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Christopher Johnson

@cj8157.bsky.social
1.4K followers 2.1K following 234 posts

Florida resident, over 50 years. Blue voter and progressive Christian. Love listening to classical music (on physical media!), visiting museums, reading nonfiction. Disclaimer: my opinions do not necessarily reflect the views of present or past employers.

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Christopher Johnson @cj8157.bsky.social · 30/08/2026
So it appears that Ken Paxton wears a $42,000 Swiss-made Hublot wristwatch. My Filipino-made $65 Timexes can tell time just as well.
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Christopher Johnson @cj8157.bsky.social · 05/07/2026
The fireworks began at midnight. I’m watching mostly to see if DC can survive all that ordnance going off.
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Christopher Johnson @cj8157.bsky.social · 03/08/2025
Can AI make Freudian slips? The other day, I did a Google search on “west hollywood musk permits.” I was looking for information on how Musk’s new Tesla Diner got permission to erect its massive video screens. Google’s AI thought that I wanted to learn about getting rid of infestations of muskrats!
Screenshot of what Google AI came up with when I searched for information on Elon Musk.  Google AI thought that I was researching how to get rid of muskrat infestations.
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Christopher Johnson @cj8157.bsky.social · 13/07/2025
. . .and on 7/11, the Board of Governors that oversees Florida’s higher education system debated this proposal. Board members had a lot of reservations, mostly related to the logistics if setting up the agency. But they voted unanimously to OK it. www.insidehighered.com/news/governm...
insidehighered.com
Despite Reservations, Florida BOG Approves New Accreditor
The State University System of Florida’s Board of Governors moved forward with plans to start a new accreditor. But the board has questions about how it will work.
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Christopher Johnson @cj8157.bsky.social · 13/07/2025
One issue that hasn’t gotten much attention nationwide is Florida Gov. DeSantis’ attempt to create a new higher education accrediting agency to supersede the supposedly “woke” SACS. The Florida Legislature has appropriated $4 million for this purpose, . . .
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Brendan Nyhan @brendannyhan.bsky.social · 10/07/2025
Harassing kids about where they're from in the new "papers, please" America (and threatening a coach with obstruction of justice for telling them they don't have to talk to ICE) www.westsiderag.com/2025/07/10/a...
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Christopher Johnson @cj8157.bsky.social · 08/07/2025
Immigration authorities are on the ball protecting us from dangerous clarinet players.
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Christopher Johnson @cj8157.bsky.social · 03/07/2025
In 2010, I greatly admired Murkowski. In that year, a Tea Party radical defeated her in the primary. She wound up winning reelection by running as a write-in, defeating both the Democratic candidate and the Tea Party candidate. An impressive feat. Contrast that with 2025—impressive cowardice.
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Raider @iwillnotbesilenced.bsky.social · 01/07/2025
Senator Chris Murphy “ I am shaking with fury over what just happened “
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Christopher Johnson @cj8157.bsky.social · 02/07/2025
This remarkable photo was posted on Facebook recently. It purportedly shows the “Alligator Alcatraz” as seen from a rural home in Florida. The post specifically mentioned light pollution and noise. Florida’s leaders used to at least pretend to care about the “River of Grass.” Not any more, it seems.
Photo showing the “Alligator Alcatraz” on the horizon, washing out the stars in the night sky.
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Christopher Johnson @cj8157.bsky.social · 01/07/2025
Crap. The Senate passed the Big Ugly Bill. 50-50 vote, with Vance breaking the tie. Tillis, Collins, and Paul voted Nay.
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Christopher Johnson @cj8157.bsky.social · 28/06/2025
A very strange decision, because hurricanes have a greater impact on red states.
