Welcome 🌻 to Friday’s Roundup of Good News!
Well, I enjoyed politics this last week. To my great surprise and relief, the government remained open, with the help of the Ds. But then the chaos caucus, which could not manage to shut down the government, removed their own Speaker — and again, the Ds were happy to help. Now there’s talk of expelling Matt Gaetz. If there’s a vote, again, the Ds will again step up to help.
It’s competence vs chaos. Just look at all President Biden is getting done, with drug negotiation and student debt relief. Tackling real problems instead of making stuff up and doing nothing.
Remember, Gnusville, Virginia and Ohio and several other places have important votes coming up. Help out if you can.
But pour yourself your preferred hot beverage and come in for the Friday GNR!
Regular Scheduled Programming
No one here is naïve; we are aware of the many who are fighting to destroy our country. 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. 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.
🗽 Biden as President! 🗽
Biden, Harris and their administration have been hard at work. Here are the last week’s posts at the White House briefing room.
- Thursday, October 5, 2023: Press Briefing by Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre
- Thursday, October 5, 2023: A Proclamation on National Manufacturing Day, 2023
- Thursday, October 5, 2023: Statement from White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre on the Visit of President Frank-Walter Steinmeier of Germany
- Thursday, October 5, 2023: FACT SHEET: Biden-Harris Administration to Kick Off Third Investing in America Tour, Tout Historic Investments Benefitting Communities Across the Country
- Thursday, October 5, 2023: Remarks by President Biden Before National Security Team Briefing on Ukraine
- Wednesday, October 4, 2023: Press Briefing by Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre
- Wednesday, October 4, 2023: Remarks by President Biden on the Administration’s Efforts to Cancel Student Debt and Support Students and Borrowers
- Wednesday, October 4, 2023: Nominations Sent to the Senate
- Wednesday, October 4, 2023: President Biden Names Thirty-Ninth Round of Judicial Nominees
- Wednesday, October 4, 2023: President Biden Announces an Additional $9 Billion in Student Debt Relief for 125,000 Americans
- Tuesday, October 3, 2023: Readout of President Biden’s Call with Amir Sheikh Tamim Bin Hamad Al-Thani of Qatar
- Tuesday, October 3, 2023: Readout of Meeting with Lin-Manuel Miranda and the Professional Non-Profit Theater Coalition on the Biden-Harris Administration’s Commitment to the Arts and Humanities
- Tuesday, October 3, 2023: Readout of National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan’s Meeting with Guatemalan President-elect Bernardo Arévalo
- Tuesday, October 3, 2023: Press Briefing by Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre and NSC Coordinator for Strategic Communications John Kirby
- Tuesday, October 3, 2023: Statement from Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre on the House Motion to Vacate
- Tuesday, October 3, 2023: Nomination Sent to the Senate
- Tuesday, October 3, 2023: President Biden Announces Hampton Dellinger as Nominee for Special Counsel, Office of the Special Counsel
- Tuesday, October 3, 2023: Readout of President Biden’s Call with President William Ruto of Kenya
- Tuesday, October 3, 2023: Readout of President Biden’s Call with Allies and Partners
- Tuesday, October 3, 2023: Biden-Harris Administration Takes Major Step Forward in Lowering Health Care Costs; Announces Manufacturers Participating in Drug Price Negotiation Program
- Monday, October 2, 2023: Remarks by President Biden to Celebrate the Americans With Disabilities Act
- Monday, October 2, 2023: Remarks by President Biden Before Cabinet Meeting
- Monday, October 2, 2023: Readout of National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan’s Call with National Security Advisor Sydney Mufamadi of South Africa
- Monday, October 2, 2023: Remarks by President Biden at a Campaign Reception | Atherton, CA
- Monday, October 2, 2023: Press Release: Bill Signed: S. 475
- Monday, October 2, 2023: Statement by National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan on UN Security Council Resolution Authorizing a Multinational Security Support Mission for Haiti
- Monday, October 2, 2023: Press Briefing by Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre
- Sunday, October 1, 2023: Remarks by President Biden on the Bipartisan Bill to Keep the Government Open
- Saturday, September 30, 2023: Message to the Congress on Designation of Funding as an Emergency Requirement in Accordance with Section 114(c) of division A of the Continuing Appropriations Act, 2024 and Other Extensions Act
- Saturday, September 30, 2023: Press Release: Bill Signed: H.R. 5860
- Saturday, September 30, 2023: Statement from President Joe Biden on Passage of the Bipartisan Bill to Keep the Government Open
- Saturday, September 30, 2023: June 2023 Visitor Logs Records Posted
