Walker88

Yes. People are simply fed up with robust economic growth, a soaring stock market and low unemployment. Let's bring back the carnage of 45's first term! We need another Recession and 6.8% unemployment. We need lots more Las Vegas (2017), Parkland HS, Sutherland Church, the Pittsburgh Synagogue, El Paso Walmart. 45 was paradise. 47 will be paradise turbocharged. We'll have a Recession, a 20% stock market decline, and if we're lucky and he does what we all know he's capable of doing, double digit unemployment.

What's the point of being King of the World if you cannot impose lese majeste laws and put other "nobility' under the same umbrella? Monarchs like Musk and 47 are even more infallible than a Pontiff (kind of like the redundancy of the term "very unique"), so they cannot be accused of hypocrisy.

Since the OP is "clearly" a biochemist, probably a PhD, he must already be fully up to speed on MHC-I proteins vs MHC-II. Yes, each of us has a unique protein structure around every cell in our body. While within an individual it's always the same, between individuals it's unique. Proteins are large and complex molecules, so there are slight variations in the bonds each protein has as well as the way it folds. The lucky ones among us might have gotten a certain HLA-B*15:01 allele from one of our parents. Really lucky people got one from each parent. That allele has the ability to bind with certain peptides that result from the breakdown of the Covid-19 virus as it enters a cell, which turbo charges killer T-cells and B cells to block that virus from infecting more cells and destroying the ones it has infected. Such individuals are 2.5 times more likely to suffer no symptoms from Covid-19 infection (if they have one HLA-B*15:01 allele from one parent) and up to 8.5 times more likely to suffer no symptoms if they got that allele from both parents. Luckier still are those folks who inherited the Delta 32 gene, a gene which not only protected one's ancestors from the Bubonic Plague, but also makes it unlikely the carrier can become infected with viruses such as HIV or Covid-19.

1 "witchhunt' civil sexual assault conviction + 1 "witchhunt" bank and insurance fraud conviction + 1 "witchhunt" charity fraud conviction + 1 "witchhunt" indictment for "defrauding the United States" (his Jan 6 and fake elector scheme, plus 1 "witchhunt" State charge in Georgia for (just find me...11,780 votes), plus 2 "witchhunt" defamation suits, plus 1 "witchhunt" indictment for stealing hundreds of documents classified TS/SCI, Codeword, SAP, HCS, RD, RH, etc. somehow equals "Hitler's Concentration Camps" that resulted in the deaths of 6 million people? Wow, the insanity runs deep in the MAGA cult. Is it possible that the guy is just a career criminal? I know that's sacrilege to cult members, but if I took even one TS/SCI document out of Langley o any of my overseas Stations, I would be in jail awaiting trial, even if I did it to work at home and had a safe to store it. I'm still trying to figure out how the guy even got his hands on HCS documents (Human Clandestine Sources). Even his lackey DNIs (Ratcliffe and Grenell) did not have access to HCS, nor does any POTUS normally (POTUSs are just told "a source with direct access whose previous reporting has proven highly reliable"). Also, no way Gina Haspel would have given him those. It seems to me now he had a source inside the agency. THAT guy should be in jail.

Maybe Khan Academy or some other site offers a course on Marxism, so one day you might actually know what it means. By the way, if 47 actually intends to pardon the terrorists who stormed the Capitol, injured 140 cops, and engaged in wanton destruction while hoping to hang the Vice President and overthrow democracy, Biden should pardon Ryan Wesley Routh. Seems fair.

Safe for foreigners. Most murders are Thai on Thai, save for the occasional German who stores frozen "meat" in Patts.

