Week-long Welcomings from Moosylvania: Jan. 29th through Feb. 4th

January 28, 2017 JanF Community 390

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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58 Comments

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

    Sunday morning low of 18 degrees in Madison WI with an expected daytime high of 25. Snow flurries are in the forecast.

    Have a great day, all y’alls!!

    • Hi! I’d like to join in the conversation here! We need to keep up the phone calls to our Dem Senators to block everything! WH now believes they’re above the law.

  2. Up early – Sunday morning – could barely sleep – so distressed about #MuslimBan
    Really, really angry at those who decided to vote against Hillary or stay home
    Guess will use my rage to fuel action –

    • I was watching the crisis unfold on Twitter yesterday. The response was immediate – I think our people were prepared for this. All the bs that the Republican administration’s spokesliars peddled about “oh it was just campaign rhetoric about the Muslim ban and the wall” fooled no one but the Republican Congress who kept saying “this is fine”. They own this vulgar man and the hateful cabal he has assembled.

      It was inspiring seeing the demonstrations and the pro bono attorneys sitting on the floor with their laptops at all the major international airports and the outpouring of support. It won’t stop the Republican’s president but as his approval drops lower and lower, the Republicans in Congress will realize that when you govern to please the 36%, at some point the numbers won’t add up and you will lose your seat.

      Okay – off to Twitter to check the overnight news!

      • Am checking twitter as often as I can – have to go get hubby up – he’s going into NYC this morning.
        Am proud of my fellow NY’ers

      • It was inspiring seeing the demonstrations and the pro bono attorneys sitting on the floor with their laptops at all the major international airports

        Yes, it was! My house is two miles away from Dulles International Airport. I knew nothing about it until we came home from our afternoon out and turned on the TV. This is going to mean civil war—or something!

    • Dear Goddess, Denise, have you ever seen anything like this? All the stuff with Nixon seemed as if it was happening up at the higher levels. This is in the streets now!

      People are saying that the Powers at Dulles International Airport who are defying the stay imposed by the federal judges on the Muslim ban are precipitating a constitutional crisis. There is talk of sending in U.S. marshals.

      • Anyone who didn’t have “will precipitate a constitutional crisis” on their list of things that would happen when Donald Trump was inaugurated as President of the United States was not paying attention. It is worst because we have no check on his power in Congress – we are left with the courts, who are going to be powerless to enforce their rulings because the “Justice” Department is part of the executive branch.

  3. Good morning, Moosekind! It’s gray out there, with a current temp. of 33 F., going up to 43 F. I’m simply mesmerized by the news. Two miles from my house, at IAD, the authorities are defying the stay issued by a federal judge and refusing to release the detainees.

    This is simply unprecedented! (Unpresidented?)

    Was going to have a quiet day and even start work on my income taxes, but now I know I’ll be glued to the either the Internet or the telly. My head aches already.

    Snow flurries tonight, or so they stay. Everyone stay safe and warm!

  4. I am so sickened by Trump. The stories from yesterday are just awful. I just don’t know what we’re going to do. if T is impeached, his supporters will react badly. But we can’t allow this to continue.

    Cold here this morning, but 70s this afternoon. I’m supposed to make up yesterday’s walk – hope I have enough time. Playing The Revolution Starts Now in my head.

  5. Just under freezing this morning but heading towards 50 – sunny at the moment although the forecast is “partly cloudy” – I prefer my clouds early as the greatest electricity generation happens after 10 am anyway. 152 KWHs for the month and averaging just under 10 KWHs a day since last Monday. If this keeps up through Tuesday the month’s total will be the “pro-rated” equivalent to January 2015. Still need to do my cooking for the week. Don’t feel really well which always negatively impacts my cooking though. The soup I made yesterday is “edible” and that’s about all I can say for it. Need to make at least another batch of soup and something for dinners next week. I’d thought of another soup but if my soups are going to be “meh” maybe I’d best do something else. sigh

    Welp, the bus keeps wobbling along the edge but so far we Dems have managed to somehow keep it from going over – pretty good deal when you don’t have the steering wheel. Not sure how long we can manage to keep doing it but we’ll do it as long as we can. Hopefully that will be as long as necessary. Not gonna say we can’t go over the edge because unfortunately of course we can. Am gonna say I still think we’ll get it back and restore our “free” society in the long run. And hope the “long run” isn’t that long. Meanwhile calls, postcards, and my community stuff. Keep on keepin’ on.

