Can we finally put this stupid rumor to rest.

One of the silliest rumors to spread around the blog, mainly from the crazies on the Left (as opposed to the crazies on the Right-- Go Ron Paul.) has the story that Sarah Palin didn't really give birth to her son, Trig.

The theory was that Palin faked her pregnancy to cover up for her daughter who was allegedly the real mother. The evidence for this nonsense was a convincing as the loony theory about Obama not really being born in the United States. Two arguments were used. One was that no photo of Palin looking pregnant could be found -- but then people pushing a wacky theory tend not to look for evidence that proves them wrong. I've seen photos of Palin where she looked pregnant to me.

The second "proof" was that after the nutters started spreading the story Palin didn't come forward with a birth certificate to prove them wrong. Sorry, but that proves NOTHING. It is not incumbent on her to prove lunatics wrong but for the lunatics to prove their case. And they gave nothing close to evidence to prove it.

But this last weekend we got some nice proof. Remember that Palin's daughter, Bristol, was pregnant. She just gave birth to a healthy, 7 lb son. Seven lbs. is clearly not premature. Pregnancy is a nine month affair. Bristol's son was just born, and that was only eight months after Trig Palin was born. It would be highly unusual for a woman to give birth even nine moths after her previous birth but giving birth eight months later just isn't in the cards.

Bristol Palin gave birth to her son eight months after her mother gave birth to her brother. That really ought to shut up the crazed conspiracists who find a plot under every bush. But, if past experience is any indication, the conspiratorially minded will find some bizarre explanation to prove that they are still right with their unfounded accusations. One reason I try not to debate with people with this mind-set is that they are simply NOT open to reasoned debate.

By the way, Bristol Palin is a born-again fundamentalist and living proof that the abstinence education program of the religious Right is relatively worthless. Picture is of Palin and the father of her child, Levi Johnston.

In addition, it should be noted that the infant's other grandmother, Sherry Johnston, was just arrested in a drug sting. She supposedly offered the pain killer OxyContin to undercover drug warriors. I despise a government that won't allow people to medicate their pain in the name of protecting them from "drug abuse". At least I can give the Palin extended family for giving us examples of why we need to end the government war on sex and the government war on drugs.

You call that small!

I find conservatives to be a fraudulent bunch. They spout how they are advocates of “small government” and they continually whine that government is big enough on the issues that concern them. Take this outfit that calls itself SmallGovTimes as a prime example of the hypocrisy.

Take a look at these two charts which indicate the amount of money that our immigration “enforcement” agents spend every year. Remember this data is before the big increases in recent years. Also note the number of personnel specifically hired to patrol the borders and close every avenue of escape, I mean entry. These are very large increases in a very short period of time. And that is only at the federal level and doesn't include the massive expenditures by local cops who want to play G man.



Our nascent police state, in the form of the dictatorial and misnamed Department of Homeland Security, is well funded to attack immigrants, the Bill of Rights, and other examples of “terrorism”. These brownshirts are getting $40 billion for their budget next year. That is $2.2 billion than they flushed down the toilets this year.

They added $800 million for armed agents to track down dishwashers and gardeners committing the heinous crime of working without a permit from a politician. They allocated to the Immigration gestapo just under $5 billion dollars. There is $775 million to install cameras on the borders. And don’t forget the $50 million being used to force the states to implement the internal passport system known as Real ID which will crack down on those Americans who think they have a right to exist without state permission.

So what does this have to do with SmallGovTimes and why do I say they are hypocrites. Simply put this outfit is a bunch of paranoid lunatics who are whining about illusionary plots like the alleged “North American Union” while bitching that “our federal government has done almost nothing to rectify the situation” of immigrants getting in to work.

Almost nothing! Billions flushed down the toilets. Walls being built on the borders. Controls put on every company in America in regards to hiring people, forcing Real ID down the throats of every citizen, cameras along the borders, thousands of more “agents” scouring the borders and the country. Controls, regulations, rules, and billions and billions of the productive economy squandered to chase down dishwashers. And this conservative says this is “almost nothing”.

