"Sir, you do read and write English?"

"Yes, officer."

"So you are aware that this is a no-standing zone?"

"Yes, officer."

"And you are aware that it's five days after 9/11?"

"Um...yes, officer."*

"And that our country is at war right now?"

Read More "Never a Dulles Moment With the TSA" »

Eddie Turner's image says, so simply, what we are all feeling.

(N.B.: Turner's girlfriend passed this on to me; it is not posted on his Web site but you should read that anyway.)

Great Moments in Capitalism™, Special 9/11 Edition

On this date in 2005: Get your Tragedy Hats!

None of the Redskins marketing endeavors under Dan Snyder dropped the jaw faster than the "Redskins Flag Hat" that went on sale on the team's web site and at FedExField at the beginning of the 2005 season.

For $23.99 plus shipping where applicable, Snyder would sell you a Redskin baseball cap with a red, white and blue Pentagon stitched on the side to tug the heart strings and stir more nationalism at a time when the country was already crippled by an oversupply. The hats were a great way, according to the radio ads that ran on the sports stations owned by Snyder, to "commemorate Sept. 11."

The punch line: The proceeds weren't earmarked for any charity or cause. Unless you consider the owner's wallet a charity or cause.

Genius!

***

(AFTER THE JUMP: Bankers going for Michael Vick haters? Bob McDonnell, you lie? Boswell basking in the afterglow of his Snyder bashing? DC Divas become video stars? A bump in the Nats' Road to 100 Losses?  Jaycee Dugard jokes?)

Read More "Cheap Seats Daily: It’s 9/11! Did You Pay $23.99 Plus Shipping for Dan Snyder’s Commemorative Hat?" »

I don't think I have the stomach to process a lot of the news stories commemorating the fact that it's been seven years since 9/11---too many of them will be too mawkish, too partisan, or just too much of a reminder of sad information I already know about. But somebody's come up with a tribute I can get behind: Exploiting Twitter's hash-tag functionality, Twemes is collecting folks' Twitter posts of what they were doing when the terrorists attacks occurred. (via)

Me, I was living in San Francisco at the time---home to the Examiner, which produced the best page-one on the attacks, by a mile.

On Oct. 25, 2001, September 11 became a holiday, thanks to a resolution sponsored by this charmer. Not a real holiday, mind you, rather the kind where President Bush encouraged "employers to permit their workers time off during the lunch hour to attend the noontime services to pray for our land."

It was a perfect American solution: a holiday you don't get off work for, a remembrance of sacrifice that requires no sacrifice whatsoever.

The next year, Bush changed the name of the holiday to Patriot Day. Calendars say Patriot Day. Crayola offers a page of warmed-over July Fourth activities to complement it.

And that's about it. Tomorrow, heads will bow in remembrance, somebody will play "Taps," and everyone will call it "September 11th." No one, except maybe the president and a few maudlin gym teachers, will use the dipshit term "Patriot Day."

Nice to see the marketplace of ideas actually working once in a while.