Why, God, why do you believe that? Loopy conspiracy theories

OMG...I found Henry Hudson's description of the area! He didn't say anything about a city!

Even scarier: I saw a picture of my neighborhood in 1959. There weren't any houses! It's all a government conspiracy to make us think we live indoors!

Good Lord, guys, are you stupid? Of course there aren't any buildings in the pictures of the 1800's.


The gubmint will tell you they just hadn't been built. If those pictures could prove anything, do you really think you'd be able to find them online???

Isn't that the conspiracy that any government is smart enough to hide its tracks?

Yattara wrote:

Isn't that the conspiracy that any government is smart enough to hide its tracks?

It would be if the words 'government' and 'smart' could ever actually be used in the same sentence.

Of course they can be!

"No one smart trusts the government."
"The government is the opposite of smart."

Well, it's not really the individual politicians' fault though, is it? Group intelligence is calculated as the IQ of the dumbest member divided by the number of people in the group: no government has a chance of being much smarter than /b/.

grmblfjx wrote:

Well, it's not really the individual politicians' fault though, is it? Group intelligence is calculated as the IQ of the dumbest member divided by the number of people in the group: no government has a chance of being much smarter than /b/.

"None of us is as dumb as all of us."

Zeiss Manifold wrote:

Oh yeah, have we covered Why People Laugh at Creationists? Like hell am I gonna look through all 21 pages to check.

Don't think so, no. Although Heywood has offered help with making my GAFF screenshots available, and if I get the abortion thread up, nobody will need an explanation. Shebakoby demonstrates live and in color!

I hate to drag us back to 9/11 again, but...

While I do believe Al-Qaeda was behind it, just how "out there" am I for willing to believe that Bush, Cheney, etc. may have known about it but simply let it happen, out of malice/to further their own plans and not just incompetence?

I don't really believe this, but I'm not willing to completely shut the door on the possibility either...does that make me an idiot?

Thanos6 wrote:

I hate to drag us back to 9/11 again, but...

While I do believe Al-Qaeda was behind it, just how "out there" am I for willing to believe that Bush, Cheney, etc. may have known about it but simply let it happen, out of malice/to further their own plans and not just incompetence?

I don't really believe this, but I'm not willing to completely shut the door on the possibility either...does that make me an idiot?

Not really, given that it's since become open knowledge that both the FBI and CIA reported to President Bush and Vice-President Cheney that terrorist activity had increased since they took office, and that they believed that there might very well be a concentrated effort by a group to undertake some sort of attack on American soil.

The problem was that Bush used to openly boast about how he never read his Presidential Briefings-he just had his buddies pick out what they thought was important and read it to him. Combine that with the fact that his family knew, and were friends with, Osama Bin Ladin's family (the morning of the attack, when all airplanes were grounded, a military transport was used to fly Osama Bin Ladin's relatives out of the US; partially to move them out of harms way, and partially, I suspect, in the hopes that no one would go digging around and find out the Bush's had been business associates with them for years). This was actually printed in several newspapers and magazines at the time, but in the climate of total terror that took hold in the aftermath of 9/11, most people chose to ignore it, or were too upset to process it.

I don't believe Bush or Cheney played any active part in 9/11 happening-but they were responsible for it happening by ignoring the advice given to them by the people who were tasked to give them warning about things like that. Their sheer arrogance and belief that the United States was so holy and mighty that nothing could ever happen here makes them, in my mind at least, as culpable for what happened as if they'd known the truth and simply not done anything. They'd been warned, they'd been told the possibility of a large-scale terrorist attack existed, and they preferred to go their merry way, assuming that God was on their side and wouldn't let anything bad happen to a such a good 'Christian' nation.

Thanos6 wrote:

I hate to drag us back to 9/11 again, but...

While I do believe Al-Qaeda was behind it, just how "out there" am I for willing to believe that Bush, Cheney, etc. may have known about it but simply let it happen, out of malice/to further their own plans and not just incompetence?

I guess that makes you so out there you've come back round and are sitting in the room with the rest of us.
Sheer incompetence - of which the past administration demonstrated having an ample supply - still explains what happened, so the main defense for Bush and co. is the Occam's razor. Time and again, when warned in advance, they have done too little and too late - it is possible that 9/11 was no exception.
OTOH we cannot rule out that someone in the administration decided a 'token attack' would turn the public opinion in their favour no matter what they decided to do. Someone who possibly read the report about Al Qaeda affiliates learning to fly airliners and said 'Ho humm, hijacking, eh? well, we can afford that.'
Then again, these things have a habit of coming up sooner or later - something minor surfaced in England IIRC, a mail sent in the wake of 9/11 saying, "Any bad things we cannot keep the lid on any longer? Because what with the attacks and the press looking the other side of the Atlantic, this might be the right time to slip stuff past their radars." The sender, a spin doctor in Blair's office, lost her job for it.
IMHO incompetence is still the better explanation, with 9/11 exploitation coming after the attacks. If this was a trial, the administration would be acquitted for lack of evidence. But if this was a car accident, the administration would be guilty of recklessness - not having done everything in their power to prevent the attacks.

Best conspiracy ever

ZoZo wrote:

Best conspiracy ever

I am forced to agree.

myeerah wrote:

ZoZo wrote:

Best conspiracy ever

I am forced to agree.

It is brilliant, but then Obama's not that unusual a type - he looks a bit like Bob Marley. And like my ex-husband.

LEXIN WAS MARRIED TO OBAMA. THAT MEANS HE'S NOT A US CITIZEN!!!11

ZoZo wrote:

LEXIN WAS MARRIED TO OBAMA. THAT MEANS HE'S NOT A US CITIZEN!!!11

ZOMG! London is in Kenya! I knew it! I knew the map was wrong when it said London was in England!

ZoZo wrote:

LEXIN WAS MARRIED TO OBAMA.

OMG! That explains so much! And he owes me £800!