- Saturday, September 30, 2023: Press Briefing by Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre and Office of Management and Budget Director Shalanda Young
- Friday, September 29, 2023: Readout of National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan’s Call with Prime Minister Kurti of Kosovo
- Friday, September 29, 2023: Statement from Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre on the Southern District of Ohio’s Decision on Medicare Drug Price Negotiation
- Friday, September 29, 2023: Memorandum on Presidential Determination with Respect to the Efforts of Foreign Governments Regarding Trafficking in Persons
- Friday, September 29, 2023: By the Numbers: Impacts of Extreme House Republicans’ 30% Cuts
- Friday, September 29, 2023: Statement by Vice President Kamala Harris on the Ninth Circuit’s Decision on Access to Emergency Health Care for Women
- Friday, September 29, 2023: FACT SHEET: The Biden-Harris Administration Advances Equity and Opportunity for Latino Communities Across the Country
- Friday, September 29, 2023: The White House Announces 2023 Fall Garden Tours
- Friday, September 29, 2023: A Proclamation on National Arts and Humanities Month, 2023
- Friday, September 29, 2023: A Proclamation on Child Health Day, 2023
- Friday, September 29, 2023: Remarks by President Biden at the Armed Forces Farewell Tribute in Honor of General Mark A. Milley | Joint Base Myer-Henderson Hall
- Friday, September 29, 2023: A Proclamation on National Community Policing Week, 2023
- Friday, September 29, 2023: A Proclamation on National Domestic Violence Awareness and Prevention Month, 2023
- Friday, September 29, 2023: A Proclamation on Cybersecurity Awareness Month, 2023
- Friday, September 29, 2023: A Proclamation on National Breast Cancer Awareness Month, 2023
- Friday, September 29, 2023:A Proclamation on National Disability Employment Awareness Month, 2023
- Friday, September 29, 2023: A Proclamation on National Clean Energy Action Month, 2023
- Friday, September 29, 2023: A Proclamation on National Youth Justice Action Month, 2023
- Friday, September 29, 2023: A Proclamation on National Youth Substance Use Prevention Month, 2023
- Friday, September 29, 2023: Executive Order on the Continuance of Certain Federal Advisory Committees and Amendments to Other Executive Orders
- Friday, September 29, 2023: A Proclamation on the Death of Dianne Feinstein
- Friday, September 29, 2023: Why We Must Invest in AANAPISIs
- Friday, September 29, 2023: Memorandum on Presidential Determination on Refugee Admissions for Fiscal Year 2024
- Friday, September 29, 2023: Statement by Vice President Kamala Harris on the Passing of Senator Dianne Feinstein
- Friday, September 29, 2023: Statement from Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre on House Republicans’ Extreme 30% Cuts
- Friday, September 29, 2023: A Proclamation on National Disability Employment Awareness Month, 2023
- Friday, September 29, 2023: A Proclamation on National Clean Energy Action Month, 2023
- Friday, September 29, 2023: A Proclamation on National Youth Justice Action Month, 2023
- Friday, September 29, 2023: A Proclamation on National Youth Substance Use Prevention Month, 2023
- Friday, September 29, 2023: Executive Order on the Continuance of Certain Federal Advisory Committees and Amendments to Other Executive Orders
- Friday, September 29, 2023: A Proclamation on the Death of Dianne Feinstein
- Friday, September 29, 2023: Why We Must Invest in AANAPISIs
- Friday, September 29, 2023: Memorandum on Presidential Determination on Refugee Admissions for Fiscal Year 2024
- Friday, September 29, 2023: Statement by Vice President Kamala Harris on the Passing of Senator Dianne Feinstein
- Friday, September 29, 2023: Statement from Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre on House Republicans’ Extreme 30% Cuts
- Friday, September 29, 2023: Statement from President Joe Biden on the Passing of Senator Dianne Feinstein
👎 Out with the Bad, In with the Good 👍
Kevin McCarthy is out. (I’m not linking, but you can still chortle)
Senator LaPhonza Butler is in. (Again, I’m not linking, but you can smile and nod with approval.)
The kids are all right. NC teenager rips the Rs for their gerrymandering. Walter Einenkel Daily Kos
🌵 Governor Hobbs in Arizona tells Saudis to go pound sand Stacey Barchenger AZ Central
Gov. Katie Hobbs' administration on Monday announced two steps to stop a controversial Saudi Arabian company from using groundwater beneath state land in western Arizona to grow and export alfalfa.
Hobbs said in a statement that the Arizona State Land Department had canceled one of its leases to Fondomonte Arizona, and would not renew three others that are set to expire in February. ✂️
“I’m not afraid to do what my predecessors refused to do — hold people accountable, maximize value for the state land trust, and protect Arizona’s water future,” Hobbs said in a statement. “It’s unacceptable that Fondomonte has continued to pump unchecked amounts of groundwater out of our state while in clear default on their lease."
