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Hey, good morning.
It is 8.06.
Nice to have you back here up north on a Thursday morning.
It is November 13th, 2025.
Coming up, Joseph Ecke will be joining us.
Todd Alba, before we wrap things up, just before nine o'clock.
And then, of course, we're followed by Matt Nair on air with Jane Matt Nair and Greg Bach coming up a little later on here on the Civic Media Radio Network.
But first, let me tell you how some of the dominoes fall during this half hour normally.
This is when we would talk to Chad Holmes, our friend at 98.9 WXCO in Warsaw.
And then what happens is, you know, we go to that commercial break at about 20 past the hour and a lot of our civic media stations break away and give a little local news update.
And Chad does that over, of course, on the station in Wausau.
Well, Chad is off.
He's been posting from a little trip you remember last week.
He told us he was going to take a little time off, go see a hockey game at the United Center.
I saw him sitting at Johnny Carson's original desk at the Museum of Broadcasting in Chicago yesterday.
Well he's not here today and normally after we visit with him he turns right around and he does that local update for our Wausau station at about 820 and one of his occasional guests on Thursday is Nancy Stencil chair of the Marathon County Democratic Party out there in Wausau.
Well Chad's not here this week and so Nancy can't be on with him.
But she can be on with us.
So here's Nancy Stencil from Marathon County.
Nancy, good morning.
Good to see you again.
Good morning.
Thanks for having me on this morning.
It was a pleasant surprise.
Haven't been on your show in a little while.
Well, you thought you were going to, you know, get off easy here with Chad taking a break and instead.
No, I'm delighted to be on.
Instead, the B team is here for you now until Chad comes back.
Now, I notice under your name here, it says chair of the Seventh Congressional District Party and the Marathon County Democratic Party.
Are you doing double duty these days?
Yeah, yes, I am.
I have been chair, oh, previously, a number of years back.
And, you know, after what happened last fall, you know, last year after Kamala had sadly lost, I thought, you know, we need to get back, we need to get at it, we need to keep people active.
And so I went back to Marathon County as well.
We have a great team.
Oh, you absolutely do.
And I know that as former chair here in Chippewa County, former chair of the State Chairs Association, that there are all these great county chairs and congressional district chairs who want to get involved, who want to serve in their community.
I would say for for many people in the Republican side, again, they want to step up and do what they can based on their values for their community.
It's better than just sitting at home and catarwaling about these kinds of things.
That's right.
So I'm so thankful that that you stepped up.
And I want to have I want to start with this rather nuanced discussion about county parties because you you and I have talked about, you know, membership and especially dues paying members because that's part of the heartbeat of any political party.
And that's
that to me is is the foundation you know is to have a good healthy local party democratic republican whatever
it
is and yet there are also folks who they don't feel like they want to be part of a political party and we have had
I would, I think maybe explosion is the right term and explosion of other groups that are out there.
And you would refer to them as allied groups.
And
Republicans have, you know, Turning Point USA and other things over there.
So keep in mind, I'm talking about both sides of the aisle here, but on the Democratic side, you have people in all these other groups, but they are not necessarily party members, but they're all working toward the same goal.
But I'd like you
take a second and just go ahead and make the case that you know people can be involved in whatever activities they want, but there is something I would say inherently good about being An official member of your local party
It is and and
not to bash anybody.
I mean, I feel like everybody should be a member, but even if they don't, we've seen such a rise of like the indivisible groups across the state.
We have a really good, good one here in, in the Wasa area.
We have an excellent one as you and I were talking off air.
Northern lights indivisible up in Rhinelander and
They've helped us as well coordinate some like the Tom Tiffany first Friday protests and the recently they did a food drive they stepped up to you know the same as as the Democratic Party has and they collected when all this snap stuff came about they collected for a little community of Rhinelander.
three truckloads of food and over $2,000 in cash and We need those allies.
They like to work on just separate little issues You know and and your party can't do everything, you know, we need to work a lot with you Issues as well, but you know the elections and they can they can hold some of the other stuff And we did a drive down here in wassa too this last week in one hour We collected a huge box of food and in a cash donation
And the other thing that I've noticing more out of county parties is they're not in silos so much anymore.
