Call the Police, There's a Madman Around

So my mom's about half-loopy these days. She's not batshit crazy, but she certainly can't remember things like she used to. I'm fairly certain that she might not remember my name sometimes, but I see no need to press her on such matters since she's happy to do a crossword puzzle or play Scrabble with me when I visit her in the old folks' home. But clearly there's been some slippage when it comes to reality. Like last time I visited her, my mom introduced me to a woman whom she claimed wuz her half-sister. I just chuckled and said, "No, she isn't." My mother has two sisters, but no half-sisters. Of that I'm quite sure.

Anyway, it's prolly a bit perverse of me, but I find that kind of dementia a little bit humorous. Not so humorous are the crazy people who in some cases run our country or (unbelievably) actually shape our thinking. It's alarming that anything at all that Brush or Dickless Cheney say anymore is taken seriously. Just the other day, in fact, Dickless trotted out another one of his tired cliches about how the Democratic attempts to stop the "surge" would--yep, you guessed it--"validate the al Qaeda strategy." Cheney lives in some bizarro world where everything the Democrats do somehow fulfills al Quaeda's wettest of wet dreams even tho' the Dems have had almost no real power until very recently. Funny how Cheney always thinks it's everyone else who's the asshole when he's clearly the biggest one. No, Dickless, they're not trying to validate the al Qaeda strategy...they're repudiating the Asshole Strategy crafted by you and Asshole Brush and Asshole Rummy.

But ol' Dickless is not above spouting the craziest bullshit and he will always make predictions that will always turn out to be wrong. His string of rosy predictions and assessments of the ever-devolving situation in Iraq is already a matter of public record, but one wonders how much more insane the rhetoric has to get before the media will stop quoting him without guffawing. Just this past Sunday, in fact, you had Tim Russert reading the aforementioned Cheney blurb to Democrat Carol Levin and axing him what he thinks about it. Had I been in Levin's shoes, I would have said, "Gee, Tim, I dunno...it's hard to respond to this question when I'm thinking of your probable follow up question: what do I think of the notion that the moon is made of cheese." I mean, come the fuck on, Russert...if Dickless says that Democrats rape babies, are you gonna have them come on your show and axe them what they think about the quote...or are you going go axe them, "So...when do you think Dick Cheney went off his meds?"

Look, I don't make fun of my mom (at least not to her face), and in any case her nuttiness seems not to do any harm these days...not even to her. But when a politician or pundit has clearly lost his mind or is lying so ridiculously or behaving so treacherously that he might be clinically judged to be a sociopath...don't we have to acknowledge that in our public discourse? If Dickless started sporting a pink tutu and talking to a giant invisible rabbit named Harvey, no one would axe him what his views are on the Middle East. But when he says that it's a good sign of progress in Iraq that the British are starting to pull out...but any pulling out on our part (or any stopping of the surge) would validate the al Quaeda strategy--shouldn't someone sit ol' Dickless down, give him a mild sedative and a glass of water, and calmly ask him if he's ever seen a mental health professional?