Week-long Welcomings from Moosylvania: July 12th through July 18th

July 12, 2015 JanF Community 145

Welcome to The Moose Pond! The Welcomings posts give the Moose, old and new, a place to visit and share words about the weather, life, the world at large and the small parts of Moosylvania that we each inhabit.

Welcomings will be posted at the start of each week (every Sunday morning). To find the posts, just bookmark this link and Voila! (which is Moose for “I found everyone!!”).

The format is simple: each day, the first moose to arrive on-line will post a comment welcoming the new day and complaining (or bragging!) about their weather. Or mentioning an interesting or thought provoking news item. Or simply checking in.

So … what’s going on in your part of Moosylvania?

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NOTE: The comments page will now split off after 20 or so left margin comments with the most recent comments on the current page. To see the older comments, scroll to the bottom of the page and use the link.

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40 Comments

  1. Back at work. No real pain, occasional twinges. Nose is kinda scary looking, but given time, it should settle down.

    More Pluto pictures this morning. Will keep a tab open so I can see them. Earworm is City of Blinding Lights. “The more you see, the less you know. The less you find out as you grow. I knew so more more then than I do now.” I love my boys.

  2. Good morning Meese

    Tired – spent the whole day yesterday replying to comments to my orange rant – which messed with my schedule – usually have Wednesday set aside for writing.

    Have to hit the keyboard now to catch up.

    Hugs to all – I’ll be back later when I come up for air

  3. Hi Meeses – playing serious catch-up ball this morning and not sure when I’ll have time to read anything except work stuff. I’ll get back to read and fierce as soon as I can. {{{HUGS}}} and good health to all.

  4. Good morning, Meese. Hope it’s a good day throughout our land and pond.
    Am coming back to read Obama’s press conference and his address to the Choctaw Nation. He is one of the few presidents who has reached out to Native communities.
    Just sent an email to Schumer telling him how pleased I was with the nuclear deal and knew he would like to join me in congratulating President Obama on this triumph of diplomacy.

    • The video of the address to the Choctaw Nation is attached as a reply to Bfitz’s comment yesterday. I have not seen the transcript yet but will post it when it is released.

      It was a wonderful speech, filled with hope for tribal youth.

  5. Good morning, it’s 62 and clear in Bellingham today. I have a quiet morning planned, and whatever happens this afternoon will be whatever it is!

    Yesterday was busy with the pool and then a consult with the vascular surgeon re improving the blood flow in my left side. Unfortunately the 2011 BCH damage to my veins is chronic and severe, so stents aren’t an option and vein bypass surgery is risky and best reserved for a medical emergency. So my rest, elevation, compression, and pool therapy program will continue. Fortunately I know what to do and it’s still effective, but it would have been nice to have an alternative to consider.

    • I am sorry to hear that there is not much new that you can do to get relief. :( You have been living with this so long it must make you weary. But “living” is the operative word, isn’t it?

      • “Living” is indeed the operative word and there’s still a lot of life swirling past my sofa!

    • Sorry that you did not get another alternative but pleased to know that the established regime is effective. Hadn’t realized that that was why you were going to the pool so often. I thought you were training for a swimming meet! Does this mean you are on blood thinners? I hope the doctor also recommended an occasional nap!

      • Heh……a swimming meet at my pool would involve lots of floaties! The pool is at the PT clinic and all ten of us have our own set of exercises. I do a combination of stretching and strengthening sets and then I bycycle (with a pool noodle) and walk for the rest of the hour. The resistance of the warm water makes the workout safe (in terms of weight bearing movement) and as challenging as I chose to make it. It feels so good to just move freely I tend to overdo, and then I do need a nap!

        And yes, I do take coumadin. It’s tricky to keep the right levels so I’m at the lab about every two weeks.

    • Princesspat, you seem to do a great job of keeping on top of your health situation. Cheering you on in Northern Virginia, girlfriend!

