Williams' controversial statement was made in October 2010, only 9 entire years after 9/11, which was a terrorist act committed by a bunch of guys not wearing "Muslim garb."
The problem I see with Williams' comments is that it's advocating irrational prejudice. If you watch the whole segment, he essentially said, "When I see Muslims in Muslim (sic) garb on my plane, I get nervous just like everyone else, and there's nothing wrong with that." He is defending his prejudiced reaction. It's irrational because, you know, none of the Muslim terrorists who have attacked planes (or attacked other things with planes) have been dressed like that (and he's not talking about Muslim clothing as much as Arab Muslim).
If that sort of reaction is normal, perhaps we need to rethink how the topic is presented in the media.
We do. That's why NPR fired Williams. They were doing something about it.
You guys, he had STATISTICS. You'll be sorry you got him fired.
I doubt he'll have trouble finding a new job. He's a conservative, so he can always find work at one of the other money-losing conservative magazines. (We liberals call it wingnut welfare.)
You're a fuckface, but you remind me of something interesting I read in National Geographic a couple years ago. The basic idea was that sub-Saharan Africa is oriented North-South, while Eurasia is largely East-West. Since a crop from one area can generally be adapted to grow in another area, the possible range of a given plant is a latitudinal strip. Without agriculture, it's difficult to have a city. This reality made it more difficult to urbanize in Africa, and urbanization leads to specialization and real economic development, so, yeah, LAND MASSES can actually have a very big impact on overall levels of economic development.
Of course, centuries of slavery and legal inequality can also have a small effect on a population.
Unless their parents are graduates of the same college, then they don't have to do any work at all to get in! Entirely coincidentally, college graduates with college-age children are overwhelmingly white.
Make sure to tell those poor white kids that if they make it to college, nobody will assume, based on looking at them, that they are dumber than everyone else there.
Either it's OK for everyone, or it's OK for no one.
Why do you want to say nigger?
I'm being a little facetious here, but it's not a good word. The idea that it communicates has connotations of sub-humanity, other-ness, trying illegitimately to rise above one's place. At least, it connotes those things when it's used by a white person. "I may be a shitty-ass worthless sack of meat, but I'm white, so at least I'm not a nigger. No matter how bad I have it, I'm still better than a nigger." When a black person says it to another black person, it takes on a tongue-in-cheek aspect, and it dilutes the power that the idea used to have. At least I think so, I'm just a white guy, and someone might call me a racist, because I don't have any intelligent, well-socialized black friends to deflect accusations.
Is there a specific situation you need it for, or does it just bother you that it's taboo?
Derb pointed out that a lot of "scientists" think there is such a thing as some inherent (unchangeable through education), one-dimensional quantity intelligence, that intelligence can be well-measured by a written test which shows differences between populations that can only be explained by racial group membership (even though most black people have numerous white ancestors, and many white people have some black ancestors). These "scientists" also think the effects of being completely dispossessed, cut off from your history and forced into uncompensated labor with no legal rights for hundreds of years should be gone by now, since the parents of today's black youth could vote as adults, and their parents and grandparents were not literally slaves (even though they lived under a constant threat of terrorist violence and were denied permission to attempt to join high status jobs to bring themselves out of poverty and couldn't live outside the black neighborhood, where much of the property was nonetheless owned by white people).
Yeah, the truth is racist. Derb wants to perpetuate the status quo; some of us think it's shitty and want to change it.
There's a history of violence against people from all sorts of walks of life...even white adult straight males.
No, there isn't. There is a world of difference between "Straight white men have been victims of violence" and "There is a history of violence against straight white men."
I don't believe any 'special' groups are out there deserving of special laws just for them.
There are not "special laws" protecting certain groups. There is a list of classifications which, if a crime is committed against someone based on actual or perceived status within those classifications, can result in hate crime charges. The law covers violence based on race, so they would protect a white person being attacked because he is white.
