Looks like Repubs will pass the Big Billionaire Blowjob on a party line vote. The latest from WaPo’s live coverage:
The Republican-led House is nearing passage of President Donald Trump’s massive tax and immigration bill, as it seeks to meet Trump’s deadline to get the bill to his desk by July 4. As debate draws to a close, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-New York) is speaking at length on the House floor, decrying cuts to Medicaid and other provisions in the sweeping legislation. At one point, Jeffries referred to the House floor as a “crime scene.” Speaker Mike Johnson (R-Louisiana) has confidently declared that Trump and GOP leaders have notched enough votes to pass the bill, which the Senate approved Tuesday. Meanwhile, Trump plans to head to Iowa on Thursday to showcase next year’s celebration of the nation’s 250th birthday.
I believe they will reap the whirlwind. Unfortunately, so will the rest of us.
Right now, I’m watching something much more pleasant than the Congressional shit-show. A Roseate Spoonbill is in our lagoon hunting for crawdads. There are also Limpkins and a Snowy Egret, plus a pair of Common Gallinules, aka, moorhens.
Anyone have big plans for the Fourth of July? I don’t feel like there’s much to celebrate this year, but a day off is nice.
Open thread!
On The Road – Deputinize America – Moorea 2024
Baud
I don’t usually do anything special for the Fourth. I’m glad it’s on a Friday. Hate mid week holidays.
Soprano2
So much for Murkowski’s hope that they would fix the bill in the House. She knows better than that, I think it was all posturing. I hope they reap the whirlwind for this too. I was wondering how people will prove that they’re working, since most people don’t get a physical pay slip anymore. They could make that process easy, but of course they’ll make it extra hard to do. I can’t believe FFOTUS froze money from a bill he signed! These are the kind of things that make you think he’s not in charge of anything at all except the PR and keeping the rubes in Congress in line.
We probably won’t do anything special for the 4th. We saw fireworks at the ballgame last night. If we stay home I always watch A Capitol 4th on PBS. Don’t know if I can this year.
Baud
Quite a discrepancy from the Wednesday’s estimate.
Baud
@Baud:
Working as intended.
p.a.
@Baud: Anybody trust numbers from this admin? Have they gone after the CBO yet? I think I still trust their output.
Baud
@p.a.:
No whistleblowers that I’m aware of saying otherwise. But who knows?
UncleEbeneezer
I’m playing a gig tomorrow and an outdoor venue featuring several bands. So tomorrow I have a short rehearsal in the am and then playing at 7 pm. Should be fun, and only 81 degrees (cooler by evening) which will be a nice departure from the high-80’s days we’ve had and will have more of next week.
Baud
Different president, different spin.
Ohio Mom
We will do what we always do on the 4th: go to the Northside parade — Northside is Cincinnati’s alternative, bohemian-hippie, lots of LGBTQ and artists neighborhood, there are always things like giant puppets, etc.
We plan to sit where we always sit, on a church’s steps. Afterwards, we’ll go out to eat a late lunch.
At 10 pm, we will walk over to the neighborhood rec center’s parking lot and watch our suburb’s fireworks from two miles away. They aren’t quite as spectacular from that distance but it only takes us five minutes to get home afterwards.
I’m done with the traditional ratio of half hour of fireworks to an hour’s worth of bottleneck getting out of the parking lot. And I’m not walking two miles to and back carrying a folding chair, either.
The rest of the day, undistracted, I’ll be doing a deer-in-the-headlights about what’s going to happen to Ohio Son’s Medicaid, and his services and supports.
Soprano2
@Baud: That’s sure not how they were spinning it a year ago. Every month, they were predicting a recession was just around the corner. They were practically jonesing for a recession! Now, the labor market is showing “resilience”.
satby
@Baud: The discrepancy from the ADP payroll report released yesterday will raise a few eyebrows.
Like most holidays, I plan a “quiet” day at home (scare quotes because my neighbors will make sure it’s not quiet at all 😆). After 2 days of normal mid 80° temps, we’re back in hot, humid, miserable 90+° weather until next week. Already can’t wait for autumn. I hate summer.
p.a.
Also too, my numbers are admittedly OLD, but I recall job growth needed to be at least 175k per month to keep pace w population growth.
Betty Cracker
Bluesky says Jeffries is holding the floor to delay a vote on the bill and that he has unlimited time to do so as minority leader of the House. Maybe he conferred with Booker on how to NOT PEE for 24 hours? (Just speculation — I don’t know how this works in the House.)
Soprano2
@Ohio Mom: Well, since your son is among the “truly deserving” (maybe, I’m not sure exactly what they mean by that phrase because they never define it) his services should be OK, right? /s/s/s/s/s/s/s/s/s I’m so sorry, I can’t imagine the stress you’re under. I’ll be curious to see if they’re talking about this at the next support group meeting, because a lot of them depend on Medicaid for their loved one’s care.
Baud
@Betty Cracker:
Pretty sure holding it works the same way in both Houses.
Baud
@Soprano2:
Blue sky hot take is that a lot of the gain was in state and local government hiring. But even without that, the numbers would have been positive, just much less so.
eclare
@satby:
Same. Summer is to be endured.
Soprano2
@satby: Well, FFOTUS got the headlines he wanted – on Yahoo I just saw “Hiring surged in June, defying concern about FFOTUS’s tariffs”. They can always adjust them down in a few days, and few people will notice that. I feel that you can’t trust any information from this government, because now they’re all supposed to be in service of the goals of FFOTUS. That is contradictory to telling the truth.
Ohio Mom
@p.a.: Nope, I’m not trusting any numbers coming out of this administration.
I wonder how the business sector is going to fare, they depend on government stats for planning. That’s something all their tax cuts can’t buy.
satby
Former (?) friend of the blog:
hilzoy @hilzoy.bsky.social · 14m
Imagine being someone who could be persuaded to throw their poorest constituents off Medicaid and SNAP for Trump merch. Just imagine.
David Gura @davidgura.bsky.social · 46m
As Shawn McCreesh and Tyler Pager report, House Republican holdouts were apparently swayed to support President Trump’s tax and spending bill by signed merch and photographs with the president.
NotMax
Beware the Florida skunk ape!
;)
sab
My new cats are approaching their first anniversary here. After almost a year as lurking scaredy cats they have turned into adorable needy fuzzballs.
Echo even likes the pitbull.
Matt McIrvin
My wife’s band plays at least one Fourth of July concert every year (some years it’s two). I was hesitant about going, but we have a hectic schedule involving my daughter’s job and my father-in-law’s birthday celebration that kind of makes it unavoidable, besides I don’t *really* want to cede patriotism to the assholes. I don’t know, is The Stars and Stripes Forever the same as the Horst Wessel Lied now?
eclare
@Ohio Mom:
I cannot imagine what you’re going through. I can only hope it’s not as bad as feared.
prostratedragon
@Baud, @p.a.:
With a discrepancy like that the BLS revisions, when they come, could be interesting.
BLS news release
ADP news release
Both releases have technical overviews of their survey methods.
stinger
“Trump plans to head to Iowa on Thursday”
May Joni Ernst’s prognostications come true!
stinger
@Baud: I thought we were deporting all the people taking Black jobs! What gives?
sab
@Ohio Mom: My working class stepkids feel the job market as shaky underfoot. Too much reliance on international trade. We remember when that used to be a good thing.
