158 Comments

funny, except NPR is tax payer funded. We the People, at gunpoint, are paying this naval gazer to post her communist drool. we are the country our founders fought against.

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author

NPR mostly lives on corporate and foundation money, now, with listener donations. Their government funding has shriveled, quietly. A commenter below notes the importance of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to NPR, and yes. And others.

https://www.npr.org/about-npr/727982638/philanthropic-supporters

https://www.npr.org/about-npr/178660742/public-radio-finances

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💯 and by "foundation" we mean front org.

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Apr 18Liked by Chris Bray

Max Headroom, thou shouldst be living at this hour

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Tiktok = blipverts. We're all watching station 23 these days.

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No doubt they shuffle $$ from other 'sources', like 'NGO's", lots of sophisticated shucking & jiving money laundering & kickback schemes, but they're a tax payer funded Big Gov mouthpiece

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It's mostly donor funded, with local stations receiving state taxpayer money depending on which state one lives in and a relatively small amount of federal tax dollars. But, yes, with something this biased and ideological, it would be like the government funding The Blaze or The Daily Wire. NPR needs to stick to art, literature, and wildlife programs.

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Defund NPR. I don’t care what they publish as long as taxpayers don’t pay a penny toward it.

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🎯

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The government (our $) funding should be completely ended.

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I hope you saw Matt Taibbi’s piece where he places Mahers’s tweets side by side with similarly themed gems from parody account Titania McGrath.

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author

I missed that, but I'm headed over there. That's perfect.

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Please pardon me for being off topic. The first piece I read by you was about the impending death of the L.A. Times. This last weekend I purchased the always thin Saturday edition. Imagine my horror when I arrived home to discover this thin paper was the Sunday edition!

I have fond memories of rainy Sundays in the 80's when I spent All Day reading the Sunday L.A. Times.

Death? It won't be long.now.

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author

I had exactly those rainy Sundays in exactly the 80s. It used to be a newspaper.

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your comment reminds me of that old Woody Allen joke about two elderly women at a Catskill mountain resort, and one of 'em says, "Boy, the food at this place is really terrible." The other one says, "Yeah, I know; and such small portions."

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I must be gettin' old. I can remember when that was funny - and when almost everyone "got it".

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It’s still funny.

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True. But unfortunately, many of our brainwashed younger generation simply don't 'get it'.

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It won't come soon enough. Bankrupt and empty doesn't even describe it.

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Apr 19Liked by Chris Bray

In the 80s, I lived in small-town Saskatchewan, and had a friend and co-worker who had grown up in La Canada-Flintridge. A few times, when she returned after visiting family in that area, she was kind enough to have brought back for me a Sunday LA Times. I devoured every page to the point where I was interested in the goings on in places like the Inland Empire, which I had never even heard of until I saw it covered in the Times.

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I use to read the real estate pages although I lived 100+ miles away. The whole paper was so well written in those days.

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Apr 18Liked by Chris Bray

And think of all the talented people who worked all week to tantalize, inform, amuse, and energize readers because they couldnt imagine better work. Now we have each other here, lacking only the geographic glue. But other commonalities are more evident.

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Katherine Maher sounds like Kamala Harris 2.0. Still a vapid wind-up doll with the annoying inflection and usage of “sort of” and “right?”, but with new and improved delivery of a buzzword salad into nearly complete sentences. Remarkable. Newsom/Maher 2024?

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SNL could not make a better parody of what our political landscape has become.

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and they would too, if they hadn't of sold out too

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Yep. SNL used to poke fun at everyone. For many years now, it’s ruined. Completely unwatchable. I’ll just keep my fond memories of watching it when it began in 1975, through the 70’s it was great. I wouldn’t watch that tripe now for all the tea in China.

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the cabal is making sure the parodies are the realities.

