* New evidence for Gulf War Syndrome:
Regions of the brain important for thinking and memory may have shrunk in some veterans of the first Gulf War, according to a new study. The decline is at its worst in veterans who report more symptoms of what is commonly called ‘Gulf War syndrome’, the mysterious condition that has afflicted as many as one in seven veterans from the 1990-1991 war.
The sample size, 36 Gulf War veterans, is practically zero in epidemiology terms so take these results with an appropriately sized grain of salt.
* Hilzoy expands on a fave topic of mine – what the heck is wrong with George W. Bush? One lifetime Republican comments in a quoted article:
“I really wonder whether his failure to distinguish between necessary toughness and catastrophically shoot-ourselves-(America)-in-our-foot pigheadedness results from biological anomaly. His inability to harvest experience, and so to think and form successful judgments, is just so inexplicable.””
Go read, it’s a great blog post. Hilzoy makes a lot of sense while leaning on the oedipal failure complex a bit more than I did. Add her contribution and mine to the rapidly growing field of pathopresidentology.
teak111
The presidency is a validation of who GW thinks he is. Anything eroding that validation is of course ignored.
RLaing
Yes, Mr. Bush is a champion-class idiot, no question. In any nation of multi-millions, however, we can reasonably expect there to exist a substantial number of individuals with his personality traits.
So the interesting thing about the present situation is not his character, so much as the character of a nation that would give such a man so much power.
BFR
What the heck is wrong with George W. Bush? Why bother?
I really don’t understand why there’s any focus on his mental health/capacity. I can’t imagine that he’s actually the decision-maker in anything remotely close to a meaningful sense. He has no life experiences to draw on in his decision-making process and he hasn’t shown anything close to intellectual curiosity to figure things out on his own.
He has always seemed a completely empty suit – unable to form meaningful opinions & judgements he is completely dependent on a narrow circle of advisers who only present him heavily skewed interpretations of the world. At some level, why even bother psychoanalyzing him?
HyperIon
lately i’ve started thinking that this syndrome is affecting pretty much everybody in this country. when did we become a confederacy of dunces? in some strange perverted way, GWB is the most appropriate president for these times: a moron at the head of a nation of morons.
srv
Lifelong Republicans never cease to amaze me with their views of themselves.
The utter lack of rational realism isn’t a problem with Republicans, it’s a trait.
What is it about people that they can’t figure out they’re just something to be exploited?
jake
Can you say “Enabler Nation,” boys n’ girls? Good.
In all seriousness, this is an excellent point and one I ponder every time I hear the President speak or read another Presidential Pontification: How the hell did THAT incoherent arse hat get elected?
Rome Again
I think it’s due to overextension, we’ve had a very eventful last six years, with lots to remember. I can’t remember it all, can anyone else?
Does that make us a nation of idiots? Only those who think having George W. Bush in the White House is “Situation: Normal”
Rome Again
Only by having the name BUSH on his birth certificate, I assure you.
BIRDZILLA
And brain shrikage affects all liberal politicians why else do the always come up with real stupid ideas
The Other Steve
The problem with GW Bush is liberalism. He’s the corrupt failure of an immoral, decadent liberal society!
Kimmitt
GW Bush got elected because the media loved him. Now the next question: in what kind of sane society would any news media not loathe that vicious SOB?
stickler
Kimmitt, I disagree:
The media didn’t “love” GWB so much as it “deferred” to him. Yes, they slobbered all over him while attacking Gore. But both the media and the East Coast elite saw in GWB what they wanted to see: son and grandson (both sides!) of Senators, CIA directors, Connecticut aristocracy. George W. Bush was a Republican, but a safe one — a member of the elite.
Now, of course, we know that W is a sociopathic fool. Presumably the elite knows it too. Maybe they always did. But, apparently, they figured that he’d govern like his father, consult with the elite, manage from the middle.
Whoops.
jake
Wise men know the two are not mutually exclusive. Pampered boys rarely grow up to be gentlemen.
demimondian
I don’t think that the media loved GWB as they despised Clinton, who just didn’t defer to them enough, and, by extension, despised Gore.
High Broderism at its best…
grumpy realist
I think the US has still a way down the slope to go before it learns that putting a bunch of idealistic incompetents in charge is a Bad Idea.
Until we stop turning off our evaluating capabilities as soon as someone tosses out “Jesus”, “morality”, or “Christianity” we will continue to end up in the soup.
And yah, between the kaffe-klatch insider Beltway punditization of the MSM and the fact that more than 50% of the freakin’ US population can’t tell the difference between a U.S. Presidential election and voting for American Idol, we’ve got a long way to climb back up to dealing with reality.
Heck, we’re probably not going to learn it until we have another civil war inside the US between the religious nuts and everybody else. Either the religious nuts will win, or they will be beaten down, and people will finally realise that allowing your religious crazies to run the place is a really, really Bad Idea.
