HALF-FULL REPORT 10/06/17

It wasn’t the worst mass shooting in American history. But what happened in Las Vegas last Sunday night (10/1) may have been the domestic equivalent of 9/11.

Or the worst Islamist terror attack since then.

Just one shooter – Stephen Paddock, 64 – killed 58 people attending a country music festival, injured 489 more.

But just one shooter doesn’t mean no conspiracy.

“We presume he must have had help,” Clark County (Las Vegas) Sheriff Joseph Lombardo said Wednesday (10/5).

“We have multiple leads all around the world involving the travel patterns of multiple people involved in this investigation,” said FBI Agent Aaron Rouse at Wednesday’s presser.

ISIS has been persistent in claiming credit. We should take nothing ISIS says at face value. But Rukmini Callimachi, who covers ISIS for the New York Times, says the terror group typically claims credit only for attacks for which it is responsible.

There were two other Islamic terror attacks last weekend. ISIS took credit for only one. (Details below.)

“Did this person get radicalized, unbeknownst to us, and we want to identify that source,” Sheriff Lombardo said Tuesday (10/3).

************

The mass murder was meticulously planned. Paddock checked in to a suite on the 32^nd floor of the Mandalay Bay hotel the Thursday before (9/28). That gave him plenty of time to bring in an arsenal without arousing suspicion.

Police found more than 20 rifles, some with bump stocks, telescopic sights, and oversize magazines (holding up to 150 rounds).

Police found 19 more guns, thousands of rounds of ammo, and several pounds of explosives in the home Paddock shared with “companion” Marilou Danley, 62, in an upscale senior living community in Mesquite, 80 miles northwest of Las Vegas, and in Paddock’s car.

The guns, ammunition, explosives and accessories appear to have been acquired legally, over a period of years, with a big splurge last October.

The window in one bedroom of Paddock’s suite looked down on the crowd of 22,000 in the Las Vegas Village and Festival Grounds. The window in the other was across from aviation fuel storage tanks. Paddock shot at both.

Police released this timeline.

Paddock shot at the crowd for about ten minutes. The death toll almost certainly would have been higher were it not for the heroism of  security guard Jesus Campos, armed only with a nightstick, who found the suite from which Paddock was firing.

When Campos pounded on the inner door of the suite, Paddock fired through it, wounding Campos in the leg. The next time Paddock shot someone, it was himself.

Paddock evidently expected to escape, had scouted other sites for terror attacks. Campos foiled his plans.

************

Paddock lived much of his life “off the grid.” He evidently was very wealthy, but it isn’t clear where the money came from.

He worked as an accountant for Lockheed Martin for 18 months in the 1980s, but otherwise his employment record is spotty. According to the Office of Personnel Management, he’s worked as a mailman, and for the IRS.

Younger brother Eric said Paddock was a skilled investor, mostly in real estate. (Paddock has had at least 27 residences.) Eric looks dodgy in television interviews, has changed dramatically his story about big bro.

Paddock’s father was a notorious bank robber who the FBI called a “psychopath.” Like father, like son?

Paddock is said to have been a high stakes gambler. But if he’d been a successful high stakes gambler, the Vegas casinos would have blackballed him.

Criminals often pretend to be gamblers, because it’s an easy way to launder money.

When Paddock lived in Florida, he registered to vote as a Democrat. This may have been him at an anti-Trump protest in Reno (where Paddock owned a home).

************

The FBI is questioning Paddock’s “companion” about what he was thinking. They may also be asking Marilou Danley why she didn’t notice the guns, ammo and bomb-making materials in their home, what the $100,000 he wired to the Philippines two weeks prior to the massacre was for.

Marilou was in the Philippines when the shooting started, but left Vegas after Paddock checked into the Mandalay Bay.

************

It’s clear Paddock had help, that authorities know more about his co-conspirators than they’re saying now.

ISIS says Paddock converted to Islam six months ago, but he doesn’t fit the profile of an ISIS convert.

Paddock does resemble James Hodgkinson, the Bernie bro who shot Rep. Steve Scalise (R-LA). Could Antifa have gone beyond thuggery at public events to plotting mass murder? We’ll have to wait and see.

