Walker88

Over time, perhaps 6 months, Thailand ceases to exist. People in NZ will last slightly longer, but to what end? The latest models indicate nobody gets out alive. Perhaps we start a GoFundMe campaign to pay the person who double taps putin. It should---if people truly understand the risk---quickly hit $1 billion. Frankly, it's worth more than that. Guessing there's now perhaps a 15% chance this all ends in nuclear winter, we can figure a value by discounting the future at current rates and come up with about $1 trillion.

The old models of the fallout from a nuclear war were incomplete. Better data and better computer power has yielded a better answer to what the actual outcome would be. In a nutshell, we're all dead. Most will starve to death, as nuclear winter will make it impossible to grow enough crops to feed even 10% of humanity. You can be a Mormon and store a year's worth of food and water. Super, what do you do in Year 2? Year 5? Year 10? Those who have written dystopian novels that consider an epidemic or natural disaster or even a nuclear holocaust were optimists. Cormac McCarthy's "The Road" will seem like a comedy in comparison. We're closer to this scenario than ever, and largely the result of one damaged and dangerous man. Ideally, there is one person, somewhere in russia, who might turn out to be the most important person who ever lived. He or she is the one who will take out putin and stop the insanity.

Fanciful. What putin's war of aggression has shown is that the russian army is poorly trained, poorly led, poorly equipped and russian weapons are poorly made. It looks like all the funds siphoned off from the abject corruption that is that "Gas Station with Nukes" left their armed forces a Potemkin Military. The Ukrainians are infinitely superior as a fighting force and much more highly motivated. Little vladdy is losing face by the day. Those 4 inch lifters he has installed in all of his shoes make his height as fake as his military. He cannot even adequately supply the loser force he currently has. How is he going to supply these pressganged reserves? Anyone driving a tank into Ukraine is going to sell it, hoping to get enough for airfare as far from motherf**king russia as possible. Of course they'll be offered peanuts, because---like that line from the movie Casablanca---"T-90s are a glut on the market....ten bucks" Should little vladdy resort to tactical nukes, russians---no matter their support or lack thereof---will be targeted around the world. It will be open season on them.

Since no meteorologists, nuke scientists, weapons experts or physicians with expertise in radiation disease are going to show up, I will post an opinion from a former intel officer. putin: As many will guess, putin is a psychopath. He is also a coward, and he has a painful insecurity complex. He's a little man in the manly way, just like 45 in the US (remember what Stormy said: "Not freakishly small, but well below average"). It is the source of his insecurity. The two guys are the same, the only difference being that russia is more open to autocracy and an absolute dictator, which is what 45 would like for himself. putin is losing face now. The russian military and fighting men, once believed to be formidable, have been shown to be poorly trained, poorly equipped, disorganized, poorly led, with shoddy equipment, and simply weak. Calling up mobilized forces won't help. putin cannot even adequately supply the forces he has now, and recruits are not likely to be motivated. His mobilized forces will represent a Turkey Shoot for Ukrainian patriots. putin will thus lose more face. If up to putin he will use a tactical nuke, at least on Kyiv. It will be up to Naryshkin or a sane general or two to stop him. 50-50 they can succeed. If they succeed, putin is dead and the war ends. If they fail, Kyiv is dead. West Response: The US will move incredible amounts of weapons into NATO border nations as well as to the surviving military forces in Ukraine. Some of those Ukrainian forces will attack wherever they can reach in russia. They will start killing russian civilians en masse. Every conceivable sanction against russia and russians will be imposed. The UK govt will retake Mayfair and Kensington. Sports teams will be seized. The remaining non-seized yachts will be seized, and yachts in supposed safe havens will be destroyed by SEAL teams. All banks accounts owned by russians will be seized, even in Switzerland. putin's girlfriend in Switzerland will be assassinated. Around the world all russians will be fair game. They will be slaughtered en masse, whether they support the war or not. So many will be killed that law enforcement won't even bother to investigate; in fact, they will join in. Everywhere, including in Thailand, where there is ample stock of prey. Killing russians will become a fad. The threat of nuclear holocaust will have an effect on mass psychology, so while it might seem unthinkable that people will begin killing russians for sport, our worst instincts will come to the surface, driven by the prospect of total human annihilation. The pain inside russia will be so severe that even his protectors and bodyguards will turn against him. He will get something between the Mussolini Treatment and the Qaddafi Treatment. russian forces inside Ukraine, few of whom wanted to be there anyway, and who have been shown to be a paper tiger force wildly inferior to the highly motivated and organized Ukrainians, will abandon their weapons and try as best they can to get home before Ukrainians butcher them. The West will not have to respond with nukes, because one tactical nuke used by putin will set off this chain reaction that will lead to his execution by his own people.

