Yost Finds A Use For Poison Peanut Butter

Sept. 26, 2012 -- The nationwide recall of peanut butter has vastly expanded to include dozens of peanut butter, tahini, and other nut butter products, many sold under popular brand names.

All of the products use nuts from Sunland Farms. The New Mexico nut company is the likely source of a salmonella outbreak that so far has sickened 30 people in 19 states …

CDC, state, and local officials had been looking for the source of an outbreak of Salmonella Bredeney infections that began on June 11. The investigation suggests that people became ill after eating Trader Joe's Creamy Salted Valencia Peanut Butter.

– Webmd.com

Wow, how about those presidential debates last week.

Going into them, it looked like Obama had everything all but wrapped up, but then, somehow, somewhere out of nowhere, Mitt Romney found his mojo while, at the same time, President Obama, as one commentator put it, "looked like he was on Ambien."

I thought Obama might do better than he did because, in the previous debate that Obama had – when he debated Clint Eastwood at the Republican National Convention – I thought Obama was able to get the better of Eastwood without even so much as showing up for the debate. If you watched that one, you know Obama was a no-show but still ran circles around Eastwood.

However, last week, on Wednesday night, like I said, Mitt Romney really had his mojo on a roll. And I'll tell you the clearest indication of that for me: I've seen plenty of debates over the years, but last week's debate was the first time in my entire life that I've ever seen, right in the middle of the debate, one of the debaters feeling confident enough to turn to the moderator as an aside and say, "Oh, and by the way, after I'm elected, I'm going to fire you from your job as well."

I mean, that takes guts right there.

Now all of the political pundits say that everything will come down to Thursday, Oct. 11 and the vice presidential debate. So now everything – basically the entire future of Obama's presidency – rests on the shoulders of Joe Biden.

The Biden/Ryan debate will happen the night after The Rhino Times goes to press this week but, with everything now in Biden's hands, I think we can all safely say, hail to the new chief and president, Mitt Romney. The Stormin' Mormon from Norman.

Romney was actually born in Detroit, but Detroit doesn't rhyme with much, so I took a little poetic license right there – but you get the point.

Anyway, with the contentious presidential debate finally settled once and for all, we can move on to other topics of interest …

Last week, two female students in Raleigh woke up alarmed to find a strange man in their bed, and they called police.

According to WRAL, "Campus police at North Carolina State University are warning students and staff about a home intruder who climbed into bed with two sleeping female students and ran away when one of them woke up early Friday morning."

This event took place shortly before 4:30 a.m., when "a man walked into an unlocked home on Chamberlain Street and rubbed the legs and backs of two women living there."

Jim Sughrue, a spokesman for the Raleigh Police Department, said his department had received similar reports in recent months, and he told everyone to be on the alert.

He added that his department was looking for leads and doing all that it could.

The WRAL story stated, "Since February 2011, investigators have received reports of nine similar cases in neighborhoods north of Hillsborough Street near N.C. State, but the victims usually have a limited description of the intruder, making it difficult to determine if they are related."

OK, now I have to say something here. Can we all please just take a breath and relax a moment and think about this for a second.

Now, I know that this type of thing can be alarming to wake up to, but listen, trust me, if I called 911 every time I woke up in the morning and there was some strange woman in my bed rubbing my legs and back – well, let's just say that everyone's taxes would go up because they would have to hire a whole lot more law enforcement officers.

Trust me, in cases like this, there's no need to call the police: Usually, in this type of situation, the person will get up very quickly, throw on their clothes and leave hurriedly without any prompting from you, and, for what it's worth, generally they will look quite ashamed about what they have just done.

Hey, ever since Fox 8 News anchor Julie Luck announced that she was stepping down from the anchor chair, about 1,032 people have asked me what she was going to do and where she was going. When I first heard the news a few weeks ago that she was leaving, I texted Julie to find out if she was really leaving Fox 8.

"Yes, I made the difficult decision to move on," she texted back.

When I asked her where she was going, she sent back, "I'm exploring new opportunities. I love the Fox 8 family dearly," which isn't the most informative text in the world.

Since she wasn't telling me much, I called News 2 weatherman Eric Chilton to see if he knew anything. Eric said he'd asked Julie the same question and basically gotten the same response I did.

Well, recently, in case you were one of those wondering, Julie posted the following on her Facebook page. This, at least, was a little more informative.

"Many people have asked, 'Where are you going?'" her post said. "The answer: I am going to enjoy some down time and recharge my batteries while exploring new opportunities.

"For the first time in my 15 year career in TV news, I'm not going to work on Thanksgiving, Christmas Eve, Christmas day, New Year's Eve and/or New Year's Day so I'm looking forward to spending some extended, long overdue time with family and friends."

That sounds like a pretty good plan.

You know, the other day I was watching the news on television, and I saw shot after shot of people taking big cases of peanut butter, and peanut butter crackers, and all sorts of other peanut butter products out of Trader Joe's, Target and other stores.

If you haven't heard the news, recently there was a giant nationwide recall of peanut butter and peanut butter products, so health authorities and store clerks everywhere have been taking these products off the shelves and hauling them off to be disposed of.

When I saw that on the news, I had a great idea that I'm surprised no one has thought of before. I thought to myself: What a waste! And then I had my great idea: Why should we let all that food go to waste? I think the best thing to do whenever you have a recall like that, rather than simply throw out all that food, would be to give it to homeless people and homeless shelters.

It's one of those simple ideas that's so simple it makes you wonder why no one has thought of it before.

When the weather is nice – as it is this time of year – I like to go to various parks in town and shoot basketball for long periods of time. Now, I take some water with me so I don't get thirsty, but I've always encountered one problem: Sometimes, when you are out there shooting basketball – well, nature calls.

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In the past, that's always meant that I had to pack up everything, get back in my car, drive back to my house, take care of business and then drive back to the park.

But now, the city, at various parks, has been putting up new Porta-Potties for park guests, and that's a good idea and a good thing, so don't think I'm complaining about that. But I have to say the Porta-Potties are very poorly designed to say the least.

OK, now first of all, even though there is a sink and faucet in this facility, the water doesn't work, but that's not my main complaint. Here's my main complaint: They made the Porta-Potties way too small – most notably, the roof isn't nearly high enough for anyone to comfortably do their business.

I mean, it is amazingly short, and no normal human of any size could use this facility comfortably.

So, if you are like the city person in charge of the new Porta-Potties, don't think I'm not grateful for the effort – but for goodness sakes, people, let's put some thought into things before building them and putting them in public parks.