Welcome 😄 to Friday’s Roundup of Good News!
Another Friday the 13th falls to me. Of course, as I do Fridays, I get all the Friday the 13ths.
It’s supposed to be an unlucky day, but for whom? It doesn’t have to be unlucky for our side. Let’s make it unlucky for the other side. Like the impeachment vote scheduled for 10 am in the Judiciary committee.
There are plenty of signs that the strain is getting to them. I’ve seen speculation that the creep’s unexplained visit to Walter Reed was brought on by a panic attack; the number of frenzied tweets has been high. We’ve seen lots of Rs from the House announce retirements. Despite the brazen lies, they don’t seem happy. Or all that confident.
So keep on fighting. It’s working. After all, the harder we work, the luckier we seem to get — and the unluckier the other side feels.
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Regular Scheduled Programming
No one here is naïve; we are aware of the very bad stuff that is happening. Some of us expected it: the cheating, the lying, the chaos, and yes, even the attempts to cling to power despite the clear will of the people. But we are here to read the efforts and the positive results of those (including us and our fellow gnus) who are working so hard to save our country from those very bad people. We are furious with them for what they are doing and we are letting them know. Remember:
💚 There are more of us than there are of them.
💛 They are terrified when we organize. THERE IS LOTS OF EVIDENCE THAT THEY ARE TERRIFIED!
💔 They want us to be demoralized. We have to keep demoralizing them. Name, blame and shame! IT IS WORKING! WE HAVE EVIDENCE THAT THEY ARE DEMORALIZED!
💙 The best way to keep up your spirits is to fight. So, take the time to recharge your batteries, but find ways to contribute to the well-being of our country and our world.
💙 Toxic 🍄 Trump Matters 👎 & Russia, Russia, Russia 🐻
There is simply so MUCH going on! I doubt very much I’ve caught it all. Please add to the comments.
Make sure you contact your representatives and let them know how you feel about impeachment.
The Judiciary committee hearing went on and on, with many Republican tempermantrums, even when Nadler decided to postpone the final vote until 10 am on Friday ET. The Republicans apparently wanted to force the meeting to continue so that they could say that Democrats voted in the middle of the night. So, perhaps the bad luck will be at 10 am for the cretin.
Trump’s frenzied tweets shows he is losing it Wonkette
GOTCHA LAST, we are not including any of that dumbfuck's tweets in this post. They are all irrelevant, they are all whiny, but did you know he's sent over 100 of them today? He is really handling this day of impeachment very well! And doing a lot of work in the process, obviously, like a worker bee who works. Politico reports that his tweetstorm started at 6:51 a.m. with a "Fox & Friends" thing, and, well, it's been going all day, with tweets and retweets and more retweets and more tweets and oh my god, that man does not have even one friend.
His tweets include whining, complaining, lying, and also bitching and moaning. Oh yeah, and he attacked Greta Thunberg, a child, because he is SUPER J she got Person Of The Year from TIME. In other words, a typical Trump day, just even more tweety than usual.
Politico notes that Trump broke the number he hit Sunday, which was 105 tweets and retweets. Dunno why people harbor suspicions that the president SNIFF might SNIFF have a habit of SNIFF snorting things.
Some of us wonder why Trump even cares about impeachment. He’s got the Senate firewall, so removal from office is unlikely. But apparently he does care, a lot. He’s so thin-skinned that he can’t admit that he wasn’t the valedictorian at his various educational institutions (even though bad grades would probably endear him to many of his voters). He’s so thin-skinned he cheats at golf — why play a game if you’re going to cheat? So the asterisk that will be by his name — impeached — really hurts.
USA Today’s Editorial Board calls for Trump’s impeachment USA Today
The current board has made no secret of our low regard for Trump’s character and conduct. Yet, as fellow passengers on the ship of state, we had hoped the captain would succeed. And, until recently, we believed that impeachment proceedings would be unhealthier for an already polarized nation than simply leaving Trump’s fate up to voters next November.
Trump leaves Democrats little choice
Unless public sentiment shifts sharply in the days and weeks ahead, that is the likely outcome of this process — impeachment by the Democratic-controlled House of Representatives followed by acquittal in the GOP-controlled Senate. So why bother? Because Trump’s egregious transgressions and stonewalling have given the House little choice but to press ahead with the most severe sanction at its disposal.
