NPR popularly known as “National Palestinian Radio” is an unreliable source of “News.” It’s an American version of the BBC which had its best days in WWII and has been downhill ever since. Both are beacons of Marxist/jihadist propaganda.
Also known as “National Panhandler Radio” courtesy of talk radio host Chris Plante. He frequently cites the fact that a one hour show on NPR is produced by 26 people whereas his own three hour show is produced by three people.
NPR I agree. BBC not so much. I access them for a look at how we are being viewed from the outside; not just from the inside. Our press is essentially corrupt; we know that. Still there are some good sources here like WSJ and National Review and of course Don's well researched opinion. And peeking at BBC and Reuters for example but being able to filter out the questionable stuff is, in my humble opinion, a good way to balance things.
Brits are often overheard speaking unkind thoughts of the Beeb. I've not missed an episode of "Keeping up Appearances" but I have not bought any of the CD's.
Actually, being a member of Congress was never supposed to be a full time job. It was 5- 6 months so that Congress could work their real job the rest of the year. So now they do 6 month and spend the rest of the year campaigning, not working. I dont think they are worth what they are making now as they vote, then had whatever they voted on off to bureaucrats to fill in the laws.
They should be made to actually write the laws. The laws shouldnt be more than a single subject and should be in plain English. period.
I don’t think the part-time public office holding paradigm made sense beyond Americas early years. Not if you want to hope for the best and the brightest taking on those responsibilities.
What we need are more ‘Hillsdale College’s, turning out people knowing history, logic, and how to speak clearly, and having values that guide away from corruption.
Beyond that, let’s support Christian and classical academies.
If we ended all the advantageous legal loopholes they receive, many in office would not run again. Some may even resign before their term is up.
Aggressively manage insider trading and handouts from lobbyists and big industry people and prevent anyone who has served from becoming a lobbyist for 5 years after their exit from office and the most dedicated (to Steve Bogg's point above) - the Hillsdale well-educated - will have a shot. There's too much money in politics today and the good, decent people can't afford to run against the big money seekers who are really after the side gig to the job.
You are right. There are a lot of loopholes, a lot of lobbyists and corporate money running around DC and you basically have to have money to run which is not what I think the founders had in mind.
"Brandice Canes-Wrone, a political science professor at Stanford University, told NPR, “When adjusted for inflation, member salaries have decreased 31% from 2009, when they last received a pay increase."
Some things just frost my ass. And why, Honey pray tell, have their inflation-adjusted salaries gone into the toi-lay? Maybe it's because that inflation is the expected - and realized - result of their own deficit spending, debt, and money-printing.
I have ANOTHER Constitutional amendment: "Congress shall receive no salary in any period during which there is not a balanced budget." Nothing quite having a dog in the hunt.
Twenty-four hours. Make me king for 24 hours. All I ask in return are a hundred spools of rope.
Amazingly enough NO one else gets a pay raise for inflation and since the idiots in Congress are to BLAME for the inflation, they should not be getting a raise for a p*ss poor job.
Anyone else notice the pittance we who receive social security received this year? Bah-humbug! Sure nothing like the $66K the do-nothing congress was going to award itself !
Cookie how do you think they were planning to get the money for their raise. They were just going to have just a very, very small increase in SS to fund that raise. They could gloat and say, see how smart we are!
Yes, and I haven't even looked at the constant e-mail from SSA that wants me to 'GO PAPERLESS' and they can hold their breath until I do. My son calculated my increase on his Samsung smart watch"
They have removed all the expense stuff from the CPI bucket they use to calculate the Cost of Living raise. Sure if you dont eat, dont pay bills, dont heat your home and dont drive, your cost of living is relative small....
Our formerly city-owned classical radio station was taken over by NPR last year. In addition to now having a perfectly wretched play list and several new hosts, they spend most of their time begging for money. I rarely listen to them any more. and certainly am no longer a member. Back in the day when I lived in Austin, I was a contributor to PBS and for several years raised donations for their annual fundraiser among the local travel community and helped present and auction the items on the air. Austin City Limits was one of my favorite shows and I got to bring in lots of the talent for tapings until American Airlines became a sponsor and brought the talent in for free
Will NPR investigate why all its "news" readers sound like they work for a medical group formed to cure sleep disorders? Oops, I forgot: I must have quit listening forty years ago; can somebody tell me if they sound any more lively now? Oops again: is it conceivable that Don Surber acolytes listen to NPR?
