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You're listening to Mornings with Pat Cricklow powered by Up North News.
Now, for my Lake Minnesota studio, here is the founding editor of Up North News, Pat Cricklow.
Hey, good morning.
Welcome back.
Nice to have you here.
Kind of sort of Up North, I mean, for the rest of the country, all of Wisconsin is America's Up North, but we're in, we're in Madison today, actually, Studio A2 along with Parker Olson, who is producing this fine program.
And, and again, we'll say at the top of this hour, believe it or not,
We're in the same room.
This is the same room, which is the, oh, this is only the second time that I've done shows down here when, when Parker's here.
And apparently the last time around I complained.
I,
a little, a little, just a
little about the sparse.
Bear decor void behind me.
Yeah.
And so there's there's like this table.
There's multiple spotlights.
There's there's the show logo, the old logo, but hey, it's a it's a logo something is on a monitor behind me.
I mean, this is very Hollywood.
It is.
I have a feeling it's temporary and yet I know you can you can just barely tell on the Parker camera angle though There's a little bit of blue light coming off his microphone stand there.
Oh, yeah That
they'd indicate.
Oh, yeah, none of the banner behind him that says there seems to be did a UFO land in front of him or something What's what's going on?
But
it's just me
that cry well,
it's just
me yeah now we turn to his camera and there There I am over there looking nothing like in the left camera Because in this one I look like I've actually you know, I'm healthy and have been well fed not at me
and green in the gills, like the one that you normally have here in the studio.
I will say my camera looks better with there being something over there.
Well,
it's the
lighting.
Lighting is very important.
Brittany's going to back me up on this meteorologist.
Brittany Merleau is here.
Brittany, you've done you've done a little bit of TV in your day.
Yes, I have and it's all about the lighting.
It is blinding sometimes.
Yes.
Yours is very Vegas.
I like
it.
I know it really is.
And again, of course, because I've got to say something that makes me sound horribly old.
But just the, if you've ever heard the term CLEAGUE lighting, CLEAGUE was the brand name of these, of the old fashioned spotlights, those great big black
cone type spotlights and they were called Klig lights.
And that's what, you know, we had, well, Ford going back 40 years now.
And so when you talk about hot studio lights, that was what people would reference because those puppies, I mean, they were hot.
By comparison now with all the LEDs and everything, you know, they don't, you don't get that heat source anymore.
Thank goodness.
That's so
true.
I know.
You're sending me back to my studio days now where the heat.
from those lights, because the meteorologist is always sitting in the studio.
That's our office, right?
All of those lights, they keep the AC on, so cold in the studio.
You're trying to work with those lights.
Oh, it was just blanket time.
It was summer.
And
ours too, we come into the studio and there's our meteorologist and she'd be in a jacket on a hot day because it was just, it was a meat locker.
in there because of the old hot lighting.
So I am glad to see that lighting has developed over time here.
Although like our listeners said before, you know, they'd still preferred the natural lighting off the Lake Wasoda studio and the same goes for you.
You've got some very lovely natural lighting there.
So
thank you.
Are you going to tell me that this is all you've got like six ring lights in front of you just to, you know, make it look proper?
I actually have.
I do have a ring light in front of me.
I have another tall one in the corner.
And then I also have a happy light too.
So three lights from every corner.
Then I got the backlight because you need all of it or it won't work.
Yeah.
You got
the whole three point lighting thing going on.
Wow.
I was going to say here, here's my dirty little secret.
There are actually five lights that I have to turn on in my home office for the, for the, for the lighting there.
Are we counting at ceiling lights?
Yeah, there's a ceiling light.
There's a ring light.
There's a halogen light.
There's the bookshelf lights.
And then there's the adjust the curtains for natural lighting.
Wow.
Yeah.
So I guess I'm at the same number then.
Thanks for joining us for lighting talk today where we would normally have a weather report.
But since Brittany's here, I mean, we may as well go ahead because, you know, yesterday all we had was the natural light and that was enough.
It was gorgeous.
