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Could President Bush be under the influence?

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LOL, Have any of you seen this video? About a 1/3 the way through it, Bush is slurring "decision" and then the topic is CitiGroup bank and he calls them CitiCorp... unless of course that's a corporate name for them. Anyway, after listening to this accidentally, I wondered if our President wasn't under the influence of something other than a casual beer. :whistling:

YouTube - Bush says there could be more Citigroup-like bailout decisions

@Justin,

I wish his stupidity was that easy to explain away, but a someone with a little too much experience with both of those drugs I know that not even being stoned and drunk could drag a moderately intelligent person so far down dumb*** lane as our President travels.

@Justin,

Nothing new. You've got to hand it to him, though -- relative to his innate intelligence and nuanced thinking, he is probably the greatest overachiever in the history of the planet.

@Justin,

That particular clip could just be explained by the fact that Bush plainly does not do too well in public appearances...it is my opinion that he suffers from great anxiety when speaking in public (you can tell, imo, by his mannerisms and speech patterns).

Perhaps he uses drugs/booze to counteract this anxiety:

YouTube - Bush- Drunk

...15 drinks down at the bar, and send Bush off to the press conference! Smile

@Pangloss,

I personally don't like the man, but I'm not a US citizen and don't like to tell other people who to pick as their President.
Bush's speech slurring is not a new thing - he mispronounces "nuclear" and I have also heard him stumble over names of countries (although I can't think of a specific example). As he was probably reasonably well educated (?) it sounds like some sort of speech defect, a mild stroke perhaps.
I wouldn't care if he stammered and stuttered if he would only say something sensible and stop repeating cliches and buzz words. It might give him some home-town folksy appeal, but it doesn't do much for his credibility.

@CarolA,

Just in case anyone didn't notice, the second clip is altered to make Bush appear drunk.

To the point - the man is probably like most of us; we want so badly to do well but these intentions are easily corrupted by personal gain and the influence of snakes (think Nixon). Add to Bush's nearly non-existent backbone a severe lack of education (I don't care what school he went to, them man is clearly uneducated), a crowd of friends and advisers who are some of the nastiest individuals this nation has seen, and a severely retarded worldview, you end up with one of the worst, most disastrous administrations in our nation's history.

@Justin,

Decades of heavy boozing and partying also may have taken its toll on the man...whether or not he still drinks, the damage was/is done.

@Pangloss,

Sure, he partied hard... cocaine and all that, but really unless you go way over the edge, you can recover pretty well. You generally only get an Ozzie Osborn when you have a Jim Morrison live past 35.

@Justin,

It seems that he was basically an alcoholic from his pre-college years all the way up until the age of 40 when he supposedly quit drinking. If that's the case, then permanent damage is likely.

@CarolA,

CarolA;35397 wrote:

I personally don't like the man, but I'm not a US citizen and don't like to tell other people who to pick as their President.

I'm not a citizen of Zimbabwe, but I've got no problem criticizing Robert Mugabe.

Quote:

As he was probably reasonably well educated (?) it sounds like some sort of speech defect, a mild stroke perhaps.

Quite well educated... Yale undergrad and Harvard Business School. But he's extraordinarily inarticulate and awkward. I doubt it's a stroke -- strokes usually produce much different kinds of speech deficits.

Quote:

I wouldn't care if he stammered and stuttered if he would only say something sensible and stop repeating cliches and buzz words. It might give him some home-town folksy appeal, but it doesn't do much for his credibility.

He talks to us as if we're children, which insults our intelligence. There are ways to convey complicated things to laypeople without treating them like idiots.

@Pangloss,

I guess that depends on how you define alcoholic. I'm a college student, and most nights I can be found with a beer in my hand. Does that make me an alcoholic?

If Bush says he was an alcoholic, how much of that claim is based on his recently developed world view? He is an extremely, fundamentalist Christian. Super-original sin and all that. No sex before marriage. All kinds of crazy ideas.

I wouldn't doubt that he has some permanent liver damage, but I'm skeptical that his drug use caused significant damage to his cognitive capacity. Remember, this is a guy who made it to the White House, not by his own brilliance, but because he surrounded himself with greedy, and clearly intelligent individuals. They invented Bush's Presidency. That's one of his great legacies - his subservience to advisers. He has a unique inability to lead.

@Justin,

One night of heavy drinking can seriously hurt cognitive abilities in the short-term...years, or decades of it has been proven to do long-term brain damage.

