"That Simon & Garfunkel-referencing track is drawing a lot of attention for the video, which depicts a fictionalized account of the 2017 Las Vegas shooting from the perspective of the shooter."

I'm reading "Eminem’s Juvenile Shock Tactics Ruin Surprise New Album ‘Music To Be Murdered By’" (Daily Beast) and the part that interests me is "Simon & Garfunkel-referencing." The track is called "Darkness," so I'm thinking "Hello, Darkness, my old friend...." Rather than read on about how "Em can’t seem to resist his own adolescent tendencies—and it can make for a muddied listening experience, even on his stronger works," I'm just going to embed the video:

"Video poker... attracts a lot of very intelligent people."

Said Anthony Curtis, who has a website about the casino business, quoted in "Stephen Paddock and the World of Video Poker" (New Yorker).

“Video poker is well known for attracting people who have compulsive gambling problems,” he told me. “It’s almost the perfect gambling game. But it also has the property of being able to be beaten. So it attracts a lot of very intelligent people.” Curtis told me that he’d been in touch with a number of such players in Las Vegas who “can derive advantages over the casino of half of one per cent, sometimes higher.... They call themselves A.P.s... and just about everyone I talked to said, ‘No, he wasn’t A.P. level.’... People who are semi-sharp, as we say in Vegas, they know they’re better off playing video poker than slots. This guy was smart enough to know that....”

ADDED: One concert-goer described the walled-in space full of people as a "kill box." Perhaps Stephen Paddock saw that box as something like a video poker machine over which he'd finally figured out how to get the advantage.

"16 Unanswered Questions About The Las Vegas Shooting That The Mainstream Media Doesn’t Want To Talk About."

From Michael Snyder (a Republican candidate for Congress in Idaho’s First Congressional District). Excerpt:

#1 Photos of Stephen Paddock’s hotel room have been leaked, and one of those photos appears to show a suicide note. Why hasn’t the public been told what is in that note?

#2 Were there additional shooters?... #3 Why were law enforcement authorities discussing “another suspect on the fourth floor”...

#4 As Jon Rappoport has pointed out, it would have been impossible for Stephen Paddock to kill and wound 573 people in less than five minutes of shooting with the kinds of weapons that he is alleged to have used. So why won’t law enforcement authorities acknowledge this fact?

#5 How in the world did Paddock get 42 guns and “several thousand rounds of ammo” into his hotel room without anyone noticing?...

#7 Why was one woman telling people in the crowd that they were all going to die 45 minutes before the attack?...

#15 Why were nearly all of the exits out of the concert venue completely blocked?…

ALSO: "Before targeting the Route 91 Harvest music festival, Paddock rented a room at a condominium complex overlooking the Life is Beautiful music festival, another downtown event held between September 22 to September 25.... 'Was he doing pre-surveillance?'..." (CNN).

AND: In case you're wondering why I linked to that and whether I'm a conspiracy-theory nut, I got to that list of #16 via Drudge who has this list of links at the top of the page today:

MORE: "There was a note in his hotel room whose exact contents the authorities have yet to reveal. Sheriff Lombardo said that it contained numbers that were being analyzed for their relevance, and that it was not a manifesto or suicide note" (NYT).

We don't include Muslims?

I'm disturbed by this gaffe on the front page of The New York Times:



Here's the column by Thomas L. Friedman, "If Only Stephen Paddock Were a Muslim." I know he's trying to insult the "right" people, but the damage is not limited to those he's targeting. In attempting sarcasm, he's coming across as cloddishly crude (and at such a sensitive time).

But the front-page teaser is even worse, since millions of Muslims have the United States as their country of origin.

Is it strange that we have heard nothing about whether the Las Vegas shooter was a Republican or a Democrat?

I'm cynical enough to assume that when news reports don't say whether someone who's done something wrong is a Republican or a Democrat that he is a Democrat. In this case I know Paddock's brother said he had "no political affiliation." Then again, the brother seemed out of the loop (and not clearly credible).

There's also this, at Heavy, saying that "Paddock was not a registered voter, as either a Democrat or a Republican, in Clark County or elsewhere in Nevada, where his permanent residence was located. He was also not a registered voter in Florida, despite some social media claims he was a registered Democrat there."

ADDED: From "False News of the Vegas Attack Spread on Google, Facebook" (NYT):

[A] story by the pro-Trump political website "The Gateway Pundit" named a different person as the shooter, citing a Facebook page to claim the individual was "a far left loon" and "a Democrat who liked (MSNBC host) Rachel Maddow." Posters on the anonymous, anarchic 4chan.org forum likewise trumpeted supposed findings that the same individual was both the shooter and a "social democrat."...

