Recent comments
ADHD: Hunter in a Farmer's World
Thom Hartmann has written a dozen books covering ADD / ADHD - Attention Deficit Hyperactive Disorder.
Join Thom for his new twice-weekly email newsletters on ADHD, whether it affects you or a member of your family.
Thom's Blog Is On the Move
By webmaster
Hello All
Thom's blog in this space and moving to a new home.
Please follow us across to hartmannreport.com - this will be the only place going forward to read Thom's blog posts and articles.
Palindromedary - I have read your comments and it is the same things you have been stating since we have been disagreeing on the conspiracy theory you embrace for several months. I still respectively believe your theory does not convince me that your theory is even remotely correct. Every time I state something you come back with the same patent statement trying to present facts that can be shown to be untrue or happened by another means. I watched a program where one of the individuals that helped create the plans for the towers explained how the outer structure lost its integrity because to the impact and heat and subsequently he believed that is why the towers fell. The idea of having the support of the building in the outside skeleton rather than on the inside as most traditional buildings have was to save room on the inside where the beams could have been set. This can be written off as something I heard as well! We can both sit here and state he said this or this person has shown that test prove their were explosions that brought down the support beams or how the Pentagon's defenses were not operating at the time of the incident. I have talked to friends of mine who are Republicans and they repeat the same conspiracy theories they have heard on TV. or have read in an article. Neither they nor you are able to present any concrete evidence that the government was involved in these terrorists’ acts. That is why they are called theories. Have a good evening... K.W. Do you really think I am too scared of knowing the truth? I really thought you knew me better than that! I have refrained from calling you names, do you really want to go there with me? Not a good idea my friend...
Ken: But, I believe that the so-called hijackers were meant, by the Neocon conspiracists , to be noticed. To be noticed, would only work to be remembered after the deed was done. If they were real enemy agents, ie: not working for the internal powers of this country, then they would have had to worry about being discovered and jailed. But they had no such fear. Why? Because they were being assisted from within this country by the ones who planned the whole thing. A number of FBI agents certainly noticed them and reported them but were ignored. Don't you find that a little strange? The way the 'hijackers' were acting...they seemed to want to be noticed. No one was really trying to hide what they were doing. Now why would a cabal of terrorists do such a thing if they wanted to succeed in a covert mission against a very powerful country? Loose lips, sink ships! Why would the higher ups at the FBI ignore agent's reports? There was "hands off" all the way from letting them into the country (except for one that didn't make it because a true American border agent heard the alarm bells and acted on it) to letting them on the planes that were hijacked. From then on, it was electronic hijacking and a guidance system that accurately guided the flights to their targets.
And as I have already stated, even if the buildings did "pancake" the way you think they did...there still would have been a resistance to free fall speed because the intact lower levels would have provided that resistance until overcome by the weight and downward momentum of the upper floors. The only way those buildings could have come down at the speed they came down was if the lower supporting structures presented no resistance to the downward force. It looked just like a demolition because it WAS a demolition. The squibs help support that...the huge beams and even body parts thrown hundreds of feet shows that, and the scientific evidence of explosives and nano thermite shows that..and lots of other evidence shows that.
Remember, the people who designed these buildings did so with the ability to withstand airliners crashing into them.
And do I think you and a lot of other Americans, even very intelligent ones, have been duped...scammed...yes, I do!
But a lot of other very intelligent people who know physics, metallurgy, architecture, pilots, and other professionals have spoken out...and it is unusually brave of them to have done so. The witch burning mentality did not die with the Middle Ages and is alive and well today in the form of another kinds of religion....called jingoism...called cognitive dissonance...called too damn lazy or stubborn to read, or look at, the evidence. I guess they are too scared about what they may discover.
chuckle8 - The bill was originally designed in the White House and given to Senator Reid. You are correct in your statement that the House majority fell to the Republicans in the 2010 election. The Budget Control Act passed by the Republicans and the Democrats in congress and signed by President Obama in Aug. 2011 included the Sequestration or automatic cuts with the expiration of the tax cuts. When Congress could not agree on a budget, Sequestration went into affect as we went over the so called, "Fiscal Cliff" in Jan. 2013 and Sequestration was put off until Mar. 2013. This information was found in Wikipedia under Fiscal Cliff and Sequestration.
I stand corrected: It was the Democrats and the Republicans who passed the Budget Control Act in 2011, which included the Sequestration and the end of the Bush tax cuts and was signed by Obama.
