Epstein? Never Heard of Him. (Hour 3)

Live, across Wisconsin on Civic Media, you're listening to Mornings with Pat Craiglow powered by Up North News.

Now, for my Lake Basota studio, here is the founding editor of Up North News, Pat Craiglow.

Well, hey there, Wisconsin.

Good morning.

It is 606.

It's a Thursday morning, November 13, 2025.

And it's another beautiful morning to have you here up north live from Lake Wissota.

From wherever you're spending your morning listening across the Civic Media radio network.

If you're not listening on the radio, if it's on a podcast or through the Civic Media app, social media.

Also, great to have you along as we get things rolling for Thursday.

I got a question for you.

Will you miss the penny?

Because apparently the the last of the pennies have been minted.

I was looking my chainsaw here.

There's a lot of pennies in here But you know seriously when was when was the last time that it really you know was useful to

Have some pennies in your pocket except for that moment where you know, they say something is $5 and 27 cents and you you feel in your pocket and you got the quarter and you're like I do have two pennies Wow It doesn't really mean anything though does it there?

They just they've become kind of an annoyance over time and so the last of the pennies have been minted I mean at least for now, I suppose they could always come back but

Will you miss it?

Remember when they actually meant something?

Look over at, you know, focus on social media.

See that gumball machine behind me?

I have a, you know, an old school gumball machine, you know, the kind you can get at department stores or whatever.

And for the longest time it sat on my desk at Channel 13 here in Eau Claire, as I was anchoring the news and I took the coin mechanism out of it and people could just spin it all the time because I had it filled and to this day it's still filled, not quite full right now, with M&Ms.

So anybody would just stop by turn the crank a couple times and get it but every so often somebody like wanted to put pennies in there It's like here.

I want to help pay for the M&Ms.

I'm like, I don't want your pennies pennies are a hassle But maybe you maybe you think we should keep them around let's go to the other end of the spectrum Do we need to get serious about dollar coins here?

I mean look at the time that we've tried the big old what Eisenhower silver dollars

We had the Kennedy 50 cent pieces.

Those those things were biggest manhole covers.

And then they went with the ones with Sacajawea, but they were too close to the size of a quarter.

And so those got messed up.

And yet it feels like every other country as I travel around has figured out the dollar coin.

And even the $2 coin, the, you know, the, uh, what do they call it up in Canada?

The Looney, you know, uh, Alicia's asking, are they peanut M&Ms?

No, Alicia, I would not do that.

Just M&Ms.

Just how they're, how God meant them to be.

I don't know who infringed on, on a good recipe and put peanuts in there.

I mean, if you like them, fine, fine for you.

I'm not judging you.

Yes, I am.

Roger on Facebook says the remaining JC Penny stores will not be known as JC Nickel.

Very nice.

Parker Olson is producing things down in Madison Studio A2.

Somebody who I bet you has never stuck a penny in a gumball machine.

At least you're telling me how rude.

Again, you can like your peanut M&M's.

That was rude, Pat.

I know.

Peanut M&M's are superior.

No, let's not get crazy here.

They're

pretty

good.

They're pretty good, Pat.

They have their place.

My

favorite

M&M's.

Yes.

The Caramel M&M.

See, now that's when they got weird.

They started doing the peanut, they put peanut butter in there.

They put caramel.

I mean, the M&M's are perfect as they are.

You got, you grab a handful of M&M's and a little swig of milk and you got the best chocolate milk in the world.

That's, that's my, that's my position on M&M's and I'm sticking to it.

uh let yesterday about this time we were all raving about the northern lights and parker was not aware that they were out there uh but the whatever it's called the geomagnetic storm continued into the overnight hours here so i am sure that you got in your car and drove several miles beyond the madison city limits so you could see this wonder of nature did you

Okay.

I guess you did not.

So, um, again, look at all the, but you saw the great photos and it's funny.

I mentioned one of them that was sent to us on the text line.

I said somebody named Chris, uh, sent this beautiful photo from Lake Superior on the text line.

I found out later it was Chris Hamburg Boyle, our friend from the Wisconsin public education network.

Uh, but she didn't put her last name on there.

So Chris, thank you again for that.

Um,

Alicia's not responding.

They are superior.

They don't make my tummy hurt.

So apparently, if you add peanuts to your M&Ms, they don't make your tummy hurt.

I didn't know that M&Ms made my tummy hurt, but now I'm thinking about it.

I think they

might.

You know what?

Everybody has something.

They might be lactose intolerance, might be, yeah, might be garlic, who knows, whatever.

You get older and it's like suddenly it's anything with tomatoes.

If you have

pizza or, you know, big old bowl of tomato soup

or

whatever.

If you notice, you have a tummy ache and you go, oh, yeah, that's right.

I had such and such.

One of those fun things about getting older that we got going.

Oh, joy.

I'm so excited.

Yeah.

So I somehow we got the M&Ms instead of the the gumball machine that took pennies and would love to know if did you ever have you ever like used a dollar coin for anything?

Not used.

I know

the.

I

think I

have one or two of them.

Or maybe those are 50 sunpieces.

It's so

funny because when when, you know, they were really starting to be circulated.

Oh gosh, when was that late 80s?

Maybe maybe the 90s.

And what ended up happening was everybody was hoarding them.

Oh,

yeah, they're going to be valuable someday.

Yeah, they're going to be worth a dollar because they are dollar coins.

There's

you wait long

things.

I will I will never Understand I don't know how we're still the only country that hasn't embraced the metric system We're the only country that hasn't figured out the dollar coin We're the only country that hasn't figured out how to give health care to everybody since we all pay taxes anyway We haven't figured out how we can live without you know, five guns for every one American

We're very special here, but just not always for the best reasons, you know.

Yeah.

Well, you know,

sometimes that happens.

Sometimes that happens.

Sometimes you're just a little messed up.

Yep.

There's a lot of things that give me heartburn and Alicia admits on YouTube.

Yes.

Now tomatoes give me heartburn too.

All right.

855-75 Civic is the phone number here.

855-752-4842.

You can use that number to call us or to send us a text message.

Your thoughts on pennies or M&Ms or things that give you heartburn.

Or did you see Northern Lights last night as well?

We actually, we got a couple of nice photos last night right before bedtime looking north over Lake Wissota.

And perhaps you did as well.

I believe things have kind of, I want to say fizzled out now, but that was quite the anomaly for how brilliant they were over these past couple of days.

But if you have a photo you want to share, again, you can use the Civic Media app.

You can text us, you can call us from the app, and you can also leave a voice note, a little audio clip for us.

Coming up on the program, we're going to be talking to Sean O'Malley about your money and the markets.

At his new time, we're going to do that at 735.

