Week-long Welcomings from Moosylvania: Feb. 12th through Feb. 18th

February 11, 2017 JanF Community 208

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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59 Comments

  1. Good morning fellow Meeses! It’s a sunny 57 degrees here at work in Costa Mesa, CA.

    • Morning, Mvgal!

      By coincidence, it’s going to be 57 in MPLS/St Paul today (that’s just shy of record breaking for us).

  2. Started the day at 32 but up in the 50s now at just before 1 pm central – as you can see, I’ve been interrupted a lot today. Got 12.8 KWHs yesterday! That’s the best since early October! Another couple of days like that will make up for the 1.4 I got Tuesday. Concentrating on solar production seems to be the best way to get through this ungawdly mess the RW-corporate owned media got us into. Hoping we can learn how to circumvent them. We are not going to get enough power for long enough to do real progress until we do. sigh.

    About to be interrupted again – well, I do get paid for it, heh – so Bright the day and wind to thy wings, Meeses. {{{HUGS}}}

  3. Good morning, meese! Friday …

    It is 28 degrees in Madison with an expected daytime high of 55. Sunny skies are in the forecast.

    I had been running errands yesterday and when I got home and sat down to catch up on the news, I saw the live Twitter reaction to the Vulgar Talking Yam’s news conference. I won’t watch him “speak” and avoid news clips so Twitter is a perfect way to follow him in the news. And of course, my liberal bubble Twitter feed is filled with like-minded people so I did not see the reaction from the other side until the post-conference news tweets. For every OMG from our side, there was a WAYTOGO from the other side. Before anyone falls into “this will finally do him in” trap, realize that his base loves him and when he bashes the press, they love him even more. They think that his policies are fueling the Dow rise and that increased jobs are the result of his leadership and that people who are protesting are sour grapes losers … 84% of Republicans, those who elected the Republicans in the House and Senate, support him:

    Nothing he does or says will tarnish his image with them – they know exactly who they elected and are gleeful over our horrified reaction to him. And their representatives know that.

    Keep that in mind as we start rebuilding our party in the 50 states – Republicans will not be embarrassed into voting for our candidates. Our candidates will need to win by appealing to and energizing Democratic voters and getting those voters to the polls. We still outnumber them in sheer numbers but we don’t in actual voters. So when you see a poll showing a negative tRump effect, don’t believe it until you see the results – an electoral victory.

    See all y’all later!

    • Very little has tarnished the image of racists and haters over the years. It is no surprise to me that people un conditionally support him.

      But then I have an outsider/insider perspective on my fellow citizens – many of whom deny my right to exist.

      • That’s the thing, Dee. A lot of people who are new to politics think that decisions are based on rational thought and that surely people will see how awful this is. If political choices were rational, Republicans would have lost every election since 1980 when they ran on ripping away the social safety net and destroying the good government policies that give people clean air and clean water, build roads and bridges, promote commerce that benefits all people, and help people rebuild after natural disasters. Instead, they won by turning elections into single issues – THE DEMOCRATS will take your guns, THE DEMOCRATS want to shut down your churches, THE DEMOCRATS are giving your jobs and your money to people of color, THE DEMOCRATS are putting uppity wimmin and black people in charge of things. So even though people are voting to cancel their own health insurance and to put their grandmothers on the street and start wars of choice and lower their own wages, they can’t get past their hatred of THE DEMOCRATS. So we lose because Republicans have a simple message – hate and fear. And our message of love and tolerance doesn’t trump that. Maybe it will some day but we are not there yet.

  4. Good Friday morning Meese.
    25 here in Saugerties NY
    Headed out this morning to dentist (ugh)
    Did not watch the Orange Imposter presser – but am reading the fallout.
    His exchange with April Ryan is par for the course.

    On another note:

    • But, Dee!! All black people know each other!! The ignorance displayed by that comment is mind blowing but it plays right into the mindset that President Obama had some kind of control over every black person in America – and was responsible for their actions.

  5. Countdown clock – Time Until Trump Leaves Office

    My countdownCountdown

    • I used to think that if enough people disliked him, we could get him to resign because who would want to be so despised (impeachment is out of the question). But it is obvious now that he will never believe a negative poll or a negative story about how popular or effective his policies are. So we need a second countdown clock – to the 116th Congress elected by a midterm referendum sweeping in Democratic majorities and creating a firewall.

