A bunch of people have been shot in Orlando, Florida’s Gateway Center  office building. Police are seeking a man named Jason Rodriguez.

UPDATE: Suspect in custody.

October’s unemployment numbers came in this morning:

The unemployment rate has surpassed 10 percent for the first time since 1983 — and is likely to go higher.

Nearly 16 million people can’t find jobs even though the worst recession since the Great Depression has apparently ended…

The Labor Department said Friday that jobless rate rose to 10.2 percent, the highest since April 1983, from 9.8 percent in September.

(Jobless rate tops 10 pct. for first time since ‘83, by Christopher S. Rugaber, AP, November 6, 2009)

Unemployment is generally regarded as a lagging indicator, so it will probably rise for several more months–even if the recession is ending, something which government and private sector economists usually have a surprisingly hard time establishing.

My question:Where are the calls for an immigration moratorium?

VDARE.COM has been exploring the immigration moratorium issue here. When the previous month’s numbers came out, Ed Rubenstein estimated that an immediate moratorium would reduce unemployment by about half a percentage point in a year. A moratorium enacted in 1998 would have tightened the labor market to the point where, in the depths of this recession, the unemployment rate would have been less than half of what it is now.

But when I googled “immigration + moratorium“ in News this morning, I basically got VDARE.COM, plus some intrepid private citizens posting to MSM comment threads. (A good idea, btw).

When I googled “immigration suspension“, which is the term favored for some mysterious reason by NumbersUSA, I did find a useful story by Roy Beck pointing out that the 650,000 jobs that the White House claims were created or saved by the Stimulus Bill were more than completely wiped out by the 1.125 million legal immigrants and temporary workers admitted in 2009. But nothing else.

Republicans are congratulating themselves on winning on November 3 by focusing on economic issues. Isn’t unemployment an economic issue?

Here’s the AP:

Details emerge about Fort Hood suspect background

By BRETT J. BLACKLEDGE (AP) – 1 hour ago

WASHINGTON — His name appears on radical Internet postings. A fellow officer says he fought his deployment to Iraq and argued with soldiers who supported U.S. wars. He required counseling as a medical student because of problems with patients.

There are many unknowns about Nidal Malik Hasan, the man authorities say is responsible for the worst mass killing on a U.S. military base. Most of all, his motive.[More]

The word Muslim, which you’ll notice does not appear as a modifier to the word “radical” in “radical Internet postings”. The word Muslim first appears in this story 365 words down, in reference to the fact that Islam is unpopular in the army.

In an interview with The Washington Post, Hasan’s aunt, Noel Hasan of Falls Church, Va., said he had been harassed about being a Muslim in the years after the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks and he wanted out of the Army.

“Some people can take it and some people cannot,” she said. “He had listened to all of that and he wanted out of the military.”

There’s more about the Muslim background, but they’re still radically puzzled about his motive.(The photograph above shows Nidal Malik Hasan wearing Muslim dress in 7-Eleven on the morning of the attack.)

More from Tim Blair:INFORMATION LEARNED, CONCEALED.

Mark Steyn is talking about it on Rush Limbaugh. (Listen here.)

Contrary to initial reports, the Fort Hood shooter, Army Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, is alive. He was shot by a civilian police officer, Kimberly Munley, whom he wounded. Officer Munley is reportedly “in stable condition.” Depending on reports, Akbar is in stable condition or on a ventilator. He was caught on a store video at 6: 20 a.m. yesterday in traditional Moslem garb. You know what that means: The mass murder had nothing to do with Islam!

Already, officials are feverishly coming up with Bizarro World, non-Islamic explanations for the mass murder. Hasan was reportedly distraught about being deployed to Afghanistan, and suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder, based on the stories his combat veteran patients had told him. Never mind that, as James Fulford pointed out, you can’t get PTSD without “without actual trauma.”

Of course, Hasan was upset… because he’s a Moslem!

A military mental health doctor facing deployment overseas opened fire at the Fort Hood Army post on Thursday, setting off on a rampage that killed 12 [N.S.: in the meantime, 13] people and left 31 [30] wounded, Army officials said.