Maybe find out what you're talking about it before starting a stupid argument on the internet. You literally don't know the first thing about this subject.
Then I have no idea what you were trying to say when you said this:
But of course, should it be a surprise that such people would be biased (much like people who weren't in such a situation)? Their opinion isn't any more valid just because they know someone who was targeted.
Well, so, if a different criminal, was looking for anyone of any sexual preference, or race....oh hell, or either sex...JUST to torture and murder them, then, that perp should not be charged or punished as severely as the ones that did it to that poor homosexual boy?
Nope. Although I'd phrase it like this: If someone, motivated by anti-gay animus, went out looking for a gay man to kidnap, torture and murder, he should be punished more severely than someone who just went out looking for any person to kidnap, torture and murder.
I'm still asking......what makes it worse for the gay guy than the *random* person being tortured abd murdered?
It's not worse for the victim, it's worse for the community. If your church was vandalized with hateful epithets, would you be more upset than if a warehouse in the same neighborhood was tagged?
What if the people that did it to the gay guy did it because he was gay BUT, didn't go out there saying it that there is a group out there targeting gays (just isolated to these 2 or so perps in this case), nor were they trying to intimidate anyone else...then it was a hate crime?
Look, you can come up with all kinds of ridiculous thought experiments, but what you can't deny is that there is a documented history of violence specifically targeting gay people, and black people, and Japanese people, and women, and Arabs, and Muslims, and... With this backdrop of violence against people from disempowered groups trying to go about their lives, crimes targeting them can have a big effect if they come with hateful rhetoric. Hate crimes send the message that going out in public while being gay/black/muslim/&c is dangerous.
Or, are you trying to say that by the mere action they took, killing a gay guy by dragging him behind a truck and leaving him tied to a fencepost after picking him up where local gay men go to hang out...that other gay guys are by necessity (even with no other public mention or threat against the region's gay community, or incitement for others to mimic the action), that it is intimidating and therefore a hate crime?
The systematic use of violence to coerce? That's what terrorism is. If an organization sprung up to commit systematic violence against the wealthy, would we hesitate to call them a terrorist organization? Of course, such a law would also protect against any attack motivated by the victim's perceived wealth. It would be more difficult to prosecute, but I'm not opposed to it on its face; it's just that the reason we have hate crime laws in the first place is that there is a history of crimes motivated by hatred of gay people, racial minorities and women.
But "attractive" women are not more likely to be raped. Rape is a crime of violence and power, not sex. To the extent that rape happens to "put women in their place," it is also a hate crime.
It's really easy for white middle class folks to not see the issue with hate crimes. But if you know anybody who has ever been targeted, it's an entirely different thing.
Generally, the word "bias" implies some degree of prejudice, as opposed to an unbiased person who makes "objective" judgment. I was mostly critiquing your word choice, but since you seem to be doubling down on it, I'll elaborate.
If you're the kind of person who would kidnap a gay man, drag him behind your truck and leave his lifeless corpse chained to a fencepost, you're not trying to reduce the number of gay men in your town by one. You're trying to send a message, an implicit threat, to all gay men that the same thing might happen to them.
An "objective" observer (who is not gay, and is therefore not threatened) would say that a straight man dragged behind a truck and left chained to a fencepost would be just as dead, and therefore a murder (and nothing more) has been committed.
I'm not saying this is wrong as such; I'm saying it is utterly lacking in perspective. People who know personally those who are the targets of such intimidation, or are themselves the targets of such intimidation, have a much easier time understanding why hate crimes are such a threat to society.
The word "bias" in this case is meaningless, as "perspective" is the operative word. "Bias" does nothing but cast people's legitimate concerns about threats and intimidation and violence into question, because "objective" people don't feel that intimidation.
The word "biased" implies that only people who would never themselves be the target of a hate crime can be objective about hate crimes. This is a stupid thing to say.
