Week-long Welcomings from Moosylvania: Dec. 20th through Dec. 26th

December 20, 2015 JanF Community 115

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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42 Comments

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

    It is 26 degrees in Madison WI, on its way up to 42. Mostly cloudy skies are in the forecast.

    Have a great day, all y’alls!!

  2. 36 here in Saugerties

    Will be back later – have orange Sunday tending to do
    Have a good day folks!

  3. It is really nice to have a morning to sit & not have to dash off to work or exercise. Watching MSNBC & eating breakfast. Church later, then clear out the dvr & a long walk. Must do mid-week walks this week, yesterday was harder than it should be; because I didn’t do my other workouts last week. I only have a 3 day workweek, so I’ll set the alarm early & walk before work, then walk on Thurs & Fri.

  4. Morning, Meese—it’s lovely here, 38 F. now in NoVa, going up to 50 F. later. This is a drive-by too, as I need to get ready to take Miss Pink Cheeks to Oatlands for “Tea with Santa.”

    Won’t be able to read the important posts here and Denise’s at GOS until this afternoon, when I return. Have a great day, everyone!

  5. Good morning, 41 and raining in Bellingham. I enjoyed a nice Christmas evening last night, wrapping the grand kids gifts while watching the Dem’s debate. The quality of the conversation is in stark contrast to the dreadful R’s and give me hope for my families future.

    Kevin Baker, at the NYT has an interesting historical perspective re our tumultuous political history. Unfortunately Trump and his ilk are part of a pattern, but one our country can ill afford to repeat.
    a href=”http://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/20/opinion/campaign-stops/political-party-meltdown.html?action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=opinion-c-col-right-region&region=opinion-c-col-right-region&WT.nav=opinion-c-col-right-region” rel=”nofollow”>
    Political Party Meltdown

    • Ed Kilgore, at New York News and Politics, has a good summary of last night’s debate.

      The Force Was With Hillary Clinton in the 3rd Democratic Debate

      All in all, the debate did nothing to change the dynamics of the Democratic contest, and much of what was said will soon be forgotten. There will be another debate in January, and then we will find out if Bernie Sanders really is counting on his field organization and an exceed-the-expectations strategy instead of any game-change-y debate moments to close the gap with Clinton. As for HRC, she’s already regained the “inevitability” factor she came into the Invisible Primary carrying. Even if Sanders somehow wins Iowa and New Hampshire, Clinton still has a far more plausible path to the nomination, thanks to her standing in the many states that are not as honkified and activist-dominated as the first two. But the whole world will still be watching her for a stumble. It did not happen at St. Anselm’s College.

      • heh – I spit my coffee out when I read ” honkified and activist-dominated ” – thanks!

        • Good thing I wasn’t drinking anything when I read it – talk about major keyboard damage! :)

        • Ed Kilgore has a unique perspective from the Democratic Party real-life campaign trenches and from his native Georgia (he now lives in California). He can be counted on to cut through the bs and provide a pragmatic view of the political landscape.

          He is not very impressed with our current whiter-than-white first in the nation primary states. I wish the DNC would have the guts to have a real bellwether state in the first month of the primary season instead of this ridiculous Iowa and New Hampshire kabuki. Iowa does not even pick delegates from their caucuses. It is all about bringing in the cash for one of their big sources of revenue every 4 years. Meh.

  6. morning all – another coolish morning here but getting warmer for the rest of the week – 80 degrees on Christmas Day, thanks climate change!

    princesspat, thanks so much for that link to the Kevin Baker piece, it is excellent. I can think of another big example of his “4 party system” working for the public good prior to 1990- the Social Security refinancing bill of 1983, that I worked on myself. The system was going to be unable to pay benefits by late summer – the trust fund was going be totally depleted and tax revenues wouldn’t have covered benefit obligations – and we had a President Reagan in office who wanted to eliminate Social Security altogether (he told my boss, Dan Rostenkowski, that in a car ride on the way to signing the eventual bill, to Rosty’s astonishment, as he told us about it later). Yet the parties pulled together, Democratic House and Republican Senate, and we put a bill together and passed it in 3 months – we worked nonstop from January thru late March and put the financing in place that has held the system together for the succeeding 32 years and counting. I cannot imagine that happening today.