If this is “almost nothing” then how many more billions do they want? How many more armed federal agents do they want smashing down doors and raiding “chicken processing” plants? How many more walls? How many new rules and regulations are they demanding?

And they have the audacity to call themselves “small government” advocates. Sure they are --- much the way Mussolini was a small government advocate -- at least when compared to his friend Adolph.

This Birch Society inspired lunacy spends a great deal of time lamenting the alleged lack of “fighting” immigration while bitching about the phantom North America Union. And like good paranoid nutters they alleged the two are connected. Actually they are, both claims are bogus, but that is all they have in common. The government is doing a lot of fight dangerous Mexican yard workers and there is no NAU plot.

But our friends at Big Government Times, as they ought to be known, claim that the secret plotters are refusing to do anything about immigration because “the free flow of humans and money facilitates something known as ‘the North American Union’.”

Consider what this person is saying. He clearly is against the “free flow of humans and money”. How do you prevent people and their wealth from moving? The only way to do that is to impose massive amounts of control. That means massive government. That means government interfering with individual liberty over and over again. You can’t have “small government” while stopping the “free flow of humans and money”.

Yet this author calls himself a “conservative-libertarian”. That makes no sense to me. Hayek wrote that libertarianism is in the corner of a triangle. At equal and opposite distances are the two other corners, one occupied by socialists and the other by conservatives. There is no such thing as a “conservative-libertarian” anymore than we can have dry-water.

And what I find is that these so-called “conservative libertarians” are always conservatives first and libertarians last. There is barely a freedom that they wouldn’t sacrifice in the name of their conservative values. The author of this clap trap on immigration and secret plots claims he writes in support of “small government” and “open markets”. But does he?

There are three major components to open markets. One is the free flow of goods and services. Many conservatives do hold to this position. Not this author who whines about free trade agreements which actually bring about increased trade. But the other two aspects of an open market is the free flow of labor and of capital. In other words it is the “free flow of humans and money”. But that is the very thing he said he is against.

The free exchange of goods and services is merely one third of the “open market”. When you advocate that government control two-thirds of the market you are not advocating a free market but a state-controlled market. Now if you want to call that “conservative” go right ahead. Conservatives have always been lovers of state power and imposed order. But don’t call that “libertarian” and don’t pretend you are advocating “small government”. Embrace your inner fascist and admit that you hate freedom. Be honest with yourself and with others.

The call of the French loon.

I regret to say I haven’t kept up with current films. I used to go weekly to the theater but over the last few years have not done so. So I really didn’t know who Marion Cotillard is. She supposedly had a part in Big Fish, a film I did see, but I don’t remember her. She recently did a film where she played Edith Piaf. Piaf I am familiar with, Cotillard I’m not. But probably all the better.

She won an Oscar for something. And apparently she is a total loon as well. Certainly she wouldn’t be the only Oscar winner with logic deficiency problems -- all we have to do is look at the certifiably crazed Tom Cruise to see that.

Cotillard has apparently bought into the tin foil hat theories on 9/11. These theories are so weak and so out of touch with the facts that I can’t see how any rational person holds them -- actually to be honest, I don’t think any rational person does hold them.

Cotillard started out with a reasonable conclusion: “I think we’re lied to about a number of things.” No doubt. A government that doesn’t lie is surely a rarity. And the Bush regime is particularly prone to telling whoppers in public. But Cotillard gets very specific and very stupid.

"We see other towers of the same kind hit by planes. Are they burned? There was a tower, I believe it was in Spain, that burnt for 24 hours. It never collapsed. None of these towers collapsed. And there, in a few minutes, the whole thing collapsed."

This is what I mean by loon. What other towers “of the same kind” were hit by planes? Here is the reality. No other towers of this size were hit by planes of these magnitude. The woman is totally daft if she thinks there were. Some planes may have hit some buildings but nothing of this magnitude has happened before, or since 9/11.

