Tired_Old_Man

The sign is nice to see, but it is not accurate. Smoking while fueling: Definitely a no-no. Cell phones: They can not cause a fire at a pump. Why should you close the car door? I'll tell you later. About 7 years ago, I drove my company truck to the company gas pumps out past where the airplanes park while waiting to be towed to the terminal gates. As a crew chief, I carried a walkie-talkie and I had my personal cell phone. As I was fueling, my cell phone rang and I was speaking to Tina when the guy (who is supposed to fuel the vehicles) yelled from the control house. Stop talking on that cell phone before you blow the pumps up. At that same time, I heard from my walkie-talkie, “Avionics Crew Chief, you have a Radar problem on flight 609", I answered "copy that, I will be out there as soon as I fuel my truck". The guy came flying out of the control house screaming at me about my cell phone. Ok, here are the facts: #1. Even though very other year, an e-mail goes around warning you of cell phone gasoline fueling fires, it is a myth. #2. The walkie-talkie that I was using puts out 10 to 100 times of the power of the cell phone and therefor would be 10 to 100 times more dangerous than a cell phone. But because no one puts out bogus e-mails about walkie-talkie's blowing up gas pumps, no one worries about them. #3. The cell phones of 7 to 10 years ago and some of today's transmit whether you are talking or not in order to knew where the closest cell tower is, so if they could blow up a gasoline pump, they would whether you were talking or not. #4. Today's cell phones put out even less power than the ones from a few years ago. OK. Now for the answer for why you should close the car door. #1. The gas fumes may get into the car. #2. And most important. If it is a dry (low humidity) day and you get into the car while fueling and slide across the seat, when you get out, there may be a static discharge between you and the car. These static discharges can be thousands of volts and they can blow a car up (and have blown cars up) in the presence of gasoline fumes.

Parents have a right to refuse medical treatment for themselves, but not for their children. In some cultures, you can sell children into slavery or prostitution. In some cultures, you can send a child out to do strenuous manual labor before the child is 10 years old. In some cultures, you can kill the first born if it is a female. In this culture we allow parents a lot of latitude raising their children, but they are not allowed to kill them, sell them, or cause them physical harm by neglect or abuse. That is the rules of the game. Maybe if enough religious activists become congressman, children will someday be allowed to be sacrificed for the beliefs of their parents. God help us!!

Some on this thread have made fun of "stupid labels" on some products including where not to stick the curling iron. Someone else made fun of not taking a curling iron or blow dryer into the shower, but why? I bet very few know why it is dangerous to bring a curling iron or hair dryer into the shower. Saying that it is dangerous is not an answer. Why is it dangerous and are there times when it is not dangerous? My point is not to get into a pissing contest (though I will win because of superior equipment), but to make the point that things today are not easily understood. A few days ago, I pulled up to a BJ's Warehouse gasoline pump, where as member, I get about a 10 cent per gallon discount. Scotch taped to each of the 12 pumps was a hand written note saying "Do not use cell phones while in pump area. It is dangerous". Is it dangerous? Does anybody know why? If you open a computer up, there is a sign on the power supply saying "Do not touch with power on. Electrical shock hazard". Is it an Electrical shock hazard? Do you know why? Everyone can say, that this or that is common sense. Sense is neither common, nor universal, nor always what it seems to be. If I hold a dollar bill at one of the short edges between my index finger and thumb allowing the length of the bill to droop down and then I blow across my fingers where they touch the dollar bill, what will happen to the bill? If you are riding a motor cycle at 50 miles per hour and want to change lanes to the left, which way do you move the handlebars? Most people not know physics, so how are they to understand the consequences of their actions? Regrettably, we need the government or some knowledgeable body to warn us of many hazards. If you think the warnings are stupid, thank God, you have a good education.

No matter what the reason is, McDonald's coffee is still too hot. My wife says she can not eat or drink things as hot as I can (as a point of reference), but when I get a cup of McDonald's coffee (decaf), I very often have to put a few pieces of ice (from the cold drink dispenser) into it, plus the "Half'n'Half".

