"I didn’t know Maher was still on the air."

Oh please!

It's really too bad no one had a taser...

@1,
No really. I don't have cable.

I saw these knobs on I-5 today too. Made me wish I had a paintball gun in the car.

I didn't know Bill Maher was on the air anymore either- thought he was permasacked after the whole "brave terrorist" thing got blown out of proportion, and I have cable.

I go back and forth on the guy, but am glad he's still on the air. I'll add him to my tivo list (so long as he doesn't interfere with Dexter!).

for a city of progressives, seattlites believe the government an awful lot.

OK, they are annoying. But the 'explanation' is bullshit.

Who benefitted? That's obvious.

Read the first one or two accounts on
http://www.patriotsquestion911.com/survivors.html

(I heard Rodriguez on the BBC, he is not a 'troofer', but he knew the buildings inside out, and it was clear that the explosions and the plane impact were physically unrelated).

And building 7? No answer at all about that.

I'm a screaming ultra-leftie, not some NRA guns-in-my-Montana cabin kook. There has been nothing but lies and coverup on this entire sad affair.

And in its name we have thousands dead, A trillion bucks in the toilet, and the US Constitution a crumpled piece of paper in the wastebasket.

@5,

He was kicked off network TV, but he's not too provocative for HBO.

josh you should go to the link above and look at the architects and engineers section - I'm not a fan of the truth groups but...

Here's the thing, people like electricity will follow the path of least resistance. The truthers would have us believe that the government orchestrated a conspiracy of hundreds if not thousands, involving hijackers (willing to die by the way), rigging multiple buildings with explosives (including building 7 for some reason), firing a cruise missile, crashing a jet in a field, and all the cover ups to go along with those schemes. What did they get for all this, a few billion for their wealthy palls.

Why go to all that trouble. Why not just set off a big bomb somewhere, or hell do some kind of attack that work work as simply as an attack. Why pick something that requires exponentially growing your consipiracy. Why fly planes into buildings, then detonate bombs. Hell a few phony defense projects could have accomplished the same thing. Occums razor tells us to not multiply entities beyond necessity. The truthers take questions and use them to create scenarios that raise many more questions.

The fact that they do so on flimsy evidence, the occasional "eye-witnesses"(always known for reliability), and just general supposition, is almost beside the point.

@9, that kind of stuff matters as much as the fact that some "scientists" question evolution. Arguing that your position is true becasue some people with professions say so, is a classic logical fallacy. There are millions of architects and engineers in the US, the fact that a few hundred, or even a few thousand believe in such nonsense is not at all surprising,. No more then the fact that some are likely holocaust deniers, or think the moon landing was fake.

Josh-

"I didn't know Maher was still on the air."

Bullshit. Shenanigans. Are you trying to tell us that your friends don't send you copies of New Rules when he tears into Bush or anti-choice Rs or homophobes.

Your fake attempts to look hip are pathetic.

@7- I know some moderate, fairly intelligent people who buy this shit, and it seems you may be one of them. The points you're bringing up don't support the "truth" argument one bit though. We have "thousands dead, A trillion bucks in the toilet, and the US Constitution a crumpled piece of paper in the wastebasket," yes, but we could have that just as easily whether it was a US conspiracy or not. Did the Bushies cynically take advantage of a horrible tragedy to seize executive power at ungodly levels and push us a little closer to WWIII? Yes, of course, but that doesn't suggest automatically that they planned this shit. I'll buy "allowed to happen" (I've seen the minutes of the PNAC of course), but planned? For all the usual reasons all the usual people have said, this conspiracy theory doesn't float.
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@12- I'm the third person now to say this- I didn't know he was on the air either. We're not hip- We just don't have our TV sets aimed at that channel (or don't have TVs, as in my case).
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Why would Bush, or anyone in that Administration, plan 9/11 when people are lining up around the block to do suicide bombings against the US? A simple risk analysis says there's no way Bush and Co would do this when all they have to do is wait for someone else to do it for them.

