First They Came for the Applebee’s Salad Bar
If you thought middle America was pissed when they hit the WTC, you ain’t seen nothing yet:
Al Qaeda terrorists planned to poison food at multiple US hotels and restaurants over a single weekend, it has been revealed this morning.The ‘credible’ plot involved slipping the poisons cyanide and ricin into salad bars and buffets, according to CBS news.
The terrorist group behind the failed ‘ink cartridge’ attacks on cargo planes in October were said to have hatched the plan.
Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula branded the plot ‘Operation Haemorrhage’.
Militants say the plot consists of ‘attacking the enemy with smaller but more frequent operations’ to ‘add a heavy economic burden to an already faltering economy’.
When the Haley Barbour voting population can’t waddle up to a Golden Corral buffet bar safely after the weekend sermon on the threat of gays, it is time for all out war.
Although an argument could be made that if you are eating at a Golden Corral or similar place, you are already poisoning yourself.
how many more bombs will we have to drop on Afghanistan to stop AlQ from trying these kinds of things ?
December 21st, 2010 at 2:10 pm
And, for added irony, Republicans’ opposition to regulating food imports—such as from China—has made it easier than ever for terrorists to poison Americans.
December 21st, 2010 at 2:12 pm
It’s too damn easy to come up with asymmetric attacks against a country as big as the United States. They don’t even have to work. Al Qaeda only has to provoke the immune system and the body will consume itself fighting the disease.
December 21st, 2010 at 2:12 pm
So now we know why they passed the food safety act?
aimai
December 21st, 2010 at 2:12 pm
Look at the food pictures from the article. I take it the Brits have no idea what a salad bar in the US looks like.
December 21st, 2010 at 2:12 pm
I’ve long suspected that those places used the contents of ink cartridges as salad dressing, but it’s good to have proof once and for all.
December 21st, 2010 at 2:12 pm
That’s why I’m still waiting for someone to blow himself up at a mall or a Wal-Mart. That would be some real damage.
But you also haven’t pointed out that Obama is weak on terrorism because he prevented it from happening, because he would have been weak if it had happened. Or something like that.
December 21st, 2010 at 2:13 pm
Not the cherry tomatoes!
That’s why I’m still waiting for someone to blow himself up at a mall or a Wal-Mart.
I’ve been waiting for that since Christmas shopping season, 2001. It ain’t never going to stop, folks, because there are nihilists out there, and because in order to protect
our global corporate interestsourselves we’re going to continue to keep our military in their faces day in and day out untilthe oil runs outfreedom reigns.And for some reason, nighttime searches by body armored US troops and hourly flyovers by US helicopters and the occasional drone strike piss some people off. Ungrateful bastards.
December 21st, 2010 at 2:13 pm
Can they just poison the bankers, please? ;P
December 21st, 2010 at 2:14 pm
I’m convinced that al Qaeda is just trolling us with retarded plots.
Besides, if they truly were serious about a food-borne attack, they’d poison the corn syrup supply.
December 21st, 2010 at 2:14 pm
Deleted, with a five-minute major penalty, for not reading the headline.
December 21st, 2010 at 2:15 pm
LOL LOL LOL LOL LOL LOL LOL LOL LOL
God that was great.
OK I saw that story on the news last night and my bullshit radar went off BIG time. This, I have the feeling, will be like those Keystone Cops-style “Al Qaeda” who tried to take down the Brooklyn Bridge with a Bic liter.
There’s just the waft of merde coming off this story, though maybe it’s the smell of that Golden Corrall salad bar.
Ironically enough, I got food poisoning this weekend. Al Qaeda doesn’t need to slip ricin into the food supply, we’ll just let the free hand of the market kill us off by defunding the Dept. of Agriculture.
December 21st, 2010 at 2:15 pm
@Bnut:
The Daily Mail is completely unhooked from reality. Which is surprising, as it’s not one of the Murdoch-owned papers.
December 21st, 2010 at 2:16 pm
@Belafon (formerly anonevent): I’m still waiting for someone to blow himself up at a mall or a Wal-Mart.
with the DHS anti-terror messages playing on TV screens in the background …
December 21st, 2010 at 2:16 pm
Clearly Al Qaeda doesn’t realize that our food supply is already full of shit, poison, and carcinogens. They should take this weak shit to a non-third world nation.
December 21st, 2010 at 2:17 pm
How are you supposed to poison multiple eating places without someone noticing it?
December 21st, 2010 at 2:17 pm
I hate to burst the media’s bubble, and I know you don’t know me from adam, but I can say with some authority this is a non-story. Some CBS media dupe got ahold of a DHS paper of how this could potentially happen and blew it up to feed the daily beast.
Expect a statement from DHS soon.
