Welcome 😄 to Friday’s Roundup of Good News!
”Somebody has to do something, and it's just incredibly pathetic that it has to be us.”
― Jerry Garcia (and thanks to Mokurai for calling it to our attention)
I am here to assure you that many people are doing many things. Many people are not accepting the evil regime. From the US women’s soccer team, who won’t go to the “fucking” White House even if they win it all, to employees who are walking out because their employer is supplying immigrant detention centers concentration camps (see Love section below).
Also, sometimes often the opposition is not nearly as strong as they claim to be. The Oregon GOP claimed it had a huge group supporting it, but it turns out that the protesters in their picture-of-proof was from an entirely different event. Trump claimed that, outside his Orlando rally (attended by many of the same folks who follow him from rally to rally), were lots and lots of supporters — no link for this lie, but you know that’s a lie, don’t you?
Their hatred and their lies may know few boundaries, but our love of each other and our dedication to the truth are much stronger. People are stepping up. People are making a difference. It’s not just in the United States, but all around the planet. Like those protests in Hong Kong. Like the countries condemning the US concentration camps.
And although Jerry Garcia may think it’s incredibly pathetic that it has to be us, we are called upon to act. So be brave, be of good cheer, or even if you don’t feel brave or cheerful but still feel pathetic, step up and act. We are making a difference. And even if you we feel pathetic, we are not — we are powerful, and we are proving it every damned day.
Or you could call this the penis edition, because I am using that word more than once today! Not counting this paragraph!
Finally, you could call this the somewhat abbreviated edition. I’m not including the most recent bits of news. That’s because the internet in the furnished flat where I’ve been staying for the last few weeks went on the fritz last night, so I had to go the nearest McDonald’s, order the cheapest item on the menu, and use their internet. The internet in the furnished flat has been restored, but I was simply missing the hours of access that I use to collect the most recent news. Goodie always does a great job with this, so come back tomorrow.
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.
Skipping the usual section on Trump and the Russia investigation. Am sure Goodie will do a thorough roundup tomorrow...still will include this:
May it be the first of many.
🐊 Draining the Swamp 🐊
Illinois ban on for-profit immigrant detention centers should be model for all
Critics of President Donald Trump's immigration policies are calling on state and federal lawmakers to follow the lead of Illinois, which banned private immigrant detention centers and enacted other protections for undocumented state residents ahead of the president's deportation raids that were planned for Sunday but have been temporarily delayed. ✂️
"We will not allow private entities to profit off of the intolerance of this president," said Pritzker. "We will not allow local police departments [to] act as an extension of ICE. And we will ensure that every student in this state who wants to go to college should be able to do so without saddling themselves with debt for the rest of their lives."
A big reason there’s so much immigration detention is because it’s profitable. At $775 per immigrant per night (paid for by us) these places can make a lot of money. Especially as they’re not bothering with toothpaste, or soap, or medicine or even cooked food.
💙 Democrats Are Great 🌊
Republicans 🐘 Got Nothing 👎
This part is also usually based on recent news, and because of the internet issue, I’m skipping it today.
BEYOND THE BELTWAY
💙 Maine governor signs net neutrality bill
Gov. Janet Mills' office announced Tuesday that the law takes effect in September. ✂️
The law defines "net neutral service" as providing internet service without blocking lawful content or favoring some websites to benefit others. Maine would also require such providers to agree they won't inappropriately "throttle," or slow down, internet traffic based on content.
The Federal Communications Commission passed a similar order in 2015 but repealed it in 2017. Mills says she hopes net neutrality will be restored in federal law.
💙 Maine governor signs offshore wind bill
Governor Janet Mills has signed legislation directing the Public Utilities Commission to approve the power purchase agreement for the output from New England Maine Aqua Ventus, a pilot offshore wind project. Successful demonstration of the technology has the potential to lead to a 500-megawatt scale project placed in U.S. federal waters.
The project is a 12-megawatt of floating offshore wind pilot developed by Cianbro Corp., the University of Maine and DCNS. Maine Aqua Ventus is supported by nearly $40 million in grants from the U.S. Department of Energy and would be the state’s first offshore wind farm.
