O’Reilly: Bergdahl’s dad looks like a Muslim. Watch.

We’re finishing up the first day of our TPMPrime membership drive. If I were in your shoes, I’d probably be hearing this and thinking, “Okay, maybe, I’ll think about it …” Or maybe you’re on the fence. Can you give me a chance to make the case? Here’s my pitch on why it’s important for TPM and why we want you to be a part of building the next TPM. And here’s my post from Sunday not about the economics of independent web publishing and why it’s critical for a news organization not to be exclusively dependent on advertising. It’s particularly so for an outfit like TPM which has always been driven forward by a devoted, core group of readers. If I’ve suddenly convinced you, here’s the sign up link. If not, take a moment and give me the chance to seal the deal. I’m confident you’ll be glad you did.

GOProud, pro-gay rights Republican group, going out of business.

In case you missed it yesterday, the NRA came forward yesterday to apologize for saying it was “weird” and maybe not a hot idea for guys to bring their long guns to the local Chipotle.

I want to thank everybody who has signed up for Prime in our membership drive so far. 413 new sign ups as of this morning. It’s a solid start on our goal for this drive. If you signed up and you have any questions or if you’ve had any difficulty signing in or anything else, please drop us a line. We’re here ready help or flatten out any kinks you may find. (Hit us up at the main TPM email or at siteissues (at) talkingpointsmemo.com.) I’m going to try to give you a breather from my hard sells today. But we know many of you have been interested to see with your own eyes what we’re doing with the longform pieces we publish at Prime. The topics are diverse and often off the beaten TPM path by design – ranging from the demise of the filibuster to rare earth minerals to the renascent street protest culture in Erdogan’s Turkey. Today we’ve made one of those longforms available to all readers. In April we sent artist and writer Molly Crabapple to Instanbul to report on the city’s bubbling street protest culture. She returned a week later with her signature trenchant writing and lush visuals. Here’s what she found and saw. We hope you like it.

Ready to sign up? Just click right here. We truly appreciate it.

Ed Kilgore takes stock, as only he can, of yesterday’s Tea Party surprise in Mississippi and the fate of the ‘Year of the GOP Establishment’ meme.

There’s quite a lot of this out there. But courtesy of TPM Reader TT, two posts from GateWayPundit, one of the country’s most prominent rightwing blogs …

10/13/13: “Horrible. Obama to Leave US POW to Rot in Afghanistan After Withdrawal.”

6/3/14: “Figures. Obama Administration Promoted Bergdahl to Sergeant After He Reportedly Joined Taliban.“

Along those lines here’s a fun piece Tom Kludt just put together of Republicans racing to scrub their social media accounts and websites of praise for “war hero” Bowe Bergdahl.

I’m sure we can all agree that if you’re new to pot, best approach is to smoke 3 joints really fast and just see what happens.

D’oh! One day after losing primary, GOP Senate candidate hit with multiple count perjury arrest warrant tied to election fraud. Seems like just yesterday she was running this bizarre video calling for gun safety and religion classes in schools.

So Tea Party officials close to Chris McDaniel ended up in a local courthouse where ballots are kept last night at 2 am. And then they managed to lock themselves inside and had to get rescued.