December 21st, 2010 at 2:18 pm
Terrific. Can’t wait for the random strip searches at IHOP.
December 21st, 2010 at 2:18 pm
Honestly, why do we worry about these clowns? Poison in the salad bar? Yeah, they might kick off this plan and get a dozen people across the country before we figure it out and there are suddenly no more salad bars.
But what do they envision happening? They’re going to kill a dozen people in one night in one location? It’s just not going to happen. Even if nobody realizes it’s terrorism, the second multiple people fall over ill in a restaurant everyone is going to put down their forks.
I’m not trying to mock the harm these nuts can cause, but as a Big Threat they don’t even rise up to the level of danger that driving in a car exposes you to. They need to be watched out for by the appropriate counter-intelligence authorities and the rest of us need to get on with our lives.
December 21st, 2010 at 2:18 pm
@Don: Oh my god.
Get out of my brain!
December 21st, 2010 at 2:19 pm
Don’t wanna see no full body scanners at those places.
December 21st, 2010 at 2:20 pm
@colleeniem: Well, it is the Daily Mail, so I’m inclined to believe you.
December 21st, 2010 at 2:20 pm
@4tehlulz:
Or just the toothpaste, cough syrup, and children’s toys?
December 21st, 2010 at 2:21 pm
i think you mean the Golden Trough.
December 21st, 2010 at 2:21 pm
this is an exact replica of the actual plot that the rajneeshies pulled in Antelope, Oregon in the biggest bioterrorism event in US history:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1.....ror_attack
December 21st, 2010 at 2:21 pm
They hate us for our
freedomsall-you-can-eat buffets.December 21st, 2010 at 2:22 pm
@Bnut: the pictures look like a buffet at an Indian or Mediterranean restaurant… not a typical one… they are pulled from stock agencies after all.
December 21st, 2010 at 2:22 pm
So I think I see why Obama gets a rap as soft on terrorism. He keeps foiling their plots. A real American President would have lost three or four planes by now.
December 21st, 2010 at 2:22 pm
Sorry John, but Applebee’s doesn’t have a salad bar.
Perhaps if you were more in touch with common Americans, you wouldn’t make such simple mistakes.
As it is, this utterly impugns your credibility as a serious and respected journalist and rightly so.
December 21st, 2010 at 2:23 pm
@Joseph Nobles:
They still have no clue about the US.
Did they not realize how effective two bozos with a sniper’s
rifle and a large trunk sedan were in bringing out the crazy?
Can you imagine ten pairs like Malvo and Muhammed,
given $5k, a car and a rifle?
Either they cannot get these people into the US or they just do not understand.
December 21st, 2010 at 2:23 pm
You’ll notice how they aren’t targeting the candy section at Whole Foods. Clearly, the terrists are in league with the libruls.
December 21st, 2010 at 2:23 pm
“This terrorist alert sponsored by the American Beef Council. Beef: it’s what’s for dinner.”
December 21st, 2010 at 2:24 pm
Golden Corral – ouch!
I am going to visit in-laws for the holidays. They live in a small town in Texas. Golden Corral is a big thing there.
I checked yelp reviews for that town and almost wept:
“I love Olive Garden! So much so, that after living in Italy for four years, it was the second place we ate at when we came back to the states. Authentic Italian food is bland and doesn’t ever have enough sauce! Blah! ”
December 21st, 2010 at 2:25 pm
@4tehlulz:
Well somebody is, because this kind of plot is ridiculous. Get a network of militants together, give them all some ricin, and turn them loose on the salad bars and buffets of the US? It sounds like something Cobra Commander would have dreamed up. This almost sounds like the next excuse after the next wave of food poisoning in the US - it’s not a failure of the FDA to monitor the food supply! It’s terrorists spreading ricin on salad bars!
Seriously, if you have ricin and you have enough people in the US to make this kind of thing work I’d imagine you could come up with something a little scarier than killing the buffet restaurant industry.
@Belafon (formerly anonevent):
This is what I’m worried about. We saw the kind of damage a guy with a fucking TRUCK FULL OF FERTILIZER was able to do in the 90s. The fact that we haven’t seen a suicide bomber at a Kansas City Wal*Mart or the Mall of America suggests to me that al-Qaeda have problems recruiting people who live in the US and are willing to blow themselves up for the cause. That’s a positive thing in my mind – I hope we can keep it up.
December 21st, 2010 at 2:25 pm
Is Professor Chaos now AQ’s head honcho?
December 21st, 2010 at 2:25 pm
@San: My soul hurts.
December 21st, 2010 at 2:26 pm
@Don: you simpleton….dont you get what just fucking happened?
