Welcome 🌻 to Friday’s Roundup of Good News!
I get really frustrated with the MSM. Sometimes the reporters do the actual work to check the facts, but so often they don’t.
Sometimes it’s because they’re lazy. Sometimes it’s because they don’t look deep. And sometimes, it’s because people are trying to lie to us.
For example:
- Last weekend the orange man had a rally on a beach in New Jersey. Quickly they claimed that the rally was attended by 80,000 people; later it was increased to 100,000. Sounds like a lot of support, doesn’t it? And a photo was shown on Xwitter in support. BUT!!! — the venue (which was not full) holds about 20,000. Oh, and that photo was from a concert in Brazil.
- We’re being asked to believe in polls that make no sense, not compared with what we have seen in special elections. More on that later.
- We’re being told that a leaner, meaner Republican party will be able to turn out voters despite having gutted their apparatus. How does that make sense?
Remember the claim that tRump raised $50 million in the beginning of April? That’s just a claim, designed to upstage President Biden’s well-documented claim of $25 million. The date was also picked as at the beginning of the quarter, three months before actual numbers need to be reported.
Many of the events are staged complete fakes, too. I won’t go into them here, but before you accept something as true, especially if it comes from the tRump side, remember this guy and his team are practiced liars.
That is not to say there’s nothing to worry about. These are dangerous times.
Instead, I ask you to bring the truth to one or two people who normally would not hear it. For example, I was able to let the niece of a friend know that President Biden’s crime statistics are way down. Think of some way to do that, please, and report next week. I’ll try to do the same.
And, for our greatest fears: what can we do about it? Because although it may seem like nothing, it is not nothing. We can do a lot. We are doing a lot. We are making a difference.
Come on in, dear gnusies, and let’s enjoy some good news.
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, May 16, 2024: Remarks as Prepared for Delivery by First Lady Jill Biden at a Bay Mills Indian Community Event
- Thursday, May 16, 2024: Statement from President Joe Biden After Signing FAA Reauthorization Act
- Thursday, May 16, 2024: Press Release: Bill Signed: H.R. 3935
- Thursday, May 16, 2024: WHAT THEY ARE SAYING: Labor, Business, and Elected Leaders Praise President Biden’s Actions to Protect American Workers and Businesses from China’s Unfair Trade Practices
- Thursday, May 16, 2024: Press Briefing by Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre and Director of the Office of Public Engagement Stephen Benjamin
- Thursday, May 16, 2024: FACT SHEET: Biden-Harris Administration Announces Record Over $16 Billion in Support for Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs)
- Thursday, May 16, 2024: Statement from Vice President Kamala Harris on the Biden-Harris Administration’s Historic Investments in HBCUs
- Thursday, May 16, 2024: Readout of National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan’s Meeting with Representatives of Countries with Citizens Taken Hostage by Hamas
- Thursday, May 16, 2024: Statement from President Joe Biden on the Supreme Court Ruling on Consumer Financial Protection Bureau
- Thursday, May 16, 2024: Remarks by National Economic Advisor Lael Brainard on Responding to the Challenges of China’s Industrial Overcapacity
- Thursday, May 16, 2024: Readout of National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan’s Meeting with President Santiago Peña of Paraguay
- Thursday, May 16, 2024: A Proclamation on 70th Anniversary Brown V. Board of Education
- Thursday, May 16, 2024: Readout of Convening to Mark One-Year Anniversary of National Plan to End Gender-Based Violence
- Thursday, May 16, 2024: U.S.-Canada Joint Statement on the Extension of the Bilateral Energy Transformation Task Force
- Thursday, May 16, 2024: FACT SHEET: Biden-Harris Administration Unveils Critical Steps to Protect Workers from Risks of Artificial Intelligence
- Thursday, May 16, 2024: FACT SHEET: Biden-Harris Administration Takes Action to Strengthen American Solar Manufacturing and Protect Manufacturers and Workers from China’s Unfair Trade Practices
- Wednesday, May 15, 2024: President Joseph R. Biden, Jr. Approves Massachusetts Disaster Declaration
- Wednesday, May 15, 2024: The President and Vice President release their financial disclosure reports disclosing their personal financial interests
- Wednesday, May 15, 2024: FACT SHEET: Global Health Worker Initiative (GHWI) Year Two Fact Sheet
- Wednesday, May 15, 2024: Remarks by President Biden at the National Peace Officers Memorial Service
- Wednesday, May 15, 2024: Remarks as Prepared for Delivery by First Lady Jill Biden at the 2024 Women’s Health “Health Lab”
- Wednesday, May 15, 2024: Statement from NSC Spokesperson Adrienne Watson on Actions Against the Ortega-Murillo Regime Repressing People and Preying on Migrants in Nicaragua
