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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: 2025-01-13
Welcome back to the Monday Good News Roundup, the time of the week when your GNR Newsroom (Myself, Killer300, Bhu, and the fine folks at the GNR Discord server) Collect all the good news to start your week off right. I don’t have much to say this week so lets get right to it.
First our first music selection for the week: Gotta get away by the Offspring
Welcome to 2025! The new year beckons. Experts, including The Progress Network Member Ian Bremmer, expect it to be one of geopolitical conflict, which seems like a safe bet. There are plenty of things to look forward to as well, however, and a handful of things that, as usual, no one will see coming. Below are three items that have caught our eye going into 2025. They are not sure bets for progress, but they have the potential for it.
None of us have a crystal ball, and even though the future seems a bit dire at the moment, I still believe that brighter future is just over the horizon.
It takes approximately 700,000 megawatt hours of electricity to power Chicago’s more than 400 municipal buildings every year. As of January 1, every single one of them — including 98 fire stations, two international airports, and two of the largest water treatment plants on the planet — is running on renewable energy, thanks largely to Illinois’ newest and largest solar farm. The move is projected to cut the carbon footprint of the country’s third-largest city by approximately 290,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide each year — the equivalent of taking 62,000 cars off the road, according to the city. Local decarbonization efforts like Chicago’s are taking on increasing significance as President-elect Donald Trump promises to reduce federal support for climate action. With the outgoing Biden administration doubling down on an international pledge to get the U.S. to net-zero emissions by 2050, cities, states, and private-sector players across the country will have to pick up the slack.
The future is an amazing place, glad to be living in it.
But Kamate had primarily come to Europe to deliver a petition to the German government. The petition had been started by activists in Germany in reaction to a major auction of oil reserves underway in the DRC. It called on German ministers to push the Congolese government into protecting their rainforests and peatlands from oil exploration. It attracted 65,000 signatures and birthed the Congo Basin Alliance, a new group focused on linking climate activists in Europe and Central Africa. Kamate ended up handing the petition to a representative of the German Foreign Minister, who told him that the German government was shocked by the Congolese oil auction, and that “they were working on ending it.”
When we come together and fight, we win.
The Democrats must be ready to leap when things go south. Regardless of whether we are able to stop him for the next two years, we have to be seen clearly as trying. This is the time for “we told you so.” We all have a role, but the heavy lifting will have to be done by the Democratic Party, its leaders and a new media ecosystem. Trump’s voters may not care that he is a convicted felon, but they will care when their lives are turned upside down. We have had terrible crises and malignant political environments in our history, but this is different. This is an attempt to complete the vision begun by the oligarchs of the Gilded Age. They were interrupted by the New Deal, the New Frontier and the Great Society, but were impeded by the absence of a totem. They have one now, and we must help him take himself down, for the sakes of ourselves and the tens of millions of Lori Mosuras.
Our moment will come, we just have to be ready to act upon it.
President-elect Donald Trump will face resistance every step of the way in his plan to reshape America in his image, just as he did last time, Lincoln Project co-founder Rick Wilson told Salon's Chauncey DeVega — and just as important, he will be his own demise. This comes as Trump's unified GOP government is already fraying at the edges before it has fully taken power in D.C., with House and Senate Republicans bickering with each other and Trump already triggering outrage for his praise of a far-right lawyer charged with felonies in multiple states for trying to overthrow the 2020 presidential election. While the failure to stop Trump from winning a second term was "disappointing," Wilson told DeVega, "This country remains very evenly split and Trump doesn’t have nearly the mandate that his minions are trying to portray." And "the end-of-the-year budget battle where Trump and Musk threw a wrench into the works at the last second without any regard for the consequences" shows just how hard a time they will have imposing their will on the country.
We already know Trump is a failure as a president, he was before, and he will be again.
The New Mexico Supreme Court on Thursday struck down abortion restrictions by conservative cities and counties at the request of the state attorney general.
Not much to this article, but you get the general idea. We wont go back.
x BREAKING — Supreme Court has denied Trump’s request to stay his New York criminal case sentencing in a 5-4 decision. Thomas, Gorsuch, Alito, Kavanaugh would have granted — Hugo Lowell (@hugolowell) January 10, 2025
A bad day for Trump in the Supreme Court (And when are we getting Bluesky embeds on this site?)
A Freelance Vigilante: A wilderness survival trainer spent years undercover, climbing the ranks of right-wing militias. He didn’t tell police or the FBI. He didn’t tell his family or friends.
A wilderness survival trainer spent years undercover, climbing the ranks of right-wing militias. He didn’t tell police or the FBI. He didn’t tell his family or friends. The Future of Militias: He penetrated a new generation of militia leaders, which included doctors and government attorneys. Experts say that militias could have a renaissance under Donald Trump.
He penetrated a new generation of militia leaders, which included doctors and government attorneys. Experts say that militias could have a renaissance under Donald Trump. A Secret Trove: He sent ProPublica a massive trove of documents. The conversations that he secretly recorded give a unique, startling window into the militia movement.
Now right here is a real American hero. This guy infiltrated right wing Militias to gather dirt on them, to expose them, sabotage them from within, and to sow mistrust and suspicion. This guy has my undying respect.
Republicans have had control of both the House and Senate for less than a week, and it's already a mess, with House Speaker Mike Johnson and Senate Majority Leader John Thune unable to agree on the path forward to passing Donald Trump's destructive agenda of cutting taxes for the rich, deporting a major swath of the nation’s workforce, and slashing the federal budget to levels that would require deep cuts to Social Security and Medicare. Thune wants to break Trump's agenda into two bills: one focusing on immigration and another on tax cuts and spending. Johnson wants one bill that encompasses everything. In a post on his Truth Social platform on Sunday, Trump said he wants "one powerful Bill” (unnecessary capitalization in the original). But shortly after saying he wants one bill, he told conservative radio propagandist Hugh Hewitt that he is not opposed to the two-bill strategy. “I’m open to either way as long as we get something passed as quickly as possible,” Trump told Hewitt.
