Happy Father’s Day to our real national treasures

Juan Williams, in his column today calls Obama, as a father and husband, a national treasure.

I find that laughable in light of the previous blog I wrote. I don’t see where he’s been enabling or encouraging or setting an example for young black men in this country to be better and more responsible fathers and men to the children they sire. On the contrary. His presidency has empowered these angry men to be more extreme and more destructive.

Even Williams agrees that the statistics in the minority community are appalling.  He states that 2 out of 3 black children are born into one parent homes: no fathers in the home.

This is unacceptable and why the black community accepts this is inexcusable.  It’s bad enough that in America, at large today, 1 in 3 children are born without a father present. No one should accept this as normal.

All psychologists and sociologists agree that children fare better in life, are more successful adults with a strong, loving father in the home.  They are less likely to end up in jail, which is epidemic in the minority communities. They are more likely to finish high school and less likely to be teenage parents.

But instead of taking responsibility for failing their children, they blame their awful fate on the white community.  White America has oppressed them, kept them from entering the business world, kept them from equal opportunities. And all this in the specter of affirmative action, that White Americans passed into law.

On this Father’s Day, I’d like to say thank you to our real national treasures: to men like my father and the father of my children who were/are active in our lives, who helped raise me and my children, who were the loving and strong figures that all children need in their lives.  You set a wonderful example for your sons. And I thank you both for that, too.

And Happy Father’s Day to all who stood like men to parent and love their children.

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.

 

 

NPR: If its audience is so much smarter, they can find their own way to keep it on the air.

NPR can go the way of AirAmerica unless their so much smarter audience can keep it afloat. And they need to be worried about defunding because that should be and might be at the top of Congress’ hit list.

After the firing of Juan Williams, a couple of weeks ago, because of statements he made that he felt uncomfortable when he saw people dressed in “Muslim garb,”  there have been loud calls for the defunding of NPR from the public and from Congressional members. NPR CEO Vivian Schiller said  “If defunding to public broadcasting were to occur, it would be devastating to public broadcasting. That’s a fact.”

While NPR headquarters only receives about 1 percent of funding from tax dollars, member stations receive about 9 percent of their funding from tax dollars, Schiller said. She said that the 9 percent NPR member stations receive from taxpayer dollars is essential for them to stay on the air.

“For small stations, and even for large stations, that’s a big chunk of their revenue,” she said. “It’s been a critical part of keeping those stations vibrant and, so, we take these calls for defunding very, very seriously.”

Then Schiller goes on to praise her smarter-than-the -average-redneck-hayseed-Fox-News audience member:

Schiller criticized cable news during the forum for what she sees as its partisan nature. [Let me renind the reader of this ‘non-partisan’ cartoon that was featured on NPR a while back.] She also praised NPR’s audience as more intelligent than other media audiences, citing the comment section of a one-year old story about the Colorado boy who was suspected to have flown himself up in a balloon back in October 2009 on its website as evidence.

Two of the posters to NPRs balloon boy blog (I love alliteration) calculated the weight. air speed, gravitational pull and lift (okay, not all that but close) required to get this balloon off the ground with a small child on board and they contradicted each other. But they did it in a polite and civil fashion, unlike posters on other blogs who do nothing but “yell at each other.”

But let me tell you, I went to it’s blog regarding the firing of Juan Williams and I posted on it. There were many  people there who were less than polite to each other over this topic. And there was some “yelling” between those who commented.

Schiller wants to paint her audience as more intelligent and elite. If that’s the case then they are intelligent enough to find the funding to keep it on the air without the need of our tax dollars.

Read more: http://dailycaller.com/2010/11/08/npr-chief-denounces-defunding-calls-in-speech-on-future-of-journalism/#ixzz14lORHa39

Quote of the day – Debra J. Saunders

MediaMatters lives to pillory Fox News for being too conservative — at the same time, it tries to drive moderate commentators off Fox programming.

MediaMatters doesn’t want balance on Fox News. MediaMatters doesn’t want an exchange of ideas. MediaMatters wants to push Fox further to the right. Its toxic tactics are designed to widen the left-right divide in America by marginalizing not only conservatives, but anyone who associates with conservatives.

I’ve talked to people at CAIR and MediaMatters. I know folks who work for NPR. They all think they’re smart, and yet they’ve just sent a bonehead message to the American public.

Way to go, ye titans of tolerance. You’ve just broadcasted that an African-American moderate with a solid civil-rights record can lose his job and be branded as a bigot for quoting a convicted terrorist and admitting to a moment’s hesitation if he sees someone in Muslim garb on a plane.   Debra J. Saunders/Rasmussen Reports

Jeffery Lord: NPR CEO was a Soviet “fixer”

Peasants in the Belarus region of the Soviet Union

This is an excellent read by Jeffery Lord of The American Spectator about the CEO of NPR and her interesting history in the Soviet Union, when it was still a soviet union. Apparently, Vivian has enough experience with Soviet style journalism to justify how and why she fired Juan Williams.

According to Mr. Lord, Vivian was a “fixer” in the old Soviet Union: someone who could not just speak the Russian language, but was able to navigate around the society and the country and “make things happen” for her American guests.

Judging by her recent purge of Juan Williams, Vivian learned how to silence an opinion she finds disagreeable, too.

NPR fires Juan Williams for not being politically correct enough. With an update.

Update: Listening to John Gibson this morning and he mentioned that this is “PLEDGE” week at NPR.  Firing Juan Williams appears to be a calculated decision at NPR in an attempt to raise more funds from the left and its leader, George Soros.

Well Juan, how does it feel to be the one thrown under the bus? How does it feel to no longer be simpatico with your leftist amigos?

NPR is taxpayer funded and yet they have the power to silence – to censor – voices that don’t go along with their leftist ideology. He’s a news analyst,  someone who gets paid to broadcast his opinions.

Now let’s be clear, until I read this quote from Juan:

“I mean, look, Bill, I’m not a bigot. You know the kind of books I’ve written about the civil rights movement in this country. But when I get on the plane, I’ve got to tell you, if I see people who are in Muslim garb and I think, you know, they are identifying themselves first and foremost as Muslims, I get worried. I get nervous.”

I can’t remember a time when I did agree with him. The one time he actually puts words to the feelings that most people have, he gets canned. He’s been fired for saying, finally, what most Americans think and feel by a news organization that is paid for by those same Americans.

We all know how left leaning NPR is. This is not a news flash. But to censor speech because it is contrary to what some higher-ups in that organization believe, that crosses a line. We pay the salaries of those same higher-ups and pay them to make decisions, not to cram their leftist ideology down our throats. How much more arrogance are we going to tolerate from people who are essentially on OUR payroll?  The heavy handedness of this firing due to a statement that is not politically correct enough for the bleeding hearts at NPR is not just cowardly, it’s the height of arrogance.

Which one of us taxpayers gave them a promotion to speech policemen?

Along with getting rid of the Department of Education, the National Endowment for the Arts and privatizing the post office,  we need to call for pulling the plug on NPR and PBS. And firing someone for having an opinion that disagrees with the so-called bosses, is one more good reason for doing so.