Author: Fuzzy Curmudgeon

I saw this yesterday but George Neumayr over at the Prowler does it better than Fox. This isn’t a Fisking; I agree completely with Neumayr, I’m just commenting interlinearly.

Twenty-eight billion dollars is quite a penalty for selling someone a product that they demanded. Bullock enjoyed the pleasures of smoking for decades, played dumb to its obvious dangers and risks, didn’t listen to her daughter and doctors who told her to quit, and then, upon getting sick, decided to sue the source of her pleasure.

Exactly. I don’t see how you could have been a smoker for the past 40 years and NOT KNOWN that THE SURGEON GENERAL HAS DETERMINED THAT SMOKING MAY BE HAZARDOUS TO YOUR HEALTH. I knew this when I was six and reading my Dad’s Camel cigarette packs (non-filtered). Dad knew it, too, and he smoked a lot more years than this stupid woman, so you just can’t tell me that she didn’t know.

Consistency and minimal personal honor are clearly not requirements for plaintiffs, still less for Los Angeles juries. Before heading off to lunch with Bullock’s attorney, jurors explained their Solomonic reasoning to the press. “It’s just a year’s revenue for Philip Morris,” juror Jose Farinas said casually.

Fine that man a year’s pay for being an asshole on the job.

According to the Los Angeles Times, jurors “had a spirited debate over the amount of the award, with individual jurors suggesting awards ranging from $5 million to $100 billion.”
How did they end up with $28 billion? The Times said they settled on that number because “jurors had been told that only 1 in 28,000 lung cancer victims gets his or her day in court, and the panel in effect decided to impose $1 million of punishment on Philip Morris for each of the 28,000.”

So in other words, they made it up as they went along.

The jury had been instructed that the amount of damages should “bear a reasonable relationship to the injury suffered.” But egged on by [Bullock’s lawyer Michael] Piuze, they ignored that instruction.

And they should all be fined for disregarding the judge’s instructions, barred from ever serving on a jury again (or running for elective office, either, for that matter) and the verdict should be thrown out as a result.
[Update: When I originally typed this, I was so mad I typed “ATTORNEY GENERAL” instead of “SURGEON GENERAL” without realizing it. Mea culpa. I fixed it.]

USSC denies a stay in the Torricelli replacement case.

Chicago will now require companies that did business in the slavery era to confess their sins before they can do business with the city.
This includes corporations that may not themselves have had any relationship to slavery (eg corporations that did not exist at the time) but may have in any way become related to such corporations (eg by merger, purchase, etc).
Can you say “unfunded mandate”? Does the city of Chicago have any idea what this sort of thing is going to cost the corporations that do business with it?
Frankly, any company that does business with the city of Chicago should tell them to go fuck themselves. Then the city would have to sue them, and then there would be a test case that would probably overturn the new ordinance as placing an onerous requirement on city contractors. I’m hoping this is exactly what happens but it probably won’t.
It’s just another way to force the reparations non-issue to the surface again.

Via The Corner, here’s an article entitled “Hollywood goes to war” from the Telegraph. Look at this in particular:

R Lee Ermey, who made his name as the fearsome drill sergeant in the film Full Metal Jacket, told The Telegraph that Streisand’s views were far from representative of Hollywood as a whole.
“Once again, Barbra Streisand has opened her alligator-sized mouth wide before her humming-bird brain has had a chance to catch up,” said Ermey. “Of course, she has the right to her opinion, but what she does is use the ‘bully pulpit’, helped by her fame, and people think she’s talking for Hollywood.”
Ermey, an ex-marine and outspoken supporter of Mr Bush and the war on terror, continued: “We need to do something about the situation before it turns round and bites us in the ass. Democrats are criticising President Bush for not spotting signs that 9/11 was coming. But they don’t want him to act to stop the next disaster. Ms Streisand does not speak for me or many other folks in this business.”

No kidding.
I hope Mr. Ermey continues to get roles now that he’s dissed Her Bitchesty.

Item on Fox says that Santa Monica, CA, has passed (or is in the process of passing) an ordinance that will stop the 3-times-daily meal handout to the city’s 1000 homeless in the city parks. Naturally this is causing some people (although notably not “some homeless advocates”) to kick. However:

The city of Santa Monica says it isn’t pushing the homeless out. The city still intends to spend nearly $2 million this year on homeless programs even though studies show the money has done little to ease the problem.

Amazing how you can throw money at a problem and it DOESN’T GO AWAY. Kind of like the war on poverty, or the war on drugs.
At least the war on terrorism is showing some results.

