Has gwb had a stroke?

[NightWatcher]

A friend was telling me about how a stroke had affected his dad and I started wondering if maybe gwb has had a stroke. We are always making drug and alcohol jokes about the "pretzel incident" and his falling off of bikes on a regular basis, and I started trying to put two and two together.

I am not making a joke, nor am I making fun of stroke victims. My father had a small TIA and fortunately did not suffer any ill effects. I am concerned that we have a man of dimished faculties in charge of our country.

Here are a couple of things I found about the effects of a stroke. Tell me if I am wrong.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/health/conditions/stroke/aboutstro...

- Speech or language difficulties, including difficulties in understanding, speaking (dysphasia, aphasia), reading, writing and calculation. Speech and language problems usually indicate damage to the left hemisphere of the brain.

- Problems of perception, including trouble recognising or being able to use everyday objects, difficulties telling the time and problems interpreting what the eyes see, even when vision isn't affected.



- Cognitive difficulties, including problems caused by damage to areas of the brain controlling mental processes such as thinking clearly and logically, learning, paying attention, memory, decision making and forward planning.

- Behaviour changes, which may include being slower to react than before the stroke, excessive caution, disorganisation, difficulties adjusting to change and becoming confused or irritated.

- Mood changes, including mood swings, irritability and laughing or crying, even when you don't feel particularly happy or sad. Depression is extremely common, with symptoms such as loss of appetite, insomnia, crying, low self-esteem and anxiety.

[LiberalFighter]

1. If he did it was before he was elected

[NightWatcher]

5. I think so too, and the neocons are "using him" just like bush1 used a sick Reagan

It has come out that ray-gun had much more serious alzheimers than he let on in a letter in 1994. Are teh neocons and dick using a sick gwb as a puppet that will not put up a fight?

[spotbird]

7. or in utero nt

[madokie]

2. nope hes just a falling down drunk

and hes good at it, being a drunk that is

[MADem]

3. I am concerned that we have a man of dimished faculties in charge of our country.

Yep, that's been the case since he stole the gig in 2000...

[Virginia Dare]

14. Agreed...n/t

[lutefisk]

17. Good at being drunk maybe, but not a "good drunk"

He's a complete asshole when he's drunk, as we have all witnessed (I think we have - or maybe he's just a bad "dry drunk").

edit: oops, I intended to reply to madokie (post #2)

[Alter Ego]

4. No, he's just tapped a vein for the IV drip of Jim Beam.

[blogslut]

6. You've hit upon my favorite theory

I think the pretzel incident WAS a stroke. Bush's degraded speechifying is the reason why I believe this. The more one speaks before the public, the better one gets at doing it. They don't get worse. Something is physically, clinically wrong with that man.

[Virginia Dare]

13. My theory...

the pressures of the White House were too much for him from the get-go, and he fell off the wagon, literally. They put him on Antabuse or something similar, and he went downhill from there. I agree with you wholeheartedly though, there is something very, very wrong with him.

[sofa king]

8. I think that's all he had to start with.

I think the dude started off as a damned fool narcissist. He's not a total idiot, and being a narcissist he really wants to come off as a smart guy. So he surrounds himself with clever sociopaths to make himself look better, and those sociopaths manipulate him and the world to get what they want while making the poor jerk think he's in charge.

Someone once said it's unwise to ascribe malice to anything that can be chalked up to incompetence, but in this guy's case he's got both in spades. His M.O. has always been to steal whatever it is he wants, which fits in perfectly with his malevolent disposition and his total lack of logical thinking tools.

[SammyWinstonJack]

10. Right on the money!

[SteelPenguin]

9. Ever since I saw this video I've felt there was an issue

http://youtube.com/watch?v=NvVilAlCBYc

[Virginia Dare]

12. Amazing..

The decline in his mental faculties is very striking.

I remember thinking during the 2004 debates that he had a serious mental issue. Whether it's a stroke or something else, I believe he's heavily medicated. Perhaps there's a Rasputin in the White House?

[dysfunctional press]

11. it's just years and years of heavy drinking and cocaine use catching up with him...

we'd all have been much better off if he had been just a weedhead...

[Javaman]

15. I would like to think it was a stroke, but sadly, it's nothing more than

barbara having dropped him on his head as a child.

[WinkyDink]

16. Yeah---a stroke of psychopathy.

[DS1]

18. of GENIUS!

[Bigmack]

19. I think Cheney is more likely...

with all those heart surgeries and proceedures.

Could easily have thrown a clot into the thalamus or some other structure involved in mood and behavior. He's always been an asshole, but he's meaner than ever in the last few years.