The one and only thing I will ever not vehemently disagree with Trump on: the terrorists generally are losers.

Re my last comment, only a few people like your Bannons and Alex Joneses can come out as a form of winner in catering to those kinds of people.

Well, making laws against masks has been done elsewhere. North Carolina, for instance: http://law.justia.com/codes/north-caroli…

Not that I want to start emulating North Carolina or amything.

@ 1/2,

The problem is that US leadership isn't making any serious effort to understand the causes of terrorism in order to prevent future attacks. No society can ever be secure enough to stop lone wolf attacks, so addressing poverty, racism, statelessness, and religious bigotry would be far more effective in stopping terrorism than calling people "losers."

Agreeing with HW3 @1. When I heard Trump make that remark about the terrorists being losers, it suddenly occurred to me, "I can't believe it. Trump actually said exactly the right thing for once."

I could swear I heard some other prominent public figure (one with far more credibility than our current president) make much the same point some time ago.

So just now I did a nice, little Google search: "terrorists losers -trump" (the minus says exclude entries with that word). Wouldn't you know, former Obama Defense Secretary Ashton Carter called described terrorists as "losers with a keyboard."

It's not Ash Carter though whom I'm remembering. It musta been Bill Maher.

The Daily Caller - and Tucker Carlson, the guy who founded it and decreed that there would be no negative coverage of Fox - are an official GOP cockholster, so the proposed budget must be completely indefensible if even they are criticizing it.

@9:

So, you would agree that deep seated cultural differences between the West and Islam are part of what drives wayward old men to do things like send young men and women to kill people in countries where they have no business being in the first place?

"I'm poor so I'm going to kill myself and a bunch of other people"? No..these are true believers who think they are going to paradise. This wave of terrorism is only justified by guilt ridden Westerners as some sort of revenge for the Crusades or other such non-sense. Read the ISIS publication Dabiq and it spells out WHY they are doing this. It should give any reasonable person pause.

@14: Indeed - we should be reading Dabiq. I can't find a link to it but you can find some PDF files (ugh) of back issues.

Conversely, it's pretty easy to find Dailystormer.com and other white supremacist sites, and (for those so inclined) to try to extrapolate horrors that are as evil as one would on the Dabiq side.

"I'm a loser baby, so why don't you kill me...

...forces of evil in a bozo nightmare... etc

Monster/Loser : what's the difference? Any word can be flipped to a badge of honor, just ask any deplorable.

@9 - the kid who carried out the bombing was West, born and raised in England. Bigtime Manchester United fan. It's more like lack of a father figure and here comes a group that offers that taking advantage of that vulnerability with additional ideas of how he could be important, filling the void of love with hate. Like what COMTE says, kid was nothing but a vessel.

Speaking of love and hate and flipping semantics, go look at Trump campaign rallies. They transposed love and hate all the time with great success. Campaign exhortations to 'Feel the love!' were nothing more than thinly veiled incitements to revel in bigotry and hatred.

@17
http://www.globalresearch.ca/non-muslims…
Latinos committed more acts of terrorism in the Americans than any other group.
I guess you don't read much.

@17
"Controlling for target type, fatalities, and being arrested, attacks by Muslim perpetrators received, on average, 449% more coverage than other attacks."
https://www.google.com/amp/reason.com/ar…

God I wish this country could become a beautiful Islamic paradise.

@20 many commentators on Slog agree with you.

And just look at how Muslim majority nations treat minorities or women. It really is paradise. Just ask any SJW!!! No really, just ask them!! They will go on and on on how superior Islamic culture is to our own. PRAISE ALLAH !!!

@21
So people who rape and murder in the name of religion are worse than people who rape and murder for other reasons, like money, power or just for a thrill?
Could you please explain that?
You see, in the world I live in murder and mayhem are equally heinous, regardless what your motive might be.

@21
You realize that in our country you are far more likely to be killed by some random criminal than by a terrorist, right?
In fact, you're more likely to be killed by lightning than to be killed by a terrorist.
This fear of Muslims you have couldn't have anything at all to do with your own personal prejudices or bigotry, could it?

@20: no one wants that except you

I keep hearing from the social justice types how great Islam is for human rights. I really think they should stop talking about how great it is and start living it. They should just move to places like Saudi Arabia or the UAE and get a first hand taste of the amazing life they would live under the gentle hand of the Quran.

Flights are leaving SeaTac all the time! So what are you waiting for!!! LIVE the Islamic Life!!!

@26
I'm 100% sure that you never heard anything like that. If you have, please produce a link.
You know, Islam doesn't have to be good for people hating Muslims to be bad.

