Week-long Welcomings from Moosylvania: Aug. 28th through Sept. 3rd

August 28, 2016 JanF Community 115

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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36 Comments

  1. Good morning, 64 and cloudy in Bellingham. Thanks to a middle of the night list building session my day is off to a sleepy slow start. I’ve been ignoring a few things but sheesh….such moments of awareness can be overwhelming!

    This endless election is like being caught in Jerry Springer tv land. The yam is in Wa State today, stroking R egos and looking for cash. Wa State will not have enough yew voters to make a difference so his decision to rally here is puzzling. And the fact people are attending is disheartening.

    http://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/politics/live-updates-what-you-need-to-know-about-donald-trumps-everett-rally/

  2. Good Wednesday morning Meese.

    63 and cloudy here in the Catskills – going up to 85.

    Survived first day of classes – looks like a great crop of students this semester.

    Scanning the news – saw this insane sh*t spewed In the name of Trump:

    Will be passing this non to women’s studies students fro discussion

    • Did you see the story about the underlying assumptions being used in the Ipso/Reuters poll? They are assuming 70% white men turnout, 60% black women and 13% youth. HAHAHAHA!! I hope that is the poll that the Trump people are using to decide where to waste money (and how soon to measure for golden drapes for the Oval Office). In 2012, black women voted at the rate of 74%. And, along with white women, this year have every reason to crawl over broken glass to get to the polls.

  3. Good morning, meese! Wednesday …

    It is 64 degrees in Madison on its way up to 75. Sunny skies are in the forecast.

    I am looking forward to seeing if what the yam “proposes” on immigration is accepted. The press will be willing to believe it because it does not impact them and helps them promote the horse race. I am pretty sure that persuadable Latinos will see it for what it is – a giant Etch-a-Sketch wiping away the hateful and hurtful words of 15 months of campaigning. We shall see!

    Busy morning here … see all y’all later!

  4. Good morning, Meese! It’s 65 F. right now, going up to 89 F. today, with clear skies. The sky actually looks a bit less brassy-hot than usual. Still no rain in the foreseeable future. Feel as if it will never rain again.

    Can’t believe this is the last day of August! Couldn’t make it here yesterday, because had to drive to my son’s house 17 miles away in another county to look after my grandson. Today I’ll be going from noon until 4 p.m.

    Getting very nervous about the polls and those who say both candidates are equally unpopular. Poor Secretary Clinton, guilty of running for the office of POTUS while female and super-intelligent! The hateful media and Rethugs will NEVER stop trying to bring her down.

    Must eat breakfast and dress before Miss Pink Cheeks arrives; also have to make a sandwich for Dearly Beloved’s lunch. Wishing a good day to all at the Pond and Beyond!

  5. I walked last evening — a little over a mile, and 3 bouts of 30 seconds of running. Gonna walk again this evening, since it’s so cool. (for Texas in August, mid-90s counts as cool) Still sleeping really poorly.

    And brain is back to playing New Order. Which is fine — like I said the other day, happy, nostalgic, sweet 90s pop.

  6. Hi Folks – 68 at dawn, sunny at the moment, got just over 16 KWHs yesterday. Don’t have time to read right now – not going to work today cause I have some other stuff to do – but as soon as I finish I’ll be back to read and fierce. Bright the day, Meeses. {{{HUGS}}}

  7. Good morning, 61 and cloudy in Bellingham. The air feels like fall this morning, and I see leaves in my old maple starting to turn color so it’s time to start putting the summer garden to rest. We have a few plants to get into the ground, and a lot of pruning and mulching to do. We can work away at some of it but I’m going to schedule a day with the garden maintenance firm as well.

    The yam continues to annoy……

    Mexico wonders why its president is meeting with Trump

    MEXICO CITY — President Enrique Pena Nieto awoke to a storm of criticism from Mexicans over his decision to meet Wednesday with Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump, who is widely reviled in Mexico for referring to its migrants as “rapists” and criminals.

    Former first lady Margarita Zavala, herself a potential presidential candidate, aimed a tweet at Trump, saying: “Even though you may have been invited, we want you to know you’re not welcome. We Mexicans have dignity, and we reject your hate speech.”

    • Apparently the Mexican president is even less popular than Trump! I saw a Tweet that describes what is happening perfectly:

      Mike Signorile ‏@MSignorile
      The trip is meant to distract from speech, which will say nothing. The speech is meant to distract from the trip, which will solve nothing.

