i've been busy this week: what was the zany DU take on the austin software pilot?

i'm almost afraid to ask . . . was it determined here that he was a far left wing liberal?

thanks again for the updates!

Very bad taste here - almost as bad as the jokes my grade school son once told about the Space Shuttle Challenger:

"Someone should have told him he could e-file."

the joke, not the domestic terrorism

And it did not mean that my family, especially my son, didn't mourn the loss of the astronauts.

And I am very sad for those who were injured and the one innocent person who was killed.

Hell, I even feel bad for the pilot dying.

...the Challenger disaster.

Nothing, apparently. I just got it. Oh lord, that joke is awful and funny.

Kid who told the Challenger joke grew up to be a young man who loved gags. He once encrusted himself with beige plastic shopping bags (the small ones you get at a pharmacy) while my mother and I went shopping.

We came home and there was a six foot beige alien creature, complete with horns, sitting at the dining room table, and mom and I almost keeled over in horror!

All that effort to wrap himself up, and all the desperate effort to get out from the pee-soaked clothing and plastic bags. Now THAT shit's funny! ;)

...and it was obviously not terrorism but obviously terrorism.

(There was no coherent DU view)

Typical 'bagger.

and tried kill about 200 people.

I see no evidence of a legitimate beef, just anti-government teabuggery.

is that he leaned Libertarian/right, and probably only figured out recently that corporations weren't his friends.

Frankly, I find it reprehensible. But that's just me.

would get about 150 recs on DU.

The other half would make him the freeper of the week on FreeRepublic.

At least, gleaned from the less incoherent portions of it, I hear.

i am using sarcasm.

Flying a plane into a government building and killing yourself is obviously not a constructive way to solve a problem.

That being said, the disturbing thing is, the lack of outrage there is that he did it. Actually, if I had to give it a ranking it was mild apathy to rejoicing in some sectors of the left and right.

to yell their heads off in a reactive mode to propaganda they've spent a short lifetime believing and then reciting.

Everyone agreed that was wrong.

who claimed to have known him and said that he was not political at all, just someone who was pissed cause he had to pay taxes. That is my take as well.

He could have avoided a lot of problems if he had just paid his damn taxes. I don't necessarily like paying them either, especially when they are used to fund shit
like bush's illegal war, but I pay them, they are a fact of life and a necessity in a civilized society.

I think the past 30 years or so of "oh my god, we're being taxed to death to support Cadillac driving welfare queens and everybody else who is too lazy to work!" has irreparably warped our perception as a nation of what it takes to build a just, equitable and sustainable society. I think this guy got caught up in the lie and just couldn't see reality anymore .

Just my .02

(a) a left-winger, or (b) not a terrorist. Never both, obviously.

but I believe the following:

1) Stack was not insane. He knew what he was doing when he went on his murderous rampage.

2) Stack cannot be classified on the basis of that ramblin' wreck of a manifesto. He cherry-picked from various sources, but in the end he's just placing blame for everything bad that ever happened in his life on others - be it corporations, the government, or society in general.

3) I believe Stack acted alone, although I'm keeping an open mind to the possibility that he communicated with others.

4) I believe that what Stack did can be classified as terrorism, even though it doesn't meet the textbook definition as it gets applied to organized groups. Even the act of a 'lone wolf' can be called terrorism if its goal is to create fear and influence behavior. Although Stack perished during commission of that murderous act, he hoped it would inspire others to follow him into martyrdom.

5) I have no sympathy for Stack. As I said before, I believe he was not insane. He didn't seek help, even after he started taking concrete steps toward acting out his murderous fantasies. I'll save my sympathy for his family, who were lucky to escape from the house he set on fire, and his victims. Stack can burn in hell.

6) I believe this heinous act justifies keeping closer surveillance on right-wing, anti-government groups & individuals. I believe they represent a greater threat to life & property than Islamic fundamentalism, and I hope that government agencies take these groups & individuals seriously.