Welcome!
Whether you’re a long-time Gnusie, a Gnubie, or a first-time visitor, come on in and get a positive slant on the news of the day, along with stories about the good things good people are doing at home and abroad, some inspiring music, and some laughs. But wait, there’s more! The Good News Roundup also boasts the very best comment section anywhere on the internet: thoughtful, witty, encouraging, and pie-free (more on that later).
Note: because I have a long day ahead and will need a few more hours of sleep after this roundup is published, I won’t be responding to comments until later in the day, and then my responses will probably be minimal. Just know that I thank each of you for stopping by and taking the time to read and comment.
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Let’s get things started by reminding ourselves yet again that That Thing squatting in the White House is no more than a pitiful toddler and is treated as such by his handlers:
Trump’s doctor tricked president into eating vegetables and kept ice cream out of reach
From Raw Story:
Former White House physician Dr. Ronny Jackson infamously declared “great genes” might allow President Donald Trump to live 200 years — but in reality he tried to trick his patient into losing weight.
Jackson, who’s now running for Congress in Texas, pressed Trump to lose 10 to 15 pounds and exercise more, but his proposal met resistance from the president, reported the New York Times.
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Jackson had planned to bring in an exercise bike or elliptical machine for the president to use at the White House, but that never happened and Trump — who reportedly hates vegetables — had gained four pounds by his next physical.
“The exercise stuff never took off as much as I wanted it to,” Jackson told the Times. “But we were working on his diet. We were making the ice cream less accessible, we were putting cauliflower into the mashed potatoes.”
And since this toddler is also a bully, it’s always good to be reminded that the way to handle a bully is to push back, hard. Here’s a delightful illustration of that – it was recently re-published by Raw Story but was originally published in Salon:
The night the Rolling Stones fired Donald Trump: Keith Richards once pulled a knife to get [him] out of Atlantic City venue
From Salon:
The final show [of the Rolling Stones’ 1989 “Steel Wheels” tour], at the Boardwalk Hall [in Atlantic City]..., aired on pay-per-view and — like the Miss America Pageant, also held at the Hall — was to be sponsored by the adjacent Trump Plaza Hotel and Casino.
Even in the late-‘80s, however, The Stones didn’t want to be associated with Trump. So they cut a deal with him, stipulating he wouldn’t be involved in any promotional capacity outside of Atlantic City and, amazingly, wouldn’t be allowed at the show itself.
Michael Cohl, the tour promoter, discovered on the night of the show that Trump was giving a press conference in one of the rooms assigned to the Stones. He rushed over to tell Trump to quit it, went back to the dressing room, and quickly got word that Trump was back at the mic. Cohl again told him to leave.
Again to the dressing room. Again word that Trump is promoting. This time guitarist Keith Richards offered his help:
“Keith pulls out his knife and slams it on the table and says, ‘What the hell do I have you for? Do I have to go over there and fire him myself? One of us is leaving the building – either him, or us.’”
“One of two things is going to happen,” Cohl told Trump. “You’re going to leave the building and, at 6:40, The Rolling Stones are going to speak on CBS News, or you’re not going to leave the building and I’m going to go on and do an interview to explain to the world why the pay-per-view was canceled.”
Then, while literally telling Donald Trump “You’re fired,” Cohl noticed Trump’s “three shtarkers* he’s with, in trench coats, two of them are putting on gloves and the other one is putting on brass knuckles.”
Cohl signaled his head of security, who “got 40 of the crew with tire irons and hockey sticks and screwdrivers,” effectively sending off Trump and his goons.
“And that was the night I fired Donald Trump,” Cohl concluded.
*Shtarker means big tough guy or goon in Yiddish.
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[2thanks mentioned yesterday that we Gnusies might want to have a stated policy regarding pie throwing. I already had the following in today’s roundup.]