Never has so much evidence been shown to so many people, and never has so many people refused to really look or listen to that evidence. It is obviously cognitive dissonance brought on by the fear that those you've always expected to protect you are actually treasonous criminals too big to prosecute..to big to even suspect or question..even if you are a President of the United States.
http://www.benthamscience.com/open/tocpj/articles/V002/7TOCPJ.htm
Palindromedary - I have no doubt that you are intelligent and well versed in what you are saying. Over the past several months I have taken a more aggressive manner when commenting on your P.O.V. and it was the wrong approach and neither of us has moved one inch in either direction. Call me naive or to patriotic to see what the government has done. Based purely on a cost to benefit, the Bush Administration had no need for such an elaborate plot to go to war with Iraq. As far as the natural resources go and pipelines do you really think the Taliban would allow any government or corporation to use their homeland for profit. We are getting out of there as fast as we can and still have some dignity left, those who have been in power have made billions of our dollars and will probably leave as soon as we do or shortly thereafter. Have you any proof that there are plans in the making to do any of the things you claim, if so please present them. As far as the hijackers being pawns of the American government, I suppose you believe the Bush administration was able to keep all of the information about their training to fly commercial aircraft a total secret and the agents that were watching them, in order to use them in the scheme you have presented, also took part in the plan to use the terrorists as pawns to do the governments work for them. I have read the articles you have posted and I do not deny they are well educated people, but so are those who state they are wrong and primarily theorists out to blame the government for any wrong doing that happens. The support structure was primarily the outer skeleton that was weakened and allowed the floors to pancake. I could go on and make statements that disagree with your rational, but we have been here before and neither of us we see it any differently, so I think we should agree to disagree on this subject since we have gone over it several times in the past and so I will leave it at that. In my simple mind I do not see the benefit compared to the cost of being exposed as the people who killed 3000 innocent people to go to war, when we could have gone to war over several other instances we were attacked by the terrorists in the past. On the other hand Osama Bin laden and his group thrived on attacking any enemy they saw as an enemy to their god, especially after they beat the Russians after ten years of fighting. Why is it so hard to believe they financed a dozen men to be trained to take over airliners and crash them into our buildings, but it is so easy to think the American government under Bush and Cheney would plot to destroy major structures, not to mention the Pentagon, in order to have a reason to go to war? There much easier ways to go to war then to prepare an elaborate scheme like 911. I respect your right to believe what you will, just do the same for mine. K.W. P.S. I am sure you are much more informed when it comes to your resources in making your theory, I just believe it was the terrorists, so I guess in your mind I am just one of the hundreds of millions of Americans that think the terrorists did it as a simple minded guy who has been duped and bought into the scam perpetrated by our government. So be it...
Outback: But there WERE explosions in the basement levels...one survivor that worked down in one of the multiple-level basements reported them and that other employees were walking around like zombies with flesh melted off their bodies.
If you carefully watch videos of the towers collapsing, notice the squibs that shoot out of the windows, at great speeds, several floors below the actual collapsing locations and this happens all the way down. It's like the collapsing boundary is chasing the squibs all the way down. Also huge beams were found hundreds of feet from the WTC towers. Also note that the concrete was all pulverized..turned into dust and this is the dust from where the dust samples were created. And yes, I realize that most of the concrete was in the floors.
These dust sample were scientifically analyzed and were found to contain evidence of nano thermite and evidence of extremely high temperatures which was necessary to create the micro spheres. Molten iron hurled through the air at great speeds. The other chemical fingerprints in the dust also shows evidence of nano thermite reaction. The dust samples were taken shortly after the collapse...one sample was taken about 10 minutes after the collapse of one building had accumulated on top of a bridge railing. Other samples were taken just blocks from the WTC site a couple of days later. One woman's window was broken and the dust had piled inside...she collected the dust in baggies, I believe.
There is another difference between the typical demolition of a building...in that they normally use commonly used explosives...not nano thermite. Normal explosive are much louder than nano thermite which can account for why the collapsing buildings did not sound as loud as they might have had they used normal explosives. Engineers at Architects and Engineers for 911 Truth believe that they used a combination of normal explosives along with nano thermite. With nano thermite, it didn't take as many normal explosives to bring the buildings down.
The destroyed vehicles in the area all exhibited characteristics of being corroded by elements that would have been created in a nano thermite reaction.
There were many reports by those in the area at the time of the collapse...the firefighters and others...the first responders...said they heard a succession of rapid explosions as the building collapsed.
And that one photo I mentioned before, taken right after the collapse, showed a vertical beam that had what looked like a perfectly cut beam at the correct angle that would have been used to demolish buildings.