I have to disagree. Punishment should be only for the crime. A person tortured, and/or killed....will result just as brutallly tortured and/or dead no matter why that person was targeted.
The message sent by a crime like this is "If you dare to be gay here, we just might kill you." It's terrorism, in any reasonable sense of the word. The crime targets not just the person who is violently attacked, but anyone who shares that characteristic with the victim.
If a straight guy was in place of the gay guy you mentioned in your example...he would be just as tortured and then dead as the gay guy
No, if a straight guy was in place of the gay guy, he wouldn't have been tortured or dead, because the attackers WENT LOOKING FOR A GAY GUY TO TORTURE AND KILL. That's the whole fucking point.
For starters, that's not how hate crime laws work in Canada. The judge doesn't say, "You punched someone who happens to be of Arab descent, HATE CRIME!" The prosecution has to prove the crime was motivated by bias against a group of which the victim is perceived to be a member. Just punching a mugger isn't even a crime.
Find it once (either navigating the hierarchy or by typing part of the program's name), right click, Pin to Start Menu. Now it's on the Start menu.
I started using Vista and 7 when I started a new job a couple years ago after having used OS X and Linux for years, and I found it very simple in day-to-day use. (The control panel is another beast.) Use a program every day? Pin to Taskbar. Use it once a week? Pin to Start Menu. Use it more rarely? Generally, it shows up automatically in the bottom part of the Start Menu (you can configure how many programs show up there, I have 10).
I'm very curious about how the new Start screen in 8 will work out. So far, I haven't installed any of my work programs (mostly because my copy of Office is tied to my work computer, which will not be upgraded until my office supports it). I've been very pleased just messing around, so I'll have to give it more to do.
I'm skeptical of the claims made in the linked article because it's on the website for a professional organization of orthopedic surgeons, a specialty with some of the highest malpractice insurance premiums, and also because the file name of the linked page includes the word "advocacy."
Most estimates of the cost of malpractice tort awards are around 2% of health care spending, which definitely isn't nothing. Levels haven't changed much, however, and insurance premiums overall (as opposed to cherry-picking certain specialties) haven't increased as fast as overall spending, which suggests that malpractice/defensive medicine isn't a big part of the cost growth problem, and reducing costs related with malpractice and defensive medicine will serve more to lower doctors' insurance premiums rather than lowering costs.
There is a fraud problem in American health care, but it is providers defrauding public programs (Medicare and Medicaid) rather than people defrauding hospitals, as you said. I haven't seen a compelling solution to this, but I think that more thorough auditing (brought about by more complicated reimbursement policies enacted in the PPACA) could help.
The point is that the system doesn't penalize people who get sick. If his care is "free," that means he doesn't risk financial ruin in addition to his health issues.
These systems cost less than what the US government currently spends on health care. Meanwhile, we also have the huge amount spent by employers and individuals that gets us NO BENEFIT in terms of health outcomes.
1. Administrative costs are part of the problem, and the PPACA, or "ObamaCare," caps them at 15%.
2. Lawsuits are a minuscule part of the problem. As another commenter said, Texas placed strict limits on malpractice lawsuits, and they had basically no change in either the level of cost or the rate of cost growth.
3. You're just taking anecdotes and pretending they are systemic issues. Homeless people staying in the hospital for free? Using an ambulance to get to the neighborhood near the hospital? This has to be a joke.
You could solve all these problems without making a dent in the overall rate of medical inflation. Without reducing payments to providers and hospitals, and incentivizing cost-effective treatments (including research on comparative effectiveness, which Medicare is currently prohibited from performing), you'll continue to see more of the same.
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Williams' controversial statement was made in October 2010, only 9 entire years after 9/11, which was a terrorist act committed by a bunch of guys not wearing "Muslim garb."
