spidermike007

One of the problems with the major tourist zones like Pattaya, Samui and Phuket, is that they attract a lot of outsiders, Thais who are not from the area, and have no local pride, and nothing invested in the area. I saw a lot of that during the years that I was living in Samui. So there's just more of a tendency to misbehave and it seems like there's more of a tendency for the place to invite all sorts of Riff Raff, looking to make a quick buck.

Yes I have done this often with great results, you just have to be very careful because there are a lot of vendors who will sell supplements with low potency and very small quantities at more than their worth. So you have to do your research and make sure you know what you're buying.

In this world it is far easier to steal money through scams and gifting, bankruptcy, and taking small contractors for a painful ride, than it is to earn money in a righteous fashion.

A trio of polls out Sunday show that a majority of Americans disapprove of Trump’s handling of the presidency. His approval rating — which hovers between 39% and 45% in the three surveys— is the lowest for any newly elected president at the 100-day mark in more than seven decades, per CNN. Trump's approval ratings are negative as he nears 100 days in office. https://www.cnbc.com/2025/04/27/trump-approval-rating-economy-immigration-polls.html?__source=androidappshare

Trump is a circus clown. Few expected this level of chaos and such a slide in consumer confidence and poll approval numbers. Just a few of the insane things this goon has done already. He turned a legitimate federal employee designation into a loophole. By giving senior officials such as Elon Musk the title “special government employee,” Mr. Trump avoided requirements that they publicly disclose their financial holdings and divest any that present conflicts before taking jobs in the administration. He ended bans that stopped executive branch employees from accepting gifts from lobbyists or seeking lobbying jobs themselves for at least two years. He loosened the enforcement of laws that curb foreign lobbying and bribery. He dismissed the head of the office that polices conflicts of interest among senior officials. He jettisoned the head of the office that, among other things, protects whistle-blowers and ensures political neutrality in federal workplaces. He purged nearly 20 nonpartisan inspectors general who were entrusted with rooting out corruption within the government. As Mr. Musk’s political activities started to repel many potential customers of Tesla, his electric vehicle company, Mr. Trump lined Tesla vehicles up on the White House driveway and extolled their benefits. Then Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick urged Fox News viewers to buy Tesla shares. DOGE nearly halved the team at the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration that regulates autonomous vehicles. The agency has been investigating whether Tesla’s self-driving technology played a role in the death of a pedestrian in Arizona. As Trump’s trade war locks the world’s two largest economies on a collision course, America’s unnerved allies and partners are cozying up with China to hedge their bets. It comes as Trump’s trade push upends a decade of American foreign policy — including his own from his first term — toward rallying the rest of the world to join the United States against China. And it threatens to hand Beijing more leverage in any eventual dialogue with the U.S. administration. Hal Brands, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington, said China will “try to exploit Trump’s abrasive behavior to make inroads with U.S. allies and countries in the Global South.” Some scholars say Beijing is already gaining. “People lost the confidence, or even trust, for the United States, particularly for Donald Trump in the U.S. Not for China,” said Li Cheng, professor of political science at the University of Hong Kong. “So in that regard, China gains in the geopolitical landscape.” In the latest Ipsos poll, for the first time, more people globally now say China has a positive impact on the world than the United States. The pollster cited the broad backlash to Trump’s tariffs. With Trump saying that countries are “kissing my ass” to negotiate trade deals on his terms or risk stiff import taxes, Beijing is reaching out to countries far and near. It portrays itself as a stabilizing force and a predictable trading partner, both to cushion the impact from Trump’s tariffs and to forge stronger trade ties outside of the U.S. market. “America and China are now locked in a fierce contest for global supremacy,” Singaporean Prime Minister Lawrence Wong said in an April 16 speech. “Both powers claim they do not wish to force countries to choose sides. But in reality, each seeks to draw others closer into their respective orbits.” It’s all a sorry and sordid picture, a president who had already set a new standard for egregious and potentially illegal behavior hitting new lows with metronomic regularity. https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/27/opinion/trump-crypto-musk-spacex.html?smid=nytcore-android-share

They can rest assured that in Canada the government will not harvest their organs for profit. Canada rules!

