Week-long Welcomings from Moosylvania: July 3rd through July 9th

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.

30 Comments

  1. The president spoke about the shootings tonight from Warsaw Poland:

    Transcript: Statement by the President

    … all of us as Americans should be troubled by these shootings, because these are not isolated incidents. They’re symptomatic of a broader set of racial disparities that exist in our criminal justice system.

  2. Dallas is in chaos – two snipers, unclear if they were connected in any way with the rally/protest underway there or just opportunistic, have shot 10 police officers – 3 are dead, 2 in surgery, 3 more in critical condition. Don’t know if any protestors were shot as well. Horrific. I am close to despair tonight over the state of violence and racism in our country – how do we get out of this?

    • This morning the death toll is 6 dead including one of the snipers. It sounds like something planned by the perpetrators. The protest had been peaceful and was winding down then the dead enders decided to inject violence. This can all be laid at the feet of those who promote the gun culture in America: the NRA and their Republican puppets. You cannot have an armed populace and police it effectively. Period.

      I don’t have any idea how we get out of this.

  3. Good morning, meese! Friday …

    It is 72 degrees in Madison on its way up to 79. Morning clouds giving way to afternoon sun.

    More violence, a war on the streets of our cities – the participants armed by the ghouls at the NRA. Peaceful protests driven by the unfairness and the hubris of police unions too willing to protect the bad apples and those unsuited for law enforcement turned deadly by the gun culture. As the president said: “If communities are mistrustful of the police, that makes those law enforcement officers who are doing a great job and are doing the right thing, it makes their lives harder. ” Indeed.

    The nothingburger of the Clinton email server became a somethingburger – a glorious moment where Republicans, blinded by 25 years of Clinton Derangement Syndrome and their right-wing echo chamber, further damaged their party. I watched the Comey interrogation and all it really did was give our side a chance to soften the harsh rhetoric of Director Comey’s Tuesday presser and expose the Republicans as the hypocrites that they are. Charlie Pierce:

    For four hours plus, Comey stood the committee on its collective ear. Yes, there was some real dumbassery involved in how HRC handled her home server. Yes, he would use the word reckless. Yes, he would even use the word dangerous. No, he would not be indicting her because dumbassery in an official capacity is not a criminal offense—which is a good thing, otherwise there would have been very few members of the House majority able to attend Thursday’s hearings. […]

    [The] Republicans were equally complimentary of Comey’s service, but their praise usually ended with one of them intimating that Comey was a man of great integrity so they were puzzled as to how he could have gotten involved in a conspiracy involving both Clintons, Loretta Lynch, Vince Foster, Jim Guy Tucker and, as near as could be determined, George deMohrenschildt and John Wilkes Booth. […]

    Why in the name of god they couldn’t have just accepted the gift that Comey gave them on Tuesday is the best proof yet that modern conservatism has driven the GOP barking mad with no hope of recall.

    Hillary Clinton will be campaigning with Joe Biden in Scranton PA today. CSPAN will cover it at noon Eastern time. Link: Vice President Joe Biden campaigns with Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton at an event in Scranton, Pennsylvania.

    See all y’all later!

  4. Good morning, Moosekind! Again, it’s sunny and fair—thunderstorms possible later. Current temp. in NoVa is 70 F., going up to 89 F. today.

    Heartsick about all the shootings, both the police murders of innocent black men and of the murder of Dallas police officers by snipers. The only way out of this I can see is to make gun control an issue in the election and defeat all the Death Eaters at the polls. I feel like staying home all the time and having my food delivered by van—but I’m not going to surrender to the forces of Unreason like that. Sigh.

    Think I’ll just worry about my own little space today and try to avoid the news. Wishing a good day to all at the Pond and Beyond!

  5. Sad & angry & sick. I cannot believe that there are (at least) 4 people so stupid as to think that a sniper attack on police would do anything but make things immeasurably worse. You would think at some point in the planning, someone would say, “hmmm, so what will happen after our attack?” They will probably find more than the 3 in custody & 1 dead, and I just want to shake them and ask how the hell they thought this would make anything better.

