BANGKOK, Thailand -- Thaksin Shinawatra enters 2025 as purportedly the most powerful politician in Thailand, the billionaire who could not be stopped even after two coups and juntas, 15 years in self-exile, and a stack of prison sentences against him.
Mr. Thaksin is now so larger-than-life that many allege he manipulates Thailand's government through his seemingly timid daughter Prime Minister Paetongtarn Shinawatra, 38, who was elected by Parliament in August and appears to eagerly agree with his advice.
Mr. Thaksin, a two-time ex-prime minister who currently holds no political office, is this year's man to watch.
Unfortunately, he began 2025 grappling with allegations that he voiced racist views.
"African people, who have black skin and flat noses that make it difficult to breathe, are hired for millions of baht [Thai currency] to be models," Mr. Thaksin said during a campaign rally in Chiang Rai city on January 6.
"Thai people look much better," Mr. Thaksin, 75, said. "There is no need for [our people to get] nose, jaw, or breast augmentation.
In this chaotic news cycle, America’s worst plane crash in a generation already feels a generation old.
But the administration’s response to the tragic January collision that killed 67 people over the Potomac is worth revisiting. Not only because the loved ones of those lost deserve answers, but because it highlights a MAGA playbook we’ve seen repeatedly now — and we’ll see again very soon.
We don’t yet know what caused the crash. But shortly before it, President Trump disbanded a Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) safety committee, fired the FAA administrator, and implemented a federal hiring freeze despite a shortage of air traffic controllers. (Staffing at the local tower was “not normal” the night of the collision, The New York Times reported.)
The return of one million Palestinians from southern Gaza to the north on January 27 felt as if history was choreographing one of its most earth-shattering events in recent memory.
Hundreds of thousands of people marched along a single street, the coastal Rashid Street, at the furthest western stretch of Gaza. Though these displaced masses were cut off from each other in massive displacement camps in central Gaza and the Mawasi region further south, they sang the same songs, chanted the same chants, and used the same talking points.
“Some experts worry that, if the country went to war, many reserve units might be unable to deploy. A U.S. official who works on these issues put it simply: ‘We can’t get enough people.’”
“Vietnam Syndrome” hasn’t gone away! It resulted in the elimination of the draft and ultimately morphed into “Iraq Syndrome” – so it seems – and even though those lost, horrific wars are now nothing but history, the next American war is ever-looming (against Canada? . . . against Greenland?). And yet, good God, the military is having a hard time recruiting a sufficient amount of patriotic cannon fodder.
Human trafficking is humanity’s worst atrocity. It is an activity that is illegal worldwide where humans are frequently trafficked for sexual slavery. Every 30 seconds a person is forced into human trafficking! Eighty percent of these cases are girls and women. Human trafficking is a crime that generates billions of dollars worldwide and much of that money is generated in the United States. The numbers are chronically underreported.
In 2022, Ohio was the fifth state with the most victims of human trafficking. In Columbus, human trafficking has to do with the cartel, sometimes with the police, and many times with drug dealers. The victims are of different races and are violated, some murdered and thrown like garbage in alleys and placed in abandoned buildings. We have a huge humanitarian crisis in the capital of Ohio.
This article first appeared on the Buckeye Flame
The staff of The Buckeye Flame arrived at one of Ohio’s largest Pride celebrations in 2024 to find our table sandwiched between a cellphone company and a grocery-store chain.
To our left, the cellphone company was giving out gift cards and T-shirts. To our right, the grocery store chain was giving out high-quality tote bags and industrial strength carabiners. The enthusiastic staffers, with Chappell Roan blaring behind them, beckoned Pride-goers over to their tables to grab their free stuff.
All throughout the day, people would come to our table straight from one of our corporate neighbors, totes open and at the ready.
“What do you have?” people would demand, truly without salutation or preamble.
Our retorts of, “The truth!” or “Queer journalism!” never went over well.
The Trump administration is engineering the most extensive dismantling of the federal workforce in modern history—not through mass firings, but by incentivizing resignations. A new Office of Personnel Management (OPM) program offers federal employees full pay and benefits until September 30, 2025, while exempting them from in-person work. This isn’t just an incentive—it’s a slow-motion purge designed to drain the government of talent without triggering the backlash of forced layoffs.
Many will take this deal, viewing it as a lucrative early retirement with no strings attached. The most likely to leave? The most experienced, skilled employees—the backbone of the federal government. These are the workers with institutional knowledge, those best positioned to find opportunities elsewhere.
For now, the damage will be masked. These employees will technically remain on payroll, but they’ll be ghost workers—paid but absent. This illusion of stability will persist until October 2025, when their exits become official and the full impact takes hold.
I recently heard an interview on OnPoint Radio with Jane Clayson. The interview
subject was an internist named Stuart B. Mushlin. He had practiced in the Boston area
for 40 years and had recently written a book describing 20 difficult to diagnose patients
that he had encountered during his career. The book was titled “Playing the Ponies and
Other Medical Mysteries Solved”.
In the interview, Dr Mushlin expressed many of the same concerns that I have had with
the Big Business of medicine, and so I wrote the following letter to him:
Dear Dr Mushlin: Thank you for writing the book and also for taking the time to reveal
some unwelcome truths about the sad status of America’s healthcare system.