TallGuyJohninBKK

The above cited article also quotes one Canadian source as saying it's been recent changes to Canada's own immigration policies that have driven the [relatively small -- 19K+ for the past year] influx of illegal Canada to U.S. border crossings. "NDP immigration critic Jenny Kwan said changes to Canada's immigration policy have helped fuel an exodus to the U.S. of students and temporary foreign workers. "It is quite possible that people are now finding themselves in this dire situation and looking elsewhere to establish themselves," she said."

Voter roll purging part of a broader Republican campaign: Republicans are suing more election officials over voter rolls in several battleground states September 20, 2024 Washington (CNN) — Attempts by conservatives to purge state voter rolls ahead of the November election, including from Donald Trump’s campaign and the Republican National Committee, are ramping up, prompting concern from the Justice Department that those efforts might violate federal rules governing how states can manage their lists of registered voters. .... Questioning the accuracy of voter rolls has long been a hallmark of right-wing efforts to raise doubts about the integrity of elections and featured prominently in 2020 when allies of the former president pushed false claims that scores of fraudulently cast votes helped Joe Biden win the presidency. [emphasis added] ... The right-wing effort to purge voter rolls has largely centered around claims that noncitizens are casting illegal votes in favor of Democrats. But reports of noncitizen voting in US elections are extremely rare. The right-leaning Heritage Foundation’s database of confirmed fraud cases lists fewer than 100 examples of non-citizens voting between 2002 and 2022, amid more than 1 billion lawfully cast ballots. [emphasis added] https://www.cnn.com/2024/09/20/politics/attempts-to-purge-voter-rolls-increase-as-election-nears/index.html

And as for your "calamity,": From the nonprofit Brennan Center for Justice that focuses on voting rights issues: Noncitizen Voting Is Already Illegal — and Vanishingly Rare April 17, 2024 The Brennan Center is part of a broad coalition tracking election-related disinformation. A big rumor we’ve identified rattling around the murkier regions of social media is that hordes of noncitizens are voting. That’s false. A lie. An urban myth. But it has also, somehow, become the glue that’s holding together disparate wings of the Republican Party. ... In 2017, my colleagues Myrna Pérez (now a federal appeals court judge) and Douglas Keith conducted an exhaustive study of 42 jurisdictions in the 2016 general election. They found that “election officials in those places, who oversaw the tabulation of 23.5 million votes, referred only an estimated 30 incidents of suspected noncitizen voting for further investigation or prosecution. In other words, even suspected — not proven — noncitizen votes accounted for just 0.0001 percent of the votes cast.” [emphasis added] (more) https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/analysis-opinion/noncitizen-voting-already-illegal-and-vanishingly-rare

More misleading nonsense..... as previously reported here, since the Alabama action didn't just target individuals who were believed to be non-citizens: "Last month, Alabama Secretary of State Wes Allen announced that he had begun inactivating the voter registrations of 3,251 people who had been previously issued noncitizen identification numbers. A Justice Department review of the purge also identified multiple native-born and naturalized citizens who were incorrectly identified as potential noncitizens during the voter purge. A coalition of voting rights groups separately sued Allen earlier this month over the move, alleging he illegally targeted and intimidated naturalized citizens." https://abcnews.go.com/US/doj-sues-alabama-election-official-allegedly-purging-voters/story?id=114317068 That's in addition to the fact that Alabama's entire attempted purge of its voter rolls, according to the Justice Department, would violate federal law by being done too close to the upcoming federal election. The only "calamity" here is that right-wing Republican election officials or Republicans at large in various states are attempting to force voting roll purges that end up targeting Americans who are legally entitled to vote.

Trump 2018: Trump on Kim: Tough talk ... ‘and then we fell in love’ September 30, 2018 WHEELING, W. Va. (AP) — President Donald Trump told a cheering crowd at a campaign rally that there was once tough talk “back and forth” between him and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un “and then we fell in love.” Trump said at the Saturday night rally in West Virginia: “He wrote me beautiful letters and they’re great letters. We fell in love.” https://apnews.com/article/4d56f6e8f99d4eefb2f22b7a6dd072d0 Trump 2024: Huh???

