Reasonable point.
Democratic political strategist, analyst, commentator. Hopium purveyor. More than 30 years in the fight. My primary political home is on Substack. Join me there too - https://www.hopiumchronicles.com/
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Reasonable point.
Crime is literally lower than it has been in the entire life of every single non-senior-citizen American. If you are under age 65 you have never lived at a time with lower property crime rates, lower violent crime rates or lower homicide rates. Never.
"Blueskyism" helped make The Onion one of the largest newspapers in the world in less than a year. If we had spent all of our time on Twitter, we'd be poorer, dumber and terminally ill with internet poisoning. He's just angry he's wasting away over there in a nazi agnostic lane that doesn't exist.
This is literally the largest act of union busting in American history. www.nytimes.com/2025/09/01/u...
Nine former directors of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) are speaking out, saying Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is endangering the health of Americans. abcnews.go.com/Health/forme...
a very high proportion of centrist punditry now just boils down to "progressives yell at me on the internet and i don't like it." you would think that getting paid millions of dollars per year would give you thicker skin
“… two important lessons. One is that resistance is patriotic. Everything that we do to oppose American authoritarianism we do not just in the name of defending freedom, but in the name of preserving America as such.” #AwarenessMatters #DemocracyMatters 1/2 open.substack.com/pub/snyder/p...
Gavin Newsom, for the win! Let's fucking go! 🙌💪👏✊👇
California stepping up.
Releasing the names of covert intelligence officials is a crime. It amounts to #Treason.
Where's his hair? He looks like he's on death's door. He needs to address the media.
50% tariffs on Brazil and India seem designed to accelerate the formation of a post-American global order. And it’s working! Pretty clear Trump has decided to end both the American century and our democracy as the defining projects of his “America First” regime. Useful idiot? Idiot? Traitor?
Everyone saying “there’s no way Trump wrote this” is kind of missing the point. It doesn’t matter who wrote it— this coming out from Trump’s truth social account at all means the White House is frustrated by the narrative about the CDC / vaccines and laying the groundwork for a break from Kennedy.
The mental fitness of elderly Presidents has been such an important issue for the media lately, so I expect wall-to-wall coverage of how President Trump has once again thrown a fit about one of his own signature policies, showing no awareness of how it arose or who executed it.
Well done MAGA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
9 CDC Directors going back to 1977 speak out. What RFK Jr has done to our nation’s public health system "should alarm every American." It "is unlike anything we have ever seen at the agency, and unlike anything our country has ever experienced." www.nytimes.com/2025/09/01/o...
A Sunday round up of new essays, interviews, insights and of course charts and graphs. The bottom line - we need to win the fall 👇 www.hopiumchronicles.com/p/sunday-hop...
Pete Hegseth in December on military training: “We’re bringing a war-fighting ethos back to the Pentagon. Everything else that distracts from lethality shouldn’t be happening.”
when a judge gets woken up at two in the morning to deal with your bullshit it is generally advisable to stop producing new bullshit such that they can get some sleep at some point the next day
It has now been SIX DAYS since Donald Trump has delivered any public remarks. His last public remarks were on August 25th, during a ceremony in the Oval Office. THIS IS NOT NORMAL.
Love the Resolutions Project started by @simonwdc.bsky.social #constitution #democracy #RuleofLaw www.hopiumchronicles.com/p/sunday-hop...
A Sunday round up of new essays, interviews, insights and of course charts and graphs. The bottom line - we need to win the fall 👇 www.hopiumchronicles.com/p/sunday-hop...
"There is no simple or easy path for us this fall. .. our leaders have tough decisions to make. What I hope .. is that they enter this period with an understanding that we are in a new and dangerous place .. and that traditional compromise can in this new era of Trump become dangerous appeasement."
In a new post I write about how Dems 1) can't approach the upcoming budget talks as traditional negotiations w/the governing party 2) have a big opportunity w/Trump's tariffs to show we are with the people and they the oligarchs - and we need to seize it 👇 www.hopiumchronicles.com/p/a-court-ru...
These are my patients. Kids dying of brain cancer. Kids and families desperate for treatment and hoping to find a cure through experimental therapies. Trump is dismantling science and children with brain tumor are the victims. www.nytimes.com/2025/08/28/w...
If Republicans really think there is a national emergency to justify the tariffs, why don’t they just pass them in Congress like they are supposed to under the constitution. This is supposedly a national emergency, but they are gambling on the Supreme Court while doing nothing?
Trump at his golf club today. He hid from the public for days and won’t let the press pool near him.
That Trump and Trumpism are fascist doesn’t explain the sheer vandalism of unleashing mass murdering mayhem via RFK to replace medical/scientific institutions of immense value and prestige with medieval peasant superstitions. That is a criminal madness facilitated by but above and beyond fascism.
The American Academy of Pediatrics: Infants ages 6 months to 2 years should get a COVID vaccination. A baby's first encounter should be with the vaccine, not the virus. npr.org/2025/08/20/n...
