July 28, 2004
WELL, THE FROGS FEEL SAFER:
Bush Using Drugs to Control Depression, Erratic Behavior (TERESA HAMPTON, Jul 28, 2004, Capitol Hill Blue)
President George W. Bush is taking powerful anti-depressant drugs to control his erratic behavior, depression and paranoia, Capitol Hill Blue has learned.The prescription drugs, administered by Col. Richard J. Tubb, the White House physician, can impair the President’s mental faculties and decrease both his physical capabilities and his ability to respond to a crisis, administration aides admit privately.
“It’s a double-edged sword,” says one aide. “We can’t have him flying off the handle at the slightest provocation but we also need a President who is alert mentally.”
Tubb prescribed the anti-depressants after a clearly-upset Bush stormed off stage on July 8, refusing to answer reporters' questions about his relationship with indicted Enron executive Kenneth J. Lay. [...]
Although GOP loyalists dismissed the reports an anti-Bush propaganda, the reports were later confirmed by prominent George Washington University psychiatrist Dr. Justin Frank in his book Bush on the Couch: Inside the Mind of the President. Dr. Frank diagnosed the President as a “paranoid meglomaniac” and “untreated alcoholic” whose “lifelong streak of sadism, ranging from childhood pranks (using firecrackers to explode frogs) to insulting journalists, gloating over state executions and pumping his hand gleefully before the bombing of Baghdad” showcase Bush’s instabilities.
“I was really very unsettled by him and I started watching everything he did and reading what he wrote and watching him on videotape. I felt he was disturbed,” Dr. Frank said. “He fits the profile of a former drinker whose alcoholism has been arrested but not treated.”
Dr. Frank’s conclusions have been praised by other prominent psychiatrists, including Dr. James Grotstein, Professor at UCLA Medical Center, and Dr. Irvin Yalom, MD, Professor Emeritus at Stanford University Medical School.
The doctors also worry about the wisdom of giving powerful anti-depressant drugs to a person with a history of chemical dependency. Bush is an admitted alcoholic, although he never sought treatment in a formal program, and stories about his cocaine use as a younger man haunted his campaigns for Texas governor and his first campaign for President.
“President Bush is an untreated alcoholic with paranoid and megalomaniac tendencies,” Dr. Frank adds.
Gotta reduce the dosage at least long enough for him to take out N. Korea, Syria, Iran, Castro, and the ChiComms before he gets wheeled out on a Hannibal cart. Posted by Orrin Judd at July 28, 2004 2:29 PM
John Kerry eats raw veal. John Kerry drinks blood from baby seals. John Kerry sprinkles ground-up rhino horn on his tortes. John and Teresa eat tiger penis by the poolside.
See how easy it is to start a rumor? And I don't even need a Ph.D. to validate it.
Posted by: jim hamlen at July 28, 2004 2:56 PMThis had better be complete BS. If the public believes that Bush is on serious medication he'll lose in a landslide.
If this is BS it shows how desperate the Dems are to win and will make stuff up. Watch the major media take this and run 100 stories on it now and no stories 3 weeks from now when it is proved to be false.
Also, isn't this the same guy who had an article a few weeks ago claiming Bush was screaming at aides and verbally/physically assaulting people?
AWW:
Dupe--you thought the frogs deserved the firecrackers too, didn't you?
Posted by: oj at July 28, 2004 3:08 PMIt's yet another "scoop" from the folks at Capital Hill Blue. True it's not as good as some of their other work, like Bush using the threat of Terrorsist attacks as an excuse to cancel the elections, or the fact that Israeli spies actually assasinated JFK, but it is easily on a par with such greats as: Dems Move to Block GOP Homophobia, and Senate Kills Gay-Bashing Amendment. What will their fevered brains come up with next, enquiring minds want to know!
Posted by: Robert Modean at July 28, 2004 3:15 PMI was always under the impression that it was professional misconduct for a shrink to diagnose someone he hasn't treated. It may also be libellous, even with respect to a public figure. A test case would be very interesting.
But this just shows how important psychology has become to our political mindset. Say Bush hates widows and orphans and everyone yawns. Accusing him of planning to nuke the NORKS is a charge any half-decent press aide can field and deflect. But he has unresolved issues deep down inside and need pills? Lethal.
