"Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent", became one of Isaac Asimov's favorite sayings.

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.

Oh, I completely understand the short-term calculus now that the ship is sinking...
Do I think the Dems would have just stood by as a completely incompetent and amoral boob took the wheel of their party and threatened to ram their country with it? No, I do not.

I could well be wrong about this, but my understanding is that the data wasn't really stolen, it was freely shared by Facebook. I also don't think there is any evidence that suggests that CA used their psychoanalytic stuff on the Trump campaign specifically. It sounds like they are targeting voters more on purely their geographical location than any in depth analysis of their social media profile. It seems doubtful to me that CA were the only ones at this game though...

I do think Facebook absolutely shares some blame - They hand over their users data and make app creators etc pinky-swear that they will use it responsibly and delete it once they are done...and then they do absolutely nothing to ensure that agreement is honoured. They either willfully ignored it because they knew the data was likely to be misused, or they were naive to the point of complete incompetence. I really can't see an option C.

Jesus, Bob! I don't want the guy dead! WTF!

I WOULD like it if he was doing something more suited to his skills and temperament. He was great as a reality TV charicature of a sociopathic, incompetent CEO.

Lol. Nice try. If I were a Russian troll pretending to be left leaning, I would be doing it on a right wing site, wouldn't I?

Deliberate, he admitted as much. At the direction of Trump or Jared, or both, according to him. They're the only leaders of the transition team he reported to.

What he admitted he lied about was colluding with Russians to subvert American foreign policy, which is treason, he's been caught on tape and now admitted doing it at the transition teams direction.

It's about his team being liars and criminal traitors. If it's not at his direction, he's incompetent as a leader. If it's not with his knowledge, he's senile. Consider his best attribute was supposed to be his ability to get only the best people, so.....

Everyone who's not a Russian puppet or Trumpeter believes it, and you do too, you simply can't admit it or your world crashes down.

I'm here because I'm retired (low income doesn't necessarily mean low net worth), it's a fun site to watch more interesting videos and talk about them, and with few exceptions have adult conversations and maybe learn something I didn't know from interesting diverse people.
Even you've taught me something....that Putin's troll farms are so advanced they turned out right wing characters to "live" on left leaning sites in order to give the impression that right wingers are ridiculous know nothings that can only parrot the great leader's ramblings as if they weren't racist insanity and troll like 12 year olds with no information to add to a discussion but lots of "I no you are but wat am I" arguments, this to give the impression that those with opposing views aren't worth engaging elsewhere. That helps divide us farther, Dimitri. You know this, it's why you exist here. ;-)

They, and other news organizations (so probably not Fox) are back on it today, since Flynn plead guilty to lying to the fbi about colluding with Russian diplomats, specifically his repeatedly "secretly" (so he thought) violating the Logan act, at the direct direction of and reporting back to the campaign/transition leader(s)...which means Trump himself.

Maybe they're hoping this will distract from the failed secret attempt at making abortion illegal with their tax bill which would have codified fetal personhood, a huge step towards making any abortion murder, on top of raising taxes on anyone making under $75k by up to 30% and lowering taxes for millionaires. Good thing they're so incompetent that the tax bill was illegal, or abortion could be ended today by a scam and a lie.
https://www.snopes.com/gop-tax-bill-fetal-personhood-legislation/
Underhanded sneaky lying traitors, those are your people.

Way to ignore point one...the illegal hacking of what he hoped contained top secret information by a hostile power at Trump's public direction.

The fact that you would even try to contend that the relationship between the U.S. and Russia is not adversarial makes anything else you say moot, because you have already proven to either be a liar or insanely naive. It is, and since ww2 has been adversarial. Your contention that responding to an illegal-by-treaty Russian military build up and invasion on it's borders with a long term international defence program stoked the Russian invasions of Crimea and the Ukraine shows you bought the Putin propaganda, and your follow up that it's an excuse for them installing their candidate in a hostile nation, as if that's proper, shows you aren't being rational at all. What we were required by treaty to do was protect the Ukraine...all of it...with our full military force, securing their borders....we balked and Russia just walked in.

Really, you think collusion with a foreign power to perform illegal acts against private citizens and the government and the interests of the U.S. isn't a crime? Sorry, but it absolutely is here in the U.S., where he did it.

