FOX Harpy Laura Ingraham Has To Eat Dung....Errrrr... Humble Pie, After Attack On David Hogg

"I don't care how much you hate, I can hate more!"

"The issue for me is how David Hogg, specifically, seems to have triggered all these snowflakes on the Right. I'm fascinated by how they are so activated by the Parkland students and him in particular. I can't quite put my finger on what it is the Right finds so intimidating about these children. I wonder if it's their idealism or when you see young people this motivated, this organized, it's the biggest threat to the standing order." - Anna Marie Cox on 'All In'.

"The bottom-feeders of the right-wing ecosystem, of course, haven't held back at all. Alex Jones has equated the Parkland survivors to Nazis, suggesting they intend to murder gun owners. "Alt-right" sites are spreading fake images of the kids and spreading conspiracy theories, including claiming that the students are actors or that no massacre happened at all. Breitbart has joined in, trying to convince readers that Parkland student David Hogg threw a Nazi salute during last weekend's March for Our Lives. (He didn't.)"  - Amanda Marcotte, salon. com

It was bound to happen. The degenerates on the Right had become more and more brazen about mounting spurious bullshit attacks on the Parkland shooting survivors, especially the articulate and passionate David Hogg. As Janice asked this morning, after reading about the Right's latest collective assaults on Hogg and fellow Stoneman Douglas survivors in a salon.com piece by Amanda Marcotte: "What's wrong with these people? What are they afraid of?"

I answered that this was precisely the issue: The Right's minions were pissing in their panties and terrified of Hogg's command of the language and media prominence,  and they feared his ability to make inroads on gun control.  We also know when certain humans are overcome by fear, their innate weakness causes them to lash out at those viewed as threats.

Such has been the case with FOX News' Laura Ingraham and her "Ingraham Angle" in which she launched one of the most ill advised twitter attacks ever, e.g.

David Hogg Rejected By Four Colleges To Which He Applied and whines about it. (Dinged by UCLA with a 4.1 GPA...totally predictable given acceptance rates.) 

The ill-conceived attack instantly brought retribution including from Hogg's 14 year old sister, Lauren, e.g.

"How low are your ratings @IngrahamAngle that you have to start attacking my brother’s grades to get attention? If you ask me, he is more articulate than you and has far better character. Man, that’s real low even for you. Coming from a 14 year old, please grow up. #NeverAgain https://t.co/CgUVeGRfxP"

David himself then followed up: with a tweet to his nearly 600,000 Twitter  followers identifying Ingraham's sponsors, e.g.

Pick a number 1-12 contact the company next to that #

Top Laura Ingraham Advertisers
1. @sleepnumber
2. @ATT
3. Nutrish
4. @Allstate & @esurance
5. @Bayer
6. @RocketMortgage Mortgage
7. @LibertyMutual
8. @Arbys
9. @TripAdvisor
10. @Nestle
11. @hulu
12. @Wayfair

The tweet was flooded with replies from Hogg’s supporters, some of whom pasted images of their messages to the companies in question,.  Ingraham herself was deluged with responses including many taking her to task for stooping so low. This prompted her to finally yelp 'Uncle!' tweeting:

Any student should be proud of a 4.2 GPA —incl. @DavidHogg111. On reflection, in the spirit of Holy Week, I apologize for any upset or hurt my tweet caused him or any of the brave victims of Parkland. 

Note she acknowledged his 4.2 GPA and also the  record shows he attained a 1270 in the SAT.  Not getting into the college of his choice is no mystery, given as the WSJ noted today (p.A3) there is a crush now with college applications and the Millennials feature the biggest contingent ever- bigger in numbers than the  Boomers.  So,  Hogg will definitely gain entrance to a good school, just perhaps not his first choices.

