Tracey Barnett: When everyone's cranky and nutcases fall from the tree

Go ahead, bring your loaded handgun, or even an assault rifle to Town Hall presidential health care discussions. About a dozen people already have.

Why? Those with an IQ over 100 may wonder.

Just ask a guy named Chris, who brought his semi-automatic rifle slung over his shoulder to a health care "Town Hell" in Phoenix recently. Chris replied, "Because I can do it. In Arizona, we still have some freedoms."

Kris Kristofferson never sang, "Freedom's just another word for no brain cells left to lose", but I'm thinking it's time he did. Chris went on to tell reporters he does set his gun down when he showers.

One guy even accidentally dropped his gun out of his holster. I bet the Secret Service guys loved that. It must have been like Grand Theft Auto meets SpongeBob SquarePants.

As long as weapons aren't concealed, packing a gun in a crowd peppered with shouting, testosterone-challenged primates is perfectly legal.

Publicity-seeking stunts or not, today Barack Obama faces a 400 per cent increase in death threats from Bush's presidency, logging about 30 a day. And you thought the right to "bare arms" referred to Michelle Obama's penchant for wearing sleeveless tops.

I love America. It's the only country in the world where citizens pack an AR15 to go a'courting their President. When an economy is stressed, the truly wacked fringes always manage to find centrestage.

I went back to visit family last month, and there was Old Glory, limping along with the biggest single tax revenue drop since the Great Depression, like Paris Hilton with maxed-out credit cards and nothing to wear.

Most friends' companies had already downsized or were on their way to shrinking more. There were conversations about a spouse or in-law's job loss.

These days "Depression" alludes to the nation's state of mind. Numbers tell the tale. Individual income tax receipts have dropped 22 per cent from a year ago. Corporate income taxes have plummeted a whopping 57 per cent, according to an Associated Press report on Treasury data. No wonder people are yelling at each other in civic centres. Everyone's cranky.

It's makes sense, then, that twisted perspectives rise to the top in these times.

What sticks are headlines long past their sell-by date, like the "Birther Movement", made up of the intellectually constipated who believe Obama wasn't really born in Hawaii and so shouldn't legally be President.

Poll numbers show people are actually starting to believe them. Fingers crossed, next they'll find a way to prove Obama is descended from a secret coupling between Star Trek's Mr Spock and Peta Mathias. It would explain a lot.

Yet American politics still holds moments of pure beauty. Any fears Sarah Palin's towering intellect would quietly seep back into the Alaskan tundra have proved unfounded.

Because - voila! - the Newly-Not-Governor Palin has gone on to invent the "Death Panel", a gorgeous health care fiction started on her Facebook page. Palin imagines a line-up of government officials killing off her special needs baby - or more likely, your nanna - if Obama gets his "socialist" health care way.

Translation: I'm guessing she fears rationing end-of-life care, but far be it from me to interpret the policies of a woman who quoted her parents' refrigerator magnet in her gubernatorial resignation speech.

To be fair, it was Palin's first big, tactical coup, becoming so successful that folks got out their assault weapons to celebrate.

The President has stumbled badly and backed away from a public option for health care, alienating the merely sane who felt that was the real meat left in the reform sandwich.

Meanwhile, Obama has copped the N word lately, but this time it refers to Nazi. When a Town Hall questioner likened the President's health care proposals to Nazism and waved a picture of Obama with the Fuhrer's moustache, the colicky Congressman Barney Frank felt compelled to reply, "On what planet do you spend most of your time?" [View at: www.traceybarnett.co.nz/favs.htm]

Proving historically that Nazism and American health care reform do have one thing in common: the biggest nutcases fall from the tree when the economy tanks.

With an American bark that brought a patriotic lump to my throat, the Massachusetts Congressman spoke for me, "Ma'am, trying to have a conversation with you would be like arguing with a dining room table. I have no interest in doing it."

God bless Barney Frank and sanity. God bless every normal American who still has the guts to turn up to a Town Hall. And God bless dining room tables - as long as they're not packing heat.

Have a nice day.

www.traceybarnett.co.nz