Franklin D. Roosevelt Vs. George Bush, A comparison Options

[jeffmoskin]

I was not right there in New York City when 9-11 went down, but I was in a diner full of people, and I was watching it all on television, and I did see those building go down, and I will say from my point of view as an engineer, that it looked like an implosion to me, for whatever that is worth!

The buildings did not tip over, they went down!

A very astute observation, Livyjr.

The WTC towers were constructed with the vertical support beams along the OUTSIDE walls. That type of "shell" construction is borrowed from the aircraft industry (monocoque construction is their term). And the hundreds of steel box beams were designed to withstand 14 hours of "towering inferno" fire, at a temperature far hotter than 45 minutes of burning kerosene can generate.

And, surprisingly, the two towers suffered "progressive collapse," STRAIGHT DOWN!

Just like when they demo an unwanted building.

Not the kind of thing one might expect from the effects of uneven heating caused by all that jet fuel sloshed about and trickling down a few floors.

I find it very hard to explain, myself, as a recovering engineer.

[amy]

A very astute observation, Livyjr.

The WTC towers were constructed with the vertical support beams along the OUTSIDE walls. That type of "shell" construction is borrowed from the aircraft industry (monocoque construction is their term). And the hundreds of steel box beams were designed to withstand 14 hours of "towering inferno" fire, at a temperature far hotter than 45 minutes of burning kerosene can generate.

And, surprisingly, the two towers suffered "progressive collapse," STRAIGHT DOWN!

Just like when they demo an unwanted building.

Not the kind of thing one might expect from the effects of uneven heating caused by all that jet fuel sloshed about and trickling down a few floors.

I find it very hard to explain, myself, as a recovering engineer.

Could it have been possible for explosives to have been set off inside the towers about the same time the jets hit the towers? But if that were true, wouldn't those who investigated the site be able to find evidence of that? I saw the second plane hit the tower and the buildings collapse straight down, but I thought that was normal.

[Livyjr]

Could it have been possible for explosives to have been set off inside the towers about the same time the jets hit the towers?

But if that were true, wouldn't those who investigated the site be able to find evidence of that?

I saw the second plane hit the tower and the buildings collapse straight down, but I thought that was normal.

It sure did look normal to me, amy, if you had wanted to "raze" those buildings for "urban renewal", and so did a controlled explosion to make those buidlings fall down that way.

And you CAN DO those types of implosions BECAUSE of the high quality timers available today, timers such as the CIA sold to Libya quite a few years ago, from its own stocks of same!

And where was anyone going to look for evidence of that afterwards, if there were explosives used to take down those buildings?

Once those buildings came down, there was nothing but a huge pile of rubble!

And you don't get a controlled explosion by flying an airplane into the side of a building!

Stack a pile of kid's blocks up out in your back yard, and throw a baseball at the middle of the stack!

Watch how the "forces" distribute themselves!

Not to talk "geek" here, too much anyway, but there definitely were some asymmetrical forces imposed on those buildings on 9-11, since they were not hit on all sides at once by equal forces, and yet, straight down they went, as if by design, rather than tipping, as I would have expected from how the damage was inflicted!

I stood there and watched it happen, and when it did, the only thought in my head was that this is a load of ****, and today, it stinks worse than ever!

[jeffmoskin]

The whole WORLD watched those towers fall. But we have been conditioned by Hollywood to believe what we see.

Even if the explaination isn't correct.

[Livyjr]

The whole WORLD watched those towers fall.

But we have been conditioned by Hollywood to believe what we see.

Even if the explanation isn't correct.

After reading amy's comment last night, and after recalling what I saw happening all around me on 9-11 as other people watched those building go straight down, without thinking a thing about it, a similar thought came to me last night!

Everybody saw what was right in front of their eyes, AND YET, DID NOT SEE A THING, and then all LEAPT to the conclusion that they were supposed to LEAP to, ACCORDING TO WHAT I SEE AS A SCENARIO that was picture perfect in its execution!

BANG!

BANG!

BANG!

"And there we have it folks, let's kill all the Arabs in the world, before they kill us."

Just like clockwork it was, when it should not have been!

And the TV cameras strategically located, so that we would see what was needed by us to see, except, it was a crock of ****!

I keep thinking about that second plane hitting the second tower, and how the camera was already right there to see it happen, since there was no way someone could have had the reflexes to get a camera up and aimed AFTER the plane went into that building.

A house of cards, masterfully constructed, but a house of cards, nonetheless!

And then people went off shrieking and moaning, and each said to the other, "Let's go kill Arabs!"

Nobody said, "hey, wait a minute, how come those building went down in that manner, and all within a pretty tight time schedule?"

Everybody simply reinforced everybody else, and then the competition to be the shrillest voice and the most vocal in the cry to murder the Arabs began, and that was that!

And Karl Rove sat there, in the wings, loving every minute of it!

THE GIFT THAT JUST KEPT ON GIVING!

All that evidence of corporate wrongdoing gone up in a puff of smoke, so the BASE were happy, and war against the world was now a certainty ......

And last night, true to REPUBLICAN form, once more again, George W. Bush trotted out the old reliable "9-11" to try and score some further political points off of it, for him and his!

[Livyjr]

"If this were a dictatorship, it would be a heck of a lot easier, just so long as I'm the dictator!"

- George W. Bush clearly and succinctly articulating the "judicial philosophy" that any judicial appointment of his would have to embrace, in order to get the necessary nod and wink from George W. Bush that would make them a judge in his version of America, Washington, D.C.; December 18, 2002

[Livyjr]

March 4, 2005

OP-ED COLUMNIST, NY Times

"Deficits and Deceit" By PAUL KRUGMAN

Four years ago, Alan Greenspan urged Congress to cut taxes, asserting that the federal government was in imminent danger of paying off too much debt.

On Wednesday the Fed chairman warned Congress of the opposite fiscal danger: he asserted that there would be large budget deficits for the foreseeable future, leading to an unsustainable rise in federal debt.

But he counseled against reversing the tax cuts, calling instead for cuts in Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid.

Does anyone still take Mr. Greenspan's pose as a nonpartisan font of wisdom seriously?

When Mr. Greenspan made his contorted argument for tax cuts back in 2001, his reputation made it hard for many observers to admit the obvious: he was mainly looking for some way to do the Bush administration a political favor.

But there's no reason to be taken in by his equally weak, contorted argument against reversing those cuts today.

To put Mr. Greenspan's game of fiscal three-card monte in perspective, remember that the push for Social Security privatization is only part of the right's strategy for dismantling the New Deal and the Great Society.

The other big piece of that strategy is the use of tax cuts to "starve the beast."

Until the 1970's conservatives tended to be open about their disdain for Social Security and Medicare.

But honesty was bad politics, because voters value those programs.

So conservative intellectuals proposed a bait-and-switch strategy: First, advocate tax cuts, using whatever tactics you think may work - supply-side economics, inflated budget projections, whatever.

Then use the resulting deficits to argue for slashing government spending.

And that's the story of the last four years.

In 2001, President Bush and Mr. Greenspan justified tax cuts with sunny predictions that the budget would remain comfortably in surplus.

But Mr. Bush's advisers knew that the tax cuts would probably cause budget problems, and welcomed the prospect.

In fact, Mr. Bush celebrated the budget's initial slide into deficit.

In the summer of 2001 he called plunging federal revenue "incredibly positive news" because it would "put a straitjacket" on federal spending.

To keep that straitjacket on, however, those who sold tax cuts with the assurance that they were easily affordable must convince the public that the cuts can't be reversed now that those assurances have proved false.

And Mr. Greenspan has once again tried to come to the president's aid, insisting this week that we should deal with deficits "primarily, if not wholly," by slashing Social Security and Medicare because tax increases would "pose significant risks to economic growth."

Really?

America prospered for half a century under a level of federal taxes higher than the one we face today.

According to the administration's own estimates, Mr. Bush's second term will see the lowest tax take as a percentage of G.D.P. since the Truman administration.

