it also means that every one of them was the deciding vote
— GOLIKEHELLMACHINE (@golikehellmachine.com) July 1, 2025 at 4:01 PM
… And she absolutely deserves every bit of the opprobrium she’s now drawing! But, let’s be honest, it’s always easier to gin up an online mob against someone who lacks a Y chromosome.
via @ryanobles.bsky.social
Sen. Lisa Murkowski stares Ryan down for more than 10 secs after he asks her to respond to Sen. Rand Paul’s critique of the deal she struck to get her to a YES and pass the OBBB.
“Do I like this bill? No. But I tried to take care of Alaska’s interests.”— jen ?? (@bunnibytz.bsky.social) July 1, 2025 at 4:21 PM
===
"Murkowski promised to make sure that 'Alaskans and *people around the country* are not impacted in a negative way' (emphasis ours). That didn’t last." www.thebulwark.com/p/senate-gop…
— The Bulwark (@thebulwark.com) July 1, 2025 at 9:00 PM
The business proposition of organized crime isn’t complicated: Parasitic gangsters suck the hard-earned money out of good citizens’ wallets to line their own pockets and deliver kickbacks up the chain of command. In the United States Senate, Lisa Murkowski has made Alaska into pretty important turf. Her unique ability to waffle on major deals or rebel against major nominations in the Trump era has put her in a prime position to collect when it’s time.
So last night and well into the early hours of this morning, Republican leaders turned their attention to Murkowski. They may have titles like “chairman” or “majority leader” or “whip,” but for at least 24 hours no one doubted who the boss really was.
To appease Murkowski, Republicans initially sought two special carveouts for Alaska: One would exempt Alaska from cuts to the SNAP food-assistance program for people with low incomes, and the other would create an Alaska-shaped exception to Republicans’ efforts to gut Medicaid. Because the bill had to conform to the Senate’s strict rules for budget-reconciliation bills, the parliamentarian threw out the Medicaid exemption. But they kept the SNAP one—by making it so that states with elevated error rates in their payments could delay implementing work requirements. Yes, it literally would pay to have an error-prone system…
===
As @spiderhyphenman.bsky.social just posted- the key quote is the next one, which is "If I vote against it, OBBB is just gone. And there are tax implications for the people of my state."
Murkowski is passing the buck, yeah, but ultimately she made a choice that extending the TCJA is more important— Schnorkles O'Bork (@schnorkles.bsky.social) July 1, 2025 at 12:42 PM
===
idk what to say about this, it seems pretty clear that Murkowski made the decision that extending the TCJA outweighed all other concerns, and because the OBBB would go down in flames if she voted no and it would be unclear how to extend the TCJA, she voted yes.
— Schnorkles O'Bork (@schnorkles.bsky.social) July 1, 2025 at 5:16 PM
===
Dumb decision making? Yeah.
Do I agree? No.
Is it a coherent reason, even if it sucks and she's a moron? Yeah.— Schnorkles O'Bork (@schnorkles.bsky.social) July 1, 2025 at 5:16 PM
===
So Murkowski sold her vote for a tax break for whalers who buy harpoons? If you or I traded votes for bribes, we'd be in prison. It would seem that the same laws should apply to senators.
📰 Democrat calls Murkowski ‘cheap date’ over whaling tax carve-out
thehill.com/homenews/hou…— 🌊 ᑎIGᕼTᗯᖇITEᖇ 🌊 (@nightwriter.bsky.social) July 1, 2025 at 9:13 PM
===
Says the awful senator who didn’t need to inflict pain on millions of Americans. At least have the decency to resign. Hoping the House undoes your own vote is the most pathetic, demented defense I have ever heard www.axios.com/2025/07/01/l…
— Jen Rubin (@jenrubin.bsky.social) July 1, 2025 at 5:20 PM
===
But but but… savvy!?!…
???? Quite a lot of the Alaska provisions were stripped and then her state is still getting devastated ffs
— Ben McAdams Memorial Act. but on BlueSky (@purrtah.bsky.social) July 1, 2025 at 2:09 PM
===
If that were real the answer is to name it all, put it out there in public. Until she levels details, these are excuses for lacking courage and basic human decency.
— Clean Observer (@hammbear2024.bsky.social) July 1, 2025 at 8:14 PM
===
Yes, Murkowski and Collins do have this exact pact. It’s been an open secret for years. And the gullible voters in their states keep falling for it.
— Jon Cooper (@joncooper-us.bsky.social) July 1, 2025 at 8:10 PM
Elizabelle
Murkowski fucked up big time. A lot of GOP senators did, but she put on this act of being so conflicted.
Not a profile in courage. You don’t sell out Medicaid for whale captain benefits or whatever she went for.
Fuck her. Fuck them all. Cowards. You almost feel less derision for the true believers, the Mike Lees and Tubervilles and other demonstrably stupid and craven Republicans who do not pretend to be anything but what they are.
Murkowski could have stopped this Senate bill. She did not.
Senator John Kennedy of Louisiana could have ensured RFK Jr.’s nomination did not make it out of committee. As a physician, he knows how dangerous RFK Jr.’s craptastic ideas are.
Screw them both. Because they sure screwed us.
catclub
So much for the ‘Equal dignitude of the States’ that Roberts used to gut the VRA.
I think every other state should sue to get the same carveouts Alaska got.
RaflW
We’re going down with the ship.* And no one, especially not Republicans, know how all of us millions and millions of rats will behave as the water rises and there’s no rescue possible. They are setting into motion desperation across vast swathes of American, and counting on having the guns and goons to control everything. Can it work? Yes. But it can also fail very spectacularly and with massive losses, personal and collective.
* That sounds like dooming, but I mean that, barring a brawl between House and Senate Rs (still possible as the two chambers try to conform this shitbox bill) we’ll literally just throw people to the streets, abandon FEMA, heck we’re already defunding K-12 and college and science and health research, etc. Life is going to get more brutish and short, how people respond to that pressure is a huge wild card the GOP is throwing into our already stressed and dysfunctional society.
Glidwrith
@Elizabelle: Amen
Enhanced Voting Techniques
The story I heard was Murkowski had a golden ticket on the vote, then Trump had to go fuck with Tilles over something Tilles said to the press, so Tillies said screw it, he’s voting no now, so the kabuki so Murkowski could save face voting yes.
JML
“i hope the House undoes my vote” has got to be the most cowardly, feckless statement from a US Senator in decades. And there’s some real contenders.
Wonder what the conversation with Collins was like when Murkowski was told it was her turn to vote yes.
Regardless, both of them suck.
While I think Murkowski deserves every bit of hell she’s getting right now (do your job, fool), I hope no one forgets the pathetic and craven Josh Hawley, who brings shame to all Josh’s in existence with his “these medicaid cuts are terrible, unacceptable, and deeply destructive and should be taken out of the bill. But I’ll vote for it anyways. because I’m a pathetic cowardly tool.”
gene108
@RaflW:
Enough people will blame minorities that Republicans will not face the consequences they deserve.
prostratedragon
Rich even without audio:
Jeffro
every single MAGA senator was the deciding vote here
JD Vance was the deciding vote here
make them all pay in ’26 and ’28!
write the bill now that repeals it all, and adds huge tax increases for billionaires, and promise to take it up the afternoon of Jan 20th, 2029
UNDONE ON DAY ONE!
