Week-long Welcomings from Moosylvania: Oct. 2nd through Oct. 8th

October 1, 2016 JanF Community 139

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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52 Comments

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

    Morning low of 50 in Madison WI with an expected daytime high of 64. Mostly sunny skies are in the forecast.

     

    Have a great day, all y’alls!!

  2. We’re having the weather that makes people want to move here. Lows in the 60s, highs in the 80s. Though next week will be warmer. Still, it’s pretty nice.

    Beans are cooking. I slept ok last night, woke up fewer times than Friday night. Might get in some exercise this afternoon. As I said in the health & fitness diary, I know I’ll improve my workouts if I do more of them. Brain is playing Disappear.

    • Still too hot for me! There is a reason I keep my indoor temperature at 76 degrees – it is perfect. Anything over 80 and I wilt. When I am on a warm weather vacation, I am willing to accept 85 degrees just so the pool water is comfortable but nothing more!! :)

      • ha! last weekend when I saw the lows of 60-ish for some days, I was worried I might have to wear shoes instead of sandals (I didn’t, it was ok) because for us, that is cool

        I read an article on sleeping better yesterday because I always read those articles. It had the same advice most of them do, including keeping your bedroom cool. It mentioned 65 or lower. I feel guilty if I run the a/c down to 72 — also if I ran it that much, all my money would go to my electric bill.

        • I sleep with the windows open until we get below freezing. I love the night sounds and the cool air – warmth is what blankets are for! In the winter I keep the house closer to 72, 68 at night. But in the summer it can’t get above 76!!

  3. Trump: “I want everybody out”. I hope that Priorities USA has enough money to play this ad a lot over the next month.

    THE AD A Hispanic family smiles and shares a box of cereal around a table, but they quickly fade from the scene, leaving an unswept table and dirty dishes. “This is a country where we speak English,” Mr. Trump is heard saying, with subtitles in Spanish. The disappearance motif builds through the spot: A woman working at her laptop fades away, her computer screen still flashing; a family reading a book in bed vanishes, followed by a woman studying on the lawn.

    “Donald Trump wants to see us disappear,” the narrator says in Spanish. Spliced between each disappearance are quotes from Mr. Trump, discussing his deportation plans: “I want everybody out.”

  4. Morning all! My weather this weekend is like anotherdemocrats, maybe a shade higher at night, but the mid-80’s with low humidity is very pleasant for down here. We have to keep an eye on Hurricane Matthew though – if it turns a bit further west than they currently forecast, we could be in for it.

    This Trump tax stuff is of course really fascinating to me as a tax lawyer and academic, although since I don’t do business tax (deferred compensation, retirement and pensions are my areas), I can’t fully explain the ins and outs of how Trump probably used net operating loss carryovers to soak up any income for years after this billion dollar loss he’s claiming on the return page the NYTimes was sent, although I have a general idea of how he did it – 1231 business loss soaking business income for tax purposes. But I certainly would like to know how anyone with any business acumen could have lost that kind of money in the midst of a booming economy and real estate market, which the mid-90’s was (in part thanks to the FIRST Clinton Presidency). This morning on AM Joy, David Cay Johnston (who I know slightly, an extremely sharp writer about taxes generally and Trump in particular) said he thinks Trump may not have paid Federal income taxes in 40 years!

    Now, Trump True Believers will not care – they probably DO think it makes him “smart”, and many of them would like to eliminate the IRS altogether, so not paying taxes is probably not something they care about. They SHOULD care about the collateral damage from Trump’s business failures – the employees, the small business contractors, the communities who all lost out when Trump went bankrupt, paid no taxes, but still walked away with probably millions (I don’t concede he’s actually a billionaire) to support his gold-plated lifestyle. But let’s face it, his core supporters are so racist and hate Hillary so much, probably nothing revealed about Trump will push them away – I’m just hoping this week will seal the case against him for the marginal ones, the independents who still don’t like Hillary, but who hopefully will be so turned off by all of this that they will suppress their dislike and vote for her to keep this man out of the White House.

    Ok, off to face the day – everyone have a great one!

