Insanity Alert: A guide to tonight's delusions

[Tuesday_Morning]

With a hat tip to Bill Frist, who perfected the art of video diagnosis, here's Arianna Huffington's diagnostic guide to tonight's speech:

<snip>

Here are some of the key symptoms of "false or irrational beliefs maintained despite clear evidence to the contrary" we should be looking out for:

Does he display clear indications of denial, continuing to use words like "victory," "win," and "stable democracy"? Does he avoid using the phrase "civil war"? When he repeatedly talks about "sacrifice" does he skip over the fact that this doesn't include me and you, and over 99 percent of Americans?

Does he exhibit signs of the classic layman's definition of insanity: repeatedly doing the same thing but expecting a different result? Look to see if he trots out strategies that have already failed time and time again and acts like he expects them to have a different outcome. Be on particular alert for mentions of a new Baghdad security plan, and see if they are accompanied by any reference to the five previous such plans, all of which have failed to curb the chaos. And keep an eye open for even the slightest acknowledgment that throughout the war the military has repeatedly carried out troop surges of more than 20,000 and the bloodshed in Iraq has continued to increase.

Does the patient -- I mean, the president -- demonstrate magical thinking, signs of a belief that merely wishing for something can make it so? For example, when he talks about sending an additional 20,000 troops to Iraq, does he acknowledge the reality that military commanders have told him they don't have the troops available to deploy more than 9,000 soldiers? Does he appear cognizant of the fact that in order to come up with even 20,000 troops the military would have to remobilize reserves, extend current tours of duty, give new units dangerously little time to train, shorten the amount of time between tours for troops returning home, and leave America even less able to deal with any new security threat?

Does he continue to make the claim that we're fighting them over there so we won't have to fight them over here...even though there isn't a shred of evidence that the war in Iraq has made us safer, and a great deal of evidence that it has, in fact, had the opposite effect?

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more at link: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/arianna-huffington/watching-the-presidents-_b_38131.html

[demnan]

1. I'd propose a drinking contest

but really who's in the mood? The whole thing is so depressing.

[YDogg]

2. basically, I believe bush is past the point of really caring ...

... about anything other than his phony legacy. Imagine how proud his parents must be of this failure of a son. What a horrid mess they imposed upon us all.