I read all the daft conspiracy theories I could find and the rebuttals. The conspiracy theories are just bonkers. Let us cover just the basic reasons for the collapse. The twin towers had two rings of supporting beams. One, on the outside of the building, and one set toward the center. The building was designed to stay standing if any one set had a major fault. But when the jets crashed into those buildings they severed the out support beams. The inner beams, though damaged continued to hold but they were being weakened by the intense heat of the burning fuel from the planes.

The inner beans didn’t melt and no expert on the topic says they did. This whole canard about not finding melted metal is conspiracy bull. What the burning fuel did was weaken the beams. Weakened beams by themselves should have held up. But they weren’t by themselves. You have to add in the fact that the outer beams were severed and no longer holding up the upper floors. The entire weight of the upper floors rested on the beams that were becoming progressively weakened by the intense heat of the fire. And at one point these beams buckled. The entire weight of the building came down on the set of beams below this level and they snapped as a result. You now how a weight that was getting progressively heavier with each floor along with the force of the collapse resulting in the pancaking of the buildings.

No other building has faced this situation. Cotillard is either woefully misinformed or just a lunatic. She also falsely claimed that the towers collapsed only a “ few minutes” after the impact of the planes. In fact, from the moment of impact to the collapse it took between 1 hour 15 minutes and 1 and 1/2 hours, depending on the tower, for the collapse to take place. This is not a “few minutes” even in France.

Her theory as to why this conspiracy took place is uniquely her own. She says the towers were “money-suckers” and that the cost of fixing them was higher “than destroying them.” Lest you think she’s sane she also isn’t sure that man ever walked on the moon. “Did a man really walk on the moon? I saw of plenty of documentaries on it, and I really wondered. And in my case I don’t believe all they tell me, that’s for sure.”

What I’ve never figured out is why anyone cares what actors think about topics. Just because one is good a pretending to be something they aren’t doesn’t make their opinion on other topics worthwhile. It is ludicrous to watch actors, even decent ones like Meryl Streep, testifying before Congress about anything other than acting. Just because Barbra Streisand can sing doesn’t mean she knows diddly-squat about economics.

If they want to talk about acting and Hollywood and films then I will pay special attention to what they have to say. But when they speak out on any other topic they are no different than any other person. In fact, because they spend so much time dealing with their acting careers they are often less informed about issues than others. Too often they embrace a cause for nothing more than the publicity to further their career.

Let’s be honest. If we were to give these Hollywood stars a blog, but put it out anonymously or under a pseudonym would anyone pay attention? Do they actually have anything to contribute on these topics? I’m not sure they do. They are merely trading their fame in one field in order to get attention regarding topics where they are ill informed.

Photo: The caption ought to say: "I hav one of dez so I am ze experrrt on anything."

Secret bankers plot takes over REASON magazine. Right!

The paranoid nut cases at the John Birch Society are outing our friends at REASON magazine as fascists! Truly. No more bizarre than the loony conspiracists theories they usually tout with such fervor, however. In fact, they are being rather mild in berating writers from REASON as only fascists. Usually they invent some plot involving bankers and the Council on Foreign Relations.

When their adrenaline is pumping they start in about the Illuminati and mysterious “Insiders”.

The Birchers, and others on the extreme Right, have been pushing a NAFTA superhighway theory that is about as bizarre as the old JBS canard that Dwight Eisenhower was a agent of the Communists and reported to his brother for instructions from Moscow. It really is difficult to emphasize how deranged the Birchers can be. And they don't even have to work hard at it. It seems to be a natural talent.

Jim Capo, at the Birch Society, is upset because the Los Angeles Times has published an article debunking their conspiracy du jour -- this Superhighway/NAFTA plot that has miscellaneous xenophobes in a dither.

