Florida Professor Claims Boston Bombing Was "Mass Casualty Drill," Also Thought Sandy Hook Shooting was Staged
Tenured, natch


In theory, tenure is supposed to ensure intellectual integrity and protect professors who might hold unpopular opinions or find themselves at odds with authority. In practice, American academia is woefully lacking in ideological diversity, something even largely liberal social scientists are starting to get wise to. Nevertheless, tenure remains an attractive perk.
The nutty Florida Atlantic University professor who suggested the Sandy Hook school massacre was staged is at it again, blogging that the Boston Marathon bombing was some sort of government drill.
James Tracy, a tenured associate professor of media history and analysis studies, posted his latest conspiracy on his personal blog, claiming that the bombing attack that killed three and injured nearly 200 was a "mass casualty drill" planned by the government.
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Once you get tenure, do you actually ever interact with a student again?
Where I went, you avoided classes with full professors and looked for the adjuncts. The Adjuncts actually knew what they were talking about, so you'd learn something. (This was also a technical school, so BS stood for Bachelor's of Science and not its usual)
Never trust a tenured professor.
Never trust a junky
Ministry
It varies a lot. Where I went, the tenured profs all had a pretty reasonable course load and for the most part actually did their own grading of papers and such. At a lot of schools, even if they do lectures, most of the work is done by TAs and adjuncts.
I'm ready to turn my doctorate back in.
"The nutty Florida Atlantic University professor..."
Have we not learned that a miracle weight loss serum could have severe psychological effects?
associate professor of media history and analysis
Obviously the go-to guy for national security analysis.
I wouldn't go to him for an opinion of Downtown Abbey.
Downtown Abbey? Is that some inner-city show about an ex-jock coaching basketball at an urban high school?
When you're alone and life is making you lonely you can always go...
Down Town
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3kToSjbyfbA
Or, I suppose, it could be about an inner-city abbey of monks, dealing with inner-city issues. . .including being next door to a brothel.
Basketball playing monks. I think you're onto something.
MIDNIGHT Basketball playing monks. NOW you're on to something.
If anybody knows where to find basketball playing monks of any sort, it is Jeffrey A. Tucker, especially if they take Bitcoin donations.
"Oh no. You've got to go downtown, George. It's all downtown. Just like the song says."
I don't know what it's about. From the title I assume it's a Sex and the City-type show about a streetwalker named Abbey who blogs about her chosen profession.
It's Downton Abbey, and it's about a stripper named Abby Downton who strips at a monastery late at night.
Now I understand why it's so popular.
The dramatic undercurrent is that she's an upper-class scion stripper for underclass stooges. Lots of tension.
Downtown Abbey is his favorite streetwalker whore.
He sounds like the Jeff Bridges character from Arlington Road. Yeah devout belief in conspiracy theories is odd in normal social spheres, but I bet his class attendance is tops.
1) Ya never wanna go full retard right out the gate.
2) "This is no drill! This is no drill!"
To be fair, it's Florida Atlantic. This is the school for Florida's high school graduates who don't meet the rigorous academic requirements can you draw this turtle test for admission into the University of Florida or Florida State University.
What? You need a 4.0 in academic classes to get into UF. Don't lump it in with that other school.
4.0 in Florida schools or real schools?
That or the ability to shoot a basketball or sack a quarterback. Although in the post Urban Meyer era that might be true anymore.
That's probably true. But that's a pretty small percentage of the school, which has something around 50,000 students.
And it is of course true of every other school in the country.
True enough. What makes me sad is that some of those kids probably do have 4.0s (on a 10-point scale or whatever ridiculous figure they allow these days), because their high schools helped them along.
^^^ This. Moreover, there might not be a distinction between types of classes and how they are weighted (if at all) in the GPA.
Full disclosure, I am a graduate of Florida A & M so take my snark with a big dose of salt.
When I was a kid (in Tallahassee), the gifted program had an entomology class at FAMU. It was pretty cool, actually, and I remember dragging nets in fields and digging through cow "patties" to find bugs. My first university experience.
