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Related: About this forumFox's Shep Smith has perfect response to Pope Francis's conservative critics
http://www.vox.com/2015/9/24/9387833/shep-smith-pope-francis
Nailed it!
oldandhappy
(6,719 posts)longship
(40,416 posts)He often plays the right card.
SusanaMontana41
(3,233 posts)Shep's a good guy.
PatSeg
(47,419 posts)I am amazed that he can survive over at Fox.
I'm so glad he said the things I was thinking - the issues the Pope talks about are NOT political, but they are Christian, at least according to the New Testament.
tecelote
(5,122 posts)Religion has nothing to do with it except for freedom to practice the religion of your choice.
1. Caring for the marginalized and the poor
2. Advancing economic opportunity for all
3. Serving as good stewards of the environment
4. Protecting religious minorities and promoting religious freedom globally
5. Welcoming and integrating immigrants and refugees globally
I would add the old favorite...
6. Promoting world peace
But, that's too political. War is no longer immoral, it's easily justified and a huge profit center.
Shep and any rational person should see these as universal truths whether they're religious or not.
I agree, it's hard to believe he can say this and keep his job at Fox.
It is really about morality, which does not require religion, which often IS political.
As for war, if "peace" was more profitable, politicians would be promoting it.
FairWinds
(1,717 posts)the latter is a full-time weasel.
Bucky
(53,998 posts)[font size="4"]Pope Franciss fact-free flamboyance[/font]
[font size="1"]by George F. Will | Opinion writer | September 18, 2015[/font]
Pope Francis embodies sanctity but comes trailing clouds of sanctimony. With a converts indiscriminate zeal, he embraces ideas impeccably fashionable, demonstrably false and deeply reactionary. They would devastate the poor on whose behalf he purports to speak if his policy prescriptions were not as implausible as his social diagnoses are shrill.
Supporters of Francis have bought newspaper and broadcast advertisements to disseminate some of his woolly sentiments that have the intellectual tone of fortune cookies. One example: People occasionally forgive, but nature never does. The Vaticans majesty does not disguise the vacuity of this. Is Francis intimating that environmental damage is irreversible? He neglects what technology has accomplished regarding Londons air (see Page 1 of Dickenss Bleak House) and other matters.
And the Earth is becoming an immense pile of filth? Hyperbole is a predictable precursor of yet another U.N. Climate Change Conference the 21st since 1995. Fortunately, rhetorical exhibitionism increases as its effectiveness diminishes. In his June encyclical and elsewhere, Francis lectures about our responsibilities, but neglects the duty to be as intelligent as one can be. This man who says the Church does not presume to settle scientific questions proceeds as though everything about which he declaims is settled, from imperiled plankton to air conditioning being among humanitys harmful habits. The church that thought it was settled science that Galileo was heretical should be attentive to all evidence.
Francis deplores compulsive consumerism, a sin to which the 1.3 billion persons without even electricity can only aspire. He leaves the Vatican to jet around praising subsistence farming, a romance best enjoyed from 30,000 feet above the realities that such farmers yearn to escape.
The saint who is Franciss namesake supposedly lived in sweet harmony with nature. For most of mankind, however, nature has been, and remains, scarcity, disease and natural note the adjective disasters. Our flourishing requires affordable, abundant energy for the production of everything from food to pharmaceuticals. Poverty has probably decreased more in the past two centuries than in the preceding three millennia because of industrialization powered by fossil fuels. Only economic growth has ever produced broad amelioration of poverty, and since growth began in the late 18th century, it has depended on such fuels.
Matt Ridley, author of The Rational Optimist, notes that coal supplanting wood fuel reversed deforestation, and that fertilizer manufactured with gas halved the amount of land needed to produce a given amount of food. The capitalist commerce that Francis disdains is the reason the portion of the planets population living in absolute poverty ($1.25 a day) declined from 53 percent to 17 percent in three decades after 1981. Even in low-income countries, writes economist Indur Goklany, life expectancy increased from between 25 to 30 years in 1900 to 62 years today. Sixty-three percent of fibers are synthetic and derived from fossil fuels; of the rest, 79 percent come from cotton, which requires synthetic fertilizers and pesticides. Synthetic fertilizers and pesticides derived from fossil fuels, he says, are responsible for at least 60 percent of todays global food supply. Without fossil fuels, he says, global cropland would have to increase at least 150 percent equal to the combined land areas of South America and the European Union to meet current food demands.
Francis grew up around the rancid political culture of Peronist populism, the sterile redistributionism that has reduced his Argentina from the worlds 14th highest per-capita gross domestic product in 1900 to 63rd today. Franciss agenda for the planet global regulatory norms would globalize Argentinas downward mobility.
As the world spurns his churchs teachings about abortion, contraception, divorce, same-sex marriage and other matters, Francis jauntily makes his church congruent with the secular religion of sustainability. Because this is hostile to growth, it fits Franciss seeming sympathy for medieval stasis, when his church ruled the roost, economic growth was essentially nonexistent and life expectancy was around 30.
Franciss fact-free flamboyance reduces him to a shepherd whose selectively reverent flock, genuflecting only at green altars, is tiny relative to the publicity it receives from media otherwise disdainful of his church. Secular people with anti-Catholic agendas drain his prestige, a dwindling asset, into promotion of policies inimical to the most vulnerable people and unrelated to what once was the papacys very different salvific mission.