They Call Me Noni
This whole thing is disgusting. We have a Republican Senator from Alaska begging for scraps while the other 49 know full good and well this bill is disastrous for their state and the country. It feels like we’re living in some sort of dystopian Hunger Games government.
Scott
Aging prostitute who has to keep lowering her trick price.
RaflW
@gene108: That’s not a foregone conclusion. As golikehellmachine and others say pretty regularly on Bsky, people’s views are not fully baked. Look at how polling on immigration has swung away from Trump as his cruelty has become unmistakeable. But that also requires effective communication of the stakes and consequences by the opposition party.
Geminid
@Elizabelle: Political pedant here: Bill Cassidy in the Louisiana Senator and medical doctor who could have killed RFK Junior’s nomination but did not.
John Kennedy is the Louisiana Senator and Oxford grad who channels Foghorn Leghorn.
Ed. How’s the weather over there in Richmond? It’s been rainy here, but I see blue sky to the west, so we both might have a sunny afternoon.
japa21
Someone should ask Murkowski why Alaskans deserve to keep their SNAP benefits, but people in other states don’t. Is she saying people in Alabama, Mississippi, Kentucky or West Virginia are some type of sub-human species?
George
Republicans are contemptible human beings–a sad collection of sociopaths, psychopaths, and malignant narcissists. All it ever would have taken to counter the destruction wrought on America and the world by FFOTUS would have been for four senators or three or four congresspeople to caucus with Democrats. Would they have been primaried if they did so? Probably, but at least they would have demonstrated that they have spines and history would have judged them kindly.
But that’s the thing, man. They are bent on destruction of the U.S., full stop.
schrodingers_cat
Murkoswki is a Republican senator. Unless her actions match her words I am uninterested in what she has to say.
OT: BJers, I have a question how much do most Americans know about the history of British rule in India? Thanks.
(By India I mean British India)
Baud
Baud
@schrodingers_cat:
You should assume the answer is nothing.
japa21
@RaflW: The Dems have been out there telling the truth about this bill, and it has worked. This is a deeply unpopular bill. GOP passed it anyway.
The GOP was out there telling lies about the ACA and it worked. People were against it, but the Dems passed it anyway.
Difference is the Dem passed it because it was the right thing to do and they were willing to pay the electoral price. The GOP passed knowing it is the wrong thing to do for their constituents and country, because they really don’t believe they will pay any electoral price.
Elizabelle
I think Lisa Murkowski should resign, since she is in such bodily danger.
Would love to see US Senator Mary Peltola.
schrodingers_cat
@Baud: Even a well read audience like the Juicers?
Geminid
@schrodingers_cat: I’ve read all three of Richard Cornwell’s Sharpe novels set in 1790s India.
japa21
@schrodingers_cat: Whatever they got from Gunga Din. Only half kidding. Looking back, I had some fairly good history lessons which covered that period. But they really only scratched the surface.
schrodingers_cat
@japa21: @Geminid: So whatever most Americans know about the British occupation of India comes mostly from Victorian era fiction authored by British writers? Or rosy narratives like Darlymple’s?
Doug R
@RaflW:
These new polls prove Trump isn’t untouchable on immigration
Old School
Let’s not forget Ron Johnson:
tam1MI
I would say that’s, unless they watched a lot of PBS back in the day, nothing.
Doug R
@schrodingers_cat:
Well, there’s RRR.
schrodingers_cat
@Doug R: Second degree orientalism from RWNJ Indian sources is even worse. There were so many factual errors in that narrative that I don’t even know where to begin. It was terribly condescending to India’s Adivasis (original inhabitants).
Ohio Mom
@schrodingers_cat: Very little. If they are old, maybe they saw the movie, Ghandi.
We don’t learn much history in public school, mostly because we pushed history aside to teach STEM.
ETA: if it makes you feel better, Americans don’t know much American history either.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@schrodingers_cat: Most Americans think history begins in 1930. Not mention when we do hear about British India it’s from the British perspective.
Geminid
@Elizabelle: Mary Peltola is running for Alaska Governor. She’s one of two Native woman running for Governor in 2026; Deb Haaland is running in New Mexico. Two very talented, experienced and hardworking Democrats.
zhena gogolia
@schrodingers_cat: A Passage to India, The Raj Quartet (and the miniseries). Vanity Fair. i.e., not much.
I don’t think The Raj Quartet is very easy on the British, but it is written by a Brit, of course.
laura
Every single republican senator voted for this giant bust out because they wanted to do it, even principled Randy P and concerned Susan C. This is who they are, have always been, will always be.
@schrodingers_cat: I know far too little, most of which by way of fiction- raj quartet, Midnight’s Children and the like. I’d be interested in knowing more. Also, those AD pencils- they are dreamy! Deeply pigmented and blendable.
Elizabelle
@Geminid: Thank you!! Get them mixed up.
Light rain out there. Should lift by midafternoon. We had a huge T storm through about 6 last night, and more throughout the evening.
Prefer this to drought.
schrodingers_cat
@Ohio Mom: Gandhi was pretty historically accurate.
schrodingers_cat
@laura: They are the best watercolor pencils. Period. I also have the sister set of FB’s polychromos.
Josie
@schrodingers_cat: I know very little. It was never covered in any schooling I experienced, and I wouldn’t know where to begin to read about it. Most of my historical knowledge deals with Europe and the Americas.
Elizabelle
@Geminid: Good to hear re Mary Peltola.
And eventually Minnesota will have Governor Peggy Flanagan. They should have her right now (Walz being elevated to VP), but America done fucked up right bad.
kindness
Susan Collins still sucks even with her no vote. The good folk in Maine I feel really sorry for. They have way too many MAGA neighbors that are not New England nice. I thought Collins would lose to the moderate Assembly Speaker she faced last time but nope, Collins won. That’s pretty much when I gave up on Maine. I’d love to be proved wrong.
schrodingers_cat
@zhena gogolia: One needs both the perspectives (British and Indian) to understand the Empire. The Jewel in the Crown was a good series.
The Raj Quartet’s British characters are thoughtful and sympathetic, for the most part. But most British officers were like Merrick. He was the rule not the exception.
p.a.
Yeah, Bunk Beautimous Bill and the nascent Nazi immigration efforts so effing bad the badness penetrates the cinderblock heads of normies, some Faux “News” viewers, and maybe some MAGA-lites. Repub/Faux p.r. about: “you’re not really on fire, that’s yummy yummy bbq you smell” not yet effective. MSM’s “but maybe being on fire is good?” on deck.
And we’re only 6 months in…
comrade scotts agenda of rage
I’m always the first to question and criticize people who bring in right wing Never Trumpers as people we should pay attention to, or listen to their watered down concern trolling about what Democrats should do.
But I’ll hand it to Rubin, of all of them, she’s probably the closest to being a ‘John Cole’ in truly turning away from the GOP in damn near everything.
As somebody said earlier in the week, the fact she quit from the Wa(com)Post, while nice to see in terms of “standing up for something” effectively lost her a broader audience.
schrodingers_cat
@comrade scotts agenda of rage: I also like Stuart Stevens. Most of the Bulwark crew I am suspicious about.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@schrodingers_ca: So what your take on The Great Munity then, since that seems to have been a big deal?
Ksmiami
Tbh I think life in this country is already terrible for most people. Better to carve it into smaller chunks anyway
Josie
@schrodingers_cat:
I want to thank you for your recommendation of the watercolor pencils. My seven year old autistic granddaughter loves to paint. I bought her a set of the watercolor pencils, and she was thrilled to discover that she could draw and paint both with them. Her older sister has joined in the fun, and the dining room table and the refrigerator now sport some very nice artwork.