ARMY? You mean like battle hardened soldiers? Or are they all rapists and murderers and escaped convicts......and BROWN ! Do you know the demographic breakdown of migrants and illegals in the US? One guess as is which nation is represented the most in the last 4 years...... China. People escaping the Middle Kingdom and all that paradise. While I appreciate the need to have some sort of filter system for migrants, it’s best not to forget how much of a part dumb luck played in what you are and where you are. Do you think all of what you are is because of some special skills and talents you have, or just an accident of birth? Those born in the US, especially as a white male, materialized on 3rd base with the pitcher passing out on the mound. Easy to score, relative to the other 125 billion or so home sapiens who have lived since Oldavai Gorge or when Eve had a hankering for fruit. Because you were whelped in a developed and prosperous nation---of which your contribution at the time of your birth was ZERO---you are allowed to move yourself into an alien culture and reside as long as you want. You’ve now chosen Thailand. Good for you. Folks can tell you’re not native, and a good many of them might prefer you go home….NOW. Tribalism does that. It makes us see "others" as bad or potentially dangerous. Frankly, a little humility is called for. I happen to be a multimillionaire and graduated from top universities, an Ivy and Stanford. I turned down Harvard Biz and Wharton for my MBA. Am I special? No, just lucky. I never forget that. Can I say with certainty that some young woman who walked 800 miles from Central America, dragging two kids the whole way, trying to escape gang violence and poverty, would not have achieved far more than me, if she had been born as I was to smart and athletic parents in the US? I cannot. No contrafactual data. Yes, life ain’t fair. At the same time, I understand why the systems each bordered land has established needs to have some means of vetting all those who might want to come. Frankly, if up to me, I’d prefer that woman who walked 800 miles than some beefing, moaning MAGA on SSDI in a Red State, sitting on his bloated butt binge-watching the Kardashians or Fox. I suspect that woman will be grateful and work hard to add value to both her family and society, whereas the SSDI MAGA is a drain, as are the vast majority of Red States. Humility. Empathy. Those are attractive human qualities.

I might also suggest that you stop breathing. That's for your own good. Scientists, as well as chiropractors no doubt, have found that air is filled with lots of heavy metals in Thailand, as is most locally grown produce. Seafood is even worse, so take that shrimp off the barbie. What's the data say on people who stop breathing vs those who continue to harm themselves by breathing air filled with heavy metals? By the way, there is increasing evidence that naming a son "James Taylor" is highly correlated with baldness. You can't argue with facts. Plain as day. Don't do that to your own kids. Please. AT least throw in an extra initial, as the former lead singer of Kool and the Gang still sports some hair, but his parents were prescient enough to name him J. T. Taylor. Whew! Lucky.

Come on, he's an expert. We're lucky to have him sharing his well-researched wizdumb. Why, from that guy I'd take advice on how to raise kids, what my asset allocation should be in terms of equities, fixed income, cash and physicals, my exercise protocol, and hair growth. As a bonus, he could teach me how to take dramatic selfies with eyes that scream "Do you know what THEY are trying to do to you!"

I'll risk it and take you seriously. Bangkok is a great city. It is quite modern, has good commo technology, great healthcare, and a wide range of restaurants covering every taste, from Thai to Japanese to Italian to Chinese to Indian to French to burgers and wings. Grocery stores carry lots of Western staples, if one wishes to eat those foods, you can find most any clothing or electronic item you might want (except if you have large and narrow feet, like my 12 B, best your bring shoes from home). If one is an exercise fanatic, good gyms are everywhere and inexpensive. Transportation is convenient (BTS Skytrain and MRT underground), and even if taxi drivers try to cheat you, rides are still cheap. Nightlife is whatever you want it to be, from nightclubs to bars to the things for which Thailand has a reputation. For a Westerner, especially one who hasn't traveled much, the city can be somewhat exotic. It's also safer than most major Western cities, almost on par with Tokyo. Suvarnabhumi Airport is a major hub and one can catch a flight to almost anywhere from there. The downsides are that it is crowded and the air is not the best, especially during the field burning season. Also, there are really only two seasons: really hot, and rainy & really hot. One gets used to the heat, but it can take time.The bureaucracy can be frustrating, too, but a little patience and a polite manner get one through that. I've lived in many countries, and I find Thailand and Bangkok to be a place where one can easily and quickly adapt......and enjoy. What I like is that each little neighborhood in Bangkok becomes like a village: everybody knows everybody and gets along really well, both Thais and expats.

You talking about Mali (where 45 told one widow "Get over it, jeesh")? Maybe Irbil, where---according to 45---"nobody was hurt" (the response to the killing of Gen Suleimani)? Oh, you're talking about the servicemen killed by some of the 5000 jihadis 45 ordered released in Afghanistan, the guys who now run Afghanistan. So how would you MAGAs have handled the withdrawal, whose time table was set up by 45? In a protracted withdrawal, maybe 45 would have sent Proud Boys to supervise, since the Taliban would have had much more time to go after servicemen and contractors?

