impulse

I'd kind of like to get back to a new normal, where we discuss things to do in Thailand, how to navigate visas (and now taxes), and where to buy that eclectic stuff that only expats use. And fishing reports. I miss fishing reports. Plus, my usual lament... I'd like to hear about interesting activities in Thailand before they happen. So we can attend, instead of reading about them after the fact.

I know the source is RT. And it's a UK newspaper (The Guardian). But this is hilarious: UK newspaper offers free therapy to journalists after Trump win – media https://www.rt.com/news/607305-guardian-therapy-trump-win/

Assuming that's not a loaded question, the RNC fired their old head and hired some new ones that filed dozens of lawsuits around the country to address ballot security. They hired thousands of lawyers and enlisted over 100,000 election monitors for election day. On the morning of the election, 8 PA counties barred them from watching, and the RNC lawyers fought that and got them access, as allowed by law. So, yeah. There were changes. The RNC learned their lessons well. Edit: BTW, in the few cases where the MSM reported on the RNC lawsuits, they referred to the complaints as "debunked election lies". The right wing media was more likely to report the issues fairly.

Maybe not, but NYC Mayor Eric Adams sure put a price tag on the services required to care for each of the city's 110,000 "newcomers". $36,000 a year per head. We cannot afford that.

Welcome to the dark side.

What's funny is that the lefties are claiming the votes are missing in 2024, while the wingnuts on the right are claiming it's evidence of too many improper votes in 2020. If one of those elections was anomalous, it isn't 2024. But then, I love a good wingnut conspiracy theory. So many of them have come true...

You've told someone else's customers to go away. You've come into the conversation with zero context, zero understanding, and zero history of the contributions the guy has made to the AN community and dissed him and told him to leave. As if you have the right, and as a noob. There are posters that I vehemently disagree with on the Political Soapbox, but I treasure their contribution to other AN forums where their input helps us navigate life in Thailand. So I make allowances... Because I'd miss their input and that's why I come to AN. The Political Soapbox is a minor distraction. Good luck getting to 50.

Good luck making it to 50 posts. That's the equivalent of walking into a restaurant and telling the diners to go elsewhere. That's why I'm not cut out to be a mod. If I saw a noob with 14 posts starting that crap up, they wouldn't make it to 15.

He was the most disappointing president in my lifetime. I was thrilled when he got elected. And appalled when he got his 2nd term. He broke just about every campaign promise. The most egregious being the promise of a transparent gub'ment.

I don't think lefties appreciate how easy they've had it, and for years. With 10x as many registered Dems as registered Repubs in journalism, we have to work 10x as hard to come up with "approved sources" to link. Of course, the flip side is that I appreciate that the lefties aren't really that dumb. They've just been spoon fed bad information. They have to hold their noses and click on Fox occasionally if they want to get both sides of any story. Hell, I even link to CNN on occasion. But I just can't stomach MSDNC...

For that statistic (68%) to be true, the voting population in the USA would have to be 437 million. Here's an interesting graph that's making its way around the wingnut conspiracy sites... The MSM is already pre-bunking it, using the same fibs they've used all along. The data is correct, in the history books. The question then becomes interpretation of the data.

Universities today don't educate. They indoctrinate. With some rare exceptions at strictly technical colleges. And it's spreading down to the lower grades as the indoctrinated teachers get in front of fresh minds. Listen to a Thomas Sowell on the issue. He spouts facts and statistics showing how much worse it is for public school kids today. The USA tops the spending per student, and is close to the bottom in student test scores. So yeah. The indoctrinated tend to vote Blue.

I hope this thread stays active, since I'm sure there are solutions in Thailand. In the USA, you can get on EBay and order the wheels, with dimensions for a lot of different styles and brands. In China here, the wheels are available online for about 1/4-1/2 of the EBay price. If you're comfortable with AliExpress, that's an option. I ordered quite a bit on AliExpress, delivered to Thailand. Never had a problem. There seem to be a few dozen standard configurations that the manufacturers design their cases around. I'd look at Lazada.th, but it's blocked here right now, probably temporarily (I hope). Here's an example on Ebay: https://www.ebay.com/itm/314622449848 (These guys sell by the piece. Others sell by a set of 2 or 4) In any case, someone should have a Thai-centric solution. But I don't imagine it's a real money spinner for anyone looking to make a killing. And I've found that knowing that there is a solution keeps me from giving up.

