Trouble

King's been reigning since the late 1940s and now he's in his late 80s and one of the richest men around. Less reason to have the blues when you can afford a life of luxury on the back of brainwashed fans who live in relative poverty. Nice.

Seems like a stupid thing to say. Just because one likes his talent and music, spends money to attend a concert or show and buys his music doesn't mean one is brainwashed or in poverty. He grew up poor and made it. Are you jealous of success?

Obviously there seems to be a great difference of opinion in whether the trade was justified or not. Negotiating with terrorists is publicly not the route the American government wants to take. Obviously behind the scenes preliminary negotiations can't hurt anything as there maybe some common ground reached. This deal however was just not right from the get go. In this case the military made every effort to find Bergdahl knowing at the time he basically walked off. Lives of decent soldiers were lost in that effort. The Administration turned loose five very bad guys in the trade. They will be back in a matter of months working to harm the USA, no doubt about that. Obama is the head of this Administration and it was a bad deal. The buck stops with him on this one. We know that no one made the decision for him. The fact that Obama made a big deal out the the trade and Bergdahl's parent's were invited to the White House only shows that the Administration did not, for whatever reason, take into account the whole story of his desertion. That was either bad leadership or bad decision making on Obama's part. We have not traded terrorists for civilians and have watched as they were beheaded. There is a lot more to this Bergdahl than has come out so far. Trading five terrorists for him was, in my opinion, not the thing to do.

Obama is a left leaning political ideologue and should have remained in the college environment where his ideas could be argued endlessly but cause no harm. The USA needs a leader who can deal in the real world as it exists, be that Democrat or Republican. In my lifetime I can think of no person more ill-equipped to be President nor more divisive than Obama. As the first black president, he squandered his chance to bring people together. His legacy is a divided people, economically, socially, and racially and after six years one can't keep blaming the previous administration. He had neither the leadership skills nor the administrative skills to run an administration. I had high hopes when he was first elected. So much for electing a young, naive, utopian.

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The state of the bear was indeed pitiful.

However, perhaps the condemnation of the temple is out of place.

Thai people dump their unwanted pets at temples, knowing that the monks and helpers will do their best to help them.

Ditto wild animals found injured or their babies abandoned.

The temples simply don't have the expertise or the money to look after these animals, but they usually try their best in difficult circumstances.

If Thailand had a proper organisations dedicated to animal welfare such as the RSPCA in the UK then the temples wouldn't have to bear this unwanted burden.

What a load of crap, It does not matter how they acquired this animal they kept it so they should have at least saw that it got food ( Sun Bears are omnivorous so I am sure they could have found something in the food they beg to feed it} and enough sunlight to keep it alive. Does not take a lot of expertise to know it like all animals has basic needs. If they could not figure this out I am sure they could have found someplace to take this poor animal to like the organization that found the poor thing or a zoo. I doubt they even tried. These monks sure did not do their best to help this poor creature in fact they did DAMN little, it makes me lose respect for the buddist religion. And you piss me off for trying to make excuses for them, there is no excuse for the way this poor creature was neglected it is criminal.

Have you seen the rather charming documentary series about three Roman Catholic priests and their housekeeper on Craggy Island off the coast of western Ireland, "Father Ted"?

How do you think they would have coped if somebody had dumped a Sun Bear in their parochial house? Do you think they'd really have known how to care for it? Feed it? Mrs. Doyle's tea, cake and sandwiches probably wouldn't have met its dietary requirements.

Your anger at the religious institution is misdirected. Your anger would better be directed either at the people who dumped the animal there, or wider Thai society for not providing proper refuges for animals in need.

In the absence of evidence to the contrary, I would suggest that the temple probably did its best with limited knowledge and limited resources.

What a load of BS. If someone "dumped" a bear on my front steps I would use some common sense and find out what the bear needed and who might be in a better position to provide that. Obviously deprived of food, put in a room and forgotten. I will not condemn a whole religion but I have seen very little of the Buddhist religion the makes me think of it as positive. People just go through the motions and understand little of the teachings. Ask any Thai something specific about Buddhist teachings or why something is done at a temple and 10 to 1 they can't give you an explanation. Children are to the wai at anything Buddhist image, temple, etc. out of respect but have little understanding of why they should have the respect. Wish I have passed over the posting.

"The White House was furious when Netanyahu's government defied Obama and announced plans to construct new housing units in East Jerusalem while Biden was visiting Israel in 2010. Additional housing plans that year upended U.S. efforts to restart peace talks between the Israelis and Palestinians."

I have said this before but herein lies the crux of the problem. I believe the dislocation of Palestinians to build these settlements has been the single biggest hindrance to any possible peaceful settlement of the Israeli/Palestinian conflict. The Israelis just keep taking land and building settlements on it. They have done it in the face of administrations both Republican and Democrat suggesting that they don't do it. They have continually defied world opinion in this matter as if they are some kind of rogue state. Then they expect the US to continue with its 3 billion dollars in aid per year and expect sympathy from the world always wanting us to remember the holocaust. They are dead wrong on the settlement issue and the US and world should once and for all tell them so.