And so where do we go from here?
More and more of that natural light.
Plenty of it.
So much of it that maybe some of us will get sick of it.
Nah, we're going to love it.
We are looking bright and beautiful.
Once this fog clears, it is dense in places.
A lot of spots are already seeing it lift, but the dense fog advisory remains in effect until nine from Ashland to Green Bay and north.
So up north in the state, but it is still in low lying areas, especially in the rivers off west too.
So temperatures this morning, we hit 39 degrees in Merrill.
Pretty crisp.
That's because we didn't have many clouds out there.
And so as the fog burns off, it's leading way to beautiful sunshine.
mostly sunny statewide.
Nothing happening today.
We're all going to rise to those mid 70s feeling fantastic.
We'll repeat that up north tomorrow.
Some 80s will be felt down south tomorrow and we're going to continue to be in the upper 70s to low 80s for the entire weekend and into early next week.
We hold mild and above average for next week as well.
Because mind you, this time of year, we should be in the upper 60s across the state.
So 80s is fantastic.
And we're going to hold on to that for all next week, too.
I don't see rain in the forecast until next weekend.
And so again, I don't know when everybody's going to be doing their fieldwork, but for any fieldwork, any harvesting that can get done next week, you're welcome.
Because it's going to be a good week for that, along with anything else that you might be planning.
Brittany Merleau, thank you very much.
Have a great day.
You too.
Thanks.
All right.
Let's bring in Chad Holmes now from 98 nine WXCO in Wausau to talk about the things that he's been following.
He does, of course, you know, 10,000 high school football games this time of year.
He's got, of course, all of the local interviews that he does during this particular program during the seven and eight AM hours.
And then, of course, he's following some national headlines as well.
And so, Chad, I know that
We, we'll talk about Tom Tiffany in a moment here, cause obviously he's the congressman there.
He's running for governor and everything else.
But you, you tell me, you also noticed that one of the congressional candidates in the third district, uh, Becca Cook made a comment and that you heard us talking about it on the show recently, her, her, uh, noting an endorsement of, uh, Zoran Mamdani in the New York city mayor's race.
Well, number one, I'm, I'm a big fan of whenever, uh,
Todd Alba brings on Pat Krightlow on his program and then I'm always make sure to tune in and Trig Vilsen and you three get together and I have to be you know tuned in because
Wednesday's at two o'clock.
I'm a
huge fan and yesterday you guys were talking about this and you all agreed that basically that Becca Cook should not have answered the question on whether or not she
who she would have, who she would support if she was voting.
I went under the supposition that it was a question designed to bait you, that there is no right answer.
So try to come up with the least wrong answer because you're, you're being baited and don't take the bait.
So that was my premise to say, you don't have to answer it.
So I don't
agree.
I have a different premise on a couple of different
ways of looking
at it.
Number one is I think.
the idea of, and I heard, I don't know, I think it was maybe you or Trigby talking about instead of answering it that way is that you would, I care about who's the mayor of
Tomah or Lacoste.
Yeah,
whatever it may be.
Number one, I think at this point we need folks who are willing to answer the questions and not play the consultant games.
That was my first thought.
It sounded like this is the kind of answer that a consultant would give you.
And basically, my opinion is that the consultants for the Democratic Party have run the party into a ditch and made a bunch of people that are sounding like robotic candidates.
And we hear all the time about the right kind of language, you know, in terms of how Democrats should be running.
And I think we're running these candidates around in circles when we should be looking for the bulwarks of this world right now.
That if there's one thing that MAGA has proven,
Is that they can go as far right as possible if people seem to think that in some way they're being authentic And yet here in this case, that's one part of the Answer and then the second part for somebody like myself And I've said it to you that Becca cook the first thing that pops into my mind.
What is the first thing that pops into my mind?
What have I told you before?
The
commercial with her in
the middle of the road.
Yes, exactly
And basically my thought was when I hear people saying oh, she should
avoid answering the question and she should give the consultant response.
