Mid-Week Post

The epicenter of the week...


Lots going on at the Fur.

 
A disgruntled former employee of a news station in Virginia shot and killed a reporter and her cameraman during a live report and then posted the video of the act on his Facebook page. He is now dead:

Two television journalists were killed during a live broadcast in Virginia on Wednesday, shot by a suspect who was a former employee of the TV station and who called himself a "powder keg" of anger over what he saw as racial discrimination at work and elsewhere in the United States.

The suspect, 41-year-old Vester Flanagan, shot himself as police pursued him on a Virginia highway hours after the shooting. Flanagan, who was African-American, died later at a hospital, police said.

The journalists who were killed were reporter Alison Parker, 24, and cameraman Adam Ward, 27.

Both journalists were white, as is a woman who they were interviewing. The woman was wounded and was in stable condition, a hospital spokesman said.

Social media postings by a person who appeared to be Flanagan indicated the suspect had grievances against the station, CBS affiliate WDBJ7 in Roanoke, Virginia, which let him go two years ago. The person also posted video that appeared to show the attack filmed from the shooter's vantage point. 

Flanagan sent ABC News a 23-page fax about two hours after the shooting, saying his attack was triggered by the June 17 mass shooting at a black church in Charleston, South Carolina, the network said. Nine people were killed, and a white man has been charged in that rampage. 

The network cited Flanagan as saying he had suffered racial discrimination, sexual harassment and bullying at work. He had been attacked by black men and white women, and for being a gay black man, he said. 

"The church shooting was the tipping point ... but my anger has been building steadily," ABC News cited the fax as saying. "I've been a human powder keg for a while ... just waiting to go BOOM!"

(Sidebar: oh, please...)

Cue the usual whinging about gun control, motives, why adults shouldn't be held responsible for their actions because their feewings were hurt ect.

 
James Holmes has been given a life sentence:

The man who unleashed a murderous attack on a packed Colorado movie theatre was ordered Wednesday to serve life in prison without parole plus 3,318 years — the maximum allowed by law — before the judge told deputies, "Get the defendant out of my courtroom, please."

The gallery applauded the remark by Judge Carlos A. Samour Jr. as he gaveled the hearing to a close, ending a grueling three-year wait to see the gunman brought to justice. Survivors, relatives and a handful of jurors who were in the courtroom cheered and then hugged prosecutors and law enforcement officers. Some wiped away tears.

Samour ordered 28-year-old James Holmes to serve 12 consecutive life sentences without the possibility of parole, one for each of the people he killed in the July 20, 2012, attack on a crowded movie theatre.

He then added another 3,312 years for 70 convictions of attempted murder, and six years for an explosives charge.

"The defendant does not deserve any sympathy," the judge said. "And for that reason, the court imposes the maximum sentence it can impose under the law."

Samour handed down the sentences after a withering condemnation of Holmes as an angry quitter who gave up on life and turned his hatred into murder and mayhem against innocent victims and hundreds of their family members.

Dubbed the "Dust Lady" after emerging from the destroyed World Trade Centre, Marcy Borders dies at age forty-two:

A woman whose photograph became one of the iconic images of the 9/11 attacks has died of stomach cancer aged 42.

Marcy Borders, who was pictured covered in dust fleeing the World Trade Center in 2001, was diagnosed with the disease in 2014 which she claimed was caused from inhaling toxic air from the attack.

"I definitely believe it because I haven't had any illnesses," she had told NJ.com. "I don't have high blood pressure ... high cholesterol (or) diabetes."

Ms Borders had started a new job just one month before the attack and had arrived late that morning. After fleeing the building covered in dust she was grabbed by a man who led her to safety.

The picture of her covered in dust was taken by photographer Stan Honda of Agence France Presse and published in newspapers around the world and before her identity was revealed she became known simply as "dust lady".

In 2011 she told the New York Post her life spiralled out of control after the attacks.

"I didn't do a day's work in nearly 10 years," she said. "By 2011 I was a complete mess. Every time I saw an aircraft, I panicked. If I saw a man on a building, I was convinced he was going to shoot me."

Some pundits think the federal election in October should focus on women's issues.

I think that's a fantastic idea. 

Let's ask Justin Trudeau why he admires a totalitarian state that allows abortion for unborn female babies and then infanticide or if he thinks that the Chinese's using North Korean women as sex slaves is a non-issue.

Let's ask Thomas Mulcair if it would be cheaper to let women stay at home with their kids rather than a boondoggle of a daycare plan.


Also: that's what Justin Trudeau does:

Canada's once-popular opposition Liberals, who are trailing in third place ahead of an Oct 19 election, shifted their fire to the first-place New Democratic Party on Wednesday as the two center-left rivals battle to defeat the ruling Conservatives.

And now, this is the best cake ever: