You Talkin’ To Me? You Talkin’ To Me?

To my legions of fans – both of them – out there, my apologies for not posting for the past few days.

But when you’ve been twisted into a fetal position, sucking gin out of the bottle with a straw, it’s not that easy to unfurl oneself.

I suppose the reason for my wanting to just crawl under the nearest barstool until I was more in the bag than John Daly meets “The Lost Weekend,” has had something to do with the on-going insanity of the health care debate – the town meetings, which have turned into something out of “Invasion of the Body Snatchers,” the crazier than Ezra Pound radio pundits spewing more disinformation than the birther wackos, the endless commercials suggesting Barack Obama is plotting to send Luca Brasi after your beloved grandmother.

But perhaps the most surreal image has been the arrival of protesters showing up at town hall meetings attended by Obama armed with handguns and assault rifles. And – amazingly – it’s all perfectly legal.

Now any of you who might have read my scribblings over the years know I have always been a strong advocate for more stringent gun control. And these scenes of armed morons showing up at presidential events only helps to support my beliefs.

To be sure, the gun nuts all have valid permits to walk around with their little guns, a replacement perhaps for their Viagra needs.

But if the government can restrict the airspace over Washington and anywhere else the president of the United States may be appearing as a national security measure, why is it then that that folks walking around with guns cannot also be restricted from getting within miles of a locale when the president may be speaking?

At the same time, while these buffos claim they are only exercising their Second Amendment rights by showing up at these town hall events decked out with their Rambo starter kits, it certainly has to be something of an intimidating sight for some people who merely want to stand on a street corner and petition their government without having to worry about “The Taxi Driver’s” Travis Bickle standing next to them.

The Secret Service and local law enforcement assigned to provide protection and crowd control at these events have enough on their hands to do their jobs without also having to contend with right-wing extremist dolts also showing up to feebly demonstrate how faux macho they are.

Let’s be honest here. If you are so paranoid, so insecure, so delusional about black helicopters following you to the loo, that you need to parade around at public events displaying weapons to compensate for your manhood, you are probably in need of government-funded mental health treatment.

Or put another way, in their own feeble manner, these militiamen from the Planet Zircon 12 are unwittingly making a case for government health care for all – especially the Deliverance crowd.

Cue the dueling banjos.

As for my legion of fan – I’ll try to post with greater regularity.