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Good News Roundup for Friday, July 29, 2022: Justice without Fear or Favor [1]
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Date: 2022-07-29
GNR 261 for cc
Welcome 🌻 to Friday’s Roundup of Good News!
I was annoyed with Biden earlier in the week. Why? Because he didn’t go far enough in his condemnation of tRump. President Biden talked about tRump lacking the courage to act to defend the country on Jan 6. I thought he should have said, tRump was encouraging the insurrectionists.
Then I realized, President Biden could not say that. If the DoJ is investigating tRump and his seditionists, talking about tRump being guilty in this respect would look political. So now I get it.
And, what wonderful news has come out — strong hints the DoJ is investigating. Heck, more than hints. Eastman’s phone. Cassidy Hutchinson. Pursuing justice without fear or favor.
Gnusies, I’m visiting a friend this week, and although I have internet, I won’t be available when this goes live. But most of you know what to do. And, happy Friday!
Regular Scheduled Programming
No one here is naïve; we are aware of the many who are fighting to destroy our country. Some of us expected it: the cheating, the lying, the chaos, and yes, even the attempts to cling to power despite the clear will of the people. But we are here to read the efforts and the positive results of those (including us and our fellow gnus) who are working so hard to save our country from those very bad people. We are furious with them for what they are doing and we are letting them know. Remember:
💙 There are more of us than there are of them.
💛 They are terrified when we organize. THERE IS LOTS OF EVIDENCE THAT THEY ARE TERRIFIED!
💔 They want us to be demoralized. The best way to keep up your spirits is to fight. So, take the time to recharge your batteries, but find ways to contribute to the well-being of our country and our world.
🗽 Biden as President ! 🗽
Biden, Harris and their administration have been hard at work. Here are the last week’s posts at the White House briefing room.
👎 Out with the Bad, In with the Good 👍
Bye-bye!
x Clarence Thomas will not teach at George Washington University this fall, after a student-led petition sought his removal. — Gracie (@GracieDogge) July 27, 2022
The Russians want tRump back, but for now they’re being blocked Julia DavisThe Daily Beast
While the Kremlin’s disinformation apparatus is facing unprecedented resistance in the West, head of RT Margarita Simonyan admitted that her outlet’s operations in the West have not ceased—despite being blocked—but continue on a covert basis. Appearing on a state TV program The Evening With Vladimir Solovyov last week, Simonyan explained: “When they [Western governments] conducted carpet bombing against us and destroyed everything, denying us any access to disseminating information, we came to our senses and started to penetrate their defenses using partisan trails: under other names, with different people, in new ways. I won’t disclose the rest here.”
Like, you know, Tucker Carlsson…
👎 Gaetz 👍 Juliana
x WE HAVE RAISED 1 MILLION FOR ABORTION FUNDS IN 72 HOURS #ThanksMattGaetz — Olivia Julianna 🗳 (@0liviajulianna) July 28, 2022
Russian economy being hurt by sanctions Felix Salmon Axios
Sanctions have been effective at crippling the Russian economy. That's the conclusion of a new 118-page paper from Yale's Jeffrey Sonnenfeld and 18 c0-authors. Why it matters: The big question about Russia sanctions is whether they have teeth, if they exclude Russian oil and gas. While official Russian statistics suggest the economy is using its oil and gas revenues to withstand the effects of sanctions, Sonnenfeld's paper says that the official Russian statistics are lies. ✂️ The conclusion: "Looking ahead, there is no path out of economic oblivion for Russia as long as the allied countries remain unified in maintaining and increasing sanctions pressure."
An entire police force resigned. Which may, you know, be a good thing…
x Kenly, North Carolina. Hired new City Manager. Justine Jones. Black. Woman. Entire all-white police department resigns. Claim 'hostile work environment' yet to provide no support. A long-time resident says: “They don’t want to be led by anybody Black; that’s Kenly.” Wow. pic.twitter.com/5fvvAvBR43 — Don Lewis (@DonLew87) July 26, 2022
💣 Republicans: Party of Crimes and Chaos 💣
McConnell and McCarthy are not getting along Bob Brigham Raw Story
“Senate GOP Leader Mitch McConnell had such a reputation for stopping Democratic legislation and keeping his conference together that he earned the nickname 'the grim reaper.' But now he’s helped push through a string of major bipartisan victories that Democrats in particular are touting, splintering his own conference and leaving some House Republicans fuming," CNN reported Thursday. There's been a great deal of discussion over McConnell getting "played" by Manchin. "The divide is most pronounced between McConnell and House GOP Leader Kevin McCarthy, who has whipped his members to oppose some of the big-ticket items that McConnell has backed, raising concerns among some Republicans about how the two will function in a potential GOP majority next year," CNN reported. "Over the past year, McConnell and some of his deputies have supported bipartisan deals on infrastructure, gun violence and the global chip shortage – all of which the majority of Senate Republicans opposed, putting McConnell in the minority of his own party."
Pence gets dissed and deserves it Dana Milibank Washington Post
On Tuesday, Trump staged a grand return to Washington, giving a keynote speech to the pro-Trump America First Policy Institute. For hours before the address, sycophants praised the former president and failed coup leader. ✂️ Pence, by contrast, couldn’t catch a break. Travel delays forced the cancellation of his planned speech to the Heritage Foundation on Monday, leaving him to deliver the same speech to a lukewarm reception from the Young America crowd. “God must have had different plans,” Pence reasoned. I don’t pretend to know God’s plans. But is it possible that God, by delivering Pence from the mob that day, intended for him to find the courage to speak out against the evil that is imperiling our democracy? Instead, as Pence again plays Trump’s meek supplicant, more humiliation will follow. He deserves that, too.
Michigan: chaos among the Rs trying to upset Governor Whitmer Michelle Maynard Washington Post
Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer’s (D) first term has been wracked by turmoil. She has dealt with a bitter backlash over pandemic restrictions, been the subject of a kidnapping plot and sparred repeatedly with former president Donald Trump. She has even taken heat over a private plane flight to visit her ailing father. But, as the state’s Michigan’s GOP gubernatorial primary nears on Aug. 2, the Democratic governor seems to be sitting comfortably above the chaos among her potential Republican challengers. Five of 10 Republican candidates were kicked off the ballot last month for submitting fraudulent petition signatures, prompting the best-known among the disqualified, former Detroit police chief James Craig, to run as a write-in candidate. ruled he can stay on the ballot. One of the surviving five, Ryan Kelley, was arrested by the FBI for participating in the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol. Kelley has pleaded not guilty, and an appeals courthe can stay on the ballot.
Madison rolls away with the money. I posted this in comments before, but it’s too funny not to repeat. As Kinzinger said, tRump and cronies are out to steal magat money.
x It’s theft. He stole from his campaign. — Madison Cawthorn Can't Pay Donors Back, Report Says
https://t.co/ZS0JALMgC8 — Fred Wellman (@FPWellman) July 23, 2022
💙 Democrats Deliver 💙
The Senate climate bill! I distrust Manchin so much that I’m not holding my breath, but given how it happened, it seems like it might actually be real.
x D.C. is buzzing with the eleventh hour switcheroo by Sens. Schumer and Manchin that left McConnell fuming. How the hell is a multi-hundred billion dollar climate, tax and healthcare package back on with just days to go?
https://t.co/Fo9WX8qWOK — Jay Kuo (@nycjayjay) July 28, 2022
And the potential 🎩 hpg
x Let's not lose sight of this. If the Democratic coalition can achieve the largest investment in our climate future *ever* and sell it as job creation in places like West Virginia — while the GOP sits it out entirely — that opens up vast new possibilities.
https://t.co/JfoCu0JlXk — Greg Sargent (@ThePlumLineGS) July 28, 2022
Blue Lives Matter. And they do!
x How can Congressional Republicans claim to be pro-police? pic.twitter.com/4wMQbR7IEs — President Biden (@POTUS) July 26, 2022
And this:
x National Association of Police Officers pro-police scores, based on votes:
Kevin McCarthy - 57%
Elise Stefanik - 57%
Ted Cruz - 60%
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez - 71%
Nancy Pelosi - 81%
Ilhan Omar - 86%
The numbers Republicans don't want you to see.
https://t.co/WxM5elPo3j — No Lie with Brian Tyler Cohen (@NoLieWithBTC) June 30, 2021
I remember the 70s. Sigh, I even worked in the 70s.
x One third of states are at their lowest unemployment rates since the seventies.
