Tuesday 26 November 2013

Fun Online Polls: Age of consent & JFK assassination cover-up

The results to last week's Fun Online Poll were as follows:

If it were up to you, what would the age of consent be?

None of the government's business - 24 votes
14 or younger - 4 votes
15 - 5 votes
16 - as at present - 40 votes
17 - 3 votes
18 or older - 11 votes
Depends on the age of the older partner and the age difference - 34 votes
Other, please specify - 2 votes


I perhaps didn't make it clear enough that you could choose more than one option, i.e. you could choose an age but then caveat it with "Depends on the age of the older partner and the age difference". Only about 8 people chose this a well (including me).

So there we have it. Broadly speaking people are happy with 16 and the fact that the law turns a blind eye when both partners are under-age. I suppose it's impossible for a government to get everything wrong.
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The whole JFK assassination thing and what happened afterwards, how it was explained always struck a lot of people, including me, as a little bit fishy. There was something not quite right about it.

Personally, I would dismiss all the rumours about the Russians/Communists organising it (they wouldn't dare; the backlash if they'd been found out would be unthinkable); about the military-industrial bloc doing it (JFK was firmly in their pockets and a massive warmonger); the FBO/CIA (ditto);the Mafia (ditto); the Teamsters, Freemasons etcetera etcetera.

But they showed a TV programme on Channel 5 this week which seemed perfectly plausible to me, they reckoned that a trigger happy secret service agent in the following vehicle shot him by mistake while swinging his AR-15 semi-automatic rifle into position. So there certainly wasn't a conspiracy in advance, just a massive cover-up afterwards by the secret service, because admitting that one of their men had shot the President by mistake would have been career suicide for his superiors and made the USA a worldwide laughing stock.

This is not a conspiracy theory, it is just a theory, and of course there are plenty of articles saying it is piffle, which it might well be, but usually on the basis of a lot less evidence than was presented in the programme itself.

So that's this week's Fun Online Poll.

"Who shot the shot which blew JFK's brains out?"

Vote here or use the widget in the sidebar.

13 comments:

Kj said...

There´s a book coming out now with the title "LBJ killed Kennedy". I won´t vote it, because I have no idea about the merits of that idea.

Kj said...

It was supposed to be "LBJ killed JFK" ofcourse.

JohnM said...

Eh?

So there was a assassination attempt which involved LHO (or other unknown person(s)) during which a friendly fire event caused the actual death.

That's taking Occams Razor and going in the wrong direction by increasing complexity.

Hence I vote that Jack Kennedy killed JFK from the grassy knoll and I cite the documentary Red Dwarf as my evidence.

Tim Almond said...

The thing with cover-ups is that you have to ask about people's moral choices. If you can find something that's within people's moral code and they think they can get away with it, it can fit a conspiracy.

It's why 9/11 conspiracies don't add up. You'd need so many people involved with the deaths of thousands of innocent people, in peacetime, in a democratic, pro-rights country that it ain't going to happen.

It's why most theories about a conspiracy/cover-up don't add up.

But it's entirely possible that someone of high moral standing could cover something up because the alternative seemed to do no damn good. If it was an accident, what would happen by telling the truth? A secret service agent would have his life ruined. The president would still be dead. The country would be a laughing stock around the world.

Tim Almond said...

PS I think Oswald did it, and everything I've heard about his life suggests that he fits with the profile of killers - people who think much higher of themselves than reality, think they should be hanging with The President/John Lennon/whoever.

Mark Wadsworth said...

Kj, it wasn't him.

JM, watch the programme, it seems reasonable and plausible.

TS, the programme, and nobody else, disputes that LHO fired off two or three shots, one of which hit JFK (and might have been enough to kill him if he bled to death) and the bloke in front of him. That all stacks up.

I'm talking about the one that hit JFK in the back of the head.

Bayard said...

Of course, it is quite possible that any or all of the usual suspects had geared up LHO to do the shooting AND that the bullet in the back of the head was a genuine cock-up.

BTW, you've left the Bankers out of the line-up of suspects.

DBC Reed said...

If it is indisputable that LHO fired two or three shots, you have to account for the fact that one has been shown to have hit a traffic signal after being fired practically straight down.
I tend to the Hickey explanation by analogy with the death of Huey Long.

benj said...

Good grief.

It was obviously Bobby and Jackie Kennedy who organised between the two of them.

Jackie was fed up with all the affairs and Bobby wanted to be President.

( I just made the above up, but then googled and found this. Which should give everyone a hint about the nature of "evidence". Seek and you shall find;))

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1197934/Jackies-grief-true-love-JFKs-brother-Bobby-Kennedy.html


Mark Wadsworth said...

PC, so what's your favourite theory?

B, bankers didn't rule the world fifty years ago; and now they do, there's no need for them to kill anybody, they already own everybody and everything anyway.

DBC, good.

BJ, from that article:

"Heymann, who claims to have trawled through FBI and secret service records as well as talking to Kennedy family and friends, says Bobby was the former First Lady's one 'true love'.

He says their romance grew from their shared grief over the assassination of John Kennedy in 1963."


So that blows your theory out of the water, I'm afraid, even if we go with the "Jackie luvs Bobby" theory (quite possibly it is true).

Anonymous said...

If I had to choose it would be to go along with the official line. LHO did it from the 6th floor. No grassy knoll blah di dah and how come no one else heard or witnessed the trigger happy secret service man firing off his weapon all these years?

Bayard said...

"B, bankers didn't rule the world fifty years ago;"

You obviously haven't seen that entertaining film (on YouTube? I forget) which purports to chart the rise of Big Banking from the Rothschilds onwards. There they imply that JFK was going to bring the Federal Reserve under complete state control and so the Banksters rubbed him out. Worth a watch if you can find it.

benj said...

Of course there is the possibility that JFK organised his own death.

He was taking shit loads of anti-depressants. Perhaps he couldn't hack being Pres anymore?

Go down in history as a loser who couldn't cope with the pressure at the top? Or the legend(bullshit) that is JFK now?

Lets face it, if he had of lived, it was only a matter of time before the lid blew off all the scandals.

I think he did the right thing, and got LHO to blow his brains out.