The 2017 Fake News Awards
And the award for the least shocking report on the planet goes to…The GOP and President Trump.
Yesterday, Trump and the GOP put together something called the “Highly-Anticipated 2017 Fake News Awards.”
The report was filled with unflattering headlines from the usual suspects. ABC News, The New York Times, CNN, the Washington Post.
Look, those publications are never going to be nice to the President. They are owned and operated by liberals for the most part. Why does this fact seem to escape Trump and the GOP?
You can call them out on their bias all you want, but the truth is it’s not going to make them change, believe me I know.
It’s the American people’s responsibility to use their brains and think about where their news is coming from and to read both sides of every story.
Not to mention a “Fakes News Awards” report coming from the White House makes me a little bit uncomfortable. In their effort to control the narrative on Trump, they are throwing free speech under the bus. Just because an article is negative about the President doesn’t mean it doesn’t deserve to be read or published.
Calling out fake news is what an entertainment show, like this one, does. We call out biased and bad reporting all the time. But Trump and the GOP should really have more important things to do. I would advise Trump to stop worrying about what people think of him and let his actions speak louder than their lies.
California violates first amendment aggressively promoting abortion
Free speech is on trial again at the Supreme Court. This time it’s related to abortion and the stakes could not be higher.
The case is National Institute of Family and Life Advocates vs. Becerra (Becerra is California’s attorney general). It’s about a new California law that requires pro-life pregnancy centers to post signs, in prominent places, to inform women that California offers low-cost, or in some cases free, abortions. The signs must include a phone number for abortion clinics.
California could do all the abortion clinic advertising it wants of course, but it is forcing those who are firmly against abortion to promote the abortion industry. Not only is California clearly violating free speech, it is aggressively endorsing the murder of unborn children over efforts to protect them. What have we become?
It’s kind of like forcing marriage counselors to post advertisements for hitmen, you know, that way their clients always have the option of just having their spouse murdered instead of working on the marriage.
If you crack open this legal door, imagine all the other insane positions that government could force us to start endorsing. This is the Fairness Doctrine on steroids. Imagine mandatory signs inside your church promoting atheism, except that atheist gatherings would not be required to promote your religion.
Two hundred twenty-six years after passage of the First Amendment, you’d think our freedom of speech would be secure. But apparently, the Freedom of Speech part still isn’t clear to the state of California and the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. They’re only interested in protecting speech they approve. And not only protecting it, forcing people who disagree with their position to endorse it! It is absolute tyranny.
The people who run these non-profit, pro-life pregnancy centers are humble, loving, caring, genuine, hard-working people. Their mission is helping women and saving lives. They’re unsung heroes on the frontlines of the American holocaust – 21st-century Paulinas – saving people from being murdered.
Apparently, these pro-life pregnancy centers are a little too good at saving lives, because their government is going out of its way to persecute their crazy notion that the baby growing inside you is an actual human life, with inherent value, that deserves protection.
This decision should be a no-brainer for the Supreme Court. Pray that they do the right thing.
Stolen 'NOC' list brings movie plot to real life
A stolen CIA “NOC” list, it’s the plot line in almost every Hollywood spy movie. The good guys have to catch the bad guy before the names and locations of every undercover operative is outed and killed. In the movies, the good guys usually win, but this is real life.
A former CIA officer was arrested on Monday and charged with “unlawfully possessing national defense information.” He was caught red-handed with two notebooks containing the names of CIA assets and the locations of covert facilities in China. He was illegally carrying a NOC list, but he’s suspected of much worse.
The New York Times reported last year that the CIA was losing agents in China at an alarming rate. Since 2010, the Chinese government had all but completely destroyed US spying operations on the mainland. The CIA had a mole, and all the evidence pointed directly at the man arrested this week.
The damage done to the CIA in China was catastrophic, but even worse was the number of lives lost. All in all, he’s responsible for the deaths or imprisonment of twenty American agents. Say what you want about Snowden. He’s definitely a traitor enjoying the protection of Vladimir Putin, but at least he didn’t get anyone killed.
If Doc Brown and Marty McFly traveled here from the year 1985 and looked at the news headlines, they’d see a world that hasn’t really changed all that much. Now granted, the music is a lot worse and the clothes are a lot better, but they’d probably assume the Cold War was still raging.
Despite Cindy Lauper and neon shorts, the world of 1985 was kind of a scary place. Aldrich Ames was a CIA agent selling secrets to the Soviets. Because of him, multiple CIA assets were killed. Korean airlines flight zero zero seven had been shot down just two years prior. Nuclear tensions were at their highest. Both sides looked willing to press the button.
Sounds eerily familiar, doesn’t it? It’s been thirty-three years. Have we learned nothing? Three decades and life is just as cheap now as it was then. The only difference between then and today is that, with our technology, we can betray, kill and threaten each other more efficiently.
The bad guy was eventually caught, but the human toll he inflicted makes this story ultimately a tragedy. Likewise, the redundant cycle we’re in is also a tragedy. How do we break it? Both as individuals and as a nation, we can not navigate the ship following pure self or national interest. Principles and values are our true north. If we don’t make a course correction, we’re in for another three decades of nothing but the same.