Hank Hoffman
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hankhoffmanct.bsky.social
Hank Hoffman
@hankhoffmanct.bsky.social
1.2K followers 1.5K following 4.2K posts
Music—psychedelia, punk, garage rock, roots reggae, jazz, '60s soul, Beatles. Left/lib politics, NY Mets. 1950s cars w/ tailfins, midcentury modern design. Film noir, EC Comics. If you follow me & your feed makes me wonder why, I'll probably block you.
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hankhoffmanct.bsky.social
Appeaser Neville Chamberlain hold up a piece of paper after selling out Czechoslovakia in 1938.
November 10, 2025 at 3:15 PM
hankhoffmanct.bsky.social
The word "THIS" in large red and blue block letters on a yellow background.
November 10, 2025 at 4:09 AM
hankhoffmanct.bsky.social
Dear Ted Cruz:
Meme of Buster Keaton in the silent comedy film The Projectionist with text, " Are you in the Projectionists Union? Because you do a lot of projecting.
November 6, 2025 at 9:50 PM
hankhoffmanct.bsky.social
www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-i...
Screenshot from Guardian report on healthcare workers who lost their lives due to the covid pandemic. A picture of Leila Hoffman, with this text: Leila Hoffman Leila Hoffman RACE/ETHNICITY White AGE 61 LOCATION Madison, Conn. WORKPLACE Madison House - Genesis HealthCare OCCUPATION Healthcare support CONCERNS ABOUT ADEQUATE PPE? Yes CNA personalized care in the midst of pandemic Leila Hoffman was a healthcare assistant who cared deeply and made little money – and kept working while weakened by Covid. Her family remembered her kindnesses. When she and daughter Katie were sick, Hoffman made a pot of sweet coffee and carried her outside to sit in the sunshine. When her younger daughter, Leila, had a breakup, Hoffman treated her to 10am movie screenings. A screenshot from a Guardian feature on healthcare workers ho lost their lives in the covid pandemic. This is about Leila Hoffman, and reads: Hoffman had Covid-19 from April to May 2020. The aide, who also had asthma, told her family she contracted the virus while working at Madison House, a facility in Connecticut. She said she and one other aide had PPE but they often cared for about 30 patients. After Covid, Hoffman quit because she found the work physically challenging. She was hired that summer as a part-time caregiver with Visiting Angels care agency. Hoffman had trouble breathing in January 2021, her daughter, Leila, said, but did not suspect Covid. She had been tested a few weeks earlier; the result was negative. Her daughter said Hoffman didn’t seek medical help because she had bought insurance, although she had yet to receive her card. Hoffman died as her 18-year-old son, Jacob, drove her to a hospital. Her card arrived by mail the next day. Leila said the hospital tested Hoffman after death – and she was Covid-positive. “She was a CNA and she was poorly paid and she was overworked in a chronically understaffed facility. But she really, truly loved the people that she took care of,” Leila said. – Eliza Christina Loukou
October 31, 2025 at 2:09 PM
hankhoffmanct.bsky.social
"Don't call us Nazis! Whatever you do, don't draw comparisons between us and things the Nazis did or said!"
October 24, 2025 at 9:00 PM
hankhoffmanct.bsky.social
Just a few photos from the New Haven No Kings demonstration on the New Haven Green.
Young woman on the New Haven Green at the No Kings protest with a sign reading “I love my neighbor! Not the dictator!!!” A protester in an inflatable frog costume on the New Haven Green at the No Kings protest holding a sign reading “RESIST.” A middle-aged make protestor on the New Haven Green holding a sign reading “I’M NOT GETTING PAID TO PROTEST I HATE TRUMP FOR FREE.” He’s wearing a hoodie that says, “I was going to be a Trump voter for Halloween but my head wouldn’t fit my ass.” A protester on the New Haven Green in an inflatable elephant costume and a sign that says, “Elephantifa says No Kings!”