- Wednesday, May 15, 2024: Background Press Call on Actions Against the Ortega-Murillo Regime Repressing People and Preying on Migrants in Nicaragua
- Wednesday, May 15, 2024: Statement from President Joe Biden on Attempted Assassination of Slovakia Prime Minister Robert Fico
- Wednesday, May 15, 2024: Statement from NSC Spokesperson Adrienne Watson on the U.S.-PRC Talks on AI Risk and Safety
- Wednesday, May 15, 2024: Statement from President Joe Biden on the April Consumer Price Index
- Wednesday, May 15, 2024: FACT SHEET: Biden-Harris Administration Announces New Actions and Resources for Increasing Student Attendance and Engagement as Part of the White House Every Day Counts Summit
- Tuesday, May 14, 2024: Nominations Sent to the Senate
- Tuesday, May 14, 2024: Press Briefing by Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre and United States Trade Representative Katherine Tai
- Tuesday, May 14, 2024: Memorandum on Actions by the United States Related to the Statutory 4-Year Review of the Section 301 Investigation of China’s Acts, Policies, and Practices Related to Technology Transfer, Intellectual Property, and Innovation
- Tuesday, May 14, 2024: Remarks by President Biden on His Actions to Protect American Workers and Businesses from China’s Unfair Trade Practices
- Tuesday, May 14, 2024: President Joseph R. Biden, Jr. Approves Iowa Disaster Declaration
- Tuesday, May 14, 2024: Notice on the Continuation of the National Emergency With Respect to Yemen
- Tuesday, May 14, 2024: Message to the Congress on the Continuation of the National Emergency With Respect to Yemen
- Tuesday, May 14, 2024: FACT SHEET: The Biden-Harris Administration Highlights Investments in Rural America, Invites Public Nominations for Rural Innovators Initiative
- Tuesday, May 14, 2024: FACT SHEET: President Biden Takes Action to Protect American Workers and Businesses from China’s Unfair Trade Practices
- Monday, May 13, 2024: Background Press Call by National Economic Advisor Lael Brainard and Senior Administration Officials on President Biden’s Actions to Protect American Workers and Businesses from China’s Unfair Trade Practices
- Monday, May 13, 2024: Statement From National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan on the Signing of the Prohibiting Russian Uranium Imports Act into Law
- Monday, May 13, 2024: Bills Signed: H.R. 593, H.R. 1042
- Monday, May 13, 2024: Order Regarding the Acquisition of Certain Real Property of Cheyenne Leads by MineOne Cloud Computing Investment I L.P.
- Monday, May 13, 2024: Remarks by Vice President Harris in a Moderated Conversation with Jimmy O. Yang at the Asian Pacific American Institute for Congressional Studies Legislative Leadership Summit
- Monday, May 13, 2024: FACT SHEET: President Biden’s Investing in America Agenda is Helping American Families Across the Country Save Money
- Monday, May 13, 2024: Readout of Principal Deputy National Security Advisor Jon Finer’s Meeting with United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees Filippo Grandi
- Monday, May 13, 2024: Statement from NSC Spokesperson Adrienne Watson on the U.S.-PRC Talks on AI Risk and Safety
- Monday, May 13, 2024: FACT SHEET: Biden-Harris Administration Kicks Off Infrastructure Week by Highlighting Historic Results Spurred by President Biden’s Investing in America Agenda
- Sunday, May 12, 2024: Remarks by President Biden at a Campaign Reception | Seattle, WA
- Sunday, May 12, 2024: Remarks by President Biden at a Campaign Reception | Medina, WA
- Sunday, May 12, 2024: Readout of National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan’s Call with Israeli National Security Advisor Tzachi Hanegbi
- Saturday, May 11, 2024: President Joseph R. Biden, Jr. Amends Soboba Band of Luiseño Indians Disaster Declaration
- Saturday, May 11, 2024: Statement from President Joe Biden on the Flooding in Brazil
- Saturday, May 11, 2024: Remarks as Prepared for Delivery by First Lady Jill Biden at The Mesa Community College Commencement
- Friday, MAY 10, 2024: Remarks by President Biden at a Campaign Reception | Portola Valley, CA
- Friday, MAY 10, 2024: Bill Signed: H.R. 8289
- Friday, MAY 10, 2024: President Biden Announces Key Appointments to Boards and Commissions
- Friday, MAY 10, 2024: A Proclamation on Women’s Health Week, 2024
- Friday, MAY 10, 2024: A Proclamation on Peace Officers Memorial Day and Police Officer Week, 2024
- Friday, MAY 10, 2024: Memorandum on Delegation of Authority Under Section 506(a)(1) of the Foreign Assistance Act of 1961
- Friday, MAY 10, 2024: A Proclamation on National Defense Transportation Day and National Transportation Week, 2024
- Friday, MAY 10, 2024: A Proclamation on Mother’s Day, 2024
👎 Out with the Bad, In with the Good 👍
👍 US Supreme Court says Louisiana has to have the two majority Black congressional districts Crystal Hill Democracy Docket
WASHINGTON, D.C. — The U.S. Supreme Court granted requests from both the state and Black Louisiana voters and civil rights organizations to allow Louisiana’s new congressional map to remain in place while they appeal a lower court ruling that struck it down.