Of course, by then our economy will be in the trash and we will have lost any science and technology advantage to China, but that’ll be the breaks, I guess.
Tsulagi
Yeah, I’ve heard that from some in other countries. And they were pro-America or at least pro-Americans. They had respect.
They didn’t think GWB’s first election said much about Americans. People didn’t know who he was, plus the election was all screwed up. Shit happens.
But when he was reelected, there was a sense of WTF now that we knew the “man.” That maybe the U.S. really was now a nation of small, pathetic spoiled brats. With our foreign policy and national defense looking like a retarded version of Christian Crusaders from the Middle Ages seeking a Pax Americana Holy Grail in the ME.
Thank you, GWB. It’s been a swell ride for the country through the depths of stupid. And the truly fucked part is I know he isn’t finished yet.
tBone
I heart Birdzilla.
The Other Steve
America didn’t really Know the Man… The press wouldn’t let us. They were still describing him as wildly popular, despite his anemic 45% approval rating at the time.
Not once in 2004 did they question who Bush was, what he believed in, nothing. It was 100% pure repitition of the propaganda.
Why? Must be something about the tax cuts.
jg
That’s why we killed Saddam’s kids. They were worse than him.
Robert Fredson
Now you people are insinuating that the President is insane and that we should kill his childen. That so many Americans would stoop to such treachery is sickening. Maybe Mr. Cole could syndicate the site to Al Jazeera.
Article III, Section 3, traitors.
demimondian
Really, don’t you think that’s a bit much? I don’t think that someone who attempts to intimidate his fellow citizens by slandering them is genuinely a traitor. Do you perhaps mean that you’re a loathsome subhuman cretin whose ancestors should be ashamed of him? If so, I would say that your posting supported that statement — but, really, that’s not the same thing as claiming that you’re a traitor.
Rome Again
Just because I was born in this country doesn’t mean I have to like it, or root for it in a war. If I don’t root for it in a war, that doesn’t mean I am rooting for the other side either.
Being born in this country doesn’t automatically make me patriotic either.
Now, where is the other witness who is going to witness the same overt act and declare me traitorous? Oh htat’s right, you don’t have one. Fuck off RF.
grumpy realist
Before those on the right want to scream “traitor!’ every time someone says something they don’t like, it would behove them to read up on why we have the definition of treason that we do and why it is the one crime defined in the Constitution.
Western Europe has enough history of authorities using accusations of treason to squelch any sort of dissent. Remember why Dante had to scamper off into exile?
God, these idiots make me sick. They’re willing to trash the entire system of checks-and-balances in US law in a grab for power.
Rome Again
It’s all for our own good, you know. :rolls eyes::
The Other Steve
What do you suggest we do instead of whining?
It’s hard to watch your country governed by an American-hating President.
jake
Bubblegum Tate
Ooh! Ooh! I know! Because he criticized Il Deciderati, thereby enabling Islamifacismo.
Jon H
“Regions of the brain important for thinking and memory may have shrunk in some veterans of the first Gulf War”
Does that include Cheney?
lard lad
Beautifully put, Hyperlon… or as the great H.L. Mencken said about three-quarters of a century ago:
Remember, when H.L. wrote these words, he was denigrating presidents he saw as intellectual inferiors… men like Calvin Coolidge and Woodrow Wilson, God help us.
jenniebee
The national media live in NY and DC, they go to some very posh parties, they hobnob with the well connected, and they get to see the utter decadence that most Americans are shielded from by virtue of not ever being invited to the right parties. So they go to Le Cirque and they meet all the celebs and the millionaires and the billionaires and they react in some very predictable ways. They like the money and the parties and the expensive restaurants, and they either decide that this is all rot, it isn’t real, it’s obsessions with Manolo Blahniks and it’s fake and there are real Americans out there who eat meatloaf and hamburger helper and wear John Deere caps and those are the people who really have it all figured out, or else they start rolling in the money and things like eliminating captial gains taxes and inconvenient safety or environmental regulations just start making sense to them, because who wants to go muck around in a wetland, anyway?
If they go the first way, then America is divided in their minds between the natty poshishness of the Upper East or Lower West or maybe it’s Central Park South this week and a great authentic redneck nation (think Bobo); if they go the second way then the whole world – the world that counts – is what’s in a 30 mile radius of the NY-DC shuttle, and anybody who threatens to ripple their pond is just so not A-group lunch table material (think Momo). In either worldview, Democrats are the almost-ran elitists, the people who keep gates to places that nobody wants to go anyway, or else they’re tree hugging organic vegan stoner hippy holdovers from back in the day.
Time to throw the bums out.
Andrew
You’re such an anti-elitist elitist.