Week-long Welcomings from Moosylvania: Sept. 4th through Sept. 10th

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.

47 Comments

  1. Good morning, Motley Meese! The week begins …

    Morning low of 61 in Madison WI, on its way up to 77. Mostly cloudy skies are in the forecast.

    Have a great day, all y’alls!!

  2. Thanks, Jan! Good morning, Moosekind! It’s a delightful 64 F. here in NoVa, going up to 78 F. Oh, how one dotes on this lovely cool weather and being able to open windows and doors! Still no rain. Not one drop did we receive from Hermine, whose name, I notice, is continually mispronounced by the weather morons.

    Not much to say…hate to look at the news. Got to concentrate on dinner plans for today and tomorrow and start getting ready to fly.

    Off to cook Dearly Beloved’s Sunday Breakfast and watch the race. I’ll doze off during it, because as usual we woke up much too early. Enjoy your day, Meese!

    • I just scanned the news and you are not missing much. Our national media refuses to subject Donald Trump to the same scrutiny as they do Hillary Clinton. I suspect that digging for information on Trump requires “investigating” and “writing new words” … for Hillary Clinton you simply need to find any “scandal” written about over the past 25 years and copy and paste it into a new post. Voila! Paycheck earned!!

      Here are a couple of good things I found:
      – A proposed Title X rule change to protect Planned Parenthood: Obama Administration Protects Access to Health Care for Millions of People
      – The United States and China formally signed the Paris Climate Accord. President Obama on medium: “Today, the U.S. joined China in taking a major step forward in the global effort to combat climate change.”
      Al Gore, by the way, said that voting for a third party puts climate change action at risk. He should know; a President Al Gore would have begun work in 2001, instead we lost 8 years – thanks to the 40,000 who voted for Ralph Freaking Nader in Florida. :(

      Enjoy your day! I am trying to decide if I will get my weekend projects done and banked today or if I will be lazy and wait until tomorrow.

  3. Good Sunday morning Meese

    Have not really scanned the news (thanks Jan) . Am tired – adjusting to the long school days on Tuesday and Fridays is going to take some time.

    Off to get coffee and then to sit in Sunday orange comments in a few.

    • Found on the Internets: Black folks have long memories, Mr. Trump


      September 4, 1957: 15-year-old Elizabeth Eckford walks through an angry white mob in Little Rock, Arkansas, as she attempts to integrate Central High School.

      Today, let’s remember the courage of Elizabeth Eckford. While Donald Trump plays games pretending to court black voters (who don’t support him, and almost unanimously loathe and reject him) in order to convince some white folks that he “isn’t so bad,” let’s remind him—and anyone who buys his bullshit—that we black folks have long memories.

      The screaming, spittle-flecked people in the crowds drawn to him like flies on shit, his supporters waving confederate flags, shouting racial epithets, and grinning proudly at their own bigoted cleverness evoke a racial déjà vu that some of us participated in, or remember witnessing firsthand on the news, or heard stories about from older kinfolks. We saw Eckford brave an angry crowd alone, separated from the other members of the group who would come to be known as the “Little Rock Nine.” The photograph of a lone Eckford, captured by young journalist Will Counts, will forever remain in my memory and in the minds and souls of all who have seen it.

      • Probably thanks to my mother, I will never understand people like that (the white folks screaming abuse at a kid going to school). Actually, while my mother taught me that people are people, my grandmother without going that far (but not bad for someone born in a small 99.9% white town in IN in 1905), would have deplored the lack of civility required of all “ladies” that she expected us to be. So on two counts – from my perspective of a white woman – I really don’t understand those people.

    • {{{Denise}}} – totally understand the tired – our students came back on 8/22 – and it’s always an adjustment. (And while my university doesn’t pay me enough, yours sure as Hell doesn’t pay you enough!)

      Superb diary, as usual. I read, rec’d, and tipped. I was only 6 in 1957, and not that until October so not really paying attention at the time as I was still getting used to going to school at all. But whether it was my mother’s teaching or something inherent in me, racism has always puzzled me. There was a basic satisfaction that something I’d always felt was vaguely wrong had gotten righted when both the neighborhood I lived in at the time and the school I was going to at the time integrated, but that wasn’t until the mid- to late-1960s. The stomach-sickening reality of racism didn’t start hitting me until I was older – in my late teens and early 20s – and started reading about it. I still sometimes get nightmares about some of the stuff I read and goddess knows it must be much worse for you who lived through it. Thank you.

