I don't trust your video, not even a little bit.

I know you just dismissed opposing evidence earlier up thread, but here's a link to audio recordings and english transcripts the NSA captured and posted from Israeli helicopters in the area at the time. Again, I know you dismiss it, but they certainly were uncertain of what had just been hit/attacked.

https://www.nsa.gov/news-features/declassified-documents/uss-liberty/recordings.shtml

Friendly fire is a fact of war, Canadians on a training mission in Afghanistan where killed by USAF runs despite their training operation and location being registered with the airforce. Fatal screw ups happen in war so it seems much less of a stretch to call this an accident than a deliberate scheme against an ally.

You go ahead and believe some video referring to the 'mockingbird media' and using literally 4-5 words of audio and leaving out all other communications though, I'm sure they left it out for brevity and not because it contradicts their narrative. That's something only the mockingbird media would do...

Or perhaps more briefly, provide a little better evidence before acting like this is as clear cut as our knowledge that the earth is round...

The Love of Christ everyone. A continuing shinning example of why I hate the faith. Treat others as you'd have others treat you. Anyhow, I agree, no need for a ban, at least yet, though that is a new low, but in line with the rest of the Trump supporters. It again, just shows how evil and vile the faith is, because that's what they actually think Christ would act like, do and say, and have zero conviction in their heart otherwise. The modern right is the biggest reason cited why people leave the faith or are turned off by the faith, so the more Trump supporters dig in, the more and more people will leave the faith. Hopefully they'll turn to reason, or Paganism, anything but stick to a faith where they are happy at the death of a man who served his nation far better than the man they praise. As to Bob himself, I don't know if he's just a troll or what, my issue has never been with him, but the faith he represents. I am surrounded by people like him at home and work, and it isn't the people, it's their faith... sort of like how they say of the gays, "love the sinner hate the sin", I just hate everything about them, but I'm sure they are just fine people otherwise.

While I didn't like McCain, I at least respected his service. I respect the fact that he REFUSED to leave the POW camp when it was offered to him because there were others there before him, and he'd go on for another four plus years more of torture because of his refusal. He could have left the service long before he was even shot down, as he was injured on the deck of his ship when he was accidentally shot by another plane on the deck, an indecent that killed 134 other sailors and injured 161 others, himself included... of course many on the far right blame him for somehow being shot in that case and say he caused the deaths... As bad as he was on his political philosophy and the whole Palin thing (which I agree with what was pointed out already, was an attempt to lure the far right and women voters, and it worked on the far right, he probably wouldn't have got nearly as many votes as he did without her, because the narrative had already shifted far right on Fox and talk radio), he at least served and didn't dodge service because of a bone spur.

And this video just goes to show how gullible people are, "he's a Muslim" and he has to refute it. He has to keep saying how good Obama is as a man, and how true to himself he is, but they boo him. They are so wrapped up in the Fox and talk radio narrative, and their little social media bubbles, they don't know how to vet things they see and hear... they may do a quick Google search, not realizing that Google changes its search results to match what you'll find most agreeable... and then even if they do see a link they disagree with, they'll ignore it, find ones they like and coddle their bias.... I should know, I was among them for far too long. Up until basically this 2008 election, where I moved from Republican to supporting Paul, to supporting Obama, then loosing my faith shortly after the election because of the far right's actions...

At this point, you calling someone in America a traitor is a compliment. If you applauded them, that's become insulting evidence against them. You act like a caricature, a compilation of all the worst of the know nothing rabid Trumpeteers, it's impossible to take you seriously.

Yes, everyone is entitled to their opinion, no matter how ignorant, vapid, feculent, and infantile they want that opinion to be, but you, sir, are taking excessive advantage of that entitlement.

Trump's draft dodging and tax evasion and multiple intentional bankruptcies at taxpayers expense were traitorous, McCain's decades of honorable service and self sacrifice were heroic and excessively patriotic.

If you honestly think you're fair and balanced, you must honestly be severely mentally unbalanced. You couldn't be more biased with an entire troll farm behind you....and I think you have one, comrade.

This comment would only be made by an enemy of America and disgusting human being, both.

People like this, Bob, most of my family, and most Trump supporters are why I hate Christianity. It shows just how full of hate they are. I love them as people, but I hate everything about them... this of course is exactly what they say about the gays. They don't hate them, they just hate their sin... not that they are sin free themselves, but they'll ignore that. Anyhow, they'll say "hate the sin, love the sinner" but don't understand how hating everything about a person doesn't show the love of Christ. Christ spent His ministry hanging out with the very sinners that most Christians today try to separate themselves from and react with vile towards. They act like the Pharisees that Christ spoke out against, and are the main reason people are turned off the faith... they are doing more harm than good. And in the end, that's probably a good thing. Let them show how full of hate Christianity is, how they don't actually love the way Christ said to love, and more and more people will leave their faith, then perhaps we'll start to make some progress in this world towards a true loving society that is more akin to the one Christ preached.