OBL junk-punked America in the wallstreet junk and destroyed our economy and our courage with one blow.
all ive ever heard on the radio are antiwarsongs since i reached adulthood.
we have spent TEN FUCKING YEARS IN MENA PLAYING WHACKAMOLE while our economy bleeds out.
we arent the land of the free and of the home of the brave…we are the land of economic serfs and fucking cowards that torture brown people and blow them up with drones while building schools for their kids and paying mercs to slaughter their menfolk.
/spit
December 21st, 2010 at 2:28 pm
So apparently AQAP is getting its terrorism ideas from episodes of Breaking Bad?
/when is our military-industrial complex going to cop to the fact that there is no legitimate international terrorist threat, rather than disparate regional ones with minimal exposure to American lives?
December 21st, 2010 at 2:29 pm
@NonyNony:
“suggests to me that al-Qaeda have problems recruiting people who live in the US and are willing to blow themselves up for the cause. That’s a positive thing in my mind – I hope we can keep it up. ”
This.
December 21st, 2010 at 2:29 pm
I don’t know how we’d know the difference. You ever take a look at the contents of your toilet after a trip to McDonalds? Looks like somebody threw a hand grenade into a bowl of chocolate cake batter, most times.
December 21st, 2010 at 2:31 pm
@matoko_chan: “spent TEN FUCKING YEARS IN MENA PLAYING WHACKAMOLE”
What do carny amusements have to do with Clinton’s drug smuggling gang?
December 21st, 2010 at 2:33 pm
What, are we in an Agatha Christie novel now? Ricin and cyanide?! Seriously?!
December 21st, 2010 at 2:33 pm
Are we sure someone didn’t just order squid at one of these places and confuse the natural defense mechanism for a terrorist attack by ink cartridges?
Stories have a way of changing like that, you know.
December 21st, 2010 at 2:34 pm
I think I saw this plot on a Criminal Minds episode, though the test run was done with LSD, which might be
amusingrather terrifying to watch in a Golden Corral.December 21st, 2010 at 2:34 pm
You ever read SomethingAwful’s G.I. Joe after action reports? Good stuff.
December 21st, 2010 at 2:34 pm
@sukabi:
In other words, the opening of Terry Gilliam’s Brazil.
December 21st, 2010 at 2:34 pm
@The Moar You Know:
Thanks for the mental image, Moar. Looks like I won’t have trouble with holiday weight gain this year after all.
December 21st, 2010 at 2:34 pm
@colleeniem: Since most salad bars have only a limited amount food out at one time, it didn’t seem like a smart idea. Glad you gave us your informed opinion.
Also, too..my whole foods has a nice salad bar.
December 21st, 2010 at 2:35 pm
OT, sort of, but so long as we’re engaging in security kabuki, here’s the sort of thing they’re stating from the “rational” conservative corners of the internet on the subject of Peter King and his HUAC for Muslims circus.
Be forewarned, there’s a surplusage of stupid on that thread.
http://forum.darwincentral.org.....38;t=41407
December 21st, 2010 at 2:36 pm
@NonyNony:
you defame the Holy Name.
Cobra Commander would have junk-punched America in cyberspace just like Julian Assange did, or junk-punched America in meatspace like OBL.
December 21st, 2010 at 2:37 pm
What the hell is Golden Corral? I had never heard of it before this post?
December 21st, 2010 at 2:37 pm
@catclub: i take you are unfamiliar with our “surgical strategy” to kill terrorists in A-stan with drone strikes?
its whackamole.
because of SNT, every hostile killed creates AT LEAST two more, because of influence propagation along both social and consanguineous network connections.
its called the Dragonsteeth Axiom of Social Network Theory.
December 21st, 2010 at 2:39 pm
Cats blowing up dogs!
December 21st, 2010 at 2:40 pm
@schrodinger’s cat:
Lucky you.
December 21st, 2010 at 2:41 pm
This will be great for unemployment and then it will kill the restaurant biz. Allow me to demonstrate:
1. This story falls into the fRighty Skreeomatic.
2. Glenn Beck goes through 5 blackboards explaining the threat of buffet style restaurants.
3. Rep. Louie Gohmert introduces a bill titled “Toss My Salad,” to circumvent this new terrorist threat.
4. CNN does a 5 part story on Death Amongst the Cuke Chunks.
5. People start refusing to eat at restaurants staffed by anyone who fits the profile on Pamela Geller’s 500 point Mooslim Spotting Checklist.
6. Restaurants have to let go of all of their undocumented workers who fit the profile and hire documented workers who don’t.
7. The new employees will expect more than $1.50 an hour and all the scraps they can keep from being thrown away at the end of their shift.
8. Unemployment drops, but restaurants have to raise their prices to pay their new employees.
9. People stop eating out.
10. Restaurants start dropping like flies.
The moral of the story: Buy stock in Hungry Man TV Dinners!