The problem I see with Williams' comments is that it's advocating irrational prejudice. If you watch the whole segment, he essentially said, "When I see Muslims in Muslim (sic) garb on my plane, I get nervous just like everyone else, and there's nothing wrong with that." He is defending his prejudiced reaction. It's irrational because, you know, none of the Muslim terrorists who have attacked planes (or attacked other things with planes) have been dressed like that (and he's not talking about Muslim clothing as much as Arab Muslim).
If that sort of reaction is normal, perhaps we need to rethink how the topic is presented in the media.
We do. That's why NPR fired Williams. They were doing something about it.
You guys, he had STATISTICS. You'll be sorry you got him fired.
I doubt he'll have trouble finding a new job. He's a conservative, so he can always find work at one of the other money-losing conservative magazines. (We liberals call it wingnut welfare.)
You're a fuckface, but you remind me of something interesting I read in National Geographic a couple years ago. The basic idea was that sub-Saharan Africa is oriented North-South, while Eurasia is largely East-West. Since a crop from one area can generally be adapted to grow in another area, the possible range of a given plant is a latitudinal strip. Without agriculture, it's difficult to have a city. This reality made it more difficult to urbanize in Africa, and urbanization leads to specialization and real economic development, so, yeah, LAND MASSES can actually have a very big impact on overall levels of economic development.
Of course, centuries of slavery and legal inequality can also have a small effect on a population.
Unless their parents are graduates of the same college, then they don't have to do any work at all to get in! Entirely coincidentally, college graduates with college-age children are overwhelmingly white.
Make sure to tell those poor white kids that if they make it to college, nobody will assume, based on looking at them, that they are dumber than everyone else there.
Well, that settles it. Racism is OK, this guy posted a video.
Either it's OK for everyone, or it's OK for no one.
Why do you want to say nigger?
I'm being a little facetious here, but it's not a good word. The idea that it communicates has connotations of sub-humanity, other-ness, trying illegitimately to rise above one's place. At least, it connotes those things when it's used by a white person. "I may be a shitty-ass worthless sack of meat, but I'm white, so at least I'm not a nigger. No matter how bad I have it, I'm still better than a nigger." When a black person says it to another black person, it takes on a tongue-in-cheek aspect, and it dilutes the power that the idea used to have. At least I think so, I'm just a white guy, and someone might call me a racist, because I don't have any intelligent, well-socialized black friends to deflect accusations.
Is there a specific situation you need it for, or does it just bother you that it's taboo?
Derb pointed out that a lot of "scientists" think there is such a thing as some inherent (unchangeable through education), one-dimensional quantity intelligence, that intelligence can be well-measured by a written test which shows differences between populations that can only be explained by racial group membership (even though most black people have numerous white ancestors, and many white people have some black ancestors). These "scientists" also think the effects of being completely dispossessed, cut off from your history and forced into uncompensated labor with no legal rights for hundreds of years should be gone by now, since the parents of today's black youth could vote as adults, and their parents and grandparents were not literally slaves (even though they lived under a constant threat of terrorist violence and were denied permission to attempt to join high status jobs to bring themselves out of poverty and couldn't live outside the black neighborhood, where much of the property was nonetheless owned by white people).
Yeah, the truth is racist. Derb wants to perpetuate the status quo; some of us think it's shitty and want to change it.
There's a history of violence against people from all sorts of walks of life...even white adult straight males.
No, there isn't. There is a world of difference between "Straight white men have been victims of violence" and "There is a history of violence against straight white men."
I don't believe any 'special' groups are out there deserving of special laws just for them.
There are not "special laws" protecting certain groups. There is a list of classifications which, if a crime is committed against someone based on actual or perceived status within those classifications, can result in hate crime charges. The law covers violence based on race, so they would protect a white person being attacked because he is white.
Maybe find out what you're talking about it before starting a stupid argument on the internet. You literally don't know the first thing about this subject.
I think the key is "against their will."
Let me guess: you're a straight white guy.
Try not to explain to people how hate crimes do and don't affect them.