While leases of state land carry penalties for early termination, the Governor's Office said the first Fondomonte lease was canceled because the company was in default on "numerous items," including failing to properly store fuel and diesel exhaust fluid. Fondomonte was given notice of those issues in November 2016, and nearly seven years later, a mid-August inspection showed the company had not fixed those problems, according to Hobbs' office.
tRump off the Forbes richest list Sky Palma Raw Story
Trump is now $300 million short to qualify for The Forbes 400 ranking of America’s richest people. According to Forbes, Trump has "relentlessly" lied to reporters for decades in his attempts to boost himself higher in the list.
"His net worth is down more than $600 million from a year ago. The biggest reason: Truth Social, his social-media business. Trump once envisioned a significant percentage of the country logging onto the platform," Forbes reported. "But that never happened. Roughly 6.5 million have signed up so far, about 1% of the total on X (né Twitter). Trump’s 90% stake in Truth Social’s parent company has plummeted in value from an estimated $730 million to less than $100 million."
Good news for Michael Cohen — tRump dismissed his lawsuit — likely because he did not want to be deposed.
💣 Republicans: Party of Crimes and Chaos 💣
Some weeks the heading for this section are more apt than ever. tRump is in court for fraud and has been gagged. And the Rs have ousted their own speaker.
What does this mean? They are weak. tRump was not strong enough to shut down the goverment. And the rest of the Rs were not strong enough for McCarthy to keep his job. Note, however, that only 8 voted to oust McCarthy, which means that 96% voted to keep him. These are people, I suspect, who don’t want tRump to be calling the shots.
But tRump is not one to go away quietly (see January 6, 2021). He will exert influence when he can, and although he may not have sufficient power to win elections at this point, he can make people lose them. Fingers crossed for Virginia! Oh, and to what you can to help Virginia.
Repulican dysfunction here to stay Dana Milibank, Washington Post
From the front row of the gallery, I heard gasps from the floor. And then, from the Republican side of the chamber, a lone woman’s voice: “Now what?”
Need to take care with those knives
McCarthy, whose only evident ideology as speaker had been personal ambition, has secured his place in history: the only speaker in U.S. history to be voted out by his peers. His chaotic nine months in the job was the shortest tenure since that of Michael C. Kerr in 1876, as the Bulwark’s Tim Miller pointed out. But Kerr’s speakership ended because he died of tuberculosis. McCarthy, by contrast, was knifed by his fellow Republicans. ✂️
No, he’s not. Gaetz, with his arched eyebrows and slicked back hair, looks the part of a cartoon villain. He’s more of a street thug than a legislator, and in his seven years in Congress, he has done nothing but tear things down.
But this street thug made quick work of McCarthy. As the clerk called the roll, the doomed speaker, sitting in the same seat he occupied during January’s 15 ballots, could be seen sitting silently, staring straight ahead.
It’s just a matter of time until Gaetz — and the many others like him — render McCarthy’s successor a failure, too. This is all they know how to do.
The incompetence of McCarthy Jennifer Rubin Washington Post
House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) wound up with the worst of all possible worlds. After indulging the shut-it-down MAGA caucus in bringing the government to the brink of a shutdown (thereby showing their dominance), he did an about-face (thereby demonstrating his fecklessness) and relied on votes from Democrats to keep the government operating (thereby proving only Democrats can govern). Meanwhile, he gave MAGA extremist Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) a pretense to file a motion to vacate, the first step in possibly replacing the hapless speaker. ✂️
So, we come back to advice from former House speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), whose political analysis is rarely wrong. She has counseled “against rushing to bail out a man whom she argues can’t be trusted, according to multiple Democrats who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe private conversations,” Politico reported. “Instead, she has counseled, Democrats should let Republicans deal with the drama themselves.”
If McCarthy had kept his word to President Biden, the Ds might have saved him. Or not. As one of the Ds said, he’s not our clown. I admit I have a wee bit of sympathy. McCarthy knew that working with Ds would cost him his position, and yet he did that to avoid the shutdown. Still, blaming the Ds for the near shutdown — which he did — stopped any of them from stepping forward to rescue him.
Most of the Rs REALLY HATE Matt Gaetz Evan Hurst, Wonkette
Last year, now-former Republican Rep. Madison Cawthorn learned the hard way what happens when you do something to make all your colleagues despise you more than they despise Democrats. He was free to call Volodymyr Zelenskyy a “thug” and be all other manners of garbage, but then he started sitting high and mighty like a perfect holier-than-thou Christian, casting judgment on all the Republican coke boner orgies he claimed Washington Republicans were always inviting him to, but which he declined to attend. ✂️
So the GOP, both nationally and back home, decided to take him down, and they did it with alarming efficiency, as we can see he is no longer in Congress.
