not what are. the headlines here on our two international more divisions emerge in the us media this time over a video of a c.n.n. reporter released by the white house some accuse the journalist. others say the material has been doctored. white women in texas face accusations of betraying feminist values after a majority cast their midterm votes in favor of the state's republican candidate. i'm very tired of being castigated as some sort of racist simply based on my skin color who are you interest are you representing if you're only as a white woman. other white women then we absolutely have a problem absolutely. and makes

a rare appearance in high level peace talks on the stand in moscow this friday saying it was a success and they are ready to meet again is the only. two groups representatives following the meeting. and find those stories in full and plenty more over on our website i'll be here again with the headlines in an hour's time right now though it is time for the big picture. on our on this week show your voice has never been a louder thanks to social media but can she or noise cause boycotts to backfire we will discuss calmly but first the thousand oaks shooter was an ex marine who served in afghanistan mental health specialists suspected he was suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder it's veterans day weekend i'm home and cook in washington this is the big picture on our. america.

will take care of our great veteran it's like they have never been taken care of before. the us census tells us that there are eighteen plus million military veterans in the usa and the u.s. department of veterans affairs the v.a. tells us that about twelve percent of america's homeless are veterans what's wrong with this picture let says dorothy gask a who served eight years in the united states army she deployed to iraq and when she came home dorothy was a candidate for washington state's third congressional district seat dorothy thank you for your service and welcome. thank you for having me dorothy joins us from

portland and if some good can come out of this sad mass shooting story in california it is more attention to p.t.s.d. and when the story broke dorothy i immediately recalled something you told me when we spoke on the phone the other day when my dad and the other world war two vets marched home there was a parade when vietnam vets came home they were spit upon but coming home veterans of your generation are as you put it being ignored talk about that feeling . that's it's pretty rough to have such a huge experience in our lives to come home and people really aren't talking about it these wars have been going on forever it seems like my son's a high school senior and we've been work for his entire life and he's getting to the point where he's actually he's old enough to enlist at this point. to fight in

a war that started before he was born. all he's ever known is that intense wars half a world away bumper stickers here say honor the troops in the war protesters say that we would do so by avoiding these faraway regime change wars so your perspective is instructive your resume tells us that you were trained as an anti-tank missile systems technician but in iraq you fought insurgents who didn't have tanks so you ended up leading combat patrols and managing base security obviously in war improv is inherent but over there dorothy did have the sense that back here the mission wasn't thought through. oh definitely. there just really hasn't been a lot of. thought put into it over this whole period of time in words don't last for seventeen almost eighteen years because we're really putting

a lot into strategy and game since you have come home how has your experience been with the. i've actually found it to be exceptional i mean they've they've saved my life i owed them a lot and i enjoy the the ability to go to the doctor and not have to worry about how much it's going to cost me and to know that they're they understand my issues more than anybody else. and if you ask about her and who use the v.a. the majority of us are really happy with our care and we don't want to we don't want to see that taken away from us despite some of the headlines i've heard the same from other vets that they have no complaints with their health care but all their them health care does for you do for you well they paid for my education and you know how to me not have to rack up huge amounts of debt to go to college and they have and i was able to go to college without having to work which made

that transition a lot easier and they help me secure a home loan back when the market was still low and housing prices were down and so i'm able to live in a home i own and not have to pay a huge huge amount of money that people are paying now for how did your military experience prompt your run for congress. it's it's the fact that we've been at war for my son's entire life that prompted me to run he actually received an email from west point after he did really well on his piece sats and. and then my son asked me well what's west point and i said well it's the army college and he said well they said they'll pay for my college if i go and i said well yeah but you have to serve in the military for four here and they'll send you to war and they just broke my heart because i come from a long line of people who've served in the military my father my grandfather and my

brother and. it broke my heart to not feel proud of the fact that my son was being recruited by west point i had to feel like it scared me more than it felt pride and that's what prompted me to say you know what we need to start talking about this we need to start talking about the fact there we're wasting trillions of dollars on wars that aren't getting us anywhere thank you for being with us tonight and certainly for your service sergeant dorothy guess k. now let's welcome back dr harlan ullman former advisor to the pentagon a vietnam and persian gulf vet now chairman of two private companies and u.p.i. is arnaud de borchgrave distinguished columnist he is the author of anatomy of failure why america loses every war it starts welcome back and thank you for your service oh we'll. veteran state began one hundred years ago as armistice

