More "Good News" from Iraq...

At least 53 Iraqis were killed and 80 more injured Tuesday during numerous bombings and armed attacks throughout the country. The oil infrastructure was also targeted. No foreign military deaths were reported.

UPDATE: 9/20/07
But wait! There's more...

New Rule: Bill Maher is A Putz!

Some great comments though...

"Tell that to the roughly 450 firefighters who gave deposition which would substantially undermine the official story, NONE of whose testimony was included in the 9/11 Commission report." JustADumbFireman - jnicholas02@snet.net

"Bill, welcome to the club of knuckle-draggers. With your wholesale dismissal of the 911 truth movement, you embody the proverbial three wise monkeys who see no evil, hear no evil, and speak no evil. I just watched my last Bill Maher show."
Brian - pixelman_2006@yahoo.com

"Bill Maher needs to get over himself and research 9/11. Then he needs to explain his theory of WTC 7 and the lack of plane debris with both the Pentagon and Pennsylvania crashes. I like Bill Maher but sometimes he is way off in his opinions."
Ron Paul supporter - PERFECTBUYER@CHARTER.NET

"Haha...it's a pretty funny piece, but it still doesn't account for the fact that those buildings were designed to withstand the impact, and that the physical evidence points to a controlled demolition. He still didn't say anything about WTC 7."
RadioFreeBC - radiofreebc@gmail.com

"Maher's making the same mistake he made that got him fired after 911: he's not reading the mood of the country. As my wife said to me: the guy doesn't cook.

If he did, she said, he'd know that woks in the best Hong Kong restaurants are heated higher than jet fuel can EVER go, or the temperature the NIST said caused the demolition of the towers. The HK woks are heated to 1800 F. That's 300 degrees higher than the NIST's figure, and 700 degrees higher than what FEMA told the 911 Commission. [We go to HK a lot. But just go to your local commercial outdoor barbecue place and ask questions about the cooking heat. No mystery.]

Maher lost a lost of listeners on that one. He's an idiot. He lost me. It's just physics class, man."
hareli - r.hareli@gmail.com

"ASBESTOS & 9/11

The WTC was a $15 billion HALLIBURTON liability.

There's more. You see, the World Trade Towers were not the real estate plum we are led to believe. From an economic standpoint, the trade center -- subsidized since its inception by the NY Port Authority -- has never functioned, nor was it intended to function, unprotected in the rough-and-tumble real estate marketplace. How could Silverstein Group have been ignorant of this?

The towers required some $200 million in renovations and improvements, most of which related to removal and replacement of building materials declared to be health hazards in the years since the towers were built. It was well-known by the city of New York that the WTC was an asbestos bombshell. For years, the Port Authority treated the building like an aging dinosaur, attempting on several occasions to get permits to demolish the building for liability reasons, but being turned down due the known asbestos problem. Further, it was well-known the only reason the building was still standing until 9/11 was because it was too costly to disassemble the twin towers floor by floor since the Port Authority was prohibited legally from demolishing the buildings.

The projected cost to disassemble the towers: $15 Billion. Just the scaffolding for the operation was estimated at $2.4 Billion!

In other words, the Twin Towers were condemned structures. How convenient that an unexpected "terrorist" attack demolished the buildings completely."
anonymous -

"How big a lunatic do you have to be to watch two giant airliners packed with jet fuel slam into buildings on live TV and then see a third tower drop into its own footprint some 8 hours later, on voice command, and blame it on airplanes?"
anonymous -

"wow, look at the number of comments...

WTC 7 wasnt hit by a plane. I suppose fire made it collapse into it's own footprint? Well I got news for you, that's never, ever happened before in a steel framed building. No wonder most people dont know anything about WTC 7. The BBC reported it's collapse half an hour before it actually did... Why are there so many dickheads that still believe the offical story? It's pathetic."

Please read the rest for yourself...

