The killing of a photo radar worker reveals drivers rage about photo radar cameras. One man said the victim got what he deserved.
Moments after Doug Georgianni was gunned down inside his photo radar van in Phoenix, a CBS 5 photographer captured disturbing comments about the Redflex workers death.
Our photographer said, So death is what you deserve, man? Somebody got killed.
It was a photo radar guy. Does anyone care? Does anybody care about the son of a b----? the driver replied.
Other drivers expressed anger. On the anti photo radar website CameraFRAUD.com, several drivers blamed state workers for Georgiannis murder.
Here are just a few of their comments:
Joe wrote, "Arizona created this monster. No they didn't pull the trigger, but they put these cameras up when people are already hurting financially."
jgunn wrote, A big middle finger to DPS and Redf-- for trying to profit off laws and angering the public enough that this crap is happening.
Pete B wrote: DPS Director Roger Vanderpool: This man's blood is on your hands.
During a news conference Monday, DPS Director Roger Vanderpool said Doug Georgianni was just doing his job when he was killed. It seems some of the public equate working for Big Brother with Big Brother. Is "Just doing your job" equivalent to "Just following orders?"
#2
Does not justify homicide. No way, no how. And driving around potting gov't "agents" is a sure way to cause the gun grabbers to ramp up the caterwauling.
#7
Personally I'd prefer shooting the a****les who insist on riding my tail when I'm already speeding and it's bumper to bumper and nowhere to go for him except to get in front of me. But no - that's their plan - turn us against each other.
Or am I too sensitive?
Last fall, David Wiley stood in front of a room full of professors and university administrators and delivered a prediction that made them squirm: "Your institutions will be irrelevant by 2020."
Wiley is one part Nostradamus and nine parts revolutionary, an educational evangelist who preaches about a world where students listen to lectures on iPods, and those lectures are also available online to everyone anywhere for free. Course materials are shared between universities, science labs are virtual, and digital textbooks are free.
Institutions that don't adapt, he says, risk losing students to institutions that do. The warning applies to community colleges and ivy-covered universities, says Wiley, who is a professor of psychology and instructional technology at Brigham Young University.
America's colleges and universities, says Wiley, have been acting as if what they offer access to educational materials, a venue for socializing, the awarding of a credential can't be obtained anywhere else. By and large, campus-based universities haven't been innovative, he says, because they've been a monopoly.
But Google, Facebook, free online access to university lectures, after-hours institutions such as the University of Phoenix, and virtual institutions such as Western Governors University have changed that. Many of today's students, he says, aren't satisfied with the old model that expects them to go to a lecture hall at a prescribed time and sit still while a professor talks for an hour.
Higher education doesn't reflect the life that students are living, he says. In that life, information is available on demand, files are shared, and the world is mobile and connected. Today's colleges, on the other hand, are typically "tethered, isolated, generic, and closed," he says.
#3
Complete degree coursework (academic and trades) should also be broadcast on every cable and satellite system and available for download. Update the correspondence school model. It's one gov expenditure I would support. Watch it, Tivo it, study it. Expand the skills base and keep the young busy and out of trouble.
Posted by: ed ||
04/21/2009 10:13 Comments ||
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#4
Hell, I've just been wondering who could afford college in 2020. The Tsar knows a couple of the younger engineers at his old company who owe more in student loans than we do on the house we bought.
If this "new model" brings down the price of an edumacayshun, that would be an even bigger plus than just the convenience factor alone.
#5
IDK about you, but by the time Jack and Jill are eighteen, I'd like them to head out to a college and not be under my roof on the internet. Trailer cooperatives for internet undergrads?
