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, Motley Meese! The week begins …
It is 63 degrees in Madison WI, on its way up to 81. Partly cloudy skies are in the forecast.
Have a great day, all y’alls!!
Chris Christie wants to track immigrants like FedEx packages!!
One Twitter user mocked back …
Martin O’Malley’s campaign called Christie’s comments “dehumanizing”. Wut??!!? He is just expanding on the Trumpian theme that deporting 11 million people is simply a matter of “management”. Bar codes!!! It’s yoooge!!!
Good morning, Meese. It’s going to be in the nineties. Yuck.
Am getting to be exhausted from socializing. I feel I live in a pit stop where people arrive on their way east or west or even north. Summer is over and people are returning home or to school and this is where they refresh themselves for the long journeys back after visiting distant families. It’s great to see people but am tired. Some I haven’t seen in years and it’s interesting to see how they see the world. There are few rose colored glasses.
Hope it’s a good day for all in the Pond and beyond.
oh dear – sorry to hear about the heat ( and all the company)
It is going to be a little cooler than that up here today, and it is going to rain.
Good morning, Moosekind! It’s overcast here, going up to 90 F. I wish the Weather Idiots would stop bleating about “how beautiful” the weather is. It’s not beautiful at all. Clear skies and sunshine mean nothing when the grass is brown and all the vegetation withered.
Portlaw, sorry about all the company and the heat! It’s going to be hot all next week here. I do hope next week is summer’s last gasp and after that we’ll get days and days of RAIN. The August drought drives me crazy every year.
Peeked at this morning’s newspoop and discovered that Hillary’s candidacy is DEAD, that Biden’s going to save us all (the same Biden who voted in favor of that awful bankruptcy bill in 2005), and, uh…Jebby’s not doing well on the trail.
Just for that, I’m going out to hack more weeds. Yesterday we hacked a little too enthusiastically and killed both watermelons. One’s the size of a bowling ball and the other the size of a cannon ball. The poor old heirloom tomatoes, in a desperate attempt to escape the weeds, started climbing over the neighbor’s fence. I’m going to bring them all back. The Romas are proliferating madly, however. Even if we’re here next year, I’m not going to plant any more Romas. Have a good day, everyone!
My goodness, what pandemonium in your garden! I am sorry to hear about your watermelons. I gave up growing any melons because they take too long and are so subject to the vagaries of the weather. We have tomatoes this year but they are not ripening because we haven’t had enough warm weather. On my drive yesterday, I was listening to a horticulturist on our local PBS station talking about tomatoes and how it is best to bring them in, green or not, to finish ripening inside once we start getting cool nights. I hope that is good advice because I plan to take it.
In the meantime, we are getting hot here again starting tomorrow, with highs in the upper 80s through next weekend so maybe there will be a last-minute ripening.
Yes, when the nights are cool, bring your tomatoes in. That is, unless you like fried green tomatoes.
Ha!! Jebbie is doing awful! But not as badly as Scott Walker because Walker, while he is at 8% to Jeb’s 6% in Iowa needs Iowa to continue. Jeb has money to stay alive in the post-IA post-NH primaries … Walker has something to prove to his big-bucks donors.
There is a trap in the early polls which the mainstream media is willfully falling for (so that they can write click-bait). First, Iowa is not a bellwether of the national election (the national electorate is not that white or old or religious) or even the Republican primary (Romney did not win there in 2012). Second, when you include in the polling someone who is not even running, you skew the results. Joe Biden gets 12%. Okay, if Joe doesn’t run (pretty likely), who gets his supporters? No one knows! So is Hillary up by 7%, up by 19% or down by 5% … or maybe something in between? Let’s write a headline based on that? No, no one will click on “Who’s up in Iowa? No one knows!!!”.
I am going to post some primary election news a little later as a separate post. The DNC summer meeting exposed some rifts between the “build the party” Democrats and the “running for president” Democrats. I am looking for a software tool that will create transcripts from videos because some of the speeches need to be read.
