Walker88

Well then you must give even greater kudos to Nancy Pelosi, who at age 77 in 2018 gave a speech on the House floor lasting 8 hours and 7 minutes....and she did it in 4 inch heels. And unlike 45, she only needed one hand to pick up her glass of water to occasionally quench her thirst. Small finger 45 needed two hands.

I think you mean the man who saved the world's financial system and insurance industry, after inheriting the Financial Crisis and 10% UE from Bush II. Obama forced banks to sell bad assets, slash leverage, and issue new equity. The entire financial system of the world was on the brink of implosion. Oh, and because AIG had decided to take on the entire risk of planet Earth, and that would have taken down the insurance industry (imagine no planes flying, no trucks delivering food, no trains running, no ships on the seas, because who would risk an uninsured vehicle or ship)., Obama stepped in with a bailout. Obama also came in and rescued autos, Money Markets and Commercial paper market. But of course he did wear a tan suit once. Obama left 45 a growing economy, 4.8% UE, a banking system only levered 10:1, a vibrant insurance industry, and going auto concerns in Detroit. 45 left Biden 6.8% UE, a Recession, an epidemic out of control, an exploding national Debt (up 37% under 45), and a weakned NATO. 45, the self-serving, willfully ignorant, mendacious, serial philandering, Narcissistic, likely psychopathic clown, played his schtick long enough. he's the Vanilla Ice of politics...a one shot (I) wonder. A failure. He retains as his base Incels, fascists, the poorly educated, QAnons, and society's losers. Stick a fork in the bloated bozo. He's done.

And most of them lost. Watch the sane wing of the repub Party, plus those who go with the wind, begin to distance themselves from him. He lost the House, Senate and White House for repubs in 2020. repubs are slow-witted, but eventually they figure out 45 is a loser. repubs are beginning to realize they have to have a platform, not just empty slogans that appeal to their low IQ base. 45 is solely about silly slogans that grab mouthbreathers, Incels, and society's forlorn.

Perhaps "mad" is more appropriately used for the 291 repub candidates on the ballot who are election deniers, or the repubs who think an appropriate Christmas Card is a photo of the entire family---dad, mom and the kiddies---all sporting AR-15 rifles, or the hypocrite repubs who bark about 'her emails' (a couple of lowly classified CONFIDENTIAL, later declassified), when they excuse the fact 45 stole hundreds of TS/SCI and HCS classified documents and kept them in his club---then lied about returning the stolen property. The woke on the left are silly, but they are an extremely small minority of the side, whereas election deniers, fascists, democracy haters, QAnons and Incels are a majority of the right. The right, I would be willing to bet, is also the home to the highest percent of obese people. Nothing manly about a male looking 8 months pregnant or with spare tires that would fit an Airbus A380. The data shows that Red States are also the biggest parasites (get much more from the Federal Govt than their citizens pay in taxes), have the highest percentage of citizens on Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI is the largest 'employer' in KY, TN and WV), and also the highest percentage of opioid addiction. Oh, and the biggest whiny little b!tch in the entire world is 45, who is always crying about 'UNFAIR' and other things. 45 is also the biggest loser of the night, as many of the candidates he endorsed lost.

