Week-long Welcomings from Moosylvania: Oct. 25th through Oct. 31st

October 25, 2015 JanF Community 168

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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63 Comments

  1. Good morning, meese! Tuesday …

    It is 51 degrees in Madison on its way up to 61. Afternoon showers are in the forecast.

    So the big news out of Washington is that they have a budget deal. The deal will be voted on in the House on Wednesday and then sent to the Senate. The debt limit has been suspended until March 2017, kicking that can down the road past the election. The ExIm bank reauthorization was included but faces an uncertain future in the Senate. The overall budget was allowed to increase by $80 billion, split evenly between domestic and military and the deal includes help for the Medicare premium increase that was due to go into effect next year. The deal is paid for with Some Cuts which apparently have to be worked out by the House and Senate Appropriations committees by Dec. 11th. I am not sure what is included in Some Cuts but I saw Social Security and Medicare mentioned and that makes me nervous. I am glad that the threat of government shutdown seems to be off the table through the silly season but concerned that it is being done on the backs of those who are the least able to carry the burden.

    Ole Miss won’t fly the Mississippi state flag on campus any longer because it contains the racist symbol Confederate battle flag in it. Good for them.

    Tomorrow is GOP debate number 3 in Colorado and the two front runners will be duking it out. My money is on The Donald because the GOP base wants nose-punchers not problem solvers. Ha! They won’t even have any problem solvers on stage, I am not sure they exist in their party! Former Obama chief of staff Bill Daley thinks the slide into stupidity in the Republican Party started when they chose the obviously unqualified celebrity vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin. It gave permission to the party to look at sizzle over substance. I think it started sooner, with Reagan – a movie star who read lies off of index cards and became the iconic Republican President, the one they all want to be.

    See all y’alls later!

    • I couldn’t sleep last night (well, early this AM) so I got up and checked out GOS to find a lot of people being so scared and worried about what was in the budget agreement on Social Security Disability. So I found what I am pretty sure is the proposal, and did a short diary interpreting in plain English the sections on SSDI – and there’s nothing too awful in it. To my surprise, it’s on the rec list this morning (thanks for the rec Denise!), so I hope it calmed some people’s nerves. Disabled people are so vulnerable and so dependent on their benefits that it is downright cruel for the Republicans to circulate stories about their personal wish list, like means based DI benefits, making it into the agreement. Nothing like that is in there, at least from what I saw last night. But I will spend some time this morning checking everything out again, in case something has changed. Here’s the link to my diary at GOS –

      http://www.dailykos.com/story/2015/10/27/1440452/-What-s-in-the-budget-agreement-for-Disability-Insurance-nothing-dramatic-so-far-but-stay-tuned

      • I missed this comment when I was scanning recent comments and posted something downthread.

        Could you repost that diary here? I would like to read and comment but I don’t GOS – I am a delicate flower and cannot handle the negativity. :)

        I changed your Moose role to “Author” and you should be able to copy the html code into a new post here pretty easily.

      • Thanks very much. I was concerned about what the Dems might be willing to accept in a “grand bargain” – considering it wouldn’t personally impact any of them sometimes they don’t stop and think about what it would do to those it does impact. Seriously appreciate you slogging through the muck and giving us your “professional opinion”

  2. Happy Tiu’s Day, Meese! Are we all late getting here this morning? It’s 40 F. and cloudy here in NoVa, going up to 57 F. with rain later tonight. We had a lovely Supermoon last night, though.

    The Open House on Sunday was a bust. Apparently hardly anyone showed up and one of the ones who did was the nosy next-door neighbor. (We suspected she would.) Apparently no one likes our house because the hardwood floors don’t match, a point of view I find incomprehensible. But then, I’m the kind of person who thinks all cars look alike. The only reason I ever find mine is by (1) remembering where I parked and (2) memorizing the license plate.

    So, we may be living here until the walls fall down around us. No big deal. It’s just that we’re rather old.

    The state of the world is still terrible and the state of this country—well, what can one say? How anyone can want Ben Carson for POTUS, in view of his stated policies, I don’t know. Read a long, gushing article in the WaPo this morning about a Trump-smitten woman who drives for hours to see and hear him. Puh-leeze, Goddess, let there be more of us than of them at the polls a year from now!

