BIRTHERS! PUMA! AIEEEEE!!!!

My god. The Birther movement hasn't died. Still. Yet. Even now. This thing has more lives than Christopher-Lee-as-Dracula.

A short while ago, the following popped into my mailbox:

Sheriff Joe Arpaio To Hold News Conference Concerning Obama's Citizenship Questions on Thursday, March 1, at 3p ET.

After months of research, investigation, and harassment, the 'Cold Case Posse' will release their findings at a press conference.

Oh yeah. That's who you want as your spokesperson: The arrogant sheriff in Arizona often reviled as a corrupt, power-mad sadist.

The emailed release continues thus:

It's hard to believe that with an extraordinary amount of evidence (that dwarfs any other recently congressionally investigated issue) our elected officials have refused to look into the issue of constitutional eligibility and the related issues.

"Extraordinary amount of evidence," eh?

Curiosity compelled me to take a brief look at this "evidence," which you can find here. It's a compendium of all the familiar bullshit; although the theme has many variations, the primary argument comes down to the words "natural born citizen." The birthers have come up with a very strained interpretation of that term. Very, very, very strained. We're talking about the kind of straining you might do after eating a big bowl of concrete.

Scrolling down, one notes the following...

In early summer, 2007, the so called “Birther” conspiracy theory was first created by renegade members of an ultra leftist group known as the PUMAs. (That’s right! They were leftists). They were a splinter group of hard-core Hillary Clinton supporters who did not want to surrender the Democrat party nomination to Obama after a hard fought campaign leading to the 2008 Democratic nomination.

Oh man. Man oh man oh man. This is wrong in so many ways...

PUMA began on The Confluence, run by a very good writer who calls herself Riverdaughter. Is she an "ultra-leftist"? Hell, I'm probably (a smidgen) to her left, and I'm the guy who wrote "I like Ike" a couple of posts down. In 2008, most Democrats (incorrectly) presumed Hillary to be more conservative than Obama. In fact, the hyperbolic silly-billies over on Daily Kos spent most of that year talking paranoid nonsense about the "Clinton-Bush crime family."

At heart, the birthers are Birchers. They are the extremists -- not Riverdaughter, not the PUMA-folk who gathered around her, and certainly not me.

Real PUMAs steered clear of birtherism from the very beginning. I spent a lot of time poking holes in some of the early claims of forgery.

Alas, a Republican ratfuck operation infiltrated the PUMA movement and commandeered a large chunk of it. For the most part, the only PUMA-pushers who embraced birtherism were infiltrators -- red wolves in blue sheepskin. You can apply the term "ultra-leftist" to Larry Johnson, HillBuzz and the other pseudo-PUMA ratfuckers only if you're the type of person who also feels comfortable using the word "cute" to describe leprosy.

Sheriff Joe? Are you there?

I hope you're reading this. Three messages:

1. I used to visit AZ quite a bit. But as long as you're there, tourists should steer clear of the whole state. (Besides, New Mexico has better southwestern grub.)

2. If you want people to vote Republican, spewing birther madness is counter-productive. Right-wingers in this country have gone so fucking crazy that they have actually transformed me, an early and fervent Obama opponent, into someone who will probably vote D in 2012.

Yeah, I'll regret it. I get sick to my stomach just thinking about it. But reactionary conspira-creeps like you have left me feeling utterly weirded out.

If Obama has you for an enemy, Joe, then that useless sunvabitch in the oval office must have done something right. Give me a few months and I might even figure out what that something is.

3. I can't speak for Riverdaughter and the other writers who came out of The Confluence, but I have a strong suspicion that they'd tell you not to use the once-honorable PUMA label to justify your forays into birther nuttiness. If you truly consider the pro-Hillary Democrats of 2008 to be "ultra-leftists," then hie thee to a shrink and get back on your meds.