Welcome 😄 to Friday’s Roundup of Good News!
No one here is naive; we are aware of the very bad stuff that is happening. But we are here to read the efforts and the positive results of those (including ourselves) who are working so hard to save our country from those very bad people. Because sometimes the good news, which can be incremental, gets lost in the deluge of the click-bait bad. Because we need to fortify ourselves before returning to the fight. Because we sometimes get ideas about how to fight while here. And also — because we’re a community 💙 ❤️ 💙 — we like to be here.
💙 Russia, Russia, Russia 🐻
— and Other Toxic 🍄 Trump Matters
💜 Judge denies 👎 Michael Cohen’s request for more time to review seized materials
In a setback for Donald Trump, a judge denied a request by lawyers for Michael Cohen, Trump’s longtime personal attorney, in federal court on Wednesday for more time to review material seized in the FBI raid last month on Cohen’s home, hotel room and office.
This is great because we all know it’s a race against time: ⌛️
❤️ Cohen tapes being heard, threatening journalists and others
Donald Trump's lawyer Michael Cohen is facing legal peril, including an FBI raid of his home and office — and involvement in a civil lawsuit with adult film star Stormy Daniels. ...
For the first time, audio recordings of Cohen's legal threats, from a 2015 Daily Beast interview, are being published.
💛 Giuliani 🐒 says he would have recused himself if he had been in Jeff Sessions’ position.
Rudy Giuliani, President Donald Trump’s lawyer, said he would have considered recusing himself from investigations related to Russia and the 2016 presidential election, just like Attorney General Jeff Sessions.
“I would have considered it,” Giuliani told the Huffington Post. “Sure.”
In case you’re wondering why this is good news, Trump has going on and on about how Sessions should not have recused himself from the Russia investigation. So it is rather odd that Trump’s own lawyer would come out and mess up Trump’s own argument.
💛 Trey Gowdy, liberated by his retirement from Congress, can tell the truth about Spygate:
On “CBS This Morning” on Wednesday, Gowdy, chairman of the House Oversight Committee, dismissed the notion, propagated by President Trump, that the FBI had a “spy” in the Trump campaign. He said the FBI did what it “should have done” and that informants such as the one used by the FBI are used “all day, every day by law enforcement.”
Gowdy told Fox News on Tuesday that, after a classified briefing on the subject, “I am even more convinced that the FBI did exactly what my fellow citizens would want them to do.”
Gowdy, who ran some of the Benghazi hearings, always struck me as a bit brighter than his fellow Republicans. Which does not make me like him or respect him; he always knew what he was doing to Clinton was wrong. Since he doesn’t have a lot of morals, and because he has seen all the stuff that Nunes has seen (or more; I think Gowdy actually read it) — it must be amazingly bad.
🐊 Which is why Trump is terrified… 🐊
Donald Trump is afraid of going to prison. Ordinarily that might seem like a silly statement: Trump is probably the most corrupt president in American history, and some of his closest bag men open the door each morning to see if the sky looks like indictments. But this is America, where the man who drafted memos arguing that torture is legal teaches law at U.C. Berkeley, and Henry "Two Genocides" Kissinger advised the Bush administration but summered with the Clintons.
...Trump should be and is afraid. He has no real friends in Washington that didn't ride in on his coattails (and possibly commit a crime to do so). He has no party, save a GOP that let him loose like a bull in a china shop so they could sneak in the back and rob the safe. He has been a Democrat and he has been a Republican and he has alienated the ruling castes of both. He is not one of them, and no part of Trumpworld, post-tax-cuts, is essential to the preservation of their class' domination of politics.
💙 Democrats Are Great 🌊
Republicans 🐘 Got Nothing 👎
💙 Senator Feinstein plans bill to halt separation of children from parents at border
Just a reminder why Ds are so much better than Rs
💙 Democrats’ Horrible 2018 Senate map could not come at a better time
The good news for Senate Democrats is that, given the party’s healthy lead in generic-ballot polling, they are likely to overperform again this year.
But we have to really GOTV! See below to get ideas.
🐘 Another Republican senator thinks Trump is a bad role model
Sen. James Lankford (R-OK) slammed President Donald Trump’s behavior on Sunday, saying that he does not consider the President a role model for his kids, and that he would never speak or treat his staff the way Trump does.
💜 Americans don’t like Trump’s tweets (politico/morning consult poll)
By the numbers:
- 62% of voters feel Trump's use of Twitter is a bad thing — up from 59% a year ago.
- Only 20% of voters believe his feed is a good thing.
- 72% of voters believe Trump uses Twitter too much.
- Even 58% of Republicans believe the president tweets too much.