Was there cover-up? Fuck yes there was cover-up. Cover-up of the asses of whoever was supposed to prevent this from happening. Absolute worst case: The government had detailed intelligence (i.e. date, time, place, flight #) and let it happen. More likely: They had SOME intelligence (i.e. someone is planning to hijack a plane and fly it into a building, but we don't know specifics).

Oh, and the original reason I went to comments, which I totally forgot: That was a righteous ass-kicking. Screw those jackoffs.
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@7 - I really don't read anything in that testimony to suggest a controlled demolition.

Those guys may know the WTC like the backs of their hands, but they don't seem to know too much about the effects of extreme heat and air pressure through an elevator shaft. They would probably have a similar experience if they sat behind the tail pipe when a car backfired.

Yes, he's still on the air, and also has a "talk-back" session live after his live show, on HBO.com, and many of his monologues and "new rules" sessions end up on blogs such as the Huffington Post or Salon.com.

His RealTime show on HBO makes it WORTH getting cable--its one of the few plain-talking, open-minded things left in the MSM.

kind of all reminds me of the crazy people that believe the denver international airport is a secret bunker crawling with aliens.

then again, the architects and engineers do have a point - some of the other stuff is a bit contrived.

either way, the government (no matter who's been in charge) hasn't got a particularly stellar track record in the truth department.

For some reason I remember that Bill Maher thought that O.J. was not guilty because he wasn't acting like a guilty man would act (the whole drive down the highway).

By the way, I, too didn't know he was still on and I am not hip.

OK, christopher, I will take at face value that many of you do not have New Rules mailed to you by progressive and/or gay friends every single week as I do.

Take a gander:

http://www.hbo.com/billmaher/new_rules/

He can be disconcertingly sexist at times, but his general theses (as this week, "Show me a man wearing an American flag pin in his lapel, and I'll show you an asshole") tend to be right on target.

And he's the most articulate libertarian on TV.

Damn, I wish I had the time to throw at doing something as ridiculous as holding a banner over a freeway or going to a live TV show to yell things at the host that aren't relevant to the discussion.
What do truthers do all day? Do they have jobs? Is there a correlation between the jobless (or self-employed?) and the completely detached from reality?

What do truthers do all day? Do they have jobs? Is there a correlation between the jobless (or self-employed?) and the completely detached from reality?

For those of you without cable (myself included) you can listen to the Real Time audio podcast for free. Just subscribe via iTunes. The occasional sight gag is lost on me, but the lively banter shines through.

As for the 911 truthers? Jeez, look at the evidence. To quote Carl Sagan "Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence." The evidence isn't there. Earlier this month the president and founder of 9/11 Truth UAlbany finally looked at the evidence and admitted he was wrong.

Refreshing.

And here I thought my delusional nephew was the only one. Now I find out theres a whole movement of the little buggers .

For anyone keeping stats... yep, he's jobless (living off of a monthly government SSDI check... real question is, if he hates the government so much... WHY does he take their money so willingly?)

What the truthers don't seem to understand, or want to for that matter, is that they have not a shred of credible, conclusive evidence. Questions and speculation are not enough. Thats the way it works. Until they have that, their cries are not only useless, but fucking annoying. That, and not to mention the truth doesn't mean shit in this day and age anyway.

Hmm, all these 'facts' you lot keep throwing out there are all well and good, and they sound plausible enough, but I'm not going to make up my mind until I hear what Issur has to say on the matter.

Issur, where are you?

Bush and Co let 9/11 happen, that is the best case scenario. It makes my mind numb trying to figure what is true and what is not. As for a large group of Black OP types rigging the WTC to fall: well, maybe. It is not in their interests to be quiet about it, and not be caught? How many CIA/Mossad creeps does it take to rig three building with explosives? And why not create a 9/11 situation if your interests benefit, and you can get away with it? Who was going to investigate it, Gonzalas or the Democrates? Yeah, right.
If you look at the driving forces behind the Iraq war, you see Neo-Cons(mostly hard right Jews), Big Oil Reps(Bush and CO), hard right Christians. Big Oil got record profits, the Neo-Cons got ride of Saddam, and may get ride or Iran(nuke em), and the Fundies got two terms presidential terms of Bush policy. And what do we, the Americans get out of all this? The bill(2 trillion, and the coffins draped in flags.
“Securing the Realm,” is an Israeli policy piece that describes what is happening in the news right now, and it was penned before 9/11, as was the, “Plan for the New American Century.” Read them and weep rubes.

According to at least one 'truther' I spoke with incidents like the one on the Maher Show are government efforts to discredit 9/11 truthers. But they do such a good job of discrediting themselves. I wonder if the entertainment value of these conspiracy theories will last as long as the JFK conspiracy theories (goning on almost 5 decades)

JFK conspiracy theories are at least a little plausible; there wasn't a giant hand that knocked over the WTC from behind a grassy knoll :P

Gah. Too many conspiracy nutjobs out in the world. 9/11 is a conspiracy. 5 people rule the whole planet and are planning to merge Canada the US and South America for a sham economy. Aliens are being housed somewhere. There are weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. Pharmaceutical companies and the mental health care system are trying to put everyone on medications so they can make a gazillion dollars. AIDS is a myth. Elvis is alive. All corporations are evil. The Holocaust never happened. It is all about the masons. The evil liberals are trying to poison our children. The evil right wingers are trying to poison our children. There are secret societies everywhere. blah blah blah blah blah. Really, more people need antipsychotic medications than are currently receiving them.

The link to the other Bill Maher video, 'truthers should be medicated,' is even better:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qxOljd9oOzo

Ugghh. Conspiracy theories (for the most part but not all) are the modern day version of superstition. People take something that is not completely explained and fill in their own "facts" to push some sort of freakish explaination of reality.

They can be interesting to listen to and can make us think but that is the extent of what they should be used for. (ie use SPARINGLY)

But the pricks in Bill's show needed hauled out: first it is a TV Show NOT a political debate of politicians and second of all if you are an audience member you are invited to watch the show. If is rude to take a shit on your host's living room floor which is what they did.

You know, Stephen King shot John Lennon. It's twue!

There was a time growing up when no one would believe me that my family was put in Japanese internment camps or that they existed at all. Oh well.

@31: No, no, no, AIDS is a US government biowarfare project to kill black people. Get it right.

the worst part is that people on democratic underground...oh wait, nevermind, democratic underground are a bunch of idiots...

P@35: the internment of the Japanese has always been taught in Washington schools at least. There was never a cover-up. It was a public policy, for chrissakes, right there on the front page of the newspaper. Not a good comparison at all.

@35: And those people who didn't believe about the internment camps were just like the 9/11 truthers: fucking nuts.

For comparison: Executive Order 9066 and all of the other community notices made it quite public that all people of Japanese descent were being removed from the west coast and put in prison camps. Anyone who denied that, at the time or later, must have been so blind or wilfully ignorant as to be beneath contempt.

You know what annoys me about the Truthers? They oftentimes write like @28 -- with inappropriately used commas, missing spaces, and ludicriously misspelled words.

Put down Lose Chainge and, buy, a, book on, grammer people(already).

@31, tell me about it. In the past natural barriers kept them from bothering the rest of us, but now with the internet and modern media they get access to mass communication.

@38---well gee whiz Fnarf....wasn't taught in my school. Didn't seem common knowledge at all. But, a lot of embarrassing fucked thimgs our country have done in the past are glossed over.

Me so sorry for bad example.

@30---wasn't talking about newspapers and public notices AT THE TIME. Talking about teaching/relating of the incident when I was in high school as a part of our history, in the 1980's.

It was also taught in both my middle school and high school. The fact that American's are rather ignorant of history does not mean in any way that conspiracy theories are true. Not without my horse they don't.

@28 -

And why not create a 9/11 situation if your interests benefit, and you can get away with it?

Stop already. If someone was going to drive by your house with an armored car and throw bags of money on your front lawn, would you go through the trouble of committing an armed robbery and killing the driver?

Risk/benefit does not support an Bush Administration planned and executed 9/11. Worst case, they let it happen.

Congrats on you guys have more better and thorough history classes in middle and high schools than I and probably lots of people.

