Coss

"Money spent violating the basic human rights of Palestinians could be spent in America violating the basic human rights of Americans." and the word Palestinians ay be substituted for any Nationality du jour, of your choice. Hear Hear!

"The DHS has purchased over 1.6 billion rounds of ammunition over the past year – enough to wage a 20 year plus war." No wonder the gun lobby is worried about the government attacking it's citizens. DHS - Department of Homeland Security - unless they think 1.6.billion Mexicans and Canadians are gonna need to be shot, who are they arming against. Mind you, from news footage, it seems it takes the average perpetrator, 20 cops each firing 50 rounds, to get shot. So at that ratio it's only 1.6 Million people they're worried about...

Apart from Jeb ( a good hillbilly name ) is every male in this family called George? Probably makes their names easy to remember. Home sweet hoecake all you rounders. Ain't no lie went a court'n, wildwood flower! Cluck old hen hoecake scratching out dough died when I was young Juney bug soldier's joy run hot corn rye whiskey hot corn, shady grove nine-pound hammer. The cuckoo rambling. Work one day rolling down the track buried in the ground peg and awl going to town died when I was young.

I comment from a position of ignorance - my on the ground experience of the USA, being a week or so in San Francisco with Old Hippy as a tour guide... (Good times) So I am always amazed at the apparent, over the top, actions of what always seem to be LAPD officers, like the ones who shot up a car containing a woman and her mother, thinking that they were a very big armed black man named Dorner. Many many many bullets, car riddled, other cars, neighboring houses with many bullet holes.... Curiously the women were not too seriously injured and survived. The international media has fed me imagery, over the years, of scenes of cops, piling on with violence and aggression directed at seemingly passive subjects. A typical scenario is thus: a car chase ends, what looks like 50 police cars pull up and all the officers leap from their cars and pile on top of a single subject, who has thoughtfully laid down on the ground, hands behind his head, submissive. The resultant pile of cops is meantime, trying to pummel him to death, no doubt hitting each other and enraging themselves in the process. This sort of pack behaviour is most often seen in wild hunting dogs in Africa, when tearing apart prey. People say that this is the few, the exception, but to my mind, it happens enough, to make it to the media often. On the other side, Fred Reed of Fredoneverything, has a series of "cop columns" here that put this argument into context, the articles are a very good read and give the reader some perspective from the cop's side. I can say, that the actions of the gun toting citizenry and police of LA as portrayed to me in the media, have put LA way down on my list of places to visit, I just wouldn't feel safe.

"built on the spot where tradition holds the tree from which Jesus' cross was made," risibly tenuous What about a monastery built on the spot where woodcutters habitually took a leak, when cutting down the tree from which Jesus' cross was made, or the hovel in which a blind and crippled peasant passed his days, whilst being totally ignorant of the spot where woodcutters habitually took a leak, when cutting down the tree from which Jesus' cross was made. Surely that'd make a good spot for a monastery...

So some data entry prole got it wrong...

I'm not defending Tobacco, but I would suggest that many who smoke and die from "Tobacco use" related causes, may, as non smokers, have lived another year and died of non "Tobacco use" related causes. There is a definite bias, to ascribing any health issue, for a smoker as a "Tobacco use" related cause. If I have a heart attack as a smoker, it's because I smoke, If I have one as a non smoker, I have a heart attack. Just picking holes in someone's logic.

We be getting old - progress is upon us...

Very good....

And both of them could use NZ and OZ as examples of how to treat people nicely...

My point exactly... Why arm them?

NZ and Australia are such places

Another comment about the gun argument I saw on the televisual extravaganza... One guy hides a bomb in his shoes (and fails to kill anyone) and now millions of people around the world have to take off their shoes and belts and suffer harassment at airports everywhere. But if you've got people slaughtering children with guns, the answer is - arm more people...

“Pilots have been armed now for many many years, we’ve not had another hijacking and the issue is, for the bad guy, he doesn’t know which airplane he’s getting on, if the pilot is armed or not.†Faaark! I didn't know that! Another reason not to fly to America. Just my luck I'd be on the plane where some pilot goes Clint Eastwood with some Rapper who thinks he owns the world and there's the big shoot out in the sky.... ""we’ve not had another hijacking"" Didn't have a lot before, I'd suggest that airport security, increased intelligence efforts and passenger profiling has a lot to do with there not being another hijacking.

Still, lock up the remains and use the cell as a 'shock and awe' showcase for young 1st time offenders... 'See what happens when you don't behave?'

Her loony son and anyone with a functioning hand that could turn a door knob... I'd jail her for life for contributory negligence...

As a non-USA person, I have this observation to offer: If you throw a bunch of armed people into an area, someone is going to get shot. My take on this is to imprison for life or longer, or execute anyone who shoots anyone else, except in clear and demonstrable cases of justifiable self defense or the defense of others, i.e. family or children. That's it. If you want a gun, then you use it responsibly, or else it's goodbye. And before anyone says but this latest idiot didn't own the guns etc etc. If they'd been locked up as all guns should be, he couldn't have got them. If the USA society had a clear understanding that the Rambo films are not reality, and that guns are not for shooting people, then maybe he wouldn't have considered it. So I'd lock up/execute the mother and the people who sold her the guns - not responsible people in my book... Same same drink driving, if you cause no problems, you'll have no problems, if you injure or kill anyone whilst drink driving - goodbye! Too many rights are accorded the modern man/woman. The right to have weapons and then go "postal" is not one that anyone intended. I saw a nice comment from some woman on the TV today, why do we need to be armed for war in suburban America? Mind you, good way to improve the gene pool...