  4. Here’s more on your earthquake, Bfitz:

    One of the strongest earthquakes ever recorded in Oklahoma rattled the area northwest of Pawnee on Saturday, fuelling growing concern about seismic activity linked to energy production, a federal agency said.

    The magnitude 5.6 quake, which was felt from South Dakota to Texas, prompted the closure of some 35 wastewater disposal wells in the area, officials said.

    It shallow quake struck 9 miles (14 km) northwest of Pawnee in north-central Oklahoma at 7:02 a.m. CDT (1302 GMT). Its 5.6 magnitude matched a 2011 earthquake for the biggest on record in the state, the U.S. Geological Survey said.

    Strong scientific evidence suggests that these earthquakes (now 2-3 a day) are due to fracking. But Oklahoma’s economy depends on the fossil fuel energy industry and, like West Virginia with its mountaintop removal, the folks running the state are willing to destroy their state rather than find a better way to employ their citizens. Their problem is that their regressive politics would make it unwelcoming to any high-tech industries or any businesses that embrace diversity in employment. So they are left with the vulture industries who go wherever Republicans repeal regulations and reject science.

    • Thanks, Jan. Interesting that they gave the north-south range but not the east-west. It’s not officially fracking – since it’s not the process of getting the gas, they can claim that – it’s the disposal of spent fracking fluids. Yeah, it’s fracking but legally they can get away with saying it isn’t. So they do. All of the poor states with significant extraction-based revenue are dealing with that same catch-22 – TX is sliding out of it while very few people notice. TX is now either the 1st or 2nd in wind generation and as wind becomes stronger (heh) the oil industry loses clout. If we can set the tax structure so that OK and states like her can transition quickly and easily, we’ll see this attitude go away very quickly.

      • I am not sure that Oklahoma would want any “gubmint” help, even to transition to cleaner, safer industries. West Virginia is in the same boat with coal and instead of embracing the offered help, they are getting deeper red and putting all their eggs in the “Trump will bring back coal jobs” basket. Good luck with that.

        • It doesn’t really matter what the state wants. TX didn’t want to transition to wind until wind started being a big enough revenue draw to rival oil. But even the off and on tax incentive for wind was enough to get companies like AEP building wind farms there. Simply removing the tax subsidies and breaks from the Fossil Fuel industry and giving Renewables 1/10 of it will shift those states whether their governments like it or not.

  5. Still coughing – started after yesterday afternoon’s walk. But I still think I was right to walk, 2 days of virtually no movement was bad. Got to leave for church early, today is the season opener football game, parking near campus will be tricky, even 7 hours before the game. Zero other plans for the day. There’s a small chance of another walk.

    • {{{anotherdemocrat}}} – Healing Energy. (Our first football game was yesterday – getting anywhere near campus for at least 4 hours on either side of the game itself would be nuts, so I didn’t. heh) Hope you get your walk.

      • Thank you for the healing energy! I go to University Methodist, so I can’t avoid the football crowds.

        • You are very welcome. The only way I can avoid football traffic is to do my cross-town stuff very early (one of the reasons I go to the Farmers’ Market as soon as it’s light enough for me to drive) and get back home before it starts. Dem HQ is in the adjoining town north this cycle and I live 2 blocks from the freeway, so I was on the freeway heading the opposite direction from football traffic by the time it started. Encircling you in White Light, with your permission, to protect from any more “bugs” floating around the football crowds.

  6. 50s again this morning and sunny, heading for maybe 80. Just checking in while I wait for the washer to finish so I can hang out clothes, which it should be any minute. Baking is done. Cooking will be later – since things are cooler I don’t have to do all my heat-generating things before 8 am. Anyway, once I’ve hung the clothes out, I’ll head over to GOS to check the British Breakfast HNV and then read Dee’s diary. Bright the day, Meeses. {{{HUGS}}}

  7. Good morning, 48 and mostly sunny in Bellingham. I hope to be in the garden for most of my day, but when my knees stop cooperating I’ll read my book. Dust of Dreams is the 9th book of the Malazan series and is proving to be a slow but thoughtful read. Fortunately I’m still enjoying the world Erickson has created because at a hefty 889 pages I’ll be there awhile!

    I was 12 yrs old in 1957 and my rural Nevada school was very small. But the photo of Elizabeth Eckford brings memories, especially the faces and clothing of the women shouting behind her. We didn’t have a daily newspaper or a tv, so news came via radio and/or Life Magazine.

  8. Good morning, meese! Monday …

    Happy Labor Day! Today Hillary will be campaigning with Tim Kaine in Cleveland.

