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For the western world, yes. But I’m coming to understand that, while we like to say “These people are just like us with hopes and dreams that their kids will inherit a better world,” it’s simply not true. They may want their kids to inherit a ‘better’ world, but their idea of ‘better’ is parsecs away from ours.
I don’t know what the answer is, but these people don’t think like us.
The rape part is disgusting if true. It seems neither the AP or bbc are willing to confirm that part tho.
“That claim was impossible to verify, AP said, and during their interview with her police interrogators sat in an adjoining room.”
Either way it’s a horrible story.
Re: unimaginable evil. Too true.
On the funny side I remember thinking when I first saw this..
“So that’s what happened with the iraqi information minister”
That’s no woman! It’s Baghdad Bob in a burqa.
RE: CTA and red-light tickets.
From the CTA website:
1200 tickets in one year while operating 2,222 buses doesn’t seem all that bad to me. I understand that removing the incentive to drive responsibly has increased the number of tickets, but in absolute terms, this is an average of one ticket for every 1.86 drivers or .54 tickets per driver per year. Sure, they’re breaking the law and the CTA, for one reason or another, is now paying the fines, but I just can’t get worked up over this. Also, keep in mind that this probably wasn’t even an issue (running red-lights) until Chicago tried to make some money by shorting yellows and snapping photos of those caught in intersections.
Re: Pill Mill case
Might this be because those seeking to alleviate intense pain tend to be closer to death than the average person?
Regarding the female suicide bombers, I’d be more shocked but then I already knew that rape and sex were used as tools of control among insurgents (or sometimes just for fun). When I was in Afghanistan we heard stories from people who’d interrogated insurgents that systematic rape in some madrassas was used as a type of training tool for male recruits as well. And when we went on patrols, one of the biggest red flags for us when seeing vehiclkes roll by were trucks that had 6-7 fighting age men (about 25-30 years of age) and one or two young boys with no women. Whenever we pulled them over they almost invariably had three things…large amounts of Pakistani money (we weren’t close to the AF-PAK border), signal mirrors, and KY Jelly.
Things like that are only shocking to Americans because we grew up and live in a country where rape is relatively rare and where we have a rule of law and a Constitutional government that guarantees certain individual rights. Places like Iraq and Afghanistan don’t have that, or if they do, those rights often aren’t enforced. A great many Americans (and I’m not trying to cast personal aspersions on anyone here or on all Americans…because I am one) often fail to notice that this kind of thing happens in the rest of the world because whenever they travel outside of our country’s borders they only choose to see a very sanitized version of what life in other countries is like…usually, only what the other country’s tourism industry and government wishes to show them.
Re: Pill Mill case
Their clinic had been linked to 59 deaths.
Might this be because those seeking to alleviate intense pain tend to be closer to death than the average person?
I was going to say the same thing, and add that “linked to” is one of the worst “weasel” words that appear in news articles. It serves no purpose but to artificially inflate the numbers.
Re: suicide recruiter
Re: suicide recruiter
There are sociopaths all over the world. Armed conflict gives them plentiful “outlets” to satisfy themselves, no matter what their social or physical limitations.
Permit me a correction to my comment on the CTA traffic tickets.
To calculate tickets/driver-year, I realized that I assumed that drivers = buses. This isn’t true. It’s probably more like drivers = 4*buses (there are 21 8-hour shifts/week and each driver would work 5 of them). That reduces the numbers from 0.54 tickets/driver-year to 0.13 tickets/driver-year. So, on average, only 1 in 8 drivers is getting a ticket, up from ~1 in 15 last year.
This isn’t to excuse it, but to put it in some context. Sure, 1200 tickets sounds like a lot, but for an organization with 2200 buses and 8000+ drivers, it’s really not that much.
Hell, I get a speeding ticket once every two years or so.
#5…
I agree. I mean, what’s next? “Advanced Stage Cancer Clinic linked to 100s of deaths”… “Hospital linked to thousands of deaths over the past decade”. It’s just silly.
One more thing to add… It seems that those in chronic pain are more likely to commit suicide than those who are not. (Which makes sense.)
I found this bit of skepticism regarding the Iraqi rape case to be fairly convincing.
