I have always told people that the conspiracy theorist types will never go away. Under George Bush the conspiracies were coming more from the left, GWB was the New World Order devil for them. Claims that he rigged the elections and that he and Dick Cheney personally pulled off the 9/11 attacks were part and parcel of every old hippy and young hipster fevered imagination. To believe them the 2008 elections were to be stopped by another false flag terror attack and Bush would become de facto King George. Wow, what ever happened to that one?
In the middle you have the evergreen kooks, the Ruby Ridge, Waco, supporters of Ron Paul types. Summer, Spring, Winter or Fall these guys are always in full bloom wackyness. They spend a lot of time listening to Alex Jones and stockpiling C-rations in underground bunkers preparing for the end times. You had to feel sorry for them when nothing happened on Y2K.
Well here it is 2009 and a black man is in office, GWB is regarded as the worst president since Nixon and the conspiracy theorist are fast trying to adapt their natural born propensity to see boogie men under the bed for the new era. The “Bill Clinton had the Vince Foster murdered” conservatives tin foil hat types are poised to make a comeback ready to jump on any seemingly suspicious act by Barack Obama. The first salvo for this a new class of conspiratist are called “Birthers” who claim Obama isn’t eligible to be president of the United States because of question as to his birth. Never mind the fact the validity of Obama’s eligibility have no grounding in evidence. Courts across the country have summarily rejected the movement’s theory.
Discredited theories is a constant in a country with a history of partisan division, a country in which, surveys have shown 50% of the public believe in UFOs and 72% percent believes astrology works. If you want to promote this sort of stuff, you certainly have a large receptive audience. So I suspect there will be no shortage of loons to poke fun at.
One of the silliest arguments truthers make for 9/11 being this BIG conspiracy is that at no time in history has an large office building collapsed due to fire.
Of course this is mind numbingly duncical in myriad ways. For one, the idea that something could not have happened the way it did simply because it never happened before is down right childish and defies any rational logic. I guess in the truther world NOTHING can happen, everything must have a first time.
In the truther world the passenger jet that had to ditch in the Hudson river could not have happened! At no time in the past had a jet like that landed in water without breaking apart. So I guess the Hudson river emergency landing must have been an Inside Job or a holographic hoax, and all those people who saw it with their own two eyes? just government shills. The Moon landing? Yeah never happened before ergo a giant government hoax. Same with the Titanic, the break-up of the space shuttle and countless other never before events.
What is amazing is these people will repeat this ludicrous observation never once sitting down to think exactly how stupid it is. To your average brain dead conspiracy loon type this is powerful incite. To the rest of us it’s sad statement on our education system.
Posted: July 4, 2008 at 11:49 am | Tags: 9/11 truth
It’s 4th of July, Let blow some shit up.
Being the type who enjoys science fact rather than science fiction, I tend to watch shows dealing with how things are done in the real world. Long before 9/11 I saw a documentary on how controlled demolitions are done. Of course it is a far more complicated procedure than what is portrayed in movies. In the movies the bad guy plants a few bombs around a building and with one push of a button all hell breaks loose. Simple Right?
WRONG, if explosives had been used to collapse the towers, everyone who worked in the towers, from maintenance staff who enter places normally off-limits, to executives who never see more of the building than their private elevator and office would have known something was fishy. For one all of the structural columns on every floor of the building would have to be exposed wreaking havoc on any interior decoration that was in the way. In real controlled demolitions pre-weakening of the structure is done, beams are cut partway through, this tends to leave burned steel smells and sprays of steel fragments all over the interior. Beams must have explosives secured directly to them to have any effect, blast blankets are wrapped around them to direct the explosive force for the greatest effect.
Detonation Cord (DC) is the only reliable way to set off these explosives and it is very hard to hide. DC is used because normal wire and blasting caps tend to be too dangerous, any wire can create it’s own electrical charge in the presence of magnetic fields and it doesn’t take much to set off a high speed blasting cap. So imaging trying to wire a 110 story working office building with radios, computers wireless phones all of them presenting a risk of setting off your explosives. There is a reason cell phones are banned from areas where explosive are in use. DC on the other hand is non-electrical, it is actually high speed explosive with an established burn rate, but mile of this stuff would stick out like a sore thumb. To do what the conspiracy theorist types say you would have to connect every charge on every column on every floor to one sequencing timer so that the charges went off in the right order at exactly the right time.
Now assuming that all of the necessary hardware, explosive material, DC, and timing apparatus was somehow put in place without any users of the buildings noticing unusual activity, you are left with explaining how you crash a large airplane into the side of your carefully wired building and avoid severing any of the wires by direct shock or heat from flaming jet fuel. How it could avoid detonating any of the charges prematurely. Assuming you could somehow protect the charges and their wiring, it would be impossible to factor in the effects of an aircraft collision and subsequent fire on the structural integrity of the building when designing the arrangement and power of explosive charges. After all no one had ever imploded a 110 story building, what if you get it wrong and you don’t get a total collapse? What if some or most of the explosive fail? A real possibility and that would leave much explaining on how the explosive got there. Hell if explosive had been used evidence of them would have been found by rescue worker looking for survivors.
And this is just part of the problem, I could go on and on. Fact is the real world is much more complex than what the conspiracy theorist movie based ideas would have you believe. These people never take the logical step of asking the critical questions, “Why wouldn’t my hypothesis work?” I have also found these pimps of conspiracy ideas tend to lack the intellectual curiosity to want to learn how this stuff works, too much light tends to kill conspiracy theories, in their world ignorance truly IS bliss.
Posted: July 4, 2008 at 10:49 am | Tags: 9/11 truth
I sure don’t tolerate stupidity well, be they truthers or conservatives, and I don’t feel that stupid ideas deserves respect, Oh you can say whatever you like, but you will also have to learn to deal with scorn and humiliation if you start spouting halfwit notions in public. So when some local yokel started to tell me Barrack “Hussein” Obama is a secret Muslim who will not recite the Pledge of Allegiance I felt it necessary to inform him of his error. I guess the poor sod had been watching to much FOX news and failed to catch the obvious Swift-Boating that seems to be a part of the FOX pseudo-news coverage of late. He must have felt a little put off by my correcting his mistaken ideas because he got a little mad and asked if I felt it was OK to have a nigger or a bitch in the White House! Hum… must be a Rush Ditto head.
WELL! I was sure not going to let that one stand!
I pointed out that saying such a thing only demonstrates an extreme form of idiocy, the kind reserved for trailer trash hillbilly types with inbreeding issues. He made some rather weak insult back, something as clever as “Fuck You”. I inquired that perhaps he should be home fucking his sister like a good little redneck rather than talking about something he obviously had no clue about. No physical altercation happened and I got a good laugh out of it and maybe the clod learned a little something about spewing stupidity in public.
I hold the same destain for 9/11 conspiracy theorist. They wrap themselves in the flag of being “liberal” and then accuse hundreds if not thousands of their fellow man of being murderers or knowingly hiding the murders. They excused the real perpetrators of the crimes because of a mistaken ideas that all cultures are equal, even one that degrade woman and what to install a religious theocracy over the world with Muhammad as leader. Fuck Them! There are in fact the same as the low life mouth breathers that hate Obama because he is not quite White enough.
Posted: May 17, 2008 at 2:00 pm | Tags: 9/11 truth
You got to be amazed at the cognitive train wreck that is the 9/11 truth movement. And nothing demonstrates that more than the loopy list of famous truthers. Charley Sheen, Rosie O’Donnell, some dude from Blink 182, Willie Nelson,
AND NOW!………. Tommy Chong??????
And these idiots proudly advertise the fact this old stoner has jumped on bandwagon. Kind of desperate for members I guess.
So this made me think of a new game based on the Celebrity Dead Pool thing where you try and decide which famous person will die next. This would be the “Celebrity Brain Dead Pool”. Which cognitively challenged celebrity will be the next to drink the 9/11 truth Kool aid?
Posted: April 17, 2008 at 12:41 pm | Tags: 9/11 truth
The only way the conspiracy theorist nut jobs can promote their silly ideas about 9/11 being an inside job is basically to lie….. And the best way to lie is to “Quote Mine”. Take witness testimony and deliberately clip out the parts of what they said to make it more inline with the hypothesis you are trying to sell.
Mike Walters, a USA Today reporter who witnessed the plane crashing into the Pentagon tells how his story was deliberately taken out of context by the “truth” people.
Posted: April 6, 2008 at 8:40 am | Tags: 9/11 truth
The only saving grace of the 9/11 conspiracy theorist nut jobs is they’re great fodder for jokes and ridicule. For years any joke dealing with the subject of 9/11 was far too close to a sore spot, but the American people have a wonderful way of finding humor in even the worst tragedy.
Enter the 9/11 Truth movement. You can’t help but laugh when the clown car of 9/11 truth pulls up and out spills the looniest bunch of Bozos you have ever seen, festooned in black Inside Job t-shirts, and shouting “Free Fall”. And for a real laugh look at the “Space Beam Weapon” crowd.
Posted: March 30, 2008 at 11:49 am | Tags: 9/11 truth
Well when you are hated by conservatives, the religious and the loony left, you have to be doing something right. Comedian Bill Maher again takes a stab at truther loons.
Speaking on the subject of the ‘darkness of ignorance” and the “stubbornly ill informed”
Bill had this to say on the conservatives portraying Barack Obama as a Secret Muslim.
“Is Obama a Muslim”
“NO HE ISN’T”
“Was Sadam behind 9/11?”
“NO HE WASN’T”
“and while we are at it,”
“NEITHER WAS BUSH”
“How do we know Bush wasn’t behind 9/11?” “Because it WORKED, AND it involved PLANNING.”
Posted: March 12, 2008 at 4:32 pm | Tags: 9/11 truth
Progressive George Monbiot has this to say about truthers.
“Why do I bother with these morons? Because they are destroying the movements which some of us have spent a long time trying to build. Those of us who believe that the crucial global issues – climate change, the Iraq war, nuclear proliferation, inequality – are insufficiently debated in parliament or congress; that corporate power stands too heavily on democracy; that war criminals, cheats and liars are not being held to account, have invested our efforts in movements outside the mainstream political process. These, we are now discovering, are peculiarly susceptible to this epidemic of gibberish.
The obvious corollorary to the belief that the Bush administration is all-powerful is that the rest of us are completely powerless. In fact it seems to me that the purpose of the “9/11 truth movement” is to be powerless. The omnipotence of the Bush regime is the coward’s fantasy, an excuse for inaction used by those who don’t have the stomach to engage in real political fights.”
Posted: February 25, 2008 at 10:55 am | Tags: 9/11 truth
How are Truthers like their conservative counterpart, The Creationist?
Neither of them have the benefit of real science to back up their screwball claims, both rely on the “just asking questions” tactic, Why go through the bother of having to create and defend an conception when it is far simpler to thy and find hole in the other sides concepts and then force you nonexistent “god” into those holes. “God of the Gaps” its called.
Like creationist who also have no real scientist to back up their claims truthers create their own experts. For creationist theologians become biologist in the same way theologians become structural engineers and controlled demolition experts with 9/11 denial movement. It fools no one because at the end of the day these guy are only experts on faith NOT the real physical world. Just look at patriotsquestion911.com and note how many are such things as Professors of religious studies and theology.
David Ray Griffin, PhD – Professor Emeritus of Philosophy of Religion and Theology
Rosemary Radford Ruether, PhD – Professor Emerita of Feminist Theology
Kevin Barrett, PhD – Lecturer on Islamic Studies,
Blair Gadsby, MA – Adjunct Faculty, Religious Studies
John B. Cobb, Jr., PhD – Professor Emeritus of Theology
James Goulding, PhD – Professor Emeritus of Religion
Carter Heyward, PhD – Howard Chandler Robbins Professor Emerita of Theology
James Goulding, PhD – Professor Emeritus of Religion
Douglas Sturm, PhD – Professor Emeritus of Religion and Political Science
Marjorie Hewitt Suchocki, PhD – Professor Emerita of Theology
Graeme MacQueen, PhD – Associate Professor of Religious Studies
Sean Kelly, PhD – Professor of Philosophy and Religion
John Milbank, PhD – Professor in Religion, Politics, and Ethics
James K. Powell II, PhD – Visiting Assistant Professor, Buddhist Studies
Richard A. Horsley, PhD – Distinguished Professor of Liberal Arts and Former Chair of the Department of the Study of Religion
Clark A. Kucheman, PhD – Arthur V. Stoughton Professor of Christian Ethics, Claremont McKenna College
Rev. David P. Polk, PhD – Former Vice President of Christian Board
Richard Foltz , PhD – Associate Professor of Religion,
Like George Bush and his fellow anti-science anti-intellectual conservatives movement, these so called seekers of truth are pushing a fact-less belief system.
“911 TRUTH IS A FAITH BASED INITIATIVE”
As a progressive I feel like I am stuck between the Torquemada’s of the conservative right and the Luddites of the agenda driven left.
Posted: February 10, 2008 at 12:28 pm | Tags: 9/11 truth
Controlled demolitions is loony enough, but some of the crazies of the 9/11 truth movement are not satisfied with mere run of the mill stupidity, some like to take it to the max. One of the uber loons in the 9/11 conspiracy theorist camp is Judy Wood. She has managed to jump the shark and gone right in to the ultra-wacky Star Wars Directed-Energy Weapon destruction of the WTC. Her site at http://www.drjudywood.com/ is a humorous mix of loopy pseudoscience and conspiracy theorist bunk.
At some point after 9/11 damaged cars were towed to a location along FDR drive, of course this dingbat had to wonder how these cars were randomly toasted so far from ground zero! “These cars are at least 1/2 mile away from the WTC. Note the waviness of the tire tracks. What happened?” DUH! Ever hear of tow trucks Judy? At another time she shows a picture of a burned out car wheel “Wheels appear to have steel-belts from the tires still on them” AH… Yeah, maybe that is because the steel belts are made of STEEL and the rest of the tire RUBBER, rubber burns away leaving steel belts. And this woman claims to be a scientist?
On a forum one of the conspiracy theorist goofball posted a picture from Wood’s site showing a burned out FDNY fire truck. He kept asking me “explain to me where did the engine go. Did it melt?”
Well, yeah, the engine seems to be gone from the front of the truck and I am sure he thought he has made this great point, but myself being a skeptic and not being so inclined to believe a rather loopy idea that the engine was melted by a death ray from space, I asked myself the next logical question. If the engine was not in the front of the truck and the concept of it melting away by some errant energy beam clearly impossible, then the only valid explanation is the engine never was in the front. and as it turns out Mid-engine and Rear-engine configurations of this sort of fire truck are very common. It only took me 10 minutes to find these two trucks one a 1990 E-One Cyclone “Rear Engine” 1500 GPM, the other from the same manufacturer with a ladder exactly like the burned out truck.
The only reason I bring this up is it is so typical of the 9/11 conspiracy theorist inability to reason and research. They jump from one “smoking gun” to the next, and at each spot their ideas get debunked, “free fall” gets knocked down, “pull it” gets shown to be bullshit, “controlled demolition” is fast becoming passé. You would think a cause that get so much wrong would just give up, but crackpots are a special breed who never say uncle. Now it’s energy weapons and Mini nukes, And Judy Wood’s site of preposterous theories will in time join the screwball junk pile.
Posted: February 5, 2008 at 1:07 pm | Tags: 9/11 truth
Willie Nelson questions Sept. 11 on local talk radio show
10:28 PM CST on Monday, February 4, 2008
Willie Nelson went on a nationally syndicated radio show Monday, and questioned the official story of what happened on Sept. 11.
Nelson said the collapse of the World Trade Center towers reminded him of a hotel implosion in Las Vegas. http://www.kvue.com/news/local/stories/020408kvuenelson-bkm.8e5c8740.html
Too many years of booze and pot will do that to you.
It comes as no surprise that “Trutherism” draws the bottom rung of intellectual thought in this world. You have the typical moron class of young DUDES influenced by slick YouTube videos, guys living in their parents basement picturing themselves as revolutionaries while mom washes their underwear and feed them grill cheese sandwiches. Celebrity supporters are people like Willie, Rosie O’Donnle, David Lynch, the dude from Blink 182 and Charlie Sheen. Their so called “scientist” are failed nobodies like Stephen Jones.
It’s not the politically correct thing to say but it is true, you can judge a organization by the people it draws. The KKK will draw knuckle dragging bigots, Neo Nazis are infected with angry mental stunted skin heads. 9/11 conspiracy theorist have the people so dumb they can’t even come up with a workable theory, only the “we only have questions” cop out.
Posted: February 4, 2008 at 8:48 am | Tags: 9/11 truth
Well according to James H. Fetzer head wacko for Scholars for 9/11 Truth….
“Multiple reports that internet cables connecting Iran to the rest of the world have been “cut” are raising suspicions in the minds of experts on 9/11 that something serious may be in the works. Prior to 9/11, the FBI shut down Arab Muslim web sites. The fear is that internet access may have been deliberately severed to isolate Iran and make it difficult to communicate in response to a “false flag” attack in the United States, possibly during the Super Bowl, an attack upon Iran, or both.”
Go’ to show you, if a truther says something you can be sure it is NOT true.
Posted: February 3, 2008 at 12:23 pm | Tags: 9/11 truth
To anyone who has fought the “Anti-Science” agenda of the Bush administration knows who Michael Shermer is. Dr. Michael Shermer is the Founding Publisher of Skeptic magazine, the Executive Director of the Skeptics Society, a monthly columnist for Scientific American, and has been outspoken in keeping creationism/Intelligent Design out of schools, promoting stem cell research and in getting the current administration to take global warming seriously.
Of course being an informed enlightened individual he does not believe in the pop culture ramblings of the “911 Was an Inside Job” wackos. So NOW to these nabobs of the nitwit brigade, Shermer is the evil government shill! Never mind his work has been in direct contradiction to the conservative GWB ideal.
His current book “The Mind of the Market” deal with the idea that evolution and evolutionary psychology provides an answer to how our markets work, “evolutionary economics”. Now this has nothing to do with 9/11, but at almost every promotional stop he has made, Shermer has had to deal with some kook making the same long debunked conspiracy theorist crap, and getting schooled in the process, like below