#6
There are several ways to significantly reduce the cost of a universary degree, even before filling out the applications. AP courses in high school translate to college credit -- or taking higher level courses to meet the requirement instead of 100-level courses -- if the student tests well enough on the national exams offered at the the beginning of May. Almost all of the trailing daughters' equally ambitious classmates are graduating high school with 6-8 AP credits under their belts, where each credit equals a full year college course, ie they're starting with up to two full years of college schooling done. While many schools offer some AP courses, one can study for any course independently; just make sure to arrange for a proctored exam with your guidance department at the beginning of the school year. Many states also offer dual credit for college courses taken while still in high school; trailing daughter #2 is currently taking first year Japanese that way, and next year will take most of her courses at the university with the adults rather than at high school... and the great state of Ohio is paying for it, so long as she earns good grades from the university. Finally, some tertiary schools offer the opportunity to test out of courses, either for credit or to be able to skip ahead to higher level courses in the subject. Contact the college/university admissions department to find out who to talk to about that. So there can be a payoff for independent learning, even if the work doesn't show up on the student's high school transcript, and discussion of the whys and wherefores of that independent study can make for very interesting college application essays.
Check out the following links (mom probably can suggest more, as no doubt can Rantburg's professors):
http://www.collegeboard.com/student/testing/ap/about.html (note, AP study guides and practice tests can be purchased at the usual bookstores, as well as found on-line)
http://oyc.yale.edu/
http://www.apple.com/education/mobile-learning/
http://www.oercommons.org/
http://cnx.org/
http://www.bu.edu/today/buniverse/index.shtml
http://ocw.mit.edu/OcwWeb/web/home/home/index.htm
There is absolutely no reason that your student need start at the very beginning then work, antlike, along the normal path to the end, four years and $100,000 later.
#7
IMHO, it can't happen soon enough. Most universities are a scam these days. Their product is over-priced, under-delivers, and they provide a haven for idiot leftists. Most people don't need a college degree anyway. A couple of years of business school or technical training would suffice.
#9
Universities have been fairly successful in retarding the learning without walls movement, but their destruction is ultimately unavoidable. Information about everything is now available everywhere. Well, almost, and it is expanding at a huge rate. Ivy walls are becoming as relevant as telegraph poles in the 19th century were and professors are the telegraph operators of the 21st century. I hope to see India providing quality education there and on line in English that is cheap, cheap, cheap and of competitative quality.
Posted by: Richard of Oregon ||
04/21/2009 13:02 Comments ||
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#10
The cheap netbooks are being promoted to kids through Toys-R-Us for educational purposes, giving access to many that couldn't afford a computer. They also make affordable internet education for those living in impoverished nations possible. Free university could revolutionize the world by simply educating them all for $300, saving the taxpayers billions in salaries alone.
#12
Universities do have a place in the education spectrum. The problem of the autodidact is that he tends to have deep understanding of the several subjects that interest him, but often very little of the remainder that do not. And while it is useful to the economy to have businesspeople, engineers, and technicians of all sorts who deeply understand their trades, it is necessary in a democracy that citizens have a broader understanding of history, law, and the key differences between Western civilization and all the others. Universities' general education requirements, while in need of a great deal of improvement at the moment, were originally intended to provide what was once referred to as a "gentlemen's education" which would enable said gentleman to judge when the specialists were piling it high and deep.
The irrelevancy claim is not new. For the most part a disciplined autodidact could get as good an education from the Encyclopedia Brittanica by the middle of the last century as can still be gotten from most universities. It's just that with the internet, one needn't stop by the public library every evening after work.
We can hope that the result of AP and dual credit programs at the high school level, and the available resources for the higher education crowd will drive the universities to resharpen their focus on broad education and important research, rather than continuing to pursue the nonsense that's enthralled them since the 1960s.
#13
Welcome to the 21st Century. Think Tanks or interest groups will take the place of universities. We see it already on the net and it will just get more organized as time goes on. Those who are interested in a topic gravitate to it and they are often far more educated in the details than someone who has a general degree. Not to say that certification or degrees will go away, but just like journalism, you will need to produce a good product rather than a degree to have the people who are "into" a topic or who want a true expert to do the job.
That may help alot of people. And a good Mother you must be.
In the end, the system was origionally introduced as a trade school to help you sharpen your skills in your chosen trade. Thus, what is old is new again.
#15
Thank you, newc. It's hard to say whether or not I'm actually good at mothering -- I was given such good material to work with: twice by nature (trailing daughters #1 & 2), twice by the families that bore and reared them for the first 16 years of their lives (formerly temporary daughter & part time daughter). Beautiful, gifted, hard-working, kind-hearted... it's hard to go wrong when presented with that. :-D
The Nation -- As we mark Obama's first 100 Days, there is much to celebrate--from repeal of the global gag rule to the passage of the stimulus and the Administration's pledge to close Guantanamo. The budget, a smart blueprint to build a new economy, will demand that progressives mobilize to take on well-funded lobbies intent on obstructing real reform.
