Oh, look at this. Those kooky Kiwis have come up with the dumbest invention for smokers.
In some countries like New Zealand, Australia and Canada, the warning labels on cigarettes have become increasingly graphic to discourage smokers (In the U.S., Big Tobacco has actually sued over graphic warning labels, saying, get this, they make smokers “depressed.” I can’t make this shit up.
In New Zealand, to counteract the graphic warning, British American Tobacco came up with this invention to cover up the graphic warnings so smokers don’t have to look at it. It’s like some kind of Velcro band that goes around the cigarette pack literally to hide it. Oh, brother. I wonder how many people will actually buy it? What a bunch of drongos BAT are, trying to circumvent the law.
President Barack Obama’s doctor came out this week and announced the president is in good shape physically adding that he is smokefree.
According to the article:
Obama, who chewed nicotine gum, appears to have quit smoking entirely — an achievement his wife, Michelle Obama, announced earlier this year. And his cholesterol is now described as “ideal.”
So, next time some right-wing troll gives you shit about Obama and smoking, point to this article. He is no longer a smoker and hasn’t been for more than a year.
Herman Cain on Sunday defended his smoking campaign ad, by saying “we weren’t trying to make smoking look cool. Mark Block smokes.”
Cain defended the ad, saying it was not meant to send a broader message that smoking is acceptable. “Mark Block smokes. That’s all that ad says,” Cain said. “We weren’t trying to say it’s cool to smoke.”
“One of the things within this campaign is let Herman be Herman,” Cain said. “Mark Block is a smoker, and we say let Mark be Mark. That’s all were trying to say because we believe let people be people.”
On the ad released last week, Block praises Cain and states, “America’s never seen a candidate like Herman Cain.” Then with the music “I am America” playing in the background, Block smokes a cigarette and blows smoke into the camera.
The best part is his interviewer, Bob Schieffer, host of CBS’s “Face the Nation,’’ ripped into Cain for the ad.
Schieffer, a bladder cancer survivor, lit into Cain on his show. “It’s not funny to me,” Schieffer said. “I had cancer that was smoking related, and I don’t think it serves the country well — and this is an editorial opinion here — to be showing someone smoking a cigarette.”
Awesome, Bob!
Oh, by the way, Herman Cain took thousands of dollars from Big Tobacco lobbying against smoking bans when he was head of the National Restaurant Association.
Compared to the sexual harassment scandal dogging Cain, this is pretty minor, but I still can’t help shaking my head at this bizarre ad.
By the way, this Colbert bit on the Herman Cain smoking ad is FREAKING hiliarious!
Boy, if EVER there was an advertisement against chewing tobacco, it’s this photo of the Texas Rangers’ Nelson Cruz rounding the bases after hitting a home run in Game 6 of the World Series.
Really, really, gross. Not only is there is a big fat plug in his lip, his teeth are stained brown … AND he has little flecks of tobacco gunk on his teeth.
Seriously, ladies, would you kiss that? Hip guys out there. Would YOU kiss that?
Well, anyway, that was maybe the most incredible baseball game I’ve ever seen. Pretty hard to cheer for either team. GW Bush cheers for the Rangers while Tony LaRussa is a right-wing stooge (He came out in favour of the Arizona immigration law earlier this year.) I guess you just have to appreciate a great baseball game.
Grosser
Anyway, this will just give more grist to those do-gooder U.S. Senators who are trying to get chew out of Major League Baseball.
This is really bizarre. It’s an ad from Herman Cain’s campaign manager. It’s a pretty direct matter-of-fact personal testimony from the guy about why he likes Herman Cain … and then at the very end, they show him smoking a cigarette and blowing smoke right into the camera.
Bizarre. It’s like an old cigarette ad. I think it’s just a clumsy ad. They probably just told him, “act natural,” while they continued filming him, so he lit up a cigarette and smoked it.