Maybe though in 40 years events of 9-11 will look different though, conspiracy or not.

I'm sorry, it is impossible for a thinking person growing up in 1980s America not to have heard of the Japanese internment camps. Likewise it is impossible for a rational person to argue that the existence of the camps was covered up. Defended, sure, but covered up? Maybe if you can't read. The legislation that apologized on behalf of the US was signed by Reagan in 1988, for chrissakes. ON TV.

Way to pile up the credibility there.

I believe the WTC towers were brought down by boll weevils, myself.

@36: oh my bad, I was just getting confused between thinking that HIV/AIDS is a state of mind and thinking that it was deployed to get rid of teh gays and the black people in africa plus the junkies...basically all of the non-believers in God's great and holy plan. You know, because we must save the children from the godforsaken liberals, etc. Soon God will open up the skies and sit on his big throne and judge each and every one of us. Or was it that there would be 100 virgins awaiting us in heaven if we flew airplanes into the twin towers? Whatever. It all works out in the end, because God saves us.

@42 - Love the self-inflicted racial slur.

@40
Dear dw, my last post did suck, and I want to thank you for your candor and clarity. A healthy dose of “curt bitch” always does me some good. What I failed to convey in my last post is that I am not a Truther, but still do not believe it is beyond the realm of possibility that the WTC collapsed with a little help from Bush’s friends. Stranger things have happened, like George W. Bush being elected for president two times in a row. But seriously, this whole debate seems a little “straw man” to me. Who are the Truthers, and are they trying to marginalize legitimate concerns about 9/11, like the Bush administration knew it was going to happen, and just let the dice role?

I stumbled upon this article by Matt Taibi of Rolling Stone yesterday when I was looking for info on the Bill Maher incident. The first page just catches you up on the "truth" movement, but starting on page two, he tries to construct the secret meeting where the Bush administration plans 9/11. It's funny and one of the most effective "truth" debunkings I've read.

The thing is, there is no "9/11 truth movement". There are a hundred or a thousand movements, all individual nutjobs with their own poorly thought-out scenarios. That's the beauty of a good conspiracy theory: you don't need consistency, you don't need organization, you don't need agreement on ANY of the facts. You just need a broad consensus that, since Bush & Co. are bad guys, they can be credited with ANY badness your three-cylinder brain can come up with.

So you got guys who think that the towers were brought down with explosives, and guys who don't. You get moronadons who think the Pentagon was hit with a cruise missile, and people who think it was hit with a bran muffin traveling at ten times the speed of light. It doesn't matter; the only thing that matters is the deep abiding faith that there MUST HAVE BEEN a conspiracy of something.

It's a symptom of a mind that has walled itself off from the world, and can't even begin to make sense of anything, not even the tines on a fork. Dark forces are at work, confusing me.

Gotta be Bush, man -- it's GOTTA BE!

Dark forces are not afoot Fnarf? It is obvious Bush is not the master mind of the Hard right’s stunning rout of reason and law the past 8 years, but he does make the perfect scapegoat. Once he is gone, everything can be blamed on him, while everyone that has benefitted from his policies gets off scott free.

50@ you're welcome #1 Ken-san...

Nothing to see here...keep moving along...nothing to see here....keep moving along....

Not sure what's more annoying, conspiracy nuts or anti-conspiracy nuts. Both equally set in their thinking.

Conspiracy nuts are more annoying, hands down, than anti-conspiracy nuts.

9/11 Truth is a joke in your town.

@48:

because we must save the children from the godforsaken liberals, etc.

especially the liberals under their beds.

@59: OMG, that is an actual book??? lol I do have to say it does really irritate me that I have to spend any amount of time taking up sides with anyone close to being a republican just because of the huge conglomeration of ultra-left wing nut jobs out there...and I mean, I am certifiably insane...I have the hospital records and the prescriptions of anti-psychotics to prove it, yet the ultra-left wing idiots have obviously smoked too much weed and are now happily shaking hands with the ultra-right wing nut jobs. I hate saying anything bad about the left, but I just had my fill today of one of those leftie knuckleheads. Why are people so devoid of sense these days???