Justin's Political Corner
Here are some interesting facts about him, though:
- He basically saved public television. In 1969 the government wanted to cut public television funds. Mister Rogers then went to Washington where he gave an amazing merely six minute speech. By the end of the speech not only did he charm the hostile Senators, he got them to double the budget they would have initially cut down. The whole thing can be found on youtube, a video called “Mister Rogers defending PBS to the US Senate.”
- “Certain fundamentalist preachers hated him because, apparently not getting the “kindest man who ever lived” memo, they would ask him to denounce homosexuals. Mr. Rogers’s response? He’d pat the target on the shoulder and say, “God loves you just as you are.” Rogers even belonged to a “More Light” congregation in Pittsburgh, a part of the Presbyterian Church dedicated to welcoming LGBT persons to full participation in the church.”
- According to a TV Guide piece on him, Fred Rogers drove a plain old Impala for years. One day, however, the car was stolen from the street near the TV station. When Rogers filed a police report, the story was picked up by every newspaper, radio and media outlet around town. Amazingly, within 48 hours the car was left in the exact spot where it was taken from, with an apology on the dashboard. It read, “If we’d known it was yours, we never would have taken it.”
- Once, on a fancy trip up to a PBS exec’s house, he heard the limo driver was going to wait outside for 2 hours, so he insisted the driver come in and join them (which flustered the host). On the way back, Rogers sat up front, and when he learned that they were passing the driver’s home on the way, he asked if they could stop in to meet his family. According to the driver, it was one of the best nights of his life—the house supposedly lit up when Rogers arrived, and he played jazz piano and bantered with them late into the night. Further, like with the reporters, Rogers sent him notes and kept in touch with the driver for the rest of his life.
I really didnt need more reasons to love Mr Rodgers but now I have them.
BA Mr. Rogers
These are all amazing facts about an amazing person, but mostly I’m reblogging it for the gif of him doing the dual bird flip.
PPP’s annual poll on TV news finds that there’s only one source more Americans trust than distrust: PBS. 52% of voters say they trust PBS to only 29% who don’t trust it. The other seven outlets we polled on are all distrusted by a plurality of voters.
When it comes to asking Americans which single outlet they trust the most and least out of the ones we polled on, Fox News once again wins both honors. 34% say it’s the one they trust the most, compared to 13% for PBS, 12% for CNN, 11% for ABC, 8% for MSNBC, 6% for CBS, and 5% each for Comedy Central and NBC. Fox News is the choice of 67% of Republicans, while Democrats basically split their allegiances four ways between ABC and CNN, both at 17%, and MSNBC and PBS, both at 16%.
Even more Americans identify Fox News as the outlet they trust the least- 39% give its that designation to 14% for MSNBC, 13% for CNN, 12% for Comedy Central, 5% for ABC and CBS, 3% for NBC, and 1% for PBS. 60% of Democrats give it their lowest marks while Republicans split between MSNBC (24%), CNN (19%), and Comedy Central (14%) on that front.
The Obama campaign is capitalizing on Mitt Romney’s promise to cut funding to PBS and Sesame Street’s Big Bird with a new ad mocking Romney’s dedication to stripping this funding. During the last Wednesday’s debate, Romney mentioned cutting funding to PBS even though he likes Big Bird in order to cut the deficit.
“Bernie Madoff, Ken Lay, Dennis Kozlowski, criminals, gluttons of greed,” the narrator says. “And the evil genius who towered over them? One man has the guts to speak his name.”
The ad then cuts to footage of Mitt Romney saying three separate times, “Big Bird.”
TLC’s direction is a yet another reason why PBS should stay and even get more funding.
(via timekiller-s)
This is the only pundit we actually love hearing discuss last night’s debate.
