60 years ago, President Johnson traveled to the Truman Library in Independence, Missouri, to sign Medicare and Medicaid into law.
With President Truman—who began the fight—at his side, our nation took a historic step toward recognizing health care as a right, not a privilege. pic.twitter.com/lE8fqD8fX5
— Nancy Pelosi (@SpeakerPelosi) July 30, 2025
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The Federal Reserve is leaving its key short-term interest rate unchanged for the fifth time this year, brushing off repeated calls from President Donald Trump for a cut.
— The Associated Press (@apnews.com) July 30, 2025 at 3:00 PM
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Call to Activism – Joe Gallina
🚨MAJOR BREAKING: Speaker Emerita Pelosi just SILENCED Republicans by announcing she SUPPORTS the ban on Congressional stock trading.
Hawley thought it was cute calling it the PELOSI Act – now it’s the HONEST Act. I love that she called his bluff!!— Paul Eric Scannell (@pauleric70.bsky.social) July 30, 2025 at 9:23 PM
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Correct stance by @warren.senate.gov
The Vought/Trump/Vance/DOGE-Musk [remember them, and him?] forces are acting in entire bad faith.
Do not engage with them.— James Fallows (@jfallows.bsky.social) July 30, 2025 at 2:12 PM
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If you're a pilot, you've already gotten this notice.
Trump is capping off his golfing trip to Scotland, with a golfing trip to New Jersey.
At work, for America.— James Fallows (@jfallows.bsky.social) July 30, 2025 at 3:33 PM
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Coming tomorrow at 9 PM ET with @senateinsession.bsky.social: a full breakdown of my follow the money investigation on Epstein so far. How we got a look at the Treasury’s Epstein files, how it all ties back to Donald Trump, and where we go from here.
— Senator Ron Wyden (@wyden.senate.gov) July 30, 2025 at 8:58 PM
On The Road – Captain C – Netherlands, September 2024 Part 3: Rotterdam Harbour Tour Part 2
japa21
Morning all
satby
Looking forward to Sen. Wyden’s findings.
I think the felon is hiding financial dealings, since the stories of him raping minors have been out for years.
MCat
Good morning!
Librettist
Go to Texas, go broke.
I remember the good old days when the GOP would tut-tut about “pushing the demand string….”.
kindness
I miss Joe Biden’s presidency. I didn’t have to think about anything. I didn’t worry constantly about the country going to hell in a hand basket. He didn’t get any credit by the MSM and he barely got enough credit from fellow Democrats.
Lapassionara
Medicare is great in my view. I know the Republicans want to take away its power to affect what HPs are paid, but that power is crucial.
thank you, LBJ
Ohio Mom
@kindness: Me too.
Living through the heightening of contradictions is unbearably stressful.
Baud
@japa21:
@satby:
Good morning.
Baud
@kindness:
@Ohio Mom:
We’re a minority. People are bored and want a reality show with drama.
Librettist
Quantitative easing…. was one weird trick that worked until it didn’t. I don’t see his fiscal brainiacs understanding the difference between that and chopping at the rate.
Man-baby can mewl all he wants, inflationary pressures are not going away because he wishes them away to a corn field.
Geminid
@MCat: Good morning!
H.E.Wolf
President and Mrs. Truman allegedly received the first two Medicare cards, in recognition of Truman’s longstanding championship of this and similar plans.
pbs.org/newshour/health/president-johnson-signs-medicare-law
Excerpt:
“During his administration, President Truman called for the institution of a federally funded health insurance program in 1945 and again in 1947 and 1949. Each presidential plea, however, was thwarted or ignored by the U.S. Congress, aided and abetted by powerful medical lobbies such as the American Medical Association and the American Hospital Association, which denigrated such efforts as a descent into ‘socialized medicine.’ “
Raoul Paste
@Baud: The same people are so uninformed that they don’t realize the level of drama that they are getting.
Ohio Mom
Subaru Diane asked yesterday if anyone had seen Raven commenting recently.
