opening bell is sounded on Wall Street and across the markets.
And investors are kind of baking in what President Trump is already doing with his trade war.
But I've got a thought on that right after Sean tells us what exactly is happening with China here.
This whole thing was, not this whole thing, but so much of what Trump is doing is aimed at China.
Is it hurting China to this point?
But remember the whole reason behind the tariffs.
according to Trump's explanation, is to make sure that we weren't just giving away money to other countries.
Now, this is a wrong narrative, but that was the explanation, right?
That we were running a trade deficit and we needed to stop that.
We needed to bring everything back home so that we stopped running a trade deficit.
But here's the news.
While, yes, the tariffs have had an impact on China exporting
All that's happened is that you've replaced China with other largely Asia Pacific countries, exports, namely Taiwan and Vietnam.
So the trade deficit, the gap between exports and imports has largely remained pretty constant, even though it's going down a little bit in both cases.
those countries that are providing us or exporting goods to us, the names have changed a little bit.
So China's given up their market share and given it to Taiwan and Vietnam predominantly.
Yeah, and they're still shipping goods, even more goods to the European Union as well.
Meanwhile, American consumers are paying these tariffs.
The last note that I wanted to hit was part of the reason markets seemed optimistic was because Apple made this announcement that it was going to make a large investment in domestic manufacturing, which again has been what Trump has been saying is the whole role is to get to
bring back more manufacturing to America, to which I've got two points.
One, get ready for the $2,000 iPhone, if that were to happen.
But secondly, I don't think it's even going to come to that because, Sean, I've been to this rodeo before when I hear, and it's not just Apple, but when I hear, oh yeah, we're going to bring all this manufacturing to the US that's normally done overseas.
One word comes to mind.
Foxconn, you know, you
can
say you're going to bring this stuff in to get to get better treatment today, but
I actually want to see the assembly line cranking like Foxconn never did before my skepticism goes away.
How many billions of dollars were supposed to be spent on that project that never materialized?
No, you know, it's everything stock until something happens.
So even you know, Apple's announcement will positive certainly for the job situation in the US, which could certainly use the help.
doesn't necessarily mean that it's going to happen.
Number one, number two, we don't know where it's going to happen and how it's going to impact the overall economic picture.
And three, it's, you know, well, positive, it's really kind of just a small piece of a very large puzzle.
And a lot of that puzzle is still, you know, in terms of manufacturing and other types of activities are still going overseas.
Sean O'Malley reporting this time from beautiful Bayfield.
Get on the boat at some point real soon and we'll talk to you next week.
Take care.
Thank you, Sean.
You can get our newsletter, upnorthnewswi.com.
You can get our Sunday morning newsletter as well about Wisconsin politics where I ask, what do you think blue states should do about red state gerrymandering?
What's happening in Texas right now?
Should states like California retaliate and monkey around with their congressional maps as well?
Because
you know, democracy or not sink to their level because things only accelerate and get worse from there.
So sign up for the newsletter over at uprootednewswi.com and be part of our Sunday morning question of the week.
Here's Joseph Peckey now to talk Wisconsin politics and we'll pick up Joe on tariffs and trade because according to an interview with the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel congressional or upcarry gubernatorial candidate Bill Marion, I think now understands that tariffs are not something to do from state to state.
Although I thought it was funny that he was questioning where that even came from.
Dude, we played the tape.
The WMTV reporter asked you about state-based tariffs and you indicated in your answer that that could be a good thing for Wisconsin.
I feel like it's a campaign staffer's nightmare when you have to pull the guy aside and go, boss, here's how that really should have gone.
This is a guy who believes he is so much smarter.
than everybody else, that he can just erase his entire political history and cozy up to Donald Trump and all will be well.
And I'm referring to this ridiculous interview he did with Dan Bice of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel at the Wisconsin State Fair.
So to provide a little context, like, Barry is a guy who used to be what I would call like a reasonable conservative.
He wanted to move on from Trump.
He supported Nikki Haley to the tune of more than $30,000 between he and his wife and was calling for generational change within the Republican Party.
And now that Daddy Trump is still in charge of the Republican Party,
Barriain is making an absolute fool of himself groveling to try and become like Trump and probably try to win his endorsement because that's the ticket to the Republican nomination.
And so when Bice asks him what he thinks about his past support for Nikki Haley, it's one bad answer.
It's too bad answers.
And then he literally says to bias as Dan writes it up in the journal Sentinel today.
Why don't you just put down that I regret those contributions?
And what Mr. Barry doesn't appear to understand is like, as much as people dislike politicians, they dislike phonies even more than that.
And so I like, yes, the, the.
campaign staffer side of my brain did have a modicum of like horror for whoever is advising Barian and working with him, but this is not a serious individual.
That's not a serious way to talk about candidates you have supported in the past and he can't remake who he is.