Then I have no idea what you were trying to say when you said this:
But of course, should it be a surprise that such people would be biased (much like people who weren't in such a situation)? Their opinion isn't any more valid just because they know someone who was targeted.
One side's perceived intimidation isn't any less objectively real merely because members of the dominant group don't see it.
The intention would be for people of that certain race to leave the community, or minimize their presence.
Well, so, if a different criminal, was looking for anyone of any sexual preference, or race....oh hell, or either sex...JUST to torture and murder them, then, that perp should not be charged or punished as severely as the ones that did it to that poor homosexual boy?
Nope. Although I'd phrase it like this: If someone, motivated by anti-gay animus, went out looking for a gay man to kidnap, torture and murder, he should be punished more severely than someone who just went out looking for any person to kidnap, torture and murder.
I'm still asking......what makes it worse for the gay guy than the *random* person being tortured abd murdered?
It's not worse for the victim, it's worse for the community. If your church was vandalized with hateful epithets, would you be more upset than if a warehouse in the same neighborhood was tagged?
What if the people that did it to the gay guy did it because he was gay BUT, didn't go out there saying it that there is a group out there targeting gays (just isolated to these 2 or so perps in this case), nor were they trying to intimidate anyone else...then it was a hate crime?
Look, you can come up with all kinds of ridiculous thought experiments, but what you can't deny is that there is a documented history of violence specifically targeting gay people, and black people, and Japanese people, and women, and Arabs, and Muslims, and... With this backdrop of violence against people from disempowered groups trying to go about their lives, crimes targeting them can have a big effect if they come with hateful rhetoric. Hate crimes send the message that going out in public while being gay/black/muslim/&c is dangerous.
Or, are you trying to say that by the mere action they took, killing a gay guy by dragging him behind a truck and leaving him tied to a fencepost after picking him up where local gay men go to hang out...that other gay guys are by necessity (even with no other public mention or threat against the region's gay community, or incitement for others to mimic the action), that it is intimidating and therefore a hate crime?
FTFY
The systematic use of violence to coerce? That's what terrorism is. If an organization sprung up to commit systematic violence against the wealthy, would we hesitate to call them a terrorist organization? Of course, such a law would also protect against any attack motivated by the victim's perceived wealth. It would be more difficult to prosecute, but I'm not opposed to it on its face; it's just that the reason we have hate crime laws in the first place is that there is a history of crimes motivated by hatred of gay people, racial minorities and women.
But "attractive" women are not more likely to be raped. Rape is a crime of violence and power, not sex. To the extent that rape happens to "put women in their place," it is also a hate crime.
You replied to this:
It's really easy for white middle class folks to not see the issue with hate crimes. But if you know anybody who has ever been targeted, it's an entirely different thing.
Generally, the word "bias" implies some degree of prejudice, as opposed to an unbiased person who makes "objective" judgment. I was mostly critiquing your word choice, but since you seem to be doubling down on it, I'll elaborate.
If you're the kind of person who would kidnap a gay man, drag him behind your truck and leave his lifeless corpse chained to a fencepost, you're not trying to reduce the number of gay men in your town by one. You're trying to send a message, an implicit threat, to all gay men that the same thing might happen to them.
An "objective" observer (who is not gay, and is therefore not threatened) would say that a straight man dragged behind a truck and left chained to a fencepost would be just as dead, and therefore a murder (and nothing more) has been committed.
I'm not saying this is wrong as such; I'm saying it is utterly lacking in perspective. People who know personally those who are the targets of such intimidation, or are themselves the targets of such intimidation, have a much easier time understanding why hate crimes are such a threat to society.
The word "bias" in this case is meaningless, as "perspective" is the operative word. "Bias" does nothing but cast people's legitimate concerns about threats and intimidation and violence into question, because "objective" people don't feel that intimidation.
The word "biased" implies that only people who would never themselves be the target of a hate crime can be objective about hate crimes. This is a stupid thing to say.
