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Wednesday Good News Round Up Gnusie Open Thread [1]
['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.']
Date: 2023-08-23
Good Wednesday Morning Good News Crew, get your beverage of choice, a wake me up or a pick me up, and partake in the best comment section on the internet.
Full disclosure, my work has been very busy, I am transitioning from my full time job of 18 years to part time and a new position there. I have been training staff to take my former position, we have new hires, open positions, and a staff who is leaving this week, which puts more on my plate. So forgive me if this is not chock full of the news out there to savor but I know you will all step up and share in the comments.
Before we get “below the fold” I wanted to share a little something I ran across.
10 Eternal Reasons To Feel Hopeful
I think we have all been bouncing from joy to gloom and back again, as the author of the article states, “Hope can feel in scarce supply for everyone these days. Pandemics, brutal injustices, political turmoil and glaring inequalities can all take their toll. And yet, the thing with hope is that it is persistent. It lives even in the most troubled times”
Some of my favorites from this list:
2. The future is open You don’t need to be permanently happy to be hopeful. You just need to embrace the concept of possibility. You need to accept the unknowability of the future, and that there are versions of that future which are brighter and fairer than this one. And every single one of us can play a part in creating that better world. 5. We have each other The hardiest plant in the world is the purple saxifrage. Its delicate petals look like they could fly away in the wind, yet it is found amid the harshness of the Arctic. The flowers survive by being clustered together, offering each other shelter against the hardest conditions on earth. Humans, too, can be saved by one another. This year has given us a million examples of how people pull together in a crisis. How neighbours turn to neighbours. Friends to friends. Allies to allies. 10. We have innate value You don’t need to exhaust yourself trying to find your own value. You are not an iPhone needing an upgrade. Your value is not a condition of productivity or exercise or body shape or something you lose via inactivity. Value is not a plate that needs continually to be spun. The value is there. It is intrinsic. It is in the “being” not the “doing”.
I think all 10 are just beautiful and quite fitting. I hope you read and enjoy.
Biden launches ‘most affordable ever’ student loan repayment plan
Federal student loan borrowers can expect “the most affordable student loan plan ever”, Biden said in a video address on Tuesday announcing significant changes to the debt from higher education held by over an eighth of the country. The announcement comes nearly two months after the US supreme court struck down Biden’s original student debt forgiveness plan that would have forgiven $20,000 of federal student debt for borrowers who were Pell grant recipients and up to $10,000 of debt for other borrowers. The program, named Save (Saving on A Valuable Education), will replace the Revised Pay As You Earn (Repaye) plan, lowering the minimum amount due on student loans for borrowers who enroll in an income-driven repayment (IDR) plan.
Federal judge blocks Georgia's trans hormone therapy ban
Georgia legislators banned hormone therapy for transgender people under the age of 18, but a federal judge today blocked the law from taking effect after several young patients challenged it. "The imminent risks of irreparable harm to Plaintiffs flowing from the ban — including risks of depression, anxiety, disordered eating, self-harm, and suicidal ideation — outweigh any harm the State will experience from the injunction," the judge wrote. Geraghty said her ruling will block enforcement of the ban on hormone replacement therapy until a further court order or a trial.
Powerful!
Powerful Amicus Brief Asks SCOTUS to Block Domestic Abusers From Owning Guns
MW’s former partner had many guns (registered and not) hidden around their home, including an AK-47 and one outfitted with a silencer. He would “frequently” hold a gun to her head and threaten to kill her if she ever left. After pointing a gun at her in public, the police were called, and he told her that he would kill their son if she talked. “Over the years, the abuse became so bad that I did not want to live anymore. This is the only way I escaped. I realized nothing I did was going to save me. Either I was going to end my life or he was going to end it for me. He told me he would bury my body under one of his construction sites and that no one would find me,” she said. amicus brief filed Monday at the Supreme Court. The coalition is demanding the Supreme Court overturn a lower federal court’s ruling that will allow someone under a domestic violence protection order to own a gun. MW’s harrowing story is one of dozens compiled by a coalition of nearly 60 domestic and intimate partner violence survivor advocacy organizations for anMonday at the Supreme Court. The coalition is demanding the Supreme Court overturn athat will allow someone under a domestic violence protection order to own a gun.
