Unpopular opinion: I hope this trial drags out for Trump. Here is why. Saturday's GNR
GoodNewsRoundup
I am very glad the the Justice department is appealing the special master ruling because that is the right thing to do. I am very glad that they are focusing on issues of national security and working to make sure that those are not ignored. And I am glad that there is some sign that the judge will be reasonable on that.
That all said, I am totally fine with Donald J Trump twisting in the wind for quite a while more before he gets thrown in jail. I know this is an unpopular opinion, but I don’t need to see him locked up now. In fact, I would just as soon wait on that one.
I’d like to wait because the Republicans don’t deserve to be done with Trump yet. Trump didn’t create the problems with their party — he made them much worse — but the Republicans built a party on a foundation of lies and bigotry and fear and hatred. Trump took it to the next level, but it was his to take. It was made for him.
And now there are mini-trumps all over their party just waiting for their moments in the sun. And some of them are more savvy than him. Some are smarter than him. Some are better looking than him. And some are Ted Cruz. But all of them have embraced the worst parts of Trump and all of them are a danger to our democracy.
Trump has no real power over us right now. Do not let him live in your mind rent free. He is living on his disgusting gold-plated golf course, eating overcooked steaks with ketchup and living in fear of all that awaits him. His life is pathetic. He is pathetic.
But know this: When people like Ann Coulter and Mitch McConnell say that Trump is done, it isn’t because he really is done. It is because they desperately want him to be done. No one wants Trump locked up and shut up more than the Republican party. Because his idiot moves are tearing them apart. He is a constant reminder to the decent people of America (and we do outnumber the deplorable ones) that Republicans stand for extremism, racism, sexism, crime, and authoritarianism. They would love nothing more than to stuff those things back under the rug where they used to keep them — still handy but not as visible.
Trump likes candidates as dumb, obnoxious, and under-qualified as he is. Republicans know those people are less likely to win and they would love for Trump to go away so they can go back to their regular fear mongering and dog whistling racism. They want to do away with running the idiots Trump hand selects.
They want him gone more than we do. But, ironically, right now, they are less dangerous with him than without him.
The Lincoln Project Republicans are right. That party is too far gone to be saved. We need the extremists to lose along with Trump so, hopefully, something better will eventually come after them and we can have a functional two party system. Trump being gone won’t take away Trumpism. Losing big is the only thing that might — and that will be more likely to happen with that orange idiot mucking up the works for them.
So yes, I want to see Trump pay. But what is more important to me is the health of our nation and the wellbeing of our people. So if justice takes a while, I am fine with that. Let him yell into his impotent, pre-school, bankrupt version of Twitter.
We can wait.
What do we do in the meantime? We do all we can to save democracy by showing that Republicans can’t win.
✂
A few months ago, I set up a fund for 38 seats that could decide this election. Because you all are so amazing, we raised over $2000 for EACH of those seats. We raised over $80,000 for 38 tight House races.
Since we started that effort, with numbers shifting left (and more primaries happening) we have 22 more candidates for Congress who could keep the House blue! Let's support those new 22!
This batch includes Katie Porter’s seat! We need way more Porters and way fewer Boeberts. This fund will get us there.
I’d love nothing more than for us to also raise $2000 for each of these candidates
Can you donate?
C’mon, it’ll make you feel good. You can donate here:
Now onto the good news!
Good News Roundup for Friday, September 9, 2022: We Are Powerful
chloris creator
In one of his recent speeches, President Biden said, “While the threat to democracy is real, we are not powerless in the face of these threats.”
I would go further. I think we are not just “not powerless” — which is a first step — I think we are powerful. And we have been learning to use that power.
- We have learned not to be afraid. See Goodie’s wonderful GNR from Saturday, September 3.
- We have become better at messaging. For example, my “Repetition is good! Repetition is good!” mantra. I know some of us (including me!) don’t really like repetition. We learn the first time. But repetition, even if it’s tedious, is very effective.
- We have become better at uniting ourselves. I don’t know how Biden or Schumer managed to get Manchin to resuscitate the climate bill, but it was amazing
- We have become better at encouraging them to divide. Or, at least, we keep letting them do that.
- We have the power of positions that matter. Social security. Reproductive freedom. Clean air. Schools without shootouts.
- We are the majority.
- We are powerful.
Come in, dear Gnusies, and see how we, and our allies, are using our power for good.
And, RIP, Queen Elizabeth II.
Thursday Good News Roundup: #MAGAlarkey and Ice Cream
Mokurai
Racist etc. Republican majorities cowed Democrats for decades. That time is over and done. We can tell them about themselves now without fear, no matter how much they caterwaul. Actually, we could have many times before, but our candidates listened to too much Conventional “Wisdom” and shut themselves up too often. Gore, Kerry, Hillary...No more.
[Mokurai Delusion Fighter wrote the following sextet ~ 2t]
Remember, remember
The Eighth of #Roevember,
SCOTUS Roe treason and plot.
I see no reason Why
SCOTUS Roe treason
Ever should be forgot.
#Indivisible #TruthBrigade: Focused on my freedom! We. Won’t. Go. Back.
Good News Roundup for Wednesday, September 7th, 2022
arhpdx
Good morning, all! I’m sitting in for our niftiest GNR wordsmith, the inimitable niftywriter, who is away from home helping a family member. Please send nifty your good wishes in the comments!
Appropriately for the Wednesday after Labor Day, today’s roundup is full of encouraging labor news. And of course I found plenty of other good news from near and far. So settle into a comfortable seat with a cup of your favorite morning beverage, and let’s get started!
✂
White House Bans Paywalls on Any Publication Containing Taxpayer-Funded Research
I love this news! Much of the online research I do when I’m gathering news for GNRs takes me to paywalled sites, especially when I’m looking for new medical research and scientific discoveries.
From Good News Network:
The White House ruled this week that scientific research which is taxpayer-supported must be available to the American public at no cost—addressing the expensive paywalls that block online viewing of studies in many journals.
✂
The new rule also expands the definition of a “scholarly publication” to include “not only peer-reviewed articles but also book chapters and conference proceedings.”
They've Completely Used Up That Pocket Full of Mumbles - GNR for Bluesday, September 6th
NotNowNotEver
One of the titles for the devil is the Prince of Lies. I’m pretty sure the king, queen and remainder of his Court of Lies are all republicans.
From the Unamerican Activities Committee in the 50s, through the John Birch Society, the Moral Majority, the private militia crowd (3%ers, Proud Boys, Oath Keepers, et al), the Teabaggers, the Freedumb Caucus, and finally today’s MAGAots and QAnon conspiracists, republicans have a lot of extremist idiocy to atone for. When the Democratic Party told its white supremacists and bigots to go piss up a rope in 1965, they ignored that advice and found a home in the republican party getting into bed with a bunch of rich assholes and commie hunters. They invited the unchristian Christians into the marriage and have been on an express train to hell ever since.
From north to south — LePage to DeSantis; from east to west — McCarthy to Murdoch; from their honorary republican icons — Putin, Bolsanaro, bin Salman, Orban, LePen, and even Kim we are told more outrageous lies per hour than there are people in the country. Any sense of shame was jettisoned years and years ago.
We aren’t talking about little white lies, modest exaggerations, or mild puffery. These aren’t accidental misstatements or even “alternative facts.” We are far, far beyond euphemisms. These are giant, stinking, scabrous lies; the kind that get people killed; the kind that every moral teaching throughout history decries.
Vast caravans of Al Queda terrorists trudging thousands of miles to the border; brigades of Antifa rioters raging through the streets (and the Capitol); pizza parlor pedophiles; Hunter’s laptop; her emails; and so on back to Whitewater and beyond.