Authorities said immediately after the shootings that they had killed the suspected shooter, but later in the evening they recanted and said that he was alive and in stable condition at a hospital, watched by a guard.

“His death is not imminent,” said Lt. Gen. Bob Cone at Fort Hood. He offered little explanation for the mistake, other than to say there was confusion at the hospital.

A law enforcement official identified the shooting suspect as Army Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss the case publicly.

The violence was believed to be the worst mass shooting in history at a U.S. military base.

The shooting began around 1:30 p.m., when shots were fired at the base’s Soldier Readiness Center, where soldiers who are about to be deployed or who are returning undergo medical screening, Cone said.

[Army: Fort Hood shooting rampage suspect is alive by April Castro and Devlin Barrett, AP/San Francisco Chronicle, November 5, 2009, 18:38 PST.]

Initial reports said that there were three shooters. Later reports stated that there was only one shooter, and that the other two men had been released, only to be superseded by reports saying that three men are in custody. Now, we are being told that Hasan was a “lone shooter.” In other words, no one outside of the top echelons of the military police currently knows what the situation is.

In this morning’s New York Times news blog, there is nothing about three shooters, but the following 8:38 a.m. update has Army Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan “Allahu Akbar!” (“Allah is great!”) while shooting people.

“Update | 8:38 a.m. In an interview with Matt Lauer on NBC Friday morning, Gen. Robert Cone, the Fort Hood commander, said that Major Hasan is in stable condition but has not yet been interrogated. Mr. Lauer said that a relative of one of the witnesses to the shooting said that Major Hasan shouted ‘Allahu akbar’ (’God is great’) during the rampage. Gen. Cone said that ‘there are first-hand accounts here from soldiers that are similar to that.’

[Latest Updates on Shootings at Fort Hood by Robert Mackey, The Lede: The New York Times News Blog, November 6, 2009.]

The newspapers are talking about the new study saying only 1 in 4 youths is eligible to enlist in the military. Of course, the study doesn’t break it down by race, but the information is readily available.

A 2007 Rand Corporation report prepared the Office of the Secretary of Defense, Military Enlistment of Hispanic Youth: Obstacles and Opportunities, has a lot of interesting information (although nothing, so far as I can tell, on whether devout Muslim majors are likely to shoot up Fort Hood):

Hispanics are underrepresented among military recruits. In 2007, Hispanics made up 17.0 percent of the general population (ages 18 to 40) but only 11.4 percent of Army enlistment contracts and 15 percent of Navy enlistment contracts. While the trend is upward (in 1994, 6.6 percent of Army contracts and 8.9 percent of Navy contracts were Hispanic), Hispanics are still underrepresented.

(more…)

Actually, there are a lot of examples of environmental policies working. You don’t hear much about them, though. For whatever reason, nobody ever promotes environmentalism by referring to past successes.

Ozone layer — Saved by getting rid of certain chemicals, although their replacements might be causing global warming.

Acid rain — Better scrubbers on smokestacks have largely fixed this problem. It turned out that the technology wasn’t as costly as it seemed.

Smog in LA — About an order of magnitude better than when I was a kid, although the cost in poorer miles per gallon must be huge. You may recall that there used to be two different MPG ratings from the government on cars, one for California and one for the rest of the country, with the California one about, I don’t know, one-tenth worse. Now, everybody has the California smog-fighting equipment on their cars, so that must increase our oil bill by many billions annually.

Lead — Here’s where one environmental improvement caused another improvement. The catalytic converter (invented by GM and given free to other car companies — thanks, GM!) would be ruined by leaded gasoline, so unleaded gas was introduced.

Redwoods — Saved by the Save the Redwoods League, co-founded by Madison Grant.

Pelicans — Very rare at the beach when I was a kid, now plentiful due to ban on DDT, which makes eggshells brittle

Bald Eagles — Not plentiful, but they’re back. (This is one you occasionally hear about, because people like large vicious animals.)

You might think that environmentalists would promote an image for themselves that says, “Trust us. We fixed problems in the past and we know how to fix them now,” but, instead, apocalypse and misanthropy seems to sell a lot better.

