Grandma Troofer the Terrorist

Far from typical, but certainly a classic nut:

A 46-year-old Indiana grandmother is under investigation for her possible ties to suspected and convicted international terrorists, FoxNews.com has learned.

Trooferism:

In lengthy e-mail exchanges with FoxNews.com, Smith alternatively defended her online postings, denied being anti-American, called the Sept. 11 attacks an inside job, the U.S. a terrorist organization and praised the American-born radical Muslim cleric Anwar al Awlaki -- architect, trainer and inspiration for many of the recent terrorist attacks attempted or committed against the U.S. President Obama last April approved Awlaki's inclusion on the CIA's targeted killing list.

Truthers Get in Altercation With Police in Hawaii

A group of truthers from We Are Change made the news for getting in an altercation with the police, while they were running around filming the security procedures surrounding President Obama's vacation in Hawaii. Probably not the police's finest moment, even dealing with nutjobs you should treat them properly.

HONOLULU -- A public access television crew complained of police mistreatment Thursday, after trying to get a picture of President Barrack Obama.

Just after dawn Wednesday, the three-woman crew for a Big Island public access program called "We Are Change Hawaii" drove up to the barricade near the president's vacation home in Kailua.

The video from the news report is available at the link.

What Are the Odds?

Glenn Zarmanov would have a field day with this one. The other day I flew back home. You know how at the beginning of the security checkpoint somebody looks at your boarding pass and driver's license, and makes a notation on the former?

Well the notation on mine was 1-911. No kidding.

Eggscrutiatingly Stupid

Someone on the 911 Experiments website disproves the paper of Zdenek Bazant, a structural engineering professor at Northwestern University, by, and I kid you not, dropping eggs on top of each other. The fact that only 2 eggs break supposedly proves that the World Trade Center towers should not have collapsed.

In related news I disproved the moon landings using a donut and a cardboard paper towel tube...



Once again, these people are beyond parody.

The Year In Troof: March Mania

Sean Fitzgerald, the "very sane" Troofer who killed his father, was found not guilty by reason of insanity.

J. Patrick Bedell, another obviously sane person, took out a gun and started shooting people at the Pentagon Metro Station before being shot and killed himself. Bedell is a classic 9-11 Troofer.

The Troofers managed to get propositions on the ballot in six tiny New Hampshire towns, and went 1-5.

In the wake of the Pentagon shooting the media discovered that the Troofers were not just charming crackpots, that they could be homicidal maniacs as well. The Washington Post slammed Japanese Troofer Fujita. Fujita tried to weasel out of it:

'But I clearly said I have never concluded that September 11 was a dark plot and never stated that (the collapse) of the Twin Towers was a controlled demolition.'

A typical bit of prevarication from a Troofer, as Angrysoba proved.

Lots of anti-Israel, anti-Jew, anti-Holocaust stuff going on. Dahlia Wasfi provided the Zionist conspiracy theorizing at Jon Gold's Treason in America Confab. Adam Syed turned out to be a Holocaust denier.

Charles Lewis

I hadn't heard of this guy until Jesse's Pentagon Circus aired, but apparently he's the Troofer witness from heaven. This LA building inspector has evidence on virtually every aspect of 9-11 Troof. Every aspect that is, except the one you'd think of with his building inspection background.

Standdown? Yeah, he heard about that:

At first, LAX Security was very upset because it seemed to Security that none of the FAA's Air Traffic Controllers (ATCs) tracking the hijacked airliners had notified NORAD as required.

More chatter revealed that ATCs had notified NORAD, but that NORAD had not responded, because it had been "ordered to stand down."

Pentagon hit by a missile? Check:

Another piece of information that I heard, shortly after my arrival, was that the Pentagon had been "hit by a rocket." It's possible that the word was "missile," although I'm quite certain it was "rocket." I was, in any case, quite surprised when I later got home and learned that the media were reporting that an airliner had hit the Pentagon.

Flight 93 shot down? Check:

This station also reported that two fighter jets had been scrambled and had successfully shot down a hijacked airliner over Pennsylvania. The point of deployment of the fighter jets was also mentioned, but I can't remember the name of the military base.

Oddities about the collapse of the two towers? Nope, building inspector Lewis has nothing to report on that score. None of his fellow building inspectors were chattering about that, apparently.

