Every Election Matters (Hour 3)

It's a special Halloween edition of mornings with Pat Critello, powered by Up North News.

Live from the haunted Lake Wissota studio, here's your ghost host, Pat Critello.

Parker, you responsible for that?

No, I'm only responsible for

playing it.

Okay, well, then that's that's fine.

You're sorry.

Let me get my proper Halloween costume on that would be the baseball cap here that says last minute costume on it with a bat and a pumpkin and a few other things.

Wow.

Everybody.

Nice to have you along on this Friday, Halloween morning.

It's a wait, let me get let me get the spear here.

It's a

spooky morning to have you here up north live from

There we go.

The dramatic effect from wherever you're listening across the civic media radio network or all the other ways that you found your way here.

Thanks for getting your Halloween started.

Got a question for you.

Can you tell Parker that I have the scariest Halloween costume on possible right now?

That's right.

I'm dressed up as a Brewer's fan.

Oh, God.

I know I am the ghost of the league championship series past.

I hate it.

I hate it.

Trade your Halloween bats for bats that have gone silent.

Oh, there.

That's I've scared myself.

That's it.

Thank you.

Thank you very much.

Yeah.

Join us along the way.

Give us your idea of a much better costume than this 8 5 5 7 5 civic 8 5 5 7 5 2 4 8 4 2 though.

I mean, to be fair, I gave it an effort.

Parker over here is dressed as a mild mannered, you know, young man in his 20s who has an early morning job in a broom closet at a major market radio station.

Yeah, that's you.

Yeah.

Yeah.

You know, every time that we say it's a room closet, I just have to look around and go, yep.

Yep, it is.

Hey, with

a curtain

for some reason,

I like the curtain there because it prevents you from seeing some of the other items in the broom closet.

But as somebody who has worked in many of room closet in my day, working my way up the broadcast ladder of excellence, I'm here to tell you the next closet will be bigger.

Mr. Olson.

it will.

I sure hope so.

Right.

Let's see what's coming up on the program today.

We're going to talk to courier newsrooms key of a keel our national political editor.

There are elections one year from next week, one year from Tuesday here in Wisconsin.

But next Tuesday,

There also will be actual elections in several states.

It could be a real barometer of things to come.

And so we will talk to Kia about that in just a little bit.

Of course, Greg Bach will be here after that for our Friday history lesson.

And later on in the program, we'll have Chicago radio legend, Jonas Pezzito joining our Week in Review panel.

And in our eight o'clock hour, Kristen Lierly will be joined by Emily Sefos, a candidate for state senate in the Fox Valley.

So all that and more coming up along the way today.

It is another cold morning around the state.

28 right now in Black River Falls and in Superior.

La Crosse is at 36.

Chippewa Falls here is at 37 degrees.

Wasaw is over at 34 right now.

Let's see, so the number again, 855-755-CIVIC, 855-752-4842, and Cindy is on the line from Appleton to tell us about a costume.

Cindy, good morning.

Well, I'm going to beat your scarier brewers costume.

Uh-oh.

I'm dressed up like a Trump supporter.

No!

No!

No, see, we need...

We need shrieks of horror to guide that and some some organ music.

Oh, you did it, Cindy.

That I mean, you're wearing the red hat, I suppose.

Not really.

I'm just, you know, just pretending.

Oh, I feel so much better for you, Cindy.

Cindy, thank you for calling Happy Halloween and don't ever scare me like that again.

I'm not that young anymore.

And then we've got Alicia who says I'm dressed up as a blue collar worker.

Yeah, Alicia, I know it's the same costume every day and it is appreciated, trust me.

Let's see, what else have we got here?

Oh, Jim from Brookfield's putting in a little something here, so we'll see what he's got in just a bit.

And we'll also continue to take your calls on what you're given out and what other costumes you've had.

I had to take some photos of our neighborhood costume party.

And we held that yesterday just down the street here.

And we've got couples, one of them dressed up in the I Dream of Jeannie costume and her husband dressed up as Major Nelson from I Dream of Jeannie.

I mean, they looked great.

Another couple dressed up as the pair from the painting American Gothic, you know, the farmer holding the pitchfork and they totally nailed that one.

Let's see somebody else had oh, yeah, we had some folks with their they could still fit into their high school letter jacket and cheerleader outfit in in their elderly years, which was pretty impressive Let me tell you and we had some folks who had pom poms and on their shirts.

It said go ceilings Because they were fans ceiling fans.

All right, they can't they can't all be winners

Let's see, Jim from Brookfield might be on the line to talk about his daughter's costume.

Jim, you there?

Yes, good morning, Pat.

Good morning, Aaron.

Yes, I just want to let you know that my daughter, she lives out in DC, right, and it works right near the Capitol, but she and her friend are going to a costume party tonight out near the Capitol, and they're going to go as the Lou Birdlers and a pair of Lou Birdlers or the individuals who sold all that.

jewelry.

So earlier this week, my wife and I put a bunch of custom jewelry and some of our things in a box and shipped it out to her.

But we have like a crown and some jewelry or whatnot.

But she's going to go as one of the loop burglars and wear one of the safety vests with all the jewelry.

I love that.

That's perfect.

I love the the attention that goes into that.

And you were you were essentially an accessory to the accessories in sending that out to

for there.

So good on good

on you.

Well, I hope that doesn't get you in trouble with the law for, you know, aiding and abetting a burglar like that.

But thank you.

Are you are you going out and about yourself?

Well, I'll be home with a fire on the front and the skeleton out there and we'll be handing out candy most of the night because in Berksfield it is on Halloween it goes from five to seven 30.

Five to seven 30 and what are you handing out?

Snickers and of course the classic Reese's peanut butter cups and some little yeah, I mean you have to hand out the Reese's so

Do you get the candy that you know you want like when it's leftover you're going to enjoy the leftovers or do you do you purposely buy something you're not fond of and you try to give it all away

The former will buy something that will be more than happy to finish over time if it's not completely handed out.

And it ebbs and flows.

Usually there's a little left, but last year, and even the year with the snowstorm, everything went so

it

kind of ebbs and flows.

We're thinking a full crowd this year.

Oh, I'll bet you will.

And yeah, I've got my 50 gallon drum of KitKats here.

And if I don't give them all away, well, I'll just have to, I'll have to enjoy them.

