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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Good morning, meese! Tuesday …
It is 3 degrees in Madison with an expected daytime high of 7. Sunny skies are in the forecast. Windchills are below zero – it will be a challenge getting the dog to take a long walk today.
I am finally coming to a resting place about the election. Yes, the Russian hackings and leaks and the lazy press dampened enthusiasm for our candidate. But the election is over and we lost. Anything that happens now – Electoral College changes, House of Representative changes on January 6th, court intervention – would cause us nothing but grief for the next election and it is a place we don’t want to go. The Republican presidency is in the hands of the Republican Party; they can choose to support him or find ways to marginalize him or even remove him from office. We will do our part by blocking the worst of the nominees, the worst of the legislation, the worst court appointments – and prep for 2017 and 2018 statehouse and midterm elections.
Democrats need to do some education of our voters – they did not have to believe the crap coming from the press (fed to them or dredged up on their own from the right-wing fever swamps), they did not have to stay home because Bernie Sanders spent months telling them that Hillary=Trump, they did not have to believe polls saying we were winning and that they could stay home. We need to do what Republicans do: sell our brand – the Democratic Party. Sell Democratic Party principles and convince everyone to vote for the Democrat in every election to uphold those values – our values. Until we do that, third party candidates will continue to damage our electoral chances. Trump won because Republicans, the ones who were not white nationalists, voted for him because of the R after his name.
See all y’all later!
42 at dawn and pretty much gonna stay there all day. Overcast again, surprise! Did get 6.66 KWHs yesterday which I found amusing. Didn’t exactly make up for the day before’s .75 but it definitely helped. It’s supposed to clear off this evening – which will allow the temps to drop 20 degrees overnight.
I’m tired. Donations have stopped but the need is greater than ever. I myself am a bit overextended, but I have credit and I have a job. I’ll be fine. But the folks on my fundraiser lists won’t be without help. Sigh. As Above, so Below. The flip side works though – if we can change the Below, the Above will change, too. At least that’s what I believe and why I keep trying. (Not sure where Mercedes Lackey got the concept – if she didn’t make it up herself which Denise would probably know – but I like the 4-fold goddess idea. The moon has 4 phases and while the “new” moon is the Grandmother Moon for healing and hiding, the full moon is the Warrior Moon for defending and destroying danger. Come Warrior. We need you now.)
I am at work so I’d best look through all these papers on my desk to see if there’s anything I can actually do. heh. Bright the day and wind to thy wings, Meeses. {{{HUGS}}
Now here is a pick I can get behind: Tom Perez for DNC Chair …
He has no experience in electoral politics, something that may have led to his getting passed over for VP, but he has experience managing and excellent connections. PLUS he is not damaged by ties to the refused-to-concede Sanders who is not even a Democrat, my main dig against Keith Ellison.
Good morning, 29 and cloudy in Bellingham. The snow was pretty yesterday, but it’s frosty outside today. I’ve got a Dr. appointment at 9:00 am so I hope the roads aren’t icy.
We started installing the new curtains in my sewing room yesterday, so nice to see the fabric I selected about 14 yrs ago looks as I had hoped it would! I’m usually hustling around doing Christmas tasks for everyone else this time of year so it’s an odd feeling to be doing something for myself. But it’s time to shift priorities, so I am. Can’t believe so many years have gone by though.
Jan, thanks for sharing your post election thoughts. Living our Dem principles, supporting others who do the same, and educating voters as best we can is all we can do now.
Best wishes to all!
I am working through some ideas to “emerge” from my post-election funk. I will never accept small d donald tRump as a legitimate president but it is time to start grabbing the small shreds of hope and start cobbling together an effective pushback. We don’t need to rebuild our party but we really need to rebuild how we talk to each other about politics and what is at stake. If I had a dollar for every time someone said “oh, that’s just politics – let’s not talk about it”, I would be a rich woman. But it isn’t JUST politics, electoral politics is how we form our governments and how we advance our agenda and set our priorities. We can’t just get whacked every 16 years and relearn the lessons all over again. I see the tRump cabinet forming and the parallels to George W. Bush’s administration are there. Why can’t we learn from history – you can’t put awful people in charge of our government because awful things will happen! The Vox article making the rounds, where the woman is saying she didn’t realize that voting for Republicans would cause her health insurance to be repealed is case in point. This was not even a case of having to believe someone’s words – Republicans voted 62 times to repeal the ACA over the past 6 years. If it only impacted that ignorant voter, it would be one thing – but her ignorance will hurt millions of people who voted for the party that wanted to preserve healthcare. ARGGGHHH!
