Walker88

The # of tourists arriving has surprised me. In some quarters business is booming. While I do see more families and young couples, the vast majority of the folks I see are single males and groups of single males. I wonder why.....NOT ! There was pent up demand for travel because of Covid, as well as pent up demand to engage in the biological imperative. Despite trying to pretend it doesn't exist, or being ashamed, Thailand still benefits from its reputation as a place where a man can come into his own, so to speak. Try to get a table at a restaurant in the Soi Cowboy to Soi 4 corridor most nights before 9, and one is hard pressed. Hotels in that corridor are also doing well, and they run the gamut of budget to upscale. Rooms are not easy to get. This does not translate across the entire Thai economy, but the boost from re-opening is clear to see, and bodes well for 2023 (if a business caters to the right demographic and market). I'm waiting for the world to tumble into Recession, but it may not happen. I'm a perpetual Economic Cassandra---having made the vast majority of my wealth anticipating and trading bear markets---but I find myself slightly less pessimistic than normal. There seems to be a 'live for now, because another pandemic is sure to come' attitude that is keeping economies chugging along. At some point savings will be gone, or people will feel poorer become their major asset (home) may fall by 30-50%, but for now people are forgetting about tomorrow and living for today. For my pessimism, I will fade China. The cat is out of the bag. The Covid restrictions have 1.3 billion people fed up. xi is going to have to deal both with a upset populace (protests now even not topics such as 'freedom of speech' and 'democracy'), as well as factions within the CP who want to dump xi. Thailand should not factor in much Chinese tourism, though it isn't that much of a per capita benefit anyway. On the other hand, if there is social unrest in China, Thai production/exports might pick up some of the slack if China production falls. Thailand (or Vietnam) could also capture foreign investment that would be scared off by Chinese unrest. May you live in interesting times is the old Chinese curse. So be it.

Okay, but he was involved in the first interracial kiss on US TV, with Nichelle Nichols. Of course that's not funny, but it must have been fun rehearsal, as she was a gorgeous woman.

I believe Shatner was the one who originated the phrase, "Get a life". He said that to a group of Trekkies who seemed obsessed with Star Trek to the exclusion of everything else.

But some of those posters have watched hospital drama shows on TV, so that makes them almost as expert as guys with PhDs in biochemistry and molecular biology.

The law requires the IRS to provide both bodies of Congress with any taxpayers filing if requested. 45 tried to halt execution of that law, which is decades old. It isn't up to 45 to decide. One of the powers of both the House and Senate is to request from the IRS the tax returns of anyone who files. Now the guy who appointed 3 justices to the Supreme Court is barking about the court being 'political', because the court followed the law There is absolutely nothing 45 will not whine like a baby about and cry "UNFAIR!", like he always used to Tweet. It seems 45 has been quite the burden on the US Taxpayer. He declared losses for most years (squandering the upwards of $500 million he got from his father via allowance and inheritance, plus all the loans banks forced his father to co-sign), and his 6 bankruptcies become a direct burden on the Taxpayer, because stiffed banks and bondholders get to write off the loss, forcing others to pay to run the govt.

How fitting that a guy who ran up $7,000,000,000,000 more National Debt under his watch would be a guy who never paid any taxes. Also, he will lambast the IRS, yet when he was playing POTUS he used the IRS as a weapon against critics like Comey and McCabe. Karma, baby!

