UFO report overhaul

New from the "Well, At Least They're Going About It The Right Way" department, we have: the US Navy's new guidelines for reporting UFOs.

Apparently, this rewrite was spurred by an uptick in reports of strange sightings, although the powers-that-be state in no uncertain terms that they're not saying any of these are alien spacecraft.   "There have been a number of reports of unauthorized and/or unidentified aircraft entering various military-controlled ranges and designated air space in recent years," the Navy said in a statement in response to questions from POLITICO.  "For safety and security concerns, the Navy and the [U.S. Air Force] takes these reports very seriously and investigates each and every report.  As part of this effort, the Navy is updating and formalizing the process by which reports of any such suspected incursions can be made to the cognizant authorities.  A new message to the fleet that will detail the steps for reporting is in draft."

While I do tend to agree with Neil DeGrasse Tyson's view that the eyewitness testimony of pilots, policemen, ships' captains, and other people wearing uniforms isn't inherently better than that of the rest of us -- "it's all bad," he says -- I do have some niggling doubts about including pilots on that list.  After all, Tyson goes on to say that the frequency of reports of UFOs from astronomers is lower than that of the rest of the population because -- another direct quote -- "We know what the hell we're looking at!", ignoring the fact that pilots spend a lot of time looking up, too.  My guess is that a seasoned pilot wouldn't be taken in by such uncommon but perfectly natural phenomena as noctilucent clouds, lenticular clouds, sun dogs, sprites, STEVE (strong thermal emission velocity enhancement), and fallstreak holes.

And honestly, much of what pilots have reported don't admit of easy explanation.  According to Chris Mellon, former Assistant Secretary of Defense for Intelligence, a large percentage of the sightings were of objects "flying in formation" and "exceeding the speed of the airplane."

I'm in agreement that those sightings deserve investigation, and there needs to be a lessening of the stigma of even making the report.  Mellon says that a lot of pilots who've seen UFOs have chosen not to report them because of fear of ridicule or of actually hurting their careers.

So far, so good.  But then Luis Elizondo, who runs the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program, got involved, and took the new recommendations and leapt right into hyperspace.  "If I came to you and said, ‘There are these things that can fly over our country with impunity, defying the laws of physics, and within moments could deploy a nuclear device at will,’ that would be a matter of national security," Elizondo said.  "This type of activity is very alarming, and people are recognizing there are things in our aerospace that lie beyond our understanding."

Now just hang on a moment.

There's about a light year's distance between "I saw an unexplained light in the sky" and "this is a spacecraft that defies the laws of physics and is just waiting to deploy a nuclear device against us."  I mean, on the one hand, I think what Elizondo is saying is that by the time an alien spaceship did deploy a nuclear weapon, it'd be too late to do anything about it, which is true as far as it goes; but don't you think the first step would be to establish that what people have seen are alien spaceships before we go into collective freak-out mode?

And I am absolutely sick unto death of people claiming that these alleged aliens can "defy the laws of physics" and "are beyond our understanding."  Maybe I'm being a little cocky and defensive, here, but the laws of physics are pretty damn well established, and I'd be willing to bet cold hard cash that if there are aliens out there, they obey the same laws of physics we do.  I'd also be willing to wager that even if there is some hitherto-unknown bit of physics that is allowing the aliens to do their aerial gymnastics, it's not "beyond our understanding."  Physicists are by and large pretty smart women and men, and my guess is they would be perfectly capable of understanding it, if the aliens would just land their spaceships and sit down and discuss it with them.

So simultaneously mythologizing and catastrophizing these sightings isn't very productive, or even very realistic.  Yes, they should be investigated.  I'm also with Michio Kaku that if even one in a hundred credible UFO sightings are unexplainable as natural terrestrial phenomena, that 1% is worth looking into.  But we need to keep our heads on our shoulders and not assume that everything we haven't explained will turn out to be something we can't explain.

I think the US Navy has the right idea, though, in making it part of their policy to take UFO sightings by pilots seriously.  And hell, maybe one of the reports will turn out to be evidence of extraterrestrial intelligence.  Believe me, no one would be more thrilled than I am if this turned out to be the case.  But it's important to keep looking at these things skeptically, always questioning and looking for alternate (natural) explanations, especially if the more out-there explanation is something we'd very much like to be true.