Good morning, meese! Wednesday …
It is 12 degrees in Madison with an expected daytime high of 10. Temperatures will continue to drop until they reach 9 below overnight tonight. Sunny skies will provide some (literal) solace.
Not much to say today. I read more about the Tom Perez DNC candidacy and found that he is being promoted by David “A as in A**hole” Axelrod. Sigh. For one thing, Axelrod is a vindictive petty man who should not be making any Democratic Party decisions. And second, his instincts are terrible when it comes to state party building. Yes, he was a great campaign manager but knifing Howard Dean and strangling the 50-state strategy was a terrible idea. I will only support Perez if he embraces that strategy and finds some way to eliminate the caucuses and the frontloaded white people primaries. I haz opinions!!
See all y’all later!
I wish they’d get away from known political figures altogether. Yes, absolutely I want a Dem doing this – but I’d like to tap a successful union organizer. Perez is good at what he’s good at. So is Elizabeth Warren. They aren’t good at everything and shouldn’t be expected to be – or proposed for every slot that comes open. But I want Ellison where he is. He’s got too much experience in that position to lose him now. We need experienced people in Congress. Just because it’s a “safe” Dem seat doesn’t mean the probably very good noob appointed would have a clue as to how to deal with our current situation.
Good morning, Meese. It’s a frosty 34 F. here in NoVa, going up to 43 F. However, it’s fair.
The day care party was fun as usual. The headmistress showed a very cute video she’d made and set to music of the children’s daily routine before she introduced the “dancing” part of the program. The little girls in pink fairy dresses did pretty well, but the boys, including our own Toddler-Licious, kept tearing off their Santa hats and refusing to participate.
Read the Vox article. Great Goddess, I simply cannot imagine minds that work like that—thinking Thing wouldn’t repeal the ACA because “so many people depend on it.” Stupidity abounds.
I feel like an ostrich this morning. Don’t want to pull my head out and look up. Wishing everyone in Moosylvania a good day!
Must leave work early today & walk. Must leave work early today & walk. (Hoping I can convince myself not to blow it off) Traffic was completely insane yesterday — it took me nearly 1 ½ hr to get home. I’m normally annoyed by anything over 30 minutes. I only saw one accident, and that was toward the end of my odyssey. No idea what the problems were. I figure if I walk 3 miles a day today, tomorrow & Friday then Saturday morning’s 7ish miles won’t hurt so bad.
I have no idea what music was in my head, because it disappeared when I opened a tab to youtube & it had this video waiting for me. U2 doing Happy Christmas, War Is Over & Christmas Baby Please Come Home. Omg, 1987 was just…. those hats….. well, you can definitely date that video because, wow, distinctive clothes & hair.
great thread about the numerous problems with Chris Hayes’ town hall with Bernie:
https://twitter.com/tommyxtopher/status/808878777090658304
another, can you give us the short version of what happened? Just now I can’t bear to go into anything concerning St. Bernard.
I actually didn’t watch the town hall, I can’t stand BS either. The twitter thread, well what went on in the town hall is exactly why I didn’t watch. It actually is a good read, without having to watch what looks to have been a pretty annoying hour of tv.
I refuse to watch cable news. I know that there are a few people who are worth watching but they pick up their paycheck from the people who focused on emails for 15 months and helped elect tRump. It is almost like people are living double lives – their Tweets show them to care about the awful thing that has happened but when they are on TV they are owned by The Man. :)
I posted the de-Twittered Twitter feed below (with links to the Tweets that have video).
What unalloyed BULLSHIT!!
Diana, basically St. Bernard redefined political correctness to mean “saying that trade agreements are good” and that tRump was right to call that out. Chris Hayes knew, and the audience knew, that political correctness as tRump was using it was allowing people to display their unfiltered racism – to suspend all rules of civility. What an ass!