Today’s decision means that the state will have a congressional map it can legally use by May 15, which is when the state says it needs to have a map in place in order to have enough time to prepare for the November general election. The congressional map features two majority-Black districts.
The decision was a 6-3 split, with Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan saying they would have denied the application, and Ketanji Brown Jackson dissenting.
👎 Inflation down a tick Christopher Rugaber, AP Washington Post
WASHINGTON — Led by lower food and auto prices, inflation in the United States cooled slightly last month after three elevated readings, likely offering a tentative sigh of relief for officials at the Federal Reserve as well as President Joe Biden’s re-election team.
“Rugaber” looks to me as if it means giver of peace in German.
👍 Beavers are back in London! Peter Yeung Reasons to Be Cheerful
The clues are unmistakable. A muddy embankment is covered in webbed, triangular footprints. A tree’s bark has been gnawed on one side, exposing the pale innards of its trunk. But the real giveaway is the thick dam made of branches that’s blockading a stream.
This site may be in London, a bustling metropolis of nine million people dominated by concrete high-rises and traffic-filled main roads, but it is now under the management of a new, or at least returning, critter on the block: the Castor fiber, or Eurasian beaver. ✂️
But beavers bring a host of other benefits too: Their dams filter water, their instinctive maintenance of trees and shrubbery prevents them from overgrowing, and their reintroduction is a low-cost way of restoring wetland habitats — which store carbon, offer green space for locals, cool the environment and mitigate the increasing risk of flooding as the planet rapidly heats.
In fact, the brook that runs through Paradise Fields often overflows, in turn regularly flooding the nearby road junction and shopping mall. London authorities initially planned to build an expensive flood defense system — until the beavers came in.
Dr. Sean McCormack, chair of the Ealing Wildlife Group, says that although scientific studies are still underway, the beavers have already had an “anecdotal” impact. “A few weeks after they came, there were two massive storms that led to floods,” he says. “But three or four months later, there were more storms, and the same storm drain was only trickling. It’s because the beavers have built dams to slow the flow.”
👎 🍑 Georgia GOP expels vote fraudster from leadership Ja’han Jones MSNBC, The ReidOut Blog
In a Republican Party with no shortage of election deniers, Georgia Republicans have arguably been the most rabid in pushing laws to support their claims — despite evidence to the contrary — that voter fraud can sway elections.
Gov. Brian Kemp and fellow Georgia Republicans have occasionally been at odds, but they have been in sync as far as supporting laws that make it easier to purge people from voter rolls and strict voter suppression measures that have been shown to disproportionately affect nonwhite voters. ✂️
On Friday, Georgia Republicans overwhelmingly voted to remove the state party’s first vice chairman, Brian Pritchard, from his position after a judge found in March that he had voted illegally in nine elections in 2008 and 2010. (Pritchard has denied any wrongdoing.)
A step away from hypocrisy and for truth.
👍 Funding the IRS is how to catch cheats: Using an infusion of tunds provided by President Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act, the IRS has already collected more than $520 million from 1,600 millionaires who had unpaid tax bills of more than $250,000.
