Week-long Welcomings from Moosylvania: Feb. 14th through Feb. 20th

February 14, 2016 JanF Community 183

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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65 Comments

  1. Good morning Meese.

    Though we missed the burst frozen pipe bullet here at home – hubby went to work and the pipes had burst at his job in NYC – destroying his computer and client files.

    Can’t wait for this winter to be over.

    Would love to hear more about POTUS’ meeting with #BLM and civil rights activists

    Also glad to hear he is going to visit Cuba – no matter what wingnut Cruz and Rubio, and the rest of the Rs have to say about it.

    Had a very big smile on my face to see this – since she is one of my Sheroes

    • Ha! I spent too much time composing my comment and you beat me to the Cuba news!!

      I saw the Delores Huerta Tweet! I wonder how long it will be before someone calls her a corporate sellout and shill for Wall Street? ;)

      I will look for news of the presidents visit with BLM (maybe a video later?). Coming on the heels of Secretary Clinton’s speech in Harlem, I am glad to see that the leaders of the Democratic Party are focusing a white hot light on civil rights. The pending Supreme Court nomination is a reminder that many “rights” are only granted after legal battles and that who the final arbiters are makes a huge difference.

    • Sorry to hear about your husband’s computer. I hope that they have data backups but even if they do, starting from scratch with a new computer – with no saved bookmarks, no desktop shortcuts, loading all the software from scratch – is a huge time suck. And that assumes that they have the physical hardware to replace it and don’t have to order something! Companies spend lots of time and energy backing up network storage but desktop recovery often gets short shrift and the lost productivity (and potential for permanently lost files that were only local) is an issue.

      • I doubt they have much backup – I will ask him when he comes home. They’ve already ordered him a new puter. Most agencies that work with homeless populations aren’t particularly hi-tech.

    • Denise, so sorry about your husband’s computer and his files! That’s awful. Were they in the cloud? Can he recover them?

      Hope things get better. Yes, it is definitely time for this winter to end!

      • I don’t know – he does have some of his data on flash drive and laptop – but the main client tracking, case report software is on his office puter.

  2. Good morning, meese! Thursday …

    It is 16 degrees in Madison on its way up to 39. Cloudy skies are in the forecast.

    The White House announced that President Obama will be going to Cuba next month, the first president to visit since 1928. It will be part of a trip to Latin America. Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio were not happy which made me happy.

    Speaking of GOP candidates, South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley endorsed Marco Rubio saying that he would make “every day a great day in America”. And Barney the Purple Dinosaur will be Secretary of Big Smiles. Haley, by the way, is not beloved of the GOP base after removing their freak flag of hate last year. Republicans in South Carolina (by 60%) wish that the South had been able to secede.

    The CEO of the company guilty of fraud and obstruction related to the chemical spill that poisoned the drinking water in West Virginia got a one month jail sentence and a $12,000 fine. The federal judge in the case, a George W. Bush appointee, said that Gary Southern was “hardly a criminal”. Hello!!! He was convicted of a crime … that is the very definition of criminal. White corporate criminals, minimum sentence. Eighteen year old black man arrested for dealing drugs, 20-year sentence. America.

    A friend found the Hillary Clinton speech in Harlem but there is no transcript so I will have to cobble together her words from news stories for my post. It was a remarkable speech in many ways and worth viewing.

    See all y’all later!

    • I looked for a transcript too.
      There are now several videos of the speech up on youtube – however a lot of TM sources focused on her coughing – rather than the speech. Argh.

      • When I googled “Clinton speech Harlem youtube”, 9 out of 10 were focusing on her coughing. :(

        I am trying to understand why the campaign does not transcribe those speeches for people who like to read the words. There is software that does it but it is too expensive for ordinary people (I went looking for some a couple of months ago because I noticed the dearth of transcripts for her speeches).

          • That’s the one I found. I mainly want to post about the role of the Democratic Party every day, not just during election years, and specifically her call for all white people to accept that they have privileges that accrue from the color of their skin. I think I can transcribe that second part myself (the first is in the Vox article).

            That is the news – I don’t need the stump speech parts.

            There is an excellent review of the speech here that has more: How Hillary Clinton Won Harlem

            What did you think of the speech? I can only assess it through my old white feminist filter.

          • I thought it was excellent. Hillary has the ability to say things about race and privilege that Obama has been constrained from doing – since his every mention of race is attacked as “playing the race card” by the right.

            Saw the Won Harlem piece – very well done. I chuckled at this:

            “Hey, soror,” a woman half-shouted a few minutes later, as she scooped food into her Styrofoam takeout box. The seated woman looked up, smiled, and responded, “Oh, hey, soror, you see Hillary?”

            Black women from black sororities are everywhere :)

          • Thanks! A 69 year old white woman has a different race card to play, doesn’t she? I hope people listen to what Secretary Clinton actually said and don’t interpret it as “all white people have it good”. I am pretty sure that not all white people have it “good” but they don’t start with a ladder of opportunity that has had the first few rungs removed because of racial bias.

          • Thank you!! If I can get a project done and out the door, I can work on a post this afternoon but it will more likely be tomorrow morning.

