Morality is not determined by the church you attend nor the faith you embrace. It is determined by the quality of your character and the positive impact you have on those you meet along your journey
P.S. I may be biased but in my opinion the very best WHCD comedian of all time remains this guy.
Update: This might have been Wolf's most cutting remark of the night. (And the most truthful.)
The last thing I'll say is that Michelle Wolf's bit about the media was objectively true—I include myself here and it sucks to have to reckon with that every day but the least we could do is not turn around and become apologists for a regime that wants to ruin people's lives pic.twitter.com/d6v70SxHTN
Calling her comments “despicable and wrong,” Reid copped to writing some of the offense comments, but said she truly believed she did not write them all.
“A community I support and deeply care about is hurting because of despicable and truly offensive posts being attributed to me,” the somber Reid began. “Many of you have seen the blog posts circulating online and social media. Many of them are homophobic and discriminatory and hateful. When a friend found them and sent them to me, I was stunned. Frankly I couldn’t imagine where they came from and whose voice that was.”
“I spent a lot of time trying to make sense of the posts,” she continued. “I hired cyber security experts to see if somebody manipulated my words or former blog and the reality is they have not been able to prove it. But here’s what I do know: I generally do not believe I wrote those hateful things because they are completely alien to me, but I can definitely understand, based on things I have tweeted and I have written in the past, why some people don’t believe me. I’ve not been exempt from being dumb or cruel or hurtful to the very people I want to advocate for. I own that. I get it. And for that I am truly, truly story.”
I held off writing about this situation because to be honest I was not sure what to make of it.
The posts showing up on the internet, and being attributed to Reid, did not really fit my perception of her at all.
I am still not completely convinced that it was her.
Besides that I also went through something similar myself, after this blog gained a little infamy.
After the Splitsville story the Right Wing trolls went through my old posts forensically and found some that, taken out of context, did not paint a very flattering picture.
In my case most of the content was misrepresented, but there were a few things that I wrote, back when virtually NOBODY visited IM, that were truly impossible to completely defend.
They were the type of musings that one might jot down in a diary with the expectation that nobody would ever see them, but that is certainly not a mindset which translates well to the internet, where everything lives forever.
So that should serve as a lesson to us all, that we need to consider that the things we write on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and even the comment section of a blog, might one day be dredged up and used against us when we least expect it.
I think that Joy Reid is very admirable person, but there is a journey to arrive at the best version of ourselves, and sometimes those missteps along they way can trip us up even after we think we have already arrived.
Attorney Michael Avenatti appeared Thursday on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe,” where he gave a wide-ranging interview on the lawsuit against the president and a related criminal investigation of Trump’s personal lawyer Michael Cohen — and he said reporting on the case had missed an important detail.
“So, Mika, you are familiar with the fact that a week ago, Judge (Kimba) Wood ordered Michael Cohen’s attorneys to disclose all of his clients for the last three years,” Avenatti said, “and there were three clients listed — three clients listed. Do you recall which three?”
Brzezinski listed Trump, Fox News host Sean Hannity and Republican donor Elliott Broidy — but Avenatti said she was making the same mistake everyone else had.
“No, no, no,” he said. “Mr. Trump, the Trump organization and Sean Hannity. Mr. Broidy was not disclosed in open court as one of Michael Cohen’s clients.”
Co-host Joe Scarborough asked the attorney what that meant.
“I think at some point we are going to find out, if in fact, the client in connection with the ($1.6 million) settlement was, in fact, Mr. Broidy. I’m going to leave it at that.”
Avenatti wouldn’t say it, but the implication seems clear.
Yes, the implication is quite clear.
And it kind of irritates me because I actually started to write a piece about this in my head while I was driving to an appointment the other day, and decided not to post it because it seemed a little conspiratorial with not much evidence to back it up.
But let me take a stab at it again in light of this new information from Avenatti.
So this Elliot Brody guy is somebody that NOBODY really knows. At least not outside of certain Republican circles.
Though he is wealthy, and produced two b-list movies in 2013, he is not a famous person who typically hangs around celebrities.
He also looks like this.
So in what world does he get his hands on a playmate that looks like this.
I mean I know women are attracted to power and money, but unless this miss Bechard was straight up selling her body for sex, I simply don't see it.
On the other hand we KNOW that Donald Trump has been sleeping with Playboy models and porn stars for years, often did not use protection, and also habitually paid them off using Michael Cohen as a go between.