December 21st, 2010 at 2:41 pm
@JPL:
but the dressings will sit there for hours and hours and hours…
seriously, people. if AlQ started putting ricin in salad bars, or in the ketchup dispensers at McD’s, or started selling cyanide-dogs from a cart in front of a ball game, or whatever, this country would freak the fuck out. we would lose our goddammed minds.
December 21st, 2010 at 2:41 pm
@NonyNony:
Perhaps, but a big part of our not being subject to such attacks is that this is not how people like AlQ think. Even if some mall attack would cause loads of terror and economic chaos, AlQ and its ideological cousins are interested in targets that have a higher profile on the international stage. There’s a reason that they went after the WTC. It was a symbol of American Money/Power that the whole world recognized. Ditto for the Pentagon and (I guarantee) whatever building United 93 was going to try for. Any terrorist attack on some mall is going to be by home-grown crazies.
December 21st, 2010 at 2:42 pm
@schrodinger’s cat: It may be called Ryan’s Steakhouse in your neck of the woods.
December 21st, 2010 at 2:43 pm
@San:
/headdesk
December 21st, 2010 at 2:43 pm
@cleek: What country do you live in? Mine freaked out and lost its mind back in September of 2001.
December 21st, 2010 at 2:44 pm
@Michael:
Yeah, but this comment wasn’t stupid:
December 21st, 2010 at 2:45 pm
@kommrade reproductive vigor: Never heard of that one either. I checked its Wikipedia entry, it sounds like a place, you go to load up on the carbs before a big race. Although a family owned Italian restaurant may be better for that purpose.
December 21st, 2010 at 2:46 pm
@schrodinger’s cat:
you’re better off not knowing…
December 21st, 2010 at 2:46 pm
@schrodinger’s cat:
Count your blessings!
When it comes to bad restaurant experiences, the one time I was in Atlanta we got a recommendation for a place with a “fresh seafood buffet”. After that I almost became a vegetarian.
December 21st, 2010 at 2:47 pm
@cleek:
Of course, freak out over a localized terrorist threat, but heaven forbid we take a closer look at corporate agrobusiness deciding which side of quality food or profit to focus on.
December 21st, 2010 at 2:49 pm
@Mike in NC: Was everything at the buffet fried?
December 21st, 2010 at 2:49 pm
Actually I don’t much mind Applebee’s, it has some healthy items on its menu and is open late. Not exactly fine dining but not bad at all, in a pinch.
December 21st, 2010 at 2:52 pm
@Bubblegum Tate: Dr. Horrible had better plots
December 21st, 2010 at 2:52 pm
@balconesfault:
Wait till we have to have body searches/tss/body scans entering walmart.. woohoo, won’t that be awesome or what? I’ll have to make sure that I have nothing in my stomach that will projectile vomit after I see teh body scans of people entering walmart.
cain
December 21st, 2010 at 2:52 pm
You go to war with the salad bars you have
December 21st, 2010 at 2:52 pm
@David Hunt:
I think this was true in the past but it’s going to be less true in the future. al Qaeda hasn’t scored a big win in the US in almost a decade and some of them have to be getting antsy. If they really want to cause some economic chaos (like the linked report suggested) then there are ways to do it that don’t involve a ridiculous plot to poison the nation’s salad bars.
And it isn’t just aQ anymore either – the Taliban were the ones behind the Times Square bomb attempt. But even he wasn’t willing to kill himself for the cause – kill other people maybe, but not himself. That’s a good thing – if he’d been willing to sit there and blow the thing up himself it probably would have detonated instead of being a dud. And that would have driven us into a new round of crazy.
December 21st, 2010 at 2:52 pm
@The Moar You Know:
oh, we can get a hell of a lot more freaked-out than we are.
we go about our daily business almost exactly the way we did on 9/10, except for airports and govt snoops. turn our cheap greasy food against us, and things will get weird.
December 21st, 2010 at 2:52 pm
they’ll get us again. it will be big.
December 21st, 2010 at 2:53 pm
@Don: Your comment somewhat dovetails into this article from the January issue of Vanity Fair, “Bin Laden’s Lonely Crusade.”
December 21st, 2010 at 2:53 pm
Any terror we have is brought on by ourselves and our own Imperial actions.
WE CREATED bin Laden/Al Qaeda in the 1980s.
The chickens are coming home to roost. Nobody here is “innocent”.
December 21st, 2010 at 2:54 pm
John, aren’t you on vacation. Shouldn’t you be naked mopping?
December 21st, 2010 at 2:56 pm
@schrodinger’s cat: The one addition is that they have a grill that you can also keep getting meat from. So, if your on the Atkins diet, it will work just as well.
