He's long gone and laughing into his scotch.

We little people shake our tiny fists at the sky and curse Donald Rumsfeld. Meanwhile, he remains wealthy and free of concerns beyond -- should he so choose -- which high priced call girl should he pick to blow him while he dines on caviar and champagne in his luxury suite overlooking a beautiful ocean sunset?

The Bush administration was just a public sponsored day care center for grown children playing grab-ass with each other.

Depressing.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Posse_Comitatus_Act

when you vote in a cadre of mindless ideologues and fuck-ups.

"... at least partially an attempt to Bush's religious belief ..."

An attempt to what Bush's belief, suborn? praise? undermine? support? masturbate? bait? manipulate? consecrate?

Is anyone else as dismayed and disturbed as I am to see these DOD reports plastered with Bible verses?

The idea of a Crusade aside (which I find repugnant and careless) the military of this country is not supposed to serve a single religion or ideology beyond the protection of the United States and the defense of our Constitution.

We, as citizens of this country, must have the assurance that our military and government will serve ALL of us, not just those who are Fundamentalist Christian.

This is one more revolting example among many from the Bush administration at how close we came to becoming a Theocracy.

"[former Shrub administration official, eg Cheney, Rumsfeld] was even worse than you thought."

Dear War Room,

Feel free to use any time.

Thanks,

JFP

posse comitatus act - look it up

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Posse_Comitatus_Act

-- Samson141

Does that apply to the military picking helpless, drowning people from roof tops or dropping food and medicine from aircrafts?

Please explain how Posse Comitatus applies to the needless deaths of so many people during/after Katrina.

Bush was really a warm caring guy who wanted more than anything to help all those poor people in New Orleans. It was just that dastardly Donald Rumsfeld that kept him from doing it. It's not like Bush could have ordered troops in, right?

When atheists like Richard Dawkins said that cynical right-wing politicians use religion to goad the credulous to fight crusades ... some people used to doubt it. Smart Christians argued that no, no, no, that was quite impossible, faith brings strength, it doesn't blind you to reason and you can't reduce it to any religious cause.

Well, there's the smoking gun. One sheet of paper that shows that, yes, it really was that simple all along.

Look, I hate Bush, Rumsfeld, ets. as much as the next democrat, but Mr. Koppelman's squib neglects an important point: For very good reasons we have a law that prohibits using the armed forces domestically. Rumsfeld was following that law. Now, you can say that sometimes it might be obvious that a law should be broken. Perhaps. But that is also what the torturers or evesdroppers etc. will say. I kind of doubt that Rumsfeld was dragging his feet out of some kind of malic, but rather, he was doing what the law commanded and not using active duty troops as domestic law enforcers. We can debate the policy of posse comitatus and whether is should be changed. Makes sense to me that dropping food and whatnot should be allowed etc. But this post is about Rumsfeld being accused of "being even worse ..." and neglects the fact of the law dictating his actions.

These were official pentagon reports to the president and they look like they were designed for an idiot religious adolescent.

The lay-out makes it look like a tabloid and I think underscores that on some level NONE of reality was seeping through to these people. They look like movie posters for the Left Behind series. Our American soldiers, millions of dying and suffering Iraqis and if the "tabliod" covers are any indication they really totally did not care or see any of it as real. It's worse than evil, worse than illogical or irrational... Just wow.

[took him 6 months to catch up]

[and the abject finger poitnig in dC, WOW, i'm impressed]

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/13/fashion/13psych.html?_r=1&pagewanted=all

CRITICAL THOUGHT:

"see if the eqipment works" jim quest [r-mo] cocerning those victims such as myself under duress, due to, 'psychotroinc assaults [direct energy] experiments...

a thought: instead of playing footsie w/ his lunch pals,

WHY NOT CALL THE FBI?