You're seeing sometimes two or even three or four county parties all working together on something.
Yes.
Maybe holding an event or something like that.
For people that might think, oh, party membership.
That's just a bunch of good old boys, you know, smoking cigars in the
back.
No, it really is not.
No, nothing like that at all.
You
know, I got to give a shout out to Melissa up in Lincoln County, which, you know, you and I ran with Melissa a number of years ago for the CD.
And she has done like a tri-county picnic and she did a tri-county event where we all came together, mesh together, gathered ideas, what's important to us.
And I think that's good too, because you see what, on a smaller scale, what other parties are working on and you can all work together or say, Hey, that's really a great idea.
I didn't think of that.
We're talking to Nancy Stencil.
She's chair of the Marathon County Democratic Party and the Seventh Congressional District Democratic Party.
And so if we're going to talk about the Seventh Congressional District, then I'm just going to go ahead and play the audio again from Tom Tiffany, who folks who might have missed it two hours ago.
He was asked directly by CBS 58 reporter, A.J.
Byatt, poured out in Milwaukee about the Affordable Care Act and the premium supports that are going away now and they are going away for now.
There is going to be a separate vote as part of this deal that ended the government shutdown, but Tom Tiffany sure sounds like he's still on the side of jacking up your health insurance rates.
And so AJ asked him quite appropriately, isn't it time that you guys put up some kind of an alternative?
It's about a minute and a half long.
Let's give a listen to what AJ asked him, a couple of questions and how Tom Tiffany answered, and then we'll come back on the other side.
Specifically
on the question of expanding the subsidies that Democrats shut down the government over, if there's a vote on the floor to extend those tax credits, what's your vote?
We need to go back and review the ACA.
I mean, I don't accept the premise of your question there, AJ, that we simply should do one or the other.
We can do better by saying, okay, this is not working.
Let's sit down and get some alternatives for the American people that are going to work for them to give them affordable health insurance because that's the failure at this point.
And so much of this is driven by the government failure that has mandates in place that don't give people more choices.
We're all individuals in terms of our health care needs.
We should all have individual choices.
We don't have that at this point as.
as the ACA has unfolded.
Republicans have had 16 years to come up with something better.
Why isn't there something in place to replace the ACA with then?
Yeah, that's a great question.
Unfortunately, it has not been done, but no time like the present, right?
I mean, that's what I'm going to do.
Go back to Washington DC now.
Once we get this continuing resolution passed and let's put
some good things in place.
And as I said before, it's going to start with choice, competition and transparency.
And I mean, President Trump to a certain extent had a good idea when he said, rather than giving these billions of dollars to health insurance companies, let's give it to the people of the United States.
And I mean, that should be some of the principles or where we work from is let's get something more affordable for the American people.
So there was Tom Tiffany.
talking to and admitting after 16 years, Nancy, there's still nobody
says we need to go
back and review the ACA we can do better.
We can get some alternatives.
No, you got me really mad now he has not done anything in 15 years and I'd say this to his face.
And I have a friend right now that just watched her monthly rate because she luckily was able to retire early but she has to be on the ACA until she hits you know, Medicare age.
She's watched her premiums go up $900 a month Her deductible has gone up her deductibles like $7,500 you call this affordable.
No, but this is what the Republicans want to do to you
See now you sound like me two hours ago.
I told people how fired up I was after that
after 16
years you still have the audacity to say we need to do something better and
yet
15 years, how much more time do you need?
And to this notion of, he talks about mandates without choices.
Let's get one thing clear.
Mandated coverage was originally
the Republican idea for health care the right idea saying look everybody's got to be covered because otherwise if you're only if you do like the high-risk pool well and if all the healthy people don't have to pay in well then you're going to go bankrupt you know and then you're not going to buy health insurance until you get sick
which is not how the insurance model works.
I mean we know these basic things Nancy and yet they're still trying to sell the pre-affordable Care Act thing of high-risk pools as some kind of an answer when that was one of the original problems.