    • The NOL carry forward itself is certainly not illegal and many businesses, large and small, are glad of the opportunity to spread losses from a bad year out over years when they are profitable.

      I see two issues causing him problems:
      1) the staggering amount of the loss – nearly a billion dollars – hard to claim you are a successfully businessman if you suck that badly at business;
      2) what are the business expenses that made up the “loss” – we have no idea what he claimed as “legitimate business expenses” (there are no details) but based on Farenthold’s reporting we know what he spends his money on and from HuffPo’s reporting we already know that his campaign overpays Trump-owned businesses to the point where he is likely making a profit on running for president. The chances of all of his expenses being legitimate are probably close to ZERO.

      Trump is now sending his surrogates out telling everyone that Hillary Clinton is cheating on Bill – because “why wouldn’t she?” I cannot wait until Nov. 8th, or when Republican Party “leadership” decides that they can’t follow this guy down the drain he is flushing his campaign down.

  5. OK – 3rd cup of coffee and a muffin (“Mexican” muffins – cocoa and cinnamon) and checking in. 50s overnight heading for upper 70s. It’s been lovely to have the HVAC off so long – I set the A/C at 80 and the furnace at 62 (blankets in the bedroom, woodstove in the den) – it hasn’t been on since 8/6 and it won’t go on this week either. It was sunny until I started hanging out my clothes. By the time I finished we were and still are solid socked-in cloud cover. Weather is saying 0% chance of rain so I’m leaving them out – but keeping a close eye out the window. Everything done except the clothes which of course have to dry before I can do anything else. Well, and figuring out how to repair a worn spot on the waistband of one of my wool office pants. (Yes, I should have known better than to hang my car keys on my waistband.) Not being a seamstress (sewing buttons back on is pretty much the range of my talent), I haven’t a clue as to what I “should” do but I’ll think of something.

    This year is probably the 3rd most decisive of direction for the United States in its history. The 1st of course was deciding to form a new country at all. The 2nd the Civil War. Now its lower-case democratic republicanism or despotic fascism. I know where my vote is going, of course, but I truly believe that there are enough people who do not want fascism even if they hate Hillary (and we won’t even go into why right now), that as a nation we will choose the “better part.”

    Heading over to GOS to read Denise’s diary and the various Hillary and community things I seem to have gotten myself involved in. Bright the day, Meeses. {{{HUGS}}}

  6. Good afternoon, Meese! Things have been happening. Weather: cloudy this morning, current temp. 65 F. going up to 73 F. Long may it last. We’ve had enough rain to satisfy even ME, and that’s saying something.

    Yesterday morning I canvassed for Hillary. We volunteers met at the house of a nice Democrat in the next housing estate for training. I refused to go by myself, as approaching strangers is the equivalent of torture to an introvert, so another volunteer went with me. He’s an introvert too, but is very practiced at this sort of thing.

    It rained buckets on and off all morning. He had a rain jacket with a hood and I had an umbrella. Having to carry this these things plus canvassing materials was difficult. The first hour we met with no success at all—either the people weren’t awake yet, or weren’t at home, or the house was up for sale.

    When we went to the houses of sporadically voting Dems on the next block, however, we struck gold. We received many verbal commitments to vote, a couple of written pledges, and two voter registrations! My partner did all the talking because I still had a sore throat. We stopped after an hour and a half and went back to the meeting place.

    Groan…I seem to have promised to do this for several Saturdays and even, Goddess help us, on Election Day itself. I always like to go to the polls with Dearly Beloved at 10 a.m. on Election Day. We may have Miss Pink Cheeks with us, too, and she goes to the polls with us to see democracy in action. I wonder if it’s illegal to take little children with you when you canvass, which I have to do from 11 a.m. until 2 p.m. on Election Day. No, on second thought, I’ll leave her at home.

    My forte is much more administrative work in a campaign office than doing this kind of thing, but hail, if it’ll help Hillary win, I’ll grit my teeth and do it.

    Wishing everyone a good Sunday!