So the idea that this was HIS child, and that Michael Cohen paid that 1.6 million to buy her silence and arrange for an abortion to protect his boss, fits snugly with what we already know.
Well after it was revealed that Hunter was pregnant, Edwards campaign staffer Andrew Young came forward and said that he was the father.
He wasn't the father, John Edwards was, and that eventually came to light despite their best attempts to push the false story.
So yes, not only is it conceivable, but since as far as we know Michael Cohen provided semi-legal services to ONLY Donald Trump for little over a decade, it is also the most likely scenario.
CONAN: Was there a moment for you when you thought, "I'm not part of what those people may be, Republicans, or that person may be a Republican, but I'm not going with that?"
WALLACE: I mean, honestly, I think in 2008 to work for John McCain, who is also in pretty bad shape health-wise, to see that Sarah Palin's crowds were bigger and more enthusiastic for the crazy things she was saying, than him, was really the canary in the mine and the signal the party had changed.
CONAN: Telling you something was happening in this country that was angrier.
WALLACE: Yes.
CONAN: And more extreme. Darker.
WALLACE: Yes. so she gave me my first shove, Trumpism gave me my last kick out the door.
We have said it many times before here on IM, but it bears repeating.
Without Sarah Palin there would have been NO Donald Trump.
She helped to create the anti-intellectual, hating on the media, deny all reality, blueprint that Trump followed all the way to the White House.
The thing is we KNEW she was dangerous, that is why I focused on her here at the Immoral Minority.
But while I was working to undermine her chances of destroying the country, Trump came riding down that stupid escalator and started to out Palin Palin.
I mean hell, who thought THIS was literally the best way for anybody to start to campaign for president?
National Rifle Association backers are outraged over claims a company decided to cut ties with the organization, so they’ve started blowing up their products.
Yeti, a Texas-based outfit for outdoor gear, is known for its pricey coolers which can cost more than $1,000 each. The company had been offering discounts to the NRA, but once those deals were ended, the NRA said Yeti was engaging in a boycott. That prompted owners of Yeti products to lash out, crushing, shooting and blowing up their purchases, The Washington Post reported.
The source of the boycott claims was a letter from the NRA Institute for Legislative Action stating that Yeti was the latest in a series of companies to end business with the organization following the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School massacre in Parkland, FL, the Post said.
Footage of NRA advocates above shows two women destroying a Yeti cooler in what’s being dubbed the ‘#YetiCoolerChallenge,’ then stating, “Yeti does not support the NRA, so we do not support Yeti.”
So let me see if I understand this.
If a company chooses to break ties with an organization that lobbies for gun manufacturers due to gun violence, these supporters of that organization respond with gun violence?
Good thinking.
Speaking of good thinking as it turns out the Yeti folks actually did NOT cut their ties with the NRA.
Though I would think they might be reconsidering that decision now.
"Have you concluded that it’s not worth the political fallout to remove either special counsel Mueller or Deputy Attorney General [Rod] Rosenstein?” Bloomberg’s Jennifer Jacobs asked the president during his joint press conference with Japanese President Shinzo Abe.
“I can say there was no collusion and that’s been so found, as you know, by the House Intelligence Committee,” Trump responded, citing the recent closure of the Republican-led committee’s Russia investigation. “There is no collusion. There is no collusion with Russia other than by the Democrats, or, as I call them, the obstructionists. They truly are obstructionist.”
The president then switched gears to reiterate his belief that the Russia investigation is a “hoax,” claiming that it was “created largely by the Democrats as a way of softening the blow of a loss which is a loss that frankly they shouldn’t have had from the standpoint that it’s very easy for them to have a tremendous advantage in the electoral college.”
“You look at the kind of money that was paid, probably some went to Russia,” he continued. “You look at [Obama White House adviser] John Podesta having a company in Russia where nothing happened and people don’t talk about it. You look at the fact that their server, the DNC server, was never gotten by the FBI.”
You will notice that at no time did Trump proclaim that he was NOT planning to get rid of either Rod Rosenstein or Robert Mueller.
And as for collusion, we are seeing it happen right before our eyes with Trump refusing to implement the Russian sanctions that were voted on by Congress, and that his own Ambassador to the UN announced were coming.