“It’s a Republic, if you can keep it” Ben Franklin As Bill Maher---who has been 100% correct on everything politically---said on his 4 Nov show, “we can’t” It’s over. The US is finished. It was a great run…a work in progress toward a perfect society that never quite reached its goal, and now will spiral down into, at best, something mediocre and banal, and at worst, a global threat on the order of Nazi Germany. The saddest part is that the US always had a weakness, but just didn't know. It was dependent on character and integrity the Founders hoped was ubiquitous, but in point of fact never was. All it took was a Narcissistic, willfully ignorant, self-serving, vindictive, wildly insecure clown and Snake Oil salesman to come along at just the right time and flush the country down the rancid sewer into which it is sinking. There’s an election in the US on Tuesday. The House and Senate will both fall into the hands of the fascist repub Party, a Party that hates democracy and rule of law, has no platform other than maintaining power and concocting new slogans, and which will purposely make certain things go and stay so bad that the bloated orange fat man will retake the White House in 2024. The winners will be sworn in in early January 2023. The Dems are not without fault. They have a small minority that is extremely vocal and who come up with ideas so absurd that one could almost think these Dems are republican moles. Their abject idiocy is ammunition for the repubs, who are if nothing else, skilled in exploiting Dem gaffes and getting everyone on message. I will add some predictions. These might seem outlandish, but ask yourself this: Could you ever have imagined that a losing Presidential candidate would foment an insurrection and try to overthrow the existing government simply because he is 100% self-serving, painfully insecure and a whiny-ass little bitch? Well, it happened, and so bad have things become that the guy’s Party tosses it off as less bad than a mob looting a convenience store in San Francisco. These are my predictions for how things go from here: 1) Dems lose both houses of Congress. Repubs block anything and everything Biden tries to do, even if it means---no, ESPECIALLY if it means it will harm the average person. The House, led by the intellectually challenged coward named mccarthy, will engage in endless impeachment proceedings against Biden, Garland, Pelosi, etc., even though there will be no law any of the Dems actually violated. It will cost bazillions (like Benghazi, Durham and Whitewater), solve nothing, but prevent absolutely anything from getting done. 2) The former POTUS will declare his candidacy in a week or two, and then he will claim immunity from prosecution because he’s a candidate. Lower courts will strike it down, but it will move to the Supreme Court, where the stacked court will rule 5-4 in his favor. So Sedition and Conspiracy to Commit Espionage (theft of highly classified documents) will be ok’d, so long as it’s ‘my side’. 3) The former POTUS may well lose in 2024, but that will not stop him from coming to Washington on 20 January 2025 and declaring himself POTUS. Enough toadies will have been elected in various States so that they will aid him in calling 'fraud' and naming him as the actual winner in their State. 4) Once POTUS again, he will cater to the crazies, like evangelicals, and make Born Again KKKristianity the official religion of the US. The bible will replace the US Constitution, per the demands of miscreants and lunatics like Rep boebert of CO. Other belief systems will be banned, like Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, Catholicism, maybe even Judaism. 5) After Freedom of Religion is repealed, Freedom of Speech and Freedom of the Press will be repealed. Criticism of POTUS will be against the law, like lese majeste laws in Thailand. Term limits on POTUSs will disappear, and like china’s xi and russia’s putin, the guy will declare himself President for Life. 6) POTUS will announce a future succession, similar to his ‘love interest’s’ country of North Korea. His daughter will be named to succeed him when the time comes. 7) Some right wing media outlet like fox or oan will be declared Official State Media, like Pravda and RT. The newly appointed head of the FCC will shut down MSNBC, CNN, PBS and any network that doesn’t worship the POTUS. 8 Schoolchildren will be forced to pledge allegiance not to the country or Constitution, but to the POTUS. 9) Anyone who has ever publicly criticized the POTUS, even way in the past, will be hounded, or arrested and charged with some petty, made up offense, tried, convicted, and jailed or worse. It will be a vendetta without precedent except perhaps in Stalin’s Russia. 10) Mike Flynn, the 4-star wannabe who never made it, and has thus spent his later years becoming criminally insane, will head a kind of Brownshirt entity that will make sure everybody has the right thinking. Spies will be in everyplace from Starbucks to grocery stores to monitor conversations, and those with 'improper thinking' will be sent to re-education camps. Yes, Orwell’s ‘Thought Crime” becomes a reality. 11) Many US companies will relocate to Canada or more friendly homes, decimating the US economy. It will not have occurred to the powers that be that most of productive America is democrat and democracy advocates. It will be a brain drain of extraordinary proportions. 12) The US dollar will collapse. POTUS will have surrounded himself, as he did in the latter stages of his first term, with incompetents and clowns. POTUS will have to issue enormous amounts of new debt, making his wild profligacy in his first term seem like a minor overdraft. Stock markets---at least what companies remain on US Exchanges---will drop toward zero. 13) POTUS will engage in a pointless war or two to try to galvanize the people and take heat off the collapsing economy. He might even attack a US State, like California or Massachusetts, States unlikely to be supportive of him. This is when the US will become a threat on the order of Nazi Germany. 14) POTUS will blame anyone and everyone but himself. He will engage in mass arrests and maybe even mass executions, a la the Khmer Rouge. Eventually, albeit after the US becomes an abattoir, POTUS will be Ceaucescu’d, as will his entire family. Some semblance of the former US will return, albeit fragmented and partitioned like India after the Brits left.It will never be what it was. China will try to be the world leader, though that will fail. Brush fire wars, or worse, will erupt in many places. Colonialism will return, since there won't be any coordinated moral authority to stop it. The UN will close, perhaps not before time, as currently it is useless. There will have been so much unnecessary suffering because the citizens of the US became stupid by design and failed to even begin to understand the system the Founders had built. If the Dems have any willpower left, they should expedite the indictments of 45, try him, and if he is convicted, sentence him. Jail might not be enough, and since some of his crimes are capital offenses, he should be executed if found guilty, even if that means his cult would become apoplectic. Of course the Dems won’t do that. They will sit back and let most everything I have predicted come to pass. Readers may disagree with all of this, but if so, you haven't been paying attention. 200+ candidates on next Tuesday's ballot are election deniers. Many are QAnon members, which is to say people who believe Hillary and Tom Hanks run an international cabal that kidnaps, roasts and eats babies. Lying is the new truth, Hypocrisy a badge of honor (see mitch mcconnell, herschel walker, etc.) It’s over. RIP USA. Watch out world, because things are going to get a lot more ugly everywhere.