Silly MAGAs, riddle me this.... If NOLA is "Biden's America (sic), then is 47's America Las Vegas (2017), Sutherland, TX, Santa Fe HS, Thousand Oaks, El Paso Walmart, Virginia Beach, Parkland HS, Tree of Life Synagogue, Plano, TX? Is 47's America Cesar Sayoc (Google images of his truck), Robert Bowers (Tree of Life Synagogue aided new immigrants to the US), Christopher Hansson (whose spreadsheet of assassination targets used all the nicknames 45 coined, such as "Pocahontas"? Here's another question...and this from someone who is not a fan of any superstition such as Islam...? When a white military guy goes crazy, the first reaction is "PTSD", but if the military guy is Moslem, he's a fanatic jihadi. Maybe he's just crazy, like the white guy Green Beret who rented the Tesla Cybertruck used in the recent Las Vegas incident? Oh, and how is 47, or his picks like Hegseth, Patel and Gabbard going to solve the issue of serving military types going crazy? How will they all solve crazies who shoot up schools or Walmarts whose majority customers are Hispanic? More guns? Teachers with a handgun and minimal training expected to go against a guy with an AR-15, or a 70 year old Greater at Walmart expected to do the same?

I don't know. My equity portfolio really enjoyed 2024, and as far as I know, Biden was still President. I'm out now, as I believe 47 will preside over a 20% decline in the S&P in 2025, with UE somewhere in the 5-6% range and the US in a Recession by the 4th Quarter. Even MAGA cult members will be calling Biden-Harris the "good old days" by 2027.

Oh my! Vicky Nuland? I have seen this silly nonsense in the past, and it is laughable, except to those who "do research" on the internet, which means goal seek and engage in confirmation bias. What ^that poster is trying to talk about and suggest he "knows things from his research" is from years ago when Maidan Square happened and the former PM Yanukovych of Ukraine---a Putin stooge---was overthrown. He was PM after the GRU poisoned a former Ukraine PM, Yushchenko, with dioxin. If anyone actually knows Vicky Nuland and Geoffrey Pyatt, they laugh at these silly internet conspiracy theories and at those who believe them.

There seems to be some lack of knowledge about what "evidence" means. In the interest of educating those who clearly need it, here is an example of evidence. It relates to a guy whole stole boxes of highly classified documents and put US national security, as well as the identities of foreign clandestine assets, at risk.

Those Repub Talking Heads sure do have an odd definition of "disgrace". Consider: 45 left office with a Recession and 6.8% unemployment. 45 was the first POTUS since Herbert Hoover to leave office with fewer Americans employed than when he entered office. Biden will leave office with a booming economy, which has grown 3 times higher than the average G7 economy since 2020, 4% unemployment, and a stock market that bolted upward....but is now having second thoughts about who is taking over. While the entire world has seen inflation since the end of Covid, the US under Biden has slashed it from 9% down to 2.5%, all while maintaining a growing economy. Even Carter/Reagan and Volcker couldn't pull that off. Manufacturing jobs are +800,000 under Biden, an actual bipartisan Infrastructure Bill was passed (as opposed to "Net Week is Infrastructure Week" [and the Arrival of Godot]), prescription drug prices for things like insulin are down, and the US produces more energy than it uses. Most Presidents would love to be such a "disgrace". Admittedly where the two men are equal is that Mexico paid as much for a border wall under both Presidents, $0 The fact that Biden's performance could be so far superior to 45, despite Biden's age issues, is both a testament to Biden's strength as well as a reminder of just how incompetent the 6-time bankrupt, now convicted felon and civil convicted sex offender is, convicted bank and insurance fraudster, and charity fraudster is. The true disgrace will take office again 20 January, no doubt doing an even worse job than his first attempt. Flags will be flying at half staff to honor Jimmy Carter, but likely also to mourn the carnage to come under 47. I suspect 2025 will see at least a 20% decline in the S&P, unemployment rising to somewhere between 5-6%, and the start of a Recession. It will be tough to blame Biden, but 47 and guys like Jennings will try. And ye shall truly know the meaning of disgrace.

Was Will's joke too subtle?

Like every year, there's good and bad. I wouldn't have it any other way. Life should be full of challenges. It's the only way one can test himself and discover the true extent of one's skills and talents and strength. Perfection is wildly overrated. The Paradise of various religions sounds like Hell to me. Boring. I greatly enjoyed 2024. I've immunized myself from the mayhem and economic decline I expect in 2025, so I will enjoy next year, too.

