Liar, Liar, Liar, Liar, LIAR, LIAR, LIAR,

Rachel Maddow is so much better at this than I am, which might explain why she has an audience and I don't. The above video says what I've been saying about our potential next president for a very long time: that his campaign is based on lies, that he lies like he breathes, that he does so shamelessly, repeatedly, and unrepentantly. The video ought to be watched, beginning to end (okay, people could skip the details about the manufacturing history of Etch-A-Sketch, although it's interesting in its own right) by everyone, left, right, center. Because Rachel is scathing in her clarity. While, as usual, completely factual.

And she's dead on about this: whereas lying is a well-honed part of American politics (it's not illegal to lie in campaign ads), Romney's lying is something far beyond precedent. It's pathological. That a man will repeat things, over and over, that are patently false, lie about doing so, and continue with new lies every day -- whose first instinct when confronted seems to be lying -- is deeply troubling. It'd be so in your kid, your friend, your co-worker. If you cared about them you'd seek ways to get them help. Maybe you'd feel the need to turn them in; or, at minimum, just avoid them.

But you sure as hell wouldn't vote for them to be president of the United States, would you?

This guy is defective in some as-yet undefined but obvious way, a way that probably has its own DSM-IV code. And whatever else it is, whatever you might call it, it ought to be categorically disqualifying for higher office. Categorically. Absolutely.

That Mitt Romney, a blatant, continuous, and transcendent liar, will be the R nominee, will undoubtedly win some states, and might even win the whole thing says much more about who we've become as a country than about him.

But it still says a hell of a lot about him.