But so does The American Conservative! Daily Kos
We spend a lot of time calling out conservatives for bowing and scraping to the Corruptor-in-Chief, so it seems only fair to acknowledge when some of them got off their knees and speak the truth. Today The American Conservative said The Case for Impeachment is Overwhelming.
The president’s abuse of power is not in dispute. It is clear that he used the powers of his office in an attempt to extract a corrupt favor for his personal benefit, and this is precisely the sort of offense that impeachment was designed to keep in check. It doesn’t matter if the attempt succeeded. All that matters is that the attempt was made. It is also undeniable that he has sought to impede the investigation into his misconduct. The president has committed the offenses he is accused of committing, and the House should approve both articles of impeachment.
We may get more information...
Oh, and much more stuff is going on
Lev Parnas getting LOTS of money from Russia Talking Points Memo
Manhattan federal prosecutors asked a judge late Wednesday to revoke Rudy Giuliani associate Lev Parnas’ bail package and detain him pending trial. The unexpected move came after Parnas allegedly lied to the government and to his pretrial services officer about the extent of his financial assets and about whether a judge had already approved a change in the conditions of his release.
Saying that Parnas’ behavior “strongly suggest[s] a plan or intent to flee,” prosecutors cited a September 2019 deposit of $1 million into a Parnas-linked bank account from a bank account in Russia as an example of financial assets that the Giuliani associate failed to disclose to the government as part of his bail package.
Prosecutors accuse Parnas of intentionally downplaying his assets to the government after his October 2019 indictment in a bid to get a less burdensome bail package. He was arrested before his departure from Dulles International Airport on an international flight with a one-way ticket.
Prosecutors alleged that Parnas has “seemingly limitless access to foreign funds,” making him a “flight risk” who needs to be detained immediately.
In other words, the Ukraine gambit was financed by the Russians, probably with Putin’s blessing — Intelligencer
Update: I want to emphasize that the fact that Parnas was paid by Russia suggests, but does not prove, government intent. The structure of Russia’s economy and political system links its oligarchs to the political agenda of the government. (Craig Unger’s reporting has a lot of detail as to how this dynamic works.) In particular, Russia’s organized crime kingpins, to which Parnas has links, operate in conjunction with the state. It would be out of character for them to finance an operation that has such important implications in a theater in which Moscow is so deeply invested. However, prosecutors have not identified the motivation of Parnas’s financiers. As noted before, they were also engaged in a money-making scheme, so it’s possible (albeit unlikely) that the clearly pro-Russian outcomes of the work by Giuliani, Parnas and Fruman was incidental from the point of view of their financiers.
🐊 Draining the Swamp 🐊
The oranges don’t fall far from the tree...
Harvey Weinstein agrees to $25 million settlement with accusers Raw Story
Disgraced Hollywood mogul Harvey Weinstein has reached a $25 million settlement with dozens of his alleged sexual misconduct victims, one of the women’s lawyers told AFP on Wednesday.
The cash will be shared among more than 30 actresses and former employees who have sued the 67-year-old producer for offenses ranging from sexual harassment to rape.
Aaron Filler, an attorney for “Boardwalk Empire” actress Paz de la Huerta, told AFP he expected his client, who accused Weinstein of raping her in 2010, to be part of the settlement.
University of Phoenix settles and cancels one gross million of student debt Daily Kos
In the largest settlement obtained against a for-profit college, the University of Phoenix and its parent company, the Apollo Education Group, have agreed to cancel $144 million in student debt owed to the university and pay $50 million in cash to settle a dispute with the Federal Trade Commission, in a deal announced Tuesday.
The dispute is over the university using deceptive advertising to recruit students. An ad campaign for the university suggested falsely that the university had active partnerships with companies that included Microsoft, Twitter, AT&T, Yahoo, and Adobe, NBC reported. It suggested that the school worked with the companies to create job opportunities for its graduates.
“Students making important decisions about their education need the facts, not fantasy job opportunities that do not exist," the director of the Federal Trade Commission's Bureau of Consumer Protection, Andrew Smith, said.