So far, "he" isn't charged with a crime (only because it's likely he's so incompetent that he actually didn't know his entire staff were covert foreign agents....some have admitted as much when confronted with proof)...what his cabinet is charged with varies but all of them perjured themselves to congress about the crimes, who they work for, who paid them, and who they owe millions... so that's felonious.
Just a few crimes (of many) that the campaign is accused of is working with Russian diplomats for the benefit of Russia and against the interests of the U.S., hiring foreign agents, and hiding tens if not hundreds of millions secretly paid to the managers by Russia.
The campaign managers did directly receive money, all of them it seems, tens of millions...and lied about it over and over. What's more, they have admitted (only after recordings were produced) having subverted government policy by making arrangements with Putin before taking office that were diametrically opposed to the current (at the time) policy...again, that's treason.

Ugh...

Yes, they all deserve to go to prison, but...

President Pence?

President Ryan?

Isn't it better to have an incompetent jerk who wants to take from everyone else and give to the rich over a barely competent jerk who wants to take from everyone else, give to the rich, and take basic human rights away from women?

And don't give me any of that "Ryan's a policy wonk" bullshit. He only looks smart in a room filled with his Republican colleagues.

Typical liberal trying to twist and combine facts. You are coming off like a pretty big moron. You cant compare Haiti and PR as its a apple/orange situation. Do you know the situation of the infrastructure between the 2? Do you know how the government of each nation reacted? I bet there's a lot of difference between the two.

Also, you dont know how much damage is going to be caused by a hurricane. Why would they ramp up all the services and waste tens of millions of dollars when just a street sign gets blown over? (besides you liberals would then complain about wasting government money for nothing) They knew Katrina and Andrews were coming too but the US government has to wait to see if they are needed.

Also, federal agencies like FEMA have to be requested by the local governments to be there. This is where you guys are such hypocrites. If the military moved into a location and started to take over, you'd be all up in arms about it. Well, FEMA is a federal entity too. They just cant GO into a location if they arent being requested.

As far as the San Juan mayor, here's an article from Oct 1st:
http://www.dailywire.com/news/21758/san-juan-mayor-admits-she-hasnt-met-federal-joseph-curl#exit-modal

I bet even with this smoking gun in this incompetent Mayor, who is a Democrat, that you are still going to blame Trump. You people are so sad.

Yeah, you don't have to die, just ruin your chances to pass on your (faulty) genetic code.

" The prime tenet of the Darwin Awards is that we are celebrating the self-removal of incompetent genetic material from the human race. Therefore, the potential winner must be deceased, or at least incapable of reproducing. The traditional method is death. However, an occasional rebel opts for sterilization, which allows her more time to enjoy the dubious notoriety of winning a Darwin Award. " - Darwin Awards, rules.

They were, for the runway on their right, which is not Runway 28R (the thicker red line).
Edit: The thick line below that is 28L, I'm not sure what the visibility was like, but to confuse a taxiway for a runway is pretty incompetent.

That's a drastic error on the part of the pilots (although I can see how it could cause confusion).

I feel like you don't quite understand the concept of a RIGHT.
As in the RIGHT to REMAIN SILENT.
As in you can't be physiclaly attacked, kidnapped and/or shot for REMAINING SILENT.
It really is that simple.
Otherwise it's no longer a right, but a favour occasionally gifted from omnipotent state power.
And unless you are in North Korea and kinda like it, you DON'T WANT THAT and the rest of us DONT WANT GUYS LIKE YOU TELLING CORRUPT/INCOMPETENT/MURDEROUS POWER THEY'RE COOL because it actually KILLS INNOCENT PEOPLE.

what are you talking about? did we watch the same video? Have you read my previous comments? I feel like there a ton of anti-establishment Americans in here that don't even read what I wrote and get all up-in-arms just because of the subject matter.

I never said the cops were right to arrest, or that she should cooperate with an illegal search or detainment. In fact I said the opposite. But, I am saying her ridiculous, uncalled-for behavior upfront exposed her to a much greater chance of being harassed by inexperienced/incompetent cops.

I have no sympathy for people who instigate to seek out conflict just as in my previous example which does apply.

you say "She clearly told them what she was doing", but no, she does the completely unnatural and suspicious silent treatment from the get-go, when pulled over for a routine-appearing traffic stop.

You start your response with "you are wrong". That is a pretty close-minded statement. Especially when you make so many incorrect assumptions and missed so much of what I've already said? I'm not going to assume you are wrong about this encounter because we don't have all the facts about what caused the stop, but I can say you (and a few others here) are getting what I'm saying wrong.