Week-long Welcomings from Moosylvania: June 5th through June 11th

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?

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.

26 Comments

  1. Morning all! Hot and humid here – I’ll only leave the house to go get groceries later, summer has set in with a vengeance.

    So much stupidity out there today on Bernie’s demands when he meets with the President, who I hope will politely tell him to get lost. Losers don’t get to dictate, buddy. I still believe the vast majority of Sanders voters will vote Democratic, however reluctantly – I just wish they could turn their energy to supporting down ticket Dems if they can’t get over the lies they’ve been told about Hillary.

    Have a great day everyone!

    • I saw something that suggested that Sanders’ main goal is to get rid of DWS. That’s it? You build a movement with a bunch of kids and their $27ses and you want to use that to seek petty vengeance? Meh.

  2. Good morning, 57 cloudy and breezy in Bellingham. I’m waking up slower than usual and already thinking of when nap time will happen. Looks like my long list will be safe today!

    We sign the papers for our re finance loan this afternoon, so most of my day will be spent dealing with the desk and making financial decisions. The garden is really calling to me but I had best tend to business first.

  3. Good morning, meese! Friday …

    It is 66 degrees in Madison on its way up to 92. Partly cloudy skies are in the forecast.

    Wow, what a week! I am glad that the president made his endorsement announcement sooner rather than later. He is the leader of the party and the leader of the coalition that bears his name. The endorsement was sent to his OFA email list as well as Hillary’s email so he is all in. Now if someone would please stop Sen. Sanders from saying “when I am president” in his speeches, life would be good. Unless he plans to primary the sitting president in 2020, when he is 78 years old, or run again in 2024, when he is 82, he is done. And the longer he drags this out, and encourages his deadenders, the less likely he will be to wield any power over the Democratic party or in Congress (which would be fine with me, by the way).

    The Republican Party is still wringing their hands over what they have wrought. The latest is by George W. Bush’s former speechwriter: “The party of Lincoln is dying”. Give it a rest, guys. The denial that you created the circumstances for the rise of Trump is as pathetic as your denial of man-made climate change. Trumpism is not “wow, how did that happen?”; he is the inevitable result of the Southern Strategy and Lee Atwater and Rush Limbaugh and Fox News. Grab a tiny violin for them!

    Is Trump himself a racist? Who the bloody hell cares? There is no difference in public influence between a politician who is a racist and one who appeals to racist sentiments with racist arguments. The harm to the country — measured in division and fear — is the same, whatever the inner workings of Trump’s heart. […]

    Republicans have clung to the hope that Trump might find unsuspected resources of leadership; lacking that, to the hope that he might be co-opted; and lacking that, to the hope of laying low and avoiding the Trump taint. All delusions. Having tied themselves to Trump’s anchor, the protests of GOP leaders are merely the last string of bubbles escaping from their lungs. […]

    [The Republican Party] has failed one of the most basic tests of public justice: Don’t support racists — or candidates who appeal to racism — for public office. If this commitment is not a primary, non-negotiable element of Republican identity, then the party of Lincoln is dead.

    Good f-ing riddance. It has been a sham since 1964 and Abraham Lincoln deserves a better memorial to his legacy.

    I am going to be off the grid and with limited Internet access for the next few days so the president’s weekly address will probably be late and the Sunday welcomings will be put on auto-publish in case I can’t post. I am going to take some time thinking about how to pivot to the general election. The Motley Moose is purple but it is not by any means red so editorially I think it is fine to publish pro-Hillary pieces on the front page now. I do want to try to figure out a better way to organize the news that I find and want to share so I will be pondering how to do that as well.

    See all y’all later!

    • I don’t think there is a problem with f’paging her – She’s our nominee.
      We should also be pushing the Senate races – we have to flip it.

      Sanders needs to go home to Vermont. I’m not one of the people who thinks he will be useful on the stump.

      • OMG, no! Sanders on the stump will just trigger everyone’s PTSD from this primary season. I am hoping that they retain veto power over his convention speech and, if not, put him on early in the week when no one gives a rats ass about what is going on. I do NOT want him harshing our buzz coming out of the convention. Most convention bounces are 6-8% and we will need that heading into November.

        I am going to focus my writing on promoting the Democratic Party (like I did in 2012) from the top of the ticket to the Senate, the House and state races. And, yes, it will include promoting our nominee and then President Hillary Clinton. I hope her White House web site will be easy to navigate!

    • This:

      The Republican Party is still wringing their hands over what they have wrought. The latest is by George W. Bush’s former speechwriter: “The party of Lincoln is dying”.

      What does he think the mentally subnormal Dubya had in common with Abraham Lincoln, arguably our greatest president? And if Bush’s speechwriter doesn’t understand how to use the “lie/lay” construction, no wonder Dubya pronounced “nuclear” as “nucular.”

