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Now, for my Lake Minnesota studio, here is the founding editor of Up North News, Pat Kratlow.
Thank you, Don Rue.
Good morning.
It is 7.06.
Nice to have you here up north.
It's a Thursday morning, September 4th, 2025.
Congressman Mark Pokan will be joining us less than 30 minutes from now to talk about Congress being back in session.
There was a lot of focus yesterday.
on the case involving sexual predator Jeffrey Epstein, which seems appropriate because that's where Congress was when they abruptly left town on their August recess.
Speaker Mike Johnson sent Congress home early rather than continue seeing the efforts to release more of the files that might name some very rich, some very powerful people connected to the case.
And if he thought that by sending Congress home early,
folks were just going to let it go.
He was wrong.
And so we'll talk to Congressman Polkan about that, about the potential for another government shutdown.
It just seems to be the way business operates with the current regime these days, and much more, again, coming up at 735.
But first, we have ourselves one frosty morning here, upper 30s.
In some cases, it's 42 right now here in the Chippewa Valley, but Brittany 30s.
are back in I say to you in one of what appears to be not one of the little thin you know summer hoodies that that you can wear but this one's like got the it's it looks rather fleece or flantily over there.
Yes it's a nice thicker fleece kind of hoodie that I'm rocking this morning and it feels fantastic because there's frost all over the place all in the roots I can see outside on the tall grass this morning temperatures like you mentioned in the mid 30s
in Solon Springs in Accanto, you hit the coolest spots, but everybody else pretty much sitting in those low to mid forties this morning.
That frost advisory still for north central counties until 8 AM, so we're almost out of it.
Those winds are going to start to pick up again out of the Northwest, becoming breezy once again today.
Sun out there to start patchy fog as well, but more clouds as we go through the afternoon and especially into this evening.
because we've got another system headed our way.
This one is going to be a quick moving one.
It's pretty much an Alberta clipper that usually in the winter brings a quick shot of snow.
Well, this time we're going to stay warm enough.
Don't worry.
It's just going to bring a quick shot of rainfall.
No severe weather with it.
We're looking at a good half an inch to an inch of rain possible up north tonight and probably about a trace to a quarter of an inch for the southern half of the state.
So this will start to push in around.
four o'clock or so far northwest continuing to become widespread overnight and then a little bit of rain will still linger for a lot of us early tomorrow morning before that kicks on out of here by about 10 a.m.
So it will leave us with a mostly cloudy day tomorrow.
Spots of sun later, still very windy.
A gale warning goes into effect on Lake Michigan tomorrow and we're going to see the coolest day of the week tomorrow as well.
So highs today, we're looking at mid fifties north to low sixties south.
And then tomorrow, we're looking at low fifties north to low sixties south.
We'll start to slowly warm things up as we go into the weekend and the weekend looks dry.
I'm sorry, gale warnings.
I mean,
I'm familiar
with the gales of November,
the gales
of September.
That's that's a different thing.
Yeah, those waves are going to be climbing up to 10 to 12 feet out of the lake.
So wow, so strong winds off the lake,
you will not be taking your kayak out there then.
No, no, I won't even go near the shore.
That's nothing to mess
with.
No, not a bit.
Uh, okay.
Well, I mean, I, I did, I do have the, the hoodies handy.
Uh, and I did continue to hold on to them.
Remember I mentioned last week we had family up from Texas and they forgot their hoodies to lend a couple, but I, I see they made it back of course in the laundry pile, but they made it back.
So I will be ready for the season, but yeah, we keep this up.
We're going to have the
How did you refer to it?
Tender vegetation that's going to have to be brought inside or covered up, right?
Those little tender babies, those little sensitive vegetations.
Yeah.
Yeah, exactly.
All right, Brittany,
thank you so
much.
We'll check in, check in with you next hour.
Let's just let's toughen up.
those plants, shall we?
We can do better.
Hey, reminder, you can sign up for our newsletters at UpNorth News, our unabashedly Wisconsin stories, a lot of features during the week, a political wrap up on the weekends as well.
