NTSB: Plane crash into Austin office building may have been intentional; Update: Pilot left manifesto?

Intentional but likely not terrorism, which is fed-speak for “disgruntled nut lacking a political motive.”

Did he really lack a political motive, though? Hmmm.

An NTSB official told Fox News that they are investigating this as an intentional act, and said it appears the pilot set his own house on fire and then got in his plane and flew it into the building. An NTSB spokesman, however, told FoxNews.com that “we can’t confirm any of that.”

An Internal Revenue Service office is located inside the building.

Maybe the guy was blown off course. Or … maybe not:

William Winnie, an Internal Revenue Service agent, said he was in a training session on the third floor of the building when he saw a light-colored, single engine plane coming at the building.

“It looked like it was coming right in my window,” Winnie said. He said the plane veered down and to the left and crashed into the floors below. “I didn’t lose my footing, but it was enough to knock people who were sitting to the floor.”…

“It wasn’t heading into the direction of the building but all of a sudden it took a right and headed straight into it,” Whelan said. “It didn’t look like it was in distress. It wasn’t wavering at all.

Eyewitnesses say it came in at full throttle. Another federal official tells CNN that the pilot burned down his own home this morning and that the crash was indeed intentional, although his name and motive haven’t been released yet. And so the irresponsible speculation begins: Maybe there was a tax lien on the house and the guy decided that if he couldn’t live there, no one would? Or something even darker than that? Stand by for updates.

Update: The pilot is/was Joseph Andrew Stack. And the plane, according to AFP, was stolen. No wonder NORAD scrambled two F-16s.

Update: Business Insider claims that this is Stack’s website — and there’s a suicide note posted. Sounds like he had tax problems dating back decades and finally went berserk. Quote:

After my experience with the CPA world, following the business crash I swore that I’d never enter another accountant’s office again. But here I am with a new marriage and a boatload of undocumented income, not to mention an expensive new business asset, a piano, which I had no idea how to handle. After considerable thought I decided that it would be irresponsible NOT to get professional help; a very big mistake.

When we received the forms back I was very optimistic that they were in order. I had taken all of the years information to Bill Ross, and he came back with results very similar to what I was expecting. Except that he had neglected to include the contents of Sheryl’s unreported income; $12,700 worth of it. To make matters worse, Ross knew all along this was missing and I didn’t have a clue until he pointed it out in the middle of the audit. By that time it had become brutally evident that he was representing himself and not me.

This left me stuck in the middle of this disaster trying to defend transactions that have no relationship to anything tax-related (at least the tax-related transactions were poorly documented). Things I never knew anything about and things my wife had no clue would ever matter to anyone. The end result is… well, just look around…

As government agencies go, the FAA is often justifiably referred to as a tombstone agency, though they are hardly alone. The recent presidential puppet GW Bush and his cronies in their eight years certainly reinforced for all of us that this criticism rings equally true for all of the government. Nothing changes unless there is a body count (unless it is in the interest of the wealthy sows at the government trough). In a government full of hypocrites from top to bottom, life is as cheap as their lies and their self-serving laws.

I know I’m hardly the first one to decide I have had all I can stand. It has always been a myth that people have stopped dying for their freedom in this country, and it isn’t limited to the blacks, and poor immigrants. I know there have been countless before me and there are sure to be as many after. But I also know that by not adding my body to the count, I insure nothing will change. I choose to not keep looking over my shoulder at “big brother” while he strips my carcass, I choose not to ignore what is going on all around me, I choose not to pretend that business as usual won’t continue; I have just had enough.

The “Bush and his cronies are puppets of plutocrats” bit — and his contempt for the “joke we call the American medical system … [that's] murdering tens of thousands of people a year” — isn’t going to stop the media from blaming this on conservatives, is it? Ah well.

Update: Good lord. This nut may have set fire to his house with his family still inside.

The fire, which happened around 9:15 a.m. in the Scofield Farms neighborhood, destroyed the $236k home that belonged to Joseph Stack, a local pilot. Stack has not been located. Local officials have not confirmed to KXAN that there’s a connection. Joseph A. Stack is a registered pilot of a Piper PA 28-236.

A 12-year-old girl and a woman were rescued from the burning house. The girl is presumed to be to Stack’s stepdaughter.

Update: I missed this part at the very end of the manifesto, but JWF didn’t. Doesn’t sound very “tea party” to me:

The communist creed: From each according to his ability, to each according to his need.

The capitalist creed: From each according to his gullibility, to each according to his greed.

Update: My lefty pal Michael Roston scolds me for trying to place political blame vis-a-vis a nut whose political beliefs seem uncategorizable. I actually couldn’t agree more: I’m not calling the guy a leftist, merely stressing that he’s not some dogmatic right-winger either. But it ain’t my side that’s spent the better part of a year trying to frame tea partiers as some sort of racist neo-militia movement. Remember the fiasco over the Kentucky census worker murdered by conservatives — who wasn’t murdered by conservatives? I sure do. Roston, to his credit, urged caution at the time about jumping to any conclusions in that case, but a lot of his friends on the left weren’t so cautious. And given the early reaction at dKos and Democratic Underground, they’re ready to make the same mistake again.

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