"Normalcy" is democracy in action. It is that state where the maximum number of people feel comfortable. For humans, that means, inter alia, superstition. Most people feel more comfortable when they think something, or someone, is in charge. Normalcy is predictability. It is lack of randomness. Historically, why do humans create deities or embrace monarchs? Because those represent lack of randomness. Somebody, or something is in charge and in control. That takes away both the need to think and, to some extent, the need to be personally responsible. Randomness is just too scary. Even a malevolent greater power---deity or monarch---is better than nothing (or democracy, which can change things based on then-current trends and attitudes). There is always the possibility of deal making with a deity or absolute leader, even if it is a malevolent force. There is no possibility of deal making with randomness. Damn if sh!t just happens. Thus, in search of normalcy, people will embrace superstitions that can save them from harm (e.g., amulets, reading their horoscope, chanting or saying some prayer, getting a magic tattoo). People will turn to religion, which is total nonsense, but it's comforting nonsense to many. All folks need do is pick the One Truth, which of course varies depending on where one lives or in what culture one finds oneself. (That at best there can be only one One Truth, which means every other belief system--or likely all of them---were created by a charlatan, a liar, or a lunatic---doesn't influence people. That is what we call 'faith', another term for the total lack of logic or denying of objective reality.) People will embrace a monarch or autocrat, too, because that leader has all the answers and must be revered, even revered by law. Take away all those uncertainties or the need to make decisions, and we have 'normalcy'.

I would probably be classified as a wine snob (but I'm not). I have---perhaps to my detriment---knocked back enough bottles so that I can tell plonk from drinkable. If I had to limit myself to two wines for the rest of my life, I would choose a 1997 Elio Altare Barolo or a 1996 Uccilliera Brunello di Montalcino....so that is where my tastes lie (for reference). I prefer Italian to French or any other. I'm not a fanatic wine snob, but I do enjoy it enough to have learned more than is necessary. I have one wine to recommend that falls within your price range: Gran Sasso Montepulciano d'Abruzzo. It's made from grapes very similar to sangiovese, but drink enough and you can distinguish between sangiovese and montepulciano (probably doing liver damage along the way). You can find it at Italasia outlets and it runs 595 baht, at least if you buy in bulk. If your really buy in bulk, you can get it for even less. It's great to sip, but also matches well with lots of Italian foods. It tastes well above its pay grade. Your bottle will disappear quite quickly.

