Welcome 😄 to Friday’s Roundup of Good News!
This Friday’s GNR is dedicated to the late, great Elijah Cummings, whose funeral is being held in Baltimore today. Cummings died last week and his body lay in state in the Statuary Hall in the Capitol on Thursday.
I was surprised by his death last week. I had not even known he was ill, and I expected to read some report that he had died of a sudden heart attack. But that was incorrect. He died of “longstanding health issues” and was even in hospice when he passed. “Longstanding” means that he must have been working through many periods of illness — persisting despite them.
When Cummings was at the deathbed of his mother (both his parents had been sharecroppers, that usually cruel system) she told him to stop them from taking away their vote.
Cummings worked for justice and mercy his entire life. He helped integrate a public swimming pool when he was only 11. You may have read how he signed subpoenas on his last day of life, working to bring justice and mercy to young people with rare diseases, being targeted by Trump’s cruel policies.
This is Cummings’ first speech as a congressman
And this is one of his last speeches, from sometime this year (Found in Newsweek)
"I'm begging the American people to pay attention to what is going on," Cummings said after the testimony in a press conference with other House Democratic leaders. "Because if you want to have a democracy intact for your children and your children's children and generations yet unborn, we have got to guard against this moment. This is our watch."
Despite the political disagreements that Cummings had with the Republicans, many of them respected and liked him. Cummings also had an irrepressible joie de vivre — I remember a video where he took a few dance steps. But he never stopped working for justice and for mercy.
Elijah Cummings showed us how to live, and he has shown us how to die. May he rest in peace, and dance with the angels.
This is is now our watch.
Regular Scheduled Programming
Some people can’t always find the Good News Roundup, especially if they don’t get to it until later in the day. By following me and the other GNR writers, you will find it in your activity stream.
No one here is naïve; we are aware of the very bad stuff that is happening. 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. We have to keep demoralizing them. Name, blame and shame! IT IS WORKING! WE HAVE EVIDENCE THAT THEY ARE 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.
💙 Toxic 🍄 Trump Matters 👎 & Russia, Russia, Russia 🐻
Italy refuses to play along with the create a conspiracy theory game (Talking Points Memo)
Italian Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte punctured Attorney General Bill Barr’s global dirt-digging mission, reportedly telling him that Italy did not play a role in the origins of the Trump-Russia investigation.
Conte told reporters in Rome on Wednesday that his intelligence agencies had told Barr “that our intelligence is unrelated to the affair.”
“Our intelligence is completely unrelated to the so-called Russiagate and that has been made clear,” he also said.
What the hell is wrong with Barr?
And now we know:
Which we know is garbage. In other words, they’re going to harass CIA agents and go after Trump’s enemies. OK, bad, maybe it doesn’t belong in the GNR.
The Senate Democrats are telling Barr to recuse himself from this. They don’t expect him to do that, but it’s important to get it on the record. Sorry I don’t have a link; I was listening to the news, and it’s not yet available at MSNBC.
It’s back to my-lawyer-needs-a-lawyer time…
It’s a bad time to be a Trump lawyer. It’s always been a bad time to be a Trump lawyer, but these times are especially sucky. You payin’ attention, Barr?
The Taylor testimony was very bad for Trump The New Yorker
Taylor’s testimony on Tuesday was so effective that Trump had virtually no response to it after it leaked. All he could muster was a tweet quoting a Republican congressman who went on Fox News to claim that there couldn’t have been a quid pro quo because the Ukrainian government didn’t know that U.S. aid was being withheld. That crackpot theory was about as persuasive as the statement that Matthew Whitaker, the former interim Attorney General, made to Fox’s Laura Ingraham: “Abuse of power is not a crime.” On Wednesday, the Times reported that, as Giuliani and others urged Zelensky to investigate the Bidens, top officials in Ukraine were, in fact, well aware that the three hundred and ninety-one million dollars in military assistance was being held back by the White House.
Trump and his supporters are rattled, and for good reason. If this were an ordinary criminal trial, the lawyers for the defendant would be getting on the phone with the prosecutors and opening negotiations about a plea bargain. The Democrats aren’t open to offers, though. With witnesses like Taylor and Yovanovitch ready to be called on again in public hearings, and with even John Thune, the second-ranking Republican in the Senate, acknowledging that the picture presented so far “isn’t a good one,” Democrats are starting to sense they could be on to a winner.
