Record collector. Positive cynic. Sometime photographer. I eat movies and drink pop culture. Cat person. Ex music snob. Like what brings you joy, it's often in short supply. ONCE. Exhausted, daily. I can drive a stick. www.youtube.com/@Michael_Audie
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RFK Jr. rolled out that old chestnut again about how healthy Americans were in the 60’s, so here’s a fact check. In 1965: -42% of American adults smoked; it’s 11% now. -The infant morality rate was 24.7/1000; it’s 5.6/1000 now. -Overall life expectancy was 70 years; it's about 77 years now.
Gotta say seeing governors competing to one up each other to see who can make vaccines most accessible is a refreshing change.
😂
I think the chances we have a really serious, preventable outbreak in the next couple of years are rising exponentially, and that's kind of scary.
My summary of the RFK Jr. hearing: The danger he poses to the United States was made clear by Democrats. Two Republican Senators, Cassidy and Tillis, appear to grasp some of the danger. I do not believe any action will be taken to address the egregious destruction of HHS by RFK Jr.
The last few minutes before the break were very hard to sit through. Numerous false allegations of corruption in science were made by Ron Johnson and enthusiastically agreed with by Kennedy. I am stating for the record that if this continues, more violence against scientists will occur.
Democrats should make a criminal referral to DOJ over Kennedy’s outrageous lying to the committee.
RFK Jr: It's gonna be the biggest infusion of federal dollar into rural healthcare in American history BERNIE SANDERS: Yeah. You know why? Because you're cutting $150b for rural hospitals, you're putting $50b back. That's not an infusion. That's a loss of $100b.
Ron Johnson is having a tantrum about science and says it’s all been “corrupted”. He is lying about VAERS when he says that the CDC “suddenly” turned against it. This is utterly and completely false. The CDC has always explained that VAERS CANNOT BE USED TO DRAW CONCLUSIONS ABOUT CAUSALITY.
Was not expecting this: Senate Majority Whip John Barrasso (R-WY), the second highest ranking Republican in the Senate, just told RFK Jr. he is "very concerned" about RFK's leadership and vaccine policies. He's treating him as a hostile witness, asking about ACIP now
WARNER: Do you accept the fact that 1 million Americans died from covid? RFK Jr: I don't know how many died W: You're the secretary of health and human services. You don't have any idea how many Americans died from covid? RFK Jr: I don't think anybody knows that W: How can you be that ignorant?
Wyden asks about RFK Jr. installing quacks on ACIP. RFK Jr. says that the American Academy of Pediatrics is “gravely conflicted”. He then says he “depoliticized ACIP” and that scientists and doctors support him. No, we do not.
Sen Crapo (R, Gilead) leads off by alleging that this is the first time that HHS has focused on chronic disease, which is an outrageously incorrect claim. He then claims that Medicaid has been preserved through the Big Beautiful Bill, which is an egregious mischaracterization.
Wyden on RFK Jr: "This committee's unwillingness to swear in this witness is basically a message that it is acceptable to lie to the Senate Finance Committee about hugely important questions like vaccines."
RFK JR: You’re just making stuff up Hassan: Sometimes when you make an accusation, it’s kind of a confession
Ted Cruz: "I don't want to get between JB Pritzker and the Dominos Pizza line, but I'll tell you what I am willing to get between -- him and his open doors for every human trafficker ... " Raphael absolutely scorched by Gov Pritzker 🔥🔥🤣🤣👇
The same conservatives who screamed about limiting the size of soft drinks or Kamala supposedly taking away Americans’ hamburgers (we see you, lying Ted Cruz) are somehow weirdly silent about RFK’s dietary goals, expressed here:
Bennet runs out of patience with RFK Jr and yells at him that "I'm asking the questions on behalf of parents and schools and teachers all over the United States of America who deserve so much better than your leadership! That's what this conversation is about."
Warnock to RFK jr: "For the first time, we are seeing deaths of children from measles. We haven't seen that in two decades. We're seeing that under your watch. You are a hazard to the health of the American people."
VP defends RFK Jr with LOOK AT THAT SQUIRREL!
to the people who caught this in the discover tab: yes, I agree, the rest of Trump's appointees are also bad. the threat posed by RFK to the public health is unique among them. that is why the post specifies RFK. In addition, this is becoming so clear that there might be a window for progress
Trump, who can't legally own a gun because he's a convicted felon, wants his DOJ to ban trans Americans from owning guns. Are you fucking kidding me?
Secretly recorded video: DOJ official says Republicans would be edited out of the Epstein files #fyp
DOJ does damage control as staffer admits Republicans will be redacted from Epstein files - Raw Story www.rawstory.com/doj-epstein-...