    • Sometimes selling a house just takes time Diana. Our son’s house was on the market for nearly a year…..a long time to keep it clean and open house ready. After it was staged and ready to sell it was easier to manage though because most of his belongings were in storage. The stumbling block for his sale was the one car garage, but when the right buyer came along that didn’t matter to them.

      • I know it goes against conventional wisdom but my house showed better empty. Because I had an office in my house and extra rooms that were confusing with the furniture I had in (plus old furniture!), no one ever quite “got it”.

        When the house did not sell through the summer, I rented an apartment in Madison (because my daughter needed to start school here rather than switch after a move) and put everything in storage until my new house was ready. It was a little scary … buying before selling … but it all worked out.

    • Actually we were all early! Dee checked in very very early this morning but her comment ended up on the Older Comments page.

      Don’t give up on selling your house! The first reviews can be rather deflating. In my last house I had a lot of different floor coverings and people did not like that. And I had one room that no one recognized as a dining room because I did not use it as a dining room … I had only put it in for resale. Ha! The second set of showings went better and I eventually sold it.

      I read somewhere that a poll of Republicans showed that 70% of them think that Trump could win the presidency and about 60% thought Carson could. They are completely insane and/or living in a Fox News bubble. Most people in our country are NOT haters and idiots.

      The full moon was this morning, I hope you got a chance to see her.

      • Jan, we both hate the process of selling so much we’re quite prepared to stay here now. If we do, at least the dog will continue to play in a huge fenced backyard (another feature I thought prospective buyers would like), and we can enjoy our newish woodstove, which has a glass door that shows the flames.

    • You’re house sounds lovely. Why would anybody want same ol’ same ol’ through the house? Would they have had fits if the walls were creamy yellow in the kitchen, seafoam green in the bathroom, and Aztec gold in the living room? It would be nice if the plans to sell/move worked – but you have a very nice place to live if they don’t. And while you can’t do anything about getting old (well, you can but…) you definitely can rearrange rooms, furniture, and procedures to take some of the stress off. If nothing else, if you still have access to your scale-down guru, ask for advise in how to simplify rather than just get rid of. Petitions for Divine Order (Hestia? Bridgett? She of 1000 Names?) still going out for you.

      • Thank you, bfitz! Petitions to Hestia and Vesta sound wonderful. Day-yum, I’ve got to write a story about those goddesses. Perhaps I’ll do one after I write “The Coming of Bastet.”

  3. Slept in, got doc appointment this morning & just took the rest of the day. Will cook, since I didn’t on Sunday. Listening to mellow music because sometimes at the doc’s my blood pressure can be borderline. This song from U2, Promenade, is like an impressionist painting, just really gorgeous.

  4. 56 and drizzling – supposed to get to 61 today. At least there’s some water coming out of the sky to make up for the clouds. Payroll runs today and I’m waiting on the last-minute (as usual) funding distribution from the grant guys. They’d better get it to me soon. What I do has to go through an approval chain before close of business today.

    Glad De Blasio is endorsing Hillary. He’s been learning the hard way that while you may want a unicorn to pull your cart, you’d better be ready to accept a mule as long as you get something to pull that cart.

    The SC thing – just another “Oh Eff, not again” – victims can only point out the problem. To solve it requires action from those who, while not perps themselves, support the perps. To my knowledge I do not support the perps although I haven’t been victimized by “bad cops” in over 40 years and then it was just a traffic ticket I really couldn’t afford for an infraction I didn’t commit, nothing life threatening although it did cause an issue with my groceries that month. I wish I knew something I can do about the situation.

    Hope your day – whether soggy or bright – is a good one. {{{HUGS}}}

  5. Good morning, 51 and cloudy in Bellingham. This week is a medical week for me. I see my local urologist today to arrange the follow up exams for the kidney surgery I had in January. Tomorrow I see my GP to renew my meds so the new pharmacy can fill the scripts. And I need to call the vascular surgeon because something has changed in my BCH leg :( I feel creaky!

    Booman has a disheartening assessment of the R’s presidential candidates……..

    You Break It, You No Longer Own It

    In any case, Trump isn’t winning because he’s electable or willing to shake things up. He’s winning because none of them are electable and he’s willing to shake things up.

    • Booman is right in his assessment:

      Surely people don’t think Ted Cruz or Chris Christie or Rand Paul are solid general election candidates. And who is the last person to acknowledge that the Bush Brand is deader than New Coke?

