Free Republic

Large crowds packed Pacifica's Linda Mar Beach Saturday for the World Dog Surfing Championships. People watched man's best friend ride some waves. Fans of the event said the dogs look silly, but they were also very impressive. "I like the gathering. It is a big event. A lot of people from all over come and join us. And then, seeing the dogs actually surf is really a funny thing to watch. And they're really good surfers," said Patrick Sayres of Pacifica. The event at the beach also had mobile pet adoptions, a dog costume contest and "yappy hour" for drinks....

The Taco Bell Cantina in Pacifica is widely known as the most beautiful Taco Bell in the Bay Area, if not the world. But despite its breathtaking beachside location and Taco Bell’s penchant for marrying people, no one has hosted their wedding reception there. Until now. Analicia Garcia and Kyle Howser, high school sweethearts from Sacramento, wanted to keep their wedding low-key and fun. “When we got engaged, I think we both knew we didn't want to do a big, huge traditional wedding,” said Garcia. “... I saw on TikTok that the Las Vegas Taco Bell Cantina does weddings. How...

The Dodge Grand Caravan’s journey is finally ending this spring. The minivan is scheduled to end production on May 22, the automaker has confirmed. The Caravan was introduced alongside the Plymouth Voyager in 1984 as a “garageable” van that helped kick off the minivan craze that continued through the 1990s, until family car buyers started making the shift to SUVs. The stretched Grand Caravan was added to the lineup in 1987 and eventually became the only version offered. The Caravan lived through five generations, with the current one dating back to 2008. U.S. sales topped 300,000 in 1996 and 1997,...

For decades, WBAI-FM has remained a proudly scrappy alternative in New York’s radio market, a bastion of left-wing political commentary and community voices rarely heard elsewhere on the dial. That identity was cast into doubt on Monday... ~snip. click on link.

The Pacifica Foundation, a Berkeley-based community radio network that includes the progressive radio station KPFA, is in financial crisis because of mounting debt — and is now teetering on the edge of bankruptcy. Pacifica, a nonprofit founded in 1946 by conscientious objectors from World War II, is the mother of America’s alternative radio, pioneering decades of left-leaning public affairs programs and community-based music.

Veteran broadcasters accuse the board of promoting bizarre conspiracy theories as network puts pressure on staff to reduce their hours and pay Feuding and ideological extremism have driven some of the US’s flagship leftwing radio stations to the brink of collapse, according to two veteran broadcasters. ...the country’s oldest public radio network, ... Masters said a station that once competed with National Public Radio affiliates had frittered away its credibility with ultra-leftwing rants – “discount versions of Radio Havana” – plus marketing of quack medical remedies such as curing cancer with baking soda and dietary supplements which supposedly cure Aids;...

After some haggling over which jurisdiction was responsible for two dead whales washed up in Pacifica, crews on Tuesday began ripping up mammal flesh and burying the weighty beasts after neighbors complained of their rotting stench. An excavator dug into the whale flesh, tearing skin and muscle, before getting ready to sink the pieces of blubber and bone deep into the sand. Pacifica's Interim Chief of Police Dan Steidle said that after more than a month of discussion, it's been determined that the area where the whales washed up on April 14 and May 5 belong to the San Francisco...

Five-and-a-half years after being convicted of providing material support for terrorism, terror lawyer Lynne Stewart finally received a sentence commensurate with her crime. She was resentenced last week to 10 years. But if George Soros had his way, she would be free today. Stewart made a career out of defending street criminals and terrorists, including Sammy "The Bull" Gravano (pleaded guilty), Weather Underground terrorist David J. Gilbert (convicted), and Larry Davis (acquitted of wounding six policemen and killing several others in 1986, only to be convicted of a later murder and killed in prison). It should have come as...

Summer Reese, the fired executive director of Pacifica Radio, says she’s still not leaving the left-leaning organization’s California HQ in Berkeley, and is now sporting an inflatable air mattress at her office.... Reese, 40, was fired by the non-profit foundation’s board in an 11-7 vote on 3/13 and was locked out of the headquarters. However, after cutting the padlock to get into the building, Reese has hunkered down for nine days (as of 3/27) with a team of supporters. Reese and 12 of her compatriots — including Reese’s mother, a longtime anti-war and civil rights activist — refused to let...