Varney: “Big Bird Would Still Be Around Because It’s A Profit Center In And Of Itself.” Discussing Mitt Romney’s statement during the October 3 presidential debate that he would “stop the subsidy to PBS” if elected, host Stuart Varney claimed that the government spends $444 million a year on public broadcasting, adding, “If we took that subsidy away, Big Bird would still be around because it’s a profit center in and of itself.” Varney later said, “If we take it away, Sesame Street, Big Bird stands, profitable.” [Fox Business, Varney & Co., 10/4/12]
Fox Guest Carol Roth: PBS Can Make Up For Lack Of Government Funding By Bringing In Sponsors, Advertisers, Or Subscribers. Responding to Varney, guest Carol Roth said: “You can bring in corporate sponsors, you can bring in advertisers. Look, HBO is a great station, they do it by subscribers. There are other ways for PBS to remain.” [Fox Business, Varney and Co., 10/4/12]
Sesame Street Producer “Receives Very, Very Little Funding From PBS.” Sherrie Westin, executive vice president and chief marketing officer for Sesame Workshop, which produces Sesame Street, told CNN: “Sesame Workshop receives very, very little funding from PBS. So, we are able to raise our funding through philanthropic, through our licensed product, which goes back into the educational programming, through corporate underwriting and sponsorship. So quite frankly, you can debate whether or not there should be funding of public broadcasting. But when they always try to tout out Big Bird, and say we’re going to kill Big Bird — that is actually misleading, because Sesame Street will be here.” [CNN, Starting Point, 10/4/12]
From the 10.04.2012 edition of FBN’s Varney and Co.:
h/t: MMFA
nomoretexasgovernorsforpresident:
Cutting PBS support (0.012% of budget) to help balance the Federal budget is like deleting text files to make room on your 500Gig hard drive
Awesome picture.
Makes me wanna laugh out loud.
(via occupy-my-blog)
The CEO of PBS fired back at Mitt Romney Thursday, saying that it was “stunning” that the Republican candidate had singled her network out in Wednesday’s debate.
Romney had one of his most memorable moments when he vowed to cut the federal subsidy to public broadcasting.
“I’m sorry Jim, I’m gonna stop the subsidy to PBS,” he told moderator Jim Lehrer, who has worked for PBS since the 1970s. “I like PBS, I love Big Bird, I actually like you too, but I’m going to stop borrowing money from China to pay for things we don’t need.”
Noting that the debate touched on education, she called PBS “America’s biggest classroom,” adding, “This is not about the budget. It has to be about politics.”
Kerger also fact-checked Romney — who she has tussled with before — pointing out that PBS doesn’t get any direct money from the government.
“In fact, the money that comes from the government into the Corporation for Public Broadcasting goes to our member stations,” she said.
h/t: HuffPo
Poor Big Bird.
The last thing he probably wanted was a mention in the first political debate between President Obama and Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney. But that’s exactly what happened to the lovable eight-foot, two-inch feathery fellow Wednesday night.
Romney told moderator Jim Lehrer, “I’m sorry Jim. I’m gonna stop the subsidy to PBS. I’m gonna stop other things. I like PBS, I like Big Bird, I actually like you too.”
A collective stab pierced the heart of Generation X who grew up with Big Bird, Bert and Ernie and Oscar the Grouch as their best friends. I immediately thought, “Oh no, Big Bird will be unemployed if Romney wins.” I wasn’t alone.
As is normal these days, Big Bird started trending on Twitter. Memes magically appeared on Facebook showing Big Bird sitting on a stoop holding a sign “Will Work For Food.” But what we really needed at that moment was Count von Count appearing at the debate to explain Obama and Romney’s monologues about complex taxes and percentages.
Obama was not his best Wednesday night, but he could leverage Big Bird. That is if the Obama campaign is smart. A survey in 2008 noted that 77 million Americans had watched “Sesame Street” as children. That’s a lot of potential voters to woo. Nostalgia runs deep, trust me.
Big Bird, an iconic image, could serve as a bright yellow reminder that the Romney administration is keen on deep cuts to beloved institutions.