    Playing in my head: Peace On Earth, about another stupid senseless killing — I rarely listen, because the pain in his voice causes me actual physical pain (when he does the names, I cry, every time), and the words are just so gut wrenching:

    Heaven on Earth
    We need it now
    I’m sick of all of this
    Hanging around
    Sick of sorrow
    Sick of pain
    Sick of hearing again and again
    That there’s gonna be
    Peace on Earth

    Where I grew up
    There weren’t many trees
    Where there was we’d tear them down
    And use them on our enemies
    They say that what you mock
    Will surely overtake you
    And you become a monster
    So the monster will not break you

    It’s already gone too far
    Who said that if you go in hard
    You won’t get hurt

    Jesus could you take the time
    To throw a drowning man a line
    Peace on Earth
    Tell the ones who hear no sound
    Whose sons are living in the ground
    Peace on Earth
    No whos or whys
    No-one cries like a mother cries
    For peace on Earth
    She never got to say goodbye
    To see the colour in his eyes
    Now he’s in the dirt
    Peace on Earth

    They’re reading names out over the radio
    All the folks the rest of us won’t get to know
    Sean and Julia, Gareth, Ann and Breda
    Their lives are bigger, than any big idea

    Jesus can you take the time
    To throw a drowning man a line
    Peace on Earth
    To tell the ones who hear no sound
    Whose sons are living in the ground
    Peace on Earth

    Jesus this song you wrote
    The words are sticking in my throat
    Peace on Earth
    Hear it every Christmas time
    But hope and history won’t rhyme
    So what’s it worth?
    This peace on Earth

    Peace on Earth
    Peace on Earth
    Peace on Earth

  6. Good morning Meese
    I was so exhausted last night I slept though all that happened in Dallas
    Am still trying to separate “rumor” being reported as news – and fact (like what really happened.
    I did see a lot of tweets focusing in on a purported “suspect” which turned out to be total bs from the Dallas police – after I followed this tweet

    Mistaken Dallas shooting “suspect” describes ordeal
    July 8, 2016, 3:08 AM|Mark Hughes was considered a person of interest in the Dallas protest shooting. But while the world was seeing his picture, he was talking with police, and video shows him turning the gun he was carrying over to police moments after the shooting occurred. Hughes and his brother Cory spoke with Dallas CBS affiliate KTVT.

    I guess I am identifying strongly with Mark Hughes – because the NYPD had shoot to kill orders out on me and my roommates, with our photos on the dashboard of cop cars at one point in the 70’s – for something we were not involved with.

    Stupid stupid asshole cretins who decided to shoot and kill cops at a peaceful protest are not helping us deal with gun violence or police brutality.

    Prayers for all those who died and their families.

    be back later – need more coffee

    • Of course there will be calls for “black leaders to rein in THEIR people”. I am holding my breath and hoping like hell that the authorities can rein in the gun nuts who will be showing up with their arsenals.

    • The worst part of this is that the poor guy whose face is now plastered all over social media is likely the target for vigilantes. I understand wanting to find a person who may be a material witness or a perpetrator but JHC … this is terribly dangerous!

  7. The President spoke about last night’s violence:

    “There has been a vicious, calculated and despicable attack on law enforcement,” President Obama told reporters Friday morning after a meeting with European leaders in Warsaw, after speaking by phone with Mayor Mike Rawlings of Dallas.

    Mr. Obama went on: “Police in Dallas were on duty doing their jobs, keeping people safe, during peaceful protests. These law enforcement officers were targeted, and nearly a dozen officers were shot. Five were killed. Other officers, and at least one civilian, were wounded. Some are in serious condition, and we are praying for their recovery.”

    It will be a challenge to remind people that this was caused by 4 gunmen, not by the peaceful protesters, and that the apologies that need to come for this mayhem should start with one from the NRA and the Republicans who enable them.

    • President Obama this morning:

      It appears that the campaign rally with Vice President Biden and Secretary Clinton scheduled for noon Eastern has been cancelled.

  8. 75 again at dawn so I opened the house again for a bit. Something wrong with my PV system or with my monitor as it’s showing zero production production. Got an email in with the installer. We shall see what we shall see.

    Violence in America is something Americans are so accustomed to we white folks as a group have refused to see it as unusual. And we’ve always seen it on an individual basis. Now we are seeing the systemic problem. We cannot unsee it. We cannot unknow it. It will not be quick or easy to bring America to the kind of sanity all other 1st World nations live in, but we will do it. Before any change in behaviors can be made, first comes a change in attitude. We are making that change. What used to be “regrettable” is now unacceptable, even though in behavior we are still accepting it. The next several steps are figuring out what to do about it, then doing it. While there are people who are perfectly happy, even garner power, from the status quo – there are more who aren’t and don’t. Just wish I could make it happen faster.

