I don't think there is any "evidence"...at least I don't have any. It's just my belief...my hunch..from years of observation....that the Dems will play the game of pretending to go along with what their constituents (the voters anyway) expect of them. And they will do it only to the extent that the results will end up in a failure and then blame someone else. The more they can blame the Republicans, the more they can frighten people to vote for the Democrats. The Republicans do the same thing. And that works only so long as they can continually convince people that they have no other choice but to vote for one or the other. When people begin to see that it is a rigged game...it really doesn't make much sense to continue the charade. Some people might realize that the only way to change things is to think and act out of the box. And when it has come to that ...it is really scarey. But change doesn't come when you keep repeating the same old errors over and over again. I believe that revolution is inevitable. And revolutions are usually done by younger people. You know, the ones who are not confined to wheel chairs or crutches and who are not going to be here much longer anyway.

But most of these politicians, both Republican and Democrat, are not only fairly wealthy themselves (which usually means that they have spent their lives stealing from the masses in one way or another) but they know who really butters their bread...the monied powers.

They have to play the game of illusion to make themselves look like they are on our side. It is a contest between the Repubs and the Dems, for sure, and each would like to win against the other (except I understand they often wine and dine together like they are buddies...so I hear tell).

Quote DAnneMarc:My only problem is why oh why would some bone head post the recipe on the internet?

I saw another youtube video of someone setting a small thermite charge on top of the hood of a car. The thermite charge, when ignited, melted right through the hood, through the engine block, and to the ground. Themite (with an "i") has been around for a long time...so has thermate (with an "a") which is more explosive than just melting at high temperatures like thermite does. Nanothermite, or Superthermite, also sometimes called High-tech thermite, has only been around since about 1990, and invented in Lawrence Livermore Labs. It is used almost exclusively for Military use...blowing up steel bridges, tank killers, etc. So, since micro-particles of thermite (micro chips of thermite..ie: nano-thermite)...were found in the 4 dust samples taken around the WTC towers and tested in a laboratory, along with the micro-spheres of steel/iron (which can only have been created under extreme temperatures and hurled through the air at high speed..as in an explosion), it is pretty darn good evidence that the 3 buildings were demolitions. They wanted the towers to come straight down and not risk falling over on a bunch of other buildings in the area so they planted both nano-thermite and conventional explosives to make sure it did just that..come straight down in their foot prints.

I've seen other youtube videos of thermite rapidly melting a hole through thick steel beams creating the kind of excessive slag that can be seen in the diagonal cuts in photos of the wreckage of the WTC towers. And to those who say that those photos showed the cutting of vertical beams as a result of clearing out the mess by workers...it would make little sense to make such diagonal cuts when cranes are attached to the upper beams to remove them after a cut. Welder's cuts are a lot cleaner and a diagonal cut would waste effort and time and money. It would make more sense to cut straight across if cranes were used to lift the upper beams. If people had cranes attached to trees, when they cut them down, they wouldn't need to do angle cuts to make them fall in a certain direction. But they have to use angle cuts like that in demolitions to get the building to come straight down.

Palin- I'm as angry and disillusioned as you. You're preaching to the choir!! - AIW

Aliceinwonderland: I'm sure Chuckle8 does have statistics to back up the illusion that the Democrats were for Card Check but I think that is all it is... an illusion. I think that they all know just how many can vote for something just enough to make it appear that the Party was for something yet knowing full well, and by design, that it wouldn't pass.

It's all rigged to make it appear that we little people have an ally in the Democrat Party when, in fact, we don't. It is all designed to foster false hope in order to keep the exploitation machine running.

The Dems had a majority shortly after the 2008 election and they blew it, and I believe it was by design. I believe they blew it on purpose. Sure there were "blue-dog" Democrats and a mob of Republicans but look what happened to our country since.

You can't blame everything on the Republicans..like NDAA..excessive government secrecy..prosecution, or would be prosecution, of whistle blowers...a continuation of the Middle East wars...a continuation of Gitmo and torture policies...assassinations of American citizens...special renditions of American citizens...killer drones that murder innocent civilians...and especially...spying on American citizens.

We don't have a single payer healthcare system. What we do have is merely a knock-off of a Republican healthScare system that favors the Healthcare Medical and Insurance and Pharmaceutical corporations. Nothing has really been done to crack down on Wall Street or reckless banks or crooked top corporate executives. The criminal top executives have not gone to jail and are still hiding their loot in offshore banks...evading taxes. Nothing has been done to stop the offshoring of our jobs.

Obama invited the wolves into the hen house, into his cabinet as advisers, when he appointed some of the people who caused the financial problems in the first place.

One would think that the Republicans, if they really wanted to make Obama look bad, that they would rant about some of those things. But the reason they don't is because they are in favor of all of those things themselves...because their puppet masters, the ruling elite, are in favor of all of those things. So, what do the Republicans rant about? Silly ass things that make them look like immature spoiled brats (which they are).