Today is Ash Wednesday, the beginning of Lent, so I suggest that everyone here take a vow to give up pie. No, not delicious, buttery, flaky pastry (we need all the comfort food we can get these days!) – this kind of pie:
The Good News Roundup is a no-pie-throwing zone, therefore I’m avoiding stories about specific candidates, since those tend to make one’s pie-throwing arm itchy for action. Feel free to weigh in on any topic you choose in the comments, but please do so tactfully, especially if you’re responding to someone else’s comment. (End of Miss Manners’ lecture.)
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Now on to the news, starting with some local stories.
Good news from Portland
You may remember this story about the U.S. Bank employee who was fired for breaking the rules after she gave a bank customer $20 out of her own wallet when his account was blocked and he was stuck in his car without gas on Christmas Eve. Here’s the cheerful conclusion to the story:
Good Samaritan fired from U.S. Bank gets new job with credit union
From The Oregonian:
The Portland woman who was fired from her job with U.S. Bank after a Christmas Eve act of kindness has been hired by a credit union that created a job especially for her.
Emily James will be joining Community First Credit Union in Santa Rosa, California, next month as a training supervisor.
“It was exactly what I wanted,” James said. “I want to be training, mentoring and helping others. I’ll be training new hires as well as doing follow-up training.”
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“We read about Emily getting fired for an act of kindness and humanity," said David Williams, chief marketing and human resource officer for Community First Credit Union, in a press release. "At the same time, we had an employee do a similar act of kindness. We gave her an award for it. Helpfulness is in our DNA, and we are convinced Emily has that same DNA.”
James will be moving to Santa Rosa – in California’s wine country – for her new position, along with her beloved dogs, HarleyQuinn and Domino.
“I did not get to go wine tasting, but it’s on my to-do list,” James said.
A Portland Software Engineer Is Bringing the Pay Phone Back, Minus the “Pay” Part
From Willamette Week:
To the degree that anyone remembers what it was like to use a payphone, Futel's public telephones look exactly like the devices people of a certain age used...
It's not until you get up close and read the fine print that it becomes clear these are not just machines some bankrupt telecom company forgot to take off the street a decade ago.
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The most important part is written in bigger letters: "NO COIN NEEDED FOR ANY CALLS."
Karl Anderson, a former software engineer, installed the first Futel phone five years ago, near the homeless camps along the Springwater Corridor. It was part art project, part act of subversion—democratizing communication in an era when it's taken for granted.
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Through grants, Anderson has expanded Futel to 10 booths in Portland, as well as Detroit and Ypsilanti, Mich., and Seaview, Wash., using hardware salvaged from Craigslist.
In addition to their most basic function, the phones also have special features. Some are political—one option offers to connect callers to the mayor's office, another to a random concentration camp along the U.S.-Mexico border. Others are social experiments: The Payphone Demultiplexer calls multiple payphones at once to see who picks up.
But the main draw, Anderson says, are the free person-to-person calls. Last year, 12,000 were placed through the Futel system.
And just because I can’t resist a Sondland story, here’s a local wit taking on the issue of the need to keep calling him “Ambassador” now that he isn’t. Sadly, the answer isn’t the one I wanted:
Do We Have to Keep Calling Him “Ambassador Gordon Sondland” Forever?
From Willamette Week:
Yep. Former ambassadors are entitled by the conventions of etiquette to retain their titles for life.
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Former ambassadors, like former generals, judges and many other officials, are entitled by the conventions of etiquette to retain their titles for life. To this day, parking attendants still address Henry Kissinger as "Mr. Secretary" (a revelation, I admit, [that] pales in comparison to the news that Kissinger is still alive).
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Good news from Oregon
I long for the day when voters all over the country have as easy a time voting as we do in Oregon. Hint: you’ll need a Democratic trifecta in your state, so get going electing Dem governors and state legislators!
Oregon Voters No Longer Have to Pay for Postage When Mailing in Their Ballots
From Willamette Week:
Voting in Oregon is easier than anywhere else in the United States.
That's not just a semi-factual superlative. Since 1988, when Oregon became a vote-by-mail state, casting a ballot has literally been as simple as mailing a letter, a process reflected in our voter turnout rate, which is consistently among the highest in the nation.
Then last year, Oregon eliminated the last excuse anyone could possibly have. In June 2019, the Legislature approved a bill codifying paid postage for ballots. Now, ballot return envelopes will include prepaid postage so voters don't need to take the extra step of finding and paying for a stamp.
The law, which went into effect in January, guarantees Oregonians can mail in ballots from anywhere in the country—without spending a penny.
Hair discrimination bill passes Oregon House
From The Oregonian:
A bill that would expand Oregon’s anti-discrimination protections gained momentum Wednesday when it passed on a split vote in the House of Representatives.
House Bill 4107, which outlaws discrimination based on a hairstyle historically associated with race, will now heads [sic] to the Senate.
The protections against hair discrimination, part of a nationwide movement, attracted widespread bipartisan support.
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Musical break
It has occurred to me that one of the things we’re seeing so far in the caucuses and primaries is that people are making their policy wishes very clear and that those policies are progressive. (More on that in the “Good news from around the nation” section that follows.) That put this song into my mind:
And because yesterday was Mardi Gras, because I love New Orleans, and because I love the Meters, here’s another take on the same theme:
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Good news from around the nation
Here is why Nevada Caucuses prove Medicare for All is ‘hugely popular and the winning position’ in 2020
From Raw Story:
Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) is the projected winner of Saturday’s Nevada Caucuses — and Medicare for All may have helped him pull it off.
NBC News reporter Sahil Kapur noted support for the program in entrance polls:
“NBC News entrance polls of Democrats on Medicare for All: 57-38% support in Iowa, 58-37% support in New Hampshire, 62-35% support in Nevada.
Maybe the candidates who staked their primary campaigns on opposing Medicare for All miscalculated.”
Former health insurance executive Wendell Potter argued that the results show that single-payer health insurance is “the winning position for Democrats. ...Entrance polls out of Nevada show 6 in 10 want a single-payer system. Entrance & exit polls from Iowa & New Hampshire found 6 in 10 voters in both states support Medicare for All. All this after millions were spent by my old industry trying to scare voters away from it.”
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MSNBC’s Chris Jansing also noticed support for Medicare for All:
“Fascinating - I asked many @SenSanders supporters about their unions’ concern about Medicare for All. They told me yes, they have good insurance now but what if they lose their jobs? And they have friends and family w/o jobs (NV jobless rate is higher than national average)”
If the name Wendell Potter rings a bell, it’s because he wrote a kick-ass opinion piece in the NY Times on January 14th, How the Health Insurance Industry (and I) Invented the ‘Choice’ Talking Point. Here are the opening few paragraphs. The piece is well worth reading in full so you can learn to counter the “choice” arguments:
There’s a dangerous talking point being repeated in the Democratic primary for president that could affect the survival of millions of people, and the finances of even more. This is partly my fault.
When the candidates discuss health care, you’re bound to hear some of them talk about consumer “choice.” If the nation adopts systemic health reform, this idea goes, it would restrict the ability of Americans to choose their plans or doctors, or have a say in their care.
It’s a good little talking point, in that it makes the idea of changing the current system sound scary and limiting. The problem? It’s a P.R. concoction. And right now, somewhere in their plush corporate offices, some health care industry executives are probably beside themselves with glee, drinking a toast to their public relations triumph.
I should know: I was one of them.
Texas Is The Next Battleground For The Green New Deal
From HuffPost:
Sunrise Movement is pulling back from the presidential contest and redirecting its efforts toward a trio of March 3 congressional primaries in Texas, hoping a victory in the oil and gas industry’s mecca will add momentum to the two-year-old Green New Deal movement.
... in the coming weeks, Sunrise Movement is sending its army of canvassers to knock on doors in support of [Heidi] Sloan [who is running against Republican Rep. Roger Williams], Democratic Rep. Henry Cuellar’s left-wing challenger Jessica Cisneros and Mike Siegel, the progressive Green New Dealer running against two other Democrats in the race to take on Rep. Michael McCaul (R-Texas).