In a new post I write about how Dems 1) can't approach the upcoming budget talks as traditional negotiations w/the governing party 2) have a big opportunity w/Trump's tariffs to show we are with the people and they the oligarchs - and we need to seize it 👇 www.hopiumchronicles.com/p/a-court-ru...
HOPIUM CHRONICLES: A Court Rules Trump's Terrible Tariffs Are Illegal (Again), Dems Need To Fight The Battle In Front Us This Fall - Not The Battle We Wish We Had open.substack.com/pub/simonwdc...
FORTUNATELY, for everyone we have a fun way to tell your House rep that you think Bobby Jr is a quack and has to go… For $3 we will hand deliver (by a man in a duck costume) a rubber ducky with a message to “impeach the quack” to your rep! QUACK-O-GRAMS! act.standupforscience.net/fundraising/...
another radioactive shrimp recall has hit the newswires
Trump is doing everything he can to anger the world and end the global system America built after WWII.
He rose to power through crying about censorship from the medical establishment. And now Vinay Prasad is spending his time as an FDA official censoring his critics.
Can we get a statement like this from every Democrat in the country?
Garcia: We finally got word from the Epstein estate. They're going to be providing the actual Epstein book… the estate is actually going to actually now get us that book and a bunch of other documents that they have that's actually not been reported yet.
Trump has been so intent on raising prices on Americans he keeps breaking the law to do so.
Once again a court has ruled Trump’s terrible tariffs to be illegal and unconstitutional for they clearly are. They are modern day taxation without representation and Democrats should be fighting them with every patriotic bone in our body.
Good.
Pretty clear Miller driving all the eugenics and health insanity from the White House.
bsky.app/profile/sbag...
This is good: With Trump/RFK destroying CDC, JB Pritzker's officials are exploring the possibility of buying Covid vaccines from manufacturers and distributing them in-state themselves, source tells me. Dem govs must step up and fill the void. New piece from me: newrepublic.com/article/1998...
New study by @brendannyhan.bsky.social, @jasonreifler.bsky.social & colleagues demonstrates that prebunking election fraud rumors — by warning about anticipated false claims & filling conceptual gaps that those claims exploit — helps to reduce belief in falsehoods: www.science.org/content/arti...
Awesome.
Susan Collins rips Trump's/Russ Vought's effort to bigfoot Congress and cancel $5 billion in foreign aid that was already appropriated: "A clear violation of the law.” www.huffpost.com/entry/susan-...
she slayed www.cnbc.com/2025/08/29/b...
The new CDC director is trying to kill you. Not just “the most vulnerable”; you, me, everyone. This is a comic book-level evil scenario.
Host: Ghislaine Maxwell told the Deputy AG, 'I never, ever saw any man doing something inappropriate with a woman of any age.' How much weight do you put in the comments of Maxwell? Speaker Johnson: Not much at all. She has no credibility. She's been convicted for sex trafficking
And so it begins.....
This isn't just a political claim, it's an empirical one. If "the problem is not guns" then we shouldn't see any correlation between gun ownership and oh wait platform.vox.com/wp-content/u...
FOX: *plays clip of Gavin Newsom pointing out that crime is higher in Louisiana than in California* FOX: Your response? MIKE JOHNSON: He needs to go an govern his state and not be engaging in this
Dem Govs and Health Secretaries need to organize a ferocious campaign of resistance to what Kennedy is doing to their constituents.
The list of countries suspending shipments to the US is growing daily And per Bloomberg: "Americans will start to see the sticker shock immediately" Maybe get your holiday shopping done today .. www.reuters.com/business/end...
WSJ Page One: @wsj.com www.wsj.com/business/ret...
Unceasing Trumpian sabotage.
Peter Thiel crony named acting director of CDC. Jim O'Neill was CEO of the Thiel Foundation and was managing director for Thiel's Clarium Capital and Mithril Capital. He also co-founded the Thiel Fellowship. gift link to WaPo, which barely mentions these things:
STARTING IN 15 MINUTES!!! Join at the link in this post!
Confederacy of Dunces.
Welcome news. For blue states must hang together or will hang separately.
Cracking down on crime in DC, one Instagram pic at a time
"Ashli Babbitt was a grown ass adult who made a series of conscious, ill-advised decisions to engage in treasonous behavior, and she got exactly what she deserved. She was a traitor. She was a threat to national security. There is no nuance needed here."
Trump rolled out the red carpet for Putin and now he is escalating. This shit is on Trump. www.washingtonpost.com/world/2025/0...
For now. Please do your homework and stop spreading misinfo on here. Thank you.
“.. if, God forbid, there's a terrible tragedy, I can't think of better on-the-job training than what I've gotten over the last 200 days,” he added. @usatoday.com www.usatoday.com/story/news/p...
