No Sudden Jihad Syndrome: It seems obvious to me reporters know the identity (or the basics of it) of the shooter and are not speculating about SJS. Therefore, this was your typical loser-murderer, inspired to kill by bullying and heartbreak and general inadequacy and not a political-religious ideology.

Speculation as to the two hour gap in the killings is that the killer went on an early rampage, then laid low, then went to a classroom where he believed his primary target to be to kill her. Maybe she was supposed to be at the dorm he attacked eariler, too, but wasn't there, thus spurring him into additional spasms of jealous rage (who is she sleeping with?!, etc.)

...

I'll put on FoxNews and see what more is known.

gunman killed at least 20 students and faculty today at Virginia Tech University in the deadliest school shooting in U.S. history.

Shots were fired at the college's West Ambler Johnston dormitory and at the engineering school's Norris Hall, according to the university's Web site. Police aren't sure if the two shooting incidents are related and declined to identify the people killed, though they said the gunman is dead.

The campus is closed and classes canceled. Students were locked inside buildings as police tried to determine if another shooter was involved.

``Stay inside your building, away from windows,'' the school's Web site said.

The fear-of-brown-people mind springs quickly to the possibility that this was Sudden Jihad Syndrome, but of course it's hardly unprecedented for maladjusted losers to cut loose with gunfire schools.

Unconfirmed Claim: A heavily armed monster was on a rampage looking for his girlfriend. Supposedly he lined up a group of students and murdered them execution style.

Previous Bomb Threats... earlier this month, including last week. Of course, bomb threats are a dime a dozen on college campuses, and seem to coincide oddly with midterms and major exams.

Asian? A commenter says the gunman has been called "Asian" by one news outlet. Not sure how well confirmed that is.

As far as Sudden Jihad Syndrome speculation, "Asian" is used in Britain to refer to Pakistanis, but that's not the practice here.

Asian? Update: Apparently based on a picture of an Asian student being handcuffed on the ground. But this doesn't seem to be the shooter, who we're told was killed outright. The picture of the Asian student shows him clearly alive and bearing no obvious wounds.

This article, however, states that one gunman was killed and a second shooter was "apprehended."

Related: The WaPo just published a study hyping a correlation between gun ownership and suicide rates, but failed to note an anti-gun lobbying group had funded the study.

The Gap: Shootings occurred between 7:15 and 7:30. Then another came at 10:00 pm -- an unlikely scenario for a coordinated attack.

Was the second shooter opportunistically piggybacking on the initial massacre, hoping he could kill an enemy or ex-girlfriend and have her death pegged (naturally) on the rampage-shooter?

Posted by: Ace at 08:59 AM | Comments (201)
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Anwyn watched it, and wasn't very impressed. Captain Mal deserves better, and even Firefly writer Tim Minear can't seem to elevate this into more than a less-jokey version of Cannonball Run.

These bleeds?

I didn't see it, but I still don't get the trend of making very limited premises -- ones that can carry a movie or at most a mini-series -- into ongoing series deisgned to last, if everything works out right, for at least five seasons if not seven.

Posted by: Ace at 08:20 AM | Comments (23)
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Romney drops to fourth place. But note the survey composition, which is sketchy.

- Sen. John McCain has slashed Rudy Giuliani's double-digit lead by 10 points, but the GOP picture gets muddier if former Sen. Fred Thompson or former House Speaker Newt Gingrich enters the race, according to a CNN poll gauging the popularity of 2008 presidential hopefuls.

Giuliani, the former New York mayor, had a healthy 16-point lead over the Arizona senator last month, but that has dwindled to six points -- that is, if either Thompson or Gingrich enters the race.

Should they both toss their hats in the ring, Giuliani's lead over McCain drops to three points, 27 percent to 24 percent.

Analysts say McCain may have been buoyed by an April 11 speech at the Virginia Military Institute, in which he declared full support for President Bush's plan to send additional troops to Iraq. Giuliani may have taken a hit in the polls as questions continue to arise about his stances on abortion, gay rights and gun rights.

