W. Niederhut

Speaking of Michael Cohen, Dan Friedman said at Mother Jones today that Cohen was just sent back to prison after refusing to sign a gag agreement! Great to know that we live in a functional democracy... 🤪

Speaking of tax returns, remember when Trump said in 2016, before the election, that he would release them, "after the audit?" Where are they? The M$M should be asking Trump, "Why haven't you released your tax returns, as you said you would do in 2016?" So, I agree with Thomas Friedman on this one. No tax returns, no debates.

I'm not sure which is more worrisome-- Trump's faulty understanding of basic arithmetic, or his notion that our COVID catastrophe in the U.S. is merely a result of increased testing. Paul Krugman's latest op-ed at NYT entitled, "The Deadly Delusions of Mad King Donald," pretty much nails it. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/09/opinion/trump-coronavirus.html?action=click&module=Opinion&pgtype=Homepage

Funny story. Hadn't heard this one before. They should have entitled this, "Bob Dylan's Urinating Elvis-- Or The Case Of The $750,000 Sofa."

Speaking of laughter, I couldn't stop laughing yesterday when I read Mary Trump's story in the Guardian about Uncle Donald's Christmas gift basket with the missing tin of caviar. 🤪 I know that what is happening in the U.S. right now isn't funny, but I may have to buy Mary Trump's book just for a little comic relief. (Perhaps I'm suffering from end-stage Trump Derangement Syndrome.)

It's depressing, and the examples of terrible journalism on-line and in the M$M are legion-- like your recent essay about Politico using a poorly informed sports writer to write about American political history. Another example I encountered recently was on a Google search for some old scientific research literature about 9/11. (Hadn't looked this stuff up for awhile.) It was depressing to see page after page of pseudo-scientific bunk promoting the false government narrative. I felt like a character in George Orwell's novel 1984, living in a world where reality and history have been erased and re-written to manipulate the masses.

Pamela, In addition to the steel columns of the core, WTC1 and WTC2 had massive columns of heavy steel around their perimeters.* Donald Trump accurately described this aspect of the Twin Towers' construction in his original 9/11/01 commentary (above.) Also, there was no "pancaking" of floors driving the near free fall collapses of the Twin Towers. (See the film clips above.) *The Perimeter Walls The Structural System of the Twin Towers The towers' perimeter walls comprised dense grids of vertical steel columns and horizontal spandrel plates. These, along with the core structures, supported the towers. In addition to supporting gravity loads, the perimeter walls stiffened the Towers against lateral loads, particularly those due to winds. The fact that these structures were on the exterior of the Towers made them particularly efficient at carrying lateral loads. Richard Roth, speaking on behalf of the architectural firm that designed the Towers, described each of the perimeter walls as essentially "a steel beam 209' deep." 1 Regardless, it is clear that the core structures were designed to support several times the weight of each tower by themselves. As the diagram and photograph illustrate, the perimeter wall structures were assembled from pre-fabricated units consisting of 3 column sections and 3 spandrel plate sections welded together. Adjacent units were bolted together: column sections were bolted to adjacent columns above and below, and spandrel plate sections were mated with adjacent sections on either side with numerous bolts. There were 59 perimeter columns on each face of the towers, and one column on each corner bevel, making a total of 240 perimeter columns in each tower. Like the core columns, the thickness of the perimeter columns tapered from the bottom to the top of the towers. The illustrated cross-sections represent columns near the top, and near the mid-section of the towers. https://911research.wtc7.net/wtc/arch/perimeter.html

Before the punk rockers, before Donovan and Dylan, before the Beat Poets, Pete Seeger, and the Weavers, there was the radical Antifa Dust Bowl troubadour, Woody Guthrie... 🤨 This machine kills fascists https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/This_machine_kills_fascists