You know, and it gets into this whole issue of border security
You know, who's gonna say that the borders are secure?
We've got the House and the Senate debating this issue
And it's, it's really astonishing that in a country founded by immigrants
"Immigrant" has somehow become a bad word
So the debate rages on and we continue
And just like that it's over, we tend to our wounded, we count our dead
Black and white soldiers wonder alike if this really means freedom
Not yet
I got one job, two job, three when I need them
I got five roommates in this one studio, but I never really see them
And we all came America trying to get a lap dance from Lady Freedom
But now Lady Liberty is acting like Hilary Banks with a pre-nup
Man, I was brave, sailing on graves
Don't think I didn't notice those tombstones disguised as waves
I'm no dummy, here is something funny, you can be an immigrant without risking your lives
Or crossing these borders with thrifty supplies
All you got to do is see the world with new eyes
Immigrants, we get the job done
Look how far I come
Look how far I come
Look how far I come
We get the job done
Look how far I come
Look how far I come
Look how far I come
Immigrants, we get the job done
It's a hard line when you're an import
Baby boy, it's hard times
When you ain't sent for
Racists feed the belly of the beast
With they pitchforks, rich chores
Done by the people that get ignored
Ya se armó
Ya se despertaron
It's a whole awakening
La alarma ya sonó hace rato
Los que quieren buscan
Pero nos apodan como vagos
We are the same ones
Hustling on every level
Ten los datos
Walk a mile in our shoes
Abróchense los zapatos
I been scoping ya dudes, ya'll ain't been working like I do
I'll outwork you, it hurts you
You claim I'm stealing jobs though
Peter Piper claimed he picked them, he just underpaid Pablo
But there ain't a paper trail when you living in the shadows
We're America's ghost writers, the credit's only borrowed
It's a matter of time before the checks all come
But
Immigrants, we get the job done
Look how far I come
Look how far I come
Look how far I come
We get the job done
Look how far I come
Look how far I come
Look how far I come
Immigrants, we get the job
Not yet
The credit is only borrowed
It's America's ghost writers, the credit's only borrowed
It's America's ghost writers
America's ghost writers
America's ghost writers, the credit's only borrow-borrowed
It's America's ghost writers, a credit is only borrowed
It's America's ghost writers, a credit is only borrowed
It's America's ghost writers, a credit is only borrowed
It's
Immigrants, we get the job done
Ay yo aye, immigrants we don't like that
Na they don't play British empire strikes back
They beating us like 808's and high hats
At our own game of invasion, but this ain't Iraq
Who these fugees what did they do for me
But contribute new dreams
Taxes and tools, swagger and food to eat
Cool, they flee war zones, but the problem ain't ours
Even if our bombs landed on them like the Mayflower
Buckingham Palace or Capitol Hill
Blood of my ancestors had that all built
It's the ink you print on your dollar bill, oil you spill
Thin red lines on the flag you hoist when you kill
But still we just say "look how far I come"
Hindustan, Pakistan, to London
To a galaxy far from their ignorance
'Cause
Immigrants, we get the job done
Por tierra o por agua
Identidad falsa
Brincamos muros o flotamos en balsas
La peleamos como Sandino en Nicaragua
Somos como las plantas que crecen sin agua
Sin pasaporte americano
Porque la mitad de gringolandia es terreno mexicano
Hay que ser bien hijo de puta
Nosotros les sembramos el árbol y ellos se comen la frutas
Somos los que cruzaron
Aquí vinimos a buscar el oro que nos robaron
Tenemos mas trucos que la policía secreta
Metimos la casa completa en una maleta
Con un pico, una pala
Y un rastrillo
Te construimos un castillo
Como es que dice el coro cabrón?
Immigrants, we get the job done
Look how far I come
Look how far I come
Look how far I come
We get the job done
Look how far I come
Look how far I come
Look how far I come
Immigrants, we get the job done
Look how far I come
Look how far I come
Look how far I come
Immigrants, we get the job done
Not yet

Pretty good video. Specific things:

Too many prostitutes: Most of the non-Thai people that complain about this went to the wrong places in Thailand. Pattaya was a tiny fishing village before the Vietnam war. Then, soldiers started getting shipped into the country for R&R. The Thai government didn't really know what to do with them, so they sorta passed the buck and decided to send them to Pattaya to relax. Bunch of stressed out dudes there, nothing to do, high demand for alternate activities ... the market answered.

