I have observed Dick Cheney's behavior for years. I have always been baffled by how an obviously intelligent person can be so consistently wrong on nearly everything he believes and practices. Reading this article by Blumenthal began to create a "light bulb" moment for me. Although I am a practicing psychologist, I never thought to look at Cheney as a patient. This article moved me to do just that and it suddenly became clear what the problem is with Dick Cheney. He suffers from psychosis. There are five symptoms of psychosis. The symptoms are delusions, hallucinations, disorganized speech, disorganized behavior, and flat affect (DSM-IV). The presence of one supports a diagnosis of psychosis. Dick Cheney is clearly delusional. A delusion is "a firmly held belief that is false." " Common experiences for these people include thinking they are President of the United States or that they are being persecuted or chased by the CIA" (webmd.com). What a relief it is for me to have this insight. I no longer have to make sense of what he says and I no longer have to be angry with him. I can now feel the concern for his welfare that I feel for any of my patients that suffer from the same condition. As this thinking becomes more clear in my mind, I can see that it may be a condition suffered by both George W. Bush and Donald Rumsfeld! Of course W is President but he still subbornly clings to beliefs that are obviously false and his speech is freqently disorganized.

I don't think Sidney Blumenthal is saying that Dick Cheney is an "evil genius". Ruthless ideologue is more like it. And one who has historically been wrong about just about everything.

I agree that the media dropped the ball on Cheney, but let's face it--they dropped the ball on George W. Bush, and, in fact, the entire Republican agenda. Or worse--they were in on the con from the start.

Now that the poll numbers reflect a reality they can't ignore, the press is suddenly "discovering" just how radical and incompetent these people are.

Why and how the press allowed this to happen is a real story--and it's something to bear in mind before you go blaming specific "liberal" pundits and politicians: until recently, anyone who questioned this cabal got their heads handed to them by the media--time and again. Just ask Marty Meehan.

Everything in this article was known before November 2000, so how come we didn't see anything pulled together so completely back when it might have done some good. The media, mainstream and alternative, portrayed Cheney as a moderating influence on Bush -- not a radicalizing one. Of course, that was because he has a lesbian daughter, so his personal experience made him less homophobic...and that one moderating trait was allowed to translate into a false belief that he would be moderate on other matters as well. Sure, the alternative media did a good job of revealing his innate corruption, but that's not the same sort of danger to the country as megalomaniacal power hunger.

For one thing: No, I don't believe the WTC or any of the buildings around it were pre-wired to blow up or fall down or whatever. The whole thing sounds ridiculous. The sad truth is that there are no great conspiracies. It's all just ordinary people doing ordinary things. There's a certain point where portraying Dick Cheney as this dark otherworldly figure in whose grips we are all suffering becomes alittle bit tiresome.

For another thing: Dick Cheney is a politician who despite everything has managed to hand Ariana Huffington, Joe Conason, Sidney Blumenthal, John Kerry and a hundred other supposedly brilliant left-leaning political activists in this country their asses for the last 30 years. So, of course, the left has a stake in portraying him as some kind of evil genius: the more of an evil genuis Dick Cheney is the less you have to account for your own paltry failures in standing up for leftist causes. If our Leftist and Democratic leadership (both in government and in the media) are so brilliant, why have we lost ground on every single important issue in the last few decades?

And finally: Salon, like Halliburton, is a business. Most of the material published on Salon is totally bourgeois stuff of interest mainly to yuppies that has no progressive political content whatsoever. It's the kind of stuff that could be written by an Italian fascist with a sense of humor who likes shopping and clubbing in New York City. In fact, most of the stuff on Salon that's fun to read is totally bourgeois stuff of interest mainly to yuppies. Salon is a clique that makes money JUST LIKE HALLIBURTON does: by selling things. And even though Salon does not currently live off the public dole like Halliburton does, I have no doubt that once a Democrat is back in office, half the people associated with Salon will be getting government paychecks as staff advisors or speech writers or whatever... including Sidney Blumenthal. I think Arianna Huffington will make an excellent replacement for Donald Rumsfeld.

The 47 story WTC 7 building falling down on 9/11 for no reason because there is nothing they could possibly say that would explain what happened.

Keep pretending WTC 7 wasn't pre-wired for demolition. Don't "EVEN" discuss it. That'll make the world a better place.

What prominent family controls Mississippi River shipping? Who runs Diebold? Whose barge was parked next to the NOLA levee break?

I'm not even going to address the absurd conspiracy theories being bandied about here.

I do have to say that comparing Halliburton to Salon is remarkably disingenuous. Salon is not a government contractor; Salon is not funded directly by the federal government. Blumenthal did not sign contracts enriching Salon while a federal employee.

I think Tim Boyle's letter is totally correct. Watch the video. It was obviously a demolition. No metal building ever failed before in history. Then 3 fail in one day perfectly into their footprints. Building 7 was barely on fire. Why did it fall? There wasn't time to wire it for demolition. So it had to be prewired for demolition. Why did Rumsfeld abandon his post for 2 hours that morning to help evacuate people from the Pentagon? The country was supposedly under attack. Yet he's wandering around the lawn at the Pentagon. Didn't he have decisions to make to protect the country? How did he know the entire scope of the attack? Why was there a meeting with the WTC president in Omaha that day? What was she doing there at Buffet's unpublicized fundraiser? You could replay that time period in a million simulations and no one would ever sit there reading to children while the country is under attack.