    Bright the day, Meeses. {{{HUGS}}}

  9. Good morning, 62 cloudy and breezy in Bellingham. My little world is peaceful this morning, but my soul is hurting……so much violence in our bigger world.

    Nancy LeTourneau…….

    “The Mindless Menace of Violence”

    The story about what happened in Dallas last night is still developing. We all still have lots of questions about exactly what happened. It’s important to keep that in mind as the finger-pointing begins.

    But here’s something we already know. These kinds of events are happening so fast in succession that they start to build on one another. As I watch the news, it feels like the whole world is in chaos. And yet, as I sit here and look out my window, everyone I see is going peacefully about their day’s business. Keep that in mind. Most Americans aren’t toting around guns and firing them off at the slightest provocation.

    And yet, we are certainly living in violent times. It’s not the first time things have felt like this in America. As you await the development of the news coming out of Dallas, I suggest that you listen to an excerpt of the speech Robert Kennedy gave the day after Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated. The similarity between the events of those days and what we are experiencing right now is captured by how his words are exactly what we need to hear today.

  10. Just checking in – I don’t have much to add to what I wrote last night. I’m just sick and disheartened at the state of our country. Everyone be well today.

    • Chin up, Geordie! We have faced worst and come out of it. Take solace in the fact that the Republican Party is systematically destroying itself and, even if they do attempt to rise from the ashes of 2016, will find that they have become a regional rump party, tied to the dying demographics of bitterness and envy. When we can get back Congress we can start draining the swamp and maybe finally be the people that President Obama thinks we can be.

    • Maybe this will help:

      “We are not going to let a coward who would ambush police officers change our democracy,” [Dallas police chief David Brown] said during a press conference Friday morning. “We are not gonna do it. Our city, our country, is better than that.”

      “Police are guardians of this great democracy,” he said earlier in the briefing. “Freedom to protest, freedom of speech, freedom for expression — all freedoms we fight for with our lives. It’s what makes us who we are as Americans.”

      “We risk our lives for those rights. We won’t militarize our policing standards.”

      (Dallas police chief: We won’t let a coward change our democracy | TheHill)
      http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news/286982-dallas-police-chief-we-wont-let-a-coward-change-our-democracy

  11. Good morning, meese. Saturday …

    It is a delightful 63 degrees in Madison with an expected high of 77. Sunny skies are in the forecast. Windows open, birds cheeping in the pre-dawn (sun due up in about an 40 minutes or so).

    The ghastly attack in Dallas looks less ghastly after 24 hours. It was a lone gunman – who hated both police and Black Lives Matters – with a personal arsenal including the AR-15 weapon used in the shootings. I am relieved it was not part of a plan to kill policemen and interested now in seeing if Congress has any interest in getting military assault weapons out of the hands of civilians. I feel hopeful that Dallas won’t turn into an armed camp of “us v them” after listening to their mayor and their police chief and reading about the changes that Dallas made over the past few years to address the issues of racism in their ranks. It is actually a model city for law enforcement practices and it will be interesting to see if what the chief built is strong enough to withstand the calls from the right-wing to demonize a group or race because of one bitter-ender.

    Joe Biden is giving the Weekly Address this morning since the president is still traveling. He was in Poland for a NATO summit and is in or will be in Spain today.

    I found the speech that Hillary gave at an AME church in Philadelphia yesterday and will post it in the Weekly Address. She took a lot of grief because she did a “campaign event”. No, she spoke at a black church that was celebrating its 200th year of existence and it was exactly where a national leader should be – in the community with words of comfort and strength, celebrating and praying.

    By the way, Ruth Bader Ginsburg is so wonderful! From an AP interview yesterday:

    Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg says she doesn’t want to think about the possibility of Donald Trump winning the White House, and she predicts the next president — “whoever she will be” — will have a few appointments to make to the Supreme Court.

    See all y’all later!

    • Hillary Clinton’s speech last night at Mother Bethel AME in Philadelphia is a good recap of where we are. She is concerned, like I am, that the murders in Louisiana and Minnesota will get shoved to the side because of the brutal killings in Dallas. That must not be allowed to happen because it is part of the same conversation about armed America and poorly trained and/or blatantly racist police officers and police departments and institutionalized racism.

      She said “when the 24-hour news cycle moves on, I won’t”.

      It was a good speech at least to my white ears. :) She quoted President Obama, Elie Wiesel and Dr. King.

  12. Good morning, Meese! It’s a lovely day here in NoVa, 70 F. now, 89 F. later, and they say the humidity will lower itself. If it does, we’ll turn off the a.c.

    This morning I lay in bed gloomily contemplating the garden. The long, cold wet spring plus the Ant Invasion destroyed the strawberries. The Japanese beetles are destroying the raspberries. Forget the blueberries, they’re puny. However, I did pick what my maternal grandmother would have referred to as a “nice mess of beans.” No runner beans you can buy taste as good as the ones you grow yourself and season with olive oil and home-grown basil!

    Grateful to live in my neighborhood, where race doesn’t seem to matter. I can’t count the number of interracial couples here, it’s such a common occurrence. Of course, I realize that Northern Virginia is quite different from “down state,” as we call the rest of Virginia. Still, this was the first state in the country to elect a man of color as governor. When we elect a woman of color as governor, I’ll know we’ve joined the 21st century.

    I have hope of brother- and sisterhood among the young, not so much for the olds.

    (Insert weary sigh here). So sick of the *!@#$W$^ media piling on Hillary! So very, very sick of it. May they all be struck by lightning and start speaking only French. Then very few in this country will be able to understand anything they say, to the enormous benefit of humankind.

    That’s my cheery thought for the day! Wishing a good day to all at the Pond and Beyond!

    • I wish they would quit asking her about the emails. And I wish she would resist the urge to continue to defend herself publicly. She is not going to be charged criminally and anything she says now just keeps the story in the news. Yes, she was unfairly targeted, yes, it is pretty much bulldung that she passed around classified emails casually putting people at risk, yes, one would expect staff at the State Department to be well versed in classified information and not forward her anything they shouldn’t, yes, it was not wise to have the server in her basement because it SOUNDS nefarious, and yes, the director of the FBI was wrong to suggest that even though they could find no evidence of hacking “it must have happened because it sure could have!!” For a guy whose every other word was “evidence” he went off the rails because, at heart, he is a Republican and, at heart, he despises the Clintons.

      It is time to say “I have said all I am going to say about the emails”.

  13. I wouldn’t say I slept in, but I stayed in bed. Yelling at my brain that 3:30 on Saturday morning is an impractical time to freak out about my finances. Watching the news — showing a story on people thanking the Dallas police & how I’ll bring myself to not hug the officer who’s the crossing guard for my church tomorrow morning — it’d probably startle him a bit.

    Watching Le Tour. Today is one of the big climbs, Le Col de Tourmalet. On the descent, they’re going 50mph — on bikes.

  14. Good morning, 60 and cloudy in Bellingham. I finally have my desk mess back to a state of controlled chaos so between naps and puttering in the garden I’ll work on reducing the stacks of files. I need to get back to the sewing room project as well because the grand girls will be here next week and they want to sew. The new table just needs the nail holes filled and the new canvas top stapled on and then all the bolts of fabric can be sorted and put away. It helps me cope when I have a sense of order in my small world.

    Danny Westneat, at the Seattle Times……

    Driving while black? Even Seattle’s Ron Sims counts 8 cop stops

    Recently I was talking with Ron Sims, the former King County executive, about unequal discipline in the schools. He mentioned almost in passing that while driving around the city he has been pulled over by police eight times.

    ~snip~

    Sims told me this in April and since then, I think of it often. He’s an ordained Baptist minister, was the longest-serving King County executive ever (1996-2009) and is now a Washington State University regent. He’s arguably the most successful black politician in Seattle history, as well as a pillar volunteer in the community.

    Yet he’s been pulled over eight times.

    I have never been pulled over in the city. I drove around for years in a 30-year-old Volvo with a muffler tied on with a coat hanger and red tape for a taillight. Never pulled over once.

    • That is the part that needs to change. It needs to include data analysis and firing cops who target people of color. The young man killed in Minnesota is a perfect example. I think that what they should be funding is a big pot of money to offer severance packages to people who should not have a badge and a gun, get rid of them and then institute new hiring practices that require a battery of tests to suss out bias and reject applicants who are not suitable for that line of work.

      The Dallas police chief started by identifying and firing 70 bad apples – I did not find out how he managed to do that – and then he built the department he has now.