My first thought is, well, then you may as well dust off the old middle of the road commercial and put that back on because that's exactly what it would have implied to me.
I found that she answered it straightforward as something that was very surprising, number one.
And number two, it gave me more of an appreciation for her and for folks like myself, maybe that are not.
from the mushy middle that, and I'm going to be maybe a little bit the elbows out here that.
the Lincoln Projectization of the Democratic Party.
I think that we have to be thinking a little bit more about the people that bring the passion to the party and not go after people that may or may not vote in the end anyways, because I go back to last year.
There were a lot of folks, I would say, from that wing of political thinking that thought, holy cow, this was the most wonderful thing that we ever saw when Liz Cheney and Kamala Harris came to Wisconsin and campaigned.
In the end, how many votes did that get?
Not many.
Because the people that were already were voting for Kamala were voting for Kamala the people on the other side of the aisle Looked at Liz Cheney as a trader to the party.
I don't think that Running as for the mushy middle is number one the smart way to run and I don't think it's a successful way to want and that's just my opinion again I just think that we need to grasp the energy
in order to beat the energy that is out there.
We can talk about Derek Van Orden and how horrible he is, but there are still a lot of people that will crawl on glass to vote for Derek Van Orden.
We need to have people that are willing to crawl on glass to vote for Becca Cook or whoever wins that Democratic primary.
That's just my thought on, you know, it just, my first thought was again, the consultants are out there.
to be very moderate and to be trying to get to the middle and I just don't think that's a winning.
strategy for Democrats in 2026.
And I completely understand that on its face when both Todd and Trig V said, well, you know, I think the right answer would be, I care who the mayor is in La Crosse or Tomah.
You'll recall that my answer really showed why I would not be a good candidate because my answer would have been a very sincere one.
Don't know.
Don't care.
You know, I'm, I'm running here.
I, the last thing I care about is who's running for mayor in New York City.
Can I ask you a question though?
Yeah.
And I'm just generally from what you've seen around the country here when it comes to that particular candidate.
Why is there such a reticence for Democrats to endorse the Democratic nominee?
Would we see anybody that is too conservative in the Democratic Party have all this hand-ringing to be able to say, I support the Democratic nominee for this important office?
I just find that, again, there's this idea that somehow you can always be a little too far to the left, but you can never be too far to the right, whether within the Democratic Party or within the political system itself.
That is a very valid point.
And it's also why I would point people to UpNorthNewsWI.com, because the answer is the S-word, that Zoran Mamdani embraces the term socialist, and there is now a socialist caucus in the Wisconsin legislature made up of four lawmakers, including Christian Phelps of Eau Claire.
really urge people to read the op-ed that we recently published from him of why
He is embracing the socialist label.
Fran Hong talked on this program.
Candidate for governor said the same thing, that that socialist label holds her accountable to keeping her promise that things should benefit everybody, not just a few.
Now the answer to your question is, of course, a lot of consultants and party leaders, I mean, they still pucker up like crazy at the mere mention of the S-word.
And you've got people like Francesca Hong and Christian Phelps and Zaron Mamdani pushing back and saying, no, no, no.
And we're embracing these values and they're doing just what you're saying, is be honest and fight for what you believe in.
And real quickly as well, if you look at recent polling on these issues, if we can somehow get
to a real discussion of issues.
And that's on me and that's on other people with microphones.
That would go a long way towards taking away maybe some of that stigma as well.
Yeah, exactly.
So there you go.
Tony puts on YouTube, sneakily spicy Chad today.
Chad Holmes catch him on 98.
Oh, perspective.
That's what we do around here, right?
I know.
It's our stock and trade.
Thank you, Chad.
Appreciate it.
Have a great day.
Thank you.
All right.
We'll have Sean O'Malley talking about your money in the markets and Joe Specky all ahead.
I'm Pat Krightlow.
This is this.
to
Civic Media Radio Network.
The Milwaukee Brewers were winners in San Diego, taking one game out of the three game series with a 3-1 victory.
96 wins on the season.
