Slouching Towards Oblivion

Showing posts with label 9-11. Show all posts
Showing posts with label 9-11. Show all posts

Sunday, September 11, 2022

Today's Today

There have been hints at it in recent years, but this is the first time I've seen where it gets so very crass.


So fucking crass.


Restaurant Slammed For 'Appalling' 9/11-Themed Menu

A Virginia restaurant has apologized after its 9/11-themed menu prompted backlash online.

The menu, entitled "Patriot Day 2022 Seafood Sunday" at The Clubhouse at Aquia Harbour in Stafford, Virginia, advertised food and drink items for the 21st anniversary of the September 11th terrorist attacks.

Although the menu has been taken down, it was first captured and circulated online by angry social media users.

A tweet from Washington, D.C., man Brian Sasser shared the restaurant's promotion, which included dishes such as "Flight 93 Redirect" (a hot crab dip with crostini), "First Responder Flatbread", "9/11 Oysters" and "Freedom Flounder."


For a drink, customers were offered a "Remember-tini"—a coconut rum cocktail with key lime cream and pineapple juice. A chocolate "Pentagon Pie" was available for dessert.

Most offensive to some residents was the "2977 Chowder," an apparent reference to the death toll from the terrorist attacks.

"Appalling," Sasser captioned his post on Tuesday. "Posted on Facebook tonight by a restaurant in a community filled with service members and veterans in Stafford, VA."

Virginia is home to over 780,000 veterans, making up over 9 percent of the state's population, according to the Virginia Department of Veterans Services.

Other Twitter users called the promotion "vile," "insensitive" and "stupid."

"This is so awful for anyone who lost someone on 9/11 or people who watched it happen right in front of them," said marketing professional Kathleen Schmidt. "I'm one of those people."

"Attempting to profit off 9/11 is gross in itself, but this themed menu is on another level," agreed another user. "Crispy oven-baked First Responder Flatbread...Someone really approved that idea."

Restaurant manager George White publicly apologized for the menu later on Tuesday.

"I apologize for those I offended with the 9/11 seafood Sunday post," he said in a community Facebook group. "My intention was to bring attention to that horrific day 21 years ago. To honor those who lost so much as well [as] those who gave everything that day. We will have a new theme tomorrow."

On September 2, a U.S. joint intelligence bulletin obtained by Newsweek warned that foreign militant groups could exploit the 21st anniversary of 9/11 to inspire homegrown violent extremists (HVEs).

The upcoming anniversary comes one year after the U.S. military withdrew from Afghanistan and a month after President Biden announced that Al-Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri, who succeeded Osama bin Laden, was killed by a U.S. drone strike.

Newsweek reached out to The Clubhouse at Aquia Harbour for comment.

Friday, September 11, 2020

Today's Today

Another Today's Today

We commemorate 9/11. 


Hopefully, this year, we can see it in a different context.

How many times do we have to get slammed by something preventable (or at least mitigable) had we listened to the people who were trying to warn us?

How many times do we have to watch Americans die because Republican presidents ignored what their Democratic counterparts and predecessors tried to to tell them?

9/11 was a horror. I sat and watched it on live TV, and worried about how the idiot in the White House would react.

I was pleasantly surprised when Bush43 rose to the occasion and managed to give us the big national hug we needed at the time. Later, of course, he'd allow Darth Cheney to drag us into a ridiculous war of conquest, and only now, in light of what we're being put through by Cult45, am I coming to realize that Dick Cheney and Donald Trump are almost perfectly aligned morally.

Cheney is way more competent, and acts on a broader spectrum of interests, better able to leverage national policy to his personal benefit, while 45* just wants his piece of the action.

Anyway, I continue to marvel at just how fucked we end up being whenever we let Republicans back in the door.

Maybe we'll finally start to listen to those warnings.

Wednesday, September 11, 2019

Today's Eternal Sadness


Christina-Taylor Green was born September 11, 2001.

She died January 8, 2011 - shot to death, along with 5 others, at a campaign rally for Gabby Giffords in Tucson.

Fuck the NRA and their coin-operated politicians.

Today's Today

That was a bad one.







Tuesday, September 11, 2018

Enough, Truthers






Yeah, but it's just science. So it just doesn't hold up against a well-cultivated deeply entrenched conspiracy theory.