October 19, 2025 at 3:17 AM
hankhoffmanct.bsky.social
Time-lapse of the No Kings march in New Haven, CT. Local TV news said 2,000 attended but I would guess it was more.
October 19, 2025 at 3:09 AM
hankhoffmanct.bsky.social
Portrait of the Supreme Court photoshopped to put Ku Klux Klan hoods on the six Republican "justices" [sic].
October 15, 2025 at 10:48 PM
hankhoffmanct.bsky.social
The Supreme KKKourt was busy today working to nullify the Voting Rights Act.
Portrait of Supreme Court photoshopped to put Ku Klux Klan hoods on the six Republican justices.
October 15, 2025 at 10:47 PM
hankhoffmanct.bsky.social
Uncool? Johnny Cash?
October 10, 2025 at 1:38 AM
hankhoffmanct.bsky.social
This is the greatest short thread ever.
October 9, 2025 at 1:15 AM
hankhoffmanct.bsky.social
Pollingism—the approach that's had Dems in its grip for over a decade—tests for issues respondents select as "important" in surveys & distills messaging to anodyne statements the widest number of voters can agree w/. Pollingism takes opinion as fixed not fluid. Don't get out of step w/voters. /2
Screenshot from "Bringing a Survey to a Gun Fight" essay by AnatShenker-Osorio. Two paragraphs, the second highlighted: Meanwhile, Pollingism optimizes for what momentarily “moves” an engaged respondent after a one-time read or listen, nearly always without exposure to the opposition messaging that generates an unrelenting din in the real world. These tests tell us what would do best if we had a captive audience to ourselves that actually listened uninterrupted and was handed a ballot immediately, without getting bombarded by the opposition’s counter arguments from all directions first. Messages that tend to rise to the top “in channel” are those that sound like a reasonable adult giving you a solid argument. This rarely works to get you to stop scrolling long enough to receive a message in the first place. Nor do these tests tend to produce messaging that people can recall, let alone get excited about repeating — an absolutely essential element of success Pollingism doesn’t just ignore, it generally dismisses. Screenshot from "Bringing a Survey to a Gun Fight" essay by AnatShenker-Osorio. A subhed reads, "The Choir – Not the Candidate – Carries the Most Credible Tune" Four paragraphs, the second highlighted: For Pollingism, focusing on what they have decided to label “the base” is “preaching to the choir,” an activity viewed as not just unnecessary – under the theory that progressive Dem voters have nowhere else to go – but detrimental. The presumption is that doing so requires you to say things the rest of the electorate disdains, without considering there may be another way to articulate the case that actually persuades. Yet, in the real world, it’s precisely said “choir” that makes the joyful noise for the congregation, which goes out and converts new adherents. Unlike ads, what voters’ friends, family, and influencers think, speak, and promote garners their attention and merits credibility. Further, there is another place that voters who revile the opposition can go: the couch. In every election, there are (at least) three candidates running — yours, theirs, and not voting at all. In short, Pollingism assumes that what wins elections is persuading the “median voter” (an individual with presumably fixed views despite the fact that both human beings and compositions of the electorate change) that your candidate aligns better with them on their most important issues than the opponent does. Never mind that experimental evidence draws into question whether voters’ stated issue priorities influence their vote choice. Screenshot from "Bringing a Survey to a Gun Fight" essay by AnatShenker-Osorio. A subhed reads, "Telling Sticky Stories." Four paragraphs, the first one highlighted: Good stories, and bad ones, have characters and conflict. But what Democrats claim as stories are often more like grocery lists. Affordable housing, quality jobs, accessible healthcare. We have to write down the groceries we need because they’re not memorable, even as the items on them are life-sustaining. This listmaking fetish goes back to Democrats’ utter confidence in what Pollingism tells them. So, Democrats apply a simple formula: Ask people what they want to hear about, tell people about that thing, then bask in the popularity boost that results. Even when it reliably doesn’t. Voters always care about living costs, yet the last eight months of Democrats’ determined rhetoric on this has coincided with plummeting approval. If swing voters say they want bipartisanship and hate divisiveness, Democrats respond by singing the praises of working across the aisle. If voters rank the economy number 1 and immigration 