GOOD DAYYYYYY, GNUSIES!
The GNR is chockerblock full today, so let’s get straight to it!!
But first, some music to set the theme...
🎩 to jessiestaf whose line “any progress is good progress” in the Monday GNR reminded me of this song (and I think it’s the perfect song for this J6 Hearing week!):
January 6 Select Committee 😊
The January 6 Committee Is Not Messing Around, Quinta Jurecic, the Atlantic, June 14, 2022.
The open hearing last week of the committee investigating the January 6 coup attempt plunged viewers back into the brutality and terror of that day. The committee featured footage of insurrectionists beating the law-enforcement officers who attempted to stop them from entering the Capitol, material disturbing enough that YouTube later labeled video of the hearing as “inappropriate for some users.” Caroline Edwards, a Capitol Police officer who testified about her injuries at the hands of the rioters, described “slipping in people’s blood.” Within the chamber, lawmakers who had escaped the violence watched the proceedings with tears in their eyes.
The second hearing, yesterday morning, was free from portrayals of violence but no less gripping. Using a combination of live witnesses and video footage from taped depositions, committee members walked through the evidence that President Donald Trump and his campaign knew the Big Lie about election fraud to be exactly that—yet continued to pursue these claims of a stolen election in the run-up to the insurrection. The overall impression was, as Trump’s own attorney general William Barr commented, of a man “detached from reality” and willing to use violence to bring his chosen reality into existence. ✂️
In potentially putting their own career on the line, members of the committee are demonstrating the strength of their own commitment to the idea that January 6 should matter. They’re insisting that the public should care too. And part of that insistence involves working to present the hearings in as digestible a way as possible in the hope of breaking through in a frenetic media environment. The Mueller report was a dense, 448-page legal document; when the special counsel finally appeared before Congress, his testimony was largely a dry back-and-forth of yes-and-no answers, interspersed with disruptions from House Republicans eager to derail the proceedings. This time around, the select committee hired a former president of ABC News to craft the January 6 hearings into, as The New York Times described, something akin to “a docudrama or a must-watch mini-series.” In an unusual move for Congress, the first and last hearings were scheduled for the prime-time 8 p.m. slot. So far, the gambit seems to be working: 20 million people tuned in for the initial hearing, a number roughly equivalent to the viewership for a game of Sunday Night Football.
👀
Inside the explosive Oval Office confrontation three days before Jan. 6, Michael Kranish, Washington Post, June 14, 2022.
But larger mysteries could still be solved at an upcoming Jan. 6 committee hearing slated to examine Clark’s actions, including the crucial question of whether Clark and his allies were acting on their own initiative — or whether they were one piece of a larger, well-planned effort to keep Trump in power. That question gets to the heart of the committee’s professed mission: proving there was a “coordinated, multi-step effort to overturn the 2020 presidential election.” ✂️
Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.), who participated in the Judiciary Committee’s investigation, said investigators should key in on whether Clark was working on behalf of others not yet identified.
“It certainly could be a symptom of a much larger and more coherent plan than has currently been disclosed,” Whitehouse said. Clark “does not appear to have elections expertise or experience, which raises the question, did he really sit down at his computer and type it out or does somebody produce it for him?”
Savage...but fair assessment
Giuliani’s Intoxication, Trump’s Big Rip-Off, And Other Tales From the January 6th Committee Hearing, Garrett Epps, Washington Monthly, June 14, 2022.
As the sun sets slowly on America’s Mayor, it is important to understand how apparently impaired he was when he captured Trump’s ear and began the process of deranging a quarter of the nation and an entire TV network. It’s not simply a pathetic spectacle; it is evidence of a defeated president who could only find clowns like Giuliani to tell him what he wanted to hear. The main thrust of the Monday hearing was to construct a tense, surreal ticktock of who told Trump that he had lost. The answer is pretty much everybody—not just Pak (and his successor, another Trump appointee), but also the Trump campaign manager Bill Stepien, Attorney General Bill Barr, the Justice Department lawyers Jeffrey Rosen and Richard Donohue, and 61 federal judges, 10 of them Trump’s own appointees.
