connda

Good!

Have you seen or heard about Biden since Jan 20th. Dude has completely disappeared into obscurity. Reality: He is a sick, mentally deteriorating elderly man with serious health issues. That in itself is not a bad thing, it is the nature of aging. What is close to criminal is allowing that shell of a person to pretend to be a functioning president. He should have been removed from office by way of the 25th Amendment when it became obvious to any independent observer that he was physically incapable of heading the most powerful nation on the planet. I don't even have pity for the guy. The entire Biden clan are corrupted. He'll basically continue his downward decline surrounded by medical staff at his Rehoboth Beach residence and wheeled out in a wheel chair to prove he's still relevant in a Weekend At Bernie's manner every few months. I mean really - it will be pathetic to watch.

I like all of the "confused" and "laughing" emojis click on posts by the "True Believer" who still buy into the Covid pandemic scam. No doubt these folk keep up-to-date and their boosters which don't stop them from getting Covid, doesn't stop transmission of Covid, but makes them feel "Safe" while more and more evidence is now being released showing that those shots are neither "Safe" nor "Effective." Let's not even discuss masking. Personally I urged them to keep getting the shots as they are willing volunteers to be the long-term test subjects on the efficiency and safety of these shots. Over the long term the truth will come up. I wonder how many will be left with "Buyer's Remorse?" Probably none as these really are true believers. Faced with reality the cognitive dissonance will eat them alive. Even when studying are release showing that the shots are dangerous, many if not most will continue to get them. C'est la vie. Up to you!

@Red Phoenix Yeah, I'm still floored at the sheer number of Thais who bought into the pandemic 110%, and five years later still do. All masked up for a mild flu and no doubt up-to-date on their Covid boosters and probably coming down with Covid on a yearly basis. Worse are the Thai corporations who force their employees to mask up during working hours. You can tell which corporation they are - walk into one of their stores and 100% of the employees are masked up. At other corporate run stores without a mask policies the masked employees reflect the general public where 40% to 50% remained masked out of fear of Covid. The people who instigated this sham quite literally mentally harmed entire swaths of the Thai public, a public who tend to be unquestioning followers to this day. Freaking sad!

Yeah, they are going to be a whole lot of fugly, tatted-up 60 and 70 years old in 30 or 40 years. Large swaths of tatted up skin all wrinkled and faded.

Nah - tats are a generational phenomenon, They ain't going away unless the youngest generation chooses to reject them. Which may happen, or not. Personally fads are fads - they come and they go. I wear a few days of facial hair because I'm retired and too lazy to shave. I wear slacks, a polo shirt, and flip-flops when out. At home shorts, t-shirts, and bare-footed. My hair in the cold season is long and in the hot season short, and in the rainy season somewhere in-between. I'm no trend setter as I'm sure there are others my age who do the same. I don't have tats and never will, well, unless I have "DNR" tattooed on my chest in Thai. Maybe there I'm a trendsetter.

Democrat Congresswoman Maxine Dexter sums up the sentiments of the far-Left in 30 seconds.

I can just imagine the conversation after work at the bar. "So crazy farang come in today and say he not leave unless we take tax paper from him. We tell him, 'No need tax paper,' but farang get all excited and demand to see boss. I hear all over Thailand now that crazy farang come to tax office and demand to give us paper. Ewwwweeee. Crazy farang!" <sigh> Ya'll will figure it out eventually. To paraphrase Big Boss, "Keep your records in case your audited and other then that, don't worry about it." No doubt we will hear more of these entertaining stories.

Sure they will.

Kanye? Is that you? 🤔

Why China will prevail over the US in this crazy world of Trump 2.0 Because they actually have a functioning manufacturing base and the infrastructure to support it - as opposed to - a lot of hot air about exceptionalism.

