spidermike007

Surviving and thriving in this world in this day and age requires a great deal of discrimination, good judgment and the ability to just say no to strangers. You never, ever fall for something offered to you by a stranger, most are up to no good. Why would somebody walking down the street spend 20,000 baht on a product that a stranger is offering them? What was this guy thinking, why is he so reckless, and where are his survival instincts? There is a whole subculture in this world, who absolutely refuse to work for a living, and instead like to prey on those who are vulnerable, naive, dumb, and easy victims. It is our responsibility to be careful, prudent, willing to do some vetting, some research, some due diligence, anytime we part with cash. Dumb and dumber. The other thing that comes to mind is if you were subject to a scam like this why would you want the whole nation to know about it? Why would you report it, what do you think the police are going to do help you recover your funds? I would just suck it up and move on.

Of course I do, I absolutely despise immigration and the government here, and I agree we should be given honorary plaques, we should be given five nights a year in five star hotels for free, we should be given all kinds of considerations but we're not. They don't want us here, that much is obvious. I think the Thai people are neutral but the government is definitely does not want us here. I agree with you on that.

If the man does anything positive I will give him the benefit of the doubt, but I just haven't seen anything yet. They're talking about eliminating bloat, so far Mad Musk nor Trump have provided nothing, absolutely nothing in the way of transparency or evidence that anything positive is happening. Just the destruction of the American economy and grand diminishment of US influence and respect. These guys are absolute goons, you don't see it yet but give it a little bit of time things will become much more clear.

If this is true it would be very typical and another harebrained Trump move, done in a rushed manner without much forethought, and with absolutely no wisdom guiding the principle of the move. The man is a human wrecking ball, and he seems to be absolutely determined to diminish the influence of America around the world and destroy its economy.

Well Trump seems to be failing in the US as his economic policy has been absolutely horrendous, his tariffs have been an abomination, and his destruction of long held alliances with supportive, friendly, and kind nations has been an embarrassment to everyone who calls themself an American, unless they are the most avid of his supporters. Now it appears that his foreign policy is failing, he claimed that he was going to get America out of wars, and end the war in Ukraine in a day. Bombing Iran with the extreme and genocidal Israeli government as a partner would not be a smart idea. America could be looking at decades of blowback and terror attacks from that, but Trump simply wouldn't understand that concept. He's too simplistic for that.

The CCP did a very nice job of staging that photo and this event, and either the Thai representative was totally deceived or he simply went along with the stooge event. Everybody knows what happens to these guys, everybody knows how vicious and heartless the CCP is, and everybody knows how badly persecuted these people are. Thailand dropped the ball, the government showed extreme levels of moral bankruptcy and cowardice, and they got the kind of egg on their face that they deserved.

I've had gout for about 20 years and I was taking 150 mg of allopurinol also, and I was getting attacks a couple of times a year. I went to a rheumatologist and she did blood work over a period of a few months and determined that I needed 450 mg a day, based on my body size. Now that I've upped the amount that I'm taking I haven't had any issues at all, so it's likely that 150 mg just isn't enough for you. Also contrary to the advice that I was getting when I got an attack Indoman (indomethacin) was much more effective than colchicine, which stopped working for me.

All I had to see was the US and the UK at 23 and 24 to know that there was some fishy about this survey and that the results were fairly bogus. The quality of life in the US is so low these days I wouldn't be surprised if it was 120 rather than 23. Thailand is facing alot of problems no doubt, the economies is in really rough shape, but for those of us who live on foreign currencies many of us live very well here and enjoy a very high quality of life. I still find the Thai people to be relatively lighthearted and I find most to be warm, gracious and fun-loving. I love living here, that hasn't changed. Having said that I can only imagine what it must be like to be living on 300 or 400 baht a day, which so many people are doing, and when you have a nation that pays 5,000 baht a month more to those with the University degree then to those with no specialized training at all, you know there are some serious inherent problems.

This is a great thing and as an American I totally support this kind of action, the US needs to be put in its place and Trump needs to be taught that US influence is nowhere near what it used to be, it has been declining for decades and he is doing nothing but precipitating the decline. Though he has no interest in education, reading or learning, it would really be beneficial for him and his administration if they knew even just a small amount of information about globalization and the inherent ecosystems required. 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. Ecosystems? Listen a bit to Beinhocker, who is also the executive director of the Institute for New Economic Thinking at the Oxford Martin School. In the real world, he argues, “There is no such thing as the American economy anymore that you can identify in any real, tangible way. There’s just this accounting fiction that we call U.S. G.D.P.” To be sure, he says, “There are American interests in the economy. There are American workers. There are American consumers. There are firms based in America. But there is no American economy in that isolated sense.” The old days, he added, “where you made wine and I made cheese, and you had everything you needed to make wine and I had everything I needed to make cheese and so we traded with each other — which made us both better off, as Adam Smith taught — those days are long gone.” Except in Trump’s head. Instead, there is a global web of commercial, manufacturing, services and trading “ecosystems,” explains Beinhocker. “There is an automobile ecosystem. There’s an A.I. ecosystem. There’s a smartphone ecosystem. There’s a drug development ecosystem. There is the chip-making ecosystem.” And the people, parts and knowledge that make up those ecosystems all move back and forth across many economies. As NPR noted in a recent story about the auto industry, “carmakers have built a vast, complicated supply chain that spans North America, with parts crossing back and forth across borders throughout the auto manufacturing process. … Some parts cross borders multiple times — like, say, a wire that is manufactured in the U.S., sent to Mexico to be bundled into a group of wires, and then back to the U.S. for installation into a bigger piece of a car, like a seat.” Trump just waves off all of this. He told reporters that the U.S. is not reliant on Canada. “We don’t need them to make our cars,” he said. Actually, we do. And thank goodness for that. It not only enables us to make cars cheaper, but also better. All that a Model T did was get you from point to point faster than a horse, but today’s cars offer you heating and cooling and entertainment from the internet and satellites. They will navigate for you and even drive for you — and they’re much safer. When we can combine more complex knowledge and complex parts to solve complex problems, our quality of life soars. But here’s the catch. You cannot make complex stuff alone anymore. It’s too complex. And if you are not part of these ecosystems, your country will not thrive.” And trust is the essential ingredient that makes these ecosystems work and grow, Beinhocker adds. Trust acts as both glue and grease. It glues together bonds of cooperation, while at the same time it greases the flows of people, products, capital and ideas from one country to the next. Remove trust and the ecosystems start to collapse. Trust, though, is built by good rules and healthy relationships, and Trump is trampling on both. The result: If he goes down this road, Trump will make America and the world poorer. Mr. President, do your homework.

As guests in this country the very least that we can do is show a consistent level of respect to the local people, this kind of behavior is never justified. Never, ever.

Well, I was sidetracked by a personal attack. Just trying to provide some clarification.

You might be right. You are one of the more reasonable intellects on this forum, so I will take this into account. Thanks.

Well I have a lot of Jews in my family and I have a lot of very close Jewish friends, and I have a lot of affection for the Jewish faith and culture. But for people with relatively simple minds, the concept of separating how one feels about Jews from how one feels about official Israeli politics and policy is just simply too much to grasp. It is alot more nuanced and is just too complicated, for jingos, memes and hateful politics. Hence, it is easier to use a term like you use. It is always far harder to understand nuanced beliefs. Especially for a supporter of the goombah.

Though this is true, back then a man's word actually meant something, and they honored things like a covenant between nations, and between people's. Trump is way too unholy to even understand the concept of a covenant or honoring an agreement. That is about honor, none of which he possesses. He is Mr. Dishonor.

Well I would say it's an exaggeration to say that the US is being colonized by Russia, but they're certainly being influenced by Russia, they are certainly allowing Russian Kompromat to have its desired effect, and they're certainly allowing Russian spying and hacking and likely they're allowing infiltration of Russian spies into US intelligence organizations. But that's just who Trump is, that's just to be expected, we can't expect any more of an imbecile creep than that. He is a traitor to his nation and he is very dangerous.

