Republican circus has big (crazy) tent

I’ve long mocked the birther movement — you know, that group of people who claim that President Barack Obama is a Muslim communist born in Kenya and then smuggled into Hawaii just days later so his parents could get a birth announcement in the local newspaper, thereby allowing that nearly 50 years later Obama could be elected the nation’s first African American president. Yeah. Those people.

The entire premise of the birther movement is based on some pretty huge leaps in faith. But it’s also based on incredibly huge doses of distrust and disbelief in anything that’s not proven to them. It’s this sort of scenario by which people ask others to prove that God doesn’t exist. And when they can’t, use that as proof of God himself.

By the birthers’ accounts, Obama is guilty (of being a foreign-born commie Muslim set out to destroy the U.S. from the inside by becoming president while personally going door-to-door confiscating firearms from law-abiding citizens) until proven innocent (of all those crazy things).

Funny thing is, once Obama released his “long-form” birth certificate, the crazies attacked it, saying it was fake and part of the liberal conspiracy to promote abortion and forced bi-racial gay weddings — or whatever. I’ve learned to tune them out. No amount of proof in the world is good enough for people who want to believe something else.

Stephen Colbert defined this phenomenon as “truthiness” — the act of believing in something based not on the facts you’re presented, but rather what your gut tells you.

Well move over, birthers, now there’s something crazier.

At the end of December, the president — in an interview with the New Republic — mentioned that he routinely shoots skeet at Camp David. This came in response to whether he’s ever fired a gun — no doubt in response to his ongoing efforts at gun control.

You wouldn’t think that a simple answer to a simple question would cause such a ruckus, but it did. Immediately, the whacko machine went into overdrive, asserting that there’s no way a commie like Obammie has ever fired a gun.

The White House did what any rational spin control group would do. They ignored the crazies — including Tennessee Rep. Marsha Blackburn — who had challenged the president to a shooting contest.

But the din of the “skeeters” (or “skeet birthers” as Obama senior advisor David Plouffe referred to them on Twitter) continued to grow. And grow.

Finally, the White House decided that the only way to make the skeeters go away was to placate them with a photo of the president firing a gun. Which they provided on Saturday.

In typical tinfoil hat reaction, the photo was denounced as a fake, Photoshopped to make it look like the president was firing a gun when he was really … um … that part’s not clear. But obviously, they claimed, it’s fake. And if it’s real, it proves that he doesn’t know how to fire a gun. Or something.

Then they got into their spaceship with Elvis and went to planet Crazyville.

Scott Leffler an equal opportunity offender who likes hats — just not tinfoil ones. Follow him on Twitter @scottleffler.

Maybe we should reflect before we talk

The tragedy in Connecticut was nothing less than that — a tragedy. When I heard the news Friday, I did the same as everyone else with a Facebook page; I immediately posted my thoughts on the topic.

“There is a special place in Hell for those who harm animals and children.”

That’s all I had to say on the matter. And still that’s about all I have to comment on the horrific shooting deaths of 26 people, gunned down for no reason that makes sense to anyone of sound mind.

What would transpire over the next several hours and days, however, was just as ugly in my opinion. The reaction by what would seem to be half of America was just as hateful and just as hurtful as those gunshots.

My simple message on Facebook quickly devolved into a political commentary about gun control. As did other people’s messages. Many jumped into the gun control message off the bat, completely ignoring the lives lost in Connecticut.

Mind you, my message was neither pro-gun or anti-gun. It was anti death. And it was anti-horrible people. And it was pro-love. That’s something I thought we could all agree on. But I was apparently wrong.

We have no time to agree on anything in America. We can’t even take a weekend to mourn the loss of innocents. We must take the first available opportunity to break out our talking points, bang our chests and shout to the world that we are right — about whatever it is we believe.

Just as the posts came stating that there’s no reason for us to have handguns, so came the posts saying that if only teachers could carry guns, the loss would have been minimized. Just as the statistics were rolled out showing that there are practically no gun deaths in other countries, the stories rolled out about armed civilians stopping mass casualties in suburban shopping malls because they had the sense about them to “pack heat.”

The television pundits salivated, finally having a topic to discuss that would divide us so evenly as the election had. Our division, after all, fuels their ratings.

And lost in it all were the 20 children and six adults who wouldn’t be able to celebrate Christmas this year. Lost in it all were the families who would have to plan funerals rather than attend holiday parties. Lost in it all was the fact that while America was arguing over whether the problem was guns or bullets or mental health, the friends and families of those who were killed couldn’t care less what caused the deaths of their loved ones. They just wanted someone to hold on to. And make them believe that all was not lost — even if everything they cared for was.
There is a time and a place for the debate over gun control. It isn’t now. And it isn’t in Connecticut. Let us first mourn our dead.

Scott Leffler is a father and a son. That’s all that matters this week. Follow him on Twitter @scottleffler.