    Video link: Hillary Clinton Campaign Event in Cleveland
    Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton and her running mate Senator Tim Kaine (D-VA) both speak to voters at a Labor Day festival in Cleveland.
    Airing Monday, Sep 05 1:00pm CDT on C-SPAN

    I read an article about Donna Brazile and how she is enjoying getting back into retail politics as interim head of the DNC:

    Her new role has taken her back to her beginnings in old-school retail politics —“back to being Donna,” she says.

    “It really puts into focus what you’re doing as chair of the party,” Brazile said of her return to grassroots campaigning. “You have to up your game.”

    With two months until Election Day, Brazile is focused on helping Hillary Clinton win the White House and putting Democrats back in charge in the Senate. She even dares to dream that her party might win a majority in the House (a long shot).

    The DNC also is backing candidates in state and local races.

    “Our plan is from the courthouse to the White House,” Brazile said. “We want to make sure if you’re running for sheriff, if you’re running for county commissioner, if you’re running as a Democrat — that the Democratic Party has your back.”

    It is not too soon to start thinking about the Democratic Party after this election and how we want to build the kind of infrastructure that will GOTV in midterms so we don’t have presidents without Congresses. She should certainly be one of those considered.

    The president is in China for the G20 and will be visiting Laos when he leaves there. I will post his press conference with British Prime Minister Theresa May in the comments of the Weekly Address.

    See all y’all later!

  9. Last day of sleeping in. Tomorrow is going to be painful. Only plan for today is to thaw out my leftover frozen oatmeal & dish it up for breakfast. Maybe a walk, since I didn’t yesterday.

  10. Good morning, Moosekind! It’s 56 F. here in NoVa on another beautiful but bone-dry morning, going up to (ugh) 87 F. later. It’s so cool I had to put on the long dressing-gown but we’re going back to oven temperatures for the rest of the week. Sigh.

    This evening I’ll be taking tossed salad, fruit salad, and cookies to the dinner at Elder Son’s house. Yesterday afternoon our enchanting Miss Pink Cheeks stopped by to bring us doughnuts from The Fractured Prune in Ocean City, MD. She knows I love them.

    Haven’t looked at the news properly yet, but did see something on Facebook to the effect that 16 senators have defected and will meet with the Supreme Court nominee. Really?

    Back to longing for rain…everyone have a good day!

  11. Mid-60s this morning but low humidity so feels almost as cool as yesterday’s mid-50s. A little hazy but mostly sunny. I haven’t gotten a 20+ KWH day in months and if I don’t get one soon I’m not gonna until next spring. But I’ve gotten in the upper teens the last two days and should again today. High’s supposed to hit 90, but I’m OK with that as long as the humidity stays down. I’m hoping by opening up after dark and closing up before the sun actually comes in the windows I can keep the A/C off. We shall see.

    Going to be doing some running around today, but not a lot. Will probably spend my online time over at DK in the Hillary diaries (and posting the link to kishik’s diary for Aji in them, the pootie diaries, and Ojibwa’s non-political diaries) and of course the pootie diary in the afternoon. I’ll get my political news in there, among friends so we can celebrate the good news together and bitch about the bad news together. :)

    Anyway, heading out for a little bit. Will check back in when I get back. Bright the day, Meeses. {{{HUGS}}}

  12. Good morning, 56 and cloudy in Bellingham. We planned a low key weekend and it has been, but now we’re feeling restless with so much quiet time. Oh well…beats cooking for a crowd!

    I watered plants and puttered around in the garden yesterday, and then made some more progress sorting fabric and trim in my sewing room. I’ll load the car today and take another donation to Ragfinery tomorrow. I’ve finally reached the point where getting rid of old projects and possibilities feels better than keeping them, so it’s going to be interesting to see where my creative impulses will take me next.

    Best wishes to all for an restful and interesting Labor Day holiday!

  13. Morning all and happy Labor Day! I so envy all of you the cool temps you are experiencing now – we’re still very tropical, doesn’t fall below 70’s at night and in the low 90’s during the day, they’re saying this week. Ugh. The good news is my friend Amy’s power was finally restored yesterday – she was without power for 2 and a half days, it was dreadful. I’m thankful to be living essentially in town, and only down 8 hours or so.