It isn't just job recovery. It’s job creation. — President Biden (@POTUS) July 24, 2022
And more jobs are coming, for example, in North Carolina, with Governor Roy Cooper. Press Release
Pisgah Laboratories, Inc., a pharmaceutical manufacturer, will add 57 new jobs in Transylvania County, Governor Roy Cooper announced today. The company will invest $55 million to expand its manufacturing product line. "North Carolina’s life science industry is expanding all over our state including rural areas like Transylvania County with the growth of Pisgah Laboratories," said Governor Cooper. "When North Carolina companies expand and reinvest in our state, it validates our ranking as the best state to do business.” ✂️ The new positions include analysts, technicians, supervisors, and managers, which have an average annual salary of $60,088. Transylvania County’s overall average annual wage is $39,028. The new jobs have the potential to create an annual payroll impact of more than $3.4 million for the region.
Governor Andy Beshear, KY, working on clean water Ethan Sirles WYMT Mountain News
FRANKFORT, Ky. (WYMT) - On Thursday, Governor Andy Beshear announced $30 million will go towards helping improve water systems across the Commonwealth. The money will fund 29 projects in Kentucky, which will benefit 1,245 households. “Having clean, reliable water service is a basic human right, and from the start of my administration I have prioritized funding major upgrades to these crucial utilities all across the commonwealth,” Gov. Beshear said. “We’ve provided hundreds of millions of dollars to communities through my Cleaner Water Program, enhancing regional systems and providing service for the first time to many residents and businesses. This latest round will provide $30 million to fund 29 projects that will make our people healthier and our communities more resilient.”
Democrats are fired up
x Democrats raised 100 million more than Republicans from small donors online in the last quarter. — Duty To Warn 🔉 (@duty2warn) July 26, 2022
Heh, heh. One reason the Ds may be outraising the Rs is because the R small donors are all giving to tRump, and he is not sharing. Heh, heh, heh.
💜 Unity? 💜
Well, it’s something.
x Senate unanimously approved a nonbinding resolution on Wed calling for Blinken to designate Russia as a state sponsor of terrorism for actions in Chechnya, Georgia, Syria and Ukraine that resulted “in the deaths of countless innocent men, women and children” — Olga Lautman 🇺🇦 (@OlgaNYC1211) July 28, 2022
Of course, now Rs are really mad because Manchin may have approved something. I bet they’re offering Sinema lots...
📥 Actions You Can Take 📤
DONATE TO GNR SAVES DEMOCRACY!
newish!!! Tax-exempt organization complaint referrals. 13909. You can fill this out for the NRA and lots of other organizations. How about if some of us white folk go into some of the MAGA churches and video record what they’re saying?
Voting rights. This may be the biggest issue threatening our democracy right now. Besides contacting your representatives at the state and federal level to do the right thing (depending on who they are), you can support and contact these organizations:
ACLU — American Civil Liberties Union
Democracy Docket — founded by Marc Elias, so important in fighting the challenges after the last election.
Fair Fight — founded by Stacey Abrams
🌱Grass roots. Biden and Harris can do the top-down stuff, but we have to support from the bottom. I don’t know how to deprogram 75 million people, but some things have been written about, such as deep canvassing, and lots of people are talking about this. If you know someone (who did not storm the Capitol), then see if you can be pleasant. Instead of trying to reason with them (logic is obviously not their strong point) distract them with something else. We need to remove the sources of lies and to take down the temperature. If we get more of the Rs to wear masks and to get vaccinated and to vote for Ds, the country will be a better place. We need to coax some of them out of the rabbit holes and diffuse the anger and the crazy.
