Week-long Welcomings from Moosylvania: Oct. 16th through Oct. 22nd

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.

44 Comments

  1. 70 already heading for 80 with some overcast this Tuesday in Fay, AR – front should be moving in tomorrow. Also rain which we need. Barring a miracle I’m not going to get 300 KWHs this month (at 149.75 right now) but I’ll hope for close. :)

    Winning the White House and flipping the Senate are our best hope – flipping Congress would be wonderful but it’s iffy and even more iffy would be keeping it in 2018. Hillary will do what she can no matter what scenario she faces, but with the Senate she can not only try for SCOTUS (her nominees would at least be brought to the Senate floor), but will be able to fill all the lower Court vacancies. With the lower Courts full, we can start turning a lot of the GOP-teajadist-gerrymander crap around. But I’m still not watching the “debate”

    Hoping to untangle a group travel mess today – got it at least sorted out so we know what the problems are – and finally clear some stuff off my desk. No classes yesterday or today “Fall Break” so all the construction people are going gangbusters to get stuff done before classes start again tomorrow. I can’t really tell the difference in noise level. LOL Bright the day, Meeses. {{{HUGS}}}

    • I never watched the 2nd debate except in clips and parodies. I had gone back and watched the 1st one on video after I deemed it “safe” but I had no interest in seeing the 2nd debate. I will probably watch the 3rd debate because it will be in a more traditional format, one where Trump is not hovering and lurking. I know that would have freaked me out!!

  2. Good morning, 50, cloudy in Bellingham. The leaves on my old maple trees are a bright spot of color against the cloudy sky. We’ll have fewer leaves to rake this fall because the trees are thinner, but I’m very thankful to see the seasons change in the tall branches.

    Our son is making good progress painting my sewing room. Moving stuff as he goes makes for slower progress but he’s being very patient with me. We’ve decided to add baseboards in keeping with the rest of the house so he’ll start that today. The room is going to look so finished!

    I need to tend to my desk this morning, and then I hope to sort some more fabric while tending to the laundry this afternoon.

  3. Hillary is looking for lawyers! Pass it on …

    From what I understand, via Twitter, that guy handing Josh Charles the brown folder at the end was Marc Elias, chief vote protection lawyer for HFA. He has done some amazing work this year.

    • Every single time an issue comes up and our team starts it’s OHHH NOES! routine, something hits the news, FB, or twittersphere to show that Hillary’s on it. Sure would be nice if the OMGHOF part of our team would stop parroting “she’s the most qualified candidate every” and start believing it. Meanwhile, yes I donate, yes I volunteer, hell yes I’m going to vote – but I trust her to know what she’s doing and when to do it. And that is such a good feeling. :)

  4. Good morning, meese! Wednesday …

    It is 45 degrees in Madison with an expected daytime high of 66. The forecast calls for sunny skies this morning giving way to variable cloudiness this afternoon.

    Tonight is the last debate and then our long national nightmare of having to pay attention to anything Donald Trump says will be over. Many have already moved on, there is simply nothing more to say about him. Time to concentrate on voting. The early voting chaos in Georgia is bothersome to me and simply underscores our need to take back the statehouses or, my preference, pass comprehensive nationwide standards for voting. I am sure that the founding fathers had no notion of how awful things would end up when they entrusted elections to the various states. Maybe it was a compromise of some sort but I am certain that they never expected that one of our national political parties would have as a guiding principle the suppression of the vote. Sickening, really.

    I will watch the debate muted so that I can see what is happening and match it up to what I am reading on Twitter. I won’t listen live because Trump’s words are so awful they cause me pain. I saw on Twitter last night that Bill Clinton will not be in the debate audience and I suspect that means Chelsea won’t either. I agree with that plan – there is no reason to pretend that Trump will treat them with respect and it avoids the awkward post-debate nicey-nice. The Trump family has trashed America and they should not be rewarded with any measure of civility.

    See all y’all later!

