The main stream media tries very hard to get the facts correct but every once in while they get it wrong.
LGBTQ rights are NOT a threat to religious liberty – When the Supreme Court and the media portray LGBTQ rights as a threat to religious liberty, it actually hurts the religious liberty of pro-LGBTQ Christians, including churches that celebrate marriage equality and ordain LGBTQ clergy. According to the nonpartisan Public Religion Research Institute, “Vast majorities of most major religious groups support nondiscrimination protections for LGBTQ people.” This includes more than 75% of Catholics of color, white Catholics, white mainline Protestants, Black Protestants, Jewish Americans, Muslims, Unitarian Universalists, Hindus, and Buddhists — and even 61% of white evangelicals. 1
It could have been worse – Listen carefully to many inexperienced reporters say the phrase, “It could have been worse.” This is a terrible thing to say when a disaster hits and kills several people. This phrase must be erased from any reporter’s vocabulary.
A blistering critique of the forces threatening the American intelligence community, beginning with the President of the United States himself, in a time when that community’s work has never been harder or more important. This book by General Michael V. Hayden, The Assault on Intelligence, is a must read.
In the face of a President who lobs accusations without facts, evidence, or logic, truth tellers are under attack. Meanwhile, the world order is teetering on the brink. North Korea is on the verge of having a nuclear weapon that could reach all of the United States, Russians have mastered a new form of information warfare that undercuts democracy, and the role of China in the global community remains unclear. There will always be value to experience and expertise, devotion to facts, humility in the face of complexity, and a respect for ideas, but in this moment they seem more important, and more endangered, than they’ve ever been. American Intelligence–the ultimate truth teller–has a responsibility in a post-truth world beyond merely warning of external dangers, and in The Assault on Intelligence, General Michael Hayden takes up that urgent work with profound passion, insight and authority.
Michael Hayden, former director of the CIA.
It is a sobering vision. The American intelligence community is more at risk than is commonly understood, for every good reason. Civil war or societal collapse is not necessarily imminent or inevitable, but our democracy’s core structures, processes, and attitudes are under great stress. Many of the premises on which we have based our understanding of governance are now challenged, eroded, or simply gone. And we have a President in office who responds to overwhelming evidence from the intelligence community that the Russians are, by all acceptable standards of cyber conflict, in a state of outright war against us, not by leading a strong response, but by shooting the messenger.
There are fundamental changes afoot in the world and in this country. The Assault on Intelligence shows us what they are, reveals how crippled we’ve become in our capacity to address them, and points toward a series of effective responses. Because when we lose our intelligence, literally and figuratively, democracy dies.
Donella Crawford, WXYZ-TV Producer, and Herman McKalpain, Engineering Videographer, take on the roles of homeless in the City of Detroit. Experience what it is like to live on the streets and constantly be worred about food and shelter. Lead-ins and tags with Bill Bonds and Diana Lewis.
“Over my decade with Fox, I long was proud of the association,” Col. Ralph Peters wrote in an email to colleagues. “Now I am ashamed.” [1]
On March 1st, I informed Fox that I would not renew my contract. The purpose of this message to all of you is twofold:
First, I must thank each of you for the cooperation and support you’ve shown me over the years. Those working off-camera, the bookers and producers, don’t often get the recognition you deserve, but I want you to know that I have always appreciated the challenges you face and the skill with which you master them.
Second, I feel compelled to explain why I have to leave. Four decades ago, I took an oath as a newly commissioned officer. I swore to “support and defend the Constitution,” and that oath did not expire when I took off my uniform. Today, I feel that Fox News is assaulting our constitutional order and the rule of law, while fostering corrosive and unjustified paranoia among viewers. Over my decade with Fox, I long was proud of the association. Now I am ashamed.
In my view, Fox has degenerated from providing a legitimate and much-needed outlet for conservative voices to a mere propaganda machine for a destructive and ethically ruinous administration. When prime-time hosts–who have never served our country in any capacity–dismiss facts and empirical reality to launch profoundly dishonest assaults on the FBI, the Justice Department, the courts, the intelligence community (in which I served) and, not least, a model public servant and genuine war hero such as Robert Mueller–all the while scaremongering with lurid warnings of “deep-state” machinations– I cannot be part of the same organization, even at a remove. To me, Fox News is now wittingly harming our system of government for profit.
As a Russia analyst for many years, it also has appalled me that hosts who made their reputations as super-patriots and who, justifiably, savaged President Obama for his duplicitous folly with Putin, now advance Putin’s agenda by making light of Russian penetration of our elections and the Trump campaign. Despite increasingly pathetic denials, it turns out that the “nothing-burger” has been covered with Russian dressing all along. And by the way: As an intelligence professional, I can tell you that the Steele dossier rings true–that’s how the Russians do things.. The result is that we have an American president who is terrified of his counterpart in Moscow.
I do not apply the above criticisms in full to Fox Business, where numerous hosts retain a respect for facts and maintain a measure of integrity (nor is every host at Fox News a propaganda mouthpiece–some have shown courage). I have enjoyed and valued my relationship with Fox Business, and I will miss a number of hosts and staff members. You’re the grown-ups.
Also, I deeply respect the hard-news reporters at Fox, who continue to do their best as talented professionals in a poisoned environment. These are some of the best men and women in the business..
So, to all of you: Thanks, and, as our president’s favorite world leader would say, “Das vidanya.”
References:
Buzzfeed, March 20, 2018, Tom Namako – An “Ashamed” Fox News Commentator Just Quit The “Propaganda Machine”
Judgment at Appomattox: A Novel (The Battle Hymn Cycle)
Judgment at Appomattox – by Ralph Peters – Available from Amazon.com
The ferocious final weeks of the Civil War come alive in Judgment at Appomattox, the final novel of New York Times bestselling author Ralph Peters’s breathtaking, Boyd Award-winning series
A great war nears its end. Robert E. Lee makes a desperate, dramatic gamble. It fails. Ulysses S. Grant moves. Veteran armies clash around Petersburg, Virginia, as Grant seeks to surround Lee and Lee makes a skillful withdrawal in the night. Richmond falls.
Each day brings new combat and more casualties, as Lee’s exhausted, hungry troops race to preserve the Confederacy. But Grant does not intend to let Lee escape…
In one of the most thrilling episodes in American history, heroes North and South, John Brown Gordon and Phillip Sheridan, James Longstreet and Francis Channing Barlow, battle each other across southern Virginia as the armies converge on a sleepy country court house.
Written with the literary flair and historical accuracy readers expect from Ralph Peters, Judgment at Appomattox takes us through the Civil War’s last grim interludes of combat as flags fall and hearts break. Capping the author’s acclaimed five-novel cycle on the war in the East, this “dramatized history” pays homage to all the soldiers who fought, from an Irish-immigrant private wearing gray, to the “boy generals” who mastered modern war. This is a grand climax to a great, prize-winning series that honors―and reveals―America’s past.