      • Thank you Diana. Fortunately my grand kids are all old enough to be good company while I rest my leg. I would have trouble keeping up with babies now.

  6. Good morning, meese! Friday (finally) …

    It is 72 degrees in Madison on its way up to 88. Evening thunderstorms are in the forecast. The humidity feels like it is eleventy billion percent so I turned the air conditioning on.

    The president was in prison yesterday! Thankfully, it was just to see first hand the conditions that young men caught up in the criminal justice system live in. I am certain that right-wingers were wishing that the Kenyan usurper was behind bars. Tough! He is instead in the Oval Office planning more great things for his last 18 months in office.

    I have the video of the prison visit and also the transcript from the visit to Durant OK for the launch of the ConnectHome initiative; I am just not sure what to do with them yet. I would like to have them available on the Moose but tucking them away in already published posts simply makes them disappear (for example, the NAACP speech, a really good speech, is tucked away in the commutation post). Maybe I will just put them up as separate posts in the “From the White House” link category and let folks find them if they want them.

    More of this please!! Papa John’s Franchisee Faces Jail Time Over Stealing Workers’ Wages. Yay, Eric Schneiderman!

    Jail time is unusual for people who perpetuate wage theft, but Schneiderman may not be done. “My office will not hesitate to criminally prosecute any employer who underpays workers and then tries to cover it up by creating fake names and filing fraudulent tax returns,” he said in a press release. “We will continue to be relentless in pursuing the widespread labor law violations, large and small, which we have found in the fast food industry.”

    This isn’t the first time Schneiderman has gone after Papa John’s franchisees. In October of last year, he sued some in New York for allegedly stealing wages from more than 400 delivery drivers, seeking more than $2 million in backpay, damages, and interest. Then in February he won a nearly $800,000 judgement against another who allegedly ripped off employees.

    He’s also focused on wage theft prosecutions in the New York fast food industry generally. In March of last year, he won a $448,000 payout from 23 Domino’s Pizza franchise owners and a nearly $500,000 one from a McDonald’s franchisee.

    Wage theft, where workers aren’t paid minimum wage and/or overtime, are made to work off the clock, or are made to buy uniforms or equipment out of their own paychecks, is particularly rampant in the fast food industry. One poll found that about 90 percent of these workers have experienced at least one form of theft.

    There is a lot of other news but not enough time to read it all right now! This weekend, the presidential candidates from both parties will be meetin’ and greetin’ Iowans who have been given an outsized say in who the presidential nominees will be. Howard Dean thought this was stupid in 2003 … and he was right. Maybe this year, because the Iowa caucuses will not likely winnow out any of the candidates flush with cash, people will relegate this to the dustbin of history along with the Confederate flag and Bill Cosby comedy LPs.

    See all y’all later!!

    • Hi, Jan, completely agree about Iowa! It was and is stupid for two small states to have such power.

      Wage theft, ugh! So glad I never, ever order from Papa John’s. He doesn’t want to pay for health insurance for his employees, either.

      Noticed with a sick feeling that an item in the WaPo this morning describes Scotty Walker being washed clean as snow. Why-why-why, he’s not corrupt after all! Isn’t that just hunky-dory? I hope when the campaign really gets underway the oppo research will reveal him for the scumbag he is.

      • Walker was never going to be ensnared in that probe. First, he was never a target, and second, he has always been careful to have someone available to pin the blame on: John Doe #1 convicted 6 of his aides of felonies but never touched a hair on his pointy head.

        The good news about the end of the investigation is that now the case will go to the U.S. Supreme Court and it will be about what is the most important thing: the honesty of our judges and the integrity of our campaign finance laws. The “majority” ruled that there are no limitations on campaign coordination between dark money groups and the candidate, something that even SCOTUS has declared is illegal. Majority is in quotes because two of the four should have recused themselves because they benefitted from about $6 million in campaign funds from two of the plaintiffs. Justice in this case was not blind but bought.