    Ok, off to check out Dee’s diary at GOS – everyone have a great day!

    • Actually, I can see the parties pulling together to save Social Security if it were in crisis because, as much as they protest, and as much as Paul Ryan, granny killer, is the (hairy!) face of the Republican Party, the olds are reliable voters. I read this piece a while back and, while it probably includes a lot of wishful thinking, it could be used to help us regain the majority in Congress. It will become an issue if we make it an issue by talking about it:

      For two presidential cycles and during midterm elections as far back as the mid 1990’s, older voters have given more votes to Republicans than Democrats. This will change in 2016 and it will change dramatically. Older voters will support Democrats in 2016.

      The reasons for this sea change are simple. The Republican Party has fundamentally gone off the deep end. Nearly every single Republican presidential candidate offers a harmful and dramatic set of changes for Social Security that will, without question, lower benefits. And lowering benefits means less money in beneficiaries’ monthly Social Security checks. To add insult to injury, many of these same Republican Presidential hopefuls suggest an equally bad set of ideas for Medicare that will give seniors a more expensive and less accessible health care system.

      Every single congressional district, even the most gerrymandered red ones, have Social Security retirees in them … and people whose parents and grandparents are Social Security retirees in them. If they vote, we kick the teabaggers to the curb. Granny don’t care about no stinkin’ guns … she wants her SS check deposited in her checking account every month.

  7. Afternoon Meeses – 47 at dawn, or what passed for dawn as it’s been cloudy all day, 53 now and apparently planning on staying there until tomorrow at dawn. sigh. Hung the sheets out since it wasn’t actually raining (or even misting) to get blown about a bit, then brought them in and hung them by the fire for the last bit of drying. Appreciated the Kilgore article but can’t seem to get the Kevin Baker one. Will try again from work tomorrow. Living room’s getting chilly so logging off. Hope everyone has a lovely what’s left of the weekend. {{{HUGS}}}

  8. Thank you Geordie! Keeping Social Security funded is important work. We are now grateful recipients and I want my children to have the same support when they are of age.

  9. Good morning, meese! Monday …

    Happy Solstice! The solstice occurs at 4:49UTC on Dec. 22 which is 10:49 tonight, Central Time, and 11:49pm Motley Moose Time.

    I brought basement cat and ceiling cat back to celebrate:

    Oh Hai, the Returning Light!

    It is a rerun (updated with dates) because the holidays – and their celebratory posts – are on an infinite loop … or more precisely, the Wheel of The Year. ;)

    See all y’all later!

    • Loved the post, Jan, just read and fierced it.

      What is this “Oh, Hai”? Cats are notoriously poor spellers, of course. Were they trying to type, “Oh, hail the returning light?”

      I need to finish writing a story about a cat this morning, come to think of it, although the cat in question won’t be writing anything as the story unfolds.

  10. Preparing to celebrate tonight – a blessed solstice to all.

    35 degrees here in Saugerties.

    Glad to see this tweet from POTUS

      • I can’t re-post it easily – the format differences are really a challenge – used to be easy – now – it would be too time consuming…and I’m buried in 3 deadlines atm :(

  11. Good morning, Moosekind! It’s a dull grey December morning here in NoVa, current temp 39F, going up to 56F today. Tomorrow we get blessed rain. The temperatures here are finally low enough to kill my brave little pansies, which have been showing their black, purple, and yellow faces from October until now.

    Planning a day of writing, as tonight Miss Pink Cheeks will be with us. Tomorrow she and I will go to her cousin’s house to make gingerbread cookies. Today she went to work with Mommy at the FCC downtown. I expect the poor little mite will be tired by the time she’s dropped off here.

    So now there’s a brouhaha because Secretary Clinton can’t “prove” that The Trumpet’s Islamophobia is attracting new recruits to Daesh? The lamestream media pick the most peculiar things to get upset about. Those of us who are rational are upset because the moderators asked stupid questions Saturday night instead of questions about the dangers women face from wild-eyed right-wingers who shoot people outside women’s clinics, police who murder people just because they have dark skin, and about global warming, which is ruining the retailers’ Christmas because no one wants to buy snow gear when it’s 70 degrees outside. Faugh!

    Wishing a good day to all in Moosylvania and happy thoughts about Winter Solstice tonight!