Trump backs out of "60 Minutes" interview after appearing "scattered" and incoherent in Wisconsin ... ""Where's my apology? They should apologize. They were wrong on everything. So I'd like to get an apology,” Trump said at a press conference in Milwaukee on Tuesday in which he repeatedly fumbled his words and showed signs of potential cognitive decline. The 78-year-old first confused the leaders of North Korea and Iran, and then suggested that 34 soldiers who suffered traumatic brain injuries from an Iranian attack during his presidency were merely experiencing "headaches." As The Washington Post reported, Trump "was especially scattered and hard to follow" at Tuesday's event. Several of his remarks were unintelligible, including a claim that Democrats want to "keep Black and Hispanic children trapped in family government." (more) https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/trump-backs-out-of-60-minutes-interview-after-appearing-scattered-and-incoherent-in-wisconsin/ar-AA1rANcy

All of the above leads me to believe one of two things. Either.... A. There are a handful of AseanNow member/posters here who are in fact ghost writing Trump's Truth Social posts (instead of Trump himself).... because what is written above in black and what a few AN posters here constantly bleat are virtually verbatim the same. or B. Those same AN posters are seriously challenged for being able to express any original thought on these topics, other than with the exact same sordid right-wing cliches that Trump feeds them....

As I said above, never been... But I thought I read in the past here about Phil ATMs often being non-working and/or hard to find, unlike Thailand.... The Thai cards charge foreign ATM usage and foreign currency fees. My U.S. cards, of which I have several, don't. What would be the point of bringing those kind of Thai bank cards?

I've got an upcoming first-time trip to the Phils for a week or so (accompanying my Thai wife on her business trip). I have a no fee / fee reimbursing U.S. debit card that should make withdrawing local funds from a Phil ATM no problem, apart from using the card itself there for POS purchases. But if anyone here is familiar, I could use some guidance on what the best value / most reliable / easiest to find working Phil bank ATMs are for foreigners to use.... We're gonna be staying in the Makati area... so not out in the boonies. TIA.

What's with this? Never heard of this below before... So just getting on the plane and arriving visa-exempt isn't sufficient anymore??? https://etravel.gov.ph/frequently-asked-questions

While entertaining, I think it's only fair to point out that the above headline could be used for almost any / every day in which Trump happens to be in the news for whatever reasons! 🙂

Nice turn of a phrase, regarding the juxtaposition of Trump supporters and the notion of "truth"!

Don't worry, John.... Rudy is still on Team Trump, even though it's thus far cost him his rights to practice law in New York and Washington DC, and is en route to potentially ruining him financially. Being in cahoots with Donald Trump is "great" for one's prospects.... That would seem to be a major part of the reason that Giuliani's daughter doesn't want Trump back in charge of the U.S., fearing he'd ruin the country the same as his involvement ruined Rudy. AND Judge ends Rudy Giuliani bankruptcy case, says he flouted the process with his lack of transparency July 13, 2024 NEW YORK (AP) — A judge threw out Rudy Giuliani ’s bankruptcy case on Friday, slamming the former New York City mayor as a “recalcitrant debtor” who thumbed his nose at the process while seeking to shield himself from a $148 million defamation judgment and other debts. [emphasis added] U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Sean Lane criticized Giuliani for repeated “uncooperative conduct,” self-dealing, and a lack of transparency. The judge cited failures to comply with court orders, failure to disclose sources of income, and his apparent unwillingness to hire an accountant to go over his books. ... Giuliani is now free to also pursue an appeal of the defamation verdict, which arose from his efforts to overturn Republican Donald Trump’s 2020 presidential election loss. (more) https://apnews.com/article/giuliani-bankruptcy-freeman-moss-2020-election-3cf8d70d1dc2608705c9f938bbb8941d

Rudy Giuliani’s Daughter: Trump Took My Dad From Me. Please Don’t Let Him Take Our Country Too “Nothing I have experienced prepared me for the very public and relentless implosion of my father’s life,” writes Caroline Giuliani, announcing her support for Kamala Harris. By Caroline Rose Giuliani September 30, 2024 "While Kamala Harris has gained extraordinary momentum by infusing this election with vitality and hope, I worry that too many Americans remain disconnected from the visceral, psychologically draining memory of Trump’s deeply destabilizing presidency. If enough people truly remembered what that chaos felt like, another Trump term wouldn’t even be on the table. But for those open to seeing the bare and unvarnished truth, there are unmistakable reminders of Trump’s destructive trail all around us, and it has broken my heart to watch my dad become one of them. As Rudy Giuliani’s daughter, I’m unfortunately well-suited to remind Americans of just how calamitous being associated with Trump can be, even for those who are convinced he’s on their side. Watching my dad’s life crumble since he joined forces with Trump has been extraordinarily painful, both on a personal level and because his demise feels linked to a dark force that threatens to once again consume America. Not to disregard individual accountability in the slightest, but it would be naive for us to ignore the fact that many of those closest to Trump have descended into catastrophic downward spirals. If we let Trump back into the driver’s seat this fall, our country will be no exception." (more) https://www.vanityfair.com/news/story/caroline-giuliani-trump-kamala-harris# For the record, Giuliani's daughter is an avowed liberal: Political views "Despite coming from a prominent Republican family, Giuliani has supported Democratic candidates.[28] During the 2008 United States presidential election, while her father was seeking the Republican nomination, she joined a Facebook group supporting Barack Obama called One Million Strong for Barack, and posted on her profile that she was a "liberal."[29][30][31] Giuliani left the Facebook group after online activity was reported in the media.[32] She supported Hillary Clinton in the 2016 United States presidential election, while her father was a vocal supporter of Donald Trump.[29][22][33] In 2016, when questioned about her political beliefs conflicting with her father's, she stated, "he knows and is fully comfortable with it and thinks I have a right to my opinion."[34][35][36] ... She accused the Trump administration of stoking "the injustice that already permeated" society, and criticized Trump's handling of the COVID-19 pandemic and his policies that rolled back protections for the LGBTQ community, women, immigrants, people with disabilities, and people of color.[29][38][39] She went on to endorse former U.S. Vice President Joe Biden and Senator Kamala Harris for the 2020 United States presidential election, and praised Biden's plans to combat climate change.[29][22][40] ... On September 30, 2024, Giuliani endorsed vice president Kamala Harris for the 2024 United States presidential election, writing in Vanity Fair: "I’ve been grieving the loss of my dad to Trump. I cannot bear to lose our country to him too."[42][43] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caroline_Giuliani

How and why Smith's current indictment can prevail even in the wake of the U.S. Supreme Court's recent ruling that presidents have sweeping immunity for "official acts." Jack Smith shows his cards just in time: January 6 case looks like the winning hand against Trump October 3, 2024 ... "To those who thought that the immunity decision would leave Smith nothing to prosecute, his new filing asks in essence “what can be retained?” The answer: Just about everything. As the filing states, “The defendant asserts that he is immune from prosecution for his criminal scheme to overturn the 2020 presidential election because, he claims, it entailed official conduct.” “Not so,” Smith insists. “Although the defendant was the incumbent President during the charged conspiracies,” Smith explains, “his scheme was fundamentally a private one. Working with a team of private co-conspirators, the defendant acted as a candidate when he pursued multiple criminal means to disrupt, through fraud and deceit, the government function by which votes are collected and counted—a function in which the defendant, as President, had no official role.” [emphasis added] (more) https://www.yahoo.com/news/jack-smith-shows-cards-just-101003123.html