  5. Good morning, Moosekind! It’s another stellar morning in NoVa except for the temperature, which currently is 64 F., heading for 82 F. Looking out the window of my little upstairs office I can see a pale blue sky and sunlight on foliage that’s changing color. It’s supposed to be colder this weekend, thank Goddess.

    Like Sister Dee, I’ll watch the debate on C-SPAN. I dread it. The debate threads fill up so quickly on GOS that I may use my laptop, because the iPad simply can’t cope.

    Made pumpkin muffins and brownies yesterday to take to Hillary HQ today. Just for kicks, I threw some sliced almonds and dried cranberries into the muffins and chopped walnuts into the brownies.

    In other news, I’m having coffee with Darling Niece-Around-the-Corner this morning. Dearly Beloved is still hacking away with his horrible, seemingly permanent cough, and sleeping a great deal of the day. I wish this virus would STOP. Although I’ve commissioned Hillary Clinton’s favorite cake for tea on Sunday, half the family will be picking apples at an orchard in Maryland. Bummer. They may stop by on Saturday. Also, one DIL will be in New York seeing friends, although she may try to come back by an earlier train. Getting the whole family together at one time seems impossible nowadays!

    Wishing a good day to everyone in Moosylvania—don’t forget to grab your smelling salts and lavender water, not to mention mute buttons, for the debate tonight!

    • So sorry to hear that hubby is still hacking. :(

      I bet the folks at Hillary HQ love you for those muffins!

    • I have it set to record. I get up so early Saturday that I don’t watch much on Fridays.

  6. I put in for today & tomorrow off. I’m just so tired. I slept in — fitful, but more sleep than usual. It’s still going to get to the low 90s today but we’re supposed to get a front tomorrow. I plan to get in a walk before it gets too hot today. Will “watch” the debate by reading twitter.

  7. Been 70 since sundown last night, heading for 80 as a high, but a front due to move in this afternoon. With rain even. We can use the rain. Of course I could use the sun, too (under 8 KWHs yesterday and today likely to be lower depending on how early the clouds move in).

    I’ll stick with the live blog tonight as long as I can – these things run later than my bedtime which is sometimes OK and sometimes not – probably with the Hillary folks rather than the front pagers. No way Jose am I watching or listening to that bag of evil, even though I’d like to hear Hillary. Early voting in AR starts Monday – and I expect to vote then weather permitting.

    Healing Energy to everybody. Bright the day, Meeses. {{{HUGS}}}

  8. Morning all!

    I didn’t know there were problems with voting in Georgia, I did see there were long lines for early voting, but was it more than that, Jan? I am so thankful I have the absentee ballot option here – voting by mail is so easy and civilized, and now that a Federal judge has thrown out attempts to interfere with that thru bogus challenges to the required signatures, it feels safe to me.

    I will not watch the debate in real time either – I’ll record it and keep up thru twitter and liveblog, but I am so worried that Wallace is going to do everything he can to help Trump and hurt Hillary, I just can’t bear to see it. Thank goddess it’s the last one!

    I saw this as it aired last night on MSNBC – it’s Steve Schmidt, who was one of McCain’s campaign managers in 2008. If you saw the great HBO movie “Game Change”, you will remember a terrific scene toward the end, where Schmidt, played by Woody Harrelson, forbids Sarah Palin from trying to make a speech from the stage where McCain was going to deliver the concession to Obama. He talks in that scene about the concession being a sacred part of our democracy – and the whole “rigged election” crap from Trump is what they were generally talking about with Brian Williams on his show last night. But this little segment, where Schmidt gets emotional, really convinced me that the concession speech scene in Game Change was pretty accurate.

    Talking about Trump's attempts to delegitimize election, Steve Schmidt quotes Churchill + warnings of fascisms rise. pic.twitter.com/Q5SKyak3nH— Garrison66 (@Garrison66) October 19, 2016

    Everyone have a great day!

