Welcome 😄 to Friday’s Roundup of Good News!
No one here is naïve; 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
Trump plans to meet with Putin in July
Pretty bad optics for Trump, but Putin’s probably happy. A big brag on his part, how he owns the American president.
Interested in learning more about Russia? This blog, Seeing Red About Russia, done by a friend of mine who listens to the Russian news and then translates and provides some commentary, will give you intriguing insights.
✊ Avenatti now representing whistleblowers at ICE
We are now representing whistleblowers within ICE, outside contractors, etc. They have reached out to us to provide us with info as to what is really going on," Avenatti tweeted. "We are going to blow this wide open and take the info to the American people so they can decide what happens next."
Good to know the whistleblowers will have a competent champion.
✈️ Major airlines pissing off Trump and his lackeys
American Airlines, Frontier, and United have all said they will not allow their airplanes to be used to transport immigrant children who have been taken away from their parents and families.
“We have no desire to be associated with separating families, or worse, to profit from it,” American Airlines said in a statement requesting the federal government to “immediately refrain” from using its services “for the purpose of transporting children who have been separated from their families due to the current immigration policy.”
Frontier
said, “Frontier prides itself on being a family airline and we will not knowingly allow our flights to be used to transport migrant children away from their families.”
United said the Trump administration’s family separation policy is “in deep conflict with our company’s values,” adding that the airline has “contacted federal officials to inform them that they should not transport immigrant children on United aircraft who have been separated from their parents.”
🐊 Tales from the Swamp 🐊
Secretary of the Interior Zinke linked to Halliburton in real estate controversy
WHITEFISH, Mont. — A foundation established by Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke and headed by his wife is playing a key role in a real-estate deal backed by the chairman of Halliburton, the oil-services giant that stands to benefit from any of the Interior Department’s decisions to open public lands for oil exploration or change standards for drilling.
Ross & Pruitt
💙 Democrats Are Great 🌊
Republicans 🐘 Got Nothing 👎
💛 Geraldo Rivera to Hannity wants to know when the Republican party became the party of child abuse:
Fox News's Geraldo Rivera said late Tuesday that the Republican Party has become "the party of child abuse," referring to a Trump administration policy that has resulted in the separation of thousands of migrant children from their parents.
...Hannity tries to turn it on the Democrats...
“No matter what the president has done or will say, this is the only thing people are thinking about," Rivera said.
"It can be fixed tomorrow," Hannity insisted.
“Twenty-three hundred children have been torn from their parents forcibly,” an emotional Rivera shot back. “These are little babies, 18 months old. These are 10-year-olds with disabilities taken from their parents. This is impossible."
I’d argue that with the many times the Rs have tried to hurt the environment, education and the availability of food and medicine for kids, that they have been running in that direction anyway. No fan of Rivera, but maybe his words will reach some of Hannity’s audience.
More fall-out — the separation of kids from parents considered Trump’s worst blunder
The Pope, the U.N., Bono, every living first lady (including his wife), a conservative radio host (Hugh Hewitt) who said this could be his Katrina, a Republican senator (Ted Cruz), a top aide (Kellyanne Conway), his oldest daughter — all of their condemnation and concern about caged kids at the border left Trump realizing he had a massive problem.
The big picture: But none of them convinced him to cave. TV was the tipping point.
But from an analysis I heard on Maddow a couple of days ago, this was actually a campaign strategy. You see since the taxes aren’t selling and people aren’t enthused about the economy (ought to tackle that lopsided income distribution), racism is all the Republicans have. So they were trying to gin up support.
💙 CNN poll ticks up for generic Democrats 💙
Support for Democratic House candidates has ticked up slightly to 50%, according to a CNN poll conducted by SSRS and released Wednesday.
The percentage of voters who said Democrats when asked which party they'll support in November was up three points since CNN's May poll, and Democrats have a sizable lead among voters who are most enthusiastic about voting. Forty-two percent of registered voters said they'll support the Republican candidate.
I think this is a misleading headline, as is wording in the article, using the words “ticks” and “slightly”. A three percent change is significant, and 50% is really significant. So is the phrase “Democrats have a sizable lead among voters who are most enthusiastic about voting.” But the media wants a horse 🐴 race.