Yet, as I think about the most troubling aspects of these first 100 days, there are two areas which I fear could endanger the Obama Presidency: the bank bailouts and military escalation in Afghanistan.
Americans deserve a real national debate about the Administration's plans in Afghanistan -its ends and means and exits--before undertaking such a major military commitment. That's why Brave New Films' work is so essential: with its new documentary Rethink Afghanistan and online debates such as the one CAP's Lawrence Korb and I had last week, BNF is fostering the kind of discussion, debate and dissent that Obama has said he welcomes.
BNF's work--along with a network of bloggers, progressive leaders, magazines like The Nation, peace and justice groups--is sparking much-needed Congressional hearings on vital areas such as the role and goals of the US military in Afghanistan, oversight of contractors, transparent budgeting and clear metrics to measure progress toward a defined exit strategy.
What's key at this pivotal moment is increasing the pressure for constructive, smart, effective non-military solutions to stabilize Afghanistan--and strengthen Pakistan's fragile democratic government. As I argued in the debate with Korb, I believe the more responsible and effective strategy moving forward is to take US-led military escalation off the table, begin to withdraw US troops and support a regional diplomatic solution, including common-sense counterterrorist and national security measures ( extensive intelligence cooperation, expert police work, effective border control) and targeted development and reconstruction assistance.
#3
It certainly would improve OUR nation when the Hassan Chop starts. Just make sure all the commie organizers are sent there in one "surge".
Posted by: ed ||
04/21/2009 15:04 Comments ||
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#4
Send our excess leftists "down to the countryside" where they will "learn from the people". You've got to learn raw, unadulterated, from the source. No more of the bourgeois learning from books, it's time to live among the Afghans in the countryside and do as they do.
Well, it's a thought. Heck, the hardcore Marxists at FARC have safe houses with plasma TVs and hot tubs...the only way to visit Afghanistan is with an NGO, with hot showers and satellite internet.
#6
Cute in theory, mojo, but you know that the survivors would just return with skulls full of fanatical conversion & a back-pocket full of citizenship paperwork. The last thing we need is to expose the feeble-minded to enemy indoctrination with a Stockholm Syndrome chaser.
Posted by: Mitch H. ||
04/21/2009 15:54 Comments ||
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The most underreported story of the month must surely be the announcement by French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner that he no longer supports the accession of Turkey as a full member of the European Union. His reasoning was very simple and intelligible, and it has huge implications for the Barack Obama "make nice" school of diplomacy.
At a NATO summit in Strasbourg in the first week of April, it had been considered a formality that the alliance would vote to confirm Anders Fogh Rasmussen, the prime minister of Denmark, as its new secretary-general. But very suddenly, the Turkish delegation threatened to veto the appointment. The grounds of Turkey's opposition were highly significant. Most important, they had to do with the publication of some cartoons in a Danish newspaper in 2005 lampooning the Prophet Mohammed. In spite of an organized campaign of violence and boycott against his country, and in spite of a demand by a delegation of ambassadors from supposedly "Islamic" states, Rasmussen consistently maintained that Danish law did not allow him to interfere with the Danish press. Years later, resentment at this position led Turkeywhich is under its own constitution not an "Islamic" countryto use the occasion of a NATO meeting to try again to interfere with the internal affairs of a member state.
The second ground of Turkey's objection is also worth noting. From Danish soil a TV station broadcasts in the Kurdish language to Kurds in Turkey and elsewhere. The government in Ankara, which evidently believes that all European governments are as untrammeled as itself, brusquely insists that Denmark do what it would do and simply shut the transmitter down. Once again unclear on the concepts of the open society and the rule of lawif the station is sympathetic to terrorism, as Ankara alleges, there are procedures to be followedthe Turkish authorities attempt a fiat that simply demands that others do as they say.
The implications of all this, as Kouchner stated in an interview, are extremely serious. "I was very shocked by the pressure that was brought upon us," he said. "Turkey's evolution in, let's say, a more religious direction, towards a less robust secularism, worries me." This is to put it in the mildest possible way. It's not just a matter of a Turkish political party undermining Turkey's own historic secularism. It is a question of Turkey trying to impose its Islamist and chauvinist policies on another European stateand indeed on the whole NATO alliance. And if this is how it behaves before it has been admitted to the European Union, has it not invited us all to guess how it would behave when it had a veto power in those councils?
For contrast, one might mention the example of reunited federal Germany, easily the strongest economic power in the European Union, which painstakingly adjusted itself to its neighborsto the extent of giving up even the deutsche mark for the euroand adopted the slogan "not a Germanized Europe but a Europeanized Germany." With Turkey, it seems the reverse is the case. Its troops already occupy one-third of the territory of an EU member (Cyprus), and now it exploits its NATO membership to try to bully one of the smaller nations with which it is supposed to be conjoined in a common defense. For good measure, it continues to be ambiguous about its recognition of the existence of another non-Turkish peoplethe Kurdswithin its frontiers.
President Obama's emollient gifts were on display at the NATO summit, where he eventually persuaded the Turks to withhold their veto on the appointment of Prime Minister Rasmussen. Accounts differ as to the price of this deal, but a number of plum jobs and positions now appear to have been awarded to Turkish nominees. Much more important, however, the foreign minister of France has reversed his previous position and has now said: "It's not for the Americans to decide who comes into Europe or not. We are in charge in our own house." Put it like this: Obama's "quiet diplomacy" has temporarily conciliated the Turks while perhaps permanently alienating the French and has made it more, rather than less, likely that the American goal of Turkish EU membership will now never be reached. And this is the administration that staked so much on the idea of renewing our credit on the other side of the Atlantic. This evidently can't be done by sweetness alone.
On the question of Turkey's accession, I used to be able to make either case. Admitting the Turks could lead to the modernization of the country, whereas exclusion could breed resentment and instability and even a renewal of pseudo-Ataturkist military rule. On the other hand, admission would put the frontiers of Europe up against Iran and Iraq and the volatile Caucasus, so that instead of being a "bridge" between East and West (to use the unvarying cliché), Turkey would become a tunnel.
The Strasbourg crisis clarifies the entire picture and should make us grateful to have been warned in such a timely fashion. Turkey wants all the privileges of NATO and EU membership but also wishes to continue occupying Cyprus, denying Kurdish rights, and lying about the Armenian genocide. On top of this, it now desires to act as a proxy for Islamization and dares to waste the time of a defensive alliance in trying to censor the press of another member state! Kouchner was quite right to speak out as he did, and the Turkish authorities will now be able to blame the failure of their membership scheme not on the unsleeping plots of their enemies, but on the belated awakening of their former friends.
Bettca this guy's phones, mail, car, etc will soon be on the radar H/T HotAir
The president's critics ought to lighten up. We should give him credit for not knowing any better. (He was "finished" and "polished" at Harvard, after all.) Barack Obama is an accident of history, a street hustler from the South Side of Chicago with the gift of gab who landed on the world stage like a whale beached at the whim of a storm, the wrong man at the right time. There, someone finally said it!
He landed on that beach just as the nation, or a large part of it, desperately wanted absolution for the sins of the past, some real and some only imagined, That's a nice consolation prize acknowledging that some were only imagines
and suddenly we had our own Susan Boyle, a honey-tongued idol of the moment. Now, now, don't be so rough on Miss Susan
He not only had the gift of gab, useful for presidential candidates as well as aluminum-siding salesmen, but a gift for the seductive language of the black pulpit. The masses, for whom the poetry of the King James Bible and the musical cadences of Sunday morning are as foreign as the culture of rural Timbuktu, eagerly stepped forward to take the pledge of the cult. Opppsss RACIST
Only Barack Obama knows what's in his heart, but there's the possibility, not heretofore considered by his critics, that the blundering loose tongue he packs with his teleprompter, scorning the dignity and good name of his country for the cheap applause of tin-pot dictators eager to throw rotten bananas at their betters, comes easy and naturally to him.