12-13-2016_01 by DailyPolitics
Here is the Tweet thread, untweeted (to avoid the comments)
Thanks Jan……I tried to watch the town hall but I just couldn’t. So I sewed rings on my new curtains and listened to the new Neil Young cd. I worry about becoming an uninformed voter, but lately being well informed is just to upsetting.
Wow, what a load of old codswallop!
Have never liked St. Bernard, nor can I see myself ever changing my mind.
Thanks for the Tweet thread, Jan, I’ll read it now.
Stayed cloudy so didn’t drop below freezing here overnight – still in the 30s and probably won’t get out of them as it’s also still cloudy. Got a whole 1.56 KWHs yesterday (almost exactly twice what I got Sunday) – we’ll see what today brings.
Not sure what political stuff I may or may not do today. I meant to call Cotton’s office yesterday about the Russian connection and just couldn’t bring myself to do it. Will this traitor object to that traitor or cheer him on? I’m afraid to find out. sigh. Meanwhile, I’ve got a community fundraiser Street Prophets diary to write (posts around 3 pm central) in between doing the work I’m actually paid for. The donations are so down we haven’t been able to make a $100 match for PDNC – and we were making $1,000 matches for Aji over the summer/early fall. I’ve got several potential eviction/foreclosures and several “car needs work so I can” either on the list or about to be added if something doesn’t come through – not even counting PDNC and Aji. Sigh. We’ll survive. Not sure how, but we’ll survive.
Need to get to work – in fact have somebody standing at my desk waiting for something. Bright the day and wind to thy wings, Meeses. {{{HUGS}}}
You’re doing excellent work, bfitz. This is a bad time of year for people to donate, unfortunately. The last two donations I made ($120) were on my credit card, which carries an interest rate of 16.23 percent. I’ll be paying that off well into the new year.
People donated to this candidate and that candidate up to the election, and now it’s Christmas season, which carries its own expenses for most people. My theory is that people are just tapped out.
If donations were to be requested during tax refund season (March and April), I’m guessing the response would be greater.
Sorry you’ve had so much trouble with the donations. It’s just not right that a warm and helping impulse should be so treated. Wish I could do something to help. Aji would have a fit if she knew but as far as I know she doesn’t read the Moose – I cashed in a (very) small mutual fund I’d had kicking around for years to do my donations (and several “anonymous” matches) this last 6 months. I meant it all for her, but she was so concerned about several others I was fundraising for she told me to help them so part of it went to about 8 others. But it’s been donated out now and so I can’t really help in any way except to do the diaries and comments to get the word out.
In a way I hope you’re right about it being just the timing – there will always be people in need so when the funds are there, there will be places to put them. But it tears at my heart, too, because the people on my list need help now – next March will be too late. Oh well. What is, is – and it’s part of learning to accept the things I cannot change (at least after I’ve done my best to change them). Thank you. {{{Diana}}}
Good morning, 23 and clear in Bellingham. Seeing the full moon shining through the branches of my old maple trees and reflecting off the water was a lovely way to wake up this morning. I had a few peaceful moments before reading the news.
My basement sewing room is at the front of our house, with a view of the garden and Bellingham Bay so I feel connected to the outdoors when I’m inside. The well aged fabric I selected so many years ago is a botanical print in the arts and crafts style, and as I hoped it reflects the colors of the garden outside the windows.
The room has 5 windows, a french door, and a large closet which is built under the front porch. So my plan for the new window coverings was to frame the view, be easy to open and close for nighttime privacy, and to add more insulation for winter warmth. Roman shades were made for the smaller windows and the french door, curtains with brass rings on old style rods are on the 2 double windows, and an insulated drapery on a wood pole covers the closet opening. So everything functions as I hoped and the fabric looks wonderful. I’m very relieved and pleased!
I had best move my focus to Christmas today however. I need to shop for, wrap, and mail several packages and I have a few people I want to send Christmas cards to. And tonight we’re cooking dinner and decorating a tree at our son’s house. So that should keep me busy today.
Your sewing room sounds so delightful, princesspat!