From Hopium: - Yes we need to FIRE HIM. Kennedy that is. Contact your Senators/Rep and demand this crackpot be fired. - New polling shows Trump underwater on the DC occupation, like he is on most issues that matter. He's losing his power to persuade 👇 www.hopiumchronicles.com/p/fire-him-t...
They have released far more restrictive risk categories so, no.
In a new post I make 3 recommendations to Congressional Dems on how to fight Trump when they return to our occupied Capital next week 👇 www.hopiumchronicles.com/p/fighting-t...
The chorus is growing louder. Call your Senators and Rep and demand they #FireKennedy.
My contribution to the authoritarianism discourse: we're already way too far down the road, and lots of institutions that could've stopped this chose not to (SCOTUS, R Senators) but consolidation is way easier when Dear Leader is improving the quality of life, and Trump is doing the opposite.
Excellent:
She appears unaware or what her own government decided yesterday. Most of the country can NO LONGER get the vaccine. It isn’t about individual choice.
From Hopium: - Yes we need to FIRE HIM. Kennedy that is. Contact your Senators/Rep and demand this crackpot be fired. - New polling shows Trump underwater on the DC occupation, like he is on most issues that matter. He's losing his power to persuade 👇 www.hopiumchronicles.com/p/fire-him-t...
possible by oct 2026 that inflation is above 5%, we're in a jobs recession, the president's approval is at 35-40%, and people will be losing their health care and food benefits... i don't think this will go how he thinks it will go
I dare you to go to Annunciation School and tell our grieving community, in effect, guns don’t kill kids, antidepressants do. Just shut up. Stop peddling bullshit. You should be fired.
This is absolutely catastrophic for U.S. higher education, and for U.S. global leadership. Just the latest in a series of senseless acts of self-sabotage by a malevolent administration bent on making the United States weak and poor.
Dem Govs and Health Secretaries need to organize a ferocious campaign of resistance to what Kennedy is doing to their constituents.
Hang onto this image of CDC's full list of underlying conditions tied to severe risk of COVID. If you're an adult aged 18-64, RFK Jr. is now making you show some proof of one of these underlying conditions in order to get a COVID vaccine.
Yes we must #FireKennedy.
Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.), top Dem on the Senate health committee, on this evening's chaos at CDC: “We cannot let RFK Jr. burn what’s left of the CDC and our other critical health agencies to the ground—he must be fired."
Wow
"Covid vaccines are more dangerous than the entire scientific edifice claims and also this long list of sick and vulnerable people can still have one" is a hell of an argument
Abbe Lowell and I represent CDC Director #SusanMonarez. Contrary to govt statements, Dr. Monarez has neither resigned nor yet been fired. She will not resign. We have issued the following statement:
If you are under 65 it is going to get much harder to get a COVID vaccine now. Kennedy is fucking insane. "Depending on the panel’s advice, Americans under age 65 could be expected to provide documentation of a serious medical problem before they can get a shot." apnews.com/article/vacc...
The fire sale at the end of the empire www.theatlantic.com/health/archi...
Can the health secretaries in the blue states organize themselves as the 23 Dem AGs do and start more aggressively pushing back on what Kennedy is doing? Their citizens are at risk.
At least four major scientists out at the CDC today. Kennedy's assault on our public health just keeps escalating..... insidemedicine.substack.com/p/breaking-n...
From Hopium: - Big win In Iowa, new intv w/Iowa Dem Chair Rita Hart - On the growing power of Dem "national security moms" - Thoughts on why it is so important for Trump to occupy the Capital of the United States - Some candidates to support, things to do 👇 www.hopiumchronicles.com/p/an-encoura...
Here's what the third day of elementary school looked like in Mount Pleasant, Washington DC.
Did she have the audacity to express concern about her building being shot up and a security guard being murdered because of RFK Jr’s lies?
Trump hasn't gone on vacation this summer, been throwing a lot at us. Recent polls suggest it isn't working: 37-55 Quinnipiac 40-56 Gallup 41-56 Strength In Numbers 👇 41-56 Econ/YG 40-54 Ipsos/Reuters S/I/N has Ds +8 in generic ballot, Q has Trump 41-56 on DC occupation. bsky.app/profile/gell...
this picture of a mom shoes off sprinting to the Mpls school: www.startribune.com/minneapolis-... By Richard Tsong-Taatarii for @startribune.com, which should be a go-to source for anyone following
Folks what is the explanation for why Trump has taken no time off this summer?
Mississippi health officials declared a public health emergency last week in response to the state’s rising infant mortality rate, stating that too many “families are losing their babies before their first birthday.”
Chief of staff to Gov JB Pritzker -->
This is so funny. The US is already finding out how it goes when you try to interfere in a village where everyone knows each other, is related to each other, and no one has secrets. Namely that it doesn’t go very far. It was probably the Danish source’s second cousin who exposed the whole thing.
Historically bad nominees deserve a historic level of scrutiny by Senate Democrats.
Leia🇨🇴🇺🇸 