Raoul Paste
@satby: Wow. If true, quite consistent with a cult.
My previous calls to my congressman have been polite. No longer
Ohio Mom
@Soprano2: I am going to guess that a difference between you and me is that at every support meeting and workshop for the past few months I have interrupted the discussion with bits like, “I don’t know if we can count on that (fill in support or service) if the Republicans cut Medicaid.”
At which point I told to hope for the best.
I am thinking that your background as a public servant stops you from such partisan rants.
It’s always amazing to me how many special needs families are Republicans. They all think they are immune, their faces are leopard proof.
NotMax
To pose for a life size butter sculpture of himself to be displayed at the state fair?
//
Steve in the ATL
@Baud:
No senator would agree with that!
prostratedragon
@Soprano2: Yeah, at +147,000 I think not so much, or to deform an old lyric, it does not die, but it suffers.
sab
@Soprano2: My dad was forced out his nursing home at age 99. They wanted his excellent room for their new elderly daycare project.
The transition killed him. The elderly do not handle change well. Many will die next year just from the shock of change.
Ironically, Trump’s Big Bad Bill will cut off the funding that supported their day care project.
Jeffg166
Republicans blowing your taxes.
youtube.com/watch?v=aK-weXT5HxE
Baud
@Ohio Mom:
American society is built on taking us for granted.
RevRick
@Baud: Due to quite different methodologies. ADP surveys businesses. The BLS “surveys” 80,000 households… via landlines? Who answers their phones anymore, especially if it’s from a strange number?
Time will tell. Trump is quite determined to eff up the economy.
p.a.
I’ve seen fbook posts of articles in redstate news media warning about the effects of the Root Hog or Die Bill, and the cultists are either : pffft, projections, ‘could’ happen, fearmongering, OR: there’s $50B in there to protect our hospitals (the MAGAs that are functionally literate I assume) and my thoughts are 1) what is the time-frame of the $50B compared to the cuts, and 2) given the massive grifting structure of conservatism, how much will really trickle down?
Ohio Mom
@sab: Yeah, disabled people are hardly the only ones living at the margins.
I don’t think that this is going to be like the Great Recession, which while scary, didn’t last all that long (thanks to Democrats). This is going to be long and extremely painful. We oldsters have to wonder if we will live to see the end of it.
Soprano2
@Ohio Mom: It’s not so much being a public servant as that these groups are supposed to be non-partisan, so ranting like that would be disapproved of, plus like you I figure at least some of these people are Republicans. I think the reason they believe they are immune to the consequences is because they all believe they are the “truly deserving” and can’t imagine anyone thinking otherwise. I have to admit I was surprised at how many of them seemed to know there were going to be cuts to Medicaid if this bill passed. The man who runs our group went to D.C. last month to lobby for a bill they’re trying to pass that would create a tax credit for caregivers, so he’s pretty politically aware of things.
p.a.
Possibly the only hope to get some MAGAts to either switch party or stay home on election days. They care for no one else.
chemiclord
@Ohio Mom: “AI will give us the real numbers!” – MBAs
FDRLincoln
No plans for the 4th. I’m working overtime.
I’m a civilian employee for a county sheriff’s office. Mostly I do paperwork, but they’ve trained me to run the jail doors and watch cameras and I can pick up some overtime shifts that way. So I’m doing that tomorrow, at double-time-and-a-half due to the holiday.
Our sheriff is a Democrat and reasonably liberal and our county is very blue/liberal, so since sheriff is an elected office, the culture of our agency reflects the culture of the county. We have had one use-of-force complaint since 2014, for example (the culprit was fired) and our agency hasn’t killed anyone in 150 years of existence.
So far we have managed to avoid any direct cooperation with ICE, although at some point ICE will probably pressure us to do so. At that point I will have some serious moral searching to do if we have to cooperate with these bastards
This is a classic “but what about my family” thing. My son is disabled, my wife has multiple sclerosis, I’m getting old myself. I have to keep this job and health insurance….but what if my agency starts cooperating with ICE? How do I avoid becoming complicit without fucking over my family?
I pray I am spared this dilemma.
Ohio Mom
@RevRick: You will have to ask lowtechcyclist, who retired from the Cencus Bureau, about government survey techniques. My impression is that they are more up-to-date and strategic than we give them credit for.
Or, I should say, they WERE…
chemiclord
@Ohio Mom: It’s honestly not amazing to me at all. Republicans always think, “Well, I’m one of those deserving! Families like me are what these programs are for!”
They then point to the one or two examples of someone manipulating the system (bonus points if its a person of color) and screech about the waste, fraud, and abuse.
That the cuts will affect them never sink in until later, but by that point, they’ve already shrugged, pointed to their bibles, and said, “We just gotta make do with less. That’s Godly living, after all.”
Soprano2
@sab: I remember that, it was awful. I know, and people with memory issues really don’t do well with change at all. I wish we could move to a one level house, but that’s out of the question now.
sab
@Ohio Mom: Their sister works in insurance as a catastrophe adjuster. With climate change her area is booming. Just hired thousands.
The boys, who just make stuff or ship stuff, not so booming.
prostratedragon
@RevRick: BLS does both household and establishment surveys; household for employment status and unemployment rate, establishments for number of jobs. ADP uses a much larger sample of business establishments.
Spanky
@Ohio Mom:
I’m counting on my spite to get me through it.
JCJ
@Betty Cracker: Foley catheter?
Belafon
@Ohio Mom: Over the last 30 years or so, every time a Republican has screwed things up, the effects have been at the end of the administration, giving Democrats the ability to fix it before things get horrible. Not now. This is going to happen early enough that we’ll be with it for years.
sab
@Ohio Mom: Off topic, but I agree with you from yesterday that I would never challenge lowtechcyclists numbers. I did not know his/her background.
Josie
I listened yesterday to an interview that Marc Elias did with Gov. Pritzker. I really do like that man. He seems to be such a good person and speaks in such a thoughtful way. I hope that he has a chance to shine nationally.
tobie
@Baud: Not for one second do I believe these figures are true. PR is the only thing that matters to this admin and they will lie to get the headlines they want all the time. You can’t have robust job growth when just this week we learned that the GDP shrunk, consumer purchases were down and inflation ticked upward rather substantially.
We’ve been hearing for weeks, if not months, that Trump was changing staffing and priorities at the BLS which would affect the quality of the data collected. Here are a few of the stories:
Politico, Big Trouble in Labor Data, June 11, 2025
Marketplace, A former BLS commissioner explains how data could be less reliable under Trump, May 2, 2025
NPR, How reliable is the govt’s economic data? Under Trump there are real concerns, May 11, 2025
Washington Post, Why some fear govt data on the US economy is losing integrity, July 3, 2025
I came across several articles raising questions about data collection in March which I’ll try to find some time today.
bluefoot
@Baud: so not surprised. My sector has had a lot of layoffs the last 18 months or so. It’s been instructive to see who gets hired first after a mass layoff. Hint: It’s not by experience or excellence. And of course now employers know that they won’t necessarily be punished for discrimination so….
anecdotally, when my division was eliminated last year, I made a bet with a couple of colleagues on the order in which people would get new positions and who would get higher positions, who would stay the same and who would have to take something at a lower level based solely on demographics. Unfortunately, I won that bet.
more unfortunately, the data bears out my anecdotal experience and my sector is less egregious than many.
sab
@Soprano2: We just moved. We spent my inheritance from Dad’s passing on a one level house. The bank people thought we were nuts. I told them that we could save ten years at least of nursing home costs just by moving to a one story house. They scoffed, but I have lived that.