Because everyone -- even pilots, astronomers, and people in the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program -- are subject to confirmation bias.

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This week's Skeptophilia book recommendation is for any of my readers who, like me, grew up on Star Trek in any of its iterations -- The Physics of Star Trek by Lawrence Krauss.  In this delightful book, Krauss, a physicist at Arizona State University, looks into the feasibility of the canonical Star Trek technology, from the possible (the holodeck, phasers, cloaking devices) to the much less feasible (photon torpedoes, tricorders) to the probably impossible (transporters, replicators, and -- sadly -- warp drive).

Along the way you'll learn some physics, and have a lot of fun revisiting some of your favorite tropes from one of the most successful science fiction franchises ever invented, one that went far beyond the dreams of its creator, Gene Roddenberry -- one that truly went places where no one had gone before.

Booms and glitches

There's a pair of stories that to my eyes don't seem to have much to do with one another, but which put together are inducing multiple orgasms in the conspiracy theory crowd.

First, we have reports of a series of booming noises that have been heard in three locations in eastern North America in the last few weeks.  The first one, which occurred late in December, found residents of Scranton, Pennsylvania being jolted out of bed by noises "like fighter jets flying overhead."  The noises continued off and on for about an hour.  Spokespeople for the Lackawanna Energy Center, a gas-powered electrical plant near Scranton, were quick to claim responsibility, saying it was a steam release from an emergency pressure valve, and that it generated "the loudest noise we've ever heard" but was not an indication of anything malfunctioning, nor was it a cause for safety concerns.

Two weeks later, residents on Davis Island, near Tampa, Florida, were awakened at four AM by the same sort of noises.  The cause, apparently, was...

... steam venting from an emergency pressure valve, this time at the TECO Bayside Power Station.  Nothing to be concerned about, officials said, sorry for waking y'all up.

Then, just a few days ago, the town of Salisbury, North Carolina experienced much the same thing, with a sound like a combination of "a locomotive and a space shuttle taking off."  Dogs and coyotes went nuts barking, and -- thus far -- no local power plants or other agencies have admitted responsibility for the uproar.

So this already had conspiracy theorists raising their eyebrows in a meaningful manner and saying, "this can't be a coincidence."  Which, of course, is exactly what you call it when events coincide, but we can overlook the semantics for the time being.  Because said conspiracy theorists started jumping up and down, making excited little squeaking noises, when another series of stories started making the rounds, once again from three different locations.

This series of odd occurrences weren't anomalous noises, but anomalous radar traces.  First, in early December, National Weather Service meteorological radars picked up a strong signal from a broad area in Illinois, Kentucky, and Indiana, which looked like a massive thunderstorm -- on a completely clear night.  Two days later, similar (but smaller) oddball signals were recorded on weather radar stations in Maine and Florida.

Brett Tingley, over at Mysterious Universe, said the most reasonable explanation is that it was chaff -- particulate aluminum that is released by military aircraft when they want to confuse enemy radar.  The difficulty with this hypothesis is that from the radar traces, it was released at a greater height (10,000 feet) than is typical for chaff tests.  Also, the chaff cloud (if that's what it was) held together for ten hours, far longer than usual, and no one has reported any trace of the stuff on the ground.

Of course, the military is neither confirming nor denying these reports.  Which is fuel to the fire for the aforementioned conspiracy theorists.

So these stories were bad enough independently, but when people started putting them together, in the fashion of a kid adding two and two and getting twenty-two, things got out of hand.  All of this stuff cannot be a coincidence.  It's got to Mean Something.  What exactly it's supposed to Mean is not all that clear, but here are a few explanations I've seen, if I can dignify them by that name:

• The military is using hypersonic aircraft (thus the loud booms) to create chemtrails to kill us all.
• Saboteurs are screwing with our radar and our power stations in an attempt to bring down the American government.  My feeling about this one is that at present, saboteurs are kind of unnecessary, because the American government is already doing a pretty good job of bringing down the American government.
• It's the End Times.  Admit it, you knew the hyper-Christians would get involved somehow.  Their argument seems to go something like, "Blah blah blah seven trumpets of doom in the Book of Revelation."  (I paraphrase slightly.)
• The Air Force is testing a super weapon that will cause systematic malfunctions in our power grid, and simultaneously spread toxins over the entire landscape.  Why they thought it was a good idea to test this over suburban areas, I have no idea.
• And, of course: Aliens.

