There has been a lot of buzz on the Internet about President’s Bush’s mysterious bulge noticed in a reverse angle shot of Bush during the first Presidential Debate on September 30th in Coral Gables, Florida.
According to Mike Allen in the October 9th issue of the Washington Post:

Bush's aides tried to laugh off the controversy, with one official joking about "little green men on the grassy knoll”… The White House refused to provide an on-the-record comment, saying that it would dignify a baseless issue, and referred questions to the Bush-Cheney campaign. "It is preposterous," campaign spokesman Steve Schmidt said. He declined to elaborate or to suggest what could have produced the unusual photo. Bush's aides said the suit was well-tailored and did not have a roll in back.

Most have suggested that our sentence-impaired head of state was possibly cheating by getting answers to questions via some sort of radio set-up and that the bulge was a transmitter.
No matter that I’ve failed to find links to these sources after prolonged searching, a highly intelligent poster on the blog Eschaton and a cardiac specialist writing to a Houston newspaper, the other day, both suggested an angle that, considering the postponement of the President’s regular August physical until after the election and his odd facial composure during all three debates, might be more plausible.
The newer idea is that our President has secretly suffered a heart attack or mild stroke and that the bulge is actually a heart monitor and defibrillator similar to products marketed by a company called LifeCor.

According to the LifeCor site:

Unlike an implantable cardioverter defibrillator (ICD), the LifeVest is worn outside the body rather than implanted in the chest. This device continuously monitors the patient's heart with dry, non-adhesive sensing electrodes to detect life-threatening abnormal heart rhythms. If a life-threatening rhythm is detected, the device alerts the patient prior to delivering a shock, and thus allows a conscious patient to disarm the shock. If the patient is unconscious, the device releases a gel over the therapy electrodes and delivers an electrical shock to restore normal rhythm.

Further support for this less paranoid possibility comes, this morning, in a New York Times editorial section (scroll down and click the Editorial link entitled Op-Art: Is That A Transmitter?) photograph apparently meant to ridicule the overall discussion while steering it away from this more important new medical possibility.

The photograph is meant to show photographic proof that lumpy rectangular “wrinkles” are a common hazard when wearing a jacket but, unsuspectingly I think, the beleaguered Times attempt at manipulation strengthens the newer possibility.
Now I’m not a doctor and I don’t even play one on television but the similarities to photographs on the LifeCor site, to me when also considering the President’s televised demeanor, lend support to the idea that Mr. Bush has suffered serious medical trauma and that this trauma is being hidden by a White House and campaign staff until after the election.
A President so seriously impaired is a very serious issue especially considering the Vice President's cardiac impairments.
In these final days before November 2nd I would strongly urge you to examine the images and form your own conclusions.
If you conclude that the LifeCor possibility is valid I would urge you to write, email and phone local and national media on this most important and widely undiscussed possibility.

Images: Commission on Presidential Debates, LifeCor, salon.com, New York Times

- posted by Sean @ 8:31 AM