11th, Democrats might beef up their talking points about jobs and tone down the talk about a roadmap to citizenship. And political journalists call them savvy for doing so. This approach might generate more accurate grocery lists, but it doesn’t tell a memorable story. And it doesn’t create a conversation. It’s one thing to agree or disagree with a policy when a survey asks you about it. It’s quite another to feel passionately enough about an issue to tell your friends and family why they should share your views, let alone act upon them. Screenshot from "Bringing a Survey to a Gun Fight" essay by AnatShenker-Osorio. A subhed reads, "Conclusion." Two paragraphs, with the first two sentences of the first paragraph highlighted: So here we are, with many Democrats responding to each new horror unleashed with a social media post attempting to drive conversation back to what surveys say voters care most about. Instead of speaking about what’s actually occurring, these Democrats have wedged themselves into an impossible corner where what they say barely gets heard and what gets heard can barely be credited. You cannot occasionally tell Americans the truth that this regime is veering into dictatorship while also promising to meet and negotiate in good faith with it. You cannot convey the full extent of the threat before us, let alone marshall public will into needed resistance, when your actions (or lack thereof) routinely undermine your utterances. We often hear of the need for a “big tent” to combat authoritarianism, a term that seems to mean welcoming in more people but not immigrants and their allies, not LGBTQ people and their loved ones, not women who’d like some reproductive autonomy and their champions. And, yes, it will take a mass movement to bring down this regime. But for a big tent to stand, it requires a central rod — otherwise it’s a tarp that smothers you. To win this battle, we must run on — not from — the broadly-held values most Americans cherish and make clear we are in a battle against fascism, not just inflation.
October 7, 2025 at 1:26 AM
hankhoffmanct.bsky.social
The word "THIS" in large red and blue block letters on a yellow background.
The word "THIS" in large red and blue block letters on a yellow background.
October 5, 2025 at 9:57 PM
hankhoffmanct.bsky.social
From "Psychedelia and Other Colours" by Rob Chapman.
Screenshot from Rob Chapman’s “Psychedelia and Other Colours.” A quote from Ian MacDonald reading, “I remember being in my back garden one day in the very hot summer of 1966 listening to Radio Caroline. Every single record they were playing was great. I just looked up at the sky in a sort of ecstasy and thought, ‘This is fantastic. This is the best it’s ever been.’ I think everyone from my generation agrees: 1965-67 were the peak years in pop.”
October 2, 2025 at 1:52 AM
hankhoffmanct.bsky.social
Screenshot of skeet by Anna Bower, noting the attorney selected by Trump to prosecute James Comey has never prosecuted a case before biut DID appear in a bikini in a cameo in the South Beach Tow reality TV show. The screenhot includes a freeze frame from the video of Halligan in her nice bikini.
October 1, 2025 at 3:14 PM
hankhoffmanct.bsky.social
A pull quote from a great response to @ezrakleinbot.bsky.social's dismal NYT column: "Common decency, then, stigmatizes people that do not participate in it—removes them from voluntary association, as Russell exemplified. We indeed have to live with one another, but terms and conditions apply."
Screenshot of Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò's debut Boston Review column, two paragraphs: The challenge for Klein and his fellow travelers is to specify what sort of ground rules could make life livable and social situations manageable for such a wide array of people whose values, commitments, and interests differ so sharply—that is, on terms other than various sorts of segregation or the most naked forms of domination and subjugation—if not precisely “social shame and cultural pressure,” now contemptuously referred to as “political correctness” or “wokeness.” We might more accurately call it exactly the “civility” that centrists like Klein otherwise pretend to champion, even while they seek to hollow out even this meager social protection of its efficacy. These codes of neighborliness or of common decency are, in other words, the bare minimum for us to exist peacefully as profoundly different people who nevertheless share the same time and place. Common decency, then, stigmatizes people that do not participate in it—removes them from voluntary association, as Russell exemplified. We indeed have to live with one another, but terms and conditions apply. (The second paragraph highlighted.)