Note as well that his stated reason for heading out to LAX is just a little weird:

I decided that I should go to the APO, because I was one of only a few persons who would know how to fix certain parts of the new security systems if problems developed. Especially crucial were the systems at Guard Post II, for which I had managed the design changes and construction.

He went out there to be available to fix certain parts of a guard shack? And I'm sorry, I don't find his claims of being at the Hilton at 6:30 AM very credible. At the end he provides several ways in which his story could be corroborated, but you can guess the next part. David Ray Griffin (who made the post at 911 truth dot org) made no attempt to confirm the guy's story.

Troofer Action Figures

Left in the comments section by M. Gregory Ferris, and too good not to promote:

The Troofer Action Figure.:
• Comes in standard black “9/11 Truth” t-shirt and jeans. Additional outfits such as pizza delivery man, McDonald’s fry-cook, and super market bag-boy are also available as their workday disguises.
• Wind it up and it walks into the nearest wall repeatedly.
• Each figure sold with scale replica laptop computer, and investigation kit (which is typically empty).

The Troofer Action Figure does not come with Barbie. Barbie comes with GI Joe, she only fakes it with the Troofer Action figure.

The Richard Gage action figure:
• Comes with stackable boxes to magically recreate any structural failure.
• The figure features a coin-slot in his back where you can donate money (or store dust bunnies)

The Alex Jones action figure features a big mouth.

The Brian Good action figure comes in janitor’s outfit and bag of iron microspheres.

Coming soon, Troofer Jenga, which is much like regular Jenga except that once the tower falls the players are forced to argue for hours about why the tower actually fell and who really knocked down by “pulling it”. Even the winners lose.

Great comment, Greg! May I suggest:

The David Ray Griffin action figure comes with a correctable memory stick, so you can change the evidence he cites to keep up with the latest research. However, every year or two the corrections get erased and he reverts to his original spiel.

Update: See also here for some hilarious Troofer games and action figures.

Their Own Personal Superhero

I often get asked why I think truthers believe what they do, and one of my answers is ego. Truthers like to believe in some fantasy world where they are the persecuted truth tellers who thankslessly fight against an oppresive regime while enduring the scorn and ridicule of society, sort of Nelson Mandela meets Batman. Nothing typifies this more than this video of a couple of truthers addressing the Portland City Council on how the recent Oregon bomber and last year's underwear bomber were both entrapped by the FBI and CIA. The video itself was rather boring, but this comment on 911 Blogger makes my point so well.

Well done and your courage is appreciated
The physical act of going into a council setting like that while the overseers sit at elevated levels and look bored at you is a tough one to actually commence with. You persevered and read some great stuff for the record. Thanks!

Wow! They went in front of the city council, nevermind that Portland has one of the most far-left whacko city governments this side of Havana anyway, and endured bored bureaucrats sitting on a dais. What an act of superhuman courage!

The Year in Troof: February Follies

Gage's Gaggle held their 1000th signer press conference and celebration. Steven Jones chose this opportunity to speculate that perhaps the New World Order had caused the Haiti earthquake.

Sibel Edmonds became a 9-11 Truther.

Debra Medina, a Republican candidate for Texas Governor who was registering real support in the polls, crashed and burned when she claimed that there were lots of legitimate questions about controlled demolition at the WTC on the Glenn Beck show.

Don Meserlian, the swimming pool engineer, got slapped down in local court for threatening to beat up the local cops because they weren't interested in his rants about misprision of treason.

The Year in Troof: January

The 1000th Clown joined Richard Gage's circus, only about 2-1/3rd years after Gage's predicted date. Not having learned his lesson, Box Boy promptly set a goal of having 2,000 members by summertime.

Cindy Sheehan joined the Troof Brigade.

The State Department blew a big hole in the "Osama Ain't Wanted for 9-11" meme.

The Obama Administration gave up on trying KSM in New York City.

Reactions to Jesse's Pentagon Circus

Finally got the chance to watch it myself. My thoughts:

1. The standdown witness is an LA building inspector? Of course, it makes complete sense to me! And it's no surprise that he tunes in to "the high-level police radio frequency" and learns that a missile hit the Pentagon. Let's put some timeframes on this. Jesse clearly states that Lewis learned this after he learned about the standdown. But what time was the Pentagon hit? Around 9:38 in the morning, right? What time is that in LA? So now we're supposed to believe that an LA building inspector was at work at LAX before 6:30 in the morning?

