spidermike007

As far as I'm concerned one of the most dangerous, reckless, and poorly thought out policies that Trump has proposed, are even higher tariffs on many classes of imported products. Who ends up paying for this? American companies who are manufacturing in China, and the consumer, that's who. In the end huge taxes may encourage companies to pull out of China, which is a good thing, but how long will that process take, and what will the economic consequences be in the interim? He is not a socialist. He is a failed capitalist. It is fairly easy to get wealthy if you are willing to steal most of your fortune from unsuspecting small contractors. Yet he still went bankrupt. That requires a special kind of skill. Or another form of grifting. His tax hike proposals would end up being a disaster. If they were highly targeted tariffs, only imposed upon goods other states were subsidizing, making it impossible to compete, that makes sense and would be good policy. But, blanket tariffs end up being punitive for the American consumer and American companies forced to operate overseas due to the silly costs of manufacturing in the US. They are a tax. Trump lies when he says other nations will pay for them. He lies when he says companies will pay for them. Consumers will pay, so it becomes a tax. Be bold, big Don and for once be honest. It is a tax hike. And it could slow down the economy and result in a massive loss of jobs, and major inflation. Very dumb policy.

It was likely some sort of TikTok challenge. People are doing very crazy things these days to impress their online followers. It is an indication of the state to which contemporary culture has fallen. We are no longer moving forward as a species.

This is a very good question and one that many of us have been wrestling with since long before his first presidency. I think that the quality of life in America has diminished to the point where only low quality candidates can be expected in the future. I don't think anyone of decency or nobility has any interest in subjecting themselves or their families to a grueling campaign.

I don't think I would enjoy any aspect of that lifestyle for a nanosecond. Sometimes I wake up and look in the mirror and say what a blessing it is to be content with my sexuality and with whom I am as a person. I can only imagine the horror show that being very uncomfortable in your own body could create.

A statement likely made by a Trump supporter, who is very envious that one of the top singers in the country who has millions and millions of followers, is supporting Harris. Certainly Trump is very envious, he shows that with his silly tweets.

That was my point, is that Bush Sr. was way more presidential than Trump. He made that statement about an enemy of the state. Making that kind of statement about a very popular musician who doesn't like you is just beyond inane, it's Juvenile and pathetic.

Neither was Bush Sr. at the time he made that statement, however Trump is an ex prez, is running for president and one would think that appearing to be presidential would at least be a minor requirement. But that does not seem to be a requirement on the part of many of his supporters, as his stock in trade seems to be hatred, anger, bitterness, and division. He loves stoking it.

It makes one wonder why are so many of these robberies and assaults committed by ladyboys, what is the issue? Is it a cultural thing? Are they just a particularly maladjusted group? I hesitate to pass judgment here but it does make one curious.

Considering the fact that exports are down, new and used car sales are way down, home sales are down, and the economy is suffering with over 7,000 steel companies having been shuttered over the last few years, it's mighty weird that the baht is as strong as it is. I understand some of it has to do with the strength of the dollar, but it also seems disproportionately high relative to other regional currencies. For an economy that's already in trouble it would seem that it would be in their best interests to figure out a way to lower their currency.

Other than George Bush Sr. saying he hated Saddam Hussein in the run up to the war, no president in the history of America has ever specifically said that they hate somebody in public. For Trump to tweet "I hate Taylor Swift" is so asinine, so juvenile, so obnoxious, so unpresidential, so inelegant, so grotesque and so ignorant. It shows how delicate the man's ego is, and if his ego is truly that delicate an adversary or an ally can use that to great effect during a negotiation to completely throw him off his game. And that makes him one of the most dangerous men in the world. He makes Nixon look trustworthy and George W. look smart and articulate. In fact, if Frankenstein decided to make a monster assembled entirely from human flaws - he would make a Trump. And a remorseful Doctor Frankenstein would clutch out big clumpfuls of hair and scream in anguish: 'My God… what… have… I… created? Unappealing, unattractive, idiotic, incompetent, hateful, hurtful, abrasive, rude, blowhard, liar, cheater, thief, infantile, failure, loser, fraud, sexual abuser, incestuous, tax cheat, insurrectionist, un-American, dictator-loving dictator wannabe, out of control, sociopathic, convicted felon, toxic narcissist & brutish A-hole. Everything about the con-man referred to as Trump is unlikeable. He's everything wrong with the human animal, all stuffed into one specimen.

