impulse

32 pages of nothing. Lack of curiosity is not a virtue, BTW.

Yup. And there's a legal procedure for that. Carefully crafted to weed out criminals, terrorists, etc. And if you want more engineers, you can offer incentives that make it easier for engineers. I worked with dozens of great Thai engineers who would give their eyeteeth to move to the USA an increase their earnings by several multiples. And if you need low wage fruit pickers and ditch diggers, you can make it easier for them. Or, you can throw the borders wide open, neglect immigration laws, and let anyone in, with millions to be a net drain on the taxpayers for decades. That seems to be current administration's modus operandi. Obviously, someone's benefitting (even beyond the cartels who are making a killing). I wonder who?

Coming as far as Mexico? You'd need a link to evidence to convince me that that's true to any significant extent.. Have a look at the increase in docket cases between FY 2019 and 2020, when Trump got serious about illegal immigration and implemented Remain in Mexico" on Jan 25, 2019. Oops. I mean the decrease https://www.ice.gov/doclib/eoy/iceAnnualReportFY2023.pdf Now, compare that to the Biden free for all...

Here's a nicely compiled 32 page summary of 2020 election irregularities in 5 swing states. Anonymously posted because the author probably doesn't want to be swatted (or worse). But with 99 footnotes so you don't really need to know who compiled it. You can follow the footnotes to their original source. I'm not claiming it was stolen. Just that it was definitely tainted. By whom, and whether it actually changed the result, I doubt we'll ever really know. https://cdn.nucleusfiles.com/e0/e04e630c-63ff-4bdb-9652-e0be3598b5d4/summary20of20election20fraud20in20the20swing20states.pdf

Easy solution for that... Go to surveymonkey and enter 3 numbers and you, too can calculate the sample size required to meet whatever accuracy requirement you'd like. Conditioned on the caveat that the respondents have to be truly random. https://www.surveymonkey.com/mp/sample-size-calculator/

The beautiful thing about this poll is that it flies in the face of the Dem narrative that Trump objected to the results of an election he knew he lost. If tens of million of voters though the election was tainted (notice that I didn't say "stolen"), it's pretty reasonable to think Trump also believes it. And did back then... Of course, it won't stop their malicious partisan prosecution, but it'll raise him in the polls because the only way for the Dems to spin this is to reveal one more time how much contempt they have for the voters. Not unlike several posters on this thread.

That's a typical Dem view. They don't trust the voters to do the right thing. So who's the real threat to democracy? Call 'em deplorables, call em MAGA scum, call em whatever you want. When 1/3 of voters don't trust the process (including Dems), you have a problem.

The issue with water is that it has no net energy until you add some. That energy has to come from somewhere not intrinsic in the water. For that matter, steam is water power that's been used for hundreds of years. Just add heat and you can do all kinds of work with steam. Acknowledging, of course that hydrogen is more storable and portable than steam, for sure. Simple entropy says you can only store steam for a finite amount of time before the energy dissipates, even with the best insulation. I suspect you can store hydrogen indefinitely (though the small size of the H2 ion may make leakage inevitable through even the best container, but I don't know). Edit: I'd add that the technology I'm most interested in related to hydrogen is how to store it in the smallest container. Simple compression has limits to how many H2 molecules you can store per cubic meter. (Not that it matters in an Amazon warehouse, but it matters in a Toyota). Promising developments are coming out in storing it in a chemical matrix where the H2 molecules are stored at a higher density in the interstitial spaces or bound at the molecular level.

100% agree I don't disagree, but I'm keenly aware that I chose to move into an ecosystem that existed long before I got there, and will exist long after I leave. It's incumbent on me to protect myself against risks I was fully aware of before I made that choice. Risks like uninsured cyclists who don't have enough money. If I want to live in a nanny state, I can always move. They can't... They don't enjoy that same luxury.

Sadly, it'll be about who benefits the party elite, regardless of what the voters want. https://edition.cnn.com/polling/approval-rating-polls I don't care what you think about the guy. When you see them putting up a guy with numbers like those, you can't help but question their motives. Total disrespect for the voters...

At the risk of being ridiculed, you could try one of the expat focused churches. I met quite a few nice folks at the (I think) Catholic church near the US Embassy. I also met a lot of people, local and foreign, walking around the tracks at Queen Sirikit and Lumphini parks, especially around 5:00 PM when it cools off a little and the workers come out for exercise. I was surprised at how many local women would approach and speak English. Most of them a little older... Could be because they recognized me from walking there several days a week. Used to meet them bicycling in the same parks, but that seems to have gone by the wayside. (Or maybe bicycling hours have been changed- I didn't ask.) I don't know if they still do it this year (or where), but Sunday evening BKK Symphony concerts in Lumphini park were always enjoyable and usually met some nice folks. Used to be January and February, when it's a little cooler.

Once again, the Dem establishment insisting they know better than the voters. The voters know when they're getting peed on, even if the Dems want to claim it's rain. But feel free to ignore the voters... https://edition.cnn.com/polling/approval-rating-poll-of-polls https://edition.cnn.com/polling/approval-rating-polls And those are the CNN lefties. I won't even link to the conservative press. If I was a Dem looking at those numbers, I'd be looking for a better candidate. And I would have started that search a long time ago.