“We’re entering an era in which our enemies can make it look like anyone is saying anything at any point in time — even if they would never say those things,” says “Obama,” his lips moving in perfect sync with his words as they become increasingly bizarre. “So, for instance, they could have me say things like, I don’t know, [Black Panther’s] Killmonger was right! Or Ben Carson is in the sunken place! Or, how ’bout this: Simply, President Trump is a total and complete dipshit.”
As the video soon reveals, the man speaking is not the former commander-in-chief, but rather Oscar-winning filmmaker Jordan Peele with a warning for viewers about trusting material they encounter online.
“This is a dangerous time. Moving forward, we need to be more vigilant with what we trust from the internet,” says Peele as Obama.
The PSA for the Internet Age was a project first imagined by Peele and BuzzFeed CEO Jonah Peretti, the filmmaker’s brother-in-law.
The pair wanted to warn the public about the rapidly evolving threat posed by digital misinformation after discussions between them about new technologies and the erosion of a shared reality.
Okay I am not going to lie, that is straight up terrifying.
And not so much because somebody MIGHT create a fake video of somebody saying something shocking or controversial (We know that they will.), but that it allows people caught on tape saying something shocking or controversial to claim that THEY were the target of video manipulation.
Think about it.
This means that news outlets might broadcast a completely legitimate video of Donald Trump saying something truly stupid or embarrassing and the Right Wing media can manipulate their own video, claim it is the real one, and call the mainstream media version "fake news."
You know it is going to happen. In fact it probably already has.
STEPHANOPOULOS: How strange is it for you to sit here and compare the president to a mob boss?
COMEY: Very strange. And I don’t do it lightly. I — and I’m not trying to, by the way, suggest that President Trump is out breaking legs and — you know, shaking down shopkeepers. But instead, what I’m talking about is that leadership culture constantly comes back to me when I think about my experience with the Trump administration. The — the loyalty oaths, the boss as the dominant center of everything, it’s all about how do you serve the boss, what’s in the boss’s interests. It’s the family, the family, the family, the family. That’s why it reminds me so much and not, “So what’s the right thing for the country and what are the values of the institutions that we’re dealing with?”
Trump's impact on those around him:
The challenge of this president is that he will stain everyone around him. And the question is, how much stain is too much stain and how much stain eventually makes you unable to accomplish your goal of protecting the country and serving the country? So I don’t know.
Trump's bizarre response to news that Russia had interfered in the election:
No one, to my recollection, asked, “So what — what’s coming next from the Russians?” You’re about to lead a country that has an adversary attacking it and I don’t remember any questions about, “So what are they going to do next? How might we stop it? What’s the future look like? Because we’ll be custodians of the security of this country.” There was none of that. It was all, “What can we say about what they did and how it affects the election that we just had.”
Are the Russians blackmailing Trump?
STEPHANOPOULOS: Do you think the Russians have something on Donald Trump?
COMEY: I think it’s possible. I don’t know. These are more words I never thought I’d utter about a president of the United States, but it’s possible.
STEPHANOPOULOS: That’s stunning. You can’t say for certain that the president of the United States is not compromised by the Russians?
COMEY: It is stunning and I wish I wasn’t saying it, but it’s just — it’s the truth. I cannot say that. It always struck me and still strikes me as unlikely, and I would have been able to say with high confidence about any other president I dealt with, but I can’t. It’s possible.
How Clinton's inevitability convinced Comey that revealing the newly discovered emails on Anthony Weiner's laptop would not hurt her campaign:
STEPHANOPOULOS: At some level, wasn’t the decision to reveal influenced by your assumption that Hillary Clinton was going to win? And your concern that she wins, this comes out several weeks later, and then that’s taken by her opponent as a sign that she’s an illegitimate president?
COMEY: It must have been. I don’t remember consciously thinking about that, but it must have been. Because I was operating in a world where Hillary Clinton was going to beat Donald Trump. And so I’m sure that it — that it was a factor. Like I said, I don’t remember spelling it out, but it had to have been. That — that she’s going to be elected president, and if I hide this from the American people, she’ll be illegitimate the moment she’s elected, the moment this comes out.
Concerning his possible impact on the outcome of the election:
But a whole lot of me was thinking, “Oh my God, did we have some role in this? Did we have some impact on the election?” And it’s an incredibly painful juxtaposition, but also thinking, “I really wouldn’t have done it any differently.”
