Ron Paul SuperPAC Operated By Conspiracy Kook

Last week, Revolution PAC filed a notice with the FEC that it couldn't file required reports to identify donors due to a bank error.

This week, reporters have finally noticed that the PAC is operated by a Gary Franchi, a kook who sees conspiracies everywhere from 9/11 coverups to FEMA concentration camps and the New World Order. Oh, and it wouldn't be a conspiracy theorist without claiming that President Barack Obama is ineligible to be President of the US.

The leader of the group, its founder, chairman and treasurer, is Gary Franchi, a promoter of conspiracy theories and sophisticated social-media entrepreneur in the resurgent movement known as the Patriots.
The 34-year-old political activist from the Chicago suburbs told msnbc.com that his goal is a "non-violent intellectual revolution, which results in a full restoration of the federal Constitution."

Online videos produced by Franchi, and online interviews with him, add specifics:

• Franchi has supported the 9/11 Truth Movement, which supports the idea that the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, werean inside job to create a pretext for a reduction in American liberty, or at least involved a cover-up, with the World Trade Center brought down by a planned U.S. demolition, instead of terrorist-controlled airplanes. Franchi founded the Lone Lantern Society (a reference to Paul Revere indicating that foreign enemies are on American soil). The group supports "the birth of freedom and the death of the New World Order," a secretive elite that is supposedly trying to set up a world government. Lone Lantern has held street demonstrations on the 11th of every month in Chicago and elsewhere, demanding an investigation of 9/11. In New Hampshire in 2008, a video shows Franchi asking Tom Ridge, the former secretary of Homeland Security, who was campaigning for Sen. John McCain, whether Ridge would support an investigation of the "controlled demolition" of the World Trade Center. Ridge was having none of it, saying, "I just don't buy into that. That's a conspiracy theory that has no basis in fact. It's almost out of the Twilight Zone."
  
• According to a 2010 reportby the Southern Poverty Law Center, which tracks domestic fringe groups, "Gary Franchi is one of the leading promoters of a resurgent Patriot conspiracy theory that alleges the government is creating concentration camps for U.S. citizens." In 2009 he co-wrote and co-produced the video "Camp FEMA: American Lockdown," which claims that the Federal Emergency Management Agency is creating concentration camps on air bases and in vacant buildings to house political dissenters when the federal government proclaims martial law. "Your church may have already signed a deal with the devil," reads promotional material for the film. The film questions whether Census data will be used to round up Americans. Clips from Franchi's film on YouTubeshow Hitler youth marching while the narrator ominously describes President Obama's plans to expand AmeriCorps and the USA Freedom Corps, the volunteer initiative launched by the Bush administration after 9/11.
• Franchi operates Restore the Republic, which opposes the Federal Reserve, the IRS and the income tax, decries the control of the economy by the Rockefellers and the "banking cartel," and warns of government plans to plant RFID microchips into all Americans. The group was founded by Franchi and filmmaker and Libertarian presidential candidate Aaron Russo, and has been operated by Franchi since Russo's death from cancer in 2007. RTR shares an address with Revolution PAC in Northbrook, Ill. The group, which describes itself as a social media platform for like-minded individuals, promotes Russo's film, "America: Freedom to Fascism," in which Ron Paul declares, "If that's the definition of a police state — that you can't do anything unless the government gives you permission —we're well on our way." In a YouTube video interview with Franchi in 2008, Paul credited the Russo video with bringing a lot of people to his presidential campaign. The group has also placed billboards fueling the bogus claim that Obama is not an American citizen, asking, "Where's the REAL birth certificate?"

No surprise that Franchi has been a regular guest on Alex Jones' conspiracy-minded talk show.

What's surprising is that the media hasn't taken a closer look at Paul's supporters and super PACs until now. It's fertile ground for exposing the extremist views that are permeating Paul's campaign, to say nothing of the spillover effect on the rest of the Republican party, who feels that catering to extremists is the way to go.

Ahmadinejad Rallies in Lebanon And Engages In Troofer Talk

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is busy trying to spread Iranian influence throughout the Middle East and he's stopped in Lebanon to help prop up their proxy army Hizbullah. He's also busy capitalizing on the ongoing fascination with conspiracy theories - particularly when it comes to the 9/11 attacks in the US.

Ahmadinejad announced that Iran is creating a panel to prove US behind the 9/11 attacks.

He's capitalizing on the alternative reality movement that remains pervasive in the Middle East and beyond, where people think that the 9/11 attacks were done by the US to expand its influence overseas in any number of areas. Ahmadinejad only manages to tell the truth by accident - and regularly engages in all kinds of conspiracy theorizing and revisionist history, especially when it comes to the US or Israel.