Now do tRump, please. And there may be some stuff going on there.
👎 Rudy Giuliani’s radio show gets suspended. Martin Pengelly The Guardian
The former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani’s troubles deepened on Friday when he was suspended by WABC radio, for trying to use his show to discuss the lie that the 2020 presidential election was lost by Donald Trump because of electoral fraud.
John Catsimatidis, a New York billionaire, Republican donor and owner of WABC, told the New York Times: “We’re not going to talk about fallacies of the November 2020 election. We warned him once. We warned him twice. And I get a text from him last night, and I get a text from him this morning that he refuses not to talk about it.
“So he left me no option. I suspended him.”
Giuliani said he had been fired.
Truth wins! Or, at least that settlement of 787.5 million that Fox needed to make to Dominion has scared some of the lies out of the media, even a section owned by a RW billionaire.
💣 Republicans: Party of Crimes and Chaos 💣
GOP loses suit to mess up AZ elections:
⏰ Marge is mad about Mike Johnson going to NY to support his “friend” the nearly convicted felon. Well, even a stopped clock is right twice a day.
I don’t know how true this is, but I like it a lot, so there
🚚 💙 Democrats Deliver 💙 🚚
President Biden trolled tRump into accepting Biden’s debate conditions: Donald Trump lost two debates to me in 2020. Since then, he hasn’t shown up for a debate. Now he’s acting like he wants to debate me again. Well, make my day, pal.
Some conditions include: more honest moderators (CNN and ABC, not FOX), no audience, the mike gets turned off when the turn is over. See more about the situation here. Kerry Eleved Daily Kos
MARKETS! Even higher on Thursday although they didn’t stay there! And President Biden takes a victory lap!
Stock market indices at all-time high thanks to April CPI reading Vivien Lou Chen Market Watch
All three major U.S. stock indexes finished at their highest-ever levels on Wednesday, fueled by signs of slowing inflation on a monthly basis in April's consumer price index.
It was the first time since March 21 that all three indexes reached record closing highs on the same day. Wednesday's rally also reflects the best CPI-day performance for the Dow Jones, S&P 500 and small-cap Russell 2000 index since Nov. 14 of last year.
Why aren’t we hearing more about this? Well, at least there is Victor Shi:
The Biden Harris administration kicks off infrastructure week White House Briefing Room
When President Biden signed the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law in November 2021, he committed to delivering once-in-a-generation investments to rebuild America’s infrastructure and competitiveness. Today, his Administration is cutting ribbons and breaking ground on projects across the country to rebuild our roads and bridges, deliver clean and safe water, tackle legacy pollution, expand access to high-speed internet, and build a clean energy economy for all Americans. While “Infrastructure Week” became an empty punchline during the prior Administration, President Biden is delivering an “Infrastructure Decade” that will benefit communities for generations to come. As this year’s Infrastructure Week kicks off, the Administration celebrates the historic progress of President Biden’s Investing in America agenda, which continues to unlock economic opportunity, create good-paying jobs, boost domestic manufacturing, strengthen supply chains, and grow the economy from the middle out and the bottom up.
To date, the Administration has announced nearly $454 billion in Bipartisan Infrastructure Law funding, including over 56,000 specific projects and awards, across over 4,500 communities in all 50 states, D.C., the territories, and for Tribes. To highlight the wide-ranging impact of the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, the White House has released an updated map showcasing the more than 56,000 projects and awards that are identified or now underway.
Today, the Administration is also highlighting progress across President Biden’s entire Investing in America agenda — which includes the Inflation Reduction Act, the CHIPS and Science Act, the American Rescue Plan, and the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law. The President’s agenda has driven over $866 billion dollars in private sector manufacturing and clean energy investments in the United States, and the Administration is releasing new state by state fact sheets that spotlight investments and projects in all 50 states, the territories, and Washington DC.
This Infrastructure Week, the Administration also continues to call on Republicans in Congress to extend funding for the Affordable Connectivity Program, a Bipartisan Infrastructure Law program that has lowered internet bills to enable more than 23 million households—1 in 6 households across the country—to access affordable high-speed internet. Without action from Congress, millions of Americans will see their internet bills increase or lose internet access at the end of May.