The only thing Republicans can give you is a country based on greed and well we know in Wisconsin, I'll turn the sprinklers on on you too but
Yeah,
anybody that's missed
that there's been protests outside Tom Tiffany's district office and she fought by some sheer coincidence whenever the protesters are there the sprinklers come on
Yeah, even if when we change our times imagine that
yeah
beach party, but I love
the beach party everybody's in swimsuits and umbrellas and like it's almost like you knew it was gonna happen like somebody in the building was gonna be a jerk and Yeah, yeah, that's exactly what they
were.
I wasn't my idea.
I've got to give credit to I believe it's your chip
false people that would come up and help us too and and there's the ones that thought of that
nice
but you're getting back to Tom Tiffany he does not deserve to be our governor what has he done tell me one thing he has done for the seventh congressional district
oh he's he's keeping up you know people
out of the southern border.
And by southern border, I don't mean here in Chippewa County, the southern border of the Southern Congressional District.
His whole focus has been on bashing immigrants
and
anything else that
Donald Trump tells him.
He finally gave up on his telegram.
Now he finally gave up on bashing Biden, but there is not one bit of positive news of what he's going to do for you.
He just spins it about what those Democrats have done to you.
Yeah.
Well, I mean, it's no different than his career as a state legislator in terms of actually delivering something for your constituents has
been sorely lacking.
He wants to pollute their water and their land and he, yeah.
Drill baby drill.
First law and yeah, I could go on all day.
Oh, I know you could.
And that's why we've got you here.
Nancy Stencils here.
She's chair of the Marathon County Democratic Party and the Seventh Congressional Democratic Party.
And of course, so you can't
Get let Tiffany get away as well without talking about the billions that he says well these enhanced credits would just give billions of dollars to the health insurance companies Okay, but so for now you're gonna take the credits away and just make taxpayers You know make customers pay all that money to the health insurance companies here again not solving anything the guy No,
he's not solving anything does not solve anything
more
Yep, Nancy Stenzels with us.
And then coming up, we will be talking to Joseph Pecky and Todd Alba yet before things are all said and done.
Quick check on sports here, the Milwaukee Bucks, they lost yesterday to the Charlotte Hornets, 111 to 100.
They will play Charlotte again on Friday at home as part of the NBA Cup.
The Badger women's basketball team defeated Bowling Green 90 to 78.
They will host UW Green Bay on Sunday afternoon from the heart.
of America's Up North, live from Lake Basota, I'm Pat Crightlow.
This is the Civic Media Radio Network.
You're listening to Civic Media.
Stay up to date on the latest news and information for your local community and Wisconsin by signing up for our free email newsletter.
Visit civicmedia.us slash email to get started.
Tomorrow on the program, we will have our Week in Review panel, of course.
It includes former U.S.
Attorney Jim Santel.
Also, Mark Jacob, who has the Stop the Press's newsletter, and it's a weekly newspaper, a newsletter, I guess I should say, about how right-wing extremism has exploited weaknesses in American journalism and what we can do about it.
And this week's newsletter from Mark Jacob is titled, How News Coverage Eases Us Into Tyranny.
When the media act like things are normal, they don't reassure us.
They gaslight us.
And it includes the illustration of a frog in a pot of water that is slowly boiling.
And that has been something that Mark and I have talked about, you know, throughout the past couple of years here is media coverage that is too timid.
to tell you when something is just flat out wrong.
Not he says, but he says, but to actually say, yeah, but what he said is not true.
And Mark Jacob, you know, believes in calling that out in much the same way that we talk, for example, about a
president who tried to overthrow an American election.
And again, the media just say, well, he said there were irregularities.
No, those weren't irregularities.
was, that's, that's incorrect to put it kindly, shall we say.
So again, that's in Mark Jacobs newsletter.
You can look for that through couriernewsroom.com as well as stopthepresses.news.
Coming up today, we've got, of course, the
I was going to say Todd all but I can't forget Matt and air on air.
They're coming first and Jim Santel the aforementioned former U.S.