************

But we can dispense with the “grassy knoll” speculation. The windows at the Mandalay Bay do not open. The only broken windows were in Paddock’s suite. (He brought a small sledgehammer for that purpose.)

If there had been a second shooter on the 4^th or 6^th floor, he/she would have had his/her vision obstructed by foliage. What some numbnuts on social media call “muzzle flashes” are reflections from the lights of the casino across the way.

************

Before the wounded could be taken to hospitals, the vultures were out in force, blaming the NRA, calling for more gun control. There’s no tragedy leftists won’t politicize.

“Imagine the deaths if the shooter had a silencer, which the NRA wants to make easier to get,” Hillary Clinton said on Twitter.

Even with a silencer, an AR-15 rifle “would have a noise equivalent to a jack hammer,” noted Washington Post fact checker Glenn Kessler. Moreover, firing as many rounds in as short a time probably would have melted down a suppressor.

Hillary never lets facts get in the way of a good narrative.

* * * *

The Lying Swine spew nonsense about the firearms Paddock used, and the way he used them. CBS invents here bullets that don’t exist. They know nothing about guns, have no desire to learn.

No, journos, putting a telescopic sight on a rifle with a bump stock doesn’t make it more deadly. It indicates Paddock didn’t know much about guns.

It’s beyond stupid to put a telescopic sight on a (near) automatic weapon. The rapid recoil makes aimed fire (all but) impossible.

Watch this young lady fire an AR-15 with a bump stock at a target just 75 yards away (not 400, like Paddock). She put half her rounds into the ground in front of it.

Paddock shot himself in the mouth, with the muzzle pointing up, like in the movies. If he tried to commit suicide, that indicates Paddock was an amateur, because that often doesn’t produce instantaneous death. If he shot himself by accident, that’s more evidence he was an amateur.

Paddock may have lived for up to 30 agonizing minutes before he drowned in his own blood. Karmic justice.

************

When leftists call conservatives “haters,” they’re projecting.

She’s “not even sympathetic” to the shooting victims because “country music fans often are Republican gun toters,” said Hayley Geftman-Gold, a vice president in the legal department at CBS, on her Facebook page.

CBS, to its credit, promptly fired Geftman-Gold. This sleaze bitch should be fired too.

“White people shooting white people isn’t terror…it’s community outreach,” tweeted Greg Morelli, one of the owners of Max’s deli in Highland Park, Ill. His tweet hasn’t been good for business.

What vile, despicable creatures leftists have become.

************

Normals in Las Vegas responded with courage and compassion. There were many other heroes besides Jesus Campos among the first responders and the victims.

People in Las Vegas and elsewhere in Nevada patiently waited on line for hours to donate blood for the victims.

Donald and Melania Trump flew to Las Vegas Wednesday (10/5) to thank the first responders, and to comfort victims and their families. Watch this video as Thomas Gunderson, shot in the leg, struggles to his feet to “show my president the respect he deserves.”

https://twitter.com/PoliticalShort/status/915794339669860353

“He was super nice,” said one victim. “He’s not who we see on social media.”

************

Also last Sunday, a man shouting “Allahu Akbar” stabbed two young women to death at the train station in Marseilles, France.

In Edmonton, Alberta the night before, a man drove a white Chevrolet Malibu into a police barricade outside the stadium where the Edmonton Eskimos play, striking a police officer.

The driver jumped from the car and stabbed the cop several times before fleeing on foot. There was an ISIS flag in the car.

Hours later Abdulahi Hasan Sharif, 30, a Somali refugee, was back at the stadium, this time at the wheel of a U-Haul truck. He drove into pedestrians in crosswalks, injuring four, before police stopped him.

Both “lone wolves” were “known wolves.”

The knife wielder in Marseilles, a Tunisian with seven different identities, was released after his most recent arrest the day before his terror attack.

The Royal Canadian Mounted Police investigated Abdulahi Hasan Sharif in 2015 for “espousing extremism,” but he was deemed not to pose a threat.

************

Operation Katrina began last Friday (9/29) when San Juan Mayor Carmen Yulin Cruz blamed President Trump for SNAFUs in providing aid to Puerto Ricans devastated by Hurricane Maria.

