“I feel like a kid in a candy store!” – terrified diabetic

— Mike Leffingwell (@mikeleffingwell) April 23, 2013

You can’t argue “Boston illustrates our need to help struggling immigrants more” and “immigrants are not a threat to us” simultaneously.

— jimgeraghty (@jimgeraghty) April 23, 2013

“I’m killing you because of my radical beliefs””You don’t mean that””No, really. This is part of my jihad””You were bullied,weren’t you?”

— Will Antonin (@Will_Antonin) April 23, 2013

So the motivation of the bombers is what everyone pretty much guessed as soon as they heard there was a bombing: They were motivated by their religion of Islam. But it’s not nice to jump to conclusion, so we have to act all surprised.

Give me a sec…

But most Muslims are such nice people! How could this happen? Did we fail them somehow? Maybe it’s our fault for what our military has done to those countries overseas; they were so peaceful and nice before we got involved! Really, the Tsarnaev’s are the true victims here! Why did this have to happen?! Why?! Maybe if we change our ways, less people will fall victim to wanting to mercilessly blow up children.

Okay, I’m done. You have to wonder what the logic was here:

1. Blow up children proving you’re ruthless murderers who can’t be reasoned with
2. ??
3. Islam dominates the world

People wonder if these two were part of some larger conspiracy. It seems too stupid and pointless to be much larger, but of course I never got exactly what sensible thing 9/11 was supposed to achieve either.

And I know the left are going to want us all to learn something from immigrants turning against us, but are Muslims going to have some deep conversations about why if you hear an explosion, you can think “Muslim!” and usually be right? Anyone working on a solution to fix that?

And are we waterboarding Dzhokhar? I mean, I know we probably got all the information we needed out of him, but maybe he can work as a practice dummy for CIA agents who need more waterboarding training.

So the other day I ran into one of our commenters who had put up a big conspiracy rant, and I posted it because I found it fascinating. Here’s a guy who thinks the government is quite regularly assassinating its own citizens to political ends and the reaction is to… casually drop that into conversation at a humor blog. You want to talk about a conspiracy, something doesn’t seem to add up there.

Anyway, I was disheartened to find out the reaction of some commenters was to engage in even crazier and even more obviously stupid conspiracy theories. One commenter (who will remain nameless — NAMELESS!) started alleging that the families from Newtown are actually actors who didn’t lose children and the whole incident was done to push gun control. Now, I’m just trying to run this through my head how this conspiracy would work: The government would hire a bunch of actors to pretend to be grieving families — and all these actors would collectively be known by hundreds of people who could easily expose this conspiracy saying, “Hey, I know these guys. They’re not even married and don’t have children!” Plus, apparently they’re all really bad actors because the conspiracists are easily seeing through their lies. And I know at least one of the fathers is against more gun control… so I’m not sure how that fits in the conspiracy.

There’s no way this conspiracy would grow beyond two people without one of them saying, “This is a really stupid idea that would never work.” And I haven’t even pointed all that’s stupid with it.

So what happens when I point the obvious flaws in the conspiracy? I got the stereotypical conspiracy theorists response of, “Well, I wasn’t alleging all that obviously crazy stuff; I was just asking questions.” I mean, this was a constant refrain from the 9/11 truther twits when you’d critique how idiotic their ideas are from a high level. Like I remember one going on about evidence it was a missile that hit the Pentagon, so I’d ask, “Then what happened with all the people from the plane that they said hit the Pentagon? They’re in hiding? The government just landed the plane elsewhere and assassinated them all?” And he’d never try to explain what happened to those people because he knew there was no answer that wasn’t insane; instead he’d just point out a few “inconsistencies” because he’s just asking questions. And so he’d get you trying to scrutinize some pixel on some image and ignore how completely insane the whole premise of a vast conspiracy is.

And that’s the real conspiracy: These conspiracy theorists don’t actually believe their own crap. That’s why they do everything to avoid following what they’re alleging to the logical conclusion because then they’d have to admit how completely insane it is and give up the game. So they’re really just silly people, but when you’re silly about actual tragedies where people were murdered, it’s gets offensive.

And I must do something. If I’m going to be the type of person to teach my children to punch hippies, then I cannot let useless people indulging in idiocy to continue on unmolested. Plus, IMAO is a site I have worked hard on for years, and thus I will not let it descend into a cesspool of nutty conspiracy theories! Thus there is only one solution:

A PURGE!

From hereon, anyone engaged in nutty conspiracy theories in the comments of IMAO WILL BE BANNED FROM THIS BLOG. FOREVER. AND THEIR CHILDREN. AND THEIR CHILDREN’S CHILDREN.

As for their children’s children’s children, they will be on probation. That means any comments they make will automatically go to moderation. I don’t know how long it will take on average to get them out of moderation; I’ll probably be dead by the time this applies so it will be someone else’s problem.

…Actually, on second though, I don’t even know how to ban people. This kind of seems like a lot of work to enforce. Plus, I don’t even read comments half the time so what do I care? I mean, the site could get take over by neo-Nazi skinheads (what do racists have against hair?) and it would be like weeks before I would notice.

So, new idea: If you are found writing an insane conspiracy rant, I will add “I AM NOT A CRACKPOT!” to the end of your comment to make the whole thing look ironic and thus less offensive.

Except I don’t have time to do that. I mean, I have a full time job and I’m working on two different books; I don’t even know how I’m writing this post right now. I guess I could have Harvey do the comment editing… Can I have Harvey do thing? I don’t really understand the hierarchy at this blog. Actually, I probably should have discussed this all with Harvey first. He might get mad and not let me on the blog anymore.

Okay, new plan: You must enforce this edict on yourself. If you write some insane rant in the comments, you have to add “I AM NOT A CRACKPOT!” to the end in all caps.

I know; everyone will probably just claim their rant isn’t insane. Well, we’ll have an objective measure to determine if you wrote an insane rant. You have may have noticed before that lots of trolls and crazy people tend to write long comments; that’s because if you have a coherent thought, you can condense it. If you don’t, you just tend to blather on and on and hope to conceal in all the verbiage that you’re crazy. Plus, this is a humor blog; there really is no reason to write long comments unless you’ve gone into crazy rant town.

So, the objective measure of whether a comment is a crazy rant is whether it’s more than four sentences long. Any comment longer than that will be assumed to be some sort of RON PAUL! crazy type ramblings. Thus…

NEW IMAO COMMENT RULE:

After writing a comment for IMAO, count how many sentences it is. If it’s more than four, add “I AM NOT A CRACKPOT!” in all caps to the end of it. We at IMAO thank you for your cooperation.

BTW, anyone know what happened to Carpenter?

I AM NOT A CRACKPOT!

[High Praise! to Idahoser]

Forget Earth Day:

Celebrate the Industrial Revolution

Let us have a day when all of us take a moment to acknowledge the enormous contribution made to human life by the inventors and businessmen of the Industrial Revolution.

CAUTION (Carpenter only): The author of the piece is not just a scum of the earth Libertarian, he’s one of those Objectivist minions of Satan.

C’mon, let’s overlook the Constitution just this once to try Reese Witherspoon as an enemy combatant.

— Damien Fahey (@DamienFahey) April 22, 2013

A cooking show where 85% of the action involves me repeatedly fishing the Mac and Cheese box out of the trash to check the directions.

— Diana Cook (@MissTirio) April 22, 2013

Taco Bell’s Doritos Locos tacos have been responsible for the creation of 15,000 new jobs. Mostly in plumbing.

— Chris Regan (@ChrisRRegan) April 22, 2013