Those beyond any help are the ones who know the cliff is there and then force others to drive over and then ignore the consequences and then look for another cliff (Iran).

"Then again, the performance was very Clintonesque -- showing up to defend Yearly Kos and therefore hoping to gain the affection of liberals, while doing it in a very placid and half-hearted way, treating O'Reilly with great respect, and hoping to also gain the affection of the right/Fox audience. That is Clintonism in a nutshell."

Right on target as usual. That smacks of the "ends justify the means" rationalization that has done so much damage to our country and its freedoms. When you use political operatives who have been at the game too long, they start smelling like the opposition. Politics as usual is not want many Americans are looking for in 2008.

I haven’t read the Doucat book. It stimulated my thinking about the fighter pilot mentality that I often conflicted with as a desk flyer during my Air Force career. Since our dear president was a Guard fighter pilot, his simplistic black and white thinking squares up with the challenges I faced when trying to convince a pilot or ex-pilot that his ideas contained no moderation or facts. While you will find many different pilot personality types, the type of aircraft and mission seemed to attract certain types. Airlift or bomber, multi-engine pilots had to be team players and leaders and learn to juggle a lot of balls (my word choice since you raised masculinity issues) at the same time.

Fighter pilots flying solo with one engine live a much simpler existence. They are on their own and any wrong decision could be disastrous. Ninety-percent of aircraft accidents in the Air Force, unless there are highly dangerous combat conditions, are due to pilot error. Fighter pilots are mostly immune to the human side of war, unless they lose a buddy, because they are really engaged in a video game. George Jr. must have really pissed off his fellow pilots by choosing politics over flying duty during Vietnam. Since he was born with the silver spoon and other advantages, he never learned the necessity to depend on others. I don’t have the time to delve into his psychological insecurity problems.

Phalluses and masculinity problems were ripe in the fighter pilot community when I served as was promiscuity and adultery. The simplistic thinking of sex as a game and you get your kill even if you have to hurt others is just the kind of “ends justify the means” mentality that permeates these fighter pilots like George and his RWA buddies. They are subject to the black and white thinking of evangelicals and are very homophobic because they have never learned how a real man thinks and acts because they have stuffed their emotions and only allow anger to emerge. When they don’t allow themselves to feel, then they will do anything to themselves or others due to their fear of breaking completely down. It is this catch 22 thinking that makes it so hard for an abuser to stop abusing.

I realize that to cover this much ground, I have had to generalize, hopefully not too much. I look forward to your telling us more about this intriguing book.

I share your rage. However, Glenn and we don’t get a choice to pick our opponents or the kind of game tactics they use. I don’t agree with attacking them personally because as other posters have wisely pointed out, they are trapped Beltway victims of a system and as SomeNYGuy said are expressing what they are paid to believe.

W. Edward Jennings, management guru and God in Japan for helping them rise from the ashes had a very wise precept, don’t blame bad people when things go wrong, fix the system. Chris Mathews is not a bad guy. He has played Beltway politics for way to long. He tries to find a topic that will raise the ire index and then keep beating it.

For example, just before and after the January State of the Union Address, he rang the bell hard on his fears about the Administration and their war hawks going for Iran next. He kept that up for a few more days and when it didn’t seem to gather enough excitement, the drumbeats died. I have hardly heard him mention it much since. Considering the grave importance of that topic, I was very surprised that both the left and the right essentially ignored his warnings. Although we should speculate on why that happened, I would submit that something in the system is very broken to make that happen.

Even though we intensely dislike the personalities of the RWAs and their insecurities are costing this nation dearly, we will make more lasting progress if we do what Glenn and many others do so well, focus on the truth and how to fix the playing field that we didn’t design, then when we have the upper hand, redesign the field (system).

"Interesting, isn't it, how much Brooks seems to like Hillary? There really does seem to be some kind of GOP campaign to make her the Dem candidate."

Having Hillary as their opponent is the Rovian Plan. They want the Clinton "BJ" impeachment ghost to rise up and do its nasty job again. They are also afraid of Barack because he represents real change and since he wrote an autobiography that revealed almost all, and is a black man, they will be reduced to gutter ball racist tactics if they have to target him, so they much prefer Hillary and can a woman, who didn't dump her dirty husband, really be president as their most vulnerable target.