Head over to UpNorthNewsWI.com and click subscribe in the top banner.
a quick little follow-up to well actually know let me get over to the the mailbag first because I'll bet that I let Brittany go and No, I do not see anything from Robin Tiger can see that's that's what normally
Gets to me so he may have other things that are going on today I did Parker mentioned that it was national macadamia nut day and I I believe the last thing I said was its garbage Yeah,
I have a night I have a feeling that might have been a hot take to some
that might have been from Tony on YouTube It's no cashew, but it's not bad But even more animated from Alicia who says Patrick in all caps macadamia nuts are delicious
I guess if you like chalk, sure.
Maybe that's just me.
I don't know.
I think you might be on the extreme end in this one.
Believe
it or not.
Me?
Yes.
On the
extreme end.
I know.
It's hard to fathom.
Find that hard to believe.
Let's see.
And Tony says this weather is chef's kiss perfect.
And that's why he's up in Ashland because he likes that.
much cooler weather.
He likes when summer is wrapped up as soon as the fireworks are put away for the 4th of July.
And that's fine.
Different strokes for different folks.
From Jim and Brookfield on the text line about the Powerball jackpot, which was not won last night, and now is climbing to at least $1.7 billion.
Good morning, Pat writes, Jim, if I won the billion dollar lottery, I'd invest in civic media and give everyone a raise.
and other similar media outlets to help counter all the misinformation out there in the media craziness.
I would try to be the opposite of Rupert Murdoch.
Thank you, Jim and Brookfield, for that.
And then about comments in the last hour about states kind of going on their own now when it comes to vaccine mandates and standards, Scott and Madison says, it sounds like these states are starting to do soft secession.
Could be, I mean,
In both directions, you've got the Florida Surgeon General, which I think needs to be in quotation marks, saying that Florida is going to get rid of all of its vaccine mandates, including for school children.
Because again, nothing says come live in our state like a rising death toll as it was during COVID when it was one of the deadliest places to be.
Other states, meanwhile, as we said in the last hour, are forming their own alliances to put forward actual credible science-based health information.
And it's awfully similar to something that Dr. Kristen Lierly talked to us about a couple of weeks back when she said that ACOG, the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, was no longer going to accept federal dollars because of the strings that the Trump administration would tie to it and that
As much as we had all counted on the CDC, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, to provide these guidelines, it may now be a case that these various medical organizations put that information out themselves because we once had for generations a federal government we could trust to rely on science and facts and have the compassion to put forward guidance that would provide proper information to people.
Not so much now.
And so you may see states, agencies and other groups and it's gonna make some people have to work a little harder to find credible information.
Kinda like the news.
There used to be three channels and you'd pick one and any of them usually had a gatekeeper mentality toward newsrooms where it was not so much what people wanted to know but what they need to know.
And now we've gone completely the opposite.
It's just give people whatever they want, not whatever they need.
And as a result of that lack of leadership by people with compassion and an understanding for facts, you've got to work harder than ever to figure out what's what when it comes to news and analysis.
And as I said in this time period yesterday, not everything is
automatically left or right.
You have to learn a little bit more about an issue to determine if it's something that you agree with, if it's something that you can support.
And one of those examples that I brought up yesterday was about shipbuilding.
And how Tom Nelson, out of Gamey County Executive, had a new book about the Edmund Fitzgerald.
And it's about so much more than that.
And it's a book I highly recommend.
And in part, it's about how America used to be a great shipbuilding country.
But over time, like so many other things that were outsourced, folks said, you know, it would just be easier and cheaper if we let these other countries build our ships.
And we let our shipbuilding dwindle down to nearly zero.
So now comes this announcement last week from the Trump administration that
they're going to partner, quote unquote, with South Korea to rebuild America's shipbuilding industry.
But I wondered aloud, if that's really what this is, or is this just another way to continue outsourcing work to South Korea?
And Senator Tammy Baldwin rightly brought up concerns about what happens up in Marinette where they build ships.
So I sent a note to Tom Nelson about this asking, you know, what he thought of this partnership and whether it's, you know, good or not.
His response to me noted that South Korea is one of the dominant shipbuilding countries in the world Some companies may build more ships some other countries he says will build more ships in the United States in a single year They'll build more in a month.
