And they said to stfu:
The nerve of these people.
BTW- our only comment on the whole story was from DougJ: “I would still caution against assuming that this was anti-government right-wing violence unless and until more details emerge.”
Reader Interactions
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General Winfield Stuck
Prolly when hell freezes over, or Palin gets to be presnit. We’d be fucked either way and fully retracted.
Kryptik
I’m not even sure this is comparable, John.
This came off well-publicized rabblerousing by the likes of Bachmann fearmongering about Census workers, combined with an already irrational fear of this particular administration and it’s government.
Malkin raised a snit about a goddamn scarf and tried to make it out to be a terrorist statement.
MattR
@Kryptik: Exactly. And I thought “it would be irresponsible not to ask” was one of the catch phrases of the right.
The Moar You Know
“When will the left retract the Kentucky census worker case smear?”
As soon as the right takes back the Obama Birth Certificate smear.
Call me when it happens. I’m sure I’ll be in a retirement home by then.
jharp
“Navy SEALs Face Assault Charges for Capturing Most-Wanted Terrorist:”
Malkin’s also got this crazy shit posted. And I can’t find anything about it.
Anyone?
MattR
@MattR: And I should probably add that these are probably the same people who were jumping over every detail misreported in real time from the Fort Hood shootings
Mnemosyne
@MattR:
The catchphrase is from Peggy Noonan (aka Our Lady of the Dolphins). She was writing about the Elian Gonzalez case and claiming with zero evidence that he was being sent back to his custodial parent because Castro had blackmail pictures of Bill Clinton. The actual phrase is, “Is it irresponsible to speculate? It would be irresponsible not to.”
You may think I’m making it up to make Noonan sound crazy, but I swear to God it’s all true.
r€nato
How about the whole Beauchamp episode? Where’s the retractions over that one?
What about the episode with the NY Times publishing photos of Rummy’s little retreat, which were published with Rummy’s full knowledge and approval? That one led to numerous death threats against the Times and their families and children.
r€nato
…one could make a long, long list…
General Winfield Stuck
There was a lot of reporting from reputable news orgs from claimed reliable sources, about some of the details at the crime scene that left little wiggle room for suicide in my opinion. One was about having his hands bound behind his back, if I remember correctly, Which would make it nigh impossible, or at least a lot more difficult to be suicide. Now they are saying through other leaks, and not in the official news release, which by the way withholds all the crime scene details of an allege suicide except to claim it was suicide, that his hands were bound in front, which would make it possible to do the other stuff reported initially. I am from KY and remain skeptical for the reason of rotten wingnuts (dem and repub) running the show in that state.
Just Some Fuckhead
All I said is that it would be irresponsible not to speculate. Anyway, it prolly saved a few lives somewhere else as conservative bloodlust was temporarily sated.
Mnemosyne
If this is true, by the way, and the guy committed suicide, in some ways that’s even more depressing since the apparent motive was because he was a single father and couldn’t figure out how he could support his son any longer, so he took out a couple of insurance policies on himself, committed suicide, and staged it to look like a murder so his son would get the maximum payout.
How desperate do you need to be before that sounds like a good plan?
General Winfield Stuck
@Mnemosyne:
If true, I can’t think of a more elaborate, to the point of surreal attempt to fake ones own suicide to look like murder.
His insurance would have paid out if he had just gotten into his car and plowed into a bridge on I 64. People who get to that point usually are not that methodical about anything, but there are always exceptions.
The Moar You Know
Also: speaking for myself only; I don’t believe the explanation. My family is from the South, and I am well aware of the long and illustrious tradition of local law enforcement whitewashing obvious murders by writing them off as suicides.
So this “leftist” sees nothing to apologize for.
trollhattan
@ John Cole
Not good enough. You had to have pre-apologized for harboring thoughts that rural Kentuckian Patriots might have anything whatsoever to do with killin’ a fed–prior to forming said thoughts.
Let it also be said Ahmadinejad would never tolerate ACORN.
the Left
I stand by my reporting.
Ailuridae
@General Winfield Stuck:
Also, the KSP has every incentive imaginable to declare this a suicide rather than a murder. Its a huge black eye for the state to have a murdered census worker.
MattR
@Mnemosyne: Thanks for the refresher as to where that phrase came from.
As for your other comment, it is indeed sad that this will be used as a political football by many instead of focusing on the fact that this guy’s life got so screwed up that taking out an insurance policy and then trying to fake a suicide seemed like the best option.
ellaesther
“Hundreds”? Hundreds?
FUCKING HUNDREDS, JOHN COLE?
