C'mon, Jesse, rock the boa, for old times' sake...
Do the reporters who pen the Political Insider column for the Arizona Republic know how to use Google? Does their editor?
I wonder this after reading this Sunday's edition of the Insider. The column talks up the fact that the former governor of Minnesota is coming to town to plug his book Don't Start the Revolution without Me, and to get together for a 9/11 nutbar rally with former state Senator and certifiable dingbat Karen Johnson. Both of them buy into the hooey that the attacks on September 11 were an "inside job," and not the work of al Qaeda terrorists.
The Insider mentions that Ventura will be at Changing Hands bookstore to sign copies of his tome the day before, but they seem befuddled as to the locale of the actual headcase hootenanny.
"The location of their Valley event, however, has not been disclosed by Ventura's publicist," states the column, to which several Rep staffers contribute. "The Insider is still trying to unravel the conspiracy on that one."
Mystery solved, my pretties: Ventura's going to be at the Mesa Convention Center at 7 p.m. on September 11. Admission is $10. The info's posted at the Mesa Convention Center's Web site. If one of the Republic's hotshot journos had hopped on the Internet, plugged "Jesse Ventua" and "Phoenix" into a search engine, they would have discovered that info about the event is all over the 'Net, and has been for a while. Local talk show personality Charles Goyette, formerly of KFNX 1100, will be emceeing the wacko wingding. Ventura's supposed to talk about other stuff too, but local troofers are all psyched that he'll be discussing 9/11 conspiranut theories, as he has elsewhere, like on Texas moonhowler Alex Jones' radio show.
Generally, mainstream media types shy away from any critique of 9/11 nitwittery because it would detract from their precious latte-sipping time. That's a shame. The 9/11 "troof" movement has been an exercise in mass delusion and deception as pernicious as Holocaust-denial, and often those two camps -- Holocaust deniers and troofers have overlapped, as they did when the local 9/11 troof movement hosted a 9/11 Accountability Conference last year in Chandler. The conference was in part organized by the author of a self-published Holocaust-denying tome, a fella named Eric Williams. Back then Goyette dropped out of the conference, as did several others, after Williams' involvement was revealed. (This Ventura happening is apparently being sponsored by a different group than the one responsible for the Chandler conference, BTW.)
Ventura's been outspoken on 9/11 in various forums, from the Opie and Anthony show to Hannity and Colmes and the radio program of moonbat extraordinaire Jones. (Many of the links and clips for these appearances can be found in the archives of Phoenix debunking site ScrewLooseChange.) Mainly Ventura posits a conspiracy goulash familiar to anyone who's studied the topic: the Twin Towers were brought down by a controlled demolition; 19 hijackers with boxcutters couldn't have pulled it off; the U.S. Government has never officially indicted Osama bin Laden for 9/11; etc.
For instance, Ventura told Jones when he was on his show that, "I did watch the film of Building 7 going down and in my opinion there's no doubt that that building was brought down with demolition."
For the uninitiated, World Trade Center Building 7's collapse is the linchpin of many conspiracy theories because it too collapsed on 9/11, yet it was not hit by an airplane. Instead, it was hit by massive chunks of nearby WTC 1. Fires caused by this impact burned all day long. Sprinklers in the building were incapacitated because a water main had been cut by the collapse of WTC 1 and 2. According to a report recently released by National Institute of Standards and Technology, it was heat from the fires that compromised the building.
“Heating of floor beams and girders caused a critical support column to fail, initiating a fire-induced progressive collapse that brought the building down,” said lead investigator Shyam Sunder in a NIST press release announcing the findings.
NIST eliminated controlled demolition as a possibility. There was no evidence from video or eyewitnesses that there was an explosion.
"The team said that the smallest blast event capable of crippling the critical column would have produced a `sound level of 130 to 140 decibels at a distance of half a mile,' yet no noise this loud was reported by witnesses or recorded on videos," states NIST.
Thing is, neither this NIST report, compiled though it was by scores of researchers over a span of 3 years, nor any other report, no matter how detailed and factual will ever dissuade 9/11 fanatics. The 9/11 conspiracy movement is essentially a religion, or a cult. The people in it believe what they want to believe, discarding any proof or common sense to the contrary.
Ventura's one of several celebutards backing this bankrupt movement's lunatic claims, such as Rosie O'Donnell and Charlie Sheen. And by lending their names to this drivel, I suppose they lend credence to it in the eyes of some. For me, they just add to the clown factor. If only Ventura would appear in his pink boa and Bootsy Collins specs from his wrestling days, I might even pay the $10 watch the Mesa freak show.