Scrolling through all this, maybe one of the reasons I never wanted a tattoo is because I do not believe in 'mystical' or 'souls' or any other superstition that has absolutely nothing to suggest it is any more than a feeble hope. The Universe is endlessly fascinating, but it doesn't require any higher being or chanting or magic or mysticism. Particle physics explains everything, including this thing we call consciousness. Funny how so much evidence against souls and other nonsense screams at people, but few listen. Watch a person suffering from dementia or Alzheimers. Slowly 'who' they are evaporates. Their memories go. As other parts of the brain shut off, their personality changes. Control areas of the brain die off, and behavior borders on the bizarre. Eventually, there is nothing left of what was, The same happens when cancer ravages the body and brain. Despite that, there are those who think an instant after the body itself shuts off, that former person has some ethereal entity floating around in the cosmos, all memories and personality restored, and they're either sitting with a skydaddy or group of skydaddys on some cloud, or else depending on their behavior when they were still cognizant, coming back to life as a king or a cockroach, or something in between. That schtick might have sold a few thousand years ago, but today it is just drivel, embraced only by the eternally hopeful and wanting. So the 'mystique' part of tatts has even less attraction to me than the poor esthetics (in my opinion). Others, of course, are welcome to have a contrary opinion both on the esthetics and mystique. Happy for them if it gives them pleasure. I can have a beer with them while watching the sun set. Leave controversial subjects aside. I am happy to enjoy my skin unadorned as long as entropy doesn't take full control and disassociate my atoms, just as I'm happy to enjoy consciousness as long as the neurons keep firing. That all of what I am is purely physical doesn't change my ability to enjoy...or deceive myself into thinking this existence is anything more than physics playing itself out on a grand scale. It will all end, "I" will return to the non-existence that was (wasn't) me for the first 13.8 billion years. Until then.....

No mystique, no lure. The pain thing is silly. I don't choose to get a root canal or prostate examination, but both of those offer a benefit beyond an opinion of aesthetics. Tatts are a choice, to which everyone is entitled. I choose 'no'. While I do my best not to judge, I cannot make myself like tatts anymore than I can make myself like a food I find unpleasant. Not judging and not liking, however, are quite different things, the latter being out of one's control. Like it or not we all have preferences and we all have things we don't like. Nobody can make himself like something that he simply finds unappealing. In this thread, two of those things came up, which to me are things I just cannot like. One is tatts, the other is any religion, even if it is called a 'philosophy' and not a faith. I can accept that both give other people pleasure and are a personal choice, and it is unlikely to affect my opinion of said individuals (unless they proselytize). I just have zero need for either. I don't need any drawings on me, and I don't need any Stone Age guy to tell me things that vary from patently obvious to simply wrong.

I generally refrain from stating such opinions, as I do not want to violate any Forum rule, but this sort of thing has always rubbed me the wrong way. It is a component of all faiths (I am a 100% non-believer in any deity/deities/team of deities/competing teams of deities/etc.). "Believers" add things to what the guy who invented the faith first put down. Most faiths at the wholesale level aren't so bad, though why anyone needs them is beyond me. If the way to live a moral life isn't patently obvious to anyone reaching adulthood, then I think the person is flawed. At the retail level, however, every faith is just a layer of butter spread atop the older pagan beliefs or primitive superstitions that are much more strongly held. In Myanmar it is Moslems who catch birds, then sell them to Buddhists, who release them and ostensibly gain merit. That is kind of ecumenical capitalism which I might applaud, but it's pure abject superstition at its core. I also do not think there is a 'holy person' who ever lived who could teach me a goddamn thing. I can surmise what it takes to be good. Holy people seem to inherently know that, which is why they resort to manufacturing and then teaching BS and nonsense, as it keeps them employed. Most faiths were invented when life pretty much sucked. They worked to give people hope or keep them in line. Later faiths (mormonism, scientology) are just profit-making cults. Life for many people is pretty great now, so the false promises of most faiths (eternal boredom, getting off the wheel) are no longer attractive, so faith is dying away.

Well, he's on the Yale track team, so I suppose he was required to wear the uniform to compete. When I played sports in university they also made me wear a uniform. It helped the quarterback find me in the endzone, and the point guard to find me on the baseline for a jumper.

The list of attacks and threats against Dems and 45 critics is growing by the day. This low life depape was a QAnon guy and maga cultist. ... ALL who attacked the Capitol on 6 Jan 2021 were driven by the lies of loser 45, and the evidence is showing it was intended. Of course sane people know there was no possible reason those cultists should march to the Capitol as ... 45 told them. They were going to buy souvenirs in the Capitol gift shop? No, the sole reason 45 sent them was to overthrow democracy. This nonsense will continue until 45 is indicted for Sedition (6 Jan) and Conspiracy to Commit Espionage (stealing highly classified documents from the White House), tried, convicted, and executed if found guilty, per the law.