day and remembered today in europe at the end of world war one it was a celebration of peace correct absolutely on the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month when the armistice ended still these world war one and that was celebrated but it didn't bring peace in our times instead it brought confusion it brought disharmony and it brought world war two and the cold war because the first world war was the war to end all wars for and it certainly one it certainly did not in recent years the veterans administration has been controversial twenty fourteen secretary eric shinseki was forced to resign amid scandal over patient wait times and records manipulation by hospital officials more recently david shulgin was accused of improperly accepting gifts and misrepresenting official travel plans his side of the story was that subordinates some people in the white house were undermining over policy disagreements and ronnie jackson physician to

the president was nominated but then withdrawn after former staffers accused him of creating a hostile work environment excessively drinking on the job and then properly dispensing medication harlan is the v.a.'s mission manageable is it snakebitten or are these fiascos we've just ticked off simply fish rots from the head effect of political appointments i would not say that this was as bad a situation as you have painted i think david chilcot was very very competent in his job the issue is that the veterans administration has an almost impossible assignment of dealing with some eighteen million veterans of who a substantial portion suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder which is probably not curable and it's very much subject to congressional not only oversight but to congressional pork and so dealing with an operation that big in many cases when veterans live far far away really require. as somebody who is not only skilled

politically and in terms of management but who has the authority to make substantial changes and the fundamental problem is that virtually no head of the v.a. had the authority to make the changes that are needed because they would impose on somebody else's. somebody else's interest sure and the knock on dr jackson was an experience none and that was a bad choice of political that was a bad choice so is fix report is fixing the v.a. a matter of money and what about calls to privatized some of the benefits the problem with the v.a. is the problem with government in the united states it is broken. and it's not just fixing the v.a. when you think about our transfer payments in terms of entitlements social security how do we deal with a twenty one trillion dollar debt how do we deal with all these issues. that becomes the issue here and it seems to me that unless or until we are able to do things more rationally and on a commonsense basis the v.a. and other departments of government save the pentagon which is perhaps the most

efficient branch of government believe it or not that we have we're not providing the services that the american people want that's one of the reasons why donald trump was elected it's one of the reasons why you see in the election tuesday the results seem to show that there's a very substantial number of americans who are dissatisfied with government and that's why the republicans gain several seats in the u.s. senate i can imagine because you just said about the pentagon being a more well oiled machine than its reputation there's a definite disconnect there that had to help trump on the stump well but the point here hollande you cannot believe the circumstances under which the pentagon is laboring i spent a lot of time working with the pentagon i have unbelievable admiration for secretary defense jim madison the senior military leadership this is the first year in ten they've got a budget they're operating under all sorts of controls and regulations from congress that make doing anything almost impossible in fact you could say the rules and regulations probably are so bad that they had to be imposed by the k.g.b.

of old because no rational person would have them so the pentagon has labored under these constraints as does the rest of the government and unfortunately how we actually repair those is not going to be easy and it's going to take successive generations of competent leadership to be able to do that this a bit inside washington where you just said but it is a big deal they had all these continuing resolutions all those years it's impossible actually having a budget is going to make it run smoother well if you're doing r.t. for example and you didn't know from day to day what your budget was how are you going to pay for electricity or gas or whatever you couldn't run a and organize. operation in the pentagon multiply that to get to the tune of seven hundred fifty billion dollars that's what they face just recently the nato secretary general called on the taliban to participate in negotiations and our seventeen year afghanistan conflict which he calls pointless and counterproductive your book is anatomy of failure why america loses every war it starts can

we just leave afghanistan we can't just leave but we have to be more sensible and what we do first of all we won the wars that we didn't start world war one celebrating veterans day world war two in the cold war but when we go in to use military force without substantial knowledge and understanding of the situation we fail or we lose in afghanistan we have to reduce our presence there i think we have to go to a counterinsurgency mission to support the government there needs to be some kind of a political negotiation but the taliban are getting stronger and quite frankly there's no need for them to negotiate and so i think we just have to play a delaying game winning by not losing and so i don't need to change our strategy similar to vietnam no vietnam was entirely different vietnam had no compass strategic consequences vietnam was a disaster from the almost from the very very beginning and indeed it was a war in which we should they were become engaged in the first place but as

beethoven who was death said i shall hear in heaven perhaps we will hear in heaven let's hope harlan ullman thank you for coming back here into the big picture and thank you for your service i wish you would say that because service is mandatory in the part of all american law and i serve because i thought it was my responsibility and quite frankly i am offended by you but by saying thank you for your service because that is an american duty to be able to serve one's country i appreciate you saying so and coming up social media enables you to lead a protest but will anyone follow. this is the big picture on our t. america.