I think EVERY hospital and clinic are linked to thousands of deaths. Its like the report on FoxNews about the 10 deadliest roads. All roads have deaths on them at some point, but what is the RATE of death?? Nothing like empty data to scare and intimidate people.
When a nation who has illegally invaded other countries, obviously to steal and appropriate resources, and has military groups dedicated to propaganda, admittedly to influence public opinion, their news releases might be a little suspect? I didn’t read one word about Israel’s war crimes in Gaza here and now this . Good to know you’re open minded, sir.
1200 tickets a year is surprisingly low given how blatant bus drivers tend to be in their disregard for red lights.
Which people don’t think like us Ben? Arabs? Muslims? Women? Islamists? Radical Islamists? Blanket statements like “these people” provides fodder for near sighted bigots. Please be more specific.
Perhaps one would say that the radical islamists have a culture that values life differently than the standard westerner would?
Plus evil is not relative. It is an absolute. Though the few islamists that have adopted mass murder as a value do not see it as such, it is still evil.
“radical islamists have a culture that values life differently”
wow, thats some orweillian double-speak.
for anyone who watches the headlines from the Muslim dominated cesspools, sorry – countries, around the world knows – Muslims don’t value life they worship death.
see http://www.thereligionofpeace.com for a daily dose of “unimanginable evil”. in the Muslim world, and that is spreading rapidly into the West, unimanginable evil is a common occurence.
Question regarding the traffic light running: How long are the yellow lights in Chicago? If they are as short as in some cities I’ve seen, I could see buses getting tickets more often than cars, and the city paying those tickets wouldn’t bug me.
You’re right, I should have been more specific. What makes evil? Is it the evil act? Is it the act of allowing evil by overlooking it? Is it fear for oneself that keeps one silent in the face of evil? Being too ignorant to even know that evil is taking place?
I would argue that the ‘good person’ who knows of incidents like this going on and not speaking out is just as evil as the person carrying out the violence.
Let’s go back in history a little. Back in the day, there was a country that didn’t like being ruled from afar by a king. There were many people who spoke out against this form of rule. Many of them died for their beliefs. But they continued to speak out for the good of their fellow citizens.
I have never visited Islamic countries nor do I know enough first generation Arabic people to make a truly intelligent statement, but in the reading and research I’ve done, it seems that even moderate Muslims value ignorance over education. This is inconceivable to me. In my opinion, the terrorists and suicide bombers are a symptom, not a root cause. The root cause is willful ignorance.
So, to fully clarify, ‘these people’ refer to anyone anywhere who values religion (or any form of dogma) over reason and education.
Well said, sir.
Everyone in Chicago runs red lights. There are no turn arrows so you have to pull into the middle of the lane if you want to turn left. Often, with traffic going the other way, you don’t get to turn left until the light is red. What it means is that most drivers pause for a second or two even after they have the green light to make sure that no late-comers are trying to get through the intersection. That is what makes the cameras such a scam. The city depends on drivers running reds so they don’t have to install lights with turn arrows.
Thanks for making my point, scott in phx.
You are welcome Matt, though I suspect you are really not trying to compliment me.
If so I’ll “clarify” my statement also.
People who actually follow Islam devoutly worship death.
Thats true. You can look it up.
First of all, thanks to Radley for posting such entertaining links on a regular basis. The album covers made my cheeks hurt.
“Caving to union demands, the city of Chicago agreed to start paying the tickets of city bus drivers who get cited for running red lights. With taxpayer money, of course. Guess what happened next?”
Anyone who stayed awake in Econ 101 knows: when price falls to zero, demand rises to infinity.
Government to people: “If you’re not going to spend your money, we’ll goddamn well spend it for you!”
In response to Bryan, re: pulling into intersections:
That is standard practice. Accepted intersection analysis assumes that two vehicles will turn left through a light on the yellow / red phase. Additionally, the law in most places is that if your vehicle is completely within the intersection before the light turns red, you are legally there, and have the right-of-way to clear the intersection before opposing vehicles can go through, assuming that the roadway you are going to is clear. Creating gridlock does not apply, you have to be able to clear the intersection, and are only being prevented from doing this by opposing traffic with right-of-way.