      I know the press loves Marco Rubio but does anyone realize what his record down in Florida actually looks like when you scrutinize it? The man’s record makes Sarah Palin look clean. A Rubio candidacy will make the GOP wish they’d hired they guy who closed down the George Washington Bridge for days out of petty political spite. The Clintons would treat Rubio like a chew-toy and make him wish he’d kept the boring job that he hates.

      I know no one really serious wants to put their eggs in Carly Fiorina’s basket, and the rest of the candidates are bordering on Alan Keyes-crazy and Gary Bauer-charismatic.

      Except for Ohio Governor John Kasich, of course, who is the only guy in the field with the resume and the record and the willingness to pursue the middle to make an actual case for himself. Maybe the GOP base will figure this out in time, but it’s looking unlikely at the moment.

      Kasich is the most electable but the most un-nominatable. Booman is also right that the Republican Party did not have to end up this way: they chose to embrace Sarah Palinism, and birtherism, and nativism. The only possible result is a candidate like Donald Trump.

  6. Morning everyone! Diana, selling a house is an awful process, but try to give it a little time – and it might well do better empty. If not now, give it a while you can always try again next year – and maybe get some help with house chores that are a burden at this point? I keep thinking I need to try to sell my house in the next 5 years before the problems of rising oceans drown the Florida economy.

    I posted a comment above about my early, early AM posting at DKos on the disability insurance part of the proposed budget agreement – I wrote it really fast, just to try to keep the DI beneficiaries posting there, who were so upset about rumors of flat benefits and other horrible proposals, from melting down from anxiety. But now I need to go check it all out and make sure I was correct! See you all later.

    • Could you repost it here as a “diary” (we call them posts). Let me know and I will change your WordPress role to Author.

      I am very interested in the impact on the disabled; I know some people who will be affected. I would hope that their benefits would not be cut as a tradeoff for other things but something will be cut and they are even less well represented than the elderly poor.

      • Sure, I’ll try – I just updated it too with a bit more info I gathered this morning.

      • I believe I have posted it, but I don’t really know if I did right or where it went lol. Let me know if I need to redo it.

        • It looks like you have not quite finished. You need to click Publish. I see it in the queue.

          • thanks Jan! I don’t know why my links to the PDF’s didn’t work, but I’ll try to put those in someplace in a bit.

          • It takes a little getting used to the nuances of WordPress but well worth it … it will look good on your resume! ;)

          • If you copy and paste the DK diary contents (from within their editor), you have to copy it into the Text Tab on the WordPress editor to get the links to copy over properly. If you simply copy and paste the DK diary from the displayed diary, the links won’t get picked up at all.

            Here is an FAQ that includes information about how to cross post: FAQ – How to Compose a Post in WordPress

            When you are within the WordPress editor and you want to add a link, simply click the Link button near the top and it will walk you through it. I fixed the links in your post.

            Thank you so much for copying that here! A discussion about President Obama’s budget negotiations can get very heated on the GOS because there are a lot of people there who hate this president and everything he has tried to do to make our lives suck less. They are always looking for something to use to bash him with and facts be damned. I like facts. :)

  7. Good morning, meese! Wednesday …

    It is 50 degrees in Madison, on its way up to 53. It is raining right now and the forecast claims that it will end later this morning but the radar suggests otherwise. It is windy and will get windier. It was difficult sleeping; I find howling wind and rain to be disconcerting – maybe it trips a primal reaction?

    So the South Carolina deputy, whose assault on the young black girl in the high school classroom was caught on video tape, is known as “Officer Slam”. Luverly. On Twitter last night, in response to “well, what was the poor cop supposed to do????” someone posted a set of instructions for “no-touch student removal”:

    Ten opportunities to de-escalate. My daughter thinks that #8 would have been pretty effective. I hope they fire that guy_and_ institute the “no-touch” method.

    Tonight the Republican clown car careens into Boulder Colorado with the same cast of characters as last time. I expect it to be Trump v Carson with Cruz waiting to make points with their base. If you want to get nervous, read this article “Ted Cruz’s Plan to Pick Off the Competition”. He is better funded and better staffed than all the other candidates. When push comes to shove, Trump would be unlikely to institute a theocracy: it is Ted Cruz’s goal. The good news it that he trails our expected nominee by 9 points and that gap will widen as people learn more about him..

    There is a lot of budget news but I am going to put that in Geordie’s post. I will leave you with the coolest thing from the coolest president in my lifetime. From the USA Women’s World Cup Soccer Tour visit to the White House:

    “[This team] inspired millions of girls to dream bigger and inspired millions of boys to look at girls differently, which is just as important,” Obama said.