Anything that gets rid of DWS is fine with me.
I am sure you saw that she refused to allow a vote on a resolution supporting the DEMOCRATIC PRESIDENT and the anti-nuke deal with Iran.
As the DNC chair, she can’t let her own re-election worries determine what the party does. Just like Chuck Schumer has disqualified himself from leadership roles, she needs to resign now. You are either for our party and our president or you aren’t. Period.
Plus she did an awful job in 2014.
You bet I did.
Should have added that it is because of her that I and others that I know do not contribute to the DNC. We just select the candidates we want to support and give to them.
I don’t either. I stopped giving to the national party when the DSCC was sending money to people like Ben Nelson of Nebraska … and when Rahm was picking candidates for the DCCC based on whotheheckknowswhat.
I give money to candidates who I will also vote for and I will do the picking thankyouverymuch.
I will support the national party and Democrats up and down the ballot but right now the DNC does not even have my respect.
I can’t stand her either, Portlaw. What’s up with decreeing only six debates? We should have at least twice that for Democrats! We’d all like to hear more than one point of view (except for Jim Webb, of course, whom I regard as a DINO).
I don’t get the big deal: it is not as though the debates cost money. Personally, I want to see the candidates answer tough questions. I want Secretary Clinton to become a better candidate by having to answer her critics on a range of issues, I want to hear Martin O’Malley defend his broken “broken windows” policing from his time in Baltimore, I want Jim Webb to defend the Confederate battle flag so we can eliminate him once and for all from serious consideration, I want Lincoln Chafee to answer how a guy who can’t even get re-elected governor of Rhode Island expects to win the presidency in a year that we must not, cannot lose to the Republicans, and I want to make sure that Bernie Sanders can’t just wave his hands and miraculously “get beyond the noise” and achieve reforms on gun violence because of his record of votes against commonsense gun reform.
Every time Democrats talk about and defend Democratic Party principles on national TV, we win. I suspect they are limiting them because the Republicans are limiting their’s as well. I hope the DNC changes its mind.
Denise’s post on Thurgood Marshall: Remembering Thurgood Marshall and fighting to ensure the future of the Supreme Court
We will never get a justice as liberal as Justice Marshall, or Justice Ginsberg, and probably not one as liberal as Justice Sotomayor. But the choices will narrow even more if we cannot gain back the Senate (like you, I refuse to contemplate a Republican president). Our Democratic president will be forced to compromise to get a nominee through who will pick up the votes to gain cloture but if we have the majority we will have better options. Nuke the filibuster again? Maybe it would be necessary if we had enough 4-4 ties at the Supreme Court level and no way to settle disputes at the Circuit Court level. Judicial chaos versus Senate tradition … not a difficult choice to make.
No, we will not find the likes of Justice Marshall again, alas. I am hoping for a liberal justice and am also hoping that it will be someone who did not go to an Ivy League law school perhaps someone who went to a law school at a big state university. I say this as someone who went to an Ivy League college and am certainly more than grateful for that education but I don’t think the Ivy League should dominate such an important institution. . It sends a very bad message, IMO, to most Americans who will never have such opportunities.
The stoopid … it burns:
Thanks Jan for posting a link.
I want to keep my eyes on the prize – and the Senate is part of the package.
Big weather in Bellingham yesterday and last night……rain and high winds. It’s 60, cloudy and eerily still now. We didn’t lose power and our trees survived but we have a lot of branches to clean up. I did get the pathway pruned yesterday but I had to stop when the wind started blowing big branches around. I hope our old maple trees didn’t sustained lasting damage, but for safety sake I’ll consult with an arborist. With their full leaf canopies they were really moving with the wind.
Our daughter in Edmonds was without power for 15 hours. Her garden is full of very tall trees so she has a branch mess but fortunately no harm to her house.
http://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/weather/one-person-killed-thousands-lose-power-in-windstorm/
http://www.bellinghamherald.com/news/local/article32751321.html
Hi, princesspat, thought of you immediately when I saw on TV that thousands had lost power in Washington State. Sorry about the cleanup you’ll have to do but glad your power stayed on!
Jeff Merkley (D-OR) supports the Iran deal.
https://medium.com/@SenJeffMerkley/my-statement-on-the-iran-nuclear-deal-b9a147975108
Good morning, meeses!! Monday …
It is 62 degrees in Madison, on its way up to 85. It is foggy right now but after sunrise we will have partly cloudy skies the rest of the day.
THIS is a BHD:
The native people and the descendants of the Alaskan settlers all wanted Mt. McKinley returned to its original name. But a deadender in the Ohio delegation stood in the way for 40 years insisting on the name to honor the president born in Ohio who had never stepped foot in Alaska. Finally, old white guys lose and respect for native traditions win:
Right-wing Twitter went crazy, by the way, with the president denounced as a dictator and news personalities like Greta VanSusteran asking why they didn’t leave it “up to the state”. Huh? Read much?
And in political news, fading presidential candidate Scott Walker called for a wall along our 5,000 mile northern border with Canada and the Twitter hash #CanadaWall was trending with mockery. My favorite:
Good idea!!
See all y’alls later!!
Good mornin’ Meese.
Up and drinking coffee, have school today but don’t have to leave here till 9:30 ish.
Was pleased to see this:
Mount McKinley’s Alaska name Denali is restored by Obama
Wingnut heads are exploding – of course
Good morning, Meesies.
Wonderful news about Denali.
Will check back later. Until then, be good,
Right-wing Twitter was awful!! But the responses were great, especially the ones from Jim Wright an Alaskan blogger who posts as Stonekettle:
Good Moon Day, Meese! It’s been cloudy since yesterday afternoon here in NoVa, but not a drop of rain has fallen. Current temp. is 70 F., heading for a high of all the eights. It’s hot, humid, and horrible, so today will be a good day to stay indoors.
We hacked our way through the backyard jungle again, managing to kill the two watermelons we knew about and two we didn’t. Clearly, whatever Goddess intended us to follow as a career, it isn’t farming. We’re clueless. However, guess who came to visit at tea time yesterday—a stag! First one we’ve seen around here. He never did jump over the fence, although his wife has jumped over to eat our windfall apples.
Today is a day to .pdf my Web site updates and get them to my Web guy. Will let you know when they’re posted. Wishing all denizens of the Pond a good day!
A stag!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Am so envious.
Walked 1.5 miles this morning. Still have Disappear as my earworm. Sweet, bouncy tune — helped on the way up the ramps. And wow, was he ever gorgeous — reminds me a bit of Jim Morrison. So not only is there always music playing in my head, without me thinking about it — if I do think about it, I can also watch the video.
Eating beans, drinking tea. Monday.
Good morning, 59 and raining with a light breeze in Bellingham today. We filled the truck with branches and leaves yesterday, and the Clean Green garden recycle center is still open so we had a place to take it. The city runs the program and the debris becomes compost and mulch so it returns to enrich the soil.
Between the high winds and the fires still burning in Wa. State we have had a powerful reminder re the force of nature. I hope voters and the people they elect are listening and learning!
80 at 0945 in Fay., AR this last Moon’s Day of August – had some overcast although the sun is shining at the moment. Electricity generation as of this moment is 516 KWHs, will probably hit 530 or a bit over, depending. Last month totaled 561 and the month before 568 – sliding into the dark of the year but with mostly sunny days so far not sliding fast. :)
Great news about Denali. So what else is new? about the Rs. Just got out of a meeting so haven’t seriously checked news yet. It will probably be depressing so I’ve no urge to rush it. I’ll check back when I can and hopefully read the FP stuff today (if not today, then tomorrow). {{{HUGS}}}
Good morning, meeses! Tuesday …
It is 70 degrees in Madison, on its way up to 89. Partly cloudy skies are in the forecast.
