Sunday, October 31, 2010

Colorado Democrats Go Nutter

They've included a 9-11 "Truth" plank in their party platform:

“Whereas many disturbing facts were consciously ignored by the 9/11 Commission; Be it resolved, therefore, that the CDP calls for the establishment of a truly independent Grand Jury and public investigation into these and other anomalies in order to find the truth of the September 11, 2001 attacks, so that we have a greater probability of preventing attacks of this nature in the future.”


Note this background:
The citizens who presented arguments for a new investigation at their precinct caucuses are signatories to the Architect and Engineers for 9/11 Truth organization (www.ae911truth.org) which calls for a new investigation into the events of September 11, 2001.


Crackpots with Box Boy Gage's group, in other words.

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Friday, October 29, 2010

There Is No End to the Rabbit Hole

The latest paranoia from the nutbars? 9-11 Blogger is working for the "other" side (presumably the government). It's South Park's parody come to life.

In part because of this decision by 911blogger, to reject Barrie Zwicker’s endorsement of CIT while publishing a childish hit piece from an anonymous source, Southern California 9/11 truth activist and We Are Change LA member Adam Ruff wrote:

“In my view it is now 100% confirmed that 911blogger is an enemy of the truth
movement as a whole and is engaged in an open campaign of attack on good
truthers.”


No, Flogger is not on "our" side. I checked the budget and we don't have a line item for them. But I do find the incident amusing. The "Truthers" bitterly complain about Lefty Gatekeepers like Kos and Democratic Underground not allowing their topic to be discussed, but why do those sites do so? Because they don't want to be associated with a bunch of lunatics. Why does 9-11 Blogger ban promotion of CIT's junk? You guessed it.

As always, the real humor is in the comments.

Thursday, October 28, 2010

Roseanne Barr, Troofer

Another former celebrity gets on board with the Troof. She links Jon Gold's just the facts article, and says in the comments:

let's get to the bottom of this whole thing and see if my guess is correct---I say Bush did this, as he was instructed to do by his dad cheney and bill clinton kennedy, and everybody else whose wealth increased after 9-11. It was a red herring to empty the us coffers, to get rid of civil rights and jobs, and the working and middle classes. I know it was a big scam because after we were attacked, they sent our army away from home--instead of keeping them here to defend us. They left us here like they left the people floating away in katrina. They are using the american people as human guinea pigs for medical experiments conducted by psychiatrists. We had it too good for too long. We got lazy and stupid and obese. They are done with us now. They see us as useless eaters.


Well, Roseanne, I certainly see you as a useless eater. I love this part:

They know that the filth of the world is dumped in Haiti, and that children there are dying from dirty water, but the rich don't care about any of that.


The rich? Roseanne, I'm going to hazard a guess that you're in the top 1% of the top 1% of the wealthy in this country.

Roseanne's previous career lowlight:

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Tuesday, October 26, 2010

South Park Creators on the 9-11 Episode



Hat tip to Edx at JREF.

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Monday, October 25, 2010

Bravely Slaying the Strawmen of His Imagination



Steven Jones tackles two objections to his "research" that I have never heard before:

1. That somebody contaminated the samples with nanothermite. Huh? No, Steven, we don't think there's really nanosupercallifragilisticexpiallythermite in the samples at all.

2. Perhaps the falling buildings just generated the nanothermite. Err, see my response above.

I love that he tested samples of dust from a couple controlled demolitions and found no red-gray chips. One would think this would tell him that the WTC buildings were not brought down by controlled demolition, but Truther logic doesn't work that way.

I do find it interesting that Jones mentions what caused him to go Truther: Some woman was giving a talk on something else and casually mentioned that the Towers were not brought down by the planes, to apparently thunderous applause. And it's interesting to hear that the Waterboy is trying to make nanothermite himself. Perhaps he could get together with Jim Hoffman and manufacture ceiling tiles of the stuff.

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Wednesday, October 20, 2010

The Waterboy Again

Whatever happened to Kevin Ryan's claims to expertise because he was a water tester who worked for Underwriter's Laboratories? Now he's off on Flight 77:

Exactly how was Flight 77 hijacked, considering, among other things, that the alleged hijackers were said to be identified as security risks (possibly linked to al Qaeda) when they tried to board, and were not physically imposing (all 5 and a half feet tall or less, and slender in build)?[1]


They weren't identified as possibly linked to al Qaeda; they set off metal detectors as Kevin would know if he read his own footnotes:

When they go through, their carry-on bags fail to set off any alarms, but both men set off the alarm when they pass through the first metal detector. They are directed to a second metal detector, where Almihdhar passes, but Moqed fails again. He is subjected to a personal screening with a metal detection hand wand. This time he is cleared and permitted to pass through the checkpoint.


As for the second part of his question, I'll make him a deal. I'll get four men with knifes and box cutters to guard the entrance to a tunnel and if Kevin can get past them and into the tunnel, we'll consider his argument valid. In reality, of course, Kevin's underwear will end up brown and he won't get anywhere near the tunnel.

Why was Dick Cheney tracking Flight 77?[2]


He wasn't; he (or rather a young military man in the PEOC with him) was tracking the possible location of Flight 93, had it not crashed already.

Why did the roof of the Pentagon collapse 30 minutes after impact, giving additional evidence for the use of explosives? Note: The use of explosives at the Pentagon seems to be in agreement with the use of a large plane, which would have had little penetrating power.


Additional evidence? What was the initial evidence? And on what basis do you know that a large plane would have had little penetrating power?

Ryan also goes into the idiotic speculation about Barbara Olsen's phone calls:
Why was the official explanation for alleged phone calls made by Flight 77 passenger Barbara Olsen changed several times, and ultimately how could Ted Olsen’s story make any sense?[7]

Before closing with his real point:
Why are these questions NOT being pursued by independent investigators? That’s because the attention of many potential investigators has been hijacked by the much less useful question of “What hit the Pentagon.” This is certainly the favorite subject of intentional disruptors and official story supporters.


You know, Kevin, I'm sure you think you're helping your cause with these buffoonish posts, but you're not. He relates an anecdote:
A great example was when 9/11 Commission staffer Miles Kara and I exchanged messages a few months ago. He had written to my local group in an inquiry seeking support for his positions. My response was apparently not to his liking, and he therefore sought something in my own work that could be criticized. Despite the fact that the vast majority of my 9/11 work has centered on the World Trade Center, Army intelligence officer Kara searched through my articles and presentations over the last seven years and chose one minor statement I made about the Pentagon, in March 2006.

And so, in response, you do a longer post on the Pentagon? Oh, let's not talk about what hit the Pentagon, because that dishonors the memory of the passengers on Flight 77. Instead, let's talk about Barbara Olsen's phone calls, because that's much less likely to get people pissed off about what a bunch of morons we are.

Really?

But of course the responses are where the usual dingbat nonsense comes up. One dolt even brings up the Clock Lady's evidence of two Pentagon clocks that stopped at 9:32. Inside job!

Tuesday, October 19, 2010

West Virginia Senate Candidates Troofers

I like the lede, even though it's only half right:

Republican businessman John Raese pitched himself as a man of the right; Democratic Gov. Joe Manchin put himself forward as a man of the commonsense middle; Mountain Party candidate Jesse Johnson, the candidate of the state's Green Party affiliate, was a man of the left; and Constitution Party candidate Jeff Becker was a man of the loony bin.


And indeed, Becker exposes himself as a crackpot:

Becker's sole standout moment, other than his rambling opening statement about repealing the direct election of Senators, came when he was asked about his position on the war in Afghanistan.

Becker's long and off-topic answer had little to do with Afghanistan itself -- but was a long discussion of 9/11 Truther conspiracy theories, involving the alleged organized demolitions of the Twin Towers and the 7 World Trade Center building, the foreknowledge of this by the BBC, and the buildings' owners taking out special insurance policies for the contrived terrorist attack. "The only way for the official story to make sense is if the laws of physics had changed that day," said Becker.. "And I'm an engineer, I can tell you they did not."


But as it turns out, the "man of the left" is also a man of the nutbars:
Mountain Party nominee Jesse Johnson told The Associated Press that he is also not convinced that hijacked airliners caused the collapse of buildings at the World Trade Center.

Calling 9/11 a crime of the century, Johnson said it has never been investigated. He discounts the work of the bipartisan commission that issued a 585-page report on the attacks in 2004.

Sunday, October 17, 2010

Could Wikileaks Have Prevented 9-11?

Coleen Rowley's take.

There were a lot of us in the run-up to Sept. 11 who had seen warning signs that something devastating might be in the planning stages. But we worked for ossified bureaucracies incapable of acting quickly and decisively. Lately, the two of us have been wondering how things might have been different if there had been a quick, confidential way to get information out.


My guess is no. The problem that would have been faced is the "Where's Waldo?" problem I pointed out years ago:

Here's an analogy that illustrates the problem that the "warnings" wing of the Truthers all have. Remember the "Where's Waldo?" books of the 1990s? Imagine one kid has had the books for years, and he opens one of his favorite pages up and asks a friend to locate Waldo. And sits there fussing because his friend can't see what's so obvious to him, because he knows what to ignore.

The CIA and the FBI and the rest of the government is like that poor friend, but even worse, because in their case they don't even know if there's a Waldo on that page. They receive a blizzard of information, and most of the warnings never amount to anything. It is obvious after the fact which ones mattered, just as it is obvious to that kid where Waldo's hiding.

Thursday, October 14, 2010

Kevin Barrett's Son Debunks His Dad

Didn't notice this before, but kudos to Young Debunka.

Note how he says three buildings, making it clear that he is talking about the Twin Towers as well as Building 7 (which had its core collapse before the outer wall did). The debris we see in the videos are clearly falling faster than the building.


Good, solid, honest thinking. You know how some traits skip a generation? Young Debunka's grandfather was Peter Barrett.

Peter Barrett was competing in a series of seven sailing races in the Summer Olympics in Tokyo. He accidentally hit a mark, grounds for disqualification, but wasn't caught. He nearly finished the race, but at the finish line, in first place, he dropped out, admitting the foul. He ended up winning the silver on the strength of his performance in the other races.

Tuesday, October 12, 2010

Yeah, We Noticed

From Dylan Avery's profile on Linked In, we hear of his specialty:

Turning nothing into something.


The 9-11 "Truth" movement in a nutshell.

BTW, Building Wut is still at $88,009. Hasn't budged in about 10 days, and they haven't begged again on Flogger. Wut's up with that?

Monday, October 11, 2010

Just Another Truther Psycho

Check this story out:

Byron Williams, a 45-year-old ex-felon, exploded onto the national stage in the early morning hours of July 18.

According to a police investigation, Williams opened fire on California Highway Patrol officers who had stopped him on an Oakland freeway for driving erratically. For 12 frantic minutes, Williams traded shots with the police, employing three firearms and a small arsenal of ammunition, including armor-piercing rounds fired from a .308-caliber rifle.

When the smoke cleared, Williams surrendered; the ballistic body armor he was wearing had saved his life. Miraculously, only two of the 10 CHP officers involved in the shootout were injured.


Williams "credited" several people with waking him up, including Glenn Beck:
Williams also points to other media figures -- right-wing propagandist David Horowitz, and Internet conspiracist and repeated Fox News guest Alex Jones -- as key sources of information to inspire his "revolution."


And yes, he's a troofer:
Referring again to the "sabotage" of the Deepwater Horizon, Byron says: "This is what he won't do, Beck will not say it was a contracted hit. But he'll give you every ounce of evidence you can possibly need to make that assumption yourself." "You see what I mean?" Byron says, "That's why he downplays the 9-11 truthers. He talks bad about them."

It's clear that there are some theories Byron subscribes to that Beck does not. For example, Byron endorses the claim that "the U.S. government contracted its own destruction of the twin towers." On this issue, Byron cites Alex Jones and other websites.

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Sunday, October 10, 2010

Craig's European Vacation



BTW, who's going on vacation with the Building Wut donations?

Saturday, October 09, 2010

Your New World Order Is Ready for Delivery

This was posted in the comments section by M. Gregory Ferris and it's good enough to pop up to the top page. Posting on the news that Jason Bermas is back at the pizza parlor in Oneonta, he notes:

See if he had any brains at all he would capitalize on his Loose Change fame and open his own pizza parlor/restaurant.

He could have a Monday Night Football special called "The New World Order" with a large pizza, chicken wings and a 2-liter delivered for $25.

He could serve bran muffins called "Inside Jobs".

He could serve fried cheese balls called "Iron Spheres".


Triterope expanded on the idea:

A 9-11 conspiracy themed restaurant? I love it.

APPETIZER
Cheese Microspheres
A mixture of artisan New York cheeses, deep-fried in vegetable oil until molten and served with a savory dipping sauce. And just like the real thing, they're high in iron! $8

MAIN COURSE
Pullets
A young chicken, slow-cooked to rich, juicy flavor. We're so sure you'll love this dish, we've insured it for $3 billion! And with such terrible loss of trans fat, the smartest thing to eat is pullet!$14

SIDE COURSE
Light Pole Pasta
Bucatini pasta cooked to perfection, and arranged in vertical rows. Just like Lloyd England, you'll knock these down! $7

DESSERT
Hunt-The-Boeing King Cake
An authentic New Orleans-style King Cake in the shape of the Pentagon, and a tiny plastic model of Flight 77 instead of a baby... which we don't put in the cake. Learn the truth about 9/11 as you enjoy this delicious pastry. Where's the Boeing? Can't find it, can you? $11

SATISFACTION GUARANTEE: If you're not completely satisfied that 9/11 was an inside job, we'll remake your meal up to six times. However, we reserve the right to make substitutions.


I love the "Hunt-The-Boeing" cake idea; that made me laugh out loud. Billman added the drink selection:

Alex Jones Kool-Aid
This fatty drink will have you screaming aloud about the elite zionist flavors from which it is concocted!


All orders delivered to your door by Israeli Art Students.

Thursday, October 07, 2010

What is Old is New Again?

I got a tip this morning from a reader, and have been able to confirm some of it, but am still looking into more. Apparently Jason Bermas, from the increasingly inaccurately titled Loose Change trilogy, has now given up his career as an Alex Jones lackey and moved back home to Oneonta, New York, where it all started. Supposedly he is back working at a pizza place, like when his whole New World Order crushing fantasy began, which I have not been able to entirely confirm, but his Facebook page does mention "flipping pies" as his status a couple of times.

Apparently fighting the power has not been good for him financially because he is now begging for money to get some equipment to start his own Internet radio station. Didn't know it cost $5,000. I thought you just needed some broadband and a couple of good microphones.


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Quick Hits

From the "I'll never pitch in the major leagues again" department, David Ray Griffin talks about his recent medical problems, and closes with this:
And so I am recovering. Whether I will do much intellectual work in the near future remains uncertain at this time.

Why would anybody think otherwise?

Building Wut appears to have stalled out. There's been no news from that quarter for almost a month now, and checking the website reveals that contributions have been stuck on $88,000 for about a week. When this whole thing started I wrote that it was the latest fiasco waiting to happen; nothing recently has changed my mind on that score.

Tuesday, October 05, 2010

Clowns to the Left of Me

Jokers to the right. Taking the latter first, Fox News resuscitates the Able Danger story with a NEW DOCUMENT that proves... well, let's get into that later. First, let me say that I'm not entirely certain that the Able Danger claims are a bunch of hooey, just about 99%. Here's the res of the claim:

At least five witnesses questioned by the Defense Department's Inspector General told Fox News that their statements were distorted by investigators in the final IG's report -- or it left out key information, backing up assertions that lead hijacker Mohammed Atta was identified a year before 9/11.


Able Danger, of course, was a huge computerized data mining operation that hoped to discover links that might not be apparent to humans. So far so good. But the problem I have always had with the claim that Able Danger identified Atta, is that nobody to date has come up with the datum that says that Atta was somebody to be interested. Remember, the claim is that Atta was identified as so important that he was included on a wall chart that was printed out, with maybe 30 or so other people on the chart.

But why? Atta was just an engineering student in Hamburg at the time. He was supposedly identified as part of the "Brooklyn cell"; okay, what was his tie to Brooklyn, or anybody located dere, err, there?

As for the earth-shattering document:

Separately, Fox News has obtained a letter that challenges the Defense Department's claim. In October 2006, then Rep. Christopher Shays, chairman of the Subcommittee on National Security, Emerging Threats and International Relations, wrote to Shaffer's supervisor, Maj. Gen. Elbert Perkins, about the revocation of his clearance..

"Based on investigation of security clearance retaliation, it appears the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) used the security clearance system in an improper manner against LTC Shaffer and did not follow DOD security clearance guidelines," Shays, R-Conn., wrote.


Okay, so a congressman wrote the Defense Department to claim that Shaffer's security clearance was improperly taken away. In other words, this document does nothing to bolster the Able Danger claims, it just indicates that some of the military officials involved might--might I say--have reacted in a vindictive manner to the circus that Shaffer and Curt Weldon created with the Able Danger claims. Note in particular that Shaffer is somewhat less forceful than he used to be about the Atta ID:

"The big picture was not Atta, not so much the chart," Shaffer said. "The fact is this: That we had a pre-9/11 Department of Defense operation focused on taking action against Al Qaeda globally."


Of course, that is not exactly news, as the USS Cole incident and the embassy bombings were both pre-9/11 events.

On the left, the Huffington Post mentions a recent poll that found 9-11 kookery especially prevalent in the Middle East, and the nuts came out to play. Over 1600 comments on the article, many of them mentioning kooks like Box Boy Gage, or "facts" like OBL isn't wanted for 9-11.

Monday, October 04, 2010

If We've Lost Cleveland...



I gather that this is a spin-off of Family Guy. Going after the much-coveted "living in Mom's basement" demographic?

Sunday, October 03, 2010

Cow-Killer Kent Knudson Takes Own Life

Obviously sad news here.

It is with great sadness that I must report to you the news of the passing of my great friend and hero, Kent Knudson. Kent had been suffering from depression over yet another traumatic legal difficulty and facing two felony charges, on top of his "Cowcrap" conviction. The pressures of this latest legal action taken against him, the possibility of 3 years of jail time, and other factors lead him into a depression from which Kent had decided to take matters into his own control, ending his life.


Knudson headed up the local branch of the knucklehead Troofers. He's better known locally for having killed a cow or two that wandered onto his property in Northern Arizona, although of course the Truthers try to make it sound like some brave defense of his family:

During the years that Kent spent caring for his beloved mother who was developing Alzheimer's disease, Kent fell into legal trouble as a result of attempting to safeguard his mother against an invading herd of cattle on their 40 acre ranch near Snowflake, AZ.


Yes, he was trying to save his mother from some killer cows, a courageous act that won him a Best of Phoenix Award: Best Local Nutbar.

My condolences to his family and friends. It is a shame that he wasted several of the last years of his life pursuing the great nothing that is 9-11 Truth.

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Saturday, October 02, 2010

Steve Alten: Back Pimping the Troof

Despite the failure of his 2008 novel, the unreadable thriller, Shell Game, novelist Steve Alten is now back trying to promote another novel for the troof, called Grim Reaper: End of Days.

A bit of it was posted over at 911 flogger, and it appears as cheesy and poorly researched as before:

Unnerved, Patrick Shepard turns away, staring coldly out the driver's side backseat window. Somewhere in the distance is FDR Drive, beyond that the East River. There is only darkness out there, save for two towering infernos -- the Manhattan Bridge to the north, the Brooklyn Bridge to the south. The two expanses had been destroyed seventeen hours earlier, yet the incendiary thermite used in the blasts still burns, the chemical compound melting right through the steel girders-


I am always perplexed in how troofers seem to think that thermite has some sort of magical properties. Seventeen hours!? OK, I suppose that isn't much, considering they seem to think it burns for up to 6 weeks. I thought it was cool when the Mythbusters guys tried to cut a car in half with a half ton of thermite, and that only lasted a minute or so.



How much freaking thermite would you need to keep burning for 17 hours?

Homeland Security had shutdown all access to Ground Zero effectively preventing any close inspection of the debris; still, resourceful engineers managed to collect plenty of particle samples -- their analysis revealing the presence of a foreign substance that should not have been in the wreckage: Thermite. A pyrotechnic material used by the military and construction engineers to collapse steel structures, thermite generated temperatures at a super hot 4,500 degrees. Thermite also burned for extended periods of time. And it could be applied as a paint.


Nevermind that there was no such thing as "Homeland Security" in 2001, now, of course, thermite is no longer an incendiary, but a pyrotechnic material "used by the military and construction engineers to collapse steel structures". Aside from the fact that construction engineers don't normally do this, Thermite is not used in building demolition! It never has been. If it were, you can guarantee it would be in every YouTube video the troofers made.

So Steve, go back to the giant sharks.

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