Never forget this one simple thing: Arguing that George W Bush had prior knowledge of 9/11 is the classic Internal Contradiction. ie: You put "George W Bush" and "knowledge" in the same sentence. Your point is not valid.

Monday, September 11, 2017

Today's Today

So, no, I'm not laughing at the tragedy. I'm laughing at the sometimes absurd reactions to the tragedy.

Reactions like the inevitable commercialization of every-fucking-thing no matter what, here in USAmerica Inc.

There's also the point that it seems like we feel a need to sanctify certain events. And I think that leads us to concentrate on aspects of the event that we can relate to (3,000 dead on 9/11), at the expense of other - arguably greater - lessons that get pushed into the background; lessons that would make the next 9/11 less likely.








Sunday, September 11, 2016

Wow.Just.Wow

It just can't ever be about anything but Trump.


Friday, September 11, 2015

Today's Today








Soothe The Savage Breast

It's been said by wiser men than me that the opposite of anything is whatever keeps you from it.

That means the opposite of love is fear, and the opposite of hate is forgiveness.


One / Let It Be (mashup cover) --Boyce Avenue



Out Of The Blue by Simon Armitage --(as read by) Rufus Sewell

(the embedded commercials at dailymotion are jarring and spoil the effect, so if you wanna try it a little differently, go to YouTube):
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4


Give Peace A Chance --John & Yoko

Thursday, September 11, 2014

Today's Today

Nobody gets over something like 9-11, but we all have to figure out how to get past it.


Wednesday, September 11, 2013

Today's Today - Cont'd

Saw this on Olbermann last nite too (he led with it and he was pissed about it - surprise surprise), but it just popped up on Addicting Info:


Lemme be clear - I don't have any problem with how anybody remembers or commemorates or grieves or whatever.  My main thing is that everybody gets to do what they wanna do - which includes doing nothing at all, btw.

Keith Olbermann gets to do it his way and you get to do it your way and I get to do it my way; and we all get to feel however we feel; and we all get to express it however we want as long it doesn't pose a threat to anybody's reasonable expectation of physical safety.

We're a little weird here in USAmerica Incorporated.  I look for exactly this kind of crass commercialism because I think it signals our willingness to move past the Compulsory Solemnity Phase in our process of "getting on with it".

Today's Today

Every year, I Google "9/11 sale", thinking somebody's gotta have the balls to try it.

I honestly expect some enterprising soul will eventually kick it off and we will begin the next phase in this agonizing process of getting the fuck past it already.

Nothing to report again this year - but hope springs eternal.

Tuesday, September 11, 2012

Like A Nightmare

By way of The Atlantic, linking to NYT (log-in required):
...an inescapable conclusion: the administration's reaction to what Mr. Bush was told in the weeks before that infamous briefing reflected significantly more negligence than has been disclosed."
NYT got badly used and abused by Cheney in 2002-2003 as a conduit for the bogus rationale for invading Iraq, so there could be some axe-grinding going on here, but if there's any truth in this, we need to hammer it home to expose the fact that Romney's Foreign Policy team is chock full of the same NeoCons who've been fuckin' us over for  a good 12 or 15 years.

The saddest part is that I can see how somebody on the Bush team might've actually bought into the bullshit about FDR knowing about Pearl Harbor ahead of time, and letting the thing go forward in order to get us amped up for WW2 - which could've been used as pretext for distracting Bush from the 9/11 warnings.

And yes - politics can be just that shitty.

Where Was God?

Friday, September 11, 2009

8 Years Ago Today

09-11-09
I don't much like Sept 11th. Sitting at home that day, watching the whole thing on TV - I remember being scared and confused; and then, as it all got pieced together, I remember just being really pissed off. Back then it was easy to direct it at the bad guys who hijacked the planes and caused the suffering. Since then, those feelings have morphed into a kind of overall distaste for how we've allowed the events of that day to be used to manipulate us.

I guess I could spend the rest of the year trying to think my way thru all of this in an attempt to put it into some form of meaningful language, and maybe someday I'll get it sorted out enough to do that - but for now, I have to find some satisfaction in the process of working thru it and in the understanding that resolution will come in in its own good time.

How long will it be before we see the ads on TV for the "Big 9-11 Tent Sale" down at the local furniture warehouse? WIll it be a good thing or a bad thing?