Up North Podcast

Hi folks,

I just spoke to retired Army Colonel George Mason for 35 minutes and I hope you can listen to this interview. If you only have 2 minutes, please listen to list clip from the end of our conversation.

The take away from the entire conversation is that in order to make sure we have elections in 2026, we have to call our Democratic U.S. Senators and Congresspeople and urge them to block the continuing resolution (CR) that funds our federal government until ICE is forced to shrink, stop terrorizing Americans, and obey the law. That CR ends in January, so we must act now.

Unless that happens, Trump will use ICE to either a) instigate violence so that he can invoke the Insurrection Act and cancel elections, or b) flood swing house districts across the country, including Wisconsin's 3rd District (Eau Clair, La Crosse, and Stevens Point) with so many agents that it will be very hard for progressives to vote without being harassed/detained.

Please pick up the phone and call your Democratic federal politicians right now before you forget.

Finally, as thanks for talking with me, George asked that I give a shout out to a small business in Minneapolis called Smitten Kitten that is collecting food and other necessities for those that can’t leave their homes due to ICE raids happening nearby. He is helping distribute those goods to people and there is a need for more help. Here’s more info:

Thanks for watching and reading,

Kirk

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit minocquabrewingcompanytimes.substack.com/subscribe

Hi Friends,

Last night, I was joined by Rev. Paul D. Erickson, Bishop of the Greater Milwaukee Synod of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America for a special holiday “Up North Podcast.”

We played 7 of our favorite Christmas carols, and discussed the progressive messages behind each one.

I’ve done a variation of this holiday show ever since creating the “Up North Podcast” five years ago, because I think it’s important to reject the Fox news narrative that suggests there’s a “War on Christmas” waged by progressives.

To the contrary, it’s obvious to anyone that has read the Christmas story and sang our religion’s beautiful carols that this holiday aligns 100% with progressive values—values that are being pummeled daily by the Trump regime.

I’d suggest watching the podcast in its entirety above, so that you can let the beautiful music wash over you, but if you don’t have the time, here are a few clips of the special moments I remember from the show.

First, here’s a clip of Bishop Erickson setting the stage for the rest of the podcast.

We played the 3rd verse of “It Came Upon a Midnight Clear,” which mentioned “2000 years of wrong.” That line referred to the reign of Caesar Augustus, who was to have been born of a virgin and who ushered in the Pax Romana—a time of world peace—achieved by political repression of opposition. By the time Luke’s gospel was written, some 60 or 70 years later, it was clear that the Pax Romana didn’t last, because peace on earth cannot be sustained by political repression. On the contrary, we’ve known for hundreds of years that lasting peace can only be achieved through Democratic means.

Before we played “Away in a Manger,” which painted Jesus, Mary, and Joseph as “strangers” or “foreigners” who needed help, I read yesterday’s headline from the New York Times that said the “Trump Administration Aimed to Strip Foreign Born Americans of Citizenship. Obviously, that’s code for removing “non-white” citizens from America. Here’s a clip of Bishop Erickson responding to that fundamentally UN-Christian headline by reminding us that Jesus was a brown-skinned Palestinian refugee.

Next, we played my favorite version of “Oh Holy Night,” which was sung by an amazing tenor named David Phelps. The third verse of this song was written by John Sullivan Dwight, a Unitarian minister and staunch abolitionist. It was all about freeing the slaves, ending oppression, and understanding that we all are “brothers” (and sisters). As you can imagine, that 3rd verse wasn’t embraced by the South until recently.

The last carol we played was “I heard the bells on Christmas Day,” which came from a poem written by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow during America’s Civil War. When I read the last two stanza of the poem, I couldn’t help but get choked up, because we’re going through a period of deep hatred and despair right now in America, and I desperately pray that “The Wrong (will) fail, (and) The Right prevail.”

And in despair I bowed my head;“There is no peace on earth,” I said;“For hate is strong,And mocks the songOf peace on earth, good-will to men!”

Then pealed the bells more loud and deep:“God is not dead, nor doth He sleep;The Wrong shall fail,The Right prevail,With peace on earth, good-will to men.”

Here’s the clip of Bishop Erickson responding to this poem and reminding us that Longfellow’s line about “the right prevailing” depends on us. WE HAVE TO DO THE WORK to bend the moral arc of the universe towards justice, which will ultimately bring peace on earth and goodwill to all.

