Walker88

Seems you have forgotten history. Obama inherited an abject disaster. He brought UE down from 10.4% to 4.8%. The economy grew---and better than under 45 even before Covid. 45 tried to take credit for Veterans benefits passed by Obama. Obama saved the banking system by forcing banks to slash leverage, recapitalize, and sell off NPLs. Same with the insurance industry, after AIG tried to assuem all of te world's risk. 45 benefited from what Obama left him. Under 45, however, the National Debt exploded from $19.6 trillion to $27.6 trillion. GDP growth---before Covid---was less than the debt added, so the so-called growth was debt fueled. After Covid, growth went negative and UE jumped to 6,8%, where 45 left it---worse than what he inherited. Every POTUS has gotten a MidEast "Peace Deal". There never is and never will be peace in the ME. So what did 45 do except grift? Nothing. Well, he did almost destroy NATO, so there's that.

South Korea is a vibrant democracy that also operates via the rule of law. In theory, NOBODY is above the law. South Korea has jailed 3 former Prime Ministers for corruption. If South Korea can do it, the supposed beacon of democracy and rule of law can do it, too.

Remember that familiar chant from 45's Hate-ins back in 2016, brought back again in 2020? "Lock her up !" That was because HRC had a server in her basement. 45 brought back at least 15 boxes of documents from the White House, some of which were classified TopSecret and other classifications, like the old classification of TS Umbra and Codeword. No reason to remove such docs from the safety of a heavily guarded facility, and he had no need for them. Why would he take them? As a private individual, he has no right to such things, as it could jeopardize 'sources and methods'. Lock him up !

Some foreigners are under the mistaken impression it's still 1980. Thai women have a lot more knowledge and a lot more options than they did 40 years ago. I see older foreigners who come to Thailand to 'live the dream'. Back home they were old, fat, and of modest means. When they come to Thailand, they're old, fat, and of modest means...but in Thailand. Not exactly a 'catch' in today's Thailand. It takes as much 'game' now to win over a lovely Thai woman as it would to win over a desirable woman back home. One had best be neat, clean, in shape, kind hearted, and fairly successful. Young is also a plus. That is reality in 2022. The foreigners who are in long term relationships here had something to offer that was appealing to their mate. That being said, Thai women can be quite lovely and desirable to newcomers, and that could prove an inspiration to a man looking for a relationship. While beauty is probably evenly distributed around the country, I have often found---as some others who have posted here---that it's tough to beat Buriram. Just bring your A game, because a lovely Thai woman need not settle for second rate.

Was Hunter POTUS? Served in some govt position? Didn't know that. Thought he was just a child of POTUS, like jr & eric. He wasn't even a nepotistic 'senior adviser' like ivanka and jared. I do remember jr and eric were running around Dubai and India---at US Taxpayer expense with SS protection---trying to sell name-licensed properties, and jared's sister was selling condos that came with a Green Card. jared also got $1.4 billion in new financing for his 666 Fifth Ave property, just before it was to be foreclosed, by the Govt of Qatar. Shortly thereafter, Qatar was removed from a sanctions list. Coincidence, no doubt. Oh, and DirFBI Wray was appointed by....45 I guess 45 misjudged Wray, not realizing he believes in US ideals of everyone being equal under the law, and that Wray's loyalty is to the Constitution, not an individual.

Oh my! The Cult never wavers, in spite of endless proof that he is nothing but a traitor and criminal. Perhaps you didn't notice, but he tried to overthrow the democratically elected govt. He did absolutely nothing for 187 minutes as his cult stormed the Capitol intent on hanging the VP. He should be charged with sedition, a capital offense. If found guilty, he should be executed, per the law.

Biden has a couple of major bills passed, he has UE down to a 53 year low of 3.5%, 3 million jobs created so far in 2022 (Biden inherited 6.8% UE from 45), oil is now trading at the 87 handle with gas below $4 now, the yearly deficit was reduced by $350 billion in FY 2021 and will be down $1.7 trillion in FY 2022, and he just took out Ayman al-Zawahiri with a weapon ordered developed in 2011 under Obama. It's shaping up to be a pretty successful Presidency, despite the poll numbers.