And don't forget that President Clinton's 1993 tax increase ushered in an economic boom.

Why, exactly, are tax increases out of the question?

O.K., enough about Mr. Greenspan.

The real news is the growing evidence that the political theory behind the Bush tax cuts was as wrong as the economic theory.

According to starve-the-beast doctrine, right-wing politicians can use the big deficits generated by tax cuts as an excuse to slash social insurance programs.

Mr. Bush's advisers thought that it would prove especially easy to sell benefit cuts in the context of Social Security privatization because the president could pretend that a plan that sharply cut benefits would actually be good for workers.

But the theory isn't working.

As soon as voters heard that privatization would involve benefit cuts, support for Social Security "reform" plunged.

Another sign of the theory's falsity: across the nation, Republican governors, finding that voters really want adequate public services, are talking about tax increases.

The best bet now is that Mr. Bush will manage to make the poor suffer, but fail to make a dent in the great middle-class entitlement programs.

And the consequence of the failure of the starve-the-beast theory is a looming fiscal crisis - Mr. Greenspan isn't wrong about that.

The middle class won't give up programs that are essential to its financial security; the right won't give up tax cuts that it sold on false pretenses.

The only question now is when foreign investors, who have financed our deficits so far, will decide to pull the plug.

E-mail: krugman@nytimes.com

Bob Herbert is on vacation.

[Livyjr]

"If this were a dictatorship, it would be a heck of a lot easier, just so long as I'm the dictator!"

- George W. Bush clearly and succinctly articulating the "judicial philosophy" that any judicial appointment of his would have to embrace, in order to get the necessary nod and wink from George W. Bush that would make them a judge in his version of America, Washington, D.C.; December 18, 2002

Yeah, right, George .....

May 9, 2005

"Stranger Than Fiction" By BOB HERBERT

When Bob Woodward asked President Bush if he had consulted with his father about the decision to go to war in Iraq, the president famously replied, "There is a higher father that I appeal to."

It might have been better if Mr. Bush had stayed in closer touch with his earthly father.

From the very beginning the war in Iraq has been an exercise in extreme madness, an absurd venture that would have been rich in comic possibilities except for the fact that many thousands of men, women and children have died, and tens of thousands have been crippled, burned or otherwise maimed.

The world now knows that the weapons of mass destruction were a convenient fiction.

Less well known is that bumbling administration officials eagerly embraced the ravings of a foreign intelligence source known, believe it or not, as "Curveball."

He helped promote the fantasy that Iraq had mobile laboratories for the manufacture of biological weapons.

The C.I.A. was warned that Curveball was as crazy as a Peter Sellers character, but the administration wanted this war in the way that a small child wants candy.

Curveball's information was swallowed whole.

Amateurs and incompetents have run the war from the start, and fantasy has trumped reality at every turn.

If a movie were to be made of the war, the appropriate director would be Mel Brooks.

Even as the administration was listening to the likes of Curveball, it was showing the door to the Army's chief of staff, Gen. Eric K. Shinseki, who made the mistake of speaking the plain truth to officials fluent only in self-serving gibberish.

General Shinseki said it would take hundreds of thousands of troops to pacify Iraq.

That was the end of his career.

Bush & Co. sent far fewer troops into the war, and many of them were never properly trained or equipped.

The results have been nightmarish.

Roadside bombs have caused 70 percent of American casualties in Iraq.

The military was not prepared for this tactic and has had a miserable record providing protective armor for Humvees and other vehicles carrying soldiers and marines.

So G.I.'s from the wealthiest, most powerful nation in the history of the world have been dying because their nation wouldn't give them up-to-date combat vehicles.

As for training and preparedness, the scandal at Abu Ghraib is instructive.

The problems there went far beyond the photos of Lynndie England and others humiliating the Iraqis under their control.

We learned last week that Janis Karpinski, the brigadier general whose reserve military police unit was in charge of the prison, had been arrested for shoplifting at a military base in Florida in 2002.

