“Guns Are Cheaper At This Tennessee Store If You’re A Christian”: What Better Way To Honor Victims Of A Mass Shooting Than With A Big Gun Sale
Christians who are looking a good deal on a gun need look no further than Frontier Firearms. The Kingston, Tennessee liberty-defending establishment began offering 5 percent discounts last week for anyone who says “I’m a Christian” before purchasing a new handgun.
The rebate was announced shortly after the tragic shooting at Umpqua Community College in Oregon earlier this month—where the shooter allegedly asked his victims if they were Christians before shooting them.
And what better way to honor victims of a mass shooting than with a a big gun sale?
“If Christians are going to be targeted, we need to protect ourselves,” owner Brant Williams said when the discount began. He, and Frontier Firearms vice president Eric Parish, characterize the mass shooting as religiously motivated, citing reports that shooter Chris Harper Mercer asked students about their faith before killing them.
“I don’t care if you’re a Democrat, or Republican, an Independent, the Green Party, I don’t care what party you’re with. But to say that that shooting right there had nothing to do with religion is ludicrous,” Parish told the Daily Beast. “What if someone had done the same thing and they only shot them if they were Muslim? Would the President react differently?”
Parish alleges the sale, now extended until the end of the month (so hurry!), is no longer reserved for just Christians—or people who say they are Christians— but any and all people willing to declare a religion prior to buying a new weapon.
If a customer said they were Muslim, would there still be a discount. “Of course,” according to Parish, so long as they didn’t also say they were an extremist planning a mass shooting. Obviously.
“Religion was a part of this country’s founding, you know religious freedom. And that’s what it’s about,” Parish said. “Being able to say ‘hey I’m this,’ without getting shot in the back of the head because of it.”
Frontier Firearms has gotten their fair share of colorful commentary from customers who do not appreciate the creative sale. “FUCK YOU, you fucking fear mongering opportunistic scum wads!” wrote one thoughtful potential customer. “You fucking gun idiots make me sick. BTW the Oregon shooter was a Conservative Republican… he was one of you. BTW the bearded fool is he the owner? He looks like a JEWBAG.”
Not exactly the armed, kumbaya Parish was hoping for.
Despite Parish alleging that the store is welcoming any and all faiths, Frontier Firearms’ owner is promoting his own Christian Carry Pins which as the name suggests read: “I am Christian and I carry.” They are $5.00 each which is way less than the 5 percent customers would save on the new guns they buy. Semi-automatic pistols are available at Fronteir Firearms for as low as $408.
“This is America,” Parish said. “And I’m still pretty sure you can pick what your religion is without being persecuted for it.”
By: Gideon Resnick, The Daily Beast, October 13, 2015
“We Have Become A Midterm Party”: RNC Chair; ‘We’re Cooked As A Party’ With 2016 Loss
Republican National Committee Chair Reince Priebus had hoped for a very different kind of 2016 election cycle. As we discussed a while back, the RNC chief intended to curtail the number of debates, front-load the nominating process, and effectively stack the deck in favor of established, electable candidates. Before the process even began, GOP lawmakers were also supposed to take lessons from the 2012 losses, pass immigration reform, and take steps to broaden the base.
The party, the argument went, would position itself for victory in 2016 by avoiding an embarrassing circus and steering clear of a madcap process that tarnished the party and its candidates alike.
The execution of Priebus’ plan has worked out quite differently, and when he sat down yesterday with the conservative Washington Examiner, he looked ahead to next fall.
…”I think that we have become, unfortunately, a midterm party that doesn’t lose and a presidential party that’s had a really hard time winning,” Priebus said. “We’re seeing more and more that if you don’t hold the White House, it’s very difficult to govern in this country – especially in Washington D.C.”
“So I think that – I do think that we’re cooked as a party for quite a while as a party if we don’t win in 2016. So I do think that it’s going to be hard to dig out of something like that,” Priebus told the Examiner.