      • I’m not sure we will be able to sweep Congress – sigh. State houses have to be addressed as well – though Rs have time to continue voter suppression and gerrymandering.

        Though eyes are on Russia – am hoping that his China deals will be a source of impeachable info – though Republicans are turning their heads from almost everything – sheesh – what the hell will it take?

        • {{{Dee}}} – i know damn-good-and-well we’re not taking anything back here in AR. Bloody-red state voting for bloody-red congresscritters – and legislators. I live in the tiny blue dot surrounding the university. I wouldn’t have come back if my elder son (and later grandsons) weren’t here. I wouldn’t stay if I didn’t own my house. I can’t afford to live anywhere else once I’m on Social Security.

          And it they steal my Social Security I really no idea what i will do. My cref currently is less than 1-1/2 years of my current annual salary. And when the Market tanks it won’t be worth that. But i’ll figure out something.

  6. Good morning, Meese. Didn’t watch the Press Con, so have nothing intelligent to add. I keep hoping that the spooks will bring him down, somehow.

    It’s a gray morning in NoVa, with the current temp. 23 frosty degrees F., going up to 50 F. later.

    Have ladies coming to tea this afternoon and have just realized I can’t find the control for my hearing aids, so another day of frantic searching is in store.

    Wishing a good day to all at the Pond and Beyond!

    • Heh, “I keep hoping that the spooks will bring him down, somehow.” I just said the same thing in the TGIF diary.

  7. Good morning. It is going up to 60 degrees and sunny in Chicago today. February. Chicago. Weird.

    Did you see where the house met with ICE yesterday and smirk ryan had Latino members escorted out of the room. Unbelievable.

    How do we get impeachment if the r’s refuse? Most of them should be kicked out too. Hopefully if there’s an election next year, some of them will be gone.

    Off to see what the twitter’s doing.

  8. Eating oatmeal, drinking tea. Got to eat enough food that I can take something for my headache, though my stomach isn’t happy about that — it’d be far less happy if I took ibuprofen on an empty stomach. Google thinks I have a migraine, and the Mayo Clinic article says that drinking my tea may actually help so yay for that. Brain is playing Snow Patrol’s Chocolate. A total nonsense song — seriously, none of it makes any sense at all. But it’s adorable. Lyrics here – really, they’re nonsense.

  9. Started at 50 heading for upper 60s and sunny so far. Got another 12.8 KHW day yesterday and the monthly to-date is 145 – hope we do the same today, but the forecast is for clouds to roll in later. No rain, just clouds. sigh.

    Struggling to hang onto hope – I know the nation will survive this and that Love does eventually overwhelm Hate but the “eventually” part is the problem. It will take Dems coming together, working together to do it. And as much as I love my Village (both sites), I know we are not big enough. And DK deliberately and with malice aforethought fragmented the strongest Dem community they had on the site. (And with it the strongest group of responders to the community needs folks.) Watching a site that started out to “elect more Dems” turn into an Alt Left “nominate pure Dems, elect more Rs” venue is depressing – only partly for itself (I have friends in community over there) and mostly for what it shows is going on nationally. We will be the lost people wandering in the wilderness for a generation if we can’t stop that. And I doubt I have another generation in me. sigh. OK. Enough of that. I still know we will get through this and if my grandsons and beyond are the only generations who benefit from my work, it’s still very worthwhile to do.

    Speaking of work, I’d best get to it. Bright the day and wind to thy wings, Meeses. {{{HUGS}}}

    • {{{{bfitz}}}}
      DK and KOS have taken a weird turn indeed. As much as the place would aggravate me at times, in the past, I always thought we all had the same goals. The first “elect more Democrats.” Even crappy Democrats are better than Republicans, because if we have more of them than the Rs we can at least set the agenda.
      I think, over time, DK will dwindle into something along the lines of a Green Party blog. It doesn’t represent mainstream Dems.