No matter what happened, Trump insisted that the election had been swung by fraud. And why wouldn’t he? In 2012, he claimed that Barack Obama, who defeated Mitt Romney by 5 million votes, had only won by fraud. In 2016, he claimed that Ted Cruz cheated him in the Iowa Republican caucus. In April 2020, he began claiming that the November presidential election would be rigged. (Trump even once claimed that vote fraud cost him an Emmy for The Apprentice.)
This persistent, obsessive denial of reality might convince an onlooker that the individual in question is simply insane, incapable of understanding the world around him. But at the hearing’s end, the committee brought forward a potential second, entirely rational, reason: money. The “stolen election” narrative proved lucrative for Trump’s operation. Lofgren reported that Trump’s mail and email operation raised $250 million from donors who believed his tale of having been robbed. A lot of this money didn’t go to fight the nonexistent “steal”—it went (among other places) to the Trump Hotel Collection. “The Big Lie was also a big rip-off,” Lofgren said.
Today’s Hearing Postponed — all the better to put it in prime time!
The hearing scheduled for today has been postponed and the next one will be tomorrow. It is possible that the J6 Select Committee is quietly shifting the schedule to avoid having the hearings overshadowed by SCOTUS decisions, (which will be coming out on Mondays, Wednesdays and possibly Fridays). Or there may have been another good reason — we all know that some of the witnesses are not exactly eager.
But the J6 work continues, and the committee’s determination to get the truth out is undiminished. The committee released a video late Tuesday:
The Jan. 6 committee has postponed its Wednesday hearing and will next meet Thursday, Ximena Bustillo, NPR, June 14, 2022.
The committee's release does not offer an explanation, but a source familiar said the move was a result of scheduling conflicts.
The committee's next hearing will take place Thursday at 1 p.m. ET, followed by a meeting next Tuesday, June 21 at 1 p.m. ET and then Thursday, June 23 at 1 p.m. ET.
Jan. 6 committee member Pete Aguilar said the hearing would likely be moved to next week, although he cautioned that the calendar continues to be fluid.
So When Will We Get That Hearing About Attempted Coup At The DOJ? Liz Dye, Wonkette, June 14, 2022.
Looks like we'll have to wait a little bit longer to hear testimony about the attempted coup at Trump's Justice Department, since the House January 6 Select Committee just announced that the hearing scheduled for tomorrow will be postponed for technical reasons. Maybe former acting Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen and his deputy Richard Donoghue and the former head of the Office of Legal Counsel Steven Engel are all in labor!
But probably not.
Luckily the Washington Post has a tick-tock of Trump's attempt to weaponize the DOJ to help him steal the election with a bunch of crazy new details to tide us over until they reschedule. ✂️
It's not clear when Rosen, Donoghue, and Engel will eventually testify, but, if we might make a minor suggestion, the committee needs to put these guys on in prime time. This shit was NUTS, and nobody but diehards like us knows exactly what happened here. Make it must see TV, guys — it ain't rocket science.
CALM DOWN. It Doesn't Matter If The Jan 6 Committee Makes A Criminal Referral To The DOJ! Liz Dye, Wonkette, June 14, 2022.
The same people who shout that Merrick Garland should "do something" might take a moment to ponder the political cost of having the January 6 committee join the chorus. Because, while it would be satisfying to wrap these hearings up with an indictment-ready referral, the reality is that doing so will undercut the appearance of independence when and if prosecutors indict President Crimetime. And conversely, if Garland declines to indict after a referral, it will undercut the committee's conclusions of law and make it look partisan.
Meanwhile, the DOJ has already requested every scrap of evidence amassed by the January 6 committee, while Garland promises that "I'm watching and I will be watching all the hearings, although I may not be able to watch all of it live. But I'll be sure that I'll be watching all that. And I can assure you that the January 6 prosecutors are watching all the hearings as well."
Does that mean that prosecutors are waiting in the wings with a warrant for Trump's arrest? No, of course not. It's clear that Garland is going to be incredibly cautious about this process and will probably disappoint us in the end. But the outcome is certainly not going to be determined by whether the committee sends him a letter telling him to arrest Trump.