@17:

Islamic "culture" as it has manifested for the past 200 years or so has been driven almost entirely by Western colonial encroachment. The West needed oil, the Persian Gulf had lots of it, so we went in and either took it outright or else installed proxy regimes willing to sell it to us on-the-cheap, which in turn enriched a very few at the expense of the many. Iran our #1 adversary in the region precisely because the West elected to side with the Sunni controlled ruling house of Pahlavi, and against the Shi'a majority population.

As for Islamic culture "uniquely shap(ing) the way the people of that region have responded to Western encroachment", well that could be said about pretty much any geographic area where Western Colonialism took a foothold; the peoples of Africa, Australia, the Indian subcontinent, and both North and South America all certainly responded in their own "unique" ways, and almost universally with disastrous and long-reaching results. It's just that the Middle East, being really the last major global region where the yoke of Colonialism was finally thrown off, is still acting in response to the stranglehold the West - or by extension Western proxies - has locked them into for roughly the past century.

Sharia Law, which the majority of Muslims support, is a beautiful thing. Here's hoping it becomes a reality n the USA, inshallah.

@25 Yeah, that's a lot of nonsense. Still, you'll be hard pressed to find much criticism of Islam from the left, though there is always as much as anyone can stomach of Judaism and Christianity. More to the point, if anyone dares suggest that maybe there is a small but highly toxic cohort of Islamists responsible for much of the terrorist acts around the world TODAY and that maybe their religion plays a role their motives in nail-bombing children, stoning women and throwing gays off buildings, well, those people are islamaphobes who are literally hitler. Amirite?

There is a lot of hate-blame to go around. Certainly the right has latched onto the (overall) brownness and the not-christians-like-us-ness of Muslims and hate them for that. The left turns a blind eye to the faults of the culture and religion and hates anyone who thinks maybe some reform of a 9th century worldview is in order.

There is a 500 lb gorilla in the room and few -with some notable exceptions- are confronting it.

And as a result of our interference in Guatamala it became a virtual killing field for much of the next four decades - maybe not the best example of the point you're attempting to make?

The only reason Saudi Arabia didn't share a fate similar to much of the rest of the Middle East was because the British simply didn't recognize there was any value under all those millions of square miles of arid desert until they'd already pulled up stakes. Oil wasn't even discovered there until 1933, and not in commercially exploitable quantities until 1938, and by then Britain was far too distracted by the looming threat of German Fascism to go back in and try to take it by force. Besides, U.S. based petroleum companies had already beaten them to the punch, as it were, cutting sweetheart deals with the ruling House of Saud, and turning a veritable handful of former nomadic herders into some of the wealthiest people on the planet in a matter of just a few years' time.

As for Iran, if we'd allowed the democratically-elected Mossaddegh government to remain in-place, despite their nationalization of domestic oil production (and in spite of the U.S. and Britain's belief that THEIR oil belonged to US) there probably would have been enough subsequent democratic reforms enacted over time to blunt any conservative backlash, and for certain there would not have been any grounds for a leftist/Islamic revolution such as the one that ousted Shah in 1979, and thus it would not have spawned the Shi'a-led fundamentalist Islamic counter-insurgency we're fighting against today.

(@33 meant for @30)

@32:

It's not that there's no criticism from the Left, but unlike so many on the Right, it's criticism of individuals and small groups, rather than a blanket condemnation of the entire 1.6 Billion people who happen to practice the same religion - just like Christians keep saying we shouldn't hold ALL of them responsible for the violent acts committed in their name by a comparatively tiny handful of extremists on their side.

@34 Fair enough. But I wonder - do YOU think maybe some reform of a 9th century worldview is in order?

@35:

Sure, and while we're at it, I think there's a lot of reform in order for a 1st Century worldview as well.

@38 Because they're followers of Osama Bin Laden, who hated the US for our support of the extremely cruel and corrupt House of Saud. Why don't you ask WHY we support the MOST oppressive regime against women, LGBT, minorities, and poor people in the world, or why we just "sold" them all those weapons so they can spread their cruelty and oppression to other countries in the region, or why they owe so much property and so many businesses in the US? Why do we demonize Iran, where more than half of college students are females, while support Saudi Arabia, where women are chattel and slaves? It's ridiculous to spout off about evil Islam on one side of your mouth, and sell them lots of weapons to help them commit whatever evil they wish on the other! As always, our actions - because of greed and entitlement - have consequences!

Previous post is @37, not myself!

Also,
* ...actions - taken because of greed....

@37 Please stop while you're centuries behind. Why do you think that is?
Your ignorance is appalling. THINK, doofus!
@38 & @39 iseult: Well said, and future generations along with this planet will suffer
catastrophically for it.