(C) Daily Kos
This story was originally published by Daily Kos and is unaltered.
. . . . . . . . . .
From the GNR Newsroom: Its the Monday Good News Roundup [1]
['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.', 'Backgroundurl Avatar_Large', 'Nickname', 'Joined', 'Created_At', 'Story Count', 'N_Stories', 'Comment Count', 'N_Comments', 'Popular Tags']
Date: 2022-07-25
Welcome back friends to the Monday good news roundup, another week and another collection of stories to help you feel better about the world. With the help of my newsroom of Bhu and Killer 300. So lets get right to it and get to the stories.
Utilities are worried that homes switching to electric heating, electric cooking and electric-vehicle charging will create major new strains on their power grids. And homeowners looking to go all-electric face steep costs if they need to upgrade their grid connections to handle bigger electrical loads. A new report suggests that both problems could be addressed by the latest smart electric panels.
Once again its always cool that we technically live in the future.
Renewable energy project developer Intersect Power just raised a $750 million growth equity investment, which it will use to drive its defiantly nontraditional approach to scaling up clean infrastructure. This means leaving power-purchase agreements behind and focusing on moving into new industrial sectors that will be critical to a decarbonized world. The funding round was led by TPG Rise Climate and included existing investors Climate Adaptive Infrastructure and Greenbelt Capital Partners. Intersect Power CEO Sheldon Kimber wants to redefine what it means to be a clean power developer. “We’re not just trying to sell people electrons,” he told Canary Media. “We’re looking at new industries that we want to vertically integrate into.”
Sounds like a good investment to me. Clean energy is the future. Literally.
Republican Sen. Rand Paul chided Senate GOP Leader Mitch McConnell on Monday after President Joe Biden decided not to nominate a conservative to a federal district courtship in their home state of Kentucky, intensifying a blame game over what McConnell believed could have been a rare Republican victory on the judiciary under a Democratic president. Paul told CNN that McConnell never consulted with him before cutting a deal with Biden to name Chad Meredith to the post. And without Paul’s support, the White House said it wouldn’t name Meredith to the post since he lacked backing from home-state senators, relieving Democrats who were concerned with Meredith’s anti-abortion views.
Uh oh the kids are fighting again! Also good news that Biden decided not to appoint that shitty judge. I guess he realized he couldn’t trust McConnell.
Claims of “censorship” are flying on Donald Trump’s alternative social media platform, Truth Social. The main point of contention among users is that Trump’s site continues to apply “sensitive content” notices obscuring some posts, including a popular anti-Biden meme that mocks the president over increasing inflation rates. “This content may not be suitable for all audiences,” the notice states. That content warning has also covered up a popular graphic depicting Jesus Christ and a quote from the Bible with a gray filter, leaving users fuming. “Truth Social loves censorship,” one user wrote, whose bio on the site included the hashtag “NoMoreRINOs.”
Of course Trump is censoring people. Everything these assholes accuse us of doing is pure projection.
A bipartisan group of senators reached a deal on Wednesday to reform a federal law and prevent a future presidential candidate from overturning the will of the people and the result of a valid presidential election. The lawmakers have agreed to two bills that would reform the Electoral Count Act of 1887, which governs how electoral votes are counted after a presidential election. Citing ambiguities in the law, Donald Trump and his attorneys pushed his vice-president, Mike Pence, to disrupt the counting of electoral votes that showed he lost the 2020 election, escalating calls for the 135-year-old law to be reformed. Even before the election, experts warned the law was ambiguous and could be exploited.
Gee I wonder what made them do this? *eyes shift nervously*
The U.S. Postal Service is boosting its electric-vehicle ambitions yet again, after initial plans to replace the nation’s aging mail fleet with mostly gas-powered trucks drew public backlash and legal challenges. On Wednesday, the Postal Service said it expects to electrify at least 40 percent of its new delivery fleet, up from its original pledge of 10 percent. Critics have argued that putting more fossil-fueled trucks on the road would undermine the broader U.S. effort to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and harmful air pollution from the transportation sector.
Can I just say I’m glad we were able to save the post office? I was worried about them there for a while.
A potentially historic political shift is currently taking place within an unexpected group of Americans: evangelical Christians. In the wake of Donald Trump’s presidency, strains within the evangelical community, especially among people of color, have resulted in significant numbers of people defecting from the right and opening themselves to social justice stances on issues of race, immigration, climate and economic fairness. Should the trend escalate, it could send tremors that extend well beyond the religious community and reverberate throughout U.S. politics. While the future of evangelical politics remains uncertain, the divisions forming in religious spaces are creating significant opportunities for those interested in promoting progressive change. Moreover, organizing among evangelical dissenters is providing important lessons in how those working on social justice issues might find fertile ground in communities outside their circles of usual suspects — provided they can relate with people who do not identify as belonging on either side of the traditional divide between the political right and left.
Yeah as it turns out, people want to worship God, not Donald Trump. Go figure right?