        Here is a very hopeful article in the WaPo from yesterday, with not only a great headline but including a great analysis of the Walker Way:
        Scott Walker wants to drug test food stamp recipients. That shows why he’ll never be president..
        There are too many great quotes to (legally) repeat but here are a few of my favorites:

        In the 2016 GOP primaries, it’s compassionless conservatism that’s in fashion. […]

        The test is the point, not the result. Walker isn’t trying to solve a practical problem here. He wants to test food stamp recipients as a way of expressing moral condemnation. You can get this benefit, he’s saying, but we want to give you a little humiliation so you know that because you sought the government’s help, we think you’re a rotten person. […]

        What George W. Bush understood is that the Republican Party is generally considered to be somewhat, well, mean. It’s not welcoming, and it spends a lot of energy looking for people on whom it can pour its contempt. You can argue that this is an inaccurate representation of the party’s true nature, but it is nevertheless what many, if not most, voters believe. […]

        Scott Walker’s attitude is nothing like George W. Bush’s. He practically oozes malice, for anyone and everyone who might oppose him, or just be the wrong kind of person.

        Waldman continues with this analysis of Walker’s strategy.

        Walker’s theory of the general election is a decades-old conservative idea that if you motivate Republicans enough with a pure right-wing message, there will be so many hidden conservatives coming out of the woodwork that you won’t need moderates to win.

        This theory persists because of its obvious appeal to hard-core conservatives. It says that they’re right about everything, and compromise is not only unnecessary but counterproductive. So the path to victory is to become even more conservative and even more uncompromising.

        The trouble is that this theory has no evidence to support it. Its adherents, of whom Scott Walker is now the most prominent, believe that the reason Mitt Romney and John McCain lost is that they didn’t move far enough to the right (or that they were the wrong nominees in the first place). And they learned nothing from the one Republican in the last two decades who actually won the White House.

        Like the GOPers heading to Iowa to court the evangelical white vote, the GOPers who think that evangelical whites were sitting back and not voting because Romney was not conservative enough, instead of just simply not being a large enough voting bloc to sway an election, will be surprised.

        Please proceed, governor.

          • I have re-read it several times. I am looking for something to lift my spirits and I like the idea of the far right wing finally getting a chance to test their theory of elections (“if you motivate Republicans enough with a pure right-wing message, there will be so many hidden conservatives coming out of the woodwork that you won’t need moderates to win.”) Much like Gov. Brownback of Kansas getting a chance to put in place the full trickle down economics, including Arthur Laffer consulting, it will end badly for them. We on the left tried it once:

            I hope we never fall into the trap that electability is somehow impure and that throwing out the baby with the bathwater will make the baby healthier.

  7. A fast wave of a good morning to all. Busy day. Somebody is coming from a lab to do blood work, then someone coming to do physical therapy, then someone coming to fix some broken stuff, then someone coming with stuff and to visit and so on. Hope it’s a good day for the Pond and beyond.

  8. Good morning, Moosekind! The sky is beginning to turn blue after the early morning overcast. It’s 66 F. now, going up to 85 F. today. They Say that the weekend will be ‘ot, ‘umid, and ‘orrible. Turn up the a.c.!

    Jan, thanks for publishing the Hillary post! It’s been a long time since I posted here. Have slowed down with diaries for the past few months, preferring to devote my time to other projects. Even in pro-Clinton diaries on GOS, people step in to criticize or castigate her. And every time someone disses Secretary Clinton for frivolous reasons I feel like sending money to her campaign. Don’t always have the wherewithal to do it, but that’s what I feel like.

    Lunch with the Circle Sisters today and, it’s to be hoped, getting some writing done tonight. Lammas approaches, so I need to write the second part of “Getting Unhexed.” After Babylicious goes to day care in September, I want to use Wix to create a Web site more to my liking. Hate the way the current one looks in Safari.

    Wishing a good day to all at the Pond and beyond!

