Week-long Welcomings from Moosylvania: November 8th

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 (usually Saturday night with a Sunday date). 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 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 (right before “Leave A Reply”) and use the Pages Tool, shown here with 3 pages of comments available.

COUNTING DOWN THE TIME UNTIL DECENCY RETURNS …

34 Comments

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

    Morning low of 55 degrees in Madison WI with an expected daytime high of 72. SunnyPartly cloudy skies are in the forecast.

    Have a great day, all y’alls!!

  2. Sunday Meese. 40 going up to 73 here in Kingston NY

    Madam Vice President, Kamala Harris

  3. Puerto Rico – Paper towels

  4. Wow, yesterday was amazing. Loved watching all the celebrations, and the speeches from our incoming POTUS & VPOTUS were everything. I love that Biden has orders lined up the first day to undo thinks that can be undone by executive order. Today’s agenda: church (which will be full of joy — I was thinking yesterday about the 1st service after the 2016 election felt like ones after a disaster or terror attack, today’s will be the opposite); cooking, and once again I’ll try to get in some exercise this afternoon.

    • The response from around the world is gratifying. I remember vividly the international front pages when George W. Bush was “re”-elected in 2004 – front pages questioning how we could be so stupid as to give 4 more years to what was at that time the worst president in recent history. Seventy-million Americans tried to repeat that embarrassment but we outnumbered them and out maneuvered them, rebuilding the blue wall that Bernie Sanders kicked over.

  5. It’s 68 going to 73 on this glorious if cloudy morning. It’s such a relief – held breath let out, shoulders dropped down from my ears kind of relief – to know that in just over 10 weeks we can get to work. We still need to fight for GA – runoffs in January – to give them the tools they need to do the job of course. & They are working now. Getting plans in place, getting the staff and whatever is needed to implement them. But we’ve been watching all the evil we knew was coming as of 11/9/2016 and not being able to do a thing about it. In just over 10 weeks we can. And we know our concerns will be heard whether or not they can be attended to immediately, not just laughed over. OK, we landed, we got off the beaches. Now we see if we can do what’s needed to win the war. But we have the chance.

    I’ve got about half done but there’s pumpkin bread in the oven and the house is beginning to smell lovely. Bright the day, Meeses. {{{HUGS}}}

    • If we can win at least one of those Georgia Senate seats, there is a possibility that Susan Collins would respect the will of the voters of her state who elected Joe Biden president. 49+Collins+VP Kamala = 51. I am not going to rely on Susan Collins to do the right thing but anything is possible. We need to fill the cabinet with good people and not give Mitch McConnell veto power over the Biden Administration’s executive branch. We have some strong pickup opportunities in 2022 and can probably wait for the courts (McConnell can’t nominate, he can only block or confirm); we can’t wait to fill the the good government posts that have been depleted during the tRump years.

      • I trust Collins as far as I can throw her. She lost the benefit of the doubt a whole lot of years ago. Mopshell’s got a diary over at DK quoting a legal expert who says Joe’s actually got an option that McConnell & the Rs really aren’t gonna like. If McConnell tables Joe’s appointees from the getgo/refuses to bring them to the floor for vote, Joe can “assume” McConnell’s waived the Senate’s right of advise and consent (as they’ve done with lower-level appointments since forever) and install his people. McConnell will then have to go to Court – in DC – over that, & the Courts are not likely to rule McConnell can just not bring appointments up for a vote. Either the Senate does advise and consent or it doesn’t but it can’t just block. If that happens, the Rs’ favorite tactic of blocking by not bringing things to the floor at all just got shot down. (I hope Joe’s legal people are paying attention to this guy.)

        • I hope that the strategy is available. I don’t doubt that Biden’s team has quite a few people steeped in Senate rules – it’s where he came from. I would like to see the headline “McConnell choose to waive the Senate’s right to advise and consent” and watch his members scream. You know that they are looking forward to bloodying Biden’s choices even though my guess is that for 90% of them, they will have already been confirmed by at least one Senate and there won’t be any surprises. I really REALLY want Susan Rice at State and I hope that Joe Biden does not give in to the Republican haters. He didn’t in his VP pick, so there is hope.

  6. Good Sunday morning, Moosekind. Sunday mornings are always busy for me, but now I have a chance to sit down for a while. It’s another lovely day, although polluted: the air quality index is not good for sensitive groups. Right now it’s sunny and blue-skied, with a current temperature of 61 F., on its way up to 75 F.

    Could NOT get to sleep until about 1 a.m. despite going to bed at 10 p.m. and taking just one sleeping pill. Woke up at 20 minutes to 6, got up. I’ve got a loaf of bread rising in a pan on top of the oven.

    Yesterday was the happiest I’ve felt for a while. Today, although I hope to get out for a walk, will be quite laid back.

    Wishing a nice, quiet day to all at the Pond.

  7. Good morning, 41 and partly sunny in Bellingham. I’ve cried tears of relief, watched too much tv and read too much twitter so today needs to be a quiet day. Loved talking with my grandkids last night…..they feel so much better re their future and so do I!