  15. 67 at dawn – got about an inch of rain between 1:30 and 3:30 (and a weather-warning call from Code Red at 2:14 that there was a flash flood watch in the county) so no watering tomorrow – still very overcast even though no more rain predicted. Don’t know what the problem was yesterday about my solar panel monitoring system but when I got home after work I didn’t have phone service either so re-booted the router. That reconnected everything (only 7 KWHs yesterday – if things don’t clear off a bit the rest of the month, I’ll definitely have a lower total than July 2015. We shall see what we shall see.

    Saw the videos of Hillary speaking to AME and Rev. Barber doing a press conference. Both wonderful and to a large extent saying the same thing in their own ways. Maybe I’m optimistic – well, I have to be optimistic or I’d turn my face to the wall and give up – but I think we’ve reached “critical mass” on these overlapping issues of systemic racism/gun violence in America, that we will finally start listening to each other (especially us white folks listening to people of color) and finally start working out what the steps are to end this and then finally start putting those steps into practice. I’m not a fool and I know it will take time and people will continue to die until we get it done – and that it could be cut short by RWNJ backlash. But I think we have finally, finally reached the point where the majority of America says “Enough.”

    Bright the day, Meeses. {{{HUGS}}}

  16. Morning all. Watching AMJoy, and she is doing such a great job with coverage this morning. I am so glad MSNBC gave her this weekend show, and that she’s the go to sub for many of their daily shows. She’s really the only cable news person I care to watch these days. Although I’m kind of horrified that I’m actually agreeing with a lot that the redstate.com guy is saying here.

    I thought Hillary’s speech yesterday was wonderful, and I wish it would get more coverage – Joy covered it some just now, but it deserves more exposure. I too hated Wolf Blitzer going on and on at her about the damned e-mails yesterday, but I’m not sure she has much choice about answering the questions. I came across this though, this morning, that I bookmarked to send to anyone with doubts about the whole situation – useful information –

    http://www.dailynewsbin.com/news/field-guide-to-defending-hillary-clinton-against-the-non-concluded-phony-email-scandal/25114/

    I was also cheered up last night watching some of the wonderful US gymnastics Olympic trials – Gabby Douglas and the incredible Simone Biles were so beautiful to watch – and then again, this morning, watching Serena Williams win Wimbledon ladies final, tying Stephie Graf with 22 Grand Slam titles. Her joy, her ease and command, and her camaraderie with her opponent afterwards, just put a huge smile on my face. That, plus seeing on twitter a wonderful Vine series CarefreeBlackKids, featuring all sorts of black youngsters just enjoying themselves, being funny, being cute, just made me feel a bit better.

    I was also very impressed with the remarks of the Dallas mayor yesterday at the prayer vigil – gives me hope that maybe things will not go completely to hell now.

    OK, I am determined to enjoy my opera afternoon – its our umpteenth day of hot, sunny, near 100 degrees after night time temps that don’t drop below 75 degrees, and I need to go to the grocery store but I can’t bear going out in this heat. I’ll go after the sun goes down tonight. The opera is Verdi’s Macbeth, from the Vienna State Opera, so I hope it will be a good production although I’ve not heard of most of the singers. Macbeth is not performed very often, it’s very demanding particularly the Lady Macbeth role, so it’s kind of a must listen, with my fingers crossed that the singers are up to the challenge!

    Everyone have a great day!

    • I was excited to see a transcript because for whatever reason her campaign only releases those to the media. Hey, I am a reporter for the Moose News Network!! Give me the secret web site where you stash the PDFs!!! ;)

      Anyway, the transcript is posted with the video in the Weekly Address news roundup. There were a lot of excellent points made and as the future president of the United States she will be in a position to make a difference. I hope people were heartened by it.

    • On the email thing, I think one of the big problems is that people don’t understand the technology and will never understand the technology. It is frustrating as an IT person to hear the misinformation being reported as fact, even by people who should know better like the FBI director.

      The good news is that most people have moved on and as soon as the news media realizes that the clicks they are getting on their breathless reporting are from the same people hitting refresh on their web sites hoping to see Hillary Clinton in orange coveralls with handcuffs, they will give up on it as a story. It will make not one whit of difference in November. The media has the meme of “dishonest” set for Hillary, reinforced by the berners, and folks who support her (shown by double digit leads in the polls) are going in with their eyes wide open. Most of us know the narrative is bs and the rest have tuned it out as white noise, the same old same old. The right-wing went to the well too many times and ran it dry.

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