spidermike007

In essence these farmers are practicing a form of terrorism against their own people, they are killing people, they are putting people in the hospital, they are shortening lives, and they are making life miserable for a significant portion of the nation, simply because it's easier and less expensive to burn. The degree to which the smoke is toxic is unfathomable. it is the absolute epitome of self-absorption and zero concern for others. These farmers need to be punished in a very expensive and convincing manner. If the government cared one iota which they don't they would start convincing Farmers to switch crops and start moving away from 16th century crops like rice and sugar, moving toward more progressive crops which are potentially more profitable. If they felt the need to stick with rice and sugar they could educate the public on how those crops can be processed without burning, and subsidize the purchase of the required equipment.

I'm not even going to comment on his relations with his trans daughter or his lack of relations with her. I will just comment on him in general. He is a total social misfit, and is not wearing his wealth, nor his power lightly. Musk appears to have extremist tendencies. I am hoping he goes on one of his Mars missions, but we all know he does not have nearly enough courage for something like that. I have respect for his achievements, but zero respect for the small man. He's a completely ridiculous man, the more wealthy he's become the more obnoxious he's become, the more arrogant he's become, the more self-righteous and the more insufferable. Trump made a tremendous mistake by giving him more power than he already had, and time will reveal what a tragic decision that was. Boycott Tesla, don't buy anything that he is associated with, knock him off his pedestal, bring him back down to earth, try to knock some sense into his absolutely foolish head, say no to his petty small mindedness, and take some pride in doing the right thing and helping America.

My experience was that getting a tourist visa and a student visa that we applied for, for My Thai wife was very difficult and we were turned down both times. Once we were married and we applied for a marriage visa it was easy, it took a short amount of time and she got a 10-year multiple entry visa. I was advised beforehand for her to bring MY original passport with her, which was great advice since all the visa guy at the embassy did was study my passport to determine how often I go back and forth from Thailand back to the US. Once he saw that that was frequent she was issued the visa, no hassles at all.

This is a great topic as the beer industry, and the oppression of craft brewers here has a rather fascinating history. Thaopipob Linjittkorn, or Thao as he is more popularly known, a lawyer and homebrewer, was very publicly arrested in 2017 for making beer. He used that publicity to win an election to Parliament in 2019, along with 80 other members of the Future Forward Party. This progressive, pro-democracy party included in its platform a detailed plan to deregulate the beer industry, as well as a proposal for the legalization of marijuana, citing both as ways of putting money into the pockets of small businesses and local farmers. The opposition that Future Forward was up against is a military-backed, hardline government that supports the duopoly with strict regulations that allow it to control over 99% of Thailand’s estimated 180 billion baht ($5.8 billion) beer industry. The duopoly was originally made untouchable with the first Thai Liquor Control Act in 1950, a law which has been amended several times since to push legality even further out of reach of any small brewer. Prayuth's administration has done much to reinforce the isolationist and nationalistic policies that Phibul established in the 1940s and ’50s, and has called again and again for citizens to display a certain level of “Thainess,” which the PM defines in part as unquestioning loyalty to the government. Do not be disobedient! For small breweries, it requires production of at least 100,000 liters (852 barrels) but no greater than 1,000,000 liters (8,520 BBLs), and stipulates that all beer must be sold on the premises. At the same time, the minimum amount for an industrial license was increased from one million liters to 10 million liters (85,200 BBLs) per year, as well as requiring that the brewer demonstrate available capital of at least 10 million baht ($320,000). Just to make sure small brewers were thoroughly intimidated, the rewrite also increased inflated penalties. Fines were increased from their original, almost quaint 200 baht ($6) for possession of bootleg alcohol to 10,000 ($300). For actually brewing without a license, fines were increased from 5,000 baht ($150) to a range of 50,000–100,000 baht ($1,600–$3,200), plus jail time. Reporting in 2017, The Bangkok Post estimated that in order to meet the new regulations, a brewer would need to have a billion baht—around $30 million—in start-up capital. For some, craft beer is associated with anti-establishment politics. “It’s very similar to the French Revolution, which started from a cafe in Paris, where people drank coffee,” says Taopiphop. “The fuel of the revolution is not coffee any more, it’s craft beer.” Taopiphop adds that, after the 2014 coup in Thailand, many pro-democracy activists chose to meet in Bangkok’s craft beer bars. If only the younger Thais were allowed to express themselves, be inventive, be creative, be industrious, and use their smarts and ambition, Thailand could have a future. Craft beer is needed here, and so are the young entrepreneurs. But, that future appears to be suppressed at every turn by dinosaurs, who only answer to money, money, and even more money. Money is the God of lesser men. The money first attitude is holding back Thailand on so many levels.