Thanks for listening, and thanks for sticking with the Minocqua Brewing Company.

Together, we must remind our neighbors that the Christmas story ultimately rejects what America has become this past year. Alternatively, it shows us a path to right our ship by fighting for justice and peace, and living lives of generosity, hospitality, and love for everyone.

Kirk Bangstad

Owner, Minocqua Brewing Company/Minocqua Marketplace

Publisher, Minocqua Brewing Company Times

Founder, Minocqua Brewing Company Super PAC

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit minocquabrewingcompanytimes.substack.com/subscribe

Thank you to everyone who tuned into my live video! Join me for my next live video in the app.

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit minocquabrewingcompanytimes.substack.com/subscribe

Hi folks,

Kirk Bangstad here from the Minocqua Brewing Company.

On last night’s podcast, after which we had a holiday party at our Madison Taproom for Substack subscribers, we discussed America’s current media landscape where partisan “news” outlets inundate us with “zombie articles.”

What are zombie articles? The ones that tell us that that this time the walls are closing in on Trump’s regime. This time someone’s getting arrested. This time the Supreme Court will save us. It’s a dopamine loop designed to keep us doomscrolling, not to help us act.

Doomscrolling & dopamine:

* Doomscrolling literally spikes dopamine – each new upsetting headline gives a little hit, so our brains keep chasing more bad news even though we feel worse overall.

* Negative headlines outperform positive ones, so outlets are financially rewarded for keeping things dark and scary.

* High conflict + low sense of agency = learned helplessness; people stop believing they can change anything.

This sets up a problem:

We’re addicted to stories that go nowhere. We mistake spectacle for progress. We’re exhausted, but nothing structurally changes.

Here are a few examples of these times of stories in the media today;

* “Hegseth is about to be impeached for that second strike.” (Not with a Republican majority in Congress)

* “Kristi Noem is finally going to get fired for building ICE camps too slowly.” (Who cares, they’ll replace her with someone worse)

* “The ACA premium tax credits are getting restored any minute now, so health care is safe again.” (Which Republicans in Congress have proven to have any spine to actually follow through with this? None.)

* “Twenty-four MAGA members of Congress are on the verge of resigning, so maybe Democrats might get the majority before the 2026 elections.” (Who in there right minds would give up power willingly for nothing in return?)

Here’s our guest, Amanda Nelson from the popular Substack Page called “Amanda’s Mild Takes,” with her “Mild Take” on these zombie articles.

Then we moved to Senator Chris Larson to talk about some of the zombie articles coming out of Wisconsin. He talked about how Republicans wasted precious time legislating the culture wars rather than lowering healthcare costs, making childcare affordable, and even keeping our state’s public oversight TV channel (Wisconsin Eye) alive.

We then moved to talk about things that really mattered, like lawsuits working their way through the courts to stop ICE and stop the Trump regime.

* League of Women Voters Education Fund v. Trump- A federal court permanently blocked the part of Trump’s 2025 voting executive order that would have forced people to show a passport or other proof of citizenship just to register with the federal voter form. That would have disenfranchised millions, especially voters of color. Lower court said no.

* Castañon Nava consent decree (ICE arrests)- A federal judge extended a consent decree limiting ICE’s ability to arrest people without warrants or probable cause, keeping those protections in place at least through early 2026. That directly reins in ICE on the ground.

* The Minocqua Brewing Company’s lawsuit to unmask ICE in Wisconsin.

* Lower-court injunctions pausing or narrowing Trump executive orders on DEI or federal workplace rules – examples of judges still applying the law even when SCOTUS is hostile.

Also, we’re getting great news about states passing legislation to slow ICE down:

* New Illinois law limiting ICE enforcement

* Signed this week by Gov. JB Pritzker.

* Restricts immigration enforcement around courthouses, hospitals, day cares, and college campuses.

* Lets Illinois residents sue ICE agents in state court if they’re arrested in or near courthouses or if their constitutional rights are violated.

* Limits what data schools, day cares, and hospitals can share with ICE about people’s immigration status.