    “This team taught all of America’s children that ‘playing like a girl’ means you’re a badass,” he continued. “Perhaps I shouldn’t have used that phrase — ‘playing like a girl’ means you’re the best.”

    See all y’alls later!!

  9. Good morning, Moosekind! It’s dark and rainy here and something must have happened to the electricity during the night because the bedroom clock was flashing. My computer clock in here tells me it’s 6:08 a.m.

    Took a peep over at GOS and now wish I hadn’t: “Why I’ll never vote for Hillary,” “I’m Backing Bernie until the End,” and “Hillary’s Fake Misogyny Charge” are featured on the diary list. Ugh. After Bernie said Hillary was “shouting” (even though that’s all he ever does himself), I like him considerably less than I did.

    Not many thoughts in my head this morning. Finished my Fiction Cafe story yesterday, now trying to think of a blog to write. Haven’t looked at the news yet. Will be back later to say hello to everyone.

    • Yay for finishing one of your writing tasks!!

      Yes, I saw an article a couple of days ago that called out Hillary’s “Bernie Bashing” by stating that Bernie was “a better feminist than Hillary”. Say what? Probably just like Bernie’s “I marched with King” moment perhaps we will find an “I burned my bra with Bella” moment in his past. You know what I saw, from the Iowa Jefferson-Jackson dinner last Saturday? Bernie, or his speechwriters, borrowing heavily from Barack Obama’s 2007 speech at the JJ down to the “I will run based on principles, not polls”. You know what? I don’t care when someone evolved but that the evolution took place and that they are on the right side now. It is not a “first across the line” contest. Joe Biden voted for the crime bill and for DOMA and for the AUMF and I doubt he would defend those votes now. But because he is now “Kindly Uncle Joe”, he gets to evolve. I smell a bit of misogyny there as well but my feminist hackles have been on high alert since Hillary got into the race so maybe it is just me.

      • My hackles went into overdrive when the Bernie people started the ‘Hillary accuses Bernie of Misogyny” routine. He specifically said “shouting” in the the same sentence with her name. She simply said, “I’m not shouting…When women speak some people think it’s shouting” – something all women are familiar with. If the shoe fits – and apparently by their screaming push back Bernie people think the shoe fits.

        As to the rest of the anti-Hillary crap at GOS, well, I’m coming to think they’re R trolls trying to make trouble. I avoid any diary whose title tells me it’s anti-Hillary and get out of the ones I’ve been suckered into as soon as I realize what it is. Aside from community/pootie diaries I try to read FPs but not go into comments and read Hillary News type diaries with comments. Aside from the few trolls, the commenters in those remind me that many Bernie supporters are good Dems who will work and vote for Hillary if she wins the nomination – and I really need to see that.

  10. Ugh, I woke up at 4:10, after a bad dream (not a nightmare, just unpleasant) about getting repeatedly lost on marathon day. I kept ending up in a mall.

    But I did get my walking in. Eating okra/potato breakfast. Wondering how much caffeine I can consume this morning. I added tea to my strong tea, and I have caffeinated NUUN (an electrolyte tab that runners & cyclists use). I’ve had a headache since my flu shot yesterday so I’m being careful to eat with every gulp of caffeine, no need to add an upset stomach to that.

    I have moved on to new songs in actually listening to my race day mix, but my head is still playing Everlasting Love. Which is fine, because it’s a pretty great cover. (& I love this video, sweet pics of Bono & his wife, including from when they were school kids)

  11. Here is a story about the South Carolina school district where the young girl was body slammed by the deputy. Apparently, the suburb is now 59% black and when black parents wanted to have a greater say on the school board and organized to elect some of their own, here is the backlash they encountered:

    In last year’s Richland School District Two board election, the RTBPA rallied around black candidates, hoping to elect people who could better represent the student body.

    “I ran for the school board during the last election,” [Rev. Hugh ] Harmon [the chairman of the group, the Richland Two Black Parents Association (RTBPA)] said. “It was a visceral, volatile and vociferous debate, because out of 11 candidates that ran, seven were African-American.” Four of the seven board members are black. Three of them were supported by the RTBPA.