In the year 2022, there is plenty of real shit to be angry about. Whether or not the committee makes a meaningless referral to the DOJ simply does not rate.
Oops, and meanwhile, TFG has other problems:
N.Y. high court nixes Trump appeal, clearing way for testimony, AP via NBC, June 14, 2022.
NEW YORK — New York’s highest court rejected former President Donald Trump’s last-ditch effort to avoid testifying in the state attorney general’s civil investigation into his business practices on Tuesday, clearing the way for his deposition next month.
The state’s Court of Appeals said there was no “substantial constitutional question” that would warrant its intervention in the matter following an intermediate appellate court’s ruling last month enforcing a subpoena for Trump’s testimony.
The court also dismissed a motion by Trump’s lawyers to stay the subpoenas, saying that doing so would be “academic,” since it wasn’t taking up the former president’s appeal in the first place.
Trump and his two eldest children, Ivanka and Donald Trump Jr., agreed last week to answer questions under oath starting July 15 unless the Court of Appeals decided to step in.
Trump is ‘facing a season of legal reckoning’: Eric Swalwell explains how he’s exploiting Jan. 6 evidence, Bob Brigham, Raw Story, June 14, 2022.
Democratic Rep. Eric Swalwell of California on Tuesday explained how he is using evidence presented to the public during the select committee hearings as he sues Donald Trump under the Ku Klux Klan Act of 1871.
"Prosecutors are not the only lawyers watching Jan. 6 committee's hearings looking for evidence, there is a small army of lawyers who have already made Donald Trump a defendant in civil lawsuits who are also looking for evidence to use against Donald Trump in the Jan. 6 committee hearings," MSNBC's Lawrence O'Donnell. ✂️
"Now, because of the Jan. 6 commission, because of the Department of Justice's hundreds of indictments and what we have learned from those defendants, and because of lawsuits in New York, as well as what's being investigated in Georgia, Donald Trump right now is going into a season of legal reckoning," he said.
"And there are storms that are really brewing right now in strengthening that could hit him, both criminally and civilly. I brought my case civilly to do mine in small part, to bring accountability to the person who started the insurrection and I hope as far as accountability, it ends with him being held accountable."
And the Loser social network under investigation
You just know — with TFG — that it was all set up in advance as a grift...
Government expands investigation into Trump's social network deal, Dan Primack, Axios, June 13, 2022.
Federal securities regulators have expanded their investigation into the planned merger between a blank check acquisition company and former President Trump's social media business, known as Truth Social, according to a Monday morning filing with the SEC.
Why it matters: Truth Social's financial prospects are heavily reliant on investment tied to the merger, which may never come to pass.
Backstory: The Securities and Exchange Commission is investigating communications between the blank check company, called Digital World Acquisition Corp., and Trump. Of particular interest would be if the two sides negotiated prior to DWAC going public, which would have been illegal.
🎶 Music! 🎶
The Kids are All Right
March for Our Lives rallies in Boston and nationwide amid call for tough gun controls, Andrew Brinker, et al, Boston Globe, June 11, 2022.
More than a thousand demonstrators gathered Saturday afternoon on Boston’s waterfront to call for stronger gun control laws, joining a national protest movement that promised to bring many more into the streets of major cities and small towns across the country.
The national mobilization comes in the wake of a spate of mass shootings that has devastated the nation, including an attack at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas, that left 21 dead, including 19 young students.
Saturday’s March for Our Lives protests marked the second time demonstrators have poured into the streets and onto the steps of the nation’s Capitol building in the name of the movement. The first was four years ago in 2018 after a gunman killed 17 people at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla. Students who survived that shooting organized the first March for Our Lives.
These kids don’t believe their faith justifies cruelty to others
With Pride flags in hand, Seattle Pacific graduates protested anti-LGBTQ bigotry, Hemant Mehta, OnlySky Media, June 14, 2022.
