A surprising thing

[fredintoon]

Seems that the next major menace to the USA are these things:-
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kinder_Surprise
To my utmost astonishment I read in this morning's paper that the US customs and Border Patrols will be devoting extreme efforts to searching Christmas parcels sent into the US in order to detect and confiscate any Kinder Surprise toys that may be in them. Seems that the handgun capital of the world is threatened by a child's toy.
Who'd'a thought it?

[kirmit77]

Hey, I have an idea!!! Try to send me one and see if it gets here I bought a handle bar from andreas and the friggin border patrol took it out for some reason..... bastards.

[latexeses]

Well, I for one, am glad to see our government protecting us from toys in lumps of chocolate.

Thanks for the heads up Fred. I know my tax dollars are being well spent.

I guess it's a bigger problem than the flow of narcotics, huh?

[Larrym]

In The Grand Scheme...

Fred,

I agree that it looks odd to do this but only if you look at this action in isolation , you know? Not part of the larger context?

Fact is that on this side of the parallel we are trillions of dollars in debt . That is much more than any single generation of taxpayers would be able to pay off . So we gotta think "long term" and multi-generations here .

Those confiscations and import bans on these little "chocolate menaces " serve to prevent any of our future taxpayers from choking and dieing before they reach the age of sixteen . Just for argument's sake I will concede the fact that any kid who would would have choked to death on these "surprises" would at best be suited for a lifelong position which paid minimum wage and required him/her to always ask, "would you like fries with that?"

they don't have to be that bright anyway . They just have to be bright enough to find a mate and make more little taxpayers who will require protection from choking hazards as well .

See? We need every inch of ground here . (or in your case every 2.54mm ....)

[XSokieSPECIAL]

Rotflmao

Fred,

I agree that it looks odd to do this but only if you look at this action in isolation , you know? Not part of the larger context?

Fact is that on this side of the parallel we are trillions of dollars in debt . That is much more than any single generation of taxpayers would be able to pay off . So we gotta think "long term" and multi-generations here .

Those confiscations and import bans on these little "chocolate menaces " serve to prevent any of our future taxpayers from choking and dieing before they reach the age of sixteen . Just for argument's sake I will concede the fact that any kid who would would have choked to death on these "surprises" would at best be suited for a lifelong position which paid minimum wage and required him/her to always ask, "would you like fries with that?"

they don't have to be that bright anyway . They just have to be bright enough to find a mate and make more little taxpayers who will require protection from choking hazards as well .

See? We need every inch of ground here . (or in your case every 2.54mm ....)

[Montreux_Blue]

Seems that the handgun capital of the world.....

That's the only line that stuck out for me, guess I need to finally break down and buy a handgun then.

[fredintoon]

That's the only line that stuck out for me, guess I need to finally break down and buy a handgun then.

Hi Blue,
my point is that you can go and buy yourself a handgun but you can only get a chocolate egg with a toy in it by smuggling it across the Canadian border.
OTOH we Canadians can go buy all the toy filled chocolate eggs we want but can only get a handgun by smuggling it across the US border.

[81xsproject]

Fred,

I agree that it looks odd to do this but only if you look at this action in isolation , you know? Not part of the larger context?

Fact is that on this side of the parallel we are trillions of dollars in debt . That is much more than any single generation of taxpayers would be able to pay off . So we gotta think "long term" and multi-generations here .

Those confiscations and import bans on these little "chocolate menaces " serve to prevent any of our future taxpayers from choking and dieing before they reach the age of sixteen . Just for argument's sake I will concede the fact that any kid who would would have choked to death on these "surprises" would at best be suited for a lifelong position which paid minimum wage and required him/her to always ask, "would you like fries with that?"

they don't have to be that bright anyway . They just have to be bright enough to find a mate and make more little taxpayers who will require protection from choking hazards as well .

See? We need every inch of ground here . (or in your case every 2.54mm ....)

Missed it by a power of 10. (25.4mm to an inch) 2.54CM to an inch

[Montreux_Blue]

Hi Blue,
my point is that you can go and buy yourself a handgun but you can only get a chocolate egg with a toy in it by smuggling it across the Canadian border.
OTOH we Canadians can go buy all the toy filled chocolate eggs we want but can only get a handgun by smuggling it across the US border.

I know our handgun acquiring laws aren't as stringent as a lot of other places but I think we will be there soon enough.

[fredintoon]

I know our handgun acquiring laws aren't as stringent as a lot of other places but I think we will be there soon enough.

Hi Blue,
so now is the time to buy, eh? Back when all a Canadian had to do to buy a rifle or a shotgun was walk into almost any department store and lay his money down, I had several hunting weapons. Sold 'em all when I moved to city living.
Today's regulations are such that I'd hate to jump through all of those hoops to replace them.

[Larrym]

Awwh, Fiddlesticks!!!!

Missed it by a power of 10. (25.4mm to an inch) 2.54CM to an inch

Absolutely right! But I was hoping that Fred would have busted my chops on this. That way he might have replied with a "bad math skills might be a direct link to a trillion dollar debt load." kinda answer. I'd have said something along the lines of "Ya don't need math skills to balance a budget when the banks will always raise your credit limit.." That discussion had some real potential.....

BTW, the fact that you caught me on this has me equally confused/impressed at the same time. It's important to be able to tell MM and inches apart especially when one is setting the float levels on XS1100 carbs. But to be caught by the one guy that I know doesn't even have/use carbs/floats anymore really makes my brain hurt....

[RS Thornton]

Man, who would have thought?
My younger brother is one of the Kinder Egg geeks that still gets them and trades the toys with other around the world. I have "smuggled" some of those eggs back into the US when he gave them to my daughters. I still have a set of lawn darts too, so I expect to be on some government list of subversives any day now.

[jmnjrpa]

Power of TEN?

Sorry, but it was only one decimal place whereas the power of ten would be a LOT MORE!

[mstic2000]

I sure feel safer now and am sleeping better at night. God Bless our chocolate egg partol.