    Best wishes to all.

    • My daughter heaved a sigh of relief knowing that, at least for the next 4 years, she does not have to worry about how the federal government treats immigrants and people of color. She can finish college, get a job in the sciences and hope that she and her GenZ cohorts can keep America from ever again going to that dark place.

    • And yes on “too much TV”. I never watch political TV because many of the guest choices make me angry (MSNBC is the only acceptable cable channel, no CNN and certainly no Fox.) I was glued to the TV for election returns and had to put up with the Republicans that MSNBC felt the need to give a microphone to including Morning Joke and his pals. I will probably watch a bit more this morning or at least have the scrolling updates on muted and then go back to watching sports, weather feeds, and HGTV.

  8. Good morning, meeses! Monday …

    It is 61 degrees in Madison with an expected daytime high of 72. Sunny this morning then clouds moving in this afternoon. Tomorrow it will rain and then we will be back to more typical November temperatures on Wednesday.

    My first glance at the news headlines shows that the media is still stupid and out of touch. People wonder why the 75 million (and still counting) who voted to oust Donald Trump are not embracing the 70 million who voted to kill us and those we love? Gosh, what would make us feel that way? Here is what I said elsewhere:

    What the 70 million people who are upset because their candidate did not get elected don’t realize is that Joe Biden’s words will not kill them or those they love, Joe Biden’s policies will not kill them or those they love, Joe Biden’s choices for DHS or EPA or Justice or State will not kill them or those they love. Donald J. Trump’s presidency was an existential threat to millions of Americans. Those who voted for Trump will survive, we wouldn’t have; that’s why we are celebrating and crying tears of relief.

    And that is why we cannot forgive or forget. We will need to beat these people in 2022 and 2024 – with an electorate inspired by their own success in 2020 – crush them, burn down their party and salt the earth where it once stood. If any of them want to join us – or at least not actively try to stop our surge towards decency – fine. If Joe Biden wants to reach out to them, fine. I will not.

    I have a busy Monday ahead of me as I basically blew off my to-do list over the weekend and only did the minimum required to keep my Inbox from bursting into flames this morning. I will soon find out if I missed anything as I start my transition from nervous ballot counter to normalcy! I am already sleeping better.

    See all y’all later!

  9. Good Monday morning, Moosekind! When I got out of bed at 6 it was like Brigadoon outside. I fully expected to see bagpipers in kilts emerge from the fog, playing “Highland Laddie.” At this writing (nearly half-past 8), much of the fog has dissipated. The woods across the way are still misty and the sun is beginning to shine through, so the whole scene looks like a watercolor wash. The screens on the porch are still spangled with mist-beads and lawnmowers are making a racket. Better now than naptime!

    Had a better sleep, so I’ve more energy this morning. Pleased to report that I did finish a draft article and sent it to the subject for review. She’s our best-known writer here. On Friday she’s going to have a book-signing for her latest mystery novel, so I’ll go see her to buy a book. I’ve asked the photographer to come and take a picture of the author signing books.

    Contacted another guy by email with a proposal to interview him and today will start work on something else, I hope.

    We’ve got to help Ossoff and Warnock get elected. I’ll see which actions I can take other than donating. Other than that, hoping to get a walk in today. Oh, forgot to mention that right now it’s 51 F., going up to 73 F. later.

    Wishing a good day to all at the Pond.

    • If you find a place to donate that is not Chuck Schumer’s DSCC and that will go for GOTV and registration for both elections, let me know. What I heard is that they don’t want any Yankee voices calling Georgians or postcards from blue states. I stayed out of the Senate races, they looked well funded, but I have some money I will give to whoever is doing GOTV.

      • Jan, I plan to donate to Stacey Abrams’ Fair Fight organization. That way, it’ll go toward getting out the vote rather than ads for Ossoff and Warnock.

  10. Monday Meese. 41 going up to 71 here in Kingston NY – Indian summer continues.
    The paper towel memes from Puerto Rico persist.

    • One of the members of President Biden’s COVID advisory board is Dr. Marcella Nunez-Smith who is from the US Virgin Islands and who led research studies in the territories including Puerto Rico. WikiPedia:

      Nunez-Smith was named as one of three co-chairs of President-elect Joe Biden’s COVID-19 task force, one of his first appointments as President-elect. She had previously served as chair of the community sub-committee of the ReOpen Connecticut Advisory Group giving expert advice to the state of Connecticut. She has also been working with community partners in U.S. territories Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands to overcome obstacles in testing, self-isolation, and quarantine. A paper submitted in May 2020 of which she was senior co-author considered state-level reporting of race and ethnicity of Covid cases and outcomes in the United States, for data up to April 2020, and found reporting from many states of this dimension to have been weak or lacking — an important omission, the paper argued, as from the data available it estimated that members of Black populations had encountered a 3.6 times greater risk of death, and members of Latin populations a 1.9 times greater risk of death, compared to White populations

      Already, a seat at the table for people who care about the US Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico!

