On not being able to listen to KPFA in the mornings anymore

I'm so sickened by the current program that replaced Morning Mix that I can't listen to KPFA at all in the mornings anymore lest I hear that insufferable voice droning on with yet another appeal to authority, DC guests, nothing local. A 5 hour LSB meeting over the weekend gets nowhere.

Given the current situation, even Michael Krasney's Forum is almost endearing. He's at least local, and that's what's endearing at the moment. Today they were talking about a situation in Marin where that county is being mandated to create more housing because of being categorized as urban . . . I only heard about 15 min of it, so was not totally clear on the topic, but got the gist -- the heated positions on all sides, the snobbish component of Marin and the progressive and welcoming component, and the legislator who has never lived there but who has created a new bill to influence the situation. There is a richness of these many voices being heard together, a complexity, a topic that a whole community is arguing about, and we know that place.

But this is what local programming is. Yesterday we were in Marin, seeking out the one other grocery store besides Rainbow that purportedly carried "Happy Camper" gluten-free bread (an incredible recent find at Rainbow), and discovered a huge amazing resource of gluten free food, despite insanely high prices for most average things. And they didn't have the bread after all, but it was a reason to go to Marin. The white haired couple I noticed at the cafe was tan and in bike outfits (in Pinole this morning the white-haired couple at Peets are pair-shaped and wearing pastel colors, ordering lattes). We could never afford to live there, much less regularly shop at that perfect and unique solar powered grocery store, but it's nice to go for an afternoon and look at things.

That's the difference. We are losing KPFA. Even Letters and Politics is able to be local when necessary or when its needed, like when Mitch covered Occupy Oakland because he was there, rolling past the open door at Oakland City Hall, hosting both sides of the Hedges debate. There is richness. But that type of nuanced reporting and discussion that adds something to our lives is lost with the loss of the Morning Mix, replaced by life-size cardboard cut-outs of hosts, professional and slick, with piped in voices, talking about fake progressive issues, the fake progressives who don't really want change, but mainly want to feel okay with themselves as they vote for Democrats in the CA assembly and senate, people who then go on to authorize bills like the NDAA or stay silent on votes on fracking. The fake progressives brush it off with, "But the Republican would have been so much worse!" or "He has no choice on that vote," and "Why would I vote for someone who can't win?"

KPFA then becomes yet another tool for the Democrat machine in California, along with the Chronicle and the TV news stations, even the SF Bay Guardian is now lost to the corral of fake progressive Democrats, going in circles. The East Bay Express continues to speak openly sometimes, against the tide from time to time. And real progressives in Richmond toil on in silence from local media, breaking the barriers, threatening Wall St., creating cooperatives . . . all the things the fake progressive Democrats can't be bothered with. Might as well have the Democrat agenda be transparent, as it is on KQED, than a station that's pretending to be something else, while actually steering everyone back to the Democrat who is privatizing the CA prisons.