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Especially when they propagate anti-vaccine hysteria to the most gullible and low-wattage people out there who can afford AM radios. They have, however, good guests from time to time. I will listen to the JFK show perhaps.

That's not what has happened. There is a trend, and no serious science doubts that. There is enough data from the past to see that. Not sure where the video comes from. Looks like a downward trend to me though. What does ? No - it's regression analysis, part of statistics. Roughly how it works is, the main factors affecting temperature are put into a statistical model, based on physical science, and mapped over time to see the relationship. It's continually adjusted. If you do it with CO2 and radiative forcing, you come up with a relationship. CO2 has increased since the industrial age, correlated to temperature. You're moving away from what you said, though. That statement means nothing. The greenhouse effect has been hypothesized and studied since the 18th century, hardly a fad. Where's the science that discusses the greenhouse effect ? Here's something: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenhouse_effect It's not a serious conversation we're having. You might have some fringe science that you're following, but you haven't even posted that so I can't say for sure. Anyway, if scientific orthodoxy makes you suspicious then I can't really convince you here on my own, so best of luck. No, you're a conspiracy *guy* if you believe conspiracies such as 9/11, Sandy Hook, JFK, etc. etc. I wish you the best in your travels.

Like any story, you will never know the "whole truth". And like any story, you can focus on one part of it and imagine all kinds of ancillary threads as to why/how something happened. But also, like any story, there's a central chain of events that drive the events - that have a clear motive, beginning, middle, and conclusion. There really is only the one central chain of events that drives the planning, execution, and conclusion of this event. They used to say that about the JFK assassination. Files are continuously being released, and there is nothing. The suspicions that are speculated upon are basically a self-sustaining media sideshow and cottage industry.

Hmmm... I don't know, though. It sounds a little like psychobabble. I used to believe in UFOs, Chariots of the Gods, and JFK conspiracy theories when I was a child, an adolescent, and even a young adult. By my late 20s, I had become simply 'open minded' about such things but my doubts were growing. I still consider myself open to new evidence, but I have given up on thinking any of these things could be real. Have I changed my character ? Beyond aging, and learning about how the world works - probably not. I can only say that I was somehow intrigued and entertained by such ideas, and that entertainment was shut down for me when I read informed counterpoints that showed how the original ideas didn't make sense.

I have just finished a book by Gerald Posner - Case Closed - that examines the JFK assassination objectively and comes to the inescapable conclusion that Oswald acted alone. As astonishing as it seems, a miscreant pauper happened to be in the right place at the right time to plan an assassination of the world's most powerful man. Reading the book, it's possible to only come to one conclusion - but also to wonder how so many can believe the opposite. Posner discusses the problem that the truth has been 'crowded out' by speculation, and that theories of conspiracy have been repeated so much that Oswald himself is not examined nearly enough, in fact many conspiracy theories focus entirely on other people. As such, I think that future historians will find it strange that in an era of ostensibly large advances in science, we still relied on folklore for a lot of our information. Question: What are your favourite conspiracies ? I do have one or two. Chemtrails ? Roswell ? How much do you follow it for entertainment and how much do you believe ?

So - let me get this straight. Some people think "I wish JFK was dead", then some loner/loser assassinates him and their thought is not "great, problem solved" but "now we have to kill THIS guy" ? Doesn't follow, at least for me.

Actually, in the film JFK they made reference to that. Files are being released from time to time and there hasn't been anything that supports the conspiracy idea. Oswald was a famous hothead, with tendencies to shoot his mouth off and no qualifications for anything. He would be unfit for a conspiracy, by all accounts.

So JFK would be a Republican because he put in a tax cut ? Very weak.

LBJ seemed to spend his entire career until the presidency masquerading as a conservative democrat. Once he had power, he emulated his hero FDR and instituted a suite of social programs that stands to this day. Whether or not you agree, he had a lasting effect. He knew how to make things happen (much better than JFK and Obama do) and he did them. Civil Rights, Medicare, and the War on Poverty were some of the liberal programs he championed. Unfortunately, he threw the right wing a bone at the expense of the Vietnamese people by escalating the war in Southeast Asia - thinking that it wouldn't impact him domestically. As smart as he was, he couldn't have foreseen the cultural shift that happened during his presidency (1963-1968).

You have at least provided some idea of why this topic is popular. I'm still at a loss to understand what these people are getting at. At best, they're damning corporations and banks for being greedy (duh) and at worst it's another crackpot Twilight Zone theory - like how JFK was going to solve all of our problems, but he was shot.