What has provoked the savage Right wing attacks, including Ingraham's? Well, during a TMZ interview Hogg had simply  expressed disappointment about letters of  rejection from four schools (in the Univ. of Calif. system) he'd applied to, but said it has been difficult to focus on college lately.  The Right, always hyper -macho in a distorted way (which is why they embrace a gun identity),  took this admission as weakness and whining then went full bore mad dog on the kid.  "How dare this punk talk like a kid?!"  Of course, at other times they were whaling. on him as a veteran "bully" fighter who takes no prisoners.

At least one Media Matters spokesman quoted in Marcotte's salon.com piece asserted the "Right felt it had no choice"  other than to attack the Parkland survivors as they were getting way too much media traction. They also had Republicans "rethinking" their positions on the gun issue, and FLA governor Rick Scott even signing a new gun safety law. And  with Reepos, woe betide anyone who thinks too much or signs new gun laws, say that increase the age to access AR-15s. So these  dregs like Ingraham and others felt they had to unload on Hogg especially - as one of the most outspoken. Even writing fake news trash that he left school years ago and came back for the moment. (Tomorrow I will look at Malaysia's punishment for fake news spreaders and whether we need to adopt them here.)

The reaction to the Right has been equal rage-filled snark  from the Left who are flabbergasted these knuckle draggers have the balls to go after school shooting survivors  Since the tweet was posted, Ingraham herself has received backlash on social media, including castigating her as a mother who "ought to know better than attack a child."

Many of us have viewed her recent actions — the latest in a slew of right-wing attacks against the Parkland survivors — as particularly appalling, given that she is a parent and theoretically ought to know better.

In all of this there is an object lesson about having basic respect for victims of a mass shooting, especially victims who have found their voice and are prepared to speak out. As for the trope that Hogg and his followers are "bullying" Ingraham and the Righties, that's really choice - given they have been hammering at the Parkland kids including stupid conspiracy BS about "child actors" the past 4 weeks

At this writing, online travel website TripAdvisor said it will stop advertising on Ingraham's show after she attacked Hogg. The company joins Florida pet food brand Nutrish which also has responded to Hogg’s boycott call, tweeting Thursday morning “We are in the process of removing our ads from Laura Ingraham’s program.”

Footnote:

Seven advertisers have abandoned Ingraham's show after her apology - deeming it inadequate.  David Hogg himself pointed out she only delivered it after she began to lose advertisers and found herself approaching a crisis similar to O'Reilly's before he was booted. So she only proffered the apology to save her sorry tail. The advertisers leaving now include the two already mentioned, plus: Expedia, Wayfair,  Hulu, Johnson & Johnson, Stitchfix and Nestle. Eight others remain incuding AT & T and we must see whether they can find their consciences assuming they have any. Meanwhile, the WaPo's Eugene Robinson has predicted Ingraham will soon offer a second, more heartfelt apology - minus the "Holy Week" babble. We will see. For the Right, this ought to be an education: Do not fuck with these kids!

See also:

• Roseanne tweets 'NAZI SALUTE' to Parkland survivor, gets a call from a ratings-obsessed Trump
  
  
• Parkland parent takes down Fox News' Ingraham's pathetic apology for what it is: desperate greed
  
  
• And another one: Laura Ingraham continues to bleed advertisers after mocking David Hogg

Today's Student Walkouts Merit Praise Not Punishment

"I'm tired of being scared every time I go to school! We need real laws to protect us from those crazy automatic rifles!" - Student in Chicago, interviewed on MSNBC

The kids have taken to the streets by the hundreds of thousands and are voicing their first amendment rights that the gunnies seem to obsess over whenever anyone challenges their precious AR-15 "rights".  The National School Walkout started at 10 a.m. ET and will continue across the country at 10 a.m. in each time zone. The protest was sparked by last month's school massacre in Parkland, Florida, and fueled by years of anger about what many say are inadequate gun laws.

The students have beheld how lawmakers - nearly all - are in the maw of the NRA and they want to let those congress critters know there will be hell to pay at the voting booth if they don't become changelings.