    I see this morning Hillary has a new big campaign plane and the press will be travelling with her now – I’ve been proud of the push-back lots of people, including widely well-regarded commentators like Josh Marshal at TPM, are giving the New York Times in particular this last week on its unfair coverage of Hillary. The topper is Paul Krugman’s column this morning which goes right after his own employer the NYT for its terrible slanted coverage and its failure to go after Trump’s many crooked dealings. When I worked on the Hill, I dealt with the press a lot, and Robert Pear of the Times was really the cream of the crop – smart and honest. It’s very painful to see how far into the mud the Times has fallen.

    I also noted yesterday that Sanders was on TV, I assume ostensibly as a Clinton supporter, but couldn’t resist the opportunity to join in bashing her on this fake Clinton Foundation stuff. AND once again with the TPP. Mr. Sanders, go back to Vermont and have a seat, this kind of “help” she simply doesn’t need.

    Ok, off to do some heavy duty World of Warcraft playing – I think I’ve found a character to play that is giving me a lot of fun, unlike my hunter that I was trying to play, so I plan on having a fun day! Everyone do the same!

    • Eek! Your discussion of the weather made me realize I forgot my weather report. I was managing 4 computers remotely while checking in and got distracted!

      It was 62 when I got up but now it is 86 so we are really having the same temperature: air conditioning created 70s. I saw the Hillary airplane story and caught some of the photos on Twitter. I don’t like how her arrow goes backwards on the tail – it seems the wrong direction! Nice colors though.

      See you on Twitter!

  14. Walked 1.76 miles. Did 4 30-second bursts of running. Am coughing some, but I did it — I got my walk in. Joy Reid had a fantastic 2 hours on MSNBC. Now waiting for the last Rizzoli & Isles. I like to see how they wrap things up.

  15. Good morning, meese! It is Tuesday but feels like a Monday …

    It is 75 degrees in Madison on its way up to 88. Heat indices will be 108 and thunderstorms are in the forecast. I want my fall weather back!! It looks like I will have to wait until Saturday.

    Phyllis Schlafly. I saw two Tweets: one said if you have nothing good to say about someone, say nothing. The other was this:

    @AlanaMassey: “Respecting the dead is one of our strangest cultural customs. Particularly for people who never respected the majority of the living.”

    Someone pointed out that the results of the election would have killed her anyway.

    I watched Hillary’s (and Tim’s) speech in Cleveland. It is easy to see why Tim Kaine was chosen: he is a master of retail politics, has strong connections to unions, educators and Democrats everywhere. You need for those folks to work their butts off for your ticket. Hillary’s speech was strong – my favorite line (from the CSPAN transcript):

    WE DON’T WANT TO WIN IT JUST FOR THE SAKE OF WINNING IT, WE WANT TO WIN IT SO WE CAN GO ONTO THE WHITE HOUSE NEXT JANUARY AND GET TO WORK FOR YOU. … WE ARE NOT RUNNING BECAUSE IT IS IN NICE THING TO DO AFTER YOU HAVE A REALITY TV SHOW.

    Ha! I often wonder if Trump holds the democratic process in such contempt that he is using his run as an audition for a new reality TV show or, has been suggested, a new cable network.

    See all y’all later!

    • I was reading responses to her demise to hubby last night. Interestingly I had to explain to him who she was. When he in early 20’s he was not paying attention to ERA.

  16. Good Tuesday morning Meese

    FYI – For those of you who read Black Kos, it has been shifted in posting time – will now go up at 5PM EDT
    Dopper understood that I can’t possibly get home from school by 4. It’s still going to be exhausting doing it at 5 after a full day on campus with 3 classes.

    Jan – as usual I couldn’t cut and paste it over – :(

    On the news:

    Phyllis Schlafly is dead. No comment.

    Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte is messin’ with the wrong person – calling POTUS a “son of a whore” will not end well for him.

    Off to read more twitter

    • I will scrape the post off the DK web site and save it as a draft for you tomorrow morning. I am generally not on my computer after about 11am unless there is a client emergency.

      President Obama, after the insult, cancelled their meeting saying that he did not think they could have a productive conversation. Ya think? It has been a very uneven trip with a lot of contentiousness. I wonder if the world’s powers realize that he is approaching the end of his term and have decided it is safe to diss him. I don’t think that is very smart.