2. Matt Sullivan, who gets interviewed in the second segment is a "reporter" for the kook newspaper, the Rock Creek Free Press.

3. Dwain Deets, the former NASA engineer, embarrasses himself with his assumption that the "official story" says the nose of the plane must have made the hole in the C ring. Of course, as we have discussed previously, it was the landing gear which made that hole; the nose is (as Deets says) much too fragile to do that. Deets is making a classic strawman argument here.

4. Deets endorses the flyover conspiracy theory! LOL, so much for Deets, he joins the CIT nutbars in Troofer hell.

5. Note that they interview Rob Balsamo at Freeway Airport. Why not interview Marcel Bernard, as Dylan did, or one of the pilots who actually flew with Hani Hanjour the day he was refused rental of a Cessna? Could it be that Bernard's assessment of Hanjour as an average to below average pilot wouldn't support the conspiracy theory?

6. Jesse's gofer proves unable to hit the Pentagon in the flight simulator (with a Troofer as his co-pilot). But why not have a real professional pilot who's not a nutbar try it? The gofer says he's flown "a few times" in small planes; Hanjour had a professional air pilot's license and hundreds of hours in a simulator. It's pretty clear that Jesse's bending over backwards to support the conspiracy theory.

7. Love the dolt who compares the Pentagon crash to the Potomac crash. Let's see should there be any difference in the condition afterwards between a plane that hits a river, and a plane that hits a massive concrete building?

8. Voice-morphed crap, with Dewdney. Note that there is no discussion as to whether the voice-morphing shown today (2010) was that good in 2001. My guess is no, that it wasn't. Also, we aren't shown this being done in real-time, as it would be in a phone conversation where there has to be some back and forth between the participants.

9. The usual nuttery about the missing $2.3 trillion, and how this was all a plot to make sure everybody forgot about that press conference where Rumsfeld announced it. As usual, nobody notes that, gee, maybe if Rumsfeld wanted everybody to forget about it, maybe he could have, oh, I don't know, NOT ANNOUNCED IT IN THE FIRST PLACE?

As James indicated, it does seem like a flashback to 2005, and it's causing some indigestion among the Troofers. At Flogger:

The Pentagon no planers have been straightened out six ways from Sunday for years now. This is an exercise in repetition. You are aware of these challenges as most are. This episode is a circus of ridiculous misinformation. It's incoherent, rambling conspiracy porn of the worst kind, and does extreme injustice to 9/11 Truth. The IDEA that a missile was involved, is something not even CIT accepts as credible. It's utter delusional crackpottery. Dwain Deets?? He got it handed to him in debate on this site. He knows next to nothing about the Pentagon. Rob "Tends towards planes at the WTC" Balsamo??

The guys at the misnamed 9-11 Debunkers site were more enthusiastic:

I was skeptical about this episode, and almost didn't bother watching it. But I'm glad I did, it was so much better than I thought it would be.

They exposed how Norman Mineta's testimony that suggests a standdown was covered up. They interviewed Charles Lewis about what he heard at LAX. They demonstrated the ludicrous difficulty of the official flight path using a flight simulator. They demonstrated the power of voice morphing technology, which was mindblowing even for me. And the exposing of the 9/11 commission at the end was excellent.

And best of all, no CIT!

Yes, no CIT, but the program did manage to endorse CIT's flyover theory, the most controversial part of CIT's entire position.

Troof Action? Crickets over there, but we'll presume given their usual stance on the Pentagon crap that they were not amused.

My take? It's an embarrassing episode, which does no credit to anybody involved. I'd like to support the supposed skeptic on the show, but he was mostly a paper tiger, there to put up minimal resistance to Jesse's kookery. The black British gal (June) was every bit as credulous as she was in last year's episode.

Jesse "The Moron" Ventura on the Pentagon Conspiracy Theories

Jesse does another episode of his Conspiracy Theories TV show, this time concentrating on the Pentagon. Missiles at the Pentagon, no passenger bodies found, no plane debris, Donald Rumsfeld held a press conference announcing that $2.3 trillion was missing... What, is it 2005 again?

Coins Explains It All

Some profanity, NSFW, but hilarious. Great stuff!

How Dumb Can You Get?

Not much dumber than this post over at Flogger:

Hani Hanjour, supposedly on Flight 77, was about 5 feet tall and the other hijackers ranged from 5.5 to 5' 7". They were of slim build.