    Another group, the Bipartisan White Citizens, was formed to counter the RTBPA’s efforts, according to Harmon, and warned district residents that schools would be “destroyed” if the board shifted to mostly black members. […]

    Harmon questioned that reasoning. Why, he asked, would RTBPA parents want to destroy their neighborhood’s schools?

    “It really rose the ugly head of racism in the community — long before the Emanuel 9 and the Confederate flag debate,” he said. “We’re not rabble-rousing crazy black folk. We’re educated, and that distresses people. Most of us are educators. Two or three of the board members are retired principals.”

    Well, of course they don’t want to destroy their neighborhood schools! This is simply a racist reaction to sharing power.

    • Officer Slam fired but charges still will be filed against girl thrown across the room:

      “In a press conference at noon, Richland County Sheriff Leon Lott stressed that the incident started with a “very disruptive” student who was refusing to let the teacher continue the class. Nevertheless, he said Fields displayed “unacceptable” behavior that violated his training and department police when he “threw the student across the room.””

      http://thinkprogress.org/justice/2015/10/28/3716923/spring-valley-high-officer-slam/

  12. Good morning, 49 and partly cloudy in Bellingham today. So yesterday I had a lesson in the power of words….when Dr C said, “You had cancer and you are cured” my spirits lifted! I like her manner and I’m very appreciative of her diagnostic skills.

    Time for the pool, and then I see Dr B to sort out my meds and get the correct scripts to the new pharmacy.

    Looks like the combination of weight imbalance and a large wave caused the whale watching boat to sink. The photo of the partially submerged boat is alarming.

    Wave hit Canada boat on 1 side while passengers on left side

    TOFINO, British Columbia (AP) — Most of the passengers on a whale watching boat carrying 27 people that capsized off Vancouver Island were on the left side of the top deck when a wave struck the boat’s right side, causing the vessel to tilt and roll over, investigators said Tuesday.

  13. 56 and probably going to be all day long – raining at the moment although that should pass in another hour. Hope we get more rain than we did with the last front. We are dry, dry, dry. Got bunches of stuff to do that I keep getting interrupted on so I guess I’d best get back to it while I can. So glad Jan keeps us current with the general political stuff and Geordie is assessing the Social Security news. {{{HUGS}}}

  14. Morning all! It’s warm and kind of stuffy here again this morning, after a lot of rain last night. I am longing for cooler weather but we don’t appear to be getting any for at least a couple more weeks – highs in the 80’s for as far as the forecast goes.

    princesspat, that is AWESOME news!!!!!! C stands for CURE!

    There’s another aspect to the budget agreement – that “loophole” that the newspaper stories mentioned, that changes what I personally consider a gimmick to allow couples to maximise their Social Security benefits through first claiming spousal benefits, continuing to work, and then claiming the worker’s benefit, now higher because of the delayed retirement credit. The DRC raises your benefit by 8% for ever year after your full retirement age you put off taking your benefits – I’m not filing for my benefits till at least age 67 if I can afford it, because 8% a year guaranteed return is hard to find for regular investments. You may see some discussion of it, and some women’s advocates, notably Heidi Hartmann are up in arms about the change. Myself, I support closing it (possibly because I can’t use it myself as I’m not eligible for any spousal benefit lol) because it most likely benefits more upper income folks and was really an unintended result of a change in the law in 2000. There are already so many advantages built in for those who can keep on working past normal retirement age, especially for higher income people, that I don’t think this kind of “gaming” is justifiable, even if some lower income women might benefit. Eliminating it may save the OASI trust fund $9 Billion a year, which is not pocket change. Here’s an article by Alicia Munnell on it.

    http://blogs.marketwatch.com/encore/2014/03/19/time-to-close-a-social-security-loophole/

    • I doubt that I’ll go longer than my full retirement age (66) – well a few months longer so I close out a calendar year but not enough longer to make a difference. I’ve been lucky to last this long and last year at this time was seriously considering taking early retirement. More loopholes for upper income folks is not the kind of change I’m happy to see. It’s true my (gross) Social Security retirement estimate at 66 puts me about 120% of the official federal poverty level – but then that’s the reason I paid my house off almost 5 years ago and have spent the “mortgage” money on maintenance/upgrades to maintenance since then. I could manage on early retirement if I had to. I think I won’t have to. I think.

