Welcome 😄 to Friday’s Roundup of Good News!
I still have been paying less attention than usual to the news. Again, I’ve been really busy with a couple of projects, and I spent most of the time without a functioning phone. We ordered my new phone the day after the mishap — shortly after I took it to the phone repair shop and they told me it wasn’t mostly dead, but completely dead — but the one that arrived Wednesday came with instructions that are only in Chinese. And the screen, when we turned it on, was only in Chinese. We found someone who reads Chinese, and changing the default language to English was trivial (apparently the instructions in Chinese were how to change it to English), but that meant I only got it late Thursday night.
So I was not able to listen to the shows I frequently listen to on the phone.
But that’s been OK. I have been aware on the witness “will-they? won’t-they?” dance of the Republicans, and although I have been pleasantly surprised that there has been any movement toward the “will-they?” side, I have not been getting my hopes up, and I don’t really care. I am completely disgusted with them. If any of them do the right thing, I will acknowledge it. However, the most important thing we can do is to work against these Republicans and vote in better people in November.
In the meantime, more information is coming out, if not in the Senate testimony, in other places and spaces.
And in the meantime, we are working to throw the bums out.
And, for those who vaguely recognize the quote, it’s from Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland. Here’s the first stanza of the Mock Turtle’s Song:
"Will you walk a little faster?" said a whiting to a snail,
"There's a porpoise close behind us, and he's treading on my tail.
See how eagerly the lobsters and the turtles all advance!
They are waiting on the shingle—will you come and join the dance?
Will you, won't you, will you, won't you, will you join the dance?
Will you, won't you, will you, won't you, won't you join the dance?
Regular Scheduled Programming
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 🐻
As more information comes out, we’re getting a better idea of just how widespread the corruption is.
For example, Lev Parnas has just begun to sing. He is singing to save his life, and we should never forget that he is a crook, with
There’s evidence that Parnas and Fruman met tRump before Giuliani
And Lindsey Graham
The Russian corruption certainly includes Rand Paul. Chief Justice Roberts does at least one good thing, protecting the whistleblower Talking Points Memo
Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts has blocked Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) from using questions at President Trump’s impeachment trial to reveal the name of a person thought to be the Ukraine whistleblower, Politico reports.
Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) reportedly composed questions which would expose the tipster’s identity.
But Roberts, who screened questions before being handed them on the Senate floor, reportedly blocked them from being read in public.
I sometimes think I must be the only person who doesn’t know the name of the whistleblower, and keeping it from me is silly, because I would honor him (I’m pretty sure it’s a him).
McCain knew Rand Paul was dirty:
This piece points out how tRump demands loyalty but inspires little Washington Post
The explosive disclosures in Bolton’s forthcoming memoir about his time in the White House — including his firsthand allegation that Trump directly tied the holdup of $391 million of military aid for Ukraine to investigations into a political rival — prompted cries of heresy and betrayal from Trump and his allies.
But the short gestation period — less than five months — between Bolton’s September exit from the administration to his damning book manuscript underscores an uncomfortable truth for Trump: For a president who demands absolute loyalty, he inspires strikingly little of the same, with former aides, advisers and associates turning on him with thrumming regularity.
They are, en masse, all the president’s disloyal men and women — an unofficial club that includes Rex Tillerson, Trump’s former secretary of state, Omarosa Manigault Newman, a former White House senior adviser, and Michael Cohen, the president’s former personal attorney and fixer now serving three years in federal prison for crimes committed while working for Trump.
Our side is out there protesting Daily Kos
In the meantime I believe tRump is losing his mind — literally:
There are more and more examples of when he literally cannot speak, often accompanied by a spasm of his body, especially his shoulders. Normally I would have some sympathy, but in this case I don’t.
🐊 Draining the Swamp 🐊
Netanyahu formally indicted after removing immunity request the Guardian
The Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, has been formally indicted in court on corruption charges after he withdrew his request for parliamentary immunity from prosecution.
Netanyahu was in Washington for meetings with the US president, Donald Trump, ahead of the release of the long-delayed Israeli-Palestinian peace plan when Israel’s attorney general filed the charges in a Jerusalem court.