RevRick
@Ohio Mom: We used to go to the local high school stadium to watch the city display. Now we just sit on our front stoop and watch what the neighbors shoot off.
Your son’s awful situation will be replicated thousands of times across the nation. The GOP hopes to buy off the middle class with tax cuts, hoping they don’t notice the massive increases in health insurance premiums and the suffering around them.
I promise not to forget.
comrade scotts agenda of rage
@RevRick:
We will bike around the neighborhood to watch the often spectacular displays going off in front of people’s houses. We’re always chasing something more spectacular than the last, hence the need for bikes.
I just saw a great name for Murkowski:
Murderkowski
Ramalama
OK I can’t think about what this Big Barf-filled Blowjob will do to my people in America, but here’s something else for the moment.
Cory Doctorow wrote a book review about how the Blues Brothers that momentarily stopped my eye-rolling. That movie (which I loved) is of my time as a teen, and I lived in Chicagoland, so was surrounded by the lore. Everything everywhere Blues Brothers.
I wasn’t so much a blues fan, but more of a gospel fan, me white kid from the burbs. There was a gospel show on tv on Sundays that I watched every week. Through the years as an adult I’ve harangued friends and loved ones with mix tapes that included Mahalia Jackson.
Anyway, this surprised me:
Did not know that
Edit: The name of the actual book: Daniel de Visé’s The Blues Brothers: An Epic Friendship, the Rise of Improv, and the Making of an American Film Classic
Cliosfanboy
The Arlington (VA) Historical Society is hosting a reading of the Declaration of Independence at 1 pm. That’s all of it, including the list of complaints against G III. It’s located at the oldest home in the entire DC area, the Ball-Sellers House, built in the 1740s. There will be material for creating protest signs for kids (or anybody really).
arlhist.org/event/declaration-of-independence/
lowtechcyclist
@p.a.:
The BLS sponsors these surveys, but the Census Bureau does the actual work. (The Current Population Survey, which computes the unemployment rate, is handled by the Demographic Statistical Methods Division, where I used to work; pre-Covid, I could’ve flown a paper airplane from my cube into the pod of my colleagues who worked on the CPS. And the Establishment Survey is produced somewhere in the Econ Directorate, where my wife used to work before we retired.) The DOGErs forced a fair number of retirements on both sides of the house, but it takes a good bit longer to replace actual statisticians with apparatchiks at the GS levels, so I would continue to trust these numbers for a while longer.
tobie
Exactly one week ago we heard figures about the economy’s contraction. The news was ignored except for political junkies like us (!!) but it raises serious questions about the truthfulness of today’s monthly job’s report, which will get tons of coverage.
Regarding decline of GDP in first quarter (from CNN):
Regarding decline in consumer spending in first quarter (from Deloitte):
JWR
@JCJ:
I wasn’t aware of a name, (Foley catheter), but I wondered if Booker used one of those devices during his filibuster.
sab
I am so old that autistic people my age that I know of have spent their whole lives in institutions. I never knew them, but I know their siblings.
Turns out most of them could have been helped enough to be functioning well in the world with help, occupational and speech therapy.
It worked for a generation, so of course Trump and his minions want to stop it.
Betty Cracker
@tobie: Yeah, I don’t trust data coming out of this administration either, especially not after the DOGE locusts swarmed the agencies. I’ve seen too many stories about career staff getting fired for trying to protect the integrity of various operations and being replaced by lackeys. I assume there are many additional incidents we don’t know about and perhaps never will. Lying can only get them so far, though.
Betty Cracker
@JWR: I saw an interview with Booker after the filibuster, and IIRC, he said he deliberately dehydrated himself so he wouldn’t have to pee.
Hunter Gathers
Here’s the thing with that – these aren’t new tax cuts. They are just extending Trump’s 2017 cuts.
Gonna be hard to crow about lower taxes when no one’s tax rate changes.
kindness
4th plans. Usually I go to the in-laws and eat bbq & watch fireworks. This year a good friend is turning 70 and her niece is throwing her a birthday party. So I’m doing the birthday party
@Hunter Gathers:
I read anyone making 50K or less will be paying more under the new tax abomination. Maybe that’ll get the folk out to vote in ’26 & ’28.
sab
I cannot even fathom what motivates the MAGAs except perhaps utter ignorance. If they know how things work and they are still okay with it?….,?
rikyrah
Good Morning Everyone 😊 😊 😊
rikyrah
May they burn in Hell for the pain they are going to inflict on the least of us in this country.
Pure EVIL from top to bottom
Pure unadulterated EVIL 😡
rikyrah
@Ohio Mom:
🙏🏽🙏🏽🙏🏽🙏🏽
schrodingers_cat
Tomorrow it will be 8 years of becoming a citizen. I love this country, warts and all. That’s why I became a citizen. I just came back from a lovely road trip to Maine. Happy 4th.
No country in the world that is perfect. We are going through a deeply stupid and unserious phase right now. And I am not just talking about the people in power at the federal level.
coin operated
mrs coin and I are on the Oregon Coast for the summer…we got out of Vegas just days before the 70+ mph winds tore the town up. The city’s fireworks display will be launched from just outside the RV resort we’re staying in for the summer…which is good because I’m oncall and can’t really go anywhere until after Sunday.
I like the name Billionaire Blowjob Bill. Going to start using that name with the few Trumpers I still have in my life. Hey…did you enjoy giving billionaires a blowjob? How’d that taste?
YY_Sima Qian
This is working so much better than when the UN & the UNRWA was in charge of disbursing aid in Gaza:
rikyrah
@RevRick:
My usual reminder…
HE INHERITED THE BEST ECONOMY IN THE WORLD FROM JOE BIDEN
Baud
@rikyrah:
Good morning.
lowtechcyclist
@p.a.:
This is outside of my professional knowledge, but that’s been my understanding for quite some time. 146K is weak, especially when just over half of that is coming from state and local government hiring. (Government hiring overall was +73K, but Federal was -6K.) And practically all the rest of the gain is from hospitals and other health care hiring.
The real news (bolding mine) is:
*Besides health care.
So take out state and local government hiring and health care hiring, and employment is flat. Actual businesses aren’t hiring.
rikyrah
@sab:
Their hatred of others.
Their devotion to WHITENESS ABOVE ALL
tobie
@Betty Cracker: You’re right that people will notice if they can’t make ends meet regardless of what the admin says. Ditto for preventable diseases. People will hear about infections in local schools because the last thing they want is for Junior to get sick.
Sorry to all on this thread for posting a list of citations. Lying irks me to my core and the fact that this admin does it with abandon drives me insane.
Baud
@Betty Cracker:
pieceofpeace
@p.a.: No.
Miss Bianca
@Ramalama: Ooh, I gotta read this one!