He says Trump probably read my book He says if South Korea makes a long-term commitment, it would be really good But so far Trump hasn't done that with any other deal
And that's the most important point that that Tom Nelson hits on here is There are all these announcements about deals about trade deals, but they are usually Extremely at the surface just the What does he like to say the concepts of a plan like his plan for health care?
He has concepts of a plan we get these concepts of an agreement for trade or for shipbuilding or for anything like this
But we use this term, the devil's in the details, as if, you know, that's a bad thing when we use the term, the devil.
But really, the details are where the work actually gets done.
And that's what we're waiting to see.
So, you know, forgive me if I don't want to be overly harsh about this Trump administration announcement because I want it to work.
Like so many other things, you want things to work.
When Donald Trump said originally,
I'm going to be the guy that cracks down on Wall Street.
People wanted to believe him.
Hey, the wealthy business guy says he's going to represent us on Wall Street.
Well, it turns out he was lying to our faces and has been nothing but a Wall Street friendly president.
But you don't know that at first.
You want to believe these things.
But again, with the shipbuilding one, we'll see.
Tony Zimmerman puts up on YouTube here.
Tom is great, referring to Tom Nelson.
And again, he's one of the people that we'll check in with on
you know, whether America and Wisconsin specifically will benefit from this partnership that is supposed to bring, you know, more shipbuilding to us.
We're following other news, of course, that we'll talk about throughout the day and the coming days here, including the possibility of National Guard troops being sent to Milwaukee on a presidential whim.
Not really rooted in anything real that they could do.
What cities need is more help with law enforcement.
They don't need troops on the streets.
They need people who are authorized to make arrests.
But of course that didn't stop the two Republican candidates for governor, Bill Berrien and Josh Shulman, from saying they support troops in Milwaukee.
because if there's one thing you can count on, it's a couple of suburban white guy Republicans running for political office to bash Milwaukee and to say, oh, yeah, if we need a military takeover in there, that's just perfectly fine.
We may talk about that comment and more with Congressman Mark Pokan coming up in just about 15 minutes here.
But first from the heart of America's Up North, live from the lake.
Thanks for making this a place to spend part of your mornings.
I'm Pat Krightlow.
This is the Civic Media Radio Network.
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Welcome back at 722.
Let's see, it's 42 degrees here in the Chippewa Valley, 45 in La Crosse.
Amory here at 42, Oshkosh 43.
And in West Alice at the Pieces of Love Cake and Coffee in West Lincoln, it's 47 degrees right now.
West Alice was one of the many places that saw flash flooding and tremendous damage a couple of weeks back.
Milwaukee County Executive David Crowley was in the Chippewa Valley last week to tour an affordable housing site and to learn more about what could be done to increase affordable housing stock of all types throughout the state of Wisconsin.
But he was also asked about the FEMA assessment that was being done by the Federal Emergency Management Agency.
And understandably there's a little nervousness about this given that
Trump had first tried to abolish FEMA and said we're just gonna Put all that on the states and every state will just have to take care of their Disaster victims.
It's not like we're a country at all We're just gonna let each state handle it and now has backtracked on that a bit But has certainly not only been slow walking on FEMA but has at times politicized
the response to disasters there are places in California still waiting on any federal relief from last year's devastating wildfires well so when David Crawley was here last week he was asked about the FEMA assessments that were going on this was prior to
Governor Evers' formal request for disaster assistance, which was made since you hear this clip, but let's play a little bit of what David Crawley had to say last week about FEMA's work and what Milwaukee County had done at the very start of this disaster evaluation to hopefully help their own cause.
No, I'm incredibly grateful of the spirit of service that not only Milwaukee County residents, but many Wisconsin residents have been coming down, ascending into Milwaukee, West Dallas, Greendale, Greenfield.
All these different places have been hit extremely hard.
We did have FEMA come into a Milwaukee County and two other counties, and they've been doing incredible with their assessments.
And they let us know that in Milwaukee County, we were kind of ahead of the curve.
We created an internal dashboard where we set out our damage assessment teams who uploaded not just their assessments but pictures, which gave FEMA the opportunity to actually view a lot of the damage before they actually hit the ground.
There's about 40 to 60 individuals that were out on the ground within Milwaukee County, Walker Shaw, as well as Washington County.