They have a chance to get to 99 wins if they happen to sweep Cincinnati this weekend at American Family Field, but Cincinnati is still in a dogfight for a wildcard birth, so expect three very spirited games between the Brewers and the Reds.
starting Friday.
Hey, if you ever miss a guest or a topic or a day, you should pod this program by heading over to Spotify and looking up our show and following it there or Apple, wherever you get your podcasts, we'd love to have you along as a follower.
Time to talk about your money in the markets with Sean O'Malley joining us right now.
And the theme that I take from this is, you know, both businesses and workers are girding.
for whatever it is that might be next.
Or I've also likened them, Sean, to the squirrels in the backyard, which seem especially active this fall, burying acorns.
It's like they know winter is coming.
And I kind of get that impression from people around the economy as well.
But I don't know, maybe I'm being alarmist here.
How are you looking at things this morning?
Yeah, no, I think you're you're dead on with that one and we've we mentioned it before That you know people are making different buying decisions than they would normally because you know the pocketbook is more Constrained, you know prices are up for a lot of things and you know the overall picture isn't great that's been reflected in the updated GDP forecast from the the OECD
that puts out, you know, global forecasts for each country.
And they've got the 2026 forecast, it's a range, but it's a lot lower than what we would want and probably a lot lower than what people are, some people are expecting.
They're expecting GDP growth between 1.5 and 1.8%.
So clearly, you know, slower economic growth, which aligns with what
You know the consumers with the average Americans are seeing out there they are.
They're not making any big decisions they're kind of hanging on to what they got and not making any major financial moves.
Well and the same goes as well for.
uh, businesses and inventories, you know, with, with tariffs coming and everything.
So yeah, I, I, I guess I'll stick with my analogy there.
And I guess if, if I want to try to ask the question fairly, it's, is it inevitable that after having such a strong recovery coming out of the pandemic that this is where we would be anyway, as opposed to whether this is, shall we say, enhanced by things like Donald Trump starting a trade war.
Well, things do always move in cycles, but they don't usually move in cycles that are this rapid with this big of a change We had very strong, you know, fourth quarter 2024 GDP numbers.
We looked at the updated numbers that just came out this morning They revised Q1 down a little bit more it had been that down 0.5% it went down to 0.6% the big surprise though
was the revision upwards for second quarter, which had been at 3.3% and now got revised upward to 3.8%.
But now you got to keep in mind, similar to those consumers and those squirrels storing away their nuts, that was largely that that economic growth in second quarter was largely driven by businesses stockpiling goods because they wanted to get all the goods that they could before the tariffs hit in August.
But there was a little problem with that.
Right now, we're looking at a situation where the inventories of unsold goods posted a record rise per the S&P Purchasing Managers Index, which tracks things like inventory.
So the statement from that was the buildup of finished goods inventories is
the largest it's been in 18 years.
So what happened apparently is that, yeah, we had the surge in second quarter GDP because everybody was buying those goods to store them away like, you know, squirrels with nuts getting ready for winter.
And now that the tariffs have hit and nobody's buying.
Nobody's making those big financial decisions now businesses are sitting on record amounts of unsold finished goods for inventory and speaking of inventory we have another problem with the agriculture picture as well where farmers are thinking how they're gonna try to maximize their profits they don't want to sell right now because.
We do have the tariffs in a trade war right now.
I was at Farm Aid this last weekend, and there was a lot of talk about that in the crowd by the performers.
And the problem that they're seeing is that, okay, we can't really sell it right now, so maybe we can store it.
But then you'll look at the available storage throughout the region, you know, the US.
The two states that are probably in the best shape are Minnesota and Wisconsin, where it's almost exactly a 100% match.
Most of the others,
do not have enough capacity to store what they have produced.
So we do have an enhanced situation where the tariffs and the resulting trade wars have really sort of put things out of whack.
So what we would normally be having would be these slow sort of natural movements now get very exaggerated and get very magnified.
by the impact of the tariffs as well as trade responses from our trade partners?