From the ruling elite standpoint, it helps to push the Democrat voters to vote for a Democrat once again. And the Democrats are needed when the masses get edgy and unpredictable. They can assuage the restive crowds and soothe them back into control by telling them what they want to hear...filling them with false hope. It keeps the Democrat voters from doing something that would derail the power of the ruling elite.

Keeping the Democrats in power just keeps the ruling elite in power. If the Republicans win, the ruling elite stays in power...that is if the masses don't revolt and riot....that's just what they don't want....because they could lose everything. So, they have to keep people playing the same old rigged game of choosing between Democrats or Republicans. Either way we lose and the ruling elite wins.

I tend to agree with you, Aliceinwonderland, that the American people do tend to be rather complacent. But that is because they keep buying into the same old false hope that yet another election of yet more Democrats will fix things and maybe the problem will just go away. It will only be when things get so bad that it will push the masses into doing what is necessary.

I still believe that even if we had a Democrat President and 100% of Congress were Democrats, we wouldn't see any significant changes in our favor. They'd just find some other way of trying to convince us why they couldn't make it so.

Yes, I know, with you and some others, I am "preaching to the choir" and, most likely, many people won't even read what I have written. People shy away from long diatribes.

Aliceinwonderland: That's just what the Dems wanted you to think...that they were behind Card Check. And the ACA was a windfall for the insurance companies.

I believe that if Romney had won, that we would have been out in the streets, en masse, rioting against the crooked system. Remember, the $700 billion bank bailouts created in the Bush administration, were to take effect after the next election...(in Obama's term). They needed to keep us off guard and hopeful that Obama was going to change things. Had Romney been elected president and the bailout occurred on his watch, it very well could have caused rioting. Instead, the ruling elite played plan B and hyped the people with the great savior, Obama, who was going to make everything right again for us little people. Just let this little $700billion bailout go through and later Obama and the Dems will make things all better.

Well they fed us false hope, as they always do and, once elected, they do just what the ruling elite wanted them to do...sneak things in the back door...and then blame everything on the Republicans (convenient temporary scapegoats...although very deserving of our hatred and disgust..because they would, obviously, screw us too). The Republicans are scourge of the earth, for sure, but they are only part of the problem. The Republicans, also owned by the ruling elite, have to sit it out and will do everything they can to make Dems look bad. They want to be in charge again, obviously. We will never survive if we keep playing their game.

My friends in California, who had signed up for ACA Blue Shield of California, tell me that they are having nothing but problems. And that it was even in the news about how almost impossible it is to even get through by phone to Blue Shield and that many of the doctors on Blue Shield's list were not actually part of Blue Shield network. And they have a problem now, because they are just turning 65 and now have Medicare, and want to cancel Blue Shield because...why pay for both BS and Medicare? And they couldn't find anything anywhere (especially on the BS website) on how to transition over to Medicare. They've seen some scare stories about people who have even written and left emails to BS to cancel yet they keep sending bills and eventually it ruined their credit. It's like Hotel California...once you enter...you can never leave! They easily take your money but what do you get in return? Check out Yelp...all very bad reviews...all 1 stars with people saying they would give BS many minus stars if they could. Damn insurance rackets!

Who hasn't already sued Obama? The state of Texas has sued Obama 25 times now. Rand Paul has sued Obama. Even Chris Hedges has sued Obama. The ACLU has sued Obama. The Catholic Business Group has sued Obama. Activists have sued Obama. It goes on and on....

So what if Boner sues Obama....They are both so full of shit it is a waste of time being concerned about it. I wish we'd impeach Obama for being a bad representative of the people who voted for him. He did just fine for the monied powers who backed him. But he let the majority of people down. Screw him...impeach him..who cares...it's all just theatrics anyway. It's just a way to keep democrat voters scared stiff that the Republicans might win next time...so they will keep voting Democrat and not riot in the streets or vote for some rogue party like the Greens. Or, shut my mouth, maybe even a communist party! The Democrats will sell us out anyway...they always do. The game is rigged...it doesn't really matter who wins. The democrat voters need to wake up to reality!

You are right, Aliceinwonderland, it is just a soap opera. And they are yodeling for us all to soap up and bend over so they can screw us all again.

Chuck, the reason I keep mentioning healthcare is because access to healthcare is one of the great equalizers, way up there with education. When healthcare is available to everyone, universally and unconditionally, the accompanying, unspoken message is that everyone's life has value regardless of each person's status in society or how much money they possess. Neither the New Deal nor the Great Society achieved that. If I recall correctly, Rooseveldt tried including single-payer heathcare in the New Deal, but it was shot down by Republicans. (Sound familiar?) The so-called Great Society did not even attempt to make healthcare a universal right for American citizens. Meanwhile in the European countries and Japan, healthcare has been a right of citizenship at least since World War Two.