Google said in a statement that it highlighted 4chan's "Politically Incorrect" message board, where the incorrect posts appeared, for several hours before its search algorithm replaced it with more relevant results... Facebook said its security team removed Gateway Pundit results and other similar posts from its social network, some within minutes....

Both companies are under fire from lawmakers for promoting false stories in the lead-up to last year's election, and have been invited to testify at a congressional investigation into Russian meddling in the race.

AND: From "Terrorizing if Not Clearly Terrorist: What to Call the Las Vegas Attack?" (NYT):

Was it a plot by “deep-state Democrats” (Alex Jones of the conspiracy site Infowars) or perhaps divine punishment for the “profound disrespect” shown to Mr. Trump and the national anthem (the religious broadcaster Pat Robertson)? Was it something to do with country music, given the concert crowd Mr. Paddock targeted?...

"The Gospel of John reminds us that there is no greater love than to lay down one's life for a friend."

"The memory of those who displayed the ultimate expression of love against an unimagined act of hate will never fade. Their examples will serve as an eternal reminder that the American spirit cannot and will not ever be broken."

Scott Adams speculates about the Las Vegas shooter.

On Periscope.

"It feels like the most likely motive is that he was a little deranged, but it was an anti-Trump statement."

AND: Here's speculation from David French (at National Review):

[A] person who’s “not a gun guy” [according to brother] has either expended untold thousands of dollars to legally purchase fully-automatic weapons, somehow found them on the black market, or purchased and substantially modified multiple semi-automatic weapons — and did so with enough competence to create a sustained rate of fire. This same person also spent substantial sums purchasing just the right hotel room to maximize casualties. I cannot think of a single other mass shooter who went to this level of expense and planning in the entire history of the United States.

And there was no real warning? His family was unaware? His brother also reported that the shooter had no meaningful political or religious affiliations. “He just hung out.” At the same time, however, there are reports that a woman told a group of concert-goers, “You’re all going to die tonight.”

Trump speaks on the Las Vegas massacre.

ADDED: President Trump's speech was overwhelmingly about empathy toward the victims. He doesn't name the gunman, he calls it "an act of pure evil," and refers to the ongoing investigation before going on to praising the first responders and then concentrating onto the victims: "We cannot fathom their pain. We cannot imagine their loss."

At the 2 minute point, he turns to religion: "Scripture teaches us the Lord is close to the broken-hearted and saves those who are crushed in spirit. We seek comfort in those words for we know that God lives in the hearts of those who grieve."

"ISIS claims responsibility for Las Vegas massacre."

AP reports.

Islamic State claims Las Vegas attack, says shooter converted to Islam months ago, but provides no evidence.

Why not claim the incident as theirs after the fact?

"A gunman firing from a Las Vegas hotel rained a rapid-fire barrage on a huge outdoor concert festival on Sunday night..."

"... sending thousands of people fleeing until SWAT units found and killed him," the NYT reports.

More than 50 victims died, and at least 200 others were wounded, officials said, making it one of the deadliest mass shootings in United States history.

Sheriff Joseph Lombardo of Clark County... identified the gunman as Stephen Paddock, 64. He said the police were seeking “a companion” named Marilou Danley, and the authorities later said they were “confident” they had located her....

Video of the shooting captured nine seconds of rapid-fire, continuous bursts, followed by 37 seconds of silence from the weapon amid panicked screaming. The barrage of gunfire then erupted again in at least two more rounds, both shorter than the first.

Who was Stephen Paddock? I'm not seeing any details other than that he was 64 and "of Mesquite, Nevada." I put that in quotes because "of" is different from "from." It indicates only his current place of residence.

ADDED: As for Marilou Danley (who is in custody): "She is described as an Asian woman, around four feet 11 inches tall and weighing 111 lbs." That's from The Daily Mail, which also says that Paddock's lived in a house built 3 years ago and valued at $396,000.

I'm seeing the street address as a particular number on Babbling Brook Court, but Google Street view only gets me to the entrance to the neighborhood:



UPDATE: "At least 50 dead, more than 400 injured after shooting on Las Vegas Strip" (WaPo).

The carnage in Las Vegas surpassed the death toll of 49 people slain in June 2016 when a gunman in Orlando, who later said he was inspired by the Islamic State, opened fire inside a crowded nightclub....

Police believe Paddock, a local resident, was a “lone wolf” attacker. Lombardo did not give further details, however, on Paddock’s background or possible motivation.

“We have no idea what his belief system was,” Lombardo said during a briefing. “Right now, we believe he was the sole aggressor, and the scene is static.”