Fort Hood

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I'm not sure about your point, but the story was related to me from someone who worked at the mall of which I spoke. I did not witness any of it for myself. Circuit had a store at that mall but I didn't work at that particular one.

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What's more effective than hysteria? I can't think of anything "better" myself.

BTW, Snook, this is a profile of one of the Circuits I worked at in the 1990s:

That's how bad it was at the mall I worked at during part of my retail career with Circuit.

Yes, they actually abducted and murdered a police officer in our parking lot. But that was before I was working there. After that, they put a police substation in the middle of the mall, and it settled things down a bit.

http://www.barrypopik.com/index.php...spoint_greenspoint_district_houston_nickname/

 

Back to Fort Hood proper, here's another article I enjoyed. This part struck my funny bone:

 

LKD - You are right, of course. Sorry for getting off topic. The whole crime and profiling topic, while interesting, should be a thread in itself, especially since it has cloulded our topic a bit. One of the points I was coming to is that the crime wave in the area I worked in and cited, became somewhat racially charged, because many people blamed it on the expansion of public transportation in the area, and used it to defeat an expansion of public transportation in the city on a larger scale. It was a kind of ultimate racial profiling with the bigots here, but effective nonetheless.

I wanted to comment on the article:

Gee, do you think? Maybe the author had to stop to think that one through.

There is nothing like waiting for "the causes of truth and justice to have a chance to come out." Let's talk about "convenient" explanations, since the writer in this instance certainly knows one when he sees one (and knows how to use one).

Why should we bother? We already know it was a "slaughter of infidels" by a "jihadist." Case closed.

He must have missed the choir singing, "Onward Christian Soldier." Had his business cards been inscribed with "SoG," he might have clouded "our conclusions" a bit.

That's right. We know from the evidence that he was not a psychiatrist, nor did he "snap." He was a jihadist soldier impersonating a psychiatrist who snapped.

Of course, it was Bill Clinton's fault! Why couldn't more us see that at the time? Where is Paula Jones when we need her? Bill believed that trying to blow up a building was actually "a crime" instead of what it was (an act of terror). I agree calling that a crime certainly made us far less safe. Bill Clinton didn't need to spend all that time and waste all those tomahawk missiles trying to kill this Bin Laden character. All he had to do was call him a "terrorist" or a "Muslim jihadist" and we would have been instantly safer. What could be easier?

Hey, now. Is the president a socialist muslim from Kenya? That's what happens when you have a president who's not even an American.

That's absolutely right. They should take a lesson from their Christian friends. In all the wars in the history of the US and Europe, Christians have certianly "avoided" killing Christians.

Yes, Peter Worthington, now that he's been charged with a "crime," there is a possibility that he may admit to being a "jihadist." And your point is...?

That's what happens when somone is forced to watch 183 re-runs of the "Godfather."

But we can be sure that his 2nd Amendment rights were not violated.

Ironically, the article is called:

How funny is that?

LKD - In my opnion, the conservatives are trying to work this from two angles:

1. They wish to hang a "terrorist act" committed on American soil onto the Obama administration. There is a lot of political milage in accomplishing that. And it may turn out to be a planned "terrorist act" carried out for political reasons. Or it might be a bit more complicated and turn out to be the intersection of a number of threads which led to this violent and tragic act.

2. Conservatives do not want this to be another mass shooting, much like the Virginia Tech shooting, where a crazy person and guns became a tragic mixture.

Also:

Much of the final results will not be what he has to say, but what his mental condition is, or was at the time of the shooting. How he will be evaluated will be an important factor. Is he a cold, calculating "terrorist" who planned and carried out a mission for political reasons? Or was he a crazy person, who under stress of deployment to the ME caused him to become conflicted at a point where his strong relgious beleifs came into conflict with his professional and military duty? Or was it a combination of all those factors?

One final point regarding the Virginia Tech shooting:

Another large institution failing to "connect the dots?" There might be another conclusion, that Hasan fell through the cracks, not because he was a Muslim, but because he had mental health issues - maybe. It wouldn't be the first time that warning signs such as those were ignored.

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2009/04/07/eveningnews/main4927476.shtml

 

I see where you are coming from, but to me, when someone commits murders shouting "Allahu Akbar" it is not helpful to turn around and say "it's not terrorism, Islam had nothing to do with it", or to claim that this is an argument to take away guns from people who have never committed a crime. While even the vilest of criminals deserves a day in court, to me it is a clear cut case of terrorism with Islamic links. We'll see when all the evidence comes out in court.