11 damning details in Jack Smith’s new brief in the Trump election case From Trump’s fictitious stats about voter fraud to the FBI’s forensic analysis of Trump’s phone, prosecutors previewed how they would make their case at trial. ... Much of Smith’s brief focused on Trump’s state of mind in the weeks leading up to the Capitol riot on Jan. 6, 2021. Smith described a slew of conversations suggesting that the then-president knew his claims of election fraud were spurious. And Smith laid out evidence that Trump’s sole objective was to stay in power — not, as he and his lawyers have claimed, to exercise legitimate authority over election integrity. ... Inventing statistics Prosecutors said they would prove at trial that Trump and his allies often made up statistics about voter fraud “from whole cloth.” For example, Trump and allies alleged that 36,000 noncitizens had cast ballots in Arizona, changing the figure to “a few hundred thousand” five days later, eventually revising it back to “bare minimum … 40 or 50,000,” then to 32,000 and back up to the original number of 36,000. Broken promises of evidence One week after Election Day in 2020, Trump told then-Gov. Doug Ducey (R-Ariz.) that he was “packaging up” fraud evidence to share with him, prosecutors wrote. But Trump never provided it. Ducey told Trump that Arizona was all but lost, comparing it to being in “the ninth inning, two outs, and [the defendant] was several runs down,” Smith’s brief recounted. (more) https://www.politico.com/news/2024/10/02/jack-smith-trump-election-brief-details-00182287#

Prosecutors lay out new evidence in Trump election case, accuse him of having ‘resorted to crimes’ October 3, 2024 ... “The details don’t matter,” Trump said, when told by an adviser that a lawyer who was mounting his legal challenges wouldn’t be able to prove the false allegations in court, the filing states. ... Prosecutors also alleged that Trump advanced claims of fraud despite knowing they were false, recounting how he conceded to others that allegations of election irregularities made by attorney Sidney Powell were “crazy” and referenced the science fiction series “Star Trek.” Even so, days later, he promoted on Twitter a lawsuit she was about to file. In demonstrating his apparent indifference to the accuracy of the election fraud claims, prosecutors also cite an account of a White House staffer who after the election overheard Trump telling his wife, daughter and son-in-law on Marine One: “It doesn’t matter if you won or lost the election. You still have to fight like hell.” (more) https://apnews.com/article/trump-jack-smith-election-supreme-court-0b9969b480036bb1f7c61a73980d406c#

Another facet of Smith's legal filing, per Forbes: New Jack Smith Claims: Trump Hired Giuliani Because He Would Lie About Election Fraud Claims "Former President Donald Trump fired his attorneys after the 2020 election and replaced them with Rudy Giuliani because he would be willing to “spread knowingly false claims of election fraud,” Special Counsel Jack Smith alleged in a wide-ranging filing on Trump’s efforts to overturn the election, which claims Trump knew full well his election claims were false. ... The filing alleges Trump knew his claims of election fraud were false, with a different Trump attorney telling the then-president that they would get “slaughtered” if they tried to litigate the claims in court because the allegations were “bull<deleted>”—with Smith also claiming that when the lawyer told Trump they couldn’t prove his claims in court, Trump responded, “The details don’t matter.” [emphasis added] Trump and his allies invented their fraud claims “out of whole cloth,” Smith alleges, noting prosecutors would show at trial how they “repeatedly changed the numbers in their baseless fraud allegations from day to day” and made up “false figure[s] that they never verified or corroborated.” https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/new-jack-smith-claims-trump-hired-giuliani-because-he-would-lie-about-election-fraud-claims/ar-AA1rBu72

About 13 BILLION doses of the COVID vaccines have been given since the start of the pandemic. If there was any actual legitimacy to the issue you're raising, you wouldn't need to be scouring the internet for isolated reports from 2-3 years ago where something happened to happen to people after vaccination. People develop aneurysms, and did long before COVID vaccines came along, for all kinds of well established reasons that have nothing to do with COVID vaccinations. In fact, COVID the illness has been found to cause aneurysms in some cases. Even your cited article from Japan didnt find vaccination was the definite cause, but its authors did find the benefits of vaccination outweighed the risks.