December 21st, 2010 at 2:57 pm
@JPL: As someone mentioned above, this has actually happened in the past in Oregon, with a group not affiliated with the Middle East in any way. See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1.....ror_attack
However, my anonymous internet opinion is that your Whole Foods bar is safe (and only a little pricey). Go and enjoy!
December 21st, 2010 at 2:58 pm
@matoko_chan: No, Cobra Commander did try restaurant related hijinks once, by buying/starting a national burger chain who’s kitsch included giant red rockets on top of their restaurants which he planned to turn into actual rockets.
But I’d like to think he’d take the long term approach now. See, if you poison the food, people will stop eating out. They’ll lose weight, get in better shape, live longer, maybe start growing their own food and improving the environment, and then you’ve got a nation of lean, pissed off, fit, heavily armed Americans to deal with.
Keep feeding them burgers, then use the money you make in 20 years to buy pharmaceutical companies which produce the anti-cholesterol, hypertension, and insulin drugs they’re all using and threaten to cut them off unless they make you supreme ruler.
December 21st, 2010 at 3:00 pm
@Belafon (formerly anonevent): Sorry not much of a meat person. When I am eating out, I generally prefer Vietnamese or Thai or Middle eastern/Mediterranean food.
December 21st, 2010 at 3:00 pm
And isn’t it de rigeur for a terrorist plot to be “uncovered” the week of Christmas?
December 21st, 2010 at 3:01 pm
Al Queda knows that threat of plots and attacks are almost as good as real attacks – since it hogs the news cycles, makes them look like they are on the march, and throws people into a panic. And yes … all of that eventally does hurt the public’s confidence and cause economic damage.
Plus, as TSA has demonstrated over the last few months, Al Queda’s threats are really effective at getting the United States to overreact and do stupid, expensive, ineffective things that are destructive of commerce and personal liberty … in order to chase Al Queda’s ever-changing array of threats and phantoms. Because we need to be SAFE, at all costs, no questions asked, and no opposition tolerated.
And while we are chasing phantoms, Al Queda can plan their REAL attacks.
But messing with our fast food and buffet restaurants? Man … that’s ruthless! Talk about taking the fight to the American heartland.
December 21st, 2010 at 3:03 pm
@Comrade Dread: but that is happening anyways….did Cobra Commander plan it all already?
December 21st, 2010 at 3:04 pm
@some other guy: Ummm, maybe in another dimension… in this dimension it’s prime time...
December 21st, 2010 at 3:04 pm
Off-topic: I loved this bit from the recent G.I. Joe web serial, Resolute.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CRWI4Z-YB_c
December 21st, 2010 at 3:06 pm
Aren’t you supposed to be on vacation?
December 21st, 2010 at 3:06 pm
Deleted, double comment.
December 21st, 2010 at 3:08 pm
@jeffreyw: Homer is adorable. How old is he now? Have hostilities with your other kittehs ceased?
December 21st, 2010 at 3:08 pm
@4tehlulz:
Harder to get to without being suspicious.
December 21st, 2010 at 3:08 pm
@Bokonon:
The problm is that one wacko group already tried this exact sort of thing a few years ago in Oregon. It didn’t work, and nobody got sick from the contaminated salad bars…but I imagine somebody will succeed at some point and we can see pictures of distraught parents and coffins of six year old kids.
If that gets tracked to an overseas group, you can forget about any drawdowns or disengagement in South Central Asia in our lifetimes…to say nothing of most of the Bill of Rights.
December 21st, 2010 at 3:13 pm
I welcome the inevitable wingnut freakout. In that spirit, I have a few suggestions for our would-be terrorists:
1) Don’t hit floofy food outlets. 80% of the country already thinks that hummus is some kind of plot to destroy America. Aim for bacon and breakfast sausage, cheetos, Mountain Dew, Pop-Tarts, and Twinkies – fried Twinkies if possible. One word: baconnaise.
2) For restaurants, Applebees isn’t bad, but Cracker Barrel, Sonic, Dairy Queen, Dunkin Donuts are really your best bets. Aim low on the budget.
3) Skip the water supply – we don’t drink water unless it’s flown in from some exotic island ruled by a military junta (you know, because its the responsible thing to do). Hit the Mountain Dew and Diet Coke supply for maximum effectiveness. People brush their teeth with that shit in this country.
4) If you really want to see the country blow up – there’s only two sectors you need to hit: tobacco products (cigs, chew, etc) and caffeine (coffee, Coke). If you make those sectors appear to be compromised, and people don’t get their fix, the US will look like Dawn of the Dead after about a week.
December 21st, 2010 at 3:15 pm
@kommrade reproductive vigor:
You forgot 11) Restaurant closings are blamed on Michelle Obama’s “food police” and the Food Safety Bill.