I have to disagree. Punishment should be only for the crime. A person tortured, and/or killed....will result just as brutallly tortured and/or dead no matter why that person was targeted.
The message sent by a crime like this is "If you dare to be gay here, we just might kill you." It's terrorism, in any reasonable sense of the word. The crime targets not just the person who is violently attacked, but anyone who shares that characteristic with the victim.
If a straight guy was in place of the gay guy you mentioned in your example...he would be just as tortured and then dead as the gay guy
No, if a straight guy was in place of the gay guy, he wouldn't have been tortured or dead, because the attackers WENT LOOKING FOR A GAY GUY TO TORTURE AND KILL. That's the whole fucking point.
For starters, that's not how hate crime laws work in Canada. The judge doesn't say, "You punched someone who happens to be of Arab descent, HATE CRIME!" The prosecution has to prove the crime was motivated by bias against a group of which the victim is perceived to be a member. Just punching a mugger isn't even a crime.
Find it once (either navigating the hierarchy or by typing part of the program's name), right click, Pin to Start Menu. Now it's on the Start menu.
I started using Vista and 7 when I started a new job a couple years ago after having used OS X and Linux for years, and I found it very simple in day-to-day use. (The control panel is another beast.) Use a program every day? Pin to Taskbar. Use it once a week? Pin to Start Menu. Use it more rarely? Generally, it shows up automatically in the bottom part of the Start Menu (you can configure how many programs show up there, I have 10).
I'm very curious about how the new Start screen in 8 will work out. So far, I haven't installed any of my work programs (mostly because my copy of Office is tied to my work computer, which will not be upgraded until my office supports it). I've been very pleased just messing around, so I'll have to give it more to do.
I'm skeptical of the claims made in the linked article because it's on the website for a professional organization of orthopedic surgeons, a specialty with some of the highest malpractice insurance premiums, and also because the file name of the linked page includes the word "advocacy."
Most estimates of the cost of malpractice tort awards are around 2% of health care spending, which definitely isn't nothing. Levels haven't changed much, however, and insurance premiums overall (as opposed to cherry-picking certain specialties) haven't increased as fast as overall spending, which suggests that malpractice/defensive medicine isn't a big part of the cost growth problem, and reducing costs related with malpractice and defensive medicine will serve more to lower doctors' insurance premiums rather than lowering costs.
This link is to the Red Herrings part of a series examining the causes of high cost and cost growth in American health care. I highly recommend the whole series, but at least check out the Malpractice section of this page:
http://theincidentaleconomist.com/wordpress/what-makes-the-us-health-care-system-so-expensive-red-herrings/
There is a fraud problem in American health care, but it is providers defrauding public programs (Medicare and Medicaid) rather than people defrauding hospitals, as you said. I haven't seen a compelling solution to this, but I think that more thorough auditing (brought about by more complicated reimbursement policies enacted in the PPACA) could help.
The point is that the system doesn't penalize people who get sick. If his care is "free," that means he doesn't risk financial ruin in addition to his health issues.
These systems cost less than what the US government currently spends on health care. Meanwhile, we also have the huge amount spent by employers and individuals that gets us NO BENEFIT in terms of health outcomes.
1. Administrative costs are part of the problem, and the PPACA, or "ObamaCare," caps them at 15%.
2. Lawsuits are a minuscule part of the problem. As another commenter said, Texas placed strict limits on malpractice lawsuits, and they had basically no change in either the level of cost or the rate of cost growth.
3. You're just taking anecdotes and pretending they are systemic issues. Homeless people staying in the hospital for free? Using an ambulance to get to the neighborhood near the hospital? This has to be a joke.
You could solve all these problems without making a dent in the overall rate of medical inflation. Without reducing payments to providers and hospitals, and incentivizing cost-effective treatments (including research on comparative effectiveness, which Medicare is currently prohibited from performing), you'll continue to see more of the same.