Cory1848

32 minutes ago, Bob12345 said:

Agree, i came here hoping it would be sort of a wild west. Open carry of guns, shooting at whoever makes eye-contact, ramming people with your car, torching all you garbage in your front garden, <deleted>ting in shopping malls, steeling whatever you want to have...

 

But now it is becoming a nanny state. With laws, rules, and prison sentences for killing.

 

I will be looking for a new place to live where there is no nanny state! Somewhere in a war zone in Afghanistan or something, where i can be free. Will be looking for visa options for that region soon.

I hear there are large swathes of Syria and Somalia where “government” is at best a theory only, so you might want to check those out, too -- you can totally exercise your freedom, at least until you annoy the warlord who’s your neighbor!

1 hour ago, onekoolguy said:

My thought exactly! Tax your soft drinks because sugar is bad for you and no cheap very convient plastic bags and straws because we say so! We know what is good for you!! 

It doesn’t require a “nanny state” to make the determination that plastic bags and plastic straws are horrendously bad for the environment -- which is the environment of all of us. As for taxing high-sugar drinks, cigarettes, and other consumables that are demonstrably bad for one’s health, people who consume these items and as a result become chronically ill and require medical care drive up costs for all of us -- in the way of increased taxes and insurance premiums.

So, yes, one person’s selfishness adversely affects another person’s quality of life.

I just got an O-A visa at the Thai embassy in Washington last month. There were no additional requirements, as far as I know -- bank statement with a guarantee letter from the bank, police report, health form (downloaded from their website), money order for $200, and I also attached health insurance details (I'm covered by a US-based policy) but am not sure that was necessary. What they would NOT do is issue the O-A visa as long as I had an existing valid visa in my passport (issued by Chiang Mai immigration a year earlier), and they would not cancel the existing visa, so I had to wait until it naturally expired before I could apply for the new visa. All in all, it took a week to get the visa, and it was pretty easy --

9 hours ago, TopDeadSenter said:

Everything is for sale. It's just a question of price. 

Greenland has more than 50,000 people, who by all accounts are quite content as they are. Are they for sale? If you have children, or a spouse or partner, are those people for sale? How about you? NO, not everything is for sale. One of Trump's (countless) essential flaws, and that of many of his sycophants, is an absolute lack of any moral compass whatsoever.

I had exactly that problem. I had a nonimmigrant retirement visa in my passport, issued by the Chiang Mai immigration office last year and valid until August 4 of this year. I wanted to switch to an O-A visa, given the change in rules (no longer able to get an income affidavit) and given that I would be visiting the United States anyway (I’m American).

So I visited the Thai embassy in Washington this past April to apply for the O-A visa and was told that that would be impossible, because I still had a valid retirement visa in my passport, and I could not have two valid visas simultaneously. I can see the sense in that and then asked them to simply cancel the earlier visa, but they said they could not do that, because they had not originally issued the visa.

Then I had a friend in Chiang Mai visit the immigration office there to see if I could Fed-Ex my passport to her, and have her deliver the passport to the immigration office and have them cancel the visa, then have her Fed-Ex it back to me. Nope -- for some reason, Chiang Mai immigration said they could not do that, either.

That left two options: pretend to lose my US passport and apply for a new one, which would have no extant visas inside; or stay in the US a few extra months until the visa naturally expired. I opted for the latter, successfully applied for the O-A visa last week, and will hopefully pick it up at the Thai embassy tomorrow morning.

Different people may have different experiences with this.

7 hours ago, off road pat said:

"To learn who rules over you, simply find out who you are not allowed to criticize." The Quote Is from VOLTAIRE !!!

No, it's not, although the sentiment is not "un-Voltairian." It was most likely penned (and disseminated) by a neo-Nazi who was convicted and jailed for possessing child pornography. And, like so much other misinformation on the web, the false attribution gets passed around with abandon and taken for truth ...

https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2015/nov/27/cory-bernardi-mistakenly-quotes-voltaire-on-twitter-with-supposed-neo-nazis-line 

5 hours ago, Pilotman said:

I think with CK, it's more about his personality and locker room actions than it is about the kneeling protests.  I have heard various reports that he is quite arrogant and stand offish ( I know, what QB isn't) and a divisive personality among some of his fellow players. Maybe now its more to do with that aspect.  Problem for him is that the QB market is quite good right now and some good prospects coming out of the draft and free agency, so it looks like he is screwed.  Asking for over $20 to play in the new AAL will not have helped the perception that he thinks too highly of himself.  Bit of humble pie would have helped.  

I don't know about his locker room attitude, but the QB market is actually quite weak right now; at least half a dozen teams could improve at that position by hiring him. Somebody else here mentioned the Redskins' situation for instance; for reasons that are beyond me, the Broncos just hired Joe Flacco (who actually beat Kaepernick in the Superbowl, but Flacco hasn't had a good year since). So it's more than obvious that something else is going on here ...