I'd hope so, but I don't know. That's why I mentioned that it was an '88 model. Back then, you had to catch an intermittent problem as it happened. I would expect today's computers may record the events. The Taurus was my retired company car that I bought for peanuts. When I took it to the shop that did all our fleet work and described the problem, he immediately told me to replace the fuel pump. Strangely, a rebuilt fuel pump cost more than a new one, but he told me to spring the extra money for the rebuilt because the rebuilds fixed some issues that caused them to fail from the factory. In any case, I never had the problem over the next 10 years or so I kept the car.

Had the same issue with an '88 Ford Taurus and it turned out to be a bad fuel pump. I'd replace the fuel filter first, though. Just because it's cheaper and just as likely. There's no telling what you may put in your tank at a gas station out in the sticks. Or in BKK.

That's a good point, and I'll probably roll it into one of my investment accounts when the amount gets substantial (I'm just 66 so it's not a huge amount). But I'm still a little butthurt by one of my family's "trusted" investment advisors that was making stupid trades to bump up his commissions on my inheritance account. Then when I got back to the States after being gone for years, his office staff chuckled at me when I bitched about the lousy (in fact, negative) return. It is a different market now.

That's one opinion. Just like the Maine SOS's opinion. Quite a few Repub SOS's and election officials don't share that opinion. Deliberately allowing unvetted illegals to flow across the border doesn't sit well with them.

IMO, you're overthinking this. I chose to go on SS when I qualified for Medicare at 65, simply so I don't have to come out of pocket the $150-200 a month to pay into Medicare. Nor do I need to take any action on a monthly basis. Since I don't need the funds, they accumulate in my bank account and unless I do something stupid like buy a boat or some other toy that I don't need, the funds will still be there when I turn 70 and offset the lower payments I'll be receiving. (Unless I die in the meantime, then my heirs will get the $$$) The idea that I can predict Thai tax law, Thai (or Mexican) retirement requirements, the date of my death, interest rates, or any of 100 other unknown variables didn't figure into my decision. My crystal ball just isn't that good. Edit: That doesn't mean I don't appreciate the good flow of information. I'm open to the possibility I made a booboo.

You could easily say the same about the deliberate neglect of protecting the sovereign borders of the USA. The results would be just as wrong.

Gosh, here's a thought. Why not let the American voters decide? Are Dems that contemptuous of American voters that they won't allow us to decide?

You guys keep getting caught up in the minutia. I'm just saying that personnel operating indigenous equipment, with native language and idiosyncrasies geared toward their own experiences, are going to outperform someone operating imported equipment that they've trained on for months, and not years or decades. Using myself as an example, I will always be more competent driving on the right side of the road. That's the way I grew up. I've done millions of km driving on that side, and shifting with my right hand. Stick me in my Thai pickup truck and I was marginally proficient, in spite of years and tens of thousands of km driving Thai roads. I do enjoy watching air crash documentaries, and there are quite a few of Soviet pilots crashing Boeings and Airbuses because they're different. The autopilots act differently and even the attitude indicator is different. Uke pilots have trained in Soviet aircraft for decades. They'll be marginally proficient in F16's, for years. Just like I am driving on the left.

If they think they're going to prevail up against Russkie pilots with decades of experience flying Russkie jets, they're going to be in for a rude (but short) awakening. Minimally proficient is the best they can expect after a few months of training.

To get a 95% chance of being within 5% of the right answer, they'd need to poll 385 random people in a population of 67 million. That's just the way statistics work... And the people who do those surveys know how to reach out to "random people". Whether they do or not, I don't claim to know. https://www.surveymonkey.com/mp/sample-size-calculator/

They're probably minimally proficient. Try this... Borrow a friend's Thai language cell phone and see how well you navigate it. And understand that an air defense system probably has 10x as many knobs and menu selections. Then hand it to a 6 year old Thai kid and see how much better he does. That's the difference between a native language user and someone who's spent a few months training (and getting drunk at night) in the US desert.

When I lived in Wyoming, it was very common for hotels to offer a much lower price when I checked in using my Wyoming DL. In the summer tourist season, they weren't so happy to see me. But locals kept them in groceries in the winter months when tourism dried up. So it's not just a Thai thing. A lot of venues in Thailand gave me a huge discount when I showed them my WP. I suspect they realized that, unlike a tourist, I'd probably come back again and again, perhaps for years. So their customer acquisition cost was much lower for locals. And I knew about the deals to be had at other venues. Most tourists didn't even know those other venues existed.

Took awhile to find this, since I'm sure they'd rather we didn't. It took 244 years from 1776 to 2020 for the USA to get to 3.26 million illegal immigrants wandering around the country. It took Biden less than 3 years to get that number up to 6.2 million. And those are just the ones they have paperwork on. Counting getaways, I suspect Biden doubled the number in just 3 years. https://www.ice.gov/doclib/eoy/iceAnnualReportFY2023.pdf The Biden administration’s ICE authorities carried out 142,580 deportations in fiscal year 2023, according to an agency report released Friday. (while adding 1.44 million to the "Non-Detained docket" Deportation amounted to less than 10% of net arrivals.) https://dailycaller.com/2023/12/30/ice-held-less-37000-migrants-in-detention-2023-while-more-6-million-went-free-report-shows/