  9. Jan, thanks for your comment. I will go now and comment on the post you put up. Thanks also for the Mac-Firefox advice. Worth considering!

    • I found out new things about posting! First, the “Show Full Width” makes it easier to read but it blocks the right margin things we like such as people’s comments and the other posts. Second, your biographical information from your profile shows at the bottom along with a link to other posts you have written. What a nice feature!

      Sadly, I also discovered that because the date stayed as the date I pulled the text over, it did not hit any of the automatic social media because it didn’t look “new”. :( The Moose posts to the MotleyMoose Facebook page and also Tweets a post to the Motley Moose Twitter account. I will go post them manually.

      • Thank you, Jan!

        BTW, would never consider using Chrome for the exact reason you described. I prefer Google as a search engine but I do NOT want Google’s many other features to become my universe. :)

  10. Friday at last. Even only working 4 days, this has been a long week. I think I’m skipping Saturday workout to watch Le Tour, and sleep in.

    Weird earworm: on the way in, I was listening to Spanish Eyes, is that what’s in my head? No. I have lovely, slow Song for Someone. Gorgeous song but not helping me stay awake.

    • I am relieved to hear that the Moose is not the only place that gives authors fits related to formatting!! I think that the bottom line is that unless the formatting tool aligns perfectly to how your brain composes articles, it will be a challenge. I sometimes forget because my brain is, by necessity, multi-format enabled. :)

      I will pull the post over and put it up. Thanks for sharing!!

      I see that NN16 will be in St. Louis. Will you be going? It is a short drive to St. Louis from Madison and I would go if I could be sure I would meet up with people who I know and respect.

  12. Good morning, it’s 60 and mostly sunny in Bellingham today. The Bellingham Festival of Music is giving a free concert at the Museum this afternoon. So with the pool this morning, music this afternoon, and a nap to recover from all the fun I might successfully avoid the dreaded desk for another day!

  13. Happy Friday lunch time from Fay., AR – 88 feels like 99 and sunny. Almost got hourly payroll done – in fact am here at the moment because I’m waiting on the last person’s hours before I submit. Which I will do sometime in the next 3 hours whether or not the last person’s hours get to me – not going to penalize 8 people because the 9th didn’t get hours in on time.

    Glad to see Diana’s diary reprinted here where discussions are just that – discussions – with no vitriol allowed. I will admit I am getting awfully tired of the “if Hillary says it, it’s a meaningless political speech. If Bernie says it, it’s a policy position” routine from the haters as well as the “she voted for war” BS. Read Denise’s post from Rev. Barber but didn’t have time to read comments even though they’re likely to be more positive. Looks like everybody is doing OK today for which I am very grateful. {{{HUGS}}}

  14. Good morning, meeses! Saturday …

    It is 75 degrees in Madison on its way up to 92!! Heat advisory in effect until 8pm. Thunderstorms are expected to rumble through this afternoon into the evening.

    The Cuban embassy will be opening in Washington DC on Monday with a flag raising ceremony.

    The flag-raising will be part of a daylong series of events commemorating the opening of a full Cuban embassy in Washington. U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Roberta Jacobson, who led a series of negotiations with the Cubans to reach the historic agreement, is scheduled to be at the building, about two miles from the White House. Since 1977, the building has served as a Cuban “interests section,” where officials process visas and conduct basic consular services.

    Later in the day, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry is scheduled to host a joint press conference with Cuba’s Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez at the U.S. State Department, where the Cuban flag will be added to the collection of flags from countries that have formal relations with the United States. The two first met in Panama during the Summit of the Americas in April, where they worked on normalizing relations and reopening the embassies.

    Kerry is expected to travel to Cuba later this summer to conduct a similar ceremony, where American officials will raise the U.S. flag outside what is now the U.S. Interests Section in Havana. But starting Monday, the building, which has been the target of Cuban demonstrations for decades, will officially begin operating as a U.S. embassy.

