Special to the Cape Charles Mirror by Paul Plante
No, it is not a frivolous question, people, and what makes it not a frivolous question but instead a serious question is the source of the question, which comes to us from a GULF NEWS story out of Dubai entitled “School shooting survivors call for US gun control at Dubai forum – Three seniors from Florida school recall devastating day to highlight gun laws at GESF 2018” by Faisal Masudi, Staff Reporter, published March 17, 2018, where we were informed as follows concerning the subject of who should be allowed to own guns of any sort in this nation:
Dubai: Students who survived last month’s deadly school shooting in Florida, which killed 17 people, called for tighter gun control at the Global Education and Skills Forum (GESF) in Dubai on Saturday.
Three schoolmates — Suzanna Barna, Lewis Mizen and Kevin Trejos — from Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School spoke about the shooting and urged delegates to support stricter gun regulation.
End quotes
It is, of course, of interest that our future as citizens of this nation is being put up for some kind of vote over in the Middle East where Dubai is located, but such is the global nature of the world we live in today, that what our rights should be in this country are now subject to vote by other nations on the planet.
As to Dubai itself, in a story in the British publication The Independent entitled “Johann Hari: A morally bankrupt dictatorship built by slave labour” on Friday 27 November 2009, we are told as follows:
Dubai is finally financially bankrupt – but it has been morally bankrupt all along.
The idea that Dubai is an oasis of freedom on the Arabian peninsula is one of the great lies of our time.
Yes, it has Starbucks and Dunkin’ Donuts and the Gucci styles, but beneath these accoutrements, there is a dictatorship built by slaves.
If you go there with your eyes open – as I did earlier this year – the truth is hidden in plain view.
The tour books and the bragging Emiratis will tell you the city was built by Sheikh Mohammed, the country’s hereditary ruler.
It is untrue.
The people who really built the city can be seen in long chain-gangs by the side of the road, or toiling all day at the top of the tallest buildings in the world, in heat that Westerners are told not to stay in for more than 10 minutes.
They were conned into coming, and trapped into staying.
In their home country – Bangladesh or the Philippines or India – these workers are told they can earn a fortune in Dubai if they pay a large upfront fee.
When they arrive, their passports are taken from them, and they are told their wages are a tenth of the rate they were promised.
They end up working in extremely dangerous conditions for years, just to pay back their initial debt.
They are ringed-off in filthy tent-cities outside Dubai, where they sleep in weeping heat, next to open sewage.
They have no way to go home.
And if they try to strike for better conditions, they are beaten by the police.
Human Rights Watch calls this system “slavery.”
Yet the Westerners who have flocked to Dubai brag that they “love” the city, because they don’t have to pay any taxes, and they have domestic slaves to do all the hard work.
They train themselves not to see the pain.
End quotes
Now, doesn’t it give everyone over here a warm and squishy feeling inside knowing that these are the same people these American high school students from the ritzy, upscale community of Parkland, Florida are entrusting our future to?
Getting back to the Gulf News article, it continues as follows:
The three schoolmates — all seniors — and others have been campaigning for curbs on the kind of guns and ammo that can be purchased legally, reducing the legal buying age, stricter background checks, and other measures.
The teens told GESF delegates gun control was a difficult and decisive issue in the US, in part because the Second Amendment to the US Constitution gives people the right to bear arms.
Trejos said “it’s practically impossible” to ban guns outright in the US, but called to “limit access to guns for criminals and potential criminals … and make it difficult to fire indiscriminately”.
End quotes
Now, there is the part that caught my attention – his call to limit access to guns for potential criminals.
What, pray tell, in the United States of America under, our Constitution and our set of laws, is a “potential criminal?”
Where is this Parkland, Florida high school senior Kevin Trejos getting that classification from?
Who is teaching him that in the United States of America today, somebody can be labeled a “potential criminal” so that the person can then be denied access to guns?
By what mechanism under our Constitution and system of laws is a person to now be classified min some criminal justice system computer as a “potential criminal?”
Who is it that makes that determination?
Some Emir from Dubai?
Or the high school students themselves?
And is this something we as adults in this country should be at all concerned about – high school students in America calling for Americans to be branded as “potential criminals” so as to deny them access to guns?
Or should we just trust that these high school students really do know better than us about these things?
The candid world would like to know.
Paul Plante says
“If you listen real close, you can hear the people in power shaking!”
“We will get rid of these public servants who only care about the gun lobby.”
Strong words, those, and very threatening sounding, in my estimation, anyway, as an older American citizen, especially in light of Section 6 of Article I of Our federal Constitution, which states “and for any Speech or Debate in either House, they shall not be questioned in any other Place.”
According to the Annotations to the United States Constitution, this particular clause represents ”the culmination of a long struggle for parliamentary supremacy.”
