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You are here: Home / Politics / War on Terror / War on Terror aka GSAVE® / First They Came for the Applebee’s Salad Bar

First They Came for the Applebee’s Salad Bar

by | 154 Comments

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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.

Reader Interactions

154Comments

  2. 2.

    Tonal Crow

    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.

  3. 3.

    Joseph Nobles

    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.

  5. 5.

    Bnut

    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.

  6. 6.

    Bill E Pilgrim

    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.

  7. 7.

    Belafon (formerly anonevent)

    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.

  8. 8.

    balconesfault

    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 interests ourselves we’re going to continue to keep our military in their faces day in and day out until the oil runs out freedom 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.

  10. 10.

    4tehlulz

    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.

  12. 12.

    Southern Beale

    Although an argument could be made that if you are eating at a Golden Corral or similar place, you are already poisoning yourself.

    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.

  13. 13.

    R-Jud

    @Bnut:

    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.

    The Daily Mail is completely unhooked from reality. Which is surprising, as it’s not one of the Murdoch-owned papers.

  15. 15.

    Kyle

    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.

  17. 17.

    colleeniem

    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.

  19. 19.

    Don

    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.

  27. 27.

    sukabi

    @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.

  28. 28.

    Zifnab25

    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.

  29. 29.

    lol

    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.

  30. 30.

    catclub

    @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.

  31. 31.

    scarshapedstar

    You’ll notice how they aren’t targeting the candy section at Whole Foods. Clearly, the terrists are in league with the libruls.

  33. 33.

    San

    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! “

  34. 34.

    NonyNony

    @4tehlulz:

    I’m convinced that al Qaeda is just trolling us with retarded plots.

    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):

    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.

    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.

  37. 37.

    matoko_chan

    @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

  38. 38.

    Bob Loblaw

    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?

  39. 39.

    catclub

    @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.

  40. 40.

    The Moar You Know

    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.

  43. 43.

    Bill E Pilgrim

    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.

  44. 44.

    licensed to kill time

    I think I saw this plot on a Criminal Minds episode, though the test run was done with LSD, which might be amusing rather terrifying to watch in a Golden Corral.

  45. 45.

    daveNYC

    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.

    You ever read SomethingAwful’s G.I. Joe after action reports? Good stuff.

  47. 47.

    R-Jud

    @The Moar You Know:

    You ever take a look at the contents of your toilet after a trip to McDonalds?

    Thanks for the mental image, Moar. Looks like I won’t have trouble with holiday weight gain this year after all.

  48. 48.

    JPL

    @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.

  50. 50.

    matoko_chan

    @NonyNony:

    It sounds like something Cobra Commander would have dreamed up

    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.

  52. 52.

    matoko_chan

    @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.

  55. 55.

    kommrade reproductive vigor

    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!

  56. 56.

    cleek

    @JPL:

    Since most salad bars have only a limited amount food out at one time, it didn’t seem like a smart idea.

    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.

  57. 57.

    David Hunt

    @NonyNony:

    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.

    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.

  60. 60.

    The Moar You Know

    this country would freak the fuck out. we would lose our goddammed minds.

    @cleek: What country do you live in? Mine freaked out and lost its mind back in September of 2001.

  61. 61.

    liberal

    @Michael:
    Yeah, but this comment wasn’t stupid:

    Considering the mass of info that is available on Peter’s connections with and coddling of the less civil portions of the IRA, these hearings could actually wind up being kind of funny in terms of the verbal exchanges that will occur.

  62. 62.

    schrodinger's cat

    @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.

  64. 64.

    Mike in NC

    @schrodinger’s cat:

    What the hell is Golden Corral? I had never heard of it before this post?

    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.

  65. 65.

    ChrisS

    @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.

  67. 67.

    schrodinger's cat

    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.

  69. 69.

    Cain

    @balconesfault:

    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.

    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

  71. 71.

    NonyNony

    @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.

  72. 72.

    cleek

    @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.

  74. 74.

    Chat Noir

    @Don: Your comment somewhat dovetails into this article from the January issue of Vanity Fair, “Bin Laden’s Lonely Crusade.”

    A decade after White House aide Richard Clarke’s famous memo warning against al-Qaeda, it’s time for a reality check: the 9/11 attacks did not achieve what Osama bin Laden had hoped, and the list of his enemies is growing. Keeping the threat in perspective is the surest way to prevail.

  75. 75.

    Kenneth

    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”.

  79. 79.

    Comrade Dread

    @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.

  82. 82.

    Bokonon

    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.

  89. 89.

    celticdragonchick

    @4tehlulz:

    Besides, if they truly were serious about a food-borne attack, they’d poison the corn syrup supply.

    Harder to get to without being suspicious.

  90. 90.

    celticdragonchick

    @Bokonon:

    But messing with our fast food and buffet restaurants? Man … that’s ruthless! Talk about taking the fight to the American heartland.

    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.

  91. 91.

    Martin

    It’s the commies Muslims! They are out to destroy the purity of our essence. I first came to realize this during the physical act of love. Rather than leaving me energized, it left me feeling spent, worn-out. Since that day I drink nothing but grain alcohol and branch water.

    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.

  93. 93.

    Mark S.

    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?

  100. 100.

    Southern Beale

    @licensed to kill time:

    I think I saw this plot on a Criminal Minds episode, though the test run was done with LSD, which might be amusing rather terrifying to watch in a Golden Corral.

    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.

  102. 102.

    Southern Beale

    @Mark S.:

    Am I being naive, or is it ridiculous that we haven’t captured or killed Osama yet?

    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.

  104. 104.

    NonyNony

    @Martin:

    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.

    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).

  105. 105.

    David Brooks (not that one)

    @bookcat:

    John, aren’t you on vacation. Shouldn’t you be naked mopping?

    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…

  106. 106.

    ed drone

    @lol:

    As it is, this utterly impugns strengthens your credibility as a serious and respected journalist and rightly so.

    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

  109. 109.

    ThatLeftTurnInABQ

    @Zandar:

    Also, all AQ has to do is fuck up Shrimpfest at Red Lobster

    British Petroleum already tried that and it didn’t work.

  110. 110.

    Michael

    @liberal:

    Yeah, but this comment wasn’t stupid

    That poor slob took a hell of a beating from some really stupid people, and kept coming back for more.

  112. 112.

    licensed to kill time

    @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!

  113. 113.

    Elizabelle

    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.

    It’s been a horrible day and this made me laugh.

    Thank you.

  114. 114.

    Odder

    @29:

    Advisable to refrain from displaying your tone-deaf ignorance of internet traditions via such smugly obtuse comments

  115. 115.

    Woodrowfan

    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.

  116. 116.

    Nellcote

    The poisoned salad bar theme works well for Beck’s victory seeds/survivalist food storage scams.

  117. 117.

    ed drone

    @redrhino:

    And isn’t it de rigeur for a terrorist plot to be “uncovered” the week of Christmas?

    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

  118. 118.

    Mike in NC

    @schrodinger’s cat:

    Was everything at the buffet fried?

    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.

  119. 119.

    GregB

    I can only imagine it’s just a matter of time before the DHS starts posting undercover marshalls at your nearest Ponderosa.

  121. 121.

    Woodrowfan

    @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.

  122. 122.

    Southern Beale

    @licensed to kill time:

    Parenthetically, this actually DID happen to my mom at a party in the 60’s.

    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 …

  123. 123.

    GregB

    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”.

  125. 125.

    Nellcote

    @Southern Beale:

    This is a repeat of the “dirty fucking hippies slipped LSD into the punch bowl at the cotillion” scare from the 60s

    “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.

  126. 126.

    jeffreyw

    @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.]

  127. 127.

    licensed to kill time

    @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 :)

  128. 128.

    David Hunt

    @GregB:

    If this happens again I’m sure we’ll hear cries of “no one could have known”.

    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!”

  131. 131.

    tones

    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.

  132. 132.

    Snarki, child of Loki

    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.

  137. 137.

    Southern Beale

    @GregB:

    Look up 1984 Rajneeshee bio attacks.

    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.

  138. 138.

    Tard

    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.

  142. 142.

    Dream On

    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.

  143. 143.

    Paris

    Has Al Queda discovered ex-lax yet? or they could put LSD in the water supply – or just claim that they want to.

  145. 145.

    sukabi

    @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..

  147. 147.

    CircleSquared

    @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.

  148. 148.

    99-er

    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.

  150. 150.

    mvr

    @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.

  151. 151.

    someofparts

    Although an argument could be made that if you are eating at a Golden Corral or similar place, you are already poisoning yourself.

    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.

  153. 153.

    darrelplant

    @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.

  154. 154.

    isaac

    i got news for you america; if you think you are not already eating special sauce, you are sadly mistaken

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