I went searching for more photographs of Bush displaying the "Two-Face" effect. Guess what? It's harder to find a very recent pic that does not display this unsettling "slant-face" oddity. For example, check out the front page of Drudge today. Also the photos here on the Daily Kos. (scroll way down). See also here and here.
A reader submits the notion that Bush's symptoms suggest Atrial Flutter, as described here. This is treated with the backpack unit described earlier.
A number of people suspect that a health issue of this sort could explain the pretzel incident (in which he fainted because of an improperly-chewed pretzel -- and how likely is that?), as well as his fall off a bicycle and a Segway scooter.
It may be worth noting that Tony Blair, Bush's accomplice in the Iraq gambit, has had acknowledged heart difficulties.
Before the talk turned to the possibility of stroke, many had wondered whether Bush's "party hearty" past had finally caught up with him. In that light, I received this communication last week from a health care professional. Originally, I was not going to publish this. But since our president's health has become the topic du jour, I'll relay these comments without necessarily endorsing them.
Judge for yourself:
Although liberals, we steeled ourselves to watch the RNC convention, under the principle "know thine enemy." On the final evening of the convention, I watched Bush's nomination speech extremely attentively. It was striking to me that, from the outset, Bush spoke with virtually impenetrable calm. Yes, he had memorized it, but he still seemed totally immune to the knowledge that his speech would significantly determine swing voter perceptions, and thus his own fate in the election. Bush is, you will admit, a "flusterable" man. This was an unnatural serenity, and I said to my housemate at the time, who was also watching, that I wondered if George, facing such an important speech, had told himself that God would want him to avail himself of the alcoholic "assistance" at his disposal to ensure that all went well.
"Don't be ridiculous," my housemate answered. Yet because of this we both had his past alcoholic behavior on our minds. We were therefore startled to see, close to the end of the speech, a moment at which he slurred his words, just like a drinker who is in the middle of a bout. As we all know, alcoholics often seem to become clear-headed after first ingestion, articulate and calm, but it catches up with their physical reflexes and produces slurring.
We did not videotape the speech, but Saturday it was played again on several channels and this time a third friend was watching with us. We told him about the "slurring" moment and watched for it together. All three of us agreed it is very striking. Nothing about it from "news analysts", but we know what happens to White House access for news networks who dare to utter candid critiques of Bush's weaknesses. BTW, we were watching on MSNBC, and I can guarantee that tapes of their footage show this. I have not seen coverage from other networks, so if you are yourself able to get footage of this to verify our observations, start with MSNBC.
For someone with previous brain damage from drinking, the failure of the synapses to connect with each other during the process of thinking can be aggravated by the person's resumption of drinking. Paradoxically, he will make connections under the influence that he will not be able to make now when sober. And if he drinks the night before, his lapses of short term memory during conversation will be heightened the next day, as he goes through a "mini" withdrawal.
This phenomenon seems to me to be what we saw in the first debate. We are never going to be able to prove that he was wearing an earpiece, and certainly if he was it didn't help his performance. But whether he was listening to Rove and was too incapacitated to repeat what he heard, or whether he was floundering on his own, he was floundering, in helpless intellectual incapacity. Neither anti-depressants or tranquillizers can help this short term memory loss, the long pauses while the victim tries vainly to catch at the disappearing train of thought, the wandering speech, or, specifically, the peculiar lapse in the ability to remember long-known words and vocabulary (remember how Bush struggled with coming up with words.) During the second debate, this was largely overcome but Bush seemed extremely overstimulated, and had a pressure of words to speak unusually rapidly.
It is my estimate that he received amphetamines beforehand, now Schedule II narcotics, but distributed freely by military doctors (for example to pilots on long bombing missions). As we know, amphetamines promote an artificial alertness but also "speediness," as well as subjecting the person to ungovernable excitement and anger, as in Bush's near physical altercation with Gibson, the moderator.
This is not merely a campaign point. I am seriously alarmed that an active drunkard, who has to be temporarily "medicated out of" his incapacitating symptoms, should be in control of our nation's armaments. He needs help, he needs our expressions of compassion, and he needs to be retired. We do not permit anyone with significant blood alcohol levels to drive an automobile, pilot a ship, fly a plane, or operate heavy machinery. Indeed, the penalties for doing so are severe, because it is universal common sense that a) these are all "weapons" with the potential to cause physical harm, and b) alcohol causes potentially fatal failure of judgment and physical coordination. Why should we then tolerate an active drinker at the helm of State, driving the heavy machinery of our Armed Forces and nuclear arsenal. It would be insanity to permit this, and an imperative duty of all citizens to relieve the drunkard of command IMMEDIATELY.
In pursuit of this goal, I feel that the DNC should be made aware of this further evidence from tapes of Bush's nomination speech, and that without rancor, and with expressions of compassion, it should ask publicly and persistently for a release of Bush’s full medical records BEFORE the election -- liver function tests, MRI brain scans, any cognitive function measurements'to reassure our nation's citizens in the capacity of this man to pilot the helm of state. Many statistical documentations of our concern can be cited, from alcohol connected accidents and fatalities in automobiles to the many nautical accidents found to be alcohol related, such as the Staten Island ferry disaster last year when it slammed into the NYC pier, and the captain was found to have been drinking (and fled the scene.)
Furthermore, the same urgent demand should be made for Cheney's full medical records -- cardiac treatments, surgeries, ongoing test results, and MEDICATIONS PRESCRIBED -- since he is the proverbial "heartbeat away from the presidency" and we cannot have a VP who is physically and MENTALLY unfit to assume the helm.
Documentation? His memory lapses. Did he not forget he had met John Edwards on numerous, lengthy occasions? Let us not label this lies. Poor man, VP Cheney is showing one of the serious consequences of cardiac blockage and arteriosclerosis -- the narrowing vessels prevent oxygen from reaching the brain, leading to confusion and forgetfulness. And many of the drugs used to treat this narrowing -- especially beta blockers -- lower blood pressure and actually make the memory losses worse, by reducing the pressure with which the pathologically limited supply of oxygen penetrates the cells in the cerebral cortex.
Both of these gentlemen, Bush and Cheney, fall well within the definition of "incapacity" under which our constitution indicates a new leader should relieve them of duty.
If we are successful in disseminating these concerns to the media, in a manner that is 'compassionate' but also stimulates alarm, they will take over by playing the clips of Cheney's failures to remember, and Bush's 'slurring,' over and over and over ad nauseum, together with guest 'experts' in alcoholism, cardiac-associated dementia, etc. It is one of those issues that, no matter how much the White House declares George and Dick to be superbly fit, will remain in the mind of voters as a suspicion.
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