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“For us, Texas is both the frontlines of the climate crisis and the extreme energy fossil-fuel industry,” Sunrise Movement’s political director Evan Weber told HuffPost by phone Thursday morning. “If we can show that running boldly on the Green New Deal without moderating or hedging is a path to victory for Democrats, we think it can transform the entire conversation in this nation.”
Despite continuing to argue that chlorpyrifos is safe, its major manufacturer has been forced by regulations in California and the EU to end production. There was a lot of public outrage over this toxic pesticide before the regulations were adopted, so this is a great example of the power of the people to force mega-corporations to change:
Corteva to stop making pesticide linked to kids' health problems
From Reuters:
Corteva Inc will stop producing the agricultural pesticide chlorpyrifos by the end of the year, the company said on Thursday, removing the world’s largest manufacturer of a chemical that has been linked to low birth weight, reduced IQ and attention disorders in children.
Corteva, spun off last year after a merger of Dow Chemical and Dupont, said declining sales drove its decision to end production and officials continue to believe chlorpyrifos is safe.
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Environmental groups have pushed regulators to ban uses of the 55-year-old pesticide over concerns it harms people and wildlife. ...In the U.S., Corteva’s biggest market for chlorpyrifos, demand is less than 20% of what it was during its peak in the 1990s, the company said.
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Corteva, which sells chlorpyrifos under the Lorsban brand, faces competition from generic versions. Farmers seeking to fight insects have also turned to other chemicals, genetically engineered crops and seeds coated with pesticides.
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Good news from around the world
Scorched Australia is Getting Power Back Thanks to New Solar Grids Funded by Philanthropist Couple
From Good News Network:
Since the bushfires and flooding across southern Australia have left dozens of communities without power, several tech companies have begun installing solar panels and electrical grids with astonishing speed thanks to a philanthropist couple.
Mike and Annie Cannon-Brookes have donated $12 million towards the creation of the Resilient Energy Collective—a coalition dedicated to setting up sustainable microgrids across Australia.
The collective, which utilizes electrical batteries from Tesla and solar systems from 5B, has already deployed two clean energy grids for rural sites in New South Wales and Victoria. Prior to their installation, firefighters and locals had been depending on diesel generators for electricity during the bushfire season. In addition to these generators being particularly costly and high-maintenance, they also emit large amounts of pollutants.
The collective is now working with energy providers across the country to prioritize 100 more sites for microgrid installation.
Climate education added to national curriculum in Italy
From Positive News:
Italy will become the world’s first country to introduce mandatory climate education in state schools
Public schools in Italy will soon be required to offer one hour of climate-related lessons per week. The move, which will come into effect in September, makes Italy the world’s first country to introduce mandatory climate education in state schools. Subjects such as physics and geography will also be taught from a sustainability angle.
The Italian education minister, Lorenzo Fioramonti, said he wants the country’s education system to place “the environment and society at the core of everything we learn in school”.
This is a sweet story, especially since the project makes a special point of engaging local communities to find out exactly what they want. More nonprofits need to start thinking that way: ideas should rise up from the grassroots, not be imposed from the top down. (Lookin’ at you, consultants!)
Good apples: how orchards are uniting urban communities
From Positive News:
The Orchard Project helps to bring communities together with fruit trees and cider
The Orchard Project [is] a charity that works with urban communities around the UK to plant and restore fruit trees in cities.
Since launching 10 years ago, the Orchard Project has planted or restored more than 400 orchards around the UK. The Local Fox cider helps fund its work among urban communities. It began as a food security project, however the benefits go far beyond that, chief executive Kath Rosen told Positive News; orchards have a strong impact on community cohesion and people’s wellbeing.
Apple and pear trees are the orchard staples, but the project plants everything from cherries and plums to mulberries and even avocados. ...
The organisation works with communities for several months before planting even begins, finding out what local people want from their orchard. “Those trees are going to be there for 100 years so you want to make sure they’re going to engage people in that area,” Rosen said.