December 21st, 2010 at 3:17 pm
Am I being naive, or is it ridiculous that we haven’t captured or killed Osama yet? I realize it’s possible to hide for a couple of years like Eric Randolph, but for ten years with the CIA looking for you? And I doubt Osama can blend in perfectly: he’s over six feet tall and probably has a dozen bodyguards with him. Am I missing something?
December 21st, 2010 at 3:18 pm
@Tom Levenson:
No, you only get five for fighting. Not reading the headline is just a two-minute minor.
Ed
December 21st, 2010 at 3:20 pm
Also, all AQ has to do is fuck up Shrimpfest at Red Lobster, and you will have your war forever and eternal.
December 21st, 2010 at 3:20 pm
Man, this thread has some chemical-weapons grade poison in spots.
December 21st, 2010 at 3:20 pm
Yeah, well, bring it AlQ. We got sneeze guards.
December 21st, 2010 at 3:21 pm
@Mark S.: Being hid by the ISI?
December 21st, 2010 at 3:22 pm
@Martin:
Mmm…hummus.
December 21st, 2010 at 3:25 pm
@licensed to kill time:
ZOMFG dude you totally nailed it. This is a repeat of the “dirty fucking hippies slipped LSD into the punch bowl at the cotillion” scare from the 60s
That’s TOTALLY it.
December 21st, 2010 at 3:26 pm
OT, but while we’re busy discussing Daily Mail fanfiction, Deadspin is asking the hard questions about our executive branch.
December 21st, 2010 at 3:26 pm
@Mark S.:
I’m starting to think that Osama is a fictitious person created by the NSA and CIA.
Seriously, I’m pretty sure the dude has been long dead, but kept alive for propaganda purposes by both sides. No one has seen or heard from him in years.
December 21st, 2010 at 3:28 pm
Cole needs help on Teflon cookware upstairs.
December 21st, 2010 at 3:28 pm
@Martin:
Meh – I know you’re joking but Mountain Dew and Diet Coke are all mixed with tap water. Also check the back of the label on that bottled water with the exotic island on the label – chances are it was bottled up the road from you using your city/state’s tap water supply. There are expensive bottled waters imported, but your Dasani and your Aquafina and your other brands that folks generally find are just bottled tap water with a bit of extra filtration (or not if the bottling plant’s water supply is clean enough).
December 21st, 2010 at 3:30 pm
@bookcat:
That image made me feel nauseous in a way that all that talk of Golden Something, Applebees, and Wal*~*Mart had not.
And I just ate leftover Malai Kofta. Excuse me…
December 21st, 2010 at 3:30 pm
@lol:
Just remember that accuracy in media is just a website. Facts have no place in modern ‘journalism.’ Or at least, facts play only a minor part in the hierarchy leading to full success in modern blogistania. Many a pundit has risen to prominence by casting aside any interest in mere reality. And salad bars are the perfect example of this phenomenon.
Ed
December 21st, 2010 at 3:30 pm
Real Americans don’t eat salad. Real Americans eat a big thick freaking steak. And a baked potato with sour cream.
And dessert. Only commies don’t eat dessert.
December 21st, 2010 at 3:31 pm
All your imperialist baco-bits are belong to us.
December 21st, 2010 at 3:34 pm
@Zandar:
British Petroleum already tried that and it didn’t work.
December 21st, 2010 at 3:35 pm
@liberal:
That poor slob took a hell of a beating from some really stupid people, and kept coming back for more.
December 21st, 2010 at 3:35 pm
@Steve M.:
Ice cream, Mandrake? Children’s ice cream!
December 21st, 2010 at 3:38 pm
@Southern Beale:
I think it was supposed to be “LSD in the water supply” for maximum OMG! factor, but yeah….
Parenthetically, this actually DID happen to my mom at a party in the 60’s. She was picking up my teen sister at her friend’s house, the parents were sort of proto-hippies (the dad was a beatnik/poet/artist) having a party, and they offered my mom a drink. On the way home she started giggling and talking funny, then drive right into a phone pole (at about 10 mph) and laughed like a loon at the smoke coming up out of the engine. The cops came, my mom spent a few hours in jail.
There were a lot of tense late-night phone calls back and forth between my parents and the beatniks but nothing much came of it.
Ah, the 60’s!
eta: It WAS acid; I’m still friends with the girl in question, in fact ran away to Berkeley with her a few years later. Ah…the 60’s!
December 21st, 2010 at 3:40 pm
It’s been a horrible day and this made me laugh.
Thank you.
December 21st, 2010 at 3:41 pm
@29:
Advisable to refrain from displaying your tone-deaf ignorance of internet traditions via such smugly obtuse comments
December 21st, 2010 at 3:44 pm
A buddy of mine SWEARS once at a Golden Corral he saw a guy use his tray as his plate, loading it up with food.