    • I was listening to a discussion of the loophole on the Thom Hartmann Show yesterday afternoon. He had a Social Security expert on who was answering a range of SS questions and that came up. I never knew it existed! I don’t like it because it is gaming the system and the system is too important to make it into a game. It should be simple: you work, you collect retirement benefits when you retire. If your spouse dies, you switch to their benefits if they are greater. When you start adding all these loopholes you present the terrible optics of it being a matter of how tricky you are.

      I have a different attitude towards how long to wait to collect Social Security benefits. I participated in an interesting back and forth among some friends discussing early retirement just a few weeks ago. Essentially, it is your money at age 62, why not take it? Someone pointed out that if you take the 75% benefit from age 62 to age 66 (rather than leaving it at SSA), it would take you until you were nearly 80 to get to the point where you come out ahead for staying in the system for those extra 4 years. I had never stopped to consider that! And that assumes that you have the energy to work full time until you are 66 (something I have been doubting recently in my own case). Early retirement benefits is a bird in the hand … not worth as much as the two in the bush (plus enhancers) but who can predict what one’s life will be like 18 years from now?

      Anyway, there are lots of things to consider not least of which is that Social Security is a political football and one would not want to be left on the 3 yard line about to score and find out that someone grabbed the ball from your hands and is running the opposite direction with it.

      • Exactly, Jan! I took Social Security when I was 62 for several reasons: my mother was chronically ill and needed someone to drive her to her many doctor appointments; I hated my job; and I was sick of working proposals and just wanted to stay home and write. I’ve never regretted it.

        Another factor influencing my decision was that my hard-working uncle, who was eagerly waiting to retire at age 65 so he could take his SS benefits and sail his little Sunfish boat, died of a stroke at age 64. So I said to myself, “I’ll take it now so I can have at least a few years of retirement before I die, and before the Rethugs take SS away completely.” Remember in 2005 there was a lot of concern that the Bushies would do just that. I retired in March 2006. Of course, it is only fair to point out that my husband was still working and getting SS at the time.

        • One of the friends I was having the conversation with wants to spend her 60s hanging out with grandchildren, not just putting in time at a job she does not love until she can collect Social Security. Most people expect to supplement their SS and the government lets you do that up to limits … limits that increase every year. So if you live modestly and work part time you can get by. The wild card is health insurance since Medicare does not kick in until 65 but the ACA makes getting health insurance easier. A 62 year old woman finding affordable, heck, ANY, health insurance would have been impossible before: now it is a right.

          There are other factors to consider and certainly people with fat 401ks or IRAs or someone else still working to help pay the bills have an easier decision. I will be weighing it all carefully.

          Hearing the sad tale of your uncle puts it all in perspective, doesn’t it?

      • I would have taken early retirement if I had to – the situation at work was toxic but just knowing I could walk out was enough to allow me to hang in there another until now (2 years later) when the situation is improving daily – but I wouldn’t have liked it. The math you cite is correct, but my gross would have been $800 a month – and once they pulled Medicare out of it…

        • That makes a big difference! I am glad you have been able to stay with it and I can see why you might want to stick around to get the deferral bonus.

          • At “full” retirement (66) the estimate is $1200/month gross. My house is paid off so about $200/month for taxes and insurance and I’ve got the solar panels which seriously cuts my electric bill. I might have to curtail my charitable and political giving a bit, not much I hope, but as long as Medicare premiums don’t run over $300/month I’ll be fine. That’s my real issue with retirement. What is the Medicare premium going to be?

  16. Good morning, meese! Thursday …

    It is 36 degrees in Madison, on its way up to 48 degrees. Cloudy skies are in the forecast.

    I watched about 5 minutes of the undercard GOP debate, muted, and about 2 minutes total (flipping over to it) of the main debate, also muted, just to see what it looked like. My eyes!!!!!!!!! Reading the post-debate commentary, it appears that Trump and Carson simply stood by and watched the next tier attack each other (and John Kasich shake his tiny fists in impotent rage). Right wing commentary says: Trump, Carson, Cruz, Rubio – with Fiorina and Gov. Bully running as VP candidates. My Twitters says:

    LOLGOP ‏@LOLGOP
    If they were trying to make the stage look like Russian nesting dolls, Lindsey Graham is out of place.

    Hunter ‏@HunterDK
    Who is CNBC’s audience supposed to be? Even dogs left alone at home would hate this crap.

    John Dingell ‏@JohnDingell
    Baseball

    What? Nothing of substance? Exactly. (The last one was what John Dingell decided after weighing whether to watch the debate or the baseball game. It was my choice also.