The attempt to obtain immunity seemed doomed to fail from the start since Netanyahu, who denies any wrongdoing, lacked sufficient votes in the legislature for approval.
Basically, Netanyahu’s not asking for immunity because he knew he would be denied, not because he believes that everyone should be accountable to the law.
💙 Democrats Are Great 🌊
Republicans 🐘 Got Nothing 👎
House GOP leaders warn of fundraising crisis Politico
House Republican leaders privately conceded in a closed meeting Tuesday morning that they are in the midst of a full-blown fundraising crisis, which would imperil any chance they have at regaining their majority in 2020.
House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) put it bluntly: "They are kicking our ass," he said, in a meeting at the Capitol Hill Club, the private GOP haunt around the corner from the Capitol, referring to Democrats.
Indeed, McCarthy is right. The DCCC outraised the NRCC by $40 million in 2019, and individual Democratic candidates are besting their GOP opponents at an alarming rate. Democrats currently hold a 35-seat majority in the House, and there are five vacancies. The Congressional Leadership Fund, a House GOP-aligned super PAC, raised $32.6 million in 2019, and has a $28-million cash stash.
The disparity is even more shocking because the NRCC had a record off-year fundraising haul, but the DCCC has proven much more prolific.
So the NRCC did well, but the DCCC did fantastic. We’re ready to crawl over broken glass.
At least, whatever happens, we have made them have to work for it.
And I enjoyed this:
Democrats aren’t just about winning; they’re about doing: House votes to repeal Iraq war authorization Daily Kos
The House of Representatives passed two Democratic amendments Thursday designed to constrain presidential war-making authority. One, introduced by Rep. Barbara Lee, would repeal the 2002 Iraq Authorization for the Use of Military Force that the Trump regime most recently leaned on for its authority to assassinate Iranian Maj. Gen. Qassem Soleimani. That amendment passed 236-166. The other, introduced by Lee’s fellow Californian Rep. Ro Khanna, would require a president to obtain congressional approval for any offensive use of force against Iran. It passed 228-175. Both were attached to a noncontroversial World War II medals bill, H.R. 550.
Donald Trump vowed a veto on Monday. But on Wednesday, on Twitter, he mixed his messages by urging House members to vote their conscience. Passage of the legislation in the Republican-controlled Senate seems unlikely, though not impossible. Majority Leader Mitch McConnell could simply ignore the legislation, tossing it into the pile of nearly 300 bills the House has passed since January 2019 that he has held back from consideration.
BEYOND THE BELTWAY
New Jersey to be first state to require building permits to consider the climate crisis Ecowatch
Gov. Phil Murphy announced the new regulations Monday as part of the final version of the state's master energy plan, which commits New Jersey to achieving 50 percent clean energy by 2030 and 100 percent by 2050, according to NJ Advance Media. But while The New York Times pointed out that other states have adopted a 2050 100 percent renewable energy goal, New Jersey will be the first to require that projects seeking Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) permits consider both how their projects' emissions will contribute to global warming and how climate change will impact their building plans.
"This is a big deal," director of the water and climate team at the Natural Resources Defense Council Rob Moore told The New York Times. "For New Jersey to step to the forefront and say, 'We're going to look at future climate impacts, and that it's going to be a driver of our decision-making' — that's exactly what all 50 states need to be doing."
AZ Rs lose in ruling The Guardian
A federal court has ruled Arizona Republicans’ ban on mail-in ballots is illegal and unconstitutional, calling it intentionally discriminatory toward people of color, who already face increased barriers to voting.
The ruling is a major victory for the Democratic party, which filed the suit, and will likely make it easier for minorities to get their ballots counted in the largely red state.
Four years ago, Arizona Republicans made it a felony, punishable by prison time, for third-party groups to collect mail-in ballots during elections – a process often called “ballot harvesting.”
Marginalized communities in the state may rely more on ballot harvesting, the court noted. Native Americans, for example, benefit significantly from third-party ballot collection efforts because just 18% of registered voters have mail service at home, and reservations can be far from polling stations. Some minority communities also have widespread distrust in the mailing system: in San Luis, a city that is 98% Hispanic, a major highway separates 13,000 residents from the nearest post office.
