impulse

I've done 20 consecutive monthly visa exempt entries. I stay about a week each month, then fly out. For me, it's a visa run to reset my China visa. US citizen, age 67, worked legally in Thailand for years pre-Covid and haven't needed a visa since things opened up. YMMV. BTW, I always wear long pants, a collared shirt and a smile going through the queue. I figure it can't hurt. And that's the way I dress in public in LOS. About 1 in 3 IOs ask me how long I'm staying this visit. I'm sure that's on a standard list of questions, but they seem more curious than ominous. I would contend that any issues with visa exempt entries are probably related to the length of stay as opposed to the number of entries. But that's based only on my experience. If you wear raggedy cut-off shorts, sandals and a wife beater, please let us know how that's working at immigration. I'm curious.

The saddest thing is, regardless of the outcome, California will probably have to spend $millions to defend the guy at trial and more $millions to provide him with "humane treatment", either in a prison, or some other institution.

And proud of it. Don't forget vax injured. "The science" let me down. Bigly.

While I would debate the premise that climate change is to blame (except to the extent that the climate has been changing since long before industrialization), even if it was, that's a predictable risk that could should have been accounted for with advance planning. It wasn't a Black Swan event. The Santa Anas and dry conditions coincide all the time. They have since long before California was settled.

They'll suffer, too when their benefits get cut to bail out the banksters, the insurers and homeowners.

DOJ says Trump would have been convicted. Reminds me of Sol Wachtler's famous quote: A prosecutor could get a grand jury to indict a ham sandwich. (I'm paraphrasing). I have no doubt that a jury in 97% Democrat Washington DC would convict Trump. And thousands of potential jurors would give their eyeteeth to be on the jury that stopped the Bad Orange Man. In any number of Blue venues.

What a bunch of mumbo jumbo, that doesn't explain at all the climate catastrophes that preceded industrialization. Like the Little Ice Age, the climate change following Krakatoa, the Biblical plagues, and dozens of others just since they started recording history. Then there's the climate changes that preceded recorded human history. The climate is always changing. Dispute that... The Laws of Thermodynamics deal with isolated systems. The Earth isn't an isolated system. And you're forgetting the 5th law of thermodynamics. Sometimes, stuff just happens. (Sorry I had to misquote that one. The real quote keeps getting censored) Like the massive cooling event when that volcano off the Northeast USA erupts in 2025 like they're predicting. Cold kills a lot more humans than heat. Always has.

I'll try that again this trip... In the past, I was never able to check in online to China. My visa is in an old passport, and they usually want to see evidence of onward travel. But I haven't tried it in awhile. I fly to BKK tomorrow and back on Jan 20. I'll pay more attention to the gate announcement board and try to check in online this time. Maybe they've changed...

Those of us in cattle class don't like middle seats, and are willing to queue up early to avoid getting stuck in one. Especially on a long flight. Or worse, get booked in a middle seat on the 2nd segment, too. Since Covid, the flights to China are cheap, but very rarely non-stop to smaller (<15 million) cities.

You must not fly to China. If I show up 3 hours early, there's already a 30 minute queue. If I show up 4 hours early, I may be first in the queue when they open the check-in gate (3 hours before departure). But I'll need to get in that queue at least half an hour before they open the desks to get up front in the line. And that's if I can figure out which desk to queue up at. And they don't change it... To answer the OP, I don't move hotels to be closer to the airport, and that area isn't of enough interest to me that I'd stay near the airport. I shoot for arriving 3 hours early and allow double the expected time for traffic. Usually that means leaving the hotel 5 hours before wheels up. Swampy is a great airport to spend some extra time. Edit: In fairness, I fly cattle class. I just can't bring myself to pony up the $100 an hour for a slightly better seat and meal, and shorter queues.

If Trump would have been convicted, how about the 126 congressmen and 18 states that agreed that the election was tainted when they filed amicus briefs in support of the Texas vs Pennsylvania suit? Would they have been convicted, too?

Once again, attacking the bearer because you can't disprove the message.

Part of Stanford University. Which is neither here nor there, unless you can point to anything he has said in error, or as deliberate misinformation. I occasionally disagree with his analysis, but I haven't yet found any of his statistics to be in error. He is extremely well researched, probably backed up by a ton of Stanford interns and flunkies.

While that is true, a lot of us think that was an election year ploy that would have been reversed the day after the election had it gone the other way. They just saw how bad that issue was polling.

Yeah, but we're not supposed to talk about that...

And don't forget, "there's no evidence that Biden was crooked" Other than hundreds of pages in several official reports, bank documents, photos, and sworn testimony by dozens of witnesses.

Short answer, yes. He really got that much wrong.

Please tell me someone in charge has a lightbulb going off in their head, thinking about all those idle and paid for accommodations in Rwanda...

We'll just have to see, won't we? Here's my forecast... By Summer 2025, the dying will cease in Ukraine and Gaza. I wish I could be as optimistic that Iran won't have used all of their BidenBucks to go nuclear.

Nobody's disputing that. I'm responding to the claim that Trump will be worse for the debt than Harris would have. Record Date Debt Outstanding Amount Annual Average 9/30/2024 $ 35,464,673,929,172 $ 2,297,339,884,449 $ 2,129,820,683,639 9/30/2023 $ 33,167,334,044,723 $ 2,238,422,431,416 4 Years of Harris/Biden 9/30/2022 $ 30,928,911,613,307 $ 2,499,993,043,258 9/30/2021 $ 28,428,918,570,049 $ 1,483,527,375,434 9/30/2020 $ 26,945,391,194,615 $ 4,225,989,441,181 Black Swan Event 9/30/2019 $ 22,719,401,753,434 $ 1,203,343,570,254 $ 1,142,196,021,737 9/30/2018 $ 21,516,058,183,180 $ 1,271,158,167,127 First 3 years of Trump 9/30/2017 $ 20,244,900,016,054 $ 671,455,302,117 9/30/2016 $ 19,573,444,713,937 $ 1,422,827,047,452 Which conveniently forgets the past 8 years, when Harris/Biden added to the debt at almost twice the rate of the Trump years, excluding the pandemic year (2020), when businesses were going belly up and people lost their jobs. Historical Debt Outstanding | U.S. Treasury Fiscal Data https://fiscaldata.treasury.gov/ Past performance may not guaranty future results, but it's a more reliable indicator than some election year forecast from a partisan source.

But thank God that idiot's term will end in a few days.

That one is really making the rounds in the wingnut conspiracy websites. Or should I say the spoiler alert websites?

When I first moved to China in 1999/2000, my apartment building housed a bunch of Korean Samsung employees. 3 or 4 days a week, the van would come by and pick them up (with their sticks) to spend the day golfing. The "supervision" isn't as close as they'd like you to believe.

We sure don't matter to the Dem elite, who decide to keep RFK Jr off the primary ballot, tried to keep Trump off all ballots, then decided to swap out the candidate with 14 million primary votes in favor of a candidate with zero primary votes. Democracy isn't the problem. Democrats are.

You're, once again, deflecting from my issue. I'll never claim my taxes made a dent in the budget, even when I was in the top 10%, then the top 5% of earners. But those taxes made a huge difference in the choices and compromises I had to make on a daily basis. Neither do I. But we have to draw a line under it somewhere. Not an entire lifetime. And I do object to subsidizing generations of welfare families. Partly, that's selfish. But it's also cruel to them. The biggest incentive I had to go out and get an engineering degree was cleaning toilets and all the other crap jobs I did in my youth.