Resistance training 3 days per week. Upper and lower body. Run stairs on other days. No added sugar. No sodas, neither sugary nor diet. No local seafood (it's dirty and full of heavy metals). Wild salmon if from clean waters. Carbs and salt are a function of one's metabolism and biome. I can gorge on carbs and not have a glucose spike, and my blood pressure (at 105/60) allows me as much salt as I wish. It's genetic. Beer and wine (red), but no hard liquor. Red meat maybe twice a month. Veggies and legumes. Lots of leafy greens. More pasta than an Italian Mama. Never smoked. Never understood why anyone would chose a habit where one must overcome initial nausea just to get addicted to something that can kill. Lots of water, still and bubbly. One loses the appetite for things cut from the diet, so I don't miss cakes or pies or cookies. Zero medications. Get full blood work done once a year to make sure nothing gets out of whack. I do take a number of supplements, like Vit D3, Hyaluronic Acid, Magnesium, Omega 3, Apigenin, Alpha-keta glutorate, sometimes Quercitin, Ashwaganda, Tongkat Ali (much of my regimen is from recommendations of Dr Andrew Huberman of Stanford Medical School). Body fat is just above 10% on a 185cm/80 kg frame. Get good sleep, have very minimal life stress (dumb luck), and laugh a lot. Neither an optimist nor pessimist...just a realist. Yes, I could get cancer or get hit by a bus, but I'm maximizing the odds of a long healthspan. I'm nimble and feel quite good. I don't know how the foreigners with giant beer guts, no muscular definition, and lots of aches and pains enjoy their lives. How can a guy who looks 8 months pregnant roll over at night? Nobody went to bed svelte and woke up obese, so it takes willful lack of discipline and self control to get in the state so many expats in Thailand get. It also puts great stress on the joints. I would guess my health rules would make for a boring life for many. For me, it just feels good to feel good, so the motivation remains.

China has learned from russia that invasions of sovereign nations can go quite badly for the aggressor. putin is stuck between nuking Ukraine and making it useless, or else trying to win via conventional means. The same would be true if china invaded Taiwan. It would be a disaster for the 'motherland' and take years to win. It would destroy china's already weakening economy and jeopardize xi's leadership. Xi only used the Pelosi visit to deflect from the growing list of domestic problems...such as a collapsing RE market, banks that will need a bailout, massive over capacity in production, declining job markets for grads, the Covid lockdown nightmare, etc. Inside the commie party there are always knives out looking for a chance to take down the leader and take over the spot at the public trough so as to enrich themselves as all previous commie party chiefs have. The only war china ever won was a civil war. If things keep going south, they might have 1965 all over again.

Don't know about 'fat old Falang' and certainly no BFing the way someone might do at an agogo, but let me just say it is possible to date a Hooters woman. They are human. The women make quite good money---by Thai standards---working there. A woman who works in service at a typical restaurant will make something between 10K and 25K baht. A Hooters woman is paid 50K baht per month. There is also some cross pollination between Hooters and agogos. Some former Hooters women work agogos, and some former agogo women move on to Hooters and are okay with the pay cut to 'only' 50,000 per month.

Are those 'international standards' for hotel cleaning followed by short term hotels or the upstairs rooms on Soi 6?

I'm in full support of the One China Policy, too. I think the elected officials of Taiwan should run the entire Middle Kingdom. Certainly that has as much legitimacy as the commies claiming sovereignty over an island they have governed for a sum total of zero seconds since appointing themselves to power.

You're destroying my appreciation of Oscar Wilde ! Lots of errors in attribution that are in print and pixels....all claiming were Wilde-isms. Next you'll be telling me Evelyn Waugh wrote The Picture of Dorian Gray

Not to go too far off topic---Oscar Wilde-isms should get a pass---but the quote to which you took exception a few days ago I took out of a newspaper article many years ago, as I found it humorous. That author might have mis-attributed the quote to Wilde. Anyway, to toss in one more...."I'm not young enough to know everything".

