Daily Dose - 030412 - DILEMMA, THIS is TRUE, parmigiana, DDL, Rotten News

DILEMMA

OK, here's your dilemma of the day:

You are the President of the United States.

You've just learned that there is an asteroid headed for France that will completely wipe out their entire country.

It is scheduled to hit about 2:30 a.m. in just two days from now.

You have enough ships and military personnel nearby that can help evacuate their people safely, but they are on stand-by in case of war with Iraq.

Your question: do you set the VCR to record the asteroid hitting France, or do you stay up to watch it live?

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THIS is TRUE.....

SHIFTY CHARACTERS: On New Year's morning, two teenaged boys in Edmonton, Alta., Canada, tried to rob a pizza deliveryman -- of the pizzas he was carrying. They failed. They then jumped into the man's car and tried to steal it -- but they couldn't figure out how to drive a manual transmission. The duo then again tried to steal the pizzas -- just as the police arrived. They were both charged with robbery. A police spokesman noted "It's very early, but we may not see a more poorly thought-out robbery this year." (Edmonton Journal)
...And the race is on....

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WHEN AULD ACQUAINTANCE BE FORGOT: Hernando County (Fla.) Sheriff's Deputy Neil Sullivan was reading the paper and saw an article about the first baby born in the county this year. He recognized the father's name -- David Jose Orama, 23, who was wanted on an arrest warrant. Sullivan drove to Spring Hill Regional Hospital and arrested him. "He did not resist," a spokesman said. "He knew we were looking for him." Before the arrest, Orama and his girlfriend were considering calling the newborn boy "Darie Newyear". (St. Petersburg Times)
...Now they're thinking "Ofta Badstart".

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YOU'VE ALREADY HAD ENOUGH: Robert Tyrell, 45, owner of the 16th-century North Star pub in Steventon, Oxfordshire, England, stopped by to get a drink on New Year's eve. His staff refused to serve him. Tyrell stomped away but came back driving a bright yellow mechanical digger, using its shovel as a battering ram to knock through a wall. No one was injured in the resulting stampede for the exits. "He could have killed someone," said one regular, who was inside drinking, "but I must say it was a very novel way of calling time." (London Times)
..."Always remember that I have taken more out of alcohol than alcohol has taken out of me." --Winston Churchill, British Statesman (1874-1965)

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TURNABOUT IS FAIR PLAY: When detectives in Portland, Ore., dug through the home trashcan of a female police officer whose ex-boyfriend was charged with drug possession, they found a used tampon -- and had the blood on it tested for drugs. Outraged, the 13-year police veteran hired a lawyer. "If the police will do this to a police officer, who won't they do it to?" the lawyer asked. "There were no signs on the garbage, 'Do not open. Do not trespass'," said Multnomah County Prosecutor Mark McDonnell. "There was every indication... she had relinquished her privacy [and] possessory interest" in her trash. Once trash is put out it's "abandoned in terms of privacy," agreed Police Chief Mark Kroeker. Fine, said a local newspaper, which raided the trash of the police chief, District Attorney Mike Schrunk, and Police Commissioner and Mayor Vera Katz -- and reported on what it found. Kroeker called the stunt "cheap" and stomped out of an interview. Katz went ballistic, calling the paper's actions "potentially illegal aand absolutely unscrupulous and reprehensible." But Schrunk shrugged off the turnabout, asking the paper, "Do I have to pay for this week's garbage collection?" (Willamette Week)
...One man's trash is another man's Pulitzer Prize.

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AND YOU THOUGHT YOUR MISSING SOCK WAS A PROBLEM? "Human Foot Found in Laundry"
-- Reuters headline

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The customer in the Italian restaurant was so pleased that he asked to speak to the chef. The owner proudly led him into the kitchen and introduced him to the chef.

"Your veal parmigiana was superb," the customer said. "I just spent a month in Italy, and yours is better than any I ever had over there."

"Naturally," the chef said. "Over there, they use domestic cheese. Ours is imported."

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DDL

A story related to me
About Willie "No willy" McGee
Was that Tillie, his wife,
Chopped it up with a knife
And made Willy Con Carne for tea

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My cat got stolen. I think she was taken by a purr snatcher.