The lack of universal, non-profit healthcare has always weakened this economy, putting us at a disadvantage as competitors on the world stage. This makes it very difficult for me to wrap my mind around the idea that, at any point over the past century, our economy was as great as you and Thom have claimed. It simply defies logic. I'm sure that if the New Deal policies had remained intact, and those of the "Great Society", we'd be in much better shape than we are today. But without this healthcare issue resolved, we still couldn't make such a claim. "Far ahead" of all those European countries?! I don't think so. Healthcare extortionists are sucking the life out of us and our economy. Until that changes, this whole notion of the U.S. "leading" the world is nothing but a pipe dream. Metrics don't mean all that much to me. It's quality of life that counts, not metrics, in my realm of reality.

Anyway Chuck, all that aside, I want to thank you for such a gracious response. It showed a lot of class. I know how strongly you feel about the policies of yesteryear. I wish we could have them reestablished, along with the old tax system. Like you, I've seen our quality of life take a radical nose dive over these past several decades, especially since Nixon's presidency. Reagan only accelerated the downward spiral. This blog has helped me hang onto my sanity over the past year & a half, and I really appreciate it. - AIW

DAnneMarc: According to http://hypertextbook.com/facts/2002/SaiLee.shtml the melting point of glass (depending on the composition) is 2600-2900 °F (1425-1600 °C).

I suspect that one of the nanothermite charges, that had been previously planted along with all the rest. went off prematurely, perhaps because of the fire, perhaps due to a timing error. Thermite burns at 4000 degrees F.

Quote ae911truth.org:When ignited, the energetic Al-Fe thermite reaction produces molten iron and aluminum oxide, with the molten iron reaching temperatures well in excess of 4000° F. These temperatures are certainly high enough to allow cuts through structural steel, which generally has a melting point of around 2750° F.

There is also a variant of thermite known as thermate, which is a combination of thermite and sulfur, and is more efficient at cutting through steel. This form of thermite is believed to have been used in the demolition of World Trade Center Building 7. Although conventional thermite has the capability to cut through structural steel, it is technically an incendiary and not an explosive.

Nanothermite (also known as superthermite), simply put, is an ultra-fine-grained (UFG) variant of thermite that can be formulated to be explosive by adding gas-releasing substances. A general rule in chemistry is that the smaller the particles of the reactants, the faster the reaction. Nanothermite, as the name suggests, is thermite in which the particles are so small that they are measured in nanometers (one billionth of a meter).

http://www.ae911truth.org/news-section/41-articles/646-faq-8-what-is-nan...
http://www.instructables.com/id/Thermite/

agelbert: Very interesting stuff! Thanks! Very scary, indeed!

ChicagoMatt: I usually just take a cold shower, but very brief cold shower (marine shower to conserve water), and then wear a swim suit around the house. I always get a "great job!" on my utility bill year-round because I use less energy than a similar sized house that is considered an "energy efficient" house. I conserve on water in another way as well in using my "hillbilly grey water system". It is a bucket that I use to collect the water while waiting for the water to warm up when I want to take a hot shower. (Maybe, one day, I'll modernize and put in a real grey water system...with pipes.) And then, I take a marine shower, where I get wet, turn the water off, soap up, then turn the water back on to rinse off. I use the water in the bucket (which is pure, clear water) on my plants.

Chi Matt -- I agree with you that it would be great to let the free market determine how to pay CEO's.

Quote Chi Matt:I disagree with telling private companies what or how to pay their people, pension-wise or CEO-wise.

I wish you would have told Reagan and the boys the same thing. The paying of CEOs with options was "forced" by the tax structure that reaganomics set-up. I am a little sketchy on the details, but I will try. I think the scheme that reagonmics set up for the 0.01% was to say any salary for a CEO above a million had to come out of profit. However, if you pay them in stock options it does not. The details are difficult and not straightforward. One could sell the scheme to the American voters by saying the CEOs would be sure to make their company perform well so the options would increase. Unfortunately, the CEOs found it much more enriching to manipulate the stock price. A scheme which does not require investing in the future of the company; after all, investing is such a risky thing. One of the ways that is used to manipulate the stock is to use profits to buy back stock with company profits. This increases the price of the stock, so they can sell their options and make a huge income. Of course, the company is starved of those investments in its future, and, consequently, the company starts to fail (a scenario that makes the company a tasty treat for a private equity firm; especially if their is a large pension fund). The CEO takes his huge short term income from selling the options and departs for the next company to repeat the process. Before reaganomics, the average time a CEO was with a company was 30 years; after reaganomics it was 5 years.

Of course you are right, they did not want to raise taxes back then to enable them to pay the teachers well. One of the reasons they did not want to raise taxes

So they kicked the can down the road, which is coming to an end. Those of us who are still in our prime money-making years are going to end up paying, either through higher taxes, fewer services, or both. Gee, thanks generation that came before us.

And civic jobs - teacher, fireman, policeman, sanitation worker, etc... those are all highly-desirable, highly-paid jobs now. They don't need pensions to attract talent.