Who is spreading fake news about this heinous attack inspired by low life repubs and right wing media? Answer: Fascists and lunatics, which is to say repubs and maga

Same. Both are damaged individuals who did horrific crimes. To make light of either is in poor taste. Halloween is originally about ghosts and goblins and letting loose, not heinous real crimes.

"My" biggest mistake or "THE" biggest mistake? I think the biggest mistake most people make is choosing the wrong parents. Of course we cannot choose them, so I'm being facetious, but I think winning the Birth Lottery is the best thing that can happen to anyone, so losing it must the worst. It certainly makes life much more difficult. The Universe is quite random at that level, and by human objective standards, incredibly unfair. So much is inherited, and so much a function of where, when, and how one is born. Intellect, physical appearance, height, athleticism....those are largely inherited. Then if one was born, say, as a white male in a developed country, especially if sometime between 1950 and 1980, success in life is almost guaranteed. A person almost has to go out of one's way to fail if given those birth circumstances. Toss in decent intellect, a pleasing enough appearance, being an athlete....and one is going to be a success by late 20s at most. Once one has independent wealth (if wealth is a goal), life is pretty damn easy, and also pretty damn fun. So mistakes? I have come to the belief that life is about 95% dumb luck and 5% conscious effort. I was lucky enough to not make the mistake of being born to the wrong parents. Things just fell into place after that, so what I have 'achieved' are things for which I can hardly take credit. I'm the first to admit I didn't really earn much of what I have achieved. I'm just extra lucky I didn't <deleted> it up, because the ability to <deleted> up may well be my one independently developed skill that I've been able to sublimate.

Don't know what your country is Frits, but I bet it has lots and lots of blood on its hands.

Mental illness is on the rise around the world. It was exacerbated by the Covid restrictions, but it has been rising since the adoption of mobile phones and social media. It gets even worse when economic times are tough, and then in some countries additionally bad when Autumn and Winter come and sunlight is limited. In Thailand all the young people I know are obsessed with their various accounts on FB, TikTok, Insta, LINE, etc. Their posts are schizophrenic....one style trying to portray a hi-so life of constant partying with friends or shopping at fancy malls, eating at fine restaurants, etc., while the other kind of posts scream about how nobody understands them or why do they bother going on living, etc. At first I thought I knew lots of outliers, but that most people were likely well-adjusted. Nope. It's ubiquitous among young people who only know a life with social media and smartphones. The smiles you see on all the faces walking through Siam Paragon or Emporium are fake; those same folks are posting desperate messages on LINE or elsewhere. When I go back home and meet nieces and nephews, it's the same. Buried in the phone, living a Potemkin life on the one hand, then being full of angst on the other. Oddly, despite hearing or seeing the same angst in their friends, they all think they, alone, are the ones suffering. Perhaps this is a result of self-absorption: they cannot see what's right in front of them, because all they do is navel gaze. We've all grown use to seeing groups of 'friends' sitting at a table together, each buried in his/her phone, oblivious to the friends they are with, posting on their own social media or looking at their 'friends' sm posts and comparing. When I'm on the BTS, it is not uncommon for me to be the sole person in the car not gazing at a phone. I do not think any good could come from this addiction. I used to joke that folks older than Millennials and Gen Z never took 'selfies', because despite not having 6,752 FB 'friends' or 25,000 TikTok followers, we always had someone who could take a photo of us if needed. Thailand might have it worse than many---despite data indicating it is mid-range---because of its social system: an incompetent junta combined with one of the world's worst qini coefficient, plus the filial piety demanded by many elders who, frankly, are undeserving of the 'respect' (read: money) they demand from their progeny. Where does it all go? I suspect downhill for the foreseeable future, as economic times are unlikely to improve. Maybe this partial solution is too simple, but I suspect if everyone tossed their smartphone and deleted 90% of their social media---and began talking face to face again---depression and mental illness rates would drop dramatically. Of course, that 'ain't gonna' happen, because the addiction is too strong. So what's bad now is going to get worse. Have a nice day.