By my calculations, he’s due any moment to remind us to Fuck LBJ; if he doesn’t, I think a front pager should be alerted to do a wellness check.
Baud
@Ohio Mom:
He said he was going to be around less.
Suzanne
@Ohio Mom:
Agree.
The End of History was supposed to feel more secure, rather than less so.
zhena gogolia
@kindness: Amen.
Librettist
@satby:
Money crimes, sex crimes, thought crimes. He is no longer able to carry the blizzard of lies day to day, and just randomly blurts out incriminating stuff that might not even be true (because he doesn’t remember). He implicates himself further in the court of normie opinion on a daily basis.
They need to drop the fool now, before the midterms get baked in, but they won’t.
Another Scott
@kindness: +1
I can’t stand to listen to the top of the hour news on the radio anymore. About 85.732% of the stories are “President 47 did this thing…”. They rarely if ever call out the illegality and how he’s breaking all the systems that our parents and ancestors built.
There are times that I think that Democrats lose close elections not because people don’t like them or their policies, but because they aren’t narcissistic enough to demand to dominate the news every hour of every day.
Grr…
Best wishes,
Scott.
Betty Cracker
Good to hear Senator Warren advocate for refusing to participate in rigged budget “negotiations.” This came up last week in a post about Senator Murphy, who also recognizes it’s a charade that offers no upside for Dems.
As Bill Scher wrote in The WaMo (linked in the post), Republicans can keep the government open all by themselves by nuking the 60-vote threshold and voting on a straight party line. They don’t want to do that because they want fake bipartisan cover from agreements they telegraph in advance they’ll break.
I haven’t heard a good argument yet why Dems shouldn’t make them do that and own their unpopular shit if they’re going to cheat Dems out of every “concession” anyway.
schrodingers_cat
@kindness: He was boring and old and appointed too many black women. So we had to be punished for his “sins”. So say the Bernie bros and the PodBros and D electeds that led the charge against him.
//Dead horse alert.
schrodingers_cat
@Baud: MAGA are minority too, but they have succeeded in imposing their will on the rest of us. The majority is slumbering.
Speaking about messaging, warmed up claptrap from campus Socialist-Marxist luncheons is not a winning message beyond a certain type of an entitled person who thinks that they are the tribune of the poor and the unwashed. Eat the rich is not a great message.
stinger
@Another Scott: I get 95% of my news from Balloon Juice now, because I can’t bear to have the Felon’s actions reported as if they were normal presidential actions. The news announcers need to show horror, dismay, and outrage in their faces and voices. THIS IS NOT NORMAL.
So I’m very grateful to Anne Laurie, Betty Cracker, WaterGirl, and other frontpagers and commenters for filtering what’s going on.
Soprano2
QFT. Look at TV and the internet, this crappy reality show stuff is all over it. It wouldn’t be there if people didn’t watch it, plus it’s cheap for them to produce.
Ohio Mom
@Baud: That was good manners, to give us notice. I must have missed that thread. Thanks for the update.
Doug R
Weird error message posting a link.
What’s a “redis”?
Anyway “mystery orange shape spotted near Jeffery Epstein’s cell the night of his death: report”
Got a weird error trying to post the link…
zhena gogolia
@stinger: Same here.
ETA: And yet I feel better informed than a lot of people I talk to.
Soprano2
@Ohio Mom: I’m friends with him on FB. He posted about Ryne Sandberg’s death on Tuesday of this week.
Soprano2
Same here, I hear this crap on the local news every night too. They rarely mention the problems with what he does.
schrodingers_cat
OT: What are kosher meals on Delta international flights like? I have become supersensitive to lactose, especially milk and cream and some cheeses. I can tolerate butter, yogurt in small amounts. I usually would get the Hindu meal. Of course I can go vegan but I am afraid it will be tasteless. They have a kosher meal option too. So I was wondering what that entails. If anyone has any experience please let me know.