      • That’s wonderful. I hope she’s including stateside Indigenous as well. Aji’s finding that – at least in NM, Dem-governored NM – they’re counting Indigenous COVID cases who test via DOH or the hospitals but not those tested via IHS. So totally pretending Indigenous on Reservations/Pueblos – their COVID cases and deaths – don’t exist.

  11. It’s 67 heading for 75 and partly cloudy so far today. Yesterday’s 7.3 KWHs brought the m-t-d to 64 which is still on track. The wind’s currently from the east and the trees are dropping their leaves all over the place. Including the oak tree, although it’s still got a whole lot left at the moment.

    Looks like Joe’s team may have to do their first recourse to Court. A twitler-appointed official is refusing to sign the paperwork for the transition to start. But the team is doing everything they need to do in preparation. They aren’t gonna sit around waiting for the grifter to give them permission. That’s what all the OMGHOF folks who think it matters whether twitler concedes or even accepts anything. There’s a process and it was designed to not have dictators, no matter what the would-be dictator wants. Whether or not Joe (or anybody else) is sworn in, twitler stops being president at noon on Jan. 20, 2021. Period. A little fact the RW/fascists/KKK/Nazis have been trying to hide for a couple of decades now. With our constitutional system we don’t have people who stay in office until they’re replaced. We have people who are in office for the length of their term. If they aren’t replaced for some reason, the office in question is empty. Cancel or postpone elections beyond the end of the term? As of the beginning of the next terms, we’d have a federal govt of the 2/3s of the Senate whose terms are still going. At the state and local levels we’d have none at all in the states whose terms are even-number years. Only states like VA who elect in odd-number years would have govt. Which is what would-be dictators sucker their libertarian followers would be a good thing. And there ends the tale.

    Anyway, we have seen the light and we know it’s the end of the tunnel, not an on-coming train. There’s another tunnel, longer and darker, to get through on the other side of this one. But we’ll have some sunshine and some rest (or at least less stress) while we get ready to tackle it. Bright the day, Meeses. {{{HUGS}}}

  12. Hi there. Late check in because I went into the office this morning. Handed in completed forms, picked up new ones. Now I’m just working at home all day. I really should pick my walking routine back up, but my allergies are still really bad, and cedar is starting to come in.

  13. Good morning, 40 and mostly cloudy in Bellingham. Our twins are 49 yrs old today so I’ve been reminiscing with family via out devices. Love having the internet connection to everyone’s thoughts and photos. The B’ham family group will be here tonight for a simple birthday dinner so I’d best get busy so I can rest my old legs before they arrive. Arthritis in my spine is compounding arthritis in my knees. Add in the BCH damage to my left leg and yes, I’m hobbling around. Don’t like it at all, but such is life.

    Best wishes to all as we start the first week of President elect Biden and Harris’s term in office!

  14. Tuesday Meese. 46 going up to 74 here in Kingston NY.

    Puerto Rico

  15. Good morning, meeses! Tuesday …

    It is 52 degrees in Madison with an expected daytime high of 61. Rain is in the forecast. The thunderstorms at 3am did not materialize for which I am grateful. I woke up a little earlier than I wanted to but what woke me up was not the existential dread that has hung over me waiting for the 2020 presidential election, just the usual “oh, I really need to get that done today” stuff. I know that the pandemic is still a huge problem but I feel like we finally have a chance to survive it. Herd Immunity was not going to solve it, the bastids. As someone on MSNBC said last night, with promising vaccinations on the horizon, if we can keep people hunkered down for just another few months – give people what they need to survive so they don’t have to leave their homes – we save the lives of people who would be dying only because of impatience and the Republican Senate and hateful administration.

    I am going to ignore Mitch McChinless because life is too short. One of the drawbacks to watching cable TV news is that they showed his speech live and I didn’t realize he was going to take a dump on the Senate floor and wipe his ass with the Constitution. I figured it out after about 3 minutes and clicked it off but I remembered why I prefer my news off Twitter clips – I can skip the icky parts more easily.

    I am also going to ignore the new lawsuits, the latest one in Pennsylvania that says that “mail-in ballots” are unconstitutional because they are handled differently than “in-person ballots.” I hope this goes nowhere, the remedy they propose is to throw out all the mail-in ballots in Pennsylvania. It seems that the time to file a lawsuit like this is when the mail-in ballot laws are passed, not after they have been used in an election. I hope there are sanctions or at least shunning of the people who signed that lawsuit.

    I did not get anything done yesterday. Strike that, I did get one thing done but it wasn’t what I should have been working on! So today I need to send out “sorry about your project, I was kind of distracted” emails. I just have to decide how far to push them back, I am leaning towards the weekend but I really want to be realistic. I am finding that weekends doing nothing of consequence suit me!

    See all y’all later!

  16. Good morning, all. I’ve really got to get back into my walking routine. Sigh. Today’s plan: just work. Not logging out early & walking in the evening because our high will be 88.

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