Once nice thing about the GC, no matter how much you weigh, there is someone there fatter than you.
December 21st, 2010 at 3:45 pm
The poisoned salad bar theme works well for Beck’s victory seeds/survivalist food storage scams.
December 21st, 2010 at 3:47 pm
@redrhino:
Well, they just arrested a football-team-sized bunch in Great Britain, didn’t they? I guess we contracted-out the Great Xmas Terror Scare of 2010—must have been too tired because of the off-year elections (and was this truly an “off” year!).
Ed
December 21st, 2010 at 3:49 pm
@schrodinger’s cat:
Deep fried or boiled to the consistency of mush, there wasn’t a single ‘fresh’ item to be had. All previously frozen and tasteless. Ugh.
December 21st, 2010 at 3:49 pm
I can only imagine it’s just a matter of time before the DHS starts posting undercover marshalls at your nearest Ponderosa.
December 21st, 2010 at 3:52 pm
@David Brooks (not that one): let me help you out with your queasy stomach
December 21st, 2010 at 3:52 pm
@Mark S.:
He’s a smart man and he’s living in one of the most crowded areas on Earth, among several million sympathizers. I doubt if he ever goes anywhere near a cellphone or computer. It doesn’t help that the ISI is pro-Al Quida. It’s one thing to find a needle in a haystack, it’s another when the haystack is made up of the needle’s allies trying their best to protect the needle. I doubt we’ll find him until someone decides the reward money looks too good to pass up. Hell, Mafia chiefs have hidden in Sicily for years with the Italian police looking for them, and they’re hiding in a much smaller area.
December 21st, 2010 at 3:54 pm
@licensed to kill time:
Remind me who the famous person was (Congressman??) who said they ate a cookie laced with LSD at the Renaissance Faire in Agoura, CA? It was a famous story. My mom wouldn’t let me go because of it …
December 21st, 2010 at 3:56 pm
Celticdragonchick.
Look up 1984 Rajneeshee bio attacks.
They hit up salad bars with salmonella.
If this happens again I’m sure we’ll hear cries of “no one could have known”.
December 21st, 2010 at 3:56 pm
@celticdragonchick:
Not if you’re a “Messican” member of Al Qaeda
December 21st, 2010 at 3:56 pm
@Southern Beale:
“Wild In the Streets” (1968)
Max Flatow is a precocious, social miscreant who has a way with home-made explosives. When he tires of these, he runs away from home only to emerge seven years later as Max Frost, the world’s most popular entertainer. When Congressman John Fergus uses Frost as a political ploy to gain the youth vote in his run for the Senate, Frost wills himself into the system, gaining new rights for the young. Eventually, Frost runs for the presidency. Winning in a landslide, he issues his first presidential edict: All oldsters are required to live in “retirement homes” where they are forced to ingest LSD, taking the 60s catch phrase “Never trust anyone over 30” to its most extreme consequences.
December 21st, 2010 at 3:57 pm
@schrodinger’s cat: The first pic I have of Homer was taken the day Mrs J brought him home “for a little while”. That was 14 September and he was ~5-6 weeks old then.
They are starting to settle down. Still the occasional scrap, but Bea and Toby aren’t really past that with each other and they’re 2 years old IIRC. Littermates at that. [Yup, their first day here was 1 July 08.]
December 21st, 2010 at 4:03 pm
@Southern Beale: It sounds familiar but I don’t know the name. There’s a lot about the 60’s that’s kind of fuzzy in my mind these days. That’s how I know I was there :)
December 21st, 2010 at 4:06 pm
@GregB:
Not if it happens while there’s a Democrat in the Whitehouse. Then, it’d be “He weakened our defenses because he’s objectively pro-terrorist. See! This is what happened when you let those softy Democrats be in charge!”
December 21st, 2010 at 4:08 pm
@jeffreyw: Yes I remember little Homer with his red cast. So he is about 4 months old now.
December 21st, 2010 at 4:13 pm
So that’s what that Chi Chi’s thing was all about? Well hell, you’d think at least Al Qaeda could have the courtesy of taking credit for it.
December 21st, 2010 at 4:30 pm
Salad bars ?
A poison salad bar would affect maybe 5 % of the Golden Coral customers…none of them eat salads!
It might get all those rotten vegetarians and commies though.
This must be a government plot , now that I think about it.
heh.
December 21st, 2010 at 4:35 pm
Wait, you didn’t hear?
There was a HUGE AQ plot to use chemical and biological toxins in airplane food! Since TSA doesn’t screen tarmac workers, there was no problem slipping the tainted food onto airplanes.
It was a 100% success!
Except, nobody noticed. Funny, that.
December 21st, 2010 at 4:38 pm
And they eat there on Sunday! What disrespect of the Sabbath!