Barbara Lee - 9/14/01

Drawing the line in Congress: Fully Funded Redeployment Now!
by Rep Barbara Lee - Sept. 20, 2007

As many of you may know, just over six years ago I cast the lone vote against giving George Bush an unchecked authority to wage an undefined war against an undefined enemy for an unspecified period of time, an authority his administration has invoked in going into Iraq, in the establishment of military tribunals, even in conducting warrantless surveillance of Americans.

Thankfully, today I am no longer a lone voice, as evidenced in no small part by vibrant communities like this one. The majority of Americans want to end the occupation of Iraq and bring our troops home, but despite the fact that George Bush refuses to change course in Iraq, Congress has not taken the necessary steps to end his administration's failed policy.

So how do we change this?

ATTENTION FOX VIEWERS: Al Gore’s “Inconvenient Home” is Greener than Most!

Maybe you’ve seen the email. It describes two completely different homes – one a mansion that uses lavish amounts of energy, the other a more modest abode utilizing the latest technology to minimize environmental impact. The supposed punch line is that the first belongs former vice president and renowned environmentalist Al Gore, while the second is George W. Bush’s home in Crawford, Texas.

Needless to say, the sketchy descriptions tell only a small part of the story. Although the 10,000 square foot Gore residence does use considerably more energy than the average Nashville residence , the home is not just a part time residence, like the Crawford ranch. Both Al and Tipper Gore have their offices there, eliminating commuting. If the average person added costs of energy used in commuting plus the energy used while at work, and added both those figures to the residential energy bill, that comparison would be far more accurate.

Here’s another thing that sets Gore’s energy usage apart. He purchases -- and pays a premium for -- green energy which comes from non-carbon dioxide producing sources, such as wind. The result: a carbon neutral lifestyle.

Gore is also installing solar panels at the home, something he could not do until recently because his community had regulations restricting the panels.

The distortions depicting Gore as someone who failed to “walk the walk” were noted by all the conservative outlets, including Faux News, and were largely based on Gore’s testimony before the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, when Sen. James Inhofe (R-OK), a right-wing nut job who has been called “maybe the dumbest senator of all,” repeatedly asked pointless questions and then failed to give Gore an opportunity to answer.

Of course, the real reason that the right wing is gearing up to go after Gore is most likely the nerve-wracking possibility of him running for the Presidency. After all, he’s already won the popular vote in 2000. Now his popularity is off the charts, “An Inconvenient Truth” was honored with two Academy Awards, and there’s the very real possibility of a Nobel Peace Prize for his environmental work. And as for Mitt, Rudy, Fred and the rest -- well, they’re not nearly as accomplished.
In fact, you might say they’re much more Bush league.

THIS JUST IN: 9/19/2007

The IPCC said yesterday that the effects of global warming are being felt sooner than anticipated with the poorest countries and the poorest people set to suffer the worst of shifts in rainfall patterns, temperature rises and the viability of agriculture across much of the developing world.

In its latest assessment of the progress of climate change, the body said: "If warming is not kept below two degrees centigrade, which will require the strongest mitigation efforts, and currently looks very unlikely to be achieved, the substantial global impacts will occur, such as species extinctions, and millions of people at risk from drought, hunger, flooding."

THIS JUST IN: 10/2/2007

IMPACT OF ARCTIC HEAT WAVE STUNS CLIMATE CHANGE RESEARCHERS

Unprecedented warm temperatures in the High Arctic this past summer were so extreme that researchers with a Queen's University-led climate change project have begun revising their forecasts.

"Everything has changed dramatically in the watershed we observed," reports Geography professor Scott Lamoureux, the leader of an International Polar Year project announced yesterday in Nunavut by Indian and Northern Affairs Minister Chuck Strahl. "It's something we'd envisioned for the future – but to see it happening now is quite remarkable."

