FORT HOOD, Texas - Soldiers who witnessed the shooting rampage at Fort Hood that left 13 people dead reported that the gunman shouted "Allahu Akbar!" — an Arabic phrase for "God is great!" — before opening fire, the base commander said Friday.

Lt. Gen. Robert Cone said officials had not yet confirmed that the suspected shooter, Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, made the comment before the rampage Thursday.

And CNN has what it claims is security-camera footage of Hasan in a convenience store wearing Islamic garb on the day of the shooting:

If true, the above would seem to confirm what many on the wingnut right seemed to positively hope was the case last night—that Hasan's rampage was an act of Islamist terrorism, as opposed to the result of a breakdown or mental illness or the garden-variety insane rage and alienation that has inspired what seems like a mass killing every other month. We all know what first came to mind when Hasan's name was released yesterday. But we suppose a handy guide for finding the line that divides the Glenn Becks of the world from the rest of us is whether you reacted with dread at the idea that it may have been related, however murkily, to Islamism, or if you were filled with smug delight.

Here's some smug delight, from a horrible woman (via the Awl):

The moment I first heard about the mass murders at Fort Hood I knew in my bones that the shooter or shooters were Muslims.

Call me "Islamophobic," call me "psychic," call me what you will.

It now seems that there was only a single shooter: Major Malik Nidal Hasan, an American-born Muslim man of Palestinian/Jordanian descent, an American citizen who is an Army-trained physician-a psychiatrist to be exact-as well as a religious Muslim.

And here, from the Corner's Victor Davis Hanson, is a new meme watch: When a Christian or a Jew or any other kind of regular American blows a gasket and kills a bunch of people, there are a variety of reasons we can investigate as to the potential cause. When a Muslim does it, it's a personal jihad:

[I call it] al Qaedism, or the spontaneous rage of disaffected Muslims, who connect their own failures in some sense to generic radical Islamist sentiments, and act out that anger by running over the innocent (San Francisco or North Carolina), shooting Jews (the LAX or Seattle attacks), or shooting up malls or sniping. These are of course different from but in addition to the 24 organized plots that have been broken up since 9/11, four of them this year alone.

Maybe Hasan killed all those people because he thought Allah wanted him to. Maybe he did it because he wanted to exact revenge for perceived slights. Maybe he was a paranoid schizophrenic and thought they were lizard people. Maybe all of the above. We don't know. But if it was Islamism, this is the lesson that Hanson and his partisans want to take from it:

In other words, the narrative after 9/11 largely remains that Americans have given in to illegitimate "fear and mistrust" of Muslims in general. A saner approach would be to acknowledge that there is a small minority of Muslims who channel generic Islamist fantasies, so that we can assume that either formal terrorist plots or individual acts of murder will more or less occur here every three to six months.

A saner approach. No one, anywhere, has ever disputed that there is a small minority of Muslims—or any religious sect, for that matter—who subscribe to violent and extremist religious views. Make no mistake, this is an argument for legitimate fear and mistrust of "Muslims in general." Expect to see more like it.

The FT is "offering" staff "the chance" to "work fewer hours." And they better accept, or you know some motherfuckers are going to have to get laid off. But they're all so nice about it!

"Do you fancy spending more time with your family over the summer months? Have you been meaning to book that trip of a lifetime? Would you like to improve you work-life balance in 2009?

"If the answer is yes to any of the above questions, the FT may be able to assist," said the document.

Oh FT, we'll do whatever you like if you keep saying "fancy." [Guardian UK]

[Ratings are on a 1-10 scale—with 10 being the best—and are based on how much the media person or outlet has benefited from the crisis, how right they've been, and how much influence they've had.]

WINNERS

• Paul Krugman, NYT: Yea, he just won the Nobel Prize, okay? [10]
• Robert Thomson, WSJ: Thomson led the WSJ's recent redesign and re-imagination—which proved perfect for the big, scary headlines necessary over the last month. [9]
• Joe Nocera, NYT, and Bethany McLean, Fortune: Scored roughly a million-dollar deal to write the "definitive" book about the crisis. These two are certainly qualified to do it, but still—lucky bastards. [9]
• Maria Bartiromo, CNBC: The Money Honey is still the public face of CNBC, which owned this crisis top to bottom. [8]
• Lionel Barber, FT: Editor of the paper that's been consistently serious enough for long enough not to make anyone wonder about its political motives when the crisis went down. [8]
• Andrew Ross Sorkin, NYT: Wunderkind M&A reporter and Dealbook chief who is just everywhere. He got a shitload of money for a book. [8]
• Steve Liesman, CNBC: Senior economic reporter, and a man who's been getting way more face time with Wall Street big shots lately than their wives have. [8]
• John Gapper, FT: Chief business commentator at the solid pink paper, he's been admirably hard on the villains. [7]
• Charlie Rose, PBS: Landed a big interview with Warren Buffett—the last investor anybody trusts. [7]
• John Carney, Clusterstock: He left Dealbreaker in the midst of all this as possibly the most visible young, bloggin', new media name who actually knows what the hell is going on. [7]
• Felix Salmon, Portfolio: He's one of the better finance bloggers and has managed to stay on top of the crisis consistently, when not working on 12,000 word analyses of the Gawker pay structure. [6]
• Daniel Gross, Newsweek: Maybe smartest of all, plans a "quickie electronic book" to be published before the end of the year. Do less work, get out first, heyo! [6]

LOSERS

• Fox Business Network: Yes, the little network finally got a measurable audience because of the crisis, and yes, they go to throw some decent shots at Jim Cramer. But the comparison to CNBC just makes them look bad. [4]
• Charlie Gasparino, CNBC: Got a lot of airtime as a talking head, which is good for him. Was working on a book about reckless leaders at Wall Street firms like Bear Stearns before Bear Stearns collapsed, which could mean a lot of pain in the ass rewriting. Comes off as a bit of wingnut by trying to pin the whole meltdown on Obama. [4]
• Andrea Mitchell, NBC: Trying to report while being married to Alan Greenspan, one of the guys most responsible for this whole thing. Ha. Time to retire, maybe? [3]
• Book Publishers: Who's going to buy all these books? [2]
• Jim Cramer, CNBC: Gave intermittently terrible advice, then made it worse when he tried to correct it. Overly emotional, which is not the thing people want in a money manager. See a roundup of his whole weird year here. [1]

The Financial Times Takes On the World [BW]