Welcome 😄 to Friday’s Roundup of Good News!
I have had trouble watching the news lately. The constant lies about the vaccine. The people stripping rights from others. The Rs and the Dinos threatening, not just the Biden agenda, but the world economy.
Pelosi and Biden have decades of experience, so I hope they manage their way through.
Many of you may be like me, and that’s why you have found your way to the GNRs.
Moreover, I am especially angry with the media, because they have been making the problem worse. The framing of some of the issues — e.g. Biden’s decision to withdraw from Afghanistan — has cost him in the polls, making it harder for him to get things done.
Some outlets are worse than others. Some are crazy lies; we don’t watch them. But even “our side” sometimes goes to breathless hyperbole, such as making it sound as if September 18 was going to be another January 6, or as if we needed to fret all night during the attempted Republican recall of Newsom. Now, don’t get me; these things required our attention and our elbow grease — but maybe with a little less heart-punding adrenaline.
Then, thanks to something that NotNowNotEver wrote this week, I realized we need to do something about it. That we CAN do something about it. NNNE was right in a comment, when he said that by writing his diary he was informing the media what he thought. I know that Charles Gaba’s (our BrainWrap) has had his analyses of covid rates by county and blue/red votes touted by the media. And I have seen some of my own ideas show up — probably by coincidence, but not necessarily — in some of the commentary.
Daily Kos is read. So publish diaries. Let us know here, and they’ll get more attention. And remember, Repetition is good. Repetition is good. (I wrote a diary about FB the other day .)
There are other ways to influence the news. There’s the truth brigade at Indivisible. There is directly contacting influencers to praise or to complain. There’s a suggested boycott of Facebook.
There is also making news better, by getting our reps to do what we want them to do. By electing better Ds.
And there are good things happening that have nothing to do with politics.
Come on in, my dear gnusies, and see what the good guys are doing.
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 7, 2021: Press Gaggle by Principal Deputy Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre En Route Chicago, Illinois
Thursday, October 7, 2021: Readout of White House Community Violence Intervention Collaborative Meeting
Thursday, October 7, 2021:FACT SHEET: Biden Administration Releases Agency Climate Adaptation and Resilience Plans from Across Federal Government
Thursday, October 7, 2021: Statement by President Joseph R. Biden, Jr. on the Occasion of Archbishop Desmond Tutu’s Birthday
Wednesday, October 6, 2021: Statement from Press Secretary Jen Psaki on Texas S.B. 8 Court Ruling
Wednesday, October 6, 2021: Press Briefing by Press Secretary Jen Psaki, October 6, 2021
Wednesday, October 6, 2021: Press Briefing by White House COVID- 19 Response Team and Public Health Officials
Wednesday, October 6, 2021: President Biden Announces Key Nominations
Wednesday, October 6, 2021: Remarks by President Biden on the Need to Raise the Debt Ceiling
Wednesday, October 6, 2021: Remarks by President Biden After Marine One Arrival
Wednesday, October 6, 2021: Readout of National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan’s Meeting with Politburo Member Yang Jiechi
Wednesday, October 6, 2021: Remarks by President Biden Before Air Force One Departure
Tuesday, October 5, 2021: Remarks by President Biden on the Bipartisan Infrastructure Bill and Build Back Better Agenda
Tuesday, October 5, 2021: President Biden Announces Intent to Nominate Chairs of National Endowments for the Humanities and Arts
Tuesday, October 5, 2021: Press Gaggle by Principal Deputy Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre En Route Lansing, MI
Tuesday, October 5, 2021: Readout of the President’s Meeting with 11 House Democrats
Tuesday, October 5, 2021: Readout from NSC Spokesperson Emily Horne on National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan Leading a Meeting of the U.S.-Israel Strategic Consultative Group
Tuesday, October 5, 2021: Statement by NSC Spokesperson Emily Horne on Senior Administration Official Trip to Europe
Tuesday, October 5, 2021: A Proclamation on German-American Day, 2021
Tuesday, October 5, 2021: Statement by President Joe Biden on Dr. Francis Collins Stepping Down as Director of the National Institutes of Health
Monday, October 4, 2021: Readout of Joseph R. Biden, Jr.’s Call with European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen
Monday, October 4, 2021: Press Briefing by Press Secretary Jen Psaki, October 4, 2021
Monday, October 4, 2021: U.S.- Mexico High-Level Security Dialogue
Monday, October 4, 2021: Readout of President Biden’s Meeting with NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg
Monday, October 4, 2021: Remarks by President Biden on the Need to Raise the Debt Ceiling
Monday, October 4, 2021: Nominations Sent to the Senate
Monday, October 4, 2021: President Joseph R. Biden, Jr. Approves New Hampshire Disaster Declaration
Monday, October 4, 2021: Statement by President Biden Congratulating Prime Minister Kishida of Japan
Monday, October 4, 2021: Background Press Call by Senior Administration Officials on the Administration’s Trade Approach to China