Now everybody hates Matt Gaetz that much. They already hated him, everybody hated him. But after the stunt he’s now pulled, orchestrating the political end of their beloved Kevin McCarthy, they hate him a whole lot more. So we may be about to hear allllllll the stories they know about Matt, his jingle bells, who he shakes them at, and whatever other nasty-ass details there might be.
Markwayne Mullin, the senator from Oklahoma whose name sounds like he’s the lovechild of a serial killer and a youth pastor, shared a secret yesterday.
The claim: that Matt Gaetz would brag to his fellow congressmen about how he would just pound boner medicine and energy drinks, so he could fuck all night, bro!
Why did most GOP reps like McCarthy? The one thing he is good at is fundraising. And that’s important for these people. Here’s a piece about it Jake Lahut, The Daily Beast
For all his flaws, Kevin McCarthy fully earned his reputation for being, as one GOP operative put it, “a money fucking factory for Republicans.” ✂️
With McCarthy now relegated to the House Republican rank and file after his historic ouster from the speakership this week, the campaign cash void he leaves behind might be as concerning to Republicans as the literal power vacuum in the House. ✂️
As if House Republicans didn’t have enough of a challenge trying to defend an extremely narrow five seat majority and a less favorable landscape heading into 2024 after redistricting, cash has also been tight. After the National Republican Congressional Committee reported its lowest fundraising month since 2020, McCarthy infused $2.5 million to make up for the underperformance.
In a perfect encapsulation of how the chaos in the Capitol hurts the GOP’s campaign operation, the NRCC announced after McCarthy’s removal that it was postponing its fall fundraiser—scheduled for Oct. 12 in Dallas—where McCarthy was set to headline.
Look who is not good at raising money (de santis):
remember much of trump’s money will go to lawyers or he will steal it, so don’t worry about it.🌵 Kari Lake has filed to run for Senate in Arizona:
Kari Lake filed to run for Senate. I've heard from several people with knowledge that Trump DOES NOT support Lake. He sees her as anvil pulling the AZ GOP ticket down in 2024. Trump has asked others to run against her.
Note that the GOP Senators are not keen on her either. Khaleda Rahman, Newsweek
But Daines, chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, which is devoted to electing Republicans to the Senate, said the disappointing showing in last year's midterm elections shows voters aren't interested in rehashing the past.
In 2022, voters widely ejected Trump-backed candidates in battleground states, including Arizona, who had promoted the former president's false claims of fraud in the 2020 election.
Lake came pretty close to winning the governorship, but her behavior ever since has been really disgusting.
⚡️ Santos’ campaign finance director pleads guilty to fraud Daily Kos⚡️
🚚 💙 Democrats Deliver 💙 🚚
What does the White House have to say about the chaos in the House? Here’s their statement:
President Biden has demonstrated that he is always eager to work with both parties in Congress in good faith on behalf of the American people. Because the urgent challenges facing our nation will not wait, he hopes the House will quickly elect a Speaker. The American people deserve leadership that puts the issues affecting their lives front and center, as President Biden did today with more historic action to lower prescription drug prices. Once the House has met their responsibility to elect a Speaker, he looks forward to working together with them and with the Senate to address the American peoples’ priorities.
In the meantime, the Ds keep delivering for the American people!
President Biden on helping those with student debt White House Briefing Room
Now, turning to student debt relief. When I ran for President, I vowed to fix our broken student loan program. Because while a college degree is still the ticket to a better life, that ticket has become excessively expensive. Americans who are saddled with unsustainable debt in exchange for a college degree has become the norm.
Since, my administration has taken significant action to provide student debt relief to as many borrowers as possible as quickly as possible. That starts with making sure the existing system works in the way it was supposed to work for student borrowers.
We fixed what’s called the Public Service Loan Forgiveness program, which was designed originally to make sure schoolteachers, firefighters, social workers, and other public servants can get their student loans forgiven if they make 10 years of payments and do 10 years of public service.
By the time I took office, that program had been placed for — in place for nearly 15 years, but because of red tape, only 7,000 borrowers had been helped.
Well, today, thanks to the reforms, more than 700,000 borrowers have had their debts forgiven.
Just the other day, I spoke with Tanya and Chad, a married couple in their 50s who both work at a public high school in Milwaukee. For years, they paid over $800 a month toward their student loans. It meant they couldn’t pay — put away any money away for their retirement. And this summer, thanks to fixes we made to the debt relief program for people in public service, Chad and Tanya’s remaining balance was forgiven.
There’s a lot more, but you know, my diaries already tend to run long!