European Space Agency to launch world’s first space clean-up
From Positive News:
The European Space Agency (ESA) has announced plans to launch the first ever space mission to remove debris
Dubbed ClearSpace-1, the expedition is planned for 2025 and aims to collect a single piece of space rubbish, called the Vespa, which was left in orbit in 2013. It is hoped that this mission could pave the way for space clean-ups on a larger scale.
“The space debris issue is more pressing than ever before,” said Luc Piguet, one of the researchers working on the mission. “Today we have nearly 2,000 live satellites in space and more than 3,000 failed ones.”
ESA director general, Jan Wörner, described the number of failed satellites floating in space as “dangerous”. “It cannot be allowed to continue,” he said.
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News about animals
This is really great news for many reasons, but my first thought was that it might be a ray of hope for endangered pangolins, fascinating and gentle creatures that have been under siege for a long time because their scales are believed by ignorant people to be medicinal.
China Bans Wildlife Trade Permanently Due To The Coronavirus Outbreak
From World Animal News:
Yesterday, The National People’s Congress Standing Committee in China declared an immediate and “comprehensive” ban on the trade and consumption of wild animals, as it is suspected to be responsible for the devastating coronavirus epidemic ...
The decision stipulates that the illegal consumption and trade of wildlife will be “severely punished,” as will hunting, trading or transporting wild animals for the purpose of consumption.
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The announcement came amid rising speculation that the deadly coronavirus arose within a market in the city of Wuhan that was illegally selling wildlife. The cramped, highly unsanitary, cruel conditions under which wild animals are illegally traded and sold for human consumption is known to create the ideal conditions for viruses to mutate into particularly virulent forms, with the potential to cross the species barrier to humans, sometimes with fatal consequences.
Experts with the World Health Organization first believed that the new coronavirus came from the consumption of bats, but it is now suspected that the consumption of critically endangered pangolins may be the source.
How did this rare pink manta get its color?
From National Geographic:
“I had no idea there were pink mantas in the world, so I was confused and thought my strobes were broken or doing something weird,” says Laine, whose photographs posted on Instagram this week have gone viral. Laine later realized he’d spotted an 11-foot male reef manta ray named after Inspector Clouseau, the bumbling detective of the Pink Panther movies. The fish, who cruises the waters around Lady Elliot Island, is the only known pink manta ray in the world.
First spotted in 2015, Inspector Clouseau has been seen fewer than 10 times since.
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Scientists with the Australian research group Project Manta, who study the rosy ray, have confirmed its color to be real. At first, they theorized Inspector Clouseau’s color was the result of a skin infection or diet, similar to how pink flamingos get their color from eating tiny crustaceans. But in 2016, Project Manta researcher Amelia Armstrong took a small skin biopsy from the famous animal, and their resulting analyses ruled out diet and infection as the cause.
Now, Project Manta’s leading theory is that the manta has a genetic mutation in its expression of melanin, or pigment...
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A couple of silly laughs
One of my husband’s friends, a fellow musician, likes to send him funny stuff. These two t-shirts made me laugh:
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Spring is springing in my neighborhood
Here are some photos from recent walks I’ve taken around my neighborhood with our dog. If spring hasn’t quite reached your neighborhood yet, be of good cheer – it’s on the way!
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Hot lynx
www.goodnewsnetwork.org/… Newly-Discovered Bacteria That Gobbles Up Pollutants Could Have a ‘Big Impact on Climate Change’
www.nationalgeographic.com/… Why combining diversity with STEM is a good thing for kids – Wildlife biologist and mom Rae Wynn-Grant talks about the importance of diversity in STEM—and how parents can embrace it for their children.
www.goodnewsnetwork.org/… Scientists Demonstrate Success of a Possible ‘EpiPen’ to Prevent Paralysis From Spinal Cord Injuries
www.positive.news/… Subvert the advert: making the advertising industry more sustainable – Ethical advertising? Some folks in Britain are trying to encourage that.
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And here’s some closing music to remind us that we have the power to create the change we want.
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Thanks to each and every Gnusie for your smarts, your hearts, and your faithful attendance at our daily Gathering of the Herd.
❤️💙 RESIST, PERSIST, REBUILD, REJOICE!💙❤️