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To: Raymond Duray who wrote (16235)	3/29/2005 11:00:09 PM
From: TigerPaw	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 20773

This is far more severe than the impact forces of the 767s striking the towers. I don't think anyone maintains that the impact of the 767s is what brought the towers down. Since the central core columns were designed to .... As I understand the innovation of the Twin Tower design is that the center of the building was not load bearing which allowed much more open space than the traditional Ibeam cube design. The load of the building was carried by the interlocking structure of the out walls. TP

To: Raymond Duray who wrote (16235)	3/30/2005 7:56:22 AM
From: zonder	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 20773

Ray - You give me a headache every time you go off in one of these conspiracy theory tangents :-) This is from your own link: The structural damage from the planes and the explosive ignition of jet fuel in themselves were not enough to bring down the towers. Rather, theory has it, the subsequent contents fires attacking the questionably fireproofed lightweight trusses and load-bearing columns directly caused the collapses in an alarmingly short time. So, you see, the editor of Fire Engineering magazine is not supporting your theory of "it wasn't the planes and the fire that brought down the twin towers". He is just saying that there could have been engineering mistakes that caused the buildings to collapse quicker than they should have.

To: Raymond Duray who wrote (16235)	3/30/2005 4:12:11 PM
From: stockman_scott	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 20773

A Party Inverted ___________________ Editorial by Bill Bradley Published on Wednesday, March 30, 2005 by the New York Times Five months after the presidential election Democrats are still pointing fingers at one another and trying to figure out why Republicans won. Was the problem the party's position on social issues or taxes or defense or what? Were there tactical errors made in the conduct of the campaign? Were the right advisers heard? Was the candidate flawed? Before deciding what Democrats should do now, it's important to see what Republicans have done right over many years. When the Goldwater Republicans lost in 1964, they didn't try to become Democrats. They tried to figure out how to make their own ideas more appealing to the voters. As part of this effort, they turned to Lewis Powell, then a corporate lawyer and soon to become a member of the United States Supreme Court. In 1971 he wrote a landmark memo for the United States Chamber of Commerce in which he advocated a sweeping, coordinated and long-term effort to spread conservative ideas on college campuses, in academic journals and in the news media. To further the party's ideological and political goals, Republicans in the 1970's and 1980's built a comprehensive structure based on Powell's blueprint. Visualize that structure as a pyramid. You've probably heard some of this before, but let me run through it again. Big individual donors and large foundations - the Scaife family and Olin foundations, for instance - form the base of the pyramid. They finance conservative research centers like the Heritage Foundation, the Cato Institute and the Intercollegiate Studies Institute, entities that make up the second level of the pyramid. The ideas these organizations develop are then pushed up to the third level of the pyramid - the political level. There, strategists like Karl Rove or Ralph Reed or Ken Mehlman take these new ideas and, through polling, focus groups and careful attention to Democratic attacks, convert them into language that will appeal to the broadest electorate. That language is sometimes in the form of an assault on Democrats and at other times in the form of advocacy for a new policy position. The development process can take years. And then there's the fourth level of the pyramid: the partisan news media. Conservative commentators and networks spread these finely honed ideas. At the very top of the pyramid you'll find the president. Because the pyramid is stable, all you have to do is put a different top on it and it works fine. It is not quite the "right wing conspiracy" that Hillary Clinton described, but it is an impressive organization built consciously, carefully and single-mindedly. The Ann Coulters and Grover Norquists don't want to be candidates for anything or cabinet officers for anyone. They know their roles and execute them because they're paid well and believe, I think, in what they're saying. True, there's lots of money involved, but the money makes a difference because it goes toward reinforcing a structure that is already stable. To understand how the Democratic Party works, invert the pyramid. Imagine a pyramid balancing precariously on its point, which is the presidential candidate. Democrats who run for president have to build their own pyramids all by themselves. There is no coherent, larger structure that they can rely on. Unlike Republicans, they don't simply have to assemble a campaign apparatus - they have to formulate ideas and a vision, too. Many Democratic fundraisers join a campaign only after assessing how well it has done in assembling its pyramid of political, media and idea people. There is no clearly identifiable funding base for Democratic policy organizations, and in the frantic campaign rush there is no time for patient, long-term development of new ideas or of new ways to sell old ideas. Campaigns don't start thinking about a Democratic brand until halfway through the election year, by which time winning the daily news cycle takes precedence over building a consistent message. The closest that Democrats get to a brand is a catchy slogan. Democrats choose this approach, I believe, because we are still hypnotized by Jack Kennedy, and the promise of a charismatic leader who can change America by the strength and style of his personality. The trouble is that every four years the party splits and rallies around several different individuals at once. Opponents in the primaries then exaggerate their differences and leave the public confused about what Democrats believe. In such a system tactics trump strategy. Candidates don't risk talking about big ideas because the ideas have never been sufficiently tested. Instead they usually wind up arguing about minor issues and express few deep convictions. In the worst case, they embrace "Republican lite" platforms - never realizing that in doing so they're allowing the Republicans to define the terms of the debate. A party based on charisma has no long-term impact. Think of our last charismatic leader, Bill Clinton. He was president for eight years. He was the first Democrat to be re-elected since Franklin Roosevelt. He was smart, skilled and possessed great energy. But what happened? At the end of his tenure in the most powerful office in the world, there were fewer Democratic governors, fewer Democratic senators, members of Congress and state legislators and a national party that was deep in debt. The president did well. The party did not. Charisma didn't translate into structure. If Democrats are serious about preparing for the next election or the next election after that, some influential Democrats will have to resist entrusting their dreams to individual candidates and instead make a commitment to build a stable pyramid from the base up. It will take at least a decade's commitment, and it won't come cheap. But there really is no other choice. ________________ Bill Bradley, a former Democratic senator from New Jersey, is a managing director of Allen & Company. © 2005 New York Times, Co. commondreams.org

To: Raymond Duray who wrote (16235)	3/30/2005 5:53:56 PM
From: Yogizuna	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 20773

I consider the construction of the WTC towers "shoddy and cheap", as opposed to the much more solid design of the Empire State building for example... And one cannot simply compare severe hurricane force winds to an impact from a heavy fuel laden jet aircraft. Apples and oranges... It is enough to realize our military and leaders "dropped the ball" unbelievably badly on the morning of 911, without having to believe stuff like explosives were planted in the towers and all kinds of other stuff... The towers were designed to hold up very heavy loads, but were definitely not designed to withstand the tremendous load of the upper floors crashing on to the lower ones. There is no doubt about that, so no need for any planted explosives.