And we're going to start with a doozy because Donald Trump, who again got wealthy essentially by either persuading or conning, depending on your opinion and the situation, other people out of their money.

Here's his great new idea.

You've got a 15-year mortgage.

You've got a 30-year mortgage.

How about a 50-year mortgage?

So if we spread it over 50 years, your monthly payments are going to be so much lower, you're going to save so much money.

No, you're not.

And Sean's done the math and wait till you hear the math on how much more you'll have to pay if you take that short-term gain of a slightly lower monthly payment and spread it out over 50 more years.

So that's coming up at 735 we'll have Joseph Pekki along as well to talk about the news of the day a lot of it state-based but also we've got that whole notion of the the Epstein files and the latest Disclosures about what Donald Trump may have known and of course you've got the government shutdown that is now come to an end

the House of Representatives passed the bill last night, President Trump assigned it.

So the whole government shutdown thing is unwinding and things are slowly getting back to normal, but a whole lot of damage was done topped by your health insurance costs are going up.

Whether you're on the Affordable Care Act marketplace or not, there's going to be that many more people without health insurance and we're all going to have to pay for it.

And here's the thing, after all these years,

You'd think that Republicans have finally come up with something like okay, we don't like the Affordable Care Act, but here's here's what we got instead and Congressman Tom Tiffany was in Milwaukee yesterday Part of his running for governor before he headed back to Washington to vote on that package and a reporter from CBS 58 Just straight up asked him, you know when they have that separate standalone vote on whether to put back the enhanced tax credits that kept health insurance prices affordable

would he support it?

And he just squirms answering this question, give a listen, it's about a minute and a half or so.

And he just comes out and says the quiet part out loud that after all these years, they still have no plan.

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 healthcare needs.

We should all have individual choices.

We don't have that at this point 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.

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.

Oh, boy.

Oh boy.

There it is.

You're just coming right out and saying it.

Asked directly.

You've had 16 years where here's your plan.

And he says, you know, basically, we haven't gotten around to it yet.

We haven't, we haven't, that hasn't happened yet.

But we have these things that we'd like to do and we should just sit down and do them.

I mean, it is the ultimate case of saying one thing and doing another.

They've always been saying, oh, we're going to come up with an alternative.

put your cards on the table already and they aren't there and they're not gonna be there because they love saying right now oh we don't want to give billions of health insurance companies yes you actually do that's what you've been doing for all these years and by ending the government shutdown and taking away those premium supports you're giving more money to health insurance companies and you're saying it's a bad thing but you're not actually doing anything to stop it

Because you don't want to stop it.

You want the for-profit health insurance companies that make big campaign donations to continue screwing Americans rather than when we actually had choice and affordable care under the Affordable Care Act.

So this will come up for a vote as part of the shutdown deal.

And maybe this time, after the first couple of hundred votes didn't work, maybe this time you'll vote with Americans who want affordable health care.

When we come back, we'll talk to Sharita Booker about some of the events you can attend this weekend and one of our posts that's gone really viral for those of you who use the word bubbler.

I'm Pat Critello.

This is the Civic Media Radio Network.

All right, we're back.

And for a good many of you, if I say, hey, what's the big event going on around Wisconsin this weekend, you're going to say, dear season.

people are heading you know toward their tree stands or going to be driving through the woods or anything like that.

There are other things to do and not all of them are the you know so-called deer hunters widows activities.

There's just all kind of kinds of community events as well and we'll learn more from our social media manager, Sharita Booker.

Sharita, good morning.

Will you be in the woods on Saturday hunting the the Wiley Whitetail?

good morning and no I'm such a city girl like I just needed to check you know I you know right I didn't know until we started talking earlier this year how much you love to fish for example yeah I

love fishing

yeah all right well let's get into some of the other events that folks could be doing this weekend and they're all

uh two of them are on saturday and then the third one is saturday and sunday so i don't have anything to give you to kick off things tonight but that's okay let's start in appleton and the light the night market what's that all about

Yup, and that's the like the night market holiday edition and that's hitting the streets of downtown Appleton Saturday from three to seven It all kicks off at Houdini Plaza with live music from the Brewster Street Brass Band Then watch an ice carving demonstration and check out the holiday projection show inside first five Fox Valley There also be a Mrs. Claus festive sing-along followed by music from Dave Ross and throughout the evening You can enjoy a train ride and wagon rides on Appleton Street

Live reindeer with Santa's crew, letter writing to Santa and a scavenger hunt with prizes from downtown businesses.

There will also be street performers, food trucks, craft vendors and a treat.

A treat walk at dozens of local shops from Cooper, Rock Coffee to Legendary Cookies and Creamery.

Everything's free and open to the public and for more information visit AppletonDowntown.org.

You know, I was going to say, I'd feel bad for the reindeer that'll be there like, oh yeah, once a year you want to see us, you know, we got to travel around like reindeer.

But then I realized turkeys are in that same boat, but you know, the one day a year we want them.

Yeah, they're going

back, you know, we're not, we're not eating the reindeer after their appearance.

So yeah, go see the reindeer.

That's just fine.

And then we'll head down to the Milwaukee suburb of Germantown for another event going on this weekend.

Yep, and they're also kicking off the holiday season with an 80s themed celebration at the Christmas Festival Parade in Christmas in the Park Saturday.

November 15th and it begins at 1.30 with the annual Christmas Festival Parade.

After the parade, the celebration continues at Fireman's Park from 2 to 4.45 with Christmas in the park featuring free photos with Santa, stilt walkers, clowns, costume characters, and a book walk hosted by the Germantown Community Library.

And you can warm up with free hot chocolate, coffee, and popcorn and grab a snack from Blissful Bites Desserts.

Robert's Frozen Custard and Wisconsin Fried Cheese Curds.

You can also enjoy live music at the Christmas tree all afternoon leading up to the official fireman's park Christmas tree lighting at 4.30.

And if you want to get some cardio in before this event, there's also a 5k candy cane run or walk and the kids jingle bell dash taking place the morning of the event.

So to register and for more information, visit GermantownChamber.org.

And if you missed it off the top there, she said that there is a theme here.

It's the theme is an 80s Christmas and their poster has a DeLorean on it from back to the future, of course.

And it says, get ready for a totally tubular time.

And it's got the classic 80s graphics behind it.

And it's just funny how you don't know something is going to be dated, you know, at the time, everything looks like it's going to be, well, this is it.

This is modern.

This is the current look.

And then you look back at it after 20 years or more and you go, ooh, that's very dated.

There's definitely, you can do that with the 80s now for sure.

For sure, for sure.

All right, one more event here.

It's in Sturgeon Bay.

That's what it is.

Tell us more about what's happening there.