🐍 Schadenfreude 🍎
I understand the “high winds” were a mere 37 mph.
The wall is a stupid idea anyway. This article from The Guardian describes a sophisticated tunnel linking the two countries.
More to enjoy:
The following guy is so awful that I almost didn’t include this story.
Sandy Hook creep arrested Wonkette
Since 2012, Florida man Wolfgang Halbig has been obsessed by the idea that the massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, was a hoax.
In pursuit of proving this, he has spent the last eight years harassing the parents and families involved, claiming they are lying, sending them pictures of what he believes to be their children, alive and well and in their teenage years. He harassed Jeremy Richman, the father of Sandy Hook victim Avielle Richman — whom he insisted was alive and even singing with the Sandy Hook school choir at the Super Bowl in 2013 — until Richman took his own life last year in Newtown's Edmond Town Hall. He has worked for Alex Jones at Infowars. He has been tapped by an NRA official seeking to prove that Parkland was a hoax.
And now he has been arrested for his harassment of Leonard Pozner, the father of Sandy Hook victim Noah Pozner, whom he has previously claimed is a fictional character. Specifically, Halbig has been arrested on charges of unlawful possession of personal information (Pozner's personal information to be exact)
📣🏅 Let’s Honor Truth 🏅☀️
Mary Louise Kelly v. a$$hole Mike Pompeo. The Week
After Kelly's interview with Pompeo, she told NPR on Friday, he called her into a separate room and "asked, 'Do you think Americans care about Ukraine?' He used the F-word in that sentence and many others." Kelly also said Pompeo made her point out Ukraine on an unlabeled map — she says she did; Pompeo, in his official response, snidely (and improbably) suggested she pointed to Bangladesh. Pompeo also accused Kelly of lying, though emails of her exchange with Pompeo's staff show Kelly was forthright and stayed within agreed-upon parameters.
Pompeo calling her a "liar" is "not what bothers me," Kelly wrote in an New York Times op-ed Tuesday. "It matters that people in positions of power — people charged with steering the foreign policy of entire nations — be held to account. The stakes are too high for their impulses and decisions not to be examined in as thoughtful and rigorous an interview as is possible. Journalists don't sit down with senior government officials in the service of scoring political points. We do it in the service of asking tough questions, on behalf of our fellow citizens. And then sharing the answers — or lack thereof — with the world."
Our journalists are often on the front line. We need to support them.
🌹 Let’s Celebrate Love ❤️
75 years after D-Day Daily Kos
Mississippian KT Robbins was a 24 year-old young man when he deployed to Europe in mid-1944.
He was there for the allied invasion….D Day….. and France was in the process of being liberated from Nazi subjugation.
He was in a company of bakers for the army, and he was sent to Briey, a town in northeastern France, where he was to spend four months before being sent ever east.
In his first week there, he was unloading mostly-empty 5-gallon buckets of lard from a truck, when he was approached by 18 year old Jeannine Ganaye and her two young siblings.
Speaking from the other side of the fence, she asked KT if they could have the containers.
“I asked them what they wanted them for, and they told me they planned to heat them up and get the last bits of lard out of them.
I said ‘Great you can have em all.’”
She started returning every day, and their relationship grew.
He asked a mate about the local woman that cleaned and washed his clothes, so he could get her to clean his as well. His mate introduced them...and within minutes he discovered that it was Jeannine’s mother.
The story is long, but really worth a read.
📎📎Odds & Ends 📎📎
On Friday the today will be yesterday, but it’s nice to see that Ifill is being honored.
Mexico monarch population the largest in over a decade Daily Kos
This year’s population count from the Mexican overwintering colonies increased 144% over last year.
This winter, researchers found the butterflies occupying 14.95 acres (6.05 hectares) of pine and fir forests in the mountains of Michoacan and Mexico states. That's an increase from 6.12 acres (2.48 hectares) a year ago.
They arrive in such numbers that their population is measured by how much surface area they cover.
This year's is the biggest measurement since the 2006-2007 period, Rhodes said. A low of just 1.66 acres (0.67 hectares) was recorded in 2013-2014.
Not all is good, however. A guy who took care of a monarch reserves has been found dead.
💙 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.