HISTORIC PROGRESS ON INFRASTRUCTURE: BY THE NUMBERS
Thanks to the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law alone, the Administration has already:
- Launched improvements on over 165,000 miles of roads and launched over 9,400 bridge repair projects – making our roadways safer and reconnecting communities across the country;
- Provided funding to deploy nearly 3,000 low-and zero-emission American-made transit buses and funded over 5,000 clean school buses in 600 communities across the country, prioritizing disadvantaged areas;
- Delivered funding for over 450 port and waterway projects to strengthen supply chains, speed up the movement of goods, lower costs, and reduce greenhouse gas emissions;
- Deployed investments in over 300 airport terminal projects to modernize and expand terminals—over 100 of which are under construction or complete;
- Launched over 4,100 projects to help communities build resilience to threats such as the impacts of climate change and cyber-attacks;
- Financed over 1,400 drinking water and wastewater projects across the country;
- Deployed funding that will help replace up to 1.7 million toxic lead pipes;
- Removed hazardous fuel material from nearly 15 million acres of land through the Infrastructure Law and other sources to protect communities from wildfires;
- Funded nearly 500 projects for water recycling, storage, conservation, desalination, and other purposes to improve drought resilience across the West;
- Provided funding to over 200 states, Tribes, and territories and launched over 60 projects to improve the resilience and reliability of America’s electric grid and deliver cheaper and cleaner electricity—representing the largest single investment in electric transmission and distribution infrastructure in the history of the United States;
- Enabled over 23 million low-income households to access free or discounted high-speed internet service through the Affordable Connectivity Program;
- Funded 12,000 miles of middle-mile high-speed internet infrastructure across 370 counties, promoting the security, resilience, and affordability of our nation’s regional networks;
- Provided funding to more than 280 Tribal governments to connect over 65,000 Tribal households with high-speed internet;
- Implemented new rules to expose internet junk fees, enabling 300 million Americans to shop for home and mobile internet plans that best meet their needs and budget;
- Plugged nearly 8,000 orphaned oil and gas wells to address legacy pollution;
- Allocated funding to 95 previously unfunded Superfund site projects, including the longstanding backlog of projects, to clean up contaminated sites and advance environmental justice; and
- Provided funding to 180 programs that advance President Biden’s Justice40 Initiative, which set a goal that 40% of the overall benefits of certain federal clean energy, climate, and other investments flow to disadvantaged communities.
Here are the state fact sheets. I looked up 🌵 Arizona. It’s a pdf, making it harder to insert into here, but it highlights the amount of investment, how this has helped jobs, the employment rate, and important projects.
I want the MSM to pay attention to this!
💜 Unity? 💜
Jennifer Rubin calls for unity in combatting election challenges NOW Washington Post, gift article
We know it is coming. The array of contestants in four-times indicted former president Donald Trump’s vice-presidential beauty pageant have repeatedly refused to say they unequivocally will accept the election results. Trump has already begun to lie about Democrats enlisting illegal immigrants to vote. If the MAGA forces do not win, Americans can expect an enhanced replay of 2020 election denial — amplified by Truth Social, Elon Musk’s X and China’s TikTok. Americans must collectively prepare for it — and for any violence MAGA forces (from the gang who argued Jan. 6, 2021, was “legitimate political discourse”) might incite.
Democrats can certainly sound the alarm. For starters, they can underscore that only one side is planting the seeds of election denial. President Biden and other top Democrats can talk about it at the convention this summer when they will have the largest national audience of the campaign. But Democrats cannot do it alone. It’s an all-hands-on-deck moment both to ensure all legal votes get counted and to counter expected election denial.
She discusses other ideas. I know many are being implemented, at least in Arizona.
📥 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 😈
Anti-abortion activist gets long prison term Rachel Locker BBC News
An anti-abortion activist has been sentenced to nearly five years in prison for blockading a clinic in Washington DC to stop patient access.
Lauren Handy, 30, led a group that forced entry into the Surgi-Clinic in 2020, injuring a nurse, before spending several hours inside.
She was one of several people convicted of civil rights offences last year over the incident.
Actually, I think the sentence may be too long, but it’s nice to see someone getting prison time in this case.
The guy who tried to kill Nancy Pelosi and instead attacked her husband is getting sentenced today. The DOJ is asking for 40 years.
