Good Day Good Newsies! Yes times have been tough. We here at the GNR have been addressing this on a daily basis. But as the writers here along with the contributors have pointed out, we have a lot of fight in us. I mean even Taylor Swift is on our side! Women are awesome, people of color are awesome, LGBTQ people are awesome! Do not let any of the news of a rethug surge since Kavasuck (stole that) was confirmed fool you. Polls fluctuate depending on the questions asked, the timing of them and who is doing the polling. We are still heading to a wave. We just need to keep up the momentum and never forget what this administration has done to women, the economy, the climate, immigrants, and heck just about anybody who is not white, male and rich. We have the power at the polls!
Onward
OK, I will definitely get to some news but a couple of items first.
This is a couple of days ago but I thought it was worth sharing in case you missed this:
Powerful, Privileged White Men Will Not Win Forever
This has been a week of tantrums. The last 10 days have been a picture of what it looks and feels like when white men in positions of power feel themselves threatened by a loss of the authority they feel entitled to.
We watched Brett Kavanaugh cry, lash out, bully and deflect in the face of sexual assault allegations because he wasn’t getting what he felt like he deserved. We watched Sen. Lindsey Graham put on an indignant performance of morality at the hearing on behalf of his friend, disfiguring his face like a gremlin and claiming that listening to a woman’s story, was “the most unethical sham since [he’s] been in politics.” We watched thousands of people at rallies cheer on a president who continues to produce a less ethnically aware and inclusive America.
But at the end of the day, all of the tantrums we’re seeing should be viewed as evidence that powerful white men can feel their power slipping away and are going to extremes to hold on to it. We who envision a more just America have the powers that be shook, and we may soon have them on the run if we can channel our anger and grief into action.
The social norms are being threatened and the privileged will cry and kick and scream and go to the extreme end to maintain dominance. But the more people they push to the margins, the stronger the marginalized become. If anything, the tantrums and whitelash from the privileged few are proving that maybe they’re too weak and immature to handle the upcoming fight and maybe the rule of patriarchal white supremacy is finally on its way to an end.
It is kind of a long read but well worth it.
I tell you, they want to bring us down but we just keep rising up:
‘Doctor Who’: The First Female Doctor Is a Gamechanger
In its five decades careening through the cosmos and the popular imagination, Doctor Who has given us plenty of philosophies to choose from: “Go forward in all your beliefs.” “There is no point in being grown up if you can’t be childish sometimes.” “We’re all stories in the end.” “Bananas are good.” But on yesterday’s Season 11 premiere, the latest incarnation of the time-traveling, galaxy-hopping, species-saving, face-changing Time Lord gave voice to what is perhaps the show’s most enduring philosophy: “We’re all capable of the most incredible change.”
As surely as the Doctor has two hearts, change is built into this show’s DNA. It has a lot to do with Doctor Who‘s enduring message of hope and progress, and even more to do with practicality: A show can go on indefinitely if its lead can change bodies whenever an actor decides to call it quits. In its 54-year history, 12 blokes have stepped into the role — four of them in the past 13 years alone, since the series’ 2005 resurrection. But no change has been more monumental, more timestream-shattering, than the decision to have the Doctor regenerate as a woman.
There comes a moment in every Doctor’s first episode when they take a stand against the bad guy, square their shoulders and declare: “I’m the Doctor.” It’s formulaic, but it’s thrilling; the mantra is both the establishment of a moniker and a mission statement, a superheroic call to fight injustice across time and space. And when Whittaker says it — wind-whipped and majestic in the charred remnants of a black coat tailored to an old body that no longer suited her — it sent a shiver up my spine. For the first time in half a century, women aren’t just in the passenger’s seat of the TARDIS. We’re the goddamn lords of time and space.
You know the rethugs can scream angry mob at us all they want. They can call us leftists, elitists and feminists, academics and celebrities, of Trump nemesis Michael Avenatti, philanthropist George Soros and Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.) (HT Joan McCarter) but you know what we have their number and they know it. They are grasping at straws at this point to rally their base, even as that base shrinks and shrinks. Please just keep pissing people off. It just helps us at the voting booth.