    • You are awesome, Diana!! After I decided I was too delicate to phone bank again, I went with a friend to canvass for an afternoon during the recall elections. Our list was Democrats Only so we were mainly just “don’t forget to vote!” and it wasn’t too scary. But this year, I am not sure that the Democrats Only lists will work to weed out the crazies (both Trumpers and Steiners) and I am hesitant to venture forth. I will provide moral support, for now. I am also thinking about what kind of magic might work to increase turnout for us and decrease turnout for the Trumpers and will probably do a waxing moon, waxing year ritual around Samhain – maybe ask some ancestors for help while the veil is thin.

      • That’s a good idea! A waxing moon is the time to do spells of increase. We could ask for an increase in the number of pro-Hillary voters.

        • Perfect! It is, of course, better to ask for something positive with waxing magic and all we need is an increase in pro-Hillary voters. Plus we do have to be careful not to wish bad on those who oppose her presidency, as tempting as it might be.

          We should start sending out energy on this waxing cycle as a call to gather forces for October 30th new moon and October 31st new year magic. Our planet hangs in the balance … there could be no better witchy goal, in my mind, than to save our earth.

      • I’ll tag in on that with a little candle magic. The person I get my candles from told me Saturday she’d just scored some local beeswax and will be bringing the the new batch of candles to the Market next week so I’ll be getting some then.

        Working on more Hillary voters is perfect. We go high, no matter what they do. (Hillary works for all folks, even the ones who don’t like her. We should do the same – even though it’s hard sometimes. sigh.)

  7. Good morning, 43 and sleepy in Forest Grove. It’s raining and we all slept in. Sophie finally made and delivered coffee to our beds to wake us up!

    We will do some curtain measuring and planning this morning, then pack up and drive back to Bellingham.

    I wonder if the yam’s tax news will finally widen the polling gap? I am much more confident HRC will be our next president but now I want her to win BIG! It troubles me so many voters are still planning on voting for him.

  8. Good morning, meese! Monday …

    It is 46 degrees in Madison with a expected daytime high of 68. Sunny skies are in the forecast.

    I am laughing at the national press trying to cover the Republican Party’s nominee. In my mind the events of last week signaled the end of the horse race part of the election. The only unknown now is the margin of victory. Fortunately for them, there is enough crazy to fill their reporters notebooks and they can pivot to covering it as the epic meltdown of a reality TV show star – and hopefully a national political party. I am not a right-wing christianist but I can’t believe that Giuliani going on national TV defending Trump by saying that “everyone cheats on their spouses” is a winning message to the bible belt.

    Bernie Sanders will be in Wisconsin on Wednesday to try to undo the damage his anti-Hillary anti-Democratic Party message did here. Our paper yesterday had an article on the not insignificant number of #BernieOrBust’ers who are bent on giving Wisconsin to Trump by voting for Stein – or staying home and letting Ron Johnson get re-elected to the Senate. The problem is that his Hillary support is seen as insincere – because it is! Hillary’s pivot to supporting Barack Obama was believable because she was a Democrat first. But Sanders hates Hillary, despises the Democratic Party and longs for the current system to burn to the ground. He may get his wish and his part of it will be a permanent blemish on his soul.

    Today Hillary will be in Ohio – first in Toledo at 1pm then Akron at 5:45pm. Here is where she was yesterday: Little Rock AME Zion Church in Charlotte

    I need to grab the waxing moon energy and get some projects completed. See all y’all later!!

  9. Here is a CSPAN link to Hillary’s Akron visit – 3:30pm Eastern:

    Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton delivers remarks at a voter registration event in Akron hosted by the Ohio Democratic Party.

    Airing LIVE Monday, Oct 03 2:30pm CDT on C-SPAN.org

    • She is expected to unveil a new initiative to help people protect themselves from “bad corporate actors”:

      U.S. presidential candidate Hillary Clinton on Monday will unveil a plan to make it easier for consumers to take legal action against “bad corporate actors,” citing Wells Fargo & Co and Mylan Pharmaceuticals, according to a campaign official.

