It's past time we faced up to it. Is George W. Bush insane?

[Cyrano]

And we can include Dick Cheney in that question (although there's probably not much difference between the insanity of one and the evil of the other).

How often, in all of our history, would anyone have posed that question about any American president?

This morning, he rambled on about sending more troops to what everyone else on this planet knows is a lost cause. There doesn't seem to be anything in our power to stop this lunatic from making an impossible situation even worse.

But what frightens me most (as I've mentioned in past postings) is that these two men have total control of our nuclear weapons. And that should scare the shit out of every human being on this planet.

[madokie]

1. consider me scared

to answer your question, batshit crazy

[Blue_In_AK]

2. Why, yes. Yes, he is. n/t

[lisa58]

3. Yes, I think they are insane...

...I also think that our way out of this "insane" administration will be a public meltdown. It's gonna take a lot for the repubs to admit it, but I think a public meltdown will force the congressional republicans to have to work with the dems and get him out. How much more will it really take for him to snap?

[AZBlue]

4. Yes. More specifically, he's pathological.

eom

[confludemocrat]

5. Yeah, he's real messed up.

most have had someone like him in their life. Someone about whom you could truly say, "I could do a better job of running the country, than that jerkoff!"

[NRaleighLiberal]

6. I think he started just stupid/ignorant, and the pressure has driven him

completely around the bend. In other words, YES!

[tularetom]

7. He sure as hell is. And I think most Amurkins know it

My fear is that as he begins to feel more and more trapped in the web of his own lies and fuckups, he will become desperate to make some grand gesture that will make the world forget what a miserable failure he has been. What could that coup de grace be? The dumshit could fuckin nuke somebody that's what. He has no conscience to hold him back, and he has a bunch of neocon and theocon advisors who are probably goading him into it as we speak. If he wasn't kept in such a bubble and knew what the world really thinks of him, I believe he would have done it already.

[Mist]

9. A "grand gesture," Yes, especially as * has a large amount of grandiosity in

his character, along with highly destructive behaviour, probably ADD, learning impairments, and a ton of neuroses. Severe mental illness coupled with a mediocre (at best) mind.

[DawgHouse]

8. Crazy as a bed bug.

[lisby]

10. Yes, he is and is growing moreso...

And it's so obvious that only someone as delusional isn't able to see it. He is nuts and once one person who "matters" says so publicly and gets the media to run with it, then everyone else who "matters" will be able to openly say so, too.

:freak:

Lisby

[Warren Stupidity]

11. Memo to Pelosi: consider the 25th amendment.

"Whenever the Vice President and a majority of either the principal officers of the executive departments or of such other body as Congress may by law provide, transmit to the President pro tempore of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Representatives their written declaration that the President is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office, the Vice President shall immediately assume the powers and duties of the office as Acting President."

Impeach and remove Cheney and remove Bush by reason of mental disability.

[Cyrano]

13. Nancy Pelosi needs to have this amendment tattooed on her hand.

And she should stop worrying about the fact that if Bush and Cheney are impeached and removed from office, she would become the president.

The lunatic right wing in this country has taken us far beyond the realm of politics. Were Bush/Cheney allowed to complete their terms in office, there is just too big a risk that they would use our nuclear arsenal to justify their rhetoric as well as their existence.

[Az]

12. He may be a sociopath

Or as Kurt Vonnegut suggested he has a Psychopathic Personality.

But much of what we see of his behaviour can also be explained by the isolation he has placed himself in. Once cut off from society the tack he takes can vary wildly with the rest of us. Thus when he speaks in public he will come off as so out of touch with reality that he does in fact seem CooCoo for CocoaPuffs.

[Cyrano]

14. Anyone who spends so much time convincing reporters that he's "cutting brush"

seems to have some sort of problem. Some may call him "disturbed," and others may call him an insecure man under pressure.

Sorry, but I just can't bring myself to be that kind. To be perfectly clear, I believe that George W. Bush is an out-of-touch, screaming sociopathic maniac.

And even though I am unable to give a medical, textbook definition of what those terms mean, all I can say is that, I know it when I see it.

[Bobbie Jo]

19. If it walks like a duck....

Antisocial through and through...agree.
The shopping comment nailed it for me. In other words...go make yourselves useful, I have a war to run.

[tinfoilinfor2005]

15. Crazy?? No! He's just leading his country to go shopping.

We're all going shopping...and then we're going to the zoo, and then to Hong Kong and China and Disney World! Follow the yellow brick road, follow the yellow...crazy? No no. Shopping. yay. We're all going shopping.

:crazy:

[unkachuck]

16. you're absolutely right....

....and this is starting to reflect on the rest of our governement and system as a whole....

....by that I mean, where are those checks and balances that keep lunatics from destroying this country and why aren't they being implemented?....the man's a jerk with numbers in the low 30's and you mean to tell me he's untouchable politically?....

....isn't the executive/presidency one of three co-equal branches of government?....or has corporate America declared the president a dictator?....where the hell are the adults in our government?....this system is sucking more and more....

[Cleita]

17. We're not the ones who need convincing.

It's Congress that has to admit that he's a looney tune and that they need to remove him from office. They should have done so years ago. Sure the Republican majority didn't want to, but if the Democratic majority doesn't start doing something about him, then I give up. This country is truly screwed then.

[dave_p]

18. Collapse

I tend to see rationality (however obnoxious) in leaders' actions, but in recent weeks I've been coming to this conclusion too. First we had pointless political rancor-mongering with doomed idiocies like the Bolton renomination. Then we had the weeks of policy paralysis around the quickly discarded ISG report. Now we're told that Democrat success in the midterms was a GOP mandate to send even more troops into the Iraq debacle with no coherent policy foundation and entirely contrary to the recommendations of most advisers except Rumsfeld, who Dubya claims to have "been through war" with.

And we've seen the White House's gagging of Flynt Leverett, who accuses the President of being so blinded by his obsession with regime change in Iran that he can't even negotiate: "Ultimately the president is, on this issue, very, very resistant to the idea of doing a deal, even a deal that would solve the nuclear problem. You don’t do a deal that would effectively legitimate this regime that he considers fundamentally illegitimate," the alienated Bush NSC veteran told the Council for Foreign Relations in March. That's not rational.

The walls are going up around a White House Green Zone ever remoter from reason, even from the self-serving opportunism of GOP elders: Iraq's such a disaster we need to get deeper into it; election defeat is a mandate to scale up the failed policy that led to the reverse; the Middle Eastern power you've done most to strengthen and now seek to contain can't be negotiated with, despite its help in Afghanistan and its unanswered 2003 offer of comprehensive talks to resolve outstanding differences.

It's getting very scary. The last month should be enough to dispel any notion that Bush is fit to direct national affairs. I imagine even now Administration insiders are trying to prise his fingers from the levers of policymaking, but it looks like he and his dwindling clique of neocon pals aren't letting go without a fight. Insanity or incompetence? It's hard to tell from this failed mess of a Presidency, but incompetence is starting to seem the lesser worry.

[newyawker99]

23. Hi dave_p!!

Welcome to DU!! :toast:

[Fire Walk With Me]

20. No, he's a businessman. He and his friends are now unbelievably rich.

Are we up to $400 billion spent upon Iraq and Afghanistan, with no Osama Bin Laden to show for the effort?

If by "insane" do you mean that he doesn't care one whit about human life, then "yes", I'd agree.

[Fire Walk With Me]

21. The business model is similar to "The Producers".

Disaster and chaos are highly profitable.

[leftofthedial]

22. he's a malignant sociopath

he is not legally insane though. He knows that he is evil.