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The Other McCain on October 5, 2009 at 4:33 PM

That would actually make a good poll question: Do you live in Clay Co.,Ky., and how often do you watch cable news or listen to talk radio? The idea that Clay Co.,Ky., is News Junkie Head Quarters is well a big stretch….I am sure that title belongs to Cooters Pond, Alabama. GRIN. I wonder if there have been any Glenn Beck sightings in Autauga County:)

As far as assisted suicide, I suppose anything is possible. The way he was found appears staged.

Why Hoskins Family Cemetery?

Federal employees killed in the line of duty are entitled to benefits that would not be available to Sparkman’s beneficiaries in the event of his natural death.
If he was inclined to end his life, it would be rational for him to make it appear to be related to his employment, so as to provide something to his family.
SarahW on October 5, 2009 at 4:02 PM

How would he have taped his own wrist ect…

Dr Evil on October 5, 2009 at 4:16 PM

OK, since nothing has been ruled out officially by the police, let us briefly examine Sarah’s theory, strictly as a hypothetical.

What about assisted suicide? Sparkman finds his cancer has come back and knows he’s a dead man either way. He convinces a friend to help him make a suicide look like murder, takes a powerful sedative or pain reliever, and tells the friend to smother him once he’s completely passed out. And then . . .

It’s crazy and far-fetched, but really, is it more crazy and far-fetched than the suggestion that Glenn Beck, Neal Boortz and Michelle Bachman incited the Clay County Tinfoil Hat Militia into perpetrating a murder?

SarahW on October 5, 2009 at 4:02 PM

How would he have taped his own wrist ect…

I don’t know what happened and don’t pretend to, but my father’s secretary, a friend of the family whose children I played with, comitted suicide in similar fashion. She did it at least in part to provide for the children she left behind…with a double indemnity payout of her insurance.

Federal employees killed in the line of duty are entitled to benefits that would not be available to Sparkman’s beneficiaries in the event of his natural death.
If he was inclined to end his life, it would be rational for him to make it appear to be related to his employment, so as to provide something to his family.

I hope the question is settled soon, but I am content to wait until police publicly rule out suicide to do so myself.

I am a family historian a genealogist. I research and look up stuff like this all the time. I use old voter polls to find ancestors.

I have Hoskin cousins but the are across the county line in Bell Co.,Ky. I left your link on our family page, and asked anyone if they had been following this incident and if they knew anything about the Hoskins Cemetery. We all go back to the same progenitor Robert Mason The Patriot.

I wonder if Hoskins Cemetery in Clay Co.,Ky., is on Find A Grave?

Not that I am encouraging anyone to be comparing names to any known voter poll list….I suspect somebody from our government is checking out the possibility this was related to his job as a census taker. Hope so anyway.

A Dog Took My Place. . . .
Dr Evil on October 5, 2009 at 10:48 AM

Best. Title. Evah!

Collected in Songs of the Doomed : More Notes on the Death of the American Dream. People said Thompson declined after the 1972 campaign, and obviously his substance abuse was part of the problem. The real problem, however, was that he became so famous that he could no longer skulk around a big news story unnoticed. When Hunter went out to try to cover Jimmy Carter in ’76, as he explained, he was more famous than the guy he was covering.

Fame can be a trap, and sometimes a fatal trap, as it proved for John Lennon. There’s always some envious nothingburger nitwit who seeks fame by destroying The Big Man. But there’s no need to bring Rod Dreher, Conor Friedersdorf or Rachel Maddow into this . . .

As HST sits in on the trial and tries to find the real meaning, he discovers that these are his kind of people, who report spending $441, 000 on “miscellaneous and unknown” while the figure for the previous year was just $99, 000. HST figures that it was spent on cocaine, a “genuinely awesome rate of consumption – something like thirteen grams a day” which is enough “to kill a whole family of polar bears” (Thompson, 1990, p198).

And what do we get today? David Letterman, and his audience who respond to his “true confessions” like trained barking seals…sigh. Hunter Thompson might be onto something about the bestiality LOL!

This leads back to the final ending where HST decides that it is better to get involved with animals than people, “because they will never call the police on you or take you in front of a judge or run off and hide with your money…Animals don’t hire lawyers” (Thompson, 1990, p206).p

A Dog Took My Place. I do miss Hunter Thompson.
And I remember him mentioning something about dog’s body hair and little body fat LOL!

The Other McCain on October 4, 2009 at 7:25 PM

It makes no sense for the folks involved in illicit drug activity to draw attention to themselves. They are a paranoid bunch, they don’t want any attention…but say who ever Bill Sparkman was having conversations with – there is at least one person who knows why Bill Sparkman ended up at the Hoskin’s Family Cemetery. That person might have wanted Law Enforcement to “look” in the most likely direction. I hope their new sheriff is sharp. Truth is Bill Sparkman would have been an outsider. As nice a guy as he is stated to be, I don’t see anyone giving up their kin to the FEDS? So unless their was some physical traces left behind.

It’s going to become one of those Appalachian mysterys.

Bill Sparkman has come up in our discussion list.

My family came from a county directly south of Clay – Bell Co.,Ky., I have a lot of cousins down in Bell Co.,Ky.

Me, too. But they didn’t invite me, because I’m not important . .

