To be honest, the fact that he thought his plan was a good idea to begin with shows that he's not all that smart.
It does, doesn't it? That apparent disregard for people's safety and well-being out of sheer greed is mindboggling for me. I just don't understand it.
He would have had a better chance if he just asked Surf to short the stock and post it and then bought it. It would have ran to new highs.
Just to add to the humor of the situation: "Barnett is currently on probation for a 1992 kidnapping in Pinellas County, records show. In a written report submitted to his probation officer in January, Barnett said his personal goal was "learning financial markets."" http://www.clickorlando.com/news/investigators/accused-target-bomber-was-learning-financial-markets
%% Exactly what i was thinking.No telling how many red gov//SEC flags maybe, he raised with his plan to ... be long[buy] Target. LOL. The FBI made a joke about ''the gang that could not shoot straight'' LOL
If this dude's name was Mohammed.... we'd still have "our regularly scheduled programming" being preempted with hoards of fear mongering news reports for the masses.
That's how confirmation bias works, we only see what we want to see. A shockingly large number of my right of center friends still thought that Al Qaeda made millions buying puts on airlines before 9/11 when I asked them, even though it was pretty definitively determined that they didn't. There are reasonable people, not conspiracy wingnuts, and they did adjust their worldview to that particular fact when it was pointed out to them, but until then their brain had just glossed over and/or ignored it. I'm sure my brain does the same, that's why I talk politics with people who have different views than me.