The Lestats of the world are just smart/educated enough to get that Trump is a complete and total moron, but so deeply racist that their pea brains short circuit to BUT LIBERALS on every issue. There are a really lot of people like this. Highly concentrated in affluent midwestern suburbs.

Oh great, well, then, my work here is done.

Oh, what's that? There's more writing? Well I'm sure none of it will instantly show this statement to be a lie.

Buddy you try very hard to see one specific point of view, to the extent that you constantly publicly agree with it. You don't try at all to see our side of it.

Homie you voted for him. Physician, heal thyself.

Why don't you ever START on the right side of these, Lestat? Like that you eventually give up and admit the liberals were right about some thing in the past NEVER results in you starting on the left wing side of the next incident. (and of course your comment about the Mexican judge was you starting out disclaiming your old post but then just remaking the same dip**** point)

And you know what, I don't know what you had to say about the Chicago teen CPD lit up and then tried to hide the video of. You've never made a post on this forum that included his name. I don't know if you're lying to us or lying to yourself, but you lying to somebody.

Do better. It's incredibly easy. Be more upset about racism than you are about the oppression of the upper ****ing middle class by liberal elites, which if you were keeping track is IMAGINARY. It's your own personal emotional reaction here, you got FURIOUS at me for clowning on skalf but didn't have one goddamn word to say to the guy who was hinting around the need for ethnic cleansing.

Or, plan B, which I've always held out as a good option: **** off.

Naj, buddy, when the disagreement is about the nature of the threat, and your view is "pants ****ting terror because his Uber driver was named Ahmed" and mine is "keep calm and carry on", calling you a coward is just a ****ing accurate depiction of the facts.

Looks like one spoiled millennial needs a Safe Space from politically incorrect truth telling here.

For some completely non racist reason, they were only concerned about border security in the form of a wall on the Mexican border and a ban on travel from middle eastern countries.

Good example of what me and DVaut were talking about actually. This dude's super awesome plot was to take a hooker hostage and shoot some random guy who worked at the apartment building where the hooker was. Planning has really fallen a long way since 9/11. Then this:

Which one? They're unaligned. Seems like the only requirement to claim that an attack is "for IS" these days is being able to spell it.

I think there's also an issue where people tend to behave the way they're treated/viewed. So if you (or probably 50 million white people in the US) treat every muslim like a terrorist the anger or hatred could build up in them, increasing the chances that the unwell ones might lash out in some way. The whole Trading Places thing is real to a degree.

Maybe stop electing people like GWB or Theresa May who ignore terror warnings?

go on

Bin Laden determined to strike is like the most famous Presidential memo of all time.

He didn't do 9/11, but elections have consequences, and putting some oil dynasty failscion into office to cut taxes and get rid of financial regulations means that sometimes the President will be more interested in cowboy cosplay at his ranch than doing his ****ing job.

Something liberals are just completely unwilling to ever ****ing advance because it's "mean" or whatever is that the party of "family owned small businesses" and "legacy Ivy admits" has a huge built in competency handicap against the affirmative action babies and ****ing student loan wage slaves of the left. Competency is a liberal value. It should be, at least.

Know your history gents. Clinton dropped the ball on Bin Laden.

Yeah we seem to be watching that play out in real time, or at least the converse of it.

https://thinkprogress.org/was-george...t-61a3d6875f9d

That's amazing.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/...=.1159c4cfb05b

OK so when you said "go on" about GWB ignoring terror warnings, the implication was...


You didn't know about the August memo? Because now you do.

Yet another complete misunderstanding of terrorists and their motivations. They don't care if you're nice to them, or mean to them, or indifferent towards them. They don't care if you protest against travel bans, or not. They want to kill you because they hate you.

Funny you mention 9/11 like its ancient history. How about the Bataclan attacks. How would you rate that planning? Losers only killed 130 I guess.

