There is so much good news activity going on right now, it’s hard to know where to start.
Good News in Cooperation
How Schumer and McConnell kept Trump out of the shutdown talks
Normally when we hear “reaching across the aisle” we release a collective groan - Dems caved again. But we’ve passed Trump’s deadline and there is no shutdown. Yes, there is a golfing emergency, but that’s not the point. Government is open. How did it happen?
Chuck Schumer and Mitch McConnell actually worked together to find a solution that worked. They punted the whole thing to a conference committee.
When Trump first announced he was giving Congress three weeks to reach a border security deal, few in Washington thought bipartisan negotiations would achieve anything.
But the story of how the conference committee and its leaders succeeded after so many brutal months fighting over Trump’s wall is a simple one, according to more than a dozen lawmakers and aides: Trump largely stayed out of it. And seasoned veterans were allowed to do what they’ve done their entire congressional careers — figure out diplomatic ways to spend hundreds of billions of dollars.
Trump hated being left out. He especially hated losing most of his wall money. The greatest credit belongs to the Democrats in both houses who stuck together no matter how hard Trump tried to peel some off.
The president’s initial anger at what the conference committee produced brought Democratic delight. Over and over, the president had tried unsuccessfully to peel off moderate Democrats to break with Schumer and Speaker Nancy Pelosi and force the party to cave on wall funding.
“He’s not a great negotiator. He’s a bully. And that’s what the real estate people will tell you in New York. He doesn’t come up with clever compromises, he tries to bully them, sue them,” Schumer said. “He knows he can’t push me around.”
The whole article is a good read about how sausage is made.
Good News in Investigations
Our president is slowly losing places to hide.
Dems prepare to force Trump to reveal private talks with Putin
House Democrats are taking their first real steps to force President Donald Trump to divulge information about his private conversations with Russian President Vladimir Putin, setting up an extraordinary clash with the White House over Congress’ oversight authority.
Rep. Adam Schiff, the Intelligence Committee chairman, and Rep. Eliot Engel, the Foreign Affairs Committee chairman have been consulting with the House General Counsel about how to get eyes on the private talks Trump had with Putin, especially at the Helsinki conference.
It’s a development that indicates Schiff and Engel are close to taking action on the matter; key members of the majority party often consult with the chamber’s general counsel on issues that could end up playing out in court. Democrats want to ensure that they are on the strongest possible legal ground because they anticipate the Trump administration will mount spirited challenges.
Trump can’t run the Mueller playbook on New York feds
Manhattan-based federal prosecutors can challenge Trump in ways Mueller can’t. They have jurisdiction over the president’s political operation and businesses — subjects that aren’t protected by executive privilege.
(snip)
Legal circles are also buzzing over whether SDNY might buck DOJ guidance and seek to indict a sitting president.
The threat was highlighted when SDNY prosecutors ordered officials from Trump’s inaugural committee to hand over donor and financial records. It was the latest aggressive move from an office that has launched investigations into the president’s company, former lawyer and campaign finance practices. New York prosecutors have even implicated Trump in a crime.
The bolding is mine because HOLY COW!
Chris Christie: Subpoenas of Trump's Inaugural Committee 'Much more serious threat' to President than Mueller Investigation
Say what you want about Chris Christie but he knows the law. And when you’ve lost Chris Christie …..
"This is why I've been saying for months that the Southern District of New York investigation presents a much more serious threat to the administration, potentially, than what Bob Mueller is doing," Christie, a Republican who briefly ran Trump's transition team in 2016, told ABC News following the subpoenas.
“Unlike Bob Mueller who has restrictions placed upon him by the deputy attorney general when he was appointed—that his inquiry is on Russia, interference in the election, and potential Russian collusion—and you saw that Mueller reacted to those restrictions by sending the Michael Cohen matter that he discovered to the Southern District of New York,” Christie said. “The Southern District of New York has no restrictions.”
And when you’ve lost Ann Coulter …
Ann Coulter after Trump's order: ‘The only national emergency is that our president is an idiot’
You should probably start making an exit strategy.
Trump, of course, has never heard of Ann Coulter now. Trump on Ann Coulter: 'I don't know her'
Oooohhh! CAT FIGHT!
Good News in National Parks
There has been a lot of bad news concerning national parks, especially my local Joshua Tree National Park (It could take 300 years for Joshua Tree National Park to recover from the government shutdown), but did you know Donald Trump accidentally created a brand new one? It’s true.