Steve, I think you are correct on this one. All of the circumstantial evidence (and now Mary Trump's direct allegation) points to Donald Trump suffering from a congenital learning disability. It's no accident that he gets his information (and "intel briefings") primarily from television. I have often wondered if Trump has ever read a book in his life-- other than perusing the copy of Hitler's speeches that he used to keep on his nightstand (according to the Vanity Fair interview of Ivana Trump.) His knowledge of history, science, and even basic geography, is minimal. When word got out recently (from John Bolton's book) that Trump thought Finland was under Russian control, the Prime Minister of Finland, Sanna Marin, said, "To be fair, we thought the same thing about the United States." 🤥

Mary Trump's book-- scheduled for release on July 14th-- is already #1 at Amazon. Nothing too surprising, thus far, in the preliminary reports. I'm shocked, shocked to hear that Trump has sociopathic traits and a learning disability. Who'd have thunk?

It looks like Denver wasn't the only place in the country that experienced unusual fireworks on the 4th. People were even igniting fireworks again last night here in Denver (probably purchased up on the Wyoming border near Cheyenne.) 'The worst': Illegal Fourth of July fireworks ignite at least 100 fires in California https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2020/07/06/illegal-4th-july-fireworks-california-ignite-least-100-fires/5382431002/

Trump is so firmly convinced of his own marvelous, un-presidented grandiloquence that it doesn't even faze him to give a speech this ridiculous. He probably thought that his blatantly fascist, divisive Mount Rushmore debacle was a triumph. Trump’s ‘Toe-tally-terry-tism’ speech https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/07/05/toe-tally-terry-tism-speech/

Woody Guthrie used to have a sign that said, "This machine kills fascists" on his guitar back in the day.

Ron, The Have A Good Trip documentary on Netflix features some of this kind of psychedelic art, along with animations of various trips described by Sting and others. It's interesting to me as a psychiatrist because there is some fascinating research going on recently at Johns Hopkins and UCLA Neuropsych into the therapeutic potential of psychedelics for PTSD, anxiety and mood disorders, and even addictions. In fact, one of the people interviewed in the documentary is a psychiatrist at UCLA, Dr. Charles Grob. On an unrelated note, I'm wondering if people elsewhere in the country experienced non-stop fireworks/explosions in their communities last night. Here in Denver, we had continuous explosions-- Boom...boom...boom...Snap...crackle..pop...pop...Pop-- from about dusk until midnight. It was weird, unprecedented, (and illegal in Colorado.) I'm guessing it had something to do with sheltering-in-place and the cancellation of big fireworks shows in town.

I don't know if this film clip has received any coverage in the M$M since Friday, but it is truly concerning. The President's brain is missing.

President Trump addresses the nation from Mount Rushmore on July 3, 2020... 🤥

It's a fascinating documentary. My favorite quote was Sting saying, "I don't think taking psychedelics is the answer to all of humanity's problems, but it's a start." 🤥 And Anthony Bourdain was a riot.

1) Think about the height of the Twin Towers. 2) We know, for a fact, that they collapsed at near free fall acceleration-- indicating no significant resistance to collapse from the exterior and interior steel girders of the lower 80+ floors (i.e., something demolished the steel girders all the way down to ground level.) 3) Even if "jet fuel" could have melted 80+ floors of steel girders, (no way) how could sufficient jet fuel have "trickled down" 80+ floors to demolish all of those steel girders within an hour? 4) Ergo, the "trickle down" jet fuel NIST theory is absurd. WTC1 and WTC2 were demolished by pre-planted steel-melting explosives.

Ron, I've got nothing against the Boss, but I prefer the Cheech and Chong version here. Among other things, it brought back some Mariachi memories from Mexico. (BTW, if you're ever dining in a restaurant where a Mariachi band is strolling from table to table serenading the guests, DO NOT request the ranchero classic, "Volver!" If you do, the trumpet player will blow out your ear drums.)