Another exchange---Genesis---is talking about bankruptcy due to the fallout from FTX. Genesis is owned by Digital Currency Group, which also owns Greyscale Investments (which owns Greyscale Bitcoin Trust). Genesis was a big loaner to Three Arrows Capital (already bankrupt) and FTX (bankrupt last week). What seemed apparent in the manner in which all these coins traded now looks as if it is being exposed: They all propped up each other's coins via exchange subsidiaries and trading subsidiaries, and they all seem to have taken advantage of zero regulation and did not segregate customers coins stored on their exchange. They all borrowed money, pledging their coins and customer coins as collateral. Thus, when any coin that is the major holding of any exchange starts to go, the daisy chain of "I'll scratch your back if you scratch mine" is collapsing. Cold storage isn't going to save anyone when the coin itself is collapsing. Holders will just have access to their falling knife, vs those who held on exchanges and will have their coins locked in the bankruptcy court for years. While retail 'get rich quick' types helped some insiders cash out, the meteoric rises in coins in 2021 looks to have been the result of cross holdings and cross ramping. Can Michael Saylor be far behind? I suspect after Genesis blows up, Binance will be next. Microstrategy will come later. All the money that could be made in crypto has been made. Now it's just finding out where the bodies are buried. Sam Bankman-Fried was either the #1 or #2 "most respected" name in crypto, and he was a fraud all along besides being incompetent. I wonder what the financial press will be saying about Saylor in another few months?

"provisional" province renegade province Vassal State Wholly-owned Subsiidiary A rose by any other name.... According to Henry Kissinger, Bo Xilai, the jailed competitor to xi's President-for-Life demand, had a map of his wall of Greater China that included Taiwan (obviously) but also included all of Myanmar. I suspect the cartographers, working hard to produce 'ancient' and 'recently discovered' maps, just hadn't yet gotten around to including Thailand.

What puzzles me is one day I went to deposit some cash in a bank whose name shall remain anonymous. My passport was at Immigration for a Visa stamp. The teller would not let me deposit, because I did not have the physical passport. A phone photo was no good. So what did she do? She led me over to the CDM machine, where I dropped in the cash, business done. Oddly, the machine asked no questions and required no documents.

All religions are silly, and how people practice at the retail level has almost no connection to the wholesale teachings, which are there to give false promises of happiness or peace or contentment...all with a silly and usually plagiarized tale of a made-up reality. People are going to be people...everywhere....no matter the country, no matter the predominant faith. The behavior noted in this thread happens everywhere. Nobody needed any religion to teach them how to live a decent life. If anyone reached adulthood and did not inherently know certain behaviors (e.g., murder, theft, rape, etc.) are bad and mess up a wannabe civilized society, then that person is wildly flawed, and no amount of preaching or proselytizing is going to straighten him out. Moses did not come down from the mountain after chiseling out his tablets and say, "Sorry guys, got some bad news...murder is a no no". Most religions are also just a thin coating of some charlatan's or crazy guy's philosophy over more deeply held superstitions. Note how little the teachings of the founder of this country's major faith have to do with how people here actually live. The old myths, rituals, superstitions, etc. are much stronger. Magic amulets, tattoos, making 'merit' by releasing fish somebody else caught, thinking donated money comes back 1000 fold.... Organized religion is just a way for those lacking any useful skill to have a job. Hence preachers, pastors, monks, rabbis, priests, shaman, etc. The scam is taken to its zenith by the "Prosperity Gospel" preachers in the US, or guys who 'need a Gulfstream so I can spread the lord's word faster'.

I think you know in 45 world, polls and elections are only fair when you win. I do think even Dems want him back, knowing he'll shoot himself in the foot, which is in his mouth, while his head is up his thoot.

I think it's great he's back. He is becoming more and more unhinged. One might use the 'technical' term is that he's batsh!t crazy. The more exposure he gets, the more anyone sane will move away from him. Sure, he'll keep the Incels, QAnon crowd, some fanatical christians and white supremacists, but they cannot carry an election. The bloated mendacious traitor is in a political death spiral right now, and letting his increasingly crazed mind spew nonsense on a public forum will hasten his decline. Molon labe! He's a spent force and a loser. He was always an embarrassment to rational people, but now his Party knows he's poison to their Party. He lost the House, Senate and White House to the Dems in 2020, and he nearly lost the House again, while losing the Senate again and several Governor slots and SecStates. If he barks about the GA Senate runoff, he'll lose that seat, too. Losing is what he does best, in business and in politics. Give him all the rope he needs to hang himself and get it over with. Then finish him off for good with an indictment, trial conviction, and execution for capital offenses.

