Did Ted Kennedy commit suicide?

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On August 26, 2009, Americans awoke to the news that the senior Senator from Massachusetts had died the day before. The next three days were more or less devoted to extensive coverage of the late Senator's life and career.

Several things about this announcement strike one as suspicious. First of all, the source. The news did not come from a hospital or a coroner, but from the Kennedy family. According to news outlets, the body is being kept in state at the Kennedy Compound in Hyannisport until it is transported to Boston for the funeral. There was no mention of any funeral home handling the arrangements.

The second suspicious thing about this announcement is the timing. Kennedy's death came only two weeks after the death of his sister at the same Hyannisport estate. And his funeral will come at the end of the Summer Recess, immediately after which Congress is due to vote on the health care takeover that Kennedy championed for the last 45 years.

And lastly, it's suspicious that Kennedy's death came shortly after a letter was released in which he requested the Massachusetts legislature to change the succession law, allowing Governor Patrick to appoint his successor.

It all ties into the conclusion that Kennedy planned for his death to take place at the most advantageous time politically. If it was a suicide, you can be sure that those privy to that fact are sworn on the darkest possible oaths to utmost secrecy.

Race-switching (caution: not safe for goverment workers)

Microsoft has apologised for making a Polack out of a Nigger. Well, of course they didn't use those terms, but what they had done was just as offensive. They photoshopped a racially correct graphic on their Polish website by substituting a 'white' head on a 'black' body, thus kowtowing to a perceived Polish ethnocentricity. Of course they put the 'black' head back on when news of this hit the web.

Graphic designers are probably the second most racially conscious profession in America, after Law Enforcement. It is considered taboo to stereotype any occupation as consisting of only one racial group. Cartoonists, on the other hand, are usually free of such restrictions. Congressmen and other government officials are almost universally caricatured as white, and no one yet has raised a ruckus over it. Should a cartoonist put a donkey's head on a 'black' body, however, expect a few howls--but nothing, of course, like the violence that erupted over the depiction of a human head on Mohammed.

The ACLU must be reading my posts again!

Attorneys say a rural North Carolina school district will allow a Quaker peace activist to distribute information to high school students about alternatives to joining the military. On Wednesday, the American Civil Liberties Union said that Sally Ferrell's group North Carolina Peace Action now has the same access to the students as military recruiters.

This only makes sense. Even during an all-out mobilization, the military isn't going to be able to accept even half of your typical graduating senior class. That means most students are in need of alternatives to military service. Why not make information about them available?

Apparently somebody is afraid that if students knew what their options were, they wouldn't join the military. Nonsense! Some people are going to join no matter what you tell them, and some, on the same basis, aren't. I'm with the ACLU on this one; or, should I say, for once they are on the side of openness rather than censorship.

Why piracy? Why now? What next?

Almost ten months ago now, I made some predictions about what I foresaw would be an Obama Presidency. I was right on that point; let's see how the rest of my predictions are stacking up.

For one, I look to see the printing presses shift into an even higher gear, with the demise of the penny coming by the end of a second Obama administration. I kind of doubt, though, that we will ever see the $1000 bill again; cash transactions will be more and more restricted.

Wow, have they ever. The word "trillions" became a regular part of a grade-school vocabulary before Obama had even taken office, and he's continued to throw money out the window in frequent doses ever since. But what has happened? I went in to pay my property tax, and noticed signs saying that $100 bills would not be accepted. Why? I guess it had something to do with counterfeiting. Once a $20 bill won't even buy you coffee, guess what that means--a cashless society. O boy.

I expect the federal deficit to double. Any takers for the negative on that one?

I expect, by the end the first Obama administration, to see Social Security Numbers made mandatory for medical treatment.

No question that this is in the works. I may be the only American left with dependent children who have health insurance coverage without having SSN's, but then again I haven't tried to make a claim on any of them yet either. And my agent says that although it isn't actually illegal, he certainly doesn't recommend I try.

I expect to see more raids on religious groups, with all the children taken away from their parents regardless of any evidence of abuse.

I'm glad to report that, as far as I know, this hasn't happened--yet. They must still be waiting for the furor to die down from the last such incident.

I expect to see all churches lose more tax exemptions, or more churches lose all.

Still waiting for the hammer to fall on this one, too. But when it happens, it will probably be part of a Hate Crimes bill.

I expect riots should Obama fail by a thin margin to be re-elected. Too soon for this one.

And lastly,

I expect some well-placed Americans to be held hostage in a rogue state for years.

