Do I have this right? We're defunding NPR

[noamnety]

because of concerns they may have too much of political bias, and instead we're funding secret fake media personalities on the internet with the specific goal of manipulating the public for political purposes?

[cali]

1. the Senate will deep six the house defunding legislation

and why should this surprise you? the repukes are in charge in the House.

[Robbien]

4. You have much more faith in the conservatives in the Senate than I do

There is a vast majority of conservatives in the Senate

I expect in order to survive PBS will have to make many assurances they will toe the conservative line.

[cali]

5. No, I'm just paying attention-= and I have a degree of faith in

the liberals in the Senate.

[Robbien]

9. The handful of liberals in the Senate have no power

The Senate is almost chock-full of conservative corporatists.

[cali]

11. Actually, they do. And you can't really break things down as simply as you are

I'm about 95% sure that NPR won't be defunded- not that I think it matters terribly. NPR is hardly the left wing bastion some think it is.

[hardcover]

10. :) at first glance I read this as

"I have a degree <in> faith." It's early, I need coffee. :)

[EFerrari]

2. You got it.

:)

[hlthe2b]

3. All Rethug theater.... Senate won't pass it; Obama won't sign it

Yet, the Rethugs took time to make it an "emergency" issue for the House in lieu of doing anything about jobs or anything else.

[sofa king]

6. No, that's incorrect.

The Republicans in the House of Representatives voted to defund NPR. That carries about as much weight as a legal opinion from Nancy Grace--none.

Any bill the House passes also has to be voted on by the Democratically-controlled Senate, which will vote against that bill. It's even easier because it appears to be a stand-alone bill that can be buried in a committee in the Senate and safely ignored forever.

Even if the House later folds this bill as a rider into a larger appropriations bill, the Senate will simply vote to remove it. If they can't do that, they'll remove it in conference, where House and Senate members meet to justify their different versions of a bill. If they can't do that, the President can still veto it.

What's going on is that Newt Gingrich really means it when he says he's thinking of running for President. He's spent the past several years establishing his office as the conservatives' outlet for legislative news, so Fox picks up his crap press releases and runs with them, never bothering to mention that any Republican-crafted bill--at this point, because of their ill behavior, any Republican-backed bill--will never go anywhere.

Gingrich has an interest in presenting the Republicans in Congress as strong, when in fact they are desperately weak and totally incompetent. Each year, they're supposed to write their own budget proposal for the federal government, but they have failed to do so even once since President Obama took office. There are other, more diabolical reasons for not offering any real numbers, but the main one is that they simply don't have the legislative analysts needed to actually write an appropriations bill.

So they toss up clay pigeons like this one in the hopes that they can appear as if they're trying to do something effective, when in fact they're still being pulled in a hundred different directions by competing special interests.

[leveymg]

7. So, will NPR funding be contained in a continuing budget resolution?

[sofa king]

8. I think it will.

Although this is hardly an important issue, it's the Democrats who actually stand to benefit the most from a government shutdown in the middle of two wars and a depression. Once that happens, thanks to Republican legislation over the past ten years, the President is effectively unchained and becomes alarmingly powerful--something that can and should scare Republicans half to death, because those bastards effectively set up the makings of the Fourth Reich, ready to go at the first sign of crisis, which a shutdown would be.

You'll notice that despite months of threats, whenever the deadline for a CR approaches, the GOP defaults to the Democratic financial plans. So yeah, this is a fine issue on which to hinge a government shutdown.

[madrchsod]

12. what`s really behind this de-funding npr?

could it be right wing christians grabbing the rest of the lower end fm frequencies? i`d bet a dollar that it is.

[groundloop]

13. It's nothing more than Publican theatre

[Bragi]

14. Looks like well-integrated policy-making to me

If you look beyond superficial talking points from both sides, I don't see any policy contradiction here.

In fact, I see perfect policy harmony in simultaneously defunding a public information channel with a record for fair reporting and analysis, while allocating public funds to a program that will have the long-term effect of reducing public confidence in peer-to-peer communications via social media.

Both of these nicely integrated initiatives will help support future propaganda campaigns.