Russia and its gas: Sanctions work! Agathe Demaris Russia's state-owned energy giant Gazprom recorded a US$6.8bn loss in 2023, the first since 1999 - in my latest for @ForeignPolicy I unpack what this means for the Kremlin's war economy and why Moscow has no good option to revive flagging gas sales
Ukraine strikes back: Video of the Russian air force being incinerated last night at Crimea’s Belbek air base. Yep, the Russians lied. We hit them hard.
West Virginia legislator helps pass law legalizing raw milk, then gets sick from drinking raw milk
Now, if someone wants to drink raw milk, I don’t care that much. I admit I have done it, because I knew some dairy farmers (Swiss, not US).
📣 Let’s Honor Truth ☀️️
This week we are honoring all librarians and also John Oliver for his deep dive into the insane amount of pressure they are under with the book banning (and how people are fighting back). Yes, it’s long, but also really useful.
And I admit I did not “watch” it — I listened to it while doing chores around the house.
Libraries are grand places. When I was a kid, I walked the two miles to mine nearly every weekday in the summer.
They should be honored and cherished as pillars of communities and truth. Also, any kid with a phone has access to porn, more porn than could be found in the library. No, it’s that community and truth that the right has been trying to kill.
Also, in the comments, there was a warning: "When they start firing librarians and banning books, you're in the beginning of a dictatorship. Librarians are the guardians of free speech and the first lines of defense against a dictator, which means they're also the first to fall."
🌹 Let’s Celebrate Love ❤️
A cat who comforts — not a new story, but worth reading: This is Oscar the Cat and his story is amazing. Oscar was adopted by a nursing home in Providence, Rhode Island. He was supposed to be a therapy cat but the staff quickly realized that most of the time, Oscar preferred to be left alone. He didn't socialize and would hiss at people who tried to get too close to him. One day, staff noticed he showed interest in one resident and even went to curl up next to him. A few days later, that resident died. A short time later, Oscar spent hours with another resident, only for that resident to die a short time later too. The workers realized that Oscar only spent time with certain residents when he knew somehow that they were in their last moments. One time, the workers tried to get him to spend time with a senior who they believed were going to die soon only for him to spend time with a seemingly healthy senior. That seemingly healthy senior soon died a few days later. Over the course of his life, Oscar correctly predicted over 100 people's deaths and comforted them in their last moments.
It’s so important to reach out to people when they need it.
On the other hand, perhaps the cat was responsible for the deaths? Just like I always wondered if Jessica Fletcher was a murderer in Murder She Wrote.
And, more standard fare:
My husband was a widower when I married him, and I adopted his adult kids (they had to agree). It’s so special.
📎Odds & Ends 📎
Beau of the Fifth Column takes a look at election results vs polling results.
*
Sometimes we don’t know much about the things that didn’t happen. SCOTUS just rejected a constitutional challenge that could have dismantley the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. This is really, really good. Vote was 7 to 2.
A PBS documentary that imagines a possible great future Craig Thompson EcoWatch
The PBS documentary series A Brief History of the Future was an idea whose germination accelerated during the COVID-19 pandemic.
“Right around the time that the pandemic was hitting us, I realized that most of the narratives and stories about the future were based in doom and gloom, right?” said Ari Wallach, co-executive producer and host. “I call it big dystopia.”
Wallach is a futurist who has been investigating our planet for years, trying to determine “what does a flourishing society look like on a thriving ecologically-sound planet Earth.” One way to explore this idea was to travel with a film crew and document positive impacts around the globe. Wallach and his team visit a kelp farmer in New Haven, a solar farm in Morocco, a mycelium entrepreneur in New York state and a floating village in Amsterdam, among many other locations. The footage was molded into a six-part, six-hour documentary. The series, which covers not only climate innovators but historians, scientists and thinkers, premieres on PBS on April 3, and Wallach was part of a team that included executive producer Kathryn Murdoch (married to James Murdoch, Rupert Murdoch’s son), the UNTOLD studio, and Drake’s DreamCrew production team. The following are excerpts of a conversation with Wallach from his home in Hastings-on-Hudson.
Now, I’m not currently in the US, so watching PBS is a challenge, but I like the attitude. To get people to do good things, they need to be convinced there’s hope.
🐦 I do a lot of other writing. A recent offering: the Crow Nickels (chronicles), a trilogy about crows who want to save birdkind from extinction: Hunters of the Feather, Scavengers of Mind and 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 — such as The Meryton Murders — and others based on history and Greek mythology, such as Jocasta: The Mother-Wife of Oedipus, 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.