Special counsel Jack Smith's team pushed back on former President Donald Trump's effort to delay his D.C. election conspiracy trial until 2026 over the amount of evidence to be turned over in discovery. Molly Gaston, a prosecutor on Smith's team, said in a filing on Monday that Trump's lawyers incorrectly suggested that cases involving conspiracy charges typically take 29.4 months to reach a conclusion, noting that the analysis was skewed by drawing from cases between September 2021 and October 2022, a time frame in which just 22 cases went to trial amid the COVID pandemic, according to Politico. Former federal prosecutor Glenn Kirschner on MSNBC noted that U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan, who is overseeing the case, warned Trump's attorneys at an earlier hearing that she may accelerate the trial date if Trump says or posts things that interfere with the court's ability to pick a fair and impartial jury, which Kirschner alleged Trump had already done. "I also think when the defense team, Trump's defense team, throws out a date that is two and a half to three years down the road, April 2026, it shows that they are not really engaged in legitimate lawyering," he added. "It really feels like they are assistant campaign chairman at this point. That will help, I think, push Judge Chutkan to an earlier trial date if they are not trying to legitimately present a trial date that is an honest assessment of how much time they think they are going to need." Hahahaha! 🤣🤣🤣😁 Jack Smith Reveals Trump Employee Flipped After Ditching MAGA Lawyer A former maintenance worker at Mar-a-Lago, now being eyed as a key witness to an attempt to conceal evidence from the government, retracted his grand jury testimony after switching lawyers, prosecutors in special counsel Jack Smith’s office said in a Tuesday filing. The unidentified staffer, named only as “Trump Employee 4” in the filing, but suspected to be Yuscil Taveras, who oversaw the club’s security camera system, initially told a grand jury that he hadn’t been privy to any attempt to delete security footage. But after dumping his lawyer, Stanley Woodward, for another attorney offered up by the federal defender’s office in Washington, Taveras quickly reversed course. “Immediately after receiving new counsel,” Smith’s office said in the filing, Taveras retracted his prior testimony and “provided information that implicated” Trump and his two alleged co-conspirators “in efforts to delete security camera footage.” India's Lunar Mission Captures Images of Far Side of the Moon Ahead of Historic Landing India’s space agency is gearing up for a lunar touchdown, hoping to stick the landing this time after a failed first attempt nearly four years ago. The Chandrayaan-3 mission got its first glimpse of the lunar far side as it inches its way closer to the Moon’s dusty surface. The spacecraft is scheduled to land on the Moon on Wednesday at 8:34 a.m. ET (6:04 p.m. local time). If it succeeds in its soft landing attempt, India will join a small group of countries that have managed to accomplish the same feat: the Soviet Union, the U.S. and China.
Sha’Carri Richardson was always “that girl.” That the 23-year-old is now officially the fastest woman in the world—after getting booted from Team USA in 2021 after testing positive for marijuana—is just icing on the cake. according to the New York Times. This makes her the World Athletics Championships’ record holder for the 100-meter and puts her .16 behind the world record of 10.49, which Florence Griffith-Joyner set in 1988. Jamaica’s Richardson Shericka Jackson came in second in 10.72, and Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce, also from Jamaica, finished third in 10.77. On Monday, the track star won her first-ever title at a world track and field championship, winning the 100-meter race in Budapest with a time of 10.65 seconds (her personal best),to theNew York Times.This makes her the World Athletics Championships’ record holder for the 100-meter and puts her .16 behind the world record of 10.49, which Florence Griffith-Joyner set in 1988. Jamaica’s Richardson Shericka Jackson came in second in 10.72, and Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce, also from Jamaica, finished third in 10.77.
In recent generations, the Louisiana coast has found itself in ecological peril. As a result of oil and gas activity and centuries of leveeing and dredging the Mississippi River, maximizing its economy to transport oil and gas and industrial products, roughly 2,000 square miles of Louisiana coastal lands have fallen into the sea since the 1930s. While it lacks the heavy duty equipment and ambitious landscaping plans of the state, the Coalition to Restore Coastal Louisiana (CRCL) is playing its own unique role in guarding against the worst of the Bayou State’s coastal erosion crisis. Since 2014, the CRCL’s Oyster Shell Recycling Program has grown into one of the largest of its kind in the country. Its success depends on the 35 New Orleans area restaurants currently taking CRCL up on its slogan — “Once you shuck ‘em, don’t just chuck ‘em!” — and donating their leftover shells. In nearly a decade of work, the CRCL has recycled more than 13 million pounds of shells, in turn helping protect over 8,000 feet of shoreline, which is then tracked and measured over time to ensure its maintenance.
On a quiet day this spring, Alejandra Chavez walked into her office at Westside Mobile Home Park in Durango, Colorado. Residents were gathered in the community space, discussing their plans for the park’s future, some leaning on the kitchen’s baby-blue counters while others sat in plastic lawn chairs. A year ago, this building was owned by a New York corporation and was off-limits to residents. But now, residents use the space for yoga, child care and community events. That afternoon, there were piñatas in the corner, left over from a recent birthday party. After months of fundraising and working with the Denver-based nonprofit Elevation Community Land Trust, Westside made a successful offer and formed a housing co-operative. Now owned jointly by its residents and Elevation, the park operates as a community land trust, which removes land from the real estate market and transforms it into community-owned property. Two decades after she first arrived in Durango, Chavez, a DACA recipient, is now the park’s property manager and the co-op’s vice president.
More reasons to be hopeful:
A little music. Thank you bigjacbigjacbigjac and his weekly music posts! He said this about the song. “ Yes, there it is, my coffee and tea song”. Fitting.
x YouTube Video Well that’s all folks!
“Mix a little foolishness with your serious plans. It is lovely to be silly at the right moment.” –Horace
Peace!
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