I used to hear it in the background every morning bc the (now ex-) wife had it on the kitchen radio. I'd try to tune it out, bc it was nails on a chalkboard. There are basically five types of NPR voice:
Soporific male voices
Sneery male voices
Giggly female voices
Vocal-fry female voices
Mincing, prissy male voices
And that's if you hear without listening. If you actually listen to what they are saying, the self-congratulatory smug partisanship that colors every political/cultural theme or topic is absolutely vomitous.
An excellent summary. But for those who admired Uri Berliner's breakup with NPR: in his article in The Free Press of April 9, he expressed great hopes that that ditzy socialite, Katherine Maher, would right the NPR ship. Hahaha. A very minor effort at checking her background would have exploded those hopes. She has publicly stated (on a TED talk, now another permanently polluted source) that there is no such thing as TRUTH, so everybody can manufacture their own, and as head of Wikipedia she enthusiastically censored information that was adverse to the COVID orthodoxy.
Another thought: I often had convos with my (now-ex) wife which went something like:
Her: "Did you hear about what "Little Kimmie" (her derisive name for Kim Reynolds, Iowa Republican Governor) is trying to do (insert some proposed state law or initiative regarding education)? She is so awful. I can't believe this."
Me: "Well, why is there support for this thing? What are her arguments for it?"
At which point my wife would become annoyed, because she didn't understand why Reynolds was making the proposal. All she knew was that it was bad, because her lefty media sources told her it was bad, and had only framed the issue from an oppositional perspective.
I'm so glad I never have to be a part of that sort of convo, ever again.
Same. It always helped me the same way, and it's a great example of the problem of epistemic closure on the left. You KNOW that no lefty ever listens to, for example, right-leaning AM radio. I find that leftists (most of my relatives and colleagues) are completely unaware of principled arguments against their political positions/assumptions, and even unaware of significant news items that make Dems look bad (Biden family corruption particulars, for example).
Forgive my paraphrase, but "When one lies and another swears to it, you have the potential for the perfect Three Stooges Episode." I should be forgiven because I watch only Newsmax for current events.
... and let Don do all the heavy lifting? C'mon, be a team player! Plus, it's always best to "know your enemies." As much as we hated the Nazis and Commies, we kept up on what they were saying and doing in order to remain alert to their shenanigans and defeat/deflect them. Same with the enemedia.
I hope DOGE cuts to the bone. When I hear about NPR having a board of directors and hiring "political consultants" I realize that they're just a publicly funded company pretending to be a business. If they really think they're a business let's throw them in the pool and see if they sink or swim. As for Congress, any former member of Congress that has a net worth over $3,000,000 gets no pension and has to pay for their healthcare through (you guessed it) Obamacare.
How did I come up with these gems? Well, I thought about this while I had to work on New Year's Eve (while, of course, the politicians were probably out getting smashed.) Happy New Year to Don and all of my fellow readers and to all of Congress a happy kick in the pants to get them going and do some actual work.
My poll vote: NO, because he wasn't running anything anyway.
"Brandice Canes-Wrone, a political science professor at Stanford University, told NPR, “When adjusted for inflation, member salaries have decreased 31% from 2009, when they last received a pay increase."
Where is the calculation of the "adjusted for inflation" percentage for the average American citizen under Biden's last four years? It would probably be similar to the 30+% of Congress. And, while we're at it, what is the comparable "adjusted for inflation" number for Trump's four years before Biden?
Kill NPR and PBS. Make them obtain their revenue the hard way. EARN IT!
They already run numerous advertisements for products. If they're so important and invaluable to the public, more advertisers will happily spend money with them to make up the shortfall.
Note to NPR Executives: Put out a good product that everyone likes and you won't have to worry about federal funds. It's the Surber business plan and its working.
Now that the avalanche of pardons makes clear that Biden has merely been a presidential signature machine, we see we wasted emotional energy getting mad at his 40% vacations. They were irrelevant.
Agreed. I don’t think many of us would mind if a president spent half his time in office on vacation as long as the other half of his time was spent actually accomplishing the peoples work.