In August, Romney said he would eliminate funding for PBS, Amtrak, the National Endowment for the Arts and the National Endowment for the Humanities. The Corporation for Public Broadcasting, PBS’s parent organization, receives $444 million a year from the government.
Maybe Romney doesn’t understand how vital PBS, which celebrates its 42nd anniversary on Friday, is for many Americans. For several years, polls have regularly placed PBS as America’s most-trusted national institution. Before the invention of cable television, PBS offered diversity when only three networks — ABC, NBC and CBS — dominated the airwaves. Educating America’s children with smart programming has remained a dutiful promise of the network.
CHARLOTTE, N.C. — The Republican Party’s 2012 platform is one of the most conservative in modern history, with policy positions that even GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney won’t endorse. Itendorses for a constitutional ban on abortion access, comes out squarely against same-sex marriage rights and calls on the District of Columbia to loosen its gun laws.
The Republican platform has not always been so extreme. It has consistently touted smaller government, lower taxes and the benefits of private enterprise.
But the GOP’s past policy positions on issues like labor, women’s rights and environmental protection sound more like planks that today’s Democrats would have in their official platform, showing how the Republican Party has shifted more and more to the right since World War II.
LABOR
Labor unions are a top target of Republican disdain these days, with Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker (R) elevated to conservative hero status after taking on public employee unions’ collective bargaining rights in his state last year.
The 2012 Republican Party platform shows little love for the labor community, railing against “concentrating power in the Washington offices of union elites” and objecting to labor cornerstones like the Davis Bacon Act and the ability of unions to automatically collect dues from workers’ paychecks.
Compare that position to the one held by the Republican Party in 1956: “The protection of the right of workers to organize into unions and to bargain collectively is the firm and permanent policy of the Eisenhower Administration.”
In 1960, the GOP platform expressed the belief that the interests of labor and management were best reconciled in a “climate of free collective bargaining.” Republicans also boasted of achieving “[u]pward revision in amount and extended coverage of the minimum wage to several million more workers” and “[s]trengthening the unemployment insurance system and extension of its benefits.”
These days, some Republican candidates struggle to name the federal minimum wage, and nearly all oppose increasing it. Top GOP officials also decry efforts to extend unemployment benefits, even though millions of Americans remain jobless.
WOMEN’S RIGHTS
Essentially the only mention of women’s rights in the 2012 GOP platform pertains to reproductive rights. There’s a whole section on “The Sanctity and Dignity of Human Life” that expresses the belief that women should not have access to abortion under any circumstances, even in cases of rape and incest.
Abortion first appeared in the Republican Party platform in 1976 — and the language, at that time, simply acknowledged that there was a debate within the party on the issue.
“The question of abortion is one of the most difficult and controversial of our time,” read the platform. “It is undoubtedly a moral and personal issue but it also involves complex questions relating to medical science and criminal justice. There are those in our Party who favor complete support for the Supreme Court decision which permits abortion on demand. There are others who share sincere convictions that the Supreme Court’s decision must be changed by a constitutional amendment prohibiting all abortions. Others have yet to take a position, or they have assumed a stance somewhere in between polar positions.”
The party soon shifted further to the right on the issue, and the language in the current platform is similar to what was inserted in 2004 and 2008.
In 1976, the party boasted of its commitment to the amendment, stating, “The Republican Party reaffirms its support for ratification of the Equal Rights Amendment. Our Party was the first national party to endorse the E.R.A. in 1940. We continue to believe its ratification is essential to insure equal rights for all Americans.”
But in 1980, the GOP dialed back its support.
“We acknowledge the legitimate efforts of those who support or oppose ratification of the Equal Rights Amendment. We reaffirm our Party’s historic commitment to equal rights and equality for women,” read the platform.
CIVIL RIGHTS
Little is said about civil rights in the 2012 GOP platform, with the phrase appearing just three times. There’s a section on stopping undocumented immigration and a reiteration of the belief that English should be the official language of the United States.