Now on to the SCIF crashers … it was planned, and Trump was pleased
So you can say that 42 Rs broke the law thanks to Trump’s encouragement. But you know what we can also say? We can say that 197 — 42 = 153 Republicans in the House decided not to break the law.
Even the Russians despise the GOP!
Which means their opinion of Trump has to be really lousy.
And Trump keeps whining that he wants to hear from the whistleblower. I loved this:
🐊 Draining the Swamp 🐊
Tuesday evening, Maddow had some interesting things to say about that memo over at the Department of Justice that claims the president cannot be indicted. This is from the the transcript:
But beyond that, the other thing to really listen for is that this ruling against Trump that is being appealed tomorrow, it not only smacks down the president for this incredible executive overreach in terms of what he says he can get away with, it also basically dismantles the internal memos at the Justice Department that say that is a president can`t be indicted. I mean, the president`s lawyers and Attorney General William Barr basically hinge their case that the president can`t be investigated on these internal Justice Department memos which, in fact, say that a president can`t be indicted. These are the same memos that supposedly constrained Robert Mueller from recommending any charges against president Trump in his report, right? So that the DOJ policy that a president can`t be charged.
Well, the judge in this case that smacked down Trump for trying to say that he is immune from any investigation, the judge in this case in this ruling also says those Justice Department memos shouldn`t be seen as having, quote, substantial legal force. It says those memos, quote, do not constitute authoritative judicial interpretation of the Constitution concerning these issues.
The ruling says those DOJ memos are, quote, flawed by ambiguities if not outright conflicts. The ruling says that in short, quote, the court rejects the Justice Department memos` position. By which the justice means specifically that this ruling rejects the position those memos take, which is the position that a president can`t be criminally charged while in office.
That whole idea that we have that the president can`t be indicted, that comes from those DOJ memos, part of this ruling that is being appealed tomorrow is a ruling that says actually those DOJ memos shouldn`t be enforced here. There shouldn`t be a rule that says the president can`t be indicted. That`s crazy. That`s what that fight is going to be about at the 2nd Circuit tomorrow.
Now, I don’t have perfect news in that this particular fight is over and that we won, but I wanted to let you know that it is being fought. I think it next goes to the Supreme Court.
I understand the point of the DoJ memo. If it didn’t exist, presidents could be forced to deal with all sorts of nuisance indictments. We can imagine what a hostile DoJ or Rs would have done to Obama if they could have.
Hooray for that opinion! May it have an impact.
And here’s what the New York Police Department has to say:
💙 Democrats Are Great 🌊
Republicans 🐘 Got Nothing 👎
Pelosi’s drug pricing bill passes committee and to be voted on by the House
The House Ways and Means Committee late Tuesday approved Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s drug pricing bill, sending the legislation to the full House floor for a vote expected before the end of this month.
The legislation, which passed three committees along partisan lines, has a high chance of approval in the House, where Democrats control the chamber with 234 seats versus 197 held by Republicans. The Education and Labor Committee and the Energy and Commerce Committee made few changes to the bill last week, despite Republican members expressing concerns that the legislation was rushed and dead on arrival in the Senate.
Of course, Rs don’t want to do anything about anything.
Rep. Kevin Brady, the top Republican on the Ways and Means Committee, criticized Pelosi’s plan, saying it was highly partisan, secretly written and has no chance of becoming law.
This is from Wedneday’s Deadline with Nicolle Wallace on MSNBC (sorry no link and I am paraphrasing). When they were discussing what the stupidest Rs did (storming the SCIF) one of her guests pointed out that the Rs are currently in awe of Nancy Pelosi and her political skills. Because she has them. And she’s awesome.
And approval of the Congress has gone up, thanks to more satisfaction among Democrats. And Pelosi is more popular too. Washington Post
Perhaps just as predictably, the impeachment inquiry has boosted Nancy Pelosi’s popularity. The figure below from Civiqs’ daily tracking polls shows that Nancy Pelosi’s favorability rating immediately jumped six percentage points after she announced the impeachment inquiry into President Trump, moving from 31 to 37 percent.