And I know that they're going to be doing their assessment.
And they're going to give that to the state of Wisconsin.
And then Governor Evers will make his determination on whether to again to ask President Trump for that emergency declaration.
It is my hope that we receive that declaration.
I think there's more, way more than $100 million in damage in all three counties.
And there are so many residents who are hurting.
This has been a challenging time for many folks.
And there's no way as a community that we'll be able to rebuild without assistance from FEMA and the federal government.
And that's what that's how it's supposed to work the the federal government which is collecting money from far more billionaires than we have in Wisconsin and others pools those resources together to help any of us in a time of disaster unless of course you're politicizing it and that gets us back to what's gonna happen with FEMA and I got an interesting text from a friend yesterday who had a plumbing issue
and was expecting to have to wait a long time to get some plumbing help down there in the southeast corner of the state.
And was told, we're actually kind of free right now because so many places can't start their work because they're waiting on disaster assistance.
They're waiting on relief.
And from WISN TV, Channel 12 in Milwaukee comes a story of one of these folks.
The headline is Milwaukee resident tackles flood damage with personal savings says he can't wait on FEMA.
The story is about a retired city worker in Milwaukee by the name of Johnny Madlock and says, you know, basically as insurance companies are, you know, evaluating and as federal officials are evaluating.
I mean, the work has to get done.
And so he's draining his savings.
He talks about having to throw away his washing machine, his dryer, a lot of stuff that cost thousands of dollars.
And says he can't wait.
He says, quote, I don't think FEMA is going to give us the help we need because they got to go through the president in order for it to be okay.
And it's taking a while for that to do.
So I can't wait around on that.
So I've had to do it myself, you know, from the damages.
He says insurance will not cover a lot of the damages leaving madlock to clear debris and pay for the repairs independently.
Now, there are some who will say, well, isn't that how it's supposed to work?
I mean, there isn't a magic wand and that checks don't magically appear within, you know, a few days after a disaster.
And so if some people want to get started, they have to
dip into savings or borrow the funds or whatever.
And I completely get that.
Nobody should be under the illusion that every time that there's a disaster, everybody is made whole right away.
But it doesn't mean that we can't do everything possible to make the process efficient and to not play politics with it, where your recovery from a disaster is going to depend on your zip code.
I mean, it was just days ago we were talking about New Orleans and what was it, the 20th anniversary of Hurricane Katrina and what a disaster that was and the sympathy that many of us still feel for the city that has been trying to recover and rebuild.
And yet, what was the headline yesterday about New Orleans?
It was Donald Trump saying that he might send troops there as well because it's another one of those, you know, crime infested cities.
Even though in New Orleans, like in other cities, crime has actually gone down.
Crime isn't nearly as rampant as it was.
Not saying it's not an issue, but saying that it's a lie to say we're going to send troops in because crime is at some kind of an all-time high.
To say that Chicago is the murder capital of the world when it's not even in the top 10 in the United States.
So if we could please stop politicizing law enforcement,
and disaster relief and simply help people when they need it in a time of disaster and help people addressing the root causes of crime instead of putting tanks in the streets.
That would be very welcome.
I don't know if it's going to happen anytime soon, but we'll talk to Congressman Mark Pocan about that and more as Congress gets back into session.
The Midwest Farm Report is coming up next live from the lake.
You're listening to Mornings with Pat Crightlow, powered by Up North News here on the Civic Media Radio Network.
Welcome back.
Nice to have you along.
It's 735 on this Thursday morning.
I'm Pat Kratlow with Up North News, part of Courier Newsroom, a pro-democracy news network.
Go to couriernewsroom.com to read news from all of our state outlets and get links to podcasts, merchandise, and much more.
Tomorrow on the program, Dr. Kristen Lierly will join us along with Mike Clemens, giving us a preview of weekend sports.
We will have our Week in Review panel, which includes journalist Mark Jacob, Jennifer Schulze, and former U.S.
attorney.
Jim Santel.
But let's turn now to Congress getting back in session after the August recess and Congressman Mark Pokan joins us now from the second congressional district.
Although technically it's a bifurcated job.
He's also kind of the de facto rep for the third congressional district.
