Big Brass Nut

Well, another reasonably well-known liberal blog (See Correction Below) has gone a little nutter. Of course, he swears he's not a conspiracy theorist:

Nevertheless, although some within the various 9/11 conspiracy theory movements are genuinely off their rockers and have no point whatsoever, there remains a body of nearly compelling evidence, a great deal admittedly circumstantial and speculative, that the 9/11 Commission did not even so much as touch; and I can state without reservation that no future, official commission that might revisit the matter will ever go within light-years of a complete, thorough, and comprehensive investigation.

So he wants us to applaud him because he's not one of those off their rocker fruitcakes. What's his flavor?

Below is one of the better analyses of the collapse of the World Trade Center towers. The gentleman is Gordon Ross, a mechanical engineer. His presentation, which was done in London last year, is not slick and polished, yet he establishes a credibility about himself by the very way in which he walks a tightrope between technical explanations and appeal to those less knowledgeable in matters of skyscraper construction and demolition.

Yep, old Gordon Ross. I provided a link to Newton's Bit's decimation of Ross, with perhaps just a trace of acerbity, and told him not to misuse his soapbox to coerce people into a dead end.

Well, that'll teach me to go easy on him. The twit responded in the comments:

You swallow the line of the govenment hook, line, and sinker, then you come here to spew the same at me. Of course, there are plenty of reasons to believe that the events of September 11, 2001, occurred pretty much as the official story goes, but there are plenty of reasons to be suspicious; and bringing those suspicions, when they are soundly set forth, to light merits no ad hominem attack like you just leveled at me, especially when I am trying to make a larger point about a government that has lost all credibility and offer fuel for a decent discussion. I bent over backwards to try to set out why so much conspiracy theory is nonsense, and still you go on the attack. It's just like the filth the Right-wingers in their threatening e-mail messages cough up every time I lay out another facet of the case of why this Administration has literally ruined this country's future. You are in bad company when you come off spitting the same flavor of venom as all the other defenders of this awful President and his awful crew. It's also like the disgusting messages I got—and still get, once in a while—about my article on the USS Liberty incident.

Ah, so he's another one of those Israel-bashers? Not that the "Truth" Movement needs any more of those.

Notice also that, in my condescending attack on so much of conspiracy theory, I left out names of 9/11 crazies. Again, you went right to that kind of associative attack, which I had pointed out in the post as fallacious reasoning by conspiracy theorists, themselves; but there you were, going right to the heart of fallacy by association. Perhaps I should take that approach when I damn both Obama and Clinton for their thousands and thousands of fire-breathing, spinning-eyed cultist followers.

You don't get any points from me for not being one of those "crazies". There are no sane "Truthers"; just ones that aren't quite nutty enough to be locked up. Note as well that he gives no indication of having read the response from Newton's Bit. Of course, it does have complicated stuff like formulas and calculations, unlike Gordon's video.

At any rate, you can lead a horse's patootie to water, but you can't make him drink.

Correction: Apparently this is not that big a liberal blog; there is something called the "Big Brass Alliance" which is fairly major, and I confused the two.

Update: Get this comment from the poster, Dark Wraith (I'm sure he's a wicked RPG player):

The telling tale is not entirely in the words written, here, but as much in the oddities of detail: "Pat Curley," "Mark Roberts," "Dan K. Stanley," "B.J. Edwards."

Of almost 1900 threads here at this Weblog, this one has the highest ratio of commenters putting their "real" names to their comments. This is the same device used by some ad spammers: the FROM line carries a real name, thereby inducing the recipient to assign a level of credibility to what is otherwise just an advertisement. I am most certain that readers here have seen these types of e-mail messages. Here, the same method is being used. It has been done at other Websites, too.

Also, the consistent use of proxy services by these debunkers is indicative. (So, too, is the gaping back door on the particular anonymizers they keep using.)

What a fruitcake! We use our real names, therefor it must be fake. And because we used multiple real names, we must have been using proxy services.