Most locations in the US use an ‘all-red’ part of the signal phasing to allow for these vehicles to clear. However, many cities, faced with people abusing the all-red time, have gone to instantaneous changes of phases, meaning that the cross-street turns green at the same time your street turns red. This may be the policy in Chicago.
The determining factor of whether the red light cameras are a scam or not comes in with how they deal with the signal timing, and presence in the intersection. They should not pick up people already in the intersection before the red. They should not pick up people who are crossing the stop bar at the yellow. They should not be activated before the red, delaying the picture until the red, just to catch people. And they should never ever monkey with the yellow time to increase revenue. Unfortunately, all these things are done.
It’s taken something that could have been a very effective tool for increasing safety, if it was used correctly, and made it into a rightly hated scam for the government to take more of your money.
Thanks, Cynical, I was gonna say exactly that. This creates a perverse incentive for drivers’ supervisors to encourage them to run red lights to get more taxpayers’ money into the city coffers.
Chicago is my home town, but it is way too disgustingly dirty for me to ever go back there.
The bus/red lights story will lead to injury and deaths. Then the tax-payers will pay the settlements too. Finally, when it is someone important’s daughter, or pregnant wife that gets killed by a fucking bus, they will say “We need to do something about this!”
But I figure it will have to be a female, she will have to be white, and a child will have to involved somehow. Otherwise the government doesn’t care who their policies kill.
Exactly, Brandon. And this ties in with what Highway posted above. People are catching on to what a scam red-light cameras actually are. In addition to being an endless stream of revenue, they actually DECREASE safety by causing drivers to slam on the brakes rather than risk going through a yellow or barely-red light, which in turn causes rear-end collisions.
As people catch on and complain about red-light injustice, you really have to hand it to Chicago for their resourcefulness in this latest scheme. It is total stealth — well, except for the write-up in the paper, that is. Still, they’ll get away with it. The State will have its money, nothing anyone can do about it.
#14
The point is appreciated. But, this exact process has occurred throughout this country over the past ten years, and before, to ruin doctors’ practices and imprison some of them.
Studies have been done that are inconclusive about suicide. It seems that people can tolerate, even, intolerable pain before they would end their lives. It still seems that many of those deaths could have been just that.
Getting rid of 900 bad patients would look good in a reasonable person’s eyes. But we are dealing with the DEA!
The patients are the ones the ones hurting. And now, they cannot get any pain treatment The story is the same every time. The DEA gets their pamphlet out, takes down another doctor, take all the charts, and throws the patients to the wolves, where their medical care is abandoned. If a doctor abandoned a patient, it would be malpractice! Mark my words, with more “change” coming, it will, only, get much worse!
“This case will go on forever to no useful purpose if we get into anyone else,” U.S. District Judge Monti Belot said in a pretrial hearing.”
Oh. I thought it might be a PRINCIPLED objection.
All it’s about is expedience, and the belief that the State has enough of a case against the doctor without having to explore all 59 deaths.
That makes sense now.
So the City of Chicago is paying fines to the City of Chicago on behalf of City of Chicago employees who are caught by City of Chicago red-light cameras?
I don’t see much of a problem, except that it only seems to serve to occupy the time of one or more bookkeepers in the CPD and CTA. Using the numbers from thomasblair in #4 & #10, I’d guess that the miles driven per ticket for these drivers is pretty damn low- as low or lower than the general population.
Even if it were a principled objection, it means next to nothing. The couple running the clinic have already lost. They’ve already lost a bunch of money and time, for which they have zero chance or ever being compensated for. Even if in the end, the jury returns a verdict of “what the fuck are these prosecutors trying to pull” (which, given recent events, I have no faith in their ability to do), the prosecutors can take 55 more swings at these people, and that’s only if they immediately shut down their livelihood, since you can’t very well do business with sick people and expect none of them to die, ever.
Good thing we’ve got a piece of paper behind some glass in D.C. to protect us from these thugs. Oh wait.
How come no one here has stated “these damn bus drivers should pay their own ticket, just like we have to pay our own”. Who cares about computations and laws of averages. The PRINCIPLED stance is “the driver pays for the ticket since s/he did the behavior”. WTF????
