(C) Daily Kos This story was originally published by Daily Kos and is unaltered. . . . . . . . . . . The Best Community in The World: Saturday's GNR [1] ['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.'] Date: 2024-01-06 This week I started the Boosting Biden series. The plan is to publish a new Biden accomplishment every weekday until the election. I wasn’t sure how it would be received. But the response has blown me away. The posts have made the rec lists every day and stayed on them for much of the day. People are sharing. People are commenting. People are coming up with suggestions. People are helping. I am so humbled, touched, and encouraged. I am reminded why we won in the past and why we keep winning. There have been people like 2thanks, who made a group for the posts (you can join it here) and posts a welcome most days and has been a wonderful partner in this (and every other thing I’ve done on DKos). People like @bilboteach who has posted the welcome as well. People have given me suggestions. People who have shared the posts in other places. And many many other people who have read and rec-ed. I am only just getting started. I thought I would be overwhelmed with the task ahead, but because of your support I am energized. Here are the first five if you missed any: I have said it before and I’ll say it again — it is all of you who give me hope and the confidence that we WILL win. I am so, so lucky and so, so proud to be in this with all of you. Now onto the good news! Biden and Democrats are doing great things! Massachusetts Switches On Its First Large Offshore Wind Farm The first large offshore wind farm in New England has started producing electricity The power started flowing late on Tuesday. For now, the Vineyard Wind project, located off the coast of Martha’s Vineyard, Mass., can send only five megawatts of power to the grid from a single towering wind turbine. But the companies behind the project, Avangrid and Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners, plan to install a total of 62 turbines with 800 megawatts of capacity, or roughly enough electricity to power 400,000 homes, by the end of this year. “We’ve arrived at a watershed moment for climate action in the U.S., and a dawn for the American offshore wind industry,” said Pedro Azagra Blázquez, the chief executive of Avangrid, an American subsidiary of Iberdrola, the Spanish utility. The Biden administration has made offshore wind a priority, essentially aiming to create an industry from scratch. in 2021, under the Biden administration, Vineyard Wind became the first large-scale wind farm to receive federal approval. Construction got underway in June. F.D.A. to Issue First Approval for Mass Drug Imports to States From Canada The Food and Drug Administration has decided to allow Florida to import millions of dollars worth of medications from Canada at far lower prices than in the United States, overriding fierce decades-long objections from the pharmaceutical industry, according to a senior administration official. The approval is a major policy shift for the United States, and supporters hope it will be a significant step forward in the long and largely unsuccessful effort to reign in drug prices. Individuals in the United States are allowed to buy directly from Canadian pharmacies, but states have long wanted to be able to purchase medicines in bulk for their Medicaid programs, government clinics and prisons from Canadian wholesalers. It’s okay to be optimistic about the economy next year I’m going to throw out a wild idea here: What if the economy is good in 2024? I know, I know, prices are still too high. Everybody hates everything so much that we’ve coined the term “vibecession.” The pandemic fallout is still reverberating. But hear me out — maybe it would be neat to head into the new year without all the doom and gloom. There is a case for hope here. I mean, look at what happened in 2023. We came into the year with the lowest of expectations. Tons of economists, including some big names, thought a major downturn was inevitable in the United States. Many people were sure the Federal Reserve’s fight to get inflation down would mean a significant spike in unemployment; the logic was preordained. In fall 2022, Bloomberg ran a headline forecasting a 100 percent chance of a recession within a year. As it turns out, there’s never a 100 percent chance of anything. That surefire 2023 recession never came. Despite the negative sentiment around the economy — sentiment that mayyybe is starting to turn around — things this year were really good. Inflation came down. The jobs market stayed strong. Consumers, in aggregate, kept spending. The US economy grew at a surprisingly strong rate. After a tough 2022, stock market investors had a solid time. “2023 wasn’t supposed to happen,” said Claudia Sahm, the founder of Sahm Consulting and a former economist at the Federal Reserve. “For inflation to come down that much, unemployment’s been below 4 percent for the longest stretch since the 1960s, and growth — inflation-adjusted consumer spending is just knocking it out of the park.” There definitely are worse ways to head into 2024. Biden campaign amps up focus on Trump, starting with Jan. 6 speech President Biden is scheduled to travel to Valley Forge, Pa., on Friday to give remarks on the eve of the anniversary of the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection as his campaign attempts — at the start of the election year — to take a more aggressive posture toward Donald Trump and center the election on a fight for democracy. On Monday, Biden is scheduled to visit Mother Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, S.C., where nine people were fatally shot by a white supremacist in 2015. The two events — as well as a trip to South Carolina by Vice President Harris on Saturday — signal a reinvigorated campaign from the likely Democratic ticket just as Republicans begin their nomination process with the Iowa caucuses on Jan. 15. “Our message is clear and simple: We are running a campaign like the fate of our democracy depends on it. Because it does,” Biden campaign manager Julie Chavez Rodriguez told reporters on Tuesday. White House tries to flip the script on House Republicans over border crisis The Biden administration is attempting to flip the blame for the migrant crisis at the southern border onto Republicans. “Actions speak louder than words,” White House spokesperson Andrew Bates said in a statement first obtained by POLITICO ahead of two days of Republican border visits. “House Republicans’ anti-border security record is defined by attempting to cut Customs and Border