My hunch is that none of these things have any connection.  Power plants make loud noises sometimes, and it doesn't mean they're about to blow up, or any of the other panicked ideas I've heard.  Radar anomalies also occur, sometimes because of meteorological events, sometimes from natural or man-made causes (the first recorded radar glitch occurred back during World War II, when technicians monitoring the skies for aerial invasions from Germany freaked out over what turned out to be a flock of migrating birds).

So anyhow, I'm not ready to ascribe all this to nefarious causes, much less link together the loud noises with the radar glitches.  I mean, if they are connected, why did they happen so far apart?  The only state that had both was Florida, and they didn't happen at the same time.  Otherwise, we have Illinois, Kentucky, Indiana, and Maine on the one hand, and Pennsylvania and North Carolina on the other.

Pretty uncoordinated aliens, seems to me.

Of course, I'm saying all this without much in the way of actual information over what was reported by eyewitnesses, so maybe I'm wrong.  Maybe this is a sign of the American military trying to destroy civilization, or an alien invasion, or the End Times, or whatnot.  I'm not going to lose any sleep over it.  I figure if it turns out to be the end of the world as we know it, I'll find out eventually.

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This week's Skeptophilia book recommendation is a brilliant look at two opposing worldviews; Charles Mann's The Wizard and the Prophet.  Mann sees today's ecologists, environmental scientists, and even your average concerned citizens as falling into two broad classes -- wizards (who think that whatever ecological problems we face, human ingenuity will prevail over them) and prophets (who think that our present course is unsustainable, and if we don't change our ways we're doomed).

Mann looks at a representative member from each of the camps.  He selected Norman Borlaug, Nobel laureate and driving force behind the Green Revolution, to be the front man for the Wizards, and William Vogt, who was a strong voice for population control and conversation, as his prototypical Prophet.  He takes a close and personal look at each of their lives, and along the way outlines the thorny problems that gave rise to this disagreement -- problems we're going to have to solve regardless which worldview is correct.

[If you purchase the book from Amazon using the image/link below, part of the proceeds goes to supporting Skeptophilia!]

May Texas be safe from tigers

Well, this is it, folks.  Jade Helm 15, the two-month United States Army training exercise in Texas and New Mexico, has begun.  The guillotining of innocent civilians should begin presently.

[image courtesy of the Wikimedia Commons]

At least, that's apparently what a significant percentage of Texans believe.  There are numerous conspiracy theories regarding what appears to be a completely legitimate military operation, under the supervision of senior officers who assure us that every effort will be made to prevent the exercise from interfering with the lives of ordinary citizens, to the point that an article about the various angles on the conspiracy appeared in Army Times online magazine.  The author, Kyle Jahner, outlines them thusly:

1. FEMA-sponsored dome-shaped hurricane shelters are actually being used to imprison non-sheeple who "foment insurrection," i.e., object to Jade Helm and the declaration of martial law that is soon to follow.
2. The dead bodies of said insurrectionists are going to be carried to their final resting place in BlueBell Ice Cream trucks.
3. The command centers for planned takeover of Texas are some abandoned Walmart buildings that were observed to have razor wire on their roofs.  (Walmart spokespeople have said that the razor wire was to prevent break-ins.  Ha.  They would say that.)
4. The whole martial-law thing was motivated by NASA's discovery that there's going to be a major asteroid strike in September of this year, which will result not only in a great big smoking crater, but in the southern United States turning into something that resembles Mad Max: Fury Road, only better armed.  And we can't have that.
5. The Russians are secretly funding the secessionist movement in Texas, because they'd like to see America crumble.  So the people who are against Jade Helm are actually fighting against the evil Rooskies, or something.  (Yes, I know that makes no sense whatsoever.  Don't yell at me.  I'm not the one who believes this.)
6. Ultimately, the whole thing will lead to Barack Obama coming out with the fact that he has never intended to step down in 2016, and his crowning as Exalted Emperor Barack I.

Far be it from Texans to take any of that lying down.  So it will probably surprise no one that a group in Texas has formed a "Counter Jade Helm" citizen surveillance group, intended to keep an eye on things and report back when decapitations start occurring in Walmarts and the headless bodies are carted away in ice cream trucks.