Mike E
omg that picture of the two interchangeable votes ensuring senate passage (AK, ME) is an all-time classic, I can almost envision Murkowski in giant bear slippers to go with that snuggie…heh.
H.E.Wolf
@schrodingers_cat:
I’d like to learn more*. Focusing right now on Black American history up through the present – but I appreciate the reminders. Thank you!
*Took 1 college class on ancient Indian history (I was in an archaeology phase), a millennium or two short of the British Raj.
Old Man Shadow
Just because she’s not 100% shitty, doesn’t mean she’s not mostly a big ol’ pile of shit.
schrodingers_cat
@Josie: You are welcome! You should share their artwork if they don’t mind.
Geminid
@schrodingers_cat: I’d say Bernard Cornwall’s Sharpe series is post-Victorian. He did do enough research to provide a vivid landscape for the British soldiers to slash, shoot and blast their way through.
One of the novels has some interesting material on Tippoo Sultan, but I’ve never checked it against historical sources.
schrodingers_cat
@Enhanced Voting Techniques: Indians call it the first war of independence. It was far more than the sepoys in the employ of the East India Company revolting.
Captain C
@p.a.:
Along with think pieces on “Why it’s the Demoncrat Party’s [sic] fault that the Titanic hit an iceberg” while ignoring their own reporting on how it was the Republicans who controlled the ship, removed the safety features, and deliberately sailed into the iceberg field at full speed.
Perhaps along with a David Brooks piece on, “Why the Republicans are going a little too far with full-on wrecking this country, but they’re still better than the Democrats.”
schrodingers_cat
@Geminid: Ah the Tiger of Mysore! He was quite a character.
ETA: I have never heard of the novels you speak of. I will take a look. Thanks.
Raoul Paste
@Jeffro: Many things can be undone, but when you have four years of cuts to science and education, close laboratories and colleges , and wreck long-standing institutions, it’s hard to imagine the recovery timeline.
During those four years, other countries will be surpassing us in technology and product development. And there’s also the issue of regaining the trust of the world…
Elizabelle
@Raoul Paste: I know. I am so tired of always having to start so much further back.
I wonder if we should seriously consider going to a parliamentary system? And doing away with four year terms. It is catastrophic that voters do not have any control over Trump.
Lyrebird
@schrodingers_cat: my browser crashed and deleted my first reply.
“most Americans”? Baud’s estimate is correct imnsho
Juicers? I am sure some of us read Midnight’s Children back in the day.
Jay
@japa21:
There are ten States that get a “delay” in SNAP cuts.
This was done to get around the Parliamentarian.
The qualification is that these are the top ten states, (Alaska is #1), that shouldn’t be punished because they have the worst accounting of where the SNAP money is actually spent.
????????????????????????????????????????
LAC
You can miss me with the “think about the misogyny” whinging. Murkowski having her ass handed to her is not because she is a woman . She sold out every man, woman, and child in her state for some bullshit crumbs and has the audacity to pull the Susan Collin’s soon to be patented pinched face of concern in response. I hope she gets thrown out of office, along with all the male sociopaths that make up the GOP.
Elizabelle
@LAC:
Yes! It’s not that she is a woman. It’s that she is a craven coward who did the wrong thing when she could have been brave and voted no.
Steve in the ATL
@schrodingers_cat: I heard Cornershop’s “Brimful of Asha” on the radio yesterday. Does that count?
Baud
Link for Bluesky users.
https://bsky.app/profile/joekatz45.bsky.social/post/3lsyinstu7k25
JiveTurkin
While we are on the subject of lack of courage:
The University of Pennsylvania will retroactively strip transgender swimmer Lia Thomas of her records and titles as part of a deal with the Education Department to abide by bans on transgender athletes in women’s sports.
I truly thought this was a joke when I first heard of it. They are removing records someone set who competed under existing rules because they changed the rules at a later date? The U Penn Board that okayed this travesty should be run out of town on a rail, or tarred and feathered.
And there is also this:
“In addition, in providing to female student-athletes intimate facilities such as locker rooms and bathrooms in connection with Penn Athletics, such facilities shall be strictly separated on the basis of sex and comparably provided to each sex.”
So if there is a transgender person competing in intramural athletics will they have someone checking locker rooms to determine their biological sex?
I have to agree with the person who said they skipped caving, and went straight to fellating Trump (although they used a somewhat more vulgar term).
schrodingers_cat
@Steve in the ATL: This is not a test. I have no idea what the sentence you typed meant.
JetsamPool
@Enhanced Voting Techniques: I thought most Americans only knew American history through WWII, and that superficially. At least I remember the class didn’t have enough time at the end of the semester. More recent history was learned in humanities classes (do they still teach those?). Anything else comes from personally experiencing history, family stories, pop culture, historical novels, random stuff on the internet, and whatever nonfiction we choose to read.
jlowe
The 30-odd percent which voted for trump, plus the 30-odd percent which didn’t vote at all. This is your problem now. Fix it or go die. Don’t much care any longer.
rikyrah
The rest of them don’t pretend that they’re not ghouls. They wear it with pride.
THAT is why I have such contempt for the Senator from Alaska.
And, also Little Susie from Maine.
zhena gogolia
@jlowe: Kind of where I am.
CaseyL
@JiveTurkin:
Law changes taking effect retroactively are also supposed to be unconstitutional. Oh, well.
Spanky
@LAC:
No, I’m pretty sure her face froze that way.
Steve in the ATL
@schrodingers_cat: it’s a song by a British band whose lead singer has Punjabi roots. Here’s an explainer!
rikyrah
Ben Meiselas![]()
@meiselasb
What murkowski doesn’t realize is that while she got some kickbacks for Alaska, she still is harming WA State. Interestingly Alaska does not have a level 1 trauma center in their state (neither does Idaho). They all rely on access to Harborview Medical Center ( a state/public hospital) for level 1 (high acuity) services. She is essentially screwing the state that her state needs to access vital care
4:27 PM · Jul 1, 2025
comrade scotts agenda of rage
The two best con artists in the (R) Senate Caucus are Suzie Furrowbrows and Murkowski.
The Beltway Press Corpse are the marks, easy marks. Let’s give credit where credit is due, those two are *very* good at what they do.
And meanwhile, so many suffer.
schrodingers_cat
@Steve in the ATL: Thanks!
Geminid
@schrodingers_cat: I was reading about Muscat, Oman the other day, and its trading connections with India. They go way back,* but in more modern times Muscat’s Indian community established the Indian School Muscat in the 1970s. It has 8500 students now.
One of its grads is Sanam Pura. He got into music as a high-schooler, and with a classmate moved to Mumbai in 2012. Apparantly, they’ve made a splash with a band named SANAM. I wonder if you’ve heard of them.
* Oman had a substantial shipbuilding industry in medieval times. Some of the ships were built expressly for trading with India.
rikyrah
once again for the bleachers…
HE INHERITED THE BEST ECONOMY IN THE WORLD FROM JOE BIDEN
MeidasTouch
@MeidasTouch
JOBS PLUMMET: The U.S. private sector lost 33,000 jobs in June, badly missing expectations for a 100,000 increase, payrolls processing firm ADP says.
