Paul Dirks to shooter:

Everything you believe about Valerie Plame and Global Warming is factually incorrect. Every time you bring either subject up you automatically become the idiot the others here accuse you of being.

Long ago, I realized that while virtually all politicians lie, they lie for very different reasons, and in very different ways. Richard Nixon lied very strategically, with carefully-crafted tactical lies in service to his strategy as well. Ronald Reagan, OTOH, lied through a sheer inability to tell the truth--or lack of interest, take your pick. It was the contrast between these two that first got me thinking about the topic, sometime in the midst of Reagan's first term.

With Shooter, we have something else--someone who lies repeatedly in an environment where nobody's going to buy it. So, what sort of person repeatedly tells transparent lies?

Well, little children tell such lies rather frequently. I don't know what happened to the cookies. (Crumbs on my face? What crumbs?) The dog ate my homework. etc.

Brainwashed people also tell such lies. They've come to believe in the lies themselves, and so they have no problem repeating them over and over again, ignoring all the evidence to the contrary.

Common psychopaths tell such lies, because they simply don't care. Whatever moves them in the moment is what they go with.

And, of course, as Bush/Cheney Inc. so frequently demonstrate, some folks lie simply to demonstrate that they can. It's a display of power: we can piss on your leg and tell you it's raining, and there's not a damn thing you can do about it.

Shooter seems to fit into the brianwashed category. But sometimes he just seems like a little kid, with crumbs on his face, right on top of the egg.

I'm convinced that shooter has a persecution complex. It's not enough for him to simply support Bush/Cheney, etc. He has a strong need to be persecuted and victimized for his support, preferably on a daily basis. What other reason would he have for coming here and making a complete ass of himself?

Good catch. I agree completely. In fact, I was going to mention this, but I'm multi-tasking, and it got dropped. It's a brainwashing subgenre, as far as I can tell.

As soon as the November election was over, the media clearly emerged as the main enemy of the Democrats, the reality-based community, and the American people. These last few days seem to be the first hopeful sign that the crumbling of the right continues to expand from the party realm to the media.

In this light, the continuing media obsession over Imus's long-overdue come-uppance is something to be welcome--however narcissistic it is, and however much it crowds out coverage of real scandals, such as Gonzales/DoJ/US Attorneys.

It's to be welcomed because it signals a techtonic shock to the insular media elite. They can still pretend to be above it all, but they know damn well that they're pretending now. And that bell can never be unrung. They can run, but they cannot hide.

The Versailles press--so well described here in minute particulars--is perhaps best understood as a collection of court gossips, who know full well that they have nothing going for them, aside from close access to the table scraps on which they feed. And the court itself is perhaps best understood as Kevin Phillips has explained it, from several different angles in books written during the Bush II era. It is both the tail end of a reactionary imperial period in our history--analogous to similar periods in the histories of Spain, Holland and Britain--(see Wealth and Democracy) and the eruption of restoration politics--analogous to the British and French restorations--(see American Dynasty.

As Phillips (a lifelong Republican who left the party because of the Bushes) describes in these two books, what we are dealing with is a deeply engrained culture of wealth, privilege, aristocracy and power that is deeply and fundamentally hostile to democracy in principle and to people in practice. We are, in short, battling against monarchist throwbacks, neo-feudalists right out of the pages of early 1980s cyberpunk novels.

We can rest assured that of all the people on Earth, they will be the very last to know what is going on around them... not just step-by-step along the way, but about where it all ends. Because America itself--both the idea and the reality of government of the people, by the people and for the people--is utterly unimagineable, utterly unthinkable to them.

Scientician makes a very good point in highlighting the "strongly disapprove" numbers for Bush--49%. Even more striking is the "strongle disapprove" numbers for the situation in Iraq--59%.

Think about that, folks. Six out of ten Americans strongly disapprove of the situation in Iraq. And what does the media elite tell us? "Let them eat cake!"

Furthermore, the last time they did a breakdown into strongly approve/strongly disapprove for the "war on terrorism," back on 10/8/06, when the overall approve/disapprove numbers were virtually identical what they are today (45-53 then, 44-53 now), the "strongly disapprove" number was 40%.

Also: Was the Iraq War worth fighting? Strongly no: 54%

Oppose the" surge"? Strongly no: 56%

It seems indisputably clear that Iraq is not just a realworld disaster, but a political disaster for the GOP, no matter how hard the Versailles pundits try to spin it otherwise. People aren't merely annoyed--they're mad! It is the anvil that will sink the GOP to the bottom of the sea.

And the pundits? Well, to mix up my metaphors a bit, they'll be choir singing on the deck of the Titanic. What else? "Up! Up! And Way!"