Barclay-Spencer? Was Apple-Tesla already taken? BTW, returns of 7-11% back when rates were under 2% should have rung a few bells, save for in the heads of those who believe in free lunches.

Looks like the cops are drawing straws to see who gets in the photo op American Gothic 2022. They've certainly got the implements to make the photo work.

It's really immaterial what he was or what issues he dealt with. The plain and simple fact is that he took so many innocent lives and healing for the survivors is nigh on impossible. One cannot imagine the pain. From time to time we are reminded in ways we would rather forget how much harm evil can do. I use evil as an all encompassing term, which includes both psychopathy as well as the mental issues that can lead someone to inflict such horror. Just sad.

45 stole nearly 12,000 documents, none of which he had any right to keep. While his Kim Jong-un love letters might have comforted him in his declining years, there is absolutely no reason why he should have stolen highly classified documents. The ONLY reason he might have done that is to use them for his benefit, either by selling them to the highest bidder or as a bargaining chip---threatening to publish them---if he is indicted for any of the myriad criminal activities in which he engaged. There are no other possible explanations. That any repub supports him is as clear an indication as there is that that Party is corrupt and un-American, even treasonous. Right now DoJ is prevented from studying the 11,000+ documents that should be with NARA. As for the several hundred classified documents he stole, 45 is now trying to appeal to what he hopes is a corrupt Supreme Court and prevent DoJ and the intel community from studying the classified, non-NARA docs in order to assess what damage may have been done and what threats to US national security or clandestine assets and programs exist. To try to block that, as 45 is doing with his appeal to the Supreme Court, is further proof that he couldn't care less about the US or national security, and that everything is always and only about him. What an absolutely vile and revolting pile of rancid excrement that bloated bozo is !

Not a tough call at all. If 45's goobers riot, slaughter them. The terrorists on 6 Jan should have been napalmed. They were trying to overthrow the government. They are far more dangerous to the US than some al Qaeda jiihadi in the tribal regions of Pakistan, but we regularly send Hellfire missiles at those guys. We should do something similar to those who try to destroy the country. Rule of law and democracy are the foundation of the experiment that is the US. NOBODY is above the law.

There is a bit of confusion here re NARA and 45's theft of documents. The NARA issue involved the Presidential Records Act, which requires documents involving programs, activities, messages, policy papers, correspondence with foreign leaders, etc. that were part of a POTUS's Administration to be kept by NARA. Anyone can access the docs NARA holds, but NARA always retains them. The classified docs are a different story. Nobody without a clearance has access to those, and they are kept in SCIFs, mostly at ODNI, CIA and NSA, but also at State, the White House, DoD, Treasury, Energy and a few other places, depending on the nature of the doc. There is absolutely no reason whatsoever for 45 to steal them, and since he had no right to them, it is theft. The one question even sycophant repubs and 45's enablers and fanboys have failed to answer: What possible use could 45 have for TS/SCI, Codeword and HCS docs? There is no possible explanation that makes any sense, except that he intended to use them for personal gain. That constitutes 'conspiracy to commit espionage', a capital offense carrying the death penalty. What he did is reckless, irresponsible, dangerous, a threat to national security, a threat to many people's lives, and absolutely 100% criminal. He is guilty merely by the presence of those docs, and anyone who aided him in stealing them is also subject to prosecution. Try him and fry him.

I have the answer: Only 1. You are confused about "30 million". That came out of 45's bloated backside and has zero basis in fact. No other ex-POTUS was so self-serving and irresponsible. Certainly no ex-POTUS would jeopardize national security to the extent 45 has. repubs barked incessantly about HRC's server, when what was on it---it should not have been---were a few cables classified as CONFIDENTIAL (the lowest classification) and which were subsequently declassified using the official procedure. Also, a thorough cyber check was done and there was zero indication her server had been hacked. 45 had TS/SCI docs, Codeword docs and HCS docs. Unbelievable. HCS are Human Clandestine Sources, meaning they reveal the identities of assets working with US Intel. Those people would be killed, and perhaps their families, too, if their identities were exposed. What possible reason would 45 have had for stealing and keeping those docs? Current and potential clandestine assets in places like russia, china, north korea, iran, or in groups like al Qaeda or ISIS will think twice about aiding US intel, knowing that some clown like 45 could get them exposed and killed. The US is less safe now because of 45.

