W. Niederhut

Joe, From what I've read, Trump's soccer skills on the golf course are also legendary, when it comes to adjusting the lie of his balls. His nickname with the caddies is, "Pele." 🤥

Pamela, Think about all of the massive steel columns in those buildings (WTC1 and WTC2) on all of the floors below the level of the upper floors where the planes crashed into the buildings. What changed in the way of the total gravitational force (weight) exerted on those lower level columns as a result of the crashes? Very little. Those Boeing fuselages are made of light weight aluminum. (Don't forget that those steel girders and struts were designed to hold all of the weight of the upper floors of the building-- as they had done for years.) A plane crashing into an upper floor of the building would not have significantly altered the resistance of the lower level steel girders to gravitational collapse. Therefore, the official (NIST) government narrative was that "burning jet fuel" somehow weakened all of the steel beams-- presumably all 100+ floors of them. It's analogous to the Magic Bullet Theory of JFK's assassination-- a scientific absurdity. To begin with, how much burning jet fuel could have possibly seeped to floors far below the crash sites on the upper floors-- especially after a substantial amount of the fuel exploded upon impact? Secondly, even if there had been enough jet fuel to heat all 100+ floors of steel girders (an absurdity) jet fuel doesn't burn at a high enough temperature to liquefy steel-- which is what precisely what happened to WTC1 and WTC2 on 9/11. Molten steel is clearly visible on the film of the demolitions, and was witnessed at Ground Zero-- which firemen described as looking, "like a foundry." I hate to agree with Donald Trump, but he was absolutely correct when he said on 9/11 that, based upon his knowledge of the construction of WTC1 and WTC2, the Twin Towers "could only have been destroyed by bombs."

Pamela, The "pancake" theory for the collapse of WTC1 and WTC2 has been thoroughly debunked. If you study the film of the collapses, it's obvious that the buildings were not brought down by a top-down gravitational "pile driver" effect. On the contrary, WTC1 and WTC2 both collapsed at near free fall acceleration-- indicating that something had eliminated (demolished) significant resistance to collapse-- all the way down, for over 100 floors! Burning jet fuel on some upper floors couldn't possibly have demolished all of those massive steel girders. Nor would it have explosively pulverized 1.8 million tons of concrete. On the contrary, major fires in steel skyscrapers typically burn for hours and hours without melting steel girders or causing the buildings to collapse. That's why the NYFD fire officials thought Rudy Giuliani was nuts when he told them shortly after the plane crashes that the towers were going to collapse. As for WTC7, if you observe the film of the collapse, (below) the distance between the upper floors remains constant as the entire building suddenly collapses in a free fall. In other words, the building was not crushed by a "pile driver" effect of upper floors collapsing onto lower floors-- as the NIST Report claimed.

Ron, Speaking of the Stones, this is a follow up to my last Education Forum non sequitur about the ZZ Top documentary on Netflix. (This should be subtitled, "How I Survived the Plague Year By Watching Pop Documentaries on Netflix.") I survived last week by watching the Netflix series on Monty Python, Jakob Dylan's Echo in the Canyon, and the Keith Richards documentary-- a lot of interesting film clips and interviews of septuagenarian rock stars and comedians. One of the biggest shockers for me was watching the film clip of Keith Richards and Mick Jagger recording Sympathy For the Devil for the Beggars Banquet album. I've owned that vinyl LP for 50 years, but I had no idea that Keith played both the bass and guitar parts, while Mick was tapping on a small conga drum and singing behind a partition. The song was originally recorded as a slow, tedious ballad, then evolved into the up tempo rock classic that we've all heard 1,000 times.

"Pulled" by whom, Mark? Certainly not by the NYFD. The NYFD doesn't do those kind of demolitions. Larry Silverstein said, "I told them to pull it... and we watched it come down." Who is "them?" As for the NIST/Wikipedia narrative about office fires causing the abrupt-onset, free fall collapse of WTC7-- it's ludicrous. (And the NIST model only pretended to explain the initial onset of a partial collapse on an upper floor, not the observed free fall collapse of all 47 floors.) Local offices fires would have caused, at most, a partial, gradual, asymmetrical collapse of some floors-- not an abrupt, total, symmetrical collapse at the acceleration of gravity.

According to the NYT's database, new COVID cases in the U.S. have increased by 69 percent during the past 14 days. Florida's daily tally has surged 5-fold. Incredibly, Ron DeSantis is still trying to blame the surge on deltas in testing, rather than on the botched re-openings!

Doug, This Wikipedia article about the observed free fall collapse of WTC7 on 9/11 is pseudo-scientific nonsense-- and I say that as a guy who was recruited to tutor physics when I was an undergrad at Brown back in the day. Office fires don't cause 47-floor steel skyscrapers to suddenly collapse in a symmetrical free fall. That bogus NIST non-explanation simply defies the laws of Newtonian physics. Something had to abruptly eliminate all resistance to free fall acceleration. WTC7 was expertly demolished by pre-planted explosives on 9/11, after Larry Silverstein, in his own words, "told them to pull it."