September 23, 2025 at 9:49 PM
hankhoffmanct.bsky.social
Charlie Kirk "doing politics the right way," per @ezrakleinbot.bsky.social.

www.mediamatters.org/charlie-kirk...
Screenshot of Charlie Kirk video on his podcast 10/21/2024, as found on Media Matters for America website. Includes the text of Kirk's remarks in the video, which are: "CHARLIE KIRK (HOST): Kamala Harris is wired to be repulsed by the name of God. They -- she mocks God. Again, everything Democrats love, God hates. Let me say that again - everything that Democrats love, God hates. And if you're a Christian that votes to the Democrat Party, you are voting for things that God hates. That's between you and God. Think about it. If you're voting for the Democrat Party, you're voting for stuff that God hates. This is a different political instinct. Our reflex is pro-God, pro-worship of the divine, that there is a God that is not him."
September 16, 2025 at 6:11 PM
hankhoffmanct.bsky.social
Sorry but we don't have that luxury. They need to make demands that encompass the totality of the fascist usurpation. WITHIN that, the demand of outlawing racial profiling should be highlighted. The American people have the attention span for "Fascism is bad. Stop."

@brianbeutler.bsky.social:
Screenshot of Brian Beutler Substack post from 9/8/25 titled "There is No Third Door", reading: "Republicans expect Democrats to bail them out of a governing jam. They also expect Democrats to further enable Trump’s abuses of power. And they expect Democrats to do these things without any commitment from Republicans to honor their half of the deal. That’s the proposition on the table. The only dignified response is hell no. The only acceptable outcome is one where Democrats withhold their votes until Trump begins governing in accordance with the Constitution, and with backstops in place to ensure his compliance. A battle for public opinion will unfold over who is to blame if the government shuts down, but the shutdown itself would have to be indefinite. Trump can not be allowed to cross his fingers behind his back, then resume lawbreaking and double-crossing once the budget passes. This wouldn’t and shouldn’t be like any of the government shutdown dramas of recent decades, and health-insurance tax credits should have nothing to do with it. The point can not be to walk away with some extraneous concession, while ignoring the collapse of the constitutional order. It must be to assert that funding this government—Trump’s government—would be immoral. That without drastic course correction, it has earned a vote of no confidence." These sentences are highlighted: The only dignified response is hell no. The only acceptable outcome is one where Democrats withhold their votes until Trump begins governing in accordance with the Constitution, and with backstops in place to ensure his compliance. It must be to assert that funding this government—Trump’s government—would be immoral.
September 9, 2025 at 5:03 PM
hankhoffmanct.bsky.social
The six kkkonservatives on the John Roberts Supreme KKKourt strike again, saying ICE can go right ahead & round up people based on racial profiling.
Official portrait of the Supreme Court edited to put Klan hoods on the six conservative "justices" [sic].
September 9, 2025 at 1:26 AM
hankhoffmanct.bsky.social
Pre-Labor Day punk rock (after a fashion; these bands played punk clubs but weren’t really punk strictly defined) concert on the New Haven Green poster, 1980. Happy Labor Day 2025! Labor creates all wealth.
Tattered silk-screened poster for 1980 Labor Day punk rock concert in the New Haven Green in Connecticut featuring the bands Disturbance, The Furors, and Troupe Di Coupeo.