  8. Well, I’m back – and sooner than I thought because a hairline crack in my radiator turned into a not-hairline crack yesterday and as soon as I dropped off my friend, let the car cool down and put some water in the radiator, I drove as quickly as I could through the traffic the less than a mile to the nearest auto shop (fortunately the one I normally use anyway) by then steam coming out from under the hood again and the folks waiting at the light left me make a left turn into the shop, bless them, and discovered it’s not fixable, it’s only replaceable. Sigh. So I walked back to the closest campus bus stop, went to the office to tell my friend/the other secretary what’s going on, walked to the 1st bank I was going to visit – cash for groceries/Farmers’ Market – walked back to campus, and caught the bus home. The 2nd bank, the one I have a deposit for, will have to be done some other time. Ditto visiting the library.

    So most of my day will be spent over at GOS as I wait for the phone call from the mechanic as to whether they can fix it today or not. I’ll be dropping the link to the latest fundraiser/share the links diary into any diary over there I think I can get away with it. (HNV diaries, Pootie diaries, Ojibwa’ history and street prophets diaries are all OK – some of the others, campaign diaries like Chris writes, aren’t.) Anyway, more brightness to the day (turning cloudy here, darn it), Meeses. And more {{{HUGS}}}

  9. Good morning, meeses! Thursday …

    It is 63 degrees in Madison on its way up to 70. Mostly sunny skies are in the forecast.

    September! How did that happen??

    Something something “immigration” … something something “the wall”. Who even knows what the Republicans stand for anymore? I suspect that they are hoping to confuse the issue so much that it allows Trump voters to cherry-pick their favorite Trump positions and avoid the cognitive dissonance that would occur if you tried to create a coherent policy position.

    Great news from SCOTUS! Four Justices thought it was just fine that North Carolina devised new voting rules based completely on race. Fortunately, there are four Justices who disagreed and the 4th Circuit’s stay on the NC laws will continue:

    On July 29, the US Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit struck down North Carolina’s sweeping voting restrictions, saying they targeted black voters “with almost surgical precision.” The decision was the most significant victory for voting rights since the Supreme Court gutted the Voting Rights Act.

    Today the Supreme Court declined to reinstate three key voting restrictions that had been appealed by North Carolina—the state’s voter-ID law, cutbacks to early voting and elimination of preregistration for 16- and-17-year-olds. The Court deadlocked 4-4, which upholds the Fourth Circuit ruling. The death of Justice Scalia left conservatives short of the five votes they needed—Justice Thomas would’ve reinstated all of the restrictions, while Justices Roberts, Kennedy, and Alito would’ve reinstated everything except the elimination of preregistration.

    This is a huge victory for North Carolina voters and will make it easier for hundreds of thousands to cast a ballot this November.

    With the appeals courts stepping up in defense of the franchise, the 8 person Supreme Court is working quite well for us. When the Republicans filibuster President Hillary Clinton’s nominee next year, she can concentrate on the Circuit Courts and District Courts and build a court system that reflects America. Some day we will get a Senate that reflects America and get that 9th justice.

    See all y’all later!

  10. Hillary Clinton spoke to the American Legion convention in Cincinnati yesterday.

    Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton addressed the American Legion National Convention in Cincinnati. She spoke about the value of veterans and the military, as well as the importance of diplomacy and maintaining relationships with the nation’s allies. Ms. Clinton also said she would work to reform and strengthen the Department of Veterans Affairs system if she is elected president, as well as continue to build and maintain the coalitions established and fostered during the Obama administration.

    • Here is a snippet from the CSPAN sort-of transcript that we have to keep repeating over and over again to people:

      “I HAVE TO TELL YOU IT IS A LITTLE FUNNY TO GET CRITICIZED. SO MANY PLANS. PEOPLE SAY, THERE SHE GOES ABOUT ANOTHER PLAN ABOUT MENTAL HEALTH AND VETERANS. I HAVE AN OLD-FASHIONED IDEA THAT IF I ASK FOR YOUR VOTE FOR PRESIDENT, I SHOULD TELL YOU WHAT I WILL DO AS YOUR PRESIDENT, SO, YES, I HAVE LAID OUT PLANS AND I WILL WORK HARD OUT TO IMPLEMENT THE PLANS.”

      One candidate is serious and one is not. Period.

  11. Good morning, Moosekind! Today looks appropriate for Thor. Hope he’s around somewhere. Temp. here in NoVa is currently 73 F., going up to 80—that’s greaty! The skies are cloudy and we’ve had four drops of rain. Eight more may fall here in NoVa this afternoon.