“Behind these simple phrases lies a history of conflict between the Commons and the Tudor and Stuart monarchs during which successive monarchs utilized the criminal and civil law to suppress and intimidate critical legislators.”
“Since the Glorious Revolution in Britain, and throughout United States history, the privilege has been recognized as an important protection of the independence and integrity of the legislature.”
So Justice Harlan explained the significance of the speech-and-debate clause in United States v. Johnson, 383 U.S. 169, 178 (1966), the ancestry of which traces back to a clause in the English Bill of Rights of 1689 and the history of which traces back almost to the beginning of the development of Parliament as an independent force.
”In the American governmental structure the clause serves the additional function of reinforcing the separation of powers so deliberately established by the Founders.”
”The immunities of the Speech or Debate Clause were not written into the Constitution simply for the personal or private benefit of Members of Congress, but to protect the integrity of the legislative process by insuring the independence of individual legislators.” United States v. Brewster, 408 U.S. 501, 507 (1972).
The protection of this clause is not limited to words spoken in debate.
”Committee reports, resolutions, and the act of voting are equally covered, as are ‘things generally done in a session of the House by one of its members in relation to the business before it.”’ Powell v. McCormack, 395 U.S. 486, 502 (1969), quoting Kilbourn v. Thompson, 103 U.S. 168, 204 (1881).
Thus, so long as legislators are ”acting in the sphere of legitimate legislative activity,” they are ”protected not only from the consequence of litigation’s results but also from the burden of defending themselves.”
end quotes
That protection, people, whether you like it or not, is essential to our Republican form of government in this nation, so we in this country do not degenerate into a nation ruled by mobs, instead of laws.
So who was it then that was making these threatening noises this past Saturday?
And that, of course, was 17-year old David Hogg from Parkland, Florida, a self-proclaimed “school shooting survivor,” described as composed, articulate and media savvy in a March 03, 2018 Sacramento Bee article who has emerged as one of the student leaders of the anti-2d Amendment movement in America, speaking to a roaring crowd of demonstrators at the March for Our Lives rally in Washington, D.C. this past weekend.
And that is the same David Hogg who was featured in a Real Clear Politics article entitled “David Hogg: We Need To Use Our ‘White Privilege’ To Make Sure Black Gun Victims Are Heard” posted By Ian Schwartz on March 19 2018, as follows:
At a Twitter live stream event held Monday, Parkland High School shooting survivor David Hogg said he will use his “white privilege” to make sure that other non-white victims of gun violence can be heard.
“If this happened in a place of a lower socio-economic status or a place where like a black community, no matter how well those people spoke, I don’t think the media would cover it the same and I think it is important that we point that out as Americans we realize that.”
“Because we have to use our white privilege now to make sure that all of the voices that — all of the people that have died as the result of this and haven’t been covered the same can now be heard.”
“It’s sad, but it’s true,” Hogg said.
“The spotlight is on us and it’s awful and it’s a horrible thought that it is that we’re an affluent community, that’s why initially people followed this so closely.”
“Because this happens everyday other places,” fellow student Cameron Kasky chimed in.
end quotes
Ah, yes, “white privilege!”
How on earth can we forget about “white privilege” after this last presidential election where we heard so much about it from Hillary Clinton, who seems to have greatly influenced the political views of this 17-year old David Hogg, who told a roaring crowd of demonstrators at the March for Our Lives rally in Washington, D.C. this past weekend, “We will get rid of these public servants who only care about the gun lobby.”
And when we stop to consider who exactly it is that benefits from this roaring crowd of demonstrators being told by the media-savvy David Hogg, the son of a former FBI agent, “If you listen real close, you can hear the people in power shaking,” a Florida Sun Sentinel article entitled “Obamas write letter to Parkland survivors who’ve ‘helped awaken the conscience of the nation’” by Ariel Scotti, New York Daily News, on March 21, 2018, gives us this insight into the matter:
Former President Barack Obama and former first lady Michelle Obama wrote a heartfelt letter of solidarity to the survivors-turned-activists at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School — days before the students are set to march in Washington, D.C., to continue their fight for stricter gun laws.
In the letter, dated March 10 and obtained by Mic, the Obamas told the students that they have inspired them with the “resilience, resolve and solidarity that you have all shown in the wake of unspeakable tragedy.”
The Obamas assured the students in their letter that although this kind of change may be difficult to achieve and they may sometimes “feel like progress is too slow in coming,” that they believe in them and have been inspired by their resolve following the tragedy.
“There may be setbacks,” the Obamas wrote, “you may sometimes feel like progress is too slow in coming.”