That's just fine.

Jim, thank you very much for the call.

I appreciate it.

Have a good start to the weekend.

You as well.

Thank you, Pat.

All right, take care.

And let's see, also from Alicia, one I remember is when I was a ballerina with a snow suit underneath because we had a snowstorm.

What year was that, 1990?

Nope, I think you're thinking of the Halloween Blizzard of 1991, when we tried to take our youngins out, they were

one year that one had just turned one year old and the other just turned three years old.

And yeah, tried the costumes, but had to, you know, put the put the, you know, snow suit over it, essentially, because this, they said, Well, there's a chance of snow on Halloween.

And it was coming down the biggest, fattest flakes.

And the wind was was howling in a fashion that was appropriate to Halloween.

And we thought, Okay, well, this is this is spooky.

This is a

This is actual snow coming down hard on Halloween, having no idea we were going to get 30 inches.

I love because Halloween, you typically get some interesting costumes.

I really love the idea of a guy like dressed up as a surfer dude or something like that and just snowflakes in the air.

Uh

huh.

Yep.

It would not have.

It would not have been.

It would not have worked out.

So you wanted you wanted to dress like a snowboarder that year.

There

you

go.

Yeah.

Okay, well, I appreciate that.

So keep those ideas coming in through the text line or make a phone call.

Put something in the comment section of Facebook or YouTube.

And give us also more costume ideas.

Here's the other reason you need the costume ideas, not just for last minute things for tonight, but for next year.

Because tonight, it's on a Friday night.

Next year, it will be on a Saturday.

So there you go.

Alicia followed up on the Halloween Blizzard.

There's a photo somewhere of me next to a jack-o'-lantern and a pile of snow.

Yes.

I'm really glad that we're not seeing that coming up here and now.

In the news on this Friday, this is unfortunate and this is amazingly unnecessary.

But in Wisconsin, the first two Head Start programs are going to be shutting down.

because of the Republicans shutting down the government.

And that means hundreds of kids and a couple dozen child care, a few dozen childcare providers will be hurt.

And this is only the first domino of others that could fall because Head Start programs, which provide early childhood education, childcare, health, nutrition, parent involvement services to lower income families.

Head Start operates on a federal grant.

that is given out annually.

And these first two Head Start programs have grants that are supposed to come down November 1st.

And because of the shutdown, that's not happening.

So they have to close their doors.

One is the Southwestern Wisconsin Community Action Program.

It will close its nine Head Start classrooms next week.

That'll affect 114 children in Richland, Green, Grant, Lafayette, and Iowa counties.

and 34 staff who will get no paychecks while this is going on.

Also, the Sheboygan Human Rights Association will close its Head Start classrooms on November 14th.

That'll impact 172 children in Sheboygan County and 48 staff who will go without paychecks.

And not only those 172 children, but of course their parents who will suddenly not have

the usual childcare option for them and are going to be left scrambling.

Now again, because these are federal grants done on an annual basis, those are the two in Wisconsin that were due to get their annual grant on November 1st.

There are more coming.

Governor Evers made this announcement yesterday about the first two.

And noted there are three more Head Start programs that are expecting a grant on December 1st affecting more than 1,100 children.

And on January 1st,

Four more programs affecting 1,250 children, nationally around three quarters of a million kids get educational and developmental services through Head Start.

And Donald Trump and Derek Van Norton and Tom Tiffany and Tony Weed and Brian Stile and all the other congressional Republicans out there don't mind this one bit.

They are happy to keep this shut down going rather than negotiate with Democrats to avoid monster price hikes for health insurance.

That's the weird thing about this.

It's not like they're demanding anything where you'd go, Oh, well, that seems reasonable.

Let's let's try to meet halfway on this.

No, the reason that they are refusing to negotiate with Democrats to get the votes they need to get the government reopened is they'd rather see health insurance costs go through the roof.

And that's what's going to be happening tomorrow.

When the open enrollment period begins under the Affordable Care Act in the marketplace there's gonna be massive sticker shock and I think a lot of those Republicans are gonna be hearing from their constituents next week saying What are we doing here?

And in the meantime everybody else that's suffering through the snap benefits and and everything else that's happened to workers who aren't getting paychecks or working having to work for the federal government without getting paid That's all very scary in a non Halloween kind of way

We'll talk more about the headlines with Courier Newsroom's Kia Vaquille coming right up from the heart of America's up north live from Lake Wissota.

Thanks for the place to spend part of your mornings.

I'm Pat Critello.

This is the Pacific Media Radio Network.

Welcome back on this Friday morning.

Time to check in with Courier Newsroom's national political editor, Kiavakeel.

Kia, how are

you?

I'm all right, Pat.

Living one day at a time.

Well, of course, you're in Los Angeles.

I mean, you're on pins and needles.

The Dodgers are this close to blowing the World Series later tonight in Canada.

I also know you're not worried one bit about that.

Are you Philly's fan?

No, not particularly.

And I'm more watching my LAFC soccer team.

So

I'm one of the great

people who is not all that invested in the World Series despite living in LA.

Let's start with next week rather than the we'll get to the shutdown of course and other things but there's something there's some big things happening next week that I think we should preview here.

It's not election day here we'll be marking one year until the big 2026 elections for governor and congress and legislature but there are elections ever other places next Tuesday.

What should we be looking for?

You want to start with where you are in California?

Sure.

So we have Prop 50 here in California, which is essentially a ballot measure asking voters to approve a new congressional map that would most likely see Democrats pick up another five seats.

Of course, this is in response to Texas Republicans gerrymandering their map, which kicked off a whole saga that we now have like half a dozen states involved in.

We have that across the country in New Jersey and Virginia.

You have two governor's races, some legislative races.

In New York, we obviously have the mayoral race.

In Minneapolis, we have a mayoral race.

We have a state Supreme Court races in Pennsylvania.

And then there's others and different spots all across the country as well.

It'll be interesting though to see what we learn in those because during Donald Trump's first term,

Basically, every special election, every midterm, everything like that was a setback, all leading to Trump losing his own reelection in 2020.

This time around, I mean, he got reelected.

He's got a base that is devoted to him, but we're really going to see a barometer of whether that base turns out in other elections next week.