Myth and superstition are the preferred 'faith' worldwide, because they are simpler to understand. Reality is much more complicated, and often uncomfortable. Every religion, for example, is silly on the face of it, but because it fills a need, many buy into a brand, usually a function of where one was born. Bad events a result of being nasty in a 'previous life'? An act not wrong if the skydaddy doesn't instantly strike one down? A creator of 200 billion galaxies chooses an illiterate guy in the middle of nowhere to channel its 'last message'?. Another deity creates a country club in the sky with a bizarre initiation ceremony that involves setting up its kid to get killed? The need in Thailand is to believe in inherent Thai superiority, even if there's not a single discovery, invention or addition to the body of human knowledge to back it up. The indoctrination has to be all-encompassing in the face of a reality that tells a much different story. Sure, it's a bit over the top here, but the rest of the world isn't immune from the same kind of affliction. Perhaps somewhat related is the idea of willful ignorance, sometimes out of laziness and sometimes out of a desire to maintain and reinforce certain comforting beliefs. Many Thais need to think they are superior, especially when confronted with the achievements and successes of other societies. The equivalent thing in a place like the US is the need to believe in "my side" or "my tribe", and willful ignorance makes that easy. Think of the abject idiocy it takes to believe in the QAnon silliness---that a cabal of celebrities and Democrats not only rule the world, but kidnap, rape, roast and eat babies. How about the maga belief that Hugo Chavez, from the grave, and working somewhere in the EU, altered voting machines so that Biden would win in 2020, or that China was so clever producing fake ballots and getting them into States like Arizona, but they forgot US paper is not made with bamboo? Or that all major airlines worldwide, among both allies and enemies, help spread mind-controlling chemtrails to the 'sheeple'? Or that 12 men did not actually walk on the Moon? So it seems this sort of silliness is hardly limited to Thais, though perhaps the indoctrination covers more aspects of life in Thailand than most places, and there may well be a greater amount of xenophobia among Thais. I admit I also come from a society, or group of societies, with silly beliefs at their core. One major thing that has struck me as absurd since I was old enough to be aware of infidelity is that I suspect an entire major faith common in the West came to be as a result of an outrageous lie: "Joey, I swear, god did it !"

Perhaps you just haven't gotten an example yet. Not in Thailand, not in any country, does 'well educated and professional' prevent abject idiocy. Here's one.... College degree, travel to several countries, including EU nations. Professional, holding down a good job in marketing..... We're taking a walk at night. There's a full moon, and on this day and with the angle of view, it looks quite close. Just for laughs---and not expecting anything other than a laugh---I ask, "What do you think is farther away....the moon or Pattaya?" Her answer: Pattaya. "Why?", I ask. "Because I can see the moon from here, but I cannot see Pattaya." I decided to call a taxi and ask to be taken to the Pleiades Cluster, because I can see it in the night sky, and it's barely outside of the Milky Way galaxy. Ought to be less than 1500 baht to get there, as that's what Pattaya costs from Bangkok.

That's some funny stuff! Nobody with an IQ higher than a turnip thinks Biden is any sort of security risk, much less a 'massive' one. As for urgent work, indicting a POTUS who fomented an attempted coup, which qualifies as the capital crime of Sedition, is quite serious and urgent. That he thinks he can hide behind a declared candidacy is patently silly, as it would be the new defense for everyone from a rapist to a murderer to a thief to a serial killer: "I'm running for POTUS in 2024". Also, a departing loser POTUS who stole TS/SCI, HCS and Codeword documents, then lied about having them DOES represent a massive security risk. What possible purpose could he have for the theft? Certainly it suggests a desire to monetize them. When the loser was POTUS, he also represented a massive security risk...for a number of reasons...one of which was that he regularly discussed classified information on an un-secure phone. Among those who set up listening equiptment near the White House and Mar-a-Lago during his time were China, Russia, Iran, Israel and North Korea.

