Hi,

The above thought is smart and doesn’t require any further addition. It’s perfect thought from my side.

Helen

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Hi,

The above thought is smart and doesn’t require any further addition. It’s perfect thought from my side.

Helen

<a href=http://www.drug-intervention.com/new-mexico-drug-intervention.html>Drug Intervention New Mexico</a>

There is a comment I once read "The problem with not being trustworthy is not that you cannot be trusted, but that you can't trust anyone else".

The American government and people are paranoid because they know that if they could they would wipe out every other culture. They know THEY are storing WMD's so they assume everyone else is. The politicians know THEY are corrupt, so they assume everyone else is. The American people know that given half a chance, they would lie, cheat and steal, so they assume that anyone actually in a position to get away with lying, cheating and stealing probably is doing exactly that.

Google "4 october 1992" El Al airline crash and be VERY afraid. Everything the US is paranoid about and invaded Iraq and Afganistan for -- they were caught with their pants down doing it themselves. It's public knowledge and no-one did a thing.

I think there's an inherent fallacy here. You seem to be suggesting certain conspiracy theories can be rejected solely on the basis that nobody would ever want to do what's being suggested, or that they could never actually manage to pull it off (with or without eventually getting caught). Government, state and national alike, has a lot of power to cover things up, although from what we've seen during this past two terms it's safe to say some administrations are considerably worse at it than others. And as for motive... *never* underestimate that.

I prefer to just assume that anything is possible, but there's no sense believing any given theory without hard evidence (as any sane person would with any claim). For all we know, the moon landing might have been faked, but the "evidence" cited by those who actually believe we did is thoroughly unconvincing and silly. "Rejecting" a conspiracy theory just consists of dismissing the evidence presented, just the same as a jury delivering a verdict of "not guilty." It's still *possible* that the guy did it (unless hard evidence was presented that somebody else in particular did); there's just not a basis for concluding that he did.

And that, by the way, is what separates conspiracy theorists from everyone else. They point out that means and motive is grounds to arrest, but ignore that there has to be evidence that the crime was even committed in the first place.

Though I've only lived here in Crook County, IL for a short time, I just assumed that the governor was trying to sell the senate seat, and that folks like Jackson Jr. were lined up to bid. I was astonished that so many people were surprised.

Senate seats have been sold often before. What's the difference between the Gov here selling one for $1.5m (as I think Jackson's bid was reported to be) and Gov. Corzine of NJ, who used $62M of his own money to buy his senate seat in 2000?

Political coruption is, like other kinds, endemic to the human condition. Hardly new, or leading to radical new ways to view the world. In fact, we are considered odd in most of the world that we get upset and try to do something about it.

I hope someone will start a website listing all the convicted and charged politicians of both parties, going back a few years. Did you see the state senator in Massachusetts caught on tape stuffing bribe money in her bra? Didn't make me believe in conspiracy theories.

Unlikely but possible: That no conspiracy nuts are right and that there are, in fact, no large scale conspiracies successfully operating in secret in our modern world.

Unlikely but possible: That all the conspiracy nuts are right and that there are, in fact, a large number of large scale conspiracies operating successfully in secret in our modern world.

Unlikely but possible: Assuming their are some large scale secret conspiracies, the conspiracy theorists have correctly identified some or all of them.

Unlikely but possible: Scott Adams is a pseudonym used by a heterogeneous combine of humourists/writers. This composite character would be a synthetic personality like Simone in the film with Al Pacino, only less life-like and with a penchant for monkeys.

Unlikely but possible: Scott Adams is controlled by the Bavarians, who are in turn the pawns of the Boy Scouts of America, who in turn are victims of masterful manipulation by the Telephone Sanitizers, who are themselves a front for the Grey Aliens, who are acting under the orders of Steve Jackson.

Unlikely but possible: Any of these crackpot theories is correct.