This article claims this is only a drop in the bucket of what students owe, though. NBC
💙 Democrats Are Great 🌊
Republicans 🐘 Got Nothing 👎
The Republicans defending the cretin are harming themselves The Guardian
In the short term, then, the Republican strategy of stonewalling and counter-accusations may pay off. The votes on impeachment in the House and removal in the Senate will almost certainly break along uniform party lines, making it easier for Republicans to portray the process as driven entirely by partisanship. Republican voters outraged by impeachment may be more motivated to vote in 2020, while some independents may be so turned off by the whole spectacle that they either vote for Trump or don’t vote at all.
In the longer term, however, the Republican approach to impeachment will probably prove counterproductive. The party’s critical weakness, as revealed by the 2018 midterm elections, is that it has lost the support of the college-educated and mostly suburban voters (especially women) who once used to reliably vote Republican. By attempting to sabotage the impeachment process and refusing to address the substance of Trump’s actions, the Republican party will further damage its image with these voters and make it even harder to regain a governing majority.
There are many explanations for why college-educated suburban voters have turned against the Republican party; under Trump’s leadership, for example, the party has increasingly become the vehicle of white working-class resentments. But my interactions with college-educated suburban voters, in the course of trying to figure out why they have abandoned the Republican party, have led me to believe that they tend to care about facts and rational argument, to view our country’s top civil servants as serious professionals rather than nefarious agents of the deep state, and to prefer that Congress solve problems rather than devolve further into chaos and dysfunction. They are more likely to be alarmed than persuaded when Trump and other Republican officials serve as conduits for Russian propaganda by spouting baseless conspiracy theories alleging that Ukraine rather than Russia interfered in the 2016 US elections. And they worry about Trump’s trampling of democratic norms and constitutional boundaries on executive power.
And it’s not just the editorials:
From the Maddow Blog:
In hypothetical general-election match-ups, Quinnipiac also found Donald Trump trailing Biden, Sanders, Warren, Buttigieg, Klobuchar, and Bloomberg, in margins ranging from four to nine points.
House rating changes — a dozen races shift toward Democrats - Roll Call
Even if the national political environment isn’t as bad for the GOP as the midterms when they suffered a net loss of 40 House seats, there’s little evidence that President Donald Trump will dramatically improve his 2016 performance in key competitive districts next year.
That makes it difficult to envision Republicans winning those races, particularly without stellar candidates. And in some places, such as California and New Jersey, the GOP’s strongest House challengers (including Michelle Steel and Tom Kean Jr.) are running in difficult districts, against strong incumbents, or both.
With a combination of Republicans’ self-inflicted wounds, slow recruiting or suburbs continuing to shift against the president, Democratic chances of winning have improved in a dozen House races.
Only one race shifted toward the Republicans.
BEYOND THE BELTWAY
A tale of two governors and renewable energy (an op-ed) Fosters
Maine’s Governor, Janet Mills, recently signed an executive order to develop and implement a sustainability plan by Feb 2021. Part of the Maine governor’s initiative involves installing renewable energy generation and energy storage on state property.
Let’s contrast this forward-thinking endorsement of renewable energy with Governor Sununu’s retro-environmental attitude towards NH’s energy future.
Energy storage is part of the key to NH’s energy future. The contrast between the governors is stark. Sununu rejected HB 183, which would have created a task force to study microgrids. Microgrids are small elements of the larger electric grid that can operate independently and be self-powered. If you own a gas generator, you understand the concept of generating power for a limited area. They provide energy during peak energy needs through battery storage systems. With the declining costs of such systems, the HB183 feasibility study made sense. Furthermore, the ability to isolate energy infrastructure potentially could help in thwarting cyberattacks by offering a more diversified and smaller target than the larger grid. ✂️
Two governors, two philosophies, one looking backwards, one looking forward to a future where climate change accelerates, infrastructure ages, rising populations demand more energy, and decision makers wrestle with providing sustainable, safe, and reliable energy. Time for a change in in New Hampshire in 2020.
Going blue matters!