Well, this hasn't turned out quite the way I anticipated (does it ever?). True, some well-known journalists were held in one of the Axis of Evil countries for a few weeks, and some lesser-known journalists are currently being held in the other, but that's not quite what I had in mind. Instead, low-level Americans were held hostage on the open seas for a few days, necessitating a multi-million dollar effort to bring them home (with no rogue state protests in the UN to complicate things).

Piracy has made a comeback.

Why piracy? Well, it all boils down to the convergence of three factors:

1) Law Enforcement's hands are increasingly tied with red tape. Just bringing a teenage Somali gunslinger to trial for an outright act of piracy involved flying him halfway around the world (no doubt his first plane ride), putting him up in a jail cell far more luxurious than anything he's ever lived in (he must still be wondering how they keep the power from ever going out), and spending the next year or two paying high-power lawyers to argue over whether it was really his fault or not that he hijacked an American-flagged vessel. What it that his geographical education was deficient and he mistakenly took the Stars and Stripes flying from the masthead for the much more common Liberian flag? And so on.

2) There is well-published reluctance on the part of ship owners to allow their crew members to arm themselves against potential pirate attacks. There has been no corresponding reluctance on the part of pirates to arm themselves against potentially uncooperative crew members.

3) To make up for their inability to actually put criminals behind bars for any reasonable length of time (thus protecting the communities they are supposed to serve), Law Enforcement increasing focuses on its own protection from at-large criminals, thus becoming increasingly belligerent towards any who question their sense of self-importance. Witness the sad case of Professor Gates. The situation throughout the world is rapidly approaching that of Israel, where, although the death penalty for a convicted murderer is not allowed, firing a missile into a vehicle thought to be occupied by an unindicted "enemy of the state," along with whomever else might be in the vehicle, is.

The logical outcome when these three factors collide is just the sort of drama currently underway in the North Atlantic, where the Arctic Sea was apparently hijacked by pirates masquerading as law enforcement officers. Unfortunately, when one is being attacked in such a way, it is actually very difficult to tell from their tactics whether the attackers are legitimate law enforcement officers in the pursuit of justice, or pirates in the pursuit of booty. Should the pirates manage to get a few police uniforms off Ebay, the task becomes nigh impossible.

Unless one these three factors change, I predict that piracy will become a global pandemic.

The Law Killeth--and killeth--and killeth again.

The White Man has not been in any mood lately to blog about political matters. Nearly every day another e-mail arrives, duly certified as being from an unmonitored e-mail account at The White House. The thief sending the emails tries very hard to convince me that his plans to steal from me are all in my own best interests, but I remain unconvinced. As does he; soon it will be a crime not to gamble over my health. Sigh.

But at any rate, my keyboard has not yet been muzzled, and I take to cyberspace today to comment on yet another dead child, found strapped in a car on a hot day. Hardly a week goes by in the hot summer months without another such report, despite the fact that in some states it is now a crime to leave an infant strapped in an unmoving car. Of course it was already a crime to leave an infant unstrapped in a moving car, and that is the point of this blog.

All laws have consequences, and the consequences of a law are never fully foreseen at the time it is implemented. No one suspected that children would die in unmoving cars as a result of it being a crime to allow them to get hurt in a moving car, but that is what it appears has happened.

It is not easy to strap a child into an approved car seat; it's much easier to hold him on your lap. But the fact is, it's just plain safer for a child to be strapped in a car seat while the car is moving at a high rate of speed down the road. Just for safety's sake, most parents would want their infant securely buckled in while out on the open road.

But ah, the law doesn't allow parents to use their own judgment in such matters. A 5-minute stop-and-go drive to the grocery store 10 blocks away may necessitate spending another 5 minutes just buckling all the children in. And in many families' case, the laws now stipulate that every one of their children needs his own car seat--thus requiring a van for what in most countries of the world a compact car would more than suffice. Stopping at the store adds another 2-3 minutes unbuckling them all, then another 5 minutes getting them back in to go home.

Is it any wonder, then, that many parents prefer to leave their sleeping children strapped in the car while they run into the store quickly to buy something? I certainly do. And thus as an inevitable result of more and more draconian car seat laws (especially the one making it a crime to put an infant in the front seat where he could be killed by the mandatory air bag)--coupled with the wide availability of vehicular air conditioning and a paranoia over car theft--duly imprisoned infants continue to roast to death in their parents' cars.

Yet another unintended consequence from yet another series of laws "in our best interests." Sigh.