There's no word on whether Alex Jones, the troofer conspiracy-monger has accepted a position. After all, Jones has done more to spread 9/11 conspiracy nonsense in the US than anyone else, and he uses his online presence to spread the crazy.

Killer Pilot's Message Resonates Among the Lunatic Fringe

I noticed this yesterday as I had to delete several messages that considered the pilot in a deadly plane crash into the IRS offices in Austin, Texas, a hero. The lunatic fringe - both on the right and left think that Joe Stack is someone to be admired.

Walters was one of at least two dozen people who founded Facebook fan groups to hail the homicidal pilot.

Most had only a tiny handful of members, but hers attracted more than 200 before Facebook removed it.

"His sacrifice was for all of us," wrote Texan Tyler Britten.

Crackpots were also praising the dead pilot on Twitter.

"Joe Stack, you are a true American Hero and we need more of you to make a stand," tweeted Greg Lenihan, an engineer in San Diego.

Stack's manifesto railed against Wall Street, the Catholic Church, the IRS and the failure to reform health care - a little something for everyone.

The right called him a socialist, and the left branded him a right-wing tea partyer.

The only pol Stack name-checked in his final rant was "recent presidential puppet" George W. Bush, though he called all politicians useless.

There are always members of a small lunatic fringe ready to embrace a domestic terrorist targeting the feds. Tim McVeigh, who blew up the Oklahoma City federal building in 1995, killing 168 people, many of them children, remains a hero in some disgruntled circles 10 years after his execution.

Rep. Lloyd Doggett (D-Austin) said it was outrageous that some Americans were praising Stack.

This was a cowardly act of domestic terrorism," he said, and Stack's rant "reflects the steadily increasing flow of 'the government is out to get me' paranoia."

On the other end of the crazy scale, Internet conspiracy theorists - including Austin radio host Alex Jones - were quick yesterday to declare that the plane crash was staged by the government "to demonize the tea party movement."

Are you kidding me? The guy burned down his own home before taking his plane and crashing it into the IRS offices because of longstanding tax issues he had with the IRS (among other sundry issues that he raised in his rambling manifesto).

The manifesto is a cipher, allowing pretty much anyone to read whatever they want into Stack's motives, depending on what they choose to highlight. Ignore the ending, and you can suggest the guy was an adherent to the Tea Party movement. Or, you could ignore that he railed against President Bush, the IRS, FAA, and other agencies and politicians, the medical profession, his current home in Austin, and many others.


He was an angry disturbed individual who had motive and intent to kill and directed his ire against the agency he deemed did the most damage to his life; the IRS.
Here's a near complete list of all those he railed again, including President Bush, IRS, FAA, GM, banks, Christians, etc. He destroyed his family in the process of crashing his plane into the IRS offices with the intent to murder as many people as he could. In fact, we're lucky that apparently there was only one other person killed besides Stack, and there were about a dozen injuries (several serious). It could have been so much worse.

Then we have Alex Jones latching on to this attack as a means to discredit the Tea Party movement. Alex Jones has never met a conspiracy theory he didn't promulgate, spread, or metastasize into something far more sinister. What's so troubling about Jones is that far too many people on the right appeal to this guy, go on his show, or include him in their writings as a legitimate source. He's a loon with a big microphone.

Stack is the latest perpetrator in a long line of anti-IRS/anti-tax violence and the hatred crosses party lines. In Stack's case, he appears to have had multiple run-ins with IRS and tax officials, blaming them for business failures, loss of income, and having to relocate to Texas from California. He takes no personal responsibility for these situations or that he may have failed to properly report income or know the totality of his financial situation.

The Alex Jones Troofer Train Continues

Who else wants to throw their hat into the 9/11 conspiracy pages?

Spenser Pratt and Heidi Montag, come on down. You're the next contestants on the troofer train.

Spiedi appeared on the show Monday, which was apparently all about the New World Order agenda, which they got into after seeing Jones' latest opus, The Obama Deception. In addition to endorsing Jones's views on 9/11, Fleshbeard aired his concerns about Bohemian Grove, the famous old-boys' private club where, Jones asserts, the rich Republicans go in for "mock child sacrifice" in the presence of 40-foot stone owls. Spencer was troubled by these reports.

He brought them on his show, Jones explains on his website, because "Heidi and Spence are acting as though they have woken up to the New World Order and are plugging away to their combined 800,000 followers on twitter endlessly about the 'New World Order Global Elite.'" Even Miley Cyrus is intrigued!