"Let no good deed go unpunished!" Here you are, being an upright and honest foreign "resident" trying to do the right thing. And then it backfires on you because you as a US citizen know more about the US-Thai DTA then the "experts" working in the Thai tax office. Many of us who have lived here a long time warned ya'll off if you have done your homework, read your DTA, and worked out your taxes, and checked to see if you own the Thai government anything. If you don't own anything, why file? If you're under the exception thresholds, why file. If you choose to file, why divulge income that is exempt from taxation? I can perfectly understand filing if you work here (did that in the past) or if you actually own them money as a tax resident, but when you don't owe them anything, why paint a target on your back? 🎯 Your story should be pinned as the "poster-child" of what can go wrong when you offer up information to government "experts" who aren't really "experts" at all. They're bureaucratic functionaries, not lawyers. As you found out the average government employee working in a provincial tax office doesn't have a clue what is in all of the Dual Tax Agreement that Thailand has drawn up with God only knows how many different countries. Even the top managers probably don't know - now there's "The Suck." Now you may need to spend your Social Security payment to hire a tax lawyer or a real tax expert to extricate you from the governmental, bureaucratic quick-sand that you've now sunk into. Best of luck. Let us know how it works out for ya so that other "good citizens" can wrap their heads around what can happen when dealing with a Thai bureaucracy. Maybe, unlike yourself, they'll avoid the quick-sand.

"Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men, even when they exercise influence and not authority: still more when you superadd the tendency or the certainty of corruption by wealth." -Lord Acton "The only way to deal with corruption is to shine a light on it." -Bill Moyers "Corruption is worse than prostitution. The latter might endanger the morals of an individual, the former invariably endangers the morals of the entire country." -Karl Kraus

Golly gee whiz Sammy, where'd you get your $30 million from on a government salary? Being the head of USAID seemed to be a lucrative gig? "President Trump and Elon Musk exposes the EX-USAID Chief Samantha Power who accumulate a $30 million of net worth over a matter of years with a $180k annual salary." placeholder: "Nothing to see here, move along, move along!!!"

But they ARE NOT cracking down on cigarettes to "protect the children." Imho, the move has less to do with "protecting the children" than it does to protect a connected monopoly. As usual, hypocrisy reins supreme.

If you haven't noticed, the is a conservative voter backlash among the public. In Romania Călin Georgescu took 22% of the votes and the courts annulled the election, because? He wasn't supposed to win. He's the wrong candidate. He's like conservative. All conservatives are in the EU are not branded "Far-Right Wing Extremists" as well as "Putin's Puppets." It's all nonsense. The status quo does not want change via the ballot box so they are willing to upend democracy and call it "saving democracy." The status quo IS the problem. So the betting pools are not betting that Călin Georgescu will now take 40% of the vote in the upcoming election. Why? Because the voters are rebelling against the move to upend democracy in the name of "saving democracy." People aren't stupid - they was though it. That's now the state of the EU. Talk about banning the German AfD, banning France's National Rally, and banning anyone who threatens the "status quo" which has worn out its welcome - and the people are rebelling: at the ballot box. That's what happened in the US. Same same, not different. The vast majority of European voters are about to vote into office the candidates and the parties that they are being told by the status quo are "dangerous." People are tired - they want change.

There is nothing secret about it. Its just abandoned.

The "humanitarian programs" are in themselves a grift, no different that the corporate welfare programs. They are just another conduit to "wash" money then funnel it for other purposes.

Really, those making the most noise since Jan 20th are like babies whose mummies took away their rattles. Ya'll did this from 2016 until 2021, and now your whinging and crying again - for 4 more years? Gawd! I sort of have pity on those of you who melt down into the pool of goo and rant and rave. Trump didn't throw you all in concentration camps his first term and he's not going to throw you into concentration camps his second term either. Ya'll are suppose to be adults. Lord, act like it. This hyperbolic over-reactions to a second Trump term (and everything to do with Trump and conservatism in general) is exactly what has turned off those voters in the center and left-of-center. Every rational voter is simply tired of the far-Left's histrionics and hysterics. It's old, give it a rest.

Your welcome!

Make me seriously wonder how many of the most vehement AN critics of the efforts to rein in the rampant waste, fraud, and abuse by the permanent Washington DC bureaucracy weren't on the USAID payroll. Now they are mad because their paychecks stopped? Maybe.

Trump Declares Himself Chairman of Kennedy Center, Immediately Bans Drag Performances Good.

That's to bleed off all the fuel. Sounds like the pilot thought there was the potential for a crash. Glad all worked out well.