On Monday night, Spokane City Council adopted a package of interim zoning rules which establish the city as a nationwide leader in re-legalizing housing. After years of debate, task forces, Council hearings, and focus groups, it is now legal to build a duplex, a triplex, or a fourplex anywhere you can build a single-family home in the city. The rules actually go further than the package briefed in The Urbanist earlier in the month, after amendments during the legislative process. When everything shook out, the final package: Allows duplexes, triplexes, and fourplexes anywhere you can build a single-family home;
Removes unit limits on townhomes and rowhomes;
Reduces the required lot width to 36 feet in single-family (RSF) zones;
Reduces the minimum lot size for attached homes to 1,280 square feet;
Decreases and in some cases eliminates parking requirements near transit, and increases bike parking requirements to compensate;
Allows developers to round up in their density calculations (for example, if calculations yield 5.2 units allowed, you can now build six instead of five)
Applies new design standards similar to the city’s standard design requirements to all of these new unit types.
Affordable housing is something we desperately need right now. Hopefully this will catch on in other places.
Coal has been the dominant energy source in Alaska’s Interior since the Alaska Railroad completed a track through the region in 1923. But that’s changing quickly as other reliable but lower-carbon energy sources become available. Large-scale renewable power plants, like the Fire Island wind project near Anchorage and the Eva Creek wind farm near Fairbanks, came online a decade ago. Then there was a lull in development — until now. Andrew McDonnell, co-founder of Fairbanks-based green-energy company Alaska Renewables LLC, said that Golden Valley’s plan to purchase renewable energy represents a statewide shift. Alaska Renewables, for example, is planning a wind farm on Little Mount Susitna that would help power Anchorage, Alaska’s largest city
Good news as Alaska is going green, lets keep up that momentum.
On Thursday, the Treasury Department announced that it would provide millions of dollars to build out high-speed broadband projects in four states. The funding is part of the American Rescue Plan’s Coronavirus Capital Projects Fund (CPF), which provides $10 billion for states and tribal governments to fund new broadband networks. The combined projects — in Kansas, Maine, Maryland, and Minnesota — will expand high-speed broadband to over 83,000 homes and businesses, according to a Treasury Department Thursday press release. “The pandemic was many things but one thing that was for sure was a national teaching moment of the need for accessible strong broadband in the home that was strong enough that multiple people could both work and learn in each room,” White House American Rescue Plan director Gene Sperling said in a call with reporters on Thursday.
The internet is a right to all people, and is essential to modern life. Bravo to President Biden for doing this.
epublican Representative Nancy Mace backed a bill Thursday that would codify protections for contraception access in the U.S. into federal law, and took a stand against a proposed strict abortion ban in her state that includes almost no exceptions. The House voted Thursday to pass the Right to Contraception Act in a 228-195 vote. Mace was one of eight Republicans who joined Democrats in voting for the measure. Although a full breakdown of the vote tally was not immediately available on Congress' website, CNN's Manu Raju identified the other seven as Liz Cheney, Fred Upton, Anthony Gonzalez, John Katko, Brian Fitzpatrick, Maria Salazar and Adam Kinzinger. Two other Republican representatives, Bob Gibbs and Mike Kelly, voted "present," meaning that they did not vote for or against the legislation.
I think the GOP are realizing if they appear too evil too soon it will affect their country takeover, so they are trying to pump the breaks. Which they never had.
he Republican Party has suffered a heavy loss of support from senior voters in recent months, a key demographic for the party in November's midterms and for Donald Trump's presidential ambitions, according to polls. A recent survey conducted by CNN and the research firm SSRS found that 47 percent of those aged 65 and over said they would vote for a GOP candidate if the midterm congressional election for their district were held "today," with slightly more people aged 65 and over saying they would vote for a Democratic candidate (49 percent). This is a major turnaround from May, when a previous CNN/SSRS poll found that nearly two-thirds of those aged 65 and over (62 percent) said they would back a Republican candidate in the midterms, compared to just 37 percent of seniors who said they would back a Democratic candidate.
The GOP went too far this time, we’re going to defeat them in November, its not gonna be easy but we can do it.
Former President Donald Trump appears to be losing support among Republican voters for a 2024 White House bid as the public hearings of the House select committee investigating the January 6, 2021, attack against the U.S. Capitol have unfolded, new polling suggests. Trump has not officially confirmed that he plans to seek another presidential term but has repeatedly hinted at the idea as a strong possibility. While polls have generally shown the former president as the clear frontrunner for the Republican Party's nomination, his viability might be taking a hit as the January 6 hearings feature what many view as damning testimony by his own former administration officials and other Republicans
Yeah I think its time to call time on the whole Donald Trump thing. He’s just about done.
Washington State Democrats enjoy a resounding 20-point edge in a generic state legislature ballot, according to a recent Crosscut/Elway poll. Neither President Joe Biden nor Governor Jay Inslee enjoy high approval ratings, but it doesn’t seem to matter. The Republican brand simply seems to be in shambles in this state, and voters are rejecting it and turning to Democratic policymakers to address the top problems they see — which incidentally nearly all relate to the housing crisis.
Very promising. This is just in Washington of course, but we could see the same thing nationwide if we work at it.
And on that note my work for the week is done, I’m turning in for the night. I got a big work week ahead of me, so I’ll see you all next week. Remember, never give up and never surrender.
[END]
---
[1] Url:
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2022/7/25/2112417/-From-the-GNR-Newsroom-Its-the-Monday-Good-News-Roundup
Published and (C) by Daily Kos
Content appears here under this condition or license: Site content may be used for any purpose without permission unless otherwise specified.
via Magical.Fish Gopher News Feeds:
gopher://magical.fish/1/feeds/news/dailykos/