I fail to see the conspiracy theory here. I was not at all surprised to hear about the Illinois Governor's scandal. Scott, are you telling us you were actually naive to believe there is no corruption in politics? There are two kind of politicians: those that take bribe and are stupid enough to get caught and those that take bribe and are smart enough to be covert about it. And it's not just politicians. One need look no further than wall street to see corrupt businessmen.
I am guessing people who don't see, or refuse to see, the lies and corrupt lives around them have a generally cheerful outlook in life and may even become famous cartoonists.

Obama is not a US citizen - is there still wind in those sails?
http://www.worldnetdaily.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=78111
http://www.snopes.com/politics/obama/citizen.asp

You aren't especially familiar with Illinois (particularly Chicago) politics, are you? We have a *long* tradition of putting our governors in gaol. The only remarkable thing about this case is that the corruption was *so* blatant they actually arrested the guy while he was still in office. Normally they wait until after the guy leaves office.

Celebrities indulge in conspiracy themselves. In order to bring back attention to their failing images, even if it is negative attention.
Take a look all around - they are everywhere.

My Non-Ridiculous conspiracy theory: The government (or military/industrial complex, or ???) has perfected their mind control skills (effective propaganda) to the point where the American public will accepts utterly ridiculous ideas as "reality".
Ridiculous:
Mortgage brokers can take a partially employed bloke who might make $30K/year (if he can hold a job) and put him into a $800K house (that might be worth all of $80K?), turn around a sell the loan into an obfuscated product that then is given a AAA credit rating? And then the Ponzi scheme finally falls apart, the fear and loathing prompts widespread support for rampant "blank check" handouts (mostly to the crooks that perpetrated the scheme?).
As amazing as it was that Bush & Co. were able to convince a few folks that Iraq "did" have WMDs completely overlooks the ridiculous notion that they shouldn't.
The notion that a vacated senate seat would be filled by anyone other than the highest bidder... that this isn't exactly the way it's always been done (and always will be done). Has there ever been an exception to the rule that the appointed was not in some way beholden to the appointer? Catch-22 - Blagojevich can't publicly admit that this is SOP any more than he could make a public statement about the nonexistence of Santa Claus. Coming from the same environment that spawned Mayor Daley, it's no surprise that he lacks appropriate finesse.
Moral outrage over job cuts at BofA? The whole idea behind mergers is to reduce duplicated efforts (e.g. payroll systems). BofA just picked up two huge operations, both of which proven to be fiscally irresponsible (or, at worst, incompetent) coupled with an across the board slowdown (that had been staffed to handle an artificially inflated market). Since when does bailout money morally obligate a company to provide full employment to hordes of idle, crooks and/or incompetents? (They aren't a "job bank" for UAW members after all).
These all go way beyond "ignorance" or "stupidity" (or even hypnosis?) - this is mass manipulation that should only be possible in a "Matrix"-like fantasy world. Who's pulling the wool over our eyes and how did they get so good at it?

But it's Chicago.
How could you not Expect this from Chicago?

This will make 4 of the last 8 governors
imprisoned for corruption.

Which only means
the ones in between
were better at it,
and didn't get caught.


Only Louisiana is more criminal,
and they are so casual about it
that there are entertaining movies
showing you what's been done with the funds
meant for highways and schools
(hookers and hooch.)


Well, okay,
DC is worst of all,
but that's such a given
that I don't even put it on the list.

This is a conspiracy. DMD.

In response to your actual question, I think the bar of what's too ridiculous or not slips and slides around a lot. Something ridiculous might not be if you framed the question just a bit differently.

But my larger problem is with the nature of conspiracies themselves. Most of them, particularly the large ones, have in common the requirement that a great many people keep their mouths shut for a long time, and that doesn't appear to be human trait practiced very often.

