Hey everybody, its the Monday Good News Roundup, post Thanksgiving post Black Friday special. Its Sunday afternoon as I’m writing this, I’m tired, we’re all tired, we’re all wanting to curl up and sleep off the feasting and the shopping and the spending time with love ones. So this is not gonna be a long GNR, pardon our mess (and by our I mean your GNR Newsroom team, myself Killer300 and Bhu) so lets get right onto the work.
First, another entry from everyone’s favorite: GNR theater.
Trump testified last week. It did not go well for him. I am shocked.
Friends, Happy Monday all. Got a few things for you today:
Why I Am Optimistic About 2024 - I’ve put together a dedicated page with my current electoral analysis, but want to review the toplines this morning:
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We keep winning elections - we won in 2018 and 2020, outperformed all expectations in 2022, and did so again in 2023. Polling right now is having a hard time capturing the true dynamic in the American electorate. This recent wave of polling feels a bit red wavy to me as even though Biden was down a bit we had what was in essence a blue wave election on November 7th, which was proceeded by strong Dem electoral performances across the US throughout 2023. In 2022 Republicans could point to a few places they did well, despite our overall success. There was no place they could point to in 2023, anywhere in the country, on any day, in any election, where they did well. To me this is the most important electoral data out there, and is the central reason I am optimistic about 2024. When people vote, we just keep winning, and they keep struggling.
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Democrats are in a remarkable period of popular vote dominance - A new theory out there is that even though Dems keep performing well in these special elections, off year elections, mid-term elections, school board elections, run-off elections, mayoral elections, ballot initiatives in red states, and every type of election one can have somehow when the electorate gets bigger next year we will struggle. But what has actually happened as the electorate has gotten bigger in recent years? Dems are in a period of unprecedented popular vote dominance in the popular vote. We’ve won more votes in 7 of the past 8 general elections, something no other political party has done in American history. In the last 4 Presidential elections we’ve averaged 51% of the vote, the GOP 46% (51%-46%, +5). The last time we did that well was during FDR’s 4 elections all the way back in the 1930s and 1940s. For Trump to win the popular vote next year he will have to do something only a single Republican has done since 1992 and I just don’t believe this disgraced, despicable, insurrectionist is going to be the one to pull that off. We are a center-left country today, and the extremism of MAGA has made it even more so in recent years. The Democratic Party is very strong right now.
The wind is at our backs this year, I think we’re going to crush it, and we’re gonna keep crushing it.
Republican Representative Matt Gaetz has become a national face of the GOP, but his approval ratings in his home state and district are underwater.
In September, Gaetz rubbished an NBC News report that said he will ditch his congressional seat to run for governor of Florida in 2026 due to incumbent Governor Ron DeSantis—who is vying for the GOP presidential nomination in 2024—being term-limited. Gaetz said he supported DeSantis as governor and that his focus was on a successful Donald Trump presidential campaign, later telling Newsweek that the report was "overblown clickbait."
Only about 21 percent of Florida voters approve of the job Gaetz, 41, is doing in Congress, according to a poll published last week by the Florida Atlantic University Mainstreet PolCom Lab. The poll of 946 Floridians showed Gaetz with 46 percent "strong disapproval."
The poll was conducted between October 27 and November 11. This encompasses the period of chaos in the GOP following the Gaetz-led ouster of Kevin McCarthy as Speaker. Mike Johnson, a staunch conservative from Louisiana, was eventually elected to the role.
Yeah it turns out every GOP candidate is utterly horrible and despicable. And Matt “Literal sexual predator” Gaetz is no exception.
As #BlackFridayParking approaches, we want to share some of the latest cities in North America that have challenged decades-old parking requirements that have wasted productive land on automobile storage. Parking reform is snowballing. You can learn more about why by checking out our priority campaign: End Parking Mandates and Subsidies.
More and more obstacles to affordable housing in cities are being removed, which is good news for people who need houses.
And lets have another GNR theater, More from the Dondal Trump fraud trial.
Still not going well for the guy.
Here’s another Video, this time of a youtube prankster going to war against scam call centers
I know many of the GNR readers probably do not know about Dungeons and Dragons, but this is pretty much the definition of chaotic good right here. I know I’ve been targeted by these scammmers too, so all I can say is this guy is alright.
Water heaters toil away, often unseen in basements and garages, to keep our showers hot, clothes cleansed and pets bathed — and in the U.S., almost all of these machines are voracious energy hogs.
But there’s a technology that can heat water more efficiently, cheaply and without burning fossil fuels: electric heat-pump water heaters. These appliances are two to four times as efficient as the gas and electric-resistance models that are ubiquitous in the U.S. While the heat-pump variety makes up less than 2 percent of the country’s water-heater sales, the New Buildings Institute reports that the tech is ascendant: In 2022, sales grew by 26 percent. Gas-powered water-heater sales, by contrast, fell by 17 percent.
Regulations are also pushing toward heating water with heat pumps. At the federal level, for example, the Inflation Reduction Act created a tax credit that can make heat-pump water heaters 30 percent less expensive, and the U.S. Department of Energy is also considering more stringent energy-efficiency rules that would supercharge sales of the tech.
Eager to get to know more about this up-and-coming appliance? Here’s your guide to heat-pump water heaters.
Every day we make little steps closer to a greener future.
California may be one of the first states to face the risk of its power grid growing too slowly to support the surging adoption of electric vehicles, heat pumps and more — but it won’t be the last.
That’s why Colleen Quinn, co-administrator of the National EV Charging Initiative, is excited about SB 410, a new California law aimed at speeding up the state’s grid buildout. In fact, she’d like to see it serve as a model for other states across the country.
“We’re focused on state utility policy because utilities have the ability to either slow down or accelerate the growth of the market,” Quinn said. “We need to understand and deal with this big problem — the timing and the process that’s needed…to support the utilities and the industry.”
SB 410, written by state Senator Josh Becker (D) and signed into law by Governor Gavin Newsom (D) in October, takes a comprehensive approach to a complicated problem, she said. Simply put, California’s utilities aren’t expanding their power grids fast enough to meet the state’s decarbonization goals.
Our need for green energy is starting to overtake our ability to process it, luckily some people are trying to get ahead of that problem, which sounds like good news to me.
Can’t copy and paste from this article, but its good news all the same trust me.
Days before his likely expulsion from the House of Representatives, Rep. George Santos of New York went on his most unhinged tirade yet.
In an X Space hosted by conservative media personality Monica Matthews on Friday evening, the scandal-plagued Republican said he expects to be expelled when the House votes on the matter, which is likely to happen this coming week.
But he said he's not sweating it.
"I don't care. You want to expel me? I'll wear it like a badge of honor," Santos said. "I'll be the sixth expelled member of Congress in the history of Congress. And guess what? I'll be the only one expelled without a conviction."
That was just one part of Santos's lengthy and angry diatribe against his colleagues, during which the indicted congressman made a series of statements and claims that are unlikely to endear him to any colleagues who may still remain on the fence about expelling him.
So, Santos seems to be taking his expulsion well.
I have a clip I like to use whenever the GOP are forced to take an L and then act like whiny little shits afterwards. And I want to share it with all of you now. And please, whenever you see the GOP whining, or talking about how young people shouldn’t be allowed to vote or how Democracy is bad actually because they aren’t winning anymore, please post this video. I want to make this a thing. Please lets make this a thing.
And on that note, we leave the Good News Roundup for a week. I hope you all had a good holiday weekend, and we will be back next week.