Ohio Mom
@sab: lowtechcyclist once listed his degrees and background, he’s a math guy and statistician. I wonder if his ears are burning now.
Soprano2
@sab: I got a daybed for my husband last year so that he would have a bed to sleep in downstairs. These days he comes upstairs to sleep in bed about once every couple of months. Mostly he sleeps on the couch, and I let him. It’s not worth expending the energy to get him to do something else, and it doesn’t hurt anything for him to do that. You’re absolutely right that having a one level house will make a big difference.
Chief Oshkosh
The talking head on ABC’s GMA described the bill as enacting Trumps campaign promises, including no taxes on tips and overtime. That was the sum total of the description.
Fuck these people.
Elizabelle
@schrodingers_cat: Congratulations.
And you are right about the deeply stupid and unserious phase.
JWR
@Betty Cracker:
Okay and thanks. And when you think about it, 25 hours is certainly possible without breaking anything.
Betty Cracker
@Baud: Uthmeier used to be DeSantis’s chief of staff, and they’re both crooks who have ripped the state off in all kinds of ways, but nobody does anything about it since Republicans control the statehouse. A while back, we found out they straight-up stole $10M in Medicaid funds and laundered it through DeSantis’s wife’s bogus charity operation to fund a political PAC. Statehouse Republicans said they were investigating that, but I don’t think they’ll do a damn thing.
Elizabelle
@JWR: Thinking one might use ice chips for hydration.
p.a.
@lowtechcyclist:
et al.
NDD has a breakdown of the employment numbers up now at bonddad. Cliff’s Notes version: continuing weakness, numbers inching towards recession: immanent.
Me: how soon before 11/26 does it need to hit for max effect?
JML
@Ramalama: Aykroyd was a legitimate fan and really knew his stuff, so the crap they took about not being “real” bluesmen was always a little unfortunate (especially coming from critics who had done little to promote these artists and other musicians who were making money off their legacy & influence). They also didn’t pretend to be more than they were, either.
Blues Brothers weren’t my entrance to the music (Eric Clapton was more influential there, which is a bit painful seeing what an asshole he is) but they did a lot to add to the list of artists that I started seeking out. (Magic Sam, for instance) And they also led to things like the Paul Butterfield Blues Band, which was great on their own, but also had a reverence for the artists who came before them and highlighted them.
I also grew up in a city that had a great blues fest, and one of my best friends and I used to go to every summer. Love that music.
lowtechcyclist
@RevRick:
The Establishment Survey that gives the employment numbers that BLS reports (the +147,000 this month) is a survey of businesses.
The Current Population Survey which gives the unemployment numbers (4.1% unemployed) is a household survey. Each household in the survey is in the survey for four consecutive months, then is out of the survey for eight months, then back in for four more months. I can’t remember how the initial contact is made (some mix of mail or home visit is my vague recollection) but it’s definitely address-based, not reliant on phone numbers. (The Census Bureau maintains the gold standard of address lists – they start with the USPS’ ‘delivery sequence file’ and improve it from there by various operations.) After the first month, the households already part of the survey can respond by a variety of means, depending on what contact info they’ve shared with the Census field representatives.
Ohio Mom
@sab: The law of cause and effect: we assume they could not learn to communicate, so we did not teach them to communicate, so they never learned to communicate.
Shana
We’re heading to the Boston area for a wedding shower thrown by our older daughter’s fiance’s parents. This will be the second wedding in three months for us. Younger daughter’s wedding was early June. We’ve only met his folks once but they’re very nice and are looking forward to it.
schrodingers_cat
@Elizabelle: Thanks.
People are going through the latest trustfund DSA darling’s social media posts with a fine tooth comb and coming up with all kinds of tankie tweets.
From calling President Obama, evil to making excuses for Al -Q operatives.
Congratulations to NYC voters for providing us with excitement.
Question: If Democrats are so evil, why do these fuckers run as Democrats in the general election
From BS of Vt to the Dem nominee for mayor of NYC.
schrodingers_cat
People will believe in deeply stupid things if it conforms with their cherished world view.
sab
@schrodingers_cat: 8 years. I remember it like it was yesterday. And you are still on board. Yay for US, still glad you are here.
UncleEbeneezer
One of the most upsetting aspect of this shitty bill likely passing:
For my entire politically-aware lifetime, Dems have been accused of not paying attention to (or running on) affordability/kitchen-table issues. Bernie, AOC and numerous other popular Progressives have crafted their whole political identities around it. You can see it now with all of the Zohran fans declaring that he needs to be the new leader of our party because FINALLY someone dares to bring up affordability. But it’s complete bullshit. Protecting Medicaid, SS, Medicare (and Planned Parenthood) etc., ARE KITCHEN TABLE/AFFORDABILITY ISSUES!!! And every Dem from Clinton to Obama to Hillary to Biden to Kamala have all emphasized them only to have our side respond with “pfft…not enough” and accuse them of ignoring kitchen-table issues. Hell, Obamacare TRIED to expand Medicare (remember that?). They did so because unlike Rent Control or Free Metro, protecting SS/Medicare/Medicaid/PP etc., are policies that can actually be addressed by the Federal Govt/President. Now we are about to see Millions of Americans lose critical coverage and $ because we refused to give credit to Dem policies/promises that just weren’t exciting enough for us.
“Biden/Kamala will protect SS/Medicaid” is a big fucking deal for the kitchen-table economics (and health) of Millions of Americans and should have been something we were all screaming at the top of our lungs last year and reminding every voter around us. When we were far too busy accusing them of genocide and being old…
Ohio Mom
@Ohio Mom: Ha! Obviously lowrechcyclist’s ears were burning, he entered the thread while I was still responding to others upthread.
Baud
@sab:
Same. Time flies.
schrodingers_cat
@sab: Truth be told I felt like an American long before I actually became a citizen. Becoming a citizen was like getting married after being in a serious long term relationship.
BlueGuitarist
Plan for 4th:
Join a protest “visibility brigade” waving a flag or holding a protest sign at a highway overpass.
Talk to the organizers about coordinating something similar at the next overpass
Try making a lavender lemonade vodka cocktail for guests
love all y’all
Ohio Mom
@Shana: How lovely!
Nelle
@Soprano2: I am incredibly fortunate. My son and DIL have proposed that we both sell our houses and buy a place where we can age with them, with a small unit in the backyard. It will take some time to get it in place and I think it is still too soon to make the move, though they found a good place this week. But we need to start some time. I’m hoping we can make it another five years where we are. Best neighbors I can imagine here.
Betty Cracker
Huh. Bloomberg implies the Trump BLS numbers are bogus.
Baud
Looking forward to the metadata people making a comeback
Baud
@Betty Cracker:
Interesting. Is BLS using a new model?
p.a.
@JML: The local story here in RI is that Aykroyd & Belushi originally asked Roomful of Blues to be the backing band but Duke Robillard told them to eff off because he thought they were hacks.
EmbraceYourInnerCrone
@sab: need pics! Fuzzball pics make things a little less sucky. Please and thank you!
gene108
@Baud:
I posted yesterday the ADP numbers are not official and often vary from the official BLS numbers. The ADP numbers should always be taken with a grain of caution.