The same army that's scouring Iraq for insurgents and terrorists was apparently unaware of the arrest record of the woman assigned to such a sensitive position at Abu Ghraib.

Abu Ghraib was not an aberration.

It was a symptom.

This is a war in which the people in charge have had no idea what they were doing.

One of the recommendations of Maj. Gen. Antonio Taguba, who investigated the scandal at Abu Ghraib, was that a team be sent to Iraq to teach some of the soldiers how to run prisons.

How's that for an innovative step?

The United States is now stuck with a war it should never have started.

The violence continues to rage out of control.

The latest fantasy out of Washington is that somehow, miraculously, Iraqi troops will be able to take over and win the war that we couldn't.

The American public is becoming fed up and with good reason.

Support for the war is declining and the reputation of the military is in jeopardy.

The Army has been unable to meet its recruitment goals and the search for new soldiers is becoming desperate.

Last week, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Richard Myers, told Congress that the war in Iraq was taking a toll on the military and would make combat operations elsewhere in the world more difficult.

That was hardly a comforting thought as the administration was ramping up its rhetoric about North Korea.

If President Bush had consulted with his father before launching this clownish, disastrous war, he might have gotten some advice that would have pointed him in a different direction and spared his country - and the families of the many thousands dead - a lot of grief.

E-mail: bobherb@nytimes.com

[jeffmoskin]

I keep thinking about that second plane hitting the second tower, and how the camera was already right there to see it happen, since there was no way someone could have had the reflexes to get a camera up and aimed AFTER the plane went into that building.

Actually, that is the only BELIEVABLE part of the 9/11 tragedy. since there is always a news chopper in the sky reporting on traffic, it was just a matter of minutes after the first plane hit (which is only documented on one amateur videotape) until the chopper was on station. With flight visibilities of 100 miles that morning, spotting and videotaping the second plane would have been easy.

[Livyjr]

Yeah, right, George .....

May 9, 2005

"Stranger Than Fiction" By BOB HERBERT

Amateurs and incompetents have run the war from the start, and fantasy has trumped reality at every turn.

If a movie were to be made of the war, the appropriate director would be Mel Brooks.

Even as the administration was listening to the likes of Curveball, it was showing the door to the Army's chief of staff, Gen. Eric K. Shinseki, who made the mistake of speaking the plain truth to officials fluent only in self-serving gibberish.

This is a war in which the people in charge have had no idea what they were doing.

The latest fantasy out of Washington is that somehow, miraculously, Iraqi troops will be able to take over and win the war that we couldn't.

Support for the war is declining and the reputation of the military is in jeopardy.

The Army has been unable to meet its recruitment goals and the search for new soldiers is becoming desperate.

E-mail: bobherb@nytimes.com

May 3, 2005

"Army Recruiters Say They Feel Pressure to Bend Rules"

By DAMIEN CAVE, NY Times

It was late September when the 21-year-old man, fresh from a three-week commitment in a psychiatric ward, showed up at an Army recruiting station in southern Ohio.

The two recruiters there wasted no time signing him up, and even after the man's parents told them he had bipolar disorder - a diagnosis that would disqualify him - he was all set to be shipped to boot camp, and perhaps Iraq after that, before senior officers found out and canceled the enlistment.

Despite an Army investigation, the recruiters were not punished and were still working in the area late last month.

Two hundred miles away, in northern Ohio, another recruiter said the incident hardly surprised him.

He has been bending or breaking enlistment rules for months, he said, hiding police records and medical histories of potential recruits.

His commanders have encouraged such deception, he said, because they know there is no other way to meet the Army's stiff recruitment quotas.

"The problem is that no one wants to join," the recruiter said.

"We have to play fast and loose with the rules just to get by."

These two cases in a single state - one centered on a recruit, the other on a recruiter - may lie at the outer limits of the fudging and finagling that are occurring in enlistment offices as the Army tries to maintain its all-volunteer force in a time of war.

But that cheating, evidenced by Army statistics that show an increase in cases against recruiters, is disturbing many of the men and women charged with the uphill task of refilling the ranks.

