Well, this is probably going to be a bit shorter than my usual 3rd Thursday Roundup. My old but trusty desktop computer has picked an especially bad time to begin dying a slow and painful death (more research is needed to determine if there’s ever a good time for such a thing). I’ve been wrestling with it most of the night, and if I’m lucky it will hold together long enough to finish this post. Then I get to spend the day shopping for another computer while trying to coax this one into hanging on until its successor arrives.
That’s depressing.
And it’s just the latest in a long string of depressing things that have been happening of late. I don’t have to tell you what many of those things are—you watch and read the news. There have been a number of really awful things happening recently, and all of them have occurred against the background of the shared experience all of us in the US have of seeing firsthand what a complete failure to even attempt to deal with Covid-19 looks like.
And Trump’s still in the White House and has a chance—however small— of being re-elected.
All that is also depressing.
So with all that, plus some truly awful personal news, my defective psyche took the opportunity to wallow in despair as it took me on a harrowing journey to some very dark places.
Depression is extremely depressing sometimes.
A few days ago I was feeling pretty hopeless. But I don’t feel that way this morning. A large part of the reason for that is the Good News Roundup, but not in the way you’re probably thinking. It’s true that the daily parade of positivity usually does the job, but if someone is as well and truly messed up as I was last week, they will find a way to dismiss the positive and accentuate the negative.
If you think that is a symptom of a mental disorder, you’re right, and it’s pretty hard to pull oneself out of that state.
Fortunately, an unusually high number of doom-and-gloom comments in recent Roundups came to the rescue. From time to time, someone feels compelled to slither into our comment section (which is ordinarily the best comment section on the Internet ™) to spread doom, gloom, and despair. And every single time, these attempts to discourage us are so far-fetched, so absurd, and so ridiculous that the only rational reaction by someone grounded in reality is mild annoyance and unrestrained laughter.
So when I read some of my own darkest thoughts written out by others, I really had no choice but to realize how far-fetched, annoying, and ridiculous my own unhealthy thinking had become. I mean, some of the stuff the Gloomy Guses and Debbie Downers come up with is really out there, and the fact that it was a slight exaggeration of my own thinking at the time really helped me see how far I had strayed from reality. (It must also be said that the more realistic thinking and the support of regular Gnusies helped a lot, too.)
So I’m going to start out today with a little song to honor the Negative Neds who show up here occasionally, and then we’ll get to whatever good news my ailing computer will let me post. And next time you’re feeling a lessening of hope and resolve, maybe you’ll be lucky enough to see one of those negative comments and ask yourself, “Geez, do I sound like that? How embarrassing.”
You know, in light of the fact that their comments inadvertently pulled me back to the light, perhaps I should go a little lighter on the next negative commenter. Maybe I should let some of their attempts to bring us down slide. Maybe I should lay off from denigrating and mocking those who concoct wild fantasies of despair to bring us down.
Naaah.
A federal judge has prevented a Houston-area school district from enforcing a dress code policy that states that male students must keep their hair ear-length or shorter. Earlier this year, that policy spurred national attention and outrage after it was used to punish two students who wore their hair in dreadlocks.
The decision from the U.S. District Court in Houston overturns the grooming policy from the Barbers Hill ISD. Earlier this summer, despite criticism from advocates who described the restriction as racist, the Barbers Hill board of trustees voted to keep the policy.
In a February interview with The Texas Tribune, Christina Beeler, a former attorney with the Juvenile and Capital Advocacy Project at the University of Houston Law Center, called the Barbers Hill cases “the worst she has ever seen.” Beeler pored through old Barbers Hill yearbooks, coming up with photos of white students with long hair.
“White male students aren't being held to same standard,” Beeler said. “It’s so clear that white male students and black students are being treated differently.”
While Mitch McConnell’s Senate is taking a long break from an exhausting session of doing nothing, nearly half the states are attempting to block Trump’s attacks on the Postal Service in the courts, which don’t take undeserved vacations. Given Trump’s record on lawsuits over the past 3+ years, this is encouraging.
The suits, including one filed Tuesday afternoon in federal court in Washington state, will argue that the Postal Service broke the law by making operational changes without first seeking approval from the Postal Regulatory Commission. They will also argue that the changes will impede states’ ability to run free and fair elections, officials from several state attorney general’s offices told The Washington Post. The Constitution gives states and Congress, not the executive branch, the power to regulate elections.