One of 44 Canadian research initiatives to receive a total of $100 million (IPY) research funding from the federal government, Dr. Lamoureux's new four-year project on remote Melville Island in the northwest Arctic brings together scientists and educators from three Canadian universities and the territory of Nunavut. They are studying how the amount of water will vary as climate changes, and how that affects the water quality and ecosystem sustainability of plants and animals that depend on it.

The information will be key to improving models for predicting future climate change in the High Arctic, which is critical to the everyday living conditions of people living there, especially through the lakes and rivers where they obtain their drinking water.

From their camp on Melville Island last July, where they recorded air temperatures over 20ºC (in an area with July temperatures that average 5ºC), the team watched in amazement as water from melting permafrost a meter below ground lubricated the topsoil, causing it to slide down slopes, clearing everything in its path and thrusting up ridges at the valley bottom "that piled up like a rug," says Dr. Lamoureux, an expert in hydro-climatic variability and landscape processes. "The landscape was being torn to pieces, literally before our eyes. A major river was dammed by a slide along a 200-metre length of the channel. River flow will be changed for years, if not decades to come."

Comparing this summer's observations against aerial photos dating back to the 1950s, and the team's monitoring of the area for the past five years, the research leader calls the present conditions "unprecedented" in scope and activity. What's most interesting, he says, is that their findings represent the impact of just one exceptional summer.

"A considerable amount of vegetation has been disturbed and we observed a sharp rise in erosion and a change in sediment load in the river," Dr. Lamoureux notes. "With warmer conditions and greater thaw depth predicted, the cumulative effect of this happening year after year could create huge problems for both the aquatic and land populations. This kind of disturbance also has important consequences for existing and future infrastructure in the region, like roads, pipelines and air strips."

If this were to occur in more inhabited parts of Canada, it would be "catastrophic" in terms of land use and resources, he continues. "It would be like taking an area the size of Kingston and having 15 per cent of it disappear into Lake Ontario."

The Queen's-led project is working with other IPY research groups including: Arctic HYDRA, an international group investigating the impact of climate change on water in the Arctic; Science Pub, a Norwegian group working on broad research from science to public education about the impacts of global warming; and CiCAT, a University of British Columbia-led group of 48 researchers investigating the impacts of climate change on tundra vegetation.

International Polar Year (IPY) is the largest-ever international program of coordinated scientific research focused on the Arctic and Antarctic regions and the first in 50 years.

Colin Powell: Terrorists are not greatest threat to nation

In an interview with GQ magazine that's online here , former secretary of State and one-time potential presidential candidate Colin Powell has this to say about terrorism and the threat it poses to the USA:

"What is the greatest threat facing us now? People will say it's terrorism. But are there any terrorists in the world who can change the American way of life or our political system? No. Can they knock down a building? Yes. Can they kill somebody? Yes. But can they change us? No. Only we can change ourselves. So what is the great threat we are facing?"

Powell adds, in an interview with Walter Isaacson, that to improve its image in the world, the USA should focus on welcoming newcomers. He takes on the immigration debate that has become a hot-button issue in the presidential race:

"America could not survive without immigration," he says. "Even the undocumented immigrants are contributing to our economy. That's the country my parents came to. That's the image we have to portray to the rest of the world: kind, generous, a nation of nations, touched by every nation, and we touch every nation in return. That's what people still want to believe about us. They still want to come here. We've lost a bit of the image, but we haven't lost the reality yet. And we can fix the image by reflecting a welcoming attitude -- and by not taking counsel of our fears and scaring ourselves to death that everybody coming in is going to blow up something. It ain't the case."

As for the Iraq War, Powell -- a retired general and former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff -- tells Isaacson that as he and others in the Bush administration debated strategy in the lead-up to the war, he did not think the Pentagon and then-secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld had planned for what would happen after Baghdad fell.