The whole thing is being run by a guy named Pete Lanteri, a dubiously-sane former Marine who claims he founded Counter Jade Helm in order to keep an eye on things and make sure that there was someone watching what the government was up to, but whose recent behavior makes him sound like a dangerous lunatic.  When Lanteri got trolled on Facebook -- because that never happens, right? -- he responded both on Facebook and Twitter with a string of invective that certainly doesn't help his case any.  He began by closing the Counter Jade Helm Facebook page to the public with the following friendly message:

Since the huge media attention Counter Jade Helm is receiving, the fb page is being attacked by libs, conspiracy nuts, and the other 90% of useless fucking Americans.  To fix this I am creating individual state group pages closed to the public.

When a supporter responded, "They are causeing [sic] such a division in this GREAT NATION a second REVOLUTION IS NEEDED VERY BADLY," Lanteri said that basically, he couldn't agree more.  "I can't wait to kill thousands of these fucks, man!!!" he wrote.

In other bons mots from Lanteri, we have:

Here's hoping we're in a shooting war to save this country by next Fourth of July!!!!  Semper Fi Patriots!!!! 

People you should all be making lists of commies/marxists/islamists in your neighborhoods.  All the teachers, school board members, politicians etc. who are anti US Constitution need to be identified and addresses known so when it comes time to round them up we know exactly where to start looking.  They will be arrested and tried for treason!!!! 

Why can't Geraldo Rivera, aka twatwaffle, be in a church when it gets shot up? 

More dead equals more dead dems.

About African Americans in general, he had the following to say:  "War on White People continues!!!!  [Blacks are] a Failed Race."  He even attacked Pope Francis, regarding his stance that weapons manufacturers were complicit in the escalating worldwide death rate from guns, saying, "Fuck this asshole!!!  EVERY ASPECT OF AMERICA NEEDS A FUCKING PURGE!!!!"

[N.B.:  I may have miscounted the number of exclamation points, but otherwise, these quotes are as written.  And yes, apparently he does think that Pope Francis lives in the United States.]

So here we have a man who is apparently in favor of murdering members of a political party that makes up about half of American citizens, who is apparently a vicious racist, who wants anyone who disagrees with him tried for treason, and who is hoping for a violent revolution, leading a group that is monitoring heavily-armed military men engaged in a Special Ops training exercise.

Nope, I see nothing whatsoever that could go wrong with that.

So we've got to make it till the end of August without an incident, which I hope fervently will be the case.  But you know what's craziest about all of this?  If what military leaders are saying is true -- that Jade Helm really is just a training exercise -- and nothing untoward happens, all it's going to do is reinforce Lanteri's conviction that it was their vigilance that prevented the Evil Convoy of BlueBell Ice Cream Trucks from doing their dirty work.  Because you can't win with these people, you know?  No matter what happens, they never shift their ground.

Just yesterday, in fact, I saw a post on Facebook about how during Obama's presidency, the number of gun sales has increased.  The comment was something like, "Ha!  Obummer's efforts to repeal the Second Amendment and pass laws to take away everyone's guns sure have been successful!"

Or maybe, you moron, he never intended to repeal the Second Amendment in the first place.  But of course, I'd never expect you to admit that.

It's like the old story about the guy who would show up at his friend's house for a visit, but before entering the house would fold his hands in a prayerful attitude, close his eyes, and say, "May this house be safe from tigers."  This went on for some time, and finally the friend had had enough.

"Come on," he said.  "Tigers?  This is Ohio, for pete's sake.  There's probably not a tiger within a thousand miles of here!"

And the guy gave him a contented smile and said, "It works well, doesn't it?"

Scooby Doo vs. Jade Helm

For the past seven years, we've heard over and over that President Obama is planning on taking away our guns, outlawing Christianity, rounding True Americans up into FEMA- run death camps, and establishing a fascist dictatorship.

I think if my American readers will take a moment to look around them, they can confirm for themselves that none of this has happened.

You would think that a zero-percent success rate at predicting the future would induce some of the loonies who have been spouting this nonsense to reconsider their arguments.  You would think that if, after seven years, there's been no sign of a Liberal Gestapo forming, people would say, "Wow.  I guess I was wrong about all of that.  What a goober I am."

You would be wrong.

