Shooting in Ft. Hood Open Thread

A place to talk about the shooting in Ft. Hood yesterday, share news reports, express frustration with racism and xenophobia you're seeing elsewhere, grieve, rage, whatever. The thread will be heavily moderated to maintain as safe a space as possible.

The biggest recent news is that the shooter, Major Hasan, is still alive. Most of the day yesterday, the media were reporting that he had died. My thought is that they were originally told the shooter was dead by the Army, because the Army wanted to be able to move him for medical care without anyone trying to seek some vigilante justice in the process.

The most disgraceful politicization of the event so far goes to conservative pundit Linda Chavez over at Commentary, who wrote yesterday:

We still don't know what was behind the killings at Fort Hood this afternoon, in which 11 soldiers and the killer died, but President Obama's rushed press conference was surprising in its flippancy nonetheless. Before he got to the issue on everyone's mind — namely the deaths of Americans in uniform — the president gave a "shout-out" to government bureaucrats gathered for a previously scheduled conference at the Interior Department, complete with appreciative chuckles. He treated the event like a pep rally rather than a tragic occasion with a wider audience than those gathered in the room. I wonder how many media outlets will compare Obama's performance to President Bush's "Pet Goat" moment on 9/11. I won't hold my breath.

Good idea. Since the two are, y'know, nothing alike. When President Bush was told of the ongoing situation on the morning of 9/11, he was told the country was under attack and didn't move. President Obama, on the other hand, was yesterday told of a situation that was effectively already contained, and he immediately took the appropriate action, which was to make a statement to the nation.

Now, he may not have delivered it in the way Chavez would have liked (KennyBlogginz and I happened to be watching it together and both actually cringed at the "shout-out," too, and commented on the flippancy of it), but that doesn't make it a "Pet Goat" moment. Not at all. Not on this planet.