Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Whoever he was, that guy was nuts.

You don’t get rid of your umbrella while it’s still raining.

Incompetence, fear, or corruption? why not all three?

“Can i answer the question? No you can not!”

Fuck the extremist election deniers. What’s money for if not for keeping them out of office?

You don’t get to peddle hatred on saturday and offer condolences on sunday.

Wow, I can’t imagine what it was like to comment in morse code.

It’s the corruption, stupid.

“woke” is the new caravan.

If you are still in the GOP, you are an extremist.

Conservatism: there are some people the law protects but does not bind and others who the law binds but does not protect.

“Everybody’s entitled to be an idiot.”

Accused of treason; bitches about the ratings. I am in awe.

Jesus, Mary, & Joseph how is that election even close?

A thin legal pretext to veneer over their personal religious and political desires

Shallow, uninformed, and lacking identity

Sitting here in limbo waiting for the dice to roll

Make the republican party small enough to drown in a bathtub.

Red lights blinking on democracy’s dashboard

Tick tock motherfuckers!

A snarling mass of vitriolic jackals

They traffic in fear. it is their only currency. if we are fearful, they are winning.

The GOP is a fucking disgrace.

Let me eat cake. The rest of you could stand to lose some weight, frankly.

You are here: Home / Open Threads / It’s the First, Not the Second

It’s the First, Not the Second

by | 167 Comments

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Here’s the next wingnut move to make sure they keep stroking that rod:

NEWFOUNDLAND, Pa. — A Pennsylvania-based religious group is scheduled to host a blessing ceremony for couples that will feature their AR-15 rifles.

World Peace and Unification Sanctuary in Newfoundland believes the AR-15 symbolizes the “rod of iron” in the biblical book of Revelation, and it is encouraging couples to bring the weapons to a commitment ceremony Wednesday morning.

“Pope LaPierre” has quite a ring to it, don’t you think?

Update: My God:

Reader Interactions

167Comments

  3. 3.

    Fair Economist

    Another right-wing event that’s so ridiculous it just *has* to be parody. But it’s not.

  7. 7.

    Mike in NC

    Do the Moonies still own the right-wing Washington Times, which first saw the light of day during the Reagan administration? Moon might have been a bigger con artist than Pat Roberts or Jerry Falwell.

  12. 12.

    NotMax

    Ceremony isn’t a prayer so much as a series of bullet points.

    Used to live two hops and a skip from Newfoundland (pronounced new-FOUND-land). The populace, such as it was, wasn’t all that gonzo then.

  13. 13.

    Ohio Mom

    Oh my. I stay off the internet for the better part of a whole day and this is the first thing I see upon my return.

    I’m afraid to see what else I missed.

  17. 17.

    Another Scott

    @NotMax:

    (pronounced new-FOUND-land)

    Interesting. In Canuckistan, they pronounce it (roughly) nufun-LAND!!

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  19. 19.

    DanF

    “Blessed are the arms manufacturers for they shall inherit what’s left of the earth.” Jesus H Christ, Guns & Ammo 7:13

  23. 23.

    NorthLeft12

    “Lord tunderin’ jaysus” or “Jaysus, Maary, and Joseph” as the beloved Newfoundlanders of Canada would say.

    Too many people in your country are headed into the scary crazy territory that I really am wondering if you sane Americans will be able to pull your country back from the abyss. These asshats seem determined to drag your country back into the early nineteenth century.

  26. 26.

    evodevo

    Oh, wait … it’s a cult church … I thought it was just your average winger pentacostals or something … I guess the crowns would be too much for normal wingers?

  30. 30.

    efgoldman

    @NorthLeft12:

    Too many people in your country are headed into the scary crazy territory

    They’re very loud, and the intartoobz (and Russian bots) amplify the noise geometrically (logarithmically? I don’t know the difference). Our side is very energized – look at the results of special elections.

  31. 31.

    No Drought No More

    If Hope Hicks sense of self preservation is acute, she’ll have a restraining issued against Trump, one that prevents him from contacting, tweeting about, or dreaming about her. And then she should take a business card out of her wallet, the one that Mueller’s guy must have handed her, when he told her to give him a call if she recollects something she neglected to mention in the interview..

