Chris Conley shares his opinion on a variety of topics.
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
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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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CONLEY COMMENTARY - Friday on Faith; God Loved Us First
CONLEY COMMENTARY (WSAU) - I remember watching one of those television psychologists years ago - someone like Dr. Phil or Sally Jesse Raphael - who said something that rang true about human relationships. Whoever cares the least has all the power in a relationship. In a romantic situation, the person who is head-over-h...
Apr 12, 2024
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CONLEY COMMENTARY - Who are the insurrectionists?
CONLEY COMMENTARY (WSAU) - Remind me again who the insurrectionists are. This received very little news coverage, but two days ago protesters took over a part of the U.S. Capitol. They shut down the Senate dining hall, protesting U.S. support for Israel in their war with Hamas. This begs some obvious questions. How did...
Apr 11, 2024
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CONLEY COMMENTARY - A bus ticket home
CONLEY COMMENTARY (WSAU) - Why is Wausau seeing a surge in homelessness? The reason is obvious. You can't live outdoors here in January. You'll freeze to death. In April or May, the weather turns mild. It's still no cakewalk to live under the bridge, but it's do-able. If you believe, as I do, that it is beneath human d...
Apr 10, 2024
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CONLEY COMMENTARY - Do The Right Thing, Gavel In and Gavel Out
CONLEY COMMENTARY (WSAU) - Tonight the Wausau City Council holds its only lame-duck session. Voters have already picked a new mayor and have chosen some new council members. They have not yet taken their seats. The right thing for the council to do tonight is this: Take no official action. Gavel in and gavel out. Every...
Apr 09, 2024
CONLEY COMMENTARY - Men in women's sports
CONLEY COMMENTARY (WSAU) - Watch the video. Payton McNabb was a varsity high school volleyball player from North Carolina. Her school was playing against another team that has a trans player on it - a biological male playing against females. He goes to spike the ball, which hit Payton squarely in the head. She crumbled...
Apr 08, 2024
CONLEY COMMENTARY - Friday on Faith; The Other Easter Story
CONLEY COMMENTARY (WSAU) - I hope you had a blessed Easter. All four of the gospels tell the story of Christ's resurrection, but each has different details. There is one of the Easter stories that you almost never hear in church on Easter Sunday. It is the darkest and the most ambiguous. Yet it's the one that I best-id...
Apr 05, 2024
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CONLEY COMMENTARY - Beware of revaluation
CONLEY COMMENTARY (WSAU) - One of the first things on mayor-elect Doug Diny's to-do list should be to shore up relations with developers in Wausau. It's an area where the city hasn't had a lot of success lately. Recall that S.C. Swiderski pulled out of a retail and apartment project on the riverfront. Higher building ...
Apr 04, 2024
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CONLEY COMMENTARY - The end of an era in Wausau mayoral politics
CONLEY COMMENTARY (WSAU) - The message from Wausau voters appears to be this: the city's finances, and to-the-moon debt are more important than weed-eating goats and the phony issue of inclusiveness. Katie Rosenberg got to the very bottom of the voters' pockets, and when she did she was voted out of office. Whether or...
Apr 03, 2024
ChurchHatesTucker / CC
CONLEY COMMENTARY - Joe Lieberman
CONLEY COMMENTARY (WSAU) - Former Connecticut senator Joe Lieberman died last week. I interviewed and reported on him many times when I lived in the northeast. He was one of the nicest, most-glib politicians I've ever met. Senator Joe was a liberal, which means he and I disagreed on almost everything in the political u...
Apr 02, 2024
CONLEY COMMENTARY - Is She In Trouble?
CONLEY COMMENTARY (WSAU) - My colleague Meg Ellefson has shared that she is a regular Wheel of Fortune viewer. I'm sure for Meg, it's been hard to watch lately. Wausau Mayor Katie Rosenberg's campaign last week began airing four commercials in each half-hour show. That's a saturation strategy. That begs the question, i...
Apr 01, 2024
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