It’s a fair assessment. Looking back over the last six presidential elections, Democrats have won the popular vote five times. If Dems expand that to a six-out-of-seven advantage, it will be that much more difficult for Republicans to characterize themselves as a national governing party.
What’s less clear is the practical implication of defeat. When Priebus imagines the Republican Party as “cooked … for quite a while,” I’m not entirely sure what he means in applied terms. Does the RNC chair think another defeat would be an impetus for dramatic intra-party change? Does he envision a splintering of the party in which right-wing members break off?
In the same interview, Priebus added that he doesn’t “anticipate” another rough cycle next year. “I think … history is on our side,” he told the Examiner.
As a factual matter, he’s entirely correct. Looking back over the post-WWII era, parties have nearly always struggled to hold onto the White House for three straight elections. Democrats do, in fact, go into 2016 facing historical headwinds.
But it’s nevertheless easy to imagine Dems prevailing anyway, leaving Republicans “cooked.”
By: Steve Benen, The Maddow Blog, October 16, 2015
“Republicans Punish Their Own For Speaking The Truth”: Sometimes, The Biggest Sin You Can Commit In D.C. Is To Tell The Truth
“A gaffe is when a politician tells the truth — some obvious truth he isn’t supposed to say.” — journalist Michael Kinsley
So another Republican congressman has come forward to admit that his party’s Benghazi obsession is little more than an undisguised effort to damage the presidential campaign of Hillary Rodham Clinton, the Democratic frontrunner.
In a radio interview on Wednesday, U.S. Rep. Richard Hanna (R-NY) defended his colleague, House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy, who had acknowledged that obvious truth as well.
“Sometimes the biggest sin you can commit in D.C. is to tell the truth. This may not be politically correct, but I think that there was a big part of this investigation that was designed to go after people and an individual: Hillary Clinton,” said Hanna.
Well, of course. Anyone who has been paying the slightest attention already knows that the unending series of Benghazi “investigations” began as a way to embarrass the administration of President Barack Obama, including his then-secretary of state. When Clinton announced her presidential campaign, the investigations began to center on her (and are now more focused on her use of a private email server).
If you only dimly recall the origin of the GOP battle cry “Remember Benghazi!” it started with a tragedy. On Sept. 11, 2012, Christopher Stevens, then U.S. ambassador to Libya, and three other Americans were killed in separate assaults by Islamic jihadists on U.S. installations in Benghazi, Libya. Stevens was the first U.S. ambassador killed in the line of duty since 1979.
The incident deserved a thorough probe to see whether there was anything that could have been done to prevent the deaths of diplomatic personnel in the future: Was security too lax? Intelligence ignored? The area too dangerous for diplomats?
But in the days after the deaths, it became clear that leading Republicans were much more interested in scoring their own attacks on Democratic targets than investigating the “Battle of Benghazi,” as it has been called. For one thing, they focused on such superficial and unimportant details as whether Susan Rice, then the president’s national security adviser, had clearly described the assault as “terrorism” or merely extremism. It’s not at all clear what difference that makes, but that line of attack derailed any shot she had at succeeding Clinton as secretary of state.
With that, Republicans were emboldened. And they haven’t given up their efforts to sink some notable Democrat with even a tenuous link to Libya and its national security implications.
They’ve not had any luck so far. After seven congressional and two executive-branch investigations, there has been no evidence of criminal wrongdoing, malfeasance or cover-up. The last was an exhaustive probe conducted by the GOP-led House Intelligence Committee; it found no evidence that either the U.S. military or the CIA had acted improperly. There was no delay in sending a military rescue team, as many conservatives have insisted.
So there was no genuine surprise at what McCarthy told Fox News in a September interview:
“Everybody thought Hillary Clinton was unbeatable, right? But we put together a Benghazi special committee, a select committee. What are her numbers today? Her numbers are dropping,” McCarthy told Sean Hannity.
Still, he paid dearly for the slip. Criticized by Republican leaders for dropping the gauzy veil over their nakedly partisan smear campaign, he was forced to abandon his plan to succeed John Boehner as speaker of the house.