God, I hope we had no impact. I hope we had no impact. But it — I know — I worry it sounds arrogant to say, but it — it wouldn’t change the result.
Comey also revealed that though he did not vote in the election, that his wife and essentially entire family were Hillary supporters, which must have made the days immediately after the election especially fun for him.
And finally on Trump's stunning lack of morality:
I don’t buy this stuff about him being mentally incompetent or early stages of dementia. He strikes me as a person of above average intelligence who’s tracking conversations and knows what’s going on. I don’t think he’s medically unfit to be president. I think he’s morally unfit to be president.
A person who sees moral equivalence in Charlottesville, who talks about and treats women like they’re pieces of meat, who lies constantly about matters big and small and insists the American people believe it — that person’s not fit to be president of the United States, on moral grounds. And that’s not a policy statement. Again, I don’t care what your views are on guns or immigration or taxes.
There’s something more important than that that should unite all of us, and that is our president must embody respect and adhere to the values that are at the core of this country. The most important being truth. This president is not able to do that. He is morally unfit to be president.
I left out the more salacious information about hand size, Russian hookers, and the pee pee tape, because I think that has already been covered in previous posts.
My take away from this interview is that Comey is essentially reporting what most of us already know about Trump's unfitness to lead this country, but he is also demonstrating his own inability to admit his mistakes, and to recognize that he could indeed have made better choices.
At one point Stephanopoulos asks him if he thinks Trump should be impeached, and Comey say he does not because it lets the American people off the hook, and instead believes Trump should be voted out in the next election cycle.
I completely disagree with that because it would allow Trump several more years to damage the country, and also fail to send a message to future corrupt politicians that there are consequences for that corruption.
The articles of impeachment exist for a reason, and if this ain't it, then I don't know what would be.
The chairman of Sinclair Broadcast Group met Donald Trump at the White House during a visit to pitch a potentially lucrative new product to administration officials, the Guardian has learned.
David D Smith, whose company has been criticised for making its anchors read a script echoing Trump’s attacks on the media, said he briefed officials last year on a system that would enable authorities to broadcast direct to any American’s phone.
“I just wanted them to be aware of the technology,” Smith said in an interview. He also recalled an earlier meeting with Trump during the 2016 election campaign, where he told the future president: “We are here to deliver your message.”
Sinclair is the biggest owner of local TV in the US, and may soon reach 72% of American households if a proposed $4bn takeover of a rival is approved by federal regulators. It is accused by critics of having a conservative bias, which it denies.
The company has been a driving force in the development of a new broadcasting standard known as Next Gen TV, and is one of the first involved in making chips for televisions, cellphones and other devices to receive the new transmissions.
Gee I wonder if those chips can also report back information, such as viewing habits, news sources, and possible political affiliations?
Because I kind of bet they can.
The CEO of Sinclair recently apologized to their employees for all of attacks they are receiving from "extremists."
Sinclair Broadcast Group CEO Chris Ripley apologized to employees Tuesday for having to endure what he called “politically motivated attacks” over the right-leaning media company’s recent promos, which drew widespread criticism for echoing President Trump’s attacks on the “fake” news media.
In a memo sent to staff, Ripley defended the scripts that anchors at more than 60 Sinclair stations were compelled to read, telling staff that the practice “is not unique to Sinclair, however, the blowback we received for doing so certainly is.”
“For having to field nasty calls, threats, personal confrontations and trolling on social media, I am truly sorry you had to endure such an experience,” Ripley wrote. “However, as an organization it is important that we do not let extremists on any side of the political fence bully us because they do not like what they hear or see.”
Oh yeah Sinclair is being attacked for doing what EVERY other news outlet does.
Once again, which news outlets force their reporters to do this?
It is not an "extremist" point of view to point out that this is atrocious, nor is it extremist to be very uncomfortable with a "news" agency that meets with a presidential candidate and promises to deliver their message.
I am absolutely convinced that this is almost exactly how Trump's mind works.
I don't think that Baldwin was so much playing a part as he was channeling the actual subconscious of Tangerine Hitler.
And I would bet my house that a number of the people who work closely with him have heard him mutter “I don’t care about America. This whole four-year presidency is a cash grab,” more than a few times under his breath.
Bet my house.
P.S. This segment does not really have anything to do with Donald Trump or politics, but it was by far my favorite bit from last night.,
I present to you Black Jeopardy, featuring the Black Panther.
