Scary times we live in:

A crude car bomb of propane, gasoline and fireworks was discovered in a smoking Nissan Pathfinder in the heart of Times Square on Saturday evening, prompting the evacuation of thousands of tourists and theatergoers on a warm and busy night. Although the device had apparently started to detonate, there was no explosion, and early on Sunday the authorities were still seeking a suspect and motive.

Al Qaeda has been known to use propane to increase the lethality of their car bombs, but that is something most people know as it is covered pretty well on the internet and has even been talked about in the media. Something that does stand out at me is the lengths the failed bomber went through to hide his identity:

The license plates on the Nissan were registered to another vehicle — a Ford pickup truck that was taken to a junkyard near Bridgeport, Conn., within the last two weeks, according to a law enforcement official. The previous owner of the Ford was interviewed Saturday night by the F.B.I., but it did not appear he was regarded as a suspect. Still, the junkyard was considered a primary target of the initial investigation.

The S.U.V.’s standard vehicle identification number had been removed, Mr. Bloomberg said, and investigators were scouring it to see if the number appeared elsewhere.

Wrong plates and a removed VIN? Usually attacks by organized terrorist groups won’t go through this kind of work to cover up their involvement. As matter of fact they want their involvement known.

(Adding…I wonder if they also ground off the engine block VIN. Maybe we can get lucky and these idiots didn’t know about that and now they have a great lead. Janet Napolitano said this morning that they have recovered fingerprints also.)

While we don’t know who is responsible for this yet, that hasn’t stopped some of the fringe on the right from conducting their own high tech investigation from the comfort of their basements and conclude that it had to be Jihadists.

And since we want to throw out our own conspiracies, I figured I would jump in on it too. A lot of the blogs on the right aren’t jumping to any conclusions. That’s kind of shocking given their history of always drawing conclusions before the investigation was complete. So my theory is that this may have been some anti-government whack job. Again, this is a theory and for the sake of our country I sincerely hope I am wrong, but given the times we live in I wouldn’t be shocked one bit if it turned out to be just that.

If my theory does turn out to be true and some anti-government whacko did plant this bomb, then we can also expect another backlash. That would be in the form of Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck declaring that the bomb was planted by the left, or even Obama himself, to make the “God loving, big government hating patriots” look bad.