The CNN poll was conducted Tuesday through Thursday by Opinion Research Corp. Pollsters quizzed 1,218 registered voters, including 498 who call themselves Democrats or Democratic-leaning independents and 368 Republicans or Republican-leaning independents.

The Democratic survey has a sampling error of 4 percentage points; the GOP survey's sampling error is 5 percentage points.

They quizzed a mere 368 "Republicans," which includes Republican-leaning independents? Since the entire survey skews left, pardon me for suspecting the Republican subsample skews left as well.

The poll shows that voters would give substantial support to Thompson or Gingrich if they decided to enter.

Thompson, a former senator from Tennessee who has played a district attorney on three episodes of NBC's "Law & Order," would snare 11 percent of the vote (12 percent if Gingrich decides not to enter) if he announced a 2008 presidential bid.

Gingrich, on the other hand, would take 8 percent of the vote (10 percent without Thompson in the race) if he entered the running.

...

Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, who led Republican hopefuls in first-quarter fundraising with $23 million, slid into the No. 4 spot -- between Thompson and Gingrich -- with 10 percent of the vote.

For his part, Romney is leading in still-influential-but-not-quite-as-much-now Iowa, followed by McCain.

Giuliani, incidentally, picked up a $2100 contribution from Adam Sandler (near the bottom of the article). Just mentioned because Sandler's politics have occasionally been grist for discussion. Not that this proves all that much either way.

Thanks to DaveP. for the last bit.

Posted by: Ace at 07:58 AM | Comments (20)
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Macabre and graphic content warning.

Del sends it and writes, "Compare the image of the fat ring leader in the blue shirt in the 3:00 mark, with the corpse at the 5:35 mark."

Posted by: Ace at 11:03 AM | Comments (260)
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That's actually an old quote mined up by stoprosie.com, but the fat sack of fat addresses it on her true mother of all moronblogs.

u see
since terror been used to scare americans
since 9 11
terrorists - terrorists - everywhere
all of them - bad guys
terrorists - after us - here and there
they sold it
we bought it

we gave away r civil liberties
fear works

Dieting doesn't.

Posted by: Ace at 10:51 AM | Comments (64)
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That's actually an old quote mined up by stoprosie.com, but the fat sack of fat addresses it on her true mother of all moronblogs.

u see
since terror been used to scare americans
since 9 11
terrorists - terrorists - everywhere
all of them - bad guys
terrorists - after us - here and there
they sold it
we bought it

we gave away r civil liberties
fear works

Dieting doesn't.

Posted by: Ace at 10:51 AM | Comments (64)
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It's not just that zombie-infected London is a metaphor for Baghdad. That could be interesting enough. No, it's the fact that the US military's crude response to all this is "kill everybody" (the living and the dead), area firebombing, etc.

Plus, of course, the US military isn't in this ravaged foreign city to actually help. They're there to steal their oil zombie plague for development as a bioweapon, and in fact they cause the new outbreak deliberately by setting a zombie US soldier on... a pair of twelve year old girls.

The hell with 'em.

Thanks to dri.

Posted by: Ace at 10:47 AM | Comments (36)
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Sorry about that, folks. We got taken out by the storms in the DFW area.

Actually, the storms passed uneventfully, but our hosting company had switched to backup power in case the grid went out. With the storms past, they switched back to the grid - and a 2500 amp circuit breaker blew.

Not good.

Update: Um, and comments are back now too.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 10:36 PM | Comments (44)
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Take a little piece of my thighs....I've got plenty.

What do you want out of me?

I thought about a "Down on Me" joke.

Really I did.

But I couldn't bring myself to do it.

I dont want to be blamed for scarring anyone for life. You saw what they did to Imus after all.

Posted by: Jack M. at 04:37 PM | Comments (50)
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Thanks to dri.

Posted by: Ace at 03:02 PM | Comments (8)
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