  4. Good morning, Meese, and it is truly a good morning here in NoVa, as beautiful as the Goddess Freya herself. Clear blue sky, low humidity, lots of sunlight. It’s 60 F. now, going up to 79 F. today.

    Looking forward to lunch with my two ex-Circle sisters, who moved six weeks ago to a sister community of the “Gatsby Woods” retirement community I talked about in a recent post. Apparently it’s not instant bliss, although they’re still glad they moved. One of them has never driven a car and the other fears she will not be driving much longer.

    In a better mood today, thank Goddess, especially since I’ve been staying off toxic Facebark. I hid or blocked a lot of people, so my news feed hasn’t been too bad, but FB is still a time suck. That’s why I’m afraid to get any more familiar with Twitter. I need to be writing.

    Wishing everyone a good day!

  5. 68 at dawn heading for 92 – sunny, a bit hazy like yesterday (didn’t quite make it to 22 KWHs yesterday, probably the same today). Flea problem getting worse. I’m going to have to break down and get poison – for the yard and the house. Dammit. Got to be careful with the yard – want to kill fleas not bees. Living within 50 yards of a stream and its riparian buffer (which is a wetland this year) means a whole lot of little bloodsuckers are out there – and they ignore fences. sigh.

    Helluva week! Hillary crosses the delegate AND voter line, President Obama AND Elizabeth Warren AND V.P. Joe Biden (and a bunch of other folks) endorse her, and B.S. is starting to tone it down. Except for the relatively few if obnoxiously loud BoBcats, GOS is shifting into general election mode. Hillary and the down-ballot races need to be everywhere – it’s that important. Every election people say “this is the most important” – to the extent that most folks just blow it off. But for the last several decades it’s basically been like “hottest year ever” – the hits keep coming and it IS the most important. But this year’s “most important” is for the hearth, health, and soul of our country. And people are starting to wake up to that and get on board the Dem train toward sanity/safety.

    Got stuff to do, of course. (That is what being at work is about after all. heh) Bright the day, Meeses. {{{HUGS}}}

  6. Good morning, 52 and cloudy in Bellingham. Apparently I need more coffee because I just can form a coherent thought this morning. Best wishes to all!

  7. Hey all – late check in today for me, I got up, did some stuff, then felt an irresistible urge to take a nap, and now I’m up again.

    What a wonderful week for Hillary – starting last week with her stone cold takedown of Trump in her foreign policy speech, thru Tuesday’s trouncing of Sanders at the polls, then yesterday’s great day! I loved that the President politely met with Bernie and then released his endorsement of Hillary about an hour later – I’ve read one thing that said he thought he could tell the President to delay his endorsement of her. heh. I’m pleased as well about Warren’s speech and endorsement, and Biden’s (altho that was really just an off hand remark in the middle of his very serious critique of Trump’s attack on the courts and indeed the rule of law – I recommend listening to it if you find a link, it was very good.)

    I’m not so happy, although not surprised, to see all the wild enthusiasm on line for Warren as Hillary’s VP pick – I think it would be a big mistake for reasons I’ve discussed before. They’re too much alike, for starters – two white older women from the Northeast does nothing to acknowledge to Obama coalition of POC that assured Hillary’s nomination and will elect her. More importantly, I think Warren is incapable of subordinating her own views, agenda and ambitions to the President’s – she’s been a law professor for 30 years, and then a Senator, and in neither of those jobs did she have a boss to whom she was directly answerable and whom she was required to support, which is the essence of the Vice Presidential office. It might work for the campaign, but I think friction and conflict would be inevitable once they took office.

    I watched Hillary’s speech to Planned Parenthood today (it’s great!) and that made think about another aspect of Warren that troubles me – Warren, like Sanders, is narrowly focused on economic issues. She was a Republican until the late 90’s, and I don’t think has any more sense of what the Obama coalition is about than Bernie, although she’s a lot smarter than he is and so could probably figure it out. Still, it’s up to Hillary to pick the person she feels is best for the job, and if she picks Warren, presumably she’s gamed out all these issues I’m concerned about. We’ll see.

    Everyone have a good rest of the day!

    • Many of the folks over in HNV think EW is a distraction for the media while Hillary assesses and then chooses her Veep – MichaelHolmes referred to it as ‘squirrel!’ :) – with EW’s full support and complicity. I hope they are correct.

    • I hope that Sanders did try to convince the president to wait and that the release was his way of reasserting his role as leader of the party.

      I agree with you on Warren. She is the wrong pick for lots of reasons.

  8. Good morning, meese! Saturday …

    It is going to be 93 where I am headed, thank goodness for air conditioning.

    Pat Buchanan gives Trump advice “Never change!” I don’t think Buchanan needs to worry … can’t happen, won’t happen.

    I read last night that Sanders surrogates “just want Hillary to care about our issues!!” Like money in politics, minimum wage, college debt, climate change. Hello!! She does care about those issues, has actually plans to address them, and is working to get a Congress who will help. They are just angry that their candidate’s solutions (purity, screaming) won’t be chosen. Meh.