I've got less than a minute to ask you this, but when you see this, you know, squirrels burying acorns because they think something may be coming along, how do we bring that back to the individual and what they're doing with their 401k or anything like that?
And would I be right reading the word caution into what they should be thinking in terms of their own portfolio?
Yeah, right now, as a matter of fact, it's interesting you mentioned that I saw something just the other day where Fed Chairman Powell made a statement about stock prices, which is not very normal for a Fed chairman to make, but he said that they were
You know, relatively high was, you know, sort of guarded
language, but
the lines.
Yes, you can.
So yeah, there you go.
Uh, Sean O'Malley will join us, uh, after the opening bell here for a bit.
And then we will be talking with Joseph Pecky about the week's political headlines as well.
I'm Pat Krightlow here in Madison, live on the civic media radio network back in a bit.
Welcome back live from Madison Studio A2 here with Parker Olson producing...
in the same room together.
It's hard to tell, but yes, we are here.
It is an experience.
Yes, we'll do that again today and again tomorrow.
Anyway, it's a Thursday morning, which means that on Friday morning, I will be starting to tease our question of the week in our Sunday morning newsletter.
But this week's question is who's to blame if there's another government shutdown, which could happen in the middle of next week.
If you want to be among the first to see.
the question of the week and respond to it.
Sign up for our newsletter up North News W I dot com.
Let's talk about your money in the markets after the opening bell here with Sean O'Malley and then Joseph Pecky to follow in just a little bit.
Our theme would be squirrels, squirrels that are burying acorns.
They sure are in my backyard.
They're just going crazy.
It's making me a little nervous about winter.
We know that businesses have been stockpiling inventories.
But what about
employees, what about workers, job seekers, things like that?
What kind of are we seeing similar behavior like a wariness of what may be yet to come in the economy?
Everybody is basically going for the safety play is going for the known rather than the unknown.
So what you're seeing is that the labor market is actually starting to freeze up.
This is because fewer Americans are willing to quit their jobs.
And hiring, of course, is slow because there are fewer jobs to be had, which results in a labor market that overall has increasingly limited mobility.
There's nobody, you know, trading one job for another, so everything's sort of just holding steady, kind of frozen, if you will.
And all of this is kind of ironic because the dissatisfaction, the job dissatisfaction rates
among U.S.
workers keeps rising, but they're staying putting their jobs because of the economic uncertainty.
So they're making sure that they keep getting with those nuts to, you know, store away for wintertime and they're not taking any chances.
They're not taking any fliers on, oh, let me start a new job.
Let me leave my job and start a new business.
There's just too much uncertainty to
really feel like you can do that with confidence.
How does that tie in or does it tie in with some of the latest weekly initial jobless claims numbers?
So it is moderating a bit.
But we'll see what the full picture looks like when we're looking at, you know, the unemployment numbers.
You still have, you know, just
limited hiring going on so even though.
Thank heavens, we're seeing fewer people file initial jobless claims.
There are, and if the trend continues that we've seen the last several months, there's not going to be nearly enough replacement to keep the jobs picture growing.
And it's been, as we've talked about several times before, very anemic for the last handful of months.
Go bury those acorns, people.
Sean O'Malley, thank you very much for the update on your money and the markets.
Have a good start to the weekend.
All right.
Thank you very much.
Let's bring in Joseph.
Becky now to talk about some of the headlines of the week, which certainly include the aforementioned possible government shutdown, the entry of Tom Tiffany into the governor's race and more.
Joe, how are you today?
I'm okay.
Okay.
Uh, what's, uh, are you, uh, much like talking to Melissa yesterday, we were talking about ragweed and seasonal allergies and things like that.
Is that, are you one of the people laid low by that?
Well,
Yes, that's vocal capacity is mental acuity sharp as ever.
So how would you welcome Republican Tom Tiffany to the 2026 Wisconsin governor's race?
week.
not.
People are beside themselves with a Congress that refuses to stand up to Donald Trump who cannot legislate
or govern.
