I recently began work at mental hospital in Tampa, FL, and have received recognition for the quick improvements my patients have shown. Recently, The Minaret requested that I let them sit in on one of my sessions. The following dialogue is with a new patient to the practice, Meis Retardando, who will be referred to as MR from here on. And I will be GL.

GL: Welcome Meis to the practice. I am glad we are able to get together to work at making you into a better person. But before we begin, would you like something to drink?

MR: Some Kool-Aid would be nice.

GL: Sure, here you go. So tell me, what’s the matter?

MR: Well, you see Dr. LoVario, recently whenever I begin discussing political issues with my friends or strangers, I share my thoughts and they start laughing at me and walk away from me. I feel so ignored. What’s wrong with me?

GL: Hmm. Interesting. Well, let’s probe a bit further. I will ask you a few questions and let’s see what transpires. Okay. Tell me, where do you get your news from?

MR: The New York Times, of course. Who doesn’t?

GL: If I recall correctly, the NYT was convinced that the re-elections of President George W. Bush, PM John Howard in Australia, PM Tony Blair in Britain and Junichiro Koizumi in Japan would all fail because of their support for the Iraq war, stating that most of their respective populations were against the war. So in spite of the fact that they were wrong, you still read that paper?

MR: Hey, what are you trying to imply? You know President Bush falsified the intelligence information in order to be able to invade Iraq and finish his daddy’s work.

GL: There is this thing called the silent majority that the paper ignores. But anyways, you are telling me that President Bush falsified information which intelligence agencies around the world concurred with, including MI6, and which key Democrats like John Kerry agreed with. In addition, there was the UN Resolution 1441, a unanimous corporate statement of the 15-member Security Council passed Nov. 8, 2002, which affirmed the world’s absolute certainty that Saddam Hussein possessed WMDs. You still stand by your statement?

MR: I don’t like the tone of voice you are taking. While I do support the troops and all, I just hope they lose this war. The “freedom fighters” will prevail and, anyways, those fighters are sexy. In addition, the Democrats have a plan ten times better than Bush’s.

GL: Duly noted. A better plan you say? And what plan are you referring to? In November of 2005, Howard Dean, leader of the DNC, announced that it was not the responsibility of the opposition party to come up with a plan. A month later, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D – Calif., said that Democrats would “produce an issue agenda for the 2006 elections,” but it would “not include a position on Iraq” because they couldn’t reach an agreement. Pelosi said, “There is no one Democratic voice