would you i'm not in the situation when you are not a government. you'll voice is your voice belongs to you and you said he's close if you force people to accept you seems they wouldn't fix it was a situation we used it with if this is a difference between his diplomacy and in zoo officials you could see. stock buybacks are basically corbridge you know the circling of money totally in a way that doesn't reflect the business they're not in the business of except for the business of fraud and this is rampant throughout the entire s. and p. five hundred it was the day of reckoning comes as it seems to be happening now you can see it air drop of the market down forty or fifty percent you know in a week and people like oh my god what happened well it's going to linger for years because they're engaged in massive open accounted for.

as long as there have been full horns there have been boycotts but social media really amped up the volume and philosophy of protests that target media figures and athletes and the businesses that support them other than momentary noise before some other story do sure blocks out the sun what do boycotts comp. let's s. two of my favorite broadcasters who bring their own camera angles to this topic here in washington we have boom bust host bart chilton his beat is the street wall street and the numbers worldwide and before bart became u.s. trading commissioner he spent fifteen years on capitol hill so politics and he are not strangers and for massachusetts we welcome back michael harrison publisher of

talkers magazine the trade publication of talk media broadcasters and podcasters and if you're in boston or connecticut his will be a familiar voice from w r k o or w t c radio respectively and he hosts the michael harrison interview on podcast one and i tunes gentlemen welcome great to be with you after collin capper nick took i need to ring the national anthem ratings for the national football league games took a head and a j.d. power survey demonstrated the anthem protest as the top reason for n.f.l. to win out twenty six percent that's why they watch fewer games it's a bigger turnoff than the other n.f.l. woes like head injuries and domestic violence stories and game delays in excess of commercials president trump tweeted if a player is stood proudly for our flag and anthem and it is all shown on broadcast maybe ratings would come back otherwise worse yet adweek reports that despite declining ratings and protest controversy the n.f.l. t.v.

ad market is as strong as ever when nike signed caprona cable news channels loop the video of people burning two hundred dollars sneakers the hash tag boycott nike went viral and dick's sporting goods was targeted for a boycott after it announced it would stop selling assault rifles in the wake of the parkland school shooting bart how much if any is this hurt nike and dixon other companies targeted while the easy one is dix which is about flat to they they have it has really helped them a lot it hasn't really hurt them a lot. they would start off the year at about thirty dollars per share and are now at thirty four thirty five dollars around that area and nike on the other hand holland they look they didn't just happen to get up in the morning and say let's do this thing with a quarterback they were thoughtful in it and played i really think to their strength and their stock is up really so far thirty plus percent this year

and they've got about forty million dollars worth of media exposure so they've made a calculated decision here that they will there is tribalism they will upset some people but the people that they want are the people that like them they are bonded to those folks and those folks will feel mission driven and invest as consumers that's the free prize inside all the media coverage and michael speaking of media coverage last time you were with us starbucks was feeling the heat for calling the philadelphia police to inject two african-americans on our restrooms for a customer only policy since disavowed how do you grade starbucks response in that case now that all is said and done. well it all is said and done and it's forgotten so i grade them with an a because they they played it they played their hand very intelligently they they responded instantaneously they did the politically correct thing and it's been forgotten ever since and more often than not these boycotts are

over political issues and part having worked on capitol hill how much weight do senators and congressmen and congresswomen put in phone calls on the lookalike letters and postcards that will be urged to send and now social media well it's a lot but it's a lot if you are somebody that could vote for them so if you're in rhode island and i'm a congressperson from florida i don't care too much about you rhode island people but if you're in my congressional district or if i'm a senator and you're from my state i sure as heck care less so on the phone calls that come in and the identical postcards. but real letters or emails nowadays are very helpful and most importantly a handshake i did a town hall meeting those things are important for people to go you want your mate your voice heard go and look him in the eye and that does make a big difference all and they bring it back to washington the modern day media boycott came of age back in two thousand and twelve when rush limbaugh said this.

what does it say. about the college coed susan fluke. who goes before a congressional committee of essentially says that she must be paid to have sex but does that make her. it makes you a slut right if you're a prostitute she wants to be paid to have sex although we found out for days and days and days after it was sandra fluke michael although many national brand advertisers left and never came back to rush limbaugh after that fluke episode i recently spotted him on an annual forbes list as making north of fifty million dollars a year sean hannity has been targeted several times most recently for defending trump attorney andrew cohen without disclosing his own client relationship and laura ingram caught heat for dissing parkland shooting survivor david hogg yes sean and laura and rush they're all still working have these pop up boycotts shakes and

or emboldened radio and cable talkers. it depends on the show it depends on the size of their following actually there has been collateral damage due to those boycotts to a lot of innocent broadcasters who didn't say anything because there are advertising agencies and there are advertisers that just want to stay away from controversy in general and then when the controversy blows up into headlines then they're definitely staying away and some of them stopped advertising on platforms that those particular hosts appear on across the board so the ones that were heard with the lesser known names the smaller shows that were hurt where as these big time shows have such a choice of advertisers many of whom lot of the controversy and want to advertise on controversial programs that preached acquirers such as the good point that was made earlier about nike and it doesn't hurt them at all so it's a complicated issue and there is collateral damage and there is

