Tort reform, my ass

What do you think is in seasoned beef? When faced with that food, seasoned beef, what do you imagine it contains? Beef, seasonings, maybe a tad of the ubiquitous preservatives? One person found out, and is suing Taco Bell for false advertising because their seasoned beef is only 35% beef. I am opposed to frivolous lawsuits, but this I agree with.

I believe in truth in advertising laws. I want my juice to say 100% real juice, or artificially flavored, and I want to know what it means when it says one of those. And when I order a beef burrito, I want the brown lumpy fatty stuff to come from a cow, not a chemical plant. And if this lady wins her lawsuit, restaurants might be more truthful in their descriptions and that's a-okay with me. If not, at least other places will know that there are folks out there willing to pay a lab to test fast food.

And, although I've already mentioned it here before, I want to reiterate that the McDonald's hot coffee lawsuit lady had to have her vagina skin grafted because McDonald's company policy was to only serve coffee hot enough to give 3rd degree burns if sipped. Plumbers cannot legally set your water heater temp as high as the coffee that McDonald's handed to people every day. [source]

I find it odd that the Republican rallying cries are simultaneously tort reform and free market. To me, lawsuits are the epitome of free market. The bad guys are bad, they get sued, and a jury of their peers determine the damage. Be bad for as long as you think you can get away with it and then pay up when it catches you. The free market determines the penalty for bad behavior rather than the government. Isn't that exactly what free market is supposed to be about? Republicans should shun tort reform for what it is: government trying to regulate and stifle the peoples' wills in the free market.

Waaaaaaay to the left

I'm a liberal. But I'm not sitting around wondering what people can do for me. Shocking, I know. I believe in suing bad doctors for lots of money to give them a reason to not be bad doctors, not for torte reform. I'm for letting gay people get married, cuz it's none of my business and doesn't affect my life if they do. And I'm for helping people when they need help cuz what kind of country just lets people die around it and then shrugs and says "Not my problem."?

But I am not socialist. And part of that is scientific. I think that the US is a grand experiment in democracy, and you cannot change an experiment halfway through. You let it succeed or fail on its own, and if capitalism and democracy fail, then so be it. But, I also believe we can have an EPA and a DOT without becoming socialists. Especially when the hospital charges me ten dollars for a Vicodin because uninsured parents bring their kids to the ER with lung infections a regular pediatrician could have cured, if not for the $45 office visit charge. So I am a liberal, and I really wish people would stop trying to convince me not to be. In rather unpolite terms, I think non-liberals tend to be selfish fucks.

Respond in comments. Prove me wrong. I will admit it if you do.