You say of course they would not have sued, but how would they have gotten the millions needed to care for their children? I am not doubting you and I hope that a community support system would be available to everyone, but the community called the United States of America is no longer there for many people who need help through no fault of their own. I said something similar when the news was interviewing a man who's wife just had 7 healthy babies. The newsman asked the father, "How does it feel to be the father of 7 children all at once?" The father started with, "Before I say anything else, I want to thank my Lord and Savior Jesus Christ for making this wondrous event possible..." No. God did not want you to have children. That is why he made either you or your wife incapable of having children. It was medical science that made it possible.

I think abortion is a bad idea, but I think that telling women what to do with their bodies is a lot worse. I also think that allowing the government to dictate to doctors what medical care they can provide to their patients is a bad idea. And I am not talking about quackery.

Life is funny. Today, I didn't feel like preparing my own dinner, and since I had to do some shopping at a store right next to a Chinese restaurant, I decided to eat a combination platter, and since I can only eat about half, I will have my Friday night dinner in a "doggy bag". What makes life funny is, after all this debating about law suits and McDonald's hot coffee, I was sitting there eating/drinking my Won Ton soup and the waitress came out with three soaps for the table in front of me. As she was passing the table, the 10 year old boy (of the party of 5) jumped out of his seat (for no apparent reason) hitting the waitresses hand and sending one of the soups flying, landing on the face and chest (low cut Florida type dress) of the mother. I immediately though to myself, "It's a good thing that it wasn't a cup of McDonald's coffee". No matter how stupid or negligent the child was to jump, there was no damage because the soup was not at an uncivilized temperature. No matter how stupid or negligent the woman was to put the coffee between her legs, there would not have been any (or much) damage if the coffee was at a civilized temperature.

Please do not take this personally, because it is a legitimate question and even if you can not answer it, it may serve the purpose of making people think. Would your son and daughter-in-law have sued if the if the babies had come out deformed and needing millions of dollars in medical care for the rest of their lives?

Even though we have been on opposite sides in the recent lawsuit debate, I agree with most of your post. There has to be something done to make awards more appropriate and to deal with the fact that doctors are not God and in an emergency, they can not be expected to have the advantage of hind-sight. Capping lawsuit judgments is not the answer, since insurance companies have unlimited resources and can appeal until the legal fees eat up the award (if capped). Doctors who treat someone with all the classical symptoms of a heart attack should be immune from large payouts if waiting for extensive testing would have allowed the patient to die before the test results would have said heart attack or not. The doctor in that case would have had no choice but to treat for the heart attack, even if it turns out to be something else. OB/GYN is probably where the most abuse is. No doctor has the ability to know what only a God would know. There has to be leeway between making a prudent decision that was wrong and making decisions that were not prudent. Maybe what needs to be done is for a group representing plaintiff's lawyers and a group representing insurance lawyers to reach agreement on a group of doctors to be used for testimony at trials to tell the judge and jury whether the doctor made prudent decisions taking all possibilities into account. The expert doctors would have to be smart, but not the kind that are professional second guessers and hopefully the two groups could agree on fair doctors to be on the list. As it stands now, lawyers can always find experts to take their side of the argument, no matter how absurd the argument is.

No one, well at least not I, is excusing Sandy Berger for his stupid dealings with secret information, but the BuSh White House is involved with a littany of secrecy and double-dealings which IMHO is orchestrated, not the screwups of one rouge official; Sandy Berger. And Congress should be treated as an equal arm of the government when trying to root out government wrong doing, no matter which party controls congress and no matter which party the president is from.

NO!! But it sounded good.:faint: Well, yes, I am a Liberal, but a very Sarcastic Liberal.

Side Note: When I was an aircraft mechanic, I worked mostly on aviation electronics (Avionics) and that included (at least for a while) working on the electric coffee makers. During one stretch, I was working the hangar and for a few weeks, I fixed coffee makers in the repair shop. These machines have multiple safeguards including max temperature adjustments. One day, two safeties failed at once in flight, and coffee came gushing out at a cabin attendant hitting her right where the thighs meet. She was carried from the plane on a stretcher and was out of work for almost a year. I was glad that I had not been the one to have fixed that coffee-maker prior to installation.