Attorney and host of amicus a law review heard on the weekends here on civic media will be the guest of Jane and Greg coming up at 935 and then the Journal Sentinel Sports Guru JR Radcliffe will join the show at 1035.
And let's see, Todd Able, of course, will be on from two until four, and he will have some Wisconsin Fun Facts and his usual What's Worse edition.
And then the Maggie Dawn Show from four until six will have Jeremy Janine from Urban Milwaukee, and they'll be talking a bit about the Milwaukee County budget, which I'm sure will get into state assistance as well and state-shared revenue, maybe the wheel tax.
We were talking with James Kelly about that just a bit ago.
Whether that's the right way to run a railroad, I don't think it is.
I think that maybe we should have income taxes that are more progressive and then the state would divvy those back to local residents rather than jacking up property taxes.
But that's my two cents on how to run a railroad.
Speaking of running a railroad,
On my old station, WEAU, channel 13 here in Eau Claire, I noticed that they started a series, either, well last night I guess I saw it this morning, on the history of the effort to bring passenger rail back to the Chippewa Valley.
Now the Chippewa Valley was once part of a destination of something called the 400.
And it was the old passenger rail line of the, you know, the 40s and 50s and into the 60s.
And it was called the 400 because it could make the 400 mile journey from Chicago to St.
Paul in 400 minutes.
And I mean.
untold thousands of people, you know, would use that train regularly to not just go between St.
Paul and Chicago, but all the stops in between, including Eau Claire.
And of course, that went away as the automobile grew, and we dismantled our passenger rail networks and Amtrak came in, but on a much smaller network, which runs from Chicago to St.
Paul through La Crosse, rather than Eau Claire.
Well, for more than a quarter century now, there's been an effort underway to extend passenger rail
back into the Eau Claire area, specifically between Eau Claire and the Twin Cities.
If I ask you, where's the busiest corridor of I 94?
And you say from Milwaukee to Chicago, you're right.
But when I say what's second, you might not necessarily guess that it's the segment from Eau Claire to the Twin Cities.
And passenger rail would go a long way toward helping with the traffic nightmare out there.
Heck, passenger rail overall throughout Wisconsin would be so much easier if Scott Walker hadn't come on the scene back in 2010.
Think of how many trips you could be banking right now, whether it's to, you know, Madison for work or Milwaukee to go see a brewer's game.
And instead of driving in traffic, you could just be sitting in a lounge car, plugging in your laptop, getting some work done over the Wi-Fi.
But of course, that's been set back decades because of Scott Walker and the folks running the legislature right now.
Well, that hasn't stopped the Eau Claire people.
And so when I talk about TV 13 doing a series about the effort to get the passenger rail, I had to kind of chuckle because that's that's the series that I did back in either 1999 or 2000 to say that this particular group has been trying to bring passenger rail to West Central Wisconsin for, you know, something like 10 years or more.
And now here we are 25 years later and they are still working on those efforts.
And thank goodness they are.
Now, obviously Scott Walker and decisions made by other people set back the efforts.
But at some point there will be passenger rail that's, you know, accelerated again through Wisconsin.
Just witness the Borealis line that is still brand new to Wisconsin.
And yet from the get go was popular and regularly sold out because
People want passenger rail.
They want the convenience that comes along with it.
And that includes having to put that route through Eau Claire, not just lacrosse.
We can bring back the old 400 and frankly get it done a lot faster than 400 minutes from St.
Paul to Chicago.
But to do that, we have to have people who are willing to make those investments, those long term investments.
And that's a tough thing for politicians to do.
They want to see results right away.
Part of the whole reason that Democrats lost last time is that even though the Biden administration made those investments that are going to pay off for a generation in this country, because there wasn't any short-term benefit that could be readily seen and put into a campaign ad.
people punished the Biden administration.
Now they should have communicated this a lot better.
The things that they've done to create jobs, to give us better energy, to give us better infrastructure, and we need more politicians like that still unafraid to make those infrastructure investments not for ourselves, but for our children and our grandchildren, and then be able to communicate it back to the voters.
It's something we've been trying to do about rail for decades now, and we're just going to keep on chugging along.
Joseph Peck, he joins us right after this.