The Biden-Harris administration is making big pharma negotiate (kicking and screaming) with respect to drugs and Medicare. White House Briefing Room
Today, the Biden-Harris Administration took another major step towards lower health care costs for seniors and families and announced that all manufacturers of all ten drugs selected for negotiation have signed agreements to participate in the Inflation Reduction Act’s Medicare Drug Price Negotiation Program. For decades, Big Pharma fought to block Medicare from directly negotiating lower drug prices for seniors and other Medicare beneficiaries, while nearly three in ten Americans struggle to afford their medications because of cost. President Biden and Congressional Democrats finally beat Big Pharma and allowed Medicare to directly negotiate lower drug prices by passing the Inflation Reduction Act – despite zero Republicans voting in favor of the bill. ✂️
The column headings, from left to right, are: Manufacturer who has agreed to negotiate; the name of the drug; what the drug is used to treat; how many in Medicare part D use it; the average out-of-pocket costs for those with Medicare part D. cc.
Bristol Myers Squibb |
Eliquis |
Prevention and treatment of blood clots |
3,706,000 |
$608 |
Boehringer Ingelheim |
Jardiance |
Diabetes; Heart failure |
1,573,000 |
$490 |
Janssen Pharms |
Xarelto |
Prevention and treatment of blood clots; Reduction of risk for patients with coronary or peripheral artery disease |
1,337,000 |
$617 |
Merck Sharp Dohme |
Januvia |
Diabetes |
869,000 |
$502 |
AstraZeneca AB |
Farxiga |
Diabetes; Heart failure; Chronic kidney disease |
799,000 |
$448 |
Novartis Pharms Corp |
Entresto |
Heart failure |
587,000 |
$569 |
Immunex Corporation |
Enbrel |
Rheumatoid arthritis; Psoriasis; Psoriatic arthritis |
48,000 |
$2,005 |
Pharmacyclics LLC |
Imbruvica |
Blood cancers |
20,000 |
$6,497 |
Janssen Biotech, Inc. |
Stalara |
Psoriasis; Psoriatic arthritis; Crohn’s disease; Ulcerative colitis |
22,000 |
$4,207 |
Novo Nordisk Inc. |
Fiasp; Fiasp FlexTouch; Fiasp PenFill; NovoLog; NovoLog FlexPen; NovoLog PenFill |
Diabetes |
777,000 |
$261 |
Note the new negotiated prices, whatever they are, will not go into effect until 2026. Another reason to keep Ds in office! Rs could and would reverse this!
Repetition is good!
Democratic policies save lives. Lauren Weber, Dan Diamond and Dan Keating, Washington Post
“How long until this is me?” the funeral director wondered, noting his stress-filled 18-hour days and unhealthy diet.
Ashtabula’s problems are Ohio’s problems — and in large part, America’s problems.
Americans are more likely to die before age 65 than residents of similar nations, despite living in a country that spends substantially more per person on health care than its peers.
Many of those early deaths can be traced to decisions made years ago by local and state lawmakers over whether to implement cigarette taxes, invest in public health or tighten seat-belt regulations, among other policies, an examination by The Washington Post found. States’ politics — and their resulting policies — are shaving years off American lives.
Ashtabula’s problems stand out compared with two nearby counties — Erie, Pa., and Chautauqua, N.Y. All three communities, which ring picturesque Lake Erie and are a short drive from each other, have struggled economically in recent decades as industrial jobs withered — conditions that contribute toward rising midlife mortality, research shows. None is a success story when it comes to health. But Ashtabula residents are much more likely to die young, especially from smoking, diabetes-related complications or motor vehicle accidents, than people living in its sister counties in Pennsylvania and New York, states that have adopted more stringent public health measures."
Ashtabula’s problems stand out compared with two nearby counties — Erie, Pa., and Chautauqua, N.Y. All three communities, which ring picturesque Lake Erie and are a short drive from each other, have struggled economically in recent decades as industrial jobs withered — conditions that contribute toward rising midlife mortality, research shows. None is a success story when it comes to health. But Ashtabula residents are much more likely to die young, especially from smoking, diabetes-related complications or motor vehicle accidents, than people living in its sister counties in Pennsylvania and New York, states that have adopted more stringent public health measures.
Note I want to point out poor Ohio’s problems are not due to the governor, who is willing to do more, but to the gerrymandered legislature. Time write some more postcards to send to Ohio.
💜 Unity? 💜
OK, I’m not feeling much unity at the moment. But my reading group is just finishing The Persuaders by Anand Ghiriharadas, which ends with the idea that people can change; people can be persuaded. It includes deep dives into Bernie Sanders and AOC, and how to message and how to deep canvas.
Here’s a summary at the Amazon website:
The lifeblood of any free society is persuasion: changing other people’s minds in order to change things. But America is suffering a crisis of faith in persuasion that is putting its democracy and the planet itself at risk. Americans increasingly write one another off instead of seeking to win one another over. Debates are framed in moralistic terms, with enemies battling the righteous. Movements for justice build barriers to entry, instead of on-ramps. Political parties focus on mobilizing the faithful rather than wooing the skeptical. And leaders who seek to forge coalitions are labeled sellouts.