🏃 Run for something. If you want to run for something, but have no idea what to do, these people will help you. They also like money and volunteers to help those people who are running, so even if you’re not in a position to stand for office, you can help. Note: they are especially planning to target the 57 Rs in local governments who participated in the insurrection.
👎 Defund the seditionists. This is a list with companies that sometimes have donated to the seditionists, and their current approach to supporting or not supporting the seditionists. The list is long. You will recognize many of the corporations, and you probably have a relationship with some — either you are a customer, a shareholder, or maybe even an employee. Contact them and compliment or complain, but let them know you are watching. Forward it to others.
🐍 Schadenfreude 😈
So satisfying.
x ALERT. Federal judge Tanya Chutkan has sentenced Mark Ponder to 63 months in prison for assault on police during Capitol riot.
(Noting: Judge Chutkan went above prosecutors’ recommended sentence. She did the same in a separate Jan 6 case last week)
https://t.co/ExUZnsV4xK — Scott MacFarlane (@MacFarlaneNews) July 26, 2022
My only annoyance is this seems to be the one black rioter.
George Conway, father in a most dysfunctional family, nevertheless is witty:
x If you had asked me to hypothesize, for illustrative purposes, a set of emails that prosecutors would find helpful in proving a fake-elector fraud conspiracy, I would not have come up with anything nearly as incriminating as the emails that the Times just reported on today. — George Conway🌻 (@gtconway3d) July 26, 2022
Republican who canceled his voter’s registration finds out he can’t run for office Sarah K. Burris Raw Story
After the 2020 election, Republican Kristopher Stark stormed off in a huff over Donald Trump not being reelected. Stark claims that the election was actually "stolen" from Trump. He sent a letter to the Seminole County Supervisor of Elections a request to take him off of the voter rolls. Now, the Orlando Sentinel reveals that is causing some problems. “My vote means nothing. Cancel my registration,” Stark wrote in his Jan. 2021 letter. “You + the system are a joke. Thank you, communists.” Now that he's running for office in Florida House District 37 there's a problem. A 2021 bill passed by the GOP-run state house requires that candidates running for their party's nomination must be a registered party member for at least 365 days prior to the election.
Waiting for tRump to die… not really a way to deal with things. Tom Boggioni Raw Story
According to Miller, "in present-day Republican politics, that anonymous 'what’s the downside for humoring him' moron actually won the day. And not just that day, but today. Because despite how brutally and blatantly their strategy in managing Trump’s psychopathy failed, Senior Republican Officials (SROs) are still employing it." You see, back in November 2020, at least the SROs thought that there was an expiration date on their cowardice. They figured that, come January 20, 2021, Trump would be gone and they would no longer have to humor him. Today the strategy has been modified only in the removal of an expected end date," he wrote before noting a comment made by a former Republican lawmaker in Mark Leibovich's new book, "Thank You for Your Servitude." As Leibovitch wrote, "A former Republican congressman told me recently that the party’s only real plan for dealing with Trump in 2024 involved a darkly divine intervention. 'We’re just waiting for him to die,' he said."
📣 Let’s Honor Truth ☀️️
The DOJ is investigating tRump. The DoJ has a grand jury. Things have been moving for a while.
x Attorney General Garland: "No person is above the law in this country."
Reporter: "Even a former president?"
Garland: "No person is above the law in this country. I can't say it any more clearly than that."
https://t.co/Qaeq9L9jRz pic.twitter.com/c32fluOQjx — MSNBC (@MSNBC) July 24, 2022
x A pretty amazing detail of the Mark Short grand jury story is that he walked out of the courthouse Friday past the entire DC press corps waiting for Bannon and it didn’t register with any of them:
https://t.co/HwRjQDGV5f — billbindc (@BillBindc) July 25, 2022
And this
x LATEST NEWS:
DOJ has now obtained a warrant to search John Eastman’s cellphone. DOJ has had the phone since June 22. Now it has judicial permission to search its contents. To get that warrant, DOJ had to specify the crimes it has good cause to believe the contents will reveal. — Laurence Tribe (@tribelaw) July 27, 2022
Have you ever explored the DoJ website? They’re doing a lot of cool stuff. For example:
x DID YOU KNOW: the DoJ is suing meat packing companies for coordinating low wages and conspiring to low-ball farmers?