New from the "No, really!  Listen!  This time it's real!" department, we have the contention that Jade Helm 15, a military operation in the southwestern United States, is a cover for the impending takeover of Texas.

Why Texas?  Well, insofar as you can ask any kind of logical question about this claim, apparently Texans think that it's because they're the last bastion of patriotism, and Obama wants to shut 'em down.  Or something like that.  Bastrop, Texas resident Bob Wells summarized the idea thusly:

It’s the same thing that happened in Nazi Germany: You get the people used to the troops on the street, the appearance of uniformed troops and the militarization of the police.  They’re gathering intelligence.  That’s what they’re doing.  And they’re moving logistics in place for martial law.  That’s my feeling.  Now, I could be wrong.  I hope I am wrong.  I hope I’m a 'conspiracy theorist.'

The unspoken punch line, of course, was "But I'm not."  And all of this is despite the efforts of military leaders to quell the panic.  Lt. Col. Mark Lastoria was sent in to a public meeting to clarify what was going on and answer any questions, and he was met with this sign:

[image courtesy of photographer Jay Janner and the Austin American-Statesman]

Lastoria soldiered on despite the crazy-talk.  No, there wouldn't be soldiers running around gunning down innocent civilians.  The whole thing was pre-planned to take place in remote areas, and they'd made a map available of where the operation was occurring.  Soldiers participating in the activity would be wearing orange armbands, so that anyone who saw them would know who they were and what they were doing.

The whole thing, Lastoria said, was to train soldiers in how to work in hostile areas.  They were not implying that Texas was a hostile area.

Although he may well have changed his mind on that point after the meeting.

And of course, such a claim wouldn't be complete without Alex Jones fanning the flames.  Jones, who amazingly enough is still on the air even though he (1) has been batting zero, prediction-wise, for decades, and (2) apparently has three-quarters of a pound of LaffyTaffy where most of us have a brain, opined thusly on his broadcast InfoWars:

[Some] eerie footage out of Fort Lauderdale shows troops conducting a martial law-style drill under the cover of night training to intern citizens.  The secretive drill directly dovetails with the Jade Helm military exercises, in which 1,200 special forces troops will descend on ten US states for domestic training...  I happen to have met the governor when he was attorney general years ago. I happen to know, somewhat, his chief of staff. I happen to know multiple billionaires that know the governor very well and have had dinner with him and he’s stayed at their house, and they tell me he knows exactly what’s going on...  Texas is listed as a hostile sector. Of course we are. We're here defending the republic.

And apparently this ties into a claim that they're using abandon Wal-Mart stores as operational headquarters.

Oh, and people have seen said Wal-Marts being filled with empty coffins, for when the military launches their actual plan and starts slaughtering people.

You know, I'm perfectly willing to believe that our government has sponsored some pretty shady deals, and I'm sure that we don't know 5% of what is actually going on.  Fine.  But if there really was some kind of super-secret plan to stage a military takeover of Texas as a means for establishing a dictatorship in the United States, do you really think that:

1. They'd hold question-and-answer sessions to tell everyone about it?
2. They'd publish a map telling people where the operation was taking place?
3. A certifiable wingnut like Alex Jones would correctly figure out what's happening?
4. The participants would take the amazingly covert and secretive step of wearing orange arm bands, for fuck's sake?

And you'd also think that after years of claiming that the United States was going to go down in flames, and being wrong every time, that no one would be listening to Alex Jones any more.

But the way these things work is that the people who rant about them think, afterwards, when nothing untoward happened, that it was only their bravery and selflessness in speaking up that stopped the evil government from succeeding in their evil plans.  You can almost hear the government leaders saying, "Drat!  We'd have gotten away with it, too, if it hadn't been for you meddling kids and your stupid dog!"

You can't win.

False flags and Fort Hood

Sometimes I can simply laugh at the goofy ideas people have.  It was the genesis of this blog, really; to shine some light, both in the sense of "illumination" and also in the figurative sense of "light-heartedness," on the loopy stuff that we see on a daily basis.  And being a naturally optimistic person, I like it when my daily excursion into wingnuttery doesn't bring me down.

But there are times that I just want to scream.

Like today.  Because the conspiracy theorists are already howling about the Fort Hood shooting being a setup, a false flag, a hoax, before the victims have even been named, barely giving the smoke time to clear.