I would say they owe retractions to millions of Americans: All of us who didn’t buy into their bullshit fear-mongering and culture-war-shaming and who they in turn deemed not “real” Americans. They have impugned, maligned, and smeared millions of us.
I’ll be waiting by my phone.
PeakVT
Did Riehl ever apologize?
wasabi gasp
I still think Hillary whacked him.
Eric U.
one of my wife’s friends was murdered in a bizarre fashion. It was declared a suicide, which almost nobody believed. Fortunately, the way he died was strange enough that his wife got the news media interested in the story, and now the cause of death has been determined to be murder.
MattR
@General Winfield Stuck:
Are you sure about that? I have my doubts that an insurance company would quickly and painlessly pay out a half a million dollar policy that was recently taken out if the person died from a one car crash with no known cause. They may very well pay it, but I don’t think it is a sure thing.
geg6
Sorry, but based on the rather detailed accounts I read on this case through both local and nationals reports, I have a hard time believing this. I wanna see the evidence they have for this conclusion. Or is it just that they haven’t found any evidence of perpetrators? Or is it your typical Southern law enforcement, protecting their own Emmitt Till style? I want evidence. And fuck that fucking bitch Malkin. There isn’t enough regret in the universe to make up for the misery she and her ilk have caused.
Litlebritdifrnt
Bullshit. There is no way this guy committed suicide. Sorry, you can pontificate all you want about local law enforcement but it ain’t going to happen. This guy was murdered, pure and simple, anyone who thinks otherwise is delusional.
General Winfield Stuck
@MattR:
Unless he left a note, most insurance will go ahead and pay rather than risk the bad PR of a legal struggle in a situation that evokes so much public sympathy. Though there are always exceptions, car wrecks are hard to prove as intentional. Have personal experience with this.
MattR
@General Winfield Stuck: Interesting. I am learning things all over this thread. At the same time, I consider myself semi-reasonable and semi-informed and I was unsure of what would happen so it would not shock me that others had similar doubts.
General Winfield Stuck
@MattR:
It’s a reasonable doubt. And these days who knows with insurance companies. I would agree it is not a certainty, but without a note, it is hard to prove it wasn’t accidental, even with other anecdotal evidence. Plus of course, it depends on the amount of payout.
MattR
@General Winfield Stuck: Which goes back to my original point: That I would not rule out suicide just because of the overly complicated method it was done. Driving off a bridge might have been simpler, but Sparkman mightnot have been sure it would do the trick.
Mnemosyne
I was trying to find Edward G. Robinson’s big speech about methods of suicide from Double Indemnity, but the closest I could get was a big chunk of the movie. The speech comes about 2 minutes from the end of the clip.
NonWonderDog
From McClatchy:
How the hell does that make any goddamn sense? Supposedly that quote above is evidence that he killed himself, but it makes it sound as if he just decided to lean into a rope and choke himself to death — and succeeded! That would be a world’s first, as far as I know.
D-Chance.
Hell, has the Right ever retracted the Hillary Clinton murdered Vince Foster smear?
Just Some Fuckhead
@D-Chance.:
Has it ever been proven she didn’t kill him?
Chuck Butcher
@NonWonderDog:
Evidently you don’t know shit. I have personal reasons to know you don’t know shit.
General Winfield Stuck
@NonWonderDog:
I just read that, and it struck me that while the explanations the cops give for all the details at the scene, including the writing bottom up on his chest sounded sensible, but just as sensible the opposite conclusion would be as well. Too many jumped sharks imo. to get to a conclusion that sounded like they had already decided on. The DNA and fingerprint evidence however, if accurate, does not lend to others involved. And the having his knees only six inches off the ground is just plain bizzarre, unless he fixed a slip knot noose and then while choking bound his own hands so he wouldn’t do the completely natural impulse thing and loosen the noose before asphixiating himself. Very weird.
Lamont Cranston
KSP? Picture a very nice guy you knew in high school, who you never saw make an intelligent or original observation. That’s the best KSP has to offer.
Epicurus
A. Self-awareness, a conscience and a soul.
Q. What are three things MM does not have?
I mean, please, the woman is too stupid to breathe. I’ve seen her pictures; quite frankly, she does not even realize that she would have been one of the first candidates for the internment policies she lauded in her “book.” I’m well aware that she is not Japanese; I rather doubt that the citizens of Southern California in 1942 would have made such a fine distinction. Goes back to the whole lack of self-awareness thing.
General Winfield Stuck
Well, I don’t have any experience at hanging myself, so I prolly don’t know shit either.
Corner Stone
@wasabi gasp: Well, fuck yeah.