In The Persuaders, Anand Giridharadas takes us inside these movements and battles, seeking out the dissenters who continue to champion persuasion in an age of polarization. We meet a leader of Black Lives Matter; a trailblazer in the feminist resistance to Trumpism; white parents at a seminar on raising adopted children of color; Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez; a team of door knockers with an uncanny formula for changing minds on immigration; an ex-cult member turned QAnon deprogrammer; and, hovering menacingly offstage, Russian operatives clandestinely stoking Americans’ fatalism about one another.
As the book’s subjects grapple with how to call out threats and injustices while calling in those who don’t agree with them but just might one day, they point a way to healing, and changing, a fracturing country.
We need more unity, and we need to send Bannon and the others back under their rocks.
Please include any examples of persuasion in your own lives.
📥 Actions You Can Take 📤
Tax-exempt organization complaint referrals. 13909. You can fill this out for the NRA and lots of other organizations. How about if some of us white folk go into some of the MAGA churches and video record what they’re saying?
Voting rights. This may be the biggest issue threatening our democracy right now. Besides contacting your representatives at the state and federal level to do the right thing (depending on who they are), you can support and contact these organizations:
ACLU — American Civil Liberties Union
Democracy Docket — founded by Marc Elias, so important in fighting the challenges after the last election.
Fair Fight — founded by Stacey Abrams
🌱Grass roots. Biden and Harris can do the top-down stuff, but we have to support from the bottom. I don’t know how to deprogram 75 million people, but some things have been written about, such as deep canvassing, and lots of people are talking about this. If you know someone (who did not storm the Capitol), then see if you can be pleasant. Instead of trying to reason with them (logic is obviously not their strong point) distract them with something else. We need to remove the sources of lies and to take down the temperature. If we get more of the Rs to wear masks and to get vaccinated and to vote for Ds, the country will be a better place. We need to coax some of them out of the rabbit holes and diffuse the anger and the crazy.
🏃 Run for something. If you want to run for something, but have no idea what to do, these people will help you. They also like money and volunteers to help those people who are running, so even if you’re not in a position to stand for office, you can help. Note: they are especially planning to target the 57 Rs in local governments who participated in the insurrection.
👎 Defund the seditionists. Defund the seditionists. This is a list with companies that sometimes have donated to the seditionists. The list is long. You will recognize many of the corporations, and you probably have a relationship with some — either you are a customer, a shareholder, or maybe even an employee. Contact them and compliment or complain, but let them know you are watching. Forward it to others.
🔎 Want to check out what’s going on with campaign contributions? Check out this diary. 👀
🐍 Schadenfreude 😈
tRump’s organization about to be exposed:
BREAKING- Judge Engoron in Trump's NY fraud case has hit Trump and the brats w/ a devastating order that will expose them. Check out section 6. They have to disclose third party co-owners, equity partners and lenders for ALL of their businesses including the 500 LLCs. This will expose his true lack of ownership of Trump Org.
Lawyers desert Mike Lindell, the pillow guy, when he can’t pay his debts David Edwards, Raw Story
Two lawyers representing MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell have notified the court that they are withdrawing as his attorneys because he can't pay his debts.
In a court filing on Thursday, attorney Andrew Parker said that he and Nathan Lewin both wished to withdraw representation for Lindell and MyPillow. Parker's 16-attorney firm, Parker Daniels Kibort, was hired to represent Lindell and his company in defamation cases brought by Smartmatic and Dominion Voting Systems.
While Lindell initially paid his monthly bills, Parker said the payments began to slow in 2023.
Rudy owes money to the IRS and the IRS has placed a lien on his property in Palm Beach
Gaetz has given the Ds a lot of great quotes! Zachary Basu Axios
Here's some of what Gaetz has said:
- On Biden's age: "It is going to be difficult for my Republican colleagues to keep calling President Biden feeble while he continues to take Speaker McCarthy's lunch money in every negotiation."
- On the impeachment inquiry: "It is difficult to champion oversight when House Republicans haven't even sent a subpoena to Hunter Biden. So it's hard to make the argument that oversight is the reason to continue when it sort of looks like failure theater."
- On fundraising: "I take no lecture on asking patriotic Americans to weigh in and contribute to this fight from those who would grovel and bend knee to the lobbyists and special interests who own our leadership."
- On the GOP agenda: "If this House of Representatives has exceeded all expectations, then we definitely need higher expectations."