    • It was the early voting. Taniel was aghast the there was only one early voting station in that county and even more aghast that the folks there said, essentially, shit happens. NOT OKAY!! I hope they get it cleared up. We really really really need a way to federalize the elections. This is a ghastly mess.

  9. Good morning, 47 and partly sunny in Bellingham. The light in the sky is most welcome after yesterday’s pouring rain. I’m going to the pool this morning and to another garden nursery this afternoon. I hope to enlarge the planting bed in the upper garden so we can plant the new street screening trees and shrubs before winter. I found a large pot and some possible plants yesterday but the cold wet rain made shopping no fun so I went home.

    I know I’ll watch some of the debate tonight, but I hope to be tired from the days activities so I won’t have much energy for outrage. The yam can’t crawl back under his rock soon enough for me!

    • I decided I needed to watch it live and I am glad I did. There were some things that needed to be seen and heard – witnessing on behalf of Hillary Clinton.

      He’s is gone now – we are no longer required to see him because Hillary will never be forced to be in his presence again.

    • Great minds think alike! I posted a comment with that in Dee’s front page post on gerrymandering (that she so kindly agreed to crosspost here).

      A team who will take on gerrymandering – Obama and Holder

      I will be taking some time later this morning to re-read it and weigh in. It is more than gerrymandering, it is taking back the statehouses. When you look at how much power states have to control election law – and elections – it is frightening. We are one more bad Supreme Court decision away from losing the most fundamental right in a democracy, the right to fair and honest elections.

  10. Good morning, meese! Thursday …

    It is 46 degrees in Madison with an expected daytime high of 54. Mostly sunny skies are in the forecast.

    Whoo! [insert Hillary shimmy here] … that was one interesting debate. I wonder how many people thought he lost the debate based on his refusal to say he would concede if he lost and how many thought he lost when he interrupted with “such a nasty woman”. After the latter, I could see in my mind’s eye millions of women googling “where can I early vote”. The instapolls said that Hillary won by about the same margin she is winning the national vote by so the debate was probably watched as a sporting event to see how your team would do. Shockingly, Chris Wallace did a passable job although I think he gave more deference to Trump’s interruptions than to Hillary’s. You can take the Fox host out of the Fox studio but you can’t take the Foxian male privilege out of the Fox host.

    Anyway, that is done, thank the goddess, now lets get some votes in the bank and win this thing.

    See all y’all later!

  11. G’mornin’ Meese

    46 here in the mountains going up to 65 with rain.

    I’m bleary eyed from staying up to watch debate and then blogging after – have to hit the keyboards and do some writing for deadline.

    HillYES!

    • I stayed up way past my bedtime – I wanted to see the reactions and make sure it was not just me thinking that Trump made a hash of it. It was perfectly in character that his answer on the Supreme Court question was his upset at RBG’s insult to him. It is all revenge politics to him. Embarrassing, really, for our country and certainly for the Republican Party. Thank goodness we have a strong, smart candidate to run against him. I shudder to think about how close this election would be if we were running someone weak on foreign policy, weak on gun rights and abortion rights, weak on racial justice, and with a questionable economic plan.

      Now, I better go get some work done – this has not been a very productive week.

  12. Good morning, Meese! It’s a fairish morning here, with traces of last night’s rain still visible on the street. Looks partly cloudy at the moment. It’s 68 F. now, going up to 79 F. later. We’ve been breaking heat records for this date every day this week. So glad it will be cooler tomorrow.

    The debate (shudder). Wallace was as awful as I expected him to be, with his rightwing framing of questions, interrupting Hillary far more than he interrupted Thing, and letting Thing ramble on. Thing, of course, was even more awful than usual once he woke up, 30 minutes in. He kept refuting Hillary’s charges about his past statements—mocking the disabled NYT reporter and of course the vicious statements about women—as if we don’t have documentary proof of those statements! I sweartagoddess, what planet do he and his minions inhabit? Does he really think we’re going to believe his refutals instead of our lying ears and eyes? Gods!