In the 1950s and 1960s, during some of the nation’s heady civil rights battles, the Republican Party devoted significantly more space to the issue, pledging theelimination of lynching and poll taxes in 1952.
“The Republican Party will not mislead, exploit or attempt to confuse minority groups for political purposes. All American citizens are entitled to full, impartial enforcement of Federal laws relating to their civil rights,” read the platform that year.
While some Republicans at the state and local level are now working to discourage multiculturalism, at one time, the Republican Party’s official position was to embrace it.
“While working to eradicate discriminatory practices, every citizen should be encouraged to take pride in and foster the cultural heritage that has been passed on from previous generations,” read the 1976 platform. “Almost every American traces ancestry from another country; this cultural diversity gives strength to our national heritage.”
The platform also said that there should be efforts to help Spanish-speaking individuals become fluent in English — “while maintaining their own language and cultural heritage.”
“Hispanic-Americans must not be treated as second-class citizens in schools, employment or any other aspect of life just because English is not their first language,” stated the platform. “Hispanic-Americans truly believe that individual integrity must be paramount; what they want most from government and politics is the opportunity to participate fully. The Republican Party has and always will offer this opportunity.”
CULTURE
In the 1970s, Republicans considered arts and culture programs national treasures worthy of taxpayer support.
The 1972 platform said the Arts Endowment “encouraged the creativity of individual artists and writers” and the Humanities Endowment was “fostering improved teaching and scholarship in history, literature, philosophy and ethics.”
In 1976, the party again pledged funding for the two institutions, as well as for public broadcasting.
This upward trend in funding for the National Arts and Humanities Endowments “deserves to continue,” read the platform, which added, “We favor continued federal assistance to public broadcasting which provides us with creative educational and cultural alternatives. We recognize that public broadcasting is supported mainly through private sector contributions and commend this policy as the best insurance against political interference.”
In contrast, as soon as Republicans won a strong majority of seats in the House of Representatives in 2010, the party went about trying to defund NPR. Romney has also said he would like to get rid of federal funding for the National Endowment for the Arts and the National Endowment for the Humanities.
WASHINGTON — House Republicans Tuesday unveiled legislation to get rid of AmeriCorps, the national service program, and cut off federal funding for National Public Radio, public television and Planned Parenthood.
The moves would come in a controversial spending bill that pays for labor, health and education programs for the budget year beginning Oct. 1.
The measure is dead on arrival with Democrats but contains many provisions to please tea party conservatives.
“This bill is an extremely partisan proposal, stands little chance of even being brought up on the House floor, and will rightly be disregarded by both the Senate and the president,” said Rep. Norm Dicks of Washington, top Democrat on the Appropriations Committee.
The cuts to community service programs, funded at $1 billion this year, would slash such programs by 74 percent on the path to eliminating them entirely, save for a program for senior citizens. National Public Radio and the Public Broadcasting Service are familiar targets, too, but have been rejected before. NPR is seen as left-leaning while Republicans say PBS could get along just fine without taxpayer help.
But to find the $6.3 billion in cuts across the measure, Republicans went well beyond simply slashing Democratic initiatives. Funding of $10.7 billion to administer the Social Security program, for instance, would be cut $1.1 billion below President Barack Obama’s request, cutting funding for computers upgrades, new hires and “program integrity” money designed to find mistakes and combat fraud. Medicare and the Medicaid health program for the poor and disabled would absorb an even larger cut to operating funds.
The legislation would, however, maintain heating subsidies for the poor at $3.4 billion and Title I school funding at $15 billion and give a slight boost to special education for the disabled. Head Start would get a small increase and grants for local community action groups that serve the elderly and the poor would be maintained at the current budget of $712 million.
h/t: HuffPost Politics
Liberty’s Kids (09.18.2002): #13 “The First Fourth of July” (1/2) (by LibertysKidsTV)
Miss this show greatly.