No ludicrous accusations too absurd; no ridiculous charge too nonsensical. Just make up any old stupid shit to deflect from the actual crimes being committed. The rubes will swallow it whole and beg for more. They don’t even need the jests, because they always hear what they want to hear.
The republican party could not exist without their media echo chamber to reinforce their lies and their continuing assault on truth. Murdoch and his ilk have much to answer for.
If hell doesn’t exist, it needs to be created, so these bumblefucks can be segregated away from the rest of us like they’ve been demanding since before the country was founded. More than 700 years ago, Dante Alighieri might just have had our future republicans in mind when he reserved a place for them in hell. He assigned barrators (corrupt politicians) to Bolgia Five in the Eighth Circle where they while away eternity, standing in a river of boiling pitch (tar). Do you think McCarthy and McConnell know what’s waiting for them? Those who betray their country are destined for Antemora, Round Two of the Ninth Circle, where they are forced to endlessly eat (a la Jeffrey Dahmer) each other. Maybe Donnie and Jared can be cannibal compadres.
Anyhow, that’s for after they shuffle off. Before that happens, our duty to our nation is to call out the lies, bear witness to the perfidy, and to help educate our fellow citizens to the daily depredations of the republican cult. Because we care for the future, we mark ourselves as activists, as patriots, and as humanists. Complacency is complicity. Let’s go ahead and vote the liars out.
Stray related thought: The republican party has worked very, very hard to morph itself into an asshat Ouroboros, sustained entirely by the lies it excretes back through the tail it’s so busy swallowing. The cycle of unreason is close to being broken. It’s either going to chew off its own tail or choke on its own bullshit.
From the GNR Newsroom: Its the Monday Good News Roundup Labor Day Special!!!
Jessiestaf, Bhu, and Killer300
Welcome back to the Monday Good News Roundup, where myself, Killer300 and Bhu go out and gather the good news of the past week to help start your week off right.
Its Labor day! If Memorial day is the unofficial beginning of Summer, then Labor day is the unofficial end of summer. I actually have Labor Day off this year because I am dependent on the bus to get to work, and no buses run today. But just because I have the day off doesn’t mean I’m not gonna work hard for you guys, because we got plenty of good news to help you enjoy this Labor Day, whether you have to work on it or not.
US to see renewable energy boom in wake of climate bill
Renewable energy is set for an unprecedented boom in the US in the wake of its first ever climate bill, with the capacity of solar and wind projects expected to double by the end of the decade and providing the bulk of total American electricity supply, new analysis has shown.
The passage of the legislation, known as the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), will help propel the US towards the forefront of the clean energy economy, experts predict, helping it compete with China on the manufacturing and installation of solar panels, wind turbines, batteries and emerging zero carbon technology.
Sunday Good News Roundup: Open Season
Mokurai
d
WineRev’s Good and Goofy Notes
After WineRev posts his G&G comment, I’ll post a link here. His G&G comments are small but worthy Good News Roundups with a welcome, a good-news tidbit, another bold-faced and centered welcome, and his this-day-in-history notes. You can find all his comments here, in case you have a hankerin’ and missed one. Meanwhile, last week he posted:
September 4ths that have taken their turns hosting the US Labor Day holiday, and this year provides the keystone of the arch of a three day weekend, studded with the Good and the Goofy from centuries past, even sporting a double composer entry, and hoping your Sunday is a blue-sky, picture-postcard perfect as today’s forecast here at the Minnesota State Fair.
Science
New Antiviral Therapy May Block COVID-19 Transmission
DannyB, member of Daily Kos: Promising news. The more we can prevent the spread, the quicker we’ll get out of this pandemic. Which, by the way, is still raging in the U.S. with 100,000+ newly diagnosed cases a day — not counting home tests and untested cases — and 500-1000+ deaths a day. In warm weather.
Researchers at Gladstone Institutes previously developed a novel approach for treating infectious diseases: a single-dose, intranasal treatment that protects against severe SARS-CoV-2 infection.
In a new study published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, they show that this new treatment, called a therapeutic interfering particle (TIP), also decreases the amount of virus shed from infected animals and limits transmission of the virus.
"Historically, it has been exceptionally challenging for antivirals and vaccines to limit the transmission of respiratory viruses, including SARS-CoV-2," says Gladstone Senior Investigator Leor Weinberger, PhD, senior author of the new paper. "This study shows that a single, intranasal dose of TIPs reduces the amount of virus transmitted, and protects animals that came into contact with that treated animal." [Source]
Castle 2thanks
Recent additions to the battlements of Castle 2thanks to prevent infection: In addition to vaccinations, isolating, social distancing, masking whenever in crowds, and handwashing, as noted previously, I’ve added a moat and arrow windows to my battlements:
- I use nasal lavage before and after face-to-face meet-ups, because Covid viruses must remain in our nasal cavities for 24 to 48 hours to infest cells, and washing mucosal surfaces likely hinders the ability of viruses to enter cells.
- I also use a povidone iodine nasal spray before and after such meet-ups, which has been proven to be quite effective at reducing viruses.
Please share good science news with us!
(Especially JSWT, health, environment.)
Need more good news?
… arhpdx posted a list of good news sites toward the top of a recent Roundup, or you can find that same list in my comment: Good News Sources. Thank you, arhpdx and Mokurai!
[On a desktop, you could open that comment in a new Tab by clicking the timestamp, and then you could Bookmark that page or save it to your Favorites.]
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Image: Two maps of the United States, one above the other. The maps indicate the approximate locations of members of the Good News Roundup community in 2019 and 2021. The lower map contains many more blue pin-markers than the upper map. Upper image: A map of Gnuville from February 15, 2019 with about 50 Gnusie pins. Lower image: A map of Gnuville from March 21, 2021 with 582 pins across our orb.
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Tech Talk for Kosacks
- Load-More Workaround: On a desktop or laptop, to banish the Daily Kos Load More buttons, click this link, which opens the main Daily Kos page and shuts off the Load More buttons at the same time. You must Reload any open Daily Kos pages. After that, you’re good to go, but you may need to come back here and click that link again in a few weeks. The DK Help Desk asked me to add this: The “Load More” option also resets the user back to the display of the old-style, React comments. [Revised 3/13/2022]
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Where Ever is Herd
Morning Good News Roundups at 7 x 7: These Gnusies lead the herd at 7 a.m. ET, 7 days a week:
- The Monday GNR Newsroom (Jessiestaf, Killer300, and Bhu). With their five, we survive and thrive.
- Alternating Tuesdays: NotNowNotEver and arhpdx.
- Wednesdays: niftywriter.
- Thursdays: Mokurai the 1st, 2nd, and 5th (when there is one), WineRev the 3rd, MCUBernieFan the 4th.
- Fridays: chloris creator. Regular links to the White House Briefing Room.
- Saturdays: GoodNewsRoundup, the one and only!
- Sundays: 2thanks. A brief roundup of Roundups, a retrospective, a smorgasbord, a bulletin board, an oasis, a watering hole, a thunder of hooves, a wellness, a place for beginners to learn the rules of the veldt. For instance, we do not welcome grammar-police comments in Roundups.
Sun-High Good News Roundup: It’s a long dry trek between 7 a.m. and 7:30 p.m. ET. About half way between is noon or 1 o'clock. If you'd like to create a midday oasis post a Good News Group diary regularly at about that time, please let me know via kosmail. The team will support you. If morning is a better time for you, Mokurai says he can trade times.
hpg posts Evening Shade diaries at 7:30 p.m. ET every day! After a long day, Gnusies meet in the evening shade and continue sharing Good News, good community, and good actions. Find Evening Shades here or on the Trending List.
oldhippiedude posts Tweets of the Week on Sundays at 6 p.m. CT. Our second evening Gnusie hangout zone! In search of a TOTW diary? Look here or here or on the Trending List.