I'm Pat Krightlow.
You're up north.
835.
Nice to have you back on this Thursday morning, November 13th.
I'm Pat Krightlow here in Chippewa Falls.
Parker Olson producing things in Madison Studio A2 and Joseph Becky standing by as well.
Let's see from Alicia on YouTube.
Oh gosh, passenger rail from Milwaukee to Green Bay would be amazing for game days.
Yes, it would.
Yes, I've been talking all about passenger rail from the Chippewa Valley to the Twin Cities.
But yes, if that service could go from Milwaukee to Green Bay as well, what a difference that would make to the economy there as well on the text line.
From Tiffany listening in River Falls here here for passenger rail.
I just booked a ticket from Red Wing to Chicago for the weekend Similar drive time is driving myself, but I get to relax and read a book along the way It's what I did last year as well.
I had a business thing in Chicago and Took the train there from Tomah down and back to La Crosse after that
And it was fantastic.
It's definitely the kind of thing that we need.
So I appreciate everybody's point of view on that.
Joe Speck is seeing more than a few debates about politics in his day.
And Joe, as we were
talking in our last segment for the Chippewa Valley audience about passenger rail, just what a different world, a different state this would be.
Well, in many ways, if 2010 had never happened, but just if Scott Walker hadn't been able to kill passenger, passenger rail in this state, how much, what a better place we would be.
Trains are cool.
should have done that.
We should still do that.
Oh, we will.
I don't doubt that for a moment.
It's just going to be more expensive.
Yeah, yep.
But anyway, that's the those are debates that will no doubt come back if slash when things change as early as 2026 with control of the legislature and with the governor's office as well.
Hey, we'll get to a lot of the Wisconsin stuff, of course, in just a bit.
But with the end of the government shutdown, we're not going to talk about the shutdown right first.
We're not going to talk about the deal.
We're not going to talk about affordable Care Act premiums.
We're going to talk about the other thing that the shutdown
allowed to happen finally and that is swear in a member of Congress from Arizona who represents the 218th vote necessary on a discharge petition that would lead the House to direct the Department of Justice to release more files related to sexual predator Jeffrey Epstein.
Some excerpts of that got released yesterday and of course the White House right away went into defensive mode.
Here is Caroline Levitt spending her usual stuff about what the emails say.
These emails prove absolutely nothing other than the fact that President Trump did nothing wrong.
And what President Trump has always said is that he was from Palm Beach and so was Jeffrey Epstein.
Jeffrey Epstein was a member at Mar-a-Lago until President Trump kicked him out because Jeffrey Epstein was a pedophile and he was a creep.
I just feel like everything she says could be run through AI.
We don't really need her anymore.
We never needed her.
Never did.
That's what you, you expect to hear, but from the excerpts that are out there and from the debate that Republicans don't, they don't want to have.
They, you know, some of them want to keep covering up.
They'll cover up for Trump as long as it takes.
Others are saying, can we please get this behind us by getting justice for the victims, no matter whose names are on those lists?
One of the things yesterday that really stuck out to me, and I think everybody sort of implicitly understands is a president with nothing to hide.
who is innocent of all charges, does not bring a Republican member of Congress into the situation room to try to get them to take their name off of a discharge petition.
So the Trump administration is telling on themselves with those types of behaviors, J.D.
Vance is underscoring the political problem that this has created.
Because when's the last time JD Vance didn't tweet for 36 straight hours?
Yeah,
it's been a minute and What we have seen out of the emails that are starting to trickle out in terms of the broader Epstein files is pretty astonishing and The stuff that Epstein was convicted of is disgusting the behavior of that of Trump that
Epstein is describing is boorish at best and totally disgusting at worst.
You know descriptions of Trump face planting into a glass door because he can't get his eyes off the young ladies who are in Epstein's pool.
All of that is concerning enough.
What is even more relevant and what needs to be understood fully
is how Jeffrey Epstein knew Donald Trump's schedule when Trump was president the first time.
He is corresponding in these emails that surfaced yesterday, telling people when Trump will be at Lutnik's house at an exact time a couple of days from now.