Weekly Economist/YouGov surveys have found a similar increase in Pelosi’s favorability rating among registered voters since the impeachment inquiry. Her favorability rating of 45 percent among registered voters in the firm’s latest survey was higher than in any survey since RealClearPolitics began cataloguing “Pelosi polls” in mid-2018.
What Trump opposes becomes more popular
All these results are consistent with what I’ve reported here at TMC in the past. For instance, Trump’s record unpopularity helped make Barack Obama and Muslims more popular during the 2016 campaign, while eroding support for his signature border wall.
And the Syrian debacle may finally lose Trump the support of some evangelicals
And the R Senators are tired of being attacked by Trump The Daily Beast
On Thursday, Senator Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) introduced a symbolic resolution condemning the Democrats’ impeachment inquiry as being inherently unfair and constitutionally problematic. Among other things, the non-binding bill called on the House to hold a vote to open an inquiry, to allow Trump to call witnesses, and to provide congressional Republicans the power to issue subpoenas and “participate fully” in all proceedings. ✂️
But his resolution appeared to only infuriate Trumpworld writ large as it demanded that the Senate Republicans hold public hearings and congressional investigations that placed the president’s domestic opponents under the microscope. ✂️
The friction between Senate Republicans and Trumpworld operatives could complicate an already extremely dicey situation for the White House as it tries to hold in line party members. Publicly, many GOP lawmakers in the Senate remain supportive of the president. But their declarations of support have become notably more cautious and few seemed willing to endorse the idea that they should be using their committees and offices to give Trump more cover.
BEYOND THE BELTWAY
Sisolak vows to root out crime in pot marketplace
LAS VEGAS (AP) — Nevada’s governor expressed outrage Friday and vowed to tighten control of the state’s lucrative legal marijuana marketplace in response to reports that a foreign national contributed to two top state political candidates last year in a bid to skirt rules to open a legal cannabis store.
Gov. Steve Sisolak declared in a statement that there has been “lack of oversight and inaction” of the recreational and medical pot industry by the state Marijuana Enforcement Division. He also said he is commissioning a multi-agency task force to “root out potential corruption or criminal influences in Nevada’s marijuana marketplace.”
The Democratic governor pointed to a federal indictment made public Thursday in New York alleging that a man identified as having “Russian roots” funneled $10,000 each to the Republican campaigns of Adam Laxalt and Wesley Duncan.
Oh, this is part of the Giuliani / Parnas / Fruman scandal. Oh, and Laxalt and Duncan both lost, so the money went up in smoke anyway.
Pritzker, Governor of Illinois, uses his own tax return to argue for more taxes
You might call it chutzpah. Gov. J.B. Pritzker is using the annual release of his income tax returns as ammunition in his campaign to get the state to adopt a graduated income tax.
Documents released today indicate Pritzker and his wife, M.K. Pritzker, had total income of $6.027 million last year. A total of $5.55 million of that was taxable, on which the Pritzkers paid federal income taxes of $1.882 million, a rate of 33.99 percent. His taxable state income was slightly higher, $6.182 million, with a total tax of $216,000. ✂️
Had the graduated income tax that Pritzker wants been in effect, his combined state bill (both his personal earnings and trust income) would have climbed an additional $2.8 million to $8.3 million this year, his campaign committee said in a statement.
Not all billionaires are bad! I guess this camel could go through the eye of a needle!
Hemp back in Michigan (michigan radio)
It’s been illegal for farmers in the United States to grow hemp since before World War II. But thanks to the 2018 Farm Bill, Congress has now lifted that restriction. Hemp grower Dave Crabill is vice president of iHemp Michigan. He explained what hemp is used for, the challenges that come with processing it, and why he thinks it has the potential to be a profitable crop for Michigan farmers.
I guess we don’t just get pot, we get rope!
Governor Evers (WI) calls for special session on gun control (WPR)
Democratic Gov. Tony Evers says Republican legislative leaders who oppose gun control bills that polls show enjoy broad public support are essentially telling the public to "go to hell."
Evers made the comment Monday after calling the Republican-controlled Legislature into a special session — which will take place Nov. 7 — to take up a pair of gun control measures that GOP leaders have been unwilling to debate. ✂️
The move Evers announced Monday doesn't force Republicans to debate or vote on the bills. But it does give Democrats another means to spotlight the issues that a Marquette University Law School poll in August showed more than 80 percent of the public support.