Captain Charles Burlingame of Flight 77 was over 6 feet, a Navy Captain, weight lifter, and a boxer. The OCT says pilots like him gave up their planes to these puny weaklings with box cutters? The story makes no sense.

How tall is a man strapped in a pilot's seat?

And check out the rest of the post:

here are many ways the 6 foot men on the flights could have overcome them.
1. Take a seat cushion as a shield, and punch the hijackers out.
2. Pour hot tea or coffee in their face, then move in to disarm them.
3. Throw luggage at them, then move in for the tackle
4. Take a scarf or towel and snap them in the face
wrap their hand, then turn the box cutter on them.
5. Two or more passengers could overpower each one of the hijackers
6. Push the snack cart down the middle and ram the hijackers
7. Take a fire extinguisher, spray at the terrorists, then move in.

Any more ideas?

Yeah, I got a couple:

8. Kick sand in their faces.
9. Say, "Boxcutters, haha!" And make it sting.

It's tempting to say, oh, that's just one idiot at Flogger. But look at the post below that by Glenn Zarmanov:

It should be an insult to one's intelligence that a national emergency occurred on 9/11, the date the same as the number for emergency, 911.

Glenn, comparing your intelligence to that of an opossum would be an insult to marsupials.

Meanwhile, over at Troof Action, they are just now coming to the conclusion that David Ray Griffin is either non compos or a fraud.

False dichotomy, people!

Bentham Comedy Continues

It seems that the storied nanothermite paper is collapsing into to its footprint at freefall speed. A former professor at the University of Ottawa did a critique of the paper and sent it to the supposed current editor. Guess what? The supposed current editor resigned awhile ago. Why?

1) I was not editor of the journal at the time the manuscript you refer to was received and processed. I was not involved in its handling, and in no way do i agree with its conclusions. In fact i do not even know how the paper's peer reviewing was handled - or if it was reviewed at all. The journal never wanted to disclosed this matter to me

2) What may be even worse - noone seems to be at the helm of this Journal. Months ago -simply after becoming acquainted with the article you mention, its possible misshandling, etc- i submitted my immediate resignation as editor to the open chemical physics journal. As you can see from the email below, my letter of resignation was received and acknowledged. However, i still appear as the journal's editor - in fact i'm still receiving manuscripts to handle (which i naturally ignore).

(bolding added for emphasis).

Yep, he resigned over the Harrit/Jones paper. Note in particular that the professor who critiqued the nanothermite paper is sympathetic to the "Truth" Movement.

Hat Tip: grandmastershek at JREF.

CPT's Coverage of Loose Change

A little more fair and balanced than the last time around; the debunkers get in some pretty good points. Note that Screw Loose Change (the movie) is mentioned at the very end. They do let the Waterboy get away with his claim to be a whistle-blower, and the materials given away to donors are skewed strongly to the crackpot version with only the Popular Mechanics book representing the rational side.

Ambitious, I Will Give Them That

Being from Seattle and having worked at Microsoft I am pretty familiar with the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, and I just don't think this is their thing....

From: CICorp
To: info@gatesfoundation.org
Sent: Monday, December 13, 2010 6:05 PM
Subject: Please support a New Investigation of 9/11/2001, AE911Truth.org (501c3 nonprofit)

This is a proposal for the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to support a New Investigation of the events of September 11, 2001.

Bill has a scientific mind, and surely must see some suspicious things about what happened on that day.
* WTC Building 7 came down at free fall speed, as if by pre-planted explosives.
* WTC Buildings 1 and 2 also came down suspiciously fast, after have stood for nearly an hour.
* Scientists have identified military grade nano-thermite in the WTC dust (www.NielsHarrit.org)
* The Pentagon refuses to release photos of the jet, despite over 100 cameras
* The hole where the jet supposedly went in, is suspiciously small, with no wing marks.
* Eye witness testimonies vary as to the approach of the plane, its size, and type
* Senator Max Cleland, said the 9/11 Commission was a "cover up" and quit it.
* Flight 11 from Boston turned Northwest towards Griffiss AFB then sharply south
* Flight 11 turned off its transponder identifier, and "almost collided with Flight 175
* The Bush Administration used 9/11 as a pretext for wars in Afghanistan and Iraq
* America has used "false flag ops" to start wars before, such as the Gulf of Tonkin in VietNam.
* Bush and Cheney refused to testify under oath, nor in public, to the Commission.
* Over 1370 Architects and Engineers say the WTCs fell as if by explosives. (www.AE911Truth.org)
* Hundreds of high level politicians, intelligence and military personnel, and professors as for a New Investigation. (www.PatriotsQuestion911.com)

OK, this is one of the most idiotic things I have ever heard.