a predisposition in the agencies not to advertise for certain big time sponsors that are general sponsors that want to get to everybody on anything that has the label controversy one of the unintended consequences a silver lining if you will michel that i'm sure you've observed is that a lot of that money fled from talk radio to sports radio and sports radio is on fire now isn't it. sports radio is huge and as is all sports media and sports radio also has been known to have its share of controversy sports is a microcosm of the polarity that's happening in our country the political correctness versus those that like to stretch the boundaries a lot of bad boys and not that many bad girls because it's still predominantly a male medium but sports is not in the clear when it comes to being affected by boycotts and by controversy in terms of sports media while i have you both have got

to ask about media consolidation something bart and i talk a lot about on his show boom bust and it's an issue that has changed the talk radio landscape where michael and i work hard it seems like every week there's a new internet video offering recently warner media announced a new way that they're going to slice and dice their h.b.o. and other programs for cord cutters is it possible that these big mergers like a t. and t. and time warner are actually good for the consumer i think in the short term holland the outlook they are as you say they're slicing and dicing they're offering lots of packages but as we see what i have called you know a media merger madness where it's things are getting bigger i am always concerned about what happens when they get too big and too out of control and then they could not care less about the consumers because they don't have any competition if they squash the competition so i think it's ok now but whether or not it's amazon or over or time warner and h.b.o.

i think ultimately consumers and regulators going to keep an eye on these sort of folks to ensure that they're providing the services to their customers you see one of these new budget offerings you think you're locking in the price but it could go up netflix will bump it up a bit bait and switch you know get free six months but then they require a year commitment and then you've got to pay a higher rate and then all the sudden you're getting the entire n.f.l. season when you wonder. if football is really soccer it could really fool people consumers need to be on guard michael of media consolidation from your camera angle unquestionably radio suffered all the consolidation that took place since one nine hundred ninety six deregulation radio's biggest companies are in and out of bankruptcy billions in debt cost cutting is clobbered local programming on those stations yet the remaining independent mom and pop station owners who do deliver a local local local news and sports are all the more conspicuous to listeners and

advertisers and tell us about a new breed of hyper local internet radio that you're involved with there and western massachusetts. where having a lot of fun with our experimental pioneer valley radio online the hyper local radio station that's really a media station because online you can do video you could do pictures you could do news stories but it comes from the perspective of radio it has a radio mentality and an audio orientation at least at this point it's only four years old but there is a growing idea out there that online local hyper local broadcasting hyper local media can really fill the gap that's been left by the consolidators who no longer as you mentioned because of the absolutely smothering debt that they got themselves into during the run up of prices on these outlets that they are not filling a need for a local information and local coverage and local is really where people live we can

all be very interested in what's going on at the trump white house and what's happening in that reality show called washington but the fact is what's going on in your city council meeting or your board of selectmen meeting or the local dogcatcher really affects your life as much if not more than what's going on in that abstract thing called the nation and it really is going to be a very big thing. going forward i'm happy we're a part of it is part of our involvement in the media both locally and of course nationally is there a swat team is there a war room set up corporations is this now something that the big guys anticipate what with social media and these fall little times we live in absolutely i mean it's you know you got to be risk adverse in these things so these companies have the task force swat teams as it were that are ready to deal with the potential fallout for something that happens or something that maybe a c.e.o.

or somebody in a cease suite does all of these things come back to we you know we started with capper nikka nike took from something that maya angelo the famous. poet said and it is not it but it's close to it it's not really about what you say or what you do it's how you make people feel right and if a company can make you feel invested or ostracized that is the most powerful thing they could do with regard to consumers and an enduring impression thank you bart chilton and michael harrison from talkers dot com. and thank you for watching the big picture holland cook back next week meantime question.

both the republicans and democrats claim victory in the wake of the midterm elections but it seems the election settled little if anything now there is a dueling investigation warfare gridlock on steroids is this what the voters voted for. there's no way to build a bridge here in rwanda or why is this terrorist. memories . twenty four years ago this country's soul a real old end of the world. after the genocide there in the old women in rwanda. it fell to women to fix the broken.

into sophie and co i'm simply chair one more turn to a work of theirs in the shadows who are bringing the pieces together is often ignored and officials take the credit but not today i talk to a french businessman who takes noble ory in saving lives and in conflict shown here expert in peril diplomacy of brazzaville foundation today. with international mediation politicians and career diplomats feel to it conflicts of the forces come into play working quietly as private citizens.