spidermike007

Hesgeth and Waltz should both be fired, and they should quite possibly face prison sentences for this rather reckless breach of security. In some countries they would be facing a firing squad. Neither of them are even close to being qualified for their positions and this is simply a reflection that they are completely out of their league.

I'm scheduled to go back to the US next month with my Thai wife she has a 10-year multiple entry visa, and she's been to the US several times. We've never had any problems before, however now that the goon is showing his racist and isolationist tendencies and discriminating against people from many nations and randomly denying them entry into the US, I wonder how concerned I should be? Has anybody had any experience with this in regard to their Thai spouse gaining entry into the US within the last month or two?

It's becoming increasingly apparent just how incredibly sloppy and hugely ignorant this sorry administration is. Generally when you hire from the bottom of the barrel this is the kind of result you get. Will somebody please share the contact information of these officials many of us would like to give them a piece of our mind. Especially Hegseth. He was the worst appointment for his position, in history. He should have stuck with his lower level Fox News position.

I only time I carry my original passport if I am going to immigration, if I have a significant bank transaction or if I'm entering or leaving the country. Otherwise I carry a color copy of my passport with a color copy of my current visa page on the back, in my wallet and that's always sufficient along with a Thai driver's license or a pink card for hotels and such. Never been an issue.

There seem to be a lot of mentions of the fact that the women are not as beautiful as they used to be, the reality is that women have gotten bigger and they have gotten older when it comes to the massage parlors and the bars. But there are still a ridiculous number of super fine women in Thailand. The big difference is that nowadays the 9's that we used to pick up in the bars are working as escorts making 20,000 to 70,000 baht for a few hours of their time, when they used to earn 1,500 baht for an evening. They now have infinitely more options if they're young and super fine than they used to have, and they're no longer selling themselves for paltry amounts of money. In general there are more wealthy guys out there and I've talked to guys who travel the world and are accustomed to spending $2,000 every time they hire an escorts, whether it's New York, Paris, London or Bangkok. So, things have changed alot. For us, and for the really fine gals.

This is a man who feels tremendous anxiety, very low self-esteem, and is very insecure. He feels the constant need to build himself up, to build up the crowd size, to build up the size of everything surrounding him, to make himself look like a bigger. Most psychologist would agree that this comes from very deep-seated inadequacies. Sizeness, hugeness, everything in his life has always been exaggerated. Frankly I think people are just getting tired of it, his schtick is getting very old. So is he.

Maybe I am old fashioned. I have many gay and lesbian friends, and most I know are really wonderful people. And I have met a number of ladyboys over the years, casually. Cannot really relate to that culture, but to each his own. It is a huge and highly accepted culture here. All good. It is the other ones I am having an increasingly hard time comprehending. And not only all of the myriad of designations, but the whole PC culture surrounding the designation, the insistence on us using the right terminology, and all the rest that goes along with the uber PC acceptance stuff. When I grew up if you liked guys you were either gay or bisexual. Now? The US is by far the most tolerant country in the world when it comes to the whole trans, non-binary, amorosexual, decide whatever you want today, if it fits mentality. No other country is as loose, driftless, and as silly as the US, except maybe the UK. Maybe. When a woman devotes her entire youth to a sport, and becomes one of the best in that particular area, and then a man comes along who decides to identify as a woman, and steals all the awards, all the victories, and all the accolades, something is not right in society. Something is broken, society has become morally bankrupt, and there has to be a pause, there has to be an interruption of the nonsense. No woman would survive more than 30 minutes in the NFL. Women will not participate in men's sports because they won't be able to handle the physical endurance required, nor the brutality, nor the talent level. A woman ranked #5 on the WTA could not beat a #758 man on the ATP as John McEnroe so truthfully stated. Hopefully all this craziness will pass and we'll return to some form of normalcy and indecency.

I know that's the general concept and I know that's what most Trump supporters believe to be the case, but I question if it is the reality, and I seriously question if Trump and his absolute bottom of the barrel pics have enough skill to pull this off. I don't think so. I think they're just going to end up greatly diminishing American influence, increasing the hatred for America around the world, dramatically reducing tourism to America, and destroying the American economy in the process. And taking with it perhaps millions upon millions of jobs that were previously occupied by people who voted for Trump. Once they lose their jobs, once they see inflation spike, once they see that the tariffs aren't working, and once they see that Trump is an absolute fool, I think they're going to change their tune. The reckoning is coming.