Even with something like the U.S. shooting down the fourth plane on 9/11 not only assumes that the pilots would keep their mouths shut (as opposed to 'anonymously' sending proof to a reputable news source if one of them was -- or later became -- disgruntled about the action, or a later action taken by the military), but also that none of the people on the plane, some of whom were in communication with family on the ground, saw anything or said anything to support such a theory. Then you have the crash site, and the fact that the first people to arrive on the scene were locals, none of whom apparently saw anything that struck them as odd (in the sense of a plane being blown up as opposed to flying into the ground.)

Or that no one in the chain of command in the military ever became uncomfortable with the idea. Conspiracy theories all assume that everyone in the military/government who might have known about a particular plot either believed in it entirely -- both then and for the rest of their lives -- or were threatened in such a way that they weren't even willing to anonymously send proof to the media of something they disagreed with. The first assumes things about every member of the military/government that's not necessarily true, and the second assumes no one involved would take risks to 'tell the world the truth' either for ideological reasons or simple greed.

In an environment where the government is loathed, or at least distrusted, by many, and the media is always willing to pay for proof of what would be the next story...if someone had absolute proof that the mafia was involved with JFK's death, they'd have supplied those documents to the reputable media by now, taken their money, and vanished.

Human nature, particularly greed and the inability to keep secrets, makes large conspiracies, at least, unlikely.

Pulling off a conspiracy is like pulling off a prank. The more complicated and the more people involved, the less likely that the plan will work, and that is where luck comes in. I'll give you an example: A few years ago, our local rock radio station decided to play a prank on the local pop radio station, the plan was to execute it on April fools day. The found a girl willing to pose as a singing telegram girl, they wrote her a song, kept everything quiet. The luck came in during the week of April 1st, when the pop radio station decided to showcase young female entreprenuers on their morning show. The girl called up and they agreed to have her on their morning show on April 1st to air her talents, everything went off without a hitch. She sang her song, which was all about how great a radio station was, how everyone loved them, how great the morning show was, and then at the end, said the name and call letters of the rock station.

My point is, conspiracies can work, and most times when they don't work, you'll never know, if everything doesn't align, the conspirators can pull out without anyone noticing. It's when the luck doesn't hold that you find out, or when someone blabs when they shouldn't have. However, if it is the same group of people performing these big conspiracies, then now one is going to blab, and if they are powerful enough, the can manipulate their own luck.

I can't accept your thesis that the actions of the governor of Illinois are a watershed that lower the bar on the plausibility of government conspiracies. I lived in Illinois for almost all of my adult life. His actions are consistent with Illinois politics, especially the politics of the City of Chicago which is his political base. Nothing new here. Move along please. Put the conspiracy bar back up where it belongs.

Regarding aliens - I've always wondered why people look for them at night. It seems to me that if an alien race was technologically advanced enough to cover light years of space to get here, they could easily choose which side of the planet to land on. I'd choose the side that's lit.

Scott, you have it backwards. The Blagojevich scandal is an argument against conspiracy theories. One guy tried to do something illegal with several other guys, and the whole thing was discovered, and the chief conspirator indicted, within a month. This is because people can't keep secrets. When enough people know about a secret, one of them will inevitably be pissed off that he isn't the one benefiting the most from it and find that he can benefit more from revealing it to the world. Or he might simply do it out of spite, or a change in allegiance, or a moment of conscience, or to cover his ass. That's one difficulty in executing a successful conspiracy. Another is competence; you need everyone involved to do their part perfectly. For a conspiracy to work and remain secret, you'd need a large number of people who are all competent and can keep a secret. That's why most conspiracy theories you hear are ridiculous; they all involve dozens of people who each can make millions and be a hero revealing the conspiracy.

That's not to say that conspiracies don't exist, but that the ones you hear about aren't real. There could be some successful conspiracies you haven't heard about and never will, because they're successful. And the most plausible ones of the ones you have heard about are the ones that involve the fewest number of people. For example, the "David Stern fixed the 1985 NBA draft so that Patrick Ewing plays in New York" conspiracy theory is plausible becuase it really only takes three people to pull it off.