I still wonder how corrupted the BLS is or will become.
I do wonder if BLS had the personnel left to do periodic revisions to the monthly jobs numbers.
Betty Cracker
@BlueGuitarist: Oooo, say more about the lavender lemonade vodka cocktail! Sounds intriguing!
I’ve got margaritas on deck for the weekend because our lime tree is producing like crazy, and I gotta do SOMETHING with all those limes!
EmbraceYourInnerCrone
@BlueGuitarist: that’s a good plan
They Call Me Noni
@satby: The photos with TACO is what should be put on their tombstones.
schrodingers_cat
@Baud: Oh they will be back and they will blame Biden. Then a “valued” commenter will tell us how these tankies and other assorted horseshoe leftists and both-sides-do-iters don’t matter because they are a small percentage of the population without acknowledging that they are far influential beyond their numbers because of their social capital.
Jon Stewart, David Weigel and the bros of the Intercept, the Jacobin and the Nation have a huge impact.
Bookmark this tweet.
NotMax
@Chief Oshkosh
So people who receive tips will pay less in taxes on total income than, say, teachers. Or bus drivers. Or Walmart greeters. The Vidiots don’t mention that, do they?
Belafon
@p.a.: That’s one of those where you would like to ask a few years later, after he’s sees the movie, what he thought then.
Old Man Shadow
Was there ever any real doubt that they would pass it?
They’re creating a domestic secret police with 145 billion dollars of our tax money to round up/imprison/torture/enslave/kill their enemies. They aren’t going to care about citizenship either. American Latinos are going to find themselves under attack at every turn assumed to be illegals, denied the opportunity to prove their citizenship or legal status.
And when they’re done with Latinos, there will be another group. Probably LGBTQ people or Black people or the educated. Maybe all of them. (EDIT: I’m not implying that LGBTQ or Black people would not overlap with the educated. Just that the primary target for Stephen Miller would be sexual orientation or race first and education status second.)
JoyceH
@Baud:
$450 million? Is that already invested? How does a bunch of tents and cages cost $450 million? Yeah, power and water lines, but still.
Ohio Mom
@Nelle: The flip side is, move sooner and you will have more energy and time to build relationships with your new neighbors before you enter the frail years.
There is a new disability housing group in the Cincinnati area, and one of their projects is helping families build ADUs — accessory dwelling units, small houses in backyards, where the disabled family member can live independently but with supervision. Basucslly, what your family is planning.
Now it is too soon to tell how successful they will be — some jurisdictions have zoning that prohibits ADUs. The City of Cincinnati though just changed its zoning laws to encourage them.
sab
@EmbraceYourInnerCrone: As a militant luddite I have relaxed my standards and I am working on it. Solomon is gorgeous. Echo is cute as a button.
Betty Cracker
@Baud: The Bloomberg report sure seems to be implying that.
TONYG
In a logical world, the voters would destroy the Republican Party because of this. However, in the real world, about 35% of eligible voters are too lazy to vote, and, of those that day, about half are fucking idiots. So, here we are.
schrodingers_cat
OT: Thanks for the answers to my query about Indian history yesterday
p.a.
Will the “no taxes on tips and overtime” affect SS calculations? I’ve heard Y and N. That would be a fly in the ointment.
Baud
Old Man Shadow
@JoyceH: Like Russia, everybody gets a cut.
Ohio Mom
@NotMax: I believe the tax cut on tips is set to expire after the midterms. But better google that before you repeat it.
ETA: it’s a combo loss leader and bait-and-switch.
ETA: or just read Baud’s comment @ 126
sab
@Ohio Mom: Doesn’t Canada actually fund dropping these units in yards?
My sister sneaked one in for her house in suburban Boston. It will be an amazing plus when they sell their house. Built in granny unit.
lowtechcyclist
@sab:
I’ve only recently mentioned that I retired from the Census Bureau, so that hasn’t been generally known here before very recently. I was also a math professor for awhile, back in another lifetime.
ETA: I’ll check back to this thread later on in case there’s any other questions I can answer, but it’s the first nice day in awhile outside, and if I’m gonna get a bike ride in, now is the time for it.
Kristine
I’m getting a year older. I was born on a Friday, too, so that makes it even more birthday-like.
I usually watch the town fireworks display from my deck. I miss the lower-altitude portion due to trees, but I see the finale and that’s enough.
NotMax
@JoyceH
Repeated from earlier.
A shortish rundown on the history of that Everglades airport.
Ramona
@rikyrah: And if they get rid of all whom they perceive as not White, they’ll find other reasons to hate – remember that Europeans were happily murdering one another in war after war until they crossed the water and suddenly turned White and found solidarity with one another!
Baud
sab
@Ohio Mom: Doesn’t it apply only to cash tips? Who the fuck even reports cash tips, unless they are applying for a Habitat for Humanity house and need to show income.
p.a.
@Baud: That’s not my “fly in the ointment”, that’s a turd in the punchbowl?
When we think they go low, they rent a backhoe.
p.a.
@Ramona: Ummmm… it took the Napoleonic wars, various local Euro wars, WW1 &WW2 before they stopped. Until Bosnia. Then Ukraine. Meanwhile they were still killing non-whites, with bullets or economics. We white Euro-types can multi-task.
Ohio Mom
@sab: The whole thing is just a PR stunt. Those tipped service workers who voted for Trump are bound to be disappointed, if they manage to figure out they’ve been conned.
Deputinize America
@sab:
I can feel the money draining from middle income households in real time, as that is my primary clientele. It is a known feature of conservative governance in my experience – people who work get completely fucked while all the goodies flow upward.
Shalimar
I am still numb reading idiots describe why a 14% drop in sales isn’t really bad news for Tesla. Their valuation is basically based on sales growing exponentially for the next millennia (Musk projects they will sell over 800 million of their next model which doesn’t even exist yet; for comparison total world car sales last year were roughly 70 million vehicles).
Down 14% is terrible. Their company growth has died the last 3 years. There is like a 1% chance this company is ever worth what it is valued at now. More likely it goes bankrupt and doesn’t exist in a decade. Investment people are insane.
schrodingers_cat
@Ramona: Oh they were fighting each other across the seas too. BTW how far along are you with Lal’s lectures. I am on to #8.
sab
@schrodingers_cat: Have you ever read Vikram Seth ‘s ” Suitable Boy”? It is about a family’s matchmaking for their university educated daughter immediately after Partition.
When I first read it I realized it was the first novel about India I had ever read written by an Indian.
I already loved his “Golden Gate” novel length poem about love in late 20th century San Francisco. Pushkin verse in American English, and so emotionally touching. I cried at the end.
NeenerNeener
According to this, TACO is killing the dollar because most of his “wealth” is now in crypto:
narativ.org/p/ny-times-financial-bombshell-reveals-e8b?utm_source=substack&utm_campaign=post_em…
He doesn’t have enough in US dollars to cover the judgements against him. Here comes the Greater Depression.
The Thin Black Duke
It begins.
schrodingers_cat
@sab: No I haven’t. There was a Netflix series about it IIRC. Arundhati Roy’s God of Small Things set in Kerala is another good book in English written by an Indian author.