I didn’t vote for Mr. Obama. I saw him as a fraud who was undeserving based on his experience. Sadly, his time as president could have gone a long way toward healing this country’s remaining racial problems if he had simply done nothing. Instead he used his power to undo decades of racial gains and left the country a divided and weaponized mess. Now Mr. Trump is poised to be in a similar position to fix some of this damage as well as repair our economic house. I pray he succeeds overwhelmingly at it. If he fails to do so and reform our public institutions, we will never recover as a country. This is a crucial time for America and the world, a perfect storm of opportunities we will not see again. That is a lot to put on one person. I hope congress realizes it and uses the next year to accomplish as much as possible instead of being distracted by petty bickering and hate. If they have the votes, then dump Johnson as speaker. If not, STFU and get on with the peoples business. Reasonably, one year is all they get to advance major reform bills. I hope they choose wisely.
And it's not just the votes to oust Johnson, but having someone ready and in position with the votes to take over. Not having done That before was what created the whole chaotic mess last time: many hated McCarthy but when it came time to fill the gap they could barely agree on anyone. It was horrific and embarrassing.
We cannot afford another spectacle like that now. We need to Trust Trump. Let him wrangle with Johnson. To do otherwise now, at this most critical point in our history is pure folly, with potentially catastrophic consequences.
Agreed. The GOP is back in the driver's seat. The last thing they need to have is a family fight over the Speakership and let the opportunity to get some needed things done slip away. Having said that, the GOP isn't known as the Stupid Party for nothing.
Not to borrow trouble, but if the time ever comes that Johnson breaks Trump's trust in him, I'm pulling for Trump, but praying for Johnson. He'd need "a healing" if that happens.
I really wish Bannon would be a little more discreet in his policy quibble about the H1-B visas. A public fight is not wise at this time. Disappointed that Bannon isn't handling this with more class. The media is painting it as Bannon vs. Elon. Tone it down, folks.
I'm surprised no one mentioned the uber-woke NPR CEO or whatever her title is. I had kind of forgotten about her, but was listening to a podcast yesterday with some lefty journo interviewing Steven Pinker, and they mentioned her as an example of how NPR had gone off the rails. You could hear their eyes rolling when they spoke dismissively of her.
When you've lost lefty podcast journos...
If you haven't read the Uri Berliner critique of NPR culture, you should. It's incredible how Red-Guard that place has become. I mean, you could assume it was a lefty culture there, but it's now militantly left (I'd link, but too lazy).
I saw where somebody compared making Katherine Maher head of NPR was "like putting an arsonist in charge of the national forests".
That said, I already expressed (above) my skepticism of Uri Berliner's judgment, because in his April 9 article he expressed big HOPES for that ditzy dame straightening out NPR. A little background-checking would have prevented that folly. To illustrate Berliner's naïveté, allow me to quote from his April 9 article:
"Despite our missteps at NPR, defunding isn’t the answer. As the country becomes more fractured, there’s still a need for a public institution where stories are told and viewpoints exchanged in good faith. Defunding, as a rebuke from Congress, wouldn’t change the journalism at NPR. That needs to come from within.
A few weeks ago, NPR welcomed a new CEO, Katherine Maher, who’s been a leader in tech. She doesn’t have a news background, which could be an asset given where things stand. I’ll be rooting for her. It’s a tough job. Her first rule could be simple enough: don’t tell people how to think. It could even be the new North Star.”
I also would like to locate the link to the Uri Berliner critique, and to remember when Don published his two columns on the NPR Berliner debacle. Those need to be circulated widely.
If the entire district of Washington D.C. vanished in this instant, the whole earth would instantly become a better, safer, more joyful and peaceful place. Obliterate the wastrel bureaucracy.
We need a mandatory retirement age and term limits for Congress. In my former life as a Village Administrator I highly valued Councilmen who had experience and was dubious about term limits for legislatures. Today I feel that the benefits of term limits outweigh the downsides. Ohio imposed term limits on its legislature over 20 years ago, and IMHO it works fine.
If you look at some of the media staff, you will see many of them are related to people in high places of government, so they may even be closer than cousins
Thanks for your clarification regarding the source of Kay Granger story - since I really don't read any of them, I couldn't remember really who it was other than Not the News
NPR popularly known as “National Palestinian Radio” is an unreliable source of “News.” It’s an American version of the BBC which had its best days in WWII and has been downhill ever since. Both are beacons of Marxist/jihadist propaganda.