During Seattle Pacific University’s graduation ceremony on Sunday, a number of students receiving their diploma in one hand while handing rainbow flags to the anti-LGBTQ school president. It was an extension of a peaceful protest that’s been going on for weeks in opposition to the school’s new policy effectively blocking the hiring of openly LGBTQ people. ✂️
All together, about 45 students gave SPU Interim President Pete Menjares a flag instead of (or in addition to) shaking his hand.✂️
Whether or not that argument works, though, the storyline at the school for the past few weeks has been all about how students are rejecting faith-based bigotry while most of the adults in charge are defending it no matter who they hurt in the name of Jesus. The flag protest at graduation is just the latest iteration of it. It’s a reminder that even though these students attend a conservative Christian school, they don’t believe their faith justifies discrimination against LGBTQ people.
💙 Democrats Deliver 💙
Conservation of Species
U.S. House passes a major wildlife conservation spending bill, Laura Benshoff, NPR, June 14, 2022.
A bill to conserve endangered species — from the red-cockaded woodpecker to the snuffbox mussel — was passed by the U.S. House in a 231-to-190 vote on Tuesday.
The Recovering America's Wildlife Act would create an annual fund of more than $1.3 billion, given to states, territories, and tribal nations for wildlife conservation on the ground. While threatened species have been defined and protected under the Endangered Species Act since 1973, that law does not provide robust funding to proactively maintain their numbers.
The effort comes as scientists and international organizations sound the alarm about accelerating species decline.
"Too many people don't realize ... that roughly one-third of our wildlife is at increased risk of extinction," said lead House sponsor Debbie Dingell, a Democrat from Michigan, echoing a recent study about climate change.
Voting Rights
New York’s Smart New Voting Rights Law, Joshua Douglas, Washington Monthly, June 13, 2022.
The John R. Lewis Voting Rights Act of New York accomplishes much of what Congress has set out but failed to do. Even the title of the bill—named after the late civil rights icon—demonstrates the powerful message of this new state law.
The bill begins with a statement of legislative purpose, elevating the importance of the fundamental right to vote to our democracy. The language notes that the protection for the right to vote within the state constitution “substantially exceeds” that conferred under the U.S. Constitution, allowing the state legislature to promulgate robust voting rules. The bill also declares that New York seeks to “encourage participation in the elective franchise by all eligible voters to the maximum extent” and particularly to ensure that racial minorities and language-minority groups enjoy equal access to the ballot. These prefatory statements are not mere boilerplate. They are important because they set the tone for state election law, making it clear that the scale is tipped on the side of the voter.
The legal rules the bill promulgates will help to achieve these goals. For instance, the statute provides that courts must construe all election laws “liberally” in favor of the voter and employ the highest form of judicial review to any burdens on the right to vote. Government actors must demonstrate that election laws are “narrowly tailored to promote a compelling policy justification that must be supported by substantial evidence.” This means that state or local governments must have an extremely strong reason for making voting harder. That legal standard is a far cry from current jurisprudence at the U.S. Supreme Court, which unduly defers to state legislatures and barely requires states to offer any rationale for their voting rules. Federal court rulings have made it virtually impossible for voting rights plaintiffs to prevail. Imposing this stronger “strict scrutiny” standard for voting restrictions will help voting rights litigants in New York ensure that the state is not unfairly abridging our most fundamental right.
Labor and Unions
Economy
I took this screen shot from T Maysle’s comment in last night’s shade — Thank you, T!
🎶 Musical Break 🎶
😭🤯Republicans in Disarray 😫😤
Reps. Mace, Rice face hard GOP primaries after defying Trump, Meg Kinnard, AP, June 14, 2022.
CROSSING TRUMP: SOUTH CAROLINA REPUBLICANS FACE CHALLENGERS
Rep. Tom Rice, a five-term congressman, attracted a half-dozen GOP challengers after his vote to impeach Trump. All have cited the vote as a mark of disloyalty to both the former president and Rice’s constituents in the 7th Congressional District, which heavily supported Trump in his two campaigns. Trump has endorsed state Rep. Russell Fry in the race.
