ASK ME YOUR QUESTIONS AND I’LL TELL YOU NO LIES.

       Q.  Your observations about the Obama budget without making our eyes blur with multi-numbers.   What’s the politics of it?

      A.  It’s a very Obama-esque budget.  The “cuts” the media advertises are cuts from the extraordinarily lavish 2010 one where he pumped up spending to purportedly “get America back to work.” Republicans wisely want to go back to 2008 and cut from there.  Bill Daley’s strategy is to make the Republicans go first.  Fine. They’re willing to.  But just as gutless as the stimulus was…tossing it over to the Dem Congress and allow it to festoon the Christmas Tree with every possible ornament…this so-called “pared down budget” is just as gutless.

      Q.  Any news on the plan to zero out public broadcasting?

      A.  Yes. This will get you laughing…not as loud as you do when you see Dan Schmidt’s appeal on `TTW to save his funding and thereby enable Ms. Marin to propagandize for gay marriage at taxpayers’ expense—but pretty funny.

      The patrician head of NPR who okayed the firing of Juan Williams for expressing concern about Muslims in garb when he gets on a commercial aircraft….the woman who appropriately was a top executive of The New York Times (who under fire threw an underling under the bus for firing Williams over the telephone when in reality she approved it), Vivian Schiller testified before the House Appropriations committee that NPR stations in rural and “underserved areas” will deprive “more than 38 million Americans with free [sic] over the air programming they can’t find anywhere else.” Free to her means the taxpayer pays.

       And get her language:  “The public values and increasingly relies on the trustworthy news and information that public radio provides.”  But the real laugh comes from someone else.
     Q.   What?

      A.   The hilarious group moveon.org which was formed to save Bill Clinton from impeachment after he lied under oath that he “did not have sex with that woman” Monica Lewinsky.   It has launched a petition drive to continue taxpayer-funded public television, declaring that for every $6 of programming only $1 is paid by the public.” Okay then if its so miniscule why don’t you resolve to raise the $1 from private sources including your good buddy George Soros?   But in the next line it says—“Overall, public broadcasting earns $2.85 billion a year from individual members’ contributions, business, educational and foundation donations” and adds from “governments, including federal, state and local grants.” See?  Can’t kick that taxpayer funding!

       Q.  So they regard the zeroing out as a tragedy.

       A.  Of course.   The continuing resolution for the rest of the fiscal year would zero out the feds’ obligation to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting—a $36 million saving as part of the Republican goal to cut $100 billion this year. And the liberal caterwauling is just terrific. “It would diminish stations’ ability to bring high-quality local, national and international news to their communities, as well as local arts, music and cultural programming that other media don’t present.” Hmmm: “that other media don’t present”—they’ve got that right.  Meaning the russet-haired Catholic-baiter Ms. Marin would have to rely on just two news outlets to peddle her abjectly secular humanist ideological wares—NBC Chicago and the Sun-Times.

        Q.  Oh the Humanity!  What’s your take on Rahm Emanuel declaring that if elected mayor he will reorganize the city council, strip Eddie Burke of his Finance chairmanship and take away his police protection?

       A.    Big talk.  It just may be the best news Carol Moseley Braun ever had—setting her on a long-range path to financial security and mobilizing her followers to elect Chico.  When you set forth to bell the cat you’d better be sure you have the power to do it…which he doesn’t have yet.