I have seen this three times now, and it never fails to crack me up.
CNN’s Brian Stelter today opened by talking about how President Trump‘s “addiction to Fox” is having a lot of real-world consequences.
He brought up the past week of big news on immigration and troops being sent to the border, following the President’s tweet after watching a segment on Fox News.
“The line where Fox News ends and where Trump begins,” Stelter said, “is getting blurrier by the day.”
He brought up the initial Fox News coverage, followed by the primetime coverage, of the migrant “caravan” as indicative of how Trump’s “addiction to Fox and to other pro-Trump commentators leads to impulsive actions.”
Stelter said deploying the National Guard to the border is a “PR stunt” for a President who “wants to give his Fox friends something to celebrate.”
Very well said.
Donald Trump is addicted to fake news and conspiracy theories, and what better place to find them than Fox News? (Well, besides Info Wars of course.)
If Trump were just an every day citizen this might be a pain in the ass to his family, but probably nothing more.
But as America's Commander-in-Chief Donald Trump can take the bullshit from Fox News and weaponize it to cause real harm to our country, and our country's allies.
The 2008 Republican vice presidential candidate said she sees "hypocritical double standards" when it comes to the left's push for more gun control measures.
She said all Americans have the constitutional right to protect themselves and their families in the same way celebrities and politicians are protected.
"We have every right, we have a God-given right that’s codified in our Bill of Rights to protect ourselves and to protect our property and our families. It’s not just a select few that government will choose who gets to be protected. The movie stars, the politicians in D.C., those in a courthouse, no. The Bill of Rights does apply to every single citizen of the U.S.," she said.
Responding to President Trump's renewed calls for border security, including using U.S. troops, Palin said it's "obvious" why Democrats are opposed.
"I think that they just fear that Americans aren’t gonna vote Democrat, so by golly they’ll import people who will," she said.
Palin said those in favor of "globalization" want cheap labor and Americans are getting "sick of it."
"It comes back to either supporting the rule of law, our legal immigration system, or supporting and incentivizing illegal immigration with no expectation of assimilating any of the people into our culture or anything else. It’s really whack. People are really sick of it," she said.
It's really whack?
Do you know what else is "really whack?" The fact that Sarah Palin does not understand that you cannot "import" people who will vote the Democratic ticket because they are not yet US citizens.
Unless of course Palin buys into that conspiracy theory that claims the 3 million votes that Hillary Clinton beat Trump by in the popular vote were cast by illegal aliens.
But that's just crazy, right?
Of course the idea that ANYONE would seek an opinion about ANYTHING from this whack-a-doodle has been is equally crazy.
A morning TV producer at a Sinclair-owned station in Nebraska has resigned in protest of what he calls the company's "obvious bias."
Justin Simmons gave notice at KHGI TV on March 26. This was after Sinclair's corporate headquarters mandated that local anchors read the controversial promos warning of "fake" and biased news, but before the promos went viral and became a national topic of discussion.
Simmons told CNNMoney that he had been concerned about Sinclair's corporate mandates for the past year and a half, and that the promos were just the final straw.
"This is almost forcing local news anchors to lie to their viewers," he said.
He said his feelings are shared by others at his station, but didn't want to say anything that would imperil his colleagues.
The handbook states that the company “may monitor, intercept, and review, without further notice, every employee’s activities using Company’s electronic resources and communications systems.”
Well that's chilling.
But if you think that all of this attention has changed Sinclair's practices, you would be sorely mistaken.
Sinclair-owned news stations promoted a pre-taped segment praising President Trump’s decision to impose tariffs on foreign nations this week, amid controversy over a leaked “must-run” script.
The canned clip, a recurring “commentary” segment called “Bottom Line with Boris,” features former Trump campaign adviser Boris Epshteyn delivering administration-friendly talking points on the president’s proposed tariffs, which target countries like China.
“The newly negotiated trade deal between the United States and South Korea shows the new tariffs on steel and aluminum, which went into effect last week, are already paying dividends,” Epshteyn said, citing a March 25 pact between the two countries that forces South Korea to slash its steel exports to the United States by 30 percent, while exempting it from a regular 25 percent tariff.
“Here’s the bottom line,” he said. “This new deal with South Korea is a win for American businesses and our economy. Instead of causing trade wars, as critics have feared, the new tariffs…are pushing our trading partners to engage in fair trade with the United States.”