Boulder High junior Alec Eyl will join thousands of other students across the country today at 10:00 a.m. MDT-  to send a message that gun violence in schools will no longer be tolerated.

Eyl said. “We will have to be taken seriously!  We will no longer be ignored, and when we become the next generation of voters, we will make our voices heard about guns in this country!"

As many as 1,965 schools and organizations across the country are scheduled to participate in Wednesday’s #Enough National School Walkout to End Gun Violence organized by Women’s March Youth, the youth activist wing of the Women’s March group.

The walkout was called to remember the Feb. 14 shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla., that left 17 dead. The students are asked to walk out of their schools at 10 a.m. and stay outside for 17 minutes, one minute to remember each life lost in the Florida shooting.

Several Colorado schools are scheduled to participate and are doing so with the full knowledge of school officials.

But other hardhead schools and principals, especially in Texas and the deep South, plan to ding any demonstrating students with detentions and absences if they dare to participate. Talk about a way to show 1st amendment rights don't apply to students - oh, and that fascism reigns in Trumpian Amerikka.

My message to these redneck throwbacks: grow up and grow a pair, instead of being snowflakes! What the hell are you so afraid of? Free speech, or that the kids in your state will have some effect in getting your damned Bushmaster .223s under wraps? 

Or the least they could do, instead of giving detentions and absences, is what a number of school principals here in Colorado are doing: Reschedule the demonstrations after school hours so there is no disruption of actual classes (there may be some disruption of after school clubs, activities.)

From what I behold on the tube (MSNBC) thus far this a.m. the Parkland shooting could indeed be a “tipping point” when it comes to limiting gun violence in America. This is also according to  a University of Colorado Denver education expert, Carlos Porfirio Hipolito-Delgado. Quoted two days ago in the Denver Post, he said:

“What I am hearing in my classes is that students are frustrated and they don’t feel as safe as they used to."

Today’s  march and another scheduled for March 24th, are thanks largely to the media-savvy students  at Stoneman Douglas who've organized to not only challenged lawmakers in FLA but nationwide.  There is no doubt, not one, that their media confidence  and competence can shine a light on school violence better than past generations,

As Hipolito-Delgado said. “We are seeing these young people in front of the cameras and they are handling themselves well and getting their point across smoothly.”

Meanwhile, the snowflake gun mongers are crying in their brewskies at the prospect these kids will have a huge effect- if not sooner then later- after they secure their voting rights. 

See also:

http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/shepherd-bliss/78171/thousands-of-students-protest-gun-violence

Excerpt:

“Eloquent young voices, equipped with symbolism and social media savvy, riding a resolve as yet untouched by cynicism,” is how the New York Times described the rallies.

In Lower Manhattan, Gov. Andrew Cuomo joined a die-in at Zucotti Park, the former home of the Occupy Wall Street protests.

“Hey-hey, ho-ho, the N.R.A. has to go,” students chanted as they marched to the D. C. Capital steps. They were met by members of Congress, the most popular of whom seemed to be Sen. Bernie Sanders.

Stay tuned for at least two more nationwide protests on March 24 and April 20, the anniversary of the Columbine murders, as students continue to gather steam and define their movement."

How The Right Seized On A Historical Reference To Create A Specious Conspiracy Meme

Even as we saw video this morning of the Stoneman Douglas student activists moving into their own office space, e.g.

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/never-again-movement-stoneman-douglas-students-behind-the-scenes/

We also know the Right's snowflakes are trembling at the spectacle, scarified of these young, idealistic activists who they try to dismiss as "crisis actors". Now, we also know for the first time, thanks to a WSJ piece, how a historical reference and geopolitical role defining crisis actors (as nations in crisis) was seized and mutated into child crisis actors playing victims. All this compliments of the Right's trolls who double as snowflakes given their fear of kids less than half their age.