They Call Me Noni
@Baud: Way, way back in the day I waited tables and bartended. Nobody declared all their tips. Wouldn’t that mean that the historical data they use in these calculations is garbage?
WereBear
@eclare: I remember living on the Prairie. Summers are too hot and winters are too cold :)
JWR
I watched a bit of CBS News this morning on the Big Bastard of a Bill, and once again, heard them talk about making the Trump tax cuts ‘permanent’, a trick the means of which I am unaware. Can making something that can be dealt with legislatively ever be made permanent? By proclamation, maybe? By way of some esoteric rule?
sab
@The Thin Black Duke: Across the street from my house we had what appeared to be a private group home. Tuesday the young special needs kid’s mom showed up and drove him away. Later the county small bus took off the old guy with a walker. The multiple cars always in their driveway are now gone.
A guy (realtor with camera) showed up later.
Shakti
I asked my father to tell me about when he first came to this country on July 2nd. I’ve heard the story before. However, this time he told me abut the kind person who gave him a ride from the airport to the nicest hotel in town, convenient to the Greyhound station, his first day in America. For context, this was during the oil crisis in the 1970s, I think.
I started welling up and then asked my dad how he felt about that. He was so touched by the man’s generosity.
Josie
@Nelle:
I will tell you what a good friend advised me when I had to make a similar decision. She said not to wait until you were too old to make the transition easily. I am grateful now that I took her advice. Such a move is super difficult when physically and emotionally capable, much less when older and less capable.
JBWoodford
@tobie: “You’re right that people will notice if they can’t make ends meet regardless of what the admin says.”
That’s part of what did Harris in–the US had the best economy in the world, but there were still too many people who noticed that they were having trouble making ends meet. Most of what Biden et al tried to do for them got hung up by the courts or the Rs in the House, but blaming the person at the top is the easy way out. I kinda doubt the Rs will have any better luck than we did; OTOH, the bar is set pretty low for them (and has been since Reagan, if not before).
WereBear
@NotMax: You scoff, but I had a friend who lived in Skunk Ape territory.
Went to their block party. So many stories. Which remained consistent as the various refreshments were enjoyed.
JML
@They Call Me Noni: I’m guessing that it’s harder to hide your tips now with so many people paying electronically and tipping that way as well? I haven’t worked in the service industry for a long time, so I honestly don’t know enough on how it works these days, other than being convinced that owners/managers are still finding ways to steal employees tips.
cope
@Betty Cracker: I have a wonderful salmon recipe that involves cooking the salmon on cedar planks. Soak planks, cover planks with thinly sliced limes, place salmon on limes, slather salmon with honey/garlic butter, top salmon with another layer of thinly sliced limes. Grill or bake. Good stuff. I used up half a dozen limes to make it.
When we lived in FL, our lime tree was the most prolific of all our citrus trees. I would take bags of extras to the school where I taught, my wife would take bags to the hospital she worked in.
Now I want a Cuba libra for breakfast.
JoyceH
@NeenerNeener: A while ago I read an article about a piece of digital art going for some crazy sum, sixty million or like that. Thought it was nuts until I read on and the “art” was purchased with Bitcoin. So nonexistent art was bought with nonexistent money.
YY_Sima Qian
Not sure the shambolic USG under Trump has the administrative capacity to determine which goods imported from Vietnam should be taxed at 20% vs. the 40% for transshipment from the PRC (link to WSJ article below):
& if enforcement is dependent on the declarations of the Vietnamese exporters, well, good luck with/ that. Then there is simple relabeling, or doing a thin layer of final assembly (w/ minimal value added) in Vietnam.
The Vietnamese government is probably only interested in enforcing the rules of origin to the extent that allows Trump’s attention drifts elsewhere. There is no Vietnamese manufacturing w/o the deep integration w/ the PRC centric supply chain ecosystem, & Vietnam is integrating deeper.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@Baud: ADP report mention that companies weren’t laying off so much as not replacing workers who quit and why service jobs were going away, manufacturing was gaining.
Also ADP sucks ass.
WereBear
So awesome! I’m glad. They have a lot of love to catch up on. “After serious study, we have concluded these beings show promise.”
Ohio Mom
@JBWoodford: The trick is that a lot of the cuts in the BBB don’t go into effect until after the midterms. The Republicans are diabolical.
But as you say, the economy may slow down enough in the meantime to have an effect on the midterms.
What a ridiculous place to be, cheering on a terrible long economic downturn ASAP.
satby
Nope, that’s when the seething resentment against everyone else who took what they’re “entitled” to by right of (Caucasian) birth will intensify even more.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
by the same token why would anyone trust ADP?
Steve in the ATL
@Shakti:
I’m having trouble with this element of your otherwise inspiring story!
Bill Arnold
@lowtechcyclist:
Thank you; was hoping you would reply.
sab
@schrodingers_cat: Also too a Booker Prize winner!
Ramalama
@sab: I LOOOOOOOOVVVVVVVVEEEEEDDDD Golden Gate.
I enjoyed A Suitable Boy until my brother and Adrian McKinty crapped all over it – and I like them both.
Ramona
@schrodingers_cat: I watched them all! Been retired for a while now! Thanks again for the tip! I enjoyed it a great deal! I even watched his review session! Have you got to the bit where Dr Lal talks of Gandhi’s quip to the press when he was approaching Buckingham palace for his appointment with the Emperor-King?
Betty Cracker
@cope: That sounds good (the salmon AND the Cuba libre). I’ve never cooked with a plank. Might have to give that a try.
Wapiti
@satby: This. The resentment may boil over into “race riots”, which often is code for whites attacking non-whites for existing.
Ramona
@p.a.: I meant they refrained killing one another in America and focused their homicidal impulses on the indigenous inhabitants of the New World.
Geminid
@JWR: Maybe it’s more like the tax cuts are open-ended in duration. Past tax cuts have expired after 10 years and had to be renewed. These cuts can probably repealed, but that might take a positive act by Congress as opposed to declining to renew them.
schrodingers_cat
@Ramona: Not yet. I was traveling and just got back.
Hunter Gathers
@Ohio Mom: Health care organizations, like other businesses, plan out at least 5 years ahead of time. A big loss in revenue in two years, especially when you run very low profit margins, means you are done. The hospital may hang on a bit longer, but all the specialists are going to be let go and the clinics will close their doors.
Group homes are going to be devastated. There is no way they can take the hit and a lot of the disabled may wind up in the streets. There may not be anywhere for them to go, literally.
schrodingers_cat
@sab: Yes indeed. It is a scathing look at the misogyny and casteism among Kerala’s Syrian Christians.
Chief Oshkosh
@NotMax: True. But my point is that describing the bill in that manner paints the bill as a tax cut for norms (even if grossly inaccurately), whereas it’s a tax cut for billionaires. So, as far as ABC/Disney watchers know, they’re getting a tax cut that occurs because of all the other shit that’s in the bill. This is, of course, a big beautiful lie.
And ABC knows it. And every single person at ABC knows it, including all of those oh-so-friendly shitbirds at GMA.
The banality of evil.
Bill Arnold
@YY_Sima Qian:
The appearance is that they (the IDF, the Israeli government, and large parts of the general Israeli polity) are deliberately starving a human population[1], then baiting humans with food, and killing them to cause terror, and probably for sport for some, in furtherance of an ethnic cleansing project.