The costs of putin’s war are about to hit home The Economist
Over the past year few currencies have done worse than Russia’s rouble. Last September an American dollar bought just over 60 of them. These days it will buy almost 100 (see chart 1). The drop is both a symbolic blow to ordinary Russians, who equate a strong currency with a strong country, and the cause of tensions in the Russian state. It has blown apart the consensus that existed among Russian policymakers last year, when the central bank and finance ministry worked hand in glove. Now, as inflation rises and growth slows, the two institutions are turning against one another. At stake is the country’s ability to wage war effectively. ✂️
Yet the central bank is no longer keen to assist. The problem starts with the rouble. It is sliding in part because businessfolk are pulling money from the country. Low oil prices for much of this year have also cut the value of exports. Meanwhile, Russia has found new sources of everything from microchips to fizzy drinks. Resulting higher imports have raised demand for foreign currency, cutting the rouble’s value.
A falling currency is boosting Russian inflation, as the cost of these imports rises. So is the fiscal stimulus itself, warned Elvira Nabiullina, the central bank’s governor, in a recent statement. Consumer prices rose by 5.5% in the year to September, up from 4.3% in July. There are signs of “second-round” effects, in which inflation today leads to more tomorrow. Growth in nominal wages is more than 50% its pre-pandemic rate, even as productivity growth remains weak. Higher wages are adding to companies’ costs, and they are likely to pass them on in the form of higher prices. Inflation expectations are rising.
📣 Let’s Honor Truth ☀️️
A Texas shrimper holding industrial polluters accountable Michaela Haas Reasons to Be Cheerful
First, the shrimp disappeared. In late 1980s, the catch became so poor that Diane Wilson, a fourth-generation shrimper, had to take a job running a fish house in Seadrift in Calhoun County, Texas, where she grew up and still lives. Then beached, diseased 300-pound dolphins started appearing, and dead pelicans kept floating to the shores of Lavaca Bay.
It was only when a fellow shrimper with three different kinds of cancer showed her a news clip from the Associated Press in 1989 that Wilson connected the dots. Calhoun County was the number-one county in the nation for toxic waste disposal, the news story read. Aluminum smelter Alcoa had contaminated Lavaca Bay and other nearby waters with mercury, creating one of the largest Superfund sites in the US.
Wilson was incredulous. “We had the distinct honor of containing half the hazardous waste Texas generated,” she learned. Nobody had ever mentioned that. “I was so surprised that I called a town meeting,” Wilson says with her heavy Texan accent. “Everybody went crazy and tried to talk me out of organizing a meeting.” How dare she, a shrimper woman, question the biggest employers in the county? ✂️
Famed environmental activist Erin Brockovich calls Wilson the “real Erin Brockovich” because in December 2019, a federal judge awarded Wilson and her coalition a historic $50 million dollar settlement — the largest win of an individual citizen against an industrial polluter ever in the history of the Clean Water Act. Wilson achieved this by doggedly collecting evidence of plastic and toxic waste pollution, storing it in her house and schlepping over 2,400 samples in ziplock bags, containing an estimated 26 million plastic pellets, to the courthouse on the first day of the trial.
We’re also honoring the late Senator Dianne Feinstein, who did a lot to expose the torture program of the CIA Connie Buck, The New Yorker. Article is from 2015.
In her office recently, she described how she broke with the C.I.A. over the detention and interrogation program that began in the days after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. From the first time Feinstein was briefed about the program, she opposed it. On September 6, 2006, Michael Hayden, the C.I.A. director, appeared before the Senate Intelligence Committee and described a network of “black sites”: secret facilities where C.I.A. interrogators subjected detainees to “enhanced interrogation techniques,” seeking information about possible terrorist attacks. Hayden, self-assured and pugnacious, insisted that the interrogations were carefully run and unassailably effective. Afterward, Feinstein wrote to him that his testimony was “extraordinarily problematic,” and that she was “unable to understand why the C.I.A. needs to maintain this program.” In November, when Hayden appeared before the committee again, Feinstein peppered him with questions. She wanted to know how the agency guarded against abuse, whether detainees were stripped of their clothes, whether they were fed during periods of sleep deprivation. Although she and several colleagues raised objections, Hayden, not long afterward, told a meeting of foreign diplomats, “This is not C.I.A.’s program. This is not the President’s program. This is America’s program.”