8:48 AM · Jul 2, 2025
Elizabelle
@rikyrah: Wow. Having to be transported to a level 1 trauma center in the lower 48. From a state that experiences extreme weather.
rikyrah
James Martin, SJ
@JamesMartinSJ
Laughing in front of cages designed to hold migrants and refugees, many of whom came to this country fleeing extreme violence and poverty, and hoping to raise their children in a more compassionate country. And many of whom followed all the legal procedures to enter the country. And remember, 93% have no record of any violent crimes. This facility, then, is comparable to the internment camps for Japanese Americans during the Second World War. But let’s call it what it is: a concentration camp. Jesus wept.
https://x.com/JamesMartinSJ/status/1940220803255034321
schrodingers_cat
@Geminid: India traded with Rome and Greece and even Mesopotamia.
RevRick
@catclub: Murkowski got thirty pieces of silver* to betray Medicaid and SNAP recipients in the other 49 states.
*Judas Iscariot allusion; also the price of a slave (Exodus 21:32) and what the prophet Zechariah received for his labor (11:12-13).
Maybe we should all send Murkowski thirty pieces of aluminum foil thanking her for her betrayal.
Spanky
@schrodingers_cat:
Since World History as taught in 20th Century US public schools is highly Anglicized, most of it was passed over or, um, white-washed.
So I assume that there was a common method that the British employed in their colonialization. Based on the Irish model that would include:
I’m sure there are a couple of more that I’m missing.
Jay
https://bsky.app/profile/gregsargent.bsky.social/post/3lsyecj42ps26
BethanyAnne
I know almost nothing about any Indian history, whether during the British Empire or not.
gene108
@JiveTurkin:
IIRC, the former UPenn president resigned under pressure after Congressional testimony about anti-semitism on campus during the anti-Israel war protests.
They’ve faced pressure from Republicans and folded before.
schrodingers_cat
@Spanky: There was no proselytization until the 1840s (that’s when they became the dominant power in India). And even after that it was not much.
The Portuguese were big on proselytization and that got them kicked out of India except for Goa, Diu and Daman.
Steve in the ATL
@Spanky:
oldgold
My take will not be popular with some.
It is to focus like a laser beam on gaining at least a majority in one House of Congress in ’26. Nothing else really matters and is a damn waste of time and resources.
Geminid
@schrodingers_cat: Muscat was well-placed for trade with both India and Mesopotamia. I wonder if Sinbad the Sailor ever made it to Muscat. Sinbad was based in Basra, at the northern end of the Arabian Gulf
Spanky
@schrodingers_cat: The virulent anti-Catholicism practiced by the English in Ireland mirrored the upheaval in England itself under Cromwell, so that may indeed be a one-off.
Spanky
@Steve in the ATL: And then let them kick English asses at it.
Omnes Omnibus
@schrodingers_cat: Probably about as much as they know about the history of Brazil.
MagdaInBlack
@rikyrah: So, they are setting up a series of concentration camps to deal with a manufactured crisis/enemy. Sounds damned familiar, doesn’t it?
p.a.
@rikyrah: I believe even a 110,000 job monthly increase doesn’t maintain total employment equivalent to the increase in working age population. My recollected number is ~ 175,000. From early 2000s, so times do change…
Old Man Shadow
@schrodingers_cat: We didn’t mention India much.
Basically, the British colonized it. There was periodic fighting. It became part of the Empire. Gandhi led an independence movement. It’s free now.
Well… as free as any nation-state led by fundamentalist religious nationalists.
I never learned about the Partition and how horrible that was and how it’s a large reason why India and Pakistan hate one another until a few years ago.
But yeah, we honestly didn’t spend much time on British and European colonialism at all except how it factored into the World Wars or American history.
schrodingers_cat
@Spanky: They seemed to have learned their lesson.
Jay
TicToc vid at link
https://bsky.app/profile/cwebbonline.com/post/3lsxym6d47k2d
Spanky
@rikyrah: Benzinga (oops)
Reutershas the deets:gene108
@rikyrah:
ADP’s estimate is not the official BLS figure that determines the official job gains or losses in a month.
ADP’s been off from the BLS figures before.
I get in this day and age people want to make a big deal of the first bit of news they hear, but it’s not worth the risk to hype the ADP figures, if the BLS figures are different.
I know Trump’s goons will try to fudge the figures, but I do not know if BLS is that corrupted yet.
tobie
I see my hypocritical Representative is on FOX News again repeating the exact same line that every Republican says: able-bodied individuals without dependents shouldn’t be living on the public’s dime. How many friggin’ people who receive Medicaid fit that description? I’m assuming a very small fraction. The only people I know on Medicaid have serious medical conditions.
Fair Economist
@Spanky: In India the British also took over commerce by getting special tax benefits for their traders. A common tactic was to make that a requirement for support in a war, or to impose it after a victory.
During the British conquest and occupation, India went from one of the wealthiest countries in the world to one of the poorest. Average height, a proxy measurement of how well people eat, has only very recently gotten back to where it was in Mughal India.
Captain C
If we manage to take power back in 2029 one of our first priorities should be to dismantle Alligator Auschwitz. If we don’t do that, can we send every Republican senator who voted for this sadistic bill there? Not as prisoners; more like a party retreat where they can contemplate what they’ve done for a very long time without being disturbed by the outside world.
(But really, it should be dismantled ASAP.)
Mike E
@Steve in the ATL: also, Enoch Powell…this explainer on YouTube attempts to get to the political origin (a pre-brexit, if you will)
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@JetsamPool: How many of them know of WWI outside of watching The Black Adder Goes Forth. Can’t understand WWII without WWI.
Jeffro
110%
and that’s AFTER Biden fixed the economic mess that Donnie “I accept no blame at all” Bankruptcy Boy left him, as well as a raging pandemic
Joe Falco
@schrodingers_cat: I watched RRR once. Does that count? /s
lowtechcyclist
@gene108:
They’d have to corrupt the Census Bureau which does the actual work. Though that might change as DOGE etc. has hit Census pretty hard.
ETA: IOW, less capacity at Census to handle all the surveys they used to.
tam1MI
@Geminid: I’ve read all three of Richard Cornwell’s Sharpe novels set in 1790s India.
I watched THE JEWEL IN THE CROWN, and A PASSAGE TO INDIA and read Jan Morris’s PAC BRITANNICA trilogy. That’s it.
prostratedragon
schrodingers_cat
@Fair Economist: So you do know a great deal, then.
schrodingers_cat
@Joe Falco: Yeah its like trying to understand American history watching “The Birth of A Nation”
It was so trashy, it had the sophistication of the comic book Phantom.
gene108
@lowtechcyclist:
From what I read the firings in the Census Bureau has led to a reduced ability to analyze data. Not enough people to work on what used to get worked on or gather enough data points to make more accurate predictions.
I’m not sure how it will impact reporting on the employment rate, but it will have some effect.
Fair Economist
@gene108: ADP is a very respected and legitimate source, and normally gets about as much attention as BLS. This is the first monthly decline in the seasonally adjusted numbers since the pandemic, so it’s definitely news.
I’ve seen a number of news reports that this is the first decline since March 2023, and as far as I can tell, they are just wrong. The March 2023 report indicated substantial job growth, just somewhat slower than the earlier (torrid) pace under Biden. “AI” at “work”, I suspect; an indicator of the deterioration of news reporting.
danielx
@They Call Me Noni:
That would be correct.