To cut to the chase, we owe WSJ writer Ben Zimmer a debt of gratitude for debunking the Right's nonsense about child crisis actors in his excellent Review article  ('Plots, Politics and Crisis Actors',  Mar. 3-4) . He begins by reminding us that:

"Crisis is from a Greek word for turning point or sudden shift, and has long been used for traumatic or stressful events, or more broadly for unstable situations leading to drastic change".

Then adding:

"Combining the word with 'actor' suggests all manner of performance at a critical juncture."

Zimmer then informs us that there is actually a firm historical and geopolitical basis for the term 'crisis actor'. The Right's trolls didn't just recently invent the term - whether to infect events with their ignominious false flag ideations, e.g. in the Sandy Hook massacre (describing the kids actually killed as "crisis actors" not really killed) or imposing it on the Stoneman Douglas students now taking to the air waves to fight for gun control laws.  Oh, and moving into their new office to continue the fight and organize other students nationwide.

Zimmer then explains further the historical genesis of the term (ibid.):

"The two words were first brought together by political scientists. In 1977, Michael Brecher, a professor at McGill University in Montreal, used it in a report on how countries behave in times of crisis - calling the countries in conflict "crisis actors".  Together with Jonathan Wilkenfeld of the University of Maryland, Mr Brecher launched the International Crisis Behavior Project, which maintains an online database of 476 crises since 1918."

To fix ideas we're then informed of the main crisis actors in the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis: The U.S., Cuba and the Soviet Union.  NO kids (dead or alive), no students or gun shot survivors anywhere to be found because the term was coined to specifically refer to nations embroiled in crises.

But then, alas, the term was mutated to serve the agenda of the Right's loopy conspiracy spinners especially in the era of Obama- who they regarded as against their gun rights, and 2nd amendment rights. (No surprise gun sales consistently went into the stratosphere because the real "snowflakes"" - the Right's gunnies - were terrified their little toys would be taken away by a bunch of kids with voices).

Anyway, as Zimmer informs us, the process to the warped conspiracy memes of today are interesting to follow.

"Crisis actor' took a more theatrical turn in 2012 in the wake of a mass shooting at a movie theater in Aurora, Colorado that July."

 See e.g.:

http://brane-space.blogspot.com/2012/07/time-to-reel-in-us-gun-culture-zealots.html


"A few months later in nearby Denver, an actors'studio called Visionbox sought to help active shooter drills by providing realistic 'crisis actors' as part of role playing exercises. Visionbox promoted the group on the website crisisactors.org and cited backing from state authorities in a release."

Again, role playing actors for psychological exercises to help in active shooter drills are not the same as sneaky child actors hired to deceive the public,  gun buyers or not.

Zimmer goes on:

"The term acquired more nefarious connotations after the shooting at Sandy Hook ELementary School  in Newtown, Conn. in December, 2012. A since deleted article on the Washington Examiner news website questioned whether the school was participating in 'an emergency response exercise using paid crisis actors funded by a grant from our federal government' thereby linking it to the Visionbox release."

Again, let's note there wasn't an iota of evidence to make such a linkage, nor was Visionbox ever a federally funded program. It had "backing" from state authorities here in Colo. but that backing didn't mean funding. It meant psychological support backing as in "Rah, rah! Go forward!"

Despite this, we learn from Zimmer:

"The tenuous chain of reasoning was enough for conspiracy theorists to begin imagining that Newtown was a staged event populated with 'crisis actors'"

Zimmer traces the actual origin to a whacked out blogger-   James Tracy - a then professor of communications (if you can believe it) at Florida Atlantic University - but who later lost his job there, and for good reason.

Of course, once the deformed use of crisis actor appeared it was bound to get further traction,, especially by those unaware of the real history of the term. Zimmer again:

"Since then, high profile mass shootings have inevitabbly brought out groundless 'crisis actor' theories. With the Parkland massacre pushing the phrase into ever greater prominence, Facebook and Youtube have been cracking down on posts and videos using the term."

