Chris Conley shares his opinion on a variety of topics.
CONLEY COMMENTARY - Friday on Faith; The Cathedrals
CONLEY COMMENTARY (WSAU) - If I were to ever visit France, I would want to tour the great cathedrals there. I've seen pictures of the Cathedral of St. Marie on the Island of Corsica. Built in the 1490s, it is dedicated to the Virgin Mary and the fisherman who headed out to sea hoping that God would provide them a catc...
May 17, 2024
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CONLEY COMMENTARY - About those wildfires...
CONLEY COMMENTARY (WSAU) - Early this week there was a thick haze over Central Wisconsin. For the second year in a row our air quality will be impacted by wildfires in Canada. We were told that the air we were breathing was unhealthy and people with asthma should stay indoors. I think the wildfires tell us something im...
May 16, 2024
Oregon Department of Forestry / CC
CONLEY COMMENTARY - The Campaign Commercial That Will Never Be Made
CONLEY COMMENTARY (WSAU) - Tammy Baldwin's campaign is airing a television commercial that's supposed to tug at your heartstrings. In it, Brook McKearn talks about the drug overdose death of her son Nick. She says that Senator Tammy Baldwin authored a bill to stop fentanyl from coming into the country. Mrs. McKearn sa...
May 15, 2024
CONLEY COMMENTARY - Ballot Harvesting Receptacles
CONLEY COMMENTARY (WSAU) - At least it was a small group of woefully uninformed citizens. About a dozen held a rally outside of Wausau City Hall where the city's absentee ballot drop box used to be. It stayed there, bolted to the concrete but padlocked, for more than a year after the state Supreme Court ruled it was il...
May 14, 2024
CONLEY COMMENTARY - What must the Jewish students think?
CONLEY COMMENTARY (WSAU) - There are about 4,000 Jewish students who attend UW-Madison. Surely they are puzzled by the events of last Friday. Their classmates who sided with murderers, beheaders, hostage takers and rapists reached a negotiated settlement with school administrators. The demonstrators' biggest achieveme...
May 13, 2024
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CONLEY COMMENTARY - Friday on Faith; No Other Gods Before Me
CONLEY COMMENTARY (WSAU) - Consider God's deliverance of the Jewish people from slavery in Egypt. First, he spoke to Moses through the burning bush and told him to tell Pharaoh to free the Jews. Then he sent the plagues. Then he parted the Red Sea to allow his chosen people to escape. And he fed them mana while they wa...
May 10, 2024
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CONLEY COMMENTARY - Wedding Barns
CONLEY COMMENTARY (WSAU) - I remember the price of my wedding: $5,000. My bride and I did everything possible to control costs. We were the first wedding of the season at the Madison Beach Inn. Since parts of the resort weren't open, we got a discount. We kept the guest list very small. There was no cash bar; bottles o...
May 09, 2024
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CONLEY COMMENTARY - Don't fear revaluation; Fear the city council
CONLEY COMMENTARY (WSAU) - The home I bought four years ago has been a phenomenal investment. I bought my single family house for $100,000. I locked in a very low 4% interest rate. My home is now assessed at $138,900. I can't think of any investment I've made that's gone up by nearly 50% over the last four years. My mo...
May 08, 2024
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CONLEY COMMENTARY - I Wouldn't Have Been Hired
CONLEY COMMENTARY (WSAU) - Many years ago, I was a part-time instructor at Yale University. It's an impressive little line on my resume. My job was to teach aural writing to student-volunteers at the campus radio station. Aural writing is writing that's supposed to be heard, not read visually. Movie scripts and poetry....
May 07, 2024
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CONLEY COMMENTARY - No confidence
CONLEY COMMENTARY (WSAU) - I have no confidence whatsoever in UW Chancellor Jennifer Mnookin and her dealings with campus protestors in Madison. Last Wednesday she asked campus police, sheriffs deputies, and the State Patrol to clear the campus of demonstrators who'd been camping on the grounds. That very afternoon, as...
May 06, 2024
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CONLEY COMMENTARY - Friday on Faith; God Already Knows... But Pray Anyway
CONLEY COMMENTARY (WSAU) - The joke goes like this. A man has an audience with the Pope in Rome. Inside the papal office, he notices a red phone on the Pope's desk. And he asks about it. "It's a hotline to God," the Holy Father says. "You can use it... but is costs $20 per minute." Years later the ...
May 03, 2024
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CONLEY COMMENTARY - Monk Gardens
CONLEY COMMENTARY (WSAU) - We all want to be remembered for something. Leaving a legacy at the end of our lives is very... human. Robert Monk's legacy to our community was donating 21 acres of land to become a community garden on Wausau's west side. Since then, funds have been raised to buy additional adjacent land. Th...