  37. 37.

    Jay

    @efgoldman:

    Yup, La Meute in Quebec, ( Nazi’s) claims to have between 30,000 and 60,000 members, armed and ready,

    But the most they have ever gotten out to a racist protest is 25 people.

  38. 38.

    Doug R

    Exodus 32 When the people saw that Moses was so long in coming down from the mountain, they gathered around Aaron and said, “Come, make us gods[a] who will go before us. As for this fellow Moses who brought us up out of Egypt, we don’t know what has happened to him.”

    2 Aaron answered them, “Take off the gold earrings that your wives, your sons and your daughters are wearing, and bring them to me.” 3 So all the people took off their earrings and brought them to Aaron. 4 He took what they handed him and made it into an idol cast in the shape of a calf, fashioning it with a tool. Then they said, “These are your gods,[b] Israel, who brought you up out of Egypt.”

    5 When Aaron saw this, he built an altar in front of the calf and announced, “Tomorrow there will be a festival to the Lord.” 6 So the next day the people rose early and sacrificed burnt offerings and presented fellowship offerings. Afterward they sat down to eat and drink and got up to indulge in revelry.

    7 Then the Lord said to Moses, “Go down, because your people, whom you brought up out of Egypt, have become corrupt. 8 They have been quick to turn away from what I commanded them and have made themselves an idol cast in the shape of a calf. They have bowed down to it and sacrificed to it and have said, ‘These are your gods, Israel, who brought you up out of Egypt.’

    9 “I have seen these people,” the Lord said to Moses, “and they are a stiff-necked people. 10 Now leave me alone so that my anger may burn against them and that I may destroy them.

  40. 40.

    mad citizen

    Remember this guy–nailed it in 2008 (from the Guardian via googling):

    Obama was caught in an uncharacteristic moment of loose language. Referring to working-class voters in old industrial towns decimated by job losses, the presidential hopeful said: “They get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.”

    The comments were seized on by his rival for the Democratic party candidacy, Hillary Clinton, who saw in them the hope of reviving her flagging campaign by turning voters in the important Pennsylvania primary on April 22 against what she classed as Obama’s revealed “elitism”.

    “I was taken aback by the demeaning remarks Senator Obama made about people in small-town America,” she said on Saturday. “His remarks are elitist and out of touch.” Clinton campaigners in North Carolina handed out stickers saying: “I’m not bitter.”

    Obama’s comments are potentially incendiary in the Pennsylvania rust belt. Analysts speculated that the remarks could give white working-class voters the excuse they needed not to vote for Obama, whose candidacy has been regarded with scepticism in the state but had shown some signs of growing momentum.

  41. 41.

    Raoul

    Moonies (eta: or whatever son-of-Moonies are called).
    Years ago a work friend told me about his family’s brush with Moonies. His brother was in one of those mass weddings in San Francisco. He met the woman he was to marry the day of the event.
    Those folks are a tragic mix of brainwashed, and broken enough to have arrived wanting to be brainwashed.

  45. 45.

    p.a.

    @WereBear: Onion writers go on a three day drunk.

    I was thinking “spare the AR spoil the child” but it’s not remotely funny given the mindset we’re looking at, i.e. “… using the sympathy for shot children…” NRA-think.

  46. 46.

    raven

    Thank god we have a president who is going to kick in the doors of these motherfuckers and take their heat!

  47. 47.

    Sister Golden Bear

    Pulled into my hotel in Ruidoso, NM, and there were dozens of police, some with semi-automatic rifles, out in front.

    Turns out someone threatened to kill a bunch of students at the local high school and middle school, so the kids were evacuated here, where their parents could pick them up — hence the heavy security.

    Doubtful the incident will get press coverage beyond the local area because these sorts of things have become routine.

    When did we become OK with people terrorizing over communities, whether through actual mass shootings or the threat of them?! I sure as hell hope we truly are at s tipping point.

  50. 50.

    Jay

    @Raoul:

    Back in the day, 100 years ago, I had my own experience. They prey on lonely innocent people, and use NORK indoctrination techniques, (hard work, substandard diet, long hours, programming sessions, group and self criticism, group policing).

