OK, what is wrong with this photo of Bush?

[DFW]

The guy looks like he has aged 15 years in the last 6 months. What gives?

He doesn't have a care in the world. He just enriched his best buddies,
including his (nominally, anyway) vice president beyond their wildest
dreams, and will be leaving office without having been impeached or
prosecuted for crimes for which men of lesser wealth and protection
are being given lethal injections.

But there's no denying it, in this photo, he looks like absolute shit.
What happened? Don't tell me he suddenly grew a conscience. I'd believe
in the Tooth Fairy before I swallowed that one. Maybe someone spiked
the A-1 sauce at his last barbecue with an overdose of tabasco, and he
spent the whole night on the toilet? It had to have been something........

[elizfeelinggreat]

1. They stopped trying to make him look like a 30 yo cowboy ...

[lisa58]

2. prisoner release syndrome...

...we all have it

[rpannier]

3. His portrait burned and he's now aging naturally

[Virginia Dare]

4. Booze, drugs, mental and physical sickness....n/t

[hobbit709]

5. There's nothing wrong with that picture

He looks EXACTLY like what he is-the camera does not lie.

[gratuitous]

6. His handlers have given up and moved on

Bush's career is over in nine months, but for a lot of political folks, they're angling for their next job. So the folks who have spent the last three or seven years propping up the Boy King are burnishing their resumes and casting about for work for someone who will give them a job after January 2009.

Now, I'm not saying that having worked in any Bush administration should be a career killer, or that the Egyptian pharoahs were right about everything, but the idea of entombing every adviser, retainer, and sycophant from this abortion of an administration in the building of the proposed Bush Presidential Library wouldn't be all bad.

[DFW]

7. Aren't there restrictions on where you can place toxic waste dumps?

[gratuitous]

8. Not anymore

If someone can make a buck, pollute away! It's not like we have an Agency devoted to Protecting the Environment. I mean, what would you call something like that anyway? It's just crazy anyway. Why should the government have to be involved protecting the environment anyway?

[DFW]

10. Actually, I was referring to:

Your "idea of entombing every adviser, retainer, and sycophant from this abortion of an administration in the building of the proposed Bush Presidential Library"

That would turn the Bush Presidential Library from an empty cavern into a toxic waste dump.

[Epiphany4z]

9. he should look worse

all the blood and death he has brought...now we have food riots in poor countries...a way bigger threat to security than OBL....and of course another tool for recruitment by OBL and others like him.

The economy is fubar...the military is fubar..the environment is fubar..the US reputation is fubar....he should spontaneously turn to dust

[TechBear_Seattle]

11. Compare the "before" and "after" pictures of ANY president

Even those who served for only 4 years. You will see substantial aging.

Two things to keep in mind.

One, a four year span is substantial; people do age. Presidents get their pictures taken a lot, so there are plenty of images to compare, and unlike celebrities, president usually do not spend tens of thousands of dollars to hide the fact they are getting older. Take any two pictures of yourself taken four or eight years apart, and see how young you look in the second one.

Two, being president is a high stress job (even if you are insulated from reality by your puppeteers and spend eight years of heavy drinking and trying to avoid killer pretzles.) That takes a toll.

[DFW]

12. This is, of course, true, but even so

I mean, just look at the 1992/2001 pics of Bill Clinton to see the toll
the jobs takes, let alone normal aging. But this photo looks FAR worse
than photos taken of Bush just a few months ago, maybe even weeks. But the
way he looks in this photo, you'd think that after a lifetime of being told
people thought he was an asshole, he had suddenly discovered that it was true.

[TechBear_Seattle]

18. Ok, I see your point

I didn't realize the "before" picture was that recent.

[Aristus]

13. Gee, I thought it was because his basement-level polling numbers

were shrivelling up his worthless, pathetic, validation-craving soul. He's the most unpopular President in modern history now (Yay! Truman is out of the cellar!), and for just this once in his life, neither his daddy, nor his daddy's money, nor his daddy's rich friends can bail him out of the sewer he put himself, and us, in.

[TechBear_Seattle]

16. You assume he knows any of this

I'm inclined to say that he is kept isolated and quite literally has no idea how he is polling. And please do not contradict me on this; my continuing mental health requires that I believe he is an idiot figurehead and not a prime mover. :hi:

[Aristus]

20. Oh, I believe absolutely that he is an idiot figurehead.

Good mental health to you. :-) :hi:

[Brigid]

23. There are pics of Lincoln that illustrate this dramatically.

Here ya go:

1860:



1865:

[CatWoman]

14. he's in it?

:shrug:

[forintegrity]

15. Red nose = boozing again!

pretty simple

[ThatsMyBarack]

17. The entire * misadministration....

summed up in this photo. :puke:

[notadmblnd]

19. Running a criminal enterprise is hard work

[spanone]

21. lying and torturing is some heavy karma

[Brigid]

22. He looks worse than I did when . . .

I saw myself in a mirror for the first time after heart surgery this winter. Some say he might be drinking again; could be, could be.

[Jamastiene]

24. All presidents look like shit when their second terms are up.

I've never been able to quite figure it out.

Bush looked shitty when he went in though. I don't honestly see any difference. You can't exactly polish a turd.

[Bunny]

25. Give the poor man a break! Don't you know he's planning a weddin'?

It's hard werk!!!

"President President George W. Bush said he's been facing some "very difficult spending decisions" and conducting some "sensitive diplomacy." He said that's what planning a wedding is all about."

http://www.topix.net/forum/city/crawford-tx/T7SMU3HE38O4J0P40

:eyes: