Welcome 😄 to Friday’s Roundup of Good News!
We survived the creature’s salute to himself. We were fortunate in that the sheer incompetence (and some help from serious rain) meant that it did not go so well. (Even the creatures own offspring did not show up.)
And the creature made a point of praising the great history of the United States, including when George Washington’s army took over the airports of the British. (???)
But let’s get back to US. The people who care about the United States. This is our country — if we keep it that way.
We will only be overpowered if we release our power. It’s time to remember our power. It’s time to use our power.
We honor truth, we celebrate love. We respect responsibility and capability. We acknowledge problems and we search for and implement solutions. We will restore the United States to a place of honor.
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.
Today’s another light news day for me — thanks to the holiday, less big news is being generated or reported.
💙 Democrats Are Great 🌊
Republicans 🐘 Got Nothing 👎
Democrats more excited to vote Trump out than Republicans are to vote to keep him in
The presidential election is more than a year away, but Democratic voters are motivated to head to the polls and dump Trump, according to a CNN poll released Monday.
Almost half, or 47%, of Democratic voters are "extremely enthusiastic" about the 2020 elections — higher than the 40% of Republicans that report the same level of enthusiasm, according to CNN's poll.
In fact, the enthusiasm levels for voters of both parties are the highest they've been in the last three election cycles — though Democrats report being more enthusiastic than Republicans.
No time for complacency. Given the cheating on their side, we need a greater turnout to wipe them out. But we can do it.
❓💰 ❓Republicans may have some funding issues
It's almost 2020, and it looks like the RNC will be running Republican election efforts without its regular posse of irregulars. Because the Koch brothers made so many right turns they wound up on a double-date to a peace rally with George Soros. The Chamber of Commerce is looking for some nice country club Republicans to hang out with, normal people who understand we need immigrant labor and we do not need tariffs! (They'll stick with Mitch McConnell, but they've got their tax cuts now, and they'd like to go back to normal before Trump bumbles into a war. Or a recession. Or both.) Plus the NRA is having a full blown meltdown before our eyes.✂️
Politico reports that the Money Gippers are quietly losing their shit that the cash cows are noping out before the race even gets started, leaving them to lean on Trump's slimy PACs funded by God only knows who.
"Right now, the party is functioning," Club for Growth president David McIntosh told Politico. "But if you see another collapse or if we lose the White House, I think you're going to see Republicans frankly in a world of hurt without a major funding group like that."
Here’s an example…
Sen. Martha McSally (R-AZ) could see trouble on the horizon as her likely opponent, former astronaut Mark Kelly, raised $4.2 million over the last three months in his quest to unseat her, the Arizona Republic reported Tuesday.
In a show of grassroots enthusiasm, more than 90% of Kelly's donors over the past three months gave less than $100. The average contribution was $45, according to the campaign.
Since he announced his campaign in February, Kelly has raised $8.3 million, a show of strength in what most experts expect to be one of the most competitive Senate races in 2020.
BEYOND THE BELTWAY
Arizona governor insults Nike, so New Mexico governor says, let’s talk
SANTA FE, N.M. (AP) — New Mexico Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham has reached out to Nike to "explore whether there's a potential fit" after the governor in neighboring Arizona pulled funding amid a flap about an American flag-themed shoe.
Lujan Grisham spokesman Tripp Stelnicki said Tuesday the Democratic governor contacted Nike because she wants the jobs in New Mexico that would go to a planned $185 million factory in Goodyear, Arizona.
It's not clear whether the move by Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey would derail Nike's plans for the Arizona factor[y].
🐍 Schadenfreude 🍎
🤦♀️Trump’s own kids didn’t go to the event.
Donald Trump has given just one big order to his staffers for this “greatest show in history” — don’t let this suck as much as his sparsely attended, scarily bleak, doom-in-America inaugural address. As the tanks limp into position, and the airports close for Trump’s “personally planned” fireworks display, the biggest fear in D.C. is … what if they give a show, and nobody comes? ✂️
Even with the RNC handing out tickets right and … righter, and with Trump staffers being handed stacks of tickets with orders to bring their family and friends, reports are that a ticket into the VIP section of Trump’s “salute” to himself is not exactly a hard ticket to come by. The White House secretary that tried to claim that this was “not a ticketed event” could turn out to be right after all, because getting a sufficient crowd around the reflecting pool may require taking down the barriers and crowding everyone in.
Perhaps the best sign of just how well this is going is who is definitely not going to be there. Non-attendees include Ivanka, Jared, and Trump Jr—all of whom would prefer to go lounge in their Hampton’s vacation homes than swelter with Trump in D.C. Also not on hand are the great majority of Republican representatives and senators, who are spending the holiday in the usual way by participating in events back in their home districts and states. Even White House officials have been complaining that the last minute, poorly-explained event meant that many of them made plans weeks before Trump started handing them tickets to his Mall-based rally. But they’ll come. They’ll grumble, but they’ll come.