Little known protip – female SoS named Clinton have as their extra duties to flip the switch on every state’s Death Row executions. She’s one busy little murderess.
Wile E. Quixote
@Epicurus
I doubt that Michele would have been interned, on the other hand she would have been treated no better than a Mexican or indian or any other non white back in the 1940s when by all accounts California was an incredibly racist place.
What people need to understand though is that Michele Malkin doesn’t need a brain as long as she has those dick sucking lips. Seriously, Malkin is popular among conservatives because conservative men are married to ugly women who don’t put out. Given the overall appearance and hygiene of most conservative men this isn’t surprising. No, conservative men want to fuck Malkin, and Coulter and Ingraham and Caribou Barbie. They want to do with these women all of the naughty, naughty things that their own wives won’t do with them, anal, oral, A2M, gooey facials, positions other than missionary. They want Michele Malkin on her knees in front of them in a bar girl costume and squealing “Me so horny, me love you long time. Three hole, ten dollah, all night”.
One of these days younger, prettier, sex-objects who test better with the horny, sexually repressed conservatard demographic are going to come along and when they do Malkin, Coulter, et al will be shown the door.
The Moar You Know
@Chuck Butcher: Sadly, you do.
Not that I believe the official story, but it’s very possible to hang yourself from a kneeling position. Hell, i can recall a case where an old man died of asphyxiation simply from lying down with his neck on the arm of a sofa. Ten seconds of mild pressure on the carotid and you’re unconscious. Four minutes of that and you’re dead.
There are other reasons I’m not buying this story, but the manner of death, as described in the official report, is sadly very plausible.
Just Some Fuckhead
@Wile E. Quixote:
Yep, like Anita Bryant, Bay Buchanan and Jeanne Dixon so long ago and more recently, Mary Matalin, Peggy Noonan and Greta Van Susteren. These conservative boytoys will never learn.
General Winfield Stuck
Opps, I forgot. Sorry Chuck!
Just Some Fuckhead
Sorry, I meant Jean Kirkpatrick. I get my jeans twisted sometimes.
General Winfield Stuck
@Just Some Fuckhead:
I saw it in the stars.
Mnemosyne
@NonWonderDog:
Actually, it’s pretty common. IIRC, most people who asphyxiate themselves to death don’t go for the full-on from the rafters hanging, because it’s just as efficient to put the noose around your neck and lean forward.
gwangung
..or any other Filipina. Very common in that era, see Carlos Bulosan’s America is in the Heart. Lucky if she got off with a beating; there were dozens like her that I know of back in the day
bayville
According to the bio on Sparkman he just kicked the shit out of Non-Hodgkins cancer before he committed “suicide”. That makes sense – he beat cancer so he could go off into the woods to fake his own homicide so his son and family can cash in on the insurance policies.
Is that a Grisham novel plot?
gwangung
@bayville: The only thing that would make sense is if there was a re-occurence of the cancer.
Church Lady
The story on Yahoo News has a couple of other pieces of info: Sparkman believed that his cancer had come back (he told this to friends) and he supposedly also revealed to a friend his plan to kill himself, but stage it as an accident, so that the insurance he had very recently taken out would pay out. I don’t vouch for these things as fact, as I have no way of knowing, but they are in the report I just read.
Also, as far as his son is concerned, he is an adult, with financial problems, not a child.
Sly
Reminded of Graeme Frost, I wonder what kind of countertops this woman has.
Donald G
Ten to fifteen years from now, I suspect that this case will again be considered a murder rather than suicide.
Beauzeaux
There are no words in the English language foul enough to adequately describe the toxic cesspool that is Michelle Malkin’s mind.
General Winfield Stuck
From the Lexington Herald Leader
It seems they are saying that Mr. Sparkman tells a friend in detail that he is about to kill himself, and provides details to them on precisely how he plans to do it to fool authorities into thinking he was murdered, apparently not concerned that the cops might ask his friend., so his son can collect the half mill insurance. Also that his cancer had returned and he thought he was going to die, though the coroner says there is no evidence it had. Stranger than fiction, or that./
Morbo
@bayville: Perhaps he was bankrupt from his medical expenses then.
The AP version is pretty detailed.
@gwangung: It does say he thought that in the AP article.
bayville
I didn’t see that the cancer returned. Still, an odd case that is probably not over.
John Thullen
Dan Burton is just now tying a noose around a cantaloupe in his backyard as part of the Republican Party’s “Archduke Ferdinand” strategy to begin their war against liberals, blacks, gays, Muslims, government employees (add to the long list; the Republican Party hates everyone, even themselves when it suits their hyena appetite) in the United States.