repubs don't seem to get it. A majority of voters support the 6 Jan investigation, because it was actually important: an attempt to overthrow democracy. 2 45 impeachments were based on actual crimes of an elected official, not a relation of an official. The majority do not care about Biden's son, and would have been opposed if the House had launched investigations into 45, jr and the toothy one, who spent 4 years influence peddling in Saudi, the UAE, India, etc.----AND at the US Taxpayer expense, as they brought along secret service on all of their 'business' travels. The son-in-law 'somehow' got $1.3 billion in financing (on a building with a market value of $700 million) from the govt of Qatar...and days after the funding was secured, sanctions were removed against Qatar. Still, Dems did not hold Hearings on that rather obvious illegality while 'serving' as a Snr Adviser to POTUS. repubs already had the worst showing in a midterm by an out-of-power Party since after 9-11. The reason is because they are obsessed with nonsense, like election denial. Please, repubs, start dozens of House investigations in January. Have alleged pedophile matt "pizza' gaetz, the pedo enabler and yapping chihuahua little gym jordan, non-highschool grad, QAnon believer, and spouse to a man convicted of exposing himself to young girls boebert scream at witnesses in Hearings. You will alienate more voters and GUARANTEE a Dem landslide in the House, Senate & White House in 2024. Molon labe, repubs. Dig your own graves.

There has been some work done in that regard. I will try to find it. The IQ difference is astonishing. They really are mouth breathers. The difference in wealth and productivity is almost as astonishing. I've written this before, but 45 won 85% of all Counties in the US in 2016, while Hillary won only 15%. Still the Counties Hillary won represent 62% of US GDP, while 45's are a mere 38%. Do the math and the non-45 Counties are 9.25 times more productive. if the US was just the areas 45 wins, the US economy would make Venezuela look like an economic juggernaut. This should not be surprising, as 45 has as his base the weirdest elements of US society...QAnon, Incels,Talibangicals, white nationalists....hardly the cream.

It's so funny. Low Energy 45 thinks that if he declares himself a candidate, he cannot be prosecuted for the crimes he committed. If only Jeffrey Dahmer had thought of that!

The bureau had every right to search his house. Given what they knew from informants, it would have been dereliction of duty had they not done it. In fact, after they realized he lied to the bureau earlier in the year, they should have search immediately He stole TS/SCI, HCS and Codeword documents. Mere possession outside of a SCIF is a felony. Not sure why some people are so slow to realize this: he STOLE the documents, and he jeopardized national security. There is no excuse for stealing them, and he compounded the crime by lying about it. I'm assuming your ignorance is a function of not being a US person and failing to understand the issue or read about it. Instead, you gain your opinion from false sources, and thus remain ignorant of reality. Also, you probably have no clue what the classification headings mean. For example, HCS is for Human Clandestine Sources, which means assets of the CIA. That is appalling. Clandestine assets put their lives and the lives of their families on the line by cooperating with US, UK, French, etc. intel. Their recruiters and handlers are expected to give up their own lives rather than betray an asset, yet 45 cavalierly kept identities of assets in his club. Not only does that endanger existing assets, but it discourages potential assets from cooperating with intel, since when an irresponsible and criminal POTUS can cause their identity to be revealed, they refrain from cooperation. No big deal, you might try to argue. We'll, perhaps an asset is a penetration of a terrorist organization, and because of the idiocy and recklessness of 45, an attack is not prevented. Even when he was still POTUS, 45 had no reason to know any asset's identity. He could be charged with 'conspiracy to commit espionage', a capital offense. If convicted, he could---and should---be executed..

His new slogan "Make America Great and Glorious Again", or MAGAGA, is rather appropriate, as it sounds like something between baby talk and vomiting.

Perhaps you missed it. 45 took over a growing economy and unemployment at 4.8%, with a total National Debt of $19.3 trillion He left office with a Recession, unemployment at 6.8%, and National Debt of $27.3 trillion. He had the lowest growth of any POTUS since Hoover, and jobs created under his watch (he lost jobs) were dwarfed by the creation under both Obama and Biden. History will likely judge him as the worst POTUS in history. I doubt he will even be the repub's nominee. He's a proven loser. Oh....one small thing...he tried to overthrow US democracy when he lost the 2020 election. That stands far and away the worst crime---a capital crime, by the way---ever committed by a POTUS. He will be indicted, tried, and if found guilty the crime carries capital punishment. If guilty, fry him.