Which do you figure is more likely? 73 million people voting for someone they know is a criminal, or a dozen or so partisan officials bringing bogus claims in an election year? And those 73 million see through the scheme...

I'm a big fan of the compounding power of time, and of the 401K. In fact, the reason my retirement account was so small after 10 years is that the company plan was much more generous, the more years you had. Early company contributions were paltry. That was great before the banksters took over, when we hadn't had a layoff in 30 years. It didn't work when layoffs started coming every few years. That all changed when they went to a 401K program where everyone's contributions were treated the same. So I'm a huge fan of that. But looking at 401K results has a whiff of "I'm all right Jack" when kids starting out today have no money left over after rent and groceries to even put $100 a month into a 401K, and risk get laid off often enough that they have to raid their 401K every few years (at a significant penalty). Great for us old farts who've already made our nugget and live off the interest, sure. In fact, I'd do fine even under a Dem administration, no matter how much they give away to buy votes. But my nieces and nephews and their kids? I fear for them. (At least I fear for the ones that aren't in the oil business. They're all zillionaires). The teachers and nurses and the other ones, I worry about.

If you wrote that about Joe or Kamala in the USA, you'd be getting a knock at your door.

That was my first thought... Both platforms agreed to promptly remove products lacking FDA registration numbers within the stipulated 24-hour period. I wonder what is the process and the requirements to get an FDA registration number for (for example) frozen Cumberland Sausage? I could easily see this as a way to lock out all but the usual dominant Thai companies from selling food online. At least through those portals.

All of those cases and settlements are going to be massively changed on appeal. But that won't happen (obviously) until after the election. The goal was to hurt Trump's election chances. They failed. Enough of the voters saw through the lawfare.

Almost 10% more of the voters decided to sit out the most impactful election of my 60+ year lifetime? With the parties spending a combined $billion to get out the vote? And they don't even have to leave home? Sure...

89% of the value of stocks is owned by 10%. They may have a 401K, but it'll be decades before they cash in. After working about 10 years, I moved over my retirement account when I changed companies. It was worth a few thousand $$$ (that was the '80s) Chump change. https://www.cnbc.com/2021/10/18/the-wealthiest-10percent-of-americans-own-a-record-89percent-of-all-us-stocks.html#:~:text=The wealthiest 10% of American households now own,to the latest data from the Federal Reserve. The people I worry about are the starter families that don't have a portfolio or home equity and probably never will. The ones being crushed by high prices and credit card debt. The ones that aren't financially comfortable enough to have kids... Inflation may have been tamed, but the new normal is killing ordinary families.

I wouldn't trust them not to "accidentally" program in Mar-a-Lago.

As bad as it is, Kamala was saying "Hold my beer, You ain't seen nothin' yet".

Pollster Frank Luntz said Wednesday on CNN that he was “shocked” by former President Donald Trump’s surge among Latino voters, based on exit polls released after election day. “Most important is the Latino — the Hispanic vote. I was shocked to find out that Trump actually won a majority of male Latinos. Turns out, Latinos have a sense of humor, and they're generally conservative. Edit: Oops. Here's my link: https://dailycaller.com/2024/11/06/frank-luntz-reveals-shocked-exit-poll-numbers-donald-trump-elections-2024/

If the OP's new to Thailand, I'd suggest going to the local computer market and walking around to see what's available 2nd hand (the prices he posted look like new prices). If you're accustomed to "back home" where everything on offer is brand new and in a box, you may be in for a pleasant surprise. You can find a 2nd hand, tested and/or refurbished laptop or desktop, sometimes at a great price. Even better deals to be had on monitors and such. Easy to find a nice 24" monitor for around $50. Look for the shops that have stacks of the same kind of used stuff, because they probably got it from a company that's upgrading, and not from someone selling off their lemon. I'd suggest going to https://www.cpubenchmark.net/ and printing out a page of the CPU speeds to make sure you're not buying an old slug. Then wander around the computer markets...

It would be a shame to throw the baby out with the bathwater. They just need to stay the hell away from gender and grooming and equity and woke. A good update to the program would be to go from teaching the kids how to start a safe campfire in a storm, to teaching kids to connect to the interweb in a power outage.