He stands against modernity, rationality, science and, ultimately, the spontaneous creativity of open societies in which people and their desires are not problems but precious resources. Americans cannot simultaneously honor him and celebrate their nations premises.
kenfrequed
(7,865 posts)Seriously, he sputters and equivocates and bullshits constantly. He should go back to writing about baseball.
wilt the stilt
(4,528 posts)a total bore
Bernardo de La Paz
(49,001 posts)sulphurdunn
(6,891 posts)how many fallacies can one commit in just a few paragraphs? 'Francis's Fact Free Flamboyance' exists only in the sheer pomposity of Will's alliterative posturing. It would be one thing if rightist preppy propagandists like Will ever defended their positions with factual evidence, but they rarely do. It just sounds that way.They prefer hyperbolic falsehood aimed at simpletons who fancy themselves intellectual.
mucifer
(23,539 posts)Bucky
(53,998 posts)If I had a more Manichean mindset, I'd start cobbling up some conspiracy theories right about now.
LiberalLovinLug
(14,173 posts)Pope Benedict with the King Joffre Game of Thrones dipped-in-gold throne compared to the modest white large chair for Pope Francis.
DhhD
(4,695 posts)This was the only place that Gold was used. Adornment in Gold represents God. Silver-Jesus. Iron represents Man. In the New Testament, Iron and Bronze, represent the state of Man in the end times. Colors are representative also.
http://www.templesecrets.info/
There is variety in the write ups. Please feel free to research this.
http://www.jesuits.org/index
Pope Francis is a Jesuit-Society of Jesus. Jesus was born to Mary, a Levite, descendant of Aaron, the brother of Moses.
The Wizard
(12,545 posts)unless he's under oath. Even then, normal people don't believe him.
dorkzilla
(5,141 posts)Well done, Shep! Never thought Id say that!.
narnian60
(3,510 posts)hamsterjill
(15,220 posts)Well done. I loved the five items, and the "in the mirror" comment.
nightscanner59
(802 posts)Albeit I'm certain "fair and balanced" Fox will have about 120 dissenting "opinions" to balance Shep's reasonable points.
rusty quoin
(6,133 posts)Old Crow
(2,212 posts)It is revealing, isn't it, that the Republican right wing are having a fit that the Pope is preaching the message, "Do unto others as you would have others do unto you"?
The Golden Rule is now political because it's based on an egalitarian frame of mind that American conservatives despise.
It's not just Socialist its Biblical. And likely a tenant of every one of the world's great religions.
dhill926
(16,337 posts)maybe there's a spot at MSNBC for him...
Bucky
(53,998 posts)Sorry, Comrade, but that's a slippery slope that leads straight down to healthcare for all and other unBiblical abominations.
ErikJ
(6,335 posts)that Jesus condemned.
JDPriestly
(57,936 posts)CincyDem
(6,355 posts)...with opinions like this at Faux Snooze, it's got to be on the street cuz his days are numbered there, that's for sure.
totodeinhere
(13,058 posts)Most of all Fox News wants ratings and Shep's show routinely beats CNN and MSNBC. He is not going anywhere.
world wide wally
(21,742 posts)Savage spewing hate directed at the Pope like none I have heard before. (except for maybe Mark Levine talking about Obama).
These people, I'm afraid, are beyond hope in any way
. and i mean just as human beings!
I have a newfound respect for Shephard Smith right now.
(No, I am not Catholic)
Leith
(7,809 posts)On Fox Propaganda Channel?! He isn't going to last much longer.
Shep is the only one there whose hand I would shake. As for the rest of them, my reaction would include a watery substance emitted from my mouth towards their faces.
Elmer S. E. Dump
(5,751 posts)He seems like the antithesis of Fox "News" most of the time.
arely staircase
(12,482 posts)He is pretty much the only good guy at Fox. Ironically he is or was the anchor of their traditional evening news broadcast,(I don't watch FN unless I have to or I pause there briefly while channel surfing.)
As someone mentioned above, Megan Kelley has had good moments - her humiliation of Karl Rove on election night in 2012 was one of the most awesome things ever.
ion_theory
(235 posts)SCantiGOP
(13,869 posts)That made sense. Has Trump pushed FOX over the edge and made them reassess their knee-jerk fascism?
mike dub
(541 posts)Very well said, Shep Smith!
AllFieldsRequired
(489 posts)Ed Suspicious
(8,879 posts)montana_hazeleyes
(3,424 posts)IHateTheGOP
(1,059 posts)Beowulf42
(204 posts)Every once in awhile a small spark in the wilderness comes to life and shocks me. People keep telling me that things are changing (not nearly fast enough for me) and just maybe this is another sign in the long trek to making the US and the world a better place. We can only HOPE.
LiberalLovinLug
(14,173 posts)into believing the horse shit they spew. It makes it easier. Once in the odd while, they get lazy and go off script. They allow that horrible thing called "empathy" to take hold if they are not careful. Shep can be prone to these mental lapses. I have been disgusted by clips of Shep shoveling it with the worst of them and making snide comments based on unsubstantiated rumor and manufactured "scandal" plenty himself enough not wipe the slate clean for his one or two times he has a moment of clarity.
But what makes this a BIG sin for the Fox executives was to include the "and the President" when talking about the Popes altruistic views.
bucolic_frolic
(43,146 posts)Did he just say the 99% of Faux News that doesn't agree with those principles
are not 'clear-thinking'?
I think he did.
mountain grammy
(26,620 posts)Joe Chi Minh
(15,229 posts)Christian name than 'Shepard', could you?
PS: Just don't use a dog-whistle in his vicinity! He looks just too urbane to picture him howling at the moon, but just in case. No. As someone said, he seems that rarest of birds in the MSM - a rational human being.