Protection personnel, opposing President Biden’s record-breaking border security funding, and refusing to take up the President’s supplemental funding request.” Good Voting News Redistricting Decisions Will Reshape Legislative Maps in Wisconsin and Michigan — Michigan and Wisconsin will have new legislative maps in time for the 2024 elections after two separate courts handed down rulings in late December. On Dec. 21, a federal three-judge panel struck down 13 Michigan House and Senate districts for being unconstitutional racial gerrymanders. This decision stems from a lawsuit filed on behalf of Black voters who argued that the Michigan Independent Citizens Redistricting Commission intentionally lowered the percentage of Black voters in certain House and Senate districts without a justified interest and used race as the predominant factor in drawing legislative districts, resulting in racially gerrymandered maps in violation of the 14th Amendment. The voters also argued that the districts violated Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act by depriving Black voters of an adequate number of districts in the Detroit area where they can elect candidates of their choice. After a trial in November 2023, the three-judge panel concluded that the Detroit area districts violate the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment, but did not rule on the plaintiffs’ Section 2 claims. “The record here shows overwhelmingly—indeed, inescapably—that the Commission drew the boundaries of plaintiffs’ districts predominantly on the basis of race,” the opinion reads. Wisconsin Court Issues Major Mail-in Voting Victory Ahead of 2024 Election Yesterday, a Wisconsin trial court issued a major win to voting rights groups and voters ahead of the 2024 elections that could prevent thousands of ballots from being unfairly rejected due to witness certificates with an incomplete address. Wisconsin’s witness address requirement has been a source of confusion and disenfranchisement for years. In a victory for voters, the trial court sided with pro-voting groups, preventing certain ballots from rejection. Bad News for Bad Guys Florida Proud Boy Sentenced to 10 Years in Capitol Attack A Proud Boy from Florida who went on the lam after being convicted of using pepper spray on police officers during the attack on the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, was sentenced on Thursday to 10 years in prison. The Proud Boy, Christopher Worrell, was found guilty at a bench trial in Federal District Court in Washington in May on charges of assault, civil disorder and the obstruction of an official proceeding for his role in the Capitol attack. Prosecutors said that Mr. Worrell, 52, arrived in Washington on Jan. 6 “ready for battle” and wearing body armor, and with other members of the far-right organization “played a pivotal role in collapsing the police line on the west front, leading to the first breach of the Capitol building.” Missouri Rep Becomes Latest GOP Congressman to Call It Quits Rep. Blaine Luetkemeyer (R-MO) on Thursday became the latest House Republican to forgo reelection, adding to the total of nearly 20 representatives who have shared plans to depart Congress. “As I finish up my last term, I look forward to continuing to work with all my constituents on their myriad of issues as well as work on the many difficult and serious problems confronting our great country,” Luetkemeyer said in a statement. “There is still a lot to do.” He has served since 2009 and is one of the senior members of the House Financial Services Committee. Other Good News Americans are far too pessimistic about the future Get real and read some history. The past was worse. Nostalgia is a powerful political tool. Wielding nostalgia for a bygone era — one that is invariably mischaracterized — is a favorite weapon for fascist movements (Make America Great Again), harking back to a time before their nation was “polluted” by malign forces. In the United States, such nostalgia none-too-subtlety appeals to white Christian nationalism. Even in a more benign form (e.g., “Politics didn’t used to be so mean,” “Remember the days of bipartisanship?”) plays on faulty memories. If you really go back to study U.S. history, you would find two things: The past was worse, and conflict has always been the norm. The past was simply not “better” by any objective standard. Economically, we were all a lot poorer. “In 1960, there were roughly 400 vehicles per 1,000 Americans, about half of today’s car ownership rate. In other words, a family in 1960 could afford a car on one income, but today they would have two cars,” Matthew Yglesias wrote. Tom Nichols has written extensively on the politics of false memory. (“Times are always bad. Nothing gets better. And the past 50 years have not been a temporary economic purgatory but a permanent hell, if only the elites would be brave enough to peer through the gloom and see it all for what it is,” he wrote. “This obsession with decline is one of the myths surrounding postindustrial democracy that will not die.”) Crime was higher by a lot in the 1970s. Poverty, child mortality, deaths from virtually any major disease, workplace injuries, high school dropout rates, etc., were all much worse in the 1950s. Also, kids got polio, Jim Crow was in full swing, gays had to be in the closet and no one had cellphones, home computers or microwave ovens. Very few people had air conditioning or could afford to fly. So, as we look forward to 2024 be wary: Nostalgia, especially nostalgia for a time of less freedom, less opportunity and fewer rights for many of us, is the stuff of snake-oil salesmen. Instead, bet on American progress. On The Lighter Side What can you to save democracy? We here at the GNR have set up a fundraising ActBlue account where you can donate and have it evenly distributed between 24 races that will be key to winning the House in 24! Go ahead and donate at this link: More worried about keeping tfg out of the WH? You could: Looking for something else? Maybe something that doesn’t involve donating? GREAT! Here are some other ideas: So pick just one and get to it! I am so lucky and so proud to be in this with all of you 💓💚💛🧡✊🏻✊🏽✊🏾✊🏿✊❤️🧡💛💚 [END] --- [1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2024/1/6/2215536/-The-Best-Community-in-The-World-Saturday-s-GNR?pm_campaign=front_page&pm_source=trending&pm_medium=web Published and (C) by Daily Kos Content appears here under this condition or license: Site content may be used for any purpose without permission unless otherwise specified. via Magical.Fish Gopher News Feeds: gopher://magical.fish/1/feeds/news/dailykos/