The important thing to consider is that the whole world has changed so dramatically in the last decade. Thailand has changed a lot in the last 10 years, if you're a single man there's far less to work with than there used to be. In the bars and the massage shops the women are 15 kilos heavier and 20 years older than they used to be. And in this day and age the really hot young ones have too many options, and there are plenty of desperados with money, that are offering them way too much cash. Specifically Phuket, and Samui are very very pale shadows of their former selves. The nightlife is a mere fraction of what it used to be, however if you're patient and you're a good prospector there is some talent to be found, though in my opinion that doesn't really apply to Samui or Phuket anymore, they're both pretty much wastelands as far as talent goes. Pattaya still has some talent, and so does Bangkok. You can find a cute girl here and there in Hua Hin, but nothing like in the past. Otherwise Thailand's still pretty great, it's just a bit more expensive than it used to be, but it's still a great place to spend time.

This is exactly why I go there Monday through Thursday, it's absolutely delightful, uncrowded, plenty to do, a lot of great food and nice people, in addition to a few good looking birds here and there. And it's very safe as long as you keep your nose clean, the biggest hazard is driving or getting mowed down by a car or motorbike as a pedestrian. You have to always keep your eyes open, but that applies to anywhere in Thailand.

That is simply not true, it applies to to a lesser extent on Phuket and Samui and areas where the locals are jaded and deal with a lot of butthead foreigners (Pattaya), but for the most part I find the Thai people as delightful as ever, they're still very light-hearted, it's very easy to get them to smile and laugh, and they're great fun. People, please don't listen to this nonsense. The other aspect of this is that the Thai people are fairly intuitive so what you get back is often times a reflection of what you bring to the table. If you're grouchy and ornery and overly serious, they're not going to respond to you. But if you're lighthearted with a nice smile, kind-hearted and respectful, you get all of that back in abundance. Most Thai people are quite lovely. And I love to be around them, and I love it here.

Much improvement needs to be done, but there has to be motivation and willingness to change the system, to start to motivate students to be curious and to ask questions and to tell their teachers when the teachers are absolutely incorrect. Good education starts there. A majority of the teachers here are substandard, do not even know the lesson plans they teach, and cannot even pass the tests they give their students. To call the Thai educational system low quality, poor, ineffective, and outdated, would all be an understatement. Much reform is needed, and an argument can be made that the extremely toxic elite here, want to keep the system the way it is, for reasons of avarice, selfishness, and a false and ancient notion that it will protect their status. Those vermin have alot to answer for. By international standards, the two top universities in Thailand are Mahidol and Chulalongkorn. World University Rankings created by Times Higher Education takes into account the reputation of research done by universities and how often papers produced by universities were quoted around the world. They have Mahidol ranked at #610, and Chulalongkorn ranked at #801, worldwide. That is the best this nation is capable of. Shows you how unimportant education is to the elite (who send their kids overseas for college) and this spectacularly toxic administration.

What you're talking about is common sense and reason, like a hopeful Trump supporter. I don't think the man has a nanogram of reason in his entire relatively small brain. What his supporters seem to forget is that one of the reasons why America has been such a dynamic economy up until now is the relative lack of tariffs. More tariffs resolve nothing, will slow down the economy, and will result in massive job loss, inflation and what are really tax hikes on the American people. Dumb and dumber. But, that's just big Don for you.

Pay for play. Most here are familiar with the concept. The general idea is paying a relatively small amount of money to a really hot woman, who then spends the next hour or so showing you an incredibly good time. Great deal.

The creep seems hellbent on destroying what is left of America, and diminishing it's remaining stature around the world. I wonder if his supporters saw this destruction coming? Didn't he say something about actually improving the nation? That seems like an eternity ago. I knew he was senile but talk about forgetting all your promises. Yikes.

Pattaya too. And even Samui. They are taking over. Yikes. No thanks. The vast majority are highly unpleasant people. Marxist indoctrination?

It would take about 8 minutes of an internet search to establish the fact that mini Musk has been avoiding billions in taxes.

I get up in the morning and feel a deep sense of well-being here in Thailand. I live in a smaller town so there's very little stress nor congestion, it's a quiet life, my expenses are relatively low and I'm with a woman that I adore. I have a lot of good foreign friends here and I'm able to keep myself busy and able to pursue my passions. And all the years I lived in the US I never felt fulfilled. They're living for 8 years in New York City during the eighties was pretty incredible. But, that was ancient history, and everything has changed now.

Yes. 20 years now and things are still great between us.

The spectacularly ignorant level of isolationism that Trump is engaging in is going to have long-term ramifications for America. He could be setting the nation back decades and there's no doubt that he's dramatically precipitating the decline that America was already experiencing over the past few decades. The man is a completely unhinged, insane, very unstable and he's very, very poorly informed and advised. Woe is the US.