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Apr 18·edited Apr 18Liked by Chris Bray

Rufo could just as easily have put it this way: "Lysenko understood the game: The Soviets' elite institutions reward loyalty to the narrative. Those who repeat the words move up; those who don’t move out."

trouble is, gay isn't the nolan ryan of woke. she's more like the billy travers. she just gets paid a lot. they all talk the same way. every. single. one. of. them. nyc is ground zero for this bullshit. at this point, i'm numb

as far as self driving cars, they're the logical product to market to a generation who grew up in the back of the minivan watching netflix or compulsively tiktoking.

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Apr 18Liked by Chris Bray

His analysis of her spending most of her life in airports, cabs, meetings, Zoom-calls and feverishly describing her every "thought" at every turn for social validation leads me to think she is a profoundly broken, empty person psychologically and emotionally. She's essentially a sex addict without the sex, without the barfly charm of a boozer or any other redemptive quality. She reminds me a lot of Faye Dunaway's character in Network, all she needs is for a William Holden in her life to tell her she's insane.

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Apr 18Liked by Chris Bray

“It teach brain, brain go pudding, brain not do stuff.”

I was working out with weights when this line played. I burst out laughing so hard I almost fell over. That was the funniest line I’ve heard all week! Thanks for the laugh.

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It reminds me of the way Kevin on the Office would sometimes speak.

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Maher is Huxley's "Brave New World" personified. She is Soma.

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Here to say she's really bad. You forgot to say that.

:)

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Bad is a word that kind of edges up to her......and then is startled to find she is actually awful.

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Katherine Maher says the right things. She believes the right things. The substance of those beliefs is less important than that they are "right," and what that rightness confers upon those like Maher and those who share her beliefs.

She is, like so many of the dominant progressive voices of the day, an avatar for the confident liberal technocrat -- for whom getting things done is all that matters because whether they should be done has long been settled.

She is the perfect fit for NPR because they both believe in NPR as machine of social-credit-making, an institution to which listeners can outsource the narratives they need to signal to the world "I am better than you."

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Wish I was able to click the like at least two hundred more times. Thanks!

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Now I really want to fulfill my life long dream of learning how to drive a stick shift.

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Driving a stick is fun! BUT an automatic is much better in snow in winter.

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Apr 18Liked by Chris Bray

I learned to drive on a 4-speed farm tractor and never looked back. The few times I've driven automatics it was like that most essential connection to the machine was missing: keeping the motor's RPM happily balanced with the power demands of the road, with the option to manually alter that balance for special circumstances.

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I understand.

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We had stick shifts for more than two decades, all our cars, and then we got an automatic Subaru about eight years ago. You know, I still reach for the stick, and my foot looks for the clutch every time I'm at a stop sign. I just can't seem to un-learn it.

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founding

I grew up on a farm in Indiana and taught myself to drive a 3-speed, on the column, ‘63 Ford pickup at the ripe old age of 11!

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Respect, girl!!!

I know very few people that have ever driven a stick. It's pretty sad. But....funny when a guy tells me he can't drive a stick. 😂🤣😂🤣

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My husband had a 3-speed on the column with one of his trucks, can't remember which one though. Once you got used to the different orientation of the shifter it really wasn't too hard to drive.

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Yep! Been there, done that. Usually, when switching between the different cars. Also, when switching, stepping on the brake and killing the engine. 😂🤣

I miss my Subaru Brat. I loved that tiny truck so much!

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We've got an Outback, of course, the official car of northern New England. The darn thing is probably spying on us (apparently Subaru is the worst for that), but it handles so well in the snow, especially here in the mountains.

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For as little as it weighed, my Brat did really well in the snow, surprisingly.

Huh, the Japanese spying on Americans through their cars... shocking! (Not at all.)

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I had an Outback for a couple of years, a rare stick model. I hated it, called it "the nag" for all the ding-ding-ding's telling you what to do.

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Good to know!

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Remember to blip the throttle to match engine revs when you double de clutch to a lower gear 🤪

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Can’t find ‘em, grind ‘em!

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They still make cars/trucks that double clutch?!