      While campaigning in Ohio, the Democratic nominee will explain how she would, if elected on Nov. 8, curb the prevalence of contractual clauses that require consumers, employees and other individuals to resolve legal disputes in private arbitration proceedings instead of in courts, her campaign said. Mandatory arbitration clauses sometimes require that claims be pursued on an individual basis instead of on behalf of a class of similarly situated individuals. Consumer advocates say this makes it prohibitively expensive to take legal action. […]

      Clinton will also discuss how she believes that the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and other agencies already have the authority to curb the use of such clauses under the 2010 Dodd-Frank Act. The planning document said she would urge the Securities and Exchange Commission to exercise its authority to make related rules authorized by the financial reform law.

  10. Good morning, Moosekind! Cloudy here in NoVa, current temperature 58 F., going up to 72 F. today. Feel so grateful for the cooler weather.

    Have been fuming ever since I started reading Allen Sloan’s snide little comments on the Trumpish tax scandal. He despises the Clintons for making money giving speeches and writing books. Why is it any worse for them to make money that way than for Wall Street figures or other politicians who do the same? Or for that matter, overfed, aging, overpaid columnists? I think it’s part jealousy and part rank misogyny.

    Busy day ahead, including watching new developments with interest. Have been feeling cheered ever since the Great Meltdown. Wishing everyone a good day!

  11. Brain empty. Like, seriously empty. I’ve been looking at twitter for 20 minutes, trying to come up with something to say. Nada. The grocery store had the New Wave radio station playing yesterday, so songs like this one have been stuck in my head. Re-living my college years.

  12. Good morning Meese.

    Have been watching the Trump Tax Meltdown with interest. This will not play well in Ohio, I don’t think.

    Have papers to grade today – feeling lazy however.
    Have a good one. .

    • I like seeing it framed as the “Trump is a bad businessman” issue. I do wish that people would stop knocking the NOL as something “tricky” – of more importance is what went into the nearly one billion in expenses that were claimed. How much of that went to redecorating Trump’s personal homes, for example, and not costs incurred from his failed businesses? The line between tax avoidance and tax fraud is pretty thin for a guy who is a known con artist.

      Speaking of disgusting behavior, the AP has an article about Trump and his “Apprentice” shows that was cringe-inducing. This is the mindset that governs Trump voters … and we will never be able to disgust these people.

      Jim Dowd, who did public relations for Trump, NBC and “The Apprentice” shows between 2003 and 2009, said Trump was a “lover of women” and a “guy’s guy.”

      “Was he complimenting the women? Of course. Was he behind closed doors with just the guys rating the women, who were the hotter ones on the show? Yes, he certainly was prone to that,” Dowd said.

      Nothing to see here, agree most heterosexual men, just a guy being a guy!! :(

        • I think people are overlooking how huge the misogyny vote will be. Giuliani said it flat out yesterday “Trump will be better than any woman”. Conservative Democrats in rural Oklahoma voted for the socialist Bernie Sanders in the primary rather than vote for the woman Hillary Clinton.

          Those people will not be turned off by the sexist remarks of Trump. So we will need to counter with more votes to offset that.

          This is why the election of a woman is so important, Diana, something that you got yelled at about earlier this year. We need to shatter that glass ceiling, just like Barack Obama’s election broke the shackles. There should be no barrier to any child and no one who can say “but we have always had a white male as president”. Black person, check. Female, check.

          • There was a woman on Joy Reid’s show over the weekend, the founder of Latinas For Trump. She was completely impervious to all of the “but he’s a misogynist”, “but the taxes”, everything. She has a teenage son & they asked her what if her son acted like that…. she just wasn’t bothered.

          • I have found that in many cases, women with male children are more likely to look the other way when men are being pigs. Maybe they don’t want to think about their sons being like that or maybe they buy into a male privilege thing without even knowing it.

            But, really, Latinas for Trump? I cannot imagine what would cause such a disconnect from reality.