Contrary to what Trump and Vance say, there are very few illegal aliens in Springfield, Ohio. And none of them eat dogs and cats. The mayor made it very clear that they were brought there on a program in concert with the immigration Bureau and that all 15,000 of them were legal. So much of this immigration drama is fake, so much of it is an overly dramatic fiction created by the Republicans. Biden’s incompetence has led to a horrific 300,000 Americans now dead, not from a nuclear bomb but from lethal fentanyl brought in through Biden’s wide-open border.” THE FACTS: While it is correct that much of America’s fentanyl is smuggled from Mexico, 86.4% of fentanyl trafficking crimes were committed by U.S. citizens in the 12-month period through September 2023, according to the U.S. Sentencing Commission. Texas is the only state that tracks crime by immigration status. A study published by the National Academy of Sciences, based on Texas Department of Public Safety data from 2012 to 2016, found people in the U.S. illegally had “substantially lower crime rates than native-born citizens and legal immigrants across a range of felony offenses.” https://apnews.com/article/fact-check-misinformation-republican-convention-illegal-immigration-204ae438725d5b15126325a63330ce5c

I met her first. No, I saw here before you met her. You have already gotten with her. Now, it is my turn. I thought I liked you, but now I hate you.

Call it light hearted. I think it was a bit vicious. I did not some here to get married. It just happened. I was done with Western women, as I had come to my senses and realized they did not have much to offer, for a man with self esteem, who did not buy into toxic masculinity.

Any highway with alot of Thai drivers is very dangerous Nowhere else in the world have I seen people consistency take the kinds of chances and risks in the road, that they take here, with their families in the car. Nowhere. When they could have waited four seconds to make the uturn or turn onto the highway, and have a completely clear path, they instead choose to take a tremendous risk. It is beyond comprehension. I see it all the time. My eyes do not lie to me. This rarely ever happens to me in the US. If I decide to cut you off on a highway, when you are going 120kph, and I am making a u-turn, and there was plenty of room behind you for me to make a safe turn, is that an error, if it results in a horrific, fatal accident, and I take the lives of you and your family? Sometimes an error is wearing white after Labor day in New York City. And sometimes an error is invading Russia before the oncoming winter. I don't make the kind of errors that result in bad accidents, much less fatalities. Why? Because I am very, very careful on the road, and very, very respectful of other drivers, their lives, and those of their families. That is a choice that results in NOT making very many terrible mistakes. It most certainly has something to do with the inability to visualize. Neither the future, nor the hypothetical. What will happen in this scenario? What about this? What about that? What are the inherent risks involved in piloting my bike, car or truck onto the safety lane of a major highway, in the wrong direction, with big trucks coming at me at 100kph? Or onto a lane of a major highway, with oncoming traffic going 120kph? Is it worth sacrificing my life, or my ability to walk for the rest of my life? How will my death affect my kids? Hold on, what about the lives of my wife, kids and sister who are in the vehicle with me, and I am responsible for their safety. Wow. That would be a big loss. An entire family. Maybe I should act like an adult, and be prudent and careful. What if I waited four seconds for the highway lane to be completely clear, rather than just barge into it now, and risk everything. I don't think many Thais ever ponder thoughts like this. Why, I can't imagine. It is likely something we will never understand about their nature. I often like to say the best way to understand these differences in attitude and intellect, is to realize Thailand is NOT a foreign country. It is a distant planet.

Since Thailand is not a democracy, with very, very small men, with a lot of power, who lack any vision, and insist on using draconian and outdated laws to stifle freedom of speech, and freedom of the press, the nation continues its backwards march into oblivion and irrelevancy. Not a good place to be if you are an outspoken activist.

Moral bankruptcy is the order of the day for today's not so Supreme Court. It is a highly compromised body and there is a reason why so few have faith in their judgments.