We'll get into that a little bit later.
Congressman, how are you?
I'm doing as well as you can when you're in Washington.
Exactly it.
What would you call it a productive August recess for you?
Yes, you know whenever you're back home.
You're getting regrounded right you're finding out what people actually are talking about not with the bubble and the lobbyists and everyone else in Washington talks about so you know it should be for all members very valuable to do that but You know got a chance to talk to lots of people in district got a chance to do a town hall and in third congressional district got a chance to Do a whole lot of things that I can't normally do when we're here three out of the four weeks and sometimes four out of four
I had said going into this that this might be the busiest August recess in recent memory.
I mean, there's some Augusts, they're very, they're quiet and members can can get a little bit more downtime, but that there'd probably be less downtime this time around because so many people want to bend your ear on what's happening in the nation's capital, not the least of which is everything that's in the Trump mega bill, all of the cuts that are coming.
and the misinformation that's been coming out about that.
Did I turn out to be pretty good in my guess?
That's what people want to talk to you about?
Yeah, I mean, you know, people still are learning about the big ugly law now, not the big ugly bill, because it's law.
And how so many people are going to lose their health care.
I think it's something like 15 to 17 million people, not just the Medicaid folks that won't happen until after next year's election, very conveniently timed.
But people on the Affordable Care Act, 20 million people, who are going to have subsidies increase next year.
And some people are starting to get notified of what those increases are.
And it's going to be pretty shocking to people.
So the health care aspects alone,
are one of the biggest, but you know, taking away food assistance from hungry poor kids, taking away education fund in K to 12.
You know, one thing that hasn't got a lot of attention is the Social Security Fund loses a year of life because of the tax cuts to the wealthy.
We lost that much revenue that would have been there for that.
So you've got a year less of life of Social Security.
There's so many things that people want to talk about and we're making sure, you know,
As people know about the bill, they dislike it by at least 20 or more points percentage wise.
We just have to make sure more people know about that bill.
And that's what we were doing.
Well, and you have to do that in the face of what I said, you know, I called it misinformation and you had it from the vice president of the United States making an appearance in lacrosse last week.
Yeah.
And again, making the case.
And I look back at the transcript of the speech because I was noticing it in a real time.
I'm like, is he just hitting the same note over and over?
And sure enough, six paragraphs in a row.
It was, well, your benefits aren't being cut.
Your benefits are being threatened by undocumented immigrants.
Of course, you use different terminology for them.
But it was, it's the immigrants.
It's the immigrants.
It's the immigrants, the immigrants who are endangering your benefits.
it could not have sounded in my mind more like your classic smoke screen of, you know, it's those guys, it's not us who are cutting your benefits.
Well, yeah, I think with Medicaid is probably the best example.
You know, by law, you can't get Medicaid if you're not a citizen.
So there's no federal money that goes to that, right?
That's the federal law.
So some states have decided to put money in to make sure they're covering non citizens, but it's a complete, it's complete horse.
What are you?
I've tried to think what I could say on your show.
I said this information, but you can say BS.
Yes, BS.
Uh, that they would actually say that.
So they go back to their fear.
They go back to their safe zone racism.
Um, but you know, the reality is, uh, tens of millions of people are going to have their health insurance at risk or their rates go up.
Quite honestly, all of our rates are going to go up because as we know, uh, with less money out there, that's less money for rural hospitals, people are still going to get sick.
And then that is going to go on to all of us.
So all.
All they've done is done a cost shift.
to provide a tax break for Elon Musk and Donald Trump and Mark Zuckerberg and Jeff Bezos and the like.
We all wind up paying for it in other ways.
And healthcare is probably the most substantial where people are going to see this hit happen and this cost increase.
But people are still paying too much for things.
Donald Trump promised last November, that's what he was going to do when he became president instead.
All he's done is take pages of Project 2025 and sign the bottom of the page.
it's not what we were promised.
You know, we're going to talk to Sean O'Malley in our next hour about your money in the markets.
And the subject that we're going to hit is the prospect of stagflation, that we might be there already with inflation, but also a softening job market.
And usually you don't see the two together.
And when you do it, it's especially bad.