"Globalist Agenda" is a buzzterm those without a coherent argument, and those susceptible to the silliest conspiracy theories, embrace. I suspect we're only moments away from Ten Foot Shape-Shifting Lizard People from the rogue planet Nibiru shooting mind-controlling chemtrails over our heads so we'll buy illicit drugs run from Afghanistan by the CIA and a company headed by Queen Elizabeth, the Rockefellas, the Rothschilds and George Soros, because one conspiracy is never enough. Oh, and then admonish us to 'do your research'. which is to say goal seek on the internet.

I know that it is a self-appointed govt where a few factions battle each other for control, the people be damned. 1.3 billion Chinese people have ZERO say in how they are governed. Bo Xilai was in the wrong faction and paid the price in the power struggle with xi's faction. (Aside: Bo Xilai had a "map of China" on his office wall. The map included HK, Taiwan and---get this---Myanmar. This was told to me by an very old, very short, former roving diplomat with a distinctive accent. One guess as to his name.) I also know they are all wildly corrupt on a scale that would make the typical Western politician in a democracy look like a mere posseur. You probably think the democratic nation of Taipei is a 'renegade province', when the [Chinese] haven't controlled it for even one second in their entire sordid reign.

There are only two possibilities at play here, and one is conspiratorial. The [Chinese] are doing this simply because they are control freaks and feel corralling people like people are just cattle makes [them] feel all masculine. Xi is not so stupid to think he can control a virus that began in Wuhan and spread to every country on Earth and infected more than half of humanity. Also, the [Chinese] are so insecure they were way to slow to tell the world what was happening, and that prevented the world from taking quick precautions, probably resulting in millions of unnecessary deaths. Of course pride is more important than outsiders. The second possibility---conspiratorial---is that Covid is a bio weapon that slipped out of the lab and they know it will keep mutating until it becomes especially virulent. of course, if that's true, it will still spread unless China 100% closes its own borders. Nobody in or out. Of the two, I'm 99% on the side of Control Freaks and 1% grand conspiracy.

Yes. There's nothing like a self-appointed govt, answerable to no one, corralling 1.3 billion people into doing exactly what control freaks demand. Humans are not meant to be free and have any say in their governance. 1.3 billion Chinese exist merely to feed the ego and power fetishes of a guy who periodically gets dipped into a vat of Black hair dye. Who are those 1.3 billion who think they have any right whatsoever to decide how to live their lives ! The audacity of the minions !

There isn't necessarily a connection between talent and wealth...or fame. I cannot think of a talent or skill I have (though I was a pretty good amateur athlete, just not pro level), but I got rich because society pays for the obscure thing I could do well. Some little guy named Justin Bieber made millions singing a song "Baby, baby, baby, ooooh" that must have taken five seconds to write. Damien Hirst is worth a few hundred million, yet there must be ten million 'artists' with as much skill (but inferior marketing). The Universe isn't fair. There are a range of tastes in terms of entertainment. What I might consider pedestrian and banal is another's artistic treasure. What I enjoy is likely pure ennui to others. If what one produces makes one sinfully rich, one is a superstar; if one fails, call your production "Indy". In a free market cream doesn't necessarily rise to the top. The collective preference does. Lots of people think Kanye speaks for them...or at least they did. I'll never understand, but for those who can exploit society's preferences and deliver what the masses want, good on them.

Cannabis is helping refill the coffers of the property class. All of the ma&pa shops, Family Marts, etc., shut down because of Covid are now Cannabis Dispensaries. From 100 meters down Soi 4 to a similar distance down Soi 8 in BKK, there are now 10 shops selling weed. That's 10 recently empty properties now pulling in rent again.

You have to appreciate Prayut's honesty. Other world leaders pretend they give a hoot about their citizens, and a few might actually care. Prayut has no pretense. He couldn't care less about anyone who doesn't fill his coffers. Boon Rawd and Thai Bev likely keep him in silk, so he does their bidding, the people be damned.

Reserves are not some big box of money sitting idle. It is held in various currencies and invested in debt instruments in those currencies. It serves as a kind of collateral when the govt issues new debt, which the Thai govt has been doing in spades. When the current account goes negative, some reserve assets may be sold off to cover holes in domestic sovereign financing.