Time to read THE LAST CENTURION?

WeberFan wrote:

Daryl wrote:The whole Yankee go home thing is unfortunate.
People by and large world wide are similar in their values and aspirations, however cultures can influence behaviour.
The "Ugly American" does exist. Loud, uncouth, brash, boastful, dismissive of other cultures, bullying and jingoistic. Hey I just described the current President? The fact that a percentage of US citizens can't see why people from elsewhere despise Trump, indicates that this behaviour is deemed to be acceptable by a percentage of their population.
I've traveled quite a lot, and met many quite likeable and decent Americans, but a few Trump clones stand out. In a crowd at a tourist site you see all the other people putting space between themselves, and the fat couple in the Hawaiian shirts. Unfortunately by definition these are the obvious ones, so overshadow the many decent and polite US citizens.

I've got perhaps 300-400 visa stamps in my (multiple) passports. Been all around the world on business. South America, Asia, Europe, North America, Middle East. All over the place. I'm a citizen of the US. My observation is that there are "ugly XXX" from just about everywhere. I've seen ugly Americans to be sure. I've also seen ugly Brits, ugly Germans, ugly Indians, ugly Koreans, ugly Venezuelans, you name it. No matter where my many travels took me, I saw boorish behavior. Why people can't just be respectful of other people I'll never know. They go somewhere and somehow feel entitled to say and do whatever they want. Every region... Every country... Every culture is different...

I'm nowhere near as well traveled as you are. I do understand the value of courtesy. When it was Shabbat during my time as a guest worker at the Kibbutzim, I climbed off the tractor, showered, put on clean clothes including a button down shirt and tie before going to dinner. I didn't pretend to be Jewish, I just wanted to be respectful.

While the Europeans disposed me, the Israelis liked having me around. I'm an expert mechanic and metal fabricator. I also had my international driver's license for Class A heavy truck. While the European guest workers were working maybe six hour days, I worked twelve hours. I confess that I was motivated by a desire to spend much time around the other guest workers.

Good points WeberFan.
I've noticed that with the rise of the Chinese middle class that often the new rudest people are Chinese. While a small minority of Americans are loud and opinionated, some Chinese are the ones who don't understand queuing, pushing in after walking past everyone, standing in front of photo opportunities, and such. As you say, boorish behaviour can exist in all nationalities.

Senator Tom Cotton published an interesting Column in THE WALL STREET JORNAL. He makes an interesting, circumstantial case:

https://www.cotton.senate.gov/?p=press_release&id=1354


Keep in mind that part of the legitimate research process on viruses found in animals is to evaluate their ability to infect humans. To do this, you expose human tissue to the virus to determine if the virus can survive and replicate in the tissue. Since cross species transmission is usually a low probability event, this process is often repeated many times to evaluate the probability. If survival and replication does occur, the succesful strains can then be isolated and human tissue is exposed to them. Repeating this process increases "functionality," making the virus even more infectious and lethal. At what time does this process cross the line between research on a virus and modifying the virus into a weapon?

Even if there was no intent to weaponize the Covidvirus, there is reassonable suspicion that the virus originated in the lab. There is absolutely no doubt that the Chinese Communist Party concealed the severity of the outbreak. China also enabled international trasvel even after they locked down Wuhan province. I view this as a hostile act that has killed a quarter million people.

Jeez.

Cotton makes basic errors and contradicts himself.

Interesting uncertainty on number of cases.

https://www.usnews.com/news/world-repor ... tudy-finds

Even more interesting commentary by Joe Biden:

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/video ... eople.html

In Trump's continuing saga of sabotaging the US's ability to deal with Covid-19...

• Him and Pence have started flying around the county visiting various locations and defying local guidelines on wearing masks.
• Trump is continuously downplaying the need for drastically more testing, which is the *only* way that widespread contact tracing and containment can be enabled... because if there was more testing there would be more cases confirmed and he doesn't want those on his record.
• States preparing expanded vote by mail capabilities to avoid having massive crowds of people swarming polling places on election day and, you know, killing people... are being threatened by Trump with having their federal funding withheld. Because more people voting is not a good thing for Trump and he knows it.

TFLYTSNBN wrote:https://www.wnd.com/2020/05/unprecedented-obama-bureaucrat-brags-blocking-hcq-drug/

That article has all the red flags for being written to rile people up. I'm not surprised you would think it was insightful.

Joat42 wrote:

TFLYTSNBN wrote:https://www.wnd.com/2020/05/unprecedented-obama-bureaucrat-brags-blocking-hcq-drug/

That article has all the red flags for being written to rile people up. I'm not surprised you would think it was insightful.

Yeah, that's essentially "medical professional does job" but phrased in the most hyperbolic outrageous way they can spin it.

this article will really piss off the Eurotrash and their American sycophants.

https://gellerreport.com/2020/05/cuomo- ... -911.html/

To be honest, I suspect that the Governor's staff didnt keep him informed of their asctions or didnt explain the implications.