Let me hazard a guess. When the excrement hits the oscillating device on this one, Trump will say that he was only joking about Biden being shot.

And, fortunately, Masters of War has been re-discovered, and covered, in recent years by a younger generation of musicians.

Paul, IMO, the spectacular explosive demolitions of the World Trade Center on 9/11 were a carefully planned psy op-- a "New Pearl Harbor" event-- to mobilize outrage and popular support in the U.S. for implementation of the PNAC "Wolfowitz Doctrine," later dubbed, "the Bush Doctrine." Among other military interventions in the Middle East, the plan called for overthrow of Saddam Hussein. General Wesley Clark later claimed that officials in the Rumsfeld-Wolfowitz-Feith Pentagon told him shortly after 9/11 that, "We are going to take out 7 countries in 5 years, starting with Iraq, and then Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, and, finishing off, Iran." * As for these specific buildings-- WTC1 and WTC2-- they were leased by New York real estate tycoon Larry Silverstein from the Port Authority in July of 2001, just a few weeks before 9/11. Among other issues at the time, they required asbestos removal/mitigation. (WTC7 was built and owned by Silverstein for years.) Silverstein insured the buildings by September of 2001 through a consortium of international financiers, and there was an odd rider stipulating that, in the event of a terrorist attack on the WTC, the insurers would not be permitted to conduct an independent forensic examination of the damaged buildings. Silverstein, ultimately, collected $4.5 billion in insurance on his original $15 million July 2001 down payment for the WTC lease. * https://www.globalresearch.ca/we-re-going-to-take-out-7-countries-in-5-years-iraq-syria-lebanon-libya-somalia-sudan-iran/5166

I used to attend free Sunday afternoon concerts over at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum when I was a first year medical student living at Vanderbilt Hall, just one block away. Beautiful place. Fond memories. Sadly, some burglars later stole a Rembrandt from that Italian Renaissance palace.

Micah, Here's some visual evidence and witness testimony about the serial explosions that brought down the towers-- e.g., "The bombs just started exploding... boom...boom...boom..boom..." If you study the film, you can clearly see the serial explosions that were described by multiple witnesses.

The demolitions of WTC1 and WTC2 were accomplished at extremely high, steel-liquefying temperatures-- far in excess of the temperature of burning jet fuel. But, as you point out, there were also serial explosions. On film, you can directly observe the melting of steel girders prior to the sequential collapse and explosion of floors, accompanied by high velocity lateral ejections of steel beams and pulverization of tons of concrete into pyroclastic flows. The sequentially-detonated explosions are visible and audible on recordings, and were also described by numerous witnesses. It's truly amazing that the obvious audio and visual evidence of the explosive WTC demolitions-- like a well-publicized Zapruder film on steroids-- have been so successfully misinterpreted by the general public for the past 19 years! Under conditions of shock, people tend to believe what respectable authority figures (e.g., Henry Kissinger, L. Paul Bremer, Ehud Barak) tell them on network television. We were immediately inundated on 9/11 with the false government narrative about "burning jet fuel," Osama Bin Laden, "Al Qaeda" hijackers, etc.-- not unlike the way the CIA barraged the world media with the Lee Harvey Oswald, Lone-Nut- Commie-in-the-TSBD narrative shortly after JFK's murder.

Except, as James DiEugenio and Jefferson Morley have pointed out in their reviews, the M$M has generally managed to avoid talking about the real substance of Murder Most Foul. As for Masters of War, one of the most striking things about the song is that it was written and recorded more than a year before the Gulf of Tonkin incident, and two years before LBJ's major escalation of the Vietnam War.

Micah, The scientific evidence for explosive demolitions of the World Trade Center on 9/11 is overwhelming and incontrovertible. Scientists who have studied the data tend to refer to the abrupt, symmetrical, free fall collapse of WTC7 on 9/11 as "the smoking gun," but the truth is that there are a plethora of "smoking guns." What explosively pulverized 1.8 million tons of WTC concrete (along with furniture and human bodies) into pyroclastic clouds over lower Manhattan on 9/11? What liquefied those massive steel girders-- giving Ground Zero the appearance of "a foundry," as described by NYFD witnesses? (Certainly not jet fuel or office fires.) In fact, you can clearly see the melting steel flows and serial explosions that pulverized the concrete on the films. Those were carefully prepared demolitions. The two main WTC towers were not brought down by any gravitational, top-down "pile driver" effect-- they imploded. And, yes, military grade, steel-melting, thermitic explosives did, in fact, exist in 2001. So did Raytheon's successfully-tested GPS technology for the remote-piloting of Boeing jetliners. But, needless to say, none of this scientific evidence has been discussed by the NYT (or the M$M generally) during the past 19 years. There has been a complete M$M blackout. In fact, I'm not aware of any meaningful coverage in the NYT of the demolition of the 47-floor WTC7 on 9/11. (David Andrews may know more about that subject.) Someone noted several years ago that 95% of the American people had never even heard of WTC7.