Also known as “National Panhandler Radio” courtesy of talk radio host Chris Plante. He frequently cites the fact that a one hour show on NPR is produced by 26 people whereas his own three hour show is produced by three people.
I always found it odd that ADM -supermarket to the world- sponsored NPR.
NPR I agree. BBC not so much. I access them for a look at how we are being viewed from the outside; not just from the inside. Our press is essentially corrupt; we know that. Still there are some good sources here like WSJ and National Review and of course Don's well researched opinion. And peeking at BBC and Reuters for example but being able to filter out the questionable stuff is, in my humble opinion, a good way to balance things.
"good sources WSJ and National Review"?!
And The BBC is evil personified.
Oh hell no.
You need to let loose, Susie, and tell us how you really feel. Am I being sarcastic?
Yes
Happy New year, RevMaddog.
Brits are often overheard speaking unkind thoughts of the Beeb. I've not missed an episode of "Keeping up Appearances" but I have not bought any of the CD's.
I thought it was nazi propaganda radio .
Actually, being a member of Congress was never supposed to be a full time job. It was 5- 6 months so that Congress could work their real job the rest of the year. So now they do 6 month and spend the rest of the year campaigning, not working. I dont think they are worth what they are making now as they vote, then had whatever they voted on off to bureaucrats to fill in the laws.
They should be made to actually write the laws. The laws shouldnt be more than a single subject and should be in plain English. period.
RAISES?!
They should all have to resign for dereliction of duty for pushing the US economy off a cliff.
Even better, have their sumptuous pay docked for the time they don't show up. Especially if they are campaigning for another "job."
I don’t think the part-time public office holding paradigm made sense beyond Americas early years. Not if you want to hope for the best and the brightest taking on those responsibilities.
What we need are more ‘Hillsdale College’s, turning out people knowing history, logic, and how to speak clearly, and having values that guide away from corruption.
Beyond that, let’s support Christian and classical academies.
I would not say we have had the best and the brightest for a long time.
Five to six months of work seems to have turned into two or three months working and the rest repeating talking points.
If we ended all the advantageous legal loopholes they receive, many in office would not run again. Some may even resign before their term is up.
Aggressively manage insider trading and handouts from lobbyists and big industry people and prevent anyone who has served from becoming a lobbyist for 5 years after their exit from office and the most dedicated (to Steve Bogg's point above) - the Hillsdale well-educated - will have a shot. There's too much money in politics today and the good, decent people can't afford to run against the big money seekers who are really after the side gig to the job.
You are right. There are a lot of loopholes, a lot of lobbyists and corporate money running around DC and you basically have to have money to run which is not what I think the founders had in mind.
"Brandice Canes-Wrone, a political science professor at Stanford University, told NPR, “When adjusted for inflation, member salaries have decreased 31% from 2009, when they last received a pay increase."
Some things just frost my ass. And why, Honey pray tell, have their inflation-adjusted salaries gone into the toi-lay? Maybe it's because that inflation is the expected - and realized - result of their own deficit spending, debt, and money-printing.
I have ANOTHER Constitutional amendment: "Congress shall receive no salary in any period during which there is not a balanced budget." Nothing quite having a dog in the hunt.
Twenty-four hours. Make me king for 24 hours. All I ask in return are a hundred spools of rope.
Amazingly enough NO one else gets a pay raise for inflation and since the idiots in Congress are to BLAME for the inflation, they should not be getting a raise for a p*ss poor job.
Anyone else notice the pittance we who receive social security received this year? Bah-humbug! Sure nothing like the $66K the do-nothing congress was going to award itself !
Cookie how do you think they were planning to get the money for their raise. They were just going to have just a very, very small increase in SS to fund that raise. They could gloat and say, see how smart we are!
Yes, and I haven't even looked at the constant e-mail from SSA that wants me to 'GO PAPERLESS' and they can hold their breath until I do. My son calculated my increase on his Samsung smart watch"
They have removed all the expense stuff from the CPI bucket they use to calculate the Cost of Living raise. Sure if you dont eat, dont pay bills, dont heat your home and dont drive, your cost of living is relative small....
