Morden

The speculation is starting in advance of clear information. Even the news reporters on the scene are confused about the detail.

CNN has said this morning:

1. According to a woman on the bus, the killer was of very white complexion.

2. The other person arrested is said 'to be of interest' and 'Asian in appearance'. No-one other than a few reporters has yet connected this person with the killer.

3. The gun is said to be an AR15.

However, given the present confusion, we don't know whether any of this is correct or what the background of the dead killer and the 'Asian' might be.

All that seems to be established publicly is that there has been yet another gun rampage with significant loss of life involving a long barrelled gun.

On a general note, the more legal guns there are around, the more illegal guns there will be. I can't understand why there is still so much support in the US for open gun laws amongst people who seem to have no compassion for the victims or their families.

He reportedly lent out money to Thai people at extremely high interest rates.

What is an illegal high interest rate in Thailand? I think I pay too much in interest to man I buy condo from, He charges me 10% annual. Is that too much?

My information is that the maximum legal rate is the equivalent of 2% simple interest per month. Many private lenders charge more than this for loans that the banks won't provide or where the borrower doesn't want to use bank facilities. At the far end of the spectrum are those who lend, usually, small amounts at high rates where there is no collateral offered.

Your loan appears to be within the legal limit.

That may be the case but the OP mentioned only meters and, in a housing developments, common costs such as for posts and cables are usually included in the house cost.

Way over the top for meters. Ask the person who will have his or her name on the blue book to visit the relevant offices to fins out what they charge.

The builder will not do any work on this job other than to install the pipework and cabling from the meters to the house. It's the water and electricity offices that install meters.

From #724 Seriously, come back to the real world for a minute . . .

In which I presume the poster himself would claim to dwell?

Lending money to tourists and expats. is doomed to failure, especially as he didn't even want any collateral.

His biggest mistake was to advertise his business in public.

All in all, he seems to be something of a dimwit.

Thanks all. I just need the bb gun to shoot at the pigeons and the barking dogs that come around the soi. I start looking for one and try to find the place "dolly" mentioned.

Be careful about pellets going outside the boundary of your property.

We never went back after being served a "sausage" pizza with pieces of hot dog on it. And the tomatoe sauce was way too sweet.

I'm getting the impression that the shop ran out of mozzarella and, also, the staff are serving Thai style pizzas with mayo. and those awful sausages. There is no excuse for the tomato mix being sweet. Good canned Italian tomatoes are available and there's nothing sweet added to it for pizzas.

If the owner is Italian he needs to get on top of his business and not leave it to local staff to do as they please. If he wants to satisfy both Thai taste and Western taste, he can offer the choice.

Some Thais like to have a ton of sweet mayonnaise on their pizzas. Perhaps that's what was on the OPs pizza.

Sorry, he comes off as pretty darned stupid.

If he really has a high IQ, that doesn't mean he used it.

Clearly his bizarre fundamentalism (God talks to him when making big decisions, yeah right) was a crutch.

His Iraq war invasion was the biggest foreign policy mistake in American history.

England provided one-third of the troops for the Iraq invasion. There were more than 20 countries in that invasion, including Thailand.

Tony Blair stood before his country and stated that there were weapons of mass destruction which had to be taken out.

Now of course it's all Bush's fault. Certainly it's all the US fault. Never mind that Britain has high quality intelligence who themselves said there were WMDs,

Both the US Congress and the British Parliament voted to go to war. That's a lot of people. Even liberal Democrats in the US congress voted to declare war on Iraq.

So how do you explain Britain providing 1/3 of the troops with approval from Parliament, along with 20 other countries, and then blame Bush?

Your revisionist history makes you look like what you are, speaking of IQ.

I blame it all on Tony Blair and the Brits.

Why other countries joined in is easy to explain.

'You are either with us or against us'.

So with the US being an economic power the smaller countries just joined in to not be offside with the good old US of A.

Also many countries had very little intelligence on WMD as most of that intelligence came from the USA. So most of the world believed Bush when he lied about the WMD's and just hoped they would be found.

Now that the majority of the world knows the US govt will lie to them to get their own way they may not be so quick to back them next time.

You're kidding, right? The UK doesn't have really good intelligence of its own? 1/3 of the troops which invaded Iraq were British. Tony Blair told his nation there were WMDs from the UK's intelligence. The UK told the world there were WMD's.

What's a WMD? I never heard anyone say he had nukes. Saddam Hussein had killed thousands of people with poison gas during the Anfal campaign. His own people tried him and hanged him.