🏠 Michael Bloomberg planning to spend $80 million to flip the House for Democrats
Bloomberg, the billionaire former mayor of New York City, has decided to throw his political clout and personal fortune behind the Democratic campaign to take control of the House of Representatives this year, directing aides to spend tens of millions of dollars in an effort to expel Republicans from power.
💙 ⚡️ 💙 Blue Wave is on its way to New Mexico
💙 ⚡️ 💙Dem senators introduce bill to stop voter purges
An attempt to stop what the Supreme Court OKd. OK, hard to do when controlled by Rs, but at least keeps focus on it.
💙 Yosef52, who’s been at DKOS for 15+ years, says he has never seen us more fired up.
CNN says that when you factor in enthusiasm for voting, the Democratic lead in the generic House vote grows to 15! YEAH!
📎📎📎 Odds and Ends 📎📎 📎
🔫 The Trump Slump continues — gun makers losing money 💵
American Outdoor Brands, the gun maker that owns the iconic Smith & Wesson line of firearms, reported plunging sales on Wednesday.
The company said that quarterly sales dropped 25% compared to the fourth quarter of last year, and profit plummeted more than 70%.
Sales for the full year were down 33% from the year before, and profit plunged 84%.
This is not (mostly) due to the idea that it’s wrong to own guns, but because crazy gun owners are not afraid that Trump will confiscate what they have. Or maybe because they already have enough/way too many? I mean, you need someplace to store them all.
👶 New Zealand’s prime minister, Jacinda Ardern, gives birth to a baby girl
Earlier this year, she played down the media interest in her pregnancy, saying: “I’m not the first woman to multitask. I’m not the first woman to work and have a baby; there are many women who have done this before.”
Many women, yes. But no men…
Sara Netanyahu was indicted for fraud
Israeli authorities have indicted Sara Netanyahu, the wife of embattled Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, for fraud in a sordid case that has transfixed the country for several years. The question is whether her husband — President Trump’s closest ally in the Middle East — will be charged next.
Prosecutors have been investigating Sara Netanyahu since 2015, when reports surfaced that she’d directed staffers at the prime minister’s official residence in Jerusalem to order nearly $100,000 of catered meals from some of the country’s best-known chefs. Under Israeli law, it’s illegal to order food from outside when there is a private cook — paid with taxpayer money — already on the prime minister’s personal staff.
⚡️ Activists vandalized a billboard, to emphasize that ICE makes kids disappear
A group of activists vandalized a California billboard early Thursday to criticize Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) amid backlash to the Trump administration’s previous policy separating children from families who illegally cross the southern border.
The blue billboard from a junk company featuring a photo of a surprised child originally read “We make junk disappear,” according to The Mercury News. It was redone to read “We make kids disappear - I.C.E.”
❄️ Rising sea level could be delayed by West Antarctica lift
A new study finds that the ground underneath the West Antarctic Ice Sheet region is rebounding, or rising, at an extraordinarily rapid rate.
Why this matters: Previous research has shown that enough ice has already melted in this region to trigger a potentially irreversible melt of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet, which would sharply increase sea levels worldwide. Now, though, scientists may have identified a new brake on this runaway train.
Computer algorithm can test dodginess of published scientific results
IN AN ideal world the data on which a scientific study is based should be, if not publicly available, then at least available to other researchers with a legitimate interest in asking. Sadly, this is not always the case. Though attitudes are changing, many scientists are still quite proprietorial about their data. They collected them, they reason, and thus they own them, and with them the right to analyse them without sharing them with rivals.
I am very pro-science, but it’s not as if some studies have been massively abused over the last few decades.
💙 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.
Call or write your representatives! Donate! If you don’t want to donate to democrats, because you don't want your name out there, support Planned Parenthood or quality journalism or some other group that matters.
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.
As pr0gressivist reported in Wednesday’s GNR, sometimes just one person makes a difference. And 25% is usually the tipping point.
And if you have any other ideas, please put them in the comments!
TRUTH MATTERS. LOVE MATTERS.
💙 🌻 🌹 💜 🌹 🌻 💙