Bush's fitness obsession is unsettling

[Kerrytravelers]

http://www.tallahassee.com/mld/democrat/news/opinion/12219539.htm
Tallahssee Democrat
Posted on Tue, Jul. 26, 2005



Bush's fitness obsession is unsettling

By Jonathan Chait
SPECIAL TO THE LOS ANGELES TIMES

<snip>

Given the importance of his job, it is astonishing how much time Bush has to exercise. His full schedule is not publicly available. The few peeks we get at Bush's daily routine usually come when some sort of disaster prods the White House Press Office to reveal what the president was doing "at the time."

Earlier this year, an airplane wandered into restricted Washington, D.C., air space. Bush, we learned, was bicycling in Maryland. In 2001, a gunman fired shots at the White House. Bush was inside exercising. When planes struck the World Trade Center in 2001, Bush was reading to schoolchildren, but that morning he had gone for a long run with a reporter. Either this is a series of coincidences or Bush spends an enormous amount of time working out.

There's no denying that the results are impressive. Bush can bench press 185 pounds five times, and, before a recent knee injury, he ran three miles at a six-minute, 45-second pace. That's better than I could manage when I played two sports in high school. And I wasn't holding the most powerful office on Earth. Which is sort of my point: Does the leader of the free world need to attain that level of physical achievement?

<snip>

Sometimes it takes more than a nudge. In 2002, Bush fired Lawrence Lindsey, his overweight economic adviser. Lindsey's main crime was admitting to Congress that the Iraq war might cost $200 billion, at a time when the administration was trying to cut taxes and was insisting that the war would cost nothing. But compounding things was the fact that, as The Washington Post reported, Bush "complained privately about (Lindsey's) failure to exercise."

<snip>

Unfortunately, most of us have more demanding jobs than he does.

[BeyondGeography]

1. He also calls * an airhead

<"The president," said Fleischer, "finds (exercise) very healthy in terms of ... keeping in shape. But it's also good for the mind."

The notion of a connection between physical and mental potency is, of course, silly. (Consider all the perfectly toned airheads in Hollywood - or, perhaps, the president himself.)>

[kskiska]

17. I doubt Stephen Hawking or Albert Einstein

got much exercise. I wonder how much they could bench-press?

[candy]

2. Fitness is the favorite thing for millions of self obsessed people---

why should Bush be any different?

I've seen people argue about a parking space close to a health club where they are going to work out for an hour.God forbid they would have to walk fifteen or twenty yards for another space.

The entire fitness thing is ridiculous.

[HysteryDiagnosis]

3. If only they would have forced him to excercise from the neck up....

[NorCalDem]

4. Keep the meathead in the gym

while the science geeks dissect the country, and divvy up the spoils of war!

[kedrys]

5. So how come he looks so fat?

His arse is wider than mine, fer fuck's sakes. I'm not buying the running times unless I see it for myself. It's all part of the propaganda. :grr:

[quiet.american]

6. Dry drunk = fitness obsession. (That's if he is "dry." )n/t

[Emendator]

10. People with

addiction problems never cure their problem. They may transfer it to another activity, as appears to be the case with Bush exercising. Personally, I think he should go back to alcohol. He was probably a better person back then. Probably nicer. Certainly less dangerous.

[DavidDvorkin]

7. It's fake

Like everything else about him, his supposed fitness is a lie. You only have to look at the guy to see it.

[ixion]

12. exactly. For some one who supposedly cross-trains like *, he's clumsy

as the day is long.

Seriously. How many times has this 'moran' been photographed stumbling over one device or another?


How many athletes do you know who have fallen off a Segway? :evilgrin:

[DavidDvorkin]

13. Yep, graceless and clumsy

And paunchy and with no chest or shoulder or back muscle -- not the look of a man who supposedly lifts serious weights.

Then there's the walk -- the way he holds his arms out from his body to give the impression that he has huge lats, like a bodybuilder. You see real bodybuilders walking that way because their lats really do force their arms out. You can also see that he doesn't have big lats; those show when one wears a t-shirt. So that's fake, as well.

[DavidDvorkin]

16. Here's a photo of the SOB

From Reuters

That is not an athlete, and especially not someone who lifts weights, as his sycophants claim he does.

[applegrove]

8. The people who have sociopaths playing with their minds become

anxiety filled & clutzes. When your mind-soul connection has been ****ed & you begin to realize it...it stresses your body out a great deal.

[Captain Hilts]

9. Is it related to trying to not drink? (nt)

[HamdenRice]

11. There are rumors that shrub is terrified of illness and death --

In some of the psychological reporting about shrub, it has been rumored that he has a morbid terror of illness and death -- his own of course -- even though he is gleeful about causing death and suffering in others, whether by executing more prisoners than any governor in history in Texas, or by causing war.

That explains supposedly his fanaticism about exercise and his own health.

Great find, Kerrytraveler

[Vinca]

18. I have a relative with a similar malady. She was declared

bona fide "nuts" and sent for a long visit to the "happy hotel." All for sending Shrub on a similar visit, raise your hands now.

[nyhuskyfan]

14. Leno last night...

"Bush was pronounced as the fittest U.S. president in history. Well, yeah, that's cause all the ones wasted time on stuff like reading."

[woofless]

15. All that exercise crap is just a cover floated by his handlers.

He really spends his time using "Hooked On Phonics" to translate "My Weekly Reader".