This was premeditated.  This wasn’t VBC again.  That guy snapped, not this one.  He was so damn calm when he was shooting.  Methodical.  And he was moving tactically.  The Army really is diverse and we really do love all our own.  We signed up to be shot at but not at home.  Not unarmed.  No one should ever see what the inside of that medical SRP building looked like.  I suppose that’s what VA Tech looked like.  Except they didn’t have soldiers coming from everywhere to tourniquet and compress and talk to the wounded while rounds are still coming out.

No one touched him…the shooter that is…other than to treat him.  Though I told the medic (and I’m not proud of this) that was giving him plasma that there better not be anyone else who needed it because he should be the last one to be treated.  But I had just finished holding a soldier who was critical (I counted three entry wounds) and talking to him about his children…. 

Hollywood remains pretty proud of itself for standing up to an ideological bully in the 1950s. Here’s hoping it starts showing some similar gumption now.

Just ask Sen. Roland Burris.

Democratic National Committee Chairman and Virginia Gov. Tim Kaine is also high up on the list of losers. He presided over an electoral debacle in his own state. Unlike his predecessor, Gov. Mark Warner, he failed to prepare the way for a Democratic successor in Richmond and probably made a serious mistake in becoming chairman at all. It took him out of state too much and made him a partisan rather than a unifying figure. National ambitions have tripped up four of the last five Virginia governors. When you only have one four-year term, maybe the voters expect you to take care of business at home. Bob McDonnell might want to remember that when he is touted for the 2012 national GOP ticket.

The Angry White Male, suitably capitalized to indicate that the menace has become a media-certified trend, stalks the land, or at least the land of the media. In the 10 years before the November election, there were 59 (Nexis) references to angry white men. There have been 1,400 since. A post-election front-page headline in USA Today was typical: “Angry White Men: Their votes turned the tide for the GOP.“

By sheer numbing repetition, the legend grows. “The Republicans scraped together a majority,“ explains the genial Garrison Keillor, “by appealing to the sorehead vote, your brother-in-law and mine.“ By early April, the term receives its official presidential seal of approval when Bill Clinton confirms that “this is psychologically a difficult time for a lot of white males, the so-called angry white males.“

Well, the narrative is holding—or at least the angry part, and we can assume the rest. When voters elected Obama, the public was in a joyful mood, or so we were told. Now that it’s voting Republican, it’s really “grumpy.“

It couldn’t be that certain reporters are projecting just the least little bit, could it?

Heavens no.