Geminid
@schrodingers_cat: Portuguese Admiral Alfonzo de Albuquerque captured Muscat in 1507. Muc of the city was burnt to the ground in the process. The Ottomans tried to take Muscat from the Portuguese a couple times but failed. Then in 1650, the Omanis themselves finally ran the Portuguese out.
Ptolemy the Geographer noted Muscat’s status as a port in the 1st century A.D. The Sassanids captured Muscat in the 3rd century and later the Abassids captured it. That might have been around 850 A.D.
oldgold
@Fair Economist: He is going to blame Powell. And, too many will buy it.
Matt McIrvin
@RaflW:
That is really interesting to me–it’s as if people can’t fully imagine even the EXTREMELY OBVIOUS consequences of what they vote for. Isn’t this what they wanted? I assumed it was. But apparently not.
I have this sort of morbid horror imagination that absolutely jumps to conceive of cruel and disastrous consequences. But it seems like even fairly anxious people can’t do this, or else they’re anxious about the wrong things.
Miss Bianca
@Baud: Ahem! That would be – over here – *next* to nothing, thank you very much!
schrodingers_cat
@Fair Economist: And the province under the British occupation, the longest, Bengal went from one of the richest provinces in the world to one that now has come to signify hunger and abject poverty.
British rule was bookended by famine in Bengal. When they gained power in the 1780s and during WWII.
British occupied Bengal include, West Bengal, Bangladesh and Bihar and parts of Orissa too IIRC.
danielx
@George:
Also too, US senators really like being US senators for any number of reasons.
rikyrah
@Elizabelle:
That’s me. The ones who don’t pretend that they’re not ghouls get less contempt from me. They own who they are.
tobie
Here’s some actual data on what Republicans call “Able-bodied Americans without dependents” (ABAWD) receiving Medicaid. From Matt Bruenig’s article “Is There Really An Epidemic of Workless Medicaid Recipients”:
I’m off to call to my Congressman who’s champing at the bit to strip the vulnerable of healthcare.
rikyrah
@They Call Me Noni:
Absolutely ridiculous. Just evil people.
Matt McIrvin
@Captain C: It’s kind of like the prison at Gitmo, in that the official line is that these people are all incredibly dangerous terrorist gangsters and if we just let them go they’ll wreak havoc on society. Once that kind of thing gets established it’s very politically difficult to undo it. You can tell people Anne Frank is going to shank them and some large fraction will believe you.
rikyrah
@tobie:
the largest percentage of Medicaid Dollars GOES TO NURSING HOMES.
NURSING HOMES.
MEDICAID EXPANSION HAPPENED, BECAUSE WE GAVE HEALTHCARE TO THE WORKING POOR
WORKING POOR
WORKING POOR
cain
@RaflW:
Desperate rats with guns. Expect more mass shootings. More anti govt rumblings even if it is Cheeto.
I think a lot of people will target ICE personnel because they are a symbol of Trump’s power. That means personal and financial attacks.
Never mind that ICE people have to witness the trauma of the people that theyre actions put then through. Only the true sociopaths would enjoy that job. Can’t imagine working with coworkers like that. Also likely to be underpaid
Fair Economist
@schrodingers_cat: I have long been fascinated by the European conquest of India. How did a bunch of fractious countries, and ultimately only one, defeat what was at the start quite possibly the wealthiest region on Earth? And at such a huge distance? Unlike with the Americas, the Europeans didn’t have superior technology until quite late in the process (although they did have superiority in some specific naval techs, notably navigation and shipborne cannons), nor did they have microbiological assistance. It’s mindblowing that they succeeded. And, of course, as I learned about it I become increasingly horrified at what they did to the Indians in the process.
I don’t consider the subject of how it happened settled at all, and I’m rather surprised it doesn’t get more interest. Maybe it does in India and it doesn’t filter out to the US. My own thoughts is that the key elements were:
Superior contractual and legal systems.
Relatively higher status for women.
Greater governmental legitimacy and stability.
Jay
Video at link,
https://bsky.app/profile/atrupar.com/post/3lsyaef6k4j2l
2 thinks of note, a) watch the ticker for the stock market drop 30 points in the corner, immediately on the news,
b) Bartiromo and Faux “New” immediately change the subject.
schrodingers_cat
@Fair Economist: I disagree. That’s what the British would like to have you think.
Married British women couldn’t inherit property and got little to no education. Contractual and legal systems that the British introduced only benefited the British not the Indians. The Mughal Empire was stable and so was Ranjit Singh’s Sikh Empire (the last Indian Empire to fall to the British)
What the British had, that most of the world including India didn’t in the 18th century was institutional learning about wars. They took notes and learned from their mistakes and did not depend on charismatic leadership alone. The Parliamentary system is course correcting in a way monarchy just isn’t.
The Empire was held together by violence and duplicity. And when the Indians realized it, it was too late.
It took the British over 225 years to occupy all of India. So they were kind of a part of the scenery for a long time before they became threatening.
tobie
@rikyrah: I know. It’s the awful irony that the wealthiest country on earth also has the most people who work and are still impoverished.
Maybe we should take Chuck Grassley’s line regarding the ACA and use it to describe what Republicans are doing: the One Ugly Bill pulls the plug on granny and working people and steals the dinner plate from small children.
rikyrah
As a Black American woman…I have no sympathy.
They clung to the search for White Adjacency, and thought that the Orange Menace
‘ didn’t mean them’.
when he spoke of mass deportations.
Anyone with any sense knew…
that, in the country who incarcerates more people than anyone else on the planet…
that, if MILLIONS OF ACTUAL CRIMINALS EXISTED…THEY WOULD BE SWOOPED UP BY OUR CRIMINAL JUSTICE SYSTEM.
It was obvious to me, because I am well-versed in American Caucansese..
That Undocumented = CRIMINAL
PERIOD
Everybody Black that I knew understood that.
WE were baffled that the Latino community didn’t grasp that.
……………………………………………..
Trump was winning with Latinos. Now, his cruelty is derailing him
“All Trump had to do was stick to his campaign promises and target the millions of immigrants who came in illegally during the Biden years. Pick off newcomers in areas of the country where Latinos remain a sizable minority and don’t have a tradition of organizing. Dare Democrats and immigrant rights activists to defend the child molesters, drug dealers and murderers Trump vowed to prioritize in his roundups. Conduct raids like a slow boil through 2026, to build on the record-breaking number of Latino GOP legislators in California and beyond.”
https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2025-07-02/trump-latinos-2024-ice-raids?sfmc_id=6532a07225b3640666b2488a&utm_id=40525252&skey_id=646fd548a5815b1a717cd3d527122ec310d6decf8933e3f60a4b8277b373ba31&utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=NLTR-Email-List-Essential%20California-20250702&utm_term=Newsletter%20-%20Essential%20California
schrodingers_cat
@rikyrah: Not a black woman, but no sympathy from me either.
Joseph Patrick Lurker
I would have had more respect for Murkowski if she’d told Ryan Nobles she’s wasn’t answering any questions and simply walked away from him.
Instead she engaged in that nauseating performance art bullshit pearl-clutching stare down with him. She can go fuck herself and rot in Hell.
Captain C
@Matt McIrvin:
Republican Senators who voted for this travesty of a bill sound like they fit the description to me.
Agreed. We’re still dealing with the consequences of Shrubya’s wars.
Anyone who thinks that about Anne Frank probably deserves to get shanked by her, or someone. (As always, should not, but deserves to be.)
AxelFoley
@schrodingers_cat:
Most Americans don’t even know the history of their own country, much less another one.