I have to go to India, for the first anniversary to commemorate my mother.
Steve in the ATL
@Ohio Mom: @Baud: I emailed him. Will let y’all know if he responds and authorizes my sharing that information. Don’t want to intrude if he’s faked his own death and is trying to disappear.
lowtechcyclist
@Baud:
Television doesn’t already give them plenty of that? Not to mention, the ups and downs of one’s sportsball teams.
And best of all, no matter how your team’s season ends, or what happens to your favorite character on a ‘reality’ show, it doesn’t affect when you can retire or whether you can afford to see a doctor, or whether any help is on the way when your area has been hit by a natural disaster.
There’s a lot to be said for that sort of drama.
Steve in the ATL
@stinger: same here and I concur with all your statements
Another Scott
Relatedly?
Wondermark #1569
Hmmm…
Best wishes,
Scott.
Jackie
@Baud:
@Ohio Mom:
I believe he said he’d be lurking more; posting less.
BUT he needs to check in weekly with a FUCK LBJ!, if nothing else ;-D
Tony Jay
Since the UK Government was dragged kicking and squealing into sort of maybe promising to follow France and 140+ countries in recognising a Palestinian state in September (if Hamas surrenders, disarms and dissolves itself – so, no then) the usual suspects have emerged from the baroque mausoleum that is The House of Lords to inform everyone that such an action by the UK would dum-dum-duuuuum violate international law.
Forty ‘eminent lawyers’ (stop laughing at the back) have come forward to claim that recognition of Palestine is in violation of The Montevideo Convention, a 1933 agreement between states in the Americas that the UK is not a signatory to and that has never been mentioned before in pretty much any context. Except by Russia, which referred to it in justifying its invasion of Ukraine. Which is, uh, something.
Lady Ruth Deech has been on Sky News giving her ‘expert opinion’ that the UK (and presumably all the other countries that have already recognised or intend to recognise Palestinian statehood) simply have to view the MC as settled international law. Unlike those other and presumably irrelevant Hague, Geneva and Genocide Conventions. Those apparently aren’t worth the antisemitic paper they’re antisemitically written on and Ruthie is simply having no truck with that nonsense.
Needless to say, nobody at Sky or on the BBC or in the FTF Guardian felt it necessary to mention that Lady Deech is a former director of the controversial Jewish National Fund, that supports the expansion of Jewish settlements, including across the West Bank, as well as being a patron of the UK Lawyers for Israel group that uses lawfare to silence opponents of Israel. Deech is also on record denying that Israel is committing genocide, and claiming that Netanyahu has sovereign immunity against international arrest warrants because he’s Israel’s Head of State… so not a great record for accuracy.
I’m sure that the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, Lisa ‘Brexit 4 Life’ Nandy will be straight in front of a camera demanding to know why people haven’t been sacked for such a blatant failure to provide adequate disclosure. After all, she claims to be genuinely outraged with the case of a 13 year old providing a voiceover for an award winning documentary about how hellish life is in Gaza because no one revealed that the kid’s dad worked with Hamas, so she must be boiling over with rage at Lady Deech being presented as an independent legal voice.
Right? Right?!? Ha! Like fuck.
Still, always nice to smell the fumes of panic on The Right. Kind of nutty, with a floral bouquet.
Steve in the ATL
@schrodingers_cat: I get all my political opinions from the left flank of the Oberlin student council. Is that a mistake?
Miss Bianca
@Ohio Mom: I too was wondering about Raven. Also about Momsense – haven’t seen anything from her in ages.
Belafon
@Librettist: I can’t get to it from here, but a bsky post showed that the BLS has mostly stopped collecting the data it needs to actually compute the correct inflation value. So the inflation value they are putting it is only going to match reality by luck.
zhena gogolia
@Miss Bianca: Momsense left with Kay. I understand you can find them at mistermix’s blog.
schrodingers_cat
@Steve in the ATL: No that’s perfect. Do they wear their red Che tshirts?