Yep, Dora County is officially kicking off the holiday season with two weekends of festive fun during Christmas by the Bay and Sturgeon Bay beginning this Saturday and Sunday with the full lineup of holiday events for the whole family.

Saturday morning kicks off with the annual Christmas by the Bay Parade and the 22nd holiday stop and shop craft and vendor show at Dora County Gala will run from 9 a.m.

to 3 p.m.

where there'll be handmade gifts and holiday goodies.

You can also stop by Taps indoor winter market from 10 a.m.

to 2 p.m.

for local art, food, crafts and then head to Dora County Maritime Museum.

between 11 a.m.

and 3 p.m.

for the Festival of Trees and a special visit from Santa.

The afternoon will consist of Elsa and Olaf appearances along with five reindeer and a downtown trolley loop that runs from 12 to 3 p.m.

which is perfect for sightseeing.

And on Sunday, the fun continues at Stone Harbor Resort with Breakfast with Santa from 9 a.m.

to 11 a.m.

Kids can share their holiday wishes, enjoy breakfast, and make festive crafts with Santa.

For more information on that, visit Sturgeon Bay dot net.

All right.

Three great events for you to go check out here.

And with the time we have left, we haven't talked about the social media manager part of your job for a while here.

And we talk about sometimes popular posts.

And you've got a repost that has just taken off.

I mean, just crazy.

How many views has this little clip got now?

1.1 million.

1.1 million.

And so tell people what this little clip shows.

So it's a clip of an automotive shop and they're working and she's filming everybody asking and showing a picture of a well you can say bubbler water fountain or a drinking fountain.

So she's asking them what they call it and most of the people in the video said bubbler.

and um they're all from Wisconsin except I think two people in the video

and the people not from Wisconsin are like you know they go that's a drinking fountain what do you know what are you talking about and that's when you get into the the people who have never called it a bubbler have never heard it called a bubbler and people from Wisconsin especially eastern Wisconsin can't believe anybody has never

Not heard of the term bubbler.

You

have your walkie.

I call it a bubbler.

And I remember when I went to Oklahoma when I was a kid, I asked somebody in the store where the bubbler was and they looked at me like I was crazy.

And I'm like, hmm,

maybe they don't call that that year.

No, they do not.

I don't know where that came from.

And I don't know.

It's it's geographic footprint, but it is decidedly an Eastern Wisconsin thing.

But it's just the word that you use here.

You know, they're not water fountain.

A water fountain is what you throw coins in a drinking fountain.

would be the alternative.

But for you, it's a bubbler.

Yeah, and that post has like 8,000 comments.

Like people are just going back and forth debating like, no, it's a bubbler.

No, it's a drinking bottle.

No, it's crazy.

I

love that they have a little fun with that.

And boy, that has just really taken off.

So take a look at that.

See if you can get some of our other posts up to more than a million views.

But have some fun with that one.

Sherita Booker puts them all up.

Search for Up North News WI on all of your favorite social media platforms.

Sherita Booker, thank you so much.

Have a great start to the weekend.

YouTube app.

We will have today's history lesson right after this.

You're up north.

It's time once again for today's history lesson on mornings with Pat Cranklow.

To all who come to this happy place, welcome.

Ladies and gentlemen,

the Beatles!

That's one small step for man.

Well, I'm not a crook.

You believe in miracles yet?

You know, this depression is gonna be so great.

We'll be the ones eating the cats and the dogs.

That's gonna be fun.

Once again, it is time to take another revealing peek back into history.

It might be a little too early to get this mellow and romantic album.

Rod Stewart's gonna do it anyway from 1976.

Rod Stewart's Tonight the Night.

Tonight's the night with some little French cooing at the end of the song from his then-girlfriend model, Britt Eklund.

And unlike yesterday when we had Lionel Richie admitting that the African-sounding language was just gibberish, this is actually French at the end of it from Britt Eklund because, you know, she's from there.

And it was the number one song this day in 1976 and would be the number one song for eight weeks in a row.

On this day in 1922, the U.S.

Supreme Court, again, 1922, upholds mandatory vaccinations for public school students.

In the case of Zooked v. King, the court unanimously held the public schools.

could exclude unvaccinated students from attending, even if there's not an ongoing outbreak, because you know, viruses don't care if there's an outbreak, they're just there, ready to infect somebody else.

And we're allowed to protect our children and one another.

On this day in 1940, Walt Disney's animated musical film Fantasia was first released at the Broadway Theater in New York.

I'm

going to be really surprised if Parker has seen Fantasia or maybe even heard of it before today.

I think I've seen not all of it, but a pretty good chunk of it.

Here's the thing with Fantasia.

OK, 1940.

So animation, I mean, it wasn't brand new.

But I mean, again, we're talking 85 years ago.

Yeah.

And so the movie was thought of as this masterpiece of color because, again, everything was done by hand back then.

Yeah.

Painstakingly.

And so to have so much color, so many things that were dancing and swirling and everything else was like this, this marvel.

But I got to admit that years later, you call it up and you go, I appreciate the animators work, but it's not like the plot doesn't really carry the movie is what I'm trying to say

here.

There's not much of a story to it.

is there no I

don't remember any

story I remember I think Mickey just like messing around and dancing

flowers

as the Sorcerer's apprentice

right and and that's all fine and good yeah I'm just saying you're not gonna put it on and say all right kids I'll be back in an hour watch this they're not going to they're gonna wander away

yeah I think I only watched it in music classes

on this day in 1927 in New York City the Holland Tunnel opened linking New York City with New Jersey

And they've regretted it

ever

since.

Yeah, on this day in 1956, the Supreme Court invalidated Alabama's laws that required segregated city buses, thus ending the Montgomery bus boycott.

Okay, on this day in 1965, I just learned this yesterday.

1965 on this day, 60 years ago, a ship sank the passenger ship sank and led to a lot of deaths.

It happened in the overnight hours on the SS Yarmouth Castle.

And the captain and crew, as I'm reading through the whole thing, I mean, they bungled everything from trying to find out where the fire was to fighting the fire, failing to get on the PA and notify the passengers until the fire took out the electrical system and they couldn't tell them.

And it was too late.

There were plenty of survivors, but there were also 90 deaths.

Okay.

But four years later, in 1969, the tragedy was put to song.

by a certain Canadian

singer-songwriter.

It's Gordon Lightfoot.

In 1969, did a song about a ship going down.

The man's got a type.

The Edmund Fitzgerald was not the first time that he said, ooh, a ship went down and a bunch of people died.

I can make some music off of this.

Does this

guy write about anything else?

No, I don't know.

These are the only two Gordon Lightfoot songs I've ever heard.

And they're

both

shipwrecks.