Very true. You dress up a circus clown in a blue suit, and he is still a clown. And what about his trade and foreign policies? I have never witnessed such mind numbing stupidity. He is literally a Chinese and Russian wet dream. While the Swiss president was in Washington last week to lobby U.S. officials over President Donald Trump’s threatened 31% tariff on Swiss goods, the Swiss foreign minister was in Beijing, expressing his nation’s willingness to strengthen cooperation with China and upgrade a free trade agreement. As Trump’s trade war locks the world’s two largest economies on a collision course, America’s unnerved allies and partners are cozying up with China to hedge their bets. It comes as Trump’s trade push upends a decade of American foreign policy — including his own from his first term — toward rallying the rest of the world to join the United States against China. And it threatens to hand Beijing more leverage in any eventual dialogue with the U.S. administration. Hal Brands, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington, said China will “try to exploit Trump’s abrasive behavior to make inroads with U.S. allies and countries in the Global South.” Some scholars say Beijing is already gaining. “People lost the confidence, or even trust, for the United States, particularly for Donald Trump in the U.S. Not for China,” said Li Cheng, professor of political science at the University of Hong Kong. “So in that regard, China gains in the geopolitical landscape.” In the latest Ipsos poll, for the first time, more people globally now say China has a positive impact on the world than the United States. The pollster cited the broad backlash to Trump’s tariffs. With Trump saying that countries are “kissing my ass” to negotiate trade deals on his terms or risk stiff import taxes, Beijing is reaching out to countries far and near. It portrays itself as a stabilizing force and a predictable trading partner, both to cushion the impact from Trump’s tariffs and to forge stronger trade ties outside of the U.S. market. “America and China are now locked in a fierce contest for global supremacy,” Singaporean Prime Minister Lawrence Wong said in an April 16 speech. “Both powers claim they do not wish to force countries to choose sides. But in reality, each seeks to draw others closer into their respective orbits.”

Are you somehow trying to insinuate that conservatives are less prudish about sex than democrats? You are going to have to establish a much higher burden of proof before anybody falls for that rather silly and juvenile little meme.

This is unquestionably the worst first hundred days in the history of the American presidency, this man is a one-man wrecking crew. He does not get it. But, he will eventually. US influence is not what it used to be. And they will pay a huge price for his isolationism, ignorance, arrogance, tariffs (tax hikes), environmental recklessness, and unwillingness to abide by the law. Trump is threatening to impose tariffs on rivals and allies alike, without any satisfactory explanation of why one is being tariffed and the other not, and regardless of how such tariffs might hurt U.S. industry and consumers. It’s a total mess. As the Ford Motor chief executive Jim Farley courageously (compared to other chief executives) pointed out, “Let’s be real honest: Long term, a 25 percent tariff across the Mexico and Canada borders would blow a hole in the U.S. industry that we’ve never seen.” So, either Trump wants to blow that hole, or he’s bluffing, or he is clueless. If it is the latter, Trump is going to get a crash course in the hard realities of the global economy as it really is — not how he imagines it. Trump has tried to bend the U.S. economy to his will. But one force is unbowed: the financial markets. Trump says the outcome of his tariffs will eventually be “beautiful.” So far, it’s been an difficult three months with consumer confidence plummeting, stock markets convulsing and investors losing confidence in the credibility of Trump’s policies. It has become a time of anxiety instead of his promised golden age of prosperity. He is a train wreck.

Real men walk away from a relationship which is not working out, and are rational about a girlfriend speaking to her ex. No big deal. Only tiny, insecure thugs react with violence like this.

He makes Richard Nixon look like a Boy Scout, and he seems to redefine the concept of moral degradation on a daily basis. He turned a legitimate federal employee designation into a loophole. By giving senior officials such as Elon Musk the title “special government employee,” Mr. Trump avoided requirements that they publicly disclose their financial holdings and divest any that present conflicts before taking jobs in the administration. He ended bans that stopped executive branch employees from accepting gifts from lobbyists or seeking lobbying jobs themselves for at least two years. He loosened the enforcement of laws that curb foreign lobbying and bribery. He dismissed the head of the office that polices conflicts of interest among senior officials. He jettisoned the head of the office that, among other things, protects whistle-blowers and ensures political neutrality in federal workplaces. He purged nearly 20 nonpartisan inspectors general who were entrusted with rooting out corruption within the government. X, Mr. Musk’s social media outlet, has become an official source of government news. The White House welcomed a reporter from the platform at a recent briefing, and at least a dozen government agencies started DOGE-focused X accounts. As Mr. Musk’s political activities started to repel many potential customers of Tesla, his electric vehicle company, Mr. Trump lined Tesla vehicles up on the White House driveway and extolled their benefits. Then Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick urged Fox News viewers to buy Tesla shares. DOGE nearly halved the team at the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration that regulates autonomous vehicles. The agency has been investigating whether Tesla’s self-driving technology played a role in the death of a pedestrian in Arizona. The S.E.C. also suspended its civil fraud case against Binance, the huge crypto exchange that pleaded guilty to money-laundering violations and allowed terrorist financing, hacking and drug trafficking to proliferate on its platform. Soon after, the company met with Treasury officials to seek looser oversight while also negotiating a business deal with Mr. Trump’s family. World Liberty Financial, a crypto company that Mr. Trump and his sons helped launch, said it had sold $550 million worth of digital coins. A business entity linked to him gets 75 percent of the sales. The Trump family has said it will partner with the Singapore-based crypto exchange Crypto.com to introduce a series of funds comprising crypto and securities with a made-in-America focus. The federal government’s “crypto czar,” David Sacks, Mr. Lutnick and Mr. Musk all have connections to the market. (Mr. Musk named DOGE after a memecoin.) A new Trump Tower is underway in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia’s second largest city, with plans for two more projects for the kingdom announced after Mr. Trump’s November election victory, all in partnership with a Saudi company with close ties to the Saudi government. It’s all a sorry and sordid picture, a president who had already set a new standard for egregious and potentially illegal behavior hitting new lows with metronomic regularity. https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/27/opinion/trump-crypto-musk-spacex.html?smid=nytcore-android-share