I'm sure you'll be raising a glass Tuesday night to Joe and Kamala, who helped make 2024's massive S&P gains possible., by helping lead the recovery from the Recession the last guy left in his wake. I suspect at the end of 2025, the only thing you'll be lifting toward the new guy is a middle digit.

I'm not sure you are aware of the nature of reality. In another post you thought you were making a valid point by saying if gravity is strong enough to hold water on the planet, how can a tiny little bird fly? Well, easy. Water is made up of very tiny, very light things called molecules. I'm sure you've heard of them. Of course even those are made up of smaller atoms, which are made up of protons, neutrons and electrons, some of which are made of quarks and muons. Anyway, gravity acts on individual particles, and despite gravity being a weak force, it's strong enough to attract the extremely light molecules. As I noted in an earlier post, each molecule is on a force vector aimed at the Earth's center of mass, and these force lines are not parallel. Thus, bodies of water can stay on the surface of a spherical planet. Sometimes a photon smacks into some water molecules and has enough force to break the bonds between atoms and molecules, and you get something called evaporation. Heated air, which means the air molecules are moving quickly, can also hit H2O molecules and have enough energy to break bonds and cause evaporation. A tiny bird is also made up of molecules, but they are joined together by other forces of nature, so gravity cannot pull any of them away and disintegrate the bird, nor can photons or rapidly moving air molecules, unless the bird is moving through air at extreme speeds. The bird, however, has muscles that create lift, so that it can essentially make itself 'lighter than air', and fly, overcoming the weak gravitational force. Birds have a service ceiling, just as airplanes do. Once the air is too thin, their wings and efforts cannot overcome the force of gravity, and they fall back to where the air is dense enough so that controlled flight is possible. Sometimes aircraft end up going into a flat spin, and can never regain lift after exceeding their service ceiling, and gravity brings them crashing to Earth.

tl:DON'T r Oh, it’s not so simple. EVERYTHING is connected. There are always poor and always will be poor. The world has lifted billions out of poverty, so that in most countries being poor is a lot more comfortable than it was 500 years ago. The gimmick the world collectively agreed on was fiat money. Print money now, and it lifts people up, either through a social safety net or because an entrepreneur borrows this printed money and starts a business that employs people. All well and good. The problem arises when debt has to be repaid. The way the world addressed that was to gear economies to an “acceptable” level of inflation, which for the US Fed is 2%. That allows debts to be inflated away, or at least get serviced, which is good enough. Nobody thinks sovereign debt will ever be repaid. Now that system requires lots of fine tuning, along with a good deal of luck. Absent a Black Swan event, or else leaders who abuse the privilege of conjuring money, it works for a long time. Covid was a Black Swan. Folks can argue it was handled poorly, but the fact is as it arose, nobody knew how severe it might become. Once nations decided to shut down, money printing had to go into overdrive. That has resulted in inflation, exacerbating the abuse of the money printing privilege leaders have. In the US, we had both. The tax cut for the wealthy---about the only “accomplishment” of the two years when Republicans controlled the House, Senate and White House....just added debt. In the 4 years from January 2017 to January 2021, $8,400,000,000,000 was added to the US National Debt. That equates to $25,000 for every man, woman and child in the country, or $1000 for every person on Earth. That is a lot of spending power, and all those trillions chased goods and services, resulting in the inflation the US experienced. Most of the rest of the world did the same thing, so inflation was worldwide. Politicians or wannabe autocrats know the average person is dumb, and nether understands economics nor that correlation does not equal causation. If inflation is today, then the blame goes to whomever happens to be in charge today. Also, when someone claims “only I can fix it”, people want to believe. There is precious little link between anything Biden did and the inflation that was present when he was in the White House, nor does the POTUS elect have the slightest clue about how to address it. Now sometimes things settle down on their own, or with a boost from Fed policy. US inflation peaked at 9%, and is now running about 2.7%, less than most nations. Inflation, however, is a measure of ALL prices, and the index is based on a theoretical basket of goods and services the average consumer might use. People tend to see only one thing---such as the price of eggs---and extrapolate that over everything to arrive at a false idea of overall inflation. Yes, egg prices are up, but guess what’s down? Fuel. Rent, at least rent relative to home ownership, is also down. In fact, it is now 35% cheaper to rent than buy a home in the US. A good deal of inflation results from cheap money chasing assets. The last decade or so has seen the elite accumulate a much higher percent of assets in all economies. The qini coefficient is on the rise everywhere. That puts pricing power into the hands of the elite, who can then impose their own wants on to the masses. I am not of the opinion that things will get any better, because society has much less need for the number of people it has. Many of the things that have benefited economies in the last few decades have been stopgap solutions to an intractable problem. Debt soared in order to make work for the masses. In the US, access to home equity allowed the middle class to live above their means. That also required key asset prices like homes to remain stable. In 2008 a bubble burst, and that threw everything into a period of madness and decline…until ZIRP, or free money for years on end. That ran its course when inflation finally arose. The can has been kicked down the road for years, and maybe it can continue to be kicked. I think not. Human labor is increasingly losing its pricing power, and there are fewer stopgap measures to support those who need support. Debt levels are too high, and central banks are stuck between a rock and a hard place: if rates stay low, inflation will jump….if rates rise, debt service becomes more difficult. Each 1% upward shift in the US Yield Curve adds $360 billion per year in the budget deficit. Despite the US being viewed as the worst offender of debt, very few major economies are any better, and most have a worse debt-to-GDP ratio. Japan is the worst. In Europe, maybe only the Netherlands has a decent ratio; the rest top the US'. Hard choices must be made, and those making the choices tend to think of themselves first, so it isn’t going to get any better for the masses. Cut government spending, and the masses suffer. Keep spending, and inflation hurts….the masses. So inflation has not been a “tax on the poor”. It is a consequence of measures taken to lift the poor from poverty, in contrast to what the poor experienced from Oldavai Gorge until maybe the Marshall Plan or Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society.