The 'camel joke' was meant to be offensive, but the comparison you're making is off the scale. Calling today's conservatives 'Nazis in spirit' is as meaningless as saying we're the heirs to Stalin. I've always spoken up against that kind of hyperbole, as it stops all discussion from continuing. On another level, it's dreadfully short on imagination as far as insults go. "Speaking" and "Shutting down" are two completely different actions. I support her right to speak, to be offensive, and, incidentally, to face the consequences of whatever she says that is against the law. But she has to speak first. Also, I don't support her, Rush, Beck, or any of the hog-callers on US television. Furthermore, I think they are what's wrong with politics in America today. I have been denouncing them for years with all of my influence and power, which is to say none. But that's all I can do, and that's all anybody can do about merely offensive speech. Eventually, if their content is as lacking as I say it is, then it will drift away into history's gutter. Even now, the Republicans are starting to question how useful these drones are to them today. A bitter and angry minority does not appeal to the wide voter base that's out there. Do you remember the John Birch society ? They were another fringe group that outlived their usefulness with the Repubs, and eventually had to be cut loose. They're not well remembered today, but JFK, Martin Luther King and the like are.

Exactly. The religious people too are pretty sure, and they don't have any evidence to convince me either. In fact, they're certain they're right. They're internationalists, then ? Ok, that still doesn't explain the value to them in destroying their own symbols to make themselves look weak. As I said, there's no way to disprove a conspiracy theory but this would seem as good a reason as any that 9/11 conspiracy is baseless: the motivation to do it runs 180 degrees counter to the motivations that the New World Order is purported to have. They didn't have to destroy their own symbols to invade Iraq (twice), Panama, Grenada, Lybia, Lebanon etc. etc. The UN and the governments of the world are making excellent progress in fixing the world's problems. Again, I respect your right to paint watercolour sketches in the air but once in awhile you allude to real policy. If you want to dip your toe into that tide pool, they give us something concrete. JFK's words aren't relevant to real policy matters in 2009.

I just finished reading The Paranoid Style in American Politics by Richard Hofstadter. Those crazy theories have a long history in American, maybe back to the revolution itself. And not just 'truthers' or 'birthers'. There was a large movement to move America to the silver standard at the end of the 19th century that had all the hallmarks of these conspiracy movements. 9/11, JFK, KKK, anti-Catholic, anti-Mason, "know nothings" ... Freedom, it seems, makes people paranoid.

I point out that Mr. Paul is a shady demagogue who came out of nowhere, and is mostly supported by many internet blogs and forum readers. His policies appear to be grassroots, however they are extreme. He wants to abolish the Federal Reserve System, and has somehow convinced his followers that this move would be as effortless and simple as flipping a switch. ( There's also a matter whereby he allowed extreme racial views (against African Americans) to be published in his newsletter. That was supposedly a mistake, however it shows you the kind of company he was keeping at that time.) Before the Federal Reserve guaranteed banks, you didn't know if your savings were safe. Banks failed, leaving depositors in ruin. There could be disastrous effects on the worldwide credit system if the banking system was fundamentally changed as he proposed, yet he just says it and his followers believe him. When a new medium such as the internet enters into the public sphere, there is always an example of a new politics that rides on its coat tails. With television, it was JFK. With radio, in Germany, it was Hitler. We need to hold these new politicians to the same standards as the old ones, and to absolutely listen to the established wisdom about their new ideas.

We've already discussed this a lot on this board here. To summarize : No one has been able to explain how and why such a plot could ever be planned, approved and executed and who could/would do that. The theories that are out there come from people with a penchant for mysteries - people who comb through the millions of facts out there to find unexplained incidents, coincidents or oddities then build their theories on that. With an incident of this scale, there will always be these types of phenomena. To build conspiricies on that is simply destructive to society. Research the 'umbrella man' at JFK's assasination. For years, he was thought to be part of some conspiracy but it was eventually explained.

Thanks to Krusty and The Mod Centrist for holding up the candle of sanity in these discussions. Here's another plank to support both of your arguments: Most of the plots that conspiracy theorists would like us to believe happened would never have been approved because of the risk involved. The motivation for these plots is always given as something that happened immediately afterwards (for JFK, the escalation of the Vietnam conflict, for 9-11 the invasion of Afghanistan etc.) but none of these outcomes was clear or predictable immediately after the incident let alone before. So strategists would never be able to guarantee ANY outcome of a catastrophic event like 9-11. If they wanted to invade Afghanistan, they could have easily fabricated evidence to do so. They wouldn't have had to stupidly destroy their own symbols of stability first.