It is early … I couldn’t sleep as my head was full of September projects so I decided to get up and work on them instead of fretting about them. I will be able to take a nap this afternoon.
The president is in Alaska to do cool things and also to speak at the GLACIER conference. I will post the speech.
He was greeted at the airport by this woman, Poldine Demoski Carlo “an American author and an elder of the Koyukon Athabaskan of Alaska”. Two photos from Twitter:
Oh, and the deadender clerk in Kentucky who refuses to issue marriage licenses to people her bible tells her should not be married (
mixed races, same-sex couples) will have to either issue the licenses or step down. The Supreme Court said no to her stay request:The Kentucky attorney general is considering criminal charges against her.
See all y’all later!!
Hiya Meese.
Another really muggy hot day ahead here – humidity is at 88%.
Thanks for the Poldine Carlo story Jan.
Just finished reading a distressing story
Racism Within the Secret Service Colors Recent Threats to Obama’s Security. I have been following this issue (his security) since before he took office.
Will be back later – have to finish writing Tuesday’s Chile.
The president’s security troubles me a lot. There are a lot of really nasty people out there with a lot of hate and a lot of weapons. He should not have to worry that he is not getting the very best security in the world. :(
I had an opportunity to look at DK5, by the way, and the news is not good. The way it is set up now, there is no way to copy/paste the html code to crosspost. Their editor is completely Visual (unlike ours which allows us to compose in both Visual and Text and toggle between the two). You could copy/paste from their editor to our Visual editor but you lose videos, images, and links (it does keep the bold/italic/blockquotes). Once the diary is posted there, I can scrape it off the page and bring it here but unless you compose it here and copy/paste it there, you won’t be able to stage them yourself. I don’t know if that is something they might change some day (I know a lot of people crosspost and this might make them sad) or if it is what it is. I would be happy to screen scrape any of your posts if you let me know when something is available.
Good morning, 58 and raining in Bellingham with thankfully no wind! The PNW is still cleaning up from the regional and very damaging windstorm.
Crews scramble as thousands still in dark from storm
I’m on the list for a tree service to evaluate our old maple trees, but I’ll wait my turn because those without power and with trees on their houses need assistance first. Given the power of the winds and all the trees around us we are very fortunate to have power and a relatively small mess to clean up. It’s wet outside, but the rain is helping the fire fighters contain the massive fires still burning in Wa State and our garden is benefiting as well.
I do need to have the gutters cleaned though because they are full of leaves and needles and the overflow is causing water to seep into the basement. I’ve cleared a path for it to run into the floor drains so no water damage is happening but with all the books and fabric I have in my sewing room the increased humidity is not good.
oopsie……my check in comment posted here as a reply. I must have scrambled something when I started a reply, then remembered I hadn’t clicked “post” for my other comment. Oh well….
RonK had to go through a rather lengthy re formatting process to post his latest piece here, so he’ll leave a comment in the Mammoth post explaining what he finally did.
I saw that his piece looked different. I hope that doesn’t mean that we will be left without cross-posted diaries after DK5. :(
yikes.
Maybe I had better write here first then. You already have enough on your plate “checking” my saved pieces.
btw – TC is in “saved”
We can play it by ear. I don’t mind pagescraping if it means that we can continue to have your Tuesday Chiles here. But I know that sometimes the TC is a bigger diary that you simply contribute to so I might not know what to crosspost!
My statement was incorrect: the links do copy/paste from DK5 to WordPress. It is the photos and videos that don’t, I think because those links are unique to the DKos site and have no equivalent here.
I have been a WordPress poster since 2009 so I am comfortable with the editor; even when I was posting at DK, I would compose my posts on my own WordPress blog first. The editor on DK5 is not comfortable (I want a Preview button even though it says that what I see on the screen is what I will post … show me!). I suppose I would get used to it although I would miss the ability to hover which I understand is gone. :(
We will make it work!