“But we have no doubt you are going to make an enormous difference in the days and years to come, and we will be there for you.”
end quotes
Which takes us back to the Gulf News story out of Dubai entitled “School shooting survivors call for US gun control at Dubai forum – Three seniors from Florida school recall devastating day to highlight gun laws at GESF 2018” by Faisal Masudi, Staff Reporter, published March 17, 2018, where we were informed as follows concerning the subject of who should be allowed to own guns of any sort in this nation:
Dubai: Students who survived last month’s deadly school shooting in Florida, which killed 17 people, called for tighter gun control at the Global Education and Skills Forum (GESF) in Dubai on Saturday.
Three schoolmates — Suzanna Barna, Lewis Mizen and Kevin Trejos — from Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School spoke about the shooting and urged delegates to support stricter gun regulation.
The teens told GESF delegates gun control was a difficult and decisive issue in the US, in part because the Second Amendment to the US Constitution gives people the right to bear arms.
Trejos said “it’s practically impossible” to ban guns outright in the US, but called to “limit access to guns for criminals and potential criminals … and make it difficult to fire indiscriminately”.
end quotes
And that statement about potential criminals in this country takes us back to the Obamas saying to these children, “but we have no doubt you are going to make an enormous difference in the days and years to come, and we will be there for you.”
Yes, Barack, when it comes to these children who are threatening our government making the “basket of deplorables” in this country who didn’t vote for Hillary Clinton into “potential criminals” so their guns can be confiscated, I can readily believe that you will be there for them, and Barack, I can believe as well that behind the scenes, you and your community-organizing skills are behind these demonstrations, because, Barack, they are too slick by half for some seventeen year olds, however media-savvy they might be, to have come up with on their own.
And why would Barack, who is silent on all the shootings in his home town of Chicago, be interested here?
That answer is given us by the media-savvy David Hogg above here as follows: “The spotlight is on us and it’s awful and it’s a horrible thought that it is that we’re an affluent community, that’s why initially people followed this so closely.”
Yes, David, Parkland, Florida is an affluent community, and that is why Progressive Democrats on the make are flocking to your cause – because of the money – and making sure that your voice gets heard threatening our elected public officials, because politically, for them it is a crisis made in heaven that they need to exploit while it is still fresh in people’s minds.
But stay tuned, people, because this story is far from over.
More is yet to come.
Paul Plante says
“Today, we march,”
“We fight.”
“We roar.”
“We prepare our signs.”
“We raise them high.”
“We know what we want, we know how to get it and we are not waiting any more.”
end quotes
And there, frankly, is where they lose me, with all the unintelligible roaring and the sign waving and especially the fighting, which reminds me of the lyrics of a Viet Nam era song by Buffalo Springfield that went as follows:
There’s battle lines being drawn
Nobody’s right if everybody’s wrong
Young people speaking’ their minds
Getting so much resistance from behind
It’s time we stop
Hey, what’s that sound?
Everybody look – what’s going down?
What a field day for the heat
A thousand people in the street
Singing songs and carrying signs
Mostly saying, “hooray for our side”
end quotes
And what is it that they want?
They want an end to violence, and until they get it, they are going to scream and they are going to holler and they are going to roar and be disobedient, and yes, violent, which is no different than fornicating for chastity.
As to who it was that uttered those fighting words above, according to a New York Times article entitled “Students Lead Huge Rallies for Gun Control Across the U.S.” by Micheal D. Shear on 25 March 2018, where we were told that speakers on Saturday — nearly all of them students, some still in elementary school — delivered an anguished and defiant message that they are “done hiding” from gun violence, and will “stop at nothing” to get politicians to finally prevent it, it was Delaney Tarr, a student at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, who also said “If they continue to ignore us, to only pretend to listen, then we will take action where it counts.”
“We will take action every day in every way until they simply cannot ignore us any more.”
end quotes
What will that action be, I wonder, and who on earth do these children think is ignoring them?
Will we see a repeat of last year’s anti-fa violence, perhaps, on the part of these students?
Will they start cracking heads with lead pipes until somebody finally listens to them and does what they want, which is as follows:
“I have a dream that enough is enough.”
“That this should be a gun-free world.”
“Period.”
end quotes
There you go, people – a gun-free world, period!
And that, of course, was Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.’s 9-year-old granddaughter Yolanda Renee King who gave a rousing speech at the Washington rally on Saturday in Washington, D.C.
So who is going to make that happen, and how?
And when all the guns are gone, will violence end?
Not hardly is my thought.
Consider, for example, this article from the Washington Post entitled “MS-13 is ‘taking over the school,’ one teen warned before she was killed” by Michael Miller on 10 March 2018, where we were informed as follows on the subject of school violence when there are no guns around:
Out sprang members of the violent street gang MS-13, armed with baseball bats.
They attacked three 16-year-old students they suspected of being rivals before driving off.
When police spotted the van in the same neighborhood the following afternoon and surrounded it at gunpoint, the MS-13 members were in the midst of trying to abduct a fourth.