I'm not sure about the right wanting to hang this on Obama -- I'm a right winger yet I don't think Obama or his policies are responsible for this debacle -- the ingrained political correctness that has been around long before Obama hit the stage is what allowed this to happen. Hasan wasn't dealt with appropriately because everyone is deathly afraid of being labelled as a racist and outcast from civil society as a redneck Nazi. That sure as heck isn't Obama's fault.

I hope they put the needle in this guy.

 

Although this is case where I could understand if he was tried in front of a military tribunal...

However, I don't really care whether they call him a terrorist or a criminal. At a minimum he's spending the rest of his life in prison, and more likely he'll receive the death penalty for this. If the end result is the same, I don't really care.

 

SoA on his business card!?!?

This had nothing to do with terrorism or Islam -- HE WAS A BHAALSPAWN!

 

If he had shouted, "Jesus is great," would you still believe that it was a terrorist act, or the action of a crazy person? And, it's an argument to take guns away from people who are "unstable," whether they have already committed a crime or not is a moot point. It would be a little too late after the fact. As I said, it may turn out to be a cold calculated "terrorist" act. But I am willing to wait for all the facts and for the murderer to be evaluated before rendering a judgment either way.

 

Of course one wouldn't think it was a terrorists act if he yelled "Jesus is Great!". We are a predominatly Christian nation, so that wouldn't fit into the terrorists fold. But since it is Islamic Extremists that perform terrorism in the US, putting this attack into a terrorist category is the logical assumption. But yes, we should wait for the facts to be conclusive. That will be the tell all.

 

Actually, there are plenty of Christian Fundamentalist whackjobs out there who might do something like that in the name of Jesus. I would have no problem classifying that act as a terrorist act. I'm not so foolish to believe that only Muslims are capable of terrorism -- McVeigh was no Muslim, and I don't know what his actions were motivated by (frankly, I don't care) but what he did was a terrorist act, not something that can be explained away by "he was sick and not responsible for his actions, the poor guy." kind of comments.

 

Your right, though McVeigh was outside the box. The majority of terrorist acts against the US are from Islamic Extremists, which was my point.

 

Ok, great. First, no one on this board has commented, "poor guy," so you don't need to start putting words into people's mouths. With many violent criminal actions, there is some factor of instability withn the criminal. The law defines the criteria at which point it becomes clinical insanity and the person is no longer held responbile because he/she does not understand those actions.

Second, there are plenty of terrorist acts committed by "Christians" against abortion doctors and clinics over the past years, right here in the US. The recent shooting of an abortion doctor was committed for both relgious and political reasons. By your own admission they are "whack-jobs," so does that they mean that they should be held accountable? Yet, you seem to be asserting, at the same time, that the Ft. Hood murderer was not a "whack-job," but a terrorist. Why is it that we can't agree that he may have been both, much like our home-grown variety of terrorists?

 

Yes, I acknowledged that when I said:

My use of the term "whack job" in no way means that I feel these people should get away scot free -- I never insinuated that, much less said it flat out. I have also gone on record that those who kill abortion doctors should be held fully accountable by the law, so I'm not sure what you're driving at.

I know that no one here said "poor guy" for Mcveigh, but there were plenty of people who did, people who went to bat for the guy after his conviction and demonstrated outside his prison. Such people make me ill.

I also believe that Hasan could be classified as a "whack job", but again, I do not use that term as an excuse. The reason being that you have to have something a little bit wrong with you to do those sorts of things no matter what your motivation, but not enough wrong to render you not responsible for what you did.

 

No, LKD, there weren't. The people demonstrating outside McVeigh's prison were death penalty opponents. These same death penalty opponents show up to demonstrate outside of every execution that happens in the US -- they didn't just show up for Tim McVeigh. They weren't protesting his conviction or imprisonment. They weren't claiming his mass murder was justifiable, that he wasn't responsible for his actions, or that he didn't deserve to pay for his crime. They were protesting his execution. Their reasons for protesting were many and varied, so I will neither stand on my own soapbox nor generalize about that diverse group of people here.

Yes, yes, I know you're perfectly fine with the death penalty, but those of us who oppose it are not "soft on crime," nor do we oppose the death penalty without reason.

 

I know they were death penalty opponents, Drew, I am not a fool.

I simply disagree with your evaluation of that fact (posted above) -- the death penalty opponents usually argue that people are not responsible for their actions* and therefore we should show compassion for them and not kill them. Or they say things like "he didn't mean to kill those people" or "he did have a point about how the FBI handled Waco" or any number of ridiculous things -- things I fear people will start to do for Hasan -- make excuses for him or minimize the utter vileness of his actions.