There are other songs, but it's just hilarious that... Were they about a dinghy and crashing?

I don't know.

And again, it's very, it's very haunting and...

Somebody had to write shipwreck songs, and it turns out that it was Gordon Lightfoot.

Who did that?

You know,

it's

a good vein of music.

I am a fan of this song.

Yes.

Luke Mathers on the text line says, do we know Gordon wasn't sinking these ships to enhance his music career?

You know, some would say.

That's a good

point.

He also says he would put down money that Parker is thinking of Fantasia 2000 and not the original from 1940.

I don't remember that there was a Fantasia 2000.

I didn't either.

We're

both showing our age on that one.

Oh, that's definitely.

Okay, happy birthday, happy anniversary of the birthday to the late Gary Marshall.

The director was born this day in 1934, passed away in 2016.

He created Happy Days in 1974.

He directed films like Pretty Woman, Runaway Bride, Princess Diaries, Beaches.

He was an actor.

You saw him in all kinds of movie shows, movies and TV shows.

He was the sibling.

His sister was actress.

Penny Marshall from Laverne and Shirley.

Again, Gary Marshall was born this day in 1934.

All right, the late toy called Well Frontman for the Marshall Tucker Band was born this day in

1947.

A toy called Well Passed Away in 1993.

He was one of the original six members who formed the Marshall Tucker Band in 1972.

They had that hit in 1973 and then in 1977 they had to hurt it in a love song.

Let's see, we got a lot of birthdays here.

Whoopie Goldberg is 70 years old today.

Jimmy Kimmel is 58, kind of a bittersweet birthday there after losing his friend.

Texas Governor Greg Abbott is 68.

On this day in 1982, the Vietnam Veterans Memorial was dedicated in Washington DC with the names of some 58,000 people killed and missing Americans from the Vietnam War.

Up to 1982 now where the number one hit was from an Australian

group.

I guess I'd have to go back and look at the charts from 1982, but it says here that it was the number one song starting today in 1982 and state number one for 15 weeks Until it was dethroned by Michael Jackson's thriller.

I Just can't I'm guessing the Pickens were kind of slim for music in 1982.

I mean, it's a perfectly fine song But

yeah

to be number one for 15 weeks 15 seems like a lot.

Yeah, I this is making me ask another question though.

What?

day did Thriller come out?

And was it not like the week of Halloween?

Because come on.

Well, you know, release dates are a tricky thing because, you know, sometimes songs appear on a chart before they're actually released.

I learned that doing this segment.

Oh, because because they'll get traction by radio stations that get the copy first, but then they're not actually for sale until sometime later.

Sure.

So it's all it's all marketing.

So it's all

you'd think kind of a lead up to Halloween.

And so obviously it must have been released somewhere close to Halloween because, like I said, it was dethroned by Michael Jackson 15 weeks after this.

Well, you know, probably a big chunk of it too was

The album was a really big seller around Christmas of 1982.

So people were

just starting to get the

album.

I'm not even sure that Thriller was really marketed as a Halloween song back then.

It was just, you know, it was a spooky song.

People loved horror movies and monsters and all that.

But I don't think it was, I don't think it was naturally attached to Halloween as a marketing gimmick at first.

But interesting.

I would be wrong.

We've already established that even though that's the year I graduated high school, I clearly need to brush up on my history of 1982.

On this day in 1986, President Ronald Reagan confesses to weapon sales to Iran.

Those were illegal at the time, boys and girls.

The proceeds were used to fund a faction fighting a civil war in Nicaragua, also illegal at the time.

On this day in 1987, Sonny and Cher performed together for the final time, singing I Got You Babe on Late Night with David Letterman.

On this day in 1995,

came the release of GoldenEye, the 17th James Bond film, but the first with Pierce Brosnan in the title role of Agent 007.

This title track was sung by Tina Turner, and I have no memory of it because it went nowhere on the charts.

In fact, there was some kind of a dispute between the people doing the music and then the people doing the film score.

And they were so mad at each other that this actually didn't make it into the movie.

Oh, really?

It was more like released in honor of the movie years or something.

Or it was on the soundtrack album, but it was nowhere in the film

is what it was.

Yeah.

And let's see.

On this day in 2010, it's another Taylor Swift milestone, boys and girls, sets a record becoming the first female artist to place 11 songs on the Hot 100 chart at the same time.

That was 2010.

Let's see.

Tony St.

I'll bet Parker knows that GoldenEye song well.

He's a huge James Bond fan.

I do feel like I know that song.

Or maybe it's just because it feels so like James

Bond.

Like, yeah.

Yeah, it could very well be.

Alicia says land down under will now be stuck in my head all day.

Tony says down under is amazing.

I believe Luke Matters texted him and said, great tune during that song too.

He did, yeah.

And Alicia says sailors, she being in the Navy, have some tragic songs.

The sea is a scary place.

Yeah, absolutely.

We were talking earlier with Sharita Booker about bubblers and drink versus drinking fountains.

Tony, well actually first we got to give credit to Ronnie and Horicon who sent us a clip from a Milwaukee Journal article from 2020.

And it notes that the term bubbler may have been a marketing thing from the colder company in Sheboygan.

And the article references a 1914 bit of marketing about their brand new fountains that have a continuous bubbler, meaning a continuous flow of water and bubbler apparently stuck.

You do hear it in a couple of other places, including Australia, which led Tony to tell us little known fact in Australia, the bubblers drain backwards.

I don't, I don't think that's the way that that actually works.

But the toilet, I've been to Australia, New Zealand, the toilet water you're spending the other way is kind of weird.

But wait, that's actually true.

It's a natural phenomenon.

Well, yeah, because you'd need a meteorologist to kind of explain all this.

But anyway, I didn't know I thought that was enough.

It doesn't really flow backwards that way.

But anyway, a really good article about the places where you might also hear it in the state of Rhode Island.

for some reason.

Okay.

And again, I think that all could have been marketing.

I still to this day, we had for a time, we were selling merchandise throughout North News.

And we had a great one with a bubbler on it.

And then, you know, the alternate definitions as clearly a sign that you are from Wisconsin, if you're using that term, we got to bring that back.

I like that bubbler t shirt.

I'd wear it.

I don't

even say more.

Once again, we're putting out the call for, yeah, merch.

We need, we need to do coffee mugs, t-shirts, signed autograph prints of Luke Mathers.

We need, we need the whole smear.

I

like that idea.

Yeah.

Coming up in our seven o'clock hour, Sean O'Malley talks about your money and the markets and that really neat idea of the presidents for a 50-year mortgage.

Wait till you hear how much that would actually cost you if anybody signed their name on that dotted line.

I'm Pat Krightlow.

This is the Civic Media Radio Network.