Heavy drinking usually means about 30 drinks a week or more...yea, everyone does this in college, for 4 years, and maybe for a few more years in high school and post-college. But Bush did it for over 2 decades.

@Pangloss,

Maybe my perspective is just a little twisted, but that sort of drinking (30 drinks a week for two decades) doesn't seem terribly outrageous. More than someone should drink? Yeah, probably, but not uncommon by any means.

@Justin,

Well, that's "heavy drinking" as far as scientists are concerned. Most alcoholics I have known go well beyond that mark (for the Jim Morrison types it is more like 30-40 a day), as Bush probably did. So, if 30 a week can cause real cognitive damage according to studies, then double or triple can't be any better.

@Pangloss,

I'm not saying that years of moderate drinking (drinking 30 drinks a week comes out to 4.3 drinks a night) doesn't cause any cognitive damage. I'm saying that the damage shouldn't be so substantial as to be a significant impairment. In other words, he should have been able to drink considerable amounts of alcohol for a number of years and, if he is reasonably intelligent, manage to avoid looking like a complete idiot in the eyes of most Americans and a vast majority of the world.

(On top of at least a fifth of whiskey every day, Jim Morrison types also used large amounts of cocaine and psychedelics - super human amounts, which will cause some permanent damage immediately after the fact)

@Justin,

I think the studies done on alcohol's effect on cognitive abilities might dispute your thinking...the 30/week thing is not what I think Bush probably was drinking; it seems to be the bare minimum to qualify as "heavy drinking" as far as science is concerned. I have read studies done on the subject, and the group of "heavy drinkers" is usually reserved for those ingesting at least 30 drinks a week. Studies done with these people do show cognitive damage, perhaps serious.

If Bush was like most people I know who have drinking problems, he went well beyond that 30/week mark.

Jim Morrison did use a lot of psychedelics and stimulants in his "younger" years, but towards the end of his short life he was basically just a big drunk. Even so, from my limited knowledge on the subject, it seems that alcohol is significantly more damaging to the brain than cocaine is.

@Pangloss,

Than cocaine? I'm not sure what sort of studies have been done, but from watching far too many people with serious cocaine addictions and from watching far too many alcoholics I can safely say cocaine is far more destructive. Maybe the science doesn't support that conclusion. If not, this is one of those rare occasions where I ignore the science.

I drink, but if I even see cocaine, I'm gone. I'm out. Civilization and culture can progress and thrive with extensive alcohol use, but inject cocaine and both are ruined.

@Didymos Thomas,

Didymos Thomas;35432 wrote:

Than cocaine? I'm not sure what sort of studies have been done, but from watching far too many people with serious cocaine addictions and from watching far too many alcoholics I can safely say cocaine is far more destructive.

Apples and oranges. They have different mechanisms. You just can't compare. Cocaine has the capacity to give you a fatal heart attack or stroke the first time you try it. But chronic alcohol intake even at what you personally consider a moderate level is going to catch up to you, trust me.

Didymos Thomas;35427 wrote:

Maybe my perspective is just a little twisted, but that sort of drinking (30 drinks a week for two decades) doesn't seem terribly outrageous. More than someone should drink? Yeah, probably, but not uncommon by any means.

That's 4 drinks a night. I've seen plenty of people with end-stage cirrhosis from that.

@Didymos Thomas,

Didymos Thomas;35432 wrote:

Than cocaine? I'm not sure what sort of studies have been done, but from watching far too many people with serious cocaine addictions and from watching far too many alcoholics I can safely say cocaine is far more destructive. Maybe the science doesn't support that conclusion. If not, this is one of those rare occasions where I ignore the science.

I think cocaine might appear to be more destructive due to its cost-- addicts turn into criminals in order to fund the habit, and ruin themselves in the process. A hopeless bottle+/day drunk will likely physically destroy himself quicker than a coke addict, but with a full-time job he can probably support his habit.

@Aedes,

Aedes;35433 wrote:

That's 4 drinks a night. I've seen plenty of people with end-stage cirrhosis from that.

Most studies I have read go by drinks per week, and I tend to think that problems from 30/week would signify a person binge drinking 2-3 days a week, and not a person who just has 4 per night every night.

Just wondering, if from your knowledge, there is a distinction here? If 2 drinks per day is supposed to be "good" for us, then it seems 2 more a day is a short jump to make to end-stage cirrhosis, unless that 30/week is more like 15 every fri & sat night (which I assume would be worse).

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