Nelle
@Elizabelle: Decades ago, when I lived in an Alaskan village on the north coast of Alaska, the whaling captain was a simple neighbor, an Inupiate villager. Yes, he was on the International Whaling Commission and traveled to London for meetings. But no, he wasn’t a fancy man who needed benefits at the expense of his neighbors.
Rick Taylor
@rikyrah: As a clueless white American male, even I could see what was coming if Trump won. My God, he stood up there and yelled, “They’re eating the dogs! They’re eating the cats!”, ginning up hate against an immigrant community that had done nothing wrong, and had benefited the community they’d joined. How could anyone not see what he was up to?
zhena gogolia
@Rick Taylor: As far as I can tell, no one watched any debates except for the first 10 minutes of the one with Biden. At least that’s how they behaved.
schrodingers_cat
@AxelFoley: Good point.
Nelle
deleted
Fair Economist
@schrodingers_cat: What I meant was that the European contractual systems allowed the creation of business organizations that were much more persistent than the personalist systems in every other place at the time. They also had much better systems for insurance to manage risky ventures.
Europe was unique among the major Old World cultures in having an expectation of monogamy, even among the elite. This had a huge effect on long term governmental stability – for example, both Britain and France had one continuous lineage in power for a millenium. You don’t see that in the Muslim world, India, or China, because the polygamous rulers had so many sons there would be a succession crisis with almost every ruler. This made the governments much less stable – the word of one ruler was much less binding on the next. Plus, in India, it exacerbated the unstable boundaries which meant places were frequently shifting from one “country” to another.
With noble and commercial elites, there was also somewhat more stability from the preference for monogamy, and also more emphasis on training and supporting heirs, since there were more limited. This created more of a long-term focus.
Matt McIrvin
@rikyrah: It’s what happens when you base policy on lies. The fact is, most actual undocumented immigrants are not scary criminals, but workers who are working for Republican supporters. So Trump actually can’t deport too many of them without hurting his own base. But they’re a bunch of white supremacists bent on ethnic cleansing and they’ve got numbers they’re supposed to hit. So they’ve got to make up that shortfall somewhere else. Legal immigrants who thought they were safe are a lot easier to catch.
Smiling Happy Guy (aka boatboy_srq)
My only comment is that, having watched AK politics ever since they inflicted Palin on the rest of us, I would be in favor of ousting Murkowski if her state would elect someone less bad. There doesn’t seem to be any hope of that.
We seem better off going after the really rabid MAGAts in the Senate and relegating Murkowski to the sidelines.
Professor Bigfoot
@schrodingers_cat: Not enough.
Not nearly enough.
But enough that I understand the sheer, base hatred from a couple of Indian friends for the British Empire.
Reminded me of my own feeling about the Confederacy.
Captain C
@Rick Taylor:
If Biden had said something like this we would have seen the FTFNYT have an orgasmic conniption fit lasting a week. That’s all they would have covered.
Fair Economist
@rikyrah: Trump couldn’t pick off the child molesting, etc., immigrants, because undocumented immigrants convicted of serious felonies have ALWAYS been deported under EVERY president. We have always sent the “bad ones” back. That suggestion you quote would have just been to continue Biden’s policies.
Paul in KY
@JML: They didn’t have to talk with Collins, they knew that lickspittle would toe the line (no matter how furrowed her brow became).
p.a
@Smiling Happy Guy (aka boatboy_srq):
Do 4-Square independent self reliant bootstrap-owning Alaskans still get a yearly stipend of oil $$ from the state gubmint’s totes not s0cialism slushfund from the oil industry?
gvg
@Fair Economist: I have read ONE fictional book about that period. It is part of a series about the time period around 1632 on which is when Europe was having it’s religious wars etc. The India story described a country where their was no automatic eldest son’s inheiritance of rulership for the Sultan. Brothers were brought up with the knowledge they needed to gather loyalists and plan to kill their brothers eventually. This also meant that the country had repeated civil wars that must have cost a lot and would have given both outsiders and factions plenty of opportunities to gain advantages that would then be resented and cause backlashes. This included the various religions and subdivisions of religion within India. The ruling class was Muslim which had conquored it from outside and the people were mostly not. They lived an extravagant lifestyle and built palaces. I don’t know that they were much different than the unpleasant European royalty. The British king at the time was a total moron and brat, luckily not that powerful at the time.
I really don’t know how accurate the depiction I read was, but the european and american history has been very well researched, including about the technology available at the time. 1632 universe series. It did make me realize I didn’t even know India’s history before the British. I knew that Alexander the Great tried to conquor them, renaissance Italy traded with them a bit and then Portugal. Really not much.
Matt McIrvin
@schrodingers_cat: Americans mostly know about it, if they know anything at all, from British media focusing on the colonizers in an imperial-nostalgic way, and a few other things like the movie “Gandhi”. It’s not much. I don’t know much and I work with Indians all the time.
Trollhattan
@Smiling Happy Guy (aka boatboy_srq):
It seems a built-in bug. I recall when she lost the R primary to somebody far nuttier, ran as an independent and retained the seat, making her the second-worse possible senator.
The fact the seat has been occupied by a Murkowsky since 1981 seems problematic. n.b. Frank entered office the same month as Ronald Fucking Reagan.
Fair Economist
@gvg: History in European cultures is annoyingly Europe-centric. I’ll grant that modern Europe became something truly special in the world (very awful in many ways, but consequential in a way unsurpassed except by Mesopotamia during the Neolithic and maybe the proto-Indo-Europeans). But it’s frustrating that it’s almost impossible to find a survey on Indian or African history in a bookstore. Even the Eurocentric question “what was so special about Europe” can’t be answered without knowing what was going on elsewhere, which few do here.
Shalimar
@schrodingers_cat: I would be surprised if 50% of Americans even remember that India was a British colony. I would guess under 20% have heard of the partition, and half of those learned about it watching Ms. Marvel.
Scuffletuffle
@schrodingers_cat: I’ve seen Jewel in the Crown* and read the “Raj Quartet” many times…
*Mostly for Charles Dance…
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@schrodingers_cat: Worth noting it wasn’t just the British, it was also the French, Dutch and Portugal. The British were the ones that won.
Also, Portugal, I’ve been listing to a podcast series on Vasco da Gama’s rampage through the Indian Ocean in 1502. That was a nut case.
Geminid
@Trollhattan: Murkowski didn’t just run as an independent in 2010, she ran and won as a write-in candidate. That is really hard to do. But Alaska is a small state and and Murkowski had her father Frank’s backing. He had been Senator and was now Governor.
I read that support from organized labor and Alaska’s Native Corporations was also instrumental in the younger Murkowski’s write-in victory.
BethanyAnne
Yeah, the comment about Brazil is spot on. With India, at least, I’ve worked in tech for 30 years, so I’ve had Indian colleagues. And they have been some seriously impressive people. I watched the Anthony Bourdain episodes where he visited India, but that’s what, 3 hours? For a huge country that’s been around millennia? It barely seems a drop in the ocean. I do love what food I’ve eaten from their cuisines to begin cooking it myself some.
Elizabelle
@Trollhattan: Why we are so furious with Murkowski. Because she COULD have been better, and should have been, but she folded. History would treat her much more kindly, too.
As it is. Fake as Furrowed Susan Collins
Lisa Murkowski betrayed us.
cain
@Jay:
Yeah and jobs that won’t be filled by Americans. Of course with the work requirement they can maybe force you to be a migrant worker.
rikyrah
@schrodingers_cat:
Honestly, not much.