Welcome back.

It's a Thursday morning, November 13th.

Eight minutes now before seven o'clock.

Let's take a look at what's on the National Day calendar today.

Maybe a little entertainment news as well.

But what are we celebrating today?

It is World Kindness

Day today, Mr.

Great.

Well, World Kindness Day.

Yes,

I think we had something.

I was going to say, I think we did this.

Or is it Kindness Week?

It might have been Kindness Week.

Okay, so this is the kindest day of kindness week.

Yes, and after today you can be a bully as much as

you want.

Be just a pain in the arse.

Yes, that is just fine.

All right, world kindness day.

What else we got?

We've

also got dream destination day.

Pat, what is your dream destination?

My dream destination is the rocking chair I will be retiring to one of these days.

Just to unplug.

No, my dream destination is always, you know, some beach somewhere in the Caribbean.

Now, I was telling Parker off air that, you know, when you've lived in the Caribbean and they, when Americans are down there and they say Caribbean, they jump all over them.

It's not Caribbean, it's Caribbean.

I never thought about it before, you know,

I've thought about it I when I'm talking about the movie Pirates of

the Caribbean I

say that when I'm talking about the region I say Caribbean.

Yeah, I think it's one of those Things like I I think I say both coupon and coupon.

I just don't know which one's gonna fall out of my mouth I think their other word Caribbean is another one of those or Caribbean, but in terms of what was it dream destination?

Yeah, well

Tony and I are going to be sitting on the plane together because Tony just put up on YouTube, New Zealand.

Oh, I'm a fan.

Yeah.

That I've only been there once in in 1999, a trip to New Zealand on Australia with holiday vacations back when I was working for Channel 13.

And it just immediately it soared to the top of the list of favorite places ever, New Zealand.

If you go to Australia, that's great.

But if you go to Australia, and you don't include a side trip to New Zealand, you're doing it wrong.

You've got a beautiful, beautiful land, beautiful people.

And it is like a sampler platter.

Sure.

It's got everything.

It's got fjords.

It's got mountains.

It's got volcanic activity.

It's got a big dairy and sheep farming area.

It's just and you know, big cities, it is, it's just a super cool country.

So Tony, I'm glad you, you said that.

One of my other favorite places with holiday vacations was a railroad trip through the Canadian Rockies.

And Banff is the most gorgeous spot along there that if we're talking about dream destinations, if I could float between those two, if I could be the ultimate snowbird and be in Banff in the summertime and then when it's winter in Canada, go down to New Zealand and be there.

Yeah, let's see.

Tony's asking if I've watched the documentary yet about Jacinda, the former prime minister.

I have not yet and would like to see that because, again, she's very well regarded in many circles, not all.

But anyway, enough of my dream destination.

Parker, you, and then we'll ask the listeners as well.

I think Ireland would be my number one.

My

brother and his wife just

there over the summer for a couple of weeks, and I'm

very

jealous.

I know my uncle also wants to get out there, so maybe someday him and I can get out there.

Cool.

All right.

Anybody else wants to weigh in?

Get in that comment section of Facebook and YouTube if you're watching us on social media.

Otherwise, use your Civic Media app to call us or to text us, just text us where you'd like to be or put it into audio form and use the voice note feature on the Civic Media app as well on this National Dream Destination Day.

All right, what do we have for entertainment news today?

A

little bit of entertainment news here.

Will Ferrell is taking a pause on filming his new golf comedy that's supposed to be coming out on Netflix.

Apparently, he got a minor injury offset.

which is preventing him from being able to shoot comfortably.

So no shooting right now for Farrell.

My question is if he got hurt being an old person or actually

doing something.

Wow.

Wow.

Shots fired.

I mean, just because the guy's older, that doesn't mean it could have been it.

It might have been it.

It might have been it, but I mean, that's just wild speculation going on.

It's a question.

It's a legitimate question.

I think it's interesting that he's doing a golf movie.

Because here's a guy who, you know, in Anchorman, he took on something that, you know, few people have taken on and has made like the, you know, the ultimate movie mocking news anchors.

He did Talladega Nights, you know, with race car drivers.

But Adam Sandler's already done like the quintessential golf movie.

That's true.

With Happy Gilmore.

So either this script's got to be really good or...

He is just piggybacking on the happy Gilmore, you know, success, or maybe he and Adam Sandler don't get along.

And he's like, here, let me show you how it's done doing a golf movie.

This intrigues me very much.

What's the one about what you got to hear a note about Toy Story because we got to get one very dark detail out of the way.

Oh, Toy Story five.

Yes, we're at five Toy Story is now.

They just released a trailer and it appears that screens tablets are the enemy.

It shows a little girl very excited about a tablet and the real toys are shuttering in

horror.

Oh, toys are weird about being replaced by screens.

That's very contemporary.

Isn't it?

Very with the times.

Yes, totally get that.

And I hope that it is better received than Toy Story 3.

And I'm already making some people shudder.

Incinerator scene.

Ah, yes, was the darkest thing.

And I remember being in the theater with I must have been with how old were your girls?

I don't remember.

And I don't remember if it was kids or grandkids at this point, to be honest.

I just remember like, what?

What are you doing here?

When does this end?

And I mean, they couldn't have brought it closer to the characters being incinerated.

And people talk about it to this day like, where did that come from?

How did it manage to stay in the movie?

And I think that's why Toy Story 4's numbers weren't that good.

And I think a lot of people were turned off by Toy Story 3.

We've talked about this with all the Batman movies and others.

Everybody feels like they got to get darker and edgier as time goes on.

And you don't have to.

You can still make it hit.

We need to do the same show.

Toy Story 3 was great, but so emotional.

It's my kid's favorite toy story.

My wife and I are like, why?

Good question.

Totally get that.

All right, let's pause for the news.

And when we come back, we will be talking about those 50 year mortgages and whether those are a good idea to save a little bit of money.

And also, we'll talk more about that data center that's being built in Beaver Dam.

We know many more details how it belongs to

Mark Zuckerberg.

That's coming up.

I'm Pat Critello.

This is the Civic Media Radio Network.

Across Wisconsin on Civic Media, you're listening to Mornings with Pat Crichtlow, powered by Up North News.

Now, from our Lake Wasota studio, here's the founding editor of Up North News, Pat Crichtlow.

Hey good morning 706 nice to have you back here up north on a Thursday November 13th 2025 Parker Olson producing things down there in Madison in Studio A2.

Coming up Sean O'Malley is going to join us to talk about

President Trump pitching a 50-year mortgage.

Talk about short-term gain and long-term pain.

Sean has run the numbers.

Wait till you hear how much it'll cost anybody that actually signs up for one of those turkeys.