    One thing that happened outside the debate event: a voter registration drive for Latinos in Colorado. The Republican candidate will need 44% of the Latino vote to win Colorado and these folks want to make sure that does not happen:

    Latino leaders and immigration reform supporters will be stationed outside the venue to launch their “My Country, My Vote” campaign, a 12-month voter registration drive to mobilize the state’s eligible voters. […]

    Federico Pena, the organizer and founder of “My Country, My Vote” campaign, told ThinkProgress that he organized the event because he was frustrated with the “anti-immigrant, anti-Latino comments by a number of candidates for office” and that there hasn’t been “major pushback across the country” in response. “The rally has two purposes. One is to have a number of speakers eloquently and specifically respond to some of the hateful rhetoric and factual misstatements that some candidates have been making,” Pena said. “Secondly — and equally importantly — it is to launch a massive voter registration campaign in Colorado for the next 12 months. We’ll have iPads to register people to vote, particularly young college students and others. But we want to continue so that we can have a very strong Latino voter registration and voter turnout.”

    Exactly … the pushback should be in the voting booth.

    See all y’all later!!

  17. Good morning, Moosekind, and happy Thor’s Day! The sun is rising over a rain-wet street and the moon is still visible in a blue sky. Right now it’s 61 F. in NoVa, going up to 68 F. today.

    Need to do some housework before the weekend, as I think we will have viewings. The realtor stopped by yesterday to say the Washington Unmentionables will not be playing footbore this weekend, so more people will come out to look at houses.

    GMA this morning announced that Rubio was “the winner” of the debate. What? Rubio the Absent? He’s a winner? The debate was a real mess, I thought, with incredibly stupid moderators perched at a table like chickens in a hen house, squawking their questions. A couple of people squawked back, I was glad to see. Chris Christie shouted, “You’re asking about fantasy football instead of serious policy issues?” I mostly slept through it, I was so tired.

    Knocked out a short blog on the way to bed, so this morning will read through it and the short story and .pdf them both so I can send them to my Web guy. Then I’ll have to create a Facebook ad to start running tomorrow. I love doing ads.

    Hope it’s a good day for everyone at the Pond and Beyond!

    • I hope Rubio is the nominee – he will be easy to takedown – and if Repubs think he’s going to capture the “Hispanic Vote” I have a bridge to sell them

      • The pundits are saying it will come down to Rubio v Cruz for the nomination – The Establishment versus the True Believers. I tend to agree with them that Trump and Carson are more of a flirtation than twoo wuv but Rubio and Cruz together don’t even have 15%. That would be one heck of a turnaround.

        I hope they start winnowing the field for the debates. Let’s start by putting Rand Paul, Mike Huckabee, and Carly Fiorina into the undercard debate … maybe John Kasich, as well. I want Carson to be forced to say more because every time he opens his mouth, more stupid drops out. He only got about 8 minutes or so last night.

        Bush, Rubio, Kasich – for the establishment
        Cruz, Carson – for the evangelicals
        Trump – for Trump

  18. So Map My Walk says I did 1.63 miles this morning. But I’m pretty sure I walked the same thing all 3 days this week….. Anyway, I walked — had to wear long sleeves, it was 54. Had a mixture of Disappear and Hallelujah Here She Comes playing in my head while I was walking. But now that I’m eating, back to Tuesday’s mellow, impressionistic Promenade.

    I ignored the debate last night. Let the Rs fight amongst themselves. As a very wise man (Wil Wheaton) said: “Not my circus, not my monkeys”. Or to use something Douglas Adams invented, as far as I’m concerned, the Rs have a “somebody else’s problem” field around them.

    • Ha! I saw that gif this morning. Can you believe that Mike Huckabee alluded to Vince Foster in the debate? Good lord, it is going to be a long campaign.

  20. Was 40 when I got up (house was 60 – brrrr) heading for 65 but sunny. I saw the moon for the first time in a week this morning. She was beautiful, as usual :) Rain moving in tomorrow afternoon/evening. We could use it but aside from Farmers’ Market, this weekend is Homecoming (get off the streets by 10 and stay off the streets) as well as All Hallows’ Evening. Skipped the debate last night. I have enough tummy troubles as it is. (Memo to self – stay out of anti-Hillary diaries as DK.)

    Hope everybody’s Thor’s Day is pleasant, also calm and productive. {{{HUGS}}}

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