In Washington, DC. Trump's ICE America and DOJ actions. The smashing of our rights and our freedoms.
The United States is now on the Civicus Monitor Watchlist. A global list of countries where there is a serious decline in respect for civic freedoms. The watchlist was updated in March 2025 and includes the US alongside the Democratic Republic of Congo, Pakistan, Kenya, and Serbia. DOJ actions
Trump DOJ is reportedly looking at ways to ban transgender Americans from owning guns
We've become the monsters we used to hunt. At least two of the men released from CECOT needed help getting off the plane and were put in wheelchairs because of the physical torture they endured. DOJ actions. And the evangelicals cheer for this.
Warnock: Clearly you have an agenda. It is a threat to the public health of the American people. It's clear that you are carrying out your extremist beliefs. RFK JR: We’re the sickest people on earth. How am I a threat? Warnock: I think that you ought to resign.
Rand Paul: "The reason we have trials & we don't automatically assume guilt is what if we make a mistake and they happen to be people fleeing the Venezuelan dictator? ... off our coast it isn't our policy just to blow people up ... even the worst people in our country, they still get a trial."
#ReleaseTheEpsteinList
This guy also basically does not believe that Congress should exist, so this tracks www.axios.com/2025/09/03/r...
Good morning to you 🌞 from the Southern Coast on the
It's Time to Release the Epstein Files. People who fight this hard to hide something have something to hide. open.substack.com/pub/joycevan...
As a survivor, I can't think of a more fitting metaphor than a rapist creating loud noises with planes as a survivor tries to tell her story. I mean... just wow. Nevertheless, she persisted.
I’ve studied US drone strikes, I wrote a book called “Drones and Terrorism,” and this Caribbean strike is different. Lethal fire at a non-threatening target in a non-hostile environment on purpose when other means, such as capture, were easily doable, and without even attempting a legal rationale.
The guy that ordered 8 fighter jets to perform a low altitude fly-over in an effort to drown out Epstein survivors is the same guy who wants you to believe he's innocent.
Remember when Bari Weiss tried desperately to be fired from the New York Times, but they wouldn’t fire her because cancel culture isn’t fucking real, so eventually she just resigned and claimed that it was cancel culture like the kid holding a boot to his own face
Weird how they don't have Colbert money but they got Bari Weiss money
Bari Weiss is literally going to run CBS news while complaining about being silenced
Ossoff: "It's been extraordinary to see the Speaker of the House reduced to lying in order to cover up sex crimes"
This is an excellent point:
Next they'll be rewriting textbooks to say Japanese American internment camps were delightful summer resorts.
Being sent to DC may cause some members to lose a year towards retirement. What a mess.
#RFKJr wants to take away #COVID #vaccines (and then move on to #childhood #preventable #diseases). You can see it in the works now. Write to your member of #Congress now. This makes it easy to do so. @defendpublichealth.bsky.social actionnetwork.org/letters/writ...
It’s odd that the president would need to give an Oval Office address about something as arbitrary (albeit idiotic) as moving Space Force or renaming the DoD. I have to assume he’s doing it because he knows the world thinks he’s hiding.
These Effing People
The man has always scoured the horizon for cameras to put him on the idiot box. His staff couldnt stop him from running up to them if their lives depended on it. Since hes not, he probably feels how he looks. That and the security is keeping reporters bigfoot photo distance away.
The police version of the crash, as relayed by a local Manchester reporter, is unsurprisingly quite different from what Giuliani's spokesman says. The whole thing is even more murky now, however. manchester.inklink.news/rudy-giulian...
If we have to become an authoritarian state, can we at least get eco-cities, bullet trains, and renewable energy?
Reminder: Most mass shootings are carried out by cisgender men.
Google developer #1: "That's it. Our search engine is simple, efficient, and reliable. It's perfect. We're done." Google developer #2, presumably: "But wouldn't it be *more* perfect if the first search result was always a robot who mansplained your search results to you incorrectly?"
This “explicit” is a weird editorial choice. The constitution gives the president no power over this at all. It’s not ambiguous.
This is fucking pathological and they've been doing it for 8 months straight now. The average voter fully believes big stronk Mister Trump is about to personally cut them a check because that's what the media alerts on their phone keep telling them.
RFK Jr. likes to claim that thimerosal in childhood vaccines causes autism spectrum disorder (ASD). So I wonder if he’d like to explain how the rates of ASD diagnoses in the U.S. have kept going up when thimerosal was removed from all childhood vaccines in 2001?
this is a more or less ubiquitous practice in my understanding and letting it become weaponized and scandalous is bad
Jones: I would say to my colleagues who serve in government—keep your thoughts and prayers, keep your tweets. If you want to address gun violence, you don't need to tweet. What you need is a mirror. You have the power to change things.