    Feeling quite ill today. I hope I didn’t give the baby my cold. He was cranky enough as it was! Felt sorry for my poor son, who was trying to telecommute while the baby was bellowing in the background. A lot of the time Elder Son had the phone on “mute” but there were times when he simply had to contribute to the conversation. I felt bad leaving at 4 p.m. yesterday but luckily DIL was due home at 4:30.

    Wouldn’t mind a day of rain as it would give me an excuse to potter about the house and rest a lot. Have actually dropped a couple of pounds because I don’t feel like eating. I do drink a lot of water, though.

    Too depressed about Trump’s trip, the misogynist media, and the Russians hacking voting machines to say much about politics this morning. Wishing a good day to all at the Pond and Beyond!

    • Oh no! I hope you feel better soon. Getting sick is not a recommended way of dropping weight.

      Russians hacking voting machines is not as big of a deal as the media is making it out to be; I worry more about bad software not tallying the results properly. I wish everyone used the optical scanners that we use. Machines tally but you have all the paper ballots for recounts. Machines that take your vote and add it to a bucket make me nervous!

  12. I don’t know if it’s allergies or a cold, but something hit me like a ton of bricks yesterday & I’m at home sick. Like, well & thoroughly. Plan for the day is to doze, drink water & probably go through a whole box of Kleenex. And paying my bills yesterday was alarming, if I wake up enough, I’m going to call my credit cards & cancel every single recurring charge. Will be eating black beans & charging all other food on my Target card (which has an alarmingly high balance, but there’s nothing else for it)

  13. Hi Meese – had my head buried in writing for deadline – so sorry to be late.

    Not sure I can even read the news today, other than checking twitter and GOS.

    My only comment is i am glad black folks are sane – now how do we get more other groups to join us?

    • Wow! That poll is stunning.

      Here is a Tweet I found in my While You Were Away stream this morning:

      Cecilia @Cechase
      If you’re white & sane get down on your knees & thank god for non-white voters, because wo them, this monster is the next Pres. #TrumpAZ

      Indeed.

        • Not all, but probably more than 50%, and closer to 65% of white men, alas. So yeah, thank god for POC saving our butts once again.

          • Hey, us white women are moving into the Hillary camp. Stronger Together includes us. :)

            Seriously, yes – basically Black women with their very dependable vote are saving America’s butt again.

        • It will not be all white people, mostly white men and mainly white non-college educated men.

          I have nothing against white people, some of my best friends are white! ;) But there are a lot of white people whose response to power sharing is to embrace white supremacists and demagogues. They need to be told once and for all that Real America is an America that is diverse and welcoming and inclusive and that cares about the sick, the homeless and the hungry.

  14. Dear Meese, just had to come back and tell you it’s RAINING! It has been raining steadily for quite half an hour!

    Best September first I ever had.

    Of course, it’s kinda lousy for Younger Son, who is driving to the beach today with his family. However, tomorrow is supposed to be nice.

    • Wonderful. Hope it does it’s thoroughly soaking thing today and clears off for your son tomorrow.

  15. Welp, continuing this year’s pattern of little sun and less rain, September is starting cloudy but we’ve got less than 10% chance of rain. Ended August with a total of 455-1/3 KWHs (78 less than August of 2015). At least I haven’t had the A/C on since 8/6 – that will help.

    Diana and another – to both of you I say – 500 mg vitamin C every 2-3 hours and 1/2 c. garlic soup in the hours between vitamin C intake. (Garlic soup is a fist of garlic simmered in stock. I use chicken but miso broth works very well, too.)

    I’m paying little to no attention to what the national media says. It’s much better for my digestive system. Hillary and her team are very busy and the local stations cover where they are and what they are doing quite well – and quite positively. Our twitter warriors spread the local news nation-wide. I’m not on twitter, but several twitter warriors are part of the HNV “Village No Longer Under the Bus” and they keep us informed. I’ll keep doing my donations and staffing Dem HQ headquarters with a little voter registration on the side and not let the “noise” get to me by not listening to it in the first place.

    I’m having to replace the radiator in my car. It’s a 1999 Subaru so they had to order it. Should be in sometime today. Whether or not they’ll be able to do the work today depends on when it gets here. It’s going to be $500 parts, labor, and taxes – money I’d planned to put elsewhere, but I do have it. The great blessing is that it happened now and not while I was on the freeway going to or from Dem HQ Saturday.