Maine, which finally got rid of the horrible governor LePage — only in office because the vote was divided — now is going with absolutely great government thanks to the ranked-choice approach. Let’s hope the rest of the country learns from this example and moves ahead after we get rid of the GOP. They’ve been doing other great things, such as banning single-use plastics, protecting and expanding women’s reproductive services. Let’s hope they also get rid of horrible hypocrite Senator Susan Collins.
💙 Wisconsin governor vetoes 4 bills restricting abortion
Wisconsin Democratic Gov. Tony Evers vetoed a slew of bills restricting abortion on Friday, blocking measures that would have impeded abortion access by implicating doctors and cutting federal Planned Parenthood funding.
"Everyone should have access to quality, affordable healthcare, and that includes reproductive healthcare," Evers said in a statement Friday. "Politicians shouldn't be in the business of interfering with decisions made between patients and their healthcare providers."
The move comes as other Democratic governors have signed legislation prioritizing abortion protections in response to Republican state legislatures advancing bills restricting abortion access, an effort to force a potential Supreme Court challenge to the landmark Roe v. Wade decision that legalized abortion nationwide in 1973.
Wisconsin still has a Republican legislature (in large part due to gerrymandering). But having a 💙 Democratic governor blocks some of the worst stuff.
Transgender resident happy about Governor Kelly’s executive order
WICHITA, Kan. At the beginning of the week, Kansas was one of three states that barred transgender people from changing the sex on their birth certificates.
Tuesday, Eyewitness News spoke with one local man benefiting from that change.
💛 Pennsylvania GOP chair suddenly resigns
The Republican Party in Pennsylvania, a major 2020 swing state, is falling into chaos with Val DiGiorgio's resignation as chairman.
Hours after news broke that he sent a naked photo of himself to a woman, Val DiGiorgio resigned from his position as chair of the Pennsylvania Republican Party, the Philadelphia Inquirer reported Tuesday.
During late 2018 and early 2019, DiGiorgio exchanged sexually charged messages through Facebook Messenger with Irina Goldstein, who was at the time a candidate for city council in Philadelphia. After a couple days of exchanging messages, DiGiorgio sent Goldstein a photo of his erect penis.
Why do guys ever, ever do this? Why do they think it’s a good idea?
🐍 Schadenfreude 🍎
Member of militia who rounded up immigrants has been arrested
Jim Benvie claimed he and members of a militia at the US–Mexico border were there to help. Instead, federal prosecutors have charged Benvie with twice impersonating a Border Patrol agent to stop immigrants in New Mexico.
The evidence, it appears, was recorded by Benvie himself for videos posted on his Facebook profile.
In one video, posted April 15, Benvie yells "Stop!" in Spanish at a group of six people from El Salvador seeking asylum in New Mexico.
"US Border Patrol," he adds. "What are you guys doing?"
Oh, and more on that subject:
The GoFundMe Border Wall is finished and is not stopping migrants from coming in
"We plugged the hole of the worst smuggling route on the entire border!" Brian Kolfage, a decorated Iraq War veteran and founder of We Build the Wall, declared on Twitter. "We cut them off."
But days after the half-mile private barrier was erected, groups of people continued to stream over the border and into the New Mexico city. Dozens, sometimes hundreds, of people have been apprehended within view of the newly built wall, and residents are worried the barrier has only redirected migrants to other parts of town, creating new problems and possibly making matters worse.
The only thing the new wall has done, Ontiveroz said, was toss his quiet hometown into the middle of a national political fight.
"It's a bunch of bullshit," he said.
As if people who have already walked hundreds of miles couldn’t walk another half mile…
Also, didn’t they raise $20 million? Isn’t half a mile not very much for $20 million?
