Driving The Country Off A Cliff While Drunk

O beautiful for spacious skies,
For amber waves of grain,
For purple mountain majesties
Above the fruited plain!
America! America!
God shed his grace on thee
And crown thy good with brotherhood
From sea to shining sea!

O beautiful for pilgrim feet
Whose stern impassioned stress
A thoroughfare of freedom beat
Across the wilderness!
America! America!
God mend thine every flaw,
Confirm thy soul in self-control,
Thy liberty in law!

O beautiful for heroes proved
In liberating strife.
Who more than self their country loved
And mercy more than life!
America! America!
May God thy gold refine
Till all success be nobleness
And every gain divine!

O beautiful for patriot dream
That sees beyond the years
Thine alabaster cities gleam
Undimmed by human tears!
America! America!
God shed his grace on thee
And crown thy good with brotherhood
From sea to shining sea!

O beautiful for halcyon skies,
For amber waves of grain,
For purple mountain majesties
Above the enameled plain!
America! America!
God shed his grace on thee
Till souls wax fair as earth and air
And music-hearted sea!

O beautiful for pilgrims feet,
Whose stem impassioned stress
A thoroughfare for freedom beat
Across the wilderness!
America! America!
God shed his grace on thee
Till paths be wrought through
wilds of thought
By pilgrim foot and knee!

O beautiful for glory-tale
Of liberating strife
When once and twice,
for man's avail
Men lavished precious life!
America! America!
God shed his grace on thee
Till selfish gain no longer stain
The banner of the free!

O beautiful for patriot dream
That sees beyond the years
Thine alabaster cities gleam
Undimmed by human tears!
America! America!
God shed his grace on thee
Till nobler men keep once again
Thy whiter jubilee!

George Walker Bush a.k.a George W. Bush  was born July 6, 1946. He is the 43rd President of the United States. He served two terms from 2001 to 2009

"I know the human being and fish can coexist peacefully." George W. Bush

"I'm honored to shake the hand of a brave Iraqi citizen who had his hand cut off by Saddam Hussein." George W. Bush

One of the great things about books is sometimes there are some fantastic pictures." George W. Bush

It's probably not even his fault that he, Laura, their children, Jeb and Jeb's children drink. They probably watched too much Andy Griffith- maybe just the "Otis episodes!

GW had role models. They've had roles in so much!

As you can see above his pappy was a role model!

His grand-pappy was a role model too. His grand-pappy was Prescott Bush.

Prescott Bush played varsity golf, football, and baseball, and was president of the Yale Glee Club.

After graduation, Bush served as a field artillery captain with the American Expeditionary Forces (1917–1919) during World War I. He received intelligence training at Verdun, France, and was briefly assigned to a staff of French officers. Alternating between intelligence and artillery, Bush came under fire in the Meuse-Argonne offensive. In what became a controversy, Bush wrote home about receiving medals for heroic exploits, and his letters were later published in Columbus newspapers. He retracted such claims in a cable in which he stated that his earlier letter had been written "in a spirit of fun" and was not intended for publication.

In 2009, Ramsey Clark filed a lawsuit on behalf of people claiming to be Geronimo's descendants, against, among others, Barack Obama, Robert Gates, and Skull and Bones, asking for the return of Geronimo's bones. It appears that Prescott wanted Geronimo's skull for the "skull & Bones" club. Here's a rule of thumb voting rule for America- never vote for anyone who has been to Yale. GW did. What a selfish fool!

Do you have to have gone to Yale to be President of the USA or just be a jackass?

Ulysses S. Grant was a famous drinker but was never arrested for DUI!

Martin Van Buren, Franklin Pierce (died of cirrhosis), James Buchanan, Andrew Johnson was sauced at the inauguration in 1865. Chester A. Arthur was a drinking man's drinking man. But most of our country seems to have been on a binge.

Colonists liked to drink. In fact, according to one widely cited estimate, per capita consumption among colonists in 1770 was 3.7 gallons of distilled spirits per year, or approximately seven shots a day. That estimate does not include the beer or hard cider that colonists routinely drank in addition to rum, the most popular distilled beverage available in English America. Drinking took place in the countryside and in the cities -- to such an extent that Benjamin Franklin printed a "Drinker's Dictionary" in the Pennsylvania Gazette in 1737, a listing of 228 terms used for drunkenness in Philadelphia. Yet however much colonists drank, their society did not collapse. Most men and women got up and went to work each day, creating a booming economy. By the mid-eighteenth century this legion of drinkers had managed to create a well-functioning political system. They had also become so well-versed in Anglo-American BS.

The Floundering Fathers put back a few after signing the Constitution.

I guess we can thank many folks like Babe Ruth for glamorizing drinking.

One can only imagine how untouchable he could have been had he not drunk so much.

One can only imagine how happy his family may have been had he not drunk so much.

Is hitting a home-run that important?

Occasional drinking does not necessarily indicate a drinking problem, but even small amounts of alcohol can cause slurred speech, slowed reaction times, or impaired judgment. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention defines "excessive drinking" as an average of more than one drink per day for women, and an average of more than two drinks per day for men.

So how much do American drinkers drink? According to the Gallup data, the mean number of drinks that male drinkers consume in a week is 6.6 (about one per day), compared with 2.9 for female drinkers (less than half a drink per day). Seven percent of female drinkers report having eight or more drinks in the past seven days -- the CDC standard for "excessive drinking" among women. Twenty-one percent of male drinkers report consuming 10 or more drinks in the last seven days, including 9% who said they drank 20 or more -- well over the "excessive drinking" limit for men.