Capo says that article he finds so offensive “was awarded to a pair of fascists from Reason magazine, an outfit that used to be in favor of freedom.” Which is unlike the John Birch Society that loved government control over lots of things. Debunking this paranoid theory apparently makes the authors, Shikha Dalmia and Leonard Gilroy, not just fascists but “corporatist shills” as well as “phony libertarians." Aparently the new revisionist view of libertarians, that is so popular on the far right, includes beliefs in secret plots, building walls on the borders and slamming immigration.

I was once told that if you throw a stone at a pack of wild dogs the one that yelps is the one you hit. They don’t get much wilder than the Birchers --- they are crazy and funny people. (I remember one JBS member who tried to convince me that homosexuality was caused by a vitamin deficiency.) And Capo certainly is yelping loudly. Capo makes the point that “real libertarians” like Republican Ron Paul believe in the conspiracy theories they promote. He may well do so. But he is hardly a a typical libertarian.

Regardless of the vices or virtues of Ron Paul, conspiracy theories didn’t used to be typical fare for libertarians. That is, this sort of irrationality is not one peculiar to libertarians. We may have our own craziness but hundred year secret plots to rule the world by building highways isn’t one of them. The Bircher are most welcome to that insanity—we have enough of our own.

Of course, the paranoid mind always must explain anyone who challenges them. So when someone challenges the existence of witches that challenge is proof positive that the denier is clearly a witch. So apparently REASON magazine is now a part of the secret plot to take over the world and install one-world government for the Illuminati.

Capo explains: “what the LA Times and Reason magazine are really trying to do is sell us a toll ticket on the Conspiratorial highway of their sponsors.” See, “their sponsors”. Now, we know. Reason is sponsored by the conspiracy. And clever folks that these conspirators are, they set up REASON 40 years ago so it could hire two people who would write an article that would deny the secret plot to create a North American Union with a NAFTA Superhighway.

Pretty soon we’ll discover REASON editors hired Freemasons and dance naked at the Bohemian Grove —so watch for videos on YouTube proving it. I’m just waiting to find out that editor Nick Gillespie is a member of the Skull and Bones. I have it on good authority that he possesses both a skull and bones himself. He’s never been seen in public without them.

Every time I run into the Birchers I swear I can hear the music of the Twilight Zone playing in the background.

Replace one bad idea with another.

I have commented on the lunatic theory of the “North America Union” conspiracy. And I was pleased to see AlterNet taking on this paranoid delusion. As with much you find at AlterNet it is some good and some bad. And I thought I’d mention what they had to say and respond.

First, they poo-poo the idea of an international plot of “globalists” to set a transnational government. And they are right when they say it is “an offspring of the John Birch Society right, with its attendant xenophobia and paranoia.” The conspiracy theory of the Birchers is bizarre.

First, the founder Robert Welch, went on about the Communists “conspiracy”. Now he was fairly solid ground except in thinking that there was a monolithic agreement among Marxists. There never was. The Soviets did present a problem and were a monolithic government which did do some horrific things. But the Left was not in lock step with the Soviets.

Welch got even more bizarre when he wrote that President Eisenhower was a communist agent controlled by his brother. Welch did have many loose screws.

Then in the mid 60s the Birchers latched on to the ideas of Dan Smoot that the Council on Foreign Relations was involved in a plot to merge the United States with the Soviet Union and to establish a one world government. He laid out his theories in his book The Invisible Government which was published by the Birchers. Smoot presented himself as an FBI expert. He did serve as a field agent in the FBI but the Bureau was rather unhappy with the quality of his work and he left under a cloud. He was reprimanded on several occasions. Smoot also claimed he was an “administrative assistant” to J. Edgar Hoover but the FBI says this was entirely false.

The Birchers, however, moved on. Now they started looking at the “banking conspiracies” espoused by various groups, especially by anti-Semites who argued the bankers were “Jews”. At this point Welch started concocting a grand conspiracy theory tying all this strands of conspiracism together. Welch was reading the wacko conspiracy books about Freemasons and such and came across the idea that an obscure order, the Illuminati, was involved. Eventually they became the main culprits controlling, from behind the scenes, all the other conspiracies.