A little later on, we'll be talking to Joseph Pecky.

He'll be talking about the Epstein files, what's been released yesterday, how it sheds light on

what Donald Trump knew, what kind of person he was, who eventually became president of the United States.

That'll be coming up a little bit later on.

Along the way, of course, you can join us at 855-75 Civic, 855-7524842.

And if you can't call us or text us, you can always use the Civic Media app to text us, call us, use the voice note feature, and let us know what's on your mind.

We were asking in our last hour,

Whether you're gonna miss the penny since the last of the pennies have been minted I don't think too many people are crying about that, but I then asked do we Now start to take seriously the dollar coin as opposed to all those dollar bills Or do we just need to be you know fading phasing out currency entirely

Everything's going so digital.

I mean, there are people that pay for things, you know, just using their watch or their phone, certainly just tapping a credit card now.

How much longer will it be till we don't have bills or coins in our pocket?

That's certainly a fair question that we would mind hearing from you about as well.

I don't know.

Parker, you like all digital using your watch, your phone to pay for things?

No, I don't.

I still go credit card, debit card, that stuff.

Putting a but not a checkbook.

You haven't written a check.

Well, you've never know Pat I forgot about this what?

So remember when we had that conversation about check about checkbooks Yes, and how my generation tends not to have them right I think literally that like next weekend.

I was helping a friend of mine out with something and

He goes, you want to see something really cool?

And I go, what?

And he brings me a checkbook.

And I'm like, what do you mean cool?

And he opens it and he's got Lambo field checks.

That's pretty cool.

I was very

impressed.

I love that you're impressed by

this.

I was very

impressed.

You see, before digital, you know, we're talking mid 90s here or so before, you know, you really started with the internet and everything.

Checks, we're getting really fancy.

When I was young, of course, they just came in blue.

That was it, you know, and then occasionally there'd be a few designs.

The design thing actually got crazy.

I mean, you could get any, you know, sports teams logos and stadiums.

You could design your own checks.

This whole thing was like its own little sub industry that was really peaking.

Yeah.

when suddenly, checkbooks kind of stop being used all together, you know?

Yeah.

And Alicia says very well here on YouTube, you know the panic going all digital for money would cause, oh yeah, I mean, come on, one hack,

you

know?

Could bring it all crashing down, but yeah, yeah, the ones with, I used to get those.

Oh boy, what's

he reaching

for my checkbook here?

I don't even remember what's on my checks right now.

Oh, mine's just now.

It's just a kind of a beige, you know, blue with blue lines.

But

when

the

kids were younger, oh, yeah, we had Mickey Mouse on our checks and other other cartoon characters because you're writing checks everywhere.

And,

you

know, your kids think it's kind of fun.

I

just love you discovering the checkbook like you were digging in Pompeii.

And in the volcanic ash from ancient times, you find a checkbook.

He pulled

it out and I

went, okay, whatever.

And I went, oh, it's Lambo.

That's cool.

I like that you're like, yeah, you want to see something cool?

It's an old checkbook.

He knew that I would appreciate it.

And he was right.

I did appreciate it.

Mm hmm.

Tony says, show the check to the camera.

I need to check to make sure the numbers are right.

Oh, yeah.

Yeah.

With the bank account number and the routing number.

Sure.

No, no problem there whatsoever.

Just send it my way, Pat.

I'll take care of it.

Yeah, he goes on to say, ignore the miscellaneous charges tomorrow.

Yeah, you got to check those bills.

But instead, we're going the other way, all digital, all the time.

We're moving to AI.

And that takes us to the topic of data centers.

And we have now learned a bit more about the data center that is going up in Beaver Dam.

And we've talked about this for a bit.

community welcoming the investment, even if they weren't really sure what all was going on with it.

But now Meta, the parent company of Facebook, is coming, making itself more public about its data center plans around the country.

And according to a Milwaukee Journal Sentinel article by Ricardo Torres, Meta talks about spending more than a billion dollars for what's going up in Beaver Dam.

not just for the data center campus, 700,000 square feet, which they say will be, you know, at the highest levels of energy efficiency, but 200 million in energy infrastructure investment, including utility substations and transmission lines.

Now, all this will bring in about 1,000 construction jobs, they say, but in the end, the number of permanent jobs will be around 100 people.

And while the investment is certainly

welcome by some.

There are others who are very troubled or at least concerned about things like water use and the amount of electricity that's going to be needed.

And how is that electricity going to be generated to help this data center keep up with Metis plans to get deeper and deeper into AI.

Now, I believe the the article in the Journal Sentinel does talk about it being

The moves are going to be taken to try to not gobble up all of the water in the area.

The press release that's quoted by the paper says that as part of this, meta will restore 100% of the water consumed by the Beaver Dam data center to local watersheds.

Additionally, the facility will use dry cooling, which means that there will be no water demands for cooling once it is operational.

And that's the part where where I come in and go, All right, I am not saying that the the folks that are that have environmental concerns are are wrong, not not by any stretch.

My point on this one is there are things that you can decide to take a pass on.

You know, we don't need, right now, we don't need mining in Northern Wisconsin.

We don't need to spoil the water and the landscape and everything else for minerals currently.

If there were some kind of massive emergency that we needed to mine for certain minerals, I would understand that.

But we're going to take a pass for now on mining.

Thank you very much.

Data centers, on the other hand, like I've said before, it's not like we're going to do less computing.

We are only going to do more computing which is going to require data centers which is going to require electricity and so I Look at that is one of those where it's not a matter of saying no to it.

It's a matter of saying How do we at the front end of all this?

Make sure that we anticipate

the problems and try to mitigate them.

We said the same thing up here about sand mining.

Everybody thought sand mining was going to be all the rage and I'm in the legislature at the time and there's people saying we got to ban these things.

Others saying we got to go go go and dig dig dig for the sand mines and my point was always look if if a sand mine is coming if you think that's going to bring you prosperity.

Then you better get all kinds of guarantees on the front end in terms of bonding so that there's money there for Reclamation when they're all done, you know digging up all the sand out of there for any future environmental problems get all the promises and writing and The same is gonna have to be the case for these data centers.

I don't think you're gonna have a time where there are zero new ones built in Wisconsin so I would rather see much more transparency and much more

uh, insured accountability if these kinds of things are going to be put up.

So I see the note here about restoring 100% of the water and using dry cooling.

I just don't want those to be just verbal assurances.

And one more thing, make it enforceable.

And again, whether it's been sand mining or data centers or, you know, other facilities that, uh, in the past,

What happens is they get to a point.

They build it.

It's operational.

Then they start breaking their promises and people go, well, what can you do?

We can't shut it down.

To which I would say, yeah, you can.