Oh my! The captured are captured. There is no escape from the Rabbit Hole dug by 45. There's a whole gaggle of loons out there sniffing the vapors of 45's mental flatulating and getting high off of it. 45 has even joined the QAnon crazies now. The search was unprecedented because no ex-POTUS was so blatantly criminal and irresponsible to steal classified docs and store them in a non-SCIF location, then lie about 'declassifying by thought' and also lie about having returned everything. The longer this goes without an indictment the more likely the eventual indictment is going to be massive. DoJ must be building quite the case. The boy is going to be tried, and he has zero defense. The mere presence of the docs is proof of guilt. The lying about having returned everything shows intent to deceive. Even a first year student out of Harvard could probably get the guy convicted of 'conspiracy to commit espionage', a capital offense. His only shot at avoid jail or worse is to use the insanity defense. His Hannity interview could be submitted as proof, because the guy was clearly out of his <deleted> mind talking about declassifying by mere thought and his astonishing absurd quip about 'maybe they were looking for HRC's emails". Try him, convict him, but don't lock him up. Execute the criminal and traitor and be done with him forever.

From a business point of view, I think opening a weed shop is a bad idea. I walked from Soi 4 to Soi 8 and counted 7 weed shops in that five minute walk. A lot of money had been spent sprucing up whatever the place was before, so with so much competition within smoking distance, ROI looks to be pretty bad and the payback period way too long. As for using it, I'm not a fan. I don't find people buzzed on ganja to be any less boring than people buzzed on booze. I like a beer or two or a few glasses of wine, but because I like the flavor, not the buzz. I do not grab a beer or a glass of wine with the intent of getting a buzz, and if I feel one coming on, I switch to water. There are those who claim ganja enhances creativity, but one has to have the ability to be creative in order for that ability to be enhanced. Most people are incapable of creativity, so under the influence they just become turbo banal. For those who enjoy ganja, knock yourselves silly. To each his own. If I were to predict where this goes, I would say that the liberalization is going to be pulled back, and all the current dispensaries turned back into 7-11s, massage parlors, or Indian Tailors. I don't think the powers that be knew what they were unleashing. Already many in higher levels of govt or society are embarrassed that Thailand has a reputation as the World's Brothel. I don't think they will be any happier if Thailand becomes East Stoner-istan.

Yea, before you know it, they'll legalize alcohol and cigarettes. Can you imagine if they legalize those vices how many people will die from cirrhosis or hit by a drunk driver or beaten to death by an abusive drunk husband or from lung cancer or COPD or heart disease or stroke? I might guess that upwards of 500,000 people per year would die of smoking related illnesses and ailments in the USA alone ! (true stat) Society has a very funny calculus in how it selects its legal vices. The alcohol and tobacco industry have many lobbyists, but little else to differentiate them from whatever evils heroin and cocaine might unload (that they don't already while remaining illegal). Maybe the drug cartels have their own kind of lobbyists (kind of sarcasm)? The war on drugs has cost the US over a $trillion dollars, and victory was closer in Vietnam and Afghanistan than the Drug War. Maybe it's time for Plan B. How many additional users would there be if h and c were legal? Are there millions of folks who will say, "Now that it's legal I think I'm going to give that heroin thing a try". Legalize it and thousands of innocents in South America will not die, and the US will save $billiions per year, money which might go toward caring for the folks suffering from already legal vices like tobacco and booze.

What do you expect? Insurance companies are not charities. If one is old and has something like COPD, the insurance actuaries have a pretty good idea what the hopeful policy holder is going to cost them, so they will charge accordingly. What you are suggesting is a freebie. That others' will pay for you. In what universe does that make economic sense? Anyone young and healthy reading this: NOW is the time to book a policy. You don't try to get fire insurance when your house is already burning. Oh, and don't take up smoking. You are not immortal. Chances are it will kill you, and it will also make your last years not only come faster than they would otherwise, those last year will likely suck. Yes, your grandad smoked since he was 12 and lived to 98. One person also won the $1.4 billion Megamillions lottery. It's never too early to accept responsibility for your own life and well being.