    Republican hardliners are furious, of course, and vow to never confirm a U.S. Ambassador to Cuba. Tough. Here you go, hardliners:

    While Congress may be able to limit some funds for the embassy, the decision to change the status of an American diplomatic mission abroad rests solely with the president. The State Department had to provide 15 days of notice to Congress before making the move, and Monday marks the conclusion of that notification period.

    Georgians are trying to figure out what to do with Stone Mountain, the Civil War monument etched into a mountain by the KKK. A petition is circulating to not sandblast the old white supremacists off the mountain but simply add some more contemporary Georgians like Outkast, Atlanta-based rappers(?). Kind of like this:

    Do it!! The state will never agree to removing the monument … but it has less power to hurt when you are laughing yourself silly over it.

    The president’s weekly address is about the Iranian nuclear deal. The United Nations will vote to formally ratify the treaty on Monday despite the screams from the U.S. Senate to wait for 60 days. Hey, doodooheads in the Senate! Haven’t you figured out by now that you are not the boss of the United Nations? And why should they respect anything that comes from a legislative body that wrote a letter to Iran telling them to ignore any treaties. The international part of the treaty will happen regardless of what Congress does. If the Senate wants to keep the United States out of the treaty, they certainly can (with 67 votes). But it has no impact on the lifting of UN sanctions.

    See all y’all later!

    • So delighted that the USA is going to establish diplomatic relations with “Cuber,” as JFK used to call it. (Yes, I’m old enough to remember that.) It used to infuriate me that my Canadian friends could take their holidays there whenever they pleased and U.S. citizens couldn’t.

      The Republicans are a waste of space.

  15. Been up for a while, watching Up & Le Tour. Mellow day today. Groceries & an opening for a co-worker’s art show. Up has an interesting interview with Chuck Schumer on the Iran deal.

  16. Good morning, it’s 61 and mostly sunny in Bellingham today. Yesterday was a fun…..the pool in the morning, the concert at noon, a late lunch at a restaurant by the water, a long nap, and then early to bed. Thankfully I have a better perspective this morning!

    The Bellingham Festival Of Music ends Sunday. We usually go to several performances but this year was too busy so the concert at the Museum yesterday was a real treat.

    The Bellingham Festival of Music is one of America’s premier virtuoso orchestra festivals. Each summer the Festival returns to Bellingham, Washington to perform a repertoire of the finest symphonic music. Members of the orchestra all hold artistically prestigious positions elsewhere, and many of them are principal players in major North American symphony orchestras. The Festival also features world famous guest artists and young rising stars.

    http://bellinghamfestival.org/

  17. Good morning, Moosekind! It’s been raining heavily here, which puts paid to my plan to weed the front garden. I’ll clean the refrigerator instead. What a jolly morning!

    Still tired and hoping for an afternoon nap. I feel weary of the outside world at the moment. Think I’ll have a day of focusing on domestic concerns and writing.

    Wishing a good Saturday to all at the Pond and beyond!

  18. Morning almost noon Meese

    Had to give pit bull puppy a flea bath this morning – oh my what a mess in the bathroom – she got water and suds all over everything

    I’m wiped out!

    Hope everyone is having a good weekend so far

    Hugs

  19. Greetings to Moosylvania. Will be back later to read diaries and comments. Hope all is well with all of you.

  20. Happy Saturday afternoon Meeses – Normally I’d be outside doing yard work instead of inside on the computer, but the heat index is 104 and we’ve got a “heat advisory” so… I’ll see if I can get to the front yard outside work tomorrow after I finish my weekly baking. Not doing anything in the back yard until it’s treated for fleas! That will be Tuesday – as soon as the only “green” pest company in NW AR could get to me – so I’m pushing off my laundry for a week. Fortunately I have plenty of clean underwear :)

    Seems that everyone is doing well which is VERY good. I will do a little checking around the internet for this and that but at least I should be able to read a couple of the FP diaries for a change. {{{HUGS}}}

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