People across the political spectrum have their own crosses to bear. Just this morning we discussed loony old Joe Biden, the Democrat’s crazy old man in the attic; but in the interests of honesty, it’s only fair to point out that on the political right, we have our share of kooks as well.
Conspiracy theorists run the gamut, of course; there are loony-tunes conspiracy kooks on both sides of the issue, and some that are hard to place anywhere at all. For a particularly paranoid and hilariously dimwitted example, see this nitwit’s page; here’s a representative gem, reproduced exactly as presented, lack of punctuation and all:
Sarah Palin and John McCain claimed to be Mavericks.
Mavericks is also the name of Mark Cuban’s Dallas basketball team
Obama claims his basketball name is Barack O’Bomber
Sarah claims her basketball name was Sarah BARRACuda
Obama claims to have been born in Hawaii
Sarah Palin claims to have attended school in Hawaii at Hilo and graduated from University of Idaho in MOSCOW Idaho.
Tina Fey mocked Sarah Palin on SNL claiming she could see Russia from her house
The Palin name is also close to Putin
Gayle King and Oprah Gail WinFrEY were both news anchors
Sarah Palin claims she was also a news anchor
If you are familiar with George Soros and the hundreds of organizations he is tied to trying to “transform America” you should also know that the name Soros is a PALINdrome
Loony, but nobody with more than six active brain cells would take him seriously; this clown is more comic relief than anything else. But there are some conspiracy kooks that actually do have a larger following.
Which brings me to Alex Jones.
Here are some gems from Jones’ site:
Obama Staged ‘Batman’ Massacre
40 Points That Prove That Barack Obama And Mitt Romney Are Essentially The Same Candidate
Pentagon Can’t Find Records of Capturing Osama Bin Laden
The lede from that last one: “The dramatic photos of Obama, Biden, Hillary Clinton and members of the White House security team watching the assassination of Bin Laden “live” were completely staged.“
Jones’ latest bit of nitwittery has conspiracy kooks all agitated over a proposal by the Social Security Administration to purchase some 174,000 rounds of pistol ammunition. Infowars croaker Paul Watson bloviates: “It’s not outlandish to suggest that the Social Security Administration is purchasing the bullets as part of preparations for civil unrest. Social security welfare is estimated to keep around 40 per cent of senior citizens out of poverty. Should the tap run dry in the aftermath of an economic collapse which the Federal Reserve has already told top banks to prepare for, domestic disorder could ensue if people are refused their benefits.” Only days ago, Infowars writer Suzanne Posel warned us of impending martial law.
Seriously, folks?
Not too surprisingly, the Social Security Administration does in fact have a Fugitive Enforcement Program as well as an Office of Investigations, which has ten field offices. Assuming ten active agents per office, that’s a hundred agents; that’s 1,740 rounds of practice ammo a year. (And yes, cops of all sorts routinely practice with the same ammo they carry; I do the same thing with my carry weapon. And I shoot more than 1,740 rounds a year.) That’s not an unreasonable amount of practice ammo; not at all.
The whole “martial law” meme was repeated in the 1990s as well. The same sort of wacky conspiracy kooks saw black UN helicopters everywhere, and bloviated that Bill Clinton would find some pretext to declare martial law and stay in office. He didn’t. Now they are 
whining that Barack Obama is engineering pretexts to cancel the elections this fall. He isn’t. Conspiracy theorists are ascribing malign intent to what is more correctly assigned to mere incompetence.
I’m not ignorant of history. I’ve been concerned for some time that there may be a Caesar in our future. But Barack Obama is no Caesar, and neither is Mitt Romney. The elections will go on this fall as usual, following which Jones and his crowd will have to invent some new conspiracies.