NIST Did Test Explosive Theory

Our fellow debunkers over at Conspiracies R Not Us covers it well:

Rather than vindicating the faith, this archive proves that not only were the NIST and 9/11 Commission reports based on rigorous testing, but that engineers, academics and scientists working for the government explicitly tested conspiratorial claims. We have gigs and gigs of video proof that NIST and its affiliates considered every possible angle of the event, and were able to rule out the kinds of hypotheses that today guide what remains of the faith's holy writ.

Terrific job; read the whole post. Once again the Troofers demonstrate their amazing ability to ignore the evidence that rules against them.

Assessment of 9-11 Troof in Canada

Although the focus is on the Canadian brand, this summation sounds pretty accurate for the US Troofers as well.

Other newly added material included "United We Fall by Press for Truth" (4) , "9/11 Truth info wars rising" by the Alex Jone's (5) of Infowar and for the first time at a 9/11 civil information event a newsletter was introduced and titled "Global Underground News Network" (6) headlining stories such as "Black Bloc=Police Provocateurs", "Media Blackout Usually Not A Good Indicator" and "Judaism is not Zionism."

All these newly added leaflets came to be with no group discussion under the familiar banner of 9/11 Truth. "How did this happen?" I thought to myself when not too long ago this small productive group of 9/11 truth activists would settle issues and make decisions on material over (7) tea, coffee and friendly conversations after a good days work on the 9/11 civil information lines. Somehow the priorities all change as new blood moved in and replaced this small groups democratic decision making with the Infowar- We are here- Get use to it anarchy rules!

I suspect what is happening is that 9-11 Troof has been largely abandoned by the Left. It was appealing when one could argue that exposing the "inside job" would get rid of Bush and Cheney and end the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Of course, nowadays it's harder to make that argument with Obama in power and the wars grinding on with no sign of ending.

I don't think it's so much that right-wingers or libertarians have suddenly signed up en masse. Alex Jones and the Ronulans have been around for years. It's that the rest of the movement has disappeared, leaving only the bitter core. We Are Change and Alex Jones have given the libertarian/survivalist wing a focus, at the same time as Obama's election has sapped the movement of so many of its liberal followers.

It is appropriate that the Troofers are reduced to muttering about microspheres. They are rapidly becoming a micromovement.

The Conspiracy Theory Detector

Skeptic Magazine's Michael Shermer weighs in on conspiracy theories in Scientific American. For an added bonus, catch Uncle Fetzer's rant in the comments.

This past September 23 a Canadian 9/11 "truther" confronted me after a talk I gave at the University of Lethbridge. He turned out to be a professor there who had one of his students filming the “confrontation.” By early the next morning the video was online, complete with music, graphics, cutaways and edits apparently intended to make me appear deceptive (search YouTube for “Michael Shermer, Anthony J. Hall”). “You, sir, are not skeptical on that subject—you are gullible,” Hall raged. "We can see that the official conspiracy theory is discredited....It is very clear that the official story is a disgrace, and people who go along with it like you and who mix it in with this whole Martian/alien thing is discrediting and a shame and a disgrace to the economy and to the university."

David Griscom's Latest Hypothesis

You can tell David L. Griscom's a serious scientist, because he's careful to call it a hypothesis and not a theory.

Is he a CIT-head?

I have previously prepared a PowerPoint (available on request) based on eyewitness reports and the officially released Pentagon-security-camera frames that supports a hypothesis proposed by others that the Pentagon was struck on 9/11 by a smallish twin engine aircraft superficially resembling the a Boeing 737, 757, or 767. Most probably the specific aircraft type was Cold-War-era Navy A-3 converted to an unmanned air vehicle (UAV). UAVs are commonly referred to as “drones.” According to eyewitness reports, this second aircraft arrived at the Pentagon simultaneously with American Airlines Flight 77 (AA-77) but from a different quarter, at higher speed, and at lower altitude. Thus, most witnesses caught a glimpse of one or the other of the two planes, but not both. The expanding fireball of the A-3 impact then distracted everyone from noting (or correctly interpreting) the escape of the Boeing 757. In this analysis of the Pentagon attack, the passengers and crew of American Airlines Flight 77 (AA-77) would have escaped unscathed.