Enjoy your day and evening.
there’s also this interesting discussion, that starts with this:
Wherein Bernie conflates fighting for rights of women/ POC/ LGBTQ as poll-tested political pandering. Wow.
https://twitter.com/hhavrilesky/status/808786962567942144
Good morning, meese! Thursday …
It is minus 2 degrees in Madison with an expected afternoon high of 5. Windchill is 17 below. Sunny skies are in the forecast.
North Carolina Republicans are doing what Republicans do all the time – now that they have lost the governorship and their legislative districts have been ruled illegal, they are rushing through legislation to take away the power to run honest elections from the incoming Democratic governor. The post-democratic America that John Roberts envisioned has come to pass.
I am having a difficult time finding good news these days. The world is a mess, our democracy is in tatters, our only firewall against the horrific damage that Republicans can do is leaving office in a little over a month. I wish that Republicans cared about human lives – it would really relieve a lot of the anxiety that people are having now. When you govern with a moral compass that says that people should be treated with decency and that they should not go hungry or without medical care or have no place to live, all the rest of it falls into place. That 46.1% of our country voted for hate is too depressing to deal with today.
See all y’all later!
Got this email from Moral Mondays:
Press Conference with North Carolinians affected by Hurricane Matthew in Response to the Surprise Special Session
Thursday, December 15, 2016
10:30 a.m.
NC General Assembly Press Room
16 W. Jones St. Raleigh, NC
Click here to RSVP on Facebook
Join with the North Carolina NAACP, North Carolina Voters for Clean Elections, Progress NC, and flood victims as we gather at the General Assembly to urge our lawmakers, those who were elected to govern for the good of the whole, to stop their attempt to use disaster relief and the pain of thousands of North Carolinians to push through measures that strip Governor-elect Roy Cooper of executive powers, hurt public education, create gridlock in the state and county boards of elections, and do further harm to the people of our state.
The House of Representatives and the Senate filed over 20 bills this evening during the surprise special session that began today at 2:00 p.m. Lawmakers were called to Raleigh under the pretense of disaster relief but instead they have exploited the tragedy of thousands of North Carolinians to ram a partisan power grab through a surprise special session.
“My family is still recovering from the flooding, and some of our neighbors lost everything they had,” said Sean Yarborough of Robeson County. “We are pleading with lawmakers not to exploit our suffering by using us as political pawns in their blatantly partisan schemes while they’re supposed to be helping us rebuild.”
Good for them! I doubt that anything will shame these Republicans in their power grab – Republicans have shown themselves to be post-shame. Rick Hasen thinks that the change to the county boards of elections will be challenged on VRA grounds – the audacity of putting Democrats in charge in odd number years and Republicans in charge in even number years!!
Good Thursday morning Meese.
We are in for bone numbing wind chill here – O have to be careful my pipes don’t freeze and we are keeping our indoor outdoor cat inside.
Looks like we will have snow for Christmas.
I am sitting here musing about the question – who appointed Bernie Sanders as the head of Democrats?
I’m really feeling irked.
You are not alone in your being irked. If he wants to “mold” the Democratic Party he needs to freaking join the Democratic Party. He is not doing Keith Ellison any favors by stumping for him with his message that the last 8 years were terrible. There are still plenty of Obama Democrats in the party and if Ellison allies himself with an ideology instead of a business plan to rebuild state parties, he is going to be rejected by them.
WordPress would like me to upgrade the site to version 4.7 so I will be doing that later today. The last few upgrades have been pretty seamless so we will hope that pattern continues.
I keep getting a pop-up message to download “Unpollute My Mac” because of “porn sites I’ve accidentally visited in the past.” I don’t visit porn sites ever, so I know this is a scam.
Of course I won’t click anywhere on it, even the upper left corner that I wish were a “close” button, but the only way to get rid of it is to restart my Mac. That’s what I did yesterday and the nasty little pop-up did go away, but now it’s back again.
It sounds like you keep visiting a web site that has some misbehaving adware.
I admit to knowing nothing about Macs other than that everyone tells me that they are awesome and that Microsoft sucks. I know the ins and outs of Windows and so I will stick with the “evil” I know, thankyouverymuch.