Carbo-phobia is way out of hand. Individual metabolism varies, as does the amount of exercise people do. I eat a ton of carbs---pizza, pasta, French bread---though I also aim for 2 gm/kg/day of protein. I hit the gym 6 days a week for resistance training and cardio/HIIT. I just had a complete physical. HbA1c is 5.2. Tryglycerides are 66 mg/L, while thyroid and liver readings are normal. HDL-C is 68. Body fat is 11%. Doctor did not say to lay off the carbs. Carbs do not seem to be the bogeyman those chiropractors claim.

The joke's on you. You might think your little greeting card looks impressive, but the reality paints a very different picture. Guess where 62% of total US GDP is generated? (Hint: It's blue on your greeting card.) You should say 'thank you' to those blue areas, as it is their skill and hard work that pays your government pension. Red areas are mostly all net takers from the Federal trough, while blue pays the bills.

While I appreciate the good intentions of those who want to use the 14th Amendment to do the needful---those true American patriots---I'm kind of looking forward to the abject disaster 47 is going to make of things. The best way to crush MAGA forever is not to make a martyr of him, but to let him do what he does best: fail miserably. Rational people know that if not for his Game Show and the fantasy manufactured by Mark Burnett, the guy would still just be the laughing stock of NYC and Atlantic City business. I've immunized myself against the certain economic fallout he will bring about, so I'm just going to grab the popcorn and sit back watching his sycophants and cult members get disillusioned with the clown to whom they've pinned their false hopes and delusions. I think Vegas has long odds on him surviving his 4 years, but I do hope he stays above ground long enough to utterly destroy every last delusion his cult has of him. Only then will the US get on track to an actual recovery of rational political beliefs and ideologies. The US needs at least two genuine political parties, not a cult of personality, especially when the messiah is as terribly flawed of a human being as 47 is. To repeat again that old haiku from Basho: Go ahead cricket Chirp away I know it's Autumn

47? At 12:00:01 on the 20th of next month. Of course, that won't help him in NY and GA, as the GA charges and the NY felony convictions are State, not Federal matters. I guess after that, he'll be rather busy trying to get the price of bacon down, though as yet he doesn't even have the concept of a plan on how to do that, and even admitted---albeit AFTER the election---he doesn't know how. He did say he could end the Ukraine war in an hour, so I'm going to keep the TV on at US Eastern time of 13:00:01, ready to rejoice over Ukraine's freedom. Is that too optimistic? I'm waiting for him to finally say something truthful, such as "Nobody knows more about mendacity than me."