TallGuyJohninBKK

Got this today via SMS from CIMB:

He's also been the beneficiary, like many others, of the rising prices of US real estate over the decades... "Biden bought the five-bedroom, 2.5-bath former DuPont mansion at 6 Montchan Drive, Wilmington, Delaware, in 1974. He bought the 10,012-square-foot home in disrepair for $185,000.... He spent two decades renovating and living in it before selling it for $1.2 million in February 1996." https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/factcheck/2020/10/22/fact-check-joe-biden-owns-2-homes-pictured-viral-meme/3720570001/

In part because he made a good amount of money during his time in the private sector from January 2017 to 2020 after ending his tenure as vice president, as has been well documented: Trump’s False Claims About Biden Wealth... "But over the next 23 months, according to Forbes, citing tax filings, the couple made $15 million. Forbes said Joe Biden received $2.4 million in speaking fees and $1.8 million from book tour events. It also said he brought in $775,000 from the University of Pennsylvania, where he is the Benjamin Franklin professor of practice and where he heads the Penn Biden Center for Diplomacy & Global Engagement. It said Jill Biden added $700,000 in speaking fees. ... While Trump is right that Biden spent many years on a government salary, the former vice president has had some very lucrative years in the private sector. ... And there is no evidence he earned money through any kind of corruption." https://www.factcheck.org/2020/10/trumps-false-claims-about-biden-wealth-recovery-wishes/

Indeed.. But it equally would be more useful and productive if people posting their personal experiences also provided the pertinent details, such as what Immigration office was involved, and what kind of transaction triggered the TM30 request. Without that, readers really have no way of clearly knowing what actually transpired and why.

Most of the recent sources cited above in this thread by various Trump supporters here are deemed "questionable sources" by MediaBiasFactCheck.com -- which supposedly are not allowed as legitimate news sources on the forum. For example: "Overall, we rate Just the News Questionable and Right Biased based on story selection that mostly favors a conservative perspective. We also rate them Mixed for factual reporting due to numerous failed fact checks and the promotion of conspiracy theories and right-wing propaganda." https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/just-the-news/

More Fox News source rubbish, recycled by the Daily Mail, similar to the debunked claims by Rep. Jordan involving Anthony Blinken... "Brennan, the CIA chief during Obama's administration made the admission during his four-hour testimony to House Judiciary Committee investigators behind closed doors last week', Fox News reports."

Further: https://democrats-judiciary.house.gov/news/documentsingle.aspx?DocumentID=5150 Judiciary Committee Democrats Respond to Baseless Claims about Secretary Blinken Washington, April 21, 2023 "From a Judiciary Committee Spokesman: "To be clear, no part of that interview demonstrates that Tony Blinken or any other Biden campaign official asked Mike Morell to write a letter about Hunter Biden’s laptop. ... "At no point during his interview did Mr. Morell testify that Secretary Blinken directed or asked him to write any letters. Instead, Mr. Morell testified that Mr. Blinken sought his advice, as many others have. In response to questions posed by Chairman Jordan’s own lawyers, he testified that Mr. Blinken did not “direct, suggest, or insinuate in any way” that he should write a letter about Hunter Biden’s laptop."

Your link ties to another Fox news report... predictably... The letter was legitimate and was voluntarily signed by all those who signed it, including multiple former officials from the Trump admin. Regardless of whether a Biden campaign official at the time had any role in the origins of the letter.