I didn't support the invasion of Iraq, believing that it was up to the people to get rid of Hussein if that was their choice. Many countries have had revolutions to remove leaders and I felt that was up to the people if they wanted it.

I didn't vote for or support Bush either although I now think Gore would have been worse. He's crazy.

But I don't buy the idea that anyone lied. Many think those WMD's were moved to Syria as Hussein saw the invasion coming. Many believe they are still there. I don't think anyone on this forum really knows what happened but I put my beliefs on the clear fact that the British intelligence, on their own, also believed the WMD's were there and voted to go to war.

Too many make this into an American invasion which it wasn't. More than 20 countries including Thailand provided troops for that invasion.

I think this is another hate America thread, not an objective thread.

David Kelly, a chemical weapons expert working for the MoD, told a journalist that there were no weapons of mass destruction. Once this became know and Kelly's name was linked to the story, Kelly was found dead in woods near his home. It's said that he committed suicide but not many people seem to believe that. The post mortem papers have been locked away for 70 years.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Kelly_(weapons_expert)

Power corrupts. If he didn't realise that before he took office he wasn't fit for the job.

I wonder who really had the power. He's too dim to run a hairdryer let alone an aggressive military power. It must have been those shadowy figures who always stood by his shoulder.

Whoever wrote his little speech should be sacked. How on earth could he be prompted to say words to the effect that 'he doesn't 'feel sorry for them' and that they were 'volunteers' in war'? He never did have much in the way of speaking skills, I suppose.

Regarding "Power corrupts. If he didn't realise that before he took office he wasn't fit for the job."

One can realize something is wrong and yet still do it.

Quite so.

I've not had a problem with sand flies on White Sands beach.

Sorry, he comes off as pretty darned stupid.

If he really has a high IQ, that doesn't mean he used it.

Clearly his bizarre fundamentalism (God talks to him when making big decisions, yeah right) was a crutch.

His Iraq war invasion was the biggest foreign policy mistake in American history.

England provided one-third of the troops for the Iraq invasion. There were more than 20 countries in that invasion, including Thailand.

Tony Blair stood before his country and stated that there were weapons of mass destruction which had to be taken out.

Now of course it's all Bush's fault. Certainly it's all the US fault. Never mind that Britain has high quality intelligence who themselves said there were WMDs,

Both the US Congress and the British Parliament voted to go to war. That's a lot of people. Even liberal Democrats in the US congress voted to declare war on Iraq.

So how do you explain Britain providing 1/3 of the troops with approval from Parliament, along with 20 other countries, and then blame Bush?

Your revisionist history makes you look like what you are, speaking of IQ.

I blame it all on Tony Blair and the Brits.

As I recall, it was Bush who first mentioned weapons of mass destruction but he an Bliar were obviously plotting together. Bliar was looking for lucrative work after he left politics so he may have been on a promise on condition he did as Bush told him. Bliar went to war without even consulting his Cabinet and against the wishes of many British people. He is as culpable for what happened as is Bush. They should both be on war crimes charges.

I love the quotations from George Senior's idiot son. Here are some more:

"And so, General, I want to thank you for your service. And I appreciate the fact that you really snatched defeat out of the jaws of those who are trying to defeat us in Iraq." --George W. Bush, to Army Gen. Ray Odierno, Washington, D.C., March 3, 2008

"Let me start off by saying that in 2000 I said, 'Vote for me. I'm an agent of change.' In 2004, I said, 'I'm not interested in change --I want to continue as president.' Every candidate has got to say 'change.' That's what the American people expect." --George W. Bush, Washington, D.C., March 5, 2008

"A lot of times in politics you have people look you in the eye and tell you what's not on their mind." --George W. Bush, Sochi, Russia, April 6, 2008

The guy was a terrible public speaker, which usually is the kind of emotional/psychological issue referenced by a previous poster. I don't know how Bush may have communicated in private, as in one to one or in small groups. It's likely he was better in the latter settings.

As to Bush's Ivy League credentials, he was what's called a 'Legacy" acceptance at Yale and Harvard, respectively. As a legacy applicant, you don't need brains. All you need is your family history and background, to include having a pulse and being able to pay tuition.

Curiously, his father was a fool which I think goes beyond intelligence into the realm of personality. Jeb Bush seems to be the only normal person with Bush family genes, although a lot of people like Barbara Bush (first ladies however are judged separately from their husband presidents).

Nixon was an intelligent guy who'd been accepted at Harvard with no legacy status, but couldn't pay tuition and was unable to secure a scholarship. Nixon's issues were entirely personality, socioeconomic status, an ingrown exclusionary nature.

