Vegas shooting (UPDATED)

The first paragraphs of this post were written last night, just as the first reports hit the internet. I've decided to let the early remarks stand; the more recent info comes toward the end of this post.

I woke up from troubling dreams to discover that there has been a mass shooting in Las Vegas. The last report I saw indicated that more than a dozen people, including a cop, have been removed by ambulance. An initial report spoke of the Mandalay Bay Casino, but I just now saw a report that mentioned "hotels" plural.

This is unbelievably bad, and not just because of the pain and suffering of the victims. Our country has already gone through so many crises. How much more can we take?

Update: I've been watching cable news. Eyewitness reports and video evidence strongly indicates that someone was firing a sub-machine gun from an upper floor of the Mandalay Bay, spraying attendees at an outdoor concert below. The LA Times says that two died and 24 were injured. We are also now told that there is but one suspected shooter who is "down," although I'm not entirely sure what that means. (Dead? In custody?)

From CNN:

Another witness told CNN affiliate KSNV that the shooting sounded like firecrackers at first.
"It didn't sound normal, it sounded like machine guns and it was like several rounds, it was like hundreds of rounds," she told the news station.

"My boyfriend had me move behind a building here because it just didn't sound right," she told KSNV. "And then we hid behind a building and we could just hear hundreds of rounds going off and then about 10 minutes later the police came and just blocked off all the streets."

I admit it: Right now, I'm worried that Trump will respond with a vulgar/stupid/inappropriate/absurd/unpresidential tweet.

Update II: A half-hour ago, the LVMPD tweeted "At this time we do not believe there are any more shooters." In response, one Whitney Driver tweeted:

My friend was in the Mirage playing blackjack & said a shooter came in there. He took off & is now hiding in parking garage.

If there's any truth to this, video evidence must exist.

The BBC website just published a map which clarifies that the music festival took place across from the Luxor and at a diagonal remove from Mandalay Bay.

Here is a view of the Mandalay Bay Hotel from the street near the entrance to the outdoor arena where the festival took place.

Update III: I just saw a strange, unconfirmed report that the cops are looking for an Asian female accomplice. The Las Vegas Sheriff says that there was only one shooter. CNN just reported that he is dead. He shot from the 32nd floor.

Latest reports have the number of the dead at 21 while the wounded number over 100. Looking at the horrifying video footage of the event, I am grateful the music venue was not located closer to the hotel. The name of the shooter has not yet been released.

Update IV: Fifty dead, 400 injured. The shooter was a white male named Stephen Paddock, 64.

And a woman described as a "person of interest" after the attack is not believed to be involved in the shooting, police said in a statement.

"Marilou Danley is no longer being sought out as a person of interest," the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department said. "LVMPD detectives have made contact with her and do not believe she is involved with the shooting on the strip."

The Gateway Pundit falsely blamed the shooting on a leftist named Geary Danley. whom I can only presume to be related to Marilou (who turns out to be Stephen's rooommate). I predict that The Gateway Pundit -- which has White House credentials, just like Lee "yogurt" Stranahan -- will not apologize; doing so is not in their nature. The Freepers are blaming Obama and Soros.

The right-wing sites are also claiming that Paddock converted to Islam.

Here's an interesting detail which makes me wonder why Marilou was not detained longer:

A woman who attended the concert told Fox News that before the shooting a man and a woman — both of whom stood about 5 feet tall — had been escorted away.

"She had been messing with a lady in front of her and telling her she was going to die, that we were all going to die," the unidentified woman told Fox News.

"They escorted her out to make her stop messing around with all the other people, but none of us knew it was going to be serious," she added.

And see here:

Danley, an Australian citizen, was found outside the country, NBC News reports, and police believe Paddock was using her ID.

Paddock lived in a retirement community in Mesquite. I've yet to see any word as to what set him off. At this writing, I've seen no indication as to where he sat on the political spectrum.

I know that this suggestion will seem callous, but I'll make it anyways. When Alex Jones claims that the entire event was staged with "crisis actors" (and you know that Mr. Predictable will do just that) the wounded should sue his ass. Don't accept his apologies: SUE. Jones made millions from selling snake oil cures; it's time he paid for his crazy-making lies.

Update V: I was under the impression that machine guns were illegal. Not in Vegas.

I remind you that one of the first things this Congress did was make it easier for the mentally ill to acquire guns. I'm not a gun control enthusiast, but surely we can agree that machine guns ought to be kept from the hands of the unbalanced? (Not that I've seen any indication that Paddock had been flagged as unbalanced.)

It's legal to carry automatic weapons in Vegas into casinos and bars. Open carry or concealed.

Wayne Alan Root, a writer for Sheldon Adelson who introduces Trump at campaign rallies, offered the following very informative message last night:

Shooting victims everywhere. Shots fired at Mandalay, Trop, Bellagio, NYNY, Luxor, Hooters, Stratosphere. This is real thing. Muslim terror.

At the time he wrote these words, 11:51 Vegas time, the general outlines of what actually occurred were already known. (Compare to the opening of this post, taken from LV police announcements minutes after the shooting stopped.) During the election, Root called for the deaths of Hillary Clinton and Huma Abedin.

Update VI. Let's not kid ourselves: At this time, reactionaries and progressives are both desperately hoping that Paddock turns out to be a member of the opposite team. Why pretend that the situation is other than it is?

If you're a Trumper and if Paddock turns out to be a Trumper, then you will say that Paddock was "just a nut" who doesn't represent anything larger than himself. (Unless you're too busy spewing predictable inanities about crisis actors and MKULTRA.) But if Paddock turns out to have been on the left, he will be considered a representative of all lefties. If you're a progressive and Paddock turns out to be of a similar nature, you'll probably indulge in a great deal of self-flagellation. Leftwingers question themselves constantly; rightwingers always pretend to be cocksure and arrogant, even when their arrogance is grounded in horseshit.

This Vegas reporter says that Paddock was known to the cops in Mesquite, but has not done anything notably wrong. I've visited that burg, and I rather doubt any kind of "liberal" would retire there and amass weaponry. His brother Eric, who seems genuinely shocked by this event, says that Stephen was not in the military.

A check of PIPL indicates that Stephen Paddock previously lived in Hawthorne, California and California City, California. The latter is a rather dismal desert community which, I would say, is not a place where one is likely to encounter anyone on the left. He is "associated" with someone called Peggy Reiko Paddock, a graduate of CSUN whose maiden name or married name apparently was Okamoto.

Question: When checking into a Las Vegas hotel, can one specify that one wants a room very high up facing in a certain direction? Whenever I visited Vegas, I simply took whatever room I was given.