“We are dying here,” Ms. Yulin Cruz said, posing in front of stacks of undelivered relief supplies. “You (the Trump administration) are killing us with the inefficiency and the bureaucracy.”

Relief supplies rotted on cargo ships because the local Teamsters truck drivers wouldn’t deliver them.

“Trump’s racism now is costing lives in PR,” tweeted MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” Scarborough. About 75 percent Puerto Ricans are white.

************

The federal response to Hurricane Maria is unprecedented in both size and efficiency. FEMA and the U.S. military sent supplies and personnel to Puerto Rico three days before the hurricane struck.

Yulin Cruz didn’t attend any of the meetings FEMA held with local government officials. Puerto Rican politicians who did praised the federal effort.

“The administration has answered and has complied with our petitions in an expedited manner,” said Gov. Ricardo Rossello.

The U.S. Virgin Islands also were devastated. The president and FEMA “have given us tremendous support,” said Gov. Kenneth Mapp.

FYI, Morning Joe: 76 percent of Virgin Islanders are black.

************

Under the law, state and local officials are in charge of relief efforts. The feds can’t provide aid until the locals ask for it.

“The mayor, Carmen Yulin, is not allowing anyone to distribute (aid),” a Puerto Rican cop said in this tearful interview with a Spanish language radio station in New York City.

************

The most epic blunder in the history of marketing bled into its second week, with the NFL trying – and failing – to find a way to declare victory while surrendering.

Most players stood for the national anthem (some with raised fists), but some knelt. The kneelers were greeted with a chorus of boos.

Ratings for Sunday Night Football were down 5 percent from last week, which were down 8 percent from the week before the protests. Ratings for Monday Night Football were down 13 percent. Ratings for Thursday Night Football were up.

A major New Jersey car dealer has pulled his ads from NFL games. Budweiser is considering ending its sponsorship of the NFL. If you want to let Anheuser-Busch know what you think, here’s the number to call: 1-800-342-5283.

“Owners are now dealing with a surge in ticket holder requests for refunds,” reported CNN’s John King.

************

The New York Times outed big shot Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein Wednesday (10/5) as a serial sexual predator, embarrassing Democrats generally, the Clintons and the Obamas in particular.

I don’t like Trump or the NRA, so you should go easy on me, Weinstein said. He’s done in Hollywood, says Variety.

************

In news this week you won’t see reported much by the MSM:

*The House passed Tuesday (10/4) a bill to forbid abortions after 20 weeks.

*The National Rifle Association thinks bump stocks should be regulated.

*Sen. Robert Menendez (D-NJ) tried to get her to fix a Medicare billing dispute on behalf of this doctor pal, former Obama HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius testified. Dirty Harry Reid may have been involved.

*The Dow is up, the labor force participation rate is at a record high, the unemployment rate (4.2 percent) is the lowest since February, 2001, despite the damage done by Hurricanes Harvey and Irma.

*A lawyer for Imran Awan said House Democrats ordered systematic falsification of records.

************

Here’s a preview of next week’s news:

*President Trump is all but certain to decertify the Iran deal.

*Bowe Bergdahl is expected to plead guilty to desertion. Here’s some background on the five Taliban terrorists Obama released to bring the scumbag traitor home.

*President Trump dined with military brass at the White House yesterday, called it “the calm before the storm.”

*Last Sunday there was a (probably illegal) referendum in Catalonia, an autonomous region in northeastern Spain. According to the Catalan parliament, 90 percent voted for independence, but only 40 percent voted.

The Catalan parliament is controlled by fascists. In the weeks preceding the vote, money poured in from Russia, Qatar (the chief financier of Islamist terror), and the George Soros organization.

The Catalan parliament announced plans to declare independence Monday. The government in Madrid feels about secession the way Abraham Lincoln did. Expect fireworks.

************

It’s hard to say the glass is more than half full in a week filled with such grim news. But the response of the normals to the massacre in Las Vegas is heartening.

The Hero of the Week is, of course, Jesus Campos. He’ll never have to buy another drink for the rest of his life.

Until next week. Be safe.