You might enjoy this video: The History of Fairbanks Native Association with Poldine Carlo
Thanks Jan!
Good morning, Meese, from a hot, humid part of the Pond.
The news about the Secret Service is very disturbing. As for other news, am eager to read about President Obama and the huge global climate issues our Earth is undergoing. Will come back to read Jan’s post (thank you for doing it!) but must be off now. See you later.
Oops, just noticed that today is September. Did I miss August?
Hope it’s a good day for the Pond and Beyond.
Yes, today is September!! I am not ready either …
If you have time, view the speech. The President is on fire, adamant about the need to address the damage we are doing to our planet.
Good morning, Moosekind! I won’t even bother reporting the weather here—it’s the same in NoVa as it was yesterday, the day before, is now, and ever shall be. Ugh.
Jan, I must say that I don’t like the look of DK5 or the features. Without “Preview” I’d be sunk. Re cross-posting: that might not affect those who do what I do, which is compose the post first off-line in whichever word processing software is handy, and then copy and paste. Problem is, there’s always one more change I can think of after I view it in diary form.
Just exchanged emails with my Web guy. Part III of “Getting Unhexed” is now up at my Web site, http://goddessfiction.com, for those who would like a story along with their sandwich at lunchtime.
And happy September 1! Wonder whether Dearly Beloved would agree not to turn on GMA in the mornings while we drink our tea. The news simply infuriates me, such as this morning’s emailghaziHillaryisevilnationalsecuritythreat and the fact that Trump and Carson are at the top of the Rethug polls in Iowa. Carson is virulently antichoice.
Wishing a good day to all at the Pond and Beyond!
I know what you mean about the news. I turned the TV on late yesterday afternoon and it was on the local news. I watched it for about two minutes and then switched it to HGTV. Sheesh … killings, attacks, hate … holey moley, what a terrible way to start or end your day!
The problem with composing offline in something like Word is that if you just have words and maybe some italics and bolding, it is fine. But if you use links and blockquotes (to say nothing of photos and videos), there are no easy ways to do that in Word so you would have to use HTML code. Plus the quotes! There are straight quotes that convert fine and then angled quotes which do not. It would be so much easier if they had a Text view or even a “Copy as HTML” button. For what it is worth, I compose all my posts, except for the news stories, on my own WP site because I don’t want to leave my drafts lying around the Moose cluttering things up (I have about 100 drafts on my site … posts I started but did not have time to finish … or which I lost interest in finishing). So my “crossposts” are pretty seamless.
Just finished “Getting Unhexed” – still crying. You are a good writer.
Thanks, bfitz! Greatly appreciate the comment. :)
Walked this morning & will go to evening workout tonight. 1.6 miles. Not bad for 33 minutes.
Saw that #BackToHogwarts is trending on twitter — I can’t believe it has been 24 years.
And that, sadly, is all the thought in my head this morning.
Already 70 by 0800 CDT in Fay., AR – starting a bit hazy with 90% humidity. sigh. August electricity generation was 533 KWHs, August of ’14 was 350 with 10 panels instead of the 16 I have now. I’ll definitely read and try to get time to listen to President Obama’s talk in AK.
Just found at the library and started reading a large-print version of Hillary’s Hard Choices – and am understanding one more reason she won’t come out against TPP and keeps saying she’ll have to see it. Not only would she be “running away from Obama” – a seriously bad idea if she wants to actually win the election – but at the time she was working on it, TPP was an economic/diplomatic response to China trying to at least economically colonize south east Asia (China gets the natural resources cheap, the countries in question have to buy Chinese made good dear). Most of the ASEAN countries are at least working on becoming democratic but without our recognition and backing China is going to roll right over them. At this point she doesn’t know what fascist/corporatist garbage has been added but she knows she wants to keep the support for ASEAN part. That woman’s sense of duty is almost scary!