Interviews with more than two dozen recruiters in 10 states hint at the extent of their concern, if not the exact scope of the transgressions.

Several spoke of concealing mental-health histories and police records.

They described falsified documents, wallet-size cheat sheets slipped to applicants before the military's aptitude test and commanding officers who look the other way.

And they voiced doubts about the quality of some troops destined for the front lines.

The recruiters insisted on anonymity to avoid being disciplined, but their accounts were consistent, and the specifics were verified in several cases by documents and interviews with military officials and applicants' families.

Yesterday, the issue drew national attention as CBS News reported that a high-school student outside Denver recorded two recruiters as they advised him how to cheat.

The student, David McSwane, said one recruiter had told him how to create a diploma from a nonexistent school, while the other had helped him buy a product to cleanse traces of marijuana and psychedelic mushrooms from his body.

The Army said the recruiters had been suspended while it investigated.

By the Army's own count, there were 320 substantiated cases of what it calls recruitment improprieties in 2004, up from 199 in 1999, the last year it missed its active-duty recruitment goal, and 213 in 2002, the year before the war in Iraq started.

The offenses varied from threats and coercion to false promises that applicants would not be sent to Iraq.

Many incidents involved more than one recruiter, and the number of those investigated rose to 1,118 last year, or nearly one in five of all recruiters, up from 913 in 2002, or one in eight.

Maj. Gen. Michael D. Rochelle, the Army's commander of recruiting, said the increases reflected a renewed resolve to find and prevent improprieties, rather than any significant rise in cheating.

Recruiters and some senior Army officials, however, said that for every impropriety that is found, at least two more are never discovered.

And the Army's figures show that it is not punishing serious offenses as it once did.

In 2002, roughly 5 of every 10 recruiters who were found to have committed improprieties intentionally or through gross negligence were relieved of duty; last year, that number slipped to 3 in 10.

General Rochelle said that decline could be explained, in part, by his decision two years ago to end a policy that nearly always dismissed serious offenders from recruiting.

"My shift in thinking was that if an individual was accused of doctoring a high-school diploma, it was an open-and-shut case," he said.

"It may still be, but now I look at person's value to the command first."

Recruiting has always been a difficult job, and some say the scandals that have periodically surfaced are inevitable.

But the temptation to cut corners is particularly strong today, some experts on the military say, as deployments in Iraq and Afghanistan have created a desperate need for new soldiers, and as the Army has fallen short of its recruitment goals in recent months, including April.

"The more pressure you put on recruiters, the more likely you'll be to find people seeking ways to beat the system," said David Segal, a military sociologist at the University of Maryland.

Over the last six months, the Army has relaxed its requirements on age and education - a move that Mr. Segal says may lead recruiters to go easier on applicants, with the expectation that those who are unqualified now may be deemed eligible later on.

Recruiters, who typically work far from commanders in storefront offices, are the Army's primary gatekeepers.

They are required to press applicants to disclose any police record or medical problems, from asthma to knee injuries, that could disqualify them.

But applicants can lie, or withhold damaging information.

So recruiters are expected to check court, educational and criminal records to confirm details and search for others that have not been disclosed.

The records are checked by senior officers and then sent to a regional processing office that arranges aptitude and medical tests; it may check into problems revealed in the files but largely depends on the digging done by recruiters.

The two cases in Ohio show just how badly the system can veer off track.

In the case of the 21-year-old who had just left a psychiatric ward, it is not clear what he revealed when he approached recruiters in September.

He could not be reached for comment through court-appointed lawyers and his parents, who asked that he not be identified.

But details of the young man's troubled past could have been easily found on the Web sites of local courts.

County court records show that he was arrested in July and charged with assault; though the charge was dismissed after his accuser failed to appear in court, the records could have raised a red flag.

Probate court records show that in a case later last summer, a judge committed the man, finding him a danger to himself and others after he showed up at his parents' door bloodied and disoriented.

He was released in late September under the guidance of a treatment program.

Recruiters are not required to check probate court records unless they are made aware of a specific case.