I think you actually need to get language in there for, you know, again, if it's my hometown and if I could negotiate the thing with the data center, it would be you are going to restore 100% of the water.

You are going to use dry cooling.

You are going to do this, that and the other thing.

And by the way, if you don't, we have a kill switch.

And we're just gonna shut it down, you know, just like you would for, you know, garnishing somebody's wages or you'd put a padlock on the door of a business that needed to be shut down for health reasons or other other reasons is this whole notion of too big to fail or too big to shut down, too big to punish, too big to hold accountable.

I reject that notion entirely.

Now granted, they could say, well,

Too bad, Pat, we'll go down the road and somebody else will welcome us in and they won't put all these restrictions on.

Well, okay.

But I'm going to be able to sleep at night knowing that nobody's going to point at me later on and say, everybody's got to move out of town because they can't get water out of their wells because of the deal you negotiated.

I'm okay with that.

You want to do business here.

We've got a great workforce.

We've got great natural resources.

We've got what you want.

And so you're going to have to work with us.

You're going to have to pay taxes to educate the kids who are going to become your workers of the future.

None of this is big government socialism.

This is just being good to your neighbors in terms of how do you have a pro-business mentality that creates jobs that helps the economy but doesn't give away the store?

it seems to me like we should be able to do that in this country and in the state.

And if you can't, if they go to, you know, we're gonna build our factory in South Carolina instead, well, I guess I certainly get that, but I don't feel like we need to sell ourselves short or sell out our values here because of it.

If you missed it in the last hour, we played some audio from Congressman Tom Tiffany.

He's now a candidate for governor and he was asked directly,

since he voted to end the government shutdown and to jack up health insurance prices for Americans.

What's your alternative?

He was asked point blank after 16 years.

What's your alternative?

And he said the quiet part out loud.

He said, we don't have one.

He says, unfortunately, that has not been done, meaning writing an alternative to the Affordable Care Act.

16 years and they've still got nothing.

Just remember that the shutdown has ended.

President Trump signed the bill overnight.

The House had passed the bill.

The shutdown is coming to an end.

As part of the promise, Senate Republican leader John Thune said a separate vote will be scheduled and if that vote were to pass, then the enhanced premium tax credits that make health insurance more affordable would be reinstated or extended or renewed or whatever.

And it's going to be really easy for people like Tom Tiffany to say, oh no, that would just be a big boondoggle to health insurance companies.

I'm not going to support that.

Well, what's your alternative?

If you don't have an alternative, what you're saying is you do want Americans to have jacked up health insurance prices that are going to go to the health insurance companies.

You're simply passing the buck quite literally to your constituents.

So whenever this standalone vote is scheduled on the enhanced tax credits for the Affordable Care Act, just keep that in mind.

We're going to seize that date.

We're going to ask you to call your congressional representative and your senator and just make sure, again, we have people that are finally looking out for us when it comes to affordable health care and not the health insurance companies.

Coming up, Sean O'Malley is going to talk to us about President Trump's bright idea for a 50-year mortgage and how much more that could actually be costing you if you were to sign on to one of those things.

I'm Pat Crightlow from the Heart of America's Up North, live from Lake Basota, here on the Civic Media Radio Network.

Hey, along with our weekday newsletter here at UpNorth News, we have a Sunday morning edition.

Sunday mornings with Pat Krightlow with more of a focus on politics.

Our weekday newsletter is a little heavier on Wisconsin features.

And you can sign up at UpNorthNewsWI.com.

It includes a question of the week.

This week's question, should marijuana be legalized in Wisconsin and to what degree?

And interestingly, there's been a little wrinkle in that question since we originally put it out on Sunday morning.

We asked, should marijuana be fully illegal?

Should it be fully legal, including for recreational use?

Or should there be some kind of medicinal use for marijuana, but not recreational?

Well, since that time, we have learned that in this bill that ended the government shutdown, turns out, shockingly, it was not a clean bill.

No, there were things that were snuck in there.

And one of the things deals with federal regulations on hemp, which would threaten to put like CBD oil distributors and other hemp growers in Wisconsin, it would jeopardize their business model by tightening federal restrictions on hemp use.

How this got in that bill I have no idea but also snuck in there was that provision that those Republican senators whose phone records were looked at as part of the January 6th investigation Could sue the federal government and get a half a million dollars and And a couple senators like Lindsey Graham say they're gonna sue for more because they're so mad but that's just saying I want

as a millionaire senator, I want you the taxpayers to give me even more money because I needed to be investigated for my potential role in trying to overthrow an American election.

Again, how that got in the bill, I will never know.

But again, to answer our question of the week about marijuana legalization, just a straight up and down question about that.

No extra stuff in the bill, I promise.

Head to UpNorthNewsWI.com and click subscribe in the top banner for our question of the week.

Parker, I noticed a story on Channel 13 here in Eau Claire about, and I saw this over the weekend driving by Oakwood Mall.

There's an Applebee's.

The Applebee's has been there forever.

Sure.

But it looks a little different now.

It's like, it's a half, half and half building.

The other half of the building has been remodeled, redone.

It has a whole new exterior to look like an IHOP.

The old international house of pancakes.

And sure enough, here's the story.

A dual branded Applebee's iHop restaurant is about to open in Eau Claire.

So we're getting to the point now.

AppleHop.

Where AppleHop.

Where they're now blending restaurants together.

Apparently they've remodeled part of the inside to look like an iHop as well, which just has a very weird.

Feel to it like you're sitting in a restaurant.

You think you're sitting in an Applebee's but you look over there And there's an I hop you know or you're sitting at an I hop with your eggs and bacon and pancakes and you're looking at a place known for Steaks and dinners over there.

I can only imagine eating a steak and then seeing a plate of pancakes walk by

Yeah, it feels a little off

Yep, let's see Tony.

Oh just I hop meh.

I want green Applebee's Oh green Applebee's I see what he did there very nice.

So yeah, we've got the the dual branded restaurants.

I don't

I don't quite understand that because it's not like you're gonna be in Applebee's and think you know what?

After this, let's go to I hop.

Like put a coffee shop or something next to it like get a drink or something after you're done with whatever.

I like the idea of, you know, of a breakfast place that then transitions into a dinner place.

I mean, we've got the Chippewa Family Restaurant here and we've got a few other family restaurants in the area.

But

it's one

thing.

But you don't change the decor.

You know, it's not like you came in for breakfast and then when you come back in, they've changed all the furniture and there's different stuff on the wall.

It doesn't work that way.

Maybe it does maybe maybe that's the wave of the future.

Maybe everything on the wall is just a it's a screen You know like at a sports stadium those wraparound scoreboards sure

yeah,

and they just they just changed the scenery that way and Pretty soon we start to wonder are we even real?

