1 Well there's a difference between terrorism and just a crazy dude wanting to blow stuff up. Maybe he had a personal grudge against time square.

What I find amazing is how many of these attempted attacks fail. Surely it can't be that hard to make something explode? (I am in no way implying that I want these things to explode.)

2 The fun part was that I was 5 blocks away, smoking cigars.  Bucket of yucks I tell ya.  All I need is to go through something like that again.

*twitch*

3

Actually it is. (Things exploding by accident or neglect is one thing.) Magic doesn't exist, so bombs, like everything else, depend on physical processes. Thus, it takes a certain amount of care and technical knowledge to get something that will go off precisely when desired, without blowing up things beforehand. This is part of the reason why western trained engineers are more successful as terrorists. This is also the reason why killing technical staff is such a good strategy to counter suicide bombers.

It is sort of like ice melting in your beverage compared having it melt to a precise schedule. The big difference is the whole dying if you screw up matter.  (Next time, try pretending that if you mis-estimate when the ice will melt, you will die of poison.)

A lot of terrorists are just crazy dudes who want to blow things up. What we are concerned about is organizations. Pulling off something big and 'successful' tends to require an organization. If it is all in the target country, and the population disapproves and isn't intimidated into silence, competent law enforcement who are allowed to follow up on stuff will tend to roll things up before they happen.

Terrorists can be defined as those who want to terrify people into following their political agenda, as opposed to forcing them.

International terrorism, which the soviets taught to most everyone they thought would bother us, tries to get around this by having part of the organization in another country without a police force as capable or as interested in rolling them up.

Treacherous lawfare tries to cripple the police force.

And of course, total idiots of various stripes try and change the population's situation so it isn't as inclined to inform. (These idiots may or may not understand the result of their actions.) The American population is, by definition, hard to intimidate successfully. It is also quite unlikely to serve anyone's political agenda if riled up enough. (A population lacking such traits has lost or is missing the American vital spirit, and is, at best, American in name only rather than fact.)

In fairness, 'does not appear to be a terrorist threat' may be fedspeak for lone nutter, probably going to be run down quick or blown up rather than being a continuing menace.

4 At risk of turning this into a "how to make bombs" thread, if you REALLY want to make sure it explodes, surely you can just buy a fuse, or use a physical one off a piece of fireworks or something, rather than building some crazy contraption with clocks and things? I'm assuming here that the only function of the fuse is to allow the bomber to get out without being blown to bits.

5 Re: Jordi's question, and Pat's response. Israeli anti-terrorist forces have a saying:

Q: how can you tell the successful bomb-makers?
A:  They're the ones missing fingers, hands, and eyes.  The rest are already dead.

6 Mr. Idjit apparently did use fireworks.  Fuses have purposes beyond escape, which I will not get into.  Fuses and detonators, especially demo grade stuff, are specialty items, and the sellers pay some attention to purchasers.  Rube Goldberg devices are harder to track, and may appeal more to the minds of paranoid, lone, nutcases.

7

"I'm assuming here that the only function of the fuse is to allow the bomber to get out without being blown to bits."

Feel free to keep making that assumption. Assumptions like that are the main reason most would-be terrorists end up only blowing up themselves. Plus, it strangely helps people sleep better at night to think that the terrorists can just make bombs out of ordinary household products, rather than having their bombs built in massive factory installations that only government defense departments can fund and support. It means they can pretend there are no national governments out to kill US citizens, just tiny gangs that can be dealt with by demanding police action from the nation they're operating from. And the resulting "Sure, we'll get right on it" followed by some random Moe off the street being executed for the terror act will make it all better, while the terrorist-supporting government's leaders laugh themselves sick over how stupid Americans are to get all our ideas from Hollywood.

8

"I was trying to remember when we last had a car-bombing in this country. Isn't this the first since Oklahoma City?"

There was an attempted car-bombing not too long ago in downtown Dallas.  Unfortunately for the would-be bomber, his suppliers were the feds, who (obviously) didn't give him a real bomb.

9 This looks like one of 2 things.  Either retaliation for the decapitation strike in Iraq about a month ago against 2 senior AQ in Iraq by Iraqi National Police or the Comedy Central South Park episode.  If it's for the 2 dead leaders in Iraq, they'd hit the Iraqi National Police HQ.  However, this vehicle is park outside of Viacom HQ in Time Square, and the South Park episode aired last week.

As far as we know, that particular group that spooked Comedy Central IS  based in New York City, and this would explained the tight schedule issue.  They want to intimidate everyone who disagree with them, and what better way than to start with a threat and end with a bang. 

However, making one of these thing isn't easy.  Even McVeigh and Nichols took their time to practice and refined their bomb before setting the real one off.  This guy have the general idea on what to do, but not necessary the actual working plan.  For example, the 8 bags of fertilizer is the wrong kind, and won't explode when ignited.