What do we expect after 50 years of Republican corporate welfare, bailouts, lax regulations and isolationist trade policy? Local manufacturing that makes cheaper and cheaper junk for higher and higher prices. It’s not just cars by any stretch of the imagination.

It’s funny how you only ever seem to hear about voting machine “malfunctions” that favor Republican candidates. I have yet to hear one where votes get switched to a Democratic or 3rd party choice.

Ever since I attended a catered event with “signature dogs” from various American ballparks and had a bleu-cheese-and-bacon dog, I’ve suspended my disbelief about what might be tasty on top of a hot dog. I gotta endorse experimentation, because if you’d asked me beforehand if I thought that would be remotely good, I’d…

The hand holding it also obviously belongs to someone with enough remaining net worth to wear a shirt, which is something else no American can be after buying concessions at a sporting event.  Or pretty much any place in the U.S. that has “concessions” as opposed to a simple snack bar.  I often feel like they want you…

How amazingly ignorant of you to dismiss as drivel the opinion of anyone not old enough to be respected in your eyes.

This is what I’m talking about when I’ve complained about people projecting, twisting my words, and reading between the lines. Just because I asserted that something is rude doesn’t mean I’m demanding everyone begin policing the world for the slightest rudeness by strangers.  I should have realized that Americans at…

At best it’s unpopular to point out, in the crowd of commenters here.  That doesn’t make it incorrect or vicious in any way.  Note how few people are bothering to really read and understand what I’ve said, and are simply projecting racism or fear thereof onto me and giving in to their need to hurl abuse at someone…

Or, alternatively, it happens to be the only obviously multi-lingual part of the world I’ve personally travelled to, and therefore can say what I’ve seen firsthand.

No, if you LIVE in that part of Burma (is there still a Burma?  Isn’t it... yeah, it’s Myanmar now.  I thought so.), and you deliberately hold your public conversations in a non-native language, you’re being rude.  A tourist outside a tourist area is still a tourist, though this is one big part of why locals tend to…

I’m interested. What region is that, and what languages do you hear? Are we talking about somewhere other than a massively cosmopolitan port metropolis like NYC, LA, or Miami which are constantly full of foreign travellers at all times? My state’s pretty red, too, with a strong history of certain, specific European…

You’re talking about multiple different things in that statement. One always has the right to be as rude or polite as they wish; that’s why ettiquette isn’t law (usually; I think the British have something to say about that in certain specific circumstances). And, while one reaps the consequences of one’s rudeness or…

Now that’s a well thought out analysis. I don’t know if it’s quite on the level of pervasive, low-grade homophobia, but I’ll grant what you said about a moral component.

There’s really nothing incompatible there with what I wrote. But if you’re a permanent resident speaking to another permanent resident, that “most comfortable” language should be the official or de facto official language of the polity you reside in, be it the U.S., or anywhere else.

Please quote my post where I said what the harassers in the article did was appropriate or good. You can’t, because I went on at length to point out that even though I consider RELATED behavior (not what the victims did, but what their harrassers were projecting onto them, minus the racist “freeloader” stuff) rude,…

For not reading my post, twisting what I said to almost the exact opposite, and calling me a racist? You have low standards.

Saying something’s rude isn’t the same as making some kind of vow to police said behavior, or even claiming that it’s people’s right. If someone went around yelling at everyone who sneezes into their hands instead of their sleeve, you’d think they were nuts, too.

“Make America smart again”, says the dolt who can’t be bothered to read and comprehend.

You’re the one willfully twisting what I said. Not only am I not being or endorsing “belligerence” about it, I believe I specifically spoke against it, at length! It’s about classifying the behavior rationally rather than in ignorance.

You’re talking about two different things: speaking within earshot, and speaking the lingua franca of the community you’re in (assuming it’s not a tourist scenario).  If you don’t want to be overheard, don’t have the conversation in public.  Eavesdropping or some imaginary, perceived claim on listening in has nothing…

It’s always going to make people uncomfortable, even ignoring the pervasive racism spreading in this country. First, people speaking in front of you whom you can’t understand always tickles that omnipresent, latent paranoia in humans that they are the subject of the conversation... and it’s not complimentary. Almost…