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The New York Times, among other papers, recently published a new Hubble photograph of distant galaxies colliding.

Of course, astronomers have had pictures of colliding galaxies for quite some time now, but with the vastly improved resolution provided by the Hubble Space Telescope, you can actually see the lawyers rushing to the scene...

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I was teaching my 6-year-old daughter how to unbuckle her seat belt. She asked, "Do I click the square?" I said yes.

She asked me, "Single click or double click?"

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Rotten News....

March 19, 2003

It's yellow, but not French
By Chris Baker
THE WASHINGTON TIMES

The company that makes French's mustard wants Americans to know the spicy condiment isn't French. Top Stories

It's British, but that's beside the point.

Reckitt Benckiser PLC — the British behemoth that manufactures Lysol, Spray 'n Wash and French's mustard — issued a press release yesterday through a New Jersey subsidiary to remind reporters of the condiment's American seeds.

"For the record, French's would like to say, there is nothing more American than French's mustard," the statement said. R.T. French Co., a Reckitt Benckiser precursor, introduced its "cream salad mustard," alongside the hot dog, in 1904 at the St. Louis World's Fair.

It seems French's mustard wants to distance itself from the French people. France has refused to support the war in Iraq, which inspired two Republican members of Congress last week to call a press conference to announce that House cafeterias have dropped the word "french" before fries and toast on their menus and replaced it with "freedom."

Americans expect this sort of thing from politicians. But a press release, on the eve of war, to declare French's mustard isn't French? Isn't that laying it on a little thick?

What's next? Is Betty Crocker going to hit the talk-show circuit to remind us that German chocolate cake isn't really from Germany, another country that opposes the war?

If so, Americans probably will just roll with the punches. C'est la vie, non?

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3 Killed in Pakistan Scrap Yard Mishap

The Associated Press

A scrap metal dealer and two small girls were killed and five other people were wounded Saturday when a shell exploded as the man was handling it, police said.

The man was hammering the ammunition shell in order to break it apart and sell the metal when it went off in his courtyard, said Malik Mohammed Iqbal, a police official in Gujranwala. The accident occurred in the nearby village of Santhla, along Pakistan's border with India, 75 miles northwest of Lahore.

Five of the scrap dealer's relatives were injured, and two were taken to a local hospital with serious shrapnel wounds, Iqbal said.

The man was identified as Mohammed Iqbal, who ran his scrap metal business from his home and had set up a junkyard in the courtyard, the police official said. There was no relation between the police official and the victim.

The police official did not specify the type of munition that exploded. The victim may have bought the shell as a piece of a scrap, he said.

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Wednesday, March 19, 2003 5:47 p.m. EST

IRS Fires Agents for ... Tax Evasion!

The Internal Revenue Service has fired over 70 employees in the last five years for what the Wall Street Journal describes as "misconduct under a provision of the 1998 IRS reform law." Specifically, section 1203 of that act.

The GAO report reveals that of 3,512 allegations of wrongdoing, 419 were found to be violations. Seventy-one employees were consequently canned.

And what were these violations discovered by the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration, or TIGTA (we just love a good, long government agency name)? They are:

Failure to file tax returns in a timely fashion
Failure to state tax liability accurately
Threat to audit for personal gain
Falsifying or destroying documents
Retaliation or harassment
Assault and battery (believe it or don’t)

In addition to the sacked workers, there were also employees who simply left the IRS because of the violations, and others who were penalized in various ways.

The 1998 reforms were enacted because the Service was receiving complaints of harassment and abuse by agents and employees toward the very people who pay their salaries.

As for the agents themselves, they resent the provisions of section 1203 of the reform act because the 10 violations which can be committed by the IRS "have had a ‘chilling effect’ on IRS frontline enforcement employees who are afraid to take certain appropriate enforcement actions,” according to the GAO.

This has resulted in the decline of enforcement activity, and has even affected agents to the point that investigations take too long, and agents are less likely to recommend asset seizure because of the provisions of section 1203, which can get them fired, the GAO report added.

The IRS and TIGTA say they are looking into correcting some of the problems section 1203 causes agents. We’re all for the reforms ... as long as assault and battery by a "frontline enforcement employee" remains a firing offense.