“We were going to take him somewhere private and beat him to death,” said Miguel Rivera, 20, according to a Suffolk County indictment.
The Dec. 6 arrests of Rivera and four others thwarted what police say would have been the sixth murder of a Brentwood High School student by MS-13 in less than two years.
But the incident also shook the school for another reason.
All but one of those arrested attended Brentwood, according to Suffolk County police.
end quotes
For those who haven’t heard of it, Brentwood High School, one of the largest high schools in New York State, is a secondary school in Brentwood, New York, where Progressive Democrat and prospective 2020 presidential candidate is governr, and it is located on the southern shore of Suffolk County, Long Island.
In his January State of the Union address, Trump recounted the story of Kayla Cuevas and Nisa Mickens, two Brentwood High students killed by MS-13 on Sept. 13, 2016.
“Many of these gang members took advantage of glaring loopholes in our laws to enter the country as unaccompanied alien minors and wound up in Kayla and Nisa’s high school,” the president said as the girls’ parents, who had been invited to watch the speech at the Capitol, wiped away tears.
A $110 million federal lawsuit, filed in December by Kayla’s mother, claims administrators failed to protect her 16-year-old, allowing MS-13 to create an “environment filled with fear within the school.”
“There were a lot of Salvadoran people, Salvadoran people we don’t like,” said Mabel Castaño, a friend of Nisa’s and Kayla’s who said she attended Brentwood High for 18 months.
“Some of them would say they had family members in MS-13.”
“They’d say, ‘I’m going to get my brother or my uncle or my cousin on you.’”
Sanchez, the school district safety director, said MS-13 had long been overshadowed by gangs like the Bloods and Latin Kings.
“The last couple of years, when we had the unaccompanied children coming, that’s when we saw the change,” he said.
By providing vulnerable newcomers with a sense of belonging, MS-13 “became a powerhouse.”
A deadly one.
First, a former Brentwood student was fatally shot by the gang in November 2015, police say.
Then Brentwood students began to go missing.
A 15-year-old Ecuadoran named Miguel Garcia-Moran vanished one February evening.
Two months later, Oscar Acosta, a 19-year-old Salvadoran, left home to play soccer and never returned.
And in June 2016, Jose Peña-Hernandez, 18, a suspected MS-13 member, disappeared, too.
Three missing immigrant teens didn’t draw much attention to Brentwood.
But that would change with the killings of Kayla Cuevas and Nisa Mickens.
Kayla, a basketball player from a Puerto Rican family, had first clashed with MS-13 two years earlier at Brentwood’s Freshman Center, where gang members spat on her, stole or broke her things and taunted her, according to her mother’s lawsuit.
Things escalated in summer school, when an MS-13 member threatened her with a knife, then continued to attend Brentwood High, the lawsuit says.
“She used to tell me, ‘Ma, they are taking over the school.'”
“‘It’s like they’re everywhere,’ ” said Evelyn Rodriguez, who has become the face of MS-13 victims.
Rodriguez said she and her daughter reported the bullying to school administrators, who promised the knife-wielding student wouldn’t be allowed back.
But when Kayla, 16, who had exchanged online taunts with MS-13, showed up for classes that fall, he was still there, the lawsuit alleges.
After a confrontation at Brentwood, federal prosecutors say, MS-13 put a “greenlight” — or kill order — on Kayla, and members made a “throat slicing gesture” toward her at school, the lawsuit says.
A week later, she was walking home one evening with Nisa, a basketball teammate one day shy of her 16th birthday, when MS-13 members spotted them and attacked with a machete and baseball bats, according to prosecutors.
The girls were beaten to death.
end quotes
There is what life in a school without gun violence looks like, people.
Instead of getting shot, you get beaten to death, instead.
But that is not an affluent area down there where Brentwood High School is located, so we never hear Progressive Democrat and presidential hopeful Young Andy Cuomo talking about it, because it’s not a crisis he can readily exploit for political gain for himself.
As to exploiting these children for political gain, a few days before Saturday’s big rally in Washington where all the sign waving and roaring and fighting was taking place, Young Andy himself stood in the middle of Zuccotti Park in Lower Manhattan, surrounded by student activists who had gathered for a school walkout to protest federal inaction on gun control.
According to his press releases, Young Andy marched and chanted with over one hundred students from the Leadership and Public Service High School, one of many nationwide protests taking place one month to the day after the shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, that killed 17 people.
Students at Young Andy’s rally carried hand-crafted signs bearing slogans such as “fear has no place in our schools” and “f*** the president,” and shifted rapidly between a series of chants, which some said were led by Young Andy himself.
From the hand-crafted signs bearing slogans such as “f*** the president” at Young Andy’s rally in Manhattan the other day, we can see it has everything to do with manipulating these young minds to get them under Young Andy Cuomo’s spell.