There are two sides.
Those that lean towards knowing the real truth
We’re the ones usually called ‘ woke’.
And, then the other ones, who gloss over what happened…
well, you know them.
Fair Economist
@gvg: 1632? The English King then was Charles I. A fool, perhaps, but not a moron, and very powerful. He lost his head (figuratively and literally) trying to become an absolute monarch.
But, yes, the extreme governmental instability created in most of the world by the large number of potential candidates was IMO a big part of Europe’s advantage. And extreme example showing how different Europe was would be the extended succession after Henry VIII – first to his minor son, then to his eldest *daughter* (remarkable in this sexist world), and then to his NEXT eldest daughter, and then to the cousin next in line, taking place over almost a century, with only one brief desultory rebellion threatening the entire process (Lady Jane Grey’s rebellion). AND including two switches of religion! That’s a level of legitimacy that would have been incomprehensible outside of Europe.
Granted the Tudor succession was extreme even by European standards, but it does point to the differences in legitimacy and government.
gvg
@rikyrah: It has not been stated outright and I am not sure I have correctly understood the implied meanings, but I think that as American’s we culturally “see” all hispanics or immigrants as the same, and they don’t. Then they don’t really understand the implications of our not seeing them as different. The south American countries all have their own racism and heirarchies, left over from their own colonial imperialism periods, and each country is a little different. They can tell upper from lower and they also have opinions about the people from the other countries. All of this is racist too, just as much as our own predjudices of white/black/native/foreign. Many of our immigrants had a little more money and status and that’s how they were able to immigrate. They have white neighbors who treat them well, so they thought all the whites in America were also their buddies, and also they think they are a higher class here too. They assumed the ones to be deported were the others that their predjudices assumed were criminals. You know, the lower classes, or the ones from that other country that should never have been let in…..not them!
It’s deluded, but built on assumptions from somewhere else.
I don’t know that anyone CAN say for sure this happened because it’s all in peoples minds, often unconscious. That may be why the reporting has been so vague. There is also the fact that there still isn’t a lot of good reporting too non spanish speakers on what is really being said in the spanish speaking Ameican spaces.
Spanky
@Fair Economist: Coming back late to this post to mention that an Indian boss of mine once said that the greatest gift the Brits gave India was a common language. Which seems to imply that at the start of the conquest India was not at all united.
cain
@Scuffletuffle: in the 80s so saw The Far Pavilions. Did not like.
Elizabelle
@gvg: Bingo.
Captain C
@Shalimar:
I wouldn’t be surprised to find out that a noticeable percentage thought it still was (though I have no direct evidence for this).
tam1MI
@cain: in the 80s so saw The Far Pavilions.
Starring Amy Irving in brownface makeup so badly applied she looked like she had just emerged from a mud bath.
Paul in KY
@schrodingers_cat: Not much.
Paul in KY
@schrodingers_cat: Probably.
HopefullyNotcassandra
Lisa Murkowski voted for a terrible bill. Nonetheless, before she took that vote she protected her state. She showed up and did the job her constituents elected her to do. Yes, it is the Klondike kickback.
What did Oklahoma Senator Markwayne Mullin get to sell his constituents out entirely?. Oklahomans were on track to start selling their wind “that comes sweeping down the plains” and seriously lower every Oklahomans’ energy bills.
What did Markwayne Mullin get for killing that? Unlike Senator Murkowski, Senator Mullin got nothing that benefits any Oklahoman who is not already very wealthy.
Senator Mullin showed up to work, bless his little heart, and ensured costs will rise on his Oklahoma constituents. Is anybody going to ask him about that? That deal just stinks.
WTFGhost
Hey! Don’t mock him! He was told the whole thing would be addressed by a plan Trump would release in *two weeks*. Two lousy weeks! When has Trump ever lied about something on that short of a BWAH HA HA HA HA!
Damn, I almost made it through, with a straight face.
Jay
@p.a:
The Alaskan Permanent Fund still exists, it’s 2025 payment will be about $1400 per resident.
Belafon
@HopefullyNotcassandra: Didn’t all of the green energy stuff get pulled?
Jay
@Belafon:
Nope, just the tariffs on Chinese products, got modified. If it’s built (wind, solar, battery storage) and in full operation before 2028, the tariffs don’t apply.
barbequebob
@schrodingers_cat: I’ve watched Gunga Din a few times//
gene108
@Fair Economist:
India was also very fractious, like England was when Northumbria, Kent, Essex, etc. were still fighting for supremacy.
Aurangzeb was the last powerful Moghul Emperor, who ruled from 1658 to 1707. His rule was not good and fractured the support the Moghul’s had.
In short, there was a power vacuum forming in northern India, after Aurangzeb’s rule, as different kingdoms looked to get out from under Moghul control.
The British were able to use this to their advantage, siding with one kingdom against another or playing both sides against each other.
“Divide and rule” is used to describe how Britain worked its way to control more and more of India.
schrodingers_cat
@Shalimar: He was smoking hot in the Jewel in the Crown
WTFGhost
@kindness: How many Stephen King books have you read, to think Maine isn’t the home to horrors?
@Elizabelle: In a parliamentary system, a lot more damage can be done quickly. Sure it can be undone quickly, but removing 20 million from health insurance means people will die in the next year, and undoing it won’t save lives. I think a parliamentary system would work, but only if we’d gotten voting for a stupid, evil, vindictive hemorrhoid as Trump out of our system, by realizing he represents everything evil in an industrialized society.
(I mean, I can’t think of any evil he missed out on – he may not have engaged in every type of corruption, but he embodies corruption, you see. He hasn’t performed certain sexual offenses, but he’s performed sexual offenses, and bragged about it. I’m not sure he actually stole candy from a baby, but he’s stolen from the vulnerable. Seriously: is there a class of evil in which he hasn’t dipped his skanky ass beak? )
@oldgold: Thing is, trying to laser focus on “one house” is like playing for a draw – and that’s a good way to end up with a loss. If you want a draw, you still have to play for a win.
Now, come September of next year, if we’ve lost the House, and are still playing for the Senate, that’s when the laser focus on the winnable chamber would be appropriate… but for now, trying to drive up Republican negatives for congress is better than trying to focus on one house, in my humble opinion.
@tam1MI: I saw Blue Rajah in Mystery Men – probably not up to the same level of historical depth :-).
@tobie: Screw that. They consider *me* able bodied, because I’m not yet officially decreed “disabled” by Social Security. Trust me, if I couldn’t afford COBRA, I would need (and deserve) Medicaid. I can barely hold a conversation lasting 15 minutes without my brain expiring. I can do some writing here, as long as it’s short bits. Oh, yeah, and if I tried to walk a mile, I’d be laid up for days.
But, without getting Social Security disability, I’m “able bodied, no dependents”. They’d like me to verify my eligibility every month, because I’m over 50, so that I could lose my coverage, because we’re expensive to cover.
HopefullyNotcassandra
@Belafon: the bill got slightly less bad. In today’s bizarro world, our press calls that beneficial.
The clean energy credits from the IRA are still eliminated just in slightly slower fashion. This bill does not touch the subsidies we already pay to petrochemical companies, either.
So, if a clean energy company can get construction started by 2026, they can still get their tax credits and incentives, assuming this president does not simply impound that money as he sees fit. He is doing that impoundment act right now with summer education funds.