The appearance is, IMO, largely aligned with reality.
(Can back that up with articles from Israeli press outlets; the Israeli press is more honest in aggregate than the USA press.)
[1] With starvation levels deliberately just barely below the relevant official famine threshold, at the average population level, but with the full understanding that there is a lot of variation, so humans, including children and infants, are in fact dying of starvation.
Ramona
@schrodingers_cat: You are in for a treat!
They Call Me Noni
@JML: Best I remember we self reported tips. There was a floor so everyone knew the how to calculate and report an amount that wouldn’t attract attention. Most everyone was paying with a card, but at both establishments I worked we took our tips home each night. Don’t know how it works nowadays either, but I’m not sure how management would be able to steal tips.
Professor Bigfoot
@Ohio Mom: “This business will get out of control. It will get out of control and we will be lucky to live through it!”
I’m so sorry for the position this puts you in… but I am also so very, very angry that it has to be this way.
Like, “WE TRIED TO TELL YOU,” but Davis X. Machina’s wisdom still applies.
(not YOU you, of course, you’re one of the “we”!)
Enhanced Voting Techniques
As I said, I work near Tesla in Fremont, CA. Every morning when I drive in at 5:30am there is always a line of people crossing the street going to work at LAM Research. What, I think, why aren’t they parking in LAM’s huge parking lot? Comes out there was shooting on the side street were people were walking from and it is this huge un-housed encampment. These people have jobs, but can’t afford rent because LAM is too cheep ass.
The prosperity is relative.
PaulWartenberg
I discovered a wood screw impaled into one of my tires as I drove into work today.
Goddammit, I had just gotten a new set of tires last month! And before that, last December one of my tires was punctured by a screw about 3 inches in diameter just off of I-4. And I swear to GOD, at least ONCE A YEAR I am dealing with nails or screws in one of my tires.
I’ve never had this problem before living in any other part of Florida. Pinellas County, Pasco County, Alachua, Broward, even brief forays into Orange and Palm Beach and Dade. ONLY IN POLK COUNTY DO I GET THIS BULLSH-T. And I found out I’m not the only one. When I told my co-workers to keep an eye out for roadside assistance to show, they all complained just like I did. One of them just had a nail in her tire two days ago!
schrodingers_cat
@Ramalama: What did they not like? I haven’t read the book so no spoilers if at all possible. Thanks.
Ohio Mom
@Hunter Gathers: I just heard recently (don’t have a link though) that 1/3 of homeless are adult orphans with developmental disability.
Group homes run on a combo of Social Security (covers “rent”) and Medicaid, which covers staffng. Oh yeah, SNAP too.
Residents get $25 a week out of their Social Security for personal expenses (new shoes, going to a movie, birthday card for family member, etc.)
Omnes Omnibus
@Ramona: My French-Canadian ancestors and my New England ancestors were steadily trying to kill one another (or have Native American proxies do it) for nearly 150 years before the American Revolution.
NotMax
@WereBear
Ah, McDLT territory.
:)
sab
@WereBear: A plus from you is hugely big. I will tell the new guys you approve. 16 year old Shadow will be furious. She is already peeing in my closet.
ETA We have a vet appointment for Shadow next week. Rule One on cat inappropriate peeing before you get angry. Is there a medical issue?
Do you agree on Rule One?
schrodingers_cat
@Ohio Mom: That is heartbreaking.
Soprano2
@p.a.: I would say yes, it would, but I don’t know for sure. They already underreport their tips, which definitely has an effect on things like SS.
Soprano2
@Ohio Mom: My hairstylist was upset about it, because he thought it would screw with SS. He told the people who work for him that it wasn’t really a good idea.
Soprano2
@JWR: I think all that means is that they don’t have an expiration date. I hate the way they say “permanent”, as if they can never be changed. Things done through legislation can always be changed by future Congresses.
schrodingers_cat
@Ramona: Thanks, I will look forward to it!
IDK whether you did SSC, CBSE or the ISCE board. I just found out recently that the SSC board has put all its text books online. And it was a treat to see all the Balbharati texts with Mario Miranda’s illustrations.
Betty Cracker
@PaulWartenberg: I had a job a long time ago that required travel throughout FL, and I always had bad luck in Polk Co. Nails in tires. Cracked windshield from passing rock trucks. It’s cursed!
zhena gogolia
@schrodingers_cat: Happy 4th! (although I hate fireworks)
schrodingers_cat
@zhena gogolia: Thanks.
Soprano2
@JML: I’m sure some do, although I would never do that. I had an employee who was voiding all of her cash tickets and stealing that money from me. We estimate that she stole several thousand dollars because the manager I had then wasn’t watching what she was doing (although she told me she was trained in loss prevention). The server voided a ticket at 11:50 p.m. on a Friday night that had seven Patron shots on it, and as far as we could tell she didn’t ring it in somewhere else. That was about $300 that probably went straight into her pocket! So remember, it goes both ways.
Hunter Gathers
@Ohio Mom: Speaking of Social Security, the GOPers didn’t use Paygo rules, and the amount of debt that this bill piles up triggers cuts in defense spending and Social Security unless they fix it later.
Citizen Alan
The morons who support donald trump, I spent eight years screaming up that barack obama had raised their taxes even though he never did. To be a republican, you have to be too stupid to understand your own tax returns, let alone understand how they might change from year to year.
sab
@Ramalama: I hadn’t fully realized how deeply Partition impacted normal families until I read Suitable Boy.
sab
@Citizen Alan: Republicans don’t prepare their own tax returns. You would be amazed at how little they know. They bring in data for stuff that hasn’t been deductible for at least fifteen years.
Eolirin
@Hunter Gathers: They will be arrested and put into prisons, since the Supreme Court has greenlit criminalizing homelessness.
JWR
@Geminid:
That makes sense, even if the word ‘permanent’ is a misnomer, and who’s ever proposed a bill to increase taxes? (I mean aside from dirty liberals.) That’s one of those ideas Repubs have spent years weaponizing.
schrodingers_cat
@sab: You should watch M S Sathyu’s Garam Hawa (Hot Air) and Govind Nihalani’s Tamas. IDK whether they have subtitles though
The movie Gandhi covers Partition well.
Garam Hawa follows a Muslim family from Delhi
And Tamas follows Sikh and Hindu families in their journey from Punjab.
Deepa Mehta’s 1947 Earth is also good.
WereBear
I’m in a rural area in a blue state. I’ve seen the same syndrome, but only heightened by their insulation in a more liberal state government.
WTFGhost
If I knew how to have a grand Independence Day blowout, I’d celebrate this one like it was my last, but, to me, that means a big fireworks show, treats for the kids, tiny carnival rides for the littles, a few stands for face painting and games where you can spend a dime to win a prize worth a nickel, but it probably flew, or made noise, and otherwise freaked out parents.
(The flying screaming monkey is probably too expensive, but it would have been perfect!)
The local elementary school would have a dunk tank where only the dullest of boring teachers felt safe.
There’d be actual, real, draft birch BEER and root BEER, and some boring stuff like Budweiser for the poor parents who didn’t understand the joys of soda.
