266 Comments
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Nathan's avatar

Trump and DOGE should have defunded NPR on day 1. Taxpayer funds should not be going to that partisan rag.

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Matt Schweder's avatar

As I’ve called them for 25 years, National Propaganda Radio.

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JudyC's avatar

National Pathetic Radio…the list goes on & on and they deserve all of them!

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Andrea's avatar

National Pubic Radio

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Bandit's avatar

😂🤣😂🤣 That's what I always called them!

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SSGJOHNZO's avatar

Or, National Democratic Communist Radio.

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JBird4049's avatar

They ain’t communist, but they are neoliberal.

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PapayaSF's avatar

Their time will come.

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Nathan's avatar

Sure hope so.

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zaporozhe's avatar

I looked into that years ago, and back then, NPR was an umbrella content provider to independent affiliates. NPR got some of it's money from the National Endowment for the Arts, and the local stations would be left to raise money on their own. A once removed thing, it seemed.

Now, this may be related to the recent leaning on the Kennedy Center for the Arts, leaving notice the NEA will, in time, attract the eye of Sauron.

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Belling the Cat's avatar

Yes, it is definitely on the list. I think it's actually a delicious irony to let them superciliously tsk-tsk over the barbarians destroying society until there is no one left when we come for them.

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zaporozhe's avatar

My conclusion at the time was the even with a withdrawl of the Congressional subsidy, NPR would soldier on.

1) The affiliates are habitual fundraisers.

2) The great foundations - Ford, Rockefeller, Mellon, Hewlett and so many others - will find a way to fill the shortfall.

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Belling the Cat's avatar

We'll see. I'm sure they will keep soaking up their salaries as long as any money is coming in. I think it will be interesting to see how much money is really out there, and what those folks are willing to finance, once the taxpayer spigot is turned off.

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zaporozhe's avatar

Sen. Kennedy, speaking in the Senate recently, pegged the subsidy at 500 million which is - and isn't - a lot of money.

The cold civil war has intensified, the left is about institutional control, I don't see NPR and PBS vanishing for want of a modest philanthropic effort.

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Belling the Cat's avatar

Again, we'll see. It's an empirical question to test, on principle if for no other reason. It's not representative; no one should be taxed to support one ideology's effort to imply consensus via government media. Let them keep it going on their own dime. If it's so important to them, they'll have to cut somewhere else. That's terrific.

Revelations about the many layers & vast dimensions of laundering have the potential to squeeze out more than one pig at the formerly overflowing trough. Keeping *everything* going with honest money will crimp a few lifestyles.

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Whalemind's avatar

I feel like defunding it would be at least as much about removing government involvement and reducing spending than making NPR not exist or at least not partisan

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BornAlive's avatar

except,gates has his dirty pennies all up in that NPR thing.

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Belling the Cat's avatar

It's okay with me if he wants to fund it, right up until he goes to prison (or even afterwards). As long as they're not getting one thin dime of taxpayers' hard-earned money to sneer down their noses at us.

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Bandit's avatar

🙌

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James's avatar

Exactly. Revoke taxpayer funding and let the lefty foundations spend $$ on NPR and the CPB. Fewer $$ for other crap that Gates, the Rockefellers, et al. want to fund. Next, Planned Parenthood.

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SomeDude's avatar

I could totally see gates in this skit

(lightweight vulgarity warning)

Ass Pennies - Upright Citizens Brigade - https://youtube.com/watch?v=f9aM_dT5VMI

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CB's avatar

Eliminating USAID might defund NPR and a whole lot of other mouthpieces for the Empire of Lies.

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Bandit's avatar

🤞🙏

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Lizzie's avatar

I cannot hate them enough.

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Hugh Wayne Black's avatar

“Nobody has balls as tasty as Peter Schweddy”. Back when SNL was actually funny and bagging on NPR and other lefty icons wasn’t liberal sacrilege.

