What is going on there? I think you have a president totally isolated from reality, totally delusional, kind of paranoid, figuring that everyone‘s against him, including his own Joint Chiefs of Staff, figuring that history 30, 40 years from now is going to prove him correct.

Here's the assessment from Mike Barnicle of MSNBC on the current state of mind of W. The video of the whole segment is here. It has gone beyond the emperor has no clothes, to the emperor is insane. Bush is being compared unfavorably to even LBJ in 1968 or Nixon during Watergate.

There may be a solution to Iraq for us, get the hell out and try to keep the mess from spreading (Lebanese Civil War on a larger scale?), but we're now looking at a much worse issue. The current resident of the White House has lost contact with reality. This is where things get really murky.

There are two ways for a President to be removed from office against his will other than invoking the Harrison, Lincoln or Nixon precedents, neither of which has ever gone through. First, standard impeachment, failed twice but would have gone through with Nixon, who saw the light at the end of the tunnel was an oncoming train that was going to force him out of office. Second, and wow is this getting weird, Section 4 or the 25th Amendment which reads:

Section 4. Whenever the Vice President and a majority of either the principal officers of the executive departments or of such other body as Congress may by law provide, transmit to the President pro tempore of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Representatives their written declaration that the President is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office, the Vice President shall immediately assume the powers and duties of the office as Acting President.

Thereafter, when the President transmits to the President pro tempore of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Representatives his written declaration that no inability exists, he shall resume the powers and duties of his office unless the Vice President and a majority of either the principal officers of the executive department or of such other body as Congress may by law provide, transmit within four days to the President pro tempore of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Representatives their written declaration that the President is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office. Thereupon Congress shall decide the issue, assembling within forty-eight hours for that purpose if not in session. If the Congress, within twenty-one days after receipt of the latter written declaration, or, if Congress is not in session, within twenty-one days after Congress is required to assemble, determines by two-thirds vote of both Houses that the President is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office, the Vice President shall continue to discharge the same as Acting President; otherwise, the President shall resume the powers and duties of his office.

I'm not certain I could forsee Cheney ripping this bloody skinned rabbit out of his hunting hat, but he did shoot that guy in the face...

'Scarborough Country' for Dec. 20 - Scarborough Country - MSNBC.com