Fast forward to today, and Pattaya knows exactly what put it on the map. I hate that place -- it is like what would happen if you took the worst/sleaziest elements of Vegas and Tijuana, and then built a "city" around it. Shittiest beach in Thailand, chock full of sleaze, disgusting. However, it is one of the most major tourist destinations. Gee, why could that be? Is it in spite of the nature of the place, or because of it? No false advertising here, you know what you're getting when you book a trip there. And if that is your thing, more power to ya.

Now, I don't want to act like prostitution exists in Pattaya and Soi Cowboy / Patpong in Bangkok, and is absent elsewhere. Far from it. Every town, down on to tiny ones, likely has a red-light district and brothels. The ones you hear about are sex tourism pits like those major ones, but the trade is alive and well pretty much everywhere -- and mostly caters to local Thais.

I've honestly never been to such an establishment or sought those services (in 11 years of being here), but I don't care that they are available. The most significant negative is that they are NOT well-regulated like, say, what I've heard about Amsterdam. Prostitution is technically illegal in Thailand. So the de-facto situation is that brothels have to pay protection money to police in order to avoid getting shut down or "inspected", etc.

Corruption is a major problem -- much worse than prostitution, in my opinion.


Too many ladyboys: It is certainly true that there are more trans people per capita here than pretty much anywhere else that I know of. It took me a while, being a country kid from Kansas, but I see that in pretty much the same light as the German narrator in the video at this point. Acceptance is good. You do you, man.

As a stereotype on the flip side of the coin, I think the ladyboys tend to be great in custom interaction kinds of jobs. Cashiers at 7-11, waitpeople at restaurants, etc. Polite, attentive, helpful. And often the most willing to attempt to use English. A lot of the best students that I've taught English to have been ladyboy leaning.


Freedom: I'm with @Mordhaus here. When your personal liberty is mainly due to the apathy / incompetence of the governing authority, and they may choose to get off their asses and revoke that at any time ... perhaps it isn't something to brag about. Very basic stuff like dissenting speech and protesting is met with being carted off for little re-education chats, etc. Pretty scary shit, actually.


Basically I tend to think that just like anywhere on Earth, there's a lot of good here and plenty of bad too. There's plenty of legitimate gripes with cultural elements and stuff in Thailand, but the most common ones (that the video pretty accurately listed) are pretty insignificant in my opinion.

Stupid French people all acting like they're Dutch and everything!

"Aren't there incel women? "

Actually, I believe the term was coined by a woman, who meant it to be a positive group for socially awkward, marginalised or mentally ill people.

"How about a program....hookers for incels....or something similar?"
That's one of the reasons why decriminalisation of prostitution is a good thing.

"Making them feel more inadequate and less a part of society will definitely lead to more attacks, so that seems like a really dumb move."
To be fair, Jim does address this. As he said himself, almost all humans are incel at some point.

I think there's also a reasonable case to be made for people to be less hung up on looks.

But if your response to being incel is to act like an entitled arsehole on reddit, or worse, to do something like this, it's kinda hard to have sympathy for you. (obviously, not you, newt... I'm sure you're a fine looking nad who has 5s of sex a year )

There's something to be said about attitude. Don't act like prey, don't be treated as prey.

Also, all the cameras and people lead me to believe this is a for-profit area. The wolves are probably well fed.

Aint nothing I like more on a hot day than a coool glass of liquid hydrogen.

AlON is fine. I guess my point was that transparent compounds of metals aren't exactly uncommon, and neither is compounds having quite different characteristics to the elements from which they are composed. So it just seems silly to act like they've invented some amazing transparent metal.

Do you call rust iron? "Look at this chassis, its COVERED in iron! It's practically all iron all the way through!" :P

Trump will veto that, hide and watch....but I hope not so you can see that this memo is nothing but republicans making accusations, not evidence, just inferences drawn from implications based on not reading reports. The classified report they claim to reference isn't being released, just the partisan Republican memo...while the Democrat version of that interpretation memo was kept classified.

Funny, Trump's people claimed McCabe stepped down of his own accord, a few months before his scheduled retirement. He's not fired, he didn't quit, he wasn't even asked to leave, much less forced out. He just switched positions...ostensibly to avoid any further contact with Trump who acts like a bully on the phone, taunting the man's wife then hanging up.

Only one falling here. This should cause even republicans to vote to protect Mueller from removal. That will be Trump's death nail.

Maybe you should actually read the article before commenting on this?

Warning: it's a terribly written article that spends a lot of time on completely irrelevant details, also very NSFW, but to summarise (quoting from article):

When Ansari told her he was going to grab a condom within minutes of their first kiss, Grace voiced her hesitation explicitly. “I said something like, ‘Whoa, let’s relax for a sec, let’s chill.’”
...
She says Ansari began making a move on her that he repeated during their encounter. “The move he kept doing was taking his two fingers in a V-shape and putting them in my mouth, in my throat to wet his fingers, because the moment he’d stick his fingers in my throat he’d go straight for my vagina and try to finger me.” Grace called the move “the claw.”