  13. 52 at sunrise, heading for 80. It’s sunny but my electricity production is going to be down until the leaves drop from the trees in the front yard. Being home yesterday afternoon allowed me to check angle of sun and what should be prime-time generating – both the wild cherry and the oak are shading my panels to the extent that only 6 of the 16 are actually in full production during the peak sunlight hours. (Fall of 2014 and 2015 the cherry tree had already dropped its leaves by now – this is being a weird year for electricity generation.)

    Trump meltdown serves the Rs right – just wish it was accompanied by a newly-awakened appreciation of Hillary. Unfortunately 35+ years of Hillary hate doesn’t seem to be even lightly erased by facts. And the Media, who are paid to reinforce the Hillary Hate are certainly not going to interview, poll, or report on us millions of voters who like Hillary and are quite enthusiastic, thank you very much.

    Got piles of stuff on my desk so I’d best get to it. Bright the day, Meeses. {{{HUGS}}}

  14. Good morning, 59 and cloudy in Forest Grove. Yesterday’s curtain project expanded so we decided to stay another day. I had made custom curtains for our daughter’s first house and they have been stored, waiting to be adapted for this house. Health and life has interfered, so it’s good to get the process underway again.

    We’ll be on the road to Bellingham soon so I’ll have 6+ hrs to read the news. My iPad has made long drives much more interesting!

  15. Good morning, meese! Tuesday …

    It is 57 degrees in Madison with an expected daytime high of 72. Morning clouds and afternoon sun are in the forecast.

    Tonight is the vice presidential debate. It will be a good opportunity for people to see what the two parties value. The Republicans will “showcase” a misogynistic body nanny whose actions even right-wing appeals court judges calls racist, a man who elevates his religion over the Constitution. Pence will try to put a lipstick on the vulgar talking yam and convince the right-wing god voters that voting for a serial adulterer who covets his own daughter is what god wants. Even his grade school teacher, a nun, refuses to vote for Trump. Tim Kaine is pretty much the anti-Pence … cheerful and warm, passionate about making people’s lives better, intelligent. I don’t know much about the moderator but CBS News doesn’t seem to have axes to grind.

    The polls look good for our candidate and to the extent that they can ease the anxiety somewhat, that is good. But President Obama said “Stay Scared” so don’t get too comfortable!! After seeing the poll fail in Brexit and then in Columbia, we need to act as though we are down 1 point and aggressively register people and get them to vote.

    The Supreme Court declined to take the Wisconsin John Doe judicial corruption case signalling, probably, that a split 4-4 court with 4 justices who think that money in politics is great would not be able to rule in favor of the people of Wisconsin whose court system is now a wholly owned subsidiary of Club for Growth, the Koch brothers and WMC, the chamber of commerce. Sucks to have your state ruined. :(

    See all y’all later!

    • It seems that Wisconsin Rethugs are still happily suppressing the vote. This is so disheartening! They’re in defiance of the freaking law!

      Does the rule of law prevail in this country or not?

  16. Good morning Meese

    I’m lecturing today on Women in Politics – keyword “Misogyny” for our lecture series with the combined 4 classes of Intro to Women’s studies

    I usually spend a bit of time examining women world wide – however this year am throwing out the normal lecture and focusing on the history of attacks on Hillary – and throwing in the Trump attacks on Alicia Machado too.

    To contrast what has happened to Hillary over the years am going to open up with the case of Julia Gillard in Australia

    Don’t know if you all have seen this:

    Interesting parallels with what happens here.

    On a brighter – but related note – since Hill gets excoriated for her pantsuits – there was a flash mob for her yesterday in NY

    Power Moves in Pantsuits: A Hillary Clinton–Inspired Flash-Mob Dance Party Takes Manhattan
    http://www.vogue.com/13487894/pantsuit-flash-mob-hillary-clinton-inspired-dance-celia-rowlson-hall-mia-lidofsky/

    • I remember when Julia Gillard was elected and the sense of hopefulness because she was a strong advocate for the environment and for addressing climate change. I admit that I kind of lost track of her other than that she lost her re-election bid to the hard-right political party in Australia. I have never seen that video – her treatment was truly awful. It is interesting because here in America, the misogyny has been more coded – until Giuliani said flat out on Sunday that Trump is better than “any woman”. I wonder if that is the signal to move ahead with more full-throated misogyny?