Yeah, I mean we are and you know, this does feel slightly different than 2017 You know, I do think we've already had a handful of specials this year where Democrats have overperformed which is not surprising the base Democratic base now turns out more in these sorts of off years But yeah, it'll be interesting if Republicans win one of the governor's races in Virginia or New Jersey That's a huge win and frankly like a huge

a huge choke job by the Democrats.

And so it'll be very interesting to see what we learn.

I think we can't look at any one election or race as like indicative of anything, but as a whole.

Yeah, I think there's going to be some signs under the hood of what we can expect going into next year.

All right.

Certainly, clouding all of this is what's happening with the government shutdown for as long as Republicans can keep.

you know, the government shut down and spread the pain around.

And we've already talked about, you know, the first two Head Start programs in Wisconsin that are likely going to have to cease operations.

And of course, you see the stories from throughout the Courier Newsroom Network and, you know, Head Start is just the latest casualty along with SNAP benefits and Affordable Care Act health insurance premiums and military paychecks.

And so why not Head Start, right?

Yeah, I mean, it's brutal.

We're going to see lots of

working class, low income, frankly just poor, even some middle class people, they're gonna lose childcare for their kids, they're gonna lose food benefits that they rely on.

We're gonna see people with disabilities and seniors and veterans and kids probably go hungry because the government shut down as it relates to SNAP, the Trump administration refuses to use emergency funding, even though that's what it's there for.

Head start, like that's gonna decimate parents, like parents,

Childcare is extraordinarily expensive.

Head Start is there for parents who can least afford it to pay for childcare.

And without it, what are they going to do?

Are they not going to work?

Are they going to lose their jobs?

Are their kids going to go without care?

It creates impossible situations for families who already basically live the lucky ones paycheck to paycheck.

Some of these people don't even live paycheck to paycheck.

And it's just really galling because Republicans control the White House.

They control the house.

They control the Senate.

And yet no one expects them to be reasonable.

It's all about, oh, when will the Democrats cave and make sure that people don't go hungry and don't lose health, don't lose childcare?

When will the Republicans actually...

try to fight and make sure people don't use those things.

It's just, it's such BS that the narrative is what it is.

It is.

And again, it is testimony to, you know, the right wing media bubble.

It is so much larger than, you know, a lot of people want to give credit for.

And then in the midst of all this, Kia are just a wave of layoffs across corporate America.

I know we've talked about it previously, but I mean, these, these are not numbers to sneeze at of people losing their jobs beyond the federal government.

No, it's a lot of number.

It's a lot of layoffs.

We have seen Target, we've seen Amazon, Microsoft, all sorts of GM this week announced a couple thousand layoffs across the Midwest.

It's brutal.

And, you know, to some extent, you do tend to see more layoffs tick up towards the end of the year as these companies, you know, want to juice their stock price and their earnings.

But this feels a little different to me.

It is

tens, if not hundreds of thousands of layoffs happening within the span of a couple weeks in September and October.

It's also a lot of white collar jobs, which is something you don't always see.

And I, you know, it's happening at the time that we're seeing car loan delinquencies go up, credit payments fall behind, all sorts of different economic indicators kind of flashing red.

Meanwhile, you have the stock market continuing a really strange climb upwards on the back of like six or seven stocks.

And so it's very much

It feels like a bubble built largely on the back of AI.

And meanwhile, everything else and everyone else is struggling.

And if and when that bubble bursts, which I suspect it will.

This is just going to be the beginning of layoffs possibly and that's really scary.

And I would reference people back to yesterday's show in our eight o'clock hour.

We talked to Sean O'Malley, a Wall Street expert all about the AI bubble.

And he's a compliance expert on Wall Street.

And if he's afraid of just how massive this bubble is, this is something everybody needs to be paying attention to.

All right, we're heading into our history lesson next.

So I'll leave you with some musical trivia.

If I give the name Robert Van Winkle as having a birthday tomorrow.

anything for Robert Van Winkle.

Come on, you've got every one of the CDs.

You know, it

sounds like a made up

name.

No, the made up name is vanilla ice because Robert Van Winkle wasn't good enough.

So Kia Vekil.

Thank you very much.

Have a good weekend.

And we will note Mr. Van Winkle, Mr. Ice's birthday after this.

You're up north.

We're starting our Friday history lesson with a little hoody, like the owl for Halloween.

It's nothing like that.

See, this is why we only let Pat play on Halloween every so often, other times it just takes the day off.

Atlantic Records signed Hoody and the Blowfish this day in 1993.

The band's debut, Cracked Rear View, would become the best-selling album in Atlantic Records history.

The title or the track they only want to be with you hit number one on the pop charts letter cry and Time and hold my hand.

We're all top five hits for hootie and the blowfish and then they Practically went away, but that's the music business for you.

Welcome to our history lesson for a Friday Friday Well, that means Greg Bakka's here boys and girls.

Oh good morning.

Yay Hello

everybody

And what are you dressed up as today?

As an accomplished adult.

Very good.

Very nice.

If you check my Instagram feed, I am Greg Bach on Instagram.

See what they did there?

Plugged my Instagram.

You will see pictures of a final, finished, completed garage cleanup.

Ooh.

That's

a big project.

That was amazing.

Scary.

It's scary to get something like that done.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So that's all right.

And it's perfect timing because Trick or Treat and Kenosha is tonight from four to seven.

So I can set myself up in the garage with some candy and a chair and allow the dozen of children to come through the neighborhood.

That's awesome.

Wait a minute.

I'm looking at this on Instagram.

Now this is the before picture.

The first picture is the before picture.

Oh, OK.

Oh, there's a before and

after.

Oh, yeah.

Oh, there's the after.

Pat was really worried about that first picture going, this is clean.

I was going to say, wait a

minute.

Do you understand what clean looks like, Greg?

Because this looks like you dropped a bomb inside of it.

If you could just get a bobcat or some other kind of a bulldozer and

just push

some of that over and make some space, that would be great.

No, I like the idea of handing out candy while you're in your garage, making it kind of an outdoor thing.

Some of

our neighbors sometimes will have a little fire pit going or something.

Ooh, that's cool.

Yeah.

Make it nice and spooky.

Plus kids knocking on the door and ringing the doorbell and coming up.

Not so good for my dog.

Oh, that's

true.

Yeah.

Yes.

All right.

I'm going to subtract her from the equation and just plant myself in the garage and hand the candy out.