📣🏅 Let’s Honor Truth 🏅☀️
☀️ Democrats backing a debate on climate change
Nineteen of the 25 Democratic presidential candidates have gone on record in favor of holding a debate devoted to climate change policy. In the past three days, four more candidates—including Kamala Harris—have told Mother Jones that they support a climate debate, raising the stakes for the Democratic National Committee, which has so far resisted allowing such an event to take place. In addition to the California senator, New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio, former Rep. John Delaney (Md.), and former Rep. Joe Sestak (Pa.) are now calling for a climate debate, joining big-name candidates including Joe Biden, Bernie Sanders, and Elizabeth Warren.
The current creature in the white house has lied so much about the climate crisis that it will be good to hear some truth on the crisis — as well as things that we can do.
🌹 Let’s Celebrate Love ❤️
Not everyone likes fireworks 🎆. Especially not the dogs 🐶. So for last night there was a plan to comfort some shelter dogs.
Most Americans enjoy the fireworks displays that light up the skies every 4th of July – but dogs generally aren’t as thrilled, especially shelter pups living in crowded kennels.
Over the years, more and more animal shelters have recruited community volunteers to comfort their shelter dogs during Independence Day firework shows, but one Florida police department has found the perfect team of helpers to look after anxious pups.
Spending time with canines has been shown to be particularly therapeutic for inmates – and that’s why the Brevard County Sheriff’s Office of Florida recently announced that they would be employing a team of inmates to comfort the dogs at the local Animal Care Center on Independence Day.
📎📎Odds & Ends 📎📎
Nestlé launches biodegradable snack wrappers
In what is being called a “world-first”, Nestlé will begin wrapping their Yes! snack bar range in a new kind of recyclable paper that can biodegrade in six months.
Researchers working at the company’s English confectionery R&D center in York have found a way to use a recyclable paper wrapper in a high-speed “flow wrap cold seal” packaging line, which – thus far – has been a process that has only been suitable for plastic films and laminates. ✂️
Additionally, the Swiss company says that they have not patented the technology as a means of encouraging other companies to adopt the packaging method starting from April of next year, according to the Financial Times.
🚃More good news from Switzerland. Lausanne is just down the lake from Vevey, where you find the headquarters of Nestlé:
If you have ever ridden an underground subway system in the summer, then you’re probably familiar with the crippling heat and humidity that can come with it.
Thankfully, researchers now believe that we may be able to use the varying temperatures of transit systems to air condition and warm our homes instead.
The researchers from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Lausanne (EPFL) have precisely quantified convection heat transfer in rail tunnels. Using the new model, they estimated how much energy the city of Lausanne could save by fitting the future M3 metro line with a geothermal heat-recovery system, in what would be a world first.
✈️Your next flight could be electric — in a good way
When people take an airline flight, “electric” is not a term that seems all that desirable. For most people, that would seem to suggest something happening in the skies that was considerably different from the kind of get on, snooze, get off experience they’d like to have in getting from A to B. But for some passengers taking a flight in the United States, there will soon be the possibility of using that word in a much more positive way, because a Massachusetts-based airline just bought the world’s first commercial electric passenger plane.
At the Paris Air Show earlier this month, deals were made for hundreds of jet liners by dozens of commercial airlines from around the globe. But it was a single aircraft purchased by regional carrier Cape Air that really stole the show. The small carrier bought a rather small plane—one that carries just nine passengers for no more than 650 miles—a far cry from the kind of large long-range craft that made up the bulk of the sales. But this plane, from new Israeli aircraft manufacturer Eviation, is a glimpse of a radical change in aviation.
🐦 Golden eagles hatch in a California park for first time in decades
Here's a spot of good news to celebrate the holiday: A close cousin of the nation's iconic symbol, the golden eagle, is coming back to the Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area in California. For the first time since the 1980s, a pair of chicks were spotted in a remote part of the park.
Katy Delaney, an ecologist with Santa Monica Mountains Recreation Area, a unit of the National Park Service, told the National Parks Traveler website that loss of habitat has reduced the range of the eagles throughout the state, enough to be worrisome for their future. "Humans are the greatest threat to golden eagles," Delaney said. "In the past, they were trapped and shot throughout their range and today, they are vulnerable to habitat loss. Like their mammalian carnivore counterparts, they can die from eating poisoned prey as well as from lead poisoning, electrocution on power lines and collisions with wind turbines."
💉 Scientists cure living creatures of HIV
In a major collaborative effort, researchers have for the first time ever eliminated all traces of HIV from the genomes of living animals.
The study, which was reported online in the journal Nature Communications this week, marks a critical step toward the development of a possible cure for human HIV infection.
🌲🌳🌴Best way to tackle the climate crisis is to plant trees
Planting billions of trees across the world is by far the biggest and cheapest way to tackle the climate crisis, according to scientists, who have made the first calculation of how many more trees could be planted without encroaching on crop land or urban areas.
As trees grow, they absorb and store the carbon dioxide emissions that are driving global heating. New research estimates that a worldwide planting programme could remove two-thirds of all the emissions that have been pumped into the atmosphere by human activities, a figure the scientists describe as “mind-blowing”.
The analysis found there are 1.7bn hectares of treeless land on which 1.2tn native tree saplings would naturally grow. That area is about 11% of all land and equivalent to the size of the US and China combined. Tropical areas could have 100% tree cover, while others would be more sparsely covered, meaning that on average about half the area would be under tree canopy.
💙 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.