September 1, 2025 at 3:13 PM
hankhoffmanct.bsky.social
Thanks, Jen. This was the rest of my post about it on Facebook:
Screenshot reading: It sounds like a very difficult, heart-rendingly challenging situation. This woman's son was born with profound disabilities; his mother provides home care—and gets paid Medicaid dollars to do so—and much of the other essential health care supports he needs are funded by Medicaid. I'm glad that support has been there for them. And that aid is at risk because of the Big Ugly Bill passed by the "proud conservative, registered Republican" Congress and signed by the "proud conservative, registered Republican" President. Nowhere does the author suggest she's had a Damascene conversion and reconsidered her "proud conservative" beliefs. She does write, "How we care for our most vulnerable reveals what we believe about ourselves. I’m just one mother, and David is just one child. But this affects your neighbors. This affects you. At one point or another most of us will lose our independence, health, rationality and will. Eventually we will rely wholly on someone else to care for us. Dependence, weakness, need of others: These are features, not bugs, of the human experience." Yes, you're almost there.
August 21, 2025 at 6:16 PM
hankhoffmanct.bsky.social
For some reason, when I post your link on Facebook as a comment, it looks like this (even though the link works):
Screenshot showing link in Facebook comment to Philip Bump article & the images with the link says "Abusive Bot blocked."
August 17, 2025 at 3:54 PM
hankhoffmanct.bsky.social
It's Democrats' fault that fascism is here because they worked to keep a far right judicial extremist off the Supreme Court in the 1980s. Guess it's time to trot out @mattbors.bsky.social again.
Matt Bors cartoon in which a red-hatted MAGA supporter insists a liberal woman made him a Nazi by criticizing Trump supporters as racist.
August 13, 2025 at 5:54 PM
hankhoffmanct.bsky.social
Another insightful post by @brianbeutler.bsky.social about structural—& self-inflicted—difficulties for Dems in cashing in electorally on anti-Trump anger.

For ex., is *dodging* fights a prerequisite for moving up in House dem leadership?

www.offmessage.net/p/anti-trump-grassroots-democrats
Screenshot of paragraph from Brian Beutler Substack post titled "There may have been good reasons for elected Democrats to choose Garcia over Crockett, but this isn’t one of them. If you want to know why so many people who protest kings also hold the Democratic Party in contempt, I believe it’s stuff like this. Too many Democrats run scared from righteous truths, because they lack confidence in their ability to win easy arguments. They’d rather allow evil to flourish unchecked than get even slightly crosswise with the median voters in their districts. And leadership has their backs." The second and third sentences are highlighted for emphasis.
August 1, 2025 at 7:05 PM
hankhoffmanct.bsky.social
The need to pursue impeachment of Trump is imperative. The excuses Dem reps & senators—& particularly their "leadership" [sic]—are bullshit. @juliusgoat.bsky.social addresses the imperative & the BS.
Screenshot of two paragraphs from a post by A.R. Moxon entitled "Impeachment Is a Duty." The two paragraphs read: We're told that the Democrats do not have the votes to successfully remove Trump. But if Trump is an ongoing, persistent, and present danger to our democracy, impeachment is not just an idea; it is a sworn duty. Fire fighters do not fight fires because success is assured. They fight fires because fighting a fire is their job and their duty. Nobody should have to beg them to do it. Likewise, impeachment is the remedy for a tyrant available to Congress, it can be done as often as needed, and there are no shortage of impeachable offences. Congress refusing to impeach Trump for his unconstitutional actions because the “votes are not there” is like a fire chief refusing to hook up the hoses to conserve the water while the building burns. Moreover, Republican efforts to do the vile, harmful, immoral, illegal things they are now doing began long before now, back when such actions were "unthinkable" and "impossible." Think for example of the effective repeal of the Affordable Care Act, which will immiserate and kill people by the millions. Republicans achieved this not by waiting until they had all the votes they needed, but by insisting that they could do it, should do it, and would do it—and then proved they meant it by putting the matter to failed vote after failed vote. These "failures" told a coherent story, and convinced voters who want vile, harmful, immoral and illegal things that immiserate and kill people by the millions (an electorate that unfortunately numbers in the tens of millions) that the Republicans would deliver. Democrats, too, could set themselves on a path for future success, if they were willing to get on that path and walk it. The first three sentences in the second paragraph are highlighted.
July 28, 2025 at 11:47 PM