You would think that Boris Epshteyn might shed a few of those ugly pounds of fat by carrying all of this water for Donald Trump.
Or in this case instead of water I think he is more accurately carrying buckets filled with bullshit.
Michael Avenatti, the lawyer to porn star Stephanie Clifford (better known as Stormy Daniels), said in a Wednesday interview with Megyn Kelly Today that his client has a whole lot more to say about her alleged affair with the president.
The interview arrived after a 60 Minutes segment featuring Clifford in March, in which she described her interactions with Trump and claimed to have sex with the president shortly after the birth of his youngest son. In the segment, host Anderson Cooper focused largely on the timeline of events, as well as the threat she said she received in the parking lot of a fitness class while in the midst of sharing her story on Trump with a tabloid magazine years before the election.
Apparently, there’s a lot left to be told about the affair.
“When she sat for that interview, it actually lasted over two hours in length … the portion that the American public saw was only about 14 or 16 minutes,” Avenatti said Wednesday. “CBS, they’re a conservative network. There’s a lot of information that was said that did not make it into the final 60 Minutes piece.”
“For instance, she can describe the president’s genitalia in great detail, that did not make it into the piece,” he added.
God I hate Megyn Kelly, who I still think is carrying water for the conservatives, but I thought that this interview was interesting and worthy of being shared.
I actually think that one of Trump's greatest fears is for one of the many women who saw his penis describing it on national television.
When he threatens to loosen federal libel laws so he can sue news organizations that are critical of him and revoke licenses of networks critical of him, he isn’t just bullying the media. He’s threatening the constitutionally guaranteed freedom and integrity of the press.
When he equated Neo-Nazis and Ku Klux Klan members with counter-demonstrators in Charlottesville, Virginia, by blaming “both sides” for the violence, he wasn’t being neutral. He was condoning white supremacists, thereby undermining the constitution’s guarantee of equal rights.
When he pardoned Joe Arpaio, the former sheriff of Maricopa County, Arizona, for a criminal contempt conviction, he wasn’t just signaling it’s okay for the police to engage in violations of civil rights. He was also subverting the rule of law by impairing the judiciary’s power to force public officials to abide by court decisions.
When he criticized NFL players for kneeling during the national anthem, he wasn’t just demanding they demonstrate their patriotism. He was disrespecting their – and, indirectly, everyone’s – freedom of speech.
When he berates the intelligence agencies and the federal bureau of investigation, he isn’t just questioning their competence. He’s suggesting they’re engaged in a giant conspiracy to remove him from office – potentially inviting his most ardent supporters to engage in a new civil war.
When he boasts that he made up information in a meeting with the prime minister of Canada, he isn’t just undermining his own credibility. He’s undermining the credibility of the united states in the eyes of the world.
Donald Trump is degrading the core institutions and values of our democracy.
Spoiler alert: So that answer appears to be "YES!"
Which means we are likely living through the worst presidency this country has ever endured.
There are lessons which need to be learned here, and steps that should be taken to prevent something like this from happening again.
However I do not know exactly how those changes to our democratic process would be implemented, or even what they would look like.
All I know is that if we do not figure something out, our democracy will not be stolen from us by outside forces, but rather we will run it off a cliff all on our own.
This is what happens when Sinclair Broadcasting buys up the local stations.
The country is now slowly being taken over by conservatives who realize they cannot win by playing fair, so they are subtly slipping propaganda into our local news in the hopes that it poisons citizens against Democrats and progressive ideas.
Immediately after the horror of the February 14 mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla., the National Rifle Association halted all of its digital advertising, including ads on YouTube, banner ads on websites, and Facebook ads.
Within four days, though, the NRA had returned in force, increasing its advertising aggressively on Facebook, and spending so widely and indiscriminately that its ads on YouTube showed up on videos for school-age kids. According to a previously unpublished review by Pathmatics, a company that scrapes data from online ads, the NRA spent more than six times as much on digital ads after the Parkland shooting than it did in the weeks before it. Its average daily spending in the 24 days before Parkland was $11,300, according to Pathmatics. In the 24 days after its silent period, that average jumped to $47,300.