And such is the world of school violence in America today, and the hack politicians that are exploiting it for partisan political gain in this year’s mid-term elections.
Take away the guns, and you still have violence, because violent people cause violence, not guns,
“They failed my daughter,” Mrs. Rodriguez said of school officials, just as the school officials at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in ritzy Parkland, Florida, failed their students, but because that is an affluent community, that failure down there is put on the nation, instead of where it belongs, with that community and the Democrat-controlled Broward County Sheriff’s Office and the government of the state of Florida.
And by the way, I am 72 years old, and in the first four years of my life, there were at least five school shootings in America.
In the next ten years of my life, there were at least seventeen school shooting in America.
And from then until I graduated high school four years later, there were at least five more school shootings in America, which makes for some 27 school shootings in the first eighteen years of my life, and there have been school shootings ever since.
Why is that, America?
Paul Plante says
In an interview Tuesday (27 March 2018), Mr. Hogg (17-year old Parkland, Florida high school student who has become the nation’s leading expert on school shootings) said they (his student’s group) had been singled out because of their prominence and emphasized that ad hominem attacks would not end school shootings.
“I mean, we’re kind of the faces of the movement,” he said.
“Together we kind of form an unstoppable force that terrifies them.”
end quotes
I must confess that as an adult in this country, I haven’t a clue as to what goals this 17-year old proselytizer David Hogg, the son of a former FBI agent, is trying achieve here with his children’s campaign about something, anyway.
“I mean, we’re kind of the faces of the movement,” he said.
To which I am forced to have to reply, “uh, okay, dude, whatever you say, but tell me, what movement are you really the face of, besides your own very obvious self-promotion tour of yourself as America’s expert on school shootings?”
As to where this teenage proselytizer David Hogg was during the school shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas, and as to how he then became America’s greatest expert on school shootings, according to the New York Times article “Parkland Students Find Themselves Targets of Lies and Personal Attacks” by Jonah Engel Bromwich on 27 March 2018,
while the school shooting was going on, video has shown that Mr. Hogg was in a closet during the shooting.
So, hey, okay, David, I guess that was really close enough to what was going down to make you as much an expert on school shootings as anyone else in your movement, or in America, for that matter, so moving right long here, people, we come to this statement by the teenage proselytizer David Hogg, to wit:
“Together we kind of form an unstoppable force that terrifies them.”
end quotes
And again, as an adult, I find myself forced to say back to David, “Oh, really, dude, do say!”
“That sounds like a very impressive soundbite, David, and it is also a very powerful TWEET on TWITTER, as well!”
“Who exactly is it that you are terrifying here with your talk of your movement and your acolytes being an unstoppable force, and why are you relying on terrorizing people to get your message across?”
As to TWITTER, which is the real political battleground in America anymore, with forums such as this where real words are used in actual sentences and paragraphs to get points across with evidence to back them up, or to refute other points made, rapidly fading into the background, as the people in America anymore can no longer absorb more than 180-characters at a time, this same David Hogg is now engaged in a political battle on TWITTER with someone named Laura Ingraham from Fox, and he is calling on his followers in his nationwide movement to target Fox News host Laura Ingraham’s advertisers after she posted a critical tweet about him being rejected from colleges, that after The Daily Wire posted an article online which stated David Hogg, a self-appointed spokesman for a generation, revealed on Tuesday that four universities he has applied to have rejected his application.
That information about the latest drama in young David Hogg’s life comes to us from the article in The Hill entitled “Parkland student targets Ingraham’s advertisers after tweet about college rejections” by Jacqueline Thomsen on 29 March 2018, where we are told as follows about the national stature of this same David Hogg, to wit:
Hogg has emerged as a national figure in the weeks since the mass shooting at his Florida high school that left 17 people dead.
He helped to organize and lead the March for Our Lives in D.C. on Saturday.
end quotes
So we now have as a national figure in this country a seventeen-year old child who was hiding in a closet while a school shooting was going down around him.
Pardon me here, people, but as a combat veteran who grew up around combat veterans of WWII, some of them as young as sixteen or seventeen when they enlisted to go and fight for our freedom against a real armed foe, I am having a lot of trouble wrapping my mind around the concept of someone who hid in a closet while the shooting was going on being considered a national hero today.
There is just something about that, that simply boggles my mind.
Paul Plante says
And down goes Laura Ingraham of Fox News like a rotten tree in a stiff breeze.
She did not even last a day before she was forced by economic necessity to cave in to new American political powerhouse seventeen-year old David Hogg of Parkland, Florida, who has gained fame in America as the face of the anti-2d Amendment movement here in America after hiding in a closet during the recent school shooting in tony, upscale Parkland, Florida.
So much for freedom of speech, thought, and expression in America.