While I am no fan of Obama as I think he is over his head in international and domestic issues, I give him some credit on the Israel issue. I would not have been as diplomatic in my relations with Israel. I am interested to hear what Netanyahu has to say. However, as the same time if I was Obama and felt it was necessary, I would then give a nationwide speech rebutting what I thought to be necessary. Let the American people hear both sides and make a decision. All too often the American public is out of the loop on these issues.

Have you noticed? FOX viewers can't have friends that don't watch FOX. Easy to spot them too. Sometimes I meet people and after a quick hello they go straight into their Hannity impression. FOX has them frothing at the mouth with hate.... Obama the muslim.....liberals!....Bengazi!....Obamacare....Death Panels.....Cuba!...liberals!...socialists!...Thats al they want to talk about. They recite a big list of the last 6 months of Roger Ailes talking points.

I can't get away fast enough from these guys...and they are all the same.

Right here on Thai Visa you can spot the FOX viewers instantly.

Then there is the MSNBC bunch that are on the other side of the fence and equally as biased with their views. This bunch sees nothing wrong with anything that the liberals and Obama do. They are just as rabid on the left as many are on the right. That's the problem today. There is no debate and compromise.

As far as I am concerned, the problems of the USA in the Middle East would not have been where they are had at least one president in the last 20 years told the Israelis to stop building settlements on territory outside their original boundaries or risk loosing American taxpayers dollars and support. Israel certainly had a right to defend its country but their actions with regard to settlements have only inflamed the issue. It turned out to be a giant land grabbing enterprise.

There just might have been a peace settlement and coexistence with the Palestinians and other countries around them. America's continued support has only reinforced the Israelis intransigence on the issue.

While I am no fan of Obama, this is the only thing where I feel he is on the mark. He has shown his unwillingness to blindly support Israel. But then I think this is only by accident and not his specific stragegy.

Seems to me this is much ado about nothing. First off he's a tourist who probably has come from the backwater of China and has little understanding of "cultural" etiquette in Thailand or anywhere else. Second, most Thais have little understanding of their own culture. They just do what they have been shown to do. My experience with Thais is that most of them haven't a clue what their religion is about or why they do certain things or act a certain way at the temple. The wai everything in passing and go about their lives neither living nor understand Buddhist teachings. Thais don't questing the why of anything. It is just the way they are taught and brought up. I have asked many a Thai a why question when it comes to temple rituals and none have ever been able to give me a straight answer about something. They simply don't know. The boys go off and do their monk thing for 2 weeks, 2 months or whatever and learn nothing from the experience. It is ritual with little understanding of the religion itself. So this outrage over someone kicking a bell seems a little overblown to me. People do stupid things. Get over it, Thailand, and move on. If you want vast hordes of tourists, this type of things will happen from time to time. If you can't stand the very infrequent disrespect that may be shown, then better give up the tourist revenue. Try taking a stroll down Walking Street in Pattaya and see how the tourists are accosted by touts, pimps, and bargirls and show me how that is respecting tourists. Of course we all know the ripoffs of tourists paying more to see a tourist site or being scammed in one way or another so the Thais have a long way to go when it comes to cultural sensitivities.

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And the WITCH HUNT continues

And if I were her I would of ran a long time ago she has no chance of any fair trial or anything with a government that imposed itself at the point of a gun

Which they did for a very good reason, and it is all coming out now ...

The Army staged the coup not for a problem in the rice pledging scheme but because opposition political activists took to the streets and disrupted the city, to voice their discontent with the amnesty bill. If my memory serves me correctly, that was the real catalyst that took things to the streets. When Yingluck bent to their demands and dissolved the parliament and new elections were scheduled that was not good enough and they disrupted those elections as well. The police and Army failed to uphold the law and the Army and its political supporters saw this as a chance to take over and and are now in the process of cleansing the opposition political base. Whether Yingluck is guilty of negligence, malfeasance, or anything else should be determined only after a legitimate elected government is established and prosecutors and judicial system are free of the junta's influence. This is definitely nothing more than an attempt to silence and stop the red shirt influence in government. There has been no effort to reconcile differences and it is amazing how Abhisit seems free to contribute his opinions and the other side is silenced. This is all about who is to control the country not about rice schemes, corruption, or anything else. This is just the excuse that is being used. Whether you like it or not the yellow shirt side is about status quo and the red shirt side threatens that.

Everyone knows the rice scheme was a failure but on the other hand the current government is still creating subsidy programs for rice, rubber, and palm oil. Some one pays for the subsidies and that is usually the tax payer. The current government is using these subsidies the same way the Yingluck government did and that is to support their base. The current government is doing the same things trying to neutralize rural opposition to the junta.