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Protect Kamala Harris ✊ @disavowtrump20.bsky.social · 28/06/2025
President Biden traveled to Minnesota today to pay his respect to assassinated Rep. Melissa Hortman and comfort her family. Donald Trump has remained silent. Thankful for a real President like Joe Biden 🇺🇸
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Minnesota Star Tribune @startribune.com · 27/06/2025
Former President Joe Biden paid respects to Melissa and Mark Hortman as they lie in state at the Minnesota Capitol.
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Christopher Johnson @cj8157.bsky.social · 24/06/2025
News item: Member of Congress from Georgia nominates Trump for Nobel Prize; Norwegian Academy responds.
Letter from Rep. Buddy Carter nominating Trump for the Nobel Peace Prize.A piece of wadded-up paper being tossed from a distance into a wastebasket.
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Christopher Johnson @cj8157.bsky.social · 23/06/2025
I’m sure many of you have seen this Onion front-page mockup.
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Christopher Johnson @cj8157.bsky.social · 15/06/2025
I got a laugh out of this meme. (To be fair, the second image appears to have been taken before the parade.)
Two images: first, a Maoist Chinese parade with lots of spectacle and color; second, a view of the Washington parade route with a mostly empty street. The meme humorously refers to common consumer complaints about wish.com
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Christopher Johnson @cj8157.bsky.social · 15/06/2025
Anyone remember the Bastille Day parade in 2018 that supposedly inspired Trump’s parade? Look at Trump’s reaction to the music. Macron is smiling; Trump scowls. m.youtube.com/watch?v=vhQk...
m.youtube.com
French army band medleys Daft Punk following Bastille Day parade
YouTube video by Guardian News
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Christopher Johnson @cj8157.bsky.social · 15/06/2025
I took a few peeks at the Trump parade. It’s just boring. One thing I miss is marching music. Where are our great military bands? Where are our great university and high school bands? Instead, cheesy canned music is piped in. (Full disclosure: I marched in parades as a band trombonist.)
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Christopher Johnson @cj8157.bsky.social · 14/06/2025
I attended a protest in Dade City, in Pasco County, FL. This is a very MAGA area, yet peak attendance was about 380, and many passing motorists expressed support. One motorist made a threatening gesture, and there was a bit of heated arguing with 1-2 counterprotesters, but nothing violent happened.
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Adam_c969 @adamc999.bsky.social · 04/06/2025
List of ships (and the USNS Harvey Milk also) that the DOD is looking to rename because they can’t handle a ship having a name of persons that have done exceptional things for our country. Renaming ships is highly unusual in the Navy. And this would clearly be a biased move This is disgusting
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John Morales @johnmoralestv.bsky.social · 03/06/2025
Cuts have consequences, illustrated. As seen on TV 📺
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Christopher Johnson @cj8157.bsky.social · 28/05/2025
An interesting item that claims that the “functional unemployment” rate—that is, people without work and people who do not earn a living wage—is about 24%. I am not familiar with the Ludwig Institute, but it’s run by Clinton’s Comptroller of the Currency. www.prnewswire.com/news-release...
prnewswire.com
'Functional Unemployment' inches upward in April, Says Ludwig Institute
/PRNewswire/ -- Even though the official government jobless rate shows unemployment has remained steady, the latest report from the Ludwig Institute for Shared...
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Christopher Johnson @cj8157.bsky.social · 17/05/2025
Sobering information about America’s decline under the current administration.
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Christopher Johnson @cj8157.bsky.social · 12/05/2025
The Tampa Bay Times is running a disturbing article on disruptions to Social Security caused by deletion of data. Americans are being hurt by this. And in about 10 days, I’ll find out if I’ve been deleted. www.tampabay.com/news/health/...
tampabay.com
At Social Security, these are the days of the living dead
In recent weeks, the agency has been plagued by problems related to technology, system errors, and even the marking of living people as dead.
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Christopher Johnson @cj8157.bsky.social · 07/05/2025
After Trump reverts Alcatraz into a prison, maybe he’ll revert the Alamo back to a fort, reactivate the Pony Express, and raise the Titanic.
