Bush: Either a Drunk or an Idiot

Fark.com has now picked up the story of the Bush picture at the G8 Summit, showing him with a beer in front of him. I'm in the midst of a major flame war with a Republican friend, who dismissed the pic as proof only that Bush is drinking non-alcoholic beer.

Even if Bush is drinking non-alcoholic beer, he's drinking alcohol. And he's definitely drinking non-alcoholic beer.

Here's a link to a story in the Scotsman from November 2003. It distinctly says that "Mr Bush’s Bitburger Drive non-alcoholic beer was £1.75."

Now, a word about nonalcoholic beers:

They're not nonalcoholic. It's a misnomer. They're reduced in their alcoholic content, but they are in no way nonalcoholic. Bitburger "nonalcoholic" beer, in
fact, has a 0.50% ABV (which is like 10 times as muchas "near beer" stateside).

Link to the Bitburger ingredient list.

If I had an alcohol problem, I'd steer as far away from anything with alcohol content as possible. That shows pretty damn poor judgment from someone who claims to
lead the free world. There's a reason most alcoholics don't drink fake beer: because they have alcohol in them. I'm not so nutty as to believe that Bush is a
drunk (at least not yet, although there are telltale signs: slurring words on the stump, a couple incidents of falling off his bike), but drinking near beer with his history is
playing with fire and pretty fucking stupid. The problem with alcoholic beer is not necessarily the minute amount of alcohol - it's that it can be a trigger to relapse. The taste, the smell, and the packaging can remind the alcoholic of what it was like
and get them more in touch with the desire to drink. Thus it is frowned upon by most people in AA and treatment professionals.

In addition, a recent study in California has shown that both alcohol and the anticipation of alcohol (in other words, anything that smells like it) may raise dopamine levels, which conceivably could lead to similar attitudes and behaviors drinking near beer as when drinking the real thing.

The fact that Bush actually thinks it's OK to drink low-alcoholic beer proves that he's even more deluded than I thought.