Are we just in a virtual reality that the scenery just changes all around

us?

I'm

starting to feel like an old Bugs Bunny cartoon where the artist just keeps changing the background on them as they're walking along.

You paint the

tunnel on the rock and you suddenly

run through it to the other side.

You think you're going into the bathroom and it turns out it's just a door that's been painted on.

Yeah, it's just a screen.

It's just all virtual reality.

The floors are all LEDs.

They change every hour.

Oh my goodness.

Yeah, like on hockey arenas, you know, you can project stuff onto the ice where it looks like you're about to skate into a canyon, you know, fall off a cliff, but you're still on the same surface.

We are in such dark, weird new territory here, you know.

I like it.

Yeah.

But, you know, we wouldn't have been there except that we were passing through on our way and noticed, as I mentioned on Monday, how busy the malls were this last weekend.

That it appears people are already starting their Christmas shopping.

I've talked about how the catalogs are coming in already.

I mean, I was even looking at TMZ this morning, you know, for entertainment news and things.

And of course, right there is prominently featured, you know, here are some gifts where obviously they get a cut of the proceeds.

But it was a lot of, you know,

digital type stuff.

You're all the little gadgets.

Maybe you need a new phone.

Maybe you need a new wireless speaker.

So I wonder, have people already started that?

I know I have.

The UPS guy showed up yesterday with the first couple of gifts that I've purchased for Christmas.

So it's underway.

My mom is like that.

She likes to do like throughout the year basically.

Like she'll kind of do little spurts and find things and just hold on to them for a while.

Yeah,

and it's and it's sometimes it's tempting when you you see something and you're like, oh, this person would really like this now.

It's like, no, no, no, you actually have to wait for the holiday.

Otherwise you get to buy something else again.

But it does appear to be underway, but I'm going to have to be on that area again today because you remember yesterday I went through all the old manuals that I found in the basement, all the old trying to find the furnace one trying to find the furnace one.

I eventually got the furnace fixed anyway.

You did.

We're very proud of you.

Thank you internet.

Yep.

I did that all by myself.

Turns out I needed it again early this morning.

I've got a desk lamp over here.

It's called a banker's lamp.

It needs a special bulb.

Those little compact fluorescent bulbs are not the kind I have just sitting around.

No.

And I have no idea what kind of bulb I can't read any of the markings on.

I needed the manual.

So there I was down in the basement again five, five o'clock this morning, looking for just the right manual.

And I've got it.

I'm the pack that has that.

Coming up next, Sean O'Malley is going to talk about your money and the markets and the magic sarcasm of a 50-year mortgage.

I'm Pat Crightlow.

This is the Civic Media Radio Network.

As I've mentioned, the Civic Media app has a voice note feature.

You can look at that Civic Media app, call up one of the stations where you hear this fine program or any other program, and you'll have the option to call that station, text, or leave a voice note, a quick little voice message.

Feel free to use that to let us know your questions and comments through the Civic Media app, civicmedia.us.

Sean O'Malley joins us now at a new time to talk about your money and the markets and

I thought maybe we wouldn't have quite as much to talk about because with the government shutdown, there hasn't been, you know, a lot of data that's out there.

But we do have something to talk about because the president of the United States has been talking up the notion of a 50 year mortgage, not a 15, not a 30.

But a 50 and I think everybody knows what the selling point would be.

It's like, well, if you stretch it over 50 years, your monthly payments can be so much lower.

That's Donald Trump's answer to affordability.

Sean, good morning.

What's the punchline?

Good morning, Pat.

The punchline is that similar to most other financial or economically oriented thoughts that go through Donald Trump's head and come out his mouth.

It's wrong.

You will, you'll be paying a little less per month, but you're

paying total

in interest.

I mean, you've run some numbers on here.

Do you want to grab, grab an example here?

I'm happy to share that.

So what I did is when I first saw it, I thought, okay, let's check what the actual difference is because I'm betting it's pretty low and having run the numbers through an actual mortgage model.

Adjusting of course for the fact that you will have a slightly higher interest rate and I think I actually went a little maybe too low on the increase because the typical increase in interest rates as you go from 15 year to 30 year is between 50 and 75 basis points.

So that's one half of a percent to three quarters of a percent.

So what I did is I just added a half a percent going from 30 years to 50 years and

It was revealing.

The payment, if it doesn't go down much, goes down by a whopping 5%.

So you're still paying 95% of the same mortgage payment monthly.

You're just doing it for an extra 20 years.

So, interest cost wise.

Did you roll the numbers on like a $500,000 house to give us an

example?

I did.

I did.

Yeah, I did it on a $500,000 because average home prices are in the US are $522,000 and change right now.

Check the number.

Okay.

So, we're a little bit below that, but we're, you know, in the ballpark of what a lot of people are seeing these days.

So and so on a 30-year mortgage current interest rates you're going to be paying a little over $600,000 in interest expense over those 30 years If you were to do the same with a 50-year mortgage You would be paying 1.2 over 1.2 million dollars in interest expense over 50

years on a $500,000 home you'd be paying 1.2 million in interest payments

Correct.

For a monthly payment that is maybe about 5% lower.

Correct.

What could possibly go wrong?

I mean, you would, for anybody else, you'd say get out of here.

For Donald

Trump.

As a matter of fact, and they did, they thought about doing this.

You got to dial it back to the financial crisis time, right?

Yeah, when everybody was trying to, you know, get in mortgage origination to continue.

That was the engine that was driving the economy forward at that point in time.

So they started doing crazy stuff, the pick a pay, you know, the the ninja loans, no income, no job or assets.

And

when they when it came to maturity, there were some some lenders that did a 40 year mortgage out there, but nobody was crazy enough to do a 50.

Until, until now from a guy who has, you know, he's made his money by trying to get people to pay more money than the otherwise would.

He's got a, you know, for example, he loves to see his properties valued low for tax purposes, but then he grossly inflates their value when he's trying to sell them.

And it's one thing to do that on the margins, but Donald Trump, you know, super sizes this.

Oh, it was, it was, it was orders of magnitude.

Take a look at the book.

you know lucky loser by two people surprised winning authors very good book goes through that in great detail and you know the other thing is that why would you take business advice from a guy who's gone through bankruptcy how many times

five or six yeah at least

yeah and let's not forget that the majority of his wealth right now is courtesy of his cryptocurrency exchange so it's really just within the last year

that most of the wealth that he has has been accumulated.

So this is not the guy you should necessarily be taking financial advice from.

We're talking to Sean O'Malley.

He's a Hudson native, a lengthy Wall Street career in anti-money laundering, financial risk management, data analytics, compliance, fraud, and risk management.