Miss Bianca
@zhena gogolia: Oh. Well. I was afraid of that. Too bad then.
schrodingers_cat
@Baud: He is wise, I should probably do the same. I must be a masochist to keep posting here to be excoriated on the daily by the leading lights aka valued commenters of BJ who fancy themselves as super novae of brilliance.
eclare
@Baud:
I get drama from reality tv. I wish it would stay there.
Baud
@schrodingers_cat:
I know Raven likes to fish. What would you do?
schrodingers_cat
@Baud: Paint. Color. Draw. Work. Read. Write.
I am restarting my blog when I come back from India this fall.
You guys are my besties, I can’t leave you even though I want to.
Baud
@schrodingers_cat:
Truth be told, all of those things sound better than being online. It’s kind of dreary on the Internet these days.
schrodingers_cat
@Baud: I have reduced my time online. One can’t quit a habit of several decades cold turkey. I could take up fishing. I like to be on the ocean. Or I will just do plein air painting. And eat the fish.
RevRick
@kindness: We all miss his Presidency. Even more, I miss the would be Presidency of Kamala Harris. We have descended into a very dark and dangerous place.
Ohio Mom
@schrodingers_cat: Ohio Dad, who keeps kosher but hasn’t been on a flight long enough for meal service in many years, says in his ancient experience, breakfast will most likely have milk products; lunch will probably be a cold cut sandwich, and dinner will probably be some sort of meat. He warns that first class is served the same Kosher meal as coach, except they get two meals — what they lack in quality, they make up in quantity.
He says they are basically TV dinners, produced by Kosher caterers. Some of his lunch sandwiches were still partially frozen.
I’m guessing if the meal has fish, which isn’t considered meat (it’s neutral), it might also have milk products included.
I don’t know if that helps you or not. As we all know, airplane food is as best mediocre, and as some of us know, almost all kosher food is mediocre as well.
My joke is, white people see Asians eating in Chinese restaurant and declare, “The food must be good, Chinese eat there,” but nobody looks in the window of a kosher restaurant and says, “The food must be good, look at all those black hats” (code for ultra-orthodox). As economics teaches us, when you have a monopoly, there is no pressure to aim for quality.
Safe travels to you!
eclare
@Soprano2:
Stephen Colbert calls him out, and his show was canceled. Sigh. I have watched him eviscerate Republicans since 2005, I hope he continues to do so in some way.
Baud
@schrodingers_cat:
I saw the news reporting this morning that Trump is screwing Modi over on tariffs.
RevRick
@H.E.Wolf: The AMA and the AHA are singing a very different tune now.
Soprano2
@zhena gogolia: I hate that this happened. I know some people here are happy about it, but I think it’s better to have a mixture of thoughts and ideas and to talk about them. I don’t like the personal attacks, though. I think it’s not great for people to isolate themselves in smaller and smaller bubbles.
Baud
@Soprano2:
When you’re insecure, you can debate yourself.
prostratedragon
An Uruguayan tango: “Matasano,” Francisco Canaro.
RevRick
@Librettist: King Cnut and tides. Or in this case, the bond market.
schrodingers_cat
@Baud: Of course he is. Modi is a typical bully, kiss up and kick down, what else did he expect. Modi is getting dragged on Indian Twitter for being too trusting.
Ohio Mom
@Steve in the ATL: Thanks. I hope Raven’s health (such as it is) is holding up.
frosty
@stinger: I’m like you, 95% of my news is from Balloon-Juice. I don’t know how the usual news sources spin what FFOTUS is doing because I never see them. Well, except for the Guardian.
schrodingers_cat
@Ohio Mom: Thanks that’s helpful. I am a pretty adventurous eater and the kosher aisle in the grocery store fits your description of kosher food.
I saw a kosher meal served by Turkish airlines and it looked delicious. Hence my question.
Ohio Mom
@schrodingers_cat: Isn’t all Turkish food scrumptious?