Good morning, Meese! Fair and blue-skied today despite the forecast of “snow between 10 p.m. and 2 a.m., turning to ice for the Thursday morning commute.” Great Goddess, these people are incompetent. I’ll tell you what we do have, though: howling winds and 25 F. It’s going up to 31 F. today.
Wish we didn’t have to go out but we have an “event” at the retirement-community-we’ll-never-move-to, starting at 11 a.m. Still need to have breakfast, so I’d better get on it.
So depressed about what’s happening to our country I don’t know where to look. I just feel numb, really. I don’t know whether to buy a gun and bury some gold ingots in the backyard, or lay in dried food for survival supplies, or what.
Hope everyone will have as good a day as possible. Denise and Jan, hope you don’t get snowed on too much.
There’s been a chemical spill of some kind in Corpus Christi, all municipal water is unsafe even for showers or washing clothes. Scary & sad.
I brought my gym bag, mapped out a 4.7 mile hilly route, e-mailed supervisor about leaving early. I really am going to walk today. Chilly — high in the 50s, then tomorrow & Saturday a huge warm up to the 70s, then fall off a cliff & high on Sunday & Monday low 40s. Craziness. I know that there’s happy bouncy seasonal music, but I’m playing Discotheque in my head to prepare for this afternoon’s long walk.
22 when I left for work and 25 now heading for mid 30s. At least it’s sunny.
I don’t have much to contribute on the political side. Wish Bernie’d shut up as he’s stirring the Berners up and helping the Rs (Republicans and Russians) divide our party even more. We need to come together to fight Rs. Otherwise, everybody’s in panic mode over the coming administration. I have no idea whether it will be better or worse than we fear, but I do know nothing is ever exactly what we fear – and that while we’re in panic mode we don’t think straight. For now I’m tending my communities, trying to remember to breathe, and asking Warrior Moon to defend us.
As usual, at work and have work to do so I’d best get to it. Bright the day and wind to thy wings, Meeses. {{{HUGS}}}
I think that panicking is probably not very productive. :)
It is possible that tRump will pose some problems for Congressional Republicans that they will have to reckon with – and which I hope slows down their hellbent-to-complete agenda for destroying everything important to us. If this were an ordinary president in an ordinary Unified Republican Government it would be more predictable. I was just reading a piece in Washington Monthly pointing out that there were 10 Republican Senators who said they would not vote tRump and the Freedumb Caucus in the House is not too keen on the things he is proposing that will incur more debt. The “unified” part of the URG is probably more wishful thinking than concrete reality. I hope that at minimum we can get them to set aside the “repeal” part of Repeal and Replace for the ACA until they have a “replace”. And that enough of them realize that Medicare and Social Security are still a third rail.
It’s funny, they could “replace” the ACA with a re-named version of the original proposal – it’s basically the Heritage Foundation’s answer to Hillarycare of 1994 anyway – and get all kinds of credit for “improving” it. But they won’t because they are more interested in destroying the government that gives them the power they have than in actually doing anything to earn that power. At least Senator Boozman seems to know that messing with Social Security and Medicare is a bad idea.
Good morning, 28 and clear in Bellingham. The moon was shinning in my window again this morning, giving me time to appreciate the power and beauty of nature.
Busy day ahead with a root canal /crown this morning, then a haircut, and then another attempt to do some Christmas errands. We enjoyed tacos and tree trimming with our son last night. Such moments mean more to me than all the shopping, wrapping and mailing, but sharing with my away family is important too so I had best not ignore my list today.
Stay warm everyone!
Good luck with your dental work!!
Healing Energy/holding the Good Thought about the dental stuff – and everything else for that matter. :)
This review of the awful restaurant in Trump Tower will make your day:
Apparently, tRump himself tweeted out an insult to the author and Vanity Fair because, of course, he is a thin-skinned vulgarian.
Being a poor person’s idea of a rich person is how you sucker said poor’s person into giving you their money.
BRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR
It’s 2 degrees here – on Friday morn – too cold on the drafty downstairs for me to sit at puter
Am headed to school later for a final exam – but have to stay upstairs in the warm for now – no puter there
We warmed up here but will head back into the deep freeze later today. Stay warm!!!