Rice, an otherwise consistent supporter of Trump’s policies, has stood by his vote, acknowledging it may lead to his ouster but saying he followed his conscience.✂️
Taking a somewhat different approach, Rep. Nancy Mace has sought to make amends for angering Trump, filming a video in New York this year outside Trump Tower to remind her constituents that she was one of the former president’s “earliest supporters.” She worked for his 2016 campaign and had his backing in her 2020 run.✂️
Trump is supporting Mace’s opponent, former state Rep. Katie Arrington, who won the GOP nomination for the seat in 2018 by defeating incumbent Mark Sanford. She went on to lose the seat to Joe Cunningham in the general election in Democrats’ first flip of a South Carolina seat in decades.
(nifty note: Joe Cunningham is now running for SC Governor — good luck Joe!)
And over at the Republican media arm…
Sebastian Gorka Wants Fox News Employees Criminally Charged for Airing Segment About Transgender Acceptance, Zachary Petrizzo, Daily Beast.
Ex-Fox News contributor Sebastian Gorka wants to see his old colleagues criminally charged with “promulgating the abuse of children” after the network aired a segment about transgender acceptance. On his Tuesday afternoon Salem radio show, Gorka, who passed out fake business cards during his Fox News tenure, played a video of The Daily Wire’s Matt Walsh speaking about the trans segment which aired Friday that caught the ire of several regular Fox News guests. “All the parties involved should explain themselves, and then they should be fired,” Walsh, who’s frequently appeared as a guest on Fox News, said of the Fox News employees involved in the segment’s production. “Named, shamed, and fired.” Gorka then called for Fox News staffers to be charged with crimes. “I’ll go a step further, you should be charged with promulgating the abuse of children,” he said. “Just like somebody who’s spreading child porn on the internet. Anyone involved in transitioning a child should be arrested for child abuse.” Fox News didn’t return The Daily Beast’s request for comment on Tuesday evening.
🌱🩺 Health and Environment News 🌱🩺
More astonishing cancer news
There have been a bunch of amazing stories recently of breakthroughs or outstanding results in clinical trials for cancer therapies. Here is another one!
Spanish-Israeli team finds mechanism to make blood cancer cells harmless, Judy Siegel-Itzkovich, Jerusalem Post, June 12, 2022.
Wouldn’t it be wonderful if, somehow, highly proliferative leukemia cells that grow and multiply rapidly could revert to normal cells that no longer multiply? Like putting a jack-in-the-box back into the container.
New research led by scientists in Barcelona, Spain – with significant participation by colleagues at the Department of Human Genetics and Biochemistry of Tel Aviv University’s Sackler Faculty of Medicine: Prof. Gideon Rehavi, Nitzan Kol, Chen Avrahami and Sharon Moshitch-Moshkovitz – has managed to do this. They have just published their findings in the high-impact journal Leukemia under the title, “Remodeling of the m6A RNA landscape in the conversion of acute lymphoblastic leukemia cells to macrophages.”
The article describes how leukemia cells become normal cells that no longer multiply by changing the chemical modifications – the so-called epigenetics – of a type of its genetic material called messenger RNA. The Spanish participants included Alberto Bueno-Costa, a researcher with the group of Dr. Manel Esteller, who heads the Josep Carreras Leukemia Research Institute at the University of Barcelona.
Abortion is a religious freedom issue, too
South Florida synagogue sues over Florida’s new 15-week abortion ban, Jim Saunders, Miami Herald, June 14, 2022.
A South Florida Jewish congregation has challenged a new state law that blocks abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy, contending the measure violates privacy and religious-freedom rights. The lawsuit, filed Friday in Leon County circuit court by Congregation L’Dor Va-Dor, seeks to block the law from taking effect July 1. Abortion clinics also filed a lawsuit this month in Leon County challenging the constitutionality of the restriction.
“For Jews, all life is precious and thus the decision to bring new life into the world is not taken lightly or determined by state fiat,” the lawsuit said. “In Jewish law, abortion is required if necessary to protect the health, mental or physical well-being of the woman, or for many other reasons not permitted under the act [the new law]. As such, the act prohibits Jewish women from practicing their faith free of government intrusion and thus violates their privacy rights and religious freedom.”
Future energy storage?