Either your memory is failing, or your attention to accuracy is... There were no "fifty FBI agents." There was a group of former federal intelligence officials, including multiple ones from the Trump admin, who correctly said in a public letter that the election season claims involving Hunter Biden back in 2020 had "all the classic earmarks of a Russian information operation.” The list was composed mostly of former CIA and NSA types, and few if any former FBI folks (none that I can find), relative to the false claim of your post above. And, they didn't claim they knew for a fact or had proof the laptop disclosures were Russian disinformation. They said the disclosures had "the classic earmarks" of Russian disinfo, which they did. From their letter at the time: "“We want to emphasize that we do not know if the emails, provided to the New York Post by President Trump’s personal attorney Rudy Giuliani, are genuine or not and that we do not have evidence of Russian involvement,” the letter reads. But, it continues, “there are a number of factors that make us suspicious of Russian involvement.” POLITICO thus explained the reasons for the suspicion of Russian involvement at that time: "But the release of the material...has drawn comparisons to 2016, when Russian hackers dumped troves of emails from Democrats onto the internet — producing few damaging revelations but fueling accusations of corruption by Trump." https://www.politico.com/news/2020/10/19/hunter-biden-story-russian-disinfo-430276

The Republicans have been pursuing the Joe Biden-Burisma-Ukraine claims since at least 2019, nearly 4 years now... And in all that time, they've produced nothing credible / substantiated of any wrongdoing by Joe Biden.... Is this latest round likely to be any different?..... https://www.seattletimes.com/nation-world/nation-politics/graham-launches-probe-into-bidens-burisma-and-ukraine/ Graham launches probe into Bidens, Burisma and Ukraine Nov. 21, 2019 at 2:42 pm ----------------------------------- Meanwhile, we see the Faux political propaganda machine continuing its relentless march... https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/fox-news-bias/

The spawn of Giuliani.... More unsubstantiated nonsense. "In a statement Wednesday, Jamie Raskin, D-Md., the member of the Oversight Committee, said the FBI team that briefed him and Chairman James Comer, R-Ky., on Monday said “that the Department of Justice team of prosecutors and FBI agents under U.S. Attorney Scott Brady determined that there were no grounds to escalate their probe from an initial assessment of the allegations surfaced by Rudy Giuliani to a preliminary or full-blown investigation and that it was therefore closed down.” https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/congress/house-republicans-attack-biden-family-viewing-fbi-document-rcna88413

I'm on a retirement extension of stay. And I did my last two 90 day reports online to BKK CW, and those both followed several domestic trips with hotel stays inside Thailand. The two online reports were in early January and late March of this year. Both were routinely approved, and in neither case was there any issue about needing to update my TM30 (which was last filed in 2019 or so). Of course, had the same home residence for the entire period of years here. Also had a certificate of residence done in person at BKK CW earlier this spring, and no demand then about updating my TM30. My last extension of stay was last fall at BKK CW, and likewise, no demand about updating my TM30 then.

I'm guessing you meant to say.... "When I submitted my TM47 [90-day report] online, I received an automatically generated reply telling me to update the TM30." ???

Indeed, that's WHY there is a prevailing culture of vigilantism here, because the common Thai citizen full well knows that the police here have a long pattern of excusing and abetting misconduct / illegal acts by those with wealth and/or influence, because they financially benefit by doing so. Heck, the police did exactly that involving the rich, hi-so low-life who struck and killed one of their own officers (the Red Bull case). So what chance for justice does a win motorcycle taxi driver have against some rich, entitled punk driving around in a Mercedes while intoxicated?

Not just "when requested," but as he was clearly obligated to do under federal law.... something Trump has consistently shown he cares not a whit about.

You have no credible basis for making that claim.... (that COVID deaths among the elderly aren't "much of a surprise." Just because a person is older and/or has other health issues doesn't by any stretch mean they're already at death's door. And, many of the chronic health conditions that increase a person's risks from dengue also increase their risks from COVID: "The main risk factors for severe dengue fever were secondary infection, and co-morbidities (hypertension and diabetes). https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7810113/

If the traditional patterns hold, we'll have a few months now during the so-called rainy season when air pollution levels here will be relatively low, followed by yet another seasonal spike of choking air pollution toward the end of the year lasting 5-6 months into next spring (the ag burning season). The annual rinse and repeat cycle. PM2.5 readings today for Thailand -- good to moderate: http://aqicn.org/station/thailand/bangkok/chulalongkorn-hospital#/z/5

And yet more than 4 times as many COVID deaths (69) in just one week compared to 5 months of dengue deaths (15).... I guess there's an awful lot of your "unluckyness" going round.

Of course, lost in the familiarly misleading partisan headline of this and similar threads posted here lately is the fact that Biden has been intentionally, deliberately uninvolved in the criminal investigation of Trump, and it's been/being handled by an independent special counsel. https://www.c-span.org/video/?528657-1/special-counsel-jack-smith-delivers-statement-indictment-president-trump# "“We have one set of laws in this country, and they apply to everyone,” said Justice Department Special Counsel Jack Smith, who delivered a brief statement to the press on the indictment of former President Trump. Mr. Smith also urged the “defendants must be presumed innocent until proven guilty…in a court of law.” President Donald Trump was indicted on 37-counts, with 31 counts related to violations of the Espionage Act." "An ongoing special counsel investigation was opened by U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland on November 18, 2022, to continue two investigations that had been initiated by the Justice Department (DOJ) regarding the former U.S. president Donald Trump. Garland appointed Jack Smith, a longtime federal prosecutor, to lead the independent investigations. Smith was tasked with investigating Trump's role in the January 6 United States Capitol attack, and Trump's mishandling of government records, including classified documents." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smith_special_counsel_investigation Independent counsel Smith doesn't work for Biden and doesn't report to Biden. That's what it means when they say independent special counsel.

The current Thai government isn't doing anything significant to reduce the country's high levels of seasonal PM2.5 air pollution. But at least they've now begun a new stricter reporting system that will better show the public just how bad things can get here:

The cost of clean air in Thailand "Air pollution increases the risk of many non-communicable diseases, such as ischaemic heart disease, stroke, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and lung cancer. In April 2022, PM2.5 concentration in Thailand's air was four times higher than the WHO annual air quality guideline value. This means the Thai population breaths in air that is too polluted, and which will affect their health. In 2016, it was estimated that over 33,000 deaths in Thailand were attributable to ambient air pollution." ... Research conducted by Associate Professor Witsanu Attavanich, an environmental economist at Kasetsart University, estimated that the social cost generated from PM2.5 nationwide in 2019 is equal to 2.17 trillion THB per year, accounting for almost 11% of gross domestic product of that year. https://www.who.int/thailand/news/detail/08-06-2022-the-cost-of-clean-air-in-thailand

"State Of Global Air reported that in 2019, over 32,000 deaths in Thailand were attributable to ambient particulate matter pollution (PM2.5). While more recent data is yet to be released, the trend is upward, and it’s very likely that in 2023, even more deaths will be attributable to air pollution." https://breathesafeair.com/air-pollution-in-thailand/#Air_Pollution_in_Thailand "A senior public health official has claimed that since the beginning of the year more than 1.3 million people in Thailand have fallen ill from air pollution, which kills more Thai people each year than obesity or smoking. According to the WHO’s State of Global Air report, air pollution accounted for nearly 8% of all deaths (more than 41,000 cases) in Thailand in 2019, with PM2.5 ranked as the top risk for such deaths." https://airqualitynews.com/headlines/air-pollution-hospitalises-200000-in-one-week-as-fumes-emissions-and-smoke-descend-on-thailand/

And Thailand just reported 69 new COVID deaths in the past one week.... Guess that helps put things in perspective some.

Seems the investigation of the SNP's finances began in 2021, more than two years ago now, and Murrell and his cohort were arrested by police and released in April, more than two months ago now, and no further action taken against them as yet. The police seem to be proceeding here at a quite leisurely pace.

So let me get this straight from reading the above news reports.... First her husband and the party's former treasurer are arrested by police, and then later released without any charges being filed. And now Sturgeon herself is arrested by police, and then again shortly thereafter released without charge. I'm not familiar with law enforcement in Scotland... But all of the above seems a very odd way for police to be going about their business. Usually, police only arrest people when they're pretty sure they have a good basis to believe they've committed a crime/crimes, and plan to seek the filing of charges.