    Then, of course, at the end he outdid himself with his refusal to accept the results of the election. I hope it’s a landslide, a blowout, a metaphorical 9.4 earthquake, whatever.

    This campaign has left me with an even more visceral loathing of the “media” and of Rethugs. A pox on all their houses!

    Going on to more pleasant matters—wishing a good day to all at Pond and beyond!

    • The Thing’s campaign relies on his followers to block out actual past statements, facts, and evidence and accept everything he says as gospel. Fortunately, the universe of people willing to do that is shrinking.

      The way we shut down “the election is rigged” is to swamp his lies in a tsunami of votes.

    • Trump lives in a delusion world of his own making – which is why he can stand there and refute what is on tape – simply because his “truth” is whatever comes out of his mouth at the moment.

  13. I stayed up to watch the commentary after the debate. So glad I have today off. Wow. That was just…

    Anyway, today I have grocery shopping to do. And I really hope I get in some walking.

  14. 56 at the moment and has been since somewhere around midnight, heading for mid 60s and cloudy so far but supposed to clear off. Depending on who you ask, we got anywhere from a tenth to a full inch of rain overnight. Hope it was the latter.

    Glad the last confrontation is over. What a nasty man. I understand the “nasty woman” comment resounded like the “taco trucks comment” from his surrogate – women are embracing it, creating twitter hashtags, and the t-shirt design people are having another field day. Early voting Monday. I’ll be there banking my vote. (And staffing Dem HQ for the next 2 Saturdays, of course.)

    Got a bunch of work to do so I’d best get to it. Bright the day, Meeses. {{{HUGS}}}

      • This election has been great for small business people – taco trucks and t-shirt designers especially!

    • The “nasty woman” comment was energizing!!

      The beauty of Trump’s comment is that it was so blatant that it requires absolutely no response — Clinton didn’t even seem rattled by it. She continued to explain her plan for social security demonstrating her strength as a leader.

      Exactly. Explain Social Security, deal with a Republican creep, continue the explanation. We will see more of that next year when she takes on the boys in Congress.

  15. Good morning, 51 and raining in Bellingham. I’m sleepier that usual this morning, thanks to a middle of the night sleepless session. I finally read debate analysis until I could sleep again. Ezra Klein, at Vox……

    Hillary Clinton’s 3 debate performances left the Trump campaign in ruins
    Donald Trump didn’t just destroy himself. Hillary Clinton destroyed him.

    ……. Trump’s meltdown wasn’t an accident. The Clinton campaign coolly analyzed his weaknesses and then sprung trap after trap to take advantage of them.

    Clinton’s successful execution of this strategy has been, fittingly, the product of traits that she’s often criticized for: her caution, her overpreparation, her blandness. And her particular ability to goad Trump and blunt the effectiveness of his political style has been inextricable from her gender. The result has been a political achievement of awesome dimensions, but one that Clinton gets scarce credit for because it looks like something Trump is doing, rather than something she is doing — which is, of course, the point.

    After catching my breathe from the yam’s “……such a nasty woman” comment I smiled , thinking of all of you and how fun it is to have such companionship! Best wishes to all :)

    • That was a great article by Young Ezra. It said what we knew, that Hillary is winning because she is smart, not that she lucked into having the worst political opponent ever. After last night’s debate, I can finally stop being overwhelmingly sad that President Obama’s term is coming to an end … President Hillary Clinton will be a worthy successor.

  16. G’day all – I stayed up way late following post-debate analysis on Twitter, after breaking down to watch a good bit of it. I thought Hillary was magnificent – and I totally agree with Ezra Klein, she was in control of both herself and Trump, laying trap after trap that he just fell into.

    What disturbs me most about Trump’s refusal to accept the election results is something Joy Reid was saying in the post-debate coverage about what Trump’s camp is really up to, which is not at all winning the election, but instead, under Putin’s influence, establishing a full blown right-wing splinter party here in the US, similar to the right wing parties Putin has fostered all over Europe. I think she’s dead on here, and it’s pretty frightening that the Republican Party may have enabled the formation of a real fascist spin off party to infiltrate mainstream American politics. That is alarming to me.