    • I believe the Clinton Fact Checking is intended merely so that they can put “Liar” and “Hillary Clinton” in the same headline. Of course if a Republican had said it, the media would be calling it what it is: a rhetorical flourish to emphasize an important point.

      If that’s what Republicans want to run on, that Trumpeting religious hatred won’t lead to further alienation of Muslim youth, fine. Most sensible people know better. The Republican base and their echo chamber will simply be in for a rude awakening in November when they realize that ordinary people stopped bothering fact checking them months ago and simply started tuning them out.

      No snow here, either. I forgot my weather report: 41 degrees in Madison on its way up to 43 … rain in the forecast.

      Have a lovely day!

  12. It is warm this morning, but I’m wearing a long-sleeved shirt because it has a Mary Engelbreit Santa on it. And shoes not sandals because Christmas socks. When I woke up, my brain was playing the Chieftains Bells of Dublin. 3 day work week. I brought my stuff for walking after work, but it may be a short one, because my walking group has a Christmas party at 6:30. Of course I slept poorly. Now drinking strong tea & eating oatmeal. Wonder how busy we’ll be.

  13. Morning all! LOVE the solstice post, JanF, wonderful stuff and great pics! Indeed, LOLcat is a great internet timesink, for sure!

    I don’t know how specific Hillary was in the debate about Trump and ISIS – if she said he was being featured in recruiting videos, I wish she’d had something concrete to back that up, as she better than anyone knows how her every word gets picked apart. If she was more general about it – “Trump is their best recruiting tool”, well, that’s pretty close to what Pres. Obama has said as well, and the reaction is just typical CDS stuff to me.

    Have a good day everyone and Happy Solstice!

    • Yes, I am sure that she does know this: “she better than anyone knows how her every word gets picked apart”. I thought she said it in such a way that did not lead one to think that she had seen actual recruiting videos using Trump’s words but just as a general statement that they easily could be. Let me go see if I can find a transcript of the debate.

    • Here is the transcript and the snippet:

      … we also need to make sure that the really discriminatory messages that Trump is sending around the world don’t fall on receptive ears. He is becoming ISIS’s best recruiter. They are going to people, showing videos of Donald Trump insulting Islam and Muslims, in order to recruit more radical jihadists.

      Well, it sure looks like she said that! She probably should have inserted a “could” suggesting that “they could easily be going to people, showing videos blah blah blah”. Or “would be able to show videos”? Too bad people are not perfect when they probably speak a million words a day. And too bad also that the moderators were so focused on their own questions and not the responses that they couldn’t be bothered to ask Secretary Clinton right then and there what she meant.

  14. 58 at dawn, 60 now and not expected to get much higher today, more sunny than not so the temps will start dropping as soon as the sun goes down. Think it will be warm enough to walk home for a change so I wore my walking shoes. Got half a dozen messes to deal with but am stuck until I get an answer from somebody so I figured it was time to check in :) Definitely enjoyed the solstice diary – good things bear repeating.

    Glad Hillary reined in her people over the data theft, accepted Bernie’s apology and said OK, let’s move on to stuff that’s more important to regular Americans. The poor put-upon media had to run with another anti-Hillary headline instead of a big fight at the debate. Also 3-day work week here – and a no-day work week next week so I’ll be hit-and-miss as far as checking in then. University will reopen on 1/4/16. But I’m here now. Everybody have a good week, however you wish to define it. {{{HUGS}}}

  15. Good morning, 41 and cloudy in Bellingham. I slept in this morning, and the grand girls quietly waited for me to wake up. We’re having a nice moment of Christmas music, hot chocolate for them and coffee for me, and making Christmas cards for my sister. They chose to go to the bookstore for lunch instead of the Star Wars movie so that’s what we’ll do next. It’s so good to have this time with them.