According to an article in The Hill entitled “Ingraham apologizes amid backlash over Parkland student criticism” by Rebecca Savransky on 29 March 2018, Fox News host Laura Ingraham apologized Thursday over a critical tweet she sent out the day before about a Parkland, Fla., shooting survivor, in which she mocked him over college rejections.
The apology comes as Ingraham faced backlash, including the loss of sponsors, after she posted a tweet critical of Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School student David Hogg, who has become a vocal advocate for gun control since the mass shooting last month.
At least four of Ingraham’s advertisers – Wayfair, Expedia, TripAdvisor and pet food brand Nutrish – announced Thursday that they were pulling their commercials from her program.
end quotes
That will teach her for having her own opinion on something and for expressing her views, when those views are not liked by this incipient Cromwell David Hogg, as we can see from The Hill article as follows:
Hogg rejected Ingraham’s apology as insufficient and self-serving in a tweet of his own:
David Hogg ✔ @davidhogg111
I 100% agree an apology in an effort just to save your advertisers is not enough.
I will only accept your apology only if you denounce the way your network has treated my friends and I in this fight.
It’s time to love thy neighbor, not mudsling at children.
end quotes
So now, for this Laura Ingraham to be able to “rehabilitate” herself in the mind of David Hogg, she has to turn on her employer, and denounce Fox News in a manner that will pass muster with young David Hogg, who seems to have stepped into Hillary Clinton’s shoes as the “conscience of America.”
And for Fox to rehabilitate itself in the mind of David Hogg, who now wields extraordinary political power in this country for someone not yet old enough to vote, Fox will have to post news in a manner acceptable to none other than David Hogg, or he will destroy them.
For those unfamiliar with this latest drama in the drama-filled life of young David Hogg the proselytizer, Ingraham on Wednesday shared a Daily Wire story that reported Hogg was rejected from four colleges, and then, Hogg replied a few hours later, asking who the Fox News host’s biggest advertisers were in a tweet.
Hogg later tweeted out a list of Ingraham’s advertisers, directing people to contact those companies, and in hours or less, down went Ingraham into a quivering heap.
As to Hogg, he has emerged as a national advocate in the weeks since a gunman opened fire at Stoneman Douglas, killing 17 people, and he has been warning lawmakers that they will be voted out of office if they don’t pass new gun laws.
Now, let me reiterate here that I am not a gun nut, I don’t own guns, nor do I use guns or advocate their use, so I don’t have a dog in that race, but, as an American citizen far older than seventeen-year old David Hogg, and as someone who shed blood for our “way of life” over here, I personally do not respond well to threats and intimidation and coercion, which methods seem to be at the heart of David Hogg’s political playbook here.
“If you don’t do what we say, we are going to get you for it!”
According to The Hill, Hogg has become the subject of fierce criticism on the right, with Breitbart News and InfoWars even comparing him to Adolf Hitler.
So much for Breitbart and InfoWars.
David Hogg is hardly a Hitler.
He is much more a Cromwell or a Hillary Clinton than a Hitler.
If anything, he is very reminiscent of one of Mao Tse Tung’s Red Guards,
For those too young to remember, the Red Guards were a student mass paramilitary social movement mobilized by Mao Zedong in 1966 and 1967, during the Chinese Cultural Revolution.
Mao made use of the group as propaganda and to accomplish goals such as destroying symbols of China’s pre-communist past, including ancient artifacts and gravesites of notable Chinese figures, and the government was very permissive of the Red Guards, who were even allowed to inflict bodily harm on people viewed as dissidents.
WOW!
Perhaps Laura Ingraham of Fox should consider herself lucky she only lost her sponsors.
Paul Plante says
Right now, as I write these words, if I was asked what do I see right now as the biggest threat to the American Way of Life I fought to defend as a member of this nation’s armed forces, my frank and candid answer would be this seventeen-year old cult leader David Hogg from upscale, affluent Parkland, Florida who has an army or posse or cult of 660,000 followers on Twitter that he is very skillfully using to overnight literally take over the United States of America and all of our sacred institutions like freedom of speech, which the Hogg Army has just denied to this Laura Ingraham of Fox, who has had not only her career destroyed by the Hogg Army, but her life, as well, and that was in a matter of hours that he was able to destroy her, and yes, my God, I know, I don’t need to be told again – she brought it on herself talking smack about a traumatized child, survivor of the Stoneman Douglas High School shooting, which gives him special status in America, and cachet, as well, and besides, nobody likes the *****, so screw her – people like her shouldn’t be allowed on television in the first place, if she don’t know her place and what not to say, and when to not say it.
So much for women’s rights – here one day and gone the next, along with the now-reviled Laura Ingraham, whose name has become so radioactive she won’t be able to get a job scraping gum off the floor of a Greyhound Bus Station out of fear that if Greyhound was found to be associated with her, the Hogg Army would destroy them, too!