People are gonna smell that phoniness from a mile away.
You know, last week I asked you about
Democratic candidates for governor and why we hadn't seen a big crush of them right away.
You had this great answer about, you know, after the first one, there really isn't any value you can announce on your own timeline.
But let me tweak the question for the Republican candidates and why we haven't seen more Republicans get in.
It's part of that reason because Republicans who might consider running for governor are so
put off by the notion that the only way they're going to win is to be the one who sucks up the most to Donald Trump?
Well, I think some of these Republican potential candidates, like Tom Tiffany, as much as I might disagree with Mr. Tiffany on basically every policy issue, he's not a dumb man, right?
And so there's two factors.
You have to go full Trump to win a Republican primary right now, and every indicator
is that Trump is going to be a boat anchor around the political necks of every Republican next year.
Trump's approval rating has dropped into the 30s.
The jobs numbers are bad.
The economy appears to be stalling out because of all the chaos and disruption that this president is enacting.
And so if you are someone like Tom Tiffany,
who's got a pretty good job being a member of Congress.
Why would you give up that $178,000 a year salary to suck up to Trump and then have to deal with the political peril that Trump causes for you and probably lose next year and then you're out of a job entirely?
So Republicans are in a tough spot and it means they're not going to get very good candidates.
I think it segues into this insanity with Van Orden.
Well, allow us to go there.
Again, we've got nothing but weirdness going here.
And it is, in this case, in Derrick Van Orden, the journal Sentinel headline, Derrick Van Orden escalates Mark Pokan feud by posting photo of a naked man in a ski mask with a sex toy.
Not the onion, boys and girls.
Actual headline, Derrick Van Orden thinks it's funny.
to put up a picture of a naked man wearing a ski mask and carrying a toy tied to a walking stick.
I think it is possible Mark Pokan is so in Van Orden's kitchen that everywhere he looks, every time he turns a corner, Congressman Van Orden sees Mark Pokan.
And my rationale for that is like, he didn't just tweet it out and let it go.
he kept going back to it.
Like, I think it's possible Van Orden actually thinks that's Mark Pokan.
And what Van Orden's explanation would be for why he's looking at pictures of naked men on Twitter aside, like, Pokan is clearly living rent-free in Derek Van Orden's head.
And if you're Van Orden, you know you took a terrible bill.
that is hitting your constituents, right, on their health care, on their cost of living.
You know that if you're Derek Van Orden, you have refused to do the right thing to stand up for Western Wisconsin businesses and manufacturers by saying no when it comes to this tariff nonsense.
And rather than, I guess, wallow in the political unpopularity of all of these votes that he's taking, he thinks his job as a congressman is to just try to change the subject, even when it comes
down to letting all of his constituents in the entire world know that he's scouring acts for pictures of naked men.
Like, okay,
that's a choice.
It is a choice.
Here's another, because our common theme here isn't just the weirdness, but the distractions that they're intended to also evoke, whether it is another sternly awarded letter to Canada about their wildfires, or this group of Republican legislators sending a letter to the mayor of Milwaukee saying, hey, do something about the crime in your city, to which the mayor says, here's the crime stat, crime's down.
in Milwaukee, but you know, like I said before, the Swiss could only wish that their timepieces had as much precision and had as much predictability as Republican legislators playing the Milwaukee card as we approach an election here.
Yeah, well, they think that's better politically than having to try to explain why they're all for cutting a trillion dollars for Medicaid.
It's easier to talk about headlines in Milwaukee than it is to explain
why you just added four trillion dollars to the national debt.
It's easier to talk about, you know, the issue du jour of the day or the trending Twitter topic than it is trying to explain why it's okay for Donald Trump to just willy-nilly fire a statistician who is telling us the truth about the American economy.
All of that, like, it's, they've all been
They've lost their mind is the only really way I can say it is like they think that's good politics to just like try and change the subject because they know they can't defend the actions they are taking in Congress or in Madison and so it's just our uniquely stupid American age
It's been it's been that kind of a week really we're talking with Joseph Peckie some of you have a local news break coming up and If that's the case, let me tell you that tomorrow.
We're gonna have free ticket Friday for Brewer's ticket
We'll have Courier Newsrooms Kia Vakil, former U.S.
Attorney Jim Santel, journalist Jennifer Scholesi and Mark Jacob will be along, so will Dr. Kristen Lierly and Mike Clemens with sports.
I'm Pat Crightlow.
This is the Civic Media Radio Network.
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.
All right, let's see what's coming up on this Thursday across the Civic Media Radio Network.
Matt and Aaron are coming up next.
Jim Santel will be joining Jane and Greg at 9.35.
JR Radcliffe from the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel Sports Department will be joining them at 10.35.
We heard from Todd Alba a little earlier today and coming up at 3.35 he will have Casey Hicks from Wisconsin Conservation Voters.