  52. 52.

    rikyrah

    Kushner gets $184 Million dollar loan from equity fund after White House meetings

    $300 million from Citigroup after White House meetings

  53. 53.

    tobie

    @mad citizen: I thought of this episode often when the media was going crazy about HRC’s deplorable comment. Every campaign has moments when they speak too candidly. Obama’s diagnosis of the problem was right.

  54. 54.

    BluegirlFromWyo

    No wonder the anti-gay marriage people are afraid of a slippery slope. Projection, thy name is wingnut.

  56. 56.

    NotMax

    Flash from the past, per Wikipedia.

    In 1974, Moon asked church members in the United States to support President Richard Nixon during the Watergate scandal when Nixon was being pressured to resign his office. Church members prayed and fasted in support of Nixon for three days in front of the United States Capitol, under the motto: “Forgive, Love and Unite.” On 1 February 1974 Nixon publicly thanked them for their support and officially received Moon. This brought the church into widespread public and media attention.

  57. 57.

    NorthLeft12

    @efgoldman: You know ef, the rest of the world is counting on you guys. Not least of all your friendly neighbours to the north.
    Best of luck to you.

  58. 58.

    debbie

    @Jay:

    A Moonie grabbed my elbow and wouldn’t let go. This was in Rockefeller Center in the late 1970s. He had this really creepy smile. Luckily, a construction worker ran up and chased him off.

  59. 59.

    mad citizen

    @tobie: On Monday and Tuesday night driving home on my local beltway I’ve come across a white pickup with the simple sticker on the driver’s side cab window: “Extremely Deplorable”. Tuesday I looked over and it was a young beared white guy with sock hat. I want to flip a finger so bad, but think better about inciting road rage. Probably why I have no stickers on my car.

  61. 61.

    NotMax

    @rikyrah

    BTW, Citigroup is the major tenant at the Fifth Avenue building. In fact, the Citigroup logo replaced the original giant 666 which had been atop the building since it opened.

  63. 63.

    Suzanne

    This is even creepier than the little girls in wedding dresses promising their hymens to their dads.

    Ugh. So much fail. So very much fail.

  64. 64.

    dmsilev

    @rikyrah: Let’s play the fun game “who leaked this?”. Considering all the Jared stories that have come out this week, someone really really really has it in for him. Kelly would be the obvious suspect, which raises the amusing scenario of Kelly torpedoing Jared, Ivanka convincing Daddy to fire Kelly in retaliation, and then the chaos spreads further.

    Meanwhile, the theme from Jaws is playing on constant loop as Mueller circles around and spirals closer with each loop.

  65. 65.

    NotMax

    Anyone else remember this?

    Following an ABC News report that thousands of gun sights used by the U.S. military in Iraq and Afghanistan are inscribed with secret Bible references, a spokesperson for the Marine Corps said the Corps is ‘concerned’ and will discuss the matter with the weapons manufacturer.
    [snip]
    Retired Army Major General William Nash, now an ABC News consultant, said he had “no problem” with organizations providing Bibles and other religious tracts to U.S. troops. “But I do have a problem,” said Nash, “with military equipment being labeled in a way where it seems like it’s our god against their god.” Source

  68. 68.

    Bill

    The church is run by a Moon, Kahr arms is owned by his brother. The church would like you to purchase an AR15 at their gun mega-store to bring to the ceremony. If you are unable to purchase a gun, for reasons, they would like you to purchase a $700 gift certificate from the gun mega-store to show your commitment. Not Making This Up.

  69. 69.

    Jay

    @debbie:

    I left the “Farm Compound” outside San Jose, after two weeks, when I realized who they were. It was really easy to get in, not so easy to get out, but eventually, they drove me back to SF.

  70. 70.

    efgoldman

    @Tbone:

    when we call them ammosexuals, it was supposed to be a joke?

    Humor is among their missing attributes. Not only missing, but in negative quantities

  73. 73.

    efgoldman

    @raven:

    we have a president who is going to kick in the doors of these motherfuckers

    If he ever comes face to face with some of those open carry motherfuckers,h e better hope an assistant is carrying an extra clean pair of pants. Underoos, too.

  74. 74.

