NPR in panic mode over possible cuts

NPR said it’s “imperative” that it receives federal funding in light of a recommended cuts by the leaders of President Obama’s fiscal commission.

“Federal funding has been a central component of public radio stations’ ability to serve audiences across the country,” NPR said in a statement. “It’s imperative for funding to continue to ensure that this essential tool of democracy survives and thrives well into the future.”

from TheHill.com

If this is so “‘essential” to American democracy, then it should survive in the open market.  Why it is that talk shows like Rush, Beck, Hannity and Levin can all sustain themselves without federal aide but AirAmerica went belly up? Could it be that there is virtually no market for liberal radio?  Just like newspapers and magazines, radio money comes from selling advertising. If any talk show can’t get ad dollars because no one is listening, that’s not the taxpayers problem. Conservative radio stands or falls on it’s own, so should liberal radio.

Maybe Vivian Schiller should have thought of how “imperative” that funding is to NPR before she had an underling fire Juan Williams and then inferred that he was in need of psychiatric help.

Firing Williams because he was a commentator on Fox News unmasked the hypocrisy of NPR and the desire to restrict free speech when it’s not YOUR speech certainly harmed NPR in the eyes of most Americans. But beyond that, financing public broadcasting is a waste of tax dollars. We can all survive without PBS and NPR.

 

 

I love these numbers! Fox makes top 6 of the list. Who are those 339,000 watching Behar?

Please note that of the top 6 Fox spots, one is a liberal, one other might be and anothers politics are unknown.

from The Drudge Report:

CABLE NEWS RACE
TUES. OCT. 26, 2010

FOXNEWS O'REILLY 3,734,000
FOXNEWS HANNITY 2,720,000
FOXNEWS GRETA 2,296,000
FOXNEWS BAIER 2,284,000
FOXNEWS SHEP 2,244,000
FOXNEWS BECK 2,154,000
MSNBC OLBERMANN 1,190,000
MSNBC MADDOW 1,087,000
MSNBC O'DONNELL 1,048,000
MSNBC SCHULTZ 724,000
CNNHN GRACE 670,000
MSNBC HARDBALL 628,000
CNN COOPER 591,000
CNN KING 560,000
CNNHN BEHAR 339,000

Obama Zombies – another choice read from Roxanne’s book club

“What Obama Zombies need to understand is that social justice is a euphemism for socialism; respecting property is the real justice, not what some college kid or Washington bureaucrat thinks is unfair. What’s interesting is that liberals are all for “spreading the wealth around” except when it’s their own.”

Jason Mattera/Obama Zombies

This book is witty and funny. It’s also sad that so many idealistic kids were duped and used by the Obama machine. Mattera tells the tale of how the campaign used Facebook, Twitter and cell phones to take over the youth vote. It’s a fascinating read and I bought it with the intent that my kids read it – after I do, of course.

Bachmann: At the point of an orderly revolution

As a side note: I love hearing one Brit draw and quarter another.  They do it with such class and style!

Joe Klein, easily the stupidest columnist on the left. Keep him there!

There is so much to debunk in this column, almost every line of it, but I’ll leave it to you to do. You’re smarter readers than any one who subscribes to this left wing rag. And Joe Klein is an idiot of the highest order – always has been; back in the days when I actually read this magazine. He’s the kind of guy you’re glad isn’t on your side.

The best part to me is that he thinks the ACORN story that Fox helped break, was not important. $53million of tax dollars is not important to this leftist dick. Okay, then I’m sending him my yearly tax bill and he can pay it since this is no big deal to him. And I’m all on having communists in the government… not.

But even this mororn is concerned that Obama is using all these side attacks as a distraction:

It’s not certain that the President’s efforts from health care to Afghanistan will succeed. We’ll know a lot more in a month, but I really hope the White House hasn’t launched this attack to fill the public space while the other issues are being sorted out.

Jeeeeeeeeesus. And this guy actually draws a paycheck…  Can you imagine?

Joe Klein at Time.com

Outfoxed

Let me be precise here: Fox News peddles a fair amount of hateful crap. Some of it borders on sedition. Much of it is flat out untrue.

But I don’t understand why the White House would give such poisonous helium balloons as Glenn Beck and Sean Hannity the opportunity for still greater spasms of self-inflation by declaring war on Fox.

If the problem is that stories bloated far beyond their actual importance–ACORN’s corruption, Van Jones’s radical past–are in danger of leaching out of the Fox hothouse into the general media, then perhaps the Administration should be a bit more diligent about whom it hires and whom it funds.

If the problem is broader–that Fox News spreads seditious lies to its demographic sliver of an audience–the Administration should probably be stoic: the wingnuts will always be with us. The best antidote to their garbage is elegant, intelligent governance. The next-best antidote is occasional engagement: I thought Obama came away from his O’Reilly and Chris Wallace interviews much the better for it. (Though you don’t want to sit down with a thug like Hannity or a weirdo like Beck.)

The problem with war is that it diverts attention from the actual news. The Administration has tried to pursue a sophisticated, difficult domestic and foreign policy. It doesn’t offer the quick-fix irresponsibility of a tax cut or an invasion. It needs space, time and patience to explain. This is an enervating, midstream moment. It’s not certain that the President’s efforts from health care to Afghanistan will succeed. We’ll know a lot more in a month, but I really hope the White House hasn’t launched this attack to fill the public space while the other issues are being sorted out. The long-term costs of stooping to Fox’s level are not just bad posture; they are a diminution of the office and its primary occupant.
Read more: http://swampland.blogs.time.com/2009/10/23/outfoxed/comment-page-8/#comment-105154#ixzz0Uya7hGNp