I have next to no faith in any Japanese bank. I'll explain why. After the Dai Boraku (Big Crash) in 1990, Japan changed a number of accounting rules. Banks could create subsidiaries that need not be consolidated on the parents BS so long as the sub was less than 10% of assets. So what many banks did was create subs and sell their bad debt to the subs. They also used to cross futures at the Open and Close, and given they were allowed three days to book the trade, after three days the "losing side" of a trade was booked in a non consolidated sub, the "winner" was run through the parent's income statement. Banks also approached trust banks to create long term options that did the same thing. The bank took both sides of the option, paid a fee to the 'originator', then booked the losing side in a non-consolidated sub. Absolute pure fraud, and 100% legal (if that is not an oxymoron). Banks also are allowed creative accounting of their book. This impacts pensions mostly, but also investment portfolios of banks. Positions can be carried at higher of cost or market. Also, only realized gains or losses need be booked, or in the case of a pension or trust, paid out. Realized losses must be offset against gains, but unrealized losses can be carried at higher of cost or market. You can guess what everyone did. Most pensions and investment portfolios are full of positions bought in the late 1980s, when the Nikkei topped out at 38,915.87 (burned into my memory). Some of those positions are 90% below peak, yet are being carried at cost. Winning positions tend to be realized, but are often put back on, so they go back on the books at a high cost. Some of this was masked because of asset allocation and the gains in JGBs. I believe Thailand followed many of these Japanese practices during Covid, as it seemed to have worked for Japan. Of course Japan has an inverted pyramid population, which means the elderly need to pull funds from pensions or Kampo and Yucho. Perhaps this is why the yen is down 40% in the last year and a half. The bubble is bursting.

I can tell from your posts you are knowledgeable regarding economics, and Thailand might not be in any worse shape than many countries, but there are concerns, the level of which I don't really know. Household debt of 90% of per capita GDP is worrying, both because the number is staggering and also because it likely does not include loan shark debt (who currently charge 20% per month to their victims). Secondly, I have no real clue on the condition of the banks, because their NPL numbers are meaningless and so is much of their reported income. The long debt moratorium, the change in laws that now allow banks to create debt-buying subsidiaries (built for abuse), and the fact banks were allowed to book imputed interest as income (as if borrowers actually repaid) makes their balance sheets and income statements rather opaque. Tourism was 18.8% of GDP in 2019. Counting both domestic and int'l, maybe it is running 25% of what it was before Covid. That's quite a hole to fill, and with exports not being helped by the worldwide fall in trade, plus the (so far) nascent shift of some foreign manufacturing facilities to Vietnam, one wonders how Thailand makes up for it. Again, Thailand may not be worse than many other countries, but the next year or two do not look rosy, and current leadership does not seem to have the skill nor wisdom to fashion a solution..

Like many people over the age of about 30, I have a love-hate relationship with mobiles. Useful, but they have hypnotized most of society and taken control. The first place I saw Phone Addiction was Japan. The usual 4 friends go to eat together, and all four ignore their mates and get buried in the phone. It subsequently spread around the world. Myanmar was one of the last places to become addicted. The old junta controlled SIM Cards. Few had phones and there was no roaming for tourists. SIM cards became a speculative item like crypto. Peak price was USD 4400. Under democracy, the market opened up and SIM prices fell to 75 cents. OUCH to those caught with a pile of junta-era SIMs. Now, it's like everywhere else: folks buried in their online life. Thailand might be the worst. On the BTS I sometimes look to see how many folks are NOT buried in their phones. Often it is only me. If I eaves drop it's usually TikTok or Facebook I see that have people entranced. TikTok, that surreptitious commie Chinese influence tool, is about the most banal thing I have seen since the Pet Rock or Tomoguchi. As I have said, TikTok is for people without talent to make product for people without taste. Harsh, yes, but true. I have visited rural Thailand with a friend, and sat at a meal under a bamboo roof where the 15 or so folks present were all staring into their phones, usually watching TikTok. Family? Are they online? (No, they're right next to you if you would look.) Real human interaction and social skills are declining due to the phone. The ability to write well and communicate is fading away due to texting. Maybe this is evolution, but the 'great connector' of phones and social media is leading to greater levels of loneliness and depression. Since leaving Oldavai Gorge humans have needed direct interaction. Giving it up to the phone has effects that are ripping lives apart. Suicides are up, depression, bipolar syndrome, OCD and other mental ailments are all on the rise. The phone likely has played a significant part in this. There is a progression that began when Zuckerberg found the best way to monetize Narcissism (beating MySpace), and moving that into the now ubiquitous phone. A poster above wrote of 'taking 200 selfies a day'. Not sure if he meant that or was trying to engage in hyperbole, but it is accurate. Some people take well more than 200 selfies a day. They also post, believing---or hoping---their life and thoughts and actions and lunches and moods are the import equivalent of a major earthquake or war. Life has become playacting. Reality of one's life is what one hopes they can convince others it is. All the while, real human interaction is asymptotically declining to zero. It isn't too much of a stretch to see a future world as all robots and virtual reality. Maybe Covid and social distancing exacerbated the trend toward isolation. So are phones a net positive or negative? That remains to be seen. If I were to guess, I would say in the long term phones will end up doing more harm than good to the average person and society at large.