My other FAMU moment was watching a UF-FAMU game at the Swamp. While the Gators, of course, won the game easily, the Florida marching band was destroyed by the Marching 100.
HBC college marching bands a serious deal. They do it better than anyone and they know it. I actually like bands. One of the cooler things about college football. All that is except that dumb ass "alternative marching band" the hipster doofuses do at Standford.
I'll take Ohio State, Michigan and Michigan State marching bands all day.
Snappy marching, great musicianship, high step - old skool and good.
aTm, they are like a panzer division. They really know how to do it. And Michigan would be alright, if they didn't play the same damn song over and over again. Hail to the Victors is catchy and all. But too much of a good thing. And isn't Wisconsin the gold standard of Big 10 marching bands?
Because A&M has a vast repertoire of songs.
The Ohio State band gets points for being far less douchey than the Ohio State fans.
aT&M plays more than one. And that puts them above Michigan.
So does Michigan, but dont let that stop you.
Ohio State: Cant spell their school name. Instead they spell the Bobcats school name.
Michigan: Knows exactly one song, and its worse than the one song the Tennessee band knows.
But their uniforms are nice.
I was in band in HS - we went to MSU for "HS Band Day". We had a small group (like they did/do) that used to walk around the stadium playing funny songs...we did "Gene Gene The Damcing Machine" from te Gong show, and my buddy "Big Beef" danced like Gene Gene....
And they pelted us with rocks and garbage, just like the Gong Show. It was epic.
HS Band - good times, good times...
I actually like "Rocky Top" okay, provided that it's not played in connection with football.
Great moment in band history:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D6Z3RONvTIU
When the crowd boos your halftime show that much, you must be doing something right!
Florida A&M is a special case. They've been called the best marching band in the country more than once. I think they even got a 60 Minutes spot once.
My school had its share of raving nutters as well. I was routinely shouted down in classes for arguing that Cleopatra, being a Ptolemy, was nowhere near as dark as she was being portrayed all over campus.
Your school was eruditer than mine
Cleopatra had about as much Egyptian blood in her as Henry VIII did.
People are so stupid, it makes me has a sad sometimes.
I can't find her name via google (funny that, almost like the shitbirds at google don't want it found) but there was a woman classicist back in the 1990s who took notice of the completely ridiculous shit coming out of African studies departments and applied her knowledge and the most current archeological evidence to the claims. They of course all turned out to be completely false and without any factual support.
She was roundly condemned as a racist and her book as widely suppressed as possible.
She was pure Greek/Macedonian.
"You need a 4.0 in academic classes to get into UF."
Lol, I didn't, and neither did anyone else I knew who got in.
Keeping in mind of course, that I went to a much better school instead.
It wasn't true when I went there, but it most certainly is true now. I have a son who didn't get in because his 3.6 wasn't good enough. I believe the technical minimum is really low, but the actual one is much higher. There are some factors that skew the average down (it's still over 4.0), which is likely due to the community college end-run
It's largely because of two things--UF is the best overall school in the state and Bright Futures, which has resulted in a lot of top students opting to go to school in-state.
Where did your son choose to attend?
My bet is he has infowars bookmarked.
And world net daily.
In fairness, if it turned out that the FBI was conducting a mass casualty drill only to accidentally set off a real bomb, would anyone here be shocked? Surprised sure. But shocked?
Anyone?
I would be shocked. You don't accidentally use real explosives in a drill.
Hell, when we did drills in the Navy, the explosives were simulated by a bunch of guys shouting 'bang'!
One of them had an explosive temper, but that's not the same thing. 🙂
The Navy is a lot more competent than the FBI. No amount of incompetence on their part would ever shock me.
Just think about it, man. Why would the FAA shut down the Boston airspace after the bombing? Because they didn't want Top Men to be exposed to CHEMTRAILS!!1
Satire is dead.
Never heard of him.
I think he just misspelled Sartre.
No, "Safire."
My Sapphire credit card is dead....tired of sitting in my wallet!
Let's go shopping!
Damn those Tea Party professors! Oh wait...