For more information about the Good News group, please see our detailed Welcoming comment, one of the first comments in our morning diaries.
The 6 R’s of the Resistance
Joe Biden is now our President. However, we continue to stay vocal and active, we continue to pull Joe to the left, and we continue resist the GQP.
- Refresh and Rest: Take care of you, the hero: Eat well, exercise, and rest.
- Resist: Protest on the streets, call senators and representatives, etc.
- Rebel: Run for office, GOTV (Get Out The Vote), support a progressive.
- Revolt: Change the laws, change the culture, build your communities.
- Rely: Trust that millions of others are fighting the good fight.
- Rejoice: Joy promotes resilience and gives rise to hope.
How to Resist: Do Something …
Some of our Good News writers regularly post a panoply of fantastic action steps in every one of their Good News Roundups. If you don’t see a way to become active that suits your personality, your funds, or your time, please review their most recent diaries for many different options to volunteer and/or donate:
As you may have noticed, recently I’ve been posting reminders about our new fundraiser in the comments:
On Daily Kos:
We welcome comments in Roundups every day regarding:
- National or local Good News.
- Links, stories, music, videos, quotes, tweets. (No tweets or images of the saffron chlamidiot, please.)
- Your resistance activity.
In my Sunday smorgasbord Roundups, I especially welcome the following types of comments:
- Who won YOUR week?
- Questions about Daily Kos tech issues or our map.
- Good News Roundups and you.
- How are you resisting?
- How are you supporting Democratic candidates?
- Please let’s stick to Good News today, no mews or databases.
In the comments of all Roundups, we do not welcome Grammar Police or Debbie Downers.
Top Image: A detailed sketch of a gnu drawn in brown, green, and black on white. A happy and dynamic gnu dances on its left hind leg in a classic heraldric rampant stance. Joyful letters prance above and behind the mane: “Happy Dance.” Signature: Nick Korolev, 2021. — Thank you, Starhawk, for creating the top image of a dancing gnu and for giving it to us Gnusies!
A Little Bit About Me
- My family reunion last week was happy and loving. The planners provided 3 days of open-air activities to suit all personalities. The weather was quite warm but not rainy. I saw no political arguments or overuse of intoxicants. Showered with love by the people I love. During the party around the pool, I was able to teach about 10 people how to do flip-turns, and we laughed and laughed. Thank you, Mokurai, for covering for me and posting a wonderful Roundup last Sunday!
- The union of professors (AAUP) at a nearby university is on strike, and I rode my bike to the picket line to march and shout with them for as long as I could, about half an hour (due to caregiving).
- My wife and I got our third boosters late this week, which tired us both. Tired now.
- In the August Michigan election, 250 of my neighbors agreed that I should be their precinct delegate. I’ve attended a Zoom meeting for that group, and I plan to attend my first open-air campaign event tomorrow, where I hope to meet up with a well-known Kosack and see my friend, Lieutenant Governor Garlin Gilchrist. As you may recall from my approximately 1 billion Daily Kos stories, I worked with him in Detroit on his first campaign, fundraising and creating a color-coded chart of Detroit's 600 precincts, which he used every day.
Our Roundup is almost open!
Thank you for fighting for truth and justice with all us Gnusies! 40% of our Readers don’t visit every day, 50% of us do, and 10% are here for the first time! We all do what we can. For 4 years, we’ve shared positive news, laughed, organized, resisted, rebelled, revolted without being revolting, relied, rested, mentored, created, crossed rivers, chewed our cud, puffed methane out both ends, and laughed. Here’s looking at you, kid, and standing upwind!
As always, please share more Good News than I can find or provide.
This is a group diary, and by my power I declare this Good Gnus Salo(o)n open! Let the good-news sharing and community building begin!
Power with, not power over ❤️ ✊ ❤️
2thanks (he, him)