Why would so many, thousands, of professional people like architects and engineers...along with pilots, policemen, firemen, just to name a few, all know that the story that the government has told us is not possible.
Even if that pancake theory were true...but it is not...it's bogus..the buildings would not have fallen at near free fall speed. Each floor beneath the falling ones above would present a resistance to the falling mass and slow the process down. If one had dropped a bowling ball from the top of one of the WTC buildings, it would have hit the ground just slightly before the top floor would have. Those WTC buildings looked just like a demolition because that exactly what they were.
DAnnemarc: Yes, I had heard the "pressure cooker" story. Now I wonder how they can walk down a crowded sidewalk with a pressure cooker stuffed into a backpack (I'd also heard of backpacks). The typical "pressure cooker" is actually pretty big and would be pretty hard to stuff into a back pack. The thought I had was that if the story of pressure cookers was true then one has to ask oneself...who would one expect to have "pressure cookers"...especially on a crowded sidewalk. Oh, I know, hot dog vendors! Or anyone pushing around a little cart. Now, I know New York has some famous hot dogs "to die for" but I've never heard of them actually exploding before.
Actually, I think if it was a real nation-state wanting to do damage to us...countries like Iran, N. Korea...or even others not usually on our radar...may already have some real whoppers already planted around the country. By whoppers, I mean nukes. They could have planted them years ago...smuggled them in piece by piece and assembled them later. The US has not seemed to me to be very cautious when it came to allowing certain workers from other countries to come here and stay for lengthy periods of time (and I'm not talking about Mexico)...although, you might be surprised..they ain't all field peons...many are very sharp techies. As a matter of fact I sometimes felt like a field peon when I had to do work of a highly technical nature over there...not that I was lacking in technical ability but that many of the people I associated with were pretty smart.
PD - I'm not an expert in building demolition, but from what I've observed, buildings are typically taken down from the bottom up. Isn't that the case? Blow out the supporting structure and the mass of the building collapses upon itself.
But from my recollection of the collapse of the towers, they pancaked. The top floors pushed down through the floors below. How do you explain that?
I'm prepared to believe that there is something very special that happens to an over-large structure like the WTC. Materials strength vs mass vs trauma. This thing may just have been too big to recover from the hits it took.
Not a possibility?
Ken: Yes, you may be correct about the Boston Marathon bombings...we don't yet know who set those off. But if our government comes out with the story like the whopper they told us about 911 then I would have to doubt their story.
Ken: I would tend to agree that the so-called "terrorist hijackers" didn't even know that they were being used as patsies by a collusion of Neocons and, perhaps even OBL who was still working for the CIA. Certainly, the Saudis and perhaps even Israel had a hand in this. Most of the alleged hijackers were Saudi anyway. They were not very good Muslims, though, because they drank like fish and partied at lap dance joints. They made themselves very visible by arrogantly boasting and even making outright threats against the US. They acted almost like they were trying to get attention. I suspect, however, that in light of the fact that none of them could really fly anything but a small aircraft that their training was done for the purpose of setting them up as patsies. After the hijackings, I suspect the planes were taken over electronically by ground control, or even pre-programmed on-board guidance systems, to target the WTC buildings and I suspect the pentagon was not hit by that airliner but by a missile. I don't believe the "hijackers" had the skill to hit the towers. That really is pretty far fetched...that hijackers who could barely fly Cessnas had the skill to accurately target those buildings. As huge as they were...at the speeds that the airliners were traveling...it would have been like trying to hit a gnat from 100 feet with a dart....by someone who couldn't really throw darts.
Ken: Afghanistan has lots of natural resources not to mention the space to put a pipeline to transport oil from Turkmenistan, and the other Stans, to the Arabian Sea.
As I said before...our oil companies and our government officials tried to wine and dine and even bribe Afghanistan into agreeing to a pipeline. And then they turned to threats that would be, if made against any other country, would be considered a declaration of war. "Accept our carpet of gold or suffer a carpet of bombs".
Besides, the Bush administration desperately wanted our forces in Afghanistan so that they could then move on Iraq. Saddam Husein was not being a good little dictator willing to be pushed around by the US and he was going to break from the dollar hegemony and sell his oil for Euros or Chinese Renminbi. Iran and Venezuela was hot on that idea as well. The US dollar empire was crumbling.