    John Revolta

    @dmsilev: This is reminding me of the liquor store shootout near the end of Repo Man:

    Jared: I blame society………………..society brought me to this sorry fate………….
    Kelly: Bullshit. You’re just a rich white kid like everybody else.
    Jared: But it still huuuurrrrrrtts…………………….

    SCENE

  76. 76.

    Brendan in NC

    Holy crap! That’s the next exit down I-84 from where I usually stop on my way to my parents place in Maine. Outside the Scranton/Wilkes-Barre area – whole lotta nothing around it.

  78. 78.

    MoCA Ace

    These people are human filth. As a Christian and responsible gun owner I am doubly offended. Enraged and offended!

    There was a period where I actually thought we were moving beyond the point where Christianity could be so easily twisted into something so vile… I am under no such delusions anymore. As an owner of hunting firearms I have long believed that the ammosexuals were going to screw it up for all of us. At this point I can honestly say I don’t care anymore.

  80. 80.

    lgerard

    Those crowns made from bullets that some of them are wearing are pretty fashionable. I wonder if they come in different calibers?

  82. 82.

    Bill

    @Brendan in NC: There are state gamelands to either side of 84, and as NotMax mentioned, a state park. Not very far away are many many houses with many many Long Islanders in them. Huge resort and retirement community, pretty much all the way down to Rt. 80 and the water gap. Poconos, baby.

  84. 84.

    M. Bouffant

    @NotMax: That had just occurred to me. Not so hoity-toity, howev. (Now I’m trying to remember if my Long Island relatives took me there in 1968 when I visited the Apple.)

    Well, the view was good from 40 stories up, especially in those days long before the World Trade Center, when a restaurant on top of a skyscraper was a novelty. Prices were reasonable. Children liked the view, and so did young couples on dates.

    ”People proposed to their wives there,” said David Grant, a spokesman for Sumitomo of Tokyo, the building’s owners, recalling his own past, when going to ”the city” meant journeying from Queens to Manhattan. ”Nobody ever went there for the food.”

    See also: Seattle’s Space Needle.

  88. 88.

    Ruckus

    @Adam L Silverman:
    I have been around cults for half a century. Not at my choosing I might add. I fully understand that they are fucking crazy. As in insane crazy. No, as in fucking insane crazy. This is beyond the pale crazy. Bug fuck, locked up inside foot thick wall fucking crazy.

  89. 89.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Ruckus: Pure Americana. When Jefferson and Madison separated church from state they made it necessary for the churches to have to hustle on the free market to sell their wares. And they’ve been hustling ever since. I know why they did what they did. I know why they thought it was a good idea. But if you look at the places that didn’t make the separation in Europe almost every single one of them doesn’t have this problem because religion has faded into the background. Sometimes fixing the problem just creates new, different problems.

  91. 91.

    smintheus

    This is the town where former NYC druglord Johnny Onionhead Eng had a large estate before his arrest. He and his gang reportedly used it for their machine gun practice.

  94. 94.

    efgoldman

    @Adam L Silverman:

    almost every single one of them doesn’t have this problem because religion has faded into the background

    Ah, but go back to the time of the Constitution and religious conflicts were very much in recent memory.

  96. 96.

    ? ?? Goku (aka Baka Amerikahito) ? ?

    OT:

    I had my orientation last Friday for the new job and guess what? I found out they actually paid us for the 3 hrs we were there. Of course, after the union intiation fees, dues and taxes I was left with 6 dollars.

    Is that normal for companies to pay new hires for that kind of thing?

  100. 100.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Adam L Silverman: France has an even stricter separation of church and state than the US and it is a far more secular country. I’m not sure we can blame this on the lack of established religion. Note that the First Great Awakening in the colonies preceded independence and the Bill of Rights.

  101. 101.

    Adam L Silverman

    @efgoldman: I understand completely. At the time it made perfect sense to do, or try to do, what they did. With over 200 years of space and the ability to compare to what happened in the states of Europe that they held up as examples of concern, perhaps not so much.

  106. 106.

    JR

    @Adam L Silverman: Considering that the founding fathers were inking the constitution just a handful of years before dechristianization took hold in France, I don’t think they were terribly misguided in creating that fix.

  108. 108.

    ? ?? Goku (aka Baka Amerikahito) ? ?

