Right after I graduated from college, I took a job as a psychiatric technician working in an in-patient acute psychiatric facility at Einstein Northern, in Philly.

One of the patients who made the strongest impression on me was a woman who'd had some kind of brain trauma. I can't remember if it was an aneurysm/stroke or an acute fever. Either way, the result was massive damage to her brain.

On the outside, this woman, in her early thirties, looked perfectly healthy. But her brain was broken and she acted very ill.

Now, we have the senate republicans, calling for the economic crisis rescue bill to consist entirely of tax breaks. This makes me think of that patient.

You see, that patient, with her organic brain syndrome, engaged in a lot of lalias. First, there was echolalia-- she'd repeat and repeat any words you said to her. Next, there was coprolalia-- repeating curse words. But she also repeated movments-- again and again and again.

Her brain was broken and it would go into these loops, doing the same thing over and over and over again.

Just the verbal stuff was enough to imprint her on my memory, with vivid images of her, 35 years later. But her repetitive movements were what really engraved that impression of her into my memory. The movement she reverted to, for hours at a time, was self masturbation.

And that's what reminded me the most of the GOP leaders -- McConnell, McCain, Chambliss, DeMint, Graham-- the way they are regressing back to the failed tax cut idea. It is so mindless, so right wing reflexive- it is sub-cortical, dead-brained economasturbation.

That's all. The question is, how can voters not look at these politically brain dead elected officials and not shake their heads in regret an embarassment, resolving to vote them the f*ck out of office? How? The only thing I can think of is the drug they put in their ears-- right wing radio.