Love is a gross exaggeration of the difference between one person and everybody else Life is one fool thing after another, whereas love is two fool things after each other ---both are quotes from Oscar Wilde (@jerrymahoney might come in and correct me....again !)

Not sure what your health problem is, but isn't it comforting to know you have an entire Forum of medical experts to aid you in discussing a potentially fatal ailment ! Really, who needs to waste 4 years of Med School, plus residency, when the human body can be instantly understood by keyboard warriors and children alike.

I've scrolled through this thread and I have come to realize that the quintessential curmudgeon has entered the room. In keeping with proper decorum I won't mention names or handles, but I see a bitter, aging, wispy-haired, pudgy little guy who used to bark at the moon before discovering the internet and member forums. Rather than self-reflect on what is likely a miserable existence, he is intent on trying to make sure no one else here either enjoys or takes comfort in the lives they have created. Well, a good many folks who did leave home for Thailand are actually rather enjoying it here. That fact seems to gall Khun Curmudgeon.

Did you happen to skip over the part about 'challenges'? I prefer not being idle, and there is always a challenge waiting to be undertaken. One never knows one's potential if challenges are avoided. Is there something wrong with running a business in Thailand? Should you tell Suzuki and Nissan and Ford and San Miguel Beer they should wrap it up and get out? Granted a foreigner running a business in Thailand, navigating the bureaucracy, motivating employees, dealing with accountants and banks, etc., isn't always easy, but it can be done, profits can be made, and most importantly (for me) the challenge is met. There is also satisfaction that comes from gainfully employing people and meeting payroll. Perhaps you lack the skill set and discipline to do it. Yes, on the internet we're all Wall Street millionaires and former CIA case officers. (LOL...private joke) Anyway, is claiming to be a millionaire more egregious than suggesting, even facetiously, one is a King, even if just one of many (since your name is plural)? It reeks of delusions of grandeur. Pardon me for being skeptical, but I am much closer to BILLIONAIRE than you are a king. I'll close by quoting Oscar Wilde: "People may boo me, but when I go home and count my money, I applaud myself"

Do you think you get bonus points or some sort of award just before you take your last breath for (claiming to have led) a life that is 'honorable' according to your definition? There are people in this world who choose not to marry. Comedian Bill Maher is a prime example. Seeing what the odds of long term success are in marriage, to some men the wisest choice, or the one that works for them, is to refrain from it. Similarly, some don't feel the need to leave copies of their gene pool behind. Plenty of folks on the planet already. Of course, I don't mind practice for the big game, if you know what I mean. I have millions, but I choose not to live in the US. I own property in several countries, but have found that at this time I prefer Thailand, so I bought a business here. Yes, I have female friends here. I am not a saint, and don't care to be. I do not happen to fit the caricature of the fat, old, bald farang loser who cannot even get one of those rotund Brit women in the OP's photo, but instead needs a poorly educated 20 year old Isaan farmgirl-turned P4P to complete myself. While I would be a bit hypocritical to generalize, I do find that at this time in history and culture, many Western women are self-absorbed, high maintenance, overweight (cannot fat shame, even though it is a result of lack of discipline and self control), divas who cannot understand why 'all the good men are taken'. I prefer a man-woman relationship, bot a psychiatrist-patient relationship. There are some pleasant and appealing women in the US, but in totality, I prefer variety....in climate, culture, and......yes, women. I did my time in the US. It was nice enough, but it's one country in a world of ~200 nations. Before I push daisies, I want to experience variety. I have become enamored of the Thai concept of sanuk....people going out of their way to seek fun. Seems a nice way to approach life. When I go back home nowadays, I see too many people who go out of their way to seek unhappiness and bitterness. That seems a bad way to approach life. I suspect many of the men who chose Thailand and who have commented here feel similar things. None of what we do is going to matter a lick when it all ends, so I choose to 1) seek new challenges, 2) seek variety, 3) seek happiness, and 4) seek the pleasures of the flesh.........because I find each of them satisfying Call me shallow, or tell me I'll burn in Hell, but I am as happy as anyone I know. My only wish is for more time, which sadly, none of us will get.