McCarthy was supposed to keep up the pretense that the House Select Committee on Benghazi is conducting a high-minded probe free of partisan tilt. And that pretense continues. Clinton will appear before the committee later this month.
If there is any better example of the excessive and stultifying partisanship that has laid waste to Washington, it’s hard to know what that may be. After all, it can hardly be considered shocking that an American diplomat was killed in a dangerous country full of Islamic militants. Tragic, gut-wrenching, awful, yes. Shocking, no.
Still, the GOP’s listing and rudderless Benghazi ship — white whale on the horizon — sails on.
By: Cynthia Tucker Haynes, Pulitzer Prize Winner for Commentary in 2007; The National Memo, October 17, 2015
“Emotions Are Too Raw, Resentments Too Deep”: Republicans Have A Serious Electability Problem — And Marco Rubio Is Not The Answer
Do Republicans want to win the presidential election next fall? Of course they do — but it’s curious that they’ve spent so little time debating not just which of their candidates is the most pure of heart and firm of spine, but which might actually have the best chance of winning the general election.
Contrast that with the Democratic race in 2004 or the Republican race in 2012. In both cases there was a long and detailed debate about electability, and voters ultimately coalesced around the candidate who seemed the best bet for the general election. After being pummeled as unpatriotic and terrorist-loving for years, Democrats in 2004 told themselves that a couple of draft-dodgers like Bush and Cheney could never pull that crap on a war hero like John Kerry, and that would neutralize their most glaring vulnerability. (It turned out they were wrong about that; in addition to the fraud of the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, a particular highlight was when delegates to the GOP convention showed up with Band-aids with purple hearts drawn on them on their faces, mocking the three Purple Hearts Kerry had been awarded in Vietnam).
Likewise, in 2012, Republicans debated intensely among themselves (see here or here) about whether Mitt Romney really was the only candidate who could win support from the middle, or whether they’d be better off going with a true believer like Rick Santorum or Newt Gingrich.
There were always dissenters, of course, and they felt vindicated by the final outcome, even if there’s no way to know whether a different candidate would have done better. But everyone makes the electability argument that serves their pre-existing beliefs. So conservatives now tell themselves a story in which Republicans lost in 2008 and 2012 because they failed to nominate a “true” conservative, and once they do so, millions of heretofore unseen voters will emerge bleary-eyed from their doomsday bunkers and home-schooling sessions to cast their ballots for the GOP. This is what Ted Cruz will tell you — and it’s notable that he may talk more about electability than anyone else, despite the fact that if he were the nominee, the party would probably suffer a defeat to rival Barry Goldwater’s.
Cruz has a passionate if finite following, but the candidates leading the Republican field — Donald Trump and Ben Carson, who between them are winning about half the Republican electorate — represent a kind of cri de coeur, an expression of disgust with everything the GOP has failed to do for its constituents during the Obama years. That either one would almost certainly lose, and badly, doesn’t seem to matter much to their supporters.
The Republican establishment, on the other hand — that loose collection of funders, strategists, apparatchiks, and officials — thinks long and hard about electability. At first they seemed to settle on Jeb Bush, who seemed like the kind of low-risk grownup who could plod his way to victory. Sure, the name could be a problem, but Bush was the right sort of fellow, a known quantity who could be relied on. And so they helped him raise a quick $100 million, in a fundraising blitzkrieg that was suppose to “shock and awe” other candidates right out of the race.
Yet somehow it didn’t work out, partly because he turned out to be a mediocre candidate, and partly because although the Republican base wants many things, Jeb does not appear to be among them. Depending on which poll average you like, he’s in either fourth of fifth place, sliding slowly down. His campaign just announced it’ll be cutting back on its spending to save money, which is never a good sign (the last candidate we heard was doing that was Rick Perry; a couple of weeks later he was out of the race).