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Äpplesche 💚 @aepplesche.bsky.social · 29/04/2025
😁
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Christopher Johnson @cj8157.bsky.social · 29/04/2025
Another reason to worry about my Social Security payments. According to the Daily Beast, Elon’s crew moved 4 million individuals to the “dead persons file,” including people who are probably not dead. You don’t just lose a payment—your whole financial life shuts down. www.yahoo.com/news/doge-so...
yahoo.com
Musk Goons Purged Living U.S. Citizens from Social Security
What might be called Day of the Dead Living is being continually played out at a Social Security Administration (SSA) office in upstate New York, and likely across the country. “We have people who did...
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Christopher Johnson @cj8157.bsky.social · 24/04/2025
FEMA will not partially fund flood mitigation projects requested by St. Petersburg, a city that must deal with frequent storms. It seems part of a nationwide cutoff, based on the ridiculous idea that planning for future disasters is “waste, fraud, and abuse.” stpetecatalyst.com/fema-slashes...
stpetecatalyst.com
FEMA slashes $33 million in St. Pete resiliency projects
Two critical infrastructure projects in St. Petersburg are now in limbo due to the presidential administration’s death-by-a-thousand-cuts approach to federal agencies.  Documents obtained by the Catal...
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Christopher Johnson @cj8157.bsky.social · 23/04/2025
A lot of us on Social Security and Medicare benefits are really worried that DOGE will screw things up, either through malice or incompetence. Here’s a possible example from FEMA. The US Government issued a check—that bounced! Story from WFLA-TV, Tampa. www.wfla.com/8-on-your-si...
wfla.com
$30K FEMA National flood insurance check ‘not good’
If you pay for flood insurance, you expect it to be there when you need it, but for a Ruskin couple, collecting insurance to rebuild has been a nightmare.
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Max Kennerly @maxkennerly.bsky.social · 17/04/2025
Huh, another Ed Martin threat letter, this time to <squints> ... the editor-in-chief of the journal of the American College of Chest Physicians? Okey-dokey. Yet another reason why @schiff.senate.gov was right to put a hold on his nomination. This guy has to go.
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Alt National Park Service @altnps.bsky.social · 19/04/2025
We’ve talked about Operation Whirlwind before, but the mission keeps expanding, now it’s targeting scientific journals. This week, Ed Martin, the U.S. attorney for D.C., sent an unprecedented letter to CHEST, a medical journal focused on respiratory science, questioning their editorial policies
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Charlotte Garden @charlottegarden.bsky.social · 17/04/2025
1. This is so poorly written that the sentence that is -- I think -- supposed to convey a semi-veiled legal threat is incomprehensible. 2. I'm jealous of whichever lawyer gets to write the response.
A letter from the acting US Attorney for DC, requesting information from the editor of the medical journal CHEST about how it selects articles
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Christopher Johnson @cj8157.bsky.social · 16/04/2025
. . . . What led me to comment on this article is a recent post here on Bluesky that discussed how Afghani Christians who came here as asylum seekers are now likely to be deported, and likely would be in danger. In other words, only some Christians are protected. www.peoplefor.org/rightwingwat...
peoplefor
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Christopher Johnson @cj8157.bsky.social · 16/04/2025
. . . .But, she said, she trusts that Paula White will make sure that only criminal Latinos will be deported. That trust is surely misplaced! . . . .
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Christopher Johnson @cj8157.bsky.social · 16/04/2025
. . . .Valdes Clayton asserted that Latinos were true MAGA. 97% of Latinos go to church, she claimed, and Latinos don’t believe in transgender, as is illustrated in the Spanish language, in which all nouns are masculine or feminine. (Weird logic, and I doubt the veracity of the 97% figure.) . . . .
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Christopher Johnson @cj8157.bsky.social · 16/04/2025
. . . .According the article, Valdes Clayton is concerned about evangelical Christian Latinos getting deported. She claimed that up to 32,000 Latino pastors held expired visas that they couldn’t renew due to bureaucratic delays, and so were in danger of being deported. . . .