Normally one would say: “And the rest is history.” But very little of what the Birchers claims holds up well when scrutinized. One ends up on an endless loop of conspiracy claims using the books of other conspiracy nuts to back up the book being read. Along the way there is a conspiracy for everyone. If you hate Catholics you can find books documenting the Vatican’s involvement with the plot. Hate Jews and there are hundreds of books you can turn to for “proof”. If you hate Protestants you can find Catholic conspiracists arguing that the Protestants are part of the conspiracy. Some argue the Mormons are and others argue the Mormons are good guys.

So out of this jumble of bad history and delusional thinking has emerged the “conspiracy” to merge the US with Canada and Mexico. That’s today. Tomorrow the world.

AlterNet, however, goes off the deep end as well. They pull in their left-wing obsessions. They argue that people are attracted to such wacko ideas as “an entirely logical reaction to the process of corporate-driven global integration that feeds in Americans’ very real and wholly valid economic anxieties.” This would be a good time to throw up.

The movement for free trade is often opposed by corporations who don’t want the competition locally. Everyone wants to be able to sell abroad and to have a protected market at home. So many corporations are leaders pushing for protectionist measures to limit their own competition.

But the really asinine comment is that the fears of the public are “real and wholly valid economic anxieties.” That is just garbage. It is mostly based on fallacies and economic illiteracy. It is not true and the economists of the world are pretty much in agreement on the benefits of free trade.

To back up the claim that these economic fallacies are legitimate the author of this piece resorts to counting heads informing us that 46 percent of the public thinks free trade deals are bad for America. And they believe they lowered wages -- in spite of rising wages to the contrary. Yet the same site laughs hysterically went Right-wing nuts pull out public opinion polls against evolution.

So the author realizes that the conspiracy theory is fringe material but is convinced that his own fringe economic theory (at least among professional economists) is absolutely valid. And he finds the fault to be the very thing he himself hates: free trade. How convenient. He speaks in way that implies he was one of “those” “who have spent years in trying to raise awareness of what’s really going on in the movement to blanket the earth in “free trade” deals...” In fact the author sounds like a nutter when he says: “Make no mistake, I’ve shed blood opposing corporate trade deals like NAFTA and the Free Trade Areas of the Americas, and there are very real and very significant problems with the push toward harmonization.....”

By the way harmonization is not the same thing as free trade and it is not good. It is a means by which bad policies are imposed on nations that have decent policies to limit competition. For instance the old EU countries are lumbering dinosaurs unfit to survive the modern world. They face stiff competition from the rising stars in Eastern Europe. So the old countries, instead of reforming their failed policies, are trying to impose the same burdens on the emerging markets in order to stifle their growth and make them less attractive.

The major difference between the AlterNet author and the lunatics he sets out to debunk is that he wants them to concentrate on his favorite hate group: corporations. He hates free trade, corporations and I would guess he isn’t found of free markets in general. And he wants the lunatic fringe on the Right to adopt his targets. I’m glad to see him debunk some of the lunatic conspiracy theories that he does. I’m disappointed to see him replace those Right-wing wacko theories with Left-wing wacko theories of his own.

Bungling bureaucrats and crazy conspiracy theories.

It is looking like the federal government is going to delay their attempt to force Americans to purchase passports in order to visit Canada, Mexico and the Caribbean. This plan of King George is party of his fortress America mind set where he strips Americans of civil liberties on the premise that by attacking his own people he will prevent terrorists from doing so.

But don’t assume any of this was done out of a concern for freedom. They are coming. Already these requirements are in place for air travel and the result has been utter chaos. The issuing of passports under the Bush administration is about as efficient as their handling of Katrinia. Disastrous.