"If you don’t want to tear it down and start from scratch, you’re part of the problem. If you *do* want to tear it down and start from scratch, congratulations, you’re hired." Not much more to it than that.
Right. Same thing as 2020 [see below].Through 2 debates and a session on Economics in Chicago during the 2024 campaign I never heard a reporter bring up the cost of the 2020 tariffs & the bailout to farmers WE paid for to cover Trump’s tariff folly. I’m sick of it. www.forbes.com/sites/stuart...
Donald Trump recently said that he has “the right” to do anything he wants—not unlike the antagonistic Homelander of the TV show "The Boys"—and his followers are determined to prove him right. www.theatlantic.com/newsletters/...
This part. Everyone should be taking notes from @ivehaditpodcast.bsky.social’s @mizzwelch.bsky.social
These are public employees who decided to leave rather than accept jobs where they actually did nothing. Remember that the next time they tell you that government employees are lazy and inefficient.
The Free State of Florida is now trying to ban *sidewalk chalking*
Just saying rain.works/products/inv...
Dr. Dmitri Daskalakis, who resigned from the CDC says that RFKJr said he believes that Avian flu should be allowed to "burn through" the chickens and then children and others, so we can propagate a "stronger species". RFKJr believes in eugenics. RFKJr needs to resign or be fired.
“…I am infuriated that the Air Force plans to grant military funeral honors to Ashli Babbitt. She did not die defending the Constitution. She died trying to overturn it.” My latest in @thebulwark.com www.thebulwark.com/p/honoring-a...
"She did not die defending the Constitution. She died trying to overturn it. She was not protecting lives at a gate in Iraq; she was forcing her way through windows in the Capitol to stop the peaceful transfer of power." New from @markhertling.bsky.social:
Perhaps dead inside.
Some perspective…
Are people ghoulscrolling yet?
At some point in the not too distant future the conventional wisdom will be that this was a period where the US focused on dumb shit while China took the lead in multiple domains
Mike Johnson dismisses the unpopularity of the Big Beautiful Bill: "The individual provisions of that giant piece of legislation are wildly popular." CNN host John Berman immediately debunks that claim.
He’s not wrong. We’re in this position because Republican politicians—like Mike Johnson—are power-obsessed sociopaths whose hearts and brains are so broken that they can’t even be moved by the horrible reality of dead children and shattered families.
Mike Johnson on CNN and Fox News polls that show how unpopular Trump's One Big Beautiful Bill Act is: “I'm not buying that, polls can be manipulated.”
If cutting nearly $1 trillion in Medicaid and literally taking food from children's mouths by slashing SNAP were as popular as Mike Johnson claims, Trump wouldn't have begged Texas to enact an extreme, mid-decade gerrymander in an attempt to keep Republicans in control of the House
🧊🖕🪖 TERRORIZING KIDS 😲 Schoolkids in DC ride free on Metro, and a lot of them use this benefit to commute to school. They're talking about the soldiers they're seeing at the stations, and the rumor is that if you so much as eat a snack on the train, they will grab you and deport you. ✊ FREE DC!
Dropping the source article link again in case anyone missed it:
This is a very good idea.
New Hampshire is the Kentucky of New England, he says with unfortunate experience.
President Sundowning.
I can't imagine how you unwind this, if the administration doesn't just outright defy the order.
Thank the Republican party, and every Republican you know for the wonderful world they are making for all of us.
"Let every American, every lover of liberty, every well wisher to his posterity, swear by the blood of the Revolution, never to violate in the least particular, the laws of the country; and never to tolerate their violation by others." --Abraham Lincoln, 1838 www.americaamerica.news/p/its-villai...
It's right out in the open.
there is no question in my mind that rfk jr is the most dangerous person in this administration and that his eugenicist ideology threatens the lives of millions of people www.advocate.com/politics/dem...
'American Experience' is a treasure.
"Political opponents are targeted with criminal probes. Federal judges’ orders are ignored. Educational institutions are extorted into obedience. Key functions of the government are politicized and degraded. Expertise and science are devalued."
Trump raise prices
"Armed soldiers patrol the streets of the nation’s capital, with more cities apparently to come. Immigrants who have done nobody any harm are abducted and disappeared by masked agents. The state is seizing stakes of national companies. Election integrity is under attack."
Mike Johnson makes clear that when Congress returns next week he's going to work tirelessly to cover up the Epstein files
Good.
Strangely enough, I have a chapter in my upcoming polemical history of vaccine resistance on exactly this. It introduces readers to the magnificent Victorian phrase "omissional infanticide," and dives in Justice Harlan's meticulous dismantling of what Mr. Tuccille would have us tolerate.
Amy Oddo✌🏻💙☀️ 