You've got a president who only wants to look at one side of the equation and is trying to bash the Federal Reserve
into cutting interest rates, even though that may not necessarily be the right solution.
But my question to you is about the importance of an independent federal reserve and how do we fix an economy if you've got a president trying to use undue influence on the federal reserve when it comes to interest rates?
Well, the real thing that we should really be talking about for the president anyway is his tariff policy or lack thereof, right?
It's this chaotic policy.
He's affecting everything that we buy just about is going to have increases.
We just saw a bunch of countries not going to send things to people in the United States anymore because of a change that happened through tariff law.
That's what's costing us.
We are paying for tariffs in the end.
So even though the federal government gets some of that revenue,
It is our money because we're the end user of the people who buy things.
That cost is getting passed on to us.
So, you know, what he's doing at the Federal Reserve, I think, is obviously very problematic.
It's supposed to be independent.
That's why it was created the way it was.
But I'm more concerned with.
when you talk about inflation or the lack of jobs is what's happening through a very uncoordinated tariff policy.
In fact, you know, even the most Republican business people I talked to from Wisconsin, it's not even just, you know, the tariffs, it's the lack of a policy.
It's what you don't know could happen in a couple weeks.
So they're not making the investments that Donald Trump said they would to make things here because that tariff policy is on and again and off again.
And who's going to put the investments in?
when you have a chaotic policy.
So that's the one I'm really worried about hurting the economy because it's coming out of our pockets and it's also affecting the job market and everything else.
And you're getting this double whammy for Wisconsin farmers where China is now boycotting soybeans.
A lot of them come from Wisconsin.
And you know, an American company like John Deere is taking it in the shorts because of the tariff policy.
So there's a lot to watch in this.
And yet
You've got to spend a time not so much focused on the broader economy, but on the prospect of I can't believe I'm saying this again another government shutdown showdown with with a budget that has to pass Let's start with the background.
What is it that Congress and the president?
But what is it that Congress needs to do by when to keep things going and and what's the path forward?
So our fiscal year ends September 30th.
You know, if you follow the cartoon, you know, that how a bill becomes a law, we have 12 appropriation bills, right, that are supposed to be passed.
To be fair, they rarely pass on time anyway, but at least some of them are done and there might be at what's called a CR, a continuing resolution that just flat funds and continues current funding.
But this Republican majority can hardly do anything.
I mean, you know, the
amount of
work that it took to pass the big ugly law, if it wasn't for all of their donors getting tax breaks, I don't know if they could have unified them around anything.
But right now, we haven't done anything substantive on the 12 appropriation bill.
So it should be an automatic.
They pass a CR, but they can't do it with their own majorities.
So they somehow have to get Democratic votes.
And they're trying to blame Democrats.
This is my favorite I tweeted about this morning.
I mean, they want to say,
Democrats are to blame.
We're not in charge of the House, the Senate, or the White House.
They've got to figure this out.
And they're saying, we're waiting for a proposal from the Democrats.
No, we're not in charge.
They got to figure this out.
They have not come for our votes.
They should be coming and asking and giving something.
But the problem is, because the president's doing recisions and Congress is giving up our Article 1 constitutional responsibility of power of the purse,
and the president's stealing money through decisions that Congress has approved, legally approved, we can't trust them on very much.
So this is gonna be a shutdown if the Republicans can't act.
I hope Democrats hold strong and honor ourselves if they're gonna steal money that we've approved that you can't trust them.
And that's unfortunately where we're at with them.
But think about just the Wisconsin delegation alone and then extrapolate that across Congress and realize why you can't get things done.
We're talking to Congressman Mark Polkan as the House of Representatives and the Senate come back from their August recess.
and the recess started on very abruptly with Speaker Mike Johnson sending members home because he did not like the fact that there there's a growing number of Republicans who also are unhappy that Donald Trump has flip-flopped on the Jeffrey Epstein case of the sexual predator now calls it a hoax when it's clearly anything but and if Speaker Johnson thought that sending Congress home you know people would just stop thinking about it
As we saw on Capitol Hill yesterday with so many of the Epstein victims coming forward, that's not happening.
Yeah.
And I think people deserve to know what's happening.