https://t.co/v9TNxSA87T — Mueller, She Wrote (@MuellerSheWrote) July 26, 2022
And there’s this little tidbit:
x Always good to remember that Merrick Garland was the lead prosecutor of the Oklahoma City bombers, the Unabomber, and the Olympic bomber -- where he earned a reputation within DOJ for being silent but absolutely lethal. — Tristan Snell (@TristanSnell) July 27, 2022
🌹 Let’s Celebrate Love ❤️
Making a difference when it matters. And doing it anonymously, at least at first, so no attention was drawn to him.
x We now know the identity of the anonymous donor who stepped up to help pay for the funerals of the Uvalde shooting victims.
It was Bo Jackson. He donated $170,000.
Bo knows 👊🏼♥️ pic.twitter.com/P36jjCSyaP — Goodable (@Goodable) July 22, 2022
📎 Odds & Ends 📎
☀️ Solar power in Barcelona
x In Barcelona, a local high school teamed up with the city council to create a solar energy community.
The school installed solar panels on their rooftop to supply power to school and the neighborhood.
It has reduced each household's bill by up to 25%.
☀️🇪🇸 pic.twitter.com/pKuFWXtPYX — Goodable (@Goodable) July 26, 2022
Reduce sugar consumption and help the environment Cristen Hemingway James EcoWatch
The processing of sugarcane has an enormous impact on the environment due to the emissions, wastewater runoff and solid waste produced by sugar mills. It also causes biodiversity loss when animal and plant habitat is destroyed to make way for sugarcane cultivation, according to the World Wildlife Fund website. It makes sense then that the reduction of sugar consumption, leading to the reduction of sugar production, would have positive impacts on the environment, according to a new study by the Institute of Environmental Science and Technology of the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (ICTA-UAB), a press release from ICTA-UAB said.
Better health too, awaits you. I stopped putting sugar in my coffee more than 10 years ago (the transition was not easy). I really need to stop a few other bad habits, too.
Here is a neat thing!
x In the Netherlands, this company uses air and bubbles to divert plastic away from the ocean.
The process is cheap, causes no environmental damage, and is able to prevent 86% of plastics from entering the ocean.
🌍 🇳🇱 🌊pic.twitter.com/glzBw8cxDF — Goodable (@Goodable) July 26, 2022
The kids are all right
x This is Alena Wicker.
She's the youngest intern ever at NASA, is studying biological sciences at two separate universities, and just got into Medical School.
She's 13. pic.twitter.com/GCKV58DP4v — Goodable (@Goodable) July 23, 2022
🐦 I do a lot of other writing. A recent offering: Hunters of the Feather, a story about a thinker-linker crow who wants to save birdkind from extinction, and the sequel, Scavengers of Mind. (They’re really good! They’re really cheap! Buy and review or rate positively! And Hunters is also available on Audible!) Other stories, based on Jane Austen novels — including a new one for lovers of Pride & Prejudice, Mrs. Bennet’s Advice to Young Ladies — and others on Greek mythology, can be found here. All titles are available through Kindle Unlimited, but I only get paid if you turn the pages.
💙 What You Can Do to Rescue Democracy 💙
It turns out that participation in democracy is not just an every-four-years event but requires active participation, like, whenever you can find time.
Current projects:
Look in the comments for Progressive Muse’s report on Postcards to Voters
And some other ideas:
You can relax and recharge.
You can join protests and freeway blog.
You can help register new voters.
You can smile.
You can get out the vote for special elections.
You can reach out to upset Republicans. We need to win some back.
You can share your ideas below.
🌻
💙 “Our history has been a constant struggle between the American ideal that we all are created equal and the harsh ugly reality that racism, nativism, fear, demonization have long torn us apart. The battle is perennial, and victory is never assured.” 💙
President Joseph R. Biden
🌹 🌹 🌹
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