*&$#@!?

OK, I think we've got a good working definition of insanity here.

The facts are simple: Nancy Pelosi traveled to Syria, and wore a head scarf while visiting the 8th-century Omayyad Mosque.

Whether or not you think Pelosi shold have visited Syria, the head scarf thing was a simple act of deference and respect when visiting someone else's house, sort of like a male gentile wearing a yarmulke when he visits a synagogue. But Matt Drudge's indignant report on the event didn't see it that way. One does not defer to them Mooslim A-Rabs, and respect is out of the question. It was most likely a commenter at Drudge's blog (the source is unclear) who responded that Pelosi was "donning the garb of America’s enemies," then asked "What’s next — a suicide bomber belt?"

You wanna know what nuts looks like? It looks like that.

To make the vast leap from a head scarf, a simple act of respect, to a suicide bomber belt, the most inflammatory and extreme talisman of the committed violent sectarian, at once lumps all Muslims and all Arabs together, and lumps Pelosi, who rightly or wrongly was making a simple fact-finding diplomatic mission in with them. It betrays a disconnect from reality, a level of hysteria, and a "kill-em-all" mentality that makes rational discourse with such a person impossible.

But by far, the best example of wild-eyed screaming yellow balls-to-the-wall moonbat wingnut stark raving craziness I've seen, ever, is provided by a recent essay by Philip Atkinson, "Conquering the Drawbacks of Democracy." where you'll find this sage advice about how Atkinson believes George Bush should have conducted the beginning of the Iraq War:

"The wisest course would have been for President Bush to use his nuclear weapons to slaughter Iraqis until they complied with his demands, or until they were all dead. Then there would be little risk or expense and no American army would be left exposed. But if he did this, his cowardly electorate would have instantly ended his term of office, if not his freedom or his life."

Until they were all dead?

Hey, what's the big deal about a little genocide when you're God's chosen people, and the biggest, baddest son of a bitch in this or any other valley?

Enough said.

In 1957 the psychiatrist Carl Gustav Jung wrote that "For every manifest case of insanity there are, in my estimation, at least ten latent cases who seldom get to the point of breaking out openly but whose views and behaviour, for all their appearance of normality, are influenced unconsciously by pathological and perverse factors," and added that "They are...despite their small number in comparion with the population as a whole, dangerous as sources of infection..."

The infection Jung speaks of is bound to spread, of course, if a group of these "latent cases" manages to capture the highest offices of government. The result is that mass craziness breaks loose, such as for example, large numbers of Californians in recent days whispering among themselves that the state's recent wildfires must have been caused by "the terrorists."

God save us. Nobody else can.