Is he a pod person?

So I reasoned that that both UA-175 (#N612UA) and AA-11 (#N334AA) took off on the morning of 11 September 2001 as unmodified Boeing 767s that had been continuously in the possession of their original owners. However, the plane that actually struck WTC2 was captured on film and digital video cameras by many dozens of individuals – and widely-published frames from these films (some even appearing on magazine covers) show the impacting aircraft to have unmistakable external modifications.

Or is he a bumbler?

Returning to the proposed ruse, I asked myself: Would it have been possible to fool the radars into missing two aircraft swapping places? Actually, the answer might have been “No” ...were it not for one thing: AA-11 turned off its transponder at a convenient time to cover up its possible substitution for a drone not possessing a transponder. This switchoff was done at point and time D on Slides 2 and 3, respectively – i.e., just before the two aircraft would have met near point E in my scenario. An aircraft’s transponder sends high-strength signals (so-called “mode C returns”) back the radar installations with encoded data specifically identifying the aircraft in terms of a four-digit number assigned by the air traffic controllers and giving its precise altitude based on an on-board airpressure altimeter. The “primary returns” (small triangles in Slide 3) represent reflections of the radar pulses off the skin of the aircraft, which bounce back to the radar receiver as signals very much weaker than those from the aircraft’s transponder ...and carrying no information about the aircraft’s identity. These weak primary returns are susceptible to large statistical errors when an attempt is made to extract altitude data from them (note scatter in triangles in Slide 3).

Nevertheless, as suggested by the bold arrows that I have added in Slide 3, the NTSB primary-return data appear consistent with actual detection of an unknown aircraft climbing to 30,400 ft and there meeting AA-11, which in turn promptly begins to descend.

Well, actually he's all of the above, and more. Believe it or not, Steven Jones' favorite peer reviewer believes in a CIT-like hypothesis for Flight 175:

Specifically, what I see in this film is a super-fast aircraft much nearer the camera than to the WTC, which pulls out of a steep dive practically simultaneously with the 767 attacker seen striking WTC2, banks sharply to its right, and disappears going away from the camera (in the general direction of the WTC). The object I am describing here has been widely noted but is generally spoken of as being a bird. However, no bird known to man is capable of flying laterally into our field of view and then turning away and disappearing in the distance in a total elapsed time of less than a second! Yet this is exactly what we see in Slide 6! It seems quite possible that this may be the very same “bird” as the one captured flying west to east just north of the World Trade Center just 14 seconds later (see the following video and Slide 7):

Good news for the family members: Griscom no longer believes that all the passengers survived.

In earlier versions of this hypothesis, I supposed that all passengers were co-conspirators, who would have been sent on their separate ways to tropical islands or mountaintop retreats of their choices. Subsequently, it was suggested to me that the head conspirators might not have had complete trust in everyone privy to the conspiracy. Thus, while promising a cushy “witness protection program” to every co-conspirator ordered to board one of these flights on the morning of 9/11/01, it seems very possible that the leaders shunted aside and murdered those they considered less trustworthy. Moreover, on study of the occupations and travel priorities of some of the people on the passenger and cabincrew lists of the 9/11 “hijacked” jetliners, I now believe that a number of innocent people were allowed to board these flights as well ...and that all of these innocents were murdered.

(Italics in original)

Well, as you can see, David Griscom is a very serious and diligent researcher. I can readily believe that his 12 pages of comments and suggestions on the nanothermite paper improved it immeasurably. Note to commenters: Don't talk about the microspheres! I mentioned it once, but I think I got away with it.

Moron Bruno Bruhwiler

The folks at the Southern Poverty Law Center have some information about WAC-LA's leader. I know it's nowhere near as fascinating as iron microspheres, but it is amusing nonetheless:

Bruhwiler also appears to be a participant in so-called redemption practices, which are rife in the world of sovereign citizens. Proponents of this bizarre ideology argue that when the U.S. quit the gold standard in 1933, it pledged its citizens as collateral so it could borrow money based on their future earnings. Then, the theory goes, the government funded a secret “Treasury Direct Account” for each individual that it stocks with millions of dollars. Redemptionists have come up with a series of bizarre maneuvers that are meant to liberate this money from the government and have it paid to them personally. For most redemptionists, this involves, among many other incomprehensible steps, filing a “Uniform Commercial Code-1” document.