Saturday, October 2, 2021: Bill Signed: H.R. 5434
Saturday, October 2, 2021: Statement by President Joe Biden on 700,000 American Deaths from COVID- 19
Saturday, October 2, 2021: Readout from NSC Spokesperson Emily Horne on Senior Administration Official Travel to Haiti
Saturday, October 2, 2021: Remarks by President Biden Before Marine One Departure
Friday, October 1, 2021: Press Briefing by Press Secretary Jen Psaki, October 1, 2021
Friday, October 1, 2021: June 2021 Visitor Log Records Posted
Friday, October 1, 2021: Press Briefing by White House COVID- 19 Response Team and Public Health Officials
Friday, October 1, 2021: Statement by NSC Spokesperson Emily Horne on Deputy National Security Advisor Daleep Singh’s Travel to Colombia, Ecuador, and Panama
Friday, October 1, 2021: A Proclamation on Fire Prevention Week, 2021
Friday, October 1, 2021: A Proclamation on Child Health Day, 2021
Friday, October 1, 2021: A Proclamation on National Community Policing Week, 2021
Friday, October 1, 2021: Statement by President Joe Biden on Cybersecurity Awareness Month
CDC as of October 7, 2021, 9 am 78% of adults have had at least one jab (I now include this because now the total doses includes boosters). Number of doses administered now at 399,552,444.
👎 Out with the Bad, In with the Good 👍 Sometimes this is a matter of individuals. Or rather, these are movements, but we see the actions in individuals.
👢 This doctor has “retired” after passing out vaccination exemptions . Sarah K Burris Raw Story
Physician Sue McIntosh has been officially retired after an anonymous tip to the Connecticut Medical Examining Board revealed she'd been handing out signed COVID-19 exemption waivers to anyone who wanted.
Business Insider reported Sunday that the medical board's investigation revealed the doctor had been "providing fraudulent vaccine exemption forms through the mail related to COVID-19 vaccines, general vaccines, COVID testing, and medical opposition to wearing facial masks," the report said . ✂️
McIntosh was suspended, pending an investigation. A week later she resigned her license, said a release from the health department.
And this is also still worthy of celebration (way to go, FBI):
Rachel Vindman is the wife of Alex Vindman, who was the whistleblower in the first tRump impeachment. (These are fantastic people.) She’s standing up to bullies at school boards (funded by Kochs )
And, the FBI has been instructed to take this seriously . Timothy Bella, Devlin Barrett Washington Post
Attorney General Merrick Garland on Monday ordered the FBI to work with local leaders nationwide to help address what he called a “disturbing spike in harassment, intimidation, and threats of violence” against educators and school board members over highly politicized issues such as mask mandates and interpretations of critical race theory.
In a
memorandum to FBI Director Christopher A. Wray and federal prosecutors, Garland wrote that the Justice Department will hold strategy sessions with law enforcement in the next 30 days and is expected to announce measures in response to “the rise in criminal conduct directed toward school personnel” in the nation’s public schools.
Total doses administered as of October 7, 2021, 9 am: 399,552,444. 78% of the US adult population has had at least one shot! 😄
💣 Republicans in Disarray 💣 The corporate overlords don’t want the US to default, which means this technique of the Rs is not as toothsome as they would have us believe.
Not all Rs are happy with this Jon Skolnik Salon
Donald Trump accused Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., of "folding" in the current debt ceiling standoff after the legislator signaled that he would support a short-term extension, allowing the federal government to avoid default for the time being.
"Looks like Mitch McConnell is folding to the Democrats, again," Trump said in a Wednesday statement. "He's got all of the cards with the debt ceiling, it's time to play the hand. Don't let them destroy our country!"
Even if Rs agree privately, many won’t agree publicly, because they are cowards.
And McConnell scraped up enough votes in order not to blow up the economy.
💜 Some are not cowards: there’s disgust at some of the R practices . One prominent OK local has switched parties as a result Raw Story
State Superintendent Joy Hofmeister sent shockwaves through the political universe in Oklahoma on Wednesday when she announced she is switching parties and registering as a Democrat to run for governor.
"The 57-year-old lifelong Republican told the Tulsa World in an exclusive interview that she is changing her party registration on Thursday in order to launch a bid to unseat Republican incumbent Kevin Stitt," the newspaper reported.
In the interview, Hofmeister had tough words for the GOP incumbent.
"Governor Stitt is running the state into the ground," she said. "Through extremism, partisanship, ineffective leadership, he is hurting our education system, our health care, our infrastructure."
💙 Democrats Being Cool 💙
The Senate has dropped its report on tfg’s use of DOJ to stay in power (this is Ds, friends, not really Rs). Talking Points Memo
Senate Judiciary Committee Democrats issued a report on Thursday detailing former President Trump’s efforts to use the Justice Department as a weapon in his bid to overturn the results of the 2020 election.