------------------rumfeld goes to jail?---------------------------

the qulty get to spend time in their state prisons for a change [and damages paid, like any other private citizen would be forced to do? oH and rummies pentagon inc? sued like any other business?]

http://www.hss.energy.gov/healthsafety/ohre/roadmap/achre/chap3_4.html

Chapter 3: Supreme Court Dissents Invoke the Nuremberg Code: CIA and DOD Human Subjects Research Scandals

[contrary to the report dmages were paid, just not enuf]

http://www.mindhacks.com/

The psychology of being scammed:

I'm just reading a fascinating report on the psychology of why people fall for scams, commissioned by the UK government's Office of Fair Trading and created by Exeter University's psychology department.

It's a 260 page monster, so is not exactly bed time reading, but was drawn from in-depth interviews from scam victims, examination of scam material, two questionnaire studies and a behavioural experiment.

Here's some of the punchlines grabbed from the executive summary. The report concluded that the most successful scams involve:

Appeals to trust and authority: people tend to obey authorities so scammers use, and victims fall for, cues that make the offer look like a legitimate one being made by a reliable official institution or established reputable business.

Visceral triggers: scams exploit basic human desires and needs – such as greed, fear, avoidance of physical pain, or the desire to be liked – in order to provoke intuitive reactions and reduce the motivation of people to process the content of the scam message deeply.

Scarcity cues. Scams are often personalised to create the impression that the offer is unique to the recipient.

Induction of behavioural commitment. Scammers ask their potential victims to make small steps of compliance to draw them in, and thereby cause victims to feel committed to continue sending money.

The disproportionate relation between the size of the alleged reward and the cost of trying to obtain it. Scam victims are led to focus on the alleged big prize or reward in comparison to the relatively small amount of money they have to send in order to obtain their windfall.

Lack of emotional control. Compared to non-victims, scam victims report being less able to regulate and resist emotions associated with scam offers. They seem to be unduly open to persuasion, or perhaps unduly undiscriminating about who they allow to persuade them.

And here's a couple of counter-intuitive kickers:

Scam victims often have better than average background knowledge in the area of the scam content. For example, it seems that people with experience of playing legitimate prize draws and lotteries are more likely to fall for a scam in this area than people with less knowledge and experience in this field. This also applies to those with some knowledge of investments. Such knowledge can increase rather than decrease the risk of becoming a victim.

Scam victims report that they put more cognitive effort into analysing scam content than non-victims. This contradicts the intuitive suggestion that people fall victim to scams because they invest too little cognitive energy in investigating their content, and thus overlook potential information that might betray the scam.

Interesting, people who fall for scams often have a feeling that it's dodgy. The report suggests we trust our get instincts. If it seems to good to be true, it probably is.

We like to think that only other people fall for scams, but as I'm working my way through the report it's becoming clear that those things that we think make us resistant to scams (a keen analytical mind) are not what help us avoid being a victim.

A really fascinating read and a great example of applied psychology.

Link to Office of Fair Trading report page and download.

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

US military pours millions into 'EEG telepathy':

I get the feeling that DARPA, the American military research agency, only ever select their research projects from sci-fi comics.

Wired reports that their latest multi-million dollar project is to create an EEG-based 'telepathy' communication system for the battlefield solder:

Forget the battlefield radios, the combat PDAs or even infantry hand signals. When the soldiers of the future want to communicate, they’ll read each other’s minds.

At least, that’s the hope of researchers at the Pentagon’s mad-science division Darpa. The agency’s budget for the next fiscal year includes $4 million to start up a program called Silent Talk. The goal is to “allow user-to-user communication on the battlefield without the use of vocalized speech through analysis of neural signals.” That’s on top of the $4 million the Army handed out last year to the University of California to investigate the potential for computer-mediated telepathy.

Before being vocalized, speech exists as word-specific neural signals in the mind. Darpa wants to develop technology that would detect these signals of “pre-speech,” analyze them, and then transmit the statement to an intended interlocutor. Darpa plans to use EEG to read the brain waves. It’s a technique they’re also testing in a project to devise mind-reading binoculars that alert soldiers to threats faster the conscious mind can process them.

It's all getting a bit Rogue Trooper isn't it?

Link to Wired on DARPA barmyness.