And then John and Gordy from our Civic Media Station in Madison, they will be guest hosting the Maggie Dawn show today from four until six on the Civic Media Radio Network.
Joseph Pecky back with us now for our final few minutes here and back to the Wisconsin lawmakers, both legislators and members of Congress who are sending sternly worded letters to Canada about their wildfire smoke.
Let me just say that when Bruce Murphy wrote up his version of this at Urban Milwaukee,
He said that the thing that maybe bugged him the most, the most insulting thing about the letter from the members of Congress was its sheer laziness.
He said these six members of Congress, including two from Wisconsin who signed this letter, are all paid, like he said, 170 something thousand dollars a year.
Each has an average of 15 staff members serving them.
That's 96 full-time public servants whose job is to learn the facts about wildfires and pursue the best policies to promote the health and welfare of Americans.
Those staffers didn't do their job.
I'd argue they probably did do their job, but they're working for people who say, I don't care.
I get more political points if I blame Canada.
That
these are Republican members of Congress who have bent the knee to Donald Trump and have not said a word in opposition to Trump's ambitions to make Canada the 51st state right so like
If you're not going to give a rip about Canadian sovereignty or take them seriously as a country and put insane, you know, tariffs on Canadian goods and make policy choice after policy choice that hammers, for example, Northern Wisconsin's tourism industry, because the number of travelers coming across the border is dropping like a rock, why would why would Canada care?
what these MAGA Congress people have to say about something going on in their country.
And if you take that one step further, what this Republican Party has decided is America first and America alone.
Now, maybe there's been a time in history when that was a defensible like policy choice or a prescription for this country's security and economic strength.
But you cannot.
go down that path and then expect your allies and neighbors and other countries to take you seriously or give a rip when you're concerned about something that they're doing.
Because everything the Trump administration and the complicit Republicans who are standing by while it all happens says we don't care about what happens anywhere else in the world.
And so those other countries, including Canada,
They don't have to care about us.
What is it?
It's not their problem if the smoke is drifting down to America Okay, less for Canadians to have to deal with so it's just all so stupid and so predictable that this insanity of a foreign policy would lead to other countries not taking us seriously anymore We are here.
This is only one.
I would say kind of silly example of it.
There will be more serious impacts
going forward, then the health challenges of people who, you know, have respiratory problems and challenges.
I mean, I'm noticing it.
I don't know if you are out, you know, on the Northwest part of the state, but like, you can tell and it's a problem.
But why should we expect Canada to care when we have said through the foreign policy of the United States that we don't care about that?
Right.
I hate to ask you to engage in parlor games here, but the only other development on the race for governor comes from the Cap Times and Madison Democratic State Senator Kelder Roy's saying, quote, I would say I'm very likely to run.
I've had so many encouraging conversations with folks all around the state, and that's been really exciting and gratifying.
She then goes down in the interview to talk about, you know, the reasons why you might not, the concern about political violence and the environment that's out there political wise and everything else.
But it certainly you don't much like the Milwaukee County executive.
You don't go so far as to say I'm probably going to get in and then don't get in.
You know, we talked about how that once somebody has the first mover advantage, everybody else can do it on their own terms.
And let's be honest, as summer is winding down and kids are going on trips with their family and people are getting ready for school.
August might not be the best time to grab people's attention and say, I'm in.
So I think it's going to be a busy September on that front.
Yeah.
Brewers of 1-6 in a row here, Joe.
Unbridled enthusiasm, run amuck.
Are we going to get pinched at some point in the stream?
Will end or should we just enjoy it?
Gosh, it's whatever and you're Are you you've got football season so you may not be getting to any more games here?
Oh, I'll make sure I far I make the time for one Yeah, you get around to it or so and they've been doing it with again, I don't want to say nobody's but you know
you gotta say, you gotta hand it to Murph, I guess, or just the way that the whole clubhouse is gelling, they're making things happen.
And my goodness, we could only wish to have that kind of chemistry in all of our workplaces, right?
That's right.
All right, Joseph Pecky, thank you so much.
Appreciate it.
Have a good start to your weekend.
All right.
Again, coming up tomorrow, we'll have our regular Week in Review panel with former U.S.
Attorney Jim Santel, Jennifer Scholdy, Mark Jacob, Dr. Kristen Lytley will be around.
She'll be off next week.
She'll be talking all about her big plans here.
And Mike Clemens will be reporting from Packer Training Camp, as well as the latest on the Brewers who are off today, but they start a new homestand against the New York Mets starting tomorrow.
Thanks for being a part of the festivities today.
I'm Pat Crightlow, founding editor.
of Up North News.
Up North News is part of Courier Newsroom, a pro-democracy news network.
Have a great Thursday.
We'll see you back here Friday morning, 6 a.m.
Here, Up North.
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