      • {{{inkaudlay}}} – it started going down after the 2008 election when we, for a short period of time, had both the White House and a tenuous hold on Congress. Totally forgetting about Dem voter falloff in the mid-terms, Kos shifted to “better Dems” from “more Dems” and started a “purge the blue dogs” attitude at DK. AR only HAD blue dogs but we had 5 out of 6 national seats held by them. Now we only have bloody-red Rs. And DK keeps purging and purging – now anybody who isn’t Bernie-approved isn’t good enough (the insanity of wanting the approval of someone who isn’t a Dem and continually attacks the party as being R-lite seems to pass Kos and rest entirely).

        I’m afraid you are correct about DK. And the only reason I even give a damn is the communities that have been created there over the years. Maybe they can keep the site afloat until sanity returns. If sanity returns. I’m having a harder and harder time being there even in my community stuff. We shall see what we shall see.

  10. Good morning, 43 and cloudy in Bellingham. I’ve been reading around the internets, trying to find a positive story to share, but it looks like I need to go to my sewing room and stay there today.

    Sending internet hugs to all.

    • A day in your sewing room will be very restorative for you. Just remember to come out for food occasionally :)

  11. Howdy! I would like to post something, a new post, what DK would call a diary. The FAQ assumes you know how to do that and goes straight to things like linking. But I don’t see anything that allows me to post a new post. What do I do? What button do I push first?

  12. Ok, I forgot yo link my emails in to my question. So, any replies, please use this one, so answers come to my email? Thanks

    • The problem is two-fold:
      1. You must be logged in and you are not – you are commenting from your email address rather than from a logged in account. Until you are logged in, you cannot see your Dashboard (click on “My Moose”) where the tools needed to create new posts are. Look under The Moose for FAQ’s on troubleshooting login issues.
      2. You did not request to be an Author! Everyone with an account starts out as a Subscriber unless they ask to be an Author. So even when you do get logged in, you will need to be “Author”ized to post. I will modify your user account now to allow that.

      We are not like some blogs where any random person can sign up and post something – we are not equipped to handle the chaos that would result from that. So we require a user account and what WordPress calls “Roles” – Subscriber, Contributor, Author. That helps insure that we have Mooselike discourse – respect for others, civility, good spelling. :)

  13. Welcome to the weekend, Meese!

    MPLS/St Paul forecast: High of 55. Awesome! while also being weird and very climate change-y.

    • Our local TV had a graphic showing the “departure from normal” yesterday. A similar “departure from normal” in July would have resulted in a temperature of 109 degrees. Yikes! I hope this is not a precursor for summer.

      Of course there is no global warming because – two years ago Sen. Jim Inhofe stuck his head out of the ground and saw his own snowballs!

      I wish there were a way to make the impacts of climate change affect only those unwilling to help mitigate them. But sadly, we will live or die as a species because of the actions of the most ignorant among us. And even when given a chance to make difference, people fail at prioritizing their own survival – Florida and North Carolina voted for Republican Senators and a Republican president. But tax cuts – if you live to spend them.

  14. Saturday Morning Meese
    22 here in the NY Catskills – going up to 52 , which means the poles of snow and ice I have will melt today.

    Twitter browsing:

    Seeya later.

    • Good morning, Denise.

      “Eric Trump’s Winery Just Begged The Labor Dept. For Migrant Workers” in a breathtaking display of no sense of irony or shame.

    • I hope the Trump family’s crops rot in the field. You can’t executive-order away “reality” and the reality is that crops need to be picked and most Americans don’t want to do backbreaking labor for 10 hours a day in the elements. Sad!

      • I remember reading that the winery had a good reputation before tRump took over (one of the many casualties of his Amberley land deal in Virginia).

      • I was just looking at some old news coverage from Georgia and Alabama – when the anti-immigrant forces wound up stewing in poles of rotted crops

        Crops Rot While Trump-Led Immigration Backlash Idles Farm Work

        Carlos Castaneda watched one-quarter of his Napa cabbages rot in three California fields this spring as 37 immigrant laborers scheduled to arrive March 13 under a farmworker visa program were delayed by bureaucratic paperwork. He said he wants changes to an immigration system that causes his crops to rot unharvested. But he has little hope that will happen in this political climate.

        “The rhetoric that’s getting preached is pushing xenophobia,” said Castaneda, 39, whose parents are Mexican immigrants. “You can’t call an immigrant a murderer. You can’t paint them with that brush.”