Pennsylvania’s suit is being joined by California, Delaware, Maine, Massachusetts and North Carolina, among others. It names DeJoy, the Postal Service and the chairman of the USPS’s board of governors, Robert Duncan, as defendants.
Washington Attorney General Bob Ferguson announced his state was filing a separate suit, joined by Colorado, Connecticut, Illinois, Maryland, Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada, New Mexico, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont, Virginia and Wisconsin. The lawsuit names President Trump as a defendant, along with the Postal Service and DeJoy, accusing the president of infringing on state power to administer elections through his attacks on mail balloting.
DeJoy announced Tuesday that he was suspending those initiatives until after the election “to avoid even the appearance of any impact on election mail.”
In response, the attorneys general said his statement did not change their legal strategy, which is to obtain the force of a court decision to protect mail service. The states in the Washington-led suit plan to seek a temporary restraining order Wednesday to hold DeJoy to his promise, Virginia Attorney General Mark R. Herring said.
“A tweet or a statement or a press release is one thing,” Shapiro said. “We need to see binding action to reverse these changes.”
The addition of Kamala Harris to the Democratic ticket provided Joe Biden with the biggest surge of online enthusiasm he's seen in the entire campaign
Why it matters: While Biden has been getting much of his momentum from voters who are opposed to President Trump, rather than excited about him, Harris could stir other voters looking for reasons to turn out.
Driving the news: With the addition of Harris to the ticket, Biden's campaign picked up some much-needed voter enthusiasm online.
And on that note, here’s some happy music for y’all.
After a 150-year absence, 750 of the aptly-named large blue butterflies have successfully emerged from their cocoons to repopulate parts of their historic habitat in South West England.
Phengaris arion, which is called the ‘large blue’, was officially declared extinct in Britain in 1979, but efforts from private trusts and ecological associations created the world’s largest and most successful insect conservation program in the world, and from 1984 to 2008, it saw the large blue return to 30 previously occupied and new breeding sites.
The most recent project in Minchinhampton and Rodborough Commons in Gloucestershire is where conservationists recorded the rousing success, with 750 butterflies emerging after 1,100 larvae had been released in the area. None of these creatures had been seen in the area for 150 years.
Furthermore, they have confirmed these butterflies to be laying eggs in the wild.
Ride-hailing competitors to Uber and Lyft are already preparing to seize the moment if the industry leaders decide to pull their service in California while fighting a new labor law.
Last week, top executives at Uber and Lyft said that, if forced to comply with the ruling, they’d likely have to suspend service in the state while reworking their businesses around the law. Both companies said they’d need time to make the necessary changes and rehire drivers as employees. They have since been warning users in California of the potentially imminent shutdown.
If they leave California, Uber and Lyft risk losing market share in the country’s most populous state, which is also the home of many sources of venture capital. Several competitors have already taken notice and are accelerating plans to enter the market. Even the taxi industry, long derided by Uber and Lyft in the early days of their services, could be positioned for something of a comeback.
At least two start-ups that spoke with CNBC are accelerating their plans to enter California in light of Uber and Lyft’s potential retreat.
After years of legal wrangling, California has finalized a deal requiring five major car companies — BMW, Ford, Honda, Volkswagen, and Volvo — to adopt higher fuel-efficiency standards than required by the Trump Administration.
The move will likely anger President Trump, who has rolled back Obama-era requirements to make American vehicles more fuel-efficient. The president has also tried to revoke California’s ability to set its own, higher efficiency standards; California and 22 other states sued in response, and that suit is still wending its way through the federal court system. But the outcome of that suit will have no bearing on this week’s agreement, since the five automakers entered into it voluntarily.
election forecasts continue to favor biden—by a lot
I know that hpg will cover this more extensively and more ably than I, but I thought I’d mention that 538’s polling aggregate currently has Joe Biden up by over 8 points. Here’s my very own look at how the race seems to stand today, slightly modified from the Cook Political Report’s map.
But I know that Trump thinks he’s got it in the bag—just look at all those boat parades he’s oddly obsessed with. How are those going?
Oh, dear.
Alright, I’ve rebooted my poor computer twice while writing this, and that’s enough stress on both me and my machine for right now. The extent of my participation in the comments section will depend on my ability to keep things running, so don’t assume much.
I’m not watching the convention so I’m counting on you guys to share the good stuff from that.
And I know the Roundup was a trifle short on good news today, so I guess it’s up to you to go out and make some of your own.
The first song today was for the doom and gloom folks. This last one is for the rest of you.
