Cory1848

5 hours ago, zydeco said:

Warren is the only candidate who will put billionaires and bankers on notice. The only one worth voting for. No more billionaires. Time for them all to cough up their ill-gotten gains from the fraudulent fixed stock market of the past ten years.

The system has to, somehow, provide incentive to innovate (and take risks), and money seems to be the primary incentive for most humans. But any system that enables such immense disparity of wealth as we have now is obscene and evil at its core. A few hundred million is more than enough for anyone. You’re totally right; Warren is the best person on the stage to effect needed systemic change. Unfortunately, she has her work cut out for her convincing enough Americans of that to vote her into office, although I’m hopeful she can do it.

On 11/9/2019 at 2:47 PM, EricTh said:

Please add Chiang Mai and Phuket to the vote list.

Definitely Chiang Mai. This would do wonders for the value of my property there.

Definitely Turbotax -- easy to use and file online (state taxes too), and it remembers all your information from year to year. You can download much financial information from investment firms/brokerages directly into the program, but having a US address where somebody stateside can collect mail and forward it to you is tremendously useful. But if you know exactly what documents you'll need beforehand, you can plan ahead for it. Failing that, I seem to recall that there were at least a few accountants in Bangkok who were licensed to do US tax filings -- H&R Block may even have a representative or office. I would be surprised if the US embassy didn't have information about such accountants they deemed reliable.

1 hour ago, Jingthing said:

I think this is academic.

Pence may be worthy of impeachment and removal but that's just not going to happen.

The senate is in control of the removal part and I doubt the house will even bother to impeach him.

The dirty little secret that isn't a secret is that the majority of republican senators would prefer Pence as president to 45 anyway!

At this point it's too politically damaging to them to vote to remove 45, but that might change, and getting Pence as a replacement actually increases the chances for 45's removal. 

I think you’re right. Also, for Pelosi to become president based on line of succession, Trump and Pence would need to be removed from office virtually simultaneously, as “President Pence” would immediately name his own VP, who would themself then be next in line over the Speaker.

“President Pence.” Rolls right off the tongue, doesn’t it. If it somehow happens, I feel he’ll be a completely impotent lame duck, unable to even get his own staff’s shoelaces tied, for a period of months only before the next general election.

7 hours ago, TopDeadSenter said:

 Blaming this on peaceful Donald Trump is quite ridiculous. The guy deserved that gong last week, nobody has ever worked so hard on delivering world peace as him.

Yes, and I am sure that it's on Donald's mind to order his Justice Department to launch an investigation into the Nobel Committee, to find out why it didn't give him that prize. So maybe we'll find out what the problem is.

4 minutes ago, Lacessit said:

All of them? You must have put yourself about a fair bit.

Yes, all in the service of one's country of course!

1 hour ago, Thailand said:

Walk in there anytime and there is a dick or two being dicks and they have to deal with this on a daily basis on top of doing their basis boring jobs.

No way could I cope with what they have to.

I've been going there for the past ten years almost and have hardly ever had a problem. Even when I'm cranky and short on patience, the staff there are gracious and helpful. It helps to dress neatly and speak at least a bit of Thai, out of respect.

1 hour ago, patsfangr said:

It's a line that's more difficult to draw than most people want to admit, Cory. I'm a "right of center" Republican in the USA. I strongly oppose what I consider to be too much government. But how much is too much? We all agree that laws are required to regulate the operation of motor vehicles, because a total lack of them would be unimaginable carnage. But, while nearly everyone now acknowledges that cigarette smoke does significantly increase the likelihood of cancer; there is a lot of disagreement over how restrictive laws should be on smokers, or, for that matter, on manufacturers of cigarettes. What about marijuana; and stronger drugs? Again, major disagreement over the degree to which those should be regulated. The question of who and what should be regulated, and to what degree, will never be solved to the satisfaction of all people. Most people find satisfaction somewhere between anarchy and absolute fascism. But there's a hell of a lot of space between the two where most of those people will still disagree! 

You’re right, there’s a big gap in opinion, and bureaucracies often tend toward overregulation. However, regulating against pollution seems to be a no-brainer; and heavily taxing cigarettes (and tobacco companies) to help cover the cost of public health -- given that smoking is elective, and smokers on average use more public health than nonsmokers (getting strokes and ending up in nursing homes covered by Medicaid, for instance) -- also makes sense to me, and many others. Basically, I trust a government to impose sensible regulation, because a government is elected and accountable to its citizenry, more than I do an industry to self-regulate, industries primarily serving profits and shareholder value (which are often directly contrary to the public good). (I’m also American BTW, but, unlike you, I just grow more indignantly liberal with each passing year!)

32 minutes ago, Bob12345 said:

Agree, i came here hoping it would be sort of a wild west. Open carry of guns, shooting at whoever makes eye-contact, ramming people with your car, torching all you garbage in your front garden, <deleted>ting in shopping malls, steeling whatever you want to have...

 

But now it is becoming a nanny state. With laws, rules, and prison sentences for killing.

 

I will be looking for a new place to live where there is no nanny state! Somewhere in a war zone in Afghanistan or something, where i can be free. Will be looking for visa options for that region soon.