These guys are already stumbling over themselves and they aren’t even running things yet.
What Trump is doing - like deer clashing antlers. The antlers have spikes on them and a deer could easily kill its opponent with a side swipe. But they never do deliberately, sometimes harm througho accidents Insteady htey ritually lock antlers and push. Trump's intimidation attempts of Canada, Greenland, Panama and Mexico are like this.
Seriously people need to stop paying attention to what this embarrassing idiot rambles on about.
Anyway, please enjoy this musical interlude. Great White- Lady Red Light
Bald eagles and ospreys have been removed from the New Jersey endangered species list following efforts spanning more than four decades to restore their populations in the state. Under the state's new Department of Environmental Protection rule, adopted Monday, the status of the bald eagle has changed from "endangered" to "special concern," and the osprey's status changed from "threatened" to "stable." The status upgrades are based on determinations that the populations of the birds of prey "have recovered to the point at which their survival in the state is no longer in jeopardy," according to a release by the NJDEP.
We need to take care of the animals we share this world with. They can’t affect change on the scale we can, they don’t understand stuff like deforestation and climate change, so we gotta look out for them.
On Monday, the Washington Post reported on the incoming administration’s tariff plans. It seems they have tempered the rhetoric of universal pain. Instead, tariffs will be targeted. Two weeks before Trump takes office, his aides are still discussing plans to impose import duties on goods from every country, the people said. But rather than apply tariffs to all imports, the current discussions center on imposing them only on certain sectors deemed critical to national or economic security — a shift that would jettison a key aspect of Trump’s campaign pledge, at least for now, said the people, who cautioned that no decisions have been finalized and that planning remains in flux.
Yeah Trump is a damn moron. But you all knew that.
President Joe Biden on Monday announced an executive action that will permanently ban future offshore oil and gas development in parts of the Atlantic and Pacific oceans in a way that could be especially difficult for the incoming Trump administration to undo. Biden’s executive action will ban new oil and gas leasing across 625 million acres of US ocean. The ban will prevent oil companies from leasing waters for new drilling along the entire East Coast, the eastern Gulf of Mexico, the coasts of Washington, Oregon and California, and portions of Alaska’s Northern Bering Sea.
One of the last good deeds Biden is doing right before his time as president is up. I hope history remembers him fondly. He really deserved better.
Yeah, Trump isn’t getting his first 100 days.
First, to keep in full view what I wrote earlier in “Is This What Democracy Looks Like?” – that Trump’s candidacy was only viable because the justices he appointed to the Supreme Court: (1) disabled the insurrection clause of the 14th Amendment (which should otherwise have barred him from holding office again) and (2) shielded him from standing trial before the election for trying to overturn the 2020 results or for hoarding classified documents (which would have kept his criminality in full view of the electorate, and possibly rendered his candidacy a non-starter due to a jail sentence or loss of support). In any other country, we would understand that as part of an autocratic takeover, not a democratic victory. Second, as this post will show, the results are best understood as a vote of no confidence in Democrats, not an embrace of Trump or MAGA.
There was a lot of arguing over how we lost in 2016. In 2024, its a lot more clear cut: Trump didn’t win, Harris just lost. Trump is still as unpopular as ever, its just people on our side stayed home. So keep that in mind, and plan for the future.
JAKARTA, Indonesia (AP) — Indonesia’s new government started an ambitious project on Monday to fight malnutrition by feeding nearly 90 million children and pregnant women that is expected to cost $28 billion through 2029, although critics question whether the program is affordable. The Free Nutritious Meal program delivers on a campaign promise by President Prabowo Subianto, who was elected last year to lead the nation, which has more than 282 million people and Southeast Asia’s largest economy. He said the program aims to fight the stunting of growth that afflicts 21.5% of Indonesian children younger than 5 and would raise the income of farmers.
In dark times, look for the helpers.
While everyone is focused on Letitia James’ request in court today, I will provide some analysis and also a very big piece of information that the corporate media is missing. But first: Donald’s nightmare number one Today was a blockbuster day for Letitia James and an awful one for Donald. And when I say awful, I truly mean one of the worst days in his life. Donald has already been found liable for fraud and is simply waiting for the judge to determine how much he will be forced to pay. Considering how rock solid New York’s case against him has been, Donald is screwed. When James first brought her fraud case against Donald alleging that he’d fraudulently inflated his property values—and also deflated them when it benefited him—she estimated that he and his company should be liable for at least $250 million in fines. As the trial proceeded, however, the extent of Donald’s “outrageous” fraud was revealed to be even greater than James initially thought. That culminated in James’ asking for Donald and the Trump Organization to be fined a $370 million for his "ill-gotten gains," plus interest - a staggering and historic number
Some days make me very proud to be a New Yorker. This is one of them.
We could be producing concrete that's 30 percent stronger by processing and adding charred coffee grounds to the mix, researchers in Australia discovered. Their clever recipe could solve multiple problems at the same time. Every year the world produces a staggering 10 billion kilograms (22 billion pounds) of coffee waste globally. Most ends up in landfills. "The disposal of organic waste poses an environmental challenge as it emits large amounts of greenhouse gases including methane and carbon dioxide, which contribute to climate change," explained RMIT University engineer Rajeev Roychand.
Pretty neat news to say the least, and a good place to stop on.
Now for our continuing look at the Pokemon Animated series, episode 3:
And now, some real cute critters.
And that does it for this week, see you all next time!
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