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From the GNR Newsroom, its the Monday Good News Roundup [1]
['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.']
Date: 2025-01-06
Welcome back to the Monday Good News Roundup, the place where your intrepid GNR Newsroom (Myself, Killer300, Bhu, and the GNR Discord server) come to bring you all the good news to start your week off right.
Its a brand new year, I know all of us are dreading the shit storm that’s coming, but we have to remember Trump is not invincible, he’s already falling on his face and he’s not even back in office yes, we can resist him. Its alright to be angry, and frustrated, and afraid, these are indeed uncertain times, but I believe we shall win in the long run, so I’m going into 2025 guns blazing (speaking metaphorically of course I actually hate guns).
And here’s our starting song, as decided by my Spotify playing songs I like at random
I swear this pick was entirely at random. But at the same time its a song about corrupt politicians getting taken down by scandal, so you know, fingers crossed!
Good riddance. That’s the first thought that springs to mind for a lot of caring and thinking people as they contemplate the passing of 2024 into the history books. Despite numerous moments of accomplishment and progress, the late-year decision of 49.9% of the American electorate to return Donald Trump and his uniquely toxic combination of narcissism and megalomania to the White House has been enough to leave much of the rest of the country throwing up their hands in despair and searching their bathroom cabinets for sleep aids and anti-anxiety meds. Maybe you’ve had similar thoughts. What disasters now await? How will we survive the next four years? How can I avoid consuming the news for the foreseeable future? It’s an understandable reaction. Especially for those of us who reside in swing states where the 2024 election often felt like a relentless, nerve-jangling assault, the temptation to turn inward, tune out the grim noise that’s sure to come, and focus for the time being on adjusting one’s own psychic oxygen mask is powerful. And yet, as a few deep breaths and a moment of quiet contemplation reveal, the hard truth is that now is no time for those who believe in peace, tolerance, sustainability and democracy to abandon the world of policy and politics. Not only is there a tremendous need for engagement and activism to help blunt the worst of what the Trump-Musk kakistocracy promises to inflict on the nation, there are important reasons to feel a sense of hope – and even optimism – for where we are and what remains possible in the coming years. Here are five:
I know things seem rough now, but we can outlast this tired old man. Trump doesn’t have the steam left to go four more years, we all know it.
The Dems can do less with more, they have before, they will again. I have faith they know how to handle this mess.
WASHINGTON − President Joe Biden on Saturday named former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and billionaire political activist and philanthropist George Soros recipients of the Presidential Medal of Freedom, part of a group of 19 people selected for the nation's highest civilian honor. Others presented the medal by the outgoing president at a White House ceremony included U2 frontman Bono, actor Michael J. Fox, actor Denzel Washington, chef José Andrés and William Sanford Nye, better known as television's "Bill Nye the Science Guy."
Biden using his last few weeks in office to make sure the real heroes get their kudos. Also I imagine that Trump is fuming about this right now.
And now, I have a very special GNR special: A triple feature!
So the takeaways from these videos are threefold:
1) Trump wont be able to actually do his “Dictator for a day” shit because this is America, We don’t want a dictator, even for a day.
2) MAGA voters are finally, FINALLY realizing they have been had thanks to this HB-1 stuff, and the evidence that Trump actually is Pro immigrant when it suits him and his wealthy buddies.
3) Trumps stupid ass comments are making it hard for conservatives in general, not just here but elsewhere.
The main takeaway is that the mask is falling away, Trumps voters are finally starting to wake up, and that will make it harder for him to do his bullshit.
However, something funny happened during December’s kerfuffle. The public watched while the seemingly monolithic Republican Party began to squabble, then fracture along moderate, conservative and extremist fault lines. In the hours leading up to the last vote on the budget measure, pragmatic Republicans, who understood that their job is to make government work for people—not to destroy it—found that they could not keep the government running without the help of Democrats. This won’t change when the new Republican majority rolls into the capital and takes control of the U.S. House of Representatives and U.S. Senate. House Republicans will have the smallest majority margin in U.S. history. They will occupy just five more seats than Democrats. In the Senate, they will occupy just 53 of 100 seats. This is not the picture of a Republican landslide that Trump proclaimed. As of Dec. 19, the Associated Press reported, Trump won the popular vote by 1.5% with 49.9% of the vote compared to 48.4% for Vice President Kamala Harris. However, he garnered 312 electoral votes compared to Harris’ 226. December’s close call was cause for optimism about what the future will bring.
Like I said, Trump is losing and he hasn’t even gotten started yet, we weathered this buffoon once, we can do it again.