    One of the reasons I seldom take time off is the mess I am greeted with when I get back. Gotta get to cleaning up said mess. Bright the day, Meeses. {{{HUGS}}}

  16. Morning all! Waiting for Tropical Storm Hermine, which is expected to be Hurricane Hermine by landfall around 1AM Fri morning. The original ‘cone of uncertainty’ had it going right over us, but it’s shifted a bit north, so hopefully we’ll get rain but not terribly high winds. We are in the south-east quadrant from the storm’s center, though, meaning we’re at substantial risk for tornadoes, so I’ll be on the alert for the next two days.

    I listened/watched to part of Trump’s speech last night, then heard a bit of cable news talking heads, and I don’t think they watched the same speech I did. Comparisons on social media to the Nuremberg rallies were not much of an exaggeration – it was hate filled, basically blaming illegal immigration (although many of his followers just don’t want brown people coming here under any circumstances, as they told the press) for every murder and rape in the country. It was vile and frightening. But almost as bad was the press’s urge to normalize this hate speech – a few people and reporters are speaking out about it, but I just hope the message has gotten through to enough POC that they will come out in droves and offset the hate-filled older white men that are the core of Trump’s supporters. Democrats have not won a majority of the white vote since 1964 – gee, wonder what happened the following year to change that? – so we are really dependent on African-Americans, Latinos and Asians to save our bacon in November.

    On a more trivial front, I’ve been having trouble getting into the new expansion of Denise and my’s game, WOW – although I played a different toon last night, was in voice chat with my good Canadian friend Baelz, and was having a good time, so maybe I was just on the wrong toon the last two days.

    My larger problem is that I’m having a hard time getting past primaries – it seems like most of my guildmates were Bernie supporters, and I find I can’t seem to forgive them for propping up that charlatan while he attacked Hillary and the Democratic Party (every time Trump starts talking about rigged elections, we can thank Bernie for making that theme popular first). I lost a lot of respect for people I thought had good sense, and I’m having difficulties being around them in game. I hope I can get past it, I’d hate to have to leave what has become an important social outlet for me. Denise is more of a grownup than I am, she is dealing with it fine I think – I hope I can be more like her when I grow up! lol

    Ok, everyone have a good day!

    • A lot of connections were frayed by the primary wars and, really, they aren’t finished yet. In Wisconsin, peevish berners are planning to vote for Stein and yesterday’s Marquette University Poll showed that they will make it closer than it needs to be and may toss it to the yam. If the NeverTrumpers see that it is close they (because Republicans understand the stakes) will vote R and Wisconsin will finish their final disgraceful descent into right-wing nuttitude. I will treat any Stein voter as if they voted for Trump and shun them.

      Maybe when the election is over and our democracy is not imperiled it will be easier to get into the games, Geordie. I am trying to balance my interest in the election with my interest in not being upset by the news. I watched none of Trump’s speech and will not read the commentary either. It is white (ha!!) noise and a distraction from what is important: GOTV, GOTV, GOTV.

  18. Good morning, 62 and mostly cloudy in Bellingham. Despite my best intentions the yam got to me last night so I tossed, turned, and worried instead of sleeping. I finally just gave up and listened to music until I could sleep, and now my day is off to a very slow start.

    AP fact check: Donald Trump on immigration statement

    Wednesday was supposed to be the day Donald Trump clarified his immigration stance. But in a key speech on that subject, he misstated facts about immigration policy, life for those in the country illegally and their impact on the U.S. economy.

  19. Took a nap, gathered enough energy to go to the store for cold medicine & juice. Been watching How The Universe Works, because I’ve seen most of them & it’s like comfort food for my brain. Called work & my supervisor put me on the calendar as out tomorrow, I apparently sound awful. And yeah, the Kleenex box I opened this morning is half empty.

  20. Good morning Meese TGIF.

    Geordie – let us know how you are doing – re: Hermine

    Hard to find stuff to laugh about – given the seriousness of Trump’s dreadful immigration speech, which Josh Marshall over at TPM discusses: Trump’s Blood Libel & Press Failure

    Twitter will find some humor, however:

    • Dee, I think that is how we are going to have to get through the next two months – with humor.

      Yesterday’s news, that Trump hired the president of Citizens United as his deputy campaign manager, set the tone for the rest of the campaign. It must drive the Republicans nuts, though, realizing that no matter what insane conspiracy theories they bake up about the Clintons, the REALITY of their candidate is 10 times worse. Karma – finding the plump ass of the right-wing to take big bite out of.

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