I think that's just the way to go.

All right.

Also on today's history lesson on this day in 1964, Baby Love by the Supremes goes to number one, giving them their second chart topper after Where Did I Love, Where Did I Love Go, making them the first Motown Act with two number one hits.

On this day, oh my gosh, it's 50 years ago.

50 years ago today, Queen released Bohemian Rhapsody.

every so often we play something during the history lesson and I can hear a good chunk of the listenership go stop no let the song play just go

get some

coffee or something but we can't do sing along this morning with Bohemian Rhapsody much as we all would like to because ever since Wayne's World the movie you have to give it a very dramatic interpretation when you're singing along to Bohemian Rhapsody.

And that song and Queen seems to have like a decade comeback.

Like, it happened for Wayne's World, then a decade later, and then the biopic came out.

They always seem to be coming back into our lives, which I have no problem with.

No, none whatsoever.

And I love the part of the movie where they play it for the record executive, and he's like, what the heck is this?

Nobody will listen to this.

And 50 years later, nobody knows his name, but we know the tune.

On this on this day in 1941, Mount Rushmore was completed after 14 years of work.

On this day in 1968, the Milwaukee Bucks won their first game after losing the first five.

They got their first win after beating Detroit this day in 1968.

By the way, they beat Golden State last night, 120 to 110.

Yana sitting out with a sore left knee.

All right, I.

I think you've got this one already, Greg, but on the birthday list, if I tell you that this is, as I said to Kia Vekila a moment ago, Robert Van Winkle's birthday.

You know who we're talking about, right?

Yeah, I do,

baby.

Let's play a little of Mr. Van Winkle's greatest hit.

Speaking of Queen.

If there was a problem, go, I'll solve it.

Check out the hook while my DJ revolves it.

Yeah.

Vanilla Ice is 58 years old today.

And got sued by Queen and David Bowie.

Yes, and rightly so.

Dan Rather is 94 years old today.

Bring that music down just a little bit there.

In

fact, it's Vanilla Ice.

You can.

Melt the ice a little bit.

Melt the ice, Parker.

We done with this.

Yeah, I'm done.

Wow.

Actor Brian Doyle Murray.

Bill Murray's brother is 80 years old.

Oh my goodness.

I don't think he gets enough do.

I mean, he's

played

some great roles in Christmas vacation and Caddyshack and Groundhog Day.

Well, his work with Second City and SNL.

I mean, he has been, if you hear it, you might, you might know the name, but you can't put it to a face and you, but you know the face.

As soon as you go to the

face and you hear the voice and you go, yep, that's,

that's, I'm professionally

angry.

Two people born this day in 1950.

I wish they both were still with us.

Only one is Jane Pauley turned 75 years old today.

And I wish John Candy did as well.

He was born this day in 1950, gone way too soon in 1994 at the age of 43.

Have you seen the John Candy documentary yet?

It was beautifully heartbreaking.

I could spend hours, but I will not.

That documentary was amazingly done.

That is on our watch list for this week.

And if I may put another great documentary just put out recently made by the children of the subject, Mira and Stiller Nothing Lost is the Ben Stiller documentary about their parents.

And I loved Stiller and Mira back in the day.

Yeah.

Oh, they were they were great night.

No, when the when their Nepo baby came up and like, Oh, he's not going to be any good.

Turns out Ben Stiller is actually pretty good.

He's amazing.

Yeah.

And with parents like that.

So yes, I'm glad you reminded me.

Okay, it's a documentary weekend.

There

you

go.

The household.

All right.

On this day in 1980, Bruce Springsteen got his first ever number one album with the river featuring this top five hit.

I think we've talked about this before, old classic songs and finally you kind of pay attention to the lyrics and go, oh gosh, I don't know if I still like this song as much.

Give a listen.

Okay, now.

It's like when you listen to the lyrics to the Pina Colada song, you're like, oh, everyone in this song is a trash bag.

They're terrible.

None of them deserve happiness.

This guy's abandoning his family.

We're just

celebrating this.

I'm laughing.

Oh my goodness.

But yeah.

1980

is when he had his number one album, The River.

On this day in 2011, if it felt a little more crowded around here, it's because the world population reached 7 billion.

In 2021, it's currently at eight and a quarter billion people.

It's just too many people.

Yes.

Meanwhile, meanwhile, Dr. Oz says America's under-babyed.

That's another topic for another

time.

Oh.

I think you keep saving these topics because I'm gonna need a guest host

one of these days podcast podcast.

Yeah.

Yes.

On this day in 2008, an anonymously submitted white paper called Bitcoin, a peer to peer electronic cash system was published describing a decentralized peer to peer network that could track and verify transactions while producing a transparent, verifiable record, the money of the future, or a Ponzi scheme, you be

the judge, you know.

No, thank you.

No, thank you.

Yeah Okay, here's here's a case of old song and it's remake here's the old song from 1963 the number one song was by Jerry the pacemakers

Now

folks either know you'll never walk alone

from that version as fans of the Liverpool Soccer Club, because that is still their theme, or maybe they remember hearing Jerry Lewis sing it at the end of all of his Labor Day telethons.

Whatever the case may be, it's a perfectly lovely song.

But I gotta say, I still prefer the way the dropkick Murphy's gave it a little touch.

They stepped up the tempo just a little bit.

I think it's still beautiful, but then... More bagpipe.

Okay, we've heard more cowbell.

This is the first time we go, I need more bagpipe.

I

need more bagpipe.

I love that song.

I love that version of it.

On this day in 1969, the Beatles scored their third

Keith number one album with Abbey Road.

A few singles off there like this one.

By about this time, you thought the Beatles are going to be around forever.

I

mean, look at

the stuff they're cranking out.

It's all so different and imaginative and little did they know they were.

coming near the end of the road on this one, the Abbey Road.

See what I did there.

On this day in 19, thank you.

On this day in 1992, the Roman Catholic Church apologized for its treatment of Galileo.

The Italian

astronomer.

That is late than never.

359 years late acknowledging he'd been right about the earth revolving around the sun.

You know, the important thing is that you recognize

that

you are

wrong.

Was it just?

Had they already acknowledged the Earth and Sun thing, or was this the first time about the Earth and Sun too?

No, this is just the the apology.

Okay, just the apology for

Galile.