But the man's parents said they did just that.

After hearing that he had enlisted, they said, they wanted to make sure the Army understood his condition.

They said they went to the recruiting station with the probate court record, gave recruiters the court's Internet address and even showed photos of their son.

The recruiters, they said, claimed they had never seen him.

"They acted sympathetic," the father said.

The parents say they went back twice more after the recruiters failed to return their calls.

At their urging, their congressmen in early October finally learned that the recruiters had indeed enlisted their son.

Days before he was scheduled to ship out, the young man was disqualified only after the father told the commander of the regional processing station about his illness.

In an interview, the commander confirmed the general outlines of the case.

The Army would say only that at least two recruiters had been investigated in the case, which is closed.

But the man's father said Army officials told him they had found no wrongdoing.

"The fact that they would recruit someone straight out of a psychiatric hospitalization - give me a break," he said.

"They were willing to put my son and other recruits at risk."

"It's beyond my comprehension, and appalling."

Co-workers in the stations where the recruiters worked said last month in interviews that the two were still on the job.

One of the two declined to comment when reached on his recruiting-command cellphone; the other did not return a half-dozen phone messages.

Recruiters in Ohio, New York, Washington, Texas and New England said that as long as an offending recruiter met his enlistment quota of roughly two recruits a month, punishment was unlikely.

"The saying here is, 'Production is power,' " the recruiter in northern Ohio said.

"Produce, and all is good."

He said that in the last year, he had seen recruiters falsify documents so that applicants could earn ranks they were not qualified to hold.

When enlistees tested positive for marijuana, he said, recruiters coached them to drink gallons of water before visiting military doctors.

Occasionally, the recruiter said, he has been ordered to conceal police records and minor medical conditions like attention deficit disorder, which usually disqualifies a candidate.

When he and others resisted such orders, he said, superiors threatened to ruin their careers.

The recruiter, who has fought in several conflicts including the current war in Iraq, said one in every three people he had enlisted had a problem that needed concealing, or a waiver.

"The only people who want to join the Army now have issues," he said.

"They're troubled, with health, police or drug problems."

The recruiter said he believed in the Army and his job, often working 80-hour weeks.

But he sometimes worries about the mental capabilities of those who are enlisted, he said, especially as they move up the ranks.

"If they are in a leadership position and they're sending 10 or 11 people all over the place because they can't focus on the job at hand," he said, "we're in trouble."

[Livyjr]

Actually, that is the only BELIEVABLE part of the 9/11 tragedy. 

Since there is always a news chopper in the sky reporting on traffic, it was just a matter of minutes after the first plane hit (which is only documented on one amateur videotape) until the chopper was on station.

With flight visibilities of 100 miles that morning, spotting and videotaping the second plane would have been easy.

Hhhhmmmm!

A good point, jeffmoskin!

Being from the country, I don't consider such things as news helicopters!

But I do know how things fall down, like the tops of trees, when sheared by the wind, and they always fall ........

[Livyjr]

"If this were a dictatorship, it would be a heck of a lot easier, just so long as I'm the dictator!"

- George W. Bush clearly and succinctly articulating the "judicial philosophy" that any judicial appointment of his would have to embrace, in order to get the necessary nod and wink from George W. Bush that would make them a judge in his version of America, Washington, D.C.; December 18, 2002

For one of the most cogent political speechs that you are ever likely to hear in your life, a speech that shows why George W. Bush is in that very select Pantheon of ALL of the Heroic Leaders of All the World, at any given time, click on this URL, now:

http://dr-joe.net/flash-files/Bush-Leno.htm

[Livyjr]

For one of the most cogent political speechs that you are ever likely to hear in your  life, a speech that shows why George W. Bush is in that very select Pantheon of ALL of the Heroic Leaders of All the World, at any given time, click on this URL, now:

http://dr-joe.net/flash-files/Bush-Leno.htm

"It's very important for folks to understand that when there's more trade, there's more commerce!"

