It does raise an interesting question. If you yell ‘Allah Akbar’ at a mass shooting, does it automatically make it a terrorist attack?
Conversely, if the Vegas shooter had yelled ‘Praise Jesus,’ would it have made him a terrorist?
(I’m not implying Muslim terrorism and Christian terrorism are equivalent problems, mind you. Just wondering about definitional questions…)
Don’t you have a 650 page manual to write? :)
I’m outsourcing it to Bruce Geryk.
You have Geryk money? Holy crap!
Oh, I didn’t figure I’d have to pay him. He’s like a brain surgeon or something. He’s probably loaded.
How do you think he got so rich? Not by giving away his talent. OTOH you could probably get a discount on brain surgery if you treat him right. I hear he likes to do… what does he call it? Frontal somethings.
I suspect that someone who decides, for whatever reason, to do something like this finds the narrative they can create by fitting their actions into something with a (to them) meaningful context attractive. Yelling something that puts your actions into the context of other actions that people have recognized and elevated to status worthy of obsession and panic is probably quite attractive. That’s not to say people aren’t sometimes actually motivated by what they feel is some sort of religious imperative, but these sorts of things seem to be more a case of people taking their own cultural roots, a widely-recognized MO, and their particular form of instability and making a template sort of thing out of it more than any sort of concerted ideological effort.
I"m pretty sure the Charlottesville dude worked himself up the same way, as running people over with cars seems to be rather far from either a) effective as a political tool, or b) a historically or culturally significant method of protest.
This morning trump is blaming Schumer for the attack last night.
edit:
Yep, he just went on TV and kept saying “diversity” like it was a bad word, over and over. This man is such a rotten scumbag. Now he’s ranting about political correctness.
“Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”
… but only if they have merit. (And are white.)
Also…
If we had merit based immigration, Trump’s family would never have been allowed in, so there’s an argument to be made for it.
Trump & McCain: Put Saipov in gitmo.
He also mispronounced diversity as “dee-verse-aree”. God what a Chump.
The assistant state attorney general handling the case, Cristina Correia, notified the court and participating attorneys Wednesday that her office was withdrawing from the case, according to an email obtained by the AP.
Spokeswoman Katelyn McCreary offered no explanation and said she couldn’t comment “on pending matters.”
Secretary of State Brian Kemp released a statement Wednesday saying the law firm of former Georgia Gov. Roy Barnes will represent Kemp and other state election officials. It did not say whether the state would pay Barnes’ firm. Both Kemp and state Attorney General Chris Carr are Republicans. Barnes is a Democrat.
By what authority can Trump send Saipov to gitmo? Does the attack become a Federal crime if defined as ‘terrorism’?
But Mr Trump said America’s criminal justice system was too slow, offering an extraordinary rebuke of America’s legal process.
“We also have to come up with punishment that’s far quicker and far greater than the punishment these animals are getting now. They’ll go through court for years”, Mr Trump said, adding that “what we have right now is a joke, and it’s a laughing stock”.
That part scares me.
They found a note in the truck which said, ISIS lives forever.
Edit: Now I’m hearing will endure instead of lives.
Of course it is a bad word for his base. In fact “diversity” symbolizes everything that nazis hate about America, so naturally Trump signals it’s a bad thing.
He also said that he wants to deal with “people like this” quickly and that our legal system was a joke. So I guess he essentially wants to do away with due process.