Ansari also physically pulled her hand towards his penis multiple times throughout the night, from the time he first kissed her on the countertop onward. “He probably moved my hand to his dick five to seven times,” she said. “He really kept doing it after I moved it away.”

But the main thing was that he wouldn’t let her move away from him. She compared the path they cut across his apartment to a football play. “It was 30 minutes of me getting up and moving and him following and sticking his fingers down my throat again. It was really repetitive. It felt like a fucking game.”

Ansari wanted to have sex. She said she remembers him asking again and again, “Where do you want me to fuck you?” while she was still seated on the countertop. She says she found the question tough to answer because she says she didn’t want to fuck him at all.

End quoting.

I find it difficult to believe Ansari is "inexperienced". He's 34, famous, good-looking and funny. Hell, he wrote a damn book on the subject.

Now, even though I've lost count of the number of times I've said this, to be perfectly clear: I DO NOT THINK ANSARI IS GUILTY OF A CRIME.

But I also don't think that behaviour is acceptable. He acted like a total asshole.

But since we're talking about degrees of harm, you can still be an asshole and do actual harm without committing a crime.

Should his accuser have just left? Probably. Does that excuse his behaviour? Nope.

I can give you a description of the bit and my opinion.

A Tom Thumb bit is jointed in the middle and has shanks for leverage. So it has a dual action. When light pressure is used it works on the gums and corners of the mouth. When the reigns are pulled harder the jaw is squeezed while the shanks multiply the force and the center joint folds upward to apply pressure to the roof of the mouth. It's kind of like the volume going from 1 to 11.

Uses:
In theory it should act like a traditional Western bit with the added advantage of rotating the shanks independently...so you can make pressure changes on each side of the mouth independently. In actual practice, it pinches the horses lip in this situation and horses tend to react by tossing their head up or holding their head in an unnaturally high position. With a strong pull it becomes extremely severe. Using it requires a very light hand.

I have used a Tom Thumb successfully with a well trained horse that required no head control but had developed a bad habit of testing his rider by picking up his gate and then bolting. The bit allowed me to ride with no hand but when the horse stretched his neck to take control he ran into the bit. When he relaxed back to the correct position, the pressure was gone. Eventually he didn't want to cause his own discomfort and once he'd broken his bad habits the bit wasn't necessary.

In my opinion, the Tom Thumb appears to check a lot of boxes but in reality it does few of them well. It can work for the right horse, with the right rider, in the right circumstances.

Roy is clearly an inexperienced rider and his personality demands that he assert control, even when he's out of his depth. He's riding a gaited horse (I think it's a Tennessee Walker but my daughter disagrees) and he seems to be trying to make it move like a Quarter Horse. My guess is he's trying to ride in like a cowboy but the horse naturally moves like pretty princess horse. Chaos ensues.

I hope that makes sense. I tried to avoid horse-people terms. If something's unclear or if anyone feels I'm wrong, then I welcome comments.

You can't possibly argue that the Pocahontas thing while at an event intending to honor Native Americans is acceptable behavior. If he thinks Warren is lying about her heritage, fine. Say she's lying about it some other time. Nobody put a gun to Trump's head and said he has to call her that. And on top of all that, at least have the courtesy to not do it at that event. Honoring World War II Native American veterans has jack shit nothing to do with Elizabeth Warren.

Even if you happen to think that there's nothing wrong with the Washington Redskins name, do you think it would be appropriate for the President of the United States to bust through the wall Kool Aid man style dressed head to toe in Redskins garb doing the Tomahawk Chop at an event intended to honor Native Americans? FFS!

What next? Meet with a Chinese delegation and walk in doing slant eyes and the ol' "Chinese, Japanese, dirty knees, *lift shirt* LOOK AT THESE!!!"

All he had to do was turn his "be a dick" switch off for a few hours to honor war veterans. Is that so hard? Apparently, it's impossible for him.

Watching this guy as President is just astounding to me. Every damn day seemingly he finds new ways to be a total dick when he completely doesn't have to be. Elizabeth Warren is going to be fine, I don't care he insulted her. But acting like an ass clown in a way that's very likely to offend actual war heroes in the process?! Zero justification, zero excuses.

Being President isn't supposed to be a 24/7 reality TV show where everything revolves around petty partisan/personal vendettas, including disregarding basic tenets of acting like a mature adult.

Agreed. To play devil's advocate, we don't know where she's going or why she's acting like this.

It's possible she has a genuine reason for her impatience. Maybe there's some kind of emergency (a family medical issue, for example). I know there have been times in my life where I've driven in a less than courteous manner for various reasons.

Or maybe she's just an asshole.