        About a quarter of the U.S. farm workforce, more than 300,000 people, don’t have valid immigration papers, according to a 2009 survey by the Pew Hispanic Center. Other studies suggest the number may be more than 1 million. Proportions of undocumented workers tend to be higher in the hand-harvested fruit, vegetable and horticulture sectors, as well as large dairy farms where milking happens year-round.

        Watch This ‘VICE’ Episode About Alabama’s Harsh Anti-Immigration Laws

        Alabama immigration: crops rot as workers vanish to avoid crackdown
        https://www.theguardian.com/world/2011/oct/14/alabama-immigration-law-workers
        The day before harsh new laws came into effect, Brian Cash had 65 Hispanic men picking tomatoes. Now he has none

          • Probably most of them. tRump voters did not look beyond satisfying their need for daily hate porn: ICE raids, media bashing, sad liberals. They can rot too!!

  15. Morning, Meese! 37 right now, with a high of 56 expected. The nurseries in my area are going to have a banner year, because the alternating temperatures and lack of snow cover are going to result in a lot of plant loss this year. I hope my garden is going to be ok, since I started refurbishing/replacing them most of last summer. I really don’t want to replace my plants all over again.

    Last night, my dogs decided the best place to sleep was on top of me, rather than next to me, so I’ve been up since 3:00am. The immediate benefit is that there will be a Village post for Saturday, but I probably won’t be awake to hang out for awhile. I’m heading back to bed for a nap right now.

    • My first question was, “how big are your dogs?” Thank you for the Saturday Village post, DoReMI. Now, get a nice nap :)

  16. Good morning, meese! Saturday …

    It is 43 degrees in Madison with an expected daytime high of 54. Sunny skies are in the forecast.

    I decide to sleep in and, yikes, look at all the folks here already! I am waiting for a day when I wake up and there is not some new awful thing that the tRump administration has done and today will NOT be that day. The Republican administration released their preliminary budget and will cut PBS, NEA, Americorps.

    I don’t know who will be doing the Democratic Party’s Weekly Address other than that it won’t be anyone from Nancy Pelosi’s team. She has an excellent web site filled with statements and videos and speech transcripts. I hope whoever chairs the DNC hires a website team to give people like me a place to find inspirational speeches and calls to action and what we as a party are doing. Right now it is donate links and shopping links. :(

    See all y’all later!

    • Yeah, I’m old enough to remember when I didn’t wake up everyday wondering what atrocity our president committed during the few hours I was sleeping. Good times.

  17. Good sunny Saturn Day morning, Meese! It’s 27 F. here in NoVa under cloudless blue skies, going up to 65 F. today. Tonight is Vegetarian Night, so it’ll be Spanish omelet and salad, unless I can think of something better. I’m so lazy nowadays that all I’m going to do is heat up some mild, chunky salsa and put it on the omelet. It’s the wrong time of year to get fresh ingredients.

    But enough about that. The state of the country is so depressing that I don’t want to think about it today. Have errands to do as well as weight training at the gym, so will focus on that.

    The house is tidy enough; the ladies seemed to enjoy afternoon tea yesterday, and we have no social events for the rest of the weekend, so today I think I’ll just take some time for myself. Wishing a good weekend to all at the Pond!

  18. Sitting here thinking about my great aunt Annie – who fled slavery in Virginia to make it to Canada.

    To sit here in NY – realizing people are fleeing like this is very sobering:

    • {{{Denise}}} – sobering is not exactly the word I’d use. These Evil, Evil people – we will get rid of them. The when and at what cost are the questions. What goes around does come around. moar {{{HUGS}}}

  19. Up for last team meeting before the race. Nibbling crackers & gingersnaps. Going to ask coach about tomorrow. Still feel bad. Record warm today — it’s 60 already & will get into the 80s this afternoon. Ironic that, as a walker not a runner, this is actually great weather for me for the race. The runners heat up more than I do, I have not liked the cold years. Deliberately playing sweet, mellow Ordinary Love in my head, to help myself feel better.

  20. 45 to 65 with some sun. Gotta go. Be back later. Bright the day and wind to thy wings, Meeses. {{HUGS}}}

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