Jim:
Tiger penis? Really? Boy, when I think how ignorant I was before I started blogging...
Posted by: Peter B at July 28, 2004 3:24 PM
...reports were later confirmed by prominent George Washington University psychiatrist Dr. Justin Frank in his book Bush on the Couch: Inside the Mind of the President. Dr. Frank diagnosed the President as a paranoid meglomaniac and untreated alcoholic whose lifelong streak of sadism, ranging from childhood pranks (using firecrackers to explode frogs) to insulting journalists, gloating over state executions and pumping his hand gleefully before the bombing of Baghdad showcase Bushs instabilities.
You gotta love an armchair diagnosis. No, that's not unethical.
This one's easy to fix - Bush pees in a jar for the FBI. Seriously. Then he can ask Kerry and Edwards to do the same...
Posted by: M. Murcek at July 28, 2004 3:32 PMOJ - Ok, I'm a dupe. After arguing with people who can't accept that Wilson was the lier not Bush, that Iraq wasn't all about Halliburton, that Bush isn't going to recreate the KKK, ban gays, etc. I fully believe some of the public (and some in the media) will accept this as fact.
Posted by: AWW at July 28, 2004 3:35 PMPerhaps, as Lincoln commented about Grant, we should find out what drugs Bush is taking and prescribe them for our other "leaders."
Posted by: George Richardson at July 28, 2004 3:43 PMAWW:
Joe Wilson is the finest public servant of our time and perhaps the most humble and reticent. And we all know George and Jeb were driving that truck in Jasper.
Posted by: oj at July 28, 2004 3:48 PMPeter:
Actually, the tiger snack is more typical to Africa or Asia, but you know those Kerrys, they are so sophisticated!
Posted by: jim hamlen at July 28, 2004 4:05 PMJuly 8?
Posted by: Robert Schwartz at July 28, 2004 4:17 PMOJ --
Jeb was in the bed of the pick-up, making sure the chains were secure. Ken Lay was riding shotgun with GWB...
Posted by: John at July 28, 2004 4:58 PMJohn Kerry eats raw veal. John Kerry drinks blood from baby seals. John Kerry sprinkles ground-up rhino horn on his tortes. John and Teresa eat tiger penis by the poolside.
See how easy it is to start a rumor? And I don't even need a Ph.D. to validate it.
Well, I do have a PhD*, and in my forthcoming book "John Kerry Drinks The Blood of Innocents" I will offer my educated diagnosis: John Kerry is a vampire!
All the evidence points to Kerry being the loathsome undead remnant of a benighted ancient race of superbeings. He's clearly hell-bent on establishing an infernal reign of terror and misery here on earth
All that stands in the way is...
Well, buy my book. It's only $24.95 at Amazon.
*in Medieval Studies.
pchuck:
While this article might be composed largely of b.s., that book really does exist.
Shades of Barry Goldwater...
Posted by: Matt Murphy at July 28, 2004 6:40 PMI was all ready to consign this to the tinfoil beanie realm until I read that Bush pulls pranks on journalists. The swine!
He must be stopped.
(By the way, has Texas had any gubernatorial candidates who weren't on crank? What's up with Texas?)
Website reviews of Dr. Frank's mentioned book say it all:
"A reviewer, A reviewer, August 5, 2004,
There Are Better Ways To Defeat Bush This Year
I am a committed liberal, a registered Democrat, and a practicing psychologist (Psy.D). To write that Dr. Frank's book is misguided in the extreme is an understatement indeed. It is another example of a highly intelligent person (such as David Ray Griffin of Claremont) setting aside her or his professional training and intellectual honesty and engaging in data manipulation (at best) and outright fraud (at worst) in order to promote a partisan political point of view. We can hardly call the extreme right-wing to account for their unseemly willingness to engage in such practices on a number of important issues if we on the left are willing to lower ourselves to this level. There is an overwhelming case to be made against Bush's reelection as president; we do not need to include the arguments contained in this book among it.
Brian, A reviewer, July 13, 2004,
Based on assumptions
As a graduate student in psychology I read this book with interest. However I found the conclusions reached were not supported by facts and the author only used TV statements to reach a diagnosis! Real psychologists can only diagnosis a condition upon interviewing the patient. Don't bother with this one."