    Heading over to DK. Need to check on a bunch of diaries including Denise’s of course. Bright the day and wind to thy wings, Meeses. {{{{HUGS}}}}

  6. It helps to be on the right page……mystery solved :)

    Good morning, 42 and partly sunny in Bellingham. Thanks to lazy left coast time I’m usually the last to check in so I’m wondering where everyone is this morning.

    Needless to say the mess of tRump and his executive orders is of deep concern, even more so as how some of them are being written emerges, https://twitter.com/CharlesPPierce/status/825725009519861764

    Malevolence Tempered by Incompetence: Trump’s Horrifying Executive Order on Refugees and Visas

    Moreover, it’s a very dangerous thing to have a White House that can’t with the remotest pretense of competence and governance put together a major policy document on a crucial set of national security issues without inducing an avalanche of litigation and wide diplomatic fallout. If the incompetence mitigates the malevolence in this case, that’ll be a blessing. But given the nature of the federal immigration powers, the mitigation may be small and the blessing short-lived; the implications of having an executive this inept are not small and won’t be short-lived.

  7. Good morning, meese! Monday …

    It is 9 degrees in Madison with an expected daytime high of 28. The forecast calls for cloudy skies this morning and snow flurries this afternoon.

    Goodness gracious, what a mess! The parallels between now and the rise of Nazi Germany really can’t be shrugged off – Godwin’s Law is hereby revoked. One thing I found interesting were reports that the White House was stunned by the outcry. Do you think that is really true? If it is, they live in an alt-reality, one created, perhaps, when they were put in power despite running a literal vulgar talking yam for president. Up is down, lies are truth and no one will care if we ban Muslims. I am convinced that last week’s flurry of executive orders was just to check the boxes on the campaign promises in an effort to show their wavering fans that they were serious – distracting them from the horrible thing they are about to do to their healthcare.

    One positive thing to come of this is that the protests have encouraged some Democratic congressmembers to speak out and maybe finally see that you can’t appease a vile administration run by vile men for the sake of comity. It is good timing as the SCOTUS nomination will apparently be announced either today or tomorrow. Whoever is picked will have to answer some pretty tough questions now about what the constitution says regarding the rights of minorities.

    Busy day here with end of year reporting deadlines upon us. See all y’all later!

    • The parallels between then and now in the rise of Hitler/Nazis to power is very similar – but the forms of government are not. Hitler could and did in a parliamentary form of government attain total power over Germany with a minority vote and coalition government he disbanded as soon as he was in power. He was then able to cancel elections and enforce his will using the German army. Trump/Bannon cannot do the same in a federal form of government. Elections are specifically set out in our constitution. To overthrow that would take a military coup – which presupposes a complicit military. If they tried we’d at best have civil war and at worst devolve into outright anarchy. Not only would enough of our military honor the oath they swore to uphold the constitution and refuse, but the National Guards and the militarized local police would fight back. And let’s not even get into the anti-government gun nuts who would be out shooting anybody in any kind of uniform.

  8. Monday morning and 27 degrees here in Saugerties and it’s a school day for me. Many faculty are deeply concerned about the impact of Trump’s ban on students.
    The State University of New York (SUNY) has has issued a statement
    SUNY says 320 students from banned countries: urges no travel

    “SUNY is reviewing President Trump’s Executive Order and surveying its campuses to determine the impact it may have on our students, faculty, and staff both abroad and at home on our 64 college and university campuses,” the statement said.

    “As always, our commitments to diversity, equity, and inclusion are unwavering. Our founding principles and support for undocumented students, restated by the SUNY Board of Trustees at its meeting last week, continue to guide our actions as we review and react to new federal mandates with regard to immigration.”

    SUNY officials said its leadership, as well as university police, will do what they can, within the law, to support students, faculty or staff who are affected by the order, which banned all refugees from Iran, Iraq, Syria, Sudan, Somalia, Libya and Yemen from entering the U.S. On Saturday, those with valid visas who were traveling back to the U.S. were also detained. But the Trump administration said Sunday those with green cards will now be allowed to re-enter the country.

    • I don’t think a lot of people “get” how integrated our society is with the world. You can’t unwind our interconnectedness with an orange-crayon scrawled signature on a piece of paper.