#32, the City of Chicago pays for the fines from TAXPAYER funds.
Bus driver runs red light, says to you HERE PAY THIS.
Chicago just has to raise ticket prices to $10 billion for a city bus running a red light and they will be very wealthy.
I will now run for king of federal reserve.
The whole Chicago bus driver story kinda reminds me of the last garbage bag. When I use the last trash bag out of the box, I then, ironically put that empty box into that same trash bag. Except in this case there is only one trash bag per box. What brand of circular bullshit logic is this? Government check kiting perhaps.
#32,
You’re forgetting that it’s not just the money. There’s a big externality: The increased possibility of a bus smashing into a person innocently driving or walking through the city, because they have less incentive to reduce red-light-running.
Yeah, the money’s a bit of a circle, but one reason for the cameras is ostensibly to help stop buses smashing into people.
#35,
Where exactly do you think the fines go? The city is taking taxpayer funds from one pile (the CTA) and putting it another pile (not sure how they allocate fine revenue, but it definitely does not disappear).
#38,
You seem to be operating under the assumption that the cameras have any purpose or effect other than revenue generation. Personally, I haven’t seen any evidence of that.
#39, it’s the Broken Window Theory (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parable_of_the_broken_window). Taking money from the taxpayers, even if it’s ALREADY in a pile under government control, means LESS money to be used on other things. Those other things will be funded by some other means, which usually means raised taxes in some form or another, hence TAKING FROM TAXPAYERS.
Bottom line is that a PRINCIPLED position would be: you ran the red light, you pay for it yourself, just like the rest of us that are more equal than others.
I wonder what fraction of the red-light tickets issued to buses are for technical violations and what fraction are for safety violations? I wouldn’t be surprised if the city doesn’t want that information to get out; if drivers had to pay tickets because they crossed the line 50ms after a shortened-yellow light turned red, the unions might start attacking the eager ticketing of technical violations.
Rock,
I would say, “These damn bus drivers should pay their own ticket, just like we have to pay our own” but there shouldn’t be a state to begin with. All state activity is violence and changing who officially pays the ticket doesn’t change a damned thing about the underlying assumption that Chicago is working with: that some group of people calling themselves the public servants of the City of Chicago claim the right to initiate violence against other people. Whether the money comes from the CTA or the bus drivers is irrelevant. What matters is that some people claim the right to steal from others and back it up with threats of murder and imprisonment.
I just crunched the numbers to give the story some context. 1200 is not that many per driver-year. On average, 7 of 8 bus drivers spent 8 hrs/day driving through city streets equipped with red-light cameras (and all the bullshit tricks they employ to catch everyone) and didn’t get a ticket.
The problem is not that the CTA is paying the fines, but that the CTA exists.
supercat,
I doubt it. The drivers aren’t paying the fines out of pocket and thus have no reason to fight to change the number of tickets issued, unless it reaches the point where CTA is paying hundreds of thousands of tickets and is threatening to put the individual drivers on the hook for it.
Those album covers were hilarious. Almost as funny as those pop-ups from the Partnershit for a Freedom-Free Amerika. An actor looking like Peter Fonda in FUTUREWORLD, telling kids that computers are cooler than drugs? “That marijuana pamphlet’s not going to read itself?” Priceless humor. Oh, wait…they were SERIOUS? That’s even better. :lmao:
Bus driver tickets being paid by the city? Presumably, the fine for running the light goes to the city, so the city is paying itself for its employees violating its laws. Won’t they eventually end up with a pile of money that goes in circles? Or should that be called “a wash”? I’m no economist here, but it seems if the city gets $100 in revenue for the signal violation, then pays out $100 for the signal violation to itself, the money goes nowhere.
Why not just admit that they aren’t fining bus drivers for running red lights?
“This case is going to be tried the way I want it to be tried … and you had better have your boss down here to talk about this,” Belot told her. “Don’t smile at me, Ms. Treadway.”
DA…PWNED!!!
I loved the “Zombies Ahead” hacked road signs.
(“On a lighter note”)
Regarding the album covers:
Sadly, the covers for album #2 and #11 are the same photo shoot. One B&W, one color, two different performers but they are the same damn shoot.
That my friends is when you know you suck as a photographer.