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Christopher Johnson @cj8157.bsky.social · 16/04/2025
I regularly read Right Wing Watch, a website produced by People for the American Way. A recent post on that site summarized the appearance of Esther Valdes Clayton on a far-right Christian podcast. Valdes Clayton is an immigration attorney, trained by UC-Berkeley and based in San Diego. . .
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Christopher Johnson @cj8157.bsky.social · 10/04/2025
The New Republic recently referred to Trump’s “bunch of overlapping antidemocracy forces—from Silicon Valley’s oligarchs to Project 2025’s goons—all trying to immanentize their bespoke eschatons every hour of every day.” Immanentizing bespoke eschatons! I love it—very intellectual, very snarky!
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Christopher Johnson @cj8157.bsky.social · 05/04/2025
One additional point to note at the protest I attended: Somebody went by in a Musk Truck. His passenger put his hands up, as if to say: “Sorry! I bought this thing when Biden was in charge!”
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Christopher Johnson @cj8157.bsky.social · 05/04/2025
Best signs at the protest I attended: one that referred to the DOGE kids as “Muskettes” (I wish I had thought of that!) and one that read. “IKEA Makes Better Cabinets.”
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Christopher Johnson @cj8157.bsky.social · 05/04/2025
About 7-8% of responses were hostile—leaning-on-the-horn blowing, thumbs down gestures, 1-finger salutations, screaming. About 4-5 counterprotestors showed up, didn’t cause any trouble.
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Christopher Johnson @cj8157.bsky.social · 05/04/2025
There are or were several events near me. I participated in one event today. About 125 of us held up signs at one of the busiest intersections in an area that historically has been ruby-red. Responses from passing cars were mostly positive—friendly horn honks, applause, thumbs up gestures. . .1/2
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Christopher Johnson @cj8157.bsky.social · 29/03/2025
In both instances, I chose not to start a political argument. I just sobbed a bit inside—which isn’t helpful, since I’m worried enough already.
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Christopher Johnson @cj8157.bsky.social · 29/03/2025
And this fellow further claimed that Trump was doing what had to be done, because other nations were taking advantage of us. Moreover (this fellow insisted), in no way, shape, or form was Trump acting like a king. . . .
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Christopher Johnson @cj8157.bsky.social · 29/03/2025
Second incident: I bought some items at a local business. Again, a Mom-and-Pop place. While browsing, I heard the one of the owners talking about how great Trump is. This fellow claimed that Trump had a superlative intellect, was a skilled businessman, and was a genius at negotiation. . . .
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Christopher Johnson @cj8157.bsky.social · 29/03/2025
As far as the folks at the restaurant were concerned, Zelensky was a corrupt leader who inappropriately felt entitled to US support and who was probably stealing the money, and who therefore deserved the treatment he got from Trump. . .
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Christopher Johnson @cj8157.bsky.social · 29/03/2025
In 2 recent instances, I’ve been removed that I live in a very pro-MAGA area. First: I ate at a local Mom-and-Pop greasy spoon. A nearby table populated by five males began talking loudly about Zelensky’s visit to the Oval Office. . . .
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Christopher Johnson @cj8157.bsky.social · 26/03/2025
A lot of folks on this platform are following the special election in my home state for a replacement for former Congressman Mike Waltz, well-known Signal user. The Republicans are favored to hold this seat, but this poll indicates that it’s neck-and-neck.
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Christopher Johnson @cj8157.bsky.social · 26/03/2025
A recent poll indicates that my home state of Florida remains pretty solidly red. Slightly over half of Florida voters support Trump and DeSantis. Support is strongest in North Florida, where a special election to replace Gaetz will take place on 4/1.
Detailed results of a recent poll of Florida voters, showing strong support for Trump.
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