      There are a lot of parts of this policy that are damaging and it is wise for everyone who is currently in a safe place to sit tight until it is sorted out. Some people can’t – they are traveling to be with sick or dying relatives or are separated from small children; I hope the wait is not long.

      I am not sure, really, what happens next. Trump is not going to resign and take his Oval Office full of deplorables with him. And the Republican Congress will never impeach him out of fear that his rabid supporters will turn on them.

    • if I weren’t under orders to not make political phone calls at the university/on “company time” I’d call my congresscritters and say “Just how much money are you trying to pull from the University? We’ve got a lot of Muslims students paying international tuition and fees here. Ban them and the money just evaporated.”

  9. Didn’t get my walking in yesterday. I ate lunch & all of a sudden it was 2pm. Got started on making lunch for the week, which I always thought went really fast, took 2 hours. (I usually cook everything at once, so each thing seems to take less time) Anyway, I’ll have to take an afternoon off this week & do that 10 miles. Playing sweet, sexy Disappear in my head. Because Michael Hutchence.

  10. Good morning, Moosekind, and a very pretty morning it is too, with our inch of snow decorating rooftops, tree branches, the tops of cars, and the grass. It’s 30 F. now, going up to 35 F. later. Another snow shower is expected today.

    The news continues to worsen. The massacre at the mosque in Quebec City was shocking as well as tragic. One doesn’t expect our Canadian neighbors to be as paranoid as Americans, especially after Justin Trudeau generously offered to take in all the refugees rejected by this country.

    Seems as if Steve Bannon, the lumbering, unkempt bear who is Thing’s right-hand Rasputin, is really running the country and has his fingers on the nuclear codes. I can’t believe what Thing has done to the National Security Council! Did you hear about it?

    Worse and worse. How will it end?

    • The only thing that will save us – sorta – is if Republicans actually move to impeach. Sigh. Not sure that is likely.
      We all gotta hang in and keep loudly pushing back and pushing elected officials

      • Impeach is probably not going to happen, but even if it does it takes 66 Senators to remove from office. I don’t think we’d get a full third of the R Senators to vote for it. Our real hope as far as the Bannon/Putin/Trump removal is concerned is the 25th Amendment “unfit for office” – but that one’s slim too as it requires a written statement by a majority of “the principal officers of the executive departments or of such other body as Congress may by law provide” to the President Pro temporare of the Senate and Speaker of the House declaring the president be unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office. But it’s a lot faster and surer than impeachment.

  11. 26 heading for 62 – no such thing as global warming, right? – and sunny. Hoping for another 9 to 10 KWHs today. Let’s finish off the month with sunshine at least.

    Americans are good. Hillary told us so and she’s being proven right on this, too. Whether or not the good Americans can stop the evil at this point I don’t know. We shall see. We’ll stop it eventually but the sooner the better.

    Heading out to a meeting – I’ll check back and read comments when I can. Bright the day and wind to thy wings, Meeses. {{{HUGS}}}

  12. Good morning, 41 and cloudy in Bellingham. Between my aching legs and my horrified reaction to the tRump reality I need a distraction. Fortunately life is providing me with a few choices…….the “fixed” carpet was delivered on Sat. but now it’s 2.5 inches too wide. Oh well, this is their error not mine so it should get resolved today, and we’ll try to put the room back together next weekend. Hope we can all keep smiling!

    I also need to get a physical therapy referral as I can tell my legs are getting weak. The new pool is now two months behind schedule and I can’t wait much longer. I’ve had enough guidance to know how to safely exercise in the water but pain and caution is limiting what I can do by myself out of the water.

    Elliot Cohen, at The Atlantic…….

    A Clarifying Moment in American History

    For the community of conservative thinkers and experts, and more importantly, conservative politicians, this is a testing time. Either you stand up for your principles and for what you know is decent behavior, or you go down, if not now, then years from now, as a coward or opportunist. Your reputation will never recover, nor should it.

  13. Morning, meesers. Tuesday …

    It is 34 degrees in Madison with an expected daytime high of 34. Flurries this afternoon.

    I am old enough to remember when it was considered bad form to fire an Attorney General who refused to break the law. Sally Yates will be leaving the Department of Justice with her integrity intact – someday, that will matter again.

    Today is the vote on Sessions, I think. If there are any Republicans nervous about the optics of Bannon’s puppet firing people who put the constitution above the president, now is the time to stand up and be counted. I won’t hold my breath.