Trump quietly created a new national park when he signed a spending bill that partially funded a border wall
Included in the bill was a small clause that upgraded Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore into full national park status, an effort that was begun in 1916 by the very first director of the National Parks. 103 years later, Indiana Dunes National Park is a reality.
The Trump administration had previously expressly rejected this proposal outright when it was presented by Congressman Pete Visclosky in 2017 on the grounds that it wasn’t large or impressive enough, so the idea that not only did Trump get almost nothing for his wall in that bill, but he accidentally created a national park that he had explicitly refused a year earlier and it makes my heart glad.
Good News About a Terrible Subject
Kamala Harris’ anti-lynching bill gets second chance at becoming law
Sen. Kamala Harris’ effort to make lynching a federal crime received new life Thursday when the Senate unanimously passed her bill to outlaw it.
The bill, which is co-authored by the two other African Americans in the Senate, Democrat Cory Booker of New Jersey and Republican Tim Scott of South Carolina, unanimously passed the Senate late last year. But the House did not take it up before the congressional session ended, and the bill died.
Bills to outlaw lynching were considered more than 200 times in Congress between 1882 and 1986 and never passed the Senate. Harris, D-Calif., said she and the bill’s other authors “expect and hope” the House will approve this latest attempt.
Paul Ryan wouldn’t even bring up a bill to outlaw lynching? Good riddance to the worst House Speaker in memory.
Good News in Recycling
Calling John Crapper of the Holy Shitters!
From toilet to brickyard: Recycling biosolids to make sustainable bricks
Biosolids are a by-product of the wastewater treatment process. These solids can be used for fertilizer or other uses. But we are creating biosolids faster than we can use them, so about 30% of biosolids produced are stockpiled or sent to landfills.
Now a team at RMIT University in Melbourne, Australia, has demonstrated that fired-clay bricks incorporating biosolids could be a sustainable solution for both the wastewater treatment and brickmaking industries.
Published this month in the journal Buildings, the research showed how making biosolids bricks only required around half the energy of conventional bricks.
As well as being cheaper to produce, the biosolids bricks also had a lower thermal conductivity, transferring less heat to potentially give buildings higher environmental performance.
The leader of this group is Associate Professor Abbas Mohajerani of RMIT. While I was googling his name for this section, I learned that the good professor has lots of interesting ideas. He also discovered that baking cigarette butts into clay bricks not only cuts down on the firing required, but the heavy metals and other pollutants are trapped in the bricks, keeping that stuff from leaching into the ground water. You can read about that here: Fired-clay bricks made with cigarette butts can save energy and help solve littering problems
Next, plastic waste:
Millions of tons of plastic waste could be turned into clean fuels, other products
A chemical conversion process developed at Purdue University under the supervision of Linda Wang, the Maxine Spencer Nichols Professor in the Davidson School of Chemical Engineering, allows researchers to turn recycled shopping bags into pellets into oil. Ms Wang was inspired by reading about the tons of plastic waste in our oceans and put her team of graduate students to work on the problem. Of all plastics created in the past 65 years, only 9% is recycled and 12% is incinerated. The rest goes into landfills or ends up in the ocean. The technique the team came up with could be used to convert 90% of polyolefin waste into fuel, animal feed, or other plastics.
Good News in Art
Breathtaking Sculptures Made Of Snow And Ice That Are Worth Braving The Cold To See
The title says it. Do yourself a favor and click the link to see some truly awesome ice and snow sculptures.
If cold art doesn’t appeal right now, how about art in the desert? We are having a free art exhibit that is so big, it takes two countries to hold it.
Somewhere over the rebar rainbow, Desert X brings a splash of color to Coachella Valley
Desert X, a collection of public art so ambitious it crosses an international border, has returned to the Coachella Valley.
Although headquartered in Palm Springs, this year’s collection has several works at the Salton Sea, a dying lake that straddles Riverside and Imperial counties, and pieces that have companion installations in Baja California, Mexico.
The wintertime is always the best in the desert.
I’m a huge Broadway fan, so here is a favorite from the musical Fiorello! that originally starred a young Tom Bosley in the title role. I think it’s still appropriate.
That’s all I have for today. The comments are always the best part of these diaries, so have at it …..