Oh Beto, won’t you be mine (bonus this is a pretty good BaHaHa):
Richard Linklater Directed a Brilliant Anti-Ted Cruz Ad
There’s aren’t many people who have advocated for Texas as artfully as Richard Linklater. From Dazed and Confused to Boyhood to Everybody Wants Some!!, his films have portrayed life in the state with the delicate touch of someone who truly understands it. Despite his success, he favors Austin over Hollywood, opting to live less than 200 miles from the Houston area where he was born and raised. His latest effort, “Tough as Texas” is just over 30 seconds and hit the web Monday night. It features one setting, a distinctly Texan coffee shop, and one character, a distinctly Texan man, who has a good laugh talking shit about someone he doesn’t deem very Texan at all: Ted Cruz.
This is far from the first time Linklater has been critical of Cruz. “Cruz to me is more scary than Trump,” he told The Guardian in April 2016. “He actually believes what he says. Trump doesn’t believe anything — he’s just a needy narcissist. Cruz is seen as the smart guy, but nobody’s asked him: ‘How old is the world?’ ‘Do you believe in biology?’ Because he doesn’t.” A few months earlier, he described the then-presidential candidate as “evil” and “calculating” in an interview with The Daily Beast. “Cruz is radioactive,” he said. “On closer inspection, I don’t think he has a chance.”
Let’s hope he is right!
Down to business, well it’s really not business but didn’t that sound professional?
Blah Blah Blah, cough, hack, cough again:
Nikki Haley makes her departure official as Trump says she made a 'glamorous' UN Ambassador
Donald Trump broken with his usual means of deposing of a cabinet member—dropping a note on their desks while they’re out of town and letting them find out by tweet—to have send UN Ambassador Nikki Haley out the door with a White House event. Haley gave a brief speech in which the most notable moments were likely her claim that she would support Trump in his 2020 effort, and her praise for the sadly unsung heroes of the Trump White House: Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump.
While Trump and Haley appeared chummy at the White House, with Trump offering Haley any role she wanted (and undoubtedly making Lindsey Graham sweat off screen), the timing of the announcement still struck many as odd. Both Trump and Haley were careful to mention that this was an idea that came to her some months ago, but Haley had been recently making changes in her staff and moving her people into new positions at the UN that seem odd for someone about to depart. This, and Haley’s vaunted ambition, have made some suspicious about her sudden need for more time at home.
I don’t buy that she will get a nice, bigly lobbying job. I think, as I have read around the interwebs, that orange aide will fire Sessions, replace him with Graham, and lady Haley will run for his seat. Time will tell.
You know you should never speak for your children:
How a mom’s “This Is My Son” anti-feminist brag went viral — and completely backfired
The downside to the age-old mantra “Never tweet” is that if we never tweeted, the internet would not occasionally reward us with amazing karmic justice — as it has in the case of the latest development on the #HimToo hashtag, the conversation around sexual assault, and the ill-advised tweet that inspired it all.
The uproar centered on a now-deleted tweet from a now-deleted user going by BlueStarNavyMom3, who made a post opining that her son was afraid to date in the #MeToo era. The apparently sincere tweet yielded not only one of the best overnight memes we’ve seen in a while but also a truly beautiful chaser, with the son in question showing up to gently disagree with his mom and deliver a win for feminism and people not being dicks to each other on the internet.
Not only is Pieter Hanson, proud Navy vet and cat dad, not a misogynist, he is a feminist ally with a sense of humor! He followed up this tweet with a highly respectable series of photos of his cats, and a plea to passersby to donate to cancer charities on behalf of his other brother, a cancer survivor.
Pieter’s Twitter debut served to change the course of his viral celebrity, turning him from an unfortunate symbol of an unfortunate counter-movement into an unexpectedly charming feminist ally.
You just have to read the whole thing. It is amazing! (Jeesh...I say that a lot)
A music break:
More good news:
New poll finds a 30-point gender gap going into the midterms
Democrats could be looking at an elections bump after the bitterly fought battle to confirm Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh — a bump propelled by women voters.
Nearly two-thirds of registered women voters polled by CNN said they were more likely to vote for Democrats this November: 63 percent voting for the Democratic candidate, compared to 33 percent who said they’re more likely to vote for the Republican.