🌹 Let’s Celebrate Love ❤️
This week we’re honoring President Jimmy Carter, who celebrated his 99th birthday on Sunday. Here are a few facts about this remarkable man, who has had the most meaningful — and certainly the longest! — post presidency. From the Carter Center webpages:
- President Carter and The Carter Center have engaged in conflict mediation in Ethiopia and Eritrea (1989), North Korea (1994), Liberia (1994), Haiti (1994), Bosnia (1994), Sudan (1995), the Great Lakes region of Africa (1995-96), Sudan and Uganda (1999), Venezuela (2002-2003), Nepal (2004-2008), Ecuador and Colombia (2008), the Middle East (2003-present), and Mali (2018-present). Under his leadership The Carter Center has sent 114 election-observation missions to the Americas, Africa, and Asia. These include Panama (1989), Nicaragua (1990), China (1997), Nigeria (1998), Indonesia (1999), East Timor (1999), Mexico (2000), Guatemala (2003), Venezuela (2004), Ethiopia (2005), the Democratic Republic of the Congo (2006), Nepal (2008), Lebanon (2009), Sudan (2010), Tunisia (2011), Egypt (2011-2012), Kenya (2013), Mozambique (2014), Myanmar (2016), Liberia (2017), and Guyana (2020). ✂️
- Until 2020, Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter volunteered one week a year for Habitat for Humanity, a nonprofit organization that helps needy people in the United States and in other countries renovate and build homes for themselves. He also taught Sunday school in the Maranatha Baptist Church of Plains. The Carters have three sons, one daughter, nine grandsons (one deceased), three granddaughters, five great-grandsons, and nine great-granddaughters.
- On December 10, 2002, the Norwegian Nobel Committee awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for 2002 to Jimmy Carter “for his decades of untiring effort to find peaceful solutions to international conflicts, to advance democracy and human rights, and to promote economic and social development.”
- Leading a coalition that has reduced incidence of Guinea worm disease by 99.99 percent, making it likely to be the first human disease since smallpox to be eradicated
He’s also a prolific author.
📎Odds & Ends 📎
Researchers find a way to turn mine waste into useful soil Andy Corbley Good News Network
An Australian-Canadian science and engineering team has discovered a way of turning mine waste into arable soil that is already being used to grow maize and sorghum.
‘Tailings’ is the official industry term for mineral waste leftover after separating away all the useful metals from mined material. Typically toxic from heavy metals and unusable for anything else because of this, tailings are kept in storage facilities to prevent them from polluting groundwater or farmland.
Hoping to save billions of dollars in such storage fees and remove the threat of disasters that occur when such facilities break down or are abandoned, a team from the universities of Queensland and Saskatchewan sought to see whether it was possible to convert this lifeless rock into healthy soil by returning microbial life to it. ✂️
Using the Canadian Light Source (CLS), Huang and his team found a way to accelerate this process of repopulating the tailings with soil microbes. ✂️
Huang noted that this process—which can occur in as little as 12 months—can also be used to restore soils damaged by over-farming, overuse of fertilizers, and climate change.
Mining is extremely necessary for our developed world. Many of the world’s largest copper and iron mines are decades, even centuries old, and with global copper needs alone estimated to double by 2050, all that mine waste will need a more sustainable home.
Animals who help us (just a sample):
“Oh, oysters come and walk with us!” the Walrus did beseech Cristen Hemingway Jaynes, EcoWatch, although I borrowed the title from Lewis Carroll’s poem “The Walrus & the Carpenter”
Oysters are essential for ocean health, filtering and cleaning the water and providing habitat and sustenance. Oyster reefs can also serve as storm and tidal barriers, prevent erosion and protect estuaries.
What happened to the oysters in The Walrus and the Carpenter. But this project plans to put them back in.
One conservationist group, the UK’s Wild Oysters Project, has released 10,000 native oysters onto a human-made reef off the North East Coast of England with the purpose of removing pollutants and creating a new marine ecosystem.
“Native oysters are ecosystem engineers, which means they change and improve the environment around them. Native oysters create a structurally complex three-dimensional habitat, which supports an abundance of other marine life and is intrinsically linked with ecosystem biodiversity,” said Matt Uttley, restoration project manager at the Blue Marine Foundation, according to a press release from the Zoological Society of London.
🐦 I do a lot of other writing. A recent offering:
Hunters of the Feather, a story about a thinker-linker crow who wants to save birdkind from extinction, and sequels,
Scavengers of Mind and the
brand-new Familiars of the Flock (They’re really good! They’re really cheap! Buy and review or rate positively! And Hunters is also available on
Audible!) Other stories, based on Jane Austen novels — including a new one for lovers of Pride & Prejudice,
Mrs. Bennet’s Advice to Young Ladies — and others on Greek mythology,
can be found here. All titles are available through Kindle Unlimited, but I only get paid if you turn the pages.
💙 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.
Current projects:
Look in the comments for Progressive Muse’s report on Postcards to Voters
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 say something nice to friend or a stranger.
You can get out the vote for special elections.
You can reach out to upset Republicans. We need to win some back.
You can share your ideas below.
🌻
💙 “Our history has been a constant struggle between the American ideal that we all are created equal and the harsh ugly reality that racism, nativism, fear, demonization have long torn us apart. The battle is perennial, and victory is never assured.” 💙
President Joseph R. Biden
🌹 🌹 🌹
TRUTH MATTERS. LOVE MATTERS.