      I have not gotten to Twitter yet, still scanning my news feeds in between work projects. I get the feeling that some reporters might have taken Paul Krugman’s (and really all of liberal Twitter’s) complaints to heart. But the NY Times still seems bent on making Hillary Clinton climb uphill while giving Donald Trump carte blanche. Is it that difficult to ask a question and then if you don’t get an answer, report that fact? “Mr. Trump was asked about the Bondi payment and declined to answer. Mr. Trump was then asked if he still thinks that President Obama was born in another country and declined to answer. Mr. Trump was asked when he would release his tax returns and he said that he had to wait until the audit was done, which is not really a requirement. Mr. Trump was asked if he would be deporting 11 million people who are in the United States illegally along with their 5 million children and he refused to say. Mr. Trump was asked if his public comments on deportation were meant to be confusing in order to gain favor with Latino voters while sending big sloppy kisses to his nativist fans and he hung up.”

      • Thanks Jan – no rush

        Am starting a series of posts covering luminaries from the Harlem Renaissance – beginning with Langston Hughes
        I’m finding it restful dealing with history – since I don’t have to cover the news in BKos

        Relentless pressure from twitter is finally getting a few media dinos to raise some of the issues with Trump – but they roll back downhill to trivialize Hillary at the drop of a hankie.
        Hard to believe they covered her coughing in Cleveland rather than her speech

        • She has seasonal allergies. I was worried about her trying to talk through the coughing and making it worse. Unfortunately, you have to talk during a speech. :)

          She gave a press conference on the plane.

          The Twitterazzi were complaining that is was all softball questions. I watched it and the only question that could be considered softball was at the very end and took up 1 minute of a 13 minute Q&A session.

        • You probably are well aware of this but it was new to me. Apparently in Texas there is a law that says that high schools have to twice a year offer voter registration to eligible students. Most schools ignore the law which is named after Willie Velasquez, a Mexican-American civil rights activist who was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Bill Clinton. There is a documentary on his life that will be broadcast on Oct. 3 on PBS:

          With his rallying cry of “su voto es su voz” (“your vote is your voice”), the Mexican-American activist Willie Velasquez launched a grassroots movement that forever changed the nation’s political landscape. Through his nonpartisan Southwest Voter Registration and Education Project (SVREP), Velasquez launched over a thousand voter registration drives in 200 cities, creating a movement that has continued to grow in power each year. “Today there are over 27 million eligible Latino voters,” said Sandie Viquez Pedlow, executive producer and executive director of Latino Public Broadcasting. “By encouraging Latinos to become invested in the democratic process by registering to vote, Willie Velasquez and SVREP paved the way for the continually increasing power of Latinos at the polls.” Directed by Hector Galán (Children of Giant), “Willie Velasquez: Your Vote Is Your Voice,” a VOCES/PBS Election 2016 special narrated by Luis Valdez, premieres Monday, October 3, 2016, 10:30-11:30 p.m. ET (check local listings) on PBS.

          Here is a video I found:

          I wonder how people can shine light on the failure of Texas schools to register their students. This could be a big deal for our goal of turning Texas purple then blue.

          • Yup – Thanks – have known about his work in TX for a long time – good to know PBS is airing doc
            I covered him in this piece last year, including his book

            The Life and Times of Willie Velasquez: Su Voto Es Su Voz

            William C. “Willie” Velásquez, Jr. founded the Southwest Voter Registration and Education Project (SVREP) and was an influential participant in other leading Latino rights and justice groups, including the Mexican American Youth Organization (MAYO) and the Mexican American Unity Council (MAUC). From the late 1960s until his untimely death in 1988, Velásquez helped Mexican Americans and other Hispanics become active participants in American political life. Though still insufficiently appreciated, Velásquez holds a unique status in the pantheon of modern American civil rights figures.

            Velásquez’s work on voter rights and registration triggered an unprecedented mobilization of Latino voters in pivotal electoral states across the U.S., including California, Illinois, and Texas. Today, as Latinos emerge to constitute America’s new minority of record, with growing reach into other major states, such as New York, Florida, Georgia, Iowa, and North Carolina, Hispanc American political influence, drawing on Velásquez’s legacy-can only become more significant in the years to come.

            Former Rhodes Scholar and Velásquez protégé Juan A. Sepúlveda, Jr.’s biography provides a first, definitive glimpse into Velásquez’s life and times. Based on Sepúlveda’s close personal relationship and exchanges with Velásquez during the SVREP founder’s final years, and over a dozen years of research and writing, the book chronicles Velásquez’s influences, his landmark contributions to American civic culture, and his enduring legacy.

          • Thanks for the links! I knew that you would be aware of him. I hope the PBS documentary helps educate the rest of us.

            Did you see that the new WaPo/Survey Monkey poll shows Hillary Clinton up by 1 in Texas? HAHAHAHA. Also, the blood-red Dallas Morning News in an editorial today said:

            Donald Trump is not qualified to serve as president and does not deserve your vote.