It delves into some of the starkest examples of corruption that took place in the run-up to the insurrection, as Trump flailed for ways to stay in power.
Among other things, the report documents a Jan. 3 meeting during which senior DOJ leaders and then-White House counsel Pat Cipollone threatened to resign if Trump went through with a plan to install former assistant attorney general Jeffrey Bossert Clark as acting attorney general.
A lot more analysis to come, but where is the DoJ now? Or has someone dognapped the Garland pooch? (Note I don’t know if they even have a dog.)
Texas judge on that abortion bill Wonkette
Last night [Wednesday night] a federal judge in Texas enjoined the enforcement of SB 8, the state's near-total abortion ban .
I just liked this and wanted to put it somewhere
US District Judge Robert Pitman's meticulous 113-page opinion can only be read as a stinging rebuke of the Fifth Circuit and the Supreme Court, which refused to acknowledge the clear constitutional issues and allowed the law to go into effect with a few sentences professing themselves unequal to the task of imagining whether an abortion ban explicitly designed to evade legal scrutiny might in fact ban abortion and evade legal scrutiny.
"From the moment S.B. 8 went into effect, women have been unlawfully prevented from exercising control over their lives in ways that are protected by the Constitution," Judge Pitman wrote. "That other courts may find a way to avoid this conclusion is theirs to decide; this Court will not sanction one more day of this offensive deprivation of such an important right."
The opinion is everything the one-paragraph brush-off from five Supreme Court justices was not: thorough, reasoned, and grappling with both the inherent bad faith of Texas legislators and the reality of women's lives.
Good time for workers! Well, at least there is certainly opportunity. We know health care workers and teachers have been having a tough time of it.
💜 Unity? 💜 In case you’ve been concerned about the supply chain:
And resistance to vaxxing is melting away
As our VP says:
Oh, both sides are mad at Facebook !Washington Post
But make no mistake: Congress is fully engaged. In a rare show of bipartisanship, senators from both parties on the subcommittee reacted angrily to evidence of Facebook’s deceit and showed strong interest in probing Facebook, especially its effect on children. When ranking member Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.) and Chairman Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) are on the same page, the target of their ire should be concerned. When both Sens. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) and Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) want to subpoena more internal documents, Facebook is going to find it difficult to hold investigators at bay.
By going public and focusing on children, health (mental and physical) and political violence, Haugen maximizes the chances that most every American will become angry about some
While some lawmakers want to break up tech giants, Haugen wants the SEC and Congress to open it up to scrutiny. After we know what Facebook is doing, she argues, we then can regulate it appropriately by requiring transparency or taking away its legal refuge in Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act. Haugen also floated creating a “dedicated oversight body” in the federal government to oversee the industry.
📥 Actions You Can Take 📤 Stay out of Facebook. For more, go here . Prepare to boycott, if not forever, then for a while.
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. This is a list with companies that sometimes have donated to the seditionists, and their current approach to supporting or not supporting 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.
🐍 Schadenfreude 😈 Only the vaxxed may be able to get transplants Washington Post
A Colorado-based health system says it is denying organ transplants to patients not vaccinated against the coronavirus in “almost all situations,” citing studies that show these patients are much more likely to die if they get covid-19.
UCHealth’s rules for transplants entered the spotlight Tuesday when Colorado state Rep. Tim Geitner (R) said it denied a kidney transplant to a Colorado Springs woman because she was not vaccinated against the coronavirus. Calling the decision “disgusting” and discriminatory, Geitner shared a letter that he said the patient received last week from UCHealth’s transplant center at the University of Colorado’s Anschutz Medical Campus in the city of Aurora.
The letter said the woman would be “inactivated” on a kidney transplant waiting list and had 30 days to start coronavirus vaccination. If she refused to be vaccinated, it said, she would be removed.
📣 Let’s Honor Truth ☀️ Frances Haugen, for blowing the whistle on Facebook USA Today
She says she lost faith in Facebook’s commitment to protecting users after it disbanded the civic integrity team after the 2020 presidential race. Facebook said it distributed the work to different teams. But Haugen says Facebook stopped paying close attention, leading to the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol .
“The thing I saw at Facebook over and over again was there were conflicts of interest between what was good for the public and what was good for Facebook,” Haugen said on the CBS News program, “and Facebook over and over again chose to optimize for its own interests, like making more money.”
So she copied thousands of pages of internal documents that she says showed Facebook lied to the public about its efforts to root out hate speech, misinformation and violence.
Haugen pins the blame on a 2018 algorithm change which prioritized posts with high user engagement. It turns out lies and anger rank off the charts.
"Facebook has realized that if they change the algorithm to be safer, people will spend less time on the site, they'll click on less ads, they'll make less money,” Haugen said.