Well I think the warnings are probably fine especially in light of the fact that Pattaya is very obviously the crime center of Thailand. The second aspect of this is that there are very rare instances where you should go with a group of women to a strange place. The third thing that comes to mind is whether or not they were ladyboys as they seem to commit a lot of crime against foreigners. The last thing that comes to mind is why would someone carry 15,000 baht cash around with them? It seems like a risky thing to do. I am not downplaying the attack which is dreadful, just saying that it's possible he could have taken greater precautions.

OK. How about just one. I could cite many, Mr. Deflection. Trump didn’t only make grand economic promises, of course. He also spent his campaign trying to draw a contrast between himself as a supposed foreign policy dove and a Biden administration navigating polarizing international conflicts in Ukraine and Gaza: “I’m not going to start wars,” Trump said in his victory speech. “I’m going to stop wars.” But, when Time asked him about the “chances of going to war with Iran during your next term,” he responded: “Anything can happen. It’s a very volatile situation.” https://www.vanityfair.com/news/story/trump-promised-no-wars-and-lower-prices-now-hes-walking-that-back?srsltid=AfmBOoreK9mTAGvEgbts0uS7ABlpy6ZhzVxGASTequnAL_sz6aFcX87U

So are you saying that the Gaza takeover, the proposed Panama takeover, the proposed Greenland takeover, the potential war with Iran and the potential war that breaks out on the Middle East with a Houthis will be very well planned? Is that what you're suggesting? If not, what are you saying?

One can say the same thing about the right, the nature of being a MAGA supporter is to support a felon, a scam artist, and a lifelong career criminal, what's the difference?

Thanks, there has been zero of the promise transparency that Musk and Trump promised. And he claims to be saving lots of money, but he won't disclose where any of that money is being saved and he won't disclose any details. That sounds like the work of a fascist or an insane technocrat.

He is correct. Nearly everything that Trump does is incredibly toxic, extremely disrespectful, unbelievably arrogant, incredibly dumb, and damaging to the US in the long term. All he is doing is precipitating the decline, and making America less influential by the day. Why would those with Danish citizenship give up free Healthcare, and a safety net for seniors? A friend of mine from Holland just recently put his mother in a rather luxurious nursing home, he said it's the equivalent of many five-star hotels that he's been to. She has a large, luxurious room with a private balcony overlooking the river. His total outlay is 900 euros monthly. A trashy facility in the US is $9,000 a month and a nice facility is $15,000 a month and up. I know couples who spend $2000 to $3,000 a month on health insurance alone, in the US. It is an unregulated mafia. Just another reason why Greenland and Canada would never choose to be a part of the US. In the process their quality of life would diminished dramatically. In Denmark, the welfare state is characterised by an extensive social security system and a high degree of income equality. All Danish citizens have equal access to education and health care regardless of their social and financial background. Similarly, every citizen is entitled to a limited compensation for loss of income due to unemployment, disability, or illness – just to name a few of the public services that the welfare system provides. The welfare system does indeed benefit each individual citizen but the main purpose of the Danish welfare model is to ensure healthcare and education for all citizens in order to provide high quality human capital/first class employees of great benefit to the taxpaying companies and hence to the Danish economy. https://denmark.dk/society-and-business/the-danish-welfare-state In other words, the polar opposite of the US, where if an older couple does not have hugely expensive health care, they could lose everything with one illness. So, why would any Dane or Greenlander choose to become American? A land owned and controlled by Big pharma, corrupt lobbyists, greedy out of control corporations and a highly dysfunctional government, let by a foolish maniac. They would have to be insane.

I use foodpanda a lot. I have an annual subscription which I pay about 260 baht for, and it allows for free delivery all year, which is extraordinary considering in the US I pay about $14 for taxes and delivery on one order. Some places charge as little as 60 to 100 baht for a dish, and with no tax and free delivery that's an extraordinary luxury to have in this life. I love foodpanda.

Of course the melting of the massive polar ice caps and glaciers are going to have an effect on sea levels. We're already seeing much higher than normal storm swells and much more flooding than ever before, and it is just the beginning. The sceptic will argue that anything we do could not possibly influence the climate, or effect the atmosphere. The planet is simply too large, and the population is too small to have any effect. Let the ships dump whatever they want into the ocean. The ocean is simply too large for anything we do to damage it. This frees people to buy as many plastic bottles as they please, drive filthy diesel vehicles, and behave as if nothing effects anything. It's not us. It is just a cycle. We are not responsible. So stop blaming us. We can be as unconscious as we want to be, and we will do as we damn please and nobody can do anything about it.

Put the beast down. The sooner the better. Any dog who bites any human being in a serious manner should be put down within 24 hours, no questions asked and no appeals possible. Dogs should never be given priority over humans and doing so is a sign of a broken society, too many snowflakes, and bent priorities. Not only that but the owner should face a massive fine, and there's just no excuse to have a poorly behaved dog who's aggressive toward others, especially defenseless children.

I beg to differ, I think as long as you keep your nose clean, stay out of other people's affairs, and don't behave like a nitwit or a butt head, the likelihood of getting attacked here is infinitely lower than in Los Angeles or London. If you choose to behave like an idiot around the Thai locals all better are off.

It is not possible to tarnish the reputation of Pattaya beyond where it already is, it seems like at least from news reports a good percentage of the nation's crime seems to happen there, and certainly a good percentage of the crime committed against foreigners seems to happen in Pattaya. It's a little hard for me to wrap my mind around something like this, there is a lot of violence here, but 99.9% of it is Thai on Thai. I hesitate to blame the victim, but it's very hard for me to imagine that an attack of this nature was totally unprovoked. Regardless it was callous disregard for another human, and the attack seems to have been pretty horrific, and perpetrated by morally bankruptless and cowardly fools.

Quite a bizarre question from someone who has obviously been drinking a substantial amount of Kool-Aid. Calling Democrats leftist ls, is a bit like calling Republicans fascists. Quite astonishing to me how MAGA has descended to a level where some of the less intelligent supporters are simply reduced to slogans, name calling as a juvenile tribute to their political Master, and memes rather than intelligent discussions. All Democrats are communist All Democrats are baby killers All Democrats support trans rights. All democrats are woke Do you know where we get our power from? We drink the blood of infants in basements of pizza parlors.

Well I suspect that your comment maybe partisan in nature, but the reality as you likely know is that both parties are severely inept, both parties are extremely corrupt, both parties have horrific leaders, and both parties may be broken beyond repair. Nobody is ever going to make America great again, the nation's been on a fairly steep decline for at least 30 years, and that's not going to change certainly not with tariffs and destruction of most alliances.

Considering that one of his major campaign promises was to NOT get America involved in new wars, this appears to just be another broken promise by a broken man, conducting a broken administration, with bottom of the barrel pics, attempting to lead a nation in a time of great troubles. Woe is America under the goons "leadership".

The quality of life in America has been declining for decades now but over the past 5 years inflation has been bordering on insanity, and the cost of living has gone up very dramatically, so at least 70% of Americans are simply struggling to get by. It's likely only 10% of Americans are traveling overseas. The other aspect of this is that many Americans have always preferred to travel close to home, and they've rarely been long-haul travelers.

No need to be embarrassed we can agree to disagree, like gentlemen often do. Dissent is an incredibly healthy thing, on both sides of the aisle. I don't see it much on the Republican side, though. Only fealty. No dissent allowed with a royal monarch.

I often disagree with a lot of Sanders views, but I have a lot of respect for the man, and it's very possible that he is the only person at the national level in American politics with some decency and integrity. I love the way he shot this guy down, stick to the script man, you're wandering off and I have no interest in your nonsense, great stuff.

We have an absolute monopoly on tobacco and we cannot control vaping, therefore it is highly illegal. That would does not profit this government will be made illegal. Obey, or else.

What they seem to be forgetting in this process is that there's absolutely nothing special about children. All they are is small people, coddle them too much and you end up paying the price and creating an entire snowflake generation.

Whether or not the petition is successful is secondary, what is most important is the amount of pushback it symbolizes. The entire world should be pushing back against this incredibly toxic, incredibly corrupt, morally bankrupt man, and his absolutely ridiculous policies, isolationism, arrogance, idiocy, and tariffs.

I think it's safe to say at this point that Trump is completely lost, he loved the idea of tariffs, they were a great talking point with voters, make America great again is his favorite slogan, but we know it's never going to happen. While I think tariffs on highly subsidized commodities like steel and aluminum are likely a good idea, I question how wise it is to impose such horrendously high tariffs on EV's from China. Likewise I question how wise it is to impose high tariffs on Mexico and Canada as they are both part of our manufacturing ecosystems. 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 too 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? If he enacts his import tariffs as promised it could spell disaster for the American economy. It is nothing but a massive tax hike on the American People, and could have a very negative impact on thousands of American companies that manufacturer overseas, without any true understanding of why they manufacture overseas. Trump manufactures overseas, every opportunity he gets, to save money. Bibles, baseball caps, and likely countless other things. So, calling him very disingenuous would be an understatement.