I can honestly agree with those who say "keep calm and carry on" is the only reasonable response. But the incessant self-delusion that the terrorists are a bunch of bumbling incompetents reeks of wishful thinking. It's like Bush calling the 9/11 hijackers "cowards", or Obama calling ISIS "the JV team". Just something you say to make yourself feel better, even as the facts say otherwise.

Between sanctions and direct military action the US/UK/coalition etc has probably killed a million people in Afghanistan/Iraq/Syria in the last 20 years.

It's more that the image of IS as this hydra-like organisation with cells all over the world is pretty overblown. Yeah, occasionally real, planned stuff like the Bataclan attacks happen, but frequently these "IS-linked attacks" are some loser shooting someone and giving a random shout out to IS.

This guy here in Straya had previously been acquitted of support of a terrorist organisation for being involved with some IS-linked Somali group, so maybe he was a little more IS affiliated than just giving a shout out. But if he was, it didn't appear to help him any with planning. And he was just a loser career criminal guy with 890234535 priors for drug, robbery and violent offences. BTW, it transpires he was somehow out on parole despite having had his sentence increased for arson while in prison. He also once stabbed a fellow prisoner while in youth detention. Questions are being asked about this. This is not the first time in recent years a homicide has been committed on parole by someone where it seems pretty obv they should not have been paroled. I hope the right lessons are learned from this and it doesn't end up just being more TOUGH ON TEH CRIME across the board.

It's actually two good characteristics and one bad one:

1. Smart enough to know there's something amiss with Trump (good!)
2. self aware enough to know that when their betters sneer at dumb racists that they are actually pretty close to the target (self awareness is good!)
3. total lack of self control to acknowledge the reality of where the real problem lies (it's with their racist friends/family, not the people pointing it out)

Trump campaigned on banning Muslims and Mexicans. It doesn't matter how much any of them hated liberals, hated lattes, hated Priuses, wanted to privatize the government, voted GOP their whole lives, hated taxes or all of that. You don't vote for Trump if you're not an authoritarian racist.

Like Chris said, obviously *some* of these plots are orchestrated and financed and coordinated and require a high degree of competence (at doing evil, terrible deeds).

However, even some with high death counts are rather crude in their implementation and the connections between the attackers and ISIS are extremely tenuous (see Orlando). Sometimes the connections are nothing more than the attackers watched some videos and made a pledge.

And I think our point is furthered by the inclination of some to take what are just normal, pedestrian if not vicious crimes are wrapped in the veneer of the Global War on Terror and all participants either ISIS or Good Guys. Take the case ChrisV is talking about in Melbourne where some dude who apparently shot a guy, took another hostage in an apartment building and shot it out with the police. That's like a real bad act and is in almost all ways simply a local crime story; it instantly becomes 'terrorism' and 'ISIS' in media stories because the dude who went off pledged himself to ISIS (and Al Qaeda!). There's no evidence he had any contact with either but the whole incident eventually gets lumped into various unkempt statistics and story-telling about creeping ISIS fueled dystopian future, fanning the flames of fear and paranoia in Bumbleweed towns across America and wherever else about this global clash of cultures.

One easy, trivial sort of re-write of the story that requires no dishonesty whatsoever is simply that humans engage in all kinds of derpy violence and pledging themselves to ISIS is now almost the reflexive move of derpy Muslim guys everywhere. Maybe this guy isn't even a bumbling incompetent, but if there's no meaningful coordination and is ISIS is just the freak flag for various angerbear Muslim guys to fly, I think it's a bit much to turn every one of their crimes into another event in the global war on terror. What purpose does that really serve? It's almost brazenly inaccurate, but in addition, has a bunch of other negative effects.

I know you know the answer to this question, right? It lets them run to the internet with their Islam hot takes.

Id love to see one of these mystery ISIS websites which young men are reading and afterwards deciding to blow themseves up at Ariana Grande concerts

i know about the warnings GWB received. that said, i lay the blame of 9/11 on Clinton and not GWB (and i'm a Dem).