GOP Senate Candidate Flirts With Troof, Endorses Infowars

Greg Brannon, a contender in the Republican primary for the US Senate, certainly seems like a fruitcake.  He danced close to the edge of Trooferism in a radio interview in 2012 (when he was running for Congress):

Greg Brannon: These questions, again, actually, that's what [9/11 commission vice-chair] Lee Hamilton said. And he just said, there's other questions that need answering. The guy who got all the information…a Democrat and a Republican, were the co-chairmen of the 9/11 commission, and when they got done, they did not put their stamp of approval on the commission. They said, 'There's data that we did not put in there.' So things like this have to be asked.

 Of course, the notion that Hamilton and Kean did not put their stamp of approval on the commission report is a bunch of BS.  Troofers love to quote that passage in their book about the commission being set up to fail, but they always miss the conclusion the two reached, that the commission did not fail due to the hard work of their staffers.

More troubling than that, however, is that Brannon's response came to a particularly buffonish Troofer question:

John, caller: I'm a 9/11 truther. And I had a friend of mine…tell me, look on the internet, Google "the Pentagon" and show me where the plane hit the Pentagon. Where is the plane? There's all kinds of pictures of that building smoldering, and fire trucks everywhere. There's no plane. So I did research on the size of planes, of the engines that ran this plane. These things are 12,000 pounds, these engines that would have flown off—that's six tons—and put a hole in something. There's nothing there.

 Hunt the Boeing in 2012?  Seriously?

Brannon also fell back on his comments about Hamilton when challenged about a website he ran called Founders' Truth, which included a link to Alex Jones' ridiculous Infowars:

Jim, caller: So I went to your website, and you made a comment about 9/11 a few weeks ago, and I went to your website, and you have a link to [InfoWars]. Can you tell your listeners, where InfoWars got their name on the web? On the internet? What was their claim to fame?
Brannon: Well they've been on [the web] for 17 years, but they think it is an inside job.
Jim: Right. So, do you—do you think it's an inside job?
Brannon: I'm the same as [the commissioners], they want more investigation. I just want more investigations…Don't forget, Lee Hamilton, the chair of the 9/11 committee, he wants more investigations. I just think it's very important we study things thoroughly.

Note particularly that Brannon apparently knew off the top of his head that Infowars had been on the web since 1995.  That certainly indicates more than a passing familiarity with the site.

RCP polling currently has Brannon running a reasonably close second to Thom Tillis, the speaker of NC's house, but Tillis will probably need to face Brannon or whoever finishes second in a runoff .

Brannon has some other skeletons in his closet; a jury found him liable for misleading investors in a tech startup company he co-founded in 2010.

Hat Tip to Consdemo in the comments.

And John Judge Croaks

Bad week for the Troofers:

 Our society has lost a great activist today with the death of John Judge.  No one spoke more clearly, strongly, and informedly on political power, militarism, and activism for positive change.  While John lived nextdoor to Dennis Kucinich -- and with one of the best views and one of the best collections of political books and documents -- in Washington, D.C., it was as staff person for Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney that he advanced numerous causes of peace and justice and accountability for the powerful on Capitol Hill.  On impeaching Bush and Cheney he was there first.  John's expertise reached back into history and across continents.  From the Kennedy assassination to conscientious objection to how-a-bill-becomes-a-law, he was a person to turn to for information and wisdom who was never anything but helpful, friendly, cheerful, and energetic.  He could describe the hiring of Nazis in Operation Paperclip and the creation of the Cold War and then suggest that perhaps the Nazis actually won World War II.

 Judge is kind of a "kitchen sink" Truther; he appears to believe in every conspiracy theory out there. from JFK to RFK to MLK to Pearl Harbor to 9-11.  Here's a talk he gave in early 2002 that summarizes where the movement was at back then; it's the usual crap about 6 of the hijackers are alive and how his parents pointed out to him the locations of the SAM batteries at the Pentagon.



He claims that NORAD knew about all four hijackings by 8:45, which would be a pretty good trick as Flight 93 had taken off from Newark only three minutes earlier.  In fact, the best evidence suggests that Flight 93 was hijacked around 9:29, while Flight 77 appears to have been hijacked about 8:54.

It is interesting that he was a staffer for McKinney, who is also a Truther moron; one wonders whether she just picked nutbar personnel or if he actually influenced her with his crackpottery.

He apparently died after a stroke.  My mother always said that deaths tend to happen in threes;  famous Truthers might want to be careful in the near future.

Another Troofer Offs Himself

Michael Ruppert, an early bigwig in the 9-11 Denial Movement, shot himself.  No surprise, the conspiracy theories are already being propounded:

a guy of this stature that never advocated guns would not have ended it this way....this doesnt make sense...this better be investigated to the highest level!

Ruppert's theories about 9-11 were (as usual) tied into some overarching conspiracy theory having to do with "Peak Oil".  

Congressman Kook

This will come as no surprise to those who've followed his buffoonish career, but Congressman Jim McDermott (D-Seattle) further beclowns himself on C-Span.