      • Because I don’t watch FOX News or listen to Rush L and his ilk – I was not really aware of the vile crap that was thrown at Hillary – day in day out

        This gave me pause

        As did this video of the type of interview questions she has gotten over the years

        • I don’t watch political TV, right or left, because it is too screechy. But I follow what is happening on Twitter and see the quotes and sometimes the clips. I try to never view a clip of Trump or his bully boys – I am too delicate!!!

    • Sister Dee, I wish more than ever that I was one of your students!

      Yes, Julia Gillard was bullied so mercilessly by the lousy misog-trogs in Oz that she left politics permanently. May I point out that the Pill, which liberated sexually active women from constantly wondering from one month to the next if they were pregnant, will be the next thing to be banned after abortion-for-any- reason-at-all is banned?

      The pants suit flash mob is great! I own only one such outfit now, and it is suitable for this time of year—wish I could join the flash mob!

      • I own a few casual pantsuits – they are far more comfortable for me, at my age than suit with skirt.

        Thanks for bringing up the pill – we’ll be covering it in our section on Reproductive Justice – later in the semester.

        Two of the adult women (they are my age) auditing my other class are coming to sit-in on today’s intro class – it will be nice to have two adults who lived through the period of 2nd Wave feminism in the room. Even my co-teachers are all young women

    • Bernie Sanders will be in Madison WI tomorrow with Senate candidate Russ Feingold, hoping to walk back some of the Hillary hate, Democratic Party hate he spewed for almost a year. We are in danger of losing here, not to Trumpism but to the peeling off of the Stein votes from our candidate.

      • Oh, crap—to the Hillary hate, I mean.

        The Corpus Christi newspaper endorsed Clinton but did so rather snidely, I thought. None of the misogynist mainstream press can bear to praise Clinton without qualifying their laudatory statements somehow: her “poor judgment” (poor compared to that of whom?), her “carelessness” (for doing EXACTLY what Colin Powell did), and bla bla bla.

        Y’know, Kerry and Biden also voted for the AUMF, but it’s never been held against them to my knowledge. It’s only bad if a GURRL voted for it, just as getting paid fabulous sums for speaking engagements is okay for male pols and Wall Street thugs, but is evil if a GURRL does it.

        Can you tell I’m in a lousy mood today? :)

        • I prefer that we answer him by having the adults take back our state Democratic Party organizations and inject a dose of pragmatism. I am going to see what I can do personally after the election is over – they are kind of busy now.

          I want the national party apparatus to get strong again, like it was when Dr. Dean was running it. We need a 50 state strategy and to build a bench for winning back the governorships and state legislatures. In 2020, we have another census and we need to have Democrats involved in the redistricting this time … 2010 was a fiasco because no one at the national party level seemed to give a rats ass about the state houses.

  18. Good morning, Moosekind! It’s a beautiful day here in NoVa, even if I woke up much too early—5 a.m.—ugh! Current temp. is 54 F., isn’t that nice? Going up to 72 F. today.

    Feel a bit grumpy for no particular reason. Have the usual list of things to do: working out, catching up on correspondence, and perhaps writing.

    Yes, I am planning to watch the debate tonight on C-SPAN. I hope Tim Kaine makes mincemeat of Pence. I followed “Periods for Pence” on Facebook for a while. Vulgar, but oh, so entertaining! The women involved drove Pence’s office staff insane with their daily phone calls to let Pence know they were menstruating, and what should they do if there were clots—bury them?

    Gods, I hate men who want to control women!

  19. So the Wikileaks “big announcement” was just a fundraising plea. How do you do an eyeroll emoji? Otoh, Kurt Eichenwald is on a roll on twitter this morning.

    Sleepy. I have really got to get a good night’s sleep at some point. Brought my gym bag to change & walk after work. Of course there’s the build up to the debate….

    Playing Discotheque in my head. Loud, dance-y, rocking U2. To keep me awake & make me happy (much Adam in this video)

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