There’d be some carefully monitored play with sparklers and bottle rockets, and, in the day (early-to-mid 70s) few children had the nerve to resist the dreadful question “WHERE ARE YOUR PARENTS?” because their parents were off, in the shade, drinking something boring, like Bud, and relaxing, and didn’t want to have to deal with a naughty child, so they’d pick a quick and effective method of dealing with the problem. Sometimes while picking a switch, I imagine.
There might be a parade, or a demo – I’m sure I remember one, on vacation, that included Redcoats and Revolutionaries, and may have even played into the legend of Molly Pitcher, as the cannon fired, and the Redcoats retreated.
There would be Democrats and Republicans giving long, boring speeches, but that day, they’d just try to drown the other in patriotic glurge. Now was not the time to point out that Republicans are killing us – no, that would resume at 12:00:00.003, SQL Server time, July 5th. Local time, not GMT. (Random fact: SQL Server only logged time down to 3/1000ths of a second, until they expanded the data size. So, yes, this is the very first moment the truce could “officially” break down if logged by that database.)
I remember one politician from Philly who was found at an Independence Day celebration, and he said, in a jolly manner, “I’m here to get bombed!” which, while displaying the crudest, least genteel, working class mannerisms, is, I think, entirely appropriate, and those “genteel” folks oughta loosen up a bit!
Jackie
@sab:
That’s utter distain and hatred for those who don’t hate and do care about others.
PaulWartenberg
@Betty Cracker:
see?!
The good news is that the roadside guy came out and found the wood screw was short enough that it didn’t puncture through. He plugged the hole (so that it won’t crack deeper) so I’ve got time to get it to the dealership after the 4th of July weekend to get it patched.
Paul in KY
@UncleEbeneezer: Break a leg! :-)
Paul in KY
@Ramalama: ‘I fucking HATE Illinois Nazis!’ (zoom)!!! Ha ha ha!!! Great movie.
Paul in KY
@schrodingers_cat: Congrats! Glad you are here :-)
WTFGhost
@Jackie: It’s not just that. It’s that they’re also being given permission, and encouraged, to hate the “correct” people.
People like me, who need health care as we puzzle out WTF it is that’s wrong with us, for the average of 3 years OR MORE to get social security disability.
People who are working poor, but can catch Covid-19 and die, yes, people do still die from it, especially if they need medical treatment, but can’t afford it.
People who are working poor, and don’t have leet computer skills and a good scanner to PDF *OR* compressed photograph, and able to ensure that the right paperwork is scanned and sent, to the right office, at the right time, sometime each and every effing *month*.
That’s where the savings come in – throwing people off of Medicaid over administrative issues.
A trillion dollars in cuts causes a lot of bleeding.
Soprano2
@They Call Me Noni: It still works like that at our place.
Soprano2
@PaulWartenberg: Did you get it fixed? Here Big O Tire will fix it for free if it’s fixable. It’s a PITA, though.
WTFGhost
@Ramalama: That’s cool! I loved the soundtrack they made for a HYPOTHETICAL NONEXISTENT SECOND LALALA I CAN’T HEAR YOU movie.
(I wasn’t a fan of the video I saw *purporting* to be Blues Brothers, but it was “2000”, and Rocky taught us all sequels have to have a Roman numeral. )
Ramona
@Omnes Omnibus: The earliest literary mention of White to characterize people was in the seventeenth century and the idea only really took hold in the eighteenth century. Your ancestors’ killing of one another in the Americas preceded the idea of Whiteness. Our world today is so steeped in this ideology of characterizing people as White, Black, Brown and so on that it does not occur to us that these categories did not exist until long after the Europeans were well entrenched in the New World. The Old World did not refer to people by color before the “noble savage” of the New World was discovered. As a Nigerian friend of mine says, “There are no Black people in Africa!”
Paul in KY
@lowtechcyclist: Congrats on your retirement!
Ramona
@schrodingers_cat: SSC and yes, the texts I used was Bal Bharati.
Paul in KY
@cope: That sounds really yummy!
Gloria DryGarden
@JWR: he did not. He dehydrated himself ahead of time. He didn’t eat, either.
dnfree
@schrodingers_cat: To answer your question, my main sources of information were the book “Freedom at Midnight”, which I read way back when it came out, and the fiction book “A Suitable Boy”. Also the Gandhi movie, back when it came out.
Ramona
@Omnes Omnibus: That Europeans continued to kill each other in the Americas until their settlements were well enough established for them to perceive themselves as White as opposed to non-White peoples is not in logical opposition to my proposition that Europeans would resort to hating and killing one another if all non-Europeans vacated their environment.
dnfree
@sab: Our daughter who worked as waitstaff before getting her musical career off the ground, generally tips by writing a tip on the credit card receipt and also including some cash. I don’t know how common that is. If she tips entirely in cash she writes “cash” on the credit card receipt so no one can take a photo of it and claim she didn’t tip.
Ramona
@schrodingers_cat: ooh! Could you post a link to that, please!
Captain C
@Hunter Gathers: Who are you going to believe, Dear Leader or your lying eyes and bank accounts?
Bupalos
@Chief Oshkosh: pleasantly surprised by NPR’s short summery, which was basically “Republicans hope to pass the bill today, which will extend tax cuts that mostly benefit the wealthy, cut services for people making less than 50k, and add 3 trillion to the deficit.”
Short and sweet with no mixer.
A woman from anywhere (formerly Mohagan)
@schrodingers_cat: so sorry that the answer was basically zip and dooda. I was thinking about it later and realized my best info about life in British India came from The Secret Garden.
lowtechcyclist
@JML:
I’ve been wondering for years what happens when you put a tip on the credit card, whether it all goes to your server or whether it gets divvied up somehow. So I leave cash on the table whenever possible.
Mr. Bemused Senior
@A woman from anywhere (formerly Mohagan): mine is from the Jewel in the Crown. Well, that and Gandhi’s autobiography.
Shakti
@Steve in the ATL: The town his employer was located in didn’t have an airport and his flight was one of the last ones for the night.
A lot of the “I had only x dollars in my pocket” stories result from coming from poorer countries and also currency restrictions. The night’s stay and cup of coffee cost 1/4 of the money my father had on him at the time.
Ramalama
@schrodingers_cat: OK I have to admit that I also Loved A Suitable Boy. But it was incredibly long with a shite ton of scenes that required a lot of slow reading. Also I had no idea about British India and the Partition.
So my brother’s and McKinty’s arguments were the same – that the first part was stellar, but brought down by the last section. It was a stylistic concern that Vikram Seth should have stopped after the first section, and made the 2nd section its own book, with more cohesive writing.
As far as I can remember, that is. I bought the book at a book store before the 2000s and I ate the whole thing up.
I wasn’t going to but I did also watch the movie due to knowing someone who was on the production end of it and I wanted something to discuss. It’s a beautiful film but the novel is eleventy hundred times better.
YY_Sima Qian
@Bill Arnold: Yes, that is the obvious explanation, which the most extremist elements in Bibi’s coalition are quite transparent on. They want to create the conditions to “encourage” Gazans to “voluntarily emigrate”, thereby creating a refugee crisis for other countries to deal w/. But the countries in the region are not dumb. Palestinian refugees did political stability in Jordan & Lebanon no favors.