The financial stranglehold on Pacifica is taking down Free Speech Radio News, a progressive news show that relied on the five-station network for the bulk of its operating costs. The show, airing weekdays on 100 stations, will close production Sept. 27 and lay off its staff, a core of part-timers and an international network of nearly 100 stringers. Owed nearly $200,000 in back payments by the California-based Pacifica Foundation, FSRN’s board of directors decided Sept. 13 to shutter the program, holding out hope that FSRN could be revived under a different production model. “Our fortunes have always been closely linked...

... In a tearful on-air announcement on Friday, Summer Reese, the interim executive director of the Pacifica Foundation, which owns WBAI, said that after talks with SAG-Aftra, the union that represents broadcasting talent, “we will be laying off virtually everyone whose voice you recognize on the air,” effective Monday.

Summer Reese, interim executive director of the Pacifica Radio Network, choked up as she announced this afternoon that legendary New York radio station WBAI was laying off its entire news department, and the majority of on-air talent, effective Monday. WBAI, the station where Pacifica's flagship program, Democracy NOW!, was founded, has broadcast on 99.5 since 1960. Andrew Phillips, former general manager of KPFA, Pacifica's Berkeley, California, station, has been appointed interim program director. The station's general manager, Berthold Reimers, and interim development director, Andrea Katz, will also stay on board. "Today I have concluded union negotiations with SAG-AFTRA, regarding proposed...

...The announcement comes a day after word that the Corporation for Public Broadcasting is withholding funding to Pacifica's five stations for insufficient accounting practices, misreported revenues and failure to comply with CPB rules on open meetings and financial transparency

"I am very upset about the changes. I think we need to boycott." "I for one will not give more money until I hear some answers...some real answers about the station." "They're not the people's station." Those were some of the on-air words of WPFW listeners this morning...Word has already spread about impending programming changes to the 35-year-old "jazz and justice" station. Interim Programing Director Bobby Hill announced on the WPFW Facebook page yesterday that the station will begin a new programming schedule on Dec. 3—one that includes more syndicated talk programs. While some of the new programs will be...

Two American hikers who were detained in Iran have been sentenced to eight years in prison on charges of "illegal entry" and "espionage," the state TV website says.

Enables of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, CPB are coming out of the woodwork to defend the taxpayer largess that they have been feeding from. Most of this centers on NPR and the arguments seem to be that: first they aren’t biased and second defunding CPB will only hurt the rural stations. Seriously. Lost in the noise is that CPB also funds via your tax dollars, other public broadcasting entities such as PRI and Pacifica. Pacifica is the most amusing as they are staunch, avowed communists and hate capitalism and Republicans. They are also very urban. Berkeley, LA, NY, Houston,...

We all know about NPR tote bags given as rewards during pledge week. The tax funded "public radio" station KPFA in Berkeley gives away "Marijuana Growers Guide" by Rosenthal for a $150 pledge. KPFA is part of "Pacifica", the ultra liberal, wackadoo radio network. And yes they are partially tax supported.

Yesterday Amy Goodman reported on Democracy Now!, cable TV’s Marxist forum, that the Columbian Government is sending elite Special Forces Operations troops to Afghanistan to assist the United States and Coalition forces in their “occupation” of that country. The report continues:

"Maverick" John McCain and attack-dog Sarah Palin seem to have staked their entire campaign on the powers of racial revulsion. "Linking Obama to William Ayers and domestic terrorism, Palin exhorted that ‘this is not a man who sees America as you see it and how I see America,'" while McCain "melds xenophobic and Orientalist rhetoric, conjuring up the dark inscrutable treasonous Other when he asks ‘who is the real Barack Obama.'" Together, McCain and Palin "tap into the deepest reservoirs of white racial angst." Cindy McCain has spoken. Shellacked white blond hair bristling with outrage, the beermeister lit into Barack...

The left blogosphere is outraged! Amy Goodman, whose "Democracy now!" website/radio/TV empire inhabits the far reaches of left wing activism, got herself arrested in St. Paul, and the arrest (which you can see on YouTube is being denounced as some for of violent atrocity. Watch the brief video for yourself and see: