segnosaur

Not going to happen, because we know that the Truther mentality and conspiracy theorist mind thrives not on facts, analysis, or plausibility, but rather on the very uncertainty of the question at hand. Yeah, I know... but hey, I'm not doing it for his benefit... I'm doing it for the benefit of others who might have stumbled upon the thread and are currently unsure of 9/11. If they can see how empty-headed their non-sense is, and how they are incapable of putting together anything that passes even the most basic of scrutiny, hopefully we'll prevent others from falling for the same garbage. Thanks. Normally I hang out on skeptics forums, so I'm used to seeing these things debunked.

Enthusiasm is irrelevant. I ignore 9/11 conspiricy theories because they are utter nonsense. I am a skeptic and I believe in following where the evidence leads. So far, the only 'evidence' provided by 9/11 conspiricy theorists has involved bad science, put forward by unqualified individuals. You want to capture people's enthusiasm? Try putting together some sort of scenario for what happened on 9/11. Until you can do that, you're going to continue to be a perfect illustration about how conspiricy nonsense thrives when logic breaks down.

First of all, congratultions on your ability to mind-read. Really quite impressive that you know exactly what's going through the minds of our political leaders at any one time. (By the way, I am being sarcastic... You know, we do elect our leaders to make the tough decisions, even some that result in deaths. That doesn't necessarily mean that whomever is the leader isn't affected by such tragedies.) Secondly.... lets assume that you were correct, and that Cheney and/or Bush were apathetic monsters who don't really care about lives... That still doesn't prove that they were involved with 9/11. After all, even if they (for some reason nobody has ever explained) wanted to carry out 9/11, they would still need hundreds if not thousands of henchment to carry out their plans. Not exactly likely that they'd be about to find thousands of people with a similar lack of morality, most of whom wouldn't even benefit from any 9/11 operation. Ummm... The U.S. is a country with around 300 million people, thousands upon thousands of potential targets, and a wide range of attitudes from workaholic to utterly apathetic. Those "bearded god delluded freaks" were not some primitive aboriginies who are out of touch with the western world. Many of the terrorists came from middle class families. Many had higher education. Why exactly is it so suprising that a group of determined, intelligent (even if delluded) individuals wouldn't have the ability to identify and expliot weaknesses in the system?

Well, here are the problems with that particular 'theory'... - Undocumented workers would not necessarily be experts in handling explosives, building demolition, etc. - Even if you could find a pool of undocumented workers willing to cart explosives into a building and they miraculously knew how to handle them properly and place them in just the right spots, you would still have to explain: * How the dozens if not hundreds of security personel managed to overlook large numbers of people caring explosives around * How the thousands of workers never noticed, at any time, suspicous packages, holes in the walls necessarily to plant charges, etc. - You'd also have to assume that each and every worker that was involved was dumb as a brick and wouldn't bother putting 2 and 2 together after 9/11 (racist much?) - Not only would you have to arrange the demolition of the building, you'd also have to arrange: * the hijackings * arrange things with Norad to prevent them from intercepting the planes (be a bummer to plant the bombs only to have the planes shot down before they hit the buildings) * Get pretty much the entire community of civil and structural engineers to throw out years of experience Once again... I'm still waiting for you to come up with a complete description of what you think happened on 9/11.... who was involved and when at all stages. (Not just picking little bits and pieces.) Until you can come up with something that actually resembles something plausible, you'll never convince a skeptic.

The word 'politics' is actually derived from a combination: Poly (meaning many) and Ticks (blood sucking parisite)

...it is a tale Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, Signifying nothing. (William Shakespeare's Macbeth) Really, are you actually capable in speaking (or writing) in anything other than slogans? So where was the benefit to Bush or other neocons over 9/11? And where exactly is your description of how the events actually happened? Who was involved? And when? Are you ever going to answer that, or do we just get the benefit of more empty-headed slogans?

Keep in mind that if one or more car companies goes out of business, those jobs may not necessarily be lost. The demand for cars will still exist, so people will either A: buy toyota/honda/etc., thus creating more jobs for THOSE companies, or B: some or all of the product lines will probably be sold to other companies, so that some or most of the jobs will still be saved. The concessions that have been made have been pretty useless. - The 2-tier wage structure isn't going to be of any benefit at a time when car companies are actually laying off workers (and won't be hiring new ones for the forseeable future). - GM and the CAW arranged the freezing of cost-of-living adjustments, but the inflation rate is very low (less than 2%) so that wasn't really a big concession. - Workers will now contribute $30/month to their health care, but that works out to be a tiny fraction of their total income Not necessarily... by giving taxpayer money to the car companies, they reduce the amout others have for consumer spending and investments. It may be better to let the companies fail, and leave the tax dollars with the original taxpayer/consumer who will also spend or invest the money. I am not saying that the managemetn of the Big 3 is innocent... however, any ability they had to fix the situation for the better is hampered by the unions.

The way power is currently misused is more like: people like Cheney (neo-cons.) needed Bush only to maximize patriotism. Still waiting to hear how Cheney or other neo-cons would have benefitted.... As I said before, the republicans are out of power, and will likely remain so for the forseeable future. The economy is in shambles, so its not like there's not much wealth for the neocons to earn. I also have to wonder... if the neo-cons (or whatever shadowy conspiricy group was involved) were so powerful and so capable of orchestrating an attack involving multiple planes/buildings, something that would have required thousands of people to pull off, then why didn't they just plant some WMD in Iraq? After all, they would have had no problem with deception, and since they obviously had some middle east contacts they would have been able to sneak in and hid a few kilos of anthrax under Saddam's pillow.

What you haven't done is illustrated how Bush was behind the attack, and not just making use of an event caused by others... Oh, and what exactly was supposed to be the benefit to Bush? He didn't exactly last any longer in power, the war-time spending is a detriment to getting the economy working. Bush himself was not an owner in any of the weapons companies or businesses that would benefit from the attack. And just what do you mean by 'maximum destruction/maximum death'? If he really wanted to maximize death, why did he wait an hour before causing the towers to collapse? Heck, why not actually try to make the towers fall over sideways? Not only would you 'maximize death', but you'd also deflect the criticism of people like you who aren't structural engineers but think its 'strange' that a building would fall straight down.

Your avoidance of the issue, along with your lack of ability to actually detail any sort of plot that could provide an alternative explaination about what happened on 9/11, is dualy noted. You do realize that you're actually doing HARM to any sort of conspiracy movement, don't you?

Strike one.... Lets look at the authors of that paper, shall we? One of the people writing the report was Stephan Jones. Jones' field of study was in cold fusion, NOT in structural engineering, and NOT in chemical analysis. Furthermore, Jones has had a reputation of writing articles outside his field of expertse, such as writing papers on archeology to support his mormon beliefs (articles which were ridiculed by serious historians). Another was Kevin Ryan. Ryan was a lab director for environmental health... NOT for structural engineering, and was NOT active as a researcher when he first got involved in 9/11. So, NEITHER of these 2 people has 'good credentials'. Strike two... The journal they were published in was a vanity publisher, who allows people to pay to have articles published. This is actually the opposite of 'peer review'. http://www.bentham.org/open/oaMembership.php Strike three... There were many problems with this 'study', such as: - The collected samples weren't exactly kept in a controlled/secure location - There was no effort to compare the samples collected in the study with other samples taken from the same location - The authours confuse the 'potential energy' of a substance with the 'explosiveness'

Given the irrational relationship naïve people have toward reality, naivety will not disappear because a so-called conspiracy has been proven. Of course you never even came close to 'proving' your conspiricy. I guess running around making blind allegations and suggesting people are 'asleep' is easier than actually putting the intellectual effort in to coming up with an actual conspiracy plan that makes sense.

Never underestimate all the benefits of staying asleep. Yup, the hundreds if not thousands of people who actually would have the qualifications to detect any sort of problem decide to 'stay asleep'.... Yet somehow some people who are totally unqualified to make any sort of technical analysis decide that something's wrong.... What makes more logical sense... that perhaps the hundreds or thousands of people were doing honest and accurate work, or that a small number of unqualified individuals simply got their facts wrong?

First of all, the towers didn't exactly collapse into their own 'footprint'. The collapse of all 3 towers was messy, and the collapse of WTC7 actually damaged several surrounding buildings. If it were being carried out by a 'controlled demoliton', it was a lot messier than any other controlled demolition. http://skepticwiki.org/index.php/WTC7#.22I...wn_footprint.22 Secondly, we know why the tower collapsed... damage to WTC7 from one of the towers collapse destroyed some of the supports resulting in added stress. Fire fueled by deisel fuel kept on site kept the building burning for hours. The fact is, the fire department was keeping track of it, and they will point out that there were signs INSIDE the building on the afternoon of 9/11 that the building was going to collapse (e.g. shifting beams, etc.) If it were a controlled demolition, the firemen would not have observed that. Why waste time/money on an 'independent inquiry' when we have pretty much the entire scientific and engineering community agreeing that the collapse was NOT due to explosives? Regardless of what they were told at the beginning, once they were told what the 'plot' was, they would, if they had any sort of consience, could have blown the whistle. Not one has. Do you think there's some sort of magical 'commitment' point at which people loose all ability to think morally?

I saw a picture of that hole, and it's really weird: They claim it was caused by debris falling from the other tower, but there is no debris in the hole. So, how EXACTLY do you think the hole got there? Termites? That doesn't even fit in with the rest of the 'explosives' theory. Since when has any controlled demoliton ever blown up a big hole in a building, and THEN destroyed it via controlled demolition? And the fact that you didn't see any debris isn't really relevant... skyscrapers often have frameworks that use very little volume (remember, the 2 towers ended up collapsing into a pile only a few stories tall, so any debris that would have hit the building would not have had to take up a significant volume. Oh, and if you're complaing that you didn't see any debris, then what exactly do you think happened to the debris from WTC7 itself? Do you think it was carted away before any pictures were taken and before the collapse? Well, you had 2 large buildings that have just been hit by planes filled with volitile jet fuel. You have 2 towers right next to WTC7 that had their own fires buring for several hours. So what makes more sense, that some of the debris coming from the 2 towers may have started an office fire (which was able to spread thanks to deisel fuel stored on site), or that some massive organization managed to sneak in tons of explosives, either on 9/11 (with hundreds of civilians, fire fighters, etc. as potential witnesses) or some tme before (in which case hundreds of office workers could have potentially found the explosives before 9/11.) Hmmm... a few pieces of flaming wreckage from an already burning building or a conspiricy of hundreds...

You should stop calling conspiracy theorists people who simply are not naïve enough to believe rulers cannot do that kind of things to a few of their subjects and national symbols when it comes to legitimizing what they think will become overwhelmingly important national security matters in the long run. Well, I could have used the term 'tr00ther', or 'tin-foil-hat brigade'. I thought 'conspiricy theorist' would be a little less insulting. And there's no need to believe the 'rulers'. After all, the 'explosives' theory has been rejected in every respectable peer reviewed engineering journal, and I doubt most people would believe structural engineers are part of the 'ruling class'. You see, while you like to point to the 'rulers' and suggest they are trying to do something immoral/illegal for their own benefit, you have to account for the fact that hundreds if not thousands of every, ordinary scientists, emergency workers, military people, etc. have also rejected your conspiricies, even though they don't really have much to benifit from teh situation. And you still haven't addressed the actual point I made... how so many 'conspiricy theorists' talk about how strange it was to have those buildings collapse the way they did, but ignore how it would even be stranger to have explostions set off and have them still standing for an hour.

Yup, no reason at all... Except for the 10 story hole in the building. Yup, no reason except for the 10 story hole. Oh, and the fires that burned for many hours. But apart from the 10 story hole in the building and the fires that burned for hours and hours there was no logical reason.

Well you see that's the problem with conspiricy theories... Either the conspirsity involves a small group (who have to do extremely long-term planning), and you are stuck trying to explain how their work could have remained undetected for so long, or you are dealing with a big group (CIA or whomever), in which case you'd have to explain how they were able to recruit so many into their plot, and yet not have ONE PERSON claim "I was in on it". Heck, not even one person claim "They asked me to join but I said no".

Instead of wasting your time looking at various videos (with their often contradictory 'evidence'), here's a suggestion... If you want to convince people it was an inside job, sit down and try to actually develop a real plan about how it would be pulled off. And provide details... how many (and who) would have to be involved with NORAD, with the police/fire department, politicians, and other 'insiders'. Give it a try. Good chance you'll quickly give up and return to watching videos made by idiots who have no actual knowledge or reputation making claims about 'inside jobs'. I've never seen any conspirisy theorist develop even a basic rudimentary explaination about what happened on 9/11. Until someone actually does, you don't really have much of a leg to stand on.

You realize that assertion makes absolutely no sense, don't you? If he was in the basement, how exactly woudl he know when the plane hit the tower? He was underground. He wasn't staring out the window. He wasn't watching the building on TV. He'd have absolutely no frame of reference to know when the building was actually hit for the first time. Furthermore, lets assume your 'fantasy' scenario is correct and there was an explosion before the plane hit the building... when there is a controlled demoltion, any exposives are set off seconds before the building actually collapses, not an hour before hand. Its always amazing how the conspricy theorists make arguments about how 'unusual' it was for a building to collapse by fire, yet they're willing to accept somethign that is even more unlikely.

A major problem with your 'theory'... If the money that you put in the hands of the poor originally came from 'wealthy' people, that will result in several undexpected consequences... - The rich people themselves will have less money to 'consume' with. So, the economy may have more poor people able to buy product X, but will have less rich people buying product Y. - Even if the rich people weren't going to spend that money, that cash wouldn't be sitting idle. It would likely be invested somewhere. Thus, taxing them more means you have less money available to the banks for lending, less money available to capitalize businesses, etc. In both cases, any overall economic 'benefit' of taxing the rich to help the poor is counteracted, in part or in full, by the negative consequences. Now, according to Keynesian theory, the government could provide extra income to poor people by borrowing now, and then paying back later when the economy is stronger. That would provide an economic stimulous immediately without the negative consequences of taxing-the-rich; however, it would require the government to be responsible enough to actually pay back the debt in the future.

Yes they did... all wrestlers were given initial screenings for steroids (as well as other drugs), to establish a 'baseline', and then get subject to random tests. Failing a test can mean 'suspension', whereas failing multiple tests can mean you get fired from the company. (Its not a perfect system... people who are 'suspended' are often allowed to continue working in some capacity, since it would be difficult to explain why 'Wrestler X' has suddently disappeared when they were supposed to be in a match. But, it is better than the system they have in many legitimate sports.) The WWE has also extended the offer of free drug rehab to any wrestler, past or present, who requests it, even if they aren't with the company any more. In fact, Test/Martin (the wrestler from the original post) had just gone through such a program when he died, even though he hadn't worked for the WWE for years.

I'm not the original poster (blueblood), but I think you may be misinterpreting his statement. When he said people 'deserve a return on their investment', he didn't mean that people should be guaranteed a certain profit for each dollar invested. I think he meant that of people DO receive a return, they deserve to keep those returns. The issue of whether rich people should be forced to 'give up' their wealth is a different issue than the corporate bailouts. I doubt anyone here really thinks 'rich people' should be given more money if their investments fail, just that they shouldn't necessarily be 'punished' when they do happen to become successful through their own efforts. Umm.. if they do earn it 'legally and morally', then they do deserve it. Keep in mind that the initial poster was specifically suggesting all rich people (even those who earned their money through their own hard work) should be forced to give up some of that wealth (possibly even over and above what they've already been taxed.) Umm... many 'rich people' may have been greedy trying to earn a profit in the mortgage market, but keep in mind that many poor people also were greedy in in trying to obtain homes that they could not afford. And while the rich may run the companies that involve oil exploration or deforestration, the poor are also responsible because they use those products. (And the wealthy, through our progressive tax system with multiple tax brackets) have already payed a higher portion of their overall income into society.

Ummm.... not sure if you actually understand the definition of the word, but Usury is a crime of charging people more interest than you're legally allowed (e.g. loan sharking). I doubt that any significant number of rich people got that way by being 'loan sharks'. You did referr to people being given a 'financial helping hand' later on... perhaps instead of referring to 'usury' you should have used the word 'inheritance'. (more on that later). Actually, the majority (69%) of wealthy people (more than $500,000 in investable assets) actually obtained their wealth through either work, business ownership, or investments (based on their own efforts). Only a tiny portion (6%) are rich ONLY because of inheritance, and of the remaining 25%, they may have inherited some of their money, but they have also increased their wealth through their own efforts. So, 2/3s of all wealthy people actually did work for their money. http://blogs.wsj.com/wealth/2008/04/11/ear...rs/?mod=WSJBlog

Ah but what value are proper scientific studies when instead you can listen to the anecdotes of a dozen pot heads? (sarcasm intended)