Last year was our first on SS. Can't wait for the tax bill.
All budgets passed by 1 Sep or they are locked in chambers until budgets passed. 3 bland calorie restricted meals, water and 4 potty breaks.
if they don't balance the budget they have to quit.
I'll help tie the noose knots. . . .
Will NPR investigate why Congressmen spend so much money to get reelected?
Will NPR investigate how Congress people , on the messily $174,000 salary, often become multimillionaires by the time they leave Congress?
Trump's proposal to eliminate income tax on tips should be welcome news to these griftrers.
Funny! You ought to write for Gutfeld!
Thanks.
K street
Only for Republicans.
Will Congress investigate why NPR spends such a large percentage of their taxpayer funded labor and airtime raising more money for themselves?
Our formerly city-owned classical radio station was taken over by NPR last year. In addition to now having a perfectly wretched play list and several new hosts, they spend most of their time begging for money. I rarely listen to them any more. and certainly am no longer a member. Back in the day when I lived in Austin, I was a contributor to PBS and for several years raised donations for their annual fundraiser among the local travel community and helped present and auction the items on the air. Austin City Limits was one of my favorite shows and I got to bring in lots of the talent for tapings until American Airlines became a sponsor and brought the talent in for free
Leftists always break what was once a good thing.
I hate the begging for money garbage.
I really resent it since they are publicly fund by our dimes.
Hopefully not for long. Then let the begging start.
I only ever supported Red Green Show out of Canada. Sadly he had to retire due to age.
Red Green was great. Loved that show.
It use to be really good-today not so much. Like most other venues there are no good shows anymore. Just sophomoric garbage.
Will NPR investigate why all its "news" readers sound like they work for a medical group formed to cure sleep disorders? Oops, I forgot: I must have quit listening forty years ago; can somebody tell me if they sound any more lively now? Oops again: is it conceivable that Don Surber acolytes listen to NPR?
I used to hear it in the background every morning bc the (now ex-) wife had it on the kitchen radio. I'd try to tune it out, bc it was nails on a chalkboard. There are basically five types of NPR voice:
Soporific male voices
Sneery male voices
Giggly female voices
Vocal-fry female voices
Mincing, prissy male voices
And that's if you hear without listening. If you actually listen to what they are saying, the self-congratulatory smug partisanship that colors every political/cultural theme or topic is absolutely vomitous.
An excellent summary. But for those who admired Uri Berliner's breakup with NPR: in his article in The Free Press of April 9, he expressed great hopes that that ditzy socialite, Katherine Maher, would right the NPR ship. Hahaha. A very minor effort at checking her background would have exploded those hopes. She has publicly stated (on a TED talk, now another permanently polluted source) that there is no such thing as TRUTH, so everybody can manufacture their own, and as head of Wikipedia she enthusiastically censored information that was adverse to the COVID orthodoxy.
I always listened with comic expectation. It was good intel to understand what the smarmy, arrogant elitists we’re thinking.
Another thought: I often had convos with my (now-ex) wife which went something like:
Her: "Did you hear about what "Little Kimmie" (her derisive name for Kim Reynolds, Iowa Republican Governor) is trying to do (insert some proposed state law or initiative regarding education)? She is so awful. I can't believe this."
Me: "Well, why is there support for this thing? What are her arguments for it?"
At which point my wife would become annoyed, because she didn't understand why Reynolds was making the proposal. All she knew was that it was bad, because her lefty media sources told her it was bad, and had only framed the issue from an oppositional perspective.
I'm so glad I never have to be a part of that sort of convo, ever again.
Same. It always helped me the same way, and it's a great example of the problem of epistemic closure on the left. You KNOW that no lefty ever listens to, for example, right-leaning AM radio. I find that leftists (most of my relatives and colleagues) are completely unaware of principled arguments against their political positions/assumptions, and even unaware of significant news items that make Dems look bad (Biden family corruption particulars, for example).
You'd think NPR's whispering heads are mourning the death of a loved when they read the news. If war is declared, their excitement will rise to tepid.
Nope. Even worse. Or as I was cured in 4th grade from saying it, "even worser."
I posted these "trite but truisms" on another blog (please forgive me, Dear Gracious Host), but I think they bear repeating here:
No matter how much you hate the corporate/legacy media, you don't hate them enough.