Scum, filth Republican Michelle Bachman is happy that there is one less Census Bureau employee. Plus, his death saved the Republican taxpayers money by obviating the need to treat his cancer.
Maybe the Census worker believed he was about to become yet another Republican zombie asshole and decided to spare the country further misery.
Sarah Death Palin will soon speak incoherently and stupidly about this topic. It will catapult her to the Presidency in this dog’s dinner of a democracy.
Bill Sparkman is glad he missed the statement.
ruemara
I’ve tried to retain an open mind but this conclusion closes it. I think he was murdered. And this is a coverup.
General Winfield Stuck
@bayville:
It hadn’t according to the coroner. It was his friend who said he thought it had returned.
Church Lady
@John Cole: Yes, DougJ was pretty circumspect in his posting on this on September 23. The comments were a little more freewheelin.
Just Some Fuckhead
@Church Lady:
OMFG- Freewheelin’ pseudonymous commenters? Get Drudge on this.
Steve
@jharp:
I can only assume that this headline is about the case of Dr Aafia Siddiqui, who is facing trial in NY. Following her arrest in Afghanistan, Siddiqui was shot by a US soldier and almost killed, so naturally enough she is now facing charges of attempted murder and assault on the soldier who shot her.
guardian.co.uk/world/2009/nov/24/aafia-siddiqui-al-qaida
A Mom Anon
Why would Mr. Sparkman stage the scene so it looked like some anti gov nut killed him? He needed a story for the insurance company,obviously,so why pick this one story out of a myriad of other possibilities? Where would he have got the silly idea that if he did such a thing it would be believable on any level? Hmmm.
Michelle Malkin: Ray of Sunshine Spreader of Joy. When I think of her,I think of the Grinch. Only more sociopathic and mean with a tinier heart. How does she separate that level of mean and nasty away from being a mom I wonder? I can’t imagine she’s at all fun to live with. Or maybe I’m wrong and she’s a real hoot at parties and stuff. And.. that would be all I care to think about that horrid tiny woman forever. ack.
kay
@Chuck Butcher:
I read the memorial you wrote for your son and I thought it was just lovely. I kept it. Just a beautiful honest thing you wrote.
I know holidays are hard, and I hope you and your wife are okay.
Royce
From the AP article: “Kentucky State Police Capt. Lisa Rudzinski said an analysis found that the “fed” on his chest was written “from the bottom up.”
This makes no sense. It is not difficult to write on one’s chest “from the top” — in fact it’s harder than the normal way of writing. Try it. It doesn’t follow that if you are writing on your own chest it would be from “the bottom up.” Sounds good at first, but it makes no sense.
I believe this is a cover up. It just doesn’t make sense. Occam’s razor and all that.
Then again, I don’t believe the media any more. Apology? I want lawsuits. Poor guy.
Brucie
Don’t forget Scott Beauchamp. He’s still waiting for his retraction.
koolaide
For those who might be amused in satire based on “just asking the question” silliness, this gemwas comedy gold to the point of a ridiculous Glenn Beck lawsuit in international court.
Interview with site creator
Comrade Baron Elmo
Or Michael J. Fox. Every time I see that clip of Limbaugh gleefully mocking Michael’s debilitating illness, I want to clobber the fat fuck’s face with a brick.
koolaide
Richard Jewell also comes to mind as someone to whom the media should apologize big time. But I don’t know if that was a left/right thing.
Paul in KY
I must say that when someone in Kentucky commits suicide, they try to make a spectacle of it.
If only Insurance companies paid off for killing yourself, none of this would have happened. The bastards (shaking fist)!!
Paul in KY
Re Malkin: She is Filipino. All Filipinos HATE the Japanese. She thinks she would have been one of the ones rounding them up in WW II.
Doesn’t matter to her that she looks sorta Japanese.
RememberNovember
The only valid outrage they acn muster is is manufactured- unless they are outraged at individual poster’s on blog sites and not the mods themselves.
RememberNovember
@Comrade Baron Elmo:
MJF has way more intestinal fortitude and strength than Krazy Kat Lady Rush.
RememberNovember
@Just Some Fuckhead:
Has it ever been proven she did?
Woodrowfan
I just tried it (I left the cap on). I found it easier to do from the bottom up than top down. (the “E” was equally easy either way, the “F” and “D” were easier for me from the bottom up). I suspect it depends entirely on the person involved…
Woodrowfan
If it were just the local cops I’d be extremely suspicious, but given the number of departments involved, including the Park Service and FBI, I tend to think they’re right…