I think…
… then again, Herman Cain does have a long, illustrious history of being a tobacco industry stooge. While he was a lobbyist for the National Restaurant Association, he apparently took a shitload of money from Big Tobacco as he lobbied against smoking bans in restaurants. More on that in this New York Times article. Maybe it was a secret product placement for his tobacco buddies. Probably not…
… but then again, you never know.
What is funny is the reaction to the video, no one could tell whether or not it was REAL! It reminded me of these three videos, one of which pretty Haruko dug up.
You tell me which ones are real and which ones are fake:
Thank you, Haruko, I have WANTED to find this one, but you did for me
In the second-biggest news of the day in Ohio — the first being all the tigers and lions that had to be shot — the Ohio Supreme Court heard arguments today challenging that state’s controversial 2007 smoking ban.
Ohio is one of the states where controversy over the smoking ban just continues to simmer. In most other states, everyone just gets used to it, but for some reason, in a handful of states, bans were massively controversial when they were being legislated, then continue to be controversial for months and even years afterward. In Ohio, it has dragged on for four-plus years. The most active thread on Topix is about the Ohio smoking ban — a thread that began nearly five years ago and has generated 75,000 comments … and is STILL generating comments. I find it fascinating that the same 20 or 30 people have been pissing at each other over smoking bans on the same thread for five years. (By the way, I highly recommend avoiding Topix because that site has become really lousy with spyware and malware.)
According to this article, more than 50 bars in Ohio have amassed more than $10,000 in fines. There have been a total of 33,000 citations written against bars over the past four years, totalling $2.5 million in fines. The state has collected about $775,000 of that money.
Part of Zeno’s argument is that it is being cited, even for posting “no smoking signs” and not putting out ashtrays, while the people lighting up — the smokers — are not cited. And it is not their responsibility to enforce the state law. (Not sure I buy that theory — businesses are liable for what goes on their premises. For instance, many bars have been sued and servers criminally prosecuted for letting people leave shit-faced drunk and then getting in a wreck.)
Zeno’s Bar in Columbus, Ohio, owes $33,000 in fines for repeatedly ignoring the smoking ban. The bar has sued to overturn the ban. A county judge ruled in favour of the bar, but a state court of appeals overturned that ruling and upheld the state law. Zeno’s is challenging the appeals court ruling.
Four senators are using the attention being given to the World Series by issuing a statement this week renewing the call for Major League Baseball to ban chew on the field and in the dugouts.
Sens. Dick Durbin, Frank Lautenberg, Richard Blumenthal and Tom Harkin, who is the Senate Health Committee chairman, all signed the letter to Major League Baseball. The letter states in part:
“When players use smokeless tobacco, they endanger not only their own health, but also the health of millions of children who follow their example.”
The senators cited the 2009 National Youth Risk Behavior Survey, which showed a 36% increase in use of smokeless tobacco products among boys in high school since 2003. The survey also showed that 15% of high school boys now use the products.
This is not the first time Congress has gotten involved in trying to get tobacco out of baseball. (And if you think this is weird, it is already banned at the Minor League level for 18 years now and most colleges do not allow their players to chew on the field.) The push has been ongoing for about a year now. And I even found out it is against the rules to smoke on the field. (Many years ago, Orioles manager Earl Weaver used to chain smoke during games. I wonder if Detroit manager Jim Leyland sneaks cigarette breaks in the clubhouse during games? He is a chain smoker.)
Baseball has been pretty stubborn about this and has yet to respond, saying it is a collective bargaining issue.
Really, it’s time. I know this sounds like the “pussyfication of America,” but the fact is, chewing is a big problem with more kids taking it up than in the past, and one of the reasons they do take it up really is because they see their heroes on the field chewing.
The biggest sporting event in the world is probably the Olympics. The next biggest is the FIFA World Cup. The next biggest is something I bet most of you have never heard of. The Rugby World Cup. It is watched by a billion people worldwide.
The Rugby World Cup has only been around since 1987, but like the FIFA World Cup and Olympics, it comes around once every four years. 20 teams from around the world compete, including the United States and Canada, but the U.S. isn’t very good.