'I've never liked him': See how JD Vance changed his tune on Trump "Ohio Sen. JD Vance has been formally nominated to become Donald Trump's running mate in the 2024 presidential election. But back in 2016, he was a fierce opponent, saying Trump could be "America's Hitler." " July 15, 2024 [past Vance comments on Trump reported in this CNN video report] https://www.cnn.com/2024/07/15/politics/video/jd-vance-trump-pivot-digvid

ABC News' fact check of the VP debate comments: "WALZ CLAIM: Gov. Walz said, "The persons closest to them, to Donald Trump, said he is unfit for the highest office. That is Senator Vance." FACT-CHECK: True Vance has shifted his view toward Trump since he first rose to prominence. Early in his career, Vance made a number of comments that were disparaging toward Trump. The specific comment that Walz seems to be referencing here is from a 2016 New York Times op-ed written by Vance ahead of the release of his book "Hillbilly Elegy." In the op-ed, Vance wrote, "Mr. Trump is unfit for our nation's highest office." [emphasis added] In years since the op-ed was published, Vance has said his views on Trump changed." https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/fact-checking-tim-walz-jd-vances-vp-debate/story?id=114405195

Vance has been a willing and active echo chamber for all of Trump's most recent notable and well documented lies: --the [not] stolen 2020 presidential election --Haitians immigrants [not] eating stolen dogs and cats --the false claims about vast numbers of undocumented resident/criminals running loose because of the Biden admin. And that's just the short list.... Vance has been an active participant and in some cases instigator of them. JD Vance spreads debunked claims about Haitian immigrants eating pets September 10, 2024 "Vance, who represents Ohio in the U.S. Senate, spread a debunked claim about Haitian migrants living in the city of Springfield, Ohio, on Monday, accusing them of abducting pets and eating them. The claim, which local police say is baseless, was made by far-right activists, local Republicans and neo-Nazis before being picked up by Vance." https://www.npr.org/2024/09/10/nx-s1-5107320/jd-vance-springfield-ohio-haitians-pets

The video exchange excerpt between Walz and Vance over the stolen election lies: https://www.nbcnews.com/now/video/walz-presses-vance-on-jan-6-and-2020-election-loss-220632133537

From the Hollywood Reporter on Walz' comments and challenge to Vance: "Walz later brought up the fact that Trump’s attempts to overthrow the results of the 2020 election and the subsequent actions of Vice President Mike Pence were ultimately the very reason that Vance was standing across from him on Tuesday night. “When Mike Pence made the decision to certify that election, that’s why Mike Pence isn’t on this stage,” Walz said. “What I’m concerned about is: where is the firewall with Donald Trump? If he knows he could do anything, including taking an election and his vice president’s not going to stand to it, that’s what we’re asking you, America: will you stand by your oath of office, even if the President doesn’t?” https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/politics-news/vice-president-debate-tim-walz-jd-vance-trump-jan-6-election-lies-1236019582/

The only moment from the VP debate that mattered Vance’s “damning non-answer” on the 2020 election exposed the true stakes for democracy in 2024. Oct 2, 2024 At the end of the vice presidential debate, Gov. Tim Walz asked Sen. JD Vance a pointed question: Did Donald Trump lose the 2020 election? Vance’s response: “Tim, I’m focused on the future. Did Kamala Harris censor Americans from speaking their mind in the wake of the 2020 Covid situation?” There is a clear right answer — that the 2020 presidential election was in fact legitimate — and Vance refused to offer it. It was, as Walz immediately noted, “A damning non-answer,” one that showed viewers who JD Vance is and what he stands for. Ultimately, every issue discussed earlier that night comes in second to the fundamental question of whether America’s democratic institutions deserve to endure. On that question, Vance truly is radical, and his exposure as such was the only truly important moment of the night. https://www.vox.com/politics/375285/vp-debate-vance-walz-democracy-2020-who-won