I’m going to guess that appetizing kosher food on Turkish airplanes is somehow related to the raised consciousness that comes with keeping Halal.
jimmiraybob
The Felonius F. Predatorius Memorial Center for the Performing Arts.
I don’t know, it kinda pops, don’t ya think?
schrodingers_cat
@Ohio Mom: Delta has a Halal option too. I love Turkish food. I had a Turkish housemate, who was a great cook.
prostratedragon
@Baud:
Derek Guy:
He illustrated the point in this thread from late last year:
H.E.Wolf
@schrodingers_cat:
Sending my warmest sympathies on the anniversary of your loss.
schrodingers_cat
@H.E.Wolf: Thanks so much.
opiejeanne
@frosty: Me too. I come here, read the posts and maybe a few comments. Then I go and do something else, because I feel powerless to do much about the chaos of the current maladministration; I try to do good things where I am, one small thing at a time.
opiejeanne
@schrodingers_cat:
May her memory bring you peace.
eclare
@schrodingers_cat:
Anniversaries are so hard.
TONYG
@satby: I had never heard of the “Katie Johnson” lawsuit until now. I wonder why this was not MAJOR NEWS back in 2016. If I didn’t know better I might suspect that the corporate media really wants Trump and the Republicans to be in charge.
Mr. Bemused Senior
500 channels and there’s nothing on.
TONYG
@Ohio Mom: Being neither Jewish nor Muslim, I do not know the difference between kosher food and halal food. Maybe there’s not much difference at all.
Mr. Bemused Senior
@schrodingers_cat: safe travels and best wishes.
NotMax
@Mr. Bemused Senior
Newton Minow calling on line1.
;)
prostratedragon
From the representation for the plaintiffs:
Fair Economist
@schrodingers_cat:
Can you use the Lactaid pills?
I’ve had Delta vegetarian meals and they were a bit bland but OK.
schrodingers_cat
@Fair Economist: Never tried them so IDK.
Soprano2
@Baud: Sure, but you have to admit that there were some vicious personal attacks that contributed to the situation. I’m not sure I’d want to put up with that either.
Baud
@Soprano2:
Sorry. That was an attempt at a joke, referring to people second guessing themselves. I wasn’t attempting to comment on the recent kerfuffle.
Geminid
@TONYG: I wonder how important halal food is in Turkiye. It’s a fairly secular society, and most observant Muslims there follow Sufi traditions that are looser than in many other Muslim nations.
But this is something I want to learn more about. I intend to once all the strife in that region settles down. I’m pretty much fixated on day-to-day events now.
Geminid
@Soprano2: Well, I’m not happy about Kay and Momsense leaving. I clashed with Kay plenty, but I still respected her and was sorry to see her go. I guess a few people are happy she’s gone but I’m not one of them.
Ohio Mom
@TONYG: People who follow Halal can eat Kosher meat and other Kosher foods, but not always (one sticking point is if alcohol was used in the recipe, alcohol being prohibited); but Halal meat is not Kosher. There are a lot of picayune rules in each tradition.
Add to that that in contemporary times, there are a lot of personal variations in observance. If you’ve ever heard the term “cafeteria Catholic,” that applies at least to many American Jews’ observance of Kashrut (keeping Kosher), I can’t speak to how Halal is observed in America but I suspect it is the same.
If you dig deep enough, there are beautiful ideas underpinning keeping Kosher, especially that if we are going to kill animals to feed ourselves, we should do it in the most painless way possible, we owe the animal our kindness and gratitude. We should take a moment to thank the universe for providing us with what we need to nourish and sustain ourselves (it’s a little New-Agey in some respects).
In real life, the animals (and the workers doing the slaughtering and butchering) are not treated well, the whole thing has devolved into an extortion racket.
Ohio Dad lives a conflicted life, knowing Kosher meat is a racket but invested in keeping this part of his heritage alive.