People who have filed for passports months ago are still waiting. Money spent on vacations, hotel books, air flights, etc., have gone down the toilet due to the chaos that is imposed on everything George Bush tries to fix. Surprised? Why? After all this is a man who mismanaged every business enterprise he ever touched. Bush is the Peter Principle in action.

That says that an individual is promoted to his level of incompentence. So naturally with someone as incompetent as George Bush he became president of the United States. And, by his actions, dreams of even higher levels of incompetence.

The State Department still is forcing Americans to get their government papers permitting them to travel. They are only delaying aspects of it. Every American still has to have state permission to get on a flight out of the United States. But those who applied months ago and haven’t received their permits can now fly out but ONLY if they show the travel Nazis a receipt proving they applied for permission. But even this “relaxation” is temporary with the original new regulations going into effect on October 1.

The real problem was going to hit when the passport requirements to drive into Canada or Mexico came into effect. Land and sea travel traffic is far heavier. If the bumbling bureaucrats can’t cope now that regulation will be an even worse disaster.

I’ve crossed over into both countries numerous times myself. I’ve never been able to come into the US with less than a two hour wait at the American border. And the way Bush is handling things it would appear that people will need to put aside half their vacation time just trying to get back into their own country -- though it causes me to wonder why they bother coming back.

This is all part of that bait and switch tactic of authoritarianism used by Bush. It’s going to make America safe! 9/11 you know. Never mind that not a single one of the men involved in 9/11 crossed the US border from Mexico or Canada. Never mind that every one of them passed through US passport control. Somehow this is supposed to be related. Just trust the Fuhrer.

A similar bait and switch was used for his disastrous war. A small group of men connected with Osama bin Laden committed grotesque criminal acts within the United States. Bin Laden was headquartered in Afghanistan. But somehow, and with some process of convoluted Bush logic, that means the US has to go to war in Iraq. The net result is that Bush more than doubled the number of American dead. Great move moron! And that’s only the beginning. He’s made an unstable region of the world even less stable. And that bin Laden fellow? No worries, the US is so mired down in the march toward fascism that he’s still free.

Personally it wouldn’t surprise me one bit to discover bin Laden has been dead for a couple of years. But you need the Bogey Man to scare the children into taking orders. Don’t forget 9/11. Shred the Bill of Rights. Don’t forget 9/11. End your freedom to travel. 9/11 you know. Just keep saying it over and over and kiss liberty good bye.

One last point about this lunacy, and that is to deal with lunatics on the other side. Just because Bush is a dangerous moron doesn’t mean everyone who opposes him has a lick of sense. There are some real daft opponents of Bush.

There is circulating a lot of nonsense from fringe Far Right anti-Bush crazies. Some even oppose Iraq. Their insanity is not due to opposing Bush but due to their delusional obsession with conspiracy theories concocted by people who are neither smart enough nor honest enough to understand reality.

At the top of the list is the absurd rumor that there is an attempt to merge the US, Canada and Mexico into one larger nation -- a North American Union with a common currency, the Amero.

The far Left doesn’t have a monopoly on fools.

One hallmark of such a union, such as the European Union, is the ease to cross borders within the Union. But Americans are finding that harder and harder to do.

This passport debacle clearly shows the US is not moving toward a North American Union but is actually moving further and further away from anything remotely resembling one. Of course that is logic and I’ve yet to meet a conspiracy advocate I thought was being logical. Most just strike me as mentally unbalanced and intellectually challenged.

Most Canadians would rather eat glass than join the United States. And the politicians can’t even agree on what to do about the Mexicans who already live in the United States. Then we have THE WALL that is being built to keep Mexicans out, or Americans in, take your pick. And yet the loony fringe is breathlessly telling us that its part of the One World plot by.... Well, just insert your favorite scapegoat there.

Here’s a hint. If you hear someone going on about the North American Union, the Amero, the NAFTA Highway, the globalists, the international bankers, etc, then you are dealing with someone whose eleveator doesn’t quite reach the top floor. Most of them are harmless so just nod knowingly and look for the nearest exit.