Sisolak and climate change The Nevada Independent
Flanked by a small crowd of smiling lawmakers and state workers, Gov. Steve Sisolak last month sat down in front of an electric bus in Reno to sign an executive order directing his administration to take a serious look at climate change. ✂️
But beyond the rhetoric — which includes an oft-repeated Sisolak promise to “not spend a single second debating the reality of climate change” — what does the executive order actually do, and how will it affect the state and the lives of Nevadans? ✂️
Both Bobzien and Crowell said one of the most likely targets for future emission reduction policies will come in the transportation sector, which is projected to become the state’s largest net emitter of greenhouse gasses. Although Nevada has not adopted California’s tougher rules on fuel economy standards for cars and trucks, the state did join onto a lawsuit led by its western neighbor to stop the Trump administration from revoking its ability to set higher emission standards than the federal level, and Crowell said the state was keeping a close eye on the outcome of the litigation. ✂️
Bobzien said the state was already taking on one proactive measure to reduce transportation sector emissions by building out electric vehicle infrastructure, primarily through the program launched in 2015 known as the Nevada Electric Highway, which provides electric vehicle charging stations in rural communities around the state. Other suggested policy ideas may come from partnering with the state’s Department of Transportation (required in the executive order) to cut down on vehicle miles traveled as well as alternative transportation methods.
Governor Kelly of KS more popular than Trump — in KS CJOnline
Kansans participating in a statewide political survey expressed greater satisfaction with the job performance of Democratic Gov. Laura Kelly than Republican President Donald Trump, who finds himself underwater in the deeply red Midwest state.
The annual survey by Fort Hays State University’s Docking Institute of Public Affairs showed 44.1% were satisfied with the president who easily carried the state three years ago and that 44.3% were dissatisfied with the investigation-tarnished president.
Kelly, who took office in January after eight years of GOP leadership in the governor’s office, held support of 52.7% surveyed. At the same time, 26.4% were dissatisfied with her performance as Kansas’ chief executive.
Governor Evers of WI demands and gets WI National Guard boss to resign Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
MADISON - The chief of Wisconsin’s National Guard resigned Monday following the release of an explosive report that showed the Guard for years botched investigations of sexual assault and harassment, violating state and federal law.
Gov. Tony Evers called for Adjutant General Donald Dunbar’s resignation after learning the Wisconsin National Guard intentionally created its own internal system of investigating sexual assault complaints to shield the Guard from state law enforcement and federal regulators.
“These internal investigations were deficient in a number of ways that adversely impacted commands’ efforts to properly support victims of sexual assault and hold offenders accountable,” said an 88-page report by the federal National Guard Bureau that Evers released Monday.
You know that the Rs would probably give him a medal.
🐍 Schadenfreude 🍎
I also thought this was interesting. The lies may be brazen, but beneath the lying facades, many of them are quivering.
And I feel sorry for the NJ transit people…
📣🏅 Let’s Honor Truth 🏅☀️ ️
This moment really got to me:
Klobuchar vs Cruz. Medals go to Klobuchar and to Horowitz, not to Cruz.
🌹 Let’s Celebrate Love ❤️
🐶 Mississippi Hotel helps shelter dogs get adopted Good News Network
As a means of helping shelter dogs find their forever homes, the Home2 Suites in Biloxi has been hosting adoptable dogs in their hotel so that they can encourage their long-term guests to foster a dog during their stay. ✂️
Not only does their “Fostering Hope” program help shelter dogs to get adopted, it also helps free up space in the kennels at the Humane Society.
Since the dogs are kept in the hotel lobby, all guests have to do is ask the concierge for the dog to be brought up to their room DURING THEIR STAY.
Bianca Janik, the shelter’s relations manager, told USA Today that the program is ideal because the hotel hosts a lot of long-term military visitors: “They have a lot of transient guests who stay for months at a time near our army and navy bases and that’s just enough time to fall in love with a dog.”
📎📎Odds & Ends 📎📎
An alternative for the end: not just burial or cremation, now you can go back to dirt! The Independent
The world’s first funeral home dedicated to composting human beings is set to open in 2021 – allowing those left behind to turn their dearly departed into soil.
US ‘deathcare’ company Recompose will be able to turn the deceased into a cubic yard of soil over a period of as little as 30 days, using one-eighth of the energy of cremation and saving as much as a metric ton of carbon dioxide from being produced compared to other forms of burial.
