impulse

Belated thanks for the thoughtful reply. Especially when, in retrospect, my question was worded snarkier than I now wish it had been.

Tragic, and though I never rode in groups that could have easily been me tooling around the backroads. I hope the driver does the right thing and turns him/herself in.

Hearing a lot of crickets here...

What has Biden actually built? All I see is a bunch of money going out, with pie-in-the-sky projections claiming benefits stretching over the future. Any idiot can throw money at a problem. Does he mean like the electric buses that don't run and the offshore wind farms that are now having to renege on their contracts because they can't produce power at the promised prices?

I'm not blaming anyone. Cars on an incline can start rolling, and the acceleration is so imperceptible that the occupants may not notice in time to avert a disaster. But I'm also open to the possibility it may have been foul play or some kind of f___nuttery gone tragically bad.

I wonder when Yingluck's flight arrives?

The Erawan Shrine bombing killed 22 innocent people and injured over 100 others in 2015 and the tourist numbers kept increasing until Covid hit. Same general area, too. This event, tragic as it was, will be a flash in the pan.

You're confusing irreversible and permanent. If I keep my kid out of school for 5 years, the results will be reversible by sending him back. But his life will be permanently affected. He will never gain parity with his peer group. If a kid hits puberty at age 20 because they decide to quit taking their puberty blockers, their lives will never be the same, even if the effects are reversed 100%. (If that's actually the case.) That's a permanent effect.

Let me guess.... All of the rice has to flow through one of a few families somewhere on its way from the farm to the end user?

Good points, but I think it's always more palatable to stop an increase than it is to claw back some benefit that's already there. I absolutely agree about saving to the NHS. I know it'll never happen in either the USA or UK, but it would probably save a lot of money if they paid airfare and hospital costs for people to fly to Thailand to get treated, either NHS or Medicare funds. It would relieve the backlog in either country as well. My heart bypass cost about 1/10 of the same surgery in the USA, and that was at the most expensive hospital in Bangkok. Excellent care, BTW, and 100% covered by my employer's insurance. Under Medicare, the US gub'ment could have flown me to BKK, put me up for a month in a nice serviced apartment, paid for my surgery and my food for less than half of the hospital bill back in the US of A. I suspect it's similar in the NHS, though the numbers may be less transparent because it's the NHS.

Agree or disagree with the policy, I think the rationale behind it is that a GBP sent to a UK resident circulates around the economy several times, paying UK taxes, supporting UK jobs (who spend it yet again in the UK), etc. A GBP sent overseas is lost to the UK economy. Disappears into the ether...

Pretty soon, she'll be making those rent payments to retired military officers... And I expect we'll be seeing massive resorts popping up on prime locations that were former military land. Again, owned by retired military bigwigs. "Reform" rarely looks like they promise. I hope I'm wrong, but I doubt it.

Interesting choice of venue... New Hampshire.

Trump wasn't a serious candidate last time, and he isn't this time. They just enjoy watching lefties' heads explode and knickers twist.

Someday, maybe somebody can explain to me how someone else using a dodgy agent makes my life more difficult. Personally, I'm more of a live and let live kind of guy, because I generally have no clue why someone may choose that method. Most of the guys I've known doing it that way were perfectly legal doing monthly border bounces for years, and then suddenly they couldn't.

I agree. But the reality is that there are more than a few guys on here using the dodgy agent route and I'm sure more will follow. And a lot of long stay guys had to switch to that route when their loophole closed since 2014. (monthly border bouncers, etc) I don't advocate it (nor have I decided where to retire to). I'm simply asking how much to budget if you choose that route.

So, which of my claims are you disagreeing with? That the mRNA vaccines weren't put through long term human trials before they were released to the public, or that my health stinks since I got my 2nd Pfizer? I specifically remember conversations from the period where the talking heads said that testing such technology on humans would have been unethical unless they identified a benefit to offset any (yet unquantified) risk. BTW, when you're talking about dinking about with RNA or DNA, "long term" means a lot longer than a few months. I have no doubt that vaccines saved many lives, and were very appropriate for some segments of the population. I've never been anti-vax. Just anti-mandate, and very much in favor of full disclosure, allowing informed decisions.

Wouldn't ask if I already knew...

Not sure a TGF is the best idea right out of the blocks, at least until he gets the lay of the land. The most eager of them eat noobs for breakfast, from the wallet out.

They were prepared with everything but real tests on real people, because that would have been considered unethical. Covid was a perfect reason to unleash the experiment. Bottom line, we don't know what the long term effects will be simply because it hasn't been a long term. Realizing that I'm speaking from a database of one, I'd give just about anything to go back and undo my 2nd Pfizer and get my health back.

Seriously? Ever seen a stoner drive before they started legalizing the stuff? They were the most careful drivers I've ever seen. Not a KPH over the limit, full stop on red and look both ways before entering the intersection. Paranoid, I think they called it. But not much of a hazard to others. Drunks? They don't give a rat...

Hers' a novel thought... Why not enforce the laws you already have? Step 1) Get on Facebook, pretend to be kids, and buy up all the guns for sale there. Step 2) Ditto for all the other social media where guns are freely traded to kids (and adults)

Frivolous crap like health care. On a somewhat related question, if a fellow was to choose the dodgy agent option instead of the 800K in the bank or 65K a month option, how much would that fellow have to put aside each month to pay that dodgy agent each year? Edit: My biggest concern would be that he'd end up one of the many guys who do great until their health requires attention. And by that time, it's too late to go back home where he's probably entitled to some kind of NHS or Medicare.

The weather up here near Beijing has been too nice to pack the airplanes headed to warm climes. Especially after such a hot summer. October has overlapping holidays that may already be driving up tourist numbers. But the real test will be the first bone chilling cold snap, when the visa-free program will allow Chinese to decide on a Thursday to fly to Thailand after work on Friday. That, and opening up more direct flights. Next week, I'm paying less than half the pre-Covid fare for a R/T ticket to BKK, but the flight choices stink. I'm okay with a longer layover because I'm not on a schedule, but it wouldn't work for long weekend. Anyone who claims the Chinese don't spend and spend in Thailand should amble by the Chinese airline ticket gates to see all the goodies they're stuffing into their luggage to take back home. I've got friends up here that fund their entire trips by smuggling goodies for resale. They even take pre-orders.

True. Texas has some Dem enclaves. Like Houston and Austin. Pretty much shooting galleries, though Austin wasn't like that when I was in college nearby. A good friend of mine ran for city council where I live, as a Democrat. We congratulated her for doing better than any Democrat in recent memory when she scored 4% of the vote. I still contend it's not the number of guns. It's the culture that causes gun violence.