Gay Obama, Silent John, and the lone killer

Gay Obama: Now this is too rich. Jerome Corsi, the Tea Party favorite, has a new revelation: Not only is Obama gay, he secretly "married" his Muslim Pakistani roommate during his Harvard days.

Remember, Corsi represents the teabaggers. These are the folks who have taken over the Republican party.

Silent John: In a previous post, we noted that John McCain -- whose campaign vetted Romney in 2008, and who may thus be in a position to know -- had refused to say whether he thinks Harry Reid lied about Mitt's taxes. Now he has been interviewed on that topic. But his wording is odd: Although he says that Reid went "over the line," he still won't call Reid a liar. 

Notice that McCain entire response is to attack Reid on a personal level. The response from most of the right-wing has been the same; RNC chairman Reince Preibus even called Reid a “dirty liar.” Yet, John McCain, of the few public figures to have seen Romney’s tax returns just couldn’t bring himself to say “Harry Reid is lying.” Nothing he’s said contradicts Reid in any way. Why not? He would know, wouldn’t he?

Lone nut: In our previous post on the Sikh temple massacre perpetrated by Wade Michael Page, we linked to two news interviews with eyewitnesses who spoke of multiple assailants. This site, previously unknown to me, thoughtfully argues in favor of a "lone shooter" scenario.

Then there are the eyewitnesses, two of whom said on air that four gunmen were responsible. One was heresay from an injured uncle, the other from a man inside the building at the time. As I've said before, eyewitness testimony is the worst form of evidence on Earth. If a crime gets committed in broad daylight and witnessed by ten people, eight of them will have radically different stories. This is a known fact among law enforcement and scientists so any testimony that is radically different from the others must be taken with a grain of salt.

Alex Jones and others are already hyping this story up, even though the evidence clearly suggests a single gunman. Why? The number of people wounded and killed was very low. If four gunman were there, there would be a lot more dead people. The number killed directly confirms to a person with a single handgun and an agenda. Police were on the scene quickly and three individuals getting away seem far fetched at best. Only two eyewitnesses say anything about multiple gunmen, the rest confirming the single shooter theory. Trust me, it is impossible to get that many people to lie about what they say when their lives were at risk. What would be their motivation? I highly doubt threats would have been used as that could blow up in their faces, so if the majority say one gunman, it is most likely one gunman.

I am not inclined to be so dismissive of eyewitness testimony. Still, I can't fault this writer's argument: Four shooters should have produced more corpses. That said, it seems very possible that Page had helpers, even if they did not carry weapons.

I have a similar problem with the two eyewitnesses who spoke of multiple shooters in the James Holmes "Dark Knight" massacre. Credible as those witnesses are, neither one saw two separate gunmen at the same time. And we can't escape the fact that most witnesses spoke of only one assailant.