Tesla reported on Thursday that 2024 saw the Austin, Texas-based car company’s first annual decline in sales in at least 12 years. The decline coincided with the company’s CEO, Elon Musk, endorsing and funding Donald Trump’s presidential campaign and becoming a major player within the Republican Party. Tesla said that in 2024 it delivered 1.79 million cars, which was 1.1% below the 1.81 million cars the company sold in 2023. Back in 2022, Tesla confidently predicted that the company would grow 50% each year for the next few years. That didn’t happen as Musk went full MAGA. Before 2024, Musk had shown some signs of conservatism. But his extremism ramped up considerably as the presidential election ramped up and he attacked the so-called “woke mind virus,” blaming leftist ideas for his child’s gender transition.
Here’s my big prediction for 2025: Elon is gonna have a bad year.
Like I’m not gonna elaborate, its just he’s Trumps right hand man at the moment, and I think that will only bring him bad things.
Amazon workers picketed their employer over the weekend through blisteringly frigid weather and, in New York, a flooded sidewalk as part of an escalating series of strikes by a minority of workers across the logistics behemoth’s supply chain. These strikes, waged from coast to coast at nine warehouses across Amazon’s supply chain, are part of a nationwide movement to consolidate organizing at the logistics giant in the International Brotherhood of Teamsters (IBT). In 2022, the Teamsters launched a division to support organizing at Amazon. The union now represents 5,500 workers at the hulking JFK8 fulfillment center on Staten Island who formed the independent Amazon Labor Union over two years ago, voting in June to affiliate with the Teamsters, creating ALU-IBT Local 1. Amazon has refused to recognize the union and bargain a contract.
Remember, we the people have the power, not the corporations. They don’t exist without our labor, so they do all they can to separate us and bully us, but when we come together, we can force them to take us seriously.
Happy New Year! And welcome to our annual look back at the boldest, most surprising ways the world has changed for the better. This epic list is a treasure trove of hopeful facts, each linked to one of our stories from 2024. We hope it brings you joy and inspiration for the year ahead.
Just remember every year is a pastiche of good and bad events. And while its easy to focus on the bad, its also important to look at the good and what was achieved in the previous year.
Now for another musical interlude:
(Again, I’m just picking songs from my spotify at random)
A common characteristic of many of these disorders is a crippling fear of events that trigger exaggerated defensive responses. The result is that the sufferer is in a near constant state of terror that something awful has occurred, or is about to. Consequently, Trump is perpetually on guard against imaginary threats and lashes out with wild preemptive strikes against his perceived foes.
More evidence Trump has no idea what he is doing, which means we can stop him.
Progressive groups are preparing a concerted fightback against Donald Trump and Project 2025, the vast far-right policy plan, sponsored by the Heritage Foundation, which promises slashing reform to all areas of government when the president-elect returns to power next month. Skye Perryman, chief executive of Democracy Forward, a national legal organization, will help lead that fightback via Democracy 2025, a new coalition of “litigation, advocacy and policy groups” designed “to deploy swift legal defenses” – an effort informed by, but meant to be stronger than, the scramble Trump prompted in 2017, the year Democracy Forward formed
Like I said before, people are lining up to fight Trump on every level, and we gotta do our part too.
Anytime the Democrats lose an election, there is a lengthy post mortem. The moderates blame the progressives and the progressives blame the moderates. The entire exercise really makes no sense and is counter-productive. It makes us look weak. The reality is that Trump and the GOP barely won the election and they were lucky to win. The pivotal issue in the recent elections was inflation, and Biden and the Democrats were unfairly blamed for inflation. Mainstream economists and the San Francisco Reserve Board Bank found that Biden’s policies had only a negligible effect on inflation. Inflation was an incumbent killer around the world in 2024. 80% of incumbent parties lost and those that won, badly under performed. Voters in the U.S. and around the world are in a bad mood.
Its time we stop with the doomerism and the finger pointing and the bemoaning our fate, its time to stand up and fight, now more than ever.
No quote for this one, but I think you can figure out what the basic subject matter is.
Fossilized footprints in Saudi Arabia show human traffic on the cusp of a subsequent ice age.
Like carbon dating, scientists use isotopes and context clues to calculate the approximate age of fossils.
These human prints were surrounded by animals but not hunted animals, indicating humans were just thirsty.
Science is awesome, and not just when inventing new things, but when rediscovering our past.
Have another video:
Even though its a bit older (Johnson is in), but its still a sign of how fractured the GOP currently is.
And another video:
Makes me proud to be a New Yorker.
Anyway, that should do it for articles for this week: TIME FOR POKEMON!
And now of course we close with the cute corner.
And we’re done! See you next week.
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