The Other McCain on October 4, 2009 at 10:10 PM

I probably should’ve applied some “pressure” to Erik. Of course, it turned into a Bring-Your-Own-Net event just like almost any other conference with more than 5 bloggers in attendance, but the drinks were definitely flowing.

damn my loyalty to turning up to the day job on that Monday morning
Track-A-’Crat on October 4, 2009 at 5:03 PM

Well, you know I’m planning to go back just as soon as I can get the money. My 50th birthday is Tuesday, so HTTJYUB.

The Other McCain on October 4, 2009 at 5:19 PM

Make the return trip over a weekend, and I might just come with…

Me, too. But they didn’t invite me, because I’m not important . .

Ah, yes, good ol’ Terry!

Nobody can resist a man with a pink camera . . .

I’ll wait for Maddow to comment about Terry McAuliffe’s photographed “association” with a white supremacist.

Heh.

We used to see the “pot planes” fly over, and I joked about hiding in my dad’s corn field until one went over, running out really fast, jumping in the truck and driving away.

Fortunately, I wasn’t that stupid.

Oh, and have you seen the Maddow allusion to you….?

Are you a Hunter Thompson fan?
Beto Ochoa on October 4, 2009 at 8:39 PM

Only since I was 19. And I’ll be 50 on Tuesday. He was from Kentucky, you know.

BTW, it’s my birthday Tuesday. Just thought I’d throw that in.

The Other McCain on October 4, 2009 at 8:30 PM

Happy early birthday. Wish you could’ve been around a certain hotel in Arlington this past weekend.

Did the tardy husband show?

Beto Ochoa on October 4, 2009 at 8:30 PM

Never did. I figure he was up at the house, his wife showed up and said, “Hey, there’s some reported down at the cemetery . . .”

And he said, “Awww, crap. I just got through buryin’ the last reporter!”

Then he rolled over and went back to sleep.

One slight problem with the report – you forgot the link to your tip jar.
steveegg on October 4, 2009 at 8:26 PM

Heh. I didn’t link the tip jar because this is Malkin’s place, not mine, and she’s got expenses of her own to worry about. But I figured if folks read all the way through, they’d click over, be excited about the total awesomeness of my blog, and hit the tip jar anyway.

BTW, it’s my birthday Tuesday. Just thought I’d throw that in.

What, you run out of Virginia Slims? Wussy!
kahall on October 4, 2009 at 8:10 PM

Heh. The reason I started on the Parliament Lights is a girl named Kim Romagnulo, who used to work on the copy desk at The Washington Times. She smoked ‘em. In fact, she was smokin’ IYKWIMAITYD.

Anyway, they had a buy-one-get-one-free offer at the time, so I started smoking Parliament Lights. But I’m not brand-loyal. Right now I’m smoking Camel Lights. Whatever’s light and on special. If I’m going to kill myself, I figure I’ll do it as slowly and as cheaply as possible.

One slight problem with the report – you forgot the link to your tip jar. I may have been late to it, but at least it wasn’t too late.

Parliament Light

What, you run out of Virginia Slims? Wussy!
Great article BTW!

There has been a Big Voter Fraud Case going on in Clay Co.,Ky., it isn’t a secret a circuit court judge and a school superintendent among others have been indited. . . .
Dr Evil on October 4, 2009 at 6:45 PM

Yes, Dr. E., the federal corruption investigation in Clay County is also the reason they’ve got a new sheriff, Kevin Johnson, who’s cracking down on the local drug scene.

The fact that druggies in the area are under increased pressure from law enforcement could easily explain why a dope grower or meth cooker would have reacted so violently to a guy with federal ID. But we’ll have to wait and see. For all we know, this was done by psychopathic zombies from the East Kentucky Brigade of the Glenn Beck Militia . . . just ask Andrew Sullivan. He knows all about it.

Why would Bill Sparkman from FLORIDA be visiting a secluded family cemetery, where none of his folks are resting?

There has been a Big Voter Fraud Case going on in Clay Co.,Ky., it isn’t a secret a circuit court judge and a school superintendent among others have been indited. They are at the discovery stage right now. I don’t think a census would be helpful to their case right now comparing a current census to names on the voter’s rolls who voted…say some of those folks in Hoskins Cemetery were still voting – post mortem and Bill Sparkman was comparing names he was a part time census taker. All Politics is Local. How many of those folks in the immediate area even watch the News to get incited in the first place? Really they are watching CMT maybe. FED means all kinds of things in SE KY., and there have been anti government sentiments there for a long time.

http://emptywheel.firedoglake.com/2009/09/24/vote-fraud-in-clay-county-and-the-hanged-census-worker/

It is a little disappointing though that the census got called suspended, and ACORN won’t be participating. It would have been fun to watch ACORN try and count heads back in the Kentucky Hollers.

Ask A Hillbilly: Occam’s razor states that the explanation of any phenomenon should make as few assumptions as possible, eliminating those that make no difference in the observable predictions of the explanatory hypothesis or theory.

Just sayin……

damn my loyalty to turning up to the day job on that Monday morning
Track-A-’Crat on October 4, 2009 at 5:03 PM

Well, you know I’m planning to go back just as soon as I can get the money. My 50th birthday is Tuesday, so HTTJYUB.