The alleged Fort Hood shooter turns out to be alive, and there’s been a weird suggestion that he got Post Traumatic Stress Disorder from listening to war stories from patients:

“He would tell us how he would hear things, horrific things,” said cousin Nader Hasan, adding that dealing with soldiers returning from war zones was “affecting him psychologically.”

It is a cruel irony that the very mental disorder Maj. Hasan was trained to treat may have claimed him as a victim. PTSD is increasingly being linked to suicide and violence among troops returning from overseas combat. Media reports indicated Maj. Hasan is single with no children.[National Post]

He may have been unhappy hearing about the war, especially if he was an enemy sympathizer, since he would then feel bad hearing about successful operations as well as scary one, but that’s not the same as PTSD. You can’t get post-traumatic stress disorder without actual trauma.

From Ready, Willing and Unable to Serve, a report by Mission Readiness, a group run by retired generals and admirals:

The Pentagon reports that 75 percent of Americans aged 17 to 24 cannot join the United States military – 26 million young Americans. …

Three Crucial Reasons Why Young Americans Cannot Join the Military:

Although there may be multiple reasons why an individual is ineligible to serve in the military, the three biggest problems are that too many young Americans are poorly educated, involved in crime, or physically unfit.

(more…)

From the Austin American-Statesman’s blog

Home > The Blotter > Archives > 2009 > November > 05 > Entry
McCaul says suspect had special training in shooting, parents hailed from Jordan

By W. Gardner Selby | Thursday, November 5, 2009, 05:40 PM

U.S. Rep. Michael McCaul, R-Austin, who has been briefed on the shootings at Fort Hood, said one suspect, Nadal Malik Hasan, was a physician who was born in Virginia to parents who hailed from Jordan.

He said he didn’t yet have the names of two other suspects.

“The background of these individuals is going to be critical,” McCaul said.

Hasan, McCaul said, “took a lot of advanced training in shooting.” He said he’s not sure why.

He said Hassan, with others, acted at Fort Hood using handguns.

“They did a tremendous amount of damage,” he said, considering they did not have AK-47s.

“It’s clear this was a coordinated attack,” McCaul said, adding that some have attributed it to the effects of post-traumatic stress disorder, though it’s premature to say so. “It’s too early to jump to any conclusions.”

McCaul said he also has been told that Hasan had undergone rehabilitative alcohol counseling.

“Whether it was domestic or foreign, clearly when a U.S. military base is attacked in this kind of fashion, that is an act of terror in my book,” McCaul said.

If you remember The Godfather, you may remember that Michael Corleone was also the child of immigrants whose parents didn’t want him to go into the military. The fact that may have been born in Virginia doesn’t mean this isn’t an immigration story.

Fox News has an interview with a cousin of the deceased shooter, Major Hasan, called Nader Hasan.

A shooting rampage Thursday afternoon at the Army’s Fort Hood in Texas killed 11 and wounded 31 before the gunman was killed and two suspects taken into custody.

All three of the people believed to have carried out the shooting were soldiers, Lt. General Bob Cone told reporters Thursday evening, though the motive remains unclear.
…
The shooter’s cousin, Nader Hasan, told Fox News that their family is in shock.

“We are trying to make sense of all this,” Nader Hasan said. “He wasn’t even someone who enjoyed going to the firing range.”

He said his cousin, who was born and raised in Virginia and graduated from Virginia Tech University, became against the wars after hearing the stories of those who came back from Afghanistan and Iraq.

Nader Hasan said his cousin, who was raised a Mulsim, [sic] wanted to go into the military against his parent’s wishes and was taunted by others after the terror attacks of Sept. 11.[Emphasis added.]
….

President Obama called the shooting a “horrific outburst of violence” on members of the nation’s armed forces. “It is horrifying that they should come under fire at an army base on American soil.”He said he doesn’t yet know all the details but promised the government would get “answers to every single question.”
…[Sources Identify Major as Gunman in Deadly Shooting Rampage at Fort Hood Fox News, November 05, 2009 ]

Note the bit about his father not wanting him to go Army, and him being “taunted” by family members after the September 11 attacks. Assimilation? Not hardly.