And when they do, one time in, what are we on here, 230 or 40 days of the Trump 2.0 presidency, what they do is, like Tom Tiffany, vote to add $4 trillion to the national debt, kick hundreds of thousands of Wisconsinites off health care,
make it harder for rural hospitals to operate, also they can give another handout to millionaires and billionaires.
And Tom Tiffany and the Republican Party in their infinite wisdom go, I know what the people want, that.
Okay, come on in Tommy.
And so in he is and I mean that's without even going you know on his Attempt to shift his position on women's reproductive health rights.
I mean the economic issues alone Tell you that that Tom Tiffany is is not going to appeal to moderate voters He's gonna have to work really hard or scare them with something else, but you know to
to be fair, I guess, if you want to, if fair is the right word, Tom Tiffany's original state senate district and his congressional district, those positions he has, you know, they serve him well in those deep red districts.
It's just that now he may be in for a bit of an awakening when it comes to trying to win a statewide race.
Among the things that Congress has been derelict in, among the things that Tom Tiffany apparently can't be bothered to figure out while he's plotting his run for governor,
is how to stop a tariff war that is killing farmers in his own district.
Good luck selling soybeans right now.
Farmers across Wisconsin are going, what the hell is happening?
And Tom Tiffany and Maga Republicans can't be bothered to put a check on this president's clearly illegal tariffs that are killing
their ability to move goods to market.
Okay, I mean, listen, I understand this is what I'll say to defend Tom Tiffany.
I can understand why you wouldn't want to be in Washington DC or serving in the Republican Congress right now, but good grief, man, do something.
Your people in Northern Wisconsin hired you to fight for them.
And he can't be bothered to do that because it would annoy Donald Trump.
And so,
I understand why he wants to get out of the swamp, but I don't understand what case he thinks he can legitimately make and say, this is when I stood up for my people.
This is when I went to fight for our farmers.
This is when I got out of bed and said, Wisconsin manufacturers need an ally and I'm gonna be it.
How can you do that?
I don't think you can.
We're talking to Joseph Pecky.
Let's go over to the Democratic side where last hour we had Devon Remaker, the state Democratic Party chair on, and I asked him about, you know, what will most likely be many contentious Democratic primaries for congressional seats, for legislative seats, and of course, certainly for governor.
And, you know, he answers as a state party chair should, but
Joe, in terms of, you know, what your own advice as a strategist would be, again, I know varies from candidate to candidate and from district to district.
So let me ask it in some kind of a broad overarching way, and then you go wherever you want with this.
But should there be a concern that the primaries, August 11th next year, that August 12th, the headline will be Democrats in complete disarray after several bruising primaries?
Is there, and if so, how do they avoid having a headline like that?
That is
several political lifetimes, and I don't buy that there are going to be contentious Democratic primaries.
I think there will be competitive Democratic primaries, and they don't have to be contentious.
Look no further than your two interview guests this morning.
Devin and I ran against each other in what is basically a primary.
We didn't get contentious.
I think the Democratic Party emerged stronger from that process because people had an opportunity to hear competing visions, not like huge differences, but we kept it civil.
We kept it above board.
We talked about how we were going to revitalize the Democratic Party.
And Devin came out ahead.
And my message every single day since then has been, we need Devin to succeed.
We need a strong Democratic Party.
There's no contentiousness.
So there doesn't have to be contentiousness after a primary.
There doesn't have to be disarray.
And I don't think there will be, because Democrats from tip to tail across this state understand the gravity of the moment we're in, where
A mega-majority Congress is abdicating its constitutional responsibility to be a check and balance on an out-of-control president who is undermining the rule of law, who is destroying due process, who has launched this insane tariff war.
with our best trading partners.
Like that's the focus.
And I believe that Democrats will keep their eyes on the prize.
And after competitive primaries, everybody will be on the same team the next day, going, we need to elect a pro-democracy and therefore big D democratic majority to the United States house.
We need to hold on to the governor's mansion and we need to flip control of the Wisconsin state legislature.
That's what's going to happen.
As noted on YouTube from Tony's he says Joseph Becky and Devin Remacher.
Where's William Garcia?
Well, they tell you what?
William Garcia, the chair of the Third Congressional District Dems, is welcome anytime, especially given recent events, Joe, about their congressman, Derek Van Orden.
And I know we've discussed it before, but I do feel like, and I don't feel like I'm comparing apples to oranges in talking about Derek Van Orden and Jimmy Kimmel.
being brought back by ABC.
In both cases, I feel like there's now been a backlash to the backlash where people have said, hey, we get that you were upset about, you know, the Charlie Kerr killing, but you guys have gone way overboard with your reaction to it.
Well,
Political violence is wrong, full stop.
Charlie Kirk's widow, Erica, at that memorial service on Sunday, did one of the most remarkable things I've ever seen in forgiving her husband's assassin.
I mean, like, that is actual, like, wow.
How does anybody get there?
That is over here.
On the other hand, you have, again, this out-of-control president who is clearly looking for a pretext to fire Jimmy Kimmel.
I mean, among the insanity of this week was Republicans rushing out to the shows and going online and saying, no, no, no, no, this wasn't government censorship.
And then as soon as Kimmel goes back on the air, Donald Trump was like, yeah, it was.
I still want him gone.
And so those are two separate issues to me.
And it just underscores the gravity of the moment that we're in.
It does.
And again, the inability of leaders on the political right to try to strike any kind of court of unity, witnessing, you know, how JD Vance reacted to the shooting at an ICE facility in Dallas yesterday.
These are folks in Vance and Van Orden and Trump and others who quite seriously need to have to take their phones taken away, take that little tiny keyboard away and maybe react like leaders and grown-ups.
Joe Specky's here with us and we will be joined by Todd Alba in just a bit for some final news and notes from here on Lake Wissota, from here in Madison.
Hey, it took
you a while to be a tripped up.
Look, it took until 8.48.
Good
for me.
Yeah, for where we're going to be today and then again tomorrow doing the programs from here and tomorrow, of course, we'll have our, by and large, our regular weekend review panel.
So stick around for that, Dr. Kristen Lierly and Mike Clemens with a weekend sports update.
I'm Pat Krightlow.
This is
the Civic Media Radio Network.
This is normally the time when I would tell you to stick around for Matt Nair on air that's coming up next with Jane Matt Nair and Greg Bach.
And normally I would have in front of me something that would tell me about guests or anything like that.
But hanging out here in Madison, having a good time with Parker, and it occurs to me, I didn't do that.
I will tell you that on the Todd Alba show coming up later today, Dan Schaefer will be just, no, wait, I don't have to do that.
Todd Alba's here.
Right here, along with Joseph Peckie, who continues with us.
Todd, how are ya?
And who the heck is on your show today?
I'm well, I'm well.
Gentlemen, good to see you all.
We have the great Dan Schaefer of the Reconpopulation Area and Civic Media's political editor.
I know Dan's gonna want to talk politics, but I'm going to ask him his second love, which is, is there truly a connection to keeping Giannis onto the cupo there by signing his brother?
So we'll be talking a little bucks strategy and of course the crew back in town in Milwaukee for their final home game The regular season they have one game left to secure the number one overall seat of baseball Which would give them home field advantage and fan field throughout the world series.
I don't want to jinx
it
I know.
And then we've got Keegan Kelly from crack.com, entertainment writer on the ramifications of Jimmy Kimmel coming back to ABC and what that means for free speech and entertainment.
all of us, and we'll pay tribute to Pat Krightlow with talking about him grousing about the fact he has his old logo behind him.
I wasn't the one to put my own face on my logo.
Well, that's true.
I offered to put the current logo back there.
No, no, no, I just put the Up North News one.
We have an updated Up North News logo that I needed to
get you and
I neglected to do that.
Joe Speck is here as well.
Joe, you said you wanted to take a crack at our question of the week from our Sunday morning newsletter.