"If the GOP wins, I should get all the credit, and if GOP loses, I don't deserve any of the blame".---45, on NewsNation Such is the way 45 thinks. 45 also threatened to pull an endorsement from repub gubernatorial candidate Lombardo in NV because Lombardo did not call 45 a "great" Potus. What a <deleted> child! 45 supported lake, and she sunk. Another loser. Well, the GOP lost the Senate, will barely retake the House, the majority of 45's endorsed goobers lost...at the Gov, Senate and StateSecofSTate level. In the last 2 elections, 45 has a dismal record, losing the House once, Senate twice, and of course the White House in 45's failed reelection bid. Democracy won in 2022. Fascism and election denial lost. 45 is spent. He's a loser whose schtick only still resonates with fellow losers and the intellectually barren. Now the DoJ will do its job, indict him for Sedition for 6 Jan, indict him for Conspiracy to Commit Espionage for his theft of TS/SCI, HCS and Codeword docs, and put the loser on trial. 45 should have stayed a schlocky Game Show host. It was the only 'business' venture he ever did that succeeded.

Perhaps you've been sequestered on a tropical isle like Tom Hanks in that movie. Just in case, I'll provide one example. 45 planned and fomented an attempt to overturn the results of the 2020 election. He told his goobers to come to DC on the 6th of Jan 2021 "it will be wild", he tweeted), then incited them to move on the Capitol. It wasn't to buy souvenirs at the Capitol gift shop. He then sat idle for 187 minutes watching the insurrection by his terrorist mob on TV, doing absolutely nothing to stop it. He heard the chants of "Hang Mike Pence", yet he made no calls to get National Guard or law enforcement to stop the attempted coup. That is an example of an authoritarian move by 45. It also falls under the definition of Sedition, a capital offense. He should be indicted, tried, and if found guilty, executed according to the law. No half mast flags when he's executed, and no burial at Arlington where real patriots rest.

Two points...call me cynical, but I see this ramp in btc today from 15.7 to 17.1 and cannot help but think Michael Saylor or some other over-levered long is doing a Nick Leeson impersonation. Time will tell, but the trading pattern is identical to how Leeson pushed up Nikkei futures and ended up imploding Barings. There was enough selling that anyone who really wanted to load on on btc could have just stayed best bid and caught all the selling, rather than play Pacman and paint the tape. If it smells like desperation and looks like desperation..... Second point....people are equating Blockchain with btc. Blaockchain is a possible useful technology upon which btc sits. An analogy might be the internet and Pets.com. The internet or world wide web is a useful technology upon which Pets.com sat. That the internet/www has value does not mean Pets.com had value.

A year ago the coin Solana, once a darling of the cryptosphere, was trading at $259.96. As I write this it is trading at $12.83, a loss of 95% in a year. Solana is down 65% in one week. And some folks bark about the USD losing a similar amount of value in 100 years. Winner: Fiat. (Also because nobody gets paid in 1922 wages) But hey, Solana owners, if you bought at $.01, you're still waaaaaay ahead. Is it starting to sink in that entities based solely on confidence need confidence to be maintained? When value is 100% dependent on the Greater Fool, a large supply of Greater Fools is desperately needed. As Mr. T might have said about Solana, "Pity the Fool!" Yes, all fiat will eventually die, though there are currently 180 fairly stable versions in good working order, readily accepted in the land of the sovereign who issued them. Plus, one has to guesstimate the life horizon of the means of exchange one uses vs the expected life span of the user. If you're a Mayfly who lives but a single day, crypto might work for you (though some cryptos tumble double digit % in a single day), but if you expect to live longer, perhaps fiat is the right thing. And we can all take some Solana...solace in the fact that economic juggernaut El Salvador uses btc as its currency. If someone is going to argue that since El Salvador adopted btc its inflation is running upwards of 400% (in btc terms), well, they're just to old to understand the beauty of the crypto future.