Happiness is intermittent dopamine surges. If continuance, the brain becomes inured to it and the effect ceases. For happiness---in the biochemical sense---there must be neutral periods. These neutral periods need noy be sad or negative, just times when dopamine is flowing. Leaving the reality of science aside, I believe that the secret to happiness is being continually curious. If forever curious, one is never bored. Then again, a threesome with a spinner and a thumper might make me pretty happy, shallow guy that I am.

James Clerk Maxwell accurately predicted the make up of the rings of Saturn using a quill, a jar of ink, some parchment paper, and math. Apollo 11 went to the moon and back with the computer power less than an IBM 386, and about ,001% of the computer power in the typical cellphone of today, and the white shirt boys in Houston used sliderules. for all of their calculations. The hand held Bowmar Brain---which was the first calculator to do + - x and / came out around 1972, 3 years after Apollo 11

Somebody is saying consciousness is 'mobile'. I guess in dementia and Alzheimers patients that consciousness has migrated somewhere else, far from grandma's head, eh? To comfort themselves, people have come to the bizarre conclusion that even if a physical brain wastes away due to dementia until the person is in a vegetative state, instantly upon passing their memory and personality returns in perfect form and grandma remembers again how to make oatmeal cookies. Also, 5 year olds who die of cancer become all knowing upon passing, despite barely being able to count to ten when their neurons still fired. Science in general, and study into dementia, has shown that consciousness is purely a physical entity. When some of the neurons stop firing and the chemicals no longer do their job, bits and pieces of that individuals memory and personality disappear. Upon death, all neaurons stop firing and everything that individual was ceases to exist. Entropy takes over and in time all the atoms that were once a person form other bits of matter and energy. Stardust to stardust. Personally, if I were to believe any creation myth, I would say deity or deities are likely bacteria, and humans were 'created' in order to be vessels for the trillions of bacteria we all carry in our biome. Clearly it's a 'loving' group of deities who would make such fine vessels as Olympic sprinter Allyson Felix to carry their bacterial 'children'. Certainly my idea makes as much sense as virgin births or no meat on Fridays or dressing up females to look like giant eggplants or angels showing up on mountains, in deserts, in Palmyra, NY, or just in time for the Holidays. The new images from the Webb telescope remind us of how utterly insignificant any of us 8 billion bacteria vessels are on one planet orbiting a mediocre sun, one of a trillion stars in a galaxy that shares spacetime with upwards of 2 trillion other galaxies across a distance of 93 billion light years which contains perhaps 700,000,000,000,000,000,000 planets (700 quintillion). Enjoy the wonder, but best not to clutter it up with myth and superstition.

Woke is a vocal, but quite small fringe movement. Sadly, it gives the far larger anti-democratic fascist movement a lot of ammo. Frankly, of infinitely greater concern for civilized and decent society is this growing trend toward autocracy and fascism. Look at the repub party in the US---a caricature seemingly from The Onion led by a bloated, willfully ignorant, self-serving clown. His supporters---some elected---now say government should be run by religion. Of course the most visible proponent of that 'religion' idiocy is someone who didn't even graduate from high school, who thinks family Christmas cards look better if everyone---mom, dad, kids---is brandishing an AR-15, and is a QAnone disciple despite the fact her hubby did time for exposing himself to teen girls. She just closed down a cafe where packing a gun was mandatory for entrance. It's a lot easier to ignore the Pronoun Warriors than idiots like 45 and his cult, who are hellbent on destroying the system that brought such prosperity and growing fairness to the country over almost 250 years.

Let's see....in the last two years laid off employees include: pilots, flight attendants, maintenance crews, service staff, baggage handlers, security, air traffic controllers, TSA staff and the equivalent on other countries.... Best to wait a few more months before flying again. Glad I'm where I'm supposed to be. By the way, I'm rated on twins...am I qualified for one of those A380s? Can't be any more difficult than a Piper Seminole or Seneca, right?

In today's vernacular, "streetsmart" tends to mean the ability to manipulate, but not be manipulated by, people.