And just because Wonkette is having so much fun with Duncan Hunter
After a cursory examination of the TWELVE filings in the case against California Congressman Duncan Hunter just in the past 24 hours, we can confidently declare that that guy is a fucking idiot. The prosecutors have him by every last one of his short and curlies -- which is what happens when you use your campaign credit card to pay for hundreds of thousands of dollars of ski trips, video games, tuition, and plane tickets for the family rabbit. ✂️
But wait, there's more! Here's a motion reminding Hunter of the one million texts between him and his wife talking about using the campaign credit card to buy personal shit, and oh, by the way, did you know she waived spousal privilege? Here's one explaining why they have to introduce evidence of Hunter's profligate spending -- 1,110 overdraft fees in 7 years -- to establish motive for his constant use of the campaign credit card. And if the Congressman doesn't mind, the government would like him to quit poisoning the jury pool with that shit about the government being BIASSSS because of Hillary Clinton.
Also, too, it's going to be absolutely essential to introduce evidence of his constant manwhoring, since he was banging so many legislative assistants and lobbyists, and they'll need to call all those women to the stand to establish that those were penis-vagina get-togethers, not legislative meetings.
Now he’s accused of sexual assault, which isn’t nice, but it’s good to know.
📣🏅 Let’s Honor Truth 🏅☀️
Celebrating most Democrats (as opposed to the other party):
Fact checking from CNN for the first night: most of the Democratic candidates were accurate in their statistics, although sometimes CNN said that they were not always presenting the complete picture (but it’s a debate with insufficient time for complete pictures). The only one who got several facts wrong was Ohio Rep. Tim Ryan. (Why is he running?)
Fact checking from CNN for the second night. Mostly correct, but not always.
We are the party of TRUTH. Fact-based truth. And we are the party of LOVE:
🌹 Let’s Celebrate Love❤️
❤️ More than 500 employees of the online retail giant Wayfair are threatening to walk out
The crisis our country is having at our border is something we have created, and something exacerbated by the current Republican administration. While progressive activists and politicians have called out the truly horrific nature of our current policies and practices of detaining children and families in sub-human conditions, Republican proponents have spent most of their worthless hot breaths on attempting to sow divisions while revising history to support their fascistic impulses. Wayfair Inc. is an e-commerce company that sells home goods, like furnishing and decorations. Over 500 employees have reportedly signed a letter voicing demands that the company stop doing business with contractors who were furnishing the U.S. border concentration camps.
Sometimes love means risking your own job. I salute these people.
Note that they were joined by a whole bunch of other people.
📎📎Odds & Ends 📎📎
🌊 ☀️ Working on floating solar farms
Millions of solar panels clustered together to form an island could convert carbon dioxide in seawater into methanol, which can fuel airplanes and trucks, according to new research from Norway and Switzerland and published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences journal, PNAS, as NBC News reported. The floating islands could drastically reduce greenhouse gas emissions and dependence on fossil fuels.
🐸 Creatures thought to be extinct found in Honduras lost city — article is mostly photos
☕️ Making coffee cups out of coffee beans
Kaffeeform, a Berlin-based start-up, has been creating coffee cups from recycled coffee grounds for the past three years. With the help of courier services, the company picks up used coffee grounds from cafés all across Berlin to create these eco-friendly mugs. We learn how the founder, Julian Lechner, got started and how he makes his products.
Following is a transcript of the video.
Narrator: Ah, coffee. It might be the very first thing you think about in the morning. But what you don't think about: all the waste that comes along with that kick of caffeine. In the US alone, 120 billion disposable coffee cups are used every year.
But it's more than just the cups and the lids that are creating waste. What about all those used-up coffee grounds? These reusable mugs are made from recycled coffee grounds.
💰 💰 💰 Investors with more than $34 trillion demand climate action
Money talks. And today it had something to say about the impending global climate crisis.
Investors managing nearly half the world's capital, more than $34 trillion in assets, demanded governments around the world take action to stop the impending global climate crisis, as Reutersreported in an exclusive.
In an open letter to the leaders of the G20 countries, groups representing 477 investors stressed urgent action to reach the Paris climate agreement targets of limiting global average temperature rise to well below 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial times. Yet, current policies put the world on track for at least a 3 degrees Celsius rise by the end of the century.
Why? Well, with the exceptions of Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, and Richard Branson, even most rich people plan to spend the rest of their lives on this planet.
💙 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.