* Santa Clara County declaring an “ICE-free zone” on county property

* San Francisco legislation to bar ICE from using city facilities to stage raids

We then discussed the tried and true tactics of “resistance,” including harassing ICE at every turn. Here’s Patti discussing the horrors of a recent ICE raid in Elgin, IL, and how folks are starting to use AI to reveal the faces of ICE agents inflicting abuse onto others to hold them accountable.

Lastly, I reminded our audience that we have to have a “Plan B” if Trump’s goons actually succeed in cancelling our upcoming elections or causing so much chaos that those election results become meaningless. This “Plan B,” according to resistance scholars such as Harvard’s Erika Chenoweth, include a general strike to force regime change by bringing the U.S. Economy to its knees.

That’s about it for this week.

Tune in next week for our Christmas-themed show with the Reverend Paul D. Erickson, Bishop of the Greater Milwaukee district of the ELCA Lutheran Church. Rev. Erickson and our team will play a bunch of beautiful Christmas carols and talk about their underlying progressive messages.

As always, we keep our daily articles and our weekly podcast free to everyone, but have started programming more podcasts, taproom talks, and even streaming live music for paid subscribers. If you’d like to support our efforts, please subscribe here.

Thanks for watching, and thanks for sticking with the Minocqua Brewing Company.

Together, we’ll block out the noise that makes us feel helpless, and focus on the information we need to get our country back—one beer at a time.

Kirk Bangstad

Owner, Minocqua Brewing Company

Publisher, Minocqua Brewing Company Times

Founder, Minocqua Brewing Company Super PAC

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit minocquabrewingcompanytimes.substack.com/subscribe

Hi folks,

The Minocqua Brewing Company Times team came back from the holidays and dove right into issues that will help safeguard Democracy in 2026, both in Wisconsin and America.

In last night’s Up North Podcast, we spoke with Nathan Taylor from a group called the Election Truth Alliance. They’ve investigated election irregularities primarily in Pennsylvania, North Carolina, and Florida.

His group has already sued a number of counties in Pennsylvania after their entire slate of voting machines failed on election day and workers recopied people’s ballots in order to count them. Here’s a clip explaining all of Cambria County’s problems.

Additionally, we discovered that 70% of all the voting machines in America are owned by only two companies: ES&S and Liberty Vote (used to be called Dominion).

The new owner for Liberty Vote is former GOP Election official and both companies have ties to Republican donors.

Not only is a near-monopoly on American voting machines troubling, but regulatory bodies for those machines are flawed. Pro V&V, the testing body for these machines, lost their accreditation in 2017 while called CIBER and 2 members of the U.S. Election Assistance Commission, the appointed board that oversees voting machines, were sued in 2022 for having secret meetings with the Heritage Foundation.

Next, Princeton Computer Science Professor Andrew Appel has claimed for years that that Election machines aren’t protected from hackers, and Nathan, who has a cybersecurity background, mentioned on the podcast that their were questionable software updates made on a majority of America’s voting machines only a month before the election. Here’s the clip:

Now, I’m the last person to hold hands with MAGA and claim that the election in 2024 was stolen like Trump claimed in 2020, but I do think that we should be talking about ways to ensure that our voting machines are 100% trustworthy well before the 2026 elections, and that’s why we had Nathan on our show.

Why?

Because Wisconsin, being a swing state, has been BESIEGED by voter suppression from the right for decades, and progressives have learned that we have to be absolutely VIGILANT in fending off their constant attempts to reduce the voter rolls and voter turnout.

Listen to this next clip, where Senator Chris Larson runs through the litany of ways Wisconsin Republicans have tried to cheat in elections over the last few decades.

We moved on to talk to my lawyer Fred Melms about our federal lawsuit in the Eastern District of Wisconsin to unmask ICE. I’ll talk more about that in my essay next Sunday. In short, we need witnesses who can testify that they saw masked men who purported to be ICE harassing and/or abusing other Wisconsinites, as well as video clips. This shouldn’t be a tall order given what we see on the news every day. If you’d like to be a witness in our case, please email us here.

In the final segment of our podcast, we reminded everyone that we’re beginning to start our special events for paying subscribers. Here’s a list of what’s happening over the next week.