Alcohol problems affect not only the individuals who drink, but also those around them. Nearly a third (32%) of Americans say that drinking has been a cause of trouble in their families. Interestingly, women (who are less likely than men to drink and to report drinking too much) are slightly more likely than men to report that drinking has been a problem in their families (35% compared with 29%).

Anyone who watches football on Sunday afternoons can see that alcohol, especially beer, is marketed most heavily to men and the under-50 crowd -- the groups that drink the most. And while men are much more likely to drink alcohol and admit to overindulging, the data show women are more likely to see it as a problem for their families.

Despite nearly 30 years of media campaigns detailing the dangers of drunken driving, almost one in 11 people admit to driving when they thought they were legally intoxicated, according to a survey released today by the AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety.

Of 2,509 adults surveyed, 9% said they had driven within the previous 30 days when they believed their blood-alcohol content was .08% or above, the legal threshold for drunken driving in all states and Washington, D.C. The AAA Foundation is a non-profit research and education group founded by AAA auto club in 1947.

The results resemble those of an unrelated, larger study released last week by the federal government. The Substance Abuse & Mental Health Services Administration's survey of 127,000 adults found that 15% of drivers 18 and older said they had driven under the influence of alcohol at least once in the past year.

Ted Kennedy had been to a “no-wives” party (never has been any drinking at one of those right? Right? Right?). He managed to wreck his car driving off a bridge.  He got out of the sinking car and left Mary Jo Kopechne in the car. He went back to his hotel to “sleep”. He passed several houses and didn’t tell a soul what happened, while the woman in the car, who could have been saved had he alerted authorities, drowned.

While attending APEC in Lima, Bush partakes of a traditional Peruvian drink known as a "Pisco Sour" (leave your puns in comments).  The ingredients?

2 oz pisco brandy
1 oz lime juice
1/4 oz simple syrup
1/2 egg white
1 dash Angostura® bitters

The (wedding) video was shot at the August 29, 1992 wedding of Jamie Weiss, the daughter of Dubya's close friends Mike and Nancy Weiss. Mike, a Lubbock, Texas lawyer and CPA, was Bush's campaign chairman during his first political race (an unsuccessful 1978 congressional bid) and was one of the Texas governor's earliest political appointments. Nancy, also a Bush appointee, had a prime speaking slot on the final night of the Republican convention. She told the crowd, "I wish you could see how he reaches out to people, teasing those who can take it and protecting those who can't."

This clearly shows that GW gave up drinking decades ago. Doesn't it? Gee- we were told he gave it up!

"George W. Bush, like most who decide to quit drinking, did so on his own without help, press reports following the revelation of his 1976 DUI arrest reveal. An estimated 70 percent of people who decide to quit drinking do so without any outside help, professional counseling, or support group meetings, and Bush is apparently among that majority."

Well, I don't think I had an addiction," Bush told the Washington Post for a July 1999 profile. "You know it's hard for me to say. I've had friends who were, you know, very addicted. . .and they required hitting bottom [to start] going to AA. I don't think that was my case."

Speculation in the national press, which went into a media frenzy over the report that Bush was arrested 24 years ago for drunk driving, ranged from the suggestion that if he never went to A.A. he is not really recovered, to the opinion that if he quit on his own, it was not a big problem in the first place.

Oh really?

               - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Above, I had installed a video of Dick while drunk but youtube does not have that for us anymore. Gee! I wish I cold erase some of my past like that. I'll keep a couple blank lines here to remind me that it appears with enough money, you can erase the truth.

Vice President Dick Cheney could actually argue that his two DWIs came when he was young and reckless.

Court and police records show that Cheney was convicted of drunk driving twice during an eight-month period in the early 1960s in his home state of Wyoming. The two convictions came when Cheney was 21 and 22 and resulted in fines and a brief suspension of his driver's license.

The vice president mentioned his rap sheet in an interview of The New Yorker that after dropping out of Yale in early 1961, he found himself "working, building power lines, having been in a couple of scrapes with the law." The busts, he said, made him "think about where I was and where I was headed. I was headed down a bad road, if I continued on that course."

Cheney's first DWI conviction came in November 1962 when he was 21. According to this docket from Cheyenne's Municipal Court, Cheney was nailed for drunkenness and "operating motor vehicle while intoxicated." A Cheyenne Police Judge found Cheney guilty of the two charges and hit him with a 30-day suspension of his driver's license. Cheney also had to forfeit a $150 bond posted at the time of his arrest. Further information about the case--such as the defendant's blood alcohol content or whether Cheney was jailed following the bust--is unavailable since other court records from that period have been destroyed, according to Wyoming officials.

Details of Cheney's second Wyoming arrest, in July 1963, have also fallen victim to time and records destruction practices at the local Municipal Court. But a police arrest card (similar to the one that haunted Dubya) maintained by the Rock Springs Police Department shows that Cheney was fined $100 for his second DWI conviction. The card lists the charge against Cheney, who was then working as a groundman laying power lines, as "11-44," the criminal code classification for drunken driving, according to Police Chief Neil Kourbelas. At the time of the Rock Springs arrest, Kourbelas said that local cops and judges would not have known that young Cheney was a boozing 'n driving recidivist. The police department, Kourbelas said, "wouldn't have had the ability to automatically check with other jurisdictions to find out if anyone had had prior arrests or convictions. We could have arrested Jack the Ripper back then and had no idea what he had done."

We're all glad that he turned his life around!