- George W. Bush in the highly acclaimed, positively brilliant speech that knocked Adam Smith right clean out of the economics box and firmly established George W. Bush into the Pantheon of the world's greatest economic minds of any time, even if the speech is a little dense and hard to understand by the common person or layman without a Harvard BID-NESS education, Quebec City, Canada; April 21, 2001

[Livyjr]

"It is time to set aside the old partisan bickering and finger-pointing and name-calling that comes from freeing parents to make different choices for their children."

- George W. Bush speaking out in his role as the "FATHER of HIS country", Washington, D.C.; April 12, 2001

[Livyjr]

"It's very important for folks to understand that when there's more trade, there's more commerce!"

- George W. Bush in the highly acclaimed, positively brilliant speech that knocked Adam Smith right clean out of the economics box and firmly established George W. Bush into the Pantheon of the world's greatest economic minds of any time, even if the speech is a little dense and hard to understand by the common person or layman without a Harvard BID-NESS education, Quebec City, Canada; April 21, 2001

"If the terriers and bariffs are torn down, this economy will grow!"

- George W. Bush in a very rousing political speech on the Freudian and Jungian aspects of macro- and micro-economics that goes a long way, indeed, in explaining to the Californians what Enron did with all that money it hoodwinked the State of California out of, to the tune of BILLIONS, Rochester, New York; January 7, 2000

[lazyboy]

Actually, that is the only BELIEVABLE part of the 9/11 tragedy.  since there is always a news chopper in the sky reporting on traffic, it was just a matter of minutes after the first plane hit (which is only documented on one amateur videotape) until the chopper was on station. With flight visibilities of 100 miles that morning, spotting and videotaping the second plane would have been easy.

I wondered why they let the firemen remain in the towers as I was expecting the towers to collapse - however my husband was amazed that the towers collapsed and he is a builder. His best friend is an architect. The towers I think were built by a Japanese man. So the firemen must have been confident they were safe, who would send their men into a trap? That makes me conclude that the towers should not have collapsed. That they were mined at every level to make sure they fell into a neat pile just as if a demolition team had done it.

[Livyjr]

That makes me conclude that the towers should not have collapsed. 

That they were mined at every level to make sure they fell into a neat pile just as if a demolition team had done it.

Lingering thoughts, lazyboy, lingering thoughts, indeed, and we shall never know the difference, shall we!

There is a latin term, cui bono, that keeps coming back to me with respect to this 9-11 BID-NESS, and that term is essentially, who benefits, or more formally, "for whose good", or "for whose use or benefit", or sometimes, "for what useful purpose", and the only ones that I can see benefitting from this alleged "tragedy" are George W. Bush, Karl Rove, Dick Cheney, and "HIS", George Pataki, Rudolph Guiliani, Tony Blair, this Mehlman and his Republican National Committee, the "security industry", a bunch of corporations who were under investigation by the New York State Attorney General for various alleged instances of corporate fraud, which is really the "NEW AMERICAN WAY", and which "proof" or "evidence" of alleged fraud was conveniently destroyed when the World Trade Center was destroyed, several large banking houses who made out quite well with spiriting away "reconstruction funds" for their own use elsewhere, and whoever was able to "sell short" all that airline stock.

Outside of that handful, I see no benefit, or "useful purpose" for anyone else, either in America, or in the world, either.

We, of course, are told what to think and believe over here in America, and for the most part, what are now called "Americans" by George W. Bush "do as they are told to do", which is to believe that America is about to be overrun and conquered by about five or ten dirty and ignorant camel drivers from the wilds of Uzbekistan, or one of those places, anyway, where there are a lot of holes in the ground that these people live in, with old rugs and such on their heads, which apparently makes them hate people who either live in houses, or don't go around wearing old rugs and stuff on their heads, although to be truthful, with all the technical language coming out of Washington, D.C., and the complexity of their psychological arguments concerning the "childhood traumas" and "unhappinesses" of these people living in holes over there, I myself certainly don't have the requisite background in psychology or sociology to exactly understand what it is that these "rugheads", I think they are called, are so allegedly spiteful about, that they would want to come over here to destroy evidence of corporate fraud in America.