I didn't even realize that there's a thousand victims when it comes to the Epstein cases.
And the fact that they won't release the files and Donald Trump has had about 10 different answers for why, I mean, you know, it doesn't pass the smell test, right?
Why they don't want to release the files.
And what they released were
almost everything has already been released and it's still redacted and excuse me that was just a way to try to cover for the fact that they can't vote to pass something to say release the files we have a discharge petition right now you need 218 people to sign it we got four Republicans I believe have signed on so far every Democrat will sign on to it I have already uh and you know at least we should let the public see what's there is this
the most substantive issue we're dealing with?
No, I think people's health care and funding of government and what we're actually here to do is still gotta be a part of the mix that we're talking about, but certainly it doesn't pass a smell test that the president originally said that they would all be released and then suddenly they're not.
Now he's saying Joe Biden might have added names to it and he's got, depending on the day, a different answer, it's a hoax.
And yet I think, you know, enough people realize that that's just not a very credible answer.
And obviously, you know, it's obvious his name is in there.
It's just a question of how many times and how many times they're going to have to redact
that.
And then finally, there's this prospect of the president sending troops to Milwaukee, as well as, you know, Chicago, all of these other cities.
Again, the Congress has has oversight.
powers that it could use.
What's your concern about whether we will see Donald Trump use the streets of Wisconsin to continue this show of force for whatever purposes it's all about?
It's certainly not about crime.
I think it's more difficult than in DC.
I mean, DC obviously is a product, so to speak, of the federal government, right?
So therefore, he has a lot more control because we have budgetary control for DC.
However, when it comes to Chicago and it comes to Milwaukee, I don't think he can do what he's putting the bravado out there he wants to do.
But what he wants to do is keep you focused on crime, that there's crime going on everywhere because that's a great fear factor for authoritarians across the globe to make them give up their rights and their freedoms.
in order to have that leader make decisions for them.
So that's what this is all about.
Donald Trump trying to continue to gain power, take away our freedoms as individuals.
If we're scared enough, you'll let him get away with more, and that's what his intention is.
Power and control.
Congressman Mark Pocan, we appreciate your time as always.
Hope you had a good August recess, and we'll check in again real soon.
Yeah, thanks, Pat, as always.
All right, thank you.
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7.52 in the morning now, and it is 42 degrees in the Chippewa Valley.
45 in La Crosse.
Oshkosh is at 43.
And at Wonder State Coffee in Verruqua, it is 42 degrees right now, which, I mean, Todd Alba, he loves when we talk about Wonder State Coffee.
It's one of his favorites, isn't it?
I have it mic'd up right now, a little bit of aqua blanca from Columbia, Wonder State Coffee.
Oh, OK.
And people go, wait a minute, Pat, why do you do the temperatures in, you know, Clare LaCrosse, Marie Oshkosh, like that?
Well,
These are the times when some of our other stations are doing little local news breaks, but you lucky folks in the Chippewa Valley and La Crosse and Oshkosh and Amory, you get to hang out with me and Todd Alba and Parker Olson for a few minutes.
Yeah.
And some people are like, where is the Civic Media app so I can go to a different station?
Yeah.
Well, see, it works both ways.
And that's what I want to remind people of is you can either go to the Civic Media app and catch some of these things on other stations or you can
you can subscribe to us as a podcast and you can listen to what we're yapping about later on and not miss your local newscast.
So you get the best of both worlds here, which by the way, when I've thought about this, it used to be, and look, radio still does a ratings book, of course, we know this, there's these windows when when ratings are taken.
But I've realized that, you know, back back in our day, Todd, there was just the ratings number.
Now, it's
the ratings over the air.
It's who's listening live on the website, Facebook, you know, YouTube, maybe even Twitter, I think some of our shows have run there.
There's, you know, who's subscribing on Spotify, who's subscribing on Apple.
There's all these different ways to calculate.
How many people are actually listening?
And I choose to look at that as a glass half full thing that I can say when somebody goes, well, you know, your ratings down a little bit.
I can go, well, there's 12 other metrics out there.
You actually have no idea whether I'm doing a good job or not.
My job.
Yes, my job security is in the complexity and the volatility of all the fragmented ways that we all come together.