"This is what the majority of people want," Evers said. "Each and every day that elected officials chose not to take gun violence seriously, that’s a choice that has significant consequences."
Evers has also been working on climate change, creating a task force to work on it
So glad Wisconsin dumped Walker!
Because I’m currently in Arizona, my twitter feed is full of ads for my unelected senator, the “let’s get this fucking thing (destroy the ACA) done” Martha McSally (who used to be my representative, so I have even more reason to despise her). Usually when one pops up I reply or retweet with the comment “Republicans are putting babies in cages while letting ISIS terrorists go free” which I think makes a good point, and, you know, is actually true. But then I decided to check and see how others were reacting, and learned that out of 30 or so replies, only 2 were positive. Here’s one I like:
🐍 Schadenfreude 🍎
📣🏅 Let’s Honor Truth 🏅☀️
This week’s virtual medal goes to Bill Taylor, who we honor for his service and his testimony and the fact that he kept so many damned notes!
🌹 Let’s Celebrate Love ❤️
Sometimes good deeds are rewarded
The 21-year-old who made headlines around the world for single-handedly running a hotel and caring for its 90 guests trapped along with him during a flood was rewarded in big way by the city of Beaumont, Texas.
Homewood Suites employee Satchel Smith was honored with a proclamation for his heroics during tropical storm Imelda, which included answering phones, cooking, doing dishes, and washing laundry, during a solo shift that lasted over 32 hours.
The young man, who said he was “just doing his job,” also lost his car in the flooding—but, after his marathon of good work, city officials surprised him with a new one, a 2013 Honda Hybrid, during an event.
📎📎Odds & Ends 📎📎
Others around the world are fighting to end corruption. This is from Lebanon:
And Hong Kong
The notorious RBG receives $1 million award for being a great thinker (USA Today)
The 2019 Berggruen Prize for Philosophy & Culture is given annually to "thinkers whose ideas have profoundly shaped human self-understanding and advancement in a rapidly changing world."
Ginsburg, 86, who has served 26 years on the Supreme Court and survived four bouts with cancer, was chosen from more than 500 nominees, later winnowed down to five. She is the fourth recipient of the prize and the third woman.
The organization said Ginsburg will direct the prize money to charitable or non-profit organizations of her choice.
Alzheimers’ is a terrible way to go. But there may be hope (Good News Network)
There is currently no drug treatments on the market that can slow the progression of Alzheimer’s disease—but this new medication could soon be a groundbreaking treatment for dementia patients after researchers examined the data from the drug’s Phase 3 clinical trials.
This week, pharmaceutical company Biogen announced that—after consulting with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA)—they plan to pursue regulatory approval for aducanumab: an investigational treatment for early Alzheimer’s disease.
New analysis showed that aducanumab reduced clinical decline in patients with early Alzheimer’s disease as measured by the pre-specified clinical endpoints.
I think that instead of aducuanumab they ought to call it abracadbra — just as hard to spell, but much easier to say.
Mexican villagers are planting trees! (Good News Network)
With reforestation being hailed as one of the easiest natural strategies for combatting climate change, a team of Mexican conservationists are working to plant at least 5 million trees around their village.
Over 100 plantation workers from the southeast town of Constitución have been planting native saplings across the region.
Since they first began their mission in collaboration with Plant for the Planet back in 2016, the team has planted more than 500,000 trees in the area.
💙 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. However, given that we have taken back the House, the tactics moving forward need to be different. Indivisible has ideas to share.
Indivisible 2.0
This Guide is for what comes next. The 2016 Indivisible Guide was about using constituent power to defend our values, our neighbors, and our democracy. This Guide is about using our constituent power to go on offense.
Offense is exciting, but it’s more complex than defense. We have the opportunity to use congressional oversight to hold Trump and his cronies accountable. We can set the legislative agenda with a bold progressive vision rooted in inclusion, fairness, and justice. But none of this is automatic — we have to demand it of Congress.
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. Remember, a lot of them crossed over in the midterms! Get them to feel good about being blue.
You can share your ideas below.
🌻
🍀 “My experience has been that work is almost
always the best way to pull oneself out of the depths.” 🍀
Eleanor Roosevelt
🔥 If you’re going through hell, keep going! 🔥
Winston Churchill
🌹 🌹 🌹
TRUTH MATTERS. LOVE MATTERS.