Nearly all of the increase was on social media, primarily Facebook, where the NRA took its spending from an average of $4,400 a day in the three weeks prior to Parkland to $34,000 a day in the three weeks after the silence. Florida was heavily targeted in the post-tragedy ad burst. The state went from ninth most targeted in January to third between mid-February and mid-March.
The NRA didn’t change its message – the ads were the same as before the shooting. The message was just pushed much harder. For the past year, the NRA had been ranked No. 706 by Pathmatics on its list of top YouTube video advertisers. In the period since Feb. 21, the gun-rights group jumped into the top 100 at No. 92.
The NRA did not stop with simple pro-gun advertisements, they also sent their spokespeople and Right Wing supporters out to attack the Parkland students.
In fact Laura Ingraham even went so far as to attack one of the student's grade point average.
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.) https://t.co/wflA4hWHXY
That seems like a rather pathetic attempt to undermine a teenager's credibility.
Hogg's sister, displaying far more maturity than Ingraham, responded with this:
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. #NeverAgainhttps://t.co/CgUVeGRfxP
Contributions to the National Rifle Association’s political action committee tripled in February amid public attacks against the organization following the Feb. 14 high school shooting in Parkland, Fla.
Supporters of the Second Amendment donated about $779,000 in February to the NRA’s political arm, the Political Victory Fund, according to recent Federal Election Commission (FEC) data.
The figure marked a more than threefold increase compared to January, when the PAC received nearly $250,000 in donations, and was the fund’s second-best month over the last year.
Well I guess if you define your manhood by the size of the metal penis extender you have strapped to your body it is a little hard to shame you about anything.
P.S. Okay just like an hour after I wrote this post Laura Ingraham caved under pressure and apologized to David Hogg on Twitter.
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. For the record, I believe my show was the first to feature David...(1/2)
Really? If you think he should be proud of a 4.2 grade average than why did you say that nasty shit in the first place?
In my mind these Right Wing trolls attack these Parkland kids at their peril, because these teenagers know exactly how to use social media to deal with idiots like them.
Update: I think this belongs here.
"This kid's not scared. He's not scared of the NRA. He's not intimidated and scared by Laura Ingraham ... Half the Republican party is hiding under the table, under their bed. They're so scared ... Not these kids, though" - @SteveSchmidtSES w/ @NicolleDWallacepic.twitter.com/QZE5I6zmv3
According to Sarah Rocksdale, who now identifies herself as an atheist, she grew up in a Pentecostal Christian home and was compelled by her parents to attend bible college in Griffin, Georgia, that she identifies as Southwestern Assemblies of God University Valor.
As Rocksdale explained, “I thought my only option forward career-wise … was in the church or to become a missionary,” before adding, “There was this peer pressure to go to this school and I did. In the first few days of being at the school that was also in a church, called Griffin First, we were told to sign a waiver or agreement giving our permission to go through their rigorous boot camp.”
Saying she was part of 35 attending the camp, she stated pastors told them upon their arrival there were three hard and fast rules: they we were not allowed to ask questions, or allowed to speak. They were not allowed to bring cell phones or watches because “the pastors didn’t want us to know what time it was while we were there.” And they were only allowed to bring one personal item with them.
What followed was a bizarre demand “to bring a backpack with a duct-tapped bag of sugar in it. The first years were supposed to have a 5 pound bag, the second years, a 10 pound bag and the third years, a 15 pound bag. We later found out that the bag of sugar represented Jesus carrying the weight of the world’s sins.”
....
According to Rocksdale, the students were herded out onto the lawn on the middle of the night and bullied into calisthenics, followed by being forced on to a bus and taken to run on nearby trails as pastors screamed at them.
“I’m not sure how long we ran, I only remember feeling like I couldn’t keep going. I looked over at my best friend at the time, she was running right beside me, crying and saying that she couldn’t do this anymore and then the pastors just screamed at her that she had to keep going,” she detailed. “I started slowing down also and they got right in my face and screamed at me too.”
According to Rocksdale, they were also denied sleep, and punished as a group if another in their class committed an infraction.
Saying she could take it anymore after three days, she contacted her parents and begged to be allowed to come home, only to be denied, so she turned to cutting herself.
Man I know it's been awhile since I attended but Sunday School sure has changed.
And I am clearly not the most religious person on the planet, but how in the hell does humiliation, forced runs, and isolation make one a better Christian?
I know that's how the military makes killing machines, but is that really the goal here?