Never believe a word of the propaganda spewed by the corporate/legacy media.
Now replace "corporate/legacy media" with "democrats" and you have the full picture.
You're welcome, and Happy New Year!
And no matter how corrupt one thinks it all is, it's not. It's worse.
When one lies and another swears to it, you have the potential for the perfect crime.
That describes exactly the relationship between corrupt government and mainstream media.
When talking about congress it sometimes seems we must have failed to criminalize prostitution decades ago.
You guys are on a roll, keep it going....
Yep--the term for the relationship between the corrupt government and Left Media--plain and simple--is "collusion".
Forgive my paraphrase, but "When one lies and another swears to it, you have the potential for the perfect Three Stooges Episode." I should be forgiven because I watch only Newsmax for current events.
It’s simpler to just stop reading/watching them.
... and let Don do all the heavy lifting? C'mon, be a team player! Plus, it's always best to "know your enemies." As much as we hated the Nazis and Commies, we kept up on what they were saying and doing in order to remain alert to their shenanigans and defeat/deflect them. Same with the enemedia.
I hope DOGE cuts to the bone. When I hear about NPR having a board of directors and hiring "political consultants" I realize that they're just a publicly funded company pretending to be a business. If they really think they're a business let's throw them in the pool and see if they sink or swim. As for Congress, any former member of Congress that has a net worth over $3,000,000 gets no pension and has to pay for their healthcare through (you guessed it) Obamacare.
How did I come up with these gems? Well, I thought about this while I had to work on New Year's Eve (while, of course, the politicians were probably out getting smashed.) Happy New Year to Don and all of my fellow readers and to all of Congress a happy kick in the pants to get them going and do some actual work.
"If they really think they're a business let's throw them in the pool and see if they sink or swim."
Yes, Let's do that.
We'll have life preservers ready because we all know the end of that story.
My poll vote: NO, because he wasn't running anything anyway.
"Brandice Canes-Wrone, a political science professor at Stanford University, told NPR, “When adjusted for inflation, member salaries have decreased 31% from 2009, when they last received a pay increase."
Where is the calculation of the "adjusted for inflation" percentage for the average American citizen under Biden's last four years? It would probably be similar to the 30+% of Congress. And, while we're at it, what is the comparable "adjusted for inflation" number for Trump's four years before Biden?
Kill NPR and PBS. Make them obtain their revenue the hard way. EARN IT!
They already run numerous advertisements for products. If they're so important and invaluable to the public, more advertisers will happily spend money with them to make up the shortfall.
I'm all for free-market concepts. That sound like traditional radio.
That makes me wish I had majored in Math instead of Music!
Note to NPR Executives: Put out a good product that everyone likes and you won't have to worry about federal funds. It's the Surber business plan and its working.
Now that the avalanche of pardons makes clear that Biden has merely been a presidential signature machine, we see we wasted emotional energy getting mad at his 40% vacations. They were irrelevant.
Agreed. I don’t think many of us would mind if a president spent half his time in office on vacation as long as the other half of his time was spent actually accomplishing the peoples work.
That's 26 weeks on and 26 weeks off. Unless it is a Biden. Then it'd be 2 weeks on and 50 weeks off. Way off. Waaaay way off.
Here’s NPR’s CEO explains how pesky that 1st Amendment thing is:
https://x.com/realchrisrufo/status/1780597079439446250
DEFUND THEM YESTERDAY.
Right on, Suzie! And those repeated fights over who would be the next Speaker were utterly counterproductive.
To illustrate why, an old Dutch proverb may serve:
"Als twee honden vechten om een been, loopt een derde er mee heen."
When two dogs fight over a bone, a third one runs off with it.
A proverb that apparently the Republicans have determined to live by, not heed.
Otherwise known as ‘Lets you and him fight.’
I didn’t vote for Mr. Obama. I saw him as a fraud who was undeserving based on his experience. Sadly, his time as president could have gone a long way toward healing this country’s remaining racial problems if he had simply done nothing. Instead he used his power to undo decades of racial gains and left the country a divided and weaponized mess. Now Mr. Trump is poised to be in a similar position to fix some of this damage as well as repair our economic house. I pray he succeeds overwhelmingly at it. If he fails to do so and reform our public institutions, we will never recover as a country. This is a crucial time for America and the world, a perfect storm of opportunities we will not see again. That is a lot to put on one person. I hope congress realizes it and uses the next year to accomplish as much as possible instead of being distracted by petty bickering and hate. If they have the votes, then dump Johnson as speaker. If not, STFU and get on with the peoples business. Reasonably, one year is all they get to advance major reform bills. I hope they choose wisely.