Bush overall is nonetheless a scatterbrain.

Bush didn't win the presidency in 2000. He was appointed president by the Republican party majority on the nine-member Supreme Court in a 5-4 vote of the "justices." It's appalling that nine citizens who, because they sit on the Supreme Court, get to vote twice in a presidential election. That's a setback from which the U.S. constitutional system has yet to recover.

What's unusual about folks voting twice in a Presidential election get to vote twice? Democrats in Illinois have been doing it for years.

About the Supreme Court stealing the election, the following article is from your vaunted NY Times. The jury has been dismissed on this issue.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Study of Disputed Florida Ballots Finds Justices Did Not Cast the Deciding Vote

By FORD FESSENDEN and JOHN M. BRODER

Published: November 12, 2001

Acomprehensive review of the uncounted Florida ballots from last year's presidential election reveals that George W. Bush would have won even if the United States Supreme Court had allowed the statewide manual recount of the votes that the Florida Supreme Court had ordered to go forward.

Contrary to what many partisans of former Vice President Al Gore have charged, the United States Supreme Court did not award an election to Mr. Bush that otherwise would have been won by Mr. Gore. A close examination of the ballots found that Mr. Bush would have retained a slender margin over Mr. Gore if the Florida court's order to recount more than 43,000 ballots had not been reversed by the United States Supreme Court.

Even under the strategy that Mr. Gore pursued at the beginning of the Florida standoff — filing suit to force hand recounts in four predominantly Democratic counties — Mr. Bush would have kept his lead, according to the ballot review conducted for a consortium of news organizations.

http://www.nytimes.com/2001/11/12/politics/12VOTE.html

The Constitution requires the equal protection of the laws, which in this instance means everyone who voted properly gets their votes counted.

The Constitution requires that any disputed election of the president be settled in the House of Representatives. In 2000 the Supreme Court contravened the Constitution, to take it upon itself to decide the outcome of the national election. The Supreme Court itself acted unconstitutionally.

I recall that not all votes were counted during Bush's re-election. Wasn't it the case that the count was going against him and the expats'. votes were ignored?

BB guns are not accurate enough for worthwhile target shooting. The only use I found for mine was to give a sting to dogs coming onto our property. They would leave quickly but return later.

According to what I read you have to have a permit even for an air gun . Thats even for a Thai person ......

That's correct.

BB guns seem still to be legal but many outlets have stopped selling them. I've seen them in the trash shops on beach Road, Pattaya.

I doubt that his IQ would exceed a 100. He is probably still looking for WMD's and Cheney, Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz should be tried for war-crimes How may people got killed because of this lot???

Here's a log just for Iraq. It doesn't include the more recent casualties that have been incurred in the chaos that was left behind. Other countries' military tagged on behind but I think that Bush's military were in the majority.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casualties_of_the_Iraq_War

Sorry, he comes off as pretty darned stupid.

If he really has a high IQ, that doesn't mean he used it.

Clearly his bizarre fundamentalism (God talks to him when making big decisions, yeah right) was a crutch.

His Iraq war invasion was the biggest foreign policy mistake in American history.

Both he and Bliar claimed that they were justified in sending young military people to Iraq to be killed or to kill because the two of them were Christians. Inflammatory comments on top of their lies about weapons of mass destruction.

At least this thread will permit all you US haters to get your rocks off at Bush.

All of you folks claiming he is stupid does not speak well for a couple of highly regarded Ivy League Universities. Bush obtained a Bachelor's Degree from Yale University and graduated with an MBA from Harvard Business School.

A couple of other items you folks might not realize. Bush could not have gone to war in Iraq and Afghanistan without the support of the Democratic party. They (Clinton, Kerry et al) voted FOR the wars.

This little comment can easily be applied to the current resident of the White House:

"To vote for an idiot once is unfortunate. To vote for him twice is carelessness."

Look at it this way. If the US administration and military kept their noses out of the business of other countries, there would be a great deal less criticism.

Hi IQ or not, he can't string together a coherent sentence and his grammar is appalling:

"One of the very difficult parts of the decision I made on the financial crisis was to use hardworking people's money to help prevent there to be a crisis." --George W. Bush, Washington, D.C., Jan. 12, 2009

"I've been in the Bible every day since I've been the president." --George W. Bush, Washington, D.C., Nov. 12, 2008

On a tourist visa and working in a shop, mataleo? You'll last two weeks, if you're lucky, before you are arrested and possibly deported.

That's spot on right!

I think that some deep research is needed.