I hear there are large swathes of Syria and Somalia where “government” is at best a theory only, so you might want to check those out, too -- you can totally exercise your freedom, at least until you annoy the warlord who’s your neighbor!

1 hour ago, onekoolguy said:

My thought exactly! Tax your soft drinks because sugar is bad for you and no cheap very convient plastic bags and straws because we say so! We know what is good for you!! 

It doesn’t require a “nanny state” to make the determination that plastic bags and plastic straws are horrendously bad for the environment -- which is the environment of all of us. As for taxing high-sugar drinks, cigarettes, and other consumables that are demonstrably bad for one’s health, people who consume these items and as a result become chronically ill and require medical care drive up costs for all of us -- in the way of increased taxes and insurance premiums.

So, yes, one person’s selfishness adversely affects another person’s quality of life.

I just got an O-A visa at the Thai embassy in Washington last month. There were no additional requirements, as far as I know -- bank statement with a guarantee letter from the bank, police report, health form (downloaded from their website), money order for $200, and I also attached health insurance details (I'm covered by a US-based policy) but am not sure that was necessary. What they would NOT do is issue the O-A visa as long as I had an existing valid visa in my passport (issued by Chiang Mai immigration a year earlier), and they would not cancel the existing visa, so I had to wait until it naturally expired before I could apply for the new visa. All in all, it took a week to get the visa, and it was pretty easy --

9 hours ago, TopDeadSenter said:

Everything is for sale. It's just a question of price. 

Greenland has more than 50,000 people, who by all accounts are quite content as they are. Are they for sale? If you have children, or a spouse or partner, are those people for sale? How about you? NO, not everything is for sale. One of Trump's (countless) essential flaws, and that of many of his sycophants, is an absolute lack of any moral compass whatsoever.

I had exactly that problem. I had a nonimmigrant retirement visa in my passport, issued by the Chiang Mai immigration office last year and valid until August 4 of this year. I wanted to switch to an O-A visa, given the change in rules (no longer able to get an income affidavit) and given that I would be visiting the United States anyway (I’m American).

So I visited the Thai embassy in Washington this past April to apply for the O-A visa and was told that that would be impossible, because I still had a valid retirement visa in my passport, and I could not have two valid visas simultaneously. I can see the sense in that and then asked them to simply cancel the earlier visa, but they said they could not do that, because they had not originally issued the visa.

Then I had a friend in Chiang Mai visit the immigration office there to see if I could Fed-Ex my passport to her, and have her deliver the passport to the immigration office and have them cancel the visa, then have her Fed-Ex it back to me. Nope -- for some reason, Chiang Mai immigration said they could not do that, either.

That left two options: pretend to lose my US passport and apply for a new one, which would have no extant visas inside; or stay in the US a few extra months until the visa naturally expired. I opted for the latter, successfully applied for the O-A visa last week, and will hopefully pick it up at the Thai embassy tomorrow morning.

Different people may have different experiences with this.

7 hours ago, off road pat said:

"To learn who rules over you, simply find out who you are not allowed to criticize." The Quote Is from VOLTAIRE !!!

No, it's not, although the sentiment is not "un-Voltairian." It was most likely penned (and disseminated) by a neo-Nazi who was convicted and jailed for possessing child pornography. And, like so much other misinformation on the web, the false attribution gets passed around with abandon and taken for truth ...

https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2015/nov/27/cory-bernardi-mistakenly-quotes-voltaire-on-twitter-with-supposed-neo-nazis-line 

5 hours ago, Pilotman said:

I think with CK, it's more about his personality and locker room actions than it is about the kneeling protests.  I have heard various reports that he is quite arrogant and stand offish ( I know, what QB isn't) and a divisive personality among some of his fellow players. Maybe now its more to do with that aspect.  Problem for him is that the QB market is quite good right now and some good prospects coming out of the draft and free agency, so it looks like he is screwed.  Asking for over $20 to play in the new AAL will not have helped the perception that he thinks too highly of himself.  Bit of humble pie would have helped.  

I don't know about his locker room attitude, but the QB market is actually quite weak right now; at least half a dozen teams could improve at that position by hiring him. Somebody else here mentioned the Redskins' situation for instance; for reasons that are beyond me, the Broncos just hired Joe Flacco (who actually beat Kaepernick in the Superbowl, but Flacco hasn't had a good year since). So it's more than obvious that something else is going on here ...

2 hours ago, Chomper Higgot said:

Did anybody answer the accusation Omar made by proving it incorrect?

There’s a pretty good opinion piece by Dana Milbank in the Washington Post about this (“Ilhan Omar’s Tweets Were Appalling”). I guess, sure, AIPAC, like any other lobbying group, contributes to the campaigns of people they like (although they would need to do it through a PAC -- frankly, I’m not sure how lobbying groups operate in terms of funneling cash). It seems to me that the keyword here is “tropes”: god knows how many people I’ve talked to make the leap from “AIPAC lobbies for pro-Israel interests” to “AIPAC dictates US foreign policy.” People perceived that Omar was skirting with such stuff in her tweets, fairly or not. She apologized, she keeps her committee seats, and everything is cool. But I think the bigger picture is, the Democrats want to maintain the high ground in the whole bigotry/racism issue over the Republicans, and mildly censuring one of their own over something like this helps them do that.