In February, Bruhwiler filed just such a form with California Secretary of State’s office. His UCC-1 filing says that his “one hundred billion United States silver dollars” have now been transferred to “Bruno Ernst Bruhwiler, a living man, secured party.”

Sounds like he's heading for Leo Wanta territory there. Hey, Bruno, check the flag in the courtroom for your trial. If it's got a gold fringe on it, you can tell the judge that you refuse to be tried in an admiralty court. Also, check to see if your name is in all-caps on the warrant. I hear lots of folks get off that way.

Hat Tip: Dumballover at JREF.

Ready for a Laugh?

Guess who exposed himself as the peer-reviewer for Steven Jones' Active Thermitic Materials paper?

No, not Snoopy. That would be deserving of some respect. Instead it's that sack of fecal matter inhabiting the hockey jersey, David L. Griscom. Does that seem like a harsh assessment of such a kindly-looking old phart?

Well, Griscom has earned it and more. In a movement not exactly blessed with sensitivity, he came up with the single-most offensive theory put forth by the Truthers: All the passengers on the four doomed flights are alive and living it up in Tahiti.

I envision a similar 9/11 scheme, but one where the passengers boarded under their true names. Indeed, the seat occupancies on all four aircraft allegedly hijacked on 9/11 were very much lower that industry average (averaging 26% of capacity vis-à-vis 71% for all domestic flights in July 2001). So, here I extend my “all passengers survived” postulate to all four 9/11 “hijacked” flights on the notion that this small number of passengers might have been considered by conspirators as the minimum number for public credulity, while at the same time not exceeding the maximum number of “true believers in the cause” willing to accept long separations from their loved ones (sweetened by handsome Swiss bank accounts).

As I have pointed out in the past, the reason these retards believe that somebody could be persuaded to betray their friends, family and country, is because they themselves would jump at the opportunity, provided the Swiss bank account was handsome enough.

So yes, the guy who "peer-reviewed" Jones' paper is a Troofer moron himself. Professor Jones tries to put a smiley face on it:

The reviewer's name is Prof. David L. Griscom. Among his impressive credentials, Prof. Griscom is a Fellow of the American Physical Society and a Fellow of the AAAS.

Well, he's certainly an AAAS-hole, Steven. But even the Troofers have their limits, and in the comments, loosenuke points out:

Does his promotion of theories, for which there's no actual evidence, such as 'all passengers survived' and 'the Pentagon was hit by a fighter jet', affect your opinion of his credibility- why or why not?

And JO911S published a letter by Griscom Feb 07; why didn't you mention this?

I think you previously mentioned that Bentam was given suggestions for reviewers; was Griscom one of the people suggested?

Jones does a little shuffle:

I do not think that Prof. Griscom's studies on 9/11 "compromise" him as a reviewer -- he critiqued the paper critically as a scientist, giving (as he said) the authors twelve pages of comments and questions. This scientific thoroughness is unusual in a review (from my experience) -- very unusual.

I do not know how the editors selected the reviewers, and I do not know the name of the other reviewer.

Never mind that he's a nut; his nuttiness wasn't evident in his review of our paper. And the second part is a dodge; loosenuke didn't ask him how the reviewer was chosen, just whether Jones recommended him. Given that Jones used to point out Griscom as an example of another physics professional for 9-11 "Truth", it's not hard for me to guess the answer to that question.

But it gets even better. Jones says he doesn't know who the second peer-reviewer was. Not to worry, the next commenter says:

I do know the name of the second Peer Reviewer, who obviously wants to stay anonymous yet. All I can say is that his reputation is undoubtable, too.

Yeah, I'm sure that if Sitting Bull knows him, he must indubitably be another fruitcake.

Nutty Napolitano and Goofy Geraldo Raise Eyebrows

CNN, seeing a chance to get a dig in at their fiercest rival, highlights the new new celebrity Troofers:

It's rare that two media watchdogs – one on the left and one on the right – ever agree when it comes to assessing coverage on the cable news outlets.

But both the conservative Newsbusters and liberal Media Matters are aiming fire at Fox News' Geraldo Rivera and Judge Andrew Napolitano for recently suggesting the third building to fall on September 11, 2001 – 7 World Trade Center- may have collapsed for reasons beside the widely held belief that fire from the two World Trade Center towers nearby was the ultimate cause.