One can only hope so, but I also wonder what the world's going to look like at that moment in time.

Just give him some time, he appears to just be warming up. If given enough power I suspect he would be way out of control.

Thanks. Racism and rampant hatred is alive and well.

Not sure why you felt the need to single out that particular murder, how many mass murders per year in the US? I think well over 100 per year and the vast majority of them are committed by American citizens, the vast majority of those citizens being white men, so what's the point of your silly post?

Is Trump a Fascist, or Marxist? Does Trump want to become a dictator as he has so often said in the past? How worried should we be? However scared you might be for our democracy, you are not scared enough. The president of the United States, from the moment he regained the office, has been step-by-step following the autocrat’s playbook. He has gone after universities for not obeying his decrees. He has extorted law firms for having on staff, or just once-upon-a-time having had on staff, people who crossed him. He has targeted for prosecution former aides who challenged him. He has arrested a local judge for not helping him round up migrants for deportation. He has attacked the free press for not bending to his will. On his very first day in office, he released from prison hundreds of domestic terrorists, effectively a personal militia, who assaulted police officers in his name. And now, not 100 days into his term, he has done what so many democracy advocates have feared he would eventually do, something that no president has dared try in the more than two centuries since Marbury v. Madison’s precedent that the judiciary would be the ultimate authority on what is and what is not legal: He is straight-up defying the United States Supreme Court. For three years, Trump and his apologist echo chamber repeated, over and over, that the flood of migrants coming over the southern border without authorization constituted an “invasion.” Of course, it was no such thing. However much a person chooses to hate illegal immigration, whether based on a strict, rules-are-rules belief system or a pragmatic concern for the effect on border communities or even straight-up racism, the migrants coming here these past several years did not represent an invading army, regardless of how frequently Stephen Miller and his allies tossed around the phrase “military-aged men.” The overwhelming majority of migrants come to this country for the same reason all of our ancestors came here: To make a better life for themselves and their children. For generations now, those entering from Mexico have picked our vegetables, made the beds and cleaned the toilets in our hotels, and laid shingles on our roofs under a scorching summer sun. In short, they’ve been doing the work that native-born Americans have been unwilling to do. To contrast that against an actual invasion, check out what’s happening in Eastern Europe right now. Notice that the Russians aren’t trying to get jobs and make new lives in Ukraine. They’re trying to kill the people who already live there and steal their land. In executive order after executive order, public statement after public statement, Trump has cited the presence of migrants in the country illegally as an “emergency” to justify sweeping powers that allow him to round up people and ship them to a foreign prison where torture is routine where they will remain, possibly forever. And that’s not the only emergency. There’s an energy “emergency” that allows Trump to trample environmental laws to bring about an infinite amount of oil-drilling. There’s an economic “emergency” that lets him impose tariffs on whatever countries’ imports he wants, notwithstanding the Constitution that specifically grants the power of taxation to Congress. The dangers in those emergency authorities, though, pale before the ones given to a U.S. president facing a literal invasion, which is why the confrontation between Trump and the U.S. Supreme Court over purported members of criminal gangs has such high stakes. Perhaps it hasn’t occurred to many, maybe even most, Americans, that the Chief Justice of the United States commands no army, can summon no police force. Nor, for that matter, does Congress. They, and all of us, are dependent on Donald Trump and the police and military under his control to honor the Constitution and the rule of law. What’s to stop him from declaring that those who protest against him are agents of a foreign power and need to be rounded up and imprisoned? What prevents him from declaring that news media are “enemies of the people” and jailing them, as well? And what about all those disloyal judges who are trying to prevent him from “saving our country” — shouldn’t they be sent to El Salvador’s torture prison, too? Yes, absolutely, this sounds alarmist, because we have a normalcy bias in this country. Nothing this bad has ever happened here, and therefore it cannot. And it is this failure of imagination, the same failure that refused to foresee Jan. 6 before Trump had unleashed his armed mob on the Capitol, that is again endangering the republic. “If today the executive claims the right to deport without due process and in disregard of court orders, what assurance will there be tomorrow that it will not deport American citizens and then disclaim responsibility to bring them home? And what assurance shall there be that the executive will not train its broad discretionary powers upon its political enemies?”