And it's not just the votes to oust Johnson, but having someone ready and in position with the votes to take over. Not having done That before was what created the whole chaotic mess last time: many hated McCarthy but when it came time to fill the gap they could barely agree on anyone. It was horrific and embarrassing.
We cannot afford another spectacle like that now. We need to Trust Trump. Let him wrangle with Johnson. To do otherwise now, at this most critical point in our history is pure folly, with potentially catastrophic consequences.
Agreed. The GOP is back in the driver's seat. The last thing they need to have is a family fight over the Speakership and let the opportunity to get some needed things done slip away. Having said that, the GOP isn't known as the Stupid Party for nothing.
Not to borrow trouble, but if the time ever comes that Johnson breaks Trump's trust in him, I'm pulling for Trump, but praying for Johnson. He'd need "a healing" if that happens.
I really wish Bannon would be a little more discreet in his policy quibble about the H1-B visas. A public fight is not wise at this time. Disappointed that Bannon isn't handling this with more class. The media is painting it as Bannon vs. Elon. Tone it down, folks.
I'm surprised no one mentioned the uber-woke NPR CEO or whatever her title is. I had kind of forgotten about her, but was listening to a podcast yesterday with some lefty journo interviewing Steven Pinker, and they mentioned her as an example of how NPR had gone off the rails. You could hear their eyes rolling when they spoke dismissively of her.
When you've lost lefty podcast journos...
If you haven't read the Uri Berliner critique of NPR culture, you should. It's incredible how Red-Guard that place has become. I mean, you could assume it was a lefty culture there, but it's now militantly left (I'd link, but too lazy).
I saw where somebody compared making Katherine Maher head of NPR was "like putting an arsonist in charge of the national forests".
That said, I already expressed (above) my skepticism of Uri Berliner's judgment, because in his April 9 article he expressed big HOPES for that ditzy dame straightening out NPR. A little background-checking would have prevented that folly. To illustrate Berliner's naïveté, allow me to quote from his April 9 article:
"Despite our missteps at NPR, defunding isn’t the answer. As the country becomes more fractured, there’s still a need for a public institution where stories are told and viewpoints exchanged in good faith. Defunding, as a rebuke from Congress, wouldn’t change the journalism at NPR. That needs to come from within.
A few weeks ago, NPR welcomed a new CEO, Katherine Maher, who’s been a leader in tech. She doesn’t have a news background, which could be an asset given where things stand. I’ll be rooting for her. It’s a tough job. Her first rule could be simple enough: don’t tell people how to think. It could even be the new North Star.”
When you wish upon a star ...
Yes, Berliner was just beginning to wake up to the disaster NPR has become, and was totally deluding himself about Katherine Maher.
I also would like to locate the link to the Uri Berliner critique, and to remember when Don published his two columns on the NPR Berliner debacle. Those need to be circulated widely.
If the entire district of Washington D.C. vanished in this instant, the whole earth would instantly become a better, safer, more joyful and peaceful place. Obliterate the wastrel bureaucracy.
We need a mandatory retirement age and term limits for Congress. In my former life as a Village Administrator I highly valued Councilmen who had experience and was dubious about term limits for legislatures. Today I feel that the benefits of term limits outweigh the downsides. Ohio imposed term limits on its legislature over 20 years ago, and IMHO it works fine.
"From your lips, to God's ears," Dennis.
It's like they're all cousins.
If you look at some of the media staff, you will see many of them are related to people in high places of government, so they may even be closer than cousins
.... and married to cousins. Double cousins, twice removed.
Happy New Year, Don!
It was The Dallas Express that broke the Kay Granger story, not The Dallas Morning News.
Your writing is so appreciated! Here's hoping for that Bentley this year!
Thanks for your clarification regarding the source of Kay Granger story - since I really don't read any of them, I couldn't remember really who it was other than Not the News