Mr. (or Ms.) pool-162-84-241-93.ny5030.east.verizon.net Googles and asks:

http://google.yahoo.com/bin/query?p=linda vester blonde or not&hc=0&hs=0&ac=

She was a brunette when she worked at NBC. And as my wife would say, she’s got awfully dark roots to be a real blonde.

I hope this helps.

See this Fox News article. It’s too sickening to Fisk.
If Maryland hadn’t outlawed guns, you wouldn’t have these outlaws doing what they’re doing. Because some caring, carrying citizen would have popped them by now. (Maybe if they had headed for Virginia…and they may have, so what was wrong with you gun nuts in Fredericksburg?)
Well, OK, a little fisking. Ehrlich and Townsend are, respectively, the Republican and Stupid (er, DemocRATic) candidates for governor in Maryland.

Ehrlich and Townsend, who have been running about even in recent polls, appeared together Friday at a conference of the Maryland Municipal League in Annapolis.

Far, far from the field of battle, of course. Oh, and don’t forget: Townsend is a Kennedy.

“I’ve always been a strong supporter of getting assault weapons off the street, but today’s not a day to politicize the event,” Townsend said before the conference. “Today’s a day to pray for the victims.”

No. Today is a day to pray for the survivors. Since the survivors aren’t armed, they can’t protect themselves.

Ehrlich, who called on U.S. Attorney Thomas DiBiagio to step up prosecution of Baltimore gun violence in July, said the Montgomery shootings have nothing to do with gun control laws.

Gee. For a Republican, you’re pretty stupid; maybe you’ve been talking to Rep. Connie Morella, who’s barely a Republican herself but who represents Montgomery County. These murders have everything to do with gun control laws. Because a citizen can’t pack an equalizer to take on one of these fuckers, you’ve got every cop in the county out looking for them instead of the coroner cleaning up the mess from someone giving them a little of their own back.

“I think it’s time to reassess people who have guns who shouldn’t have them,” he said. “What we’ve been trying to do in this state hasn’t worked.”

Right. But the reassessment needs to be of citizens’ rights to defend themselves. And it needs to be positive to the extent of allowing concealed carry to Joe Blow who just wants to protect himself and his family.
And the Brady Campaign needs to kiss my ass and die the death of a thousand screams.
But now, bonne nuit, I have a sick wife to tend.

I saw a map of the murder sites in Silver Spring this morning in the WaPo, and it occurred to me that I lived across the street from one of the killing grounds for a year in 1995 (Shoppers Food Warehouse on Randolph at Georgia; I think this might be in what was the Hechinger’s when I was living there), and I used to shop near two of the others (Aspen Hill and White Flint) and get pizza at the Pizza Hut across the street from a fourth (the Shell station in Kensington). I’m not exactly sure where the Michael’s is because it post-dates when I lived in the area. However, I know the area quite well. I’ve probably bought gas at both the Mobil and the Shell stations involved, and I used to spend a lot of time in the White Flint area (gigantic Borders Books there, also the only CompUSA I know of on that side of town). And in Aspen Hill was the only big-box department store (a K-Mart) for miles around. (I assume this has changed. It was also one of the ugliest, dirtiest, and most disgusting K-Marts I’ve ever seen.)
Makes me glad I telecommute from 600 miles away.

I need a break. Plus I need to do Mom’s taxes. Plus Sally’s van is on the fritz. So go read some of those other fine people over to the right. I’ll be back Monday.

Stupid Bitch(tm) Cynthia McKinney has filed a lawsuit to be declared the winner of her primary in Georgia.

ATLANTA — Arguing that defeated Georgia Rep. Cynthia McKinney was the victim of a “malicious crossover” vote by Republicans, five DeKalb County voters asked a federal court Friday to throw out the results of the primary.

Uh huh.

State officials pointed to the law Friday and said it was clear that Georgia voters can vote for whomever they want in the primaries; there are no restrictions on preferred political party affiliation.
“I am simply unaware of any provision of law that prohibits voters from making a choice as to which party primary they will participate in,” said Chris Riggall, a spokesman for the secretary of state.

You can’t even get a break from your own party:

Attorney General Thurbert Baker, a Democrat, said Georgia’s law “is crystal clear in its guarantee that a voter can walk into a polling place on primary election day and choose a ballot for which ever political party he or she chooses.”
He added, “Georgia’s open primary system has withstood previous legal challenges and I will vigorously defend the Aug. 20 election results.”

Let’s sing it in harmony: YOU CAN’T CHANGE THE RULES AFTER THE ELECTION IS OVER.
Or maybe we should spell it out since the McKinneys seem to like doing it that way so much: You’re S-T-U-P-I-D, Ms. McKinney, you’re O-U-T-A-T-H-E-R-E, and it’s your own F-A-U-L-T.