    @NotMax:
    We weren’t registered in the system until the very end. Pretty cool regardless.

    The paychecks are posted online 2 days before actual payday. Apparently corporate has to check payroll each week, otherwise payday would be on Tuesday instead of Thursday.

  110. 110.

    efgoldman

    @Adam L Silverman:

    It is just interesting what history has wrought.

    Pure speculation: what religion would Jefferson, Madison, Franklin and the gang have chosen if they had chosen to establish? Or would they still be arguing about it 200+ years later?

  111. 111.

    Gex mobile

    @MoCA Ace: when did you think that? The last 20 years as they waged war on gays? The last 40 years they waged war on women’s health? Or the last 50 years where the evangelism and pro-segregation forces became aligned?

  113. 113.

    JR

    @efgoldman: Those guys wouldn’t have been the ones behind the establishment of the national church, and since at least a handful of the most widely practiced variants of Christianity were decidedly anti-hierarchical you’re probably just left with Anglicism or Presbyterianism.

  116. 116.

    efgoldman

    @NotMax:

    Whatever Franklin might have leaned to, it would have included turkeys.

    Could have been the Congregationals or the Unitarians, two liberal offshoots of the original New England Puritans. The First (UU) Church of Boston is the successor to the original Pilgrim church.

  117. 117.

    Amir Khalid

    @Matt McIrvin:
    French secularism can go too far. I think giving Muslim girls grief for wearing hijab to school, and Sikh boys for wearing turbans, crosses the line into oppression of religious expression.

  118. 118.

    ArchTeryx

    @Raoul: Sadly, I lost a friend to the Moonies. He became a right wing troll around the time he joined the cult. His marriage was…arranged, as indicated above, and his college-aged daughter is now an alcoholic. (Gee, I wonder why). I unfriended him around the time Trump was elected, telling him I had no room for people who voted for my death and gloated about it.

    They ate his soul.

  119. 119.

    NotMax

    OT.

    Step-nephew was born on February 29. Should I call and wake him up when it’s the stroke of midnight in his time zone?

    :)

    (He shares a birthday with Superman!)

  121. 121.

    Citizen Alan

    @Matt McIrvin:

    To me, everything always goes back to white supremacy. The most politically active and politically aggressive religious groups in this country are the Southern evangelical denominations, all of which came into existence solely because white antebellum plantation owners wanted religious that would reassure them that God approved of slavery.

  122. 122.

    Sab

    @? ?? Goku (aka Baka Amerikahito) ? ?: We have your grocery chain here. I don’t shop there because they are pricey and they don’t have good basics ( their shoppers apparently don’t cook from scratch.) My spouse loves them because their employees are so nice, and also because he doesn’t cook from scratch either. I hope you have a good experience with them.

  125. 125.

    frosty

    @Adam L Silverman: Interesting perspective on church and state. I’ll have to cogitate on this one. OTOH with several colonies founded for a particular religion (Maryland, Rhode Island, even PA) it’s hard to see how they could have done anything else to stitch together a nation.

  126. 126.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Citizen Alan: Also, the specific cult in question here is an offshoot of one that was of Korean origin. I can’t speak to the situation concerning church and state in South Korea.

  127. 127.

    Adam L Silverman

    @NotMax: As in the day Superman was created? The date of the first publication of Superman in Action Comics? Or Kal-El’s actually birthdate on the modern Kryptonian calender?

  129. 129.

    Adam L Silverman

    @frosty: Just something that first struck me as a thought exercise in grad school. This is what happens when the person who supervised the political science portion of your PhD is the father of the study of religion and politics in political science.

  131. 131.

    Ruckus

    @Adam L Silverman:
    I wonder if it was a couple of things.
    First, European countries are mostly a lot older than the US. They have had time to go through the ins and outs of religion/government and a lot of them had issues which is why they’ve ended up where they are. We are at a point where we have to make a strong distinction that the government is for everyone, religion is for those that want it and not to be inflicted upon those that don’t. The founders gave it a decent try but enough people weren’t ready for that. Like everything else it takes a tipping point.
    Second, remember the Puritans didn’t come here because of being persecuted, they came here to practice persecution. We have bits and pieces of that still haunting us today.

  134. 134.