Recent article:
"Covering 'Financial Terrorism': The Greek Debt Crisis in U.S. News Media"
Hmm. Financial terrorism. Just think of how that could be stretched to cover just about anything a pea-brained lefty could imagine.
The Germans not wanting to fork over their hard earned money to the Greeks is just terrorism.
Two words:
Commerce. Clause.
I got bad news for you guys, the entire revolution was faked and we are still secretly ruled by the British Monarchy.
It blows my mind that anyone wouldn't know this.
Damn - that must have been one big rock I was under...
No, it happened while you were serving that sentence in the cocaine mines on Mars.
There's so much I need to catch up on...
Wait, you were on Mars?
We've said too much! ABORT! ABORT!
Maddow was going on and on about this last night.
She claims that the right wing is conspiring to push conspiracy theories (heh) in order to get people to hate government.
But you know what?
Our government hides as much of what it does as possible, and lies about the rest.
If you try to sue them to force them to release information, they'll claim you don't have standing. If you prove you do have standing, they'll claim State Secrets Privilege.
I don't believe the 9/11 Truthers because I'm not scientifically illiterate. I don't believe the Boston Truthers because I understand exactly how easy it is to pull an attack like this off, so I don't need to concoct a wide conspiracy to explain why it happened.
BUT, I also don't hate the evil, evil Truthers the way everybody else does. Because a government that hides its activities, and lies about its activities, doesn't get to complain when people don't believe its statements and contrive alternative explanations for events.
The US government is like a guy who cheats on his girlfriend for years, but then gets pissed off when she doesn't believe his latest story about his whereabouts. "How could you think I'm not working late? How dare you accuse me of being at a bar?" Fuck you, man. The other 100 times you lied means you get no sympathy from me for the times when you're telling the truth.
That's idiotic, anyway, since the right wants people to trust them when they're in power. It's not in their interest to break down Leviathan any more than it is for the left. Hence, the problem of ever-growing government, regardless of who is in power.
Well, it was Maddow.
So of course it would be idiotic on several levels.
In any event, she's an incredible hypocrite. I'm sure I could concoct a story and some BS documentation proving a ludicrous Viet Nam war conspiracy story ("Cambodia was secretly invaded years earlier than we thought!" "We had a secret agreement with China to bomb some parts of North Viet Nam and not others!" "The Khmer Rouge was a CIA front operation!") and I could get her to believe it without batting an eyelash.
It's not believing in conspiracy that she objects to, it's the social signalling associated with the current conspiracy content.
It is that the current conspiracies might interfere with her sacred cows.
Also, if she tried hard enough she would find out that many of the people who are still pushing the JFK conspiracy hard are on the left-wing. It really is jarring listening to something like the Black Op Radio Podcast, a good conspiracy podcast BTW, where someone can go on and on about who in the government was in on the JFK conspriacy, but then they go into a full on anti-Tea Party rant.
Magnificent rant, sir.
Yes. An open government is necessary because it keep people from thinking the worst about it. If the government refuses to be open, then the conspiracy theorists to gain traction. For example, one of the worsting things that has happened in the last 50 years was the shooting of Lee Harvey Oswald. Thanks to him dying, the field was left open for every conspiracy nut to fill.
In contrast, Tim Mcveigh was caught and tried in open court and while there are a few conspiracy theories about the OKC bombing, they are pretty small compared to the Kennedy assassination. Imagine how insane the country would be over OKC if McVeigh had died in a shootout the day of the bombing.
If Maddow is so concerned about conspiracy theories, she might want to consider the government being so secretive as the reason why there are so many of them.
conspiracy theories about the OKC bombing
Interesting - they had a show on last couple weeks about exactly this. Some former military guy saying that the fertilizer bomb didn't have enough power to do the damage it did, the blast wasn't symmetrical, there had to be two bombs, etc.
And...the govt did a pretty sloppy investigation in some ways, "lost" or destroyed evidence, etc.
Still - most of the guy's objections were shown to be probably invalid (explosions AREN'T symmetrical, the bomb WOULD have had enough power - they made a duplicate and tested it - GREAT assplosion!)
So...interesting. Americans have conspiracies about everything.