Okay, that's good.

Yeah, we probably shouldn't have done all those terrible things to you.

Oh, wow.

Also, in 1969, I mentioned that Abbey Road was the number one album.

The number one single was by

Elvis.

Suspicious Mines came right after the 1968 comeback special.

It was his 17th and final number one song here in the country.

There is today's history lesson for you.

What pray tell?

Parker Olson is on the national day calendar, besides it being Halloween, of course.

Well, Pat, because it's Halloween, it's also, I believe, Frankenstein Friday.

Frankenstein Friday?

Frankenstein Friday.

No word on if this is about the doctor or the monster.

I think you can't have one without the other.

Or it's my favorite comedy duo Frank and Stein.

There you go.

There's a hot dog.

Here's a beer.

Yes.

All right.

What else are we celebrating today?

It is also National Breadstick Day.

I'm a big breadstick.

Why?

What do you mean why?

Why on Halloween?

I never understand these

dates.

You asked Parker to do the national day calendar.

You didn't ask him to do deep research on the origin stories.

Clearly, I need to upgrade the assignment here.

Why?

Why?

Why on Halloween are we doing

breadsticks?

All right, do you want one that makes sense today?

Yes, yes.

It's caramel apple.

That better?

Yes, thank you.

What do you want from me?

It's caramel apple dick.

Yeah.

Caramel apples, that thing that you get to enjoy from when it first takes out, you know, one of your baby teeth.

Yeah,

it takes out one of your adult teeth in your advanced age and you go, that's it.

No more caramel apples.

It was a good ride while it lasted.

Could you swipe this up for me, please?

Better yet, could you mash it?

Let's see.

What else we got?

There's also knock knock joke day.

Halloween

on Halloween when we return.

We'll tell you why.

After this?

Welcome back to a spooky edition of Mornings with Pat Crichtlow, powered by Up North News.

Oh, that's it.

Okay.

Here we are back on Halloween on this Friday morning, October 31st.

Craig Bakas here along with Parker Olson as we were going through today's history lesson, the national day calendar, some entertainment news to follow.

Greg, when you're handing out the candy in the driveway, will you be gussied up in some way shape or form?

I'll be gussied up

in a jacket.

And that's it.

Well, pants.

I'll be pants.

No costume.

I was gonna say my favorite social media posts from yesterday said

All it takes to be Winnie the Pooh is a red t-shirt and a lot of courage.

No, I don't I might wear my little Batman mask.

I just I don't do I'm not against Halloween.

Like I'm not like an anti Halloween person, but it's to me very it's takes a lot of thought that it can be expensive if you want to do a good costume.

So I just I let I let the people who are really into it take it like you do your thing.

I

appreciate it.

Let's take

leave it.

Leave it to the masters.

All right.

Yeah, we get we gave Parker a good three, four minutes here to come up with the best possible knock, knock joke for national knock, knock joke.

Yeah.

What do you

got?

Knock, knock.

Who's there?

Radio.

Radio who?

Radio not.

Here I come.

It's a knock, knock joke.

It's not going to be good guys.

Yeah.

Look, there is only one.

really good knock knock joke.

And it is the first time a kid learns the banana orange one.

Yeah, when they when they successfully tell it for the first time, and they laugh and they laugh, they think it's just the greatest of the orange glad they didn't say banana.

And they're like crying.

They're so happy and proud of themselves.

I'm like, good for you.

Never tell any more knock knock jokes.

That's the peak right there of knock knock joke them.

Exactly.

All right, let's do some entertainment news and other celebrity gossip, things like that.

Shall we start with?

I haven't seen CBS Mornings in the better part of forever, but apparently there might be a personnel change in the works.

There are reports that Gil King is going to be leaving CBS Mornings, just with the changes that are kind of going on at CBS in general.

Yeah.

Not great, you know, I would I'd love to make a space joke right now But like that story just I read I read the story about CBS and it just make it just it really it Guts me it really just much like CBS is being gutted right now.

Yes Yeah, exactly and in Gale King's case again your Oprah's best friend

you know why why wouldn't you just be sitting on the veranda every day and you know talking and if you want to you know put a microphone between you and have a little podcast you're working way too hard if if you get to be best friends with opera you don't have to work that hard but that sounds like

a good deal

it would be a good deal i mean just like if greg were to become you know a billion-dollar lottery winner

Yeah, I mean, do you think I'd be working this hard on morning radio?

No, I'd be hanging out by the pool with him offering to wash his car every so often, whatever it took to be in the shadow of your money.

For the love of friendship.

Yes, exactly.

All right.

What

else you

got?

Prince Andrew yesterday is being stripped of his royal titles by King Charles.

comes with the allegations of him being connected to Jeffrey Epstein.

Wait, you mean somebody can face consequences for their association with a monster sexual predator?

I cannot believe that.

Wow.

And it's done by the man's brother, too.

Like we have the politicians who are like, I can't.

There are so many people.

It's like, it's like, you're not related.

Like you can do this.

You're not related to any of them.

King Charles just like smacked his brother down.

Yeah.

And apparently, rightly so.

That's that's how it's supposed to work.

Wow, actual consequences.

Yeah, we we've got to try to import that in this country.

See if we can't work on that with that 218th vote in Congress to finally release things.

Okay, so Prince Andrew will no longer be a prince.

Um, now Prince Harry is still a prince, right?

He just not the other things, the Duke of this or that.

As

far as I know, I frankly, I thought that this was about Prince Harry at first when I read it.

And then I realized,

Oh, no, no, no, no, no.

Yeah.

Harry and Megan, they just get booed at Dodger games.

Yeah.

You know, whereas if you, if you were to drop now soon to be not Prince Andrew into the middle of a crowded Dodger stadium, I think they'd do more than boo.

He's now known as a Andrew Mountbatten, that Windsor, which I did not know.

that Windsor was actually part of their family name.

Yes,

they're the

Mount Baton Windsor dot dot dot still rich.

Yeah, but he doesn't get to live in the Royal

Mansion anymore.

Still creepy still probably needs to pay more of a price.

But we got to start somewhere.

All right, got one more force.

The runner up of season six of the Bachelorette.

Chris Lampton, obviously, you know that.

Oh, of course.

Yes.

He is running to be a state representative in Massachusetts.