Since Twitter is Trump's main form of communication with Americans, that’s not a good sign for Trump. 😄
💚 Voters don’t trust Republicans to handle sexual harassment
A new Politico/Morning Consult poll shows only 26% of voters trust Republicans to handle sexual harassment and misconduct issues in the workplace.
Why should they? Trump is a self-acclaimed pussy grabber, Eric Greitens’ behavior was so awful he had to be taken out of the MO governorship, and the Republicans ran a pedophile for the AL senate slot. On the other hand, the voters think Rs do better than Ds on the economy and jobs, which is utter nonsense. Messaging, my friends, messaging!
💜 Obama’s a lot more popular than Trump
Americans, by a wide margin (56 percent to 37 percent), think Barack Obama was a better president than Donald Trump has been, according to a CNN poll of adults released this week. Americans think Hillary Clinton would have been a better president than Trump has been, but by a much smaller margin (47 percent to 44 percent).
That’s got to get Trump’s 🐐 — and I hope Obama campaigns in the midterms!
💚 From the 5/30 Maddow Blog:
Trump is in re-runs 📺
At a campaign rally in Tennessee last night, Trump attacked Hillary Clinton; his audience chanted, “Lock her up!”; and the president complained about an event Jay Z held in support of Clinton’s candidacy. Trump added that he enjoyed bigger crowds than the entertainer. The 2016 election, in case anyone’s curious, was 567 days ago.
I mean, if you think your voters are turned on by making sure that Hillary doesn’t get into office, then why would they bother to vote? She’s not on the ticket! Besides, we all know that re-runs do not translate into good ratings. I know that I, personally, am sick of the Trump show.
Nunes is a carpetbagger 💰
House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes (R-Calif.) is taking in a considerable amount of money ahead of his re-election fight, but the Fresno Bee reports that when it comes to contributions from individual donors, only about 2% of the money came from his own district.
I hope his opponent makes hay out of this fact. The ads write themselves!
And Republicans are so unpopular in California that they have fallen to third place, ceding second place to the “No Party Preference.”
📎📎📎 Odds and Ends 📎📎 📎
🌺 Illinois (decades after the deadline has passed, but that may be argued against) has ratified the Equal Rights Amendment. In case you’re wondering, they’re the 37th state.
🌻 Wearing glasses may mean you’re smarter 👓
Good news for those who wear glasses, anyway! And if you don’t, smile 😄 anyway — you don't wear glasses!
Syrian refugees 🌹 are planting gardens
Liquid biopsies 💉 may prove a huge advance in early cancer detection
The population is increasing — the gorilla 🍌 population, that is!
The oldest lizard fossil is allowing insights into the history of lizards and snakes 🐍
💙 What You Can Do to Rescue Democracy 💙
This is a marathon, not a sprint. We have to win back the offices — and despite the predicted blue wave 🌊 , this will be an uphill battle in some places -- and then we have to reverse the evil that has been wrought. This requires tremendous effort from all of us. (And working on it will make YOU feel better, too.) Some suggestions:
Browse Yosef52’s diary for lots of ideas and links. Note that he has a lot about getting out the vote, and the first step is registration. Read somewhere that a lot of potential black voters in Georgia are not registered. Boy is this an opportunity.
Call or write your representatives!
Write postcards! Here’s the link to the PostcardstoVoters site.
Put up signs! WHY DOES THIS MATTER? Because you’re reaching people outside of our bubble! Freewayblogger explains how to do this. This is great and much easier than you think and you’re not likely to get in trouble. And in this diary he explains how it’s both a Constitutional right and duty to protest in troubled times:
But I talked to my lawyer about this and he said if the President even just appears to be a traitor, I’m allowed to put up a sign on public property that says “Our President appears to be a traitor.” In fact, he said I can put up a hundred of them! How crazy is that? He was really animated about it too — said stuff like the First Amendment being created precisely for situations like the one we’re in now, and that they made the First Amendment intentionally broad so people could speak out as loud as they wanted — particularly when the nation was in peril. In fact, he said they kind of expected us to do it.
2thanks usually has a whole bunch of suggestions.
Tell people. Write comments to online articles. When you speak, you encourage others to speak as well. You may even change some minds.
What you do matters. You know the gazillion movies, where the stars are battling it out — but they wouldn’t make it, if it weren’t for the distractions and the support of the rest of the cast? Well, most of us are the rest of the cast. If you can be a star, that’s great too, but if not, you can still be a hero, even if your song is not as loud.
And if you have any other ideas, please put them in the comments!
TRUTH MATTERS. LOVE MATTERS.
💙 🌻 🌹 💜 🌹 🌻 💙