TheAgitator.com
Morning Links
Thursday, September 25th, 2008• Interesting ranking of countries based on the perception of corruption in their governments.
• Journalist undergoes treatment for the same affliction in the U.S. and U.K. heath care systems. Since I’m linking to it, you can probably guess how the two compared.
• Chicago’s idiot mayor wants to limit alcohol sales on nights where the Cubs or White Sox might clinch the penant.
• Man facing ass-ault (sorry!) charges for passing gas in the general direction of a police officer.
• Audi hatches a plan to put red light cameras out of business. Hurry up, please.
Wish we had something like that now. They just put up a whole bunch of red light cameras here in Orlando. They really suck because now everybody slams on their brakes instead of going through safely.
If passing gas is outlawed, only outlaws will pass gas.
ROFLcopter.
Huh. Heavily pregnant women better be careful, then. I can’t eat a cracker right now without belching for hours afterward. If I got stopped for some reason, would I be arrested for belching in the officer’s general direction?
*burps*
Pregnancy may be the most feminine thing a woman can do, but it sure ain’t ladylike.
Also, did the man accompany his flatulence with, “Your mother was a hamster and your father smelt of elderberries”?
Because if not, I don’t think they can prove he did it on purpose.
I spent 10 days in Wrexham-Maelor Hospital with a snapped femur and shattered heel. This guy’s story is right on the money, other than that service was slightly better in Wales because the population was less. But everything else is exactly what I experienced. Having the two end of your snapped femur grating against one another every time you do anything more than breathe for 24 hours straight is a highly, highly unpleasant experience.
Worst part: I could have gone to the private hospital down the street since either way my insurance was paying, but I didn’t realize that.
I’m confused. Are the countries at the top of the list the ones with the highest perception of corruption?
Nevermind. I figured it out by actually reading the text. Normally I just like to look at the pictures.
Oh no, here come the Holy Grail puns… The cops will be Arthur…
I see our hard work in Afghanistan has paid off. “Look at us, we’re not last!”
ktc2,
They’ve pretty much turned all the red light cameras off here in Alexandria, Virginia, because they found that they caused more accidents from people slamming on their breaks once they saw the camera in the intersection.
So, to the person behind them it looked like they’d go through the light and then, BAM!
A more jaundiced interpretation of the “corruption index” is that it’s not measuring the level of corruption in particular nations, but the level of credulousness in the population.
(I’m also reminded of something my friend who lives in the Philippines told me: “Here, corruption is affordable, so you can actually get some government asshole to leave you alone.” — In the US, you have to be a fat-cat to get the government to leave you alone.)
Yeah, it sucks ass here. It’s dangerous at those intersections now, and it wasn’t before. I don’t expect they’ll get rid of them here though no matter how many deaths they cause, more likely they’ll shorten the yellow lights to jack up profits.
A morning link you may have missed.
Man falls to death after police stun gun shock
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/26885773/
In the end, she was actually happier with the care she got in England:
aw, wasn’t that sweet that she was glad not to have to worry about paying for her doctoring, no matter how absolutely shitty the quality. “they gave me all the placebos i wanted!”
the shitty quality that she mentions, but doesn’t go into too much detail on. starving patients lying for hours in their own wastes, hospitals overrun with roaches and vermin, efective meds denied because the NHS has decided they’re too pricey (sound familiar?), the *oftentimes months-long waiting lists for treatment*…..
the people who want to bring us socialized medicine, just like in good old blighty, are the *exact same idiots* who gave us the current financial/mortgage crisis.
what could possibly go wrong?
ktc2,
It requires some data collection and research, but it is possible to sue the roadway owner if they have reduced the yellow time below the dilemma zone time, that is, the time that a driver going at the speed limit can neither make it through the interchange without stopping nor stop prior to the stop bar. It takes some work, and all you’ll get done is the yellow time increased. But there are loathsome agencies that have done this, in the name of increased revenues.
It just infuriates me to no end that an effective tool at preventing deadly collisions, the red light camera, has been perverted into a money making scam. A properly designed intersection, with adequate yellow time, and advance warning signs of photo red-light enforcement, WILL reduce accidents. Unfortunately, it’s been shown to be obvious that this is not the goal of the programs.
The Brits are the only people right now who know how to deal with those goddamn boxes — there’s a whole underground sub-culture dedicated to riding around on high-powered motorbikes and blowing and burning them up.
I spent half a week at Los Angeles County hospital with a broken leg before I finally got my ducks in a row with COBRA coverage, and my experience was similar to what the reporter described in the UK. I’m afraid that I can’t say that the US system is really all that much better unless you go to a private physician (which I did once I got them to let me out, which was difficult enough). Add to that the fact that they STILL sent me a bill for $10k (since even with COBRA, this wasn’t a primary on my plan), I don’t really think we’re that much better off. Especially for people with no insurance or insurance issues.
She may have gotten better care in the U.S., but that hasn’t been my experience. As a matter of fact, the U.K. hospital experience she described sounded a whole lot like several experiences I’ve had in the U.S., except the crappy medical care was combined with the wiping out of bank accounts.
(Deep intake of breath….)
THE HEALTH-CARE SYSTEM OF THE UNITED STATES IS *ALREADY* SOCIALIST, AND HAS BEEN FOR DECADES, YA DUMBASSES!
I.e., there’s a threadbare amount of contrast to be gleaned from comparing the U.S. socialist system to the communist systems in other places.
Well-heeled Canadians and Europeans travel to American clinics to get their problems fixed…..and well-heeled Americans travel to Mexican*, Guatemalan* or Israeli clinics to get their problems fixed (ref: stem-cells, etc). (*Staffed by ex-pat American medical professionals sick of the commie bullshit.)
We may not yet be socialist in our medical system, but it sure is bureaucratic. All the problems she described with the UK hospitals I’ve seen during two stays in the hospital during the last year. All of them, and a couple more. If you are ever forced to be hospitalized over Christmas, you had better hope that the hospital doesn’t think that staffing at less than half the normal levels for Christmas Eve and Christmas Day is a sensible option. My hospital did, leaving one nurse to take care of approximately two dozen patients. (And of course, she was one of the worst nurses, because all the good nurses had the sense to make sure they didn’t work that day.) And making a charade of sending me home all certified to take care of myself, when in fact the reason was that the insurance carrier (AIG, btw) wouldn’t pay for anything beyond the day I was sent home.
By the way, Episiarch understates the pain involved with a broken hip, which was made more interesting by the guy in the gurney next to me in the ER ward, who had been first tasered and then shot (in the leg) by cops before they could subdue him, and still yelled and threatened them until the MDs put something in his IV that shut him up for the night.
Yes, now take a look at the way health insurance is handled in the Netherlands. It’s a sensible system based on reasonable constraints.
Like the US, the UK system is “because it evolved that way”, the .nl system is a modern and deliverately created system intended to avoid the issues with both fully private and fully government-controlled medical systems, and also encourages health insurance providers to provide proper screening and preventative medicine to avoid longer-term costs.
#9 Marty, you called it. I was about to break in with, “silly policeman, I fart in your general direction!” I guess it’s kind of anti-climactic now. But seriously, I think the officer needs to lighten up a bit. As long as only gas was passed and not–to be blunt–a solid or liquid.