Tomorrow, the No. 1 ranked team in the world, the New Zealand All Blacks, are playing the No. 2 ranked team in the world, the Australian Wallabies, in the Rugby World Cup semifinals. The entire country will be watching that game. New Zealand is 5-0 in the World Cup this year and has outscored its opponents 273-59. The Wallabies have a very tough defence and beat the mighty Springboks in the quarterfinals.
The other semifinal is today — tiny Wales versus France, another rugby powerhouse. Wales is ranked No. 4 in the world, while Les Bleus, the 2007 World Cup champion, is ranked No. 5.
Rugby is New Zealand’s national sport. New Zealand is favoured to win the World Cup virtually every tournament and they have been ranked either No.1 or No. 2 every single year of the 21st century. But, they have only ever won it once, the first one in 1987. New Zealand has lost a series of heartbreakers ever since. The heavily favoured All Blacks lost in the World Cup finals in 1995 in a terrible heartbreaker to the South Africa Springboks. You might’ve seen a Clint Eastwood movie about it called “Invictus.”
New Zealand also lost in the semifinals in 1999 and 2003.
One of the reasons New Zealand is so powerful is the All Blacks always feature a number of Maori stars. Moaris like many Polynesian people are a very strong and powerful people (It’s the same reason there are so many Samoans in American football.) Before each match, the All Blacks perform a stirring Maori “Haka” war dance to try and intimidate their opponents. It is done with all due respect and the other team usually stands still and respectfully watches.
Rugby is very much like your American football, only no high-tech helmets and no forward passes. Imagine American football with a series of laterals and that is pretty close. It is a terrible brutal and violent sport, with a lot of blood and broken noses. We were made to play it in school, though we played “touch” or “rippa” rugby, which is not nearly as violent, but still resulted in our fair share of bloody noses and tears. I played rugby all the way into college. Of course, it was touch rugby, our insurance would have never covered tackle.
Despite its massive popularity around the world, it’s hard to catch some of the World Cup on American TV. It’s on some obscure network called Universal which has been showing the matches. We had to go a sports bar to watch one All Blacks match, but NBC is showing some of the matches. I believe NBC will be showing the finals.
OK, if Herman Cain’s pathological bigotry toward Muslims and his borderline Uncle Ruckus “Blacks have been brainwashed into voting for Democrats” schtick wasn’t enough reason to hate him, now there is this.
(Thanks to Sandy at Current for cluing me in on this, BTW.)
In the 1990s, when Herman Cain, owner of Godfather’s Pizza, was a lobbyist for the restaurant industry, he partnered with RJ Reynolds and Philip Morris to oppose smoking bans for restaurants. Cain helped lobby against local and state smoking bans on behalf of the tobacco giants. Why? Whoooooaaaa, Nelly! Here we go! A letter from Herman Cain to SAFE — the Save American Free Enterprise fund, a tobacco industry front group at the time:
On behalf of National Restaurant Association and the
Save American Free Enterprise (SAFE) fund, I want
thank you for RJ Reynolds Tobacco Company’s generous
contribution to the SAFE fund.
As you know, the purpose of the SAFE fund is to provide
financial support to state restaurant associations in
their efforts to defeat anti-business ballot initiatives,
along with pro-actively promoting free enterprise
through federal and state legislation .
Rob, as we head into a new millenium, it will take
courage and leadership from industry leaders like you if
we are to Save American Free Enterprise .
Again, many thanks for your ongoing support and
participation with the National Restaurant Association.
Sincerely,
Herman Cain
What a fucking weasel. We are talking about smoking bans in … FAMILY RESTAURANTS … where children eat. It’s bad enough for employees to breath secondhand smoke for 40 hours a week, but they were fighting bans around kids.
Wow, just when you think a guy couldn’t be a bigger douchebag (and really, after Cain’s cracks about Muslims and towns should be able to ban mosques, he’s pretty damn high on the douchebag scale.), Cain takes it one step higher.