2 hours ago, Chomper Higgot said:

Did anybody answer the accusation Omar made by proving it incorrect?

There’s a pretty good opinion piece by Dana Milbank in the Washington Post about this (“Ilhan Omar’s Tweets Were Appalling”). I guess, sure, AIPAC, like any other lobbying group, contributes to the campaigns of people they like (although they would need to do it through a PAC -- frankly, I’m not sure how lobbying groups operate in terms of funneling cash). It seems to me that the keyword here is “tropes”: god knows how many people I’ve talked to make the leap from “AIPAC lobbies for pro-Israel interests” to “AIPAC dictates US foreign policy.” People perceived that Omar was skirting with such stuff in her tweets, fairly or not. She apologized, she keeps her committee seats, and everything is cool. But I think the bigger picture is, the Democrats want to maintain the high ground in the whole bigotry/racism issue over the Republicans, and mildly censuring one of their own over something like this helps them do that.

5 hours ago, from the home of CC said:

I hope people realize that most successful businessmen are psychopaths - their zero empathy goes a long way when it comes to predatory business practices.

Psychopaths or not, a career in business does not translate into a career in politics. Business is driven by profits and, by today’s neoliberal business standards at least, building shareholder value. Zero empathy, as you point out, is a definite asset. Politics, on the other hand, is public service, which, while having a budgetary aspect, has no profit motive. Empathy is a job requirement. There’s no reason a businessperson can’t be a decent president, but s/he needs to learn a whole new skill set. It may be easier to, what’s the expression, shove a camel through the eye of a needle ...

3 hours ago, Belzybob said:

We all know that ladyboys, TVs and various other deviant minorities are absolutely normal; nothing abnormal about a bloke wanting to dress in a frock is there?

You are quite right -- from the point of view of a bloke who is a cross-dresser, wanting to dress in a frock is the most normal thing in the world!

25 minutes ago, anterian said:

There is a difference between normal and acceptable. Albinism is not normal but accepted and not penalised by society (except in Africa), Homosexuality is not normal (otherwise our race would not exist) but should be acceptable to the majority.  

I’ve had this rather tedious semantic discussion with a native German-speaking friend on a least a half-dozen occasions. Homosexuality is not “the norm” because only something like 6 percent of the human population is homosexual. The expression “the norm” carries only mathematical connotations. However, the words “normal” and “abnormal” in plain English are more freighted, and they often imply value judgments -- to say that homosexuality is “abnormal” implies that there’s something wrong with it.

18 hours ago, SammyT said:

You also didn't answer my question about why begpacking is an offensive term to describe a backpacker who is begging to fund their travel. Couldn't think of a decent answer, huh?

Hi Sammy -- I’m not going to read through the rest of this thread (six pages and counting) to see what other people may have replied, so apologies if I’m being redundant. The term “begpacking” is offensive for two reasons here. First, you don’t know anything about this fellow other than that he is apparently down on his luck. And second, the word is used frequently in this forum to refer not only to young travelers who are literally begging but also to young travelers who are simply having a good time traveling but who perhaps dress too informally or wear dreadlocks or otherwise behave in ways that are irritating to the grumpy old men who make up most of the people posting.

You are using the word literally and not as a generalized slur, which is great. And kudos for your own travels -- I hope you have a chance to do more, whether jet-setting to posh resorts or working your way across Indonesia on old steamers. Cheers.

14 minutes ago, unamazedloso said:

oh comeon. is it just me or is it really possible to be that drunk that you really dont remember? I dont drink anymore but would drink more than anyone i now once upon a time, done all drugs and even rohypnol thats been used as a date rate drug and although i couldnt remember much the next day some things did come back in time. I have just never known it possible to be that drunk and i used to drink like a fish until id pass out..

It’s quite possible. I have entire evenings that have disappeared forever, from late afternoon to the next morning, not a single recollection. It’s called a blackout, and it’s a common indicator for alcoholism. Different people respond to alcohol in different ways; perhaps you’re lucky!

1 hour ago, klauskunkel said:

here is her logic:

I was drunk as a skunk, therefore I must have had sex. This doesn't happen at all when I'm sober. The sex is rape, because I'm passed out and can't say: "Yeah, go ahead, whatever." 

 

I have no sympathies for people who have to drink in this fashion.

I’ve had some experience with women (not in Thailand) getting blind drunk and then calling the authorities for some nonexistent offense against them; the arriving police within minutes have read the situation correctly and responded accordingly. In these cases, the mini-crises have been entirely fueled by alcohol, which drives the woman’s anger, or insecurity, or confusion, or whatever to manifest itself in destructive behavior. It’s an old story.

I don’t know what this woman’s story is and it’s hard to sympathize with her, but she might need help; hope this is a wake-up call for her ...