    ? ?? Goku (aka Baka Amerikahito) ? ?

    @Sab:
    I hope so too. It’s a taste of a real job for me. My first and current job was bussing for a banquet hall. Never had the levels of management my new place does. It was probably the easiest job I’ll ever have.

  140. 140.

    Amir Khalid

    @Matt McIrvin:
    For what it’s worth, Wikipedia says 57% of South Koreans are of unknown religious affiliation. Of the rest, there are almost twice as many (mostly Protestant) Christians as Buddhists, which I found surprising. No mention of a state religion, so I assume it’s officially secular.

  141. 141.

    NotMax

    @Adam L. Silverman

    Per the 1976 Super DC Calendar.

    Also too,

    The idea that Superman’s birthday is February 29 initially began as a lark. DC editors explained tongue in cheek in comic book letter columns that Superman remained eternally youthful because he was born on Leap Day, February 29, which occurs only once every four years.

    When DC celebrated Superman’s 50th anniversary in 1988, they treated February 29 as the Man of Steel’s birth date. Even a “TIME” magazine cover-story (March 14, 1988 cover dated magazine) commemorating the 50th anniversary (with a cover by John Byrne) declared for all of America that Superman’s birthday is February 29.

    DC even held a Leap Day birthday party for Superman’s 50th in 1988 which I attended (and I cannot believe that was 20 years ago). The party was held at the Puck Building in downtown Manhattan. There were cheerleaders clad in Superman sweaters. Superman artist Curt Swan was there signing autographs. There was a Superman cake. Party goers got to walk through a room made of Kryptonite (actually green lights and cellophane). And of course there were truckloads of Superman merchandise for sale to those in attendance. I remember it well. Source

    In actuality, in canon the date has changed repeatedly.

  154. 154.

    ? ?? Goku (aka Baka Amerikahito) ? ?

    @Sab:
    Ha ha. It’s not a word I use often in real life, but I say it from time to time. Cool is what I usually use and it seems remarkably eternal.

  157. 157.

    MoxieM

    @efgoldman: Jefferson was known to have Arminian and Unitarian sentiments (see the way he edited his own bible with a pair of scissors for example). He also pre-dated Theodore Parker by a few decades in thinking the so-called miracles of Christ were hokum. I believe there were other founding fathers who were deists. John Adams of course attended the United First Parish (in Quincy now, not Braintree) otherwise known by itself as “church of the Presidents”, plural from JQ, Jr. I guess.

    I’m guessing it would have been a pissing contest between the scurrilous Anglicans of Virginia, and the True Believer Orthodox Congregationalists of New England, with the Quakers in the middle, like the baloney in a sandwich. Whether the OC would have come to their minds and become Unitarian in 1804 is anybody’s guess (Park St. Church about a decade earlier).

    Probably more church history than you wanted, but, poke a familial Unitarian, and you just never know. You are more likely to be bored to death than shot, I imagine.

  159. 159.

    Ruckus

    @Heywood J.:

    Worse than $cientologists.

    That is a low blow. And hard to imagine. But seemingly true in this instance. Maybe we could say, they are birds of a feather, possibly, same shit – different day.

  160. 160.

    MoCA Ace

    @Gex mobile:

    Probably before I became more politically aware and wasn’t paying much attention. You know, wrapped in my bubble like most Americans.

  161. 161.

    Arclite

    Jesus was all about the weapons after all. Wasn’t one of his sayings: “Kill thy neighbor as thee would kill thyself?”

  163. 163.

    ET

    Isn’t there a commandment about putting other gods first?

    I knew they prayed to their god The Gun I just didn’t see it so literally.

  165. 165.

    Uncle Ebeneezer

    A wonderful activist friend of mine (she helps run our Indivisible) just posted this story/tweet and said “Hey, there’s my Dad.” Literally. She’s estranged from her family since she escaped the cult and is even involved in some legal maneuvering to try to keep them away from her and her brother.

  166. 166.

    Heywood J.

    @Ruckus: It is a low blow, I’ll admit. But at least the Hubbardites don’t own an influential (if money-losing) newspaper in the nation’s capital, and they don’t seem to try to meddle with our domestic politics. Nor do they have a history of smuggling arms to the Norks.

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