The firm’s first site in
Seattle, Washington, will be able to hold 75 people at a time.
Small mostly black community in GA gets its polling place reopened Daily Kos
In a win for the little guys, a small predominantly black town in Georgia with fewer than 5,000 residents got election officials to acquiesce to their demand to reopen a polling location closed in one foul, disenfranchising swoop. A battle between Jeff Davis County election officials and Hazlehurst residents played out over the course of two years, according to the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, which helped lead the charge.
🐦 Brazilian bird being returned to the jungle Ecowatch
Extinct in its habitat for at least three decades, the Alagoas curassow (Pauxi mitu) is now back in the jungle and facing a test of survival, thanks to the joint efforts of more than a dozen institutions to pull this pheasant-like bird back from the brink.
Three pairs of curassows were reintroduced a month and a half ago in a 980-hectare (2,400-acre) area of the Atlantic Forest in the Brazilian state of Alagoas. Researchers are keeping tabs on them remotely, via GPS tags, to see whether they can find food and shelter, reproduce, and stay safe from predators on their own.
The bird is the first case of the reintroduction of an animal declared extinct in the wild in Latin America, and one of just a handful in the world. According to Luís Fábio Silveira, curator of the ornithological collection at the Museum of Zoology of the University of São Paulo, there are "very few similar cases" in the world. Success stories include the California condor (Gymnogyps californianus), the Hawaiian crow (Corvus hawaiiensis), the black-footed ferret or American polecat (Mustela nigripes), and the Mauritius kestrel (Falco punctatus).
It’s never too late to make a difference:
Possibly the oldest songwriting duo ever, at 88 and 102 Good News Roundup
Alan Tripp is the perfect example of how it is never too late to follow your dreams.
At 102 years old, Tripp is being hailed for releasing his first ever studio album of jazz songs for seniors.
Since he composed the songs with his 88-year-old counterpart Marvin Weisbord, the two men believe themselves to be the oldest songwriting duo in history.
Their musical career began two years ago when Tripp composed a poem about growing old for his 100th birthday and shared it with Weisbord, his friend at their Pennsylvania retirement home.
Holocaust survivor receiving death threats escorted by 1000s of Italians Daily Kos
Liliana Segre is an 89-year-old Holocaust survivor and Italian senator-for-life who has been under police protection because of anti-Semitic threats to her life. On Tuesday, Segre was escorted through the streets of Milan, along with hundreds of Italian mayors and thousands of supporters, in a march of support. Behind her a banner was unfurled that read “Hatred has no future.”
Segre has come under fire from the right-wing fascistic elements of our world after promoting “a new parliamentary panel against racism, discrimination, anti-Semitism and online hatred,” according to TIME magazine. ✂️ CNN reports that 600 mayors marched with Segre, while the crowd chanted her name and sang an anti-fascist song "Bella Ciao."
It’s never too soon to make a difference — this tweet should inpsire us all:
💙 What You Can Do to Rescue Democracy 💙
It turns out that participation in democracy is not just an every-four-years event but requires active participation, like, whenever you can find time. However, given that we have taken back the House, the tactics moving forward need to be different. Indivisible has ideas to share.
Indivisible 2.0
This Guide is for what comes next. The 2016 Indivisible Guide was about using constituent power to defend our values, our neighbors, and our democracy. This Guide is about using our constituent power to go on offense.
Offense is exciting, but it’s more complex than defense. We have the opportunity to use congressional oversight to hold Trump and his cronies accountable. We can set the legislative agenda with a bold progressive vision rooted in inclusion, fairness, and justice. But none of this is automatic — we have to demand it of Congress.
And some other ideas:
You can relax and recharge.
You can join protests and freeway blog.
You can help register new voters.
You can smile.
You can get out the vote for special elections.
You can reach out to upset Republicans. Remember, a lot of them crossed over in the midterms! Get them to feel good about being blue.
You can share your ideas below.
🌻
🍀 “My experience has been that work is almost
always the best way to pull oneself out of the depths.” 🍀
Eleanor Roosevelt
🔥 If you’re going through hell, keep going! 🔥
Winston Churchill
🌹 🌹 🌹
TRUTH MATTERS. LOVE MATTERS.