    January 31st! How did that happen?

    See all y’all later.

  14. Good morning Meese
    18 degrees here and snow on the way

    Got really annoyed scanning the news articles about Alexandre Bissonnette. Found several describing him as a “youngster” He’s friggin’ 27 years old.

    Those who were murdered:

    • Fox News was all over the story when it was initially misreported that the killer was a Moroccan. Once he was identified as a white supremacist with anti-women sentiments – crickets. The right-wing media will never own their part in promoting deadly hatred and giving a free pass to people who look like them.

    • I’ll say here what I can’t say at dk: all these male mass murderers have one thing in common. They’re too ugly to get a date, so they take it out on their fellow human beings.

      My friends in Montreal, who work at the university, still remember with sadness and horror how a madman killed six women engineering students on December 6, years ago. He hated women and felt they shouldn’t be engineers.

      Patriarchy! Ought to be banned.

  15. Well, yesterday was interesting. Lawrence O’Donnell had a great opening segment last night, with one of the men from Watergate…. I’ve forgotten his name, but not one of the usual people. Anyway, it was fascinating. He also said this:

    The Mt Rushmore of resistance to Trump is now all women–AG Yates, Judges Donnelly, Dein, Burroughs, Brinkema. @TheLastWord 10pm

    I need to leave early 1 day this week, but probably not today. There’s 1 person out on my team, leaving just 2, and 21 new applications. So.

    There’s this mindblowing article on astronomy. I can’t wrap my brain around it right now, but wow.

    Milky Way being pushed through space by cosmic dead zone, say scientists

    • I want to come back later and read this, another. There is so much to read! Groan. Missed the mass telephone call last night with Indivisible because they called a couple of minutes before 9 p.m. Consequently, there’s an enormous amount to read today.

  16. It’s supposed to be another pretty day (in January???) but I’m really too depressed to even be happy about it. I got my car back yesterday after work – just under $1700 as I expected – got it home and accidentally locked it. The fobs haven’t worked for years. Unlocked it with the key. The security system went to fully armed mode – opening the door sets it off, putting the key in the ignition sets it off – and the ignition is locked, car won’t start so I can’t drive it anywhere to get it fixed. And can’t even start calling people until 8 am. I don’t know how much that’s going to add to my tab to get a driveable car but I can’t afford it except I’ll have to.

    Added to that, we’ve lost two more of the writers for the Village over at DK. Once upon a time people got bojo’d for advocating 3rd party votes – now we’re getting bojo’d for pointing out how much damage 3rd party votes do. It’s hard enough to focus on how the hell to stop the fascisti without having to do it under the radar of those who should be your allies but are out to get you first. Apparently the entirety of Admin over there is/are Hillary Haters. So not sure how much longer my Village Under the Bus is going to be able to operate since they keep bojoing our writers. I certainly can’t pick up the slack – at work they turn a semi-blind eye at my community fundraising efforts. I’d get fired if I were doing actual political blogging.

    So basically I’ll wish you bright the day and wing to thy wings, Meeses, while I try to find some brightness and a bit of wind to my own. {{{HUGS}}}

    • Hi, bfitz, I feel crushed about the banning as well. Guess you and I are going to have to learn to get on Twitter. Don’t feel up to it right now, though.

      You have more than enough to do as it is, so please don’t add to your burdens even though you’re doing a great job writing.

      Agree that the admins are Hill haters as others are allowed to write with impunity.

      • Let me see if I can crank up my long-promised in-service on Twitter. I find it a better mode of political engagement because you can select who you want to interact with – and you control your own banhammer.

        It would be easier to move past the primaries if Sen. Sanders were not being elevated to deity status – and if his surrogates were not trying to change DNC rules to favor his 2020 candidacy. I see the dustups on Twitter and every once in a while I “like” a snarky Tweet but I generally try to stay away. Our coalition is big enough without the left-of-the-left bernheads.

        • Jan – I’m going to suggest to some of our Village people to check out the Moose. I have no idea if they will or not, but our Village people are all Hillary supporters. reesetheone keeps calling us “cen-dems” but his definition is not one I agree with. Basically he is saying we need to start from wherever the country is, as Bill Clinton did, and move us as far left as we can while we’re in office rather than insisting on candidates who represent where we want to be but can’t get elected, like McGovern.