Oh my God, oh my God he doesn't like me, he disapproves of my policy, he criticized me. I'm so hurt, I'm so emotionally damaged, I am such a weak victim, this is terrible, we must prevent him from entering the country. He could cause such great harm to my soul and my psyche. I'm such a delicate creature, I just can't handle criticism. I don't like it and I don't want it, keep them out please. Bad people. No fealty at all.

It depends on how dangerous the guy is if he's of the life-threatening variety then you just leave them out on the ice for a month the cold or the creatures will take care of him. If he's less lethal, then you keep him sedated, or tied up or locked in a storage closet with a bowl, and you feed him once a day, there are solutions.

Buchanan was widely considered the worst, then Harrison. Though none of them were nearly as destructive as Trump, and neither of them were insane, unhinged, and as creepy, nor as felonious as Disaster Don.

Hopefully Zelensky understands that Trump will throw even his best friends under the bus if it benefits him one iota, and it would be very surprising if Trump did anything to harm the interests of Russia and Putin.

Which is a rather bizarre thing when you're talking about 60 against 1. In a place like Antarctica one would think that it would be quite easy to contain one rotten or aggressive individual. There's something about this story that doesn't smell right. And when there's a rank spell in the air it often means there is rotten fish in the vicinity.

It is of extreme importance to differentiate between people protesting against Israel's approach to this war in Gaza, and antisemitism. They are two completely different things, however Israel is an extremely thin skinned nation, and very intolerant of any sort of criticism. As a Jew I know that many Jews are thin-skinned when it comes to any sort of criticism of Israel, and it's often interpreted as being anti-semitic. I've been called a Jew hater for criticizing Israeli policy so I know how sensitive the issue can be, and it's very important to interpret it correctly. Jews and all people have the right to be critical of Israeli policy, especially now that the extremists have taken over gotten the support of a hateful PM, and are engaging in what could be called a ridiculously disproportionate campaign against the Gazans. Israel must be very careful at this point as they are losing support around the world, by the day it's gotten to the point where there are very few nations who are still supportive of Israel, and the IDF, and even the US is considering withdrawing some support. That would put them in dire straits, and very isolated. But, they deserve that, in my opinion. This move by Trump is not surprising since he's an avid supporter of the extremists in Israel, and he's very much against the concept of dark-skinned people having any level of power, including the Palestinian people.

Outstanding news, anytime someone in Thailand is held responsible for that level of negligence it's a good thing for society, it shows the Thai people and the world that there is a semblance of law and order here, and it benefits everybody. It's very possible that even the mother of the owner of this pub is not going to miss him.

Highly inaccurate and likely totally fake, or false. But, integrity is out the window, when it comes to defending the indefensible. Regardless of whether you use Baron or Fidelity numbers, it’s clear that the Twitter takeover has so far been a financial fiasco for Musk and his co-investors. By my math, Musk et al. have about $33 billion invested in X. That’s $44 billion to buy out Twitter’s shareholders plus about $2.5 billion of expenses, less $13.5 billion that X borrowed. Even at Fidelity’s new, higher valuation, the original $33 billion of equity is down by about $23.7 billion. Musk is down about $18.6 billion; his co-investors (who put $7.1 billion into the deal) are down about $5.1 billion. Sure, Musk, the world’s richest person, may be able to laugh off those losses. But to Baron, Fidelity, and Musk’s 17 other co-investors, those big losses are no laughing matter. https://www.barrons.com/articles/elon-musk-twitter-x-valuation-baron-fidelity-72850dec

It seems like a step forward now let's get rid of the 2:00 to 5:00 p.m. prohibition window and then let's go a step further and encourage the production of microbrews. Just to make sure small brewers were thoroughly intimidated, the rewrite back in 2017 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.

This kind of action should surprise nobody as Trump is showing fealty to Putin and erasing any evidence of Putin's crimes. I think what it really comes down to is that Putin gives him a greater comfort level and makes him feel better about his own lifetime of crimes, that he himself has committed. Granted though Trump is morally bankrupt, a scam artist, a huckster and a felon, I don't think that he has been involved in all that much in the way of genocide or serial killing like his buddy. But they are still birds of a feather.