Tag Archives: culture

Free Speech NPR-Style

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And by extension, given the leftist (not the nearby center-left part of the political spectrum) bias of National Public Radio, here is the concept of the Left’s free speech. This is illustrated by NPR‘s retaliation against one of its own who spoke apart from the Narrative™.

Recall that Uri Berliner, a 25-year denizen of NPR and lately Senior Business Editor, wrote an op-ed for The Free Press that called out NPR for its far left and growing farther bias in its news reporting, extending even into the stories it chooses to publish or ignore.

NPR has suspended veteran editor Uri Berliner after he detailed his employer’s “absence of viewpoint diversity” last week in a stunning rebuke of the news organization.
NPR media reporter David Folkenflik reported the five-day suspension without pay began on Friday.

This is what the “news” and ideology opinion outlet and the Left generally think of free speech.

National Public Radio needs to have its Federal subsidies—that’s your and my tax money—cut off entirely. That won’t be much given that 69% of NPR‘s financing comes from “Corporate sponsorships” and “Core and other programming fees,” and 30+% comes from other private sources, but at least we won’t be paying for this abuse out of our own pockets.

Update: Following NPR‘s atrocious behavior regarding free speech, Berliner has resigned altogether from that outlet.

“Tightrope”

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Progressive-Democrat President Joe Biden is walking a tightrope as he tries to deal with Israel. President faces pressure from both his left and right on Middle East conflict goes the subheadline.

Maybe pressure from the Left is there, maybe not.

There are two possibilities. One is that Biden is letting himself feel pressure from an extremely vocal but small Leftist faction that supports Hamas’ terrorists in their war against Israel, disguising their protests as support for Palestinians. Their constant chants of “from the river to the sea” demonstrates that disguise. If Biden really is that easily manipulated by the loudness of a small minority of the Left, actually feeling their “pressure,” then he’s too weak to be trusted with reelection to that office.

Alternatively, those extremely loud Hamas supporters aren’t a small Leftist faction, but instead comprise a large and growing portion of the Left and especially of the Progressive-Democratic Party. If that’s the case, that’s a Party as well as a Presidential candidate that can’t be trusted with reelection.

A Governor Betrays our Children

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Kansas’ Progressive-Democrat Governor Laura Kelly has vetoed a bill that would have banned gender surgeries and hormone treatments for minors. Her rationalization:

targets a small group of Kansans by placing government mandates on them and dictating to parents how to best raise and care for their children. I do not believe that is a conservative value, and it’s certainly not a Kansas value.

A small group: leave aside the Left’s mantra (apparently only when convenient) of “if it saves just one life….” Protecting children from mutilation that’s far too often crippling as well isn’t a conservative value?

That’s how far Left the Progressive-Democratic Party, epitomized by Kelly, has gone.

Instagram’s Nudes

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Meta’s—Mark Zuckerberg’s—Instagram says they will, under certain circumstances, start blurring nude images sent over its program.

Instagram is now taking a meaningful step to contain the problem, by automatically detecting and blurring nudes in its direct-messaging service.

Whoopty-do. There’s this:

Apple stopped short of notifying parents if children under the age of 13 viewed or sent nudes, because of potential privacy issues. Instagram also won’t notify parents.

Meta still is insisting it’s a better steward of child safety than are the child’s parents. So is Apple. Typical arrogance, and unacceptable.

Meta’s response to this threat also signifies how serious financial sextortion has become….

In consonance with

Meta doesn’t have plans to roll out the warnings to its other apps, such as WhatsApp and Messenger.

Since it’s still freezing parents out of the decision process and consciously choosing to not spread the “warnings” to any of its other messaging programs, Meta’s response isn’t at all meaningful, nor does it signify anything other than obfuscation of its empty virtue-signaling.

Toddler Temper Tantrums and the Fears of the Timid

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Karl Rove may be whistling past the graveyard in his Wednesday WSJ op-ed. He opened his piece with this lede:

Conventional wisdom is that Republicans will lose the US House this fall. That may be right.

Then he ran a counterargument.

Yet the conventional wisdom that Republicans will lose the House may be wrong.
One reason is retirements. Much has been made of how many Republicans are leaving, including talented members such as Wisconsin’s Mike Gallagher, North Carolina’s Patrick McHenry, and Washington’s Cathy McMorris Rodgers. But more Democrats (24) than Republicans (19) have announced their retirements. Moreover, all the Republican retirements are in overwhelmingly red districts. The only open GOP seat considered competitive—the Cook Political Report calls it “lean Republican”—is Colorado’s Third District. Cook’s partisan vote index—which estimates a district’s leaning relative to the country based on the two most recent presidential elections—labels it an R+7 seat.
Retiring Democrats represent more-competitive seats. Cook rates the open Michigan Seventh and Eighth districts as “toss-ups.” They are R+2 and R+1 respectively. Cook classifies the California 47th (D+3) and Virginia Seventh (D+1) as “lean Democrat.” The Maryland Sixth and New Hampshire Second (both D+2) are “likely Democrat.”

Rove gave too little credence to the damage the toddler temper tantrum, led by Marjorie Taylor Greene (R, GA) and her Chaos Caucus supporters, does. These toddlers may well hand the House Speakership, and control of the House agenda, to the Progressive-Democrat Hakeem Jeffries (D, NY) before the current session ends, especially given the number of nominally Conservative Republicans who are abjectly cutting and running from their House seats, whether at the end of the current session or quitting just as soon as they can get their desks cleared.

The inability of Republicans to agree among themselves on what to put forward—the Chaos Caucus blows up anything that doesn’t suit their veriest whims to t—and the party’s timidity in putting any Conservative policies forward and putting the onus on the Progressive-Democrat-ruled Senate and the White House to work with them—tells the voting public that this is a ragtag collection of junior high politicians not ready for the national obligations they have.

Rove also gave too little effect to the timidity of the remaining “mainstream” Republican Congressmen. There are number of legitimate conservative policies that are proposed by the Freedom Caucus (when they aren’t acting in their Chaos Caucus guise). These, though, are routinely rejected by too many of the other Republicans in the House Republican caucus under the excuse that the Progressive-Democratic Party Senators would never agree to them, and that the Progressive-Democrat President would never sign, even were something to get to his desk. So, these Republicans won’t even try. They’re too timid to do something that might force the Progressive-Democratic Party’s politicians to take a stand, much less to force them to work with Republicans. Instead, these Timid Republicans would rather try, meekly, to work with the Progressive-Democrats, ceding functional House control to the minority party.

That timidity isn’t encouraging for voters.

Rove also underestimated the effect on voters by those who are heading out the door just as the battle is heating up. That timidity may well turn off voters, voters who won’t vote for the overtly destructive Progressive-Democratic Party, but who find they can’t trust Republican candidates who might well run away themselves. These voters are likely to stay home, which with today’s divisions is the same as voting Progressive-Democrat.

More Progressive-Democrats (my term, not Rove’s) than Republicans are leaving the fight? Only by five, and that, out of 43 departures, is as thin as the current Republican nominal majority. The Republican Party, too, has demonstrated in elections from 2018 forward that it’s fully capable of throwing away eminently winnable seats and donating them to the Progressive-Democrats. It would take only a net gain of five seats to get Jeffries as Speaker.

Public disgust with a Republican Party populated, at least at the national level, with toddlers and timids may well cost us a government interested in our borders, our economic strength—our national security.

Whistling past the graveyard, indeed.