This wouldn't be one of Dr. Freud's difficult cases. He was born to a mother obsessed with the pursuit of inappropriate men who would treat her badly, abandoned by his father from Kenya, uprooted again from life with a stepfather in Indonesia and ultimately raised by a grandmother he would later publicly scold for her presumed racial bigotry. Why wouldn't he feverishly pursue sanction and esteem, however mindless much of it would be, wherever he could find it? This paragraph? Whoa! I hope our author can afford body guards
Only a man with a screwed-up psyche, the likes of which we've probably never had in the White House before, would fly off to foreign shores to campaign against his predecessor and to offer abject apologies to anyone listening for the harm he imagines his country did to others, while carefully excluding himself from any of the criticism.
All for the embrace, physical and otherwise, of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Hugo Chavez, of Evo Morales and Danny Ortega. Most of us would say, in word or deed, "insult my country, dude, and you're insulting me, so back off." But this is the kind of fierce pride in home, kith and kin that Barack Obama never knew; he even married a woman who said she never felt love of country until her husband reached the front gate of the White House.
The president's excellent adventure in Trinidad and Tobago began when he accepted a book from Senor Chavez, "Open Veins of Latin America," a Marxist screed meant to insult and offend. Mr. Obama did not seem affronted, and let pass the opportunity to rebuke Senor Chavez for his manifold sins and abuses of his own people. The president didn't even have a DVD of favorite movies to offer in return. (Mr. Obama might have given him a copy of a best-selling biography of Senor Chavez, "Guide to the Perfect Latin American Idiot.") He did mention that he would give Senor Chavez a copy of HIS book
He let pass the further insult, given the timing, of the Chavez suggestion that after the president finished the book there could be talks about renewing diplomatic relations. This would have been the further opportunity to discuss Senor Chavez' support of Colombian drug terrorists and his support of Ahmadinejad and his race to build a nuclear weapon to intimidate the Middle East.
If President Obama judges his Latin American trip by the personal accolades, the trip was a roaring success. And this trip, he got all the accolades, the applause, cause he left Michelle at home! Too much attention paid to her while they were in Europe, don't cha know? Can't go letting that happen again
Nearly every criticism of the United States was prefaced with assertions that none of the insults of America were meant for Mr. Obama. The president let these cheap accolades pass with a grateful smile. He listened to a 50-minute diatribe by Danny Ortega, cataloging American sins over a century (and conceding nothing about the brutal sins of the Sandinistas). When he followed the commandante's jibe at the United States for its support of the Cuban exiles' attempt to land at the Bay of Pigs in April 1961, Mr. Obama said only that he was "grateful that President Ortega did not blame me for things that happened when I was three months old."
Everybody laughed, but Mr. Obama even got that wrong. He was born three months after the Bay of Pigs landing. The history of the country that elected him president has never been of much interest to Barack Obama - he once referred to "the 57 states" - and we shouldn't be surprised by anything he does and says now. Wesley Pruden is editor emeritus of The Washington Times which means, the black suburbans will know exactly how to find him!
#2
"He was 'finished' and 'polished' at Harvard, after all."
I hope Harvard has some redeeming value. Turning out a lightweight like Obama does nothing to add to the school's reputation, other than as a finishing school for second rate minds too dumb to know they are being insulted or too dumb to care.
#3
It's a common technique. When we lived in Europe people would say the usual America-bashing things in front of me, then finish with, "But not you, trailing wife. One would never know you were American!" It's meant to be a compliment, you see, and we Americans are taught it's good manners to accept the spirit of the statement rather than the literal words. Our vaunted tolerance, y'know.
#4
because the Europeans are soooooooooo sophisticated ya know, especially when they go on one of their ethnic cleansing escapades that seems too happen in some part of Europe every few years
Hat tip Instapundit
The pseudonimous Spengler reveals his name, vita, and beliefs
During the too-brief run of the Asia Times print edition in the 1990s, the newspaper asked me to write a humor column, and I chose the name "Spengler" as a joke - a columnist for an Asian daily using the name of the author of The Decline of the West.
That being Spengler, we must rate the snarks Top snark:
So-called cultural Judaism repelled me; most of what passes for Jewish culture comes down to the mud that stuck to our boots as we fled one country after another.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