          Actually I’d love to get the Village over here. We’re currently running 3 diaries a day that are a combination of community, open-threads, and action suggestions/results. But DK is bojoing our writers at a fairly fast clip – and some of our previous writers while still writing are afraid to publish through the Village Under the Bus community for fear of reprisal. But I don’t know if that will work with the way the Moose is set up – and again, I don’t know if the folks over there will be interested in moving here.

          • They are welcome to sign up and join in. We don’t have bojos here because we aren’t an open Internet free-for-all blog – registered users only.

            They can leave a comment in the check-in post and when I see it, I will release it from the queue and set them up with a user id (they should specify that).

            They should check the Moose About and make sure they know a little about our culture – respect for opinions, pragmatism, civility.

            I would add that we try not to diss people on other blogs by name – for those who write in both places, it puts them in an uncomfortable position.

          • Hi everyone, welcome to all I too have been suspended for a week, but will probably stay here.

          • {{{Philly76}}} – now all we have to do is ask Jan how to do “Village-type” post/diaries so we don’t take up all the space in the check in diary. So good to see you.

          • All the writers online this morning and several of the frequent commenters have gotten warnings from DK Admin saying that our Village purpose seems to be re-litigating the primaries and we need to come together to fight Trump or we’ll face “administrative sanctions” – which is what happened to rto and Batch. So the berners are accusing us of doing what they are doing and Admin is being their enforcement arm. I have no idea where this will lead. As the person who created the community in the first place and also a frequent commenter, I may end up being banned. So much for community work. Well, if I am, I am. The Pootie diaries can most certainly go on without me. The community needs list and Kos Katalogue work won’t but I can’t help that. sigh

          • I think that relitigating the primaries themselves is counterproductive but you can’t ignore the damage done by third partiers and puristas. We have DNC chair to elect at the end of the month and who we put there is important because we have to change the rules that allowed a non-Democrat, a guy on the record as believing that both parties are the same, to run for the nomination. It is not a shock that when he lost many of his followers took a crap in the punchbowl.

            I blame Bernie Sanders for not explaining more carefully to his people that there are only two parties in the general election and every vote that is not for the Democrat is for the Republican.

          • You don’t know how well the Village folks are going to fit in here! rto did a short series of “here’s what we did wrong” – totally ignored by the folks accusing us of Hillary worship – but what he was targeted for was saying exactly what you’re talking about – the damage 3rd Party voters (and Bernie is a 3rd Party person) did to us.

          • Good idea.

            Just warn them that this is not a spot to sit and gripe about folks at Orange :)

          • Denise…. did my year there, had fun, moving on! No griping from me… Scout’s honor!

          • Will do. It usually takes stimuli from outside a Village diary to start the griping :)

          • Hello! Is this thing on? Signed up for WordPress, followed motley moose and dropping a dime:)

          • I’d have dropped by sooner – and told everybody over at the Evening Edition – if I’d known Jan was going to be this fast getting you guys in.

  17. Good morning, Meese. Feeling as subdued this morning as the sky outside my office window—it’s blue, but covered with a white film of cloud. (That’s kind of a metaphor for our country right now, only that cloud is black.) Anyway, it’s 31 F. now, going up to 49 F. today.

    Every morning when I wake up I wonder, like the late Dorothy Parker, what fresh hell we’re going to endure that day. Is Thing trying to rush all these rules through in the first 100 days because he knows he’ll be impeached? The news about the 15% of the Russian oil company came to light. This morning it seems that Ukrainian villages are being attacked.

    So we now have a country in which the rule of law does not prevail, where the people in the State Department are being told to quit if they don’t like the new regime, where Customs and Border Patrol refuse to enforce the stay orders from the courts, where Bannon ousts the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the Director of National Intelligence from the National Security Council…words fail.

    Y’know what? I think we’re going to have to storm the Bastille to get President Bannon and puppet Thing out.

  20. Good morning, 30 and mostly clear in Bellingham. I’m already wishing today were over…..and I don’t think another cup of coffee will fix it!

    Feels like tRump has been squatting in the Oval Office for years…..

    Might be time to see if some primrose therapy will help lift my spirits. It’s still too cold to plant outside but I could bring spring to the porches.

    Best wishes to all :)

    • Well, hrc may have taken a step back from politics (for now) but her legacy and her 47 years of work haven’t. Going to be tough keeping up with Donald’s madness, but if dems stay detirmined and focused, he will pay in 18

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