Sign up at UpNorthNewsWI.com.
Who is to blame if there's a government shutdown next week?
Is it congressional Republicans who can't shoot straight?
Is it Democrats who are being obstinate and a lot of Americans are going to hurt from a government shutdown?
Or is it President Trump more so than congressional Republicans because Mr. Art of the Deal should be able to work something out?
A lot of our answers have been
they want to pick A and C, which means like, you can't get away with that.
Is it more on the congressional Republicans or is it more on Trump or is it the Democrats?
Joe, where do you come down?
It's on Republicans
House of Representatives.
Democrats have like the tiniest little smidge bot of power in Washington.
And what they are saying is, oh,
You need just the tiniest little smidgebot of health to keep the government open?
Great.
We are prepared to deal.
Here's the deal.
We want you to stop health care costs from going even higher on 20 million Americans.
And so if you would just do that one thing, which is probably to your benefit politically, then we'll get you the votes you need.
and Republicans can't be bothered to say, yeah, that seems like a good trade.
So clearly, it is not as simple as it's Donald Trump or congressional Republicans.
It's the whole lot of them.
All Democrats want is for 20 million people to not have to pay even more for health care next year and Republicans can't be bothered.
Give me a break.
But if they don't do that, and if there is a shutdown, and a lot of people do get hurt, the question Todd Alba becomes, I don't know, is the question whether a few Democrats caved to end the shutdown, or is the question when will a few Democrats caved to end the shutdown?
As Todd Alba likes to say, what say you?
I blame Bill Barion because he's bringing back an old 1990s Bill Clinton strategy of triangulation.
Not that kind of triangulation.
No, no, no.
That's who I would blame.
But yeah, I really hope Democrats hold the ground.
Pat, you've been an elected official.
I lost two primaries.
I think when you're hearing from your constituents and they're saying, we're not going to vote for you again unless you do something, quote unquote, that puts a lot of pressure on people.
You know, I would never second guess Joseph Pecky.
I guess I would put a little bit more on Trump.
I mean, after all, he's the guy who said, I alone killed immigration.
I alone controlled the budget.
If Donald Trump really wanted a budget passed and to save Americans from a hurt,
Apparently, he could do that.
So I would put it back on him.
Donald Trump will always, always shoot the hostage.
I mean, he's even preparing for massive layoffs over and above what a shutdown would call for, Joe.
So it is a fair question to you as well, is can Democrats in Congress hold the line so that public pressure eventually comes down against congressional Republicans and Trump?
Now, now will they get that successfully message that way that that finally becomes the trick?
Um, Todd, I know you've, I'm sure you've mentioned it at nauseam on your show, but, uh, Tom Tiffany entered the governor's race, uh, and you and I have not talked about it here.
Uh, Joe and I have both talked about how he, he does not have a record built for the moderate voter.
And so he might have a tougher row to hold than, than some other Republicans who could get in, but is that.
something that he can overcome with enough, you know, funding and consultants and everything like that.
I go to other people that said this is probably if Trump decides to endorse Tiffany, probably the biggest gift Democrats could have in a general election.
I've had the displeasure of being in the same room with Tom Tiffany when I worked with my old boss in the state Senate.
He is not deep when it comes to understanding issues and he goes to the lowest hanging fruit.
You already saw some pretty hateful and easy things for a Republican.
to go after in a general election.
And I agree with Joe and others that I just don't think that plays across the state of Wisconsin.
And you know, the last thing I'll say about it is he loves and he keeps using it this week.
He loves the phrase Communist China.
And anytime somebody says Communist China, instead of China, tells tells me it's right in line with you said about being not particularly deep on the issues.
Joseph Pecky, Todd Alba, thanks to both of you guys.
Have a great rest of your day.
Feel
better, y'all.
Have some tea.
There you go.
Some brewers.
That's right.
We got that coming for us.
Thank you.
And thanks to all of you for joining us as well.
I'm Pat Cridler here in Madison.
Back here tomorrow morning, 6 AM.
Have a great day.
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