Great post, Kirk. I grew up in a pretty soulful neighborhood in northeast Denver, (I used to deliver newspapers on the block where future NBA star Chauncey Billups lived as a boy) and I've always loved James Brown. I also found your comments about multi-cultural American "patriotism" refreshing. Conversely, Trump is going full-bore fascist in 2020. Creepy as hell. No one could dance like the Godfather of Soul, with the possible exception of Michael Jackson. And it's hard to beat Marvin Gaye's soulful vocals. BUT, I have to post one of my all-time favorite American soul classics for the 4th of July -- Eddie Floyd's Knock On Wood. For me, this song is as American as apple pie and Papa's Got A Brand New Bag.

Pamela, Seriously, this government (NIST) narrative about the airplanes somehow "destroying the structural integrity" of all of the heavy steel I-beams around the perimeters of the entire lower 80+ floors of WTC1 and WTC2 towers is simply absurd. * They may as well have claimed that the 100+ floors of massive steel girders were demolished by magical pixie dust. In reality, those steel girders were systematically lysed by steel-melting, thermitic explosives that were hot enough to completely liquefy steel. That rules out jet fuel. It also rules out gravitational force by pancaking of floors as the cause of the near free fall collapse to Ground Zero. (Nor is step-wise pancaking of floors seen on the film.) As for the 1.8 million tons of pulverized concrete-- the tell-tale signs of explosive demolition (in addition to the apparent use of steel-melting thermite) are the visible (and audible) explosions and high-pressure pyroclastic flows. Those were not mere clouds of concrete dust wafted about by the gravitational force of collapsing floors. They were high-pressure, high-velocity explosions of pulverized concrete resembling the mushroom clouds in pyroclastic flows from volcanoes-- generated by extremely high temperatures. Rob Wheeler's observations are very interesting. Those of us who live thousands of miles from the Big Apple probably don't realize how severely traumatized people in New York and New Jersey have been by 9/11-- to the extent that the subject is virtually unmentionable. *

Someone posted something over at the Democratic Underground this afternoon about Bill Barr trying to arrange a direct meeting with Maxwell in the slammer. Didn't Bill Barr also meet with Epstein at the jail shortly before his death? I'm picturing Barr as Laurence Olivier in the movie Marathon Man asking Dustin Hoffman, "Is it safe?"

Rob, The most astonishing thing to observe, IMO, is the way our mainstream U.S. media has systematically blacked out any coverage of the overwhelming scientific evidence debunking the bogus official (NIST) government narrative about the destruction of the World Trade Center on 9/11-- for the past 19 years! Concurrently, there are multiple bogus, John McAdams type websites on the internet dedicated to propagating disinformation about what happened on 9/11, and mislabeling the scientists in the 9/11 Truth research community as kooky conspiracy theorists. The explosive demolition of WTC7 is a no brainer, but so are the explosive demolitions of WTC1 and WTC2, once people look at the data.* The NIST computer "simulation" of the the collapse of the Twin Towers is so ridiculous that the NIST refused to even publish the "data" used as parameters in their computer "simulation." They also refused to mention the obvious explosions that pulverized all of the concrete, the cut steel girders, or the liquefied steel at Ground Zero. In fact, they didn't even conduct a chemical analysis of the WTC debris! There are more than 3,000 highly reputable architects, engineers, and scientists involved with the Architects & Engineers for 9/11 Truth. As far as I know, there was nothing comparable to A&E for 9/11 Truth in the JFKA research community that debunked the Warren Commission Report during the first 20 years following JFK's murder. Yet, the general public still knows almost nothing about the Architects & Engineers for 9/11 Truth or the 9/11 scientific evidence. If the public hears anything about the 9/11 research community in the M$M, it is typically the standard nonsense about paranoid "conspiracy theorists." *

LOL, Ray. I needed a laugh today... 🤪 As for sexual relations between Donald and Melania, things have seemed awfully frosty since the Access Hollywood tape went public in 2016. Donald hasn't even been allowed to grab Melania by the hand, so I seriously doubt that he has been allowed to grab her anywhere else.

Joe, Sports writer Rick Reilly (originally from Boulder, Colorado) has written an entire book about Trump's legendary ability to cheat at golf. I haven't read the book. There's too much depressing biographical material out there about Don Mar-a-Lago as it is.