I'm not sure if these "rugheads" are upset with the New York State attorney general for investigating this fraud, and so, were trying to politically embarass him by destroying this evidence, or whether these "rugheads" themselves controlled the corporations responsible for the fraud, and so, wanted to destroy the evidence to protect themselves, or whether these "rugheads" were somehow tied in with these banks that got the "reconstruction" money, in which case, they needed to take down the World Trade Center so as to make them eligible for those funds, afterwards.

As to these people who suck up any pablum that George W. Bush feeds them, these people are really nothing more than those who will agree beforehand to go to what are called "town meetings" that are to be shown on television, by the Republicans, said "town meetings" being set up by the Republicans, for the benefit of Republicans, where these people will say "YES" when cued to do so, in response to say, George W. Bush asking them if it is alright to take away OUR constitutional rights, or "NAY", in response say, to George W. Bush asking them if there is anyone else in the world who can protect them as well as he can.

And that's it.

And I don't believe that they would have had to mine the whole building, myself.

There just is too much known about explosives these days to have to resort to such overkill, especially with the quality of explosives now available, and the timers, which are the key component here, which are necessary to make remote charges all go off at the same time, or more specifically, the appropriate times, to make a building fall straight down, as did the world trade center towers.

Urban renewal and fantastic political advantage all in one fell swoop!

And George W. Bush and Tony Blair got a war out of it, as a possible extra jackpot.

Cui Bono, indeed.

[Livyjr]

Yeah, right, George .....

May 9, 2005

"Stranger Than Fiction" By BOB HERBERT

When Bob Woodward asked President Bush if he had consulted with his father about the decision to go to war in Iraq, the president famously replied, "There is a higher father that I appeal to."

It might have been better if Mr. Bush had stayed in closer touch with his earthly father.

And when you got GOD in your hip pocket as George W. Bush does, who needs reality?

"And we need a full affront on an energy crisis that is real in California and looms for other parts of our country if we don't move quickly!"

- George W. Bush in a "WE'RE ALL BUDDIES HERE, C'MON, GIVE ME A HUG" speech intended to sooth jeffmoskin's concerns about that $9 BILLION or so that Kenny "BOY" Lay's ENRON energy company screwed the Californians out of, Washington, D.C.; March 29, 2001

[Livyjr]

George Bush has recently started comparing himself to one of our former great presidents, Franklin D. Roosevelt.

This president was a president during my younger years and also during my military service in World War II.

M. Bush would be wise to not compare himself with this president.

F.D.R. as he was known to the public was one who leveled with Americans.

Here is one example.

His radio speech on December 9, 1941.

Two days after Pearl Harbor.

Note how he does not try to minimize the bad news.

No -----

He tells the truth.

I hope to post other ways, from time to time, in which F.D.R. shows his respect for the American people.

He does this by being honest with them.

A.B.

ADDRESS OF THE PRESIDENT DELIVERED BY RADIO FROM THE WHITE HOUSE, BROADCAST FROM THE OVAL ROOM OF THE WHITE HOUSE,  NATIONALLY, AND OVER A WORLD-WIDE HOOKUP

DECEMBER 9, 1941 -- 10:00 PM

MY FELLOW AMERICANS:

I have prepared the full record of our past relations with Japan, and it will be submitted to the Congress.

It begins with the visit of Commodore Perry to Japan eighty-eight years ago.

"I don't remember debates."

"I don't think we spent a lot of time debating it."

"Maybe we did, but I don't remember."

- George W. Bush, On discussions of the Viet Nam War when he was an undergraduate at Yale; the Washington Post; July 27, 1999

[Livyjr]

George Bush has recently started comparing himself to one of our former great presidents, Franklin D. Roosevelt.

This president was a president during my younger years and also during my military service in World War II.

M. Bush would be wise to not compare himself with this president.

F.D.R. as he was known to the public was one who leveled with Americans.

"I have made good judgments in the past."

"I have made good judgments in the future."

- George W. Bush