Social media is just chock-full of nut jobs who have hundreds of different theories, about hundreds of different topics. It means absolutely nothing to most of us, and as you get older you have to develop a nonsense filter and just be able to filter out the stuff that is totally ridiculous. Just ignore them, it's like water off a duck's back.

Nearly every time I see someone complaining, or observing a shortfall within Thailand, some lame guy, who has not taken the time to think things through, nor to devote any focus or effort to a reasonable reply, says something like "Perhaps Thailand is not for you", or maybe you should leave, or the top prize, "if you do not like it here, go back to your own country". Hard to even respond to such inane statements. Why? Because I have some issues with the place? Sorry to inform you, but the nature of a discerning mind, is to have issues. Though absolute contentment must be a beautiful state of mind, it is not something most of us are blessed with, in case you have not noticed. The fact that I complain, does not mean I do not love Thailand, nor most of it's people. I do. I love my life here. I have a very good life here. But, I do have some complaints, and there are some things I would love to see improved. I should leave because of that? Please. Next time you make a post, try to devote at least two moments of thought to it.

Some Trump supporters are so defensive, they can't even recognize satire anymore. Sad. Very sad. Must be hard to watch him flail.

You mean giving him the benefit of the doubt on what he "says he's trying to achieve", not what he's actually trying to achieve. Let's give this some time and see whether or not any of what appear to be insane policies work out in the long run, ye of little doubt.

Donald Trump. He wants so badly to be a fascist dictator. Just give him enough room, make the leash long enough, and his followers will be astonished to see the man that he becomes.

I think that in the second Trump term he’s changed that very quickly. Not just by taking America’s soft power and setting it on fire in all sorts of ways, but really making these abrupt decisions that are going to kill hundreds of thousands and maybe more than a million people and he’s doing it in this incredibly arbitrary, careless way. Trump is destroying the US economy one step at a time. It could be intentional. It could be diabolical. Nobody knows. He could simply be unhinged or following the dictates of a very sinister cabal. One thing is certain. He is accomplishing very little, he will NOT bring manufacturing back to America, which is stupid over priced (I am here now and inflation is raging at 20% or higher right now), he is causing alot of pain, he is losing support, destroying businesses, and consumer confidence, he does not have a coherent plan, and he is a destructive nimwit. It's just not fair, don't they know who I am? Don't they know how great I am? Don't they know that I am the most incredible human being on the planet? Don't they realize I'm the smartest guy in America? Don't they know how handsome I am? I'm am so confused, flustered, unhappy and bitter. Call me by my name. Disaster Donald. Tornado Trump.

Trump is the exact opposite of a patriot as he has shown a tremendous amount of disrespect towards the defense department and veterans by appointing a numnut who has failed miserably. So he needs to wear red and blue every single opportunity to try to convince people of his patriotism, which many of us know is completely and totally fake. Of course our allies are going to shun him, he has shown them nothing but disrespect by allying himself with genocidal serial killers, and picking wars with our closest allies. The man is an absolute abomination and the polar opposite of someone who displays leadership skills.

I refuse to put on winter tires because: • It’s my car, my choice, my freedom. • The effectiveness of winter tires is not proven, except by studies carried out by the manufacturers (like I’m supposed to trust them). • My neighbor Bob had an accident even after putting on winter tires. • Some drivers are already on their 3rd set of tires, which proves their ineffectiveness. • We do not know what the tires are made of. • The tire manufacturers scare us with winter just to enrich themselves. • In fact, I read on the internet that the tire giants invented snow and spread it at night when you sleep. • If I have winter tires, the government can track me in the snow. This year, I say no to winter tires!

Though you seem to be doing your best to defend the party line, and to defend the Goombah, the bottom line is that Chinese electric cars, MacBook Pros, iPads, and iPhones are anything but junk. There's a lot of high quality stuff being made in China, by multinational companies all over the world, and Trump is in way over his head by declaring economic war on them. Oops. Didn't know they had so much conviction and will to fight a rather dull bully.