Is Pattaya becoming the New Bali with hordes of drunk Aussies? Anyone who can't handle their liquor shouldn't drink. Some people get a little drunk and their true nature comes out, which is not a pretty thing to witness. Lock them up.

Cooper is not a historian, he's an absolute goon who is simply a supporter of revisionist history. Hitler was good, Churchill was bad, democracy is bad, fascism is great. What can one say about idiots like this? The reality is that these days there's just so much nonsense online that we have to just establish very good filters, and use them on a daily basis. Cooper’s revisionism represents a Right-wing equivalent of the 1619 Project: a radical re-narrativisation, with a similarly tendentious relation to factual accuracy, of a politically load-bearing set of historical narratives. It’s also premised on broadly the same set of insights about the relation between historical narratives, ideology, and power as Left-wing “woke” revisionism, and particularly the crucial “woke” insight concerning the operation of power through language, narrative, and ideology. If the sacred dogma of WWII is subject to critical re-reading today from the woke Right, as that of the American founding is from the woke Left, this should be understood as a response to larger ongoing shifts in the political order. The gap between Taylor’s assessment of the Second World War and the contemporary, dominant American one attests that such shifts and re-narrativisations have happened before. https://unherd.com/newsroom/darryl-coopers-woke-right-view-of-world-war-ii/

What a lot of guys don't understand is, it's not about coming to Thailand to find a girl that will marry us. It's about coming to Thailand to find a woman that we would want to marry. Most of us have already been though that in the states or the West, and it didn't work out, so we're looking for a woman who's comfortable with their femininity, and has all these other wonderful qualities, that few Western women can manifest. You can downplay that all you want, you can throw out whatever kind of labels you want, it doesn't change anything. Fulfillment is a beautiful thing. Sorry you don't have it.

You absolutely have to insist on assimilation and you have to make a staged approach to asylum based on an immigrants ability to prove that they're assimilating into society. I advocate that any Muslim family with a teenage daughter prove that she's participated in a two piece bikini contest in public by the age of 16 and that their teenage sons have no affiliation whatsoever with local Madrasas, or Mullahs preaching extremism. You want to live here, show us, and demonstrate that you will not remain culturally isolated, and will make an effort to move into the 21st century. If not, there shall be immediate consequences.

Totally agree. I think a large part of the equation is the erosion of femininity in the west. It has gotten so bad, that masculinity is now considered toxic. This is an existential threat to civilization, no doubt. It is me-too, and uber-feminism that has been the real nuclear bomb to relationships and a woman's ability to express herself, have sex freely, date normally, manifest the incredible dignity within femininity, and relate to men, in a healthy manner. It seems to contribute to an extremely unfulfilled female gender, and has resulted in making life very difficult for most men in the West. With Covid, things got even worse than before. A real life Zombieland. Thankfully, little of that toxic nonsense has reached the shores of Thailand. Women here seem to intuitively know how powerful their innate femininity is, and they use it to the fullest. I am very thankful for that. I think many have simply rejected alot of mind numbingly wrong headed Western notions, that women are saddled with. The most important aspect of this, that most Western women cannot see, nor understand, is that most Asian women are very comfortable manifesting the dignity and beauty within femininity. For most men, that is incredibly appealing, and a hugely refreshing change from what they have become used to, and learned to tolerate.

Very few people even consider that. My guess is that if people had to slaughter, and dress their own meat, many would not be eating pork, lamb or beef.

That is part of the process. Mine is getting older, but I still find her beautiful, and there is so much more than just the sex, these days. The history, the familiarity, the mutual support, the kindness, her humor and affection. The list goes on.

And that is part of the qualification process. You spend alot of time with up front, to determine what she is made of, and if she deserves your attention and devotion. And the moment you see she is combative, neurotic, very jealous, immature, or difficult, you run for the hills. Unless you want all that and need the drama. I know some men who would not know what to do with harmony.

It appears he was not shot. And Florida has very liberal gun laws. So, someone in his vicinity was carrying a gun. Another stunt, to gain some popular support for this sinking ship?