The CNN poll paints a clear picture: Democrats’ higher numbers are being driven by women.
Tuesday’s poll paints a different picture. CNN found 62 percent of Democrats say they’re extremely or very enthusiastic to vote, a 7-point bump from September among Democrats and independents who lean Democratic.
GO WOMEN!!
Tick Tock, again:
The past 48 hours in Mueller investigation news, explained
New reports over the past two days have brought increased attention to three long-simmering subplots in special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation.
First, the Wall Street Journal revealed new details about GOP operative Peter W. Smith’s quest to obtain Hillary Clinton’s emails from Russian hackers during the 2016 campaign — including that he raised at least $100,000 for the effort and then pitched in $50,000 of his own money. (Smith was found dead last year, and local authorities ruled his death a suicide.
Second, the New Yorker revisited the question of mysterious online communications between a Russian bank and a domain tied to the Trump Organization. This topic came up during the campaign and was received skeptically, but now the New Yorker quotes experts who’ve reviewed the data and still suspect there’s something there.
Third, the New York Times revealed that an Israeli firm called Psy-Group pitched its “social media manipulation” services to Trump campaign aide Rick Gates in early 2016, but that Gates didn’t hire the firm. Mueller’s team has been investigating Psy-Group closely for months for reasons that are not entirely clear but seem to be about whether the firm did in fact do work on behalf of Trump’s campaign.
All three of these story lines could be quite consequential — or they could have relatively innocuous explanations. But as former Justice Department official Matthew Miller observed on Twitter, all this news should remind us of the staggering complexity of the Mueller investigation, and that there’s still so much we don’t know about what he’s found.
Read. The. Whole. Thing. Jeesh.
Progressives In Congress Are Creating A New Institution To Try To Steer Policy Into 2020
As a dozen or so Democratic presidential hopefuls prepare to make a play for the progressive mantle, an alliance of House progressives and outside groups is making a play to shape the policies and priorities that will define it.
Progressive Caucus chairman Rep. Mark Pocan, a Democrat from Wisconsin, and Rep. Pramila Jayapal, a Democrat from Washington state, will announce Tuesday the formation of the Congressional Progressive Caucus Center, an entity intended to build infrastructure to better unite the soon-to-increase number of progressive members of Congress with outside groups that support progressive issues.
The center’s goal is to help progressives “take advantage of this moment and the opportunity that’s out there, and kind of the hunger for a progressive agenda,” Jayapal told BuzzFeed News.
And then, as attention turns to 2020, the hope is that the center can “be the entity that’s initiating the ideas, and then the people who are running for president have to pick that up,” Pocan told BuzzFeed News.
“I think we want to make sure that candidates who run for president understand what the progressive agenda is, what the working families agenda is, if you will, and are really helping to elevate that, and are using the presidential platform to elevate that agenda and continue to build the movement,” said Jayapal.
Yes to this!
So a little animal break. I had to babysit my son’s dachshund this past week and let me tell you when you have two big dogs I surely thought that would be a heck a challenge:
They got along so well! Dang, I am a puppy NaNa.
This is from yesterday but still useful:
Today is your last day to register to vote in some states; confirm your registration in 30 seconds
Fill in this form and Vote Save America will tell you whether you are (still) registered to vote, a vital step in an age of rampant, illegal voter suppression.
The process takes 30 seconds. Here's instructions on registering to vote in every US state and territory.
Voting is our power!
Yuck, I guess they do not know what the Good News title means:
Good News: International Confidence in American Leadership Has Plummeted
I am not going to include the text here, just thought what the heck, do you guys understand good news?
Please follow and promote Yosef52 he has all the voter information you need. freewayblogger is also an amazing resource.
Well I posted this on other DK dairies, but I am going to post it again anyway:
I miss him greatly. But we all know what he would say:
“There are two basic motivating forces: fear and love. When we are afraid, we pull back from life. When we are in love, we open to all that life has to offer with passion, excitement, and acceptance”.
Now VOTE!
And share your own good news here!
Update:
Disgusting
Blah I should have left McTurtle out……………….