December 21st, 2010 at 4:38 pm
@General Stuck: Oh thats just precious and ridiculously funny.
December 21st, 2010 at 4:39 pm
Couldn’t we just order from the menu?
December 21st, 2010 at 4:47 pm
Funny thing, we don’t give a goddamn about guys making Ricin as long as they’re white dudes.
http://snarla.wordpress.com/20.....were-arab/
December 21st, 2010 at 5:07 pm
@GregB:
I thought THAT was the water supply of whatever town in Oregon was dicking them around and I thought that plot never came to fruition?
Since we’re talking plots, I’d like one of these MSM assholes to discuss how Rupert Murdoch and Roger Ailes managed to poison the public airwaves with their toxic spew.
Ah well.
December 21st, 2010 at 5:17 pm
The 1984 attacks were very real. I lived in Richland, WA back then and they put salmonella into the ice to infect the water. I was there, this is confirmed, the Bananas restaurant on George Washington Way, look it up.
December 21st, 2010 at 5:26 pm
At least we know there aren’t any deadly microbes lurking in the beef supply.
December 21st, 2010 at 5:30 pm
@ThatLeftTurnInABQ: That is my winner for the day. Now I have to go back to work.
December 21st, 2010 at 6:13 pm
@Odder:
[insert thatsthejoke.jpg]
December 21st, 2010 at 6:24 pm
A long time ago my wife found a brown pubic hair in her green peas at Golden Corral – her first and only visit. She freaked out and went hungry – just as Osama Bin Laden planned.
December 21st, 2010 at 6:26 pm
Has Al Queda discovered ex-lax yet? or they could put LSD in the water supply – or just claim that they want to.
December 21st, 2010 at 6:28 pm
I guess the whole ’ acid in the water supply’ was beat to death earlier in thread.
December 21st, 2010 at 6:33 pm
@ThatLeftTurnInABQ: the results aren’t all in yet… give it another 5 years … the health care costs for the folks in the gulf haven’t even begun to be felt… or the “mysterious illnesses” that will begin to show up in the soldiers being fed an increasing diet consisting of gulf seafood..
December 21st, 2010 at 7:47 pm
@sukabi:
I need a brain douche.
December 21st, 2010 at 8:11 pm
@sukabi: But Sukabi, as veterans across America already know, those bills won’t be paid anyway. We can’t even pass legislation to pay the health bill for first responders.
December 21st, 2010 at 9:14 pm
OK, this ‘waddling’ thing has to stop.
I’m a very Liberal overweight woman living in a liberal bastion.
Sure, I ‘waddled’ less before I got laid off two years ago. Still, Liberals should be beware of equating right-wingers with over-weight people.
I’m a proud Liberal (left of Liberal, actually, I’m with Sanders, a true down-and-out Socialist!) and I’m overweight.
Don’t alienate people because of race, sexual orientation, weight or anything.
Who or how or what we are doesn’t matter – what matters is the policies we support and fight for.
Please, don’t put people down for anything. We either support your cause or we don’t, but race/weight/whatever doesn’t have anything to do with it.
Don’t lose your base by being an ass.
December 21st, 2010 at 9:24 pm
It’s been done. In Oregon. In the 1980s. At a salad bar if I’m not mistaken. To throw an election.
December 21st, 2010 at 11:54 pm
@matt: Matt got there first.
I posted a comment to the same effect somewhat late in this thread without reading what had come before, including Matt’s comment with links.
To add value I will add that it was in Eastern Oregon near Antelope, if my memory serves correctly. They were trying to keep the locals from voting so that the more recent Rashneeshees (sp?) would win a county election.
December 21st, 2010 at 11:58 pm
That’s what I thought when this tidbit popped up on the morning television news as I was getting ready to leave for work. It actually made me laugh. The terrorists will have to be more original than that. If you want to serve americans poised food, get in line behind agribusiness.
December 22nd, 2010 at 11:05 am
99-er ... me too on the waddling. Doesn’t need to be said. Hurts innocent bystanders.
December 22nd, 2010 at 11:10 am
@Southern Beale: No, one of the actual attacks the Rajneeshees pulled off was the poisoning of salad bars in ten restaurants in the town of The Dalles, in an attempt to suppress the number of voters in an election in which they hoped to be able to take control of the county of which the town was the seat.
More than 750 people got sick. 45 were hospitalized. It wasn’t exposed as a deliberate attack for months.
That said, anyone in the government who’s just coming up with the idea that salad bars are a possible source of bio-terror is obviously an idiot because this all happened more than a quarter century ago and it’s one of the only such cases in American history.
December 22nd, 2010 at 12:17 pm
i got news for you america; if you think you are not already eating special sauce, you are sadly mistaken
December 22nd, 2010 at 12:28 pm