Newsbusters:

Both Napolitano and Rivera have, er, raised questions about the "official" (read: commonsensical) explanation for the collapse of the WTC7 building on September 11, 2001. This conspiracy theory has been thoroughly debunked a number of times. Apparently Geraldo and the Judge are not convinced.

Media Matters:

As Media Matters has documented, Napolitano's previous Jones appearances have been marked with conspiracy theories about the government and the "New World Order." For instance, Napolitano and Jones have agreed that Obama will "start a wider global war" to "be a prince," and discussed whether a powerful banking cartel linked to "world government" would "collapse the economy" and use that "as an excuse for martial law." Napolitano also told Jones of Texas secession: "That time has come. That may actually happen" because of the actions of the government.

Newsbusters links our old buddy Alllahpundit from a couple weeks ago on the Gerald conversion:

Why, oh why, oh why would the nefarious neocon junta that’s supposedly responsible for the 9/11 attacks have bothered with Building 7 in the first place? Never mind the huge number of government operatives they would have needed to plant explosives in the various buildings damaged or destroyed that day, or the fact that somehow not a single one of them has leaked anything about the plot more than nine years later despite that information being worth untold millions. Just ask yourself: If they were going to bring down the Towers as a pretext for war in the Middle East, why the hell would they have brought down Building 7 too? The structure’s collapse adds nothing to the already severe trauma of the day, and taking the time and effort to plant explosives would only increase the odds of detection. It would have been a wholly needless risk.

Of course, the real answer to that question is that to conspiracy theorists, nothing just happens. It was always planned to happen. Oh, sure, they've got some nebulous argument about how the SEC's files on Enron were stored in the building and somehow this prevented the government from prosecuting those responsible (which would be news to Jeff Skilling).

The Huffington Post also covered Napolitano's Trooferism:

Fox Business host Andrew Napolitano revealed on Tuesday that he does not believe the government's account of the 9/11 attacks. Napolitano, who hosts "Freedom Watch" on Fox Business and is frequently seen on Fox News as a legal analyst, told radio host Alex Jones — who is a prominent 9/11 conspiracy theorist —that the attacks "couldn't possibly have been done the way the government told us."

The subject came about when Jones noted that Geraldo Rivera had recently raised questions about the collapse of World Trade Center 7 on Napolitano's Fox Business Show. 9/11 conspiracy theorists have centered on that building's collapse, contending that it was blown up by government forces. Jones asked Napolitano what his opinion about the issue was.

That post attracted an astounding 11,347 comments, and revealed that many of the Huffington Posts' moderators (apparently chosen automatically by a computerized set of criteria) are Truthers themselves.

Update: Family members weigh in:

Charles Wolf's wife, Katherine, died in the North Tower on Sept. 11. He calls conspiracies like those Napolitano discussed "ludicrous," and accused him of using the tragedy to seek attention.

"After all the investigations, they are rather ludicrous," he said. "Nine and a half years after, to bring something like this up, what kind of publicity is he looking for for himself? It appears to me to be rather self-serving. He is not worth getting upset about, he is just someone who is looking for publicity."

Rosemary Cain, whose son, firefighter George Cain, died that day, took issue with Napolitano specifically.

"Judge Napolitano? I can't believe that, I really don't believe it," she said when she heard about his comments. "What can they gain by that? I think it is beneath him to come out with a remark like that. He is in a position of respect."

Bob and Tony and Rosie and Malice

Rosie had Bob McIlvaine and Tony Szamboti on her radio show (MP3 file) a week or so ago. It's the usual bit of nuttery; the program leads in with a lie: "How many buildings collapsed on 9-11 Mom? Three."

Well, three if you don't count WTC-3. And St. Nick's.

Bob McIlvaine talks about the explosions before the planes hit. Never mind that mop-jockey Willie Rodriguez is the only person to claim there were explosions before the plane impacts. Bob's got people from Ladder 10 who told him there were explosions, and Willie who says there was one before the planes, so therefore Bob's got numerous reports of multiple explosions before.

Tony Szamboti chips in (breathlessly--the guy sounds like he's just finished the mile run) to tell us fire can't melt steel. Oh, except for in a few cases. Left unsaid, of course, by this engineer is that fire doesn't have to melt steel for the metal to lose its load-bearing capacity.

The 9-11 Commission didn't even mention Building 7's collapse! (They didn't even mention St. Nick's collapse either, but the dolts never bring that up.)

Sigh. These morons are like a broken record.