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Kathryn Dewalt's avatar

National Putrid Radio

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Valoree Dowell's avatar

Steady Chris steady. We need you for the long run. Seriously.

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erin's avatar

Chris is damn right.

We let this happen.

Take the effing absurd trans issue.

We all stood by while men in skirts and make up got to abuse women. We stood by while doctors cut off healthy body parts off deluded vulnerable kids.

And that's just an infinitesimal part of the mess.

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Sharon R. Fiore's avatar

I kept telling people stop going in the line of the tranny. I mean, if you see a tranny at the cashier don’t go if everybody did that they would not have them. But everybody just goes along with whatever.

I will never do that

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Kerrin Naudé's avatar

Like all emotionally abusive relationships.

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Julie's avatar

I was thinking this might be my favorite!

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KMW's avatar

I think we all need to practice the demeanor of the man in the brown shirt who calmly and passively let them rant and rave rudely and neither let them phase him nor let them in. He is my hero.

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Dena's avatar

Brilliant to put a security guard dressed like a weekend dad instead of in a uniform. Great optics.

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Belling the Cat's avatar

The kid's band-aid on the back of his neck was the perfect final touch that got me!

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K2's avatar

^^^This!^^^

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JudyC's avatar

I agree. Watching their utter hysteria over the last 2 weeks has been not only entertaining for those of us who knew there was corruption (just not the depth and breath of it) but also has shone the light on how ridiculous and corrupt those protesting really are. Many people, on both sides, have been shocked by the waste and are ANGRY about it. The liberal hysteria is the best thing that could happen. So, yes, let them rail while we calmly let them expose their corruption to the world!

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PapayaSF's avatar

I'm sure that some of what Trump and Musk do is intentional trolling to get that result. Upsetting Democrats makes it hard for them to think straight and makes them look bad to swing voters.

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PapayaSF's avatar

They seem to be going by the 2017 "Resistance" playbook, but I think the crosstabs of recent polls show that is unlikely to work in 2025. Most voters will just tune out more Orange Man Bad blather and think the Democrats are (at best) not serious or (at worst) covering up waste and corruption.

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Joanie Higgs's avatar

pa-thet-ick

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NanaW's avatar

This is the way. White hot rage spewing forth uncontrollably won’t get us anywhere. That’s their playbook.

Steadfast icy cold anger that is channeled into an implacable will of this will not stand is our path forward.

Not that I don’t indulge myself with some profanity laden moments when hubs and I discuss the latest evil stupidity in our home. It truly does all get too much when the endless stream of bs rises high. So vent as you must here with us Chris. We get it.

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Hazel's avatar

But, couldn’t the doors have simply been locked? Good optics indeed

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Nancy Benedict's avatar

Yes. Authoritative dismissal, with subtle eyerolls.

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Marc Miller's avatar

Chris,

Reading your posts are like eating knife fulls of chilled Kerry Gold butter, rich, creamy hunks of grass fed deliciousness that melt away on my tongue releasing its flavor. I can hardly control the joy it brings to my taste buds nor the way it keeps my keto metabolism humming along. It’s downright energizing.

So thanks for another knife-full of unmitigated truth laced wit.

Speaking of roll backs, rumor has it Trump’s latest EO has plastic straws rebecoming the preferred straw of the US government. 😂

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Orwell’s Rabbit's avatar

There was some 24k gold here, for sure, like “my wife would like you to know I bought the wrong kind of cheese”, the description of every. single. NPR host’s passive aggressive charade (“high imperial smugness”), and “the sweater-wearers”. Excellent.

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Fukitol's avatar

It is really weird that some republicans still haven't got the memo that they're officially allowed to retrieve and reattach their testicles now, by order of the president they nominated and elected. Is there some kind of IT issue? Are the messages not going through? Maybe Elon should look into this.

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Chris Bray's avatar

Someone send them a picture of some balls, so they can look down and check.