  17. Good morning, Meese! Woke up much too early. Current temp is 66 F. in NoVa on yet another cloudless but bone-dry morning, going up to 90 F. today. Ugh! Like you, Jan, I want my fall weather back.

    Never mind. Where we’re going it’ll be in the sixties every day, most likely, and it may well rain. Good.

    Not much to say—too sick and disgusted by the MSM to read much of it, so will focus on getting ready to leave a week from today. Still have to call Social Security to have my direct deposit redirected to a new bank account—ditto the TIAA-CREF people. I’ll call Social tomorrow, though, the website warns against calling on a Tuesday.

    Wishing everyone a good day!

    • What happens if the SSA tries to make a deposit and the account is closed? I often wondered about that. The notes I have say that it can take 30-60 days for a new account designation to be applied.

      • Yikes, Jan, I’m not sure and I don’t want to find out!

        I hope I can do it online. It was easy to update the bank information online at the TIAA-CREF website.

  18. Back at work. It wasn’t as awful getting up early as I feared. But the loudness later on when other people get here…. Anyway, eating oatmeal, drinking tea. Brought my gym bag. Might walk around the Capitol after work, it’s still fairly mild for this time of year — mid 90s. The weather guy said we might actually get a cold front next week. I think that’s insanely optimistic. Brain is playing Hallelujah Here She Comes

    I didn’t know about the high school voter registration thing. I do know that we’re approaching 90% registration in Travis County & our Tax Assessor (who is in charge of registration) is determined to meet or exceed that by the deadline. now to get people to actually, you know, vote…. With 90+% registration, if we get a big turnout, we can drag the state toward the light.

    • As I mentioned in my reply to Dee, Texas is Hillary +1 right now. If the Republican vote is deflated by the less than enthusiastic Trump support in Texas and it goes blue, it will never go back.

      What are the rules on voter registration there? When is the cutoff? The PBS documentary is on October 3rd and to the extent that it might wake people up, I hope there is time to register. If every Latino youth registered and voted at the national rate of 65% Hllary and 35% Trump, they could probably tip the balance themselves.

      • 30 days from the election — and how to get Texas blue & stay that way is to take back the state house & senate & un-gerrymander the districts. Austin should not share congresscritters with Houston & San Angelo

        • There is a Texas gerrymander case stuck in the appellate courts that Rick Hasen (the go-to guy for election law) says boggles his mind that it is still unresolved 3 years later. There are a few partisan gerrymandering (as opposed to racial gerrymandering) cases wending their way to the Supreme Court. I suspect that they are going to be rejected since we will be unlikely to have a 9th Justice anytime soon. The 8 there now are split 4-4 on protecting the right to vote. Which boggles my mind.

          • This is why it’s so important to flip the Senate, even if we can’t take the House. With the Senate, Hillary can fill all those lower Court positions – positions that have been vacant for years, some of them since Bill was president. If we get the highest of the lower Court decisions, then even if we’re stuck at 8 in SCOTUS, it goes our way.

  19. 70 at dawn and heading for 90 – a bit more humid so not as comfortable. Still hoping I can manage to not turn the A/C on. We were partly cloudy yesterday and expected to be at least that cloudy today if not more so. Got just over 15 KWHs yesterday – and just inched up to 80 for the month so far. I’ll need to average just over 15 KWHs per day to meet Sept 2015’s total. So far, so good.

    Glad Hillary and the team are back to doing things the national media notices – not that the smaller local things and the fund-raisers weren’t important, they were, but if she’s not making the headlines the concern-trolling over at GOS gets really ridiculous. Most of the time elections are framed in sporting terms. I’ve used them myself and if this were any other election I’d use the football analogy of “she’s got the ball and her team is clearing the field as she runs it in for the touchdown” – but sometimes war analogies are more appropriate. Because of the number of people who will die – no hyperbole here, will die – if Trump wins, the analogy that fits is more like the Normandy landing. Everything up til now has been getting the trained troops, equipment, and supplies created and to the jump-off point. Yesterday was D-day and the next two months are “The Longest Day”. Getting into the White House (and taking back Congress) is just the successful landing and getting off the beaches. Going on to win the war happens if/after we do that. Doing my best on the Home Front.

    I’ve got a lot of email to get through and stuff to process – Monday on Tuesday is always like that – so I’d best get to it. Bright the day, Meeses. {{{HUGS}}}

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