[image courtesy of photographer Michael Heckman and the Wikimedia Commons]

What, it's not enough for you people that four people are dead, including the shooter, and sixteen are wounded?  It's not enough that the gunman's widow, the mother of a three-year-old child, was "hysterical" upon finding out what her husband had done?  It's not enough that she now has to cope with raising a child who will forever live under the stigma of her father's crime?

Nope.  The tragedy itself is never enough for you people, is it?  It always has to be more.  It always has to be a plot, a piece of the Big Evil Puzzle that is how you see the world.  Don't believe me?  Here's a sampling of the comments that appeared on the Conspiracy subreddit today:

SOLDIERS shooting SOLDIERS means only one thing... TYRANNY... someone CHOOSE [sic] GOD OVER MONEY... IF you believe what the ZIONIST BANKER OWNED MEDIA SAYS your [sic] TRULY ASLEEP... YOU have chosen the GREEN PILL OF THE MATRIX... 

Active shooter = false flag know that the words coming from the media is a LIE.  ACTIVE SHOOTER IS ALL WE HERE.  STOP THE FAKE SHOOTINGS FUCKERS!!! 

Wherever u hear the phrase ACTIVE SHOOTER. this is a drill people. just another hoax!!!  Active shooter = drill and or false flag to disarm the people.  Watch how shady this BULLSHIT story changes 100 times! 

Another Obama Muslim gone psycho?  I suppose Obama will also give this brutal attack another mere "workplace violence" status instead of a "military attack" or "invasion."  I smell another Obama false flag plot, like all the rest of the phoney-baloney false flag terrorist attacks. 

This is a distraction, people.  They're getting too close to finding Flight 370 and needed something to turn our attention to.  Every time we get close to the truth, they set up something like this and most Americans fall for it.  Wake up!

Okay, let me say this loud and clear, so you wackos can hear me:

You have zero information on this.  You are doing what you do best, which is making shit up to force the story to conform to your warped worldview.  The shooter -- Ivan Lopez -- is only now being investigated, and so we don't yet know who he was or why he did what he did.  Could he have been a terrorist?  Maybe.  Could he have been some kind of Muslim convert, with a jihadist axe to grind?  I guess, although there's no indication of it.  Could he have had PTSD and had some kind of psychotic break?  Possible.  The point here is that you don't know, and I don't either.

The difference is that I'm not claiming that I do.

What I find most stomach-turning about the people who yammer on about this sort of thing is that they really feel like they're being noble and courageous and iconoclastic by making these sorts of statements.  But you know what?  All it amounts to is using the human cost of an as-yet unexplained tragedy to score political points, which when you think about it, is kind of the opposite of noble and courageous.  Because they don't care about facts, or logic, or evidence; all they care about is using any means they can to bolster a bitter, twisted worldview that sees everything in the world as evidence of a conspiracy.

It may be that in the days to come we will find out more about Ivan Lopez and why he took a gun and shot 19 of his fellow soldiers.  Because Lopez ended the shooting by taking his own life, it may be that we will never know.  It is the sad truth about many tragedies of this type that the real reasons behind it might be forever out of our reach.

So to the wackos who are circling around this story like flies around roadkill, I would like to recommend that you do what a responsible person does when (s)he has no facts or information: shut the fuck up.

The great Louisiana gunboat conspiracy

There are two reasons that conspiracy theorists drive me crazy.

One is that they consistently accept weird, convoluted explanations for events just because those explanations favor their twisted notions about the way the world works, simultaneously ignoring a simple, rational explanation that fits all of the available evidence.  This anti-Ockham's-razor approach runs counter to any reasonable logic, but they embrace it with a vehemence that is often scary.

The second is that they're damn near impossible to argue with.  Present a counterargument to their favored theory, and you're deluded.  Laugh at them, and you're a "sheeple."  (Wait, isn't "sheeple" plural?  What's the singular, then?  "Sheeplum?")

Come up with a really good counterargument, and you must be one of... Them.

Take, for example, the article that hit the conspiracy site Liberty Federation this week about some military boats that were seen in a river near Slidell, Louisiana.  There's a video, with the tagline, "Is this part of some kind of drill or is it just normal now in the new Amerika to see armed troops patrolling public canals?"