  16. So with his latest attack on Hillary’s possible reason for arriving onto the stage later than the other candidates, after a commercial break (“I know where she went — it’s disgusting, I don’t want to talk about it”), can we just agree this man is controlled by his 5 year old id and has no limits on what he’ll say? And he followed that up referring to her loss to Obama as “she got schlonged” – good god, he is just vulgar to the core. I can only think he’s already written off most of the female vote, because does he really think older women, in particular, will find this as funny as his audience apparently did? I am beyond appalled.

    https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-politics/wp/2015/12/21/donald-trump-calls-hillary-clinton-disgusting-for-using-the-restroom-during-a-debate/

    • The female vote that he is attracting delights in this sort of talk! It is the Don Rickleization of politics. All of his supporters ooh and ahh over each new insult, the more disgusting the better. This is ultimately “Survivor: Presidential Cage Match” and they are not looking for the leader of the free world but someone who punches people they don’t like and kicks them off the island. His followers also have the id of 5 year olds.

      The good news is that it will be very easy for Hillary Clinton to stay above this fray. Her opponent’s words really need no rebuttal.

      Latest poll: Hillary 40% Trump 29% – the rest are staying home or voting for someone else (14%). There is not enough aluminum powder in the world to clear what he has Etch-a-Sketched; it is scratched into the screen. He cannot win a general election.

      Here is an interesting article by Martin Longman (Booman) at WaMo about the dilemma the Republican Party faces if Trump wins the nomination. It links back to a longer piece at Politico (grab some grains of salt) that suggests that the Republican Party may have to divorce itself to survive, citing down ticket losses if people stay home. Martin:

      On the right, the establishment in this country is trying to come to terms with the fact that the Republican Party seems increasingly poised to nominate someone who it would simply be irresponsible to make president of the United States. And, as greedy and short-sighted as they may be, and as much responsibility for their own predicament as they may have, they aren’t prepared to argue that Donald Trump would be an acceptable leader. […]

      As much as they might dislike Hillary Clinton, and as frequently that they will predict that she’d be a disaster as a president, they seem to agree that she’d be less of a risk than Trump.

      The Politico piece includes an interview with Dan Shnur, a former California Republican (who knows first hand about extinct parties. His recommendation is to run a third party Republican candidate:

      He argues “a Trump nomination would virtually guarantee a third-party campaign from a more traditional Republican candidate.”

      Why a Republican? The short answer is to save the party over the long term. “It’s impossible to conceive that Republican leaders would simply forfeit their party to him,” he says. “Even without the formal party apparatus, they’d need to fly their flag behind an alternative, if only to keep the GOP brand somewhat viable for the future. Otherwise, it would be toxic for a long, long time.”

      I actually think that the Republican Party is not ready to admit that they created the sludge pit for someone like Trump to rise out of and become their standard bearer. It is going to take a landslide, a la Goldwater, to force any reckoning. If people stay home in droves and they lose Congress, it is difficult to see how they remain viable in their current incarnation. There really are multiple political parties in the current GOP because it is a coalition of people united against rather than for something. The glue that holds all of them together is unstable.

  17. Good morning, meeses! Tuesday …

    It is 33 degrees in Madison, on its way up to 38. Morning fog and afternoon clouds are in the forecast.

    TECHNICAL NOTE: WordPress is pestering me about an upgrade to the new version 4.4 so I will probably do that early Friday morning while none of the creatures are stirring, not even a moose. :) This will require that I run full backups and possibly disable some of our add-ins so if the site looks odd you would be wise to check-in later. I expect to be done by 8am Eastern if everything goes well. The update has security enhancements as well as new embedding features to make it easier to share content from site to site in comments and posts. More here if you are interested. The new version is named “Clifford” after jazz trumpeter Clifford Brown. Here is a little Stardust:

    See all y’alls later!!

  18. Good morning Meese.
    Finished all my writing assignments – so can concentrate on grading papers :(

    Just a reminder – Black Kos is on holiday hiatus – so won’t have a Tuesday’s Chile.

    46 degrees and rainy here in Saugerties. Looks like we’ll have rain on Christmas for our yearly drive over to Philly for family dinner. At least it isn’t ice.

    Pig Trump is going whole hog against Hillary
    http://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2016-election/trump-hates-journalists-claims-he-would-never-kill-them-n484226

    GRAND RAPIDS, Michigan — Donald Trump launched a vulgar attack on Hillary Clinton late Monday, including a sexually derogatory comment about her being “schlonged” by President Barack Obama in 2008.

    “Even her race to Obama, she was gonna beat Obama,” the GOP frontrunner told a rally in Grand Rapids, Michigan. “I don’t know who would be worse, I don’t know. How does it get worse? But she was gonna beat — she was favored to win — and she got schlonged. She lost.”