All that oil around the northeastern areas around the Caspian sea was more vulnerable to being taken by China. China, having been boosted into a manufacturing mecca for goods wanted all over the world...especially, the US, was starting to require a very large amount of oil. More people were driving vehicles than ever before in China. The explosion of skyscrapers, and other buildings, all required lots of oil and the US realized that China would gobble up all the oil. What the US wanted was control of the oil. If western oil companies controlled the oil then they could moderate China's growth and power as well as keep oil prices high so the rest of us would have to pay top dollar for it. China doesn't even want to have anything to do with the US Dollar anymore...they are buying up gold...they see where the US Dollar is headed.
Alternative theories to the official conspiracy theory are not at all far-fetched when you consider how full of holes, proven lies and obfuscations, and non sequiturs that run rampant in the official conspiracy theory of OBL masterminding it, getting 19 people to hijack 4 airliners (3 of which hit their targets) during a time when our government/military was doing a massive training exercise entailing the premise of hijackers crashing into the WTC towers. Oh, excuse me, is this a drill, or what?
How did OBL know about the exercise enough to get the hijackers to do their thing during a time when confusion could arise from a drill. Besides there is other precedence in history where conducting drills or exercises are a prelude to an actual attack. You feign exercises and then, when the right moment comes, you go for the jugular. And in this case it was Neocons setting up the ruse of Muslim terrorist hijackers against the people of the United States. The prize was the shock and awe created in the US citizens who were easily led through the nose by a grand false flag operation. Just like FDR played his Japan card...the Bush administration played their Middle East Terrorist card.
And why were certain FBI agents, who were tailing and watching some of these "terrorists" while they were being trained on how to fly small aircraft, who sent out alerts (reports) to their higher ups get totally ignored? Why did Dick Cheney change the chain of command to put himself solely in charge of decisions in the event of a terrorist attack? Why did they hastily ship all those WTC beams out of the country to be melted down when they could have been, should have been, analyzed by independent experts in metallurgy and structural engineers?
Why did NIST totally ignore the possibility of explosives, and wouldn't even investigate that possibility? Why didn't the Pentagon use the anti-aircraft weapons they had on top of the Pentagon to protect it from such an attack? How could a hijacker, who could barely fly a Cessna, manage that last minute very tight circular-while-descending maneuver and then continue to fly at speeds that many airliner pilots said would be impossible because of the air density that near to the ground? They said that the wings would have been ripped off. When airliners make landings they are moving very slow..whatever hit the Pentagon was not traveling at landing speed. Was it, in reality, a missile or a military aircraft that could make such maneuvers? What about the initial photos of the hole in the Pentagon..no damage to the areas that should have shown the damage caused by wings or at least the engines. Why is that? Did the wings, tail, engines suddenly vaporize or disappear before impact?
Many experienced airliner pilots said that even they would not have been able to pull off such a stunt! Why did they confiscate all of the video evidence from the many surveillance cameras around the Pentagon except that one that didn't really show anything? Except, maybe the fact that the blur was caused by something traveling very fast...like a missile? Why did the fighter jets get moved from Andrews to a base further south and why did they scramble out over the ocean totally missing all the action in the opposite direction where the planes were hijacked?
And how could the WTC building fall straight down at near free fall unless the supporting structural members were blown out with explosives..as in a typical demolition? That's just what it looked like...a skillfully executed demolition!
Dust samples from 911 all show that they contain not only micro-spheres of molten iron but also traces of high tech nano thermite and other trace elements that would be created in a thermitic reaction. Nano thermite cannot be made by just anyone..but the military and NIST had been playing around with this stuff since it was first invented...and nano thermite hasn't been around very long...only about 10 years prior to 911. Thermite, of course, has been around a lot longer; but, although it can rapidly melt through an engine block, it takes a little while to do it..a few seconds anyway. Nano-thermite is a specially made, high-tech, thermite that can instantaneously melt through thick iron beams...it is pretty much an explosive..but not anywhere as loud as normal explosives. And there is photo evidence showing at least one vertical beam with the typical slanted cut that one would expect to see in a demolition...shaped charges to get the building to fall in it's own footprint.
Buildings cannot fall at anywhere near free fall without instantly removing the supporting beams. Many engineers have said that the airplane, it's fuel, and the burning office materials could not have come anywhere close to melting steel beams..not even weakening them enough to cause the collapse we saw on 911. And no other steel building has even collapsed due to fire..even fires caused by airplanes hitting them. And these WTC buildings were actually designed to keep from collapsing if an airliner hit them.
The planes hit on one side of the buildings which is mostly where the fires from that crash occurred...on one side....which would mean that the building top would have had to buckle over to one side. There is no way those planes caused those buildings to fall straight down at near free fall speed. And Building 7 came straight down at near free fall speed as well and no plane even hit that building.