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Steenroid's avatar

You are assuming they have balls. Only one I know for sure is Big Balls.

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William Dean Thurmond's avatar

It’s BALZ. And his new best friend Harry.

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Andrea's avatar

They’re not really republicans, they’re democrats. As Bongino says, “there are republicans who are democrats, there’s no democrats who are republicans.”

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Longstreet's avatar

Their balls are now the size of bb’s, shrunken from disuse.

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SomeDude's avatar

or they're stored in some blackmailer's safe

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NanaW's avatar

That or their wives have them in their purses.

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Sharon R. Fiore's avatar

Most likely of all

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Mariann Warner's avatar

I used to listen to NPR daily - now I just can’t listen at all. It makes me want to smack my in-car radio controls! Was it always like this and I just didn’t notice, or has it gotten worse? I’d like to think it’s gotten worse because then I don’t feel so dumb.

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Eric Brown's avatar

Sorry, it’s been like this for decades. OTOH, it’s gotten much worse since 2010.

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K2's avatar

Indeed. I had to turn it off in the late 1980’s before it entered escape velocity.

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fiendish_librarian's avatar

You've also just described the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation.

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Tim's avatar

Agree very much with that description of the sad decline of the CBC. I grew up in a CBC household — my dad worked for 25 years in one of their local TV news operations. Since 2010 the leftist bias of their product has been undeniable, making their output largely unlistenable.

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NanaW's avatar

It’s all dreck all the time now. Sad.

I’m old enough to remember when

NPR had some worthwhile shows like Radio Reader. Found some great authors through that program. Prairie Home Companion was awesome back in the day. As was Car Talk with Click and Clack. Their classical music programming was really good too.

Glad I got to experience it in its heyday.

Although the government should never have spent our money on radio programs at all. Totally out of their lane. 🫤

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SomeDude's avatar

I'll agree with Eric as far as I'm aware. I stopped voluntarily listening to npr when they started pushing the government line on 911, I suspect they've just continued downhill from there.

the involuntary listenings over the last few years have made me fight down an ambivalent combination of hilarity and anger at their stupidity, whether it's scripted or innate.

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Matthew's avatar

Oh it's gotten way worse. And hasn't tempered itself like some of the mainstream outlets. I have a horrible compulsion to listen to it but can't take more than like 3-4 minutes.

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Bandit's avatar

It's always been like that. Always.

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Leara's avatar

Thanks for "whatever shiteating circus act that was," and for the close-up of Debbie Wasserman Schultz's really, really stylish gelled hair, and "gaggle of Weimar degenerates." Damn. I'm exhausted.

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Hugh Wayne Black's avatar

Yeah….thanks….I think…

I felt myself turning to stone while watching that clip so I immediately stopped the video while I still had a smidge of dexterity left in my thumb.

DWS. Is the very visage the ancient Greeks had in mind in reference to Medusa.

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Leara's avatar

Sad, funny, true.

Screaming, finger-pointing, indignant women seem to be all the rage.

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PapayaSF's avatar

Once PBS and NPR reach the chopping block, I want Trump to say something like: "Let Alex Soros fund it. I'm sure the programming would not change."

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Hugh Wayne Black's avatar

If NPR does get cut, I have no doubt Soros (or some other filthy rich trust fund brat) will buy it and become an instant hero to the left.

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A Whip of Cords's avatar

Yes, we the people allowed most of this by not paying attention, not caring enough, & not knowing our civics or our Constitution well enough. The small part for which we don’t take all the blame is the election fraud. Many of the worst representatives were chosen through fraud, not elected. I suspect fraud has been going on for decades and in the last 20 years has become industrial. The question is, “Do enough of us still care and if so, will we act?”

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okboomer's avatar

The thing is, we've known about the fraud all along. There were movies in the 1940s joking about election fraud. "Mr Smith Goes to Washington" showed how corrupt virtually all Federal politicians were, and how the people supported them. And today despite all the revelations of fraud and theft half of the country wants it to continue.