Renewable energy stocks increased because this bill is not killing wind and solar today, just next year. Companies are thinking the taco effect will keep the renewable cycle going through 2030. Based on what I do not know.
https://www.reuters.com/sustainability/climate-energy/european-renewable-energy-companies-shares-rise-after-revised-us-senate-bill-2025-07-02/
schrodingers_cat
@Enhanced Voting Techniques: The Portuguese were not defeated by the British but by the local rulers. The Danes were there too. The French were not able to make much headway. They were the allies of Tipu Sultan.
So its not the simplistic picture you portray, the great European powers vs. feckless Indian rulers.
WTFGhost
@Jay: There’s an excise tax on green energy – it’s deep in the bill, I just saw a news report on it yesterday, some Senators expressed surprise, I’m sure a brow furrowed a bit deeper. And they pulled a lot of funding from the IRA. It’s not just tariffs – it’s a literal excise tax, unless you can cut China out of the supply chain, which isn’t pragmatically possible right now.
schrodingers_cat
@Matt McIrvin: Bingo! That’s what I thought from my IRL interactions with mostly highly educated (with multiple degrees) Americans
schrodingers_cat
@gene108: The horribleness of Aurangzeb is also a Victorian construct now spread far and wide as the Gospel truth by RSS “historians”. He wasn’t wonderful but he was no worse than his contemporaries. He reinstituted the Jaziya (sp?) tax on non-Muslim subjects but he also had the most Hindu/Rajput sardars in his employ of all the Mughal Emperors.
For the last 30 years of his life he was in the Deccan. (Urdu/Persian pronunciation of dakshin or the south). The Mughal Empire had gotten too big and over extended.
Matt McIrvin
@Shalimar: or “Doctor Who”, which did an episode set during Partition during Jodie Whittaker’s run.
Paul in KY
@schrodingers_cat: Snarky joke to indicate he knows bupkis about India?
Edit: Tis a band!
A woman from anywhere (formerly Mohagan)
@schrodingers_cat: Practically nothing, judging by me, and I like British history. Black hole of Calcutta, maybe watched “The Jewel in the Crown” miniseries if we are old enough …
Paul in KY
@Fair Economist: IMO, they did have superior military technology and their armies had been honed by the incessant fighting in Europe. Plus, they were great at playing factions off against one another (something they also had great success with over here with the native Americans).
Soprano2
@schrodingers_cat: For me, almost nothing.
Matt McIrvin
@Fair Economist: I was just thinking about Charles I in the context of American colonization. I found this weird 16-umpteen map of New England produced from the travels of Captain John Smith (yeah, *that* Captain John Smith). He mapped all these shores and settlements where only Native people permanently lived, and then he apparently gave them English-derived place names concocted in some kind of collaboration with Charles, who was then still the crown prince.
Only these names were mostly NOT the ones that stuck, with only a few exceptions (“Charles River”, “Plymouth” and a couple of others). So this map looks like some weird alternate history map. There’s a city drawn on it labeled “Boston” and… it’s Kittery, Maine. Known for its outlet malls. The real Boston has no name, but Quincy, Mass. is “London”. It’s all like that.
A woman from anywhere (formerly Mohagan)
@schrodingers_cat: It was not covered at all in my history classes in High School. I don’t remember it coming up in my college classes either. So, Nope.
A woman from anywhere (formerly Mohagan)
@Josie: exactly 💯
brantl
@japa21: she’s saying it’s her job to stand up for the people that are her constituents and while that’s not unreasonable, it is specious. All of the Senate needs to stand up for all of the people these gutless fucks have to go.
comrade scotts agenda of rage
@Matt McIrvin:
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/john-smith-coined-the-term-new-england-on-this-1616-map-180953383/
Trollhattan
Do go on.
Paul in KY
@Paul in KY: Found out ole furrowed brow voted no. I’m sure she only did that, due to her knowing the fix was in (Murkowski would vote Yes and then the fake hillbilly would break the tie).
Paul in KY
@Fair Economist: Henry VIII (and his dad) did do a fine job of whacking all potential Yorkists who would have had a superior claim to the throne.
Paul in KY
@gvg: Those that voted for TFG are sure finding out!
Harrison Wesley
@Trollhattan: If she can torpedo this vile bill, I can overlook the Hunter Biden dick pics.
Matt McIrvin
@comrade scotts agenda of rage: That’s the one. The reason I can tell what these place names correspond to is that it’s a fairly accurate map.
Port Elizabeth, Maine claims to be one of the places named in the map, but that’s not quite right; the modern town and cape are on the other side of Casco Bay and the map calls it “Point Kent”.
Rachel Bakes
@schrodingers_cat: From my own perspective I know bits and pieces. Mostly from reading take-it-with-grain-of-salt fiction set in the early 19th C and from reading Mark Twain’s writings about India during his Anti-Imperialist writing late in the 19th C (with related research).
Gretchen
@schrodingers_cat: I know very little about British India and would like to learn more. I don’t really know where to start – it feels like a big subject. Are you thinking of starting a book club or discussion group or something? If so, I’m interested.
My son-in-law’s parents came from Kerala in the late 70s. They are Catholic so some non-English missionaries must have made it there at some point.
Anyway, I’m interested in learning more. Maybe a good starter history book?
Gretchen
@schrodingers_cat: I was raised by Irish parents who hated the British with a bitter hatred because of their brutal occupation of Ireland, so I am aware that their occupation of India was also terribly brutal, but don’t know much of the details. I’m also aware that British literature white-washes the reality of the situation and emphasizes the benevolence of the occupiers and romanticizes the whole thing.
Gretchen
@Enhanced Voting Techniques: Yes, that’s what I was trying to say. What we know of Indian history is from the British perspective, and that paints them as benevolent heroes. Which, from my knowledge of their other adventures, is certainly not accurate.
Gretchen
@JetsamPool: That was my experience. They always ran out of time at the end of the year, so the last few chapters never got covered. I think we got up to WWI in American History. The other class was World History – one year to cover the entire history of the world starting with prehistoric. So I don’t know much about anything that I didn’t learn on my own later.
Gretchen
@tobie: something like 65% of the people who are on Medicaid are able-bodied workers who make such a low income that they qualify. These idiots like Senator Langford, whose « solution » for this is that they should get a job, either don’t realize that not all jobs provide health insurance, or don’t care and are lying.
Matt McIrvin
@Gretchen: Some of it doesn’t, especially if it’s about the Indian independence struggle or its aftermath, but even that is kind of in dialogue with the conventional narrative and tends not to portray the British as outright looters.
Gretchen
@Captain C: Lawrence O’Donnell last night played a Trump press conference where he was asked how long detainees would stay in that camp. He completely missed the point of the question and talked about how long HE planned to stay in Florida, how much he liked it there, how many friends he had there, rambled on and on without realizing what the question was. O’Donnell pointed out that it was ignored, while Biden getting a name wrong was a multi-day freak out.
Matt McIrvin
@Matt McIrvin: … that should be “Cape Elizabeth” above
schrodingers_cat
@rikyrah: I do indeed.
anitamargarita
@Geminid:
She was appointed by her father when he became governor and left the senate. This waslong before she ran as a write-in.
schrodingers_cat
Thanks so much to everyone who answered my query. Its much appreciated.
The Lodger
@schrodingers_cat: “What Kipling got wrong'” would be an excellent starting point for any explanation of British Indian history for Americans.