Month: January 2013

Gun Nut Who Suggested That America’s Founders Would Have Allowed Slaves to Bear Arms Is a Protege of Dick Morris

Jon Ponder

Larry Ward, the chairman of Gun Appreciation Day, a crypto-racist rally scheduled to coincide with celebrations next week of Martin Luther King’s birthday as well as the second inauguration of America’s first black president, actually said this on national television on Friday:

LARRY WARD: I think Martin Luther King, Jr. would agree with me if he were alive today that if African Americans had been given the right to keep and bear arms from day one of the country’s founding, perhaps slavery might not have been a chapter in our history.

This is a new classic in right-wing counter-factual history — right up there with Michele Bachmann’s claim during the primaries that “the Founders fought tirelessly to end slavery” or former GOP Senate leader Trent Lott’s assertion on the 100th birthday of South Carolina Sen. Strom Thurmond, who ran for president in 1948 on the neo-Confederate Dixiecrat party ticket, that “…when Strom Thurmond ran for president, we [Mississippians] voted for him. We’re proud of it. And if the rest of the country had followed our lead, we wouldn’t have had all these problems over all these years, either.”

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Tennessee Suspends Gun Permit of Nut Who Threatened to ‘Start Killing People’

Jon Ponder

Yeager
It’s reassuring to know that someone in the Tennessee Department of Safety and Homeland Security has some sense:

Tennessee Department of Safety and Homeland Security has suspended the handgun carry permit of a local man who threatened to “start killing people” to protect his Second Amendment right.

In a statement released Friday officials said they had suspended the handgun carry permit of James Yeager, CEO of Tactical Response based on “material likelihood of risk of harm to the public.”

On Thursday, a video of Yeager angrily claiming he would “start killing people” if President Barack Obama moved forward with gun control measures began to go viral on the internet.

“The number one priority for our department is to ensure the public’s safety. Mr. Yeager’s comments were irresponsible, dangerous, and deserved our immediate attention. Due to our concern, as well as that of law enforcement, his handgun permit was suspended immediately. We have notified Mr. Yeager about the suspension today via e-mail. He will receive an official notification of his suspension through the mail,” Commissioner Bill Gibbons said.

With California GOP Bankrupt and Bleeding Voters, Incoming Chairman Signals No Significant Changes or Course Corrections

Jon Ponder

Brulte
Driven by what were perceived to be extreme anti-Latino policies in the 1990s, the California Republican Party began to lose new voter registrations in the 2000s. Financial backing fell off soon afterwards, and by 2008, the party found itself facing perpetual insolvency.

In November, voters put a Democratic super-majority in charge of legislature. Now, with its share of registered voters at around 30 percent and dropping, the California GOP appears to be circling the drain.

Even so, someone has to lead it, and now a former longtime Sacramento pol, Jim Brulte, has announced he is running for chairman of the state party. Since no one in his or her right mind would want the job, that makes him the state party’s new de facto leader.

Brulte is not talking to the press, but CalBuzz has the scoop — and what they have learned appears to be good news for everyone who wants California to continue to recover and prosper. To wit, Brulte ain’t gonna change a thing. His chairmanship of the state GOP promises more of the same old unpopular teabaggery and retrograde religiosity that has been slowly poisoning the party for nearly 20 years:

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