Hope the day goes well for everyone – and something comes your way to make you smile. {{{HUGS}}}
I think that it would be wrong for her to weigh in on a diplomatic effort she was involved in until the deal is done or not done. Her comments would change nothing and would only likely undermine the delicate negotiations underway.
There will be plenty of time for her to share her thoughts on free trade between now and November 2016.
That’s true and what I always thought was going on. The “core” of what she was working on as far as TPP is concerned just reinforces my opinion of her as a very caring, very determined woman with an almost scary sense of duty.
But there are some voters who might want to know where she stands before voting in the primaries. By November 2016, candidates for both parties have already been chosen. Actually they would probably be chosen by late summer. And that is a problem. Voters want to know and should know where candidates stand on major issues. There was a similar situation with Keystone, as you may remember
http://www.cnn.com/2015/07/28/politics/hillary-clinton-keystone-xl-pipeline/
But, as I said, voters want to know where candidates stand on important issues before they vote.. It’s a problem.
The thing about both of those initiatives is that they are still ongoing. The Keystone XL is still under review by the Obama Administration and the State Department and probably includes confidential information she was privy to and probably shouldn’t share. The TPP vote was for fasttrack negotiations and the trade deal is still being negotiated, nothing is agreed on.
Once those two things are done deals, we should expect her, and all of our candidates, to tell us where they stand. She did weigh in on the president’s Arctic drilling decision (against the president’s position) so I don’t think she is ducking the controversies.
The Trans-Pacific Trade Agreement, if I recall correctly, has some provisions in it that fixed some of the worst aspects of NAFTA, things related to job loss. They are hammering out some details with Vietnam who has a bad record of worker exploitation. If the deal makes countries like that improve working conditions and wages, that would be positive for our global community. I don’t remember what the timeline is, do you?
Don ‘t know the deadline. I do know that these are issues that are very important to those who will be adversely affected by them.
Trade agreements like this are similar to base closings: a group of people outside of the legislative bodies come up with the details and Congress gets an up or down vote … and the president can veto it.
Because of that, the trade agreement will have some things that are good and some that are bad. The trick will be to avoid throwing out any number of babies with the bathwater. If your line in the sand is environmental protections, you might vote against it if you don’t feel they are strong enough. If your line in the sand is wages, you might vote against it if the wage guarantees of our trading partners are not strong enough. If your concern is with American jobs, you look at the protections and retraining provisions and make a decision based on those.
But it won’t be perfect, just like the Iran nuclear deal is not perfect. It should be the best possible deal, one that does not make a deal just for the sake of making a deal. Once it is presented, you have to decide if no deal is better than an imperfect deal if it gives you more good things than bad things. Sausage making!!!
She did say that it was important to work with Congressional Democrats, specifically Nancy Pelosi, so in the absence of any evidence to the contrary, I will assume that she is attuned to the concerns of labor and environmentalists.
Two more Democratic Senators acting like Democrats: Sen. Bob Casey and Sen. Chris Coons, for the Iran deal..
We are at 33 now … 1 more to block the veto override.
I know we will get that vote. I just have that feeling.
Here’s who is left. Booker is a Schumerite but what the heck is going on with Barb Mikulski????
I’ve called Sen Cantwell’s office, but have yet to learn why she hasn’t made her intentions clear. She’s obviously waiting for something.
Good for you. Hope she supports peace.
Did you see what Sen Cotton said after meeting Netanyahu?
http://thehill.com/policy/national-security/252356-cotton-meets-with-netanyahu-in-israel
He is a traitor. Period. You don’t go to a foreign country and plot against your own government. But he is from the party of sedition so to him it probably seems fine. The good news is that his party will no longer be a national party after 2016 and the regional stump party that he represents will have less and less relevance. I haz spoken!
I like what you haz spoken!
A-arfen-MEN!