Joe, I thought Trump was finished after Billy Bush and Access Hollywood released the notorious "Grab 'Em By the Pussy" tape in 2016. But the tape, obviously, had very little impact on Trump's base-- partly because Fox, Breitbart, and the conservative media have consistently run interference on any negative press about Trump. And the M$M (including NYT and WaPo) also colluded bigly in smearing Hillary in 2016, running weekly headline stories about Hillary's Emails. My question. What can possibly put a dent in the fixed delusions of the Trump Cult? It's a personality cult, but it is also largely predicated on Caucasian tribalism, xenophobia, and the delusional belief that Don Mar-a-Lago will be good for the economy, and will "deliver the goods."

I have an idea for a new Education Forum thread, inspired by Jefferson Morley's recent Counter Punch article, "Bob Dylan Has A Lot On His Mind, But The NYT Doesn't Want To Talk About It." I've been reading the NYT for almost 50 years now, and I can probably generate a long list. Here's my short list. 1) The JFK assassination evidence 2) The 9/11 evidence--explosive demolitions, insider trading, Urban Moving Systems, etc. 3) Operation Timber Sycamore 4) The U.S.S. Liberty 5) NSAM 263 and NSAM 273

When I first heard the Love and Theft album I was so impressed by the brilliant song writing that I bought the (sheet) music book and recorded the whole album in my one man home studio band (minus two numbers.) Why? Because Dylan's vocal cords were so shot by 2001 that I thought I could improve the product, even with my so-so vocals. His subsequent song-writing on Modern Times and Together Through Life is also quite good. (I'm less fond of his pre- Love and Theft late 90s album Time Out of Mind. The critics loved it but, IMO, it was a somewhat murky recording.)

As I recall, Ron's favorite rock song is (I Can't Get No) Satisfaction. But, as a former Peace Corps volunteer, I'm surprised that Ron wasn't more smitten by Dylan's 1963 acoustic number about the men who almost nuked the planet in '62 before, eventually, murdering JFK.

Four states, including Florida and Texas, report highest single-day totals www.nytimes.com/2020/06/25/world/coronavirus-updates.html?action=click&module=Spotlight&pgtype=Homepage June 25, 2020 The United States reported 36,880 new coronavirus cases on Wednesday, the largest one-day total since the start of the pandemic and more than two months after the previous high. The number of infections indicated that the country was not only failing to contain the virus, but also that the caseload was worsening — a path at odds with many other nations that have seen steady declines after an earlier peak. Cases in the United States had been on a downward trajectory after the previous high of 36,739 cases on April 24, but they have roared back in recent weeks. The resurgence is concentrated largely in the South and West. Florida, Oklahoma, South Carolina and Texas reported their highest single-day totals on Wednesday, but case numbers have been rising in 29 states. The tally of new cases, based on a New York Times database, showed that the outbreak was stronger than ever. The elevated numbers are a result of worsening conditions across much of the country, as well as increased testing — but testing alone does not explain the surge. The percentage of people in Florida who have tested positive for the virus has risen sharply. Increases in hospitalizations also signal the virus’s spread.

Don't get so excited about this latest screwball ruling by a Trump-appointed judge, Rob. Judge Neomi Rao is a former Trump administration lackey affiliated with Bill Barr's corrupt Federalist Society, and with the Antonin Scalia School (ASS) of Republican Bench Warmers at George Mason. She was nominated by Trump in January of 2019 to fill Brett Kavanaugh's vacant Appellate Court seat, and was quickly approved in a strict party-line 53 GOP Senate vote. (BTW, these are the same 53 corrupt GOP screwballs who deliberately ignored the overwhelming evidence of Trump's guilt in the Ukraine/Zelensky Extortion Scam.) But notice that "Just-Us" Rao and her Bush-appointed Republican colleague completely ignored the precedents of SCOTUS rulings authorizing judges to conduct independent evaluations of Executive branch actions. Trump Judge Neomi Rao’s Flynn Opinion Is Dangerous and Anti-Democratic slate.com/news-and-politics/2020/06/michael-flynn-neomi-rao-trump-barr-sullivan.html?via=features

So, if patriotism is the last refuge of scoundrels, the Garden State ain't it. But, frankly, I'm surprised to see Texas ranked way down at #47. Texas has always seemed like a very conservative, pro-military place in my experiences there. They even have highways named for Dubya Bush and the American Sniper.

But, Ron, Trump was only joking when he talked about slowing down testing. Get it? HA HA HA... Hee hee... heh... oh, wait a minute... 🤥 Senators Find $14 Billion in Unspent Funds After Trump Admits to Ordering Slowdown in Covid-19 Testing https://www.commondreams.org/news/2020/06/22/senators-find-14-billion-unspent-funds-after-trump-admits-ordering-slowdown-covid-19