Scientists have dreamed up lots of better sources of energy for humankind, but the vexing problem has been how to efficiently store energy so that a steady supply can be provided. These guys think they’ve found one solution:
CO2 battery cracks the code for clean grid, startup says, Benjamin Storrow, ClimateWire, June 9, 2022.
Energy Dome SpA completed a 2-megawatt/ 4-megawatt-hour pilot project that tested the technology on the Italian island of Sardinia. In yesterday's announcement, it framed that success as a breakthrough in energy storage technology and said its system can be built at half the cost of a similarly sized lithium-ion battery. The company will now begin work on a 20-MW/200-MWh facility that it expects to come online next year, in partnership with Italian utility A2A SpA.
“We can now provide an answer to the most pressing issue of our time: climate change,” Energy Dome founder and CEO Claudio Spadacini said in a statement. “Our breakthrough technology, the CO2 Battery, is now commercially available to make cost-effective renewable energy dispatchable on a global scale.”
Building Food Resilience
Scientists Race to Create Wheat That Can Withstand Global Warming, Nina Lakhani, Mother Jones, June 14, 2022.
CIMMYT is an international research organization that develops new maize and wheat varieties as “international public goods” for national food programs and the private sector. Its funding comes mostly from government development agencies and foundations like Bill and Melinda Gates and the Carlos Slim Health Institute, but with some direct and indirect private sector money—and influence.
The end goal is to create varieties that can adapt to and thrive in unpredictable conditions without expensive and ecologically damaging fungicides that commercial seeds are designed to require.
It’s a painstaking, never-ending process. Every year 5,000 newly bred lines or varieties are tested between November and April, in four different environments: severe and intermediate drought, late season heat and optimal conditions. Simultaneously they are tested in Kenya for stem rust, a fungal disease and serious threat to wheat.
💞 In Honor of Father’s Day 💞
Father’s Day is this Sunday, so let’s have a little section honoring fathers!
This dad multi-tasked to a win!
Hamilton man wins Buffalo Marathon while pushing his 2-year-old son, asleep in his stroller, Bobby Histrova, CBC, June 8, 2022.
Then in early 2019, McAneney said he picked up running again and he took his son with him in a stroller. He said his wife eventually bought a proper running stroller as an early Father's Day gift. Soon after, the pandemic hit.
"Ninety per cent of my runs since the pandemic started have been with him. He's been my training partner throughout the whole thing," McAneney told CBC Hamilton. ✂️
Greg Weber, the marathon's executive director, said he was confident McAneney could break the record and made an exception to the rules to allow McAneney to run with the stroller. ✂️
McAneney didn't beat the record, but ran the marathon in two hours, 33 minutes and 32 seconds. He finished the race, with Sutton — by then nodding off — 16 seconds ahead of the next runner.
LOL
Famous Dad leaves a treasure trove!
Found: the ‘how to draw’ books Pablo Picasso created for his daughter, Dalya Alberge, the Guardian, June 11, 2022.
They are the ultimate “how to draw” books for a young child, created by a doting dad who just happened to be one of the greatest artists of the 20th century. The granddaughter of Pablo Picasso has discovered an extraordinary collection of sketchbooks used by the artist to teach his eldest daughter to draw and colour.
Picasso filled the pages with playful scenes – animals, birds, clowns, acrobats, horses and doves – which would delight any child, as well as adults.
He created them for Maya Ruiz-Picasso when she was aged between five and seven. On some pages, the little girl made impressive attempts to imitate the master. She also graded her father’s work, scribbling the number “10” on a circus scene, to show her approval.
He drew two charming images of a fox longing for grapes – inspired by the 17th-century fabulist Jean de La Fontaine’s sour grapes fable, The Fox and the Grapes – and Maya coloured in one of them. He also drew simple but beautiful eagles in a single movement, without raising the pencil from the paper, conveying his love of form and pure line to her.
The previously unseen collection includes exquisite origami sculptures of birds that he brought to life for Maya from exhibition invitation cards.