That is a security issue.
It is enough to cast doubt.
on the entire story that the Trump team has been telling about whether or not these gentlemen were in communication, even after the, I think it was 2019 indictment of Epstein.
So this is a five alarm fire if you are the Trump White House.
And the question that I have is for people like Congressman Tom Tiffany, why don't you
want to get to the bottom of this.
Why didn't you sign the discharge petition to let this stuff see the light of day?
And I think every single day until this vote takes place, Mr. Tiffany and his Republican colleagues like Mr. Van Orden and Mr. Stiles should all face that question.
Why don't they want the truth to come out when it comes to the relationship between a pedophile
his associates and the president of the United States.
You know why?
Because much like the Affordable Care Act, they don't have an alternative.
The alternative to a cover-up is to what?
Acknowledge that...
Donald Trump engaged in borderline or illegal behavior.
They don't want to face that.
They don't have a plan B. So they're sticking with plan A, the cover up as much as they can.
And as Tiffany from River Falls puts on the text line, so at the very least, Trump knew Epstein was a pedophile and did nothing but quote unquote kick him out of Mar-a-Lago.
That should make him an accomplice for not turning in Epstein, Tiffany writes on the text line.
And
Again, you've got Republican members of Congress, some of the most right wing ones, you know, Boebert and Marjorie Taylor Greene, who are for once taking the right position, which is not to cover up for Donald Trump.
Wow.
I know we're talking to Joseph Peckie here and let's let's go ahead and get to the the other part of this because obviously there will be much more said about the Epstein files here but this is all happening because the house is back from its paid vacation and back in session they have passed the the bill to end the government shutdown but not until we found out there were some goodies tucked into I mean
Honestly, Joe, as cynical as I am sometimes, even I'm surprised that this wasn't just a clean bill that we're finding out later.
There were things snuck into it, like things that would really hurt hemp manufacturing products in Wisconsin and enrich people like Ron Johnson, who, you know, could sue the government, meaning all the taxpayers, because they were, their activities were looked at in relation to January 6th and attempted coup in the United States.
How naive am I that I actually expected a clean bill?
Yeah.
But clean is different than, than how dirty this is, right?
We know because of the January 6th committee that Congress ran that John, that Senator Johnson was the, the courier, the intended courier for the fake electors slate that conspirators.
wanted him to hand Mike Pence the fake electors document from Wisconsin on January 6th.
If law enforcement did not investigate that after that was revealed by primary documents, text messages, communications between the conspirators and Johnson's chief of staff, we would have a lot of questions.
Right?
When there are potential crimes, we expect law enforcement to investigate the potential crime.
And the idea that this now means Ron Johnson can sue the federal government for half a million dollars because there was a righteous search of his phone records, come on.
It's among the dumber things I've seen out of this Congress, and that's really saying something.
And every single Republican in Wisconsin voted for it.
They think Ron Johnson should get a blank check to be able to sue the federal government for doing a righteous investigation.
Make it make sense.
I can't.
No, no.
And there's no reason why it should.
Let me switch gears and ask you from the state level here.
There's a candidate for governor, Josh Schoeman, the Washington County executive.
And he has put forward his package of ideas to reform elections.
And stop me if you've heard this before.
But he embraces the one good idea, which is early processing of ballots, absentee ballots the day before election day.
Stop.
It should just stop.
It should just stop right there.
But much like his Republican friends in the legislature, they have to attach these poison pills.
And he did the same thing saying, oh, I like the good idea.
But by the way, I want to get rid of absentee ballot drop boxes.
I want to end central account facilities and other things.
Is that going to help Josh Schoeman at all run for governor in trying to just appeal to the far right people who are trying to tear down fair elections?
The Republican primary for governor is a race to the right to try to win the support of what's left of the MAGA coalition, which by the way is smaller than it's ever been.
A new Associated Press poll out yesterday has Donald Trump at a 33% approval rating.
Josh Shulman is not going to beat Tom Tiffany in this primary.
So what he has to do is try to virtue signal to that crowd so that he can preserve his political standing for another run later.