So now, after saying to the base, “Jeb’s a guy who can get elected, what do you think?” and getting a resounding “No thanks” in reply, the establishment has turned its benevolent gaze on Marco Rubio. The billionaires love him, the strategists are talking him up, the press is on board, he’s young and fresh and new and Hispanic — what’s not to like? But so far, the voters aren’t quite convinced. Though Rubio has always scored highly in approval from Republicans, he seems like everyone’s second choice, and he hasn’t yet broken out of single digits. Most Democrats will tell you that though he has some liabilities, Rubio is the one they really fear, but that hasn’t earned him too much support (at least not yet) among Republican voters.
Perhaps the reason is that at the end of eight years suffering under a president from the other party, emotions are too raw and resentments too deep for that kind of pragmatic thinking. In that way, Republicans in 2016 are in a position similar to that of Democrats in 2008 at the end of George W. Bush’s two terms. I’m sure more than a few Republicans would like to find the candidate who can make them feel the way Barack Obama made Democrats feel then: inspired, energized, and full of hope that a new era was really dawning, one in which all their miseries would be washed away and they could show the world how great things could be if they were in charge.
That Obama was not just a vessel for their feelings but also a shrewd politician capable of running a brilliant general election campaign was a stroke of luck. So far, Republicans haven’t found someone who can be both.
By: Paul Waldman, Senior Writer, The American Prospect; Contributor, The Week, October 16, 2015
“Oh No, Non-Sense Noonan, Again”: Conservative Pundit Blames Obama For Trump’s Rise
Those familiar with Internet memes have probably come across the “Thanks, Obama” phenomenon. President Obama himself has even had some fun with it.
The basic idea is simple: the president’s critics have grown to detest Obama with such blinding and irrational hatred that they have a habit of blaming him for things he has nothing to do with. When anything goes wrong with any facet of anyone’s life, just point the finger at the White House and say, sarcastically, “Thanks, Obama.”
The meme came to mind this morning reading Peggy Noonan’s latest Wall Street Journal column in which she blames the president for, of all things, Donald Trump’s rise as a Republican contender.
The only thing I feel certain of is how we got here [with Trump’s standing in GOP polls]. There are many reasons we’re at this moment, but the essential political one is this: Mr. Obama lowered the bar. He was a literal unknown, an obscure former state legislator who hadn’t completed his single term as U.S. senator, but he was charismatic, canny, compelling. He came from nowhere and won it all twice. All previously prevailing standards, all usual expectations, were thrown out the window.
Anyone can run for president now….
Look, Noonan’s contempt for the president is hardly a secret, but blaming Obama for Trump is silly.
For one thing, the president wasn’t a “literal unknown.” He was a rising star in Democratic politics who gained a national profile at his party’s 2004 national convention. It’s true that Obama only had 12 years of experience in public office when he was elected president, but (a) that’s triple the number of years Mitt Romney had under his belt; (b) it’s largely consistent with the historical average for modern American presidents; and (c) and it’s more than many of the leading Republican presidential hopefuls have this year.
Noonan complains, “Anyone can run for president now.” Well, yes, and anyone could run for president before. President Obama has had an enormous impact on the nation’s direction, but eligibility standards for the White House remain unaffected.
The argument seems to be that Obama, by having the audacity to easily win two national elections with only 12 years in elected office and without earning the praise of Republican pundits, has made it easier for unqualified candidates to excel. The fact remains, however, that voters have seen all kinds of inexperienced and ill-prepared candidates over the years – before and after President Obama – and it’s up to Americans to decide whether or not those candidates are worthy of power.
Obama earned their trust and his successes and accomplishments should speak for themselves. Plenty of less prepared candidates have fared far worse.
As for holding the president responsible for Trump, let’s not forget that the reality-show host entered the 2016 contest as something of a joke. We’re not talking about “a literal unknown” taking advantage of lowered standards; we’re talking about a well-known celebrity who entered the race with roughly 3% support.
His numbers soared, however, when far-right voters liked what they heard from the candidate.
Given this, it seems Peggy Noonan is blaming the wrong culprit. Trump’s rise isn’t the result of President Obama’s two decades of public service; it’s the result of the Republican base embracing a clownish candidate.
By: Steve Benen, The Maddow Blog, October 16, 2015
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