We are setting a very poor example by being so civil about issues that we strongly disagree about. I feel sorry for the person who started this thread to bait the LBT members into a knock-down drag-out fight.

How do you think the safety guards got on the saws? When I was a child, my uncle was a carpenter and a circular saw cost about two week's pay. Today, even a minimum wage earner can buy a circular saw for less than a day's pay. Carpenters didn't cut their fingers off (usually), but inexperienced people doing DIY projects need protection. About the fines that (I claimed) McDonald's had paid out. I read years ago that department of health inspectors in many local municipalities had fined McDonald's restaurants, but since I can not find the proof to back it up (now), I will leave it with 700 previous burns and $500,000 in Mcdonald's previous payouts as proof that they knew what they were doing and were not going to change. The Wall Street Journal wrote (September 1, 1994), "The testimony of Mr. [Christopher] Appleton, the McDonald's executive, didn't help the company, jurors said later. He testified that McDonald's knew its coffee sometimes caused serious burns, but hadn't consulted burn experts about it. He also testified that McDonald's had decided not to warn customers about the possibility of severe burns, even though most people wouldn't think it possible. Finally, he testified that McDonald's didn't intend to change any of its coffee policies or procedures, saying, 'There are more serious dangers in restaurants.' " (Originally) Liebeck sought to settle her claim for $20,000, but McDonald's refused.

It is amazing how soon they forget. But speaking of forgetting, if you have read the George Orwell classic “1984”, you might remember that the book's main character, Winston Smith worked at the "Ministry of Truth" were it was his job to doctor up the old news stories (on tape) so that the government would appear to always have been correct in the past. Well, the BuSh administration is doing something similar. Instead of doctoring old information, they are hiding it. They have been taking documents from 40, 50 or even 60 years ago and reclassifying them as top secret. I read last year, that a researcher was writing a book and went looking for a government paper that she had read earlier, only to find that this paper "no longer existed". Why should decisions that President Harry Truman made in 1947 (for example) be classified top secret? Something to think about and something to be afraid of.

And without these lawsuits we would have products that explode in our faces and electric saws that cut people's feet and fingers off, and pajamas for infants that burn out of control and thousands of other products that would make our lives a lot less safe. People can always quote a case here and there that sounds absurd, but in the majority of cases, our lives are made better by them.

People always use that McDonald's coffee lawsuit, but people should look into the facts first. McDonald's was fined 1000's of time prior to the incident of the woman being burned for selling coffee too hot to drink. Over 700 people had been previously burned by McDonald's coffee. There are laws in every state that say that a product must be usable for its intended purpose when sold, but McDonald's constantly broke that law by selling coffee too hot to drink. The McDonald's coffee was not a few degrees hotter than most other coffees or what the suggested maximum temperature should be but 40 to 50 degrees hotter. They were ordered over and over again to adjust their thermostats (internal) on their coffee makers. McDonald's elected to keep breaking the law and paying the (what to them are meaningless) fines. So, there was a lawbreaker with expensive lawyers thumbing their nose at the law and paying minor fines. That was taken into account along with the woman doing the stupid thing of putting the coffee between her legs. The jury had to determine after listening to expert testimony from doctors if a cup of coffee at a legal temperature would have caused the burns that she sustained. The jury determined that a cup of coffee at a proper temperature would not have caused the physical damage that Micky D's coffee did to her and because of the previous flaunting of the law, they made McDonald's pay, in the punitive award, an amount which would/should inspire them to follow the law in the future. By the way, the jury found McDonald's 80% to blame and the woman 20% to blame and the judgment was adjusted for that, plus on appeal the award was cut way down.

I feel for you and the problem, but if the law in your town/city/state says you can be held liable, then the bar owner had better get you help in the form of bouncers or other bartenders. My female friend used to be a bartender and there was always a male manager there to come to her aid. I would not work in a bar if the owner did not protect me and his business. He is not a good businessman if he leaves himself open to violence and/or liability lawsuits.