And it's a real disappointment because Josh Shulman is what the like has been for the last few years.
What Republicans used to be, which was like actually conservative, but like
a person you could work with.
And now he has to cosplay as a MAGA extremist, and it's gonna get him nothing.
He's not gonna be the Republican nominee for governor.
Tom Tiffany is.
So I'm disappointed to say the least in County Executive Showman.
Well, if we're gonna do disappointment, let's just go on to the very next thing here, and that would be President Trump.
pardoning pretty much all the co-conspirators from his effort to overturn the election, including the fake electors here in Wisconsin and a couple of Wisconsin-based attorneys.
Now, again, these are state cases that from a federal standpoint, the pardons technically legally mean nothing right now, but the symbolism is nauseating, Joe.
And the worst of it is that it is a signal
to potential future conspirators, that if you do nasty, bad, illegal stuff in the name of Donald Trump's political fortunes, in that of his political party, you have a get out of jail free card.
So it can be just symbolism because these are state cases, but it's terrifying symbolism.
When you think about the fact that whether it is January 6th,
attendees who beat the crap out of cops, or whether it is the conspirators and the attorneys who behind the scenes were trying to steal the 2020 election?
Doesn't matter.
We'll just make it all go away because the president will pardon you.
That should send a chill up the spine of every American.
It's just, it's a mob situation.
Essentially, it's like having a mobster in charge.
Todd Alba will join the conversation with me and Joseph Peckie and some final news and notes from up here on Lake Wissota coming up on this Thursday morning.
I'm Pat Krightlow.
This is the Civic Media Radio Network.
You're listening to Civic Media.
Find the latest news, information, and archives of all your favorite shows on the Civic Media website, civicmedia.us.
On November 13th, Felix Unger was asked to remove himself from his place of residence.
That request came from his wife.
Deep down, he knew she was right, but he also knew that someday he would return to her.
With nowhere else to go.
He appeared at the home of his friend Oscar Madison.
Several years earlier, Madison's wife had thrown him out, requesting that he never return.
Can two divorced men share an apartment without driving each other crazy?
So begins the theme to the ad couple, which we picked only because it has nothing to do with Joseph Pecky and Todd Alba.
But Roger and Stephen's point reminded us off the start that this day in history,
As it said in the clip there, on November 13th, Felix Unger was asked to remove himself from his place of residence.
Look at Parker's expression, you've never seen that clip before.
The
odd
couple ran in the early 1970s.
I've
seen a little of the odd couple,
but I did not know the intro to that, no.
I would have missed it too if it hadn't been for Roger putting this up on Facebook, but it was on November 13th on this day.
That's excellent.
So there
you go.
This day in history.
We do it all morning long here, folks.
This is what we do.
But what an odd but interesting couple we have here in Joseph Pecky and Todd Alba.
joining us now.
And before we even do that, brand new webpage that we've we have fired up for you to look at up north news wi.com slash mornings.
It's like you're you're all in one site there for signing up for our newsletter, subscribe to the show as a podcast.
You can read my stories on the website, you can get a link to the YouTube channel.
It's all there up north news wi.com slash mornings.
Look for that.
Okay, there I've done my promotional work for the day.
Mr.
Good morning.
How are you?
I'm great now because truly one of the best television programs in the history of the odd couple.
I mean that was that was magical.
Tony Randall and Jack Cluglet.
Yes, I did.
I thought that was hilarious.
Let's let's get you to weigh in gentlemen on a very particular subject that we also covered earlier and that is whether you refer to that thing out in the hallway as a drinking fountain or a bubbler.
Bubbler.
Todd?
Wouldn't surprise you, I go both ways.
I guess if I'm in Milwaukee at Bubbler, but I grew up in Southwest Wisconsin, so probably more often drinking fountain.
OK, all right.
We had some people very set in their ways on this earlier in the
show, so I just
wanted to bounce us off you as well.
Todd, let's get your take on a couple of things here.
We did talk about the deal to end the government shutdown and some of the goodies that were in there, like potential payoffs for Ron Johnson and other senators, things that are going to affect the hemp industry here in Wisconsin.