He's running as a Democrat and says that Realty TV really got him ready because it taught him how to do interviews and think

on your feet.

You know, reality TV is the way toward public service and elected office.

I mean, look at Sean Duffy.

He's running NASA right now and the U.S.

Department of Transportation and his experience is some law school and some lumberjacking and dancing around in his underwear on reality TV.

There you go.

What, what else do you need?

So if this bachelorette guy wants to do it, I, in this day and age, I can't call him unqualified, even if he's remarkably unqualified.

I just am very not happy about

that.

We're just ending on a, on a great note here.

But I'm happy to be

here though.

I'm always happy to be here every Friday with the both of you talking about all the fun stuff.

here

in

the mornings with Pat Crichtlow.

See what I did there.

I love the civic media.

What you got on Matt and Aaron air today coming up today.

We got Dan Schaefer.

All right.

Dan Schaefer day.

We're recombobulating the news, friends.

Okay.

Looking forward to that nine to 11 across the civic media radio network.

Have a good weekend, Greg.

Thank you.

you too as well.

Thanks guys.

We'll talk to you soon.

You bet.

Still ahead.

We're going to have our week in review panel here.

It will be former U.S.

Attorney Jim Santel, journalist Mark Jacob, and pinch hitting for Jennifer Schulze will be Chicago radio legend Joan Esposito.

And then in our eight o'clock hour, we'll talk to Dr. Kristen Lierly.

Let's see, we will have Emily Cephosan as well, a candidate for state Senate.

All that and more ahead across the Civic Media Radio Network.

I'm Pat Critello from UpNorth News, back after this.

It's a special Halloween edition of Mornings with Pat Critello, powered by Up North News.

Live from the haunted Lake Wissota studio, here's your ghost host,

Pat Critello.

Did he say...

Crite Low or Frite Low?

I can never tell there.

Anyway, welcome back to a Halloween Friday, October 31st, 2025.

Nice to have you along.

Parker Olson producing things in Madison Studio A2.

And coming up, we've got our Week in Review panel, which will include former U.S.

Attorney Jim Santel, journalist Mark Jacob, and I believe we're also going to have Jonas Pizito joining us from Chicago as well once we get her all connected here.

to talk about some of the headlines of the past week.

And then in our eight o'clock hour, Mike Clemens will take the day off.

So we'll bring in Emily Seffos to join me and Dr. Kristen Lierly.

Talk a bit about her campaign for state Senate over in the Fox Valley as well.

And you can join us, 855-75-CIVIC, 855-7524842.

We've had a few callers already telling us about their Halloween costumes, either the ones they're wearing tonight.

or their favorite costumes from the past.

Would love to hear if you had any that were particularly creative or complex and what it took to bring those things to life.

I am dressed up as a Brewer's fan, which is the scariest it gets for me, the Ghost of League Championship Series past, trading in Halloween bats for Brewer's bats that go silent against Dodger pitchers.

I get frightened just thinking about it again.

Tony asks, no one dressed up like Derek Van Orden, the scariest person imaginable?

Well, I mean, you could dress up like him, but I

I can't talk out of both sides of my mouth in quite the same way to say, oh, no benefits are going to be cut.

And oh, it's so good that we passed this thing that's going to cut everybody's benefits.

If you missed it earlier, we talked about how there are already two Head Start programs in Wisconsin that are going to be closing their doors because of the government shutdown.

Head Start provides educational and childcare services to three quarters of a million children across

the United States.

And each one of these individual Head Start programs gets a federal grant for a 12 month period.

And it's staggered throughout the course of the year.

So on November 1, two Head Start programs in Wisconsin are going to be closing their doors.

And that's going to impact a couple 100 kids, dozens of providers who will not get paychecks during this shutdown.

And then if the shutdown

first, there will be more head starts that have to close up.

And again, on January 1st, there'll be more head starts with well over 1000 kids each time that will no longer have that childcare option, their parents won't, it's going to affect their workplace, or they either have to take time off from work, perhaps even lose their job as a result of what is happening here with a president

and congressional Republicans who have the power to end things any time but don't want to because they understand what it is that Democrats want in order to get their votes to reopen the government and that would be to not have

the astronomical price hikes that are coming to health insurance plans under the Affordable Care Act marketplace starting tomorrow.

And we talked about that earlier.

We gave very specific examples of how these prices are going to go up.

And we have Republicans who are saying, well, that's what Democrats want.

That's why those premium tax credits expired.

Well, then let's renew them.

Let's extend them just like we did for the Republicans' desire to extend the tax cuts for the very wealthy and for corporations.

And that's why you see such low levels of trust in the nation's capital right now is that Republicans were willing to, you know, fight for what they want for the wealth and corporations.

But, you know, when when Democrats do it, apparently they're the ones that need to cave.

And that's not that's just not going to fly because there's one group out there looking out for health insurance premiums for everybody.

and not just tax breaks for their favorite donors.

This is something that's going to be affecting food assistance as well.

Unnecessarily, there are contingency funds available to continue SNAP benefits, but the Trump administration doesn't want to pay it.

Ollie in the Northwoods is on the line at 855-75 Civic to tell us a bit more about some thoughts on SNAP.

Ollie, good morning.

Hi.

First off, I'd like to start with the thing President Herbert Hoover

Promised a chicken in every pot and Donald Trump is giving everybody an empty pot Yes, and I would just like to to encourage everyone who's listening to Quit blaming one person after another and instead get on the phone lines the text lines Straight to the White House and talk to the man in charge

Um and tell him get on the ball and start taking care of his own country

Couldn't agree more that you know, there's there's one guy that by the way You know, you know how he's got that that nickname taco for Trump always chickens out.

Have you heard that?

I mean you bet he just did it yesterday

with China, where he claims to have reached a deal.

But when you look at the details, it's all he gave up everything.

He won nothing out of this.

You think he could do the same for for Americans health insurance and food benefits, right?

You bet.

That's what I think it's terrible that he's leaving his country in time of

of need and chaos caused by him and trotting around the world, pretending to do business and getting nothing done.

No, getting nothing done and just allowing people to be hurt and, and he seems to be reveling in it.

So all your advice is spot on that people should call, you know, the White House switchboard, but they should also call their congressional representative, you know, whoever it is.

I've been doing that, but

I

think, you know, like go to the top, go, you know.

call them but go but don't be afraid to go to the top call the White House.