    See all y’all later!

  9. Good morning, Moosekind! Today is slated to be ‘ot, ‘umid, and ‘orrible, with possible thunderstorms. Uh-huh. We did put the a.c. on this morning after enjoying two days of actual air, with open windows and fans. Currently it’s overcast and 69 F., going up to 92 F.

    Going to the gym today. Really need to finish the laundry and work on my story. Yesterday, after a low-carb lunch and a low-carb dinner, I broke out and ate a chocolate-crispy rice candy bar from Trader Joe’s! Just suddenly felt desperate for carbs. Luckily my weight on the scale stayed the same as always. That’s enough about that.

    Hope everyone will have a great Saturday!

  10. Slept late — not continuously, but it was still nice to sleep late. I’m going to walk today, after I watch Joy Reid on MSNBC. It’s getting hot, but “June” so that’s to be expected. Listening to my Scottish friends’ song about the West Wing (no, really) here’s a Soundcloud link in this tweet:

    https://twitter.com/tilldecember/status/737224214260928512

  11. Good morning, 54, breezy and partly cloudy in Bellingham. Between recovering from the estate sales blues, focusing on our financial planning and the refinance, and following HRC excellent week I’m exhausted!

    Today is our oldest daughter’s birthday so I’m going to the garden shop to chose a variety of plants for her flower pots. We’ll take them to her tomorrow and enjoy a birthday lunch together. Her life has been so busy with her work and our grandson’s injury and recovery she has had little time for her garden, so I know the plants will be a welcome gift.

    It’s nice to look at the photos on her Northwest Frame of Mind site and know she is managing to keep her creative focus despite the demands of daily life.

  12. Morning all! We had huge thunderstorms last night, and my power flickered a few times, but never lost it. The power company buried most of the local power lines after the last bad hurricane year for us in 2004, when power lines went down during the series of tropical storms that hit Gainesville and people were without power for days and in some cases weeks. I’ve only had a few outages since then, mostly when a substation blows up for some reason.

    So I guess the general election is on in earnest, as DC primary is a foregone conclusion, Bernie’s continued denial of reality notwithstanding. I saw in the news headlines this morning that Trump is ‘warning’ President Obama about campaigning for Hillary, that he will go after Obama the way he’s going to go after Hillary with personal attacks. I’m shocked. No, of course not, it’s obvious because it’s all he has – witness the whoops greeting his reference to Warren “Pocahontas” last night at his anemic little rally in Richmond. What a despicable jerk – I do think if all this stuff coming out now about his cheating people and contractors working for him gets traction in the press, he may lose some (not a lot because it’s a fundamentally racist and sexist base) of his white working class voters. I really continue to wonder if Trump can last thru the Republican convention – he’s 10 points behind Hillary in some national polls already, and if he continues not using his teleprompter, Republicans may get desperate enough to try to pull something at the convention.

    Ok, stuff to get done today and it’s opera afternoon as always on Saturday – the World of Opera broadcast is something I’ve never heard of, either the composer, Cavalli or his opera, Veremonda. I had to look him up on Wikipedia – he’s late 17th century, same time period roughly as Monteverdi, baroque style music. So it should be interesting to hear – a performance from the Spoleto USA Festival probably from last year, I think in South Carolina.

    Everyone have a great day!

    • I love Monteverdi’s “Un Ballo delle Ingrate,” but I must confess I have never heard of either Cavalli or Veremonda. My late mother, an opera buff if there ever was one, might have.

  13. Good afternoon Meeses. Wow, was last week ever a week! From the “island nations” votes through Hillary’s first speech as the presumptive nominee, just Wow! And the Bernie people are starting to come on board. They’re still saying silly stuff about her, born of not listening to her just listening to others talk about her, but they’re coming. And somebody’s started a series of daily/nightly diaries on her positions. Of course the requisite “she’s lying” commenters did show up in the first one (on 12-weeks paid FMLA), but mostly it looks promising.

    I finally turned on the A/C this morning. 88 at 10 am is just a bit much for me. Had to flea spray the house – still waiting for the upholstery to dry before letting the cats back in from the porch – as none of the non-toxic stuff I was trying worked. Or at least didn’t work well enough for this very bad flea year although it usually handles things OK. I’m getting old and grumpy – or rather I’m getting old and creaky which makes me grumpy. When it’s cold there are no biting bugs but my joints, especially my hands and the scar on my foot, hurt. A lot. When it’s warm my joints are fine, but the biting bugs make me miserable. And when it’s too warm I have to turn on the A/C which bothers my joints again but doesn’t stop the biting bugs. Sigh.

    Oh well. Hope everyone has had a lovely Saturday and has wound down the week pleasantly. Bright the rest of the day, Meeses. {{{HUGS}}}

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