The very fact that they took the time to speak for him in any way, shape or form once his guilt was determined is what makes me ill. I know death penalty opponents disagree, but from where I sit, their actions show a complete lack of compassion for the victims. They choose to put their compassion towards murdering filth. The best I can say about that is that I am thankful that a wide variety of views are expressable in our Western society. Even if I find those views reprehensible.

*due to a bad childhood, a bad trip using illegal drugs, the Oppression of the White Man**, poverty, genetics, or what have you.

**Before anyone says it, yes I know Mcveigh was white, I am talking in general and not about his specific case here -- I'm sure that I didn't hit all of the wild excuses people can come up with to whitewash mass murder and terrorism. But I tried to hit the most common ones.

 

Nonsense. Utter. Nonsense. Death penalty opponents are not lobbying for the release of death row inmates. They are not lobbying for special treatment for death row inmates. They are not lobbying for free cable or gourmet meals for death row inmates. They are, for many and various reasons that vary from person to person, lobbying for an end to the death penalty. They still want these criminals behind bars. They still want these criminals to pay for their crimes. They still want these criminals held to account for what they did.

 

That's right -- alive, behind bars, because he has rights that they obviously care more about than the right to life that the terrorist stole from multiple victims. To care even a little bit about the right to life for a terrorist is tantamount to urinating on the graves of the innocent victims.

I never once said they wanted the criminals released, though as for the rest of what you said, there are always countless other protestors making sure the filth of the earth does get comfy beds, better food than that eaten by about 10% of the non-criminal population of the country, access to libraries and exercise equipment -- all things that the victims will never get. Those protestors are not all death penalty opponents, but they are out there, and that cannot be denied.

 

Prison food is most assuredly not better than the food eaten by about 10% of our population, unless you mean "more nutritious" when you say "better". Even prisoners are entitled to their basic nutritional needs. The food stamp and free lunch programs ensure that the poor will be able to have their basic nutritional needs met, and the middle and upper class have every opportunity to eat as well as our prisoners. Unless you are trying to imply that 10% of our country is homeless and falls through the cracks , this assertion is categorically false. It is also true that prisoners get access to (meager) libraries, educational and training opportunities. This is because we want those prisoners that will eventually return to society* to return with the tools necessary to make an honest living rather than return to the life of crime they led before going to prison -- a task made all the harder by the simple fact that few people want to hire a felon. It is true that prisoners have exercise facilities. There is sound science behind this as well. Prisoners with more access to exercise are easier to control. Since they are healthier, they are also less expensive to care for.

Regarding beds... ah, to hell with this. Prove it. I'm a big fan of Lock Up and have read a great deal about our prison system. I have yet to see one shred of evidence that our prisons are providing great amenities to their prisoners and that they are having a great and enjoyable time behind bars. Prison isn't a country club. If you want me to believe that it is, you'll have to prove it.

* In other words, the vast majority of them.

 

LKD, do these prostesters of whom you speak actually advocate for "comfy beds, better food than that eaten by about 10% of the non-criminal population of the country, access to libraries and exercise equipment" in regards to terrorists?

 

It may not be a country club (though the minimum security prisons for "white collar" crooks may approach it) but the point is that the prisoners are alive. They can breath, eat, read and do all sorts of things that their victims will never do again. For anyone to advocate more for prisoners' rights is to ignore that fact that even if the killers lived squalid third world conditions, they would still be better off than their victims.

I refer here mostly to terrorist killers, serial killers, and the like. But even for less serious crimes, it boggles my mind when in a world with limited resources, people actually advocate giving a bigger piece of the pie to the scum of the earth. Why don't they invest their energy into helping the families of the victims?

I was referring to the fact that poverty is a big problem in N.A. societies. I would hazard that the bottom 10% of the economic scale eat food that is worse than prison food. That's not a slam against the US, mind you -- the same can be said of my beloved country. If people care about human rights, they should focus their efforts on innocent people who do not have access to sufficient food, not on those who have chosen to spit upon society.

Splunge, there are plenty of societies who work for prisoners' rights -- here in Canada there is the John Howard Society (I think they are international, but really don't care.) And why don't I care? There's inocent people starving in the streets and they want to talk about making life better for killers and rapists. What does that say about their values? I don't think I have to say what it says to me.

 

LKD - The main reason that some of us oppose the DP is because they are not very good at convicting the right person. Were it not for modern DNA evidence, a lot of innocent people would have gone to their deaths. There are still plenty of people in prison for crimes they did not commit.