Some famous, some infamous, all in the news for making poor choices:
- Sammy Sosa announced today he will appeal his eight game suspension for using a corked bat. Why should he appeal? The penalty essentially matches the seven or eight games every other player’s gotten in the last 25 years and as one of the game’s biggest stars, he ought not to get any less. Clearly the key reason for his appeal is so that he doesn’t miss this weekend’s series against the Yankees; after all, scalpers are getting over $1500 per ticket and without Sosa there wouldn’t be any reason for the high price. Still, this incident will hopefully begin to pull off the mask that Sammy is just the sweetest, nicest guy ever to slug a homerun.
- Sultaana Freeman lost her lawsuit to force the State of Florida to issue her a driver’s license with a picture showing her in a veil. Religious freedom is terrific but allowing this request would make a mockery of the reason why pictures are on licenses in the first place. Also seems quite amusing to me that Freeman is a recent convert to Islam and she hasn’t gotten much support from that community–her lawyer comes from the ACLU and that organization, quite reasonably IMO, will represent almost anyone, defendant or plaintiff, where civil liberties are the main issue–nor have other Muslims come forward with the same demand.
- Investors went wacko, again, when Palm announced its’ deal to acquire Handspring. Palm’s offer was actually for less per share than what Handspring sold for at the closing bell (the offer was made when the market was closed) and yet Handspring’s price traded higher in the next day or two. Then the traders realized the mistake and the price went down. Making this particularly stoopid was that investors did much the same thing three years ago when 3Com spun off Palm, trading those two stocks at prices that priced 3Com at less than just the value of its’ remaining portion of Palm. One might ask what’s the fuss since traders often push the price of an acquisition target above the offer but, sorry folks, that’s only reasonable when another bidder might come along and offer more money or the offer makes traders realize the target stock is simply undervalued, neither of which was true for the Handspring deal.
- Was Chocolate Factory really the best title for accused child molester R. Kelly’s newest CD?
Even though I purposely left (national) politics off the list here, and trust me I wanted to include them, people (and I include myself as a person) need to think twice and act once. Listen up!
BillSaysThis 