US DOT Getting Real On Street Safety

This is highly encouraging news.  State's DOTS have been retrograde in their actions while cities have been making good progress.  A more progressive approach from the Feds will help turn the tide nationwide.

U.S. DOT to Publish Its Own Manual on Protected Bike Lanes

"Now, with a secretary at the helm who's determined to make bike and pedestrian safety his signature issue, the agency is going further. First, the next edition of the MUTCD (expected to be released in 2016 or 2017) will have a slew of new signage and markings recommendations for bicycling. FHWA's Dan Goodman told an audience at Pro-Walk Pro-Bike earlier this month that the updated MUTCD is expected to have everything from signage indicating how bikes should make two-stage turns using bike boxes to stripes extending bike lanes through intersections — and, of course, guidance on buffered and protected bike lanes.  

But perhaps more important than the changes to the MUTCD is the fact that FHWA is publishing its own manual dedicated to the design of protected bike lanes. (Despite the fact that the guide will deal exclusively with bike lanes that are protected from traffic with some kind of vertical barrier — not just paint — they still insist on calling the designs "separated" but not "protected" bike lanes, out of recognition of the fact that even what passes for "protection" in the U.S. these days — like flexible plastic bollards — don't offer much protection against a moving car. Streetsblog calls these lanes "protected," however, as a way to distinguish them from regular painted lanes, which are also "separated" from traffic.) 

And FHWA is collaborating with exactly the right people on the project. Carl Sundstrom from the UNC Highway Safety Research Center and Ryan Russo of NYC DOT, who presented alongside Goodman at Pro-Walk Pro-Bike, are both consulting on the new guidelines. Sam Schwartz Engineering and Kittelson & Associates, Inc. — firms which have developed specializations in protected bike lanes — are on the consultant team. NACTO and ITE are on the technical work group along with the League of American Bicyclists' Equity Initiative and some forward-looking state DOTs, MPOs, and transit agencies."

http://usa.streetsblog.org/2014/09/23/u-s-dot-to-publish-its-own-manual-on-protected-bike-lanes/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Streetsblog+%28Streetsblog%29

That last part is key.  These are people who know what they're doing and won't blindly stick to the AASHTO mentality.

Syrian Sales Pitch: New Product!

I continue to be amazed at how most US news media serve as a greek chorus to hype whatever the latest bogeyman is.  Sarin!  ISIS!  Khorosan!  One way or another we're going to be sold on bombing someone.  Funny how that's our go-to foreign policy tool these days, "kinetic action".  Also funny, but not ha-ha funny, is that our allies in the region are arguably (1) worse than Iraq or Syria or Libya or whomever it is we're bombing next and (2) are directly involved with the financing and training of our bogeymen du jour.

The threat of Ibrahim al-Asiri –who with one bomb that could not have worked and several more claimed attacks identified by double agents in Saudi employ not only created the excuse for millions of dollars in TSA scanner profits, but also the ability to label Yemen an “imminent” threat and therefore bomb it — has moved to Syria.
Label the country an “imminent” threat. Then bomb.
In Obama’s statement, he emphasized the Khorasan tie.
Some questions smart people have been asking:
Micah Zenko: If Khorasan group was truly an imminent threat, why would the US delay bombing them just so they could bomb ISIS simultaneously?
Gregory Johnsen: Are people asking why a group calling itself “khurasan” is basing itself in Syria? Or is this just a USG name for a cell?
Spencer Ackerman: Why did a senior official say, just yesterday, that Khorasan was not an imminent threat.
Also:  Why was Asiri claimed to be helping ISIS back in July?
The sources on which this latest justification relies seem to be people — James Clapper and Mike Rogers are two — who have a somewhat strained relationship with the truth and a very cozy relationship with disinformation. Moreover, Congress still hasn’t been briefed on the covert ops (which both Clapper and Rogers do know about) that the CIA has been working, with their Saudi partner, in Syria.
But we’ve got some claim to “imminent” now, so it’s all good.

For longer than I've been alive we've been in bed with arguably the worst country in the entire world, Saudi Arabia.  No good has come of it, and no good will come of it.  Just more of the same awful shit, year after year until we have an honest national conversation about our middle east policies.

The Conservative Bait and Switch, or, Government By Cliche

Excellent post at Angry Bear on an important topic I hold dear: Republican bullshit, and the consequences of failing to call it out.  [EDIT: Looks like the link didn't work. Now fixed.]