David French: I’m a columnist at The New York Times, and I’m a former JAG officer, an Army lawyer. Earlier this week, we found out that Jeffrey Goldberg, the editor in chief of The Atlantic, received an invitation from the national security adviser, Michael Waltz, to join a Signal group chat. Audio clip of Jeffrey Goldberg: He was texting attack plans, when targets were going to be targeted, how they were going to be targeted, who was at the targets, when the next sequence of attacks were happening. This is an absolutely stunning breach of security. I’ve helped investigate numerous allegations of classified information spillages, and I’ve never heard of anything this egregious. This is extraordinary. There are so many ways in which sharing war plans is among the most egregious forms of security breach. It’s hard to think of a form of security breach that is worse than this. But aside from that, there is now public insight into conversations that were meant to be private. You have the vice president questioning the judgment of the president. You have the vice president laying into our allies. I know that’s something that they do publicly, as well, but there’s a difference between public communication and private communication. The private communication was never intended for the allies. So all of these things are damaging diplomatically. They’re damaging politically. They’re damaging militarily, and in the worst scenario, they could be catastrophically dangerous for American lives. It should be obvious to people that sharing plans for an attack hours before the attack could create problems, but let’s get a little bit more specific: The Houthis could move some of their weapons away from targeted locations. They could move senior officials away from targeted locations so that the strikes are less effective. They could choose to, for example, launch missiles themselves to attack before they are attacked, an action that could be incredibly costly in lives and in ships. They could move their senior leaders. The administration is saying now that there was nothing classified in the chat and they weren’t really war plans, in many ways, casting aspersions on Goldberg’s integrity. In fact, when Pete Hegseth, the secretary of defense, was confronted with these facts, he attacked Goldberg and did not acknowledge his own wrongdoing. But there is not an officer alive whose career would survive a security breach like this. From the very first weeks that you’re a member of the military, you start learning about operational security. This is drilled into officers. And those consequences would be instant relief from command. I have seen this with my own eyes. I have been a part of this process. You would have a relief from command followed by a comprehensive investigation, and potentially criminal charges. In the military, you would be advising an officer to seek counsel, to get a lawyer instantly, because the criminal investigation would be equally instant. In the civilian context, and Pete Hegseth is a civilian, there should be an immediate Department of Justice investigation into how this happened. Why were they using the Signal app, which the Pentagon has warned members of the military against using for Department of Defense business? Who was on the chat? Were they posting in it directly? Were they posting through subordinates? How often is sensitive business being conducted on Signal? There are so many questions that arise that the Department of Justice should be answering. And I mentioned criminal charges — federal law makes it a crime when a person, through gross negligence, removes information relating to the national defense from its proper place of custody and it is delivered to anyone in violation of trust or is lost, stolen, abstracted or destroyed. It’s way too soon to say whether Hegseth’s incompetence is also criminal, but I raise the possibility to demonstrate the sheer magnitude of the mistake, a security breach this significant requires thorough investigation. I can assure you that a Signal chat is not the right place to share sensitive information about upcoming American strikes. The White House’s spin is laughable. It’s weak. They have claimed that there were no actual war plans shared. The stakes are, what are we doing to the very culture of the United States military? Are we telling it that the days of professionalism are over and the days for political loyalty have begun?

Thailand has been facing issues for a very long time and after 10 years of army rule the Prayuth Decimation still affects Thailand to this day, and will for quite some time to come. The current administration is no better, as they have very few smart appointees and virtually nobody is there based on merit nor vision. Trump is escalating his trade war and it's going to severely damage the US economy in the process, and the damage is going to be long-term. This man is an uninformed nitwit who knows nothing about globalization nor the ecosystems involved in manufacturing. He is diminishing US influence by the day and that is going to be long-term, as nations around the world are not going to forget this and will be boycotting American products for decades to come. America deserves that treatment, as they voted Trump in after all.

You are right and the reality is that a lot of us live really well here and we have a lot to be thankful for. For me, it is about quality of life, and my level of fulfillment on a daily basis, which I seem to have here in abundance. A big factor here, is the relatively light hearted attitude of the people. You just do not find that in the US, where most seem bitter, disenchanted, unfulfilled, and heavy hearted. And many are struggling to make ends meet, in an environment that is stupidly over priced. This is an entirely subjective topic, of course. But some of us have been fortunate enough to find an outstanding woman, who is delightful to be around, on a daily basis, always has our back, and is fun, smart, and lovely. For me, that likelihood of finding that back in the US, would be very low. So, that is a big factor for me. Also you can live here on a relatively limited income, I can't do that in the US right now.

Yes. An absolute typo. Unless you are referring to relatively inexpensive PFP, then it's a palace. Or a heaven.

I'm sorry but you lost your right to talk about scams and corruption when you voted for Trump. Period. End of story. You can't support a scam artist who has enriched himself from a lifetime of crime at the expense of ordinary people, and still maintain the right to criticize others for the same behavior. And I know we're both on the same page as we agree that all politicians at the national level are ridiculously corrupt.