How will the latest shutdown showdown end? The media always use the threat of shutdowns to paint Republicans as heartless budget slashers, and that's especially fun for them at Christmas time. They paint federal employees as too broke to buy a Christmas tree.  Paul Teller, executive vice president of the group Advancing American Freedom talks about hopes for restricting federal spending in 2025 and beyond. AAF, founded by former vice president Mike Pence, has called for ending federal benefit programs tasked with helping illegal immigrants, prohibiting federal funding for programs that push diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) initiatives and clawing back unspent COVID-19 money. They also want to halt hundreds of billions of dollars in student debt from being canceled via programs started by Biden’s Education Department, and get non-defense spending back to pre-COVID levels. In our "Best Notable Quotables of 1996," we had several amazing quotes underlining how the media exploit shutdown battles:  "Monuments and national parks are shut. So are museums. A long-awaited rare exhibit of the Dutch painter Vermeer at the National Gallery, eight years in the making, is closed. And the shutdown now has a human face. Joe Skattleberry and his wife Lisa both work for the government. Both have been furloughed. They can't afford a Christmas tree." -- ABC reporter Jack Smith, December 22, 1995 World News Tonight, the fifth day of the federal government shutdown. "In April, terrorists tried to kill them. Today politicians stopped their paychecks. In Oklahoma City's Social Security office, they're being ordered to work for nothing." -- Beginning of CBS reporter Scott Pelley's January 2 Evening News story on some federal workers being ordered to work during the shutdown. Now obviously, someone who has yet to miss a paycheck shouldn't be broke, and nobody was ordered to "work for nothing." They're always going to get paid.  Here we go again. The TV anchors and reporters parachute into a budget battle, and they have spent the year pretty much ignoring the mundane matter of Congress passing spending bills. The Senate has spent the year NOT passing any spending bills.  I think they presume this entire subject bores their viewers unless they can spotlight some human crisis. As much as the media love to pose about the partisan fray and tsk-tsk the politicians for failing to arrive at a solution, they are not part of the solution. They are part of the problem. They don't care about the deficit or the national debt, unless there is Republican-shaming to be done. The Democrats are emboldened to careen toward a shutdown because they know the Democrat media will do their messaging. The blackmail machine kicks into gear, with the whole bureaucrats-can’t-afford-a-Christmas-tree garbage. Enjoy the podcast below, or wherever you listen to podcasts.