Reply #60: Yup, I agree with whoever upthread said the man is a lunatic.

[Peace Patriot]

Imagine that you are a forensic linguist, investigating a case of brainwashing--a U.S. politician who has literally been kidnapped, taken to a secret bunker in, oh, Virginia or Maryland, electrodes taped to his skull, and certain phrases embedded in his brain, to be repeated on cue. The human brain is a complex and mysterious organism and how it processes sentence structure, for instance, is not at all well understood. (Try to teach a computer English sentence structure!). This man's brain is trying to fit certain embedded phrases into logical-sounding sentences, and the struggle is almost painful to behold. He strings the embedded phrases together, or throws one or two of them into a sentence arbitrarily. He real self--how own independent brain--is trying to deal with it. But he essentially loses the struggle.

He is not a lunatic exactly. His gray matter has been messed with--that's the feeling I get.

Some people are better at rolling the embedded phrases out smoothly. Colin Powell, Condi Rice, Orin Hatch, Karl Rove, Tony Blair...but this guy is very raw.

Don't get me wrong. I'm not trying to elicit sympathy for him. I don't think he was really taken to a bunker and zapped (although it can't be ruled out, I guess). I think there is a form of voluntary brainwashing that may go like this: You tweak the votes so I get elected and give me lots of money and a little fiefdom of power, and I will submit myself to your speech coach for a couple of weekends at the ranch.