"That was the big mistake. Don had written a list of the worst things that could happen, but we didn't do the contingency planning on what we would do about it. So we watched those buildings get burned down, and nobody told the divisions, 'Hey, go in there and declare martial law and whack a few people and it will stop.' Then the insurgency started, and we didn't acknowledge it. They said it wasn't an insurgency. They looked up the definition. They said it was a few dead-enders! And so we didn't respond in a way that might have stopped it. And then the civil war started at the beginning of last year. I call it a civil war, but some say no, it's not a civil war, it's a war against civilians. In fact, we have total civil disorder."

Happy 9/11/07 - Lest We Forget...

They collapsed under their own weight...

The REAL Reason Bush Doesn't Listen To Polls

Do you believe President Bush's actions justify impeachment? * 524963 responses
	Yes, between the secret spying, the deceptions leading to war and more, there is plenty to justify putting him on trial. 89%
	No, like any president, he has made a few missteps, but nothing approaching "high crimes and misdemeanors." 4.2%
	No, the man has done absolutely nothing wrong. Impeachment would just be a political lynching. 5.3%
	I don't know. 1.9%

POLL: 51% Want Congressional Probe into 9/11 Actions by Bush and Cheney

We are not alone! As America nears the sixth anniversary of the world-churning events of September 11, 2001, a new Zogby International poll finds a majority of Americans still await a Congressional investigation of President Bush's and Vice President Cheney's actions before, during and after the 9/11 attacks. Over 30% also believe Bush and/or Cheney should be immediately impeached by the House of Representatives. 67% also fault 9/11 Commission for not investigating the anomalous collapse of World Trade Center 7

More from (friend of the show) BradBlog.

Little-Noticed 9/11 Lawsuits Will Go to Trial

Congress created the Victim Compensation Fund within days of the attacks, to protect the airlines from financial ruin by discouraging lawsuits. People who filed by Dec. 22, 2003, had to relinquish their right to sue.

The fund paid $6 billion to survivors of 2,880 of those killed in the attacks, representing 97 percent of the families of the dead, according to its final report.

Now, in a concrete sign of movement in the other families’ cases, the judge, Alvin K. Hellerstein of Federal District Court in Manhattan, has set a trial date of Sept. 24 — 2,205 days since 19 hijackers brought four planes out of the sky into the twin towers, the Pentagon and a field in Pennsylvania.

By the plaintiffs’ own accounts, they have sued with mixed motives, which sometimes even they cannot untangle. They present themselves as heroes fighting for the truth and as families honoring the memory of their loved ones, but they are not apologetic about seeking money. They seem to be an angry, stubborn, sorrowful and stalwart group, who have been little known by most Americans, or perhaps forgotten with the passage of time. More here...

U.S. Military Censors ThinkProgress (But Not S4I... Yet)

ThinkProgress is now banned from the U.S. military network in Baghdad.

The ban began sometime shortly after Aug. 22, when Ret. Maj. Gen. John Batiste was a guest blogger on ThinkProgress. He posted an op-ed that was strongly critical of the President’s policies and advocated a “responsible and deliberate redeployment from Iraq.” Previously, both the Wall Street Journal and Washington Times had rejected the piece. An excerpt:

It is disappointing that so many elected representatives of my [Republican] party continue to blindly support the administration rather than doing what is in the best interests of our country. Traditionally, my party has maintained a conservative view on questions regarding our Armed Forces. For example, we commit our military only when absolutely necessary. […]

The only way to stabilize Iraq and allow our military to rearm and refit for the long fight ahead is to begin a responsible and deliberate redeployment from Iraq and replace the troops with far less expensive and much more effective resources–those of diplomacy and the critical work of political reconciliation and economic recovery. In other words, when it comes to Iraq, it’s time for conservatives to once again be conservative.

Not surprisingly, both the National Review and Fox News (and S4I) are still accessible.

7WTC - Capisci?

Follow The Money...

A mystery trader risks losing around $1 billion dollars after placing 245,000 put options on the Dow Jones Eurostoxx 50 index, leading many analysts to speculate that a stock market crash preceded by a new 9/11 style catastrophe could take place within the next month.