Which is good. The Right's ubiquitous trolls should not be permitted to demean the victims of horrific school shootings by labeling them "crisis actors". And certainly not under specious First amendment claims.  As Joe Scarborough recently pointed out, the first amendment has limits just like the 2nd. Neither is open ended and replete with 'anything goes'.

In the meantime, it is appropriate to note how gun sales are going down in the U.S. of A. despite the students' gun control activism. see e.g.

https://www.denverpost.com/2018/02/27/gun-sales-under-donald-trump/


More good news:  The Florida legislature has passed a moderate gun reform bill (no assault weapons ban, but we know a journey of a thousand miles begins with one step) .  The bill SB 7026 passed by 67- 50 in the Florida House (after 20-18 Senate passage) and provides for:

- A 3-day waiting period on gun purchases

-Raising the minimum age to purchase a gun from 18 to 21.

- $100 m to increase school security

The bill now only awaits Gov. Rick Scott's signature. We will soon see whether he really cares about the Stoneman Douglas victims and survivors or whether his words in the aftermath were mere gaseous effluent and beer talk.

We also learned in yesterday's WSJ  (p. A21) that Yale University's  admissions office is encouraging students to actively partake in the school walkouts scheduled this month in support of the #NeverAgain movement. As the author Walter Olson writes:

"Senior assistant director of admissions Hannah Mendlowitz, makes clear that Yale considers participation in such a walkout to be a plus, rather than a subject of indifference..

'For those students who come to Yale, we expect them to be versed in issues of social justice', Ms. Medelowitz writes.  'I have the pleasure of reading applications from San Francisco where activism is very much a part of the culture.'"

So go ahead, Parkland kids and others, and walk out on March 24th and spread the message of needed gun control - especially for military assault weapons. There is no reason, none at all, this nation can't do what the UK (after the Dunblane massacre) and Australia (after Port Arthur, 1996) already have.  The argument these weapons - solely designed to mass kill - are needed for "protection" is pure Right wing snowflake babble.  Protection from what? An invading cadre of 200 ISIS terr'ists? Grow a pair for once!

So is the balderdash one needs them for hunting. As one former infantryman (Ralph Peters) put it, that only applies if you plan to destroy the meat. And what manner of snowflake idiot prefers to destroy the meat - e.g. hog - he wants to eat? What kind of snowflake gun baby needs an AR to kill a hog when a 30.06 with hollow points will do?  At least for a real hunter as opposed to poseur.

See also:

https://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2018/02/the-parkland-students-arent-going-away/554159/

And:

http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/belle-chesler/78040/high-school-students-the-canaries-in-the-coal-mine-of-american-disaster

Sorry! You Have NO Constitutional Right To Own An AR-15!

Justice Antonin Scalia - your total conservative - asserted in the Heller case that no citizen has the right to own an assault weapon.

Seeing the Parkland, FL kids this a.m. confront the hidebound Reepo lawmakers in the Florida legislature was dumbfounding.  The kids had been assembled in groups of 10 to thrash out questions with these nitwits but soon learned they could as well pound sand or talk to walls.  One girl asked the leader of the House why such vicious weapons were needed at all, such rifles that are military issue and designed specifically for combat. The fool actually responded that they were often used by his constituents for hunting, especially for wild Boar!

This ought to have brought the kids to peals of howling laughter, but most took him seriously because - obviously - they lacked any inkling or knowledge of what hunting such game was like in the past. But to most of us who grew up in the sixties, the idea of hunting a wild Boar with a military style weapon is laughable. What? You think you're going against an Abrams tank!? It's a fuckin' animal, for god's sake!