This is only a few of the questions that need to be answered.
I'd say that the paranoid ones are the ones who won't accept that their own government would be behind this very glaringly obvious terrorist action. And they won't even look at the evidence. They hide their heads in the sands of propaganda created by the criminal elite who have a vested interest in scaring people out of their freedoms...and what little wealth they have left. 911 was an inside job!
Ken ware: Glad to see you rethinking the idea that violence was the only means left for change. I happen to believe the social media is a major key to change, in our times anyway. How else can we challenge the corp. media with truth and facts?
Being a distance runner myself, this senseless act of cowardice really hits close to home. I ran Boston twice during the 80's and as usual had friends running this year. Thankfully all are OK. A close friend was there with his girlfriend, a top masters runner. He said they were several blocks away by the time the bombings occurred. I got through to him about 7:30 last night and he indicated that the Hotel they were staying at was filled with other elite runners and a Swat Team was guarding the entrance. I could tell he was pretty shaken by the whole thing.
I fight back tears as I think about the innocent victims including the eight year old. I however do cling to hope as a result of the heroic humanity displayed by all who came to the aid of the victims. This includes the runners who kept right on running to nearby hospitals to donate blood. In the end I truly feel that the spirit of selfless kindness triumphed over the madness and evil of the day.
I think those of us not as close to the situation just want to find out the facts. Mainstream news can go overboard with discussion and spin that may or may not be very helpful, they shield us from the very gruesome and bloodiest of scenes, trying to make it all more sanitary than it really is. Only mentioned by those who have been to war zones and probably do work on healing from PTSD, a grim reality that's hard to ignore: bombs, drone strikes, and military interventions, are causing the same kind of havoc worldwide and on a much larger and more prolific scale.
What crack team Akunard, wasn't it because of a video?
my heart goes out to all my American friends for this terrible tradegy. We shouldn't jump to any conclusions on who did this though. But when they catch them we should lay them down on the finish line at next years race for all the racers to stomp on them as they finish. Just a suggestion.
Same crack team that hunted down and brought to justice the Benghazi attackers.
Thom, I usually agree with your comments but today was terrible. This Rusty is totally off base, and you agreed with him. Shame on you.
Regarding the illegal immigrants - what would this country do without them. A family in Upstate NY, who own a very large dairy farm, milking 900 cows three times a day, could not be run without the illegals. They have tried for years to hire local and out of state people, but nobody wants the dirty work. Salary is good, and free housing, but Americans don't want a dirty job, and these great young Mexicans, show up to work, do a good job and appreciate having work. Did you read the article in the New York Times this week about dairy farms and illegals? Great article.
Also, Obama care is a step in the right direction. What this country needs is a one payer solution. My friend from Canada wishes she had never left, the health care worked well and it does so in other countries.
The democrats only had full control of the senate for 2 1/2 months. The first 2 1/2 months of 2009. Full control means cloture (sp?) proof.
There are democrats that are conservatives (AKA totally owned by the corporatists). Mary Landreux and Ben Nelson come to mind.
What bill in 2010?
The only reason the democrats voted for sequestration is to prevent the repugs from destroying the world economy.
Palindromedary ~ You are 100% spot on. Agreed!
BTW Have you heard they have determined that the bombs were home made pressure cooker powered weapons. In my humble opinion, since the perpetrators haven't yet come public I suspect that this was either a clumsy inside job or the doings of a clever lunatic. I'm starting to doubt a False Flag because in that case a suspect is usually quickly identified and is eager to take credit to forward an agenda. If a foreign entity is blamed before they take credit I would strongly suspect False Flag. What are your thoughts?
During a war we rationalize that every person of the enemy state is guilty. It would be interesting if the Boston bomber said he was at war with US.
Ken Ware ~ A very touching comment indeed! Power through Peace! I like that! I agree 100%. Thank you!
Vegasman56 - Just to let you in on a secret, it was Obama and the Democrats that passed the Sequestration Bill that is now imposing Austerity cuts across the full spectrum of programs today. All the cuts to our firefighters, police and teachers is due to the bill they voted into law in 2010 when they had full control of the Senate and House. Yes, it is the Republicans that want cuts to all social programs, but the Democrats and Obama passed the Sequestration bill that is now under mining our safety net. Both parties are at fault for what is happening. The Democrats do not want the people (voters) to know they implemented the Austerity cuts we are feeling and will feel into the fore seeable future. K.W.
chuckle8 ~ Absolutely agreed!