We don't just all have our transistor radio listening to Todd Alba weekdays from 2 to 4 p.m.
I
like this pack right low in the morning.
I like this a lot.
This is fantastic.
However you get here is how you get here and we're very happy about that.
How was your Labor Day weekend?
Uh, it was, uh, okay.
I, uh, and timely, timely indeed.
Like Lucas is fond of saying because vaccines are the news, of course, because, uh, the CDC, RFK, Trump dismantled everything.
And now this morning, you probably already covered it, but, uh,
Florida, announcing good old running to Santas, announcing that they are getting rid of mandates for all of childhood vaccines, which seems like a bad idea to me.
I got my, I was due and so I was very happy to get them.
Very thankful I could.
I got my second shingrix for shingles vaccine and my pneumococcal pneumonia vaccine, which reminds me back in college, I had a case of pneumococcal pneumonia.
I got some penicillin to clear it right up.
But I got my vaccines and the second shingrix knocked me out.
Knocked
me out.
And so I spent most of the weekend
uh recovering from that but today I actually feel a little bionic.
I feel really good
today.
Uh it it does have that impact.
I have gone through both courses of that and both of them knocked me out.
They didn't kick in until if I remember right the 12th hour and then for that next 24 hours uh until 36 hours after the shot for that 24 hour period there.
I mean it is death warmed over and yet and people go well why the heck would you do that?
because I've had shingles and that
is
so much worse.
I will go through a little bit of hell to avoid going through all seven circles of it.
Okay.
And again, cannot recommend that strongly enough to people of a certain age.
Whether you've had shingles or not, do not just go, Oh, I might not get shingles.
It might be just fine.
You will thank me and you will thank Todd for getting those shots.
Well, I got mine at a young age.
I got mine in my early 30s.
I got shingles for reasons I won't go into.
I just had a lot of stress in my work at the time.
But I was on, I was thankful I was working for the state at the time.
I was on partial disability for three months because it was so bad.
It was terrible.
The worst thing I've ever had.
And so yeah, yeah, you're right, Pat.
It's just comforting for 36, 40 hours, whatever it is, not fun.
But you get through it and it's fine.
And a million times better than actually having shingles.
Yes.
And I, to be fair, I had
a case of shingles that was diagnosed extremely early.
It's good to be married to a doctor who said, what's that thing?
You know, referring to the rash on my side over here.
I'm like, I don't know.
Is that poison ivy or something?
She's like, let's go see a doctor right now.
And
so I did not
go through anything nearly as debilitating.
Thank goodness.
But even for the short time that I had it, I'm, I'm all in.
on get this stuff treated.
You just never know.
And yet, to get back to your initial point, you've got Florida going, you know, if you die, you die, which is exactly what they did during COVID and why so many people died.
Yeah.
Oh, yeah.
We're all
gonna die someday.
We're all gonna die someday.
Well, some of us are trying to maybe not have that happen so quickly to so many people, and we're simply going to have to do more work to find the good information, the credible information, and, you know, have people on our shows and other things that can actually be trusted and not just play politics with this.
It's depressing that we're at this point, Todd, but this is the world we live in now.
Yeah, very, very true.
A quick plug, if I might, a cool show come timely indeed on the show today.
Amy Barrio from Clean Wisconsin is going to be on Charlie Barron.
Yes, that Charlie Barron's minute to walk minute and Kripe's cast, which could be heard on civic media on Saturdays.
Amy Barrio is going to be here to talk about these data centers in Wisconsin and the threat to Wisconsin's environment, particularly our water, clean lakes and streams.
This is a real issue.
I honestly didn't know, Pat, how many of these data centers are already up and running?
Wisconsin, 30 plus, I believe.
And until Charlie did this, or this Insta post, which he doesn't get into politics very often, but this is something that should be nonpartisan.
I really credit Charlie Barron's for starting this, really amping discussion up.
I really want to encourage folks to listen to this conversation coming up from Todd weekdays from two to four.
Todd, thank you very much.
Appreciate it.
Thank you.
In our next hour, Chad Holmes and Sean O'Malley and Joseph Pecky.
I'm Pat Krightlow.
This is the Civic Media Radio Network.
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