🌹 Let’s Celebrate Love ❤️ How dogs and humans are finding their way to freedom Reasons to Be Cheerful
Jon Grobman was certain he would never again see the world beyond the walls of
rando dogs
Lancaster’s maximum-security prison. In 2005, the former hotel and casino manager was sentenced to 190 years behind bars with no possibility for parole. “Grand theft, burglary, forgery, embezzlement, meth possession,” he ticks off his rap sheet highlights. “All non-violent crimes, but under California’s Three Strikes Law , I got a life sentence for each offense.”
Now Grobman, 54, lives in Napa Valley with his family. He is the first lifer in California whose harsh sentence was overturned four years ago by a barely known legal clause called “ Recall of Commitment .” Grobman, who qualified for the commutation due to his “extraordinary behavior,” believes he owes it all to the first dog who started his journey to rehabilitation: Oreo, a black-and-white lab mix.
In 2014, dog rescue volunteer Alex Tonner set out to temporarily house dogs in prison as a way to save them from overcrowded shelters where they would be killed for lack of space. “I was only interested in saving the dogs,” the blonde Brit admits with refreshing honesty and a self-deprecating laugh. “I really didn’t care about the guys. But that quickly changed.” ✂️
Not only did the dogs emerge as better behaved companions, they fundamentally transformed the atmosphere in the prison. “Hurt people hurt people,” Grobman says. “A large percentage of inmates grew up in violent households or were abused. It’s about breaking that cycle. So many didn’t have someone they could trust. The program humanizes you and makes you feel you’re worthy of love.”
There is a lot more to this story, but I have to respect Fair Use! So, please, if you need a reason to be cheerful, click on it.
As I mentioned above, I have been having difficulty watching the news recently. One refuge for me are little documentaries. If you get Netflix, and you’re a dog lover, check out the series Explained and the episode “Dogs.” It’s about 23 minutes long, and you will learn why they are a million times more empathetic than we are. Or, if you prefer to read about the same ideas, you can spend two minutes at this Good News Network article .
📎 Odds & Ends 📎 Ford gonna make batteries for electric vehicles in KY and TN Good News Network
Ford just announced it is spending $11.4 billion to build two new factories in Tennessee and Kentucky to manufacture batteries and its electric F-series pickup
Biden driving a Lightning truck
trucks.
Together, they’ll create over 11,000 jobs, and the Tennessee factory will be Ford’s largest ever—and its first new American vehicle-assembly plant in decades.
“This is a transformative moment where Ford will lead America’s transition to electric vehicles and usher in a new era of clean, carbon-neutral manufacturing,” said Ford Executive Chair Bill Ford. “With this investment and a spirit of innovation, we can achieve goals once thought mutually exclusive—protect our planet, build great electric vehicles Americans will love, and contribute to our nation’s prosperity.”
Why is this such good news? Besides having people employed, by having them employed in an industry that is for fighting climate change, well, these people will want to fight climate change.
“It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.” Upton Sinclair
The Financial Times has all sorts of reminders about fair use, so I’m supplying a tweet instead of a link. Basically, some Brazilian food producers are working to add stuff to cattle feed to reduce methane emissions while others are working at making the soil retain more carbon.
Juvenile jail turned into a youth center Reasons to Be Cheerful
When Michael Latham became judge of Apache County, Arizona in 2014, reinventing the area’s juvenile detention center was one of his top priorities. The facility cost $1.2 million per year — and stood empty for weeks at a time. Today, what was once a place where kids were locked up has become a youth community center.
The Legacy Teen Center, a.k.a. “the Loft,” opened in 2017. Staffed by former corrections officers who now act as mentors, it is housed in the former jail and contains wifi-equipped study spaces, hangout areas filled with bean bag chairs, and even a recording studio tricked out with a keyboard and electric guitars. Video game stations and pool tables provide vectors for social interaction. (“You can’t play pool and not talk to somebody,” said one of the guards-turned-mentors.)
The Loft costs about one-quarter as much to operate as the former jail, and since it opened, youth arrests in Apache County have dropped by 55 percent. It’s likely not the Loft itself that led to this decline — according to officials, the drop is due to a 2011 change in Arizona’s screening tool for determining whether young offenders should be locked up. “If a judge or a probation officer gets upset with a kid and the response is detention, the tool kind of re-guided them and said, ‘No, this kid really isn’t a public risk,’” said a director at the Arizona Supreme Court. This change led to fewer incarcerated youth and ultimately made Apache County’s juvenile jail unnecessary. “I’d like to think we are part of a bigger shift,” said the county’s former sheriff’s deputy.
🐦 I do a lot of other writing. A recent offering: Hunters of the Feather Scavengers of Mind Audible Mrs. Bennet’s Advice to Young Ladies can be found here
💙 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 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.
