What’s worse than an idiot? Someone telling the idiot what to think.

The woeful and, in many cases, willful ignorance being displayed by people opposing health care reform is nothing short of a national disgrace. I returned home today to find a letter-to-the-editor in today's Maui News from a woman ranting against politicians wrestling with this monumentally complex issue. Among other things, she says she wants her 80-year-old mother to live as long as God intends, not until some Washington bureaucrat decides she’s lived long enough.

This stupid woman should be scorned for actually believing that euthanasia canard (if she truly does believe it), but the real condemnation should come down on the heads of the people promoting such outrageous lies. Some are paid lobbyists for the health insurance and health care industries. Others are elected public officials … and, as far as I can tell, every damn one of them is a Republican.

But the worst are the media crazies like Glen Beck … people who are not stupid and who know perfectly well that they are promoting lies to inflame the morons who believe what they say. That, of course, boosts their ratings, and higher ratings increase their already bloated paychecks.

If there is a God, these are the people who already have a seat reserved in the hottest corner of the hottest spot in Hell.

.

What is it with these randy Republican politicians?

First there was Congressman Mark Foley, who was hitting on teenage pages ... male pages. Then there was Senator Larry Craig, who tried to pick up a plainclothes cop in a men's room. A week ago Senator John Ensign admitted to having an affair with a staffer.

But today comes the latest and, if the bizarre element is factored in, the greatest: Governor Mark Sanford of South Carolina confesses to running off to Argentina over Fathers Day weekend (!!) to continue an ongoing affair with some babe there. And all the while, his staff was saying he was off hiking the Appalachian Trail.

And yes, I am well aware that Democrats have also waded in these same waters -- John Edwards and Bill Clinton are the more obvious -- but it is the Republicans who are forever and ad nauseum shoving "family values" at us, the implication being that they are the keepers of the faith while we liberals knowingly choose to live on the seamy side of the street.

But American voters are far more tolerant and forgiving of sinners than they are of hypocrites. And today I take great comfort in that.

They are out there and they are among us!

Let me say at the outset that I used to have a small collection of old guns. My favorite was a Model 1861 Springfield rifle. Firing it was an adventure: First I poured what I recall as about a thimble-full of black powder down the barrel, shoved a round lead ball down after it with a ramrod, stuck a copper percussion cap on the hollow nipple protruding from the chamber, pulled the hammer back, aimed and … BLAM!

I will tell you honestly that it was a helluva lot of fun. And I actually got pretty good with the thing … could put two out of four balls into an 8-inch fencepost at 70 or 80 yards. At the time, we lived in rural Connecticut and couldn’t see our closest neighbor. In other words, it was a reasonably safe hobby that was of no danger to anyone but, possible, myself.



But times have changed. The National Rifle Association is meeting right now in Phoenix and the paranoids and the loonies are out in force. Some of the locals there have had the temerity to express the thought via letters-to-the-editor that their town might be better of if the NRA met elsewhere. Here is a sample of the comments that thought elicited from the gun nuts:

You mentally bankrupt, driveling, woefully ignorant and unbearably simpleminded, liberal boor.

I am fed up with this double-standard stereotyping and liberal Leninist bigotry.

[We’ll see] the open invasion of our country by 20-30 million law breakers soon to be handed Democrat voters cards who being criminals lead lives of crime while sending the booty back to Mexico.

[Use cash for] some more ammo, because you never know when OBAMANATION is going confiscate all of our stash (knock, knock in the middle of the night).

And John McCain and Mitt Romney and Michael Steele and a host of other Republican politicians are right there in Phoenix sucking up to all those folks.

Is that pathetic … or what!

.