If we read of Laura Ingraham again, it’ll likely be in a gossip column cleared by and controlled by cult leader David Hogg dishing about her being a skidrow bum somewhere.
As to that, this morning Variety, where that kind of dishing takes place, had an article entitled “Laura Ingraham Says She’ll Take Planned Vacation Amidst Controversy” by Brian Steinberg where were given this following information about the future of Laura Ingraham, to wit:
Laura Ingraham is taking a vacation next week.
Now the question is whether a controversy swirling around the host will go on hiatus as well.
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From what I am reading, and yes, as a mature adult, I am following this David Hogg drama quite closely, for the controversy to go away, Ingraham is going to have to undergo a long struggle session and some re-education, and when she is ready, to confess her own crimes, and abase herself before David Hogg and grovel, seeking absolution, and then publicly denounce Fox News.
According to Variety, the popular Fox News Channel host – her “Ingraham Angle” was the fourth most-watched cable-news program in February – told viewers Friday night she would not appear on air next week as she took what she described as a pre-planned break around the Easter holiday with her children.
Substitute hosts are expected to fill in for her on the program.
She leaves in the midst of heightened scrutiny.
Ingraham set off an imbroglio Wednesday with a Twitter post mocking Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School student David Hogg, one of the students who has spoken out about gun control prominently since a February 14th shooting incident at the Parkland, Florida school left 17 people dead.
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And there, people, is “THE CRIME” of Laura Ingraham that has destroyed her career – she actually dared to make mock of David Hogg, and people, in America today, that is something you just do not do.
His name is to be spoken of with reverence, or not at all, and those who dare to break the rule, people like myself who are wondering WTF is going on here, actually, will know swift and terrible justice like Laura Ingraham just found out, which means I better watch my own back now, I guess.
As to “THE CRIME,” Variety tells us this: Her tweet linked to a report noting Hogg had been rejected from four California colleges.
Her tweet also said Hogg “whines about” the rejections.
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My god, people, what on earth could she have been thinking!
You don’t do that kind of **** to David Hogg and get away with it, as Variety tells us:
In response, Hogg posted on social media a list of recent advertisers in her program culled from Media Matters, a left-leaning watchdog group, and urged followers to pressure them to remove their commercials from Ingraham’s show.
Nestle, Johnson & Johnson, TripAdvisor, Nutrish, Expedia and Hulu – a video-streaming company partly owned by Fox News parent 21st Century Fox – are among the advertisers who have said they would no longer advertise in her program.
Ingraham apologized Thursday via Twitter, noting that she was sorry “for any upset or hurt my tweet caused him or any of the brave victims of Parkland.”
She invited the student to appear on her program.
Hogg said he would not accept her apology.
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And there it is, people, she is done, which then takes us to an article in The Hill on 30 March 2018 by a dude named Joe Concha, a media reporter for The Hill who well may be the next to have his career destroyed by David Hogg, entitled “David Hogg’s attempt to end Laura Ingraham’s career sets dangerous precedent,” wherein we are told:
For Laura Ingraham, there was no choice but to apologize to Parkland school shooting activist David Hogg for her foolish tweet regarding the 17-year-old being rejected by several colleges.
“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,” Ingraham wrote on Twitter.
“For the record, I believe my show was the first to feature David immediately after that horrific shooting and even noted how ‘poised’ he was given the tragedy.”
Ingraham had obviously seen this story played out before, almost one year ago, via her friend and former co-worker Bill O’Reilly, a cable-news icon who eventually saw too many advertisers flee his program, forcing the network to dispose of the popular prime-time figure who had been with it for decades as the industry’s top-rated host.
You know the drill: Once one advertiser goes, it’s certain another will follow, given recent history.
And another.
And another.
Because once that snowball gets going, there’s no telling where or when it will stop, in the fear of a brand being permanently damaged.
We’re now at seven on the Ingraham front as of Friday morning, despite her apology on Thursday afternoon.
Ingraham, and perhaps those above her on the Fox News food chain, saw the all-too-familiar scenario playing out again after Hogg’s boycott call gained momentum in the media and especially on social media.
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And that takes me for a second here to what I used to know as our “American Way of Life,” which in this specific case is best expressed in §8 of Article I of the New York State Constitution as follows:
§8. Every citizen may freely speak, write and publish his or her sentiments on all subjects, being responsible for the abuse of that right; and no law shall be passed to restrain or abridge the liberty of speech or of the press.
In all criminal prosecutions or indictments for libels, the truth may be given in evidence to the jury; and if it shall appear to the jury that the matter charged as libelous is true, and was published with good motives and for justifiable ends, the party shall be acquitted; and the jury shall have the right to determine the law and the fact.