Yes, yes ,yes, no, no,yes. Just a joke (above). The sidewalk owner has no responsibility because the sidewalk did not contribute to the injury. This country uses a contributory negligence system in court. If two drivers collide and one driver is judged 80% at fault and the other driver is 20% at fault, they subtract 20 from 80 ( equals 60) and the 80% driver's insurance has to pay 60% of the damage to the 20% driver. Getting back to your questions: Unless the car had steering or brake defects that the manufacturer knew about and yet failed to recall the car to be fixed, they are not at fault because their negligence did not contribute to the injury. All cities have a speed limit even if not posted. Unless there was a defect in the road pavement that could coarse cars to go out of control, then the city is not at fault because their negligence did not contribute to the injury. However if there was a rut in the street that could lock a wheel into a course that a driver could not control or if there was no sign warning the driver of the need to drive slower because of a dangerous turn ahead, then the city could be held liable for their percentage of the amount awarded to you. Both the amount and the percentage would be decided by the jury. It is not as difficult as your question tries to make it. In the bartender/drunk driver situation, depending on what witnesses say about how the drunk was acting before he was served his last few drinks, the jury might decide that the driver did $100,000 of damage and the drivers was 80% responsible and the bartender (and bar owner) were 20% responsible. Most likely the driver's insurance would pay $80,000 and the bar's insurance would pay $20. If I was going to get a job as a bartender (and I have thought about it), I would first find out if my perspective employee had insurance and if I was covered in a liability case as described. If I owned a bar, I would cover my butt with insurance. I as a private person who owns 2 rental units and at one time owned 4, I have coverage for liability regarding injuries on my properties and an Umbrella policy for $1,000,000. It is the price of doing business. Before anyone talks about our suit happy society, consider that manufactures take the easy way out. Ford knew that their Pinto gas tanks were prone to explosion in rear end collisions. Ford knew it would cost $11 per new car to fix the problem and about $40 to correct the problem in cars already on the road, but a memo was sent that it was not "cost effective" to correct either the new cars or the cars already on the road. A women was burned so bad in her Pinto, that she required over 100 surgeries. Her husband and her children left her because she was too grotesque to look at. She sued Ford and won over $100,000,000. Ford will probably put that into the equation the next time that they need to decide if it is "cost effective" to correct a possible exploding gas tank. And GM, Toyota, Mercedes, Volvo, ect., will probably also build saver cars because of that lawsuit.

What is good for the goose is good for the gander, except when George is the gander.

Where did you read anything about me suggesting that the drunk driver should not be held responsible? There is much legal president in not allowing drunks to give informed consent. Men have been held liable for sexual abuse when having sex with a drunk woman who could not give consent and it is illegal (in many jurisdictions) to sign a contract while drunk. No one is saying that the bartender should count drinks, but when a bartender serves a drink to a person who is slurring his speech or acting in a manner that would lead a normal person to conclude that the drinker was drunk, then the bartender should not serve him. I used to be a heavy drinker and I decided one day that I was going to only have a few. After my third drink, the bartender said, "Here's one on the house, TOM". It doesn't take too many drinks before the will-power breaks down and I wound up having probably about ten drinks. I was only3 blocks from home, but I still could have killed somebody. YES, IT WOULD HAVE BEEN MY FAULT, but the bartender was a contributing factor. Bars do not give away free drinks to be nice. They do it to make money and it works. And who is most likely to threaten the bartender? The man who is drunk. And if the "current law" says that bartenders share liability (as they do in many places) are you willing to agree that it is then the the bartender's responsibly to monitor his patrons? TOM PS: BJean, You have some temper. I love it when you get passionate about a topic. I would be afraid to cut off your drinks in a bar if I were a bartender or even if I was given a party in my home and you attended.