If you if you're on X and you're on his buddy line and you're one of the people who voted for him then you get on the ball and you tell him it's time to change things.

I watched a thing from Bernie Sanders and he

did a town hall meeting in Virginia and those people were mostly Republicans and they were every bit as worried about where their food and their health care was going to come to come from as any of us up here in a blue state or a purple state.

Everybody is hurting and the only one that can stop this is the man.

who started it.

Yeah, without a doubt.

And you know what, so much more in red states that are even more frequent users of SNAP and of, you know, the health insurance tax credits that come from the Affordable Care Act.

So I think, Ollie, a lot of these folks are going to start seeing

the premium price hikes, they're going to start watching their their local head start close, they're going to lose their stamp benefits.

And I think the right you've got the right advice for them is don't just look at that and shake your head actually pick up the phone and let them know.

Call the White House call.

Call your local but whatever number you can think of you can find don't be afraid to do that.

I've

even called, quite honestly, I've called the Ukrainian embassy and told Zelensky not to listen to Trump's promises because you can't trust him.

No, no, not trustworthy at all.

Ollie, it's good advice.

Thank you so much for the phone call.

I hope you have a good start to the weekend.

You too.

Happy Halloween.

Happy Halloween to you too, Ollie.

Thank you for the call.

Again, 855-757-855-7524842 to reach out to us.

It is quarter past seven right now.

Let's take a look at some sports here.

There was Badger Men's Hockey last night.

The 14th ranked Badger Men's Hockey team beat 19th ranked Minnesota.

five to two, they will play the Gophers again, but it won't be until tomorrow 6pm at the Cole Center.

And you can listen to that game tomorrow starting at 530 on WFHR in Wisconsin Rapids and on WJMS in Ironwood, Michigan.

That's one of our new Civic Media stations out there.

Badger Women's Hockey, the top ranked team

country, they will be putting their 10 and 0 record on the ice tonight as they too host the Minnesota Gophers, the third-ranked team in women's college hockey.

That will take place at LaBona Arena at 6 p.m.

tonight and then again tomorrow afternoon at 2 for Badger Women's Hockey.

Let's see, Badger football team, they are off this weekend.

The Badger men's basketball team begins their season on Monday.

Badger Women's Volleyball, the 11th ranked Badger Women's Volleyball team.

They are 15 and three on the season.

We'll have the match of the season tonight at the UW Fieldhouse taking on number one ranked Nebraska.

which is perfect at 20 and 0.

You can catch the Badger women's volleyball team versus Nebraska 8 o'clock tonight on the Big Ten Network.

And one more note here.

The Milwaukee Bucks Ryan Rollins set a personal scoring high with 32 points.

to help the Bucks beat the Golden State Warriors 120-110 even without Giannis Anticumpo who missed the game.

Due to a sore left knee, Miles Turner added 17 points for the Bucks.

Steph Curry scored for Golden State 27 points.

Steph Curry, by the way, had been working on the second longest string in his career of consecutive free throws, but he missed one after hitting 57 previous free throws.

a streak that is only exceeded by his streak of 80 free throws in a row from March of 2019 to January of 2021.

All of that and more in a losing effort in that case for the Warriors falling to the Bucks 120 to 110.

717 right now, and we've got some folks who are calling in on the phone lines and the text lines sharing their Halloween costumes and their other assorted tricks and treats for Halloween here.

And Parker, I know you're taking some of those calls.

I'm also noting that we've got one technical issue of streaming to Facebook.

And so we're going to work on that during the commercial break.

But for folks listening on the radio, you're getting some good response back from some of the listeners out there.

Oh yeah, hearing a lot of good stuff.

I always like hearing about what people are doing on Halloween because I feel like it's one of those holidays that's kind of a hit or miss for a lot of people.

So you get some varying answers.

Well, and you also get all the creativity in both the costumes and in the experiences, the candies and everything else that they're doing.

So anyway, keep the text coming, some of them with costume photos.

And again, you can also use the Civic Media app to leave us a voice note.

So on that Civic Media app, you can call us, you can text us, or you can record a little voice note that we may play back as well throughout the course of the show.

Let's see, I wanted to cover one other quick thing here in the headlines and then we'll get our weekend review panel in here.

You'll recall that a few days back, we mentioned that the Trump administration had rejected some disaster aid for Southeast Wisconsin because of the flash flooding that took place back in August.

Well, they just did it again.

The Trump administration has rejected a different kind of disaster aid request for Wisconsin.

This would be for the rebuilding efforts

to do what's called flood mitigation.

In other words, when you rebuild some of these things that have been washed out or damaged, you rebuild them stronger and able to withstand the next flash flood.

But it's going to be local taxpayers who have to foot the bill for all of that as the Trump administration has denied federal disaster relief for flood mitigation rebuilding for some of those communities in southeast Wisconsin.

Our Week in Review panel is on the way.

Thanks for joining us live from the lake on this Friday, Halloween morning.

I'm Pat Crightlow.

This is the Civic Media Radio Network.

Welcome back to a scary edition of Mornings with Pat Crite Low, powered by Up North News.

I do appreciate the effort.

I wish I was playing along a little bit better.

I'm very disappointed in myself right now.

What can I tell you?

I've got the baseball cap that says last minute costume, and that's as deep as the spirit goes here.

But we like hearing what you're up to today.

The candy you're handing out, the costumes you're wearing, and the other things that scare you.

And let's not kid ourselves.

This is always the scariest part of the week.

It's when we talk about what's in the news with Mark Jacob and Jim Santel, the former U.S.

Attorney.

And in for Jennifer Scholesy this week is Chicago Radio's own Joan Esposito-Joan.

Thanks for being here.

Always a pleasure, Mr. Kratlow.

Anything for you.

Oh, thank you.

It's so nice to have you all here.

Mark, I'm going to start with you, because as I've been looking through your feed on Blue Sky, and by the way, we now have on the radio show, we have a presence on Blue Sky and Twitter, just look up PK Radio Show.

But Mark, a lot of yours has been, it's almost like you're in a batting cage, and the misinformation just keeps coming from the President, from Speaker Mike Johnson, from others, and you're just out there.

knockin' them down with each thing that comes out.

I don't know if you wanna start with anything in particular, like,

you

know, we can't use the SNAP contingency funds, you know, or wherever you wanna start.