But nonetheless, it's been signed by the president and it's now, the government shutdown is now coming to an end.
There will eventually be a standalone vote on the premium subsidies for the Affordable Care Act.
uh all's well that ends well question mark
well i i don't know about that i i mean i think for the democrats there's a lot of people joke and speak to it better than i can but i mean i think there's a lot i saw a union guy on television this morning from the federal employees union it's like for what i mean my members were saying what do we go through all all this for so i think there's a lot of people on the left that said we could have done this 40 40 days ago and
you know, for Republicans, you know, they're literally, I mean, statistically proven, they're going to kill people because of the rising cost of a formal care act or Obamacare.
They're Wisconsinites who will die.
in the next year because of this and you know I mean that seems to be a heavy thing to have on your conscience so I don't know there are any winners at all except for people trying to get home for Thanksgiving I guess that's something and and snap benefits here in Wisconsin but you know Tony Evers was smart enough to take care of that in a matter of minutes so I had that window here in Wisconsin.
Yes, he was smart to take advantage of that.
Joe, the other thing that will die essentially is, you know, rural health care and things because as more places, as more people rather, decide to go without health insurance because of the higher premiums, the number of uninsured Americans is going to shoot up.
That's going to lead to uncompensated care.
And that's going to put a lot of health care facilities in Wisconsin on the brink, I fear.
Yeah, there's a healthcare crisis in this country that is entirely of the Donald Trump administration and Republicans and Congress is making.
This fight is not over.
There is a guaranteed standalone vote in the United States Senate where Democrats will control the floor.
That is a win.
It doesn't mean that anybody ever wins a government shutdown, but it's an opportunity to try and do the right thing for American healthcare consumers.
I
believe that Republicans are going to hold very firm on this, but I'm going to ask it anyway.
Do you feel there is some chance, much like the Epstein discharge petition, do you feel like there is some chance that there's enough Republicans who do not want to be on the record and who actually understand that these enhanced premium tax credits are good for their constituents and we won't see a straight party line vote on this standalone bill?
I think that the Donald Trump coalition is cracking.
And part of what we saw yesterday with Epstein is what that looks like, where you already have Republican members willing to say, I'm going to vote to release the Epstein files, even though they didn't sign the discharge petition.
Trump's popularity is dropping like a stone.
And it is possible, but it's only going to happen if people continue to pressure Republican House.
members like Derek Van Orden, like Tom Tiffany, people who have political aspirations, they can do the right thing here and get Mike Johnson to call for a vote.
So if you're out there and you care about this, you're impacted by this, call your Republican members and make clear the House needs to vote to extend these subsidies as well.
Todd, is it overly optimistic to think that they may actually say, yep, we will go along with this, maybe not at the same level, but at some other level rather than taking them away entirely?
Yeah, maybe I think I agree with Joe largely that there can be some Republicans out there who don't want to come back and face angry voters on health care.
I also agree that maybe, maybe the only thing that's really viable, in my opinion, of the Epstein files being released is maybe it kind of cracks the coalition.
But I had a guy on the show yesterday for a half an hour.
His name is Fred Clark.
He's running for Congress in the Northern North Woods up there.
We talked for a half an hour.
Guess what basically didn't come up with voters in the 7th District of Wisconsin?
Epstein.
They're talking about health care.
They're talking about putting food on the table.
And I really hope people get to know Fred Clark of the Northwoods because he's the real deal and he's the kind of candidate Democrats should run more often.
All right.
Todd Alba, listening to him from two to four today.
Joseph Pecky, thanks as always for stopping by.
You guys have a good start to the day and the weekend.
Thanks guys.
Take care.
Bye-bye.
All right.
We'll see you later.
And my thanks to today's guests, of course, Mr. Alba, Mr. Zappecki, Nancy Stencil, Sean O'Malley, and Sharita Booker.
Thanks to all of you for being here.
I'm Pat Critello from Up North News, part of Courier Newsroom, a pro-democracy news network.
Enjoy the rest of your Thursday.
We'll see you bright and early Friday morning, 6 a.m.
here up north.
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