Actually you are wrong. Your freedom ends where a private business begins. Have you ever been to a restaurant where jackets are required on men? Ever seen a sign, "No shirt, no shoes? No service"? On the other hand, if you enter a kaiseki restaurant in Japan, you are not allowed to walk on the tatami mats wearing shoes. Obviously there is no law against not wearing a jacket or no wearing shoes in public places, but private businesses are free to set the rules by which customers use their services. Some agogos have signs warning customers of a "5000 to 10000 baht fine" for taking photos or videos. Some restaurants have a No Smoking rule. As a customer entering a private business, you have two choices: abide by the rules the business has set, or go elsewhere. Ignoring their requests has a term that is slang for the end of the alimentary canal.

You might have missed the 'wisdom' part about Yogi Here's a few of his other quotes that might indicate his style: "We're lost, but we're making good time" "Nobody goes there anymore; it's too crowded" "The future ain't what it used to be" "Always go to other people's funerals; otherwise they won't go to yours"

Life is never wasted if you follow the wisdom of the great prophet Yogi Berra: "When you come to a fork in the road, take it"

It's pretty easy to be culturally sensitive. Use you eyes and your ears. See how Thais behave, act, speak, etc. In the park, are Thai people exercising or walking around with no shirt? I've never seen it, so I would never take off my shirt while exercising. That I have no gut and good definition is immaterial; a male's bare upper body is not something commonly on display in Thailand. Sure I see old men shirtless in the countryside doing chores around their homes, but otherwise I rarely see a Thai man shirtless. I take that to assume it is something frowned upon in Thailand, so I do as Thais do and keep the shirt on.

I like your style. In my view, life is about two things: challenges and experience. To enjoy both, one needs variety. Some folks are perfectly content to live a rural Isaan life, where there is a constancy and consistency, and where change doesn't disrupt one's idea of what is comfortable and normal. For such folks, more power to them. Before the neurons stop firing, and this sentient pile of dust becomes a non-sentient pile of dust, I like to take on as many challenges and enjoy the widest variety of experience possible. Currently living and owning a business is Thailand is giving me that challenge and experience, just as living and working in other countries did it for me in the past. Just about anyplace can provide those two things (challenge and experience). While currently it's Thailand, it could also be the West. It's up to me---my curiosity and my passion---to make wherever I am NOT boring. One's person's happiness is consistency. Another's is variety. To each his own.

Talk of a coup now is just finally, after a bazillion coups since the end of WWII, admitting the obvious: Coups have ZERO to do with social unrest or other's corruption (the usual excuses and rationalizations). The real reason for a coup is "It's my turn to get rich". Since the streets are currently quiet, but the greed never goes away, this talk of coup now is just some honesty for once. "It's my turn" Thailand, Myanmar.....it's all the same. A guy moves up the ranks in the military, sees how well the thugs at the top are living, and wants a bit of that dosh for himself. In Myanmar, lots of colonels were gobsmacked by that democracy thing. They were so close to the brass ring, then the old guys like Than Shwe and Maung Aye decided to let ASSK have her day---provided she wouldn't subsequently prosecute and take their ill gotten gains, It took a few years, but the greedy colonels moved up to general, had the fake constitution ("Tatmadaw can retake power at any time for any reason") as their justification, and now can drink from the trough all they want. It's my turn. Plus ça change.

Probably had a good enough run for now. Let it breathe a bit....dead cat bounce, etc., before the next leg. There seems to be a tendency in the market to want to believe all the tumbles have finished, so many anxiously buy the dip. Buying the dip has been ingrained, because it has worked for the lifetime of most market players. If 'this time is different', we'll know in a week or so.