We can't, you know, the thing about that is that, you know, the...

is that Elizabeth Warren actually posted the actual thing on the government website that said they could use contingency funds to pay for the snap.

The government took off the website, you know, this week.

The thing that got me most was Kristi Noem showing up in Gary, Indiana to talk about, you know, about the crackdown on immigration.

And she says, there's no American citizens that have been arrested or detained.

We focus on those who are here legally and anything that you would hear or report that would be different from that is not true and false reporting and Republican had a story just recently about a more than 170 US citizens have been detained I mean they've been report after report and I I guess what gets me is that they they just don't care whether their lies are even credible anymore It's just just just it's just a parade of lies and they're in the parade and they don't care what anyone's gonna do to fact-check them

It's so true.

I mean, Joan, you hear the same things down there in Chicago and feel like you have to probably spend your entire radio show setting the record straight day after day.

Well, Mark is absolutely right.

I mean, the brazenness.

I mean, even with Donald Trump and the grift.

He had that group of American investors take a significant part of TikTok, which is why we took it back from the Chinese.

Wall Street Journal reported after that deal was all done, he went to every one of those rich Americans that has a piece of TikTok and basically said, you know, this deal, it's like, he wouldn't have it if it weren't for me.

In the world of business, somebody like me would get a finder's fee.

I want a couple hundred million from all you guys.

According to the Wall Street Journal, not one of them complained.

Everybody said, yes, sir, and they ponied up his finder's feet.

They're grifters and liars.

Pat,

you're sorry.

Not

that.

There you go.

The other thing about it is that he goes and announces this deal with China.

There is no deal.

Mark, it was one of the rare times.

The New York Times was actually truly accurate in its headline about the deal that, you know, China has figured out how to make Trump feel like he got something when he got nothing.

Right, right.

This is essentially

the gist of the headline.

Yeah, and it's, well, and it's always the greatest deal.

It's always, you know, the deal no one else, no one can believe how good this deal is.

The deal is so, I'm so sick of the word deal.

I'd like to see the word deal banned from the English language because he's so...

Oh, no.

He's

abused it so

much.

And yeah, everything is spun.

And nothing is reality.

I mean, I'd really rather go to book back to Earth One from Earth Two, which is what he's taken this entire country on.

There's some sort of fantasy land where

just because he says it makes it true.

Yeah, and Jim Santel, former U.S.

Attorney, those tariffs are going to be argued before the Supreme Court next week,

are they?

They are.

Next week, Wednesday, probably one of the biggest cases of the term.

The question is whether or not this Supreme Court wants to uphold the first article of the Constitution that says, hey, it's the Congress and not the president, not the chief executive.

who establishes tariffs.

There's a particular statute that gives the president authority to do that.

It's called the IEPA.

I know all your listeners are completely on top of that.

And the statute basically says, you can do this in a time of emergency, urgency, great need to act quickly.

And it's not there.

Two lower federal courts that deal with trade.

The deal with commerce have said, not even close.

Can't do this.

We'll see what the Supreme Court says next Wednesday on all of this.

whether or not they're going to uphold the law, or once again, simply let Donald Trump do whatever he wants to do, which has been their practice over the past nine months.

Now, Jim's been following no shortage of cases of things the administration's doing, including hurling tear gas into trick or treaters.

Joan, I know that, again, you've got troops there that have been, you know, again, firing tear gas, even if it impacts Chicago police, not to mention the children.

And yet they say they're all going to be out there on Halloween night as well.

It's not going to be your typical Halloween on the streets.

Governor Pritzker made a plea.

Apparently he sent a private letter to Christine Ohm and then made a public plea.

Could ICE just take Halloween off?

Let's just keep kids safe, because as you pointed out, ICE, tear gas, a Halloween school parade of trick-or-treaters, young trick-or-treaters in our old Irving Park neighborhood.

That was one of the things Judge Sarah Ellis said when she had Greg Bavino before her.

She was like, trick or treaters pose no threat, no security threat to your agents.

And yes ma'am, yes

ma'am.

And yet, there's Christina.

I'm saying, nope, we're going to be on the streets.

We're going

to

continue this discussion with our Week in Review panel coming up.

First, a reminder that head on Matt Nair on air with Jane Matt Nair and Greg Bach, Dan Schaffer, Civic Media's political editor and founder of the Reconbobulation area will be joining them.

Again, that will be, oh, right around 9.30 or so.

But we continue with our Week in Review panel from the heart of America's up north, live from Lake Wasota.

Thanks for making this the place that's been part of your Halloween morning.

right low.

This is the Civic Media Radio Network.

Welcome back.

It's Friday morning, October 31st Halloween.

Hope it's a good fun and safe night for all of you.

We've got our weekend review panel here that includes former U.S.

Attorney Jim Santel.

It also includes Mark Jacob, veteran Chicago journalist and veteran Chicago radio host, Joe Nesposito.

who's got a little fan issue there that we we're still trying to address but I prefer to think of it as Joan's joining us from a water park we're hearing the water fall she's uh she's got the microphone while going down a lazy river here so we'll talk to Joan a bit more in a bit uh but Jim I want to start with you first in in terms of snap benefits and what is happening with the the court action on that one specifically because um they're

There are contingency funds available for folks that don't know.

In previous government shutdowns, and there have been several, SNAP benefits have never been cut.

This is the first time where families could go hungry because an administration refuses to use its contingency funds, and that's in the courts right now.

That's exactly right, Pat.

And here's the name that we should all be thinking about today, maybe even the next couple of hours as the federal district court on the East Coast opens in just a few minutes.

Her name is Indira Talwani.

She is a federal district court judge.

She's had hearings.

over the period of the last several days.

And as late as yesterday, she looked at the government lawyers and said, I don't get what's going on here.

She looked at exactly the information we talked about in the previous segment that says the funds are there.

They can be accessed.

It's available.

And she said, you can't just let people die.

I'd offer you that that is a stunning thing for a federal district court judge in contemporary America to say, because she is looking at the availability of these funds and looking at an administration that simply won't invoke them, won't access them, and anticipate that sometime the next couple of hours here, she is going to direct the administration to use those funds to, again, temporarily.

to keep this program afloat.

So people literally on Monday morning have food on their tables for their families and their children.