🎶 💞 Fathers’ Day Music 💞🎶
⚡️ Lightning RoundUp ⚡️
I’m mixing it up, Gnusies! Going to put the Lightning Roundup in front of CG’s Picks today — I’m also putting some (I hope!) funnies in this here GNR today — which is new for me and highly risky given my questionable humor sensor😅 — so I found I had to reorganize everything or there would be no sleep for Nifty tonight! 🤣
⚡️ Trump’s Coup Plot Relied on Giuliani’s Inebriated Lies, John Nichols, The Nation, June 13, 2022.
⚡️ I thought the Jan. 6 committee wouldn’t matter. I was wrong. Max Boot, Washington Post, June 14, 2022.
⚡️ The Future Criminal Case Against Donald Trump, Neal Katyal, New York Times (Opinion), June 14, 2022.
⚡️ Sorry, Ex-Trumpers, There Is No ‘Team Normal’ for the GOP, Wajahat Ali, Daily Beast, June 14, 2022.
⚡️ Opinion: No Republican candidate should be able to escape the Jan. 6 hearings, Jennifer Rubin, Washington Post, June 14, 2022.
⚡️ My Religion Makes Me Pro-abortion, Danya Ruttenberg, the Atlantic, June 14, 2022.
⚡️ Perspective: New York City Is a Lot Safer Than Small-Town America, Justin Fox, Bloomberg, June 7, 202
⚡️ THE BAR IS LOW or THERE ARE PEOPLE DUMBER THAN YOU OUT THERE DOING JUST FINE, Brittlestar’s Really Great Newsletter, June 12, 2022.
⚡️ Making sense of a senseless world: How children's books can mitigate the horror around us, Helena Ku Rhee, Salon, June 14, 2022.
⚡️ I think about stuff like this way too much! Your Understanding of Eye of the Needle Is Probably Wrong, Candida Moss, Daily Beast, June 13, 2022.
⚡️ Attention Jane Austen fans: Netflix’s ‘Persuasion,’ Starring Dakota Johnson, Is a New, Divisive Take on Jane Austen, Fletcher Peters, Daily Beast, June 14, 2022.
🐩💙 CG’s Picks 💙🐩
Hello Everybody! It’s me, Curlygirl! Isn’t it funny that my section is placed under the Lightning RoundUp today? I’m not sure what I think about that BUT I am sure I have some really good items for you today!
First up, an article from the Atlantic about light and noise in the world and how it affects animals. Mama says the writing is outstanding and beautiful and I really like the pictures!
HOW ANIMALS PERCEIVE THE WORLD, Ed Yong, the Atlantic, June 13, 2022.
After talking with Longcore, I head home to Washington, D.C., on a red-eye flight. As the plane takes off, I peer out the window at Los Angeles. The twinkling grid of lights stirs the same primordial awe that comes from watching a starry sky or a moonlit sea. But as the illuminated city recedes beneath my window, that amazement is tinged with unease. Light pollution is no longer just an urban problem. Light travels, encroaching even into places that are otherwise untouched by human influence. The light from Los Angeles reaches Death Valley, one of the largest national parks in the United States, more than 150 miles away. True darkness is hard to find.
So is true silence. ✂️
Sounds can travel over long distances, at all times of day, and through solid obstacles. These qualities make them excellent stimuli for animals but also pollutants par excellence. Noise can degrade habitats that look idyllic and make otherwise livable places unlivable. And where will animals go? In 2003, 83 percent of the contiguous United States lay within about a kilometer of a road.
Even the seas can’t offer silence. Although Jacques Cousteau once described the ocean as a silent world, it is anything but. It teems with the sounds of breaking waves and blowing winds, bubbling hydrothermal vents and calving icebergs, all of which carry farther and travel faster underwater than in air. Marine animals are noisy, too. Whales sing, toadfish hum, cod grunt, and bearded seals trill. Thousands of snapping shrimp, which stun passing fish with the shock waves produced by their large claws, fill coral reefs with sounds similar to sizzling bacon or Rice Krispies popping in milk. Some of this soundscape has been muted as humans have netted, hooked, and harpooned the oceans’ residents. Other natural noises have been drowned out by the ones we added: the scrapes of nets that trawl the seafloor; the staccato beats of seismic charges used to scout for oil and gas; the pings of military sonar; and, as a ubiquitous backing track for all this commotion, the sounds of ships.
