Syun

The best part about this to me, who served with the Marines, is that the whole lot of 'em are so gay adjacent that Sgt. Morgan could very plausibly be straight and that other guy is just one of his Marine buddies who wasn't on the deployment with him and the photographer just made an assumption.

"The Navy is the straightest bunch of gay guys you'll ever meet; the Marines are the gayest straight guys" as the saying goes.

No, putting them together is correct. If you'd done a cursory search for connections between it and the MB, you'd know this. Nothing Texas is doing has to work on me, I've been aware of this connection for years.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Council_on_American%E2%80%93Islamic_Relations

There was another great link about this that I saw recently, and I thought I'd bookmarked it but apparently not.

As for my "most muslim countries" misstatement, solid hit. It was late and I wrote that in a hurry. I meant most middle eastern countries, and specifically the MB. The Egyptian Military overthrew Mohammad Morsi because the people had just elected an Islamist government run by the MB, who have long been banned there, for example. The fact that they're widely known to use CAIR as their US front group, moving money through subordinate entities into our political races, they're an honest to goodness problem. I encourage you to look into it on your own terms, because the more you look, the worse it gets.

When you dig into the MB and CAIR, it's actually mind boggling that they have any leeway in the US at all. They're banned in most muslim countries for being terrorists, FFS. I expect that just because Abbott did this, people are going to be coming to their defense... out of sheer ignorance.

It ain't US lobbyists' fault. Plenty of homegrown toadies in the EU, and having a non-elected and pretty unaccountable EU government isn't doing Europe any favors.

False equivalency, eh? No. And you're looking right past my point, which is that giving cyclists an inch leads them to take a mile. Pedestrians who don't walk in the street following the same rules... talk about asinine arguments. The Idaho rules and their derivatives absolutely open the door to the very egregious behavior I mentioned, save for the gunshots.

So, I'll break down why the article is nonsense. The author of the article's premise is basically "First off, I am very smart. See? I'm an academic. That said, bikes shouldn't have to follow the same rules. Why? I have two reasons. The first is that having to stop and start is a drag. The second is that if a bike hits a car, it doesn't matter".

It's also a drag to have to stop when you're driving. Inconvenience is irrelevant. The bike hitting a car thing, that's absolute crap. First, a cyclist might not be hitting a car. Maybe another cyclist. Maybe a motorcycle rider. Second, depending on the nature of the crash, that car could be totalled depending on any number of factors. Considering that cyclists don't have to carry insurance, and a whole lot of people can only afford basic liability insurance, a cyclist hitting a car could well mean some poor person having to pay out of pocket and not being able to afford it, losing their car, and that unraveling all kinds of things in their life. Lives are ruined every day in the US by people losing their transportation. Or it could just be that some asshole runs into your car, puts a dent in it and fucks your paint up, and you have to pay out of pocket because this dickhead whose judgement is missing happens to be no worse for the wear and decides to scoot rather than deal with a problem that's "not his". Or it gets reported properly and you have to sue this dude to get the money to fix your car before the scrapes start rusting.

I call that "it's no big deal" attitude entitled.

But what's more, it's a traffic incident. It means police getting involved, it means insurance companies and the potential for the driver's rates to go up through no fault of their own, and if the cyclist is seriously hurt or worse, it means a lot of heartache and trauma for everyone involved, maybe more people than that. Discounting the realities of how disruptive, expensive, or downright bad it can be even if it's the cyclist running into a vehicle or the incident just being their fault is irresponsible at best and a bad faith argument.

Going back to the idaho rules specifically, those same rules would make perfect sense for a car, too. We've all been stuck at a red light at night with nobody coming for blocks. If the coast is clear to go, it's clear to go, right? Well, no, the rules are in place because capital P People are a bunch of idiots, and they'd be crashing cars more than they already do if those rules weren't there even when they don't seem to make sense in the moment. The same is true for cyclists. As many times as cyclists have blown through their red light into my green light, I've seen them do that to others even more. Same of cyclists shooting in between me and my parking spot while I'm very obviously parallel parking, backing up with my blinker on and moving.
Different sets of rules for different vehicles sharing the same space are a bad idea, full stop.

I have spoken.

You're pissing on the wrong leg. Don't mistake disagreement for ignorance of the article. I live in entitled cyclist central, and I've even been shot at while driving by one who got pissed at me for not seeing him wearing all black riding at night with no lights running a red. I got no time for cyclists' bullshit, even being one. We can follow the same rules as everyone else, and should. You have no idea how many times I've heard/seen/read cyclists saying that they're better people than car drivers so shouldn't have to follow the rules. It's a LOT. I currently live in one of those states with "similar laws". It's a nightmare, and cycling culture has devolved in part because of it.

As a cyclist, there are a HANDFUL of corner cases where streets are set up in a certain way where it's actually safer to disobey lights so that you can actually maintain visual awareness of what's going on around you. I encountered this in Boston, which is about the craziest kind of street layout possible, and lots of times the only sane thing to do while driving a car is also illegal, and everyone just kind of understands that and lets things slide.

But outside of those edge cases, no. We're not fucking special, if we're gonna use the road, we have to use the road correctly. Most of this entitlement to different rules comes down to a segment of cyclists thinking they're better than everyone else for not driving. Piss on that.