Advice for liberals -- let's support the news!

Pres. Trump's cult of personality thrives on media and liberal opposition. Liberals should be "wise as serpents, innocent as doves" in response, to quote Jesus. The clever tweets and opinion pieces help to relieve the tension, but they don't address the real impact Pres. Trump's policies will have on real people. Americans and Nevadans need better news, not just more shouting. Yes, action against what is wrong is needed, but so are facts on the ground. If liberals stick to their guns, not just with demonstrations but also with research and evidence to back up their claims, they will win the day and elect a Democratic Congress in 2018. It worked for Republicans in 2010 -- "grass-roots" or "astro-turfed" action coupled with conservative think-tanks created the Tea Party phenomenon, which Pres. Trump embraced. It can work for liberals now.

For this reason, I invite all my Nevada friends to check out and support two news sites here in Nevada that have responded to Pres. Trump's "alternative facts" with real reporting. They both have a more liberal slant than some news outlets, but this structural bias, which they try to avoid, is different than the overt, "info-tainment" slant of Rupert Murdoch and Stephen Bannon's creations. The first is KNPR and the other is the Nevada Independent. I trust both sites to give more impactful news coverage than anything you'll see on the mainstream media, and they are undoubtedly more fact-based than any tweet storm the Donald can dream up.

Other independent news sites will undoubtedly crop up on the national scene, but two liberal news sites are Huffington Post and Politico. A fact-checker I like is Politifact.com. The "grey lady," the New York Times, also has a valuable website, as does the Washington Post. Both sites have paywalls, but it is worth it to me to subscribe to these news sources, as they try to be balanced in their coverage and let the public officials "hang themselves" with their own comments.

As far as liberal think-tanks go, they like to maintain their independence, but I recommend the Pew Research Center for in-depth look at polls and public opinion. Check out the Pew Research Center's fact sheet on refugees, for example, for some perspective on our current situation.

So my advice to liberals is, invest in journalism!