Ohio Mom
@Geminid: Me too. Looking back, the entire ketfluffle seems inane. *That* was the breaking point?
Oh well, water over the dam and under the bridge, no use in relitigating that.
Scout211
I’m not sure if this has been discussed yet, but Kamala Harris has a book.
NotMax
@Ohio Mom
Traversed an aisle in a supermarket in NY several years ago. The left side was all halal. the right side all kosher. Much overlap in foodstuffs but not in branding.
Incidentally, the minuscule kosher section (blink and you’ll miss it) at Safeway here on Maui still has devotional candles with depictions of Jesus on them displayed right next to the boxes of maztzo.. Head/desk.
Professor Bigfoot
@Baud:
@schrodingers_cat:
I’ve definitely cut my online time down; finding more interesting things to do with my time.
Like my new pistol— great googly goo, that thang is a BLAST to shoot, especially for it being so small.
Also tinkering on the car- gotta pull the dash panel sometime and replace some backlight bulbs and maybe cajole the LEDs into displaying properly.
Keeps me occupied.
Oh, and working out. I’m actually starting to enjoy it; which makes me look in the mirror to say “who the hell are you, and what have you done with me?” ;)
We’ve stockpiled food, the freezer’s nearly full, I’ve been talking to the neighbors and building rapport because y’all, when the shit hits the fan, we will absolutely be on our own.
Suzanne
@Ohio Mom:
Having overheard many of my Muslim colleagues say things like when we sit down for lunch, “Eh, there’s some bacon…. God won’t care if it’s just a little”, I think it’s very similar.
Professor Bigfoot
I watched a Jewish (I think he was actually Israeli- and of course I can’t remember his name but he was one of those dudes who does not want to be mistaken for a white dude; like “I’m a proud Jew and if you don’t like it fuck you too” which I just love to see) chef “Beat Bobby Flay” with his matzoh ball soup, so there’s gotta be some serious fire, there!
(Bobby will take YOUR signature dish and make it better than you, I’ve watched it happen many, many times. Always leaves me hungry, too)
Went to visit a Jewish deli I used to go to up in Cleveland and it’s gone now… and there just aren’t any around here.
NotMax
@Suzanne
True story.
One grandfather, with a loosely kosher upbringing, on first tasting shrimp chow mein.
“Where has this been all my life?”
NotMax
@Professor Bigfoot
One word: cholent.
Slow cooking before slow cookers.
Harrison Wesley
@Professor Bigfoot: Have you checked out Local Harvest for food sources in your area? That’s where I found the CSA I belong to.
sab
@Professor Bigfoot: You are lucky. I am prerty sure our neighbors will be on the other side.
Ohio Mom
@NotMax: When we lived in Dayton, the supermarket in our neighborhood put out honey cakes for Passover. I thought maybe they’d been in the freezer since the fall and the store manager was looking forward to finally unloading them, one Jewish holiday looking like another to him.
It’s good character development to be periodically reminded you really are a member of a minority group.
Ohio Mom
@Professor Bigfoot: Oh, home cooking is its own category, assuming the cook is a good cook.
Ohio Mom
@sab: Hey, what was your happy news yesterday? If you shared it, I missed it, and this thread is as light-hearted as it gets around here.
Steve in the ATL
@Professor Bigfoot: my favorite restaurant in Cleveland was Greenhouse Tavern downtown, which closed during Covid. May possibly not have been Jewish or kosher since one menu item was an entire pig’s head. Chicago jackals can debate whether it’s ok to put ketchup on that or just onions and mustard.
gvg
@schrodingers_cat: Right now it is. They really didn’t need a tax cut combined with so much harm to regular people who didn’t think they were so vulnerable. I don’t think the bomb has exploded yet either.
Soprano2
@Ohio Mom: I think it was the incessant personal attacks from some posters that was the breaking point.
Miss Bianca
@Scout211: And unlike, say, Manchin’s, this one may actually get read./
New Deal democrat
Test