    Trump also made crude references to Clinton’s bathroom break during Saturday’s Democratic debate, describing it as “disgusting.”

    I suppose I should have expected no indictment in Sandra Bland’s case.
    http://www.latimes.com/nation/nationnow/la-na-nn-sandra-bland-grand-jury-20151221-story.html

    :(

    Mall of America is still trying to block the upcoming Black Lives Matter protest.

    http://www.businessinsider.com/the-mall-of-america-is-suing-black-lives-matter-protestors-2015-12

    Off to make a pot of coffee – seeya later

    • Trump is a pig but, really, his party is a party of pigs so there is no downside for him to get more and more disgusting.

      And the press loves it because it is controversial and generates page hits from the incident, the reaction to the incident, and the reaction to the reaction to the incident. It is like the old pie fights on DK:
      1. Person A questions Person B’s whatevers
      2. Person B lashes back
      3. Person A’s friends lash out at Person B for lashiness
      4. Person B’s friends come to the defense of Person B and lash out at Person A and Person A’s friends
      5. Person C writes a “can’t we all get along?” post
      6. Person A’s and Person B’s friends attack Person C
      7. Bob Johnson writes a post making fun of everyone
      45 million pagehits later, nothing is settled except that it will happen again … soon.

      Digital media wins, the American people (and DK!) lose because the level of discourse was just ratcheted down one more notch.

  19. ATX north

    Today’s Christmas music in my head is Oi To The World, which I love. Funny, fun, bouncy. And yes, it’s what my brain was playing to me when I woke up.

    “If God came down on Christmas Day
    I know exactly what He’d say
    He’d say “Oi to the punks and Oi to the skins-
    But Oi to the world and everybody wins!”

    So very in the Christmas spirit.

    I am so very walking this evening. I brought my stuff, and if I don’t walk today (& tomorrow & at least Thursday also) I will pay for it Saturday morning.

    Did y’all see this from NASA?!!?!? So cool — the Space Station crew as Star Wars people.

  20. Good rainy morning, Meese! It’s 52 F. on a grey day in Northern VA, going up to 61 F. It’s a perfect morning to go over to my niece’s house so Miss Pink Cheeks and her cousin, Mr. B., can make gingerbread cookies.

    Miss PC spent the night with us after going to work with her mother yesterday morning and visiting the DC National Zoo in the afternoon. She saw a panda and a huge turtle, so she’s very pleased with life just now.

    Yesterday I finally got my Yule newsletter out. Will mail a few but most went by email. Have already received some replies. I used to do the whole Christmas card thing but it became tedious writing out family news on so many cards. It was also expensive, considering that many of our relatives live on other continents.

    Feeling excited because Daughter-in-Austin and her fiance, who visited here at Thanksgiving, have applied for a marriage license and will marry on Christmas Eve! No forgetting that anniversary, I’m sure.

    Yes, I’m as disgusted as anyone else with the Trumpet’s latest toot. What a loathsome slimeball he is. In a way it’s fascinating that he has such a childish personality. Speaking of children, Secretary Clinton is going to be a grandmother again! She won’t have time to babysit much, I’m thinking. :)

    Denise, I must go to GOS and read your Sunday post. So much has happened in the last few days that I haven’t had a lot of time to spend on blogs, but I don’t want to miss your post on Muslims and their plight in this country. Jan—groan! What a way for you to have to spend your free time, juggling WordPress! Yesterday it forced me to clear my cookies before it would let me in here, with the result that I have to sign in all over again at other sites.

    Bfitz, we’ll miss you during the Christmas holidays, hope you’ll enjoy your time off! Geordie and anotherdemocrat, hope it gets cooler for you. It’s going to be 70 F. here on Christmas Eve. Princesspat, hope your weather won’t be too fierce and that you and RonK can enjoy time with your grandchildren.

    A good day to all—later!

    • I don’t mind keeping up with the WordPress maintenance updates for the Moose. I have a number of WordPress web sites that I maintain so it just adds more bullet points to my resume (“survived 4.4 upgrade!!”). :) Christmas is not my holiday so it is just another work day for me, although one that is usually blissfully quiet as my clients are not working.

      Maybe this fix will fix the Safari interface. I know what a PITA that is for you.

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