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Today, that is no longer true – as cult leader David Hogg has just proved to us with his Ingraham Blitzkrieg, every citizen may no longer freely speak, write and publish his or her sentiments on all subjects, being responsible for the abuse of that right; and while no law shall be passed to restrain or abridge the liberty of speech or of the press, David Hogg and his Hogg Army have the right to both restrain and abridge the liberty of speech, and for me, that is very dangerous to our American Way of Life, indeed.
Which takes us back to Joe Concha, before he too gets blacklisted:
So how did we get here?
A review of the past 48 hours shows Hogg tweeting out a note around him being rejected from four schools, including UCLA.
Ingraham unwisely jumped on board from there to jab Hogg and included an original “Daily Wire” story on the topic.
“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.),” she wrote to her 2.17 million followers.
Hogg responded by listing 12 prominent advertisers of “The Ingraham Angle” in calling on a boycott.
He proceeded to expand the list to 100 by sharing a list by Media Matters, which has ample experience in this arena from targeting Fox News hosts before.
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Talk about generalship and the art of the Blitzkrieg, this David Hogg is a veritable Heinz Guderian of the TWITTERSPHERE!
And here we come to the vindictiveness of this David Hogg, which is what makes him so dangerous to our cherished freedoms in this country today:
Notably, Hogg chose to accelerate his boycott effort after Ingraham’s apology.
Hogg expanded the reason for the Ingraham boycott beyond her tweet around his college rejections late Thursday by retweeting a Daily Kos story recounting the host’s more provocative and controversial comments over her career.
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Hogg reminds me there of the sadistic kid who sets cats on fire and pulls out the wings of flies, except in this case, his victim of choice is Laura Ingraham, probably because she is not very bright, and so makes for an easy target for the Hogg Army, which brings us back to all those who hate her saying she brought it on herself, and you know what, I guess they must be right.
And back again to Joe Concha:
So what is this boycott about exactly?
Ingraham immaturely mocking a public figure in the form of Hogg around some schools that rejected him?
Or is it about Ingraham’s career as a conservative talk radio and television opinion host overall?
Either way, we’ve entered some dangerous territory here, if boycotts like this one succeed.
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You know what, people?
As one of this nation’s many combat veterans who fought for those freedoms, I have to agree wholeheartedly with him on that score.
And this is the serious part here, as Joe Concha tells us, which is why I am so thankful for the CCM, unless David Hogg can get this shut down as well, to wit:
And not many are speaking out against said danger for two reasons:
1) Fear of reprisal for criticizing Hogg, who has the benefit of being protected from any criticism while being free to level it.
2) Fear of being seen as “the person attacking a mass-school-shooting survivor,” regardless of whether there’s a basis for such criticism or not.
Know this: He may be 17 but should be treated like an adult after entering the arena and becoming a prominent voice in what has become the biggest story of the year thus far.
But things have gone sideways since.
Hogg has played loose with more than a few facts and has leveled the same kind of personal attacks on which he’s basing this boycott.
And, through it all, almost all anchors and reporters have allowed him to go unchallenged out of that same fear of being seen as monsters for going after “the kid with the just cause.”
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Believe me, people, that seems to be going on all over America – you cannot say anything bad about David Hogg, period!
He is even more special that Hillary Clinton in that regard, well;, because she is an adult and he is still a child.
So even if David Hogg attacks adults as he has done in print, especially his own parents, one of whom is a teacher herself, telling us adults he became an activist because adults don’t know how to “use a f*cking democracy,” and mocking his own parents, saying, “When your old-a** parent is like, ‘I don’t know how to send an iMessage,’ and you’re just like, ‘Give me the f**king phone and let me handle it,’” we adults still have to like him and treat him nice, or else, and if anybody doesn’t think that is harmful to our American Way of Life, they certainly reside in a different world than the one I inhabit, which again is what makes this David Hogg so dangerous – the way he has literally overnight managed to divide the American people into his people and those few of us who aren’t, which takes us back to Joe Concha, to wit:
Hogg has rejected Ingraham’s apology and says he will only accept such an overture if she denounces what he described as the network’s attempt to “mudsling at children.”
And therein lies the rub: As stated, Hogg should be treated as an adult.
It’s the arena he chose to enter and had every right to do so, given his abilities and what he experienced.
But if a boycott succeeds here, it sets the kind of precedent that will forever change what the First Amendment is supposed to stand for.
Ingraham wrote an ill-advised tweet that had zero upside.
She’s apologized since.
Hogg won’t accept and will continue to push back, via social media and a Friday morning CNN interview, an effort that won’t end until Ingraham vanishes from the airwaves.
If someone is offended by her program or her as a person, don’t watch or listen and allow the free market eventually to decide if she’s worth keeping on.
But the effort to silence a voice, to essentially end a career, based on something like this sets not only a dangerous but completely un-American precedent.
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Say it loud, Joe, while you still have a career yourself, and let us pray that there are still people left in America who care enough about our future as a nation to hear you.