A huge part of the Conservative Movement has been to simply shift the funding of government from progressive taxation to exorbitant fines and fees for traffic violations, parking tickets, misdemeanors of other sorts, property forfeitures of large amounts of money or homes or cars, home foreclosures and forfeiture of the entire proceeds from the sale of the home for failure to pay a small property tax bill (including if you didn't know that it was due or was not paid). This is all part of freedom! Liberty! The private contractors for government services and operations, and the police and judges whose conflict of interest ensures the more-than-adequacy of this method of government funding, have to be paid, y'know.

Anything and everything to push the tax burden down the income scale, and to loot whatever valuable assets that generations of Americans built together remaining in the public sphere.

Hey! If we sell our most productive assets to rich people at fire sale prices, we can help keep marginal income tax rates on those seem rich people down.  A two-fer!  It's a no-brainer, by which I mean you must have no brain to be taken in by these charlatans.

Boots On The Ground

The supercut of FoxNews idiocy must be seen to be believed.  And then Colbert tops it.  Via Greg Mitchell.

The Colbert Report
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The NSA Gives Private Communications Of Americans To Israel

How is this possibly acceptable?  I'm grateful to Edward Snowden for all that he has exposed.  Our police state is running amok - and spying on our own citizens for a foreign power.  I don't care if that foreign power is your favorite country in the world, it is still a foreign power.

Among his most shocking discoveries, he told me, was the fact that the N.S.A. was routinely passing along the private communications of Americans to a large and very secretive Israeli military organization known as Unit 8200. This transfer of intercepts, he said, included the contents of the communications as well as metadata such as who was calling whom.

Typically, when such sensitive information is transferred to another country, it would first be “minimized,” meaning that names and other personally identifiable information would be removed. But when sharing with Israel, the N.S.A. evidently did not ensure that the data was modified in this way.

Mr. Snowden stressed that the transfer of intercepts to Israel contained the communications — email as well as phone calls — of countless Arab- and Palestinian-Americans whose relatives in Israel and the Palestinian territories could become targets based on the communications. “I think that’s amazing,” he told me. “It’s one of the biggest abuses we’ve seen.”

It appears that Mr. Snowden’s fears were warranted. Last week, 43 veterans of Unit 8200 — many still serving in the reserves — accused the organization of startling abuses. In a letter to their commanders, to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and to the head of the Israeli army, they charged that Israel used information collected against innocent Palestinians for “political persecution.” In testimonies and interviews given to the media, they specified that data were gathered on Palestinians’ sexual orientations, infidelities, money problems, family medical conditions and other private matters that could be used to coerce Palestinians into becoming collaborators or create divisions in their society.

This is just sickening.  And don't doubt that the same kind of extortionate behavior (blackmail, etc.) can and will be brought to bear on people in the United States.  Anyone parroting the line that Edward Snowden should have "gone through the proper channels" instead of leaking is a fool or worse.

23 Years Of American Military Involvement In Iraq

Fortunately, there were no better uses for the money, oil prices plunged as a result, and there have been zero repercussions.

The 23 year long war

The 23 year long war by digby 1991: 1998: 2003: 2014: I'm getting some blowback for suggesting that this argument about congressional authorization is a dodge, but I honestly believe that it's i…

http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2014/09/the-23-year-long-war.html

Right?

Give That Man A Nobel Prize!

Via Greg Mitchell, Philip Gourevitch has a lengthy reaction to Obama's ISIS speech at the New Yorker.  At least he remembers Libya (beyond Benghazi!!1!) and how great that has turned out.

Obama Widens Endless War

The President never mentioned Libya. That was the last time he attempted to wage a war on the spur of the moment, getting into it, at first, as a rescue mission to prevent a predicted massacre, then escalating fast and hard—but remaining always in the air—in support of rebel ground forces whom we barely knew, and whom we understood even less, with no clear end but total regime change, and with no commitment whatever beyond the first rush of the revolution. That war then spilled over into Mali, and turned inward in Libya, so that today the country is an absolute catastrophe—far worse off than when NATO joined its troubles, with Tripoli in the hands of forces much like ISIS.

We never seem to be short of money for bombs or training killers.  Why are schools, trains, and sewers so hard to pay for?