Chappaquiddick was a hit by the Rethuglicans to keep Teddy from ever getting the Presidency cause he was the SMART Kennedy and the were most afraid of HIM!
They are out there. They are just nothing like as numerous or widely believed the way Kennedy conspiracy theories are. Having an actual person and a open trial does wonders for keeping such theories from gaining traction.
but apparently not smart enough to stop driving a car into the water.
Remember: Kennedy Smart is relative.
Hey - look how many died young. Just sayin'...
Smart doesn't fix drunk.
"he was the SMART Kennedy"
Pretty low standards, there...
Really, Chappaquiddick wasn't consistent with his lifestyle?
He beats me because he LOVES me. It's for my own good, really...
Fluffy,
Let me give you a great example of what you are talking about. Right before the Iranian revolution the radicals burned down a movie theater killing dozens of people. The Islamic radicals had been calling for the closing of all movie theaters and threatening harm to anyone who went to one for years. The fire was a national scandal. People did not react to the fire the way the militants had hoped.
But the Shah's government had bene so corrupt and lied so much over the years, the militants were able to successfully claim that the fire was a false flag operation run by the secret police. And the population believed it and blamed the Shah even though it was the militants who were actually responsible and all of the evidence pointed to this.
But if you have been a secretive oppressive shit bag government long enough, people stop believing you no matter what the evidence.
The parallels in that situation are pretty striking.
I guess that means that to an extent the growth of Trutherism is a kind of reverse gauge of the health of our state.
We're currently at the "last years of the Shah" level on the thermometer.
That scares me a little.
Yeah my view is that conspiracy theories are the result of too much government secrecy. The government does lie to you so how do you know that giant shape-shifting space lizards don't control the government? If they did then they would certainly lie about it.
I made this point about 9/11. We have a government that has, on various occasions, fed plutonium to retards, infected people with veneral disease to track the results, dosed people with LSD to see what happens, and a host of other unpleasant things. Then the givernment lied about all of it. So do I think the government planned and executed 9/11? No. But is it possible the federal government would do something as monstrous? Oh, hell yes.
a government that hides its activities, and lies about its activities, doesn't get to complain when people don't believe its statements and contrive alternative explanations for events.
That's just crazy talk.
But what's his take on the Moon Landing?
I think we know where Buzz Aldrin and this guy stand on that subject...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EjqE5h9i-yc
I like xkcd's take on it.
http://xkcd.com/1074/
Peggy Noonan, for once, asked some interesting questions. Number one being, these guys were unemployed losers, their families were poor. Where did they get the money for things like trips to Russia, cars, bling...?
Well, as Aretha told Johan, she started out at home and is making $6552 a month from this. She works from home.
http://www.pedobotmoney.com
Wow, this dude knows what's happening.
http://www.anonbot.turing.fi
Welfare can be pretty lucrative.
Credit cards? Student loans?
Who knows? But nonetheless, it's a reasonable question.
Where did they get the money for things like trips to Russia, cars, bling...?
This is why we must stamp out the informal economy! Anybody who ever worked off the books is a terrorist, just waiting for the opportunity to attack America.
Speaking of totally off-the-wall conspiracy theories, here's a video of the guy who attacked the Family Research Council headquarters. He says he wanted to kill a *lot* of people. And he selected his target from some kind of map from the Southern Poverty Law Center.
So this video will definitely be played over and over on the evening news. Not.
http://www.lifesitenews.com/ne.....of-splc-we
Media history and analysis studies. Huh, so that's what Alex Jones majored in.
HIttem up dude, roll with it.
http://www.GotzMyAnon.tk
The bombers' mother is buying the story that the media coverage was a hoax.
All of human history is a series of successful conspiracies.
So I guess the job of this guy is to make the "9/11 was an inside job" and the false flag types looks reasonable.
Of course it could be his job because he is government funded disinfo agent. In fact how do I know Reason Magazine, the Jacket, Suderman, Welch, Walker, etc. actually exist and that the HNR commenters are not government spies trying to discredit libertarianism? Or were Rand, Rothbard and Mises all fronts for government propaganda?