Good Day, Gnusies! NNNE is having some difficulties getting his GNR published this morning, so here is your nifty gnusie potluck Good News Roundup!
Speaking of sitting in for other gnus writers, I would like to thank pucklady for subbing for me last week when I was called out of town suddenly. Thanks, pucklady!!
On with the good news!
In honor of our NNNE and his Tuesday BLUESday roundups, let’s start with a cool BLUE story! 💙
Latvia’s Blue Cow Back from the Brink
Herd the moos? Latvia's symbolic blue cow back from the brink, France24, January 5, 2022.
Kalvene (Latvia) (AFP) – Once a rarity, cows with light blue or dark ultramarine hides may again be glimpsed grazing on the Latvian countryside among the regular brown, black or white spotted cattle.
The unique and hardy breed, driven to near extinction during the Soviet era, has made a comeback over the last few decades as an unlikely symbol of Latvian national identity.
"Their worst days are over," said Arnis Bergmanis, head of the Ciruli animal park in the village of Kalvene, which serves as a breeding facility for the cattle.
Trailblazing women to be honored on new quarters
The poet Maya Angelou is the first Black woman to be featured on a U.S. quarter, Jonathan Franklin, NPR, January 10, 2022.
A new quarter featuring legendary poet and civil rights activist Maya Angelou and other trailblazing American women has officially started shipping to banks on Monday, the U.S. Mint announced. Angelou is the first Black woman to appear on the quarter.
The Maya Angelou design is the first quarter in the "American Women Quarters Program," a four-year program that will include coins featuring prominent women in U.S. history.
The other honorees include astronaut Sally Ride; actress Anna May Wong; suffragist and politician Nina Otero-Warren; and Wilma Mankiller, the first female principal chief of the Cherokee Nation. The coins featuring the other honorees will be shipped out this year through 2025, according to the Mint.
California provides housing and other assistance to 58,000
From chloris creator:
58,000 people helped into housing and treatment. The good that liberals can do is unlimited — let’s keep it growing!
Big News from Chicago re Policing Reform
This is significant news — Adam Gross is experienced and committed. This is a very good sign that the new civilian oversight board may be able to finally lay the groundwork for real reform to policing in Chicago (and elsewhere):
Lightfoot appoints police reform advocate to lead new civilian oversight board, Manny Ramos, Chicago Sun✶Times, January 10, 2022.
Gross has decades of experience in advocating for structural reforms. Most recently, he has been director of the Police Accountability Program of the nonprofit group Business and Professional People for the Public Interest. BPI, according to its website, “advocates for racial and economic equity through its four program areas: Housing, Justice Reform, Police Accountability, and Early Childhood Education.”
Since 2016, Gross has also provided legal, policy and technical support to the Grassroots Alliance for Police Accountability — an organization that fought for a civilian oversight panel.
“I am honored and humbled to serve Chicago as the first-ever Executive Director of the newly created Community Commission for Public Safety and Accountability,” Gross was quoted as saying in the news release. “Independent, civilian-led oversight of our police department and police accountability agencies is more important than ever before.”
TFG will not be get away with it all
💙 Mental Health Break 💙
💙😊 Blue blue water, blue blue sky….ahhhhhhhhh 😊💙
💉 Helpful Health News! 💉
How to get insurance to pay for at-home COVID tests, according to the White House, Jonathan Franklin, NPR, January 10, 2022.
Under the new policy announced by the White House, individuals covered by a health insurance plan who purchase an over-the-counter COVID-19 diagnostic test that has been authorized, cleared or approved by the Food and Drug Administration will be able to have those test costs covered by their insurance beginning this Saturday.
Insurance companies and health plans will be required to cover eight free over-the-counter at-home tests per covered individual per month, according to White House officials. For instance, a family of four all on the same plan would be able to get up to 32 of these tests covered by their health plan per month. ✂️
For people whose health care providers have ordered a COVID-19 test, the Biden administration said there will not be a limit on the number of tests that are covered — including at-home tests.
Currently, state Medicaid and Children's Health Insurance Program (CHIP) programs must cover FDA-authorized at-home COVID-19 tests without cost-sharing.
Some Republicans breaking out of cult
From pucklady:
Voting Rights
Today, the President will speak on voting rights in Georgia. Try to tune in if you are able to — I expect this will be an important — maybe historic — speech.
Biden to amp up the pressure on the Senate to change filibuster rules for voting rights during Atlanta speech, By Maegan Vazquez and Jeremy Diamond, CNN, January 11, 2022.
"The next few days, when these bills come to a vote, will mark a turning point in this nation. Will we choose democracy over autocracy, light over shadow, justice over injustice? I know where I stand," Biden will say, according to an excerpt of his remarks released by the White House. "I will not yield. I will not flinch. I will defend your right to vote and our democracy against all enemies foreign and domestic. And so the question is where will the institution of United States Senate stand?"
In his speech, Psaki said, Biden will "describe this as one of the rare moments in a country's history when time stops and the essential is immediately ripped away from the trivial. And that we have to ensure January 6 doesn't mark the end of democracy but the renaissance for our democracy, where we stand up for the right to vote and have that vote counted fairly, not undermined by partisans afraid of who you voted for or try to reverse an outcome."
🎩WineRev’s History Corner 🎩
(NNNE usually promotes WineRev’s history corner from the comments and I’m delighted to continue the tradition! January 11 was an interesting day in history — take it away, WineRev!)
>>>>>>Rachel Maddow put things front and center last night with her in-depth story about Election Fraud. The real kind, you know, as done by the Trumpers. It seems in at least 3 states (WI, AZ and MI) the Republican electors in those states met on December 14, even though they had NOT been chosen/elected by the popular vote to BE electors, and voted to send in an Electoral College tally anyway. They FORGED the documents and they each signed them. The J6 committee has let this be known, and the FORGERIES are in the hands of the National Archives. So now we have 38 names of 38 KNOWN FORGERS who were tampering with a federal election. While each and every one of these people need to be arrested for election tampering and fraud (see Anti-Klan Act, 1871), who PAID THEM? A single penny in my book constitutes conspiracy to commit fraud, so I want Peter Thiel and Mike Lindell and the Adelsons and FILL IN YOUR OWN NAMES all hauled in for conspiracy.
That whiff in the air sure smells like a smoking gun to me……
January 11ths of Good and Goofy moments worth pondering or smiling over while you sip your hot morning beverage, complete, when needed, with…...enhancement!
1684 Einsiedeln Abbey, Switzerland This place in the Alps, like the rest of Switzerland, gets COLD. Brother Josef Dietrich has a hobby; he daily records the weather conditions (so his +400 year old ledgers are revered by researchers as a good source of climate information; Dietrich is nicknamed the “weatherman of the Monastery” by scholars.) This day “was so frightfully cold that all of the communion wine froze," said the entry. Doubtless the Abbot was upset; the Roman Church generally does NOT authorize bread and wine popsicles or slushies for Mass/Communion. (According to science, wine at 12% alcohol freezes around 22 degrees, so not that bad, but a telling entry for the monastery, and a sign of just how lousy the heating system was (even if the wine was stored in a cellar…..as it should be……)
1746 Jaromence, Bohemia (now Czech) Birth of Frantisek Adam Mica, lawyer, composer (not a typical combination). Grew up on Moravia then moved to Vienna to study law. Discovered a love for music on the side (while maintaining a law practice) and was something of a casual “older brother” to Mozart (10 years his junior, who was also in Vienna at the time as a prodigy.) Mica became an odd combination of a Royal lawyer and member of the Royal orchestra. He wrote several operas, some short (Haydn-esque) symphonies, a number of violin concertos and while he has mostly been forgotten and neglected, he is recalled for eight sparkling string quartets.
1755 or 1757 Charlestown, Nevis, West Indies Birth of Alexander Hamilton, financier, Founding Father. Born out of wedlock but showing early promise, he excelled in school and was sent to attend King’s College (now Columbia U.) in New York Joined the Revolution and became an aide to Washington. After the war very active in both NY and national politics, calling for a strong central government. Admired Madison’s Constitution and wrote several of the ‘Federalist Papers’ to help build public support for it. First Secretary of the Treasury and Hamilton put the infant nation on a sound monetary footing. He lobbied successfully for an excise tax, (to, you know, generate INCOME for the federal government) established a National Bank, assumed the Revolutionary War debts of the several states as part of the national debt. Well deserves his spot on the $10 bill. (His Broadway show came later…..I thought I’d take a shot mentioning that…..)
1774 Charleston, South Carolina We usually (and mostly rightly) consider the South to be religiously dominated by the Baptists and Methodists, but other denominations and faiths are present too. On this day Francis Salvador, a plantation owner (and yes, a slave owner) was sworn in as a newly elected member of the South Carolina legislature. He was the first Jew elected to public office in the American colonies. Over the next two years he firmly backed the cry for independence in 1776 and meant it; he joined a militia company and was killed in action in a skirmish against a Tory company, the first Jewish casualty of the American Revolution.
1864 Ripon, Wisconsin This little place has staked a claim as the founding place of the Republican Party about 10 years ago (something that has lately NOT been bragged about.) But today Harry George Selfridge is born here, but the family soon relocated to Jackson, Michigan. His Union major father abandoned his wife and 3 children after the War, and these 2 siblings of Harry soon died, leaving Harry alone with his mother, who became a schoolteacher. Rose through a series of jobs until he became a stock boy in Chicago for Marshall Fields, where he rose to junior partner. He married well, had children, and stepped away from daily operations. (Credited with inventing the advertising campaign for December, “Only _X_ more days until Christmas!”) On a vacation to London in 1905 (age 41) he found the city lacked anything like Marshall Fields or some of the Paris Emporiums. Founder of the British department store Selfridge and Co., Ltd. Credited (at Fields, but for popularizing in England) with coining the motto "the customer is always right."
1902 Chicago. Going back to Vermonter John Deere’s factory (in Moline) back in the 1830s forging his steel plows through Mr. McCormick’s reaping machines and then endless train tracks, this city has been inventing, tinkering and producing mechanical stuff for decades. And how does it all work? Well on this day editor and publisher Henry Haven Windsor is pleased to begin selling the first issue of his new journal, Popular Mechanics. (Still extant) For decades, the tagline of the monthly magazine was "Written so you can understand it."(Let a 1000 workshop ideas bloom…….)
1943 Casablanca, Morocco No sitting US President has ever flown before while in office until today: the Secret Service regards flying as a dangerous mode of transport. But there is a war on, and communicating by cable and crackling shortwave radio have their limits. Meanwhile, the German U-boat menace in the Atlantic, while being valiantly fought and gaining ground (water?), makes a surface crossing too risky, so the Secret Service makes the best of it. Beginning last night, President Franklin D. Roosevelt flies transatlantic on a modified cargo plane and lands here for a top-secret meeting with British Prime Minister Winston Churchill. They have their talks, discuss Stalin, plan an invasion of Italy via Sicily, hash out ideas and plans for a landing in France. Churchill has brought his painting stuff and does a canvas or two. (Then both of them one night take in some entertainment at Rick’s Cafe downtown. Not everyone recalls this, but your WineRev remembers this as time goes by…. after all, in Casablanca, everybody goes to Rick’s…..shweet-hart….)
1963 Los Angeles---- I mean, how groovy can you get?! The first US dance club to borrow the French term, a discotheque, opened this evening in LA, the Whiskey-a-Go-Go. It was really groovy, and the music was really good too……
1964 Washington DC US Surgeon General Luther Terry issue a report today, “Smoking and Health,"the first major government report saying smoking may be hazardous to one's health. Big Tobacco goes to DefCon 1, but they are still with us…..
May all your News be Good, comforting and inspiring.
Shalom.
💙 RoundUp WindDown 💙
This GNR is only the beginning of our potluck good news today — go on to the comments and add your own pieces of good news! Is there a fund raiser going on in your community? Little acts of kindness? People pulling together to make life a little easier for someone in need? Good news, local, national and global is all part of our human experience and it happens every single day along with whatever doom&gloom stories that get all the media attention. Let’s celebrate the stuff that shows humankind at its best.
Speaking of “Humankind”, I have been reading the book of that name and I highly recommend it. It makes the point — and backs the point up with evidence — that contrary to popular belief, people are not bad and selfish at their core. When the chips are down, most human beings act in pro-social ways. The author gives example after example, even showing how what really happened in many historic events was distorted by the persistent (and false) belief in man’s core “sinful” nature. People actually are pretty decent!
It occurs to me that we liberals had figured that out a long time ago and we base our policy ideas on the inherent worth of our fellow human beings. I love that about us and it seems that the facts and the science backs us up!
So, my friends, tell me all of your own good news. The examples of little and big things humans in your area have shown that most people are good and decent and care about their fellow humans.
I can’t wait to read the comments today! 😊💙
Meanwhile, we are in a marathon, Gnusies, and many of us are getting weary. It’s OK to take a break now and then. In fact, it is essential. Remember the airplane mantra — first put the oxygen mask on yourself before you try to help others. Take good care of yourself and those you love. Eat nutritious food, get some rest and if you can do it at all, please try to get outdoors in the fresh air each day for a few minutes. Don’t take your phone, don’t use it to get a chore done. Please, just give yourself 5-20 minutes to breathe and look at the sky. It will restore you and there is nothing that can’t wait 5 minutes while you refresh your spirits.
That’s it from me and CG today. Happy Tuesday, Gnuville!
💗 How Can You Help Build Our Democracy Back Better? 💗
Put your beautiful bleeding liberal heart into it! 🥰
Democratic litigation hero, Marc Elias was the legal eagle behind the 60 Big Lie losses after the election. Here’s his website, Democracy Docket. You can find information about current cases he is fighting to defend voting rights around the country, as well as actions you can take to help fight voter suppression at the link!
Write to voters around the country with Postcards to Voters. Progressive Muse usually posts an update on current campaigns in the comments and you can also check out the website. It’s easy, fun and it really works to GOTV!
🎩 Also, Goody posted a great list of links and I am going to borrow it because it’s great! 🎩
The only way they can win is by keeping people from voting. They are working like heck to make that happen and we need to do all we can to keep 2022 from being a year when they grab the Senate and House back from us.
How do we do that? Fight voter suppression!
What can you do?
HERE’S HOW TO CONTACT CONGRESS:
U.S. House of Representatives:* Telephone: 202-225-3121
* Website: http://www.house.gov/
U.S. Senate:* Telephone: 202-224-3121
* Website: http://www.senate.gov/
Find your member of Congress and contact him or her:
Contact your Representative
Contact your Senator
And remember, all politics is local and personal! Let’s work to flip state and local elected positions Democratic!
Sister District Project — organization that is working to help Dems win state legislature races.
Finally, whenever you feel your hope fading, read this again:
The 3.5% rule: How a small minority can change the world — and recall that we are a majority.
Also check this out:
The Albert Einstein Institution’s 198 Methods of Non-Violent Action
There’s a multitude of people all over this country — in both so-called “red” states and “blue” — who feel just as strongly as you do about this world and its future. We can do this!
💙💙💙💙💙💙💙💙💙💙