Both before BuSh put his controversial "No Child Left Behind" Policy into effect while governor of Texas and after the policy had been in effect for years, they tested the incoming freshmen at the University of Texas with simple tests. Questions were of the nature of which side was the US on in the Vietnam war(?) and the Korean war(?), who was president during the civil war(?). The questions were either multiple choice ( with 2 possible choices) or true/false. The average score was 50%. Flipping a coin would have done just as well. The standardized testing IMHO has made the problem worse while giving it the appearance of making things better. Teachers and principals know that their jobs are on the line if the children do poorly on the standardized tests, so they teach how to pass the test, not who was president during the civil war(?) or which is the closest planet to the Sun(?). The program runs counter to all other programs in that it gives the schools who need the least financial aid (because they are doing well) more money, and takes money away from the schools who need financial aid the most because they are doing poorly. The rational for this approach is, “Why should we reward poor performance?” Sounds like a smart question at first glance, but think of the ramifications. If a school is located in a well to do town with high property values, the school tax and school budget will be high. The children there do well on the standardized testing so they get more money. In the next town which has a poor population, lower property values, lower school tax and therefor a lower school budget, when they do poorly, they get a cut in financial aid for their school system. So the rich kids who are getting a better education get even more help, while the poor lose money for the extra tutoring and remedial programs that they need. And then we wonder why the poor are locked into a cycle of poverty and we hear preaching about personal responsibility (of the poor performing students) when it is the earning power of the parents which are actually being tested. I used the University of Texas test story for two purposes. One; to show how badly high school graduates are doing and two; to show that the standardized testing of the "No Child Left Behind" Program is not working. Most colleges, I believe would have a similar record.

You are not unique in that respect, but when a church holds 100 people and they can influence 40 to vote their way, it only takes 18% of the rest to make it a majority. If there are 30 million Evangelicals and 80% vote the way that the president of the Evangelical council wants them to vote, it only takes about 20% of the rest of the eligible voters in the USA to elect a US President.

Aren't bartenders people also and if they are people and people should take responsibilty for their actions, and the actions were serving people too much to drink, then why should bartenders not be responsible for that? I am not saying that the drunk who runs someone over with his car should not be held responsible, but I am saying that the bartender should take his share of the responsibilty for what he did which was serving a drunk person.

On forums and on talk shows and in the papers, where ever people discuss the NSA spying on phone calls and internet usage, or where they discuss FBI collective of data on peace groups, or when they speak or write about warrantless searches of homes and offices, I hear the same continual refrain from members on the Right and/or supporters of the BuSh regime, "I didn't do anything wrong, so I have nothing to hide". Now the shoe is on the other foot. Members of the BuSh inner circle are accused of dirty dealing by firing US attorneys who prosecuted Republicans or who didn't prosecute enough Democrats or more generally were not seen as doing the administration's bidding. The firings, of course were legal, but the motives may have been unethical (to maybe illegal). Either way, this is a Republican scandal because all of the fired US attorneys are Republicans, who were replaced by Republicans and the replacements were not confirmed by Republicans (or Democrats for that matter). The Senate voted today 94 to 2 to repeal that clause in the newest version of Patriot Act that allows the president to bypass Senate confirmation of US attorneys, something that was slipped in without notice by congress. But getting back to the main focus of this post; the Right's continual refrain of, "I didn't do anything wrong, so I have nothing to hide". Congress wants the people involved in the scandal to testify under oath as to what took place. Some BuSh people have made statements, but the statements keep getting contradicted by the original makers of the statements and by e-mails saved by the Department of Justice and made public since the scandal broke. BuSh has offered closed door interviews of his people with no oaths and no transcript. The congress fell for this when it was Republican controlled and they were investigating 911. The problem, of course, was that after the interviews, one congressman claimed that the person being interviewed said one thing, another congressman said that he said something else and the person claimed he said a third thing, and of course the US public was left in the dark. So I want to know, if, "I didn't do anything wrong, so I have nothing to hide" is good enough when private citizens are being scrutinized, how come it isn't just as good when government officials are being scrutinized? Personally I think that it is not ok for government officials to hide behind secrecy, but private citizens should be protected. And that goes no matter which party is in power. Private citizens should only be investigated when they have given probable cause, but government officials give up that right when they take on the job, because then they are working as public servants of the people.