Callmeishmael

My grandparents lost a total of 3 out of 13 children back in the 1920s. Vaccines would have saved those kids. As my oldest aunt once told me: "In those days everyone lost one or two".

Many, if not most, middle-class boys go through an Army Reserve Training when they are in high school. This exempts them from the draft. So the actual draftees are heavily skewed towards the working class/rural kids.

Except that Trump loves the military and usually gives them more money than they even ask for. Aside from cutting the DEI programs he will probably add a 4th supercarrier fleet! Don't expect DOGE to touch the Defense budget, which is probably the most bloated and wasteful part of the Federal Government!

Dear God! In addition to the uneven sidewalks I now have to worry about GG touching me?? That's it, I'm giving up walking in Thailand! 😜

I can speak and read Thai fairly well. One problem I have is all the regional dialects. If I drive for two hours away from Bangkok everyone sounds like they are speaking an entirely different language. My wife wants to move up north when I retire, but I'm not looking forward to having to learn Phasa Nua!

It could be worse... Just what would he do if he found himself in a toilet with no tissue paper!

So you're saying that the problems that California faces are based on color/ethnicity? I agree that California is no longer livable, but that's because of over crowding and cost of living, not the fact that my neighbors were Chinese rather than white Southern Baptists!

I just completed this quiz. My Score 40/100 My Time 113 seconds  

Interesting screenshot. However you cut out part of the description: Notice the last line: Hight for factual reporting. Now let's take a look at a pro-Trump media outlet:

I did Cambodian border runs when I first came to Thailand about 23 years ago. While waiting for my stamp at the border I noticed people just walking across the border a hundred or so meters away. It was only the need for proper stamps in your passport that made you use a border crossing between Thailand and Cambodia!

Was your ex-wife from Issan? Lots of people from central or southern Thailand are quite prejudiced and look down upon people from Issan, they often view them as 'Thai hillbillys'. She may consider you to be lo-so because you learned to speak Thai with an Issan accent.

Likewise. I've worked with and been friends with many Latinos and they don't do FGM, aren't religious extremists, are very family oriented and are usually very hard workers. If the US has to be flooded with immigrants, I would rather they be Latino than some of the other alternatives.

Back in 2000 there were widespread concerns about the reliability of electronic voting machines. After the Supreme Court awarded Florida to Bush, Gore decided to not pursue questions about the voting machines simply because casting doubt on the electoral outcome would be too divisive. His decision to stand by the public results in 2000 was mirrored by Pence's actions in 2020. Two men on opposite sides of the political spectrum who decided to put any person doubts aside and preside over their own defeats.

The Thai Air Force will probably order a dozen of those useless F35s to even up the trade imbalance!

Making the world safe for Liberian shipping!

I'm 1/2 Canadian and 1/2 USAian, but hold a US passport. If war broke out I would renounce the US passport and go to the Canadian Embassy with a copy of my mother's birth certificate!

How exactly are they going to prove citizenship? Non-Citizens can have US driver's licenses and Social Security cards and the US has consistently voted against having a national ID card. Will people have to bring their Passports or Birth Certificates to the voting stations?

That's a very interesting discussion with a thoughtful conservative. One quote really stood out for me: if you want to cut Social Security, if you want to tell people you’re cutting Medicare and Medicaid, you have to start with the other stuff that doesn’t seem as close to home, with the stuff that’s, you know, the comic books in Peru about wokeness or whatever. You have to cut that stuff out first, and you have to hold up the bloody head before you have popular interest and willingness to go with you to the stuff that touches their families.

This is exactly what I said in the last social security thread. Trump/Musk don't need to shut down Social Security, they just need to cut the personnel until the whole department fails. If they start demanding "in-person verification" by going into a SS office every year there will be a lot of unhappy posters here!

^^ Lack of law enforcement looks a lot like freedom, but it isn't really the same.

Getting back to the original topic, Trump cannot and will not get rid of Social Security. However, Musk's DOGE is already closing SS field offices and firing SS customer service staff. If they then purge the SS database of a few million questionable accounts the people affected will struggle to get reinstated. In some cases, they may end up dying (next winter!) before getting their payments started again. Also, making people people apply in person while closing hundreds of field offices will save billions of dollars for their tax cuts!

Well, on the bright side, we don't have to worry about Trump going to war with China.... He's too busy going to war with the US!

The last time I few AirAsia Economy I just didn't fit into my seat. I've flown Economy class my entire life, but if that is the current size of Economy Class seats I will just have to bit the bullet and spend more the next time I fly. The problem wasn't width, I am 185cm tall and weigh 80 kilos, it was leg-room. Even sitting straight up in my seat, my legs were too long to fit in the space between my seat and the back of the seat in front of me. I had to choose between 'man-spreading' and fitting my knees into the cracks between the seats in front of me, or bracing my knees against the seat back in front of me with my legs up in the air. Fortunately it was a short flight, I don't think I could have lasted more than an hour or so like that!

Although I am usually left-wing (I voted for Bernie), I agree with Musk on this one. Freedom of speech is really the foundation of a civilized society and imprisoning people for hate speech is just wrong. To paraphrase some old pundit: "I may disagree with everything you say, but I will always defend your right to say it."

I think "feebly pawing reporters" would be a better description!