Symptoms of a Narcissistic Personality Disorder include grandiosity, paranoia and an inability to admit one is wrong. Those are ways to defend a fragile ego and justify the hostility felt toward those who may be able to see the pathology. Notice what has happened over the last few days.

His grandiosity led him to believe what he wanted to be true. He then made outlandishly detailed predictions leaving no room for doubt or disagreement. He was the Oracle, the well-reasoned, informed, able to see what others miss Oracle.

Here comes the fun part. After the voters showed he was wrong, dead wrong, the question becomes can he admit it, and can he hang around after humiliating himself that way. After all, he did it himself, no one set him up.

If you read "The turning point", you'll notice he not only barely mentioned that Obama won, he then went on to relate a grandiose tale which demonstrated he was not only right all along, is still right, but has predicted the future again. His only mistake was that he underestimated how right he was.

And he implied he was leaving the boards, again. His ego couldn't take it. What he enjoys most of all is pontificating, and he had staked it all on the election. He is vulnerable to accusations of no credibility, can't admit he's wrong, and has to leave rather than descend to mere mortal.

The reason for not accepting the bet was absolutely classic. He's so important that an online bet on a presidential election would attract the attention of authorities and ruin his reputation and the subsequent prosecution would destroy his career. I think you'd be hard pressed to find an FBI office in the country without a World Series pool, yet someone is tracking him and would note such moral transgressions.

I believe his agenda is self-aggrandizement, period. He uses the political stuff to attempt that, and when it fails he has to leave.

And the guy is bright, creative, and articulate. Unfortunately, he is convinced he somehow knows everything without having learned anything.

As an aside, I took a contrary position to the Conventional Wisdom once when I said that Neville Chamberlain had accomplished exactly what he needed to with his appeasement of Germany. (Most folks are going to have to go with their childhood lessons, and disagree with that.) However, Britain at that time was absolutely not ready to go to war with Germany and to have done so would have been a disaster. Chamberlain bought time, what Britain needed.

As it was, even with American aid and time to feverishly prepare, Britain almost lost the Battle of Britain. Had it occurred earlier, the French would have caved faster, and Germany might well have occupied England, who was in no way ready for a war.

His reply to me was that Britain was ready to take on Germany at the time Chamberlain was meeting with them, and would have defeated them soundly. Even though Germany had been rearming for years, the Luftwaffe had been practicing in Spain, and she had a very, very powerful army. S-T shot from the hip, hit himself in the foot, on an issue re which he had no clue. Didn't need to do it, just needed to be thought of as knowing all.

Now, what that says about my narcissism, grandiosity and paranoia is for someone else to say. I'm not going to blow the whistle on myself.