May 02, 2024
CONLEY COMMENTARY - A disgrace on campus
CONLEY COMMENTARY (WSAU) - I was disappointed to learn yesterday that, Syracuse University, my alma mater, is the latest campus where pro-Palestinian demonstrations have popped up on the quad. What started as a small group of 20-or-so tents grew steadily during the day. My school has at least some students who throw th...
May 01, 2024
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CONLEY COMMENTARY - The First Complaint
CONLEY COMMENTARY (WSAU) - Well that didn't take long. Just three weeks into Wausau Mayor Doug Diny's new term, comes a complaint from a city council member. Tom Neal, in a letter to the Wausau Pilot and Review, objects to the committee assignments handed down by the new mayor. Mayor Diny decided to put three new membe...
Apr 30, 2024
CONLEY COMMENTARY - Katie's Farewell Message
CONLEY COMMENTARY (WSAU) - Hopefully this is the last time for awhile that I'll be writing about Wausau's former Katie Rosenberg. The City of Wausau's newsletter arrived in my mailbox last week. Mayor Katie's farewell to the city took up the entire front page. She writes that she's particularly proud of staffing increa...
Apr 29, 2024
CONLEY COMMENTARY - Friday on Faith; Divorce and Marriage
CONLEY COMMENTARY (WSAU) - I have been thinking a great deal about divorce lately. My divorce was 14 years ago. I'd been married for 17 years before that. It has been on my mind because I will make the last of my child support payments in the coming month. Of course, I love my children and will support them any way I ...
Apr 26, 2024
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CONLEY COMMENTARY - Because of us?
CONLEY COMMENTARY (WSAU) - A forthcoming news article will take a closer look at Wausau's now-concluded mayoral race. Of course, there must be analysis when a liberal darling like Katie Rosenberg was turned out of office after just one term. A source tells me that Rosenberg was asked by a college newspaper reporter in ...
Apr 25, 2024
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CONLEY COMMENTARY - Nursing Home Staffing
CONLEY COMMENTARY (WSAU) - Nowhere is the phrase "I'm from the government and I'm here to help" more true than the Biden Administration's new nursing home rules. Vice President Kamala Harris was in Wisconsin earlier this week to talk about them. She argues that some nursing homes are so understaffed that ther...
Apr 24, 2024
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CONLEY COMMENTARY - Camping Laws
CONLEY COMMENTARY (WSAU) - Grants Pass, Oregon is about the same size as Wausau - 40,000 people. Grants Pass has an estimated homeless population of 600. Their city has an anti-camping ordinance. It's illegal to pitch a tent in a city park, or on a sidewalk and stay there overnight. Whether such an ordinance is constit...
Apr 23, 2024
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CONLEY COMMENTARY - 4-20 Day
CONLEY COMMENTARY (WSAU) - Saturday was April 20th... or 4-20 day. It's the day the supporters of legalized marijuana show their support for a more mellow, dumbed-down society. I look around and can't imagine why we'd want people to be less than they already are. "But we can tax it!" scream the people who've ...
Apr 22, 2024
Torben Hansen / CC
CONLEY COMMENTARY - Friday on Faith; Extravagant Generosity
CONLEY COMMENTARY (WSAU) - A single mother came to a church one Sunday. She was a stranger. No one knew her. She had a young child in-tow, and had another baby on the way. She was welcomed before the service. During coffee hour, she said that she was deeply in need. Her immediate needs were a crib, a car seat, infant c...
Apr 19, 2024
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CONLEY COMMENTARY - The Grant Money Trap
CONLEY COMMENTARY (WSAU) - Beware of the trap of federal and state grant money. The Wausau School District is about to find out what happens when the grand money runs out. During the COVID years, Wausau received federal grants called ESSER funds, that is Elementary and Secondary Schools Emergency Relief. About $1.2-mil...
Apr 18, 2024
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CONLEY COMMENTARY - Living Within Our Means
CONLEY COMMENTARY (WSAU) - I have this free advice for Wausau's new mayor Doug Diny. Mayor Diny, the number one priority for your administration must be this: to insist that Wausau live within its means. Former Mayor Katie Rosenberg saw taxpayers as a bottomless pocket. Of course they could pay more, for a myriad of t...
Apr 17, 2024
CONLEY COMMENTARY - When 'green fever' breaks
CONLEY COMMENTARY (WSAU) - Which would you rather have, clean energy or food? Before you answer, consider what's happening in Europe. All of the European Union nations are signatories to the Keyoto earth protocols. And meeting the climate obligations they've already agreed to are next-to impossible. Germany's transport...
Apr 16, 2024
zak zak / CC
CONLEY COMMENTARY - Idiots demonstrating
CONLEY COMMENTARY (WSAU) - There was a small protest Saturday morning on the 400-block in Wausau. So small that it generated no media attention. Even on a day when the TV stations and online news websites are scrambling for content of any kind, they all ignored this. And that's fortunate for the 10-or-so people who gat...
Apr 15, 2024
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