In the olden days we'd select a  Remington 30.06 with hollow points to do the job, but nowadays the real hunter -  as opposed to a frightened dwarf (who needs a semi-automatic)-  would more probably choose the the Savage 11 FCNS Hunter, simply because it's totally capable of bringing down a 300 lb. boar from 400 yards away.   The point is that it's laughable any real man or hunter would resort to an AR-15 to kill a hog unless he was ass-faced pathetic and a total loser and weakling who needs an unfair advantage against game. That's why that FLA House idiot's response was codswallop.  As blogger David Lindorff put it recently:
,
An AR-15 is not a hunting weapon. In fact there’s a reason it’s called an “assault rifle.” As a hunter, unless you’re an atrocious shot and are hunting random flocks of small birds, you certainly don’t need to be able to fire powerful ammunition of two bullets per second — the rate at which experts sayan ordinary person could be able to pull the trigger."

But the kids, at least for now seem to have bought this daft rationalization of why military style weapons are needed in civilian society.

The larger point is that NO one has the constitutional right to own an AR-15 or any other assault weapon, by which I mean all semi-automatics originally designed for military use.  I already cited the controversial 1939 case wherein FDR's Solicitor General framed the argument to the Court:

"The Second Amendment grants people a right that is not one which may be utilized for private purposes but only exists where the arms are borne in a militia or some other military organization provided by law and intended for protection of the State."

The SC decision was unanimous. 

Now, fast forward to 2008 and  Justice Antonin Scalia, writing the majority opinion in District of Columbia v. Heller, in which the Supreme Court reversed a long-held position and ruled that the Second Amendment did give Americans an individual right to own firearms.  The court said the District’s ban on handguns in private homes went too far, but that regulation of gun ownership was compatible with the Second Amendment:

Scalia wrote at the time:

"It may be objected that if weapons that are most useful in military service — M-16 rifles and the like — may be banned, then the Second Amendment right is completely detached from the prefatory clause. But as we have said, the conception of the militia at the time of the Second Amendment’s ratification was the body of all citizens capable of military service, who would bring the sorts of lawful weapons that they possessed at home to militia duty. It may well be true today that a militia, to be as effective as militias in the 18th century, would require sophisticated arms that are highly unusual in society at large. Indeed, it may be true that no amount of small arms could be useful against modern-day bombers and tanks. But the fact that modern developments have limited the degree of fit between the prefatory clause and the protected right cannot change our interpretation of the right.”

To get the language straight, and in Scalia's terms, it is useful to replace "assault weapons,”  with  the phrase:  “the kinds of weapons that Justice Antonin Scalia has defined as ‘dangerous and unusual’ and subject to regulation or an outright ban under the Second Amendment.”  And, if these weapons are subject to regulation, then they do not make for a "constitutional right".

As Joe Scarborough put it this morning: "Some say this is embedded in the constitution. It is not!"

Adding:

"Go back and read Heller, 2008, what Scalia and the Supreme Court said. You're right, you can have handguns in your home, and shotguns to protect your family. But the court has allowed states  - like Maryland (2017)  to ban assault style weapons.  They let this and other laws stand   - without challenge - as constitutional ."

This is important to know, because without being armed by facts, and in the heat of argument, the assault weapons defenders will throw all kinds of lies and BS at you, as that Florida House moron tossed at the Parkland student,  re: needing an AR- 15 to hunt wild boar.

As Joe Scarborough put it:

"On the substance of the matter let's be clear because there's so many people that say so many stupid things every day. Ignorant things about guns like on my twitter feed. Like rights to assault weapons. But look,  those are not constitutionally protected rights because states can limit those rights  Like the first amendment, second amendment rights are limited.

If you want to make the argument that the Supreme Court should protect your rights to have military style weapons, that's legitimate.  But if you say it is your God-given constitutional right to have an AR-15 that is not what the second amendment says. And it's not what Justice Scalia says or the Supreme Court says."

The Stoneman Douglas students need to learn and process these facts when they go up against those who try to tell them owning these weapons is an American "right". No it is not. It may be a desire for some 5 percent of guntards, but it is no right.

Footnote:  In the guntards' most recent setback, a "2nd amendment"  challenge to California's 10-day mandated waiting period for gun purchase, the Supreme Court by an 8-1 verdict again set limits on their "rights" - siding with the state.