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I’m always reminded of Kodos in a Treehouse Of Horror episode of the Simpsons:

Kodos: (as Clinton) We must go forward, not backward. Upward, not forward. And always twirling, twirling, twirling towards freedom.

Proceeds to spin on the spot to applause.

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Apr 18Liked by Chris Bray

I am reading Alexander Weinstein’s short story collection, _Children of the New World_, which is so relentlessly depressing and pessimistic about our future that it almost begs the reader to say, “that can’t really happen, right?” Then I read this column and realize that it *IS* happening as we speak.

To borrow the best line I’ve read in ages, it teach brain, brain go pudding, brain not do stuff, me watch Bugs Bunny.

Excellent piece, Mr. Bray.

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When reading pieces like this that mention terms like "elites" or "they", or frankly almost any anti mainstream narrative piece on any topic in the past 5 or so years: be it Covid policy and Big Pharma; Gender theory; CRT; Intersectionality; Trans ideology; immigration; Fentanyl; Hate crime; censorship and cancel culture, and the big one, Climate alarmism, I am minded to ask who are "they" exactly? Given the rapid onset of the breakdown of Western culture, politics, law, language and sanity and the equally rapid backlash occurring right now it is hard to see this as a natural phenomenon and not something orchestrated and coordinated. And then I came across a book called Rockerfeller: Controlling the Game and things started to click into place, at least in terms of who, how and what they want. The book is a work of academic research by Jacob Nordigard, who was interviewed by Tom Nelson on his eponymous youtube channel on all things climate change lie related (a superb collection of the best scientists and others who have the exact opposite views to the mainstream, facts and data on their side and are surely far greater than a mere 3%, which is another lie). The fact that YouTube has banned me from making comments because I was telling people about this book is perhaps all the impetus you need to buy a copy now and prepare to be fascinated at how along ago this all started and who "they" are. For this is the real issue that connects all the other issues, it is about One World Government, and this is not a conspiracy theory because the Rockerfeller foundation (via David Rockerfeller) have openly said that they are all about this (oh and population control...). Hiding in plain sight is fine if you are a multibillionaire with close ties to both US parties and the worlds power brokers it seems...

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Apr 18Liked by Chris Bray

Maher is another useful idiot who will be disposed of when her usefulness is over. She imagines she is "part of the elite" like Claudine Gay.

There are no bunkers being prepared for these morons, but they're too dumb to understand that.

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Apr 18Liked by Chris Bray

I feel unreasonably frightened by this woman. Not of the person, but all that she represents and that she can "excel" in this world being so empty and devoid of original thought. Completely useless whose only purpose is regurgitating the latest degenerate opinions and feelings.

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Apr 18Liked by Chris Bray

The world where "free and open" is a bad thing. Now the oppressors are in a nice, polite, highly educated package where manners, feelings, and BS theories are their tools of oppression. And their arrogance gives them 100% certainty that their way is correct.

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Because of a local controversy, I've been thinking all morning about a former member of our small-town city council, a retired government lawyer, who would tell the council what to do, and then IMMEDIATELY start fidgeting in her seat and saying that everyone else was "confused" if they questioned her or disagreed with her at all. "Well I see that SOME PEOPLE don't UNDERSTAND!"

She had no ability to make an argument, at all. She said what she wanted, and then everybody who disagreed at all was stupid. If you presented her with a logical, factual, well-sourced counterargument, she just got frantic and "disappointed."

They're EVERYWHERE. They're the culture.

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While watching this, I kept getting the urge to tell her to just SHUT UP! So annoying watching people like this vomit out their stupid word salads.

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Yes, and then I remember that there are people who watch that and think, "Man, we really need to hire this person as the president of our organization."

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"As for me, I just spent a full ten seconds trying to delete an eyelash from my computer screen, so maybe you should all just leave me behind and soldier on."

I've tried to delete many a spot.

So basically what you're saying is we live in an "Emperor Has No Clothes" world.

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