Right.  "Amerika."  *wink, wink, nudge, nudge*  Of course it's the military wing of the New World Order, practicing their takeover maneuvers.  Merely requiring that you ignore the fact that the Naval Small Craft Instruction and Technical Training School, which has been operating there for decades, is only five miles away.

So yeah, this really was just a drill, and the guys really were just ordinary military guys, which one of the commenters on the post pointed out:

We have a unit down there, been training in that area for close to 20 years. Not sure how that guy has never seen them before, we run all over the rivers and marshes (and Lake Pontchartrain) constantly. Completely normal training, guys are preparing for overseas deployment, has nothing to do with the conspiracy BS being spouted below. Not sure why they are transiting through such a populated area, we normally stay farther away from areas like that for various reasons. 

Well, one reason is probably that when they don't, the conspiracy theorists start honking like mad.  To wit, the following response:

so what is next
-shoot shoot You Americans , b.o."s agenda – to a " T " , e. holder is doing flips inside of the west/wing knowing that he is get’’n closer to controlling the whole kitten-ka-bouttle then any A.G. ever – even though it is so Un-American that it is sickening to the stomach – this is this administrations agenda , People wake the " F " UP ^ , this is Your Nation dying at a tic-toc and a tic-toc , Yes , What can We do – Do You not see that every time this administration wins in court or by a legislative mark of the pen , It is always very controversial and they will win it by – chicago bullitics – each and every time – what is it that they (this administration) could/and/would hold against You or Your’s , People it is get"n to be to that close of lose for Us Americans that Yes it could come down to You and what You had said and/or done and You may or/may not feel it was wrong , they (this administration) will find the wrongs and put the blame on You or one of Your loved One’s , People We have the devil in Our House and they know what You have forgotten , As little or as simple it was or is to You , They will see to it that it can make the difference of being a representative of the People ’ or NOT being a representative of the People , This administration is so damn evil that the devil HimSelf has to step-back and try to figure out where the evilness comes from – Since this devil himself knows what is in the winners package – There is Not enough wrapping paper and/or ribbon to put this in a package and say (F^ck You say’s Da devil) wel-come to da jungle where obama loves to be , he feels so much at home that he sends the tranny away – why would you need another pointer when ya have the likes of me – and this is coming from the one that has the wife of an tranny – oh baby it is the stiffy that gets me (says b.o.) fur — sure

I feel like this should come with some sort of Rosetta-Stone-like translation, don't you?  We need someone like the little old lady from the movie Airplane:

So, I feel duty-bound to do my best, here, although my Dumbassian is kind of rusty.  But here's my best shot at a translation of the above:

I dislike President Obama because I think that his agenda is to target American citizens, and perhaps kill them.  Attorney General Eric Holder is certainly part of this, and is so excited by the prospect that he is engaging in gymnastics.  Gosh, this sure makes me nauseated!  I wish that more Americans would be aware of their surroundings.  Every time this administration wins a court case, it angers me.  It is like what happens in Chicago.  President Obama knows when you are sleeping, he knows when you're awake!  He knows if you've been bad or good, so be good or his thugs will murder you and your entire family!  Even Satan is appalled by how evil this administration is.  Satan would like to wrap this administration up with wrapping paper and give it as a gift.  Also, I believe that because President Obama is an African American, he would prefer to live in a tropical rain forest biome.  And his wife is a hermaphrodite.  Oh, my, yes.

So okay, maybe it doesn't make any more sense when you put it in standard English.

The problem is, there are a lot of people who think this way.  If you go over to the Conspiracy subreddit -- which I wouldn't suggest if you want to maintain your sense that humans represent intelligent life -- you will find posts even stupider than this one.  You will find posts that will make this one seem like a doctoral dissertation.  You will find posts that will make you wonder how the people who wrote them have enough brain cells to operate a computer successfully.

I live in hope, however, that the sensible people outnumber the conspiracy theorists, a hope that is bolstered by sites such as the Conspiratard subreddit, which exists solely to ridicule the ideas of people like our above marginally-coherent friend.  I also hope that the majority of the 191,000 who have subscribed to Conspiracy are only amused bystanders, much the way I listen to Alex Jones or read the columns written by Ann Coulter.

So, yeah, I'm an optimist.  It's a dicey proposition, sometimes, but still better than the alternative.

Even here in "Amerika."