* Happy Hour with Kirk - Dec 5 at 4 PM CST

* Join me tomorrow for a virtual beer tasting on our Substack page I do this every weekend in Minocqua all summer long in Minocqua, and will now do it monthly for paid subscribers. I’ll tell the story of our beer labels and how they relate to Federal, State, and the crazy local politics of bright red Northern Wisconsin. I’ll also answer any questions you may have in the chat.

* Office Hours with Patti - Dec 8 at 4 PM CST

* Patti and I will have a chat next Monday about her Mocha Monday article, and both of us will answer any questions you have for us in the chat

* Holiday Party - Dec 10, 7-9 PM, Madison Taproom (RSVP required)

* All paid subscribers are invited to our holiday party at next Wednesday after the Up North podcast. Both Patti Vasquez and Ben Cominos will be there in person, and we’ll your first beer is on us. Here’s a link to our member’s page. To RSVP to the party, go to the Upcoming Events Section.

* Office Hours with Ben - Dec 16 at 1 PM CST

* Same as with Patti, I’ll talk to Ben about his latest article with us for a half hour and we’ll take questions for our subscribers in the chat.

If you want to join me and the crew in these more intimate podcasts and parties, here’s the link to become a paying subscriber:

That’s all I have for you today. I’ll see many of you again tomorrow, beer in hand, at 4pm.

Kirk Bangstad

Owner, Minocqua Brewing Company/Minocqua Marketplace

Publisher, Minocqua Brewing Company Times

Founder, Minocqua Brewing Company Super PAC.

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit minocquabrewingcompanytimes.substack.com/subscribe

Happy Holidays from Minocqua Brewing Company!

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit minocquabrewingcompanytimes.substack.com/subscribe

Hi Folks,

The famous right-wing radio commentator turned #nevertrumper Charlie Sykes was supposed to be on our show tonight, and he cancelled 24 hours before the show.

We think it was because the MAGA AM radio host, Jessica McBride, bullied him by posting hateful pics on her Facebook page that made fun of him for talking to our progressive listeners.

Instead of cancelling the show, we enlisted Dan Kaufmann, author of “The Fall of Wisconsin,” as well as Robert Kraig, Executive Director of Citizen Action of Wisconsin, to talk about how Charlie Sykes shaped Wisconsin politics and brought us Scott Walker, Ron Johnson, and ACT 10—all disasters for our state.

The podcast posted above in its entirety but below are a few clips that we were able to pick up in the last hour that you might be able to digest if you don’t have an hour to watch the show.

Here is Ben Cominos lamenting the loss of discourse brought upon by a McBride, a MAGA bully that drove Charlie from our show tonight

Here is Dan Kaufmann laying the groundwork on how Walker and Sykes used the strategy of “Divide and Conquer” to gain power and hurt Wisconsin.

Here is Robert Kraig taking about how Sykes/Walker destroyed core Democratic power by going into the workplace and turning workers against unions.

The podcast is taking a hiatus next week and for the Thanksgiving Holiday, but we’ll be back on Wednesday, December 3, at 6 pm.

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit minocquabrewingcompanytimes.substack.com/subscribe

Thank you to everyone who tuned into my live video! Join me for my next live video in the app.

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit minocquabrewingcompanytimes.substack.com/subscribe

Our Minocqua Brewing Company Times writing crew of Patti Vasquez, Ben Cominos, and State Senator Chris Larsen talked about the election results with Amanda Nelson from “Amandas’s Mild Takes”--a popular Substack Page.

Nancy Ropp from Stevens Point talked about county run nursing homes being bought up around the state by big corporations that then cut services and leave seniors with worse care.

Minocqua Brewing Company Attorney Fred Melms talked about our petition to hold Lakeland Times publisher Gregg Walker accountable for perjury, and also explained our appeal tomorrow with the Oneida County’s Board of adjustment to get our Minocqua Taprrom’s business permit back. (hint hint, by state law they have to give it back to us, but state law hasn’t meant much to them in the past)

Finally, Senator Larsen filled us in on all bills that passed and were veto’d by Governor Evers in the last week.

Tune in every Wednesday from 6-7pm Central Time for the our live stream

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Here’s the video of last night’s “Tuesday Taproom Talk” with Chris Walker, Journalist for Truthout.org. He spoke about bias in journalism and answered a lot of questions about how mainstream media is currently failing us with “both-side-ism”

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit minocquabrewingcompanytimes.substack.com/subscribe