    But, for now, Hillary’s on a roll, and we must do everything we can to get Democratic control of at least the Senate, if not the House. I sent Patrick Murphy, our Dem Senate candidate against Rubio, more money last night to do my little bit to make up for the DSCC abandoning him. Such a stupid move on their part – that’s why I never give to either DSCC or DCCC, I seldom agree with their priorities.

    Ok, looking forward to hearing some great speeches this afternoon – thanks for the schedule and the links, Jan! Everyone have a great day!

    • I almost never agree with DSCC or DCCC priorities and, like you, stopped sending them money. For example, this year if the DCCC had any sense, we would be more places with candidates. Instead, if there is a landslide that could yield us 30+ seats, we have CDs where we are not even challenging. I am not sure why the DSCC abandoned Murphy – I hope he beats Rubio and goes into the well of the Senate in January and glares at the naysayers.

      • DSCC has limited resources – they’re putting them elsewhere because both Hillary and President Obama are supporting Murphy in FL.

        DCCC has both more limited resources and a harder problem. They can’t force anybody to run in a deep red district. Running for Congress is expensive and the odds are lousy. Here in NW AR we’re lucky if we talk somebody into doing it every other cycle. Usually it’s more like every 3rd or 4th cycle. Unless/until we can get more funding and a deeper bench of people who can afford both the time and the money to run, there’s not a thing the DCCC can do about it. So they mostly fund incumbents on the off chance that having won at least one election, they can do it again. (And no, I don’t like it. But since I ran for office myself at the county level, I’ve come to understand it.)

        • People are certainly free to give to whichever group they think best represents their interests. I prefer to donate my limited money directly to candidates rather than party organizations because then I know where it is going. The strategic decisions of the national party are not perfect as evidenced by their ditching the 50 state strategy. I am anxious to see who Hillary puts in charge of the DNC after she takes over. I think she realizes that her administration’s effectiveness depends on getting and holding Democratic majorities in Congress.

          • I generally do that myself. And yes, I’m hoping Hillary can find someone who can actually coordinate all these pieces to a better working whole. It’s going to take some doing, that’s for sure. Here in AR we can’t get the Dem Central Committee, the Women’s Dems, and the Senior Dems to coordinate with each other or with the state Dem committees in Little Rock, much less with the National groups. Turf wars are a large part of why this state went R – you can’t GOTV when you’re too busy fighting over who should be doing what.

  17. Good Morning Meese
    65 here in Saugerties going up to a rainy 70.

    Watched the Al Smith dinner – a NY tradition – still can’t get over the fact that Trump was booed (rightly so)
    I love that Hillary went after Rudy G too (who I loathe)

    • I watched Hillary’s segment (I am yammed out and needed a break from Trump) and I caught that! There are a lot of politicians who have pretty much destroyed any chance of redeeming themselves after their connection to Trump – he is one of them. You can see the clouds of Hillary Derangement Syndrome billowing off of him.

      When I was following the Tweets on the dinner, I was shocked that the Al Smith Foundation invited Trump. His father was one of those who led the anti-Catholic bigotry back in the 20s and the KKK, part of Trump’s coalition, were part of it as well. People need to realize that this is NOT a normal election and the normal niceties don’t apply.

      • I’m not shocked they invited him – he’s the R candidate. They haven’t been happy inviting certain Ds in the past because of abortion stance.

        I am happy to see Trump openly dissed by NY pol and business elites – they pay close attention to their money and from their perspective Trump is bad for business. Plus – I think most of them find him crass and tawdry.

        Hillary speaking about this being a nation of immigrants was good – as was pointed out by Lawrence O’Donnell ((I think) the Irish Catholics in the audience are not that far removed from immigrating here.

        • I can’t imagine they like him much as it is. I think I remember he got about 10 total votes in Manhattan in the primaries – it would have been 20 but his family was not registered to vote properly! :)

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