Also, the owl picture above reminded me of this!
Awwwww! 🐩💕🦉→
Hero Boy Rescues Skunk!
If I ever have a problem like this, I hope a nice boy and his mom help me like they helped this skunk!
CG’s Funnies!
Cat funny
Dog funny
😃 Moar FUNNIES! 😄
For our punsters...
This reminds me of my second son — he was arguing like this at age 3!
Needs no explanation...
Well, I happen to prefer Miracle Whip to mayo, but I think I missed the joke...
Canada (and Denmark!), eh?
I love this man and his campaign ads are funny!
Let’s end this section with an important PSA:
💗 How Can You Help Build Our Democracy Back Better? 💗
Put your beautiful bleeding liberal heart into it! 🥰
Democratic litigation hero, Marc Elias was the legal eagle behind the 60 Big Lie losses after the election. Here’s his website, Democracy Docket. You can find information about current cases he is fighting to defend voting rights around the country, as well as actions you can take to help fight voter suppression at the link!
Write to voters around the country with Postcards to Voters. Progressive Muse usually posts an update on current campaigns in the comments and you can also check out the website. It’s easy, fun and it really works to GOTV!
🎩 Also, Goody posted a great list of links and I am going to borrow it because it’s great! 🎩
The only way they can win is by keeping people from voting. They are working like heck to make that happen and we need to do all we can to keep 2022 from being a year when they grab the Senate and House back from us.
How do we do that? Fight voter suppression!
What can you do?
HERE’S HOW TO CONTACT CONGRESS:
U.S. House of Representatives:* Telephone: 202-225-3121
* Website: http://www.house.gov/
U.S. Senate:* Telephone: 202-224-3121
* Website: http://www.senate.gov/
Find your member of Congress and contact him or her:
Let them know what matters to you!
Contact your Representative
Contact your Senator
And remember, all politics is local and personal! Let’s work to flip state and local elected positions Democratic!
Sister District Project — organization that is working to help Dems win state legislature races.
NEW!! Goody set up this place to donate to elect Democrats in tossup House and Senate races:
Did you donate yet? C’mon… it’ll make you feel great! 😁
Finally, whenever you feel your hope fading, read this again:
The 3.5% rule: How a small minority can change the world — and recall that we are a majority.
Also check this out:
The Albert Einstein Institution’s 198 Methods of Non-Violent Action
There’s a multitude of people all over this country — in both so-called “red” states and “blue” — who feel just as strongly as you do about this world and its future. We can do this!
💙 RoundUp WindDown 💙
That’s it for another Wednesday from me and CG!
Remember Gnusies, this is a long haul — in truth, it is the work of a lifetime and then the next generations’ lifetime and so on. Because a country and a democracy and the welfare of humankind is always a work in progress. It is our task to try to improve our own communities and the country, too, if we can. By doing what we can close to home, we can create ripples that will have an effect on our states, our regions, our country and the world. We work for better education in our local districts — and that helps us raise better-educated children, who will go out into the world and do good. We fight for equality and justice in our own towns and cities and pretty soon every town and city will be more equal and just. We work towards environmental conservation near us and pretty soon the effects radiate outward.
Stay in the fight, my friends — it is important work for ourselves, for our children, for our neighbors next door and around the world. And take good care of yourself not just so that you can keep up this important work, but simply because you are important and precious in your own right.
Get enough rest, eat nutritious food and every day try to get outdoors for a little while, if you can. Time spent under trees, or walking or even just sitting on a step looking up at the sky — it’s good for the spirit. Incredibly good for the spirit and will help you keep emotionally resilient.
That’s all for today and thank you all — the daily GNR is one of my self-care rituals (reading and writing) and one of the best parts is reading the comments. We’ve become a community and I appreciate you!
No classical music today! I can’t believe it! I have listened to classical music all while writing this GNR, but nope — here is a light relaxing jazz/easy listening video I found which I picked for the dreamy night pictures of my city. Enjoy!