I didn't know he was a scientist ...

I like one of the qualifications for becoming a member: { Not having been sentenced by a judgment to imprisonment in any countries except for an offence committed through negligence; } So people can say "Yes, but I didn't do anything, I didn't know it was happening..." about any particular crime - So very Thai...

yes please!

"â€My analogy is that it’s like becoming Bill Gates without liking computers.â€" Whilst I have some respect for what Bill Gates is doing nowadays, it's obvious Bill doesn't like computers, look at Windows!

ladies, wrong time of the month?

Because some of the characters in the film were portrayed as Nigerian drug runners?

Washington Square Demolition Leaves Bangkok’s Elderly Sexpats Lost, Confused MID-SUKHUMVIT – Bangkok’s senior sex tourist population is facing its greatest crisis in decades as the demolition of the nightlife zone known as Washington Square has left them with nowhere to go. Dozens, and sometimes up to a hundred portly Western men with bad skin, aged 55-80, have been reported wandering around the Sukhumvit Soi 22 area since June, when final eviction orders forced the closure of Washington Square bars and restaurants, many of which had been open since the 1980s. Even as wrecking balls and bulldozers take down the six-story shophouses which have stood unchanged since the Vietnam War, many of the faithful patrons of the vanished drinking holes have remained, emerging around dusk to wander aimlessly amidst the wreckage of the only places in Bangkok outside their apartments where they feel comfortable. “Where is Lone Star?†asked Melvin Summerville, a 68-year-old retiree from the United States. “I can’t find Lone Star. It’s supposed to be right here; it was right here,†he said over and over, pointing to pile of concrete rubble. When asked, Summerville said that he had been going to Lone Star for 16 years without ever going to another bar, and as such was unaware of where else he could get a beer. When directed towards The Dubliner, a nearby Irish-themed pub, Summerville waved his hand in protest. “Can’t go in there,†he said. “There’s young people in there. And Thai women who have their own money. Can’t go in there, no way.†He then joined a small group of about seven elderly Caucasian men who were standing silently in the street. Other groups were meandering nearby, perspiring visibly in the humid evening. According to Thammasat University sociologist Nootaree Kampongrat, the refugee crisis was created by a “perfect storm†of variables, beginning with the unique status of the Washington Square real estate. “The market value of the land surpassed the income from these cheap bars as early as 1993, but since the landowners wanted to sell the entire 20-rai plot as a single package rather than subdivide it, they had to wait for a buyer,†she said. According to Nootaree, this created what the real estate calls a “rent bog†where low-value businesses are permitted to continue in what otherwise should a be high-rent area. “Washington Square has been living on borrowed time for 20 years, and so have these men,†she explained. “Meanwhile, they’ve been stuck in a capsule, getting older and even more entrenched in their habits.†With rents unchanged since the 1970s, many of Washington Square’s bars were able to keep their drink prices artificially low, further isolating their patrons from the new and more upscale establishments that were springing up in the area. Additionally, the refusal of the landowners to upgrade any of the decrepit shophouses in Washington Square prevented the influx of any new businesses aimed at younger or more sophisticated customers. Even the physical structure of the square was a factor, according to Nootaree. “Washington Square was literally walled off by darkness,†she noted. “It was similar to a cave ecosystem, where the indigenous species evolve in isolation, adapt to their bare resources, and eventually become a new species altogether.†The possibility that the refugee patrons are suffering from a medical or psychiatric condition has caught the attention of the city government, which has sent in a team of doctors and a medical bus to provide basic services to the estimated 450 bar-less men, who have been reported to be suffering from dehydration, disorientation, and early signs of age-related dementia. “These people need to be treated as patients,†said Dr Janapat Ruenpongrat, a psychologist on the team who has interviewed and treated many of the victims. “Most of them are 60 years or older, and almost all of them have never eaten or drank outside Washington Square or the Emporium since, well, last century. They’ve lost everything and they’re scared.†Dr Janapat insisted that medical treatment was a short-term solution at best, and that these deeply sheltered sex tourists would need months of rehabilitation before being able to navigate a modern city like Bangkok on their own. “They don’t speak Thai. Heck, they barely speak English,†she noted, referring to the truncated pidgin-English used by long-term expats who communicate exclusively with female bar employees and motorcycle taxi drivers. “Also, they’re kind of poor,†she added. “I mean, just look at their shoes.†Responding to the crisis, Bangkok Governor Sukhumband Paribatra has promised to quickly find new places for the refugees to drink, carouse, and feel unthreatened by anything new, with sois 22 and 9 being vetted as prime candidates. “Bangkok is better equipped than any city in the world to serve old white men who are uncomfortable with the wider world,†he said. “We are world leaders in providing economically desperate Asian women and unhealthy Western food. As governor I promise that these men will be taken care of.†“They will live in Bangkok until they die. I promise you that much.†link