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Aviva W.'s avatar

We weren’t paying attention. And now every school board and city council is filled with activists who proceed to enact their own agendas that the ordinary people don’t want. My tiny suburb has been busy replacing car lanes with bollards, banning styrofoam, and passing resolutions about Gaza. (Since I’m in California, I will acknowledge that many of my neighbors think it’s all great. But at the same time, it sure is “interesting” how those late mail-in ballots all trend in one direction…)

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streamfortyseven's avatar

Oddly enough, I remember Debbie Wasserman from the University of Florida Student Senate. She was just as awful then as she is now, an entitled Jewish American Princess (JAP) from Miyemmi, South Flawrida, a transplant from Lawn Guy Land, Noo Yawk... She was as power-hungry then as she is now.

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Chris Bray's avatar

She was power-hungry in student government? This makes me shudder.

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streamfortyseven's avatar

Yeah, and I remember her from 1987-1988, a total Establishment hack who opposed actual student run radio - a certain distaste for punk rock as I recall - here are some pics I took of the punk rock scene there back then -https://www.flickr.com/photos/streamfortyseven/albums/72157623030646511/with/4415409438

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Fukitol's avatar

Need to photoshop Debbie into the background of one of those, scowling.

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Rikard's avatar

Thanks for those, man. Even if I'm on a different continent, it felt like a trip down memory lane for me.

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Sandra Slivka's avatar

She's the best the teachers unions can come up with

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Anne's avatar

Geeze Louise, Chris!

1. What is that "wrong kind of cheese" of which you speak?! OK, Velveeta... but then, Trader Joe's doesn't sell that. Thank you, TJ.

2. The worst of the worst have done way worse than waste a bunch of our so-precious time, and cost us precious enamel off our molars.

3. Chris Bray is correct about everything. QED

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Rikard's avatar

Speaking as a married man myself, my experience is that unless she's with you in the store, picking the cheese herself, you'll always have bought "the wrong cheese".

I think it's the wife-equivalent of a pre-pubescent boy pulling a girl's braids because he likes her.

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Alan Hodge's avatar

Me: making the boys a pizza, need cheese if you have time on the way home

Her: found this great deal on cream havarti; a whole wheel for only fifty bucks!

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Rikard's avatar

"Why did you make pizza when I found this great deal for cream Havarti?!"

You just can't win, right?

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K2's avatar

lol

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Ringmaster's avatar

I want to know about the cheese, too. 😆

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NanaW's avatar

Inquiring minds want to know!

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the long warred's avatar

Norm Eisen just lost his clearance

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Chris Bray's avatar

Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhh, refreshing

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mileytheduchess's avatar

1) You aren't old, and 2) get the weirdly expensive bite guard. They really help.

And then at bedtime, after you put it in, you can tell your wife "I wuwwu."

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Kathy Leicester's avatar

I don’t want you to be angry.

I want you to bomb Dresden, and keep going.

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B.L.'s avatar

Nice guy folksy Republicans that don’t want to offend anyone so they can get invites to the good parties and then never show up are the worst. And Mike Pence is their spirit animal.

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Belling the Cat's avatar

I can tell you they are getting A LOT of calls from their constituents right now. And the ones who don't shape up will be primaried. I am emphatically encouraged that we'll get more great people running with the leadership we have right now. Trump, yes, but the youthful energy of the rest of the team is amazing. Think of it -- Elon is one of the oldest in the gang. I like nice guys, and folksy is better than NPRy, but the future is only R if RINOs take the MAGA pill. Otherwise both Rs and Ds are parties in the rearview mirror.

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MR's avatar

Debbie Wassermann Schulz is the Chuck Schumer of the House. Somebody needs to primary them but they’ll probably be lifers.

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CB's avatar

They and many of their comrades should be Guantanamo lifers.

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