            I need to put Hillary’s medium link into my campaign bookmarks so I can find it.

  3. Black response to Rs blocking SCOTUS
    http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/18/us/politics/blacks-see-bias-in-delay-on-antonin-scalia-successor.html?_r=0

    Reflecting on the Supreme Court vacancy, Bakari Sellers, a former state representative from Denmark, S.C., likened the Senate treatment of the president to the 18th century constitutional compromise that counted black men as equivalent to three-fifths of a person.

    “I guess many of them are using this in the strictest construction that Barack Obama’s serving three-fifths of a term or he’s three-fifths of a human being, so he doesn’t get to make this choice,” Mr. Sellers said. “It’s infuriating.”

    • The White House put up a page of facts about SCOTUS nominations including ones during election years.

      According to the Republicans, a president’s term only lasts until something important needs to be done like a Supreme Court nomination or agreements on nuclear weapons or rules governing clean air and clean water. Then we have to “wait for the next election so that the people can have their say”. That is not how it works: we elect people to govern through the end of their term not some mythical (Mitchical?) moment when they become only ceremonial office holders.

        • That one is particularly annoying. When Jeb! tweeted last summer that Dubya had kept us safe AFTER 9/11, it set the stage for the rewrite of history. Actually, if they had kept Bill Clinton’s national security team in place, guys like Richard A. Clarke, maybe they could have thwarted the attack. But their hyperfocus on Sadam Hussein, who dissed Daddy Bush, led them to take their eye off the ball.

          With Jeb!’s epic collapse, I must say that I am not sorry to see the end of the Bush family’s “contributions” to America. Apparently the next Bush generation has even less political chops than Jeb! and fewer brain cells than W. Good riddance.

    • Sort of thread jacking here, sorry, but do you have the link to the diary you did about he diversity of Hillary’s campaign team? The professor I gave the link to below would like to see it. Thanks, bf

  4. Happy Thor’s Day, Meese! No sign of him this morning as we have clear blue skies, sunshine, and 30 F. here in NoVa, going up to 37 F.

    Today, February 18, is the day 73 years ago that Sophie and Hans Scholl were arrested for distributing anti-Nazi leaflets at the University of Munich. They were executed in particularly horrible fashion on February 22. Sophie was just 21. I often wonder whether, faced with the same situation, I could have been as brave as she was.

    Well, so the Cruz Missile is neck-and-neck with The Trumpet. It will be interesting to see how that plays out. Did you see the TV commercial in which Cruz plays a tape of Trump saying, “I am pro-choice”? Amusing. He even defended Planned Parenthood last Saturday night, much to my surprise, accurately stating that PP provides many health services for women.

    Last night we watched the first half of a PBS documentary about the Black Panthers, in which the Young Lords were also mentioned. I keep hoping for a glimpse of our sister Denise, but so far haven’t seen her. We’re going to watch the other half tonight.

    Wishing everyone a good day!

  5. Acupuncture was good yesterday. Today, I’m taking a long lunch & walking down to the Irish Consulate for a reception with the Riverdance performers. That’ll be fun! It’ll be in the 80s — I wore sandals.

    I completely ignored the town halls last night & just watched stuff from my dvr. I’m assuming Joe & Mika kissed Trump’s… well, anyway — and what was the other one?

    Head is playing Tired Pony’s Creak In the Floorboards — I love the last bit: “Wherever you are, be wherever you want to be, tonight”. Also the chorus: “Do you know what I’m looking for now? ‘Cause I sure don’t”

    • Someone questioned why the MSNBC infomercial for Donald Trump was not an in-kind campaign contribution. CNN at least had other candidates on for their town hall format.

      • tbh, most of MSNBC’s programming since the summer should be counted that way, it has beem the Trump network for a while now

    • anotherdemocrat, are you getting the acupuncture for your sleep problem? I was wondering whether acupuncture would help me. Might look into that.

      Have fun at the Irish Consulate today! I love Riverdance.

  6. 44 at dawn, 55 now and heading for 70 this sunny Thor’s Day in Fay., AR. Not only do I have a few crocuses blooming in my front and side yards, but I’ve got a couple of bright yellow daffodils blooming on the south side of the house! They’re beautiful but this is NUTZ! It’s the middle of February. So pleasant, but still NUTZ.

    Yesterday’s HNV at GOS somebody commented with a video of Hillary’s entire speech and somebody else commented with a link to the “Hillary won Harlem” article – then later First Amendment posted a diary of that name including both the link and the video. I sent the link to First Amendment’s diary to the one, very young (like 31 young), black professor in our department – we share him with African/African-American Studies. (Don’t get me started on both the racism and sexism in my department – it shocked me when I got here. I mean this is the Sociology department!) He thanked me because all he could find was the coughing segment.

    Still trying to move this pile of papers off my desk. Still waiting for information or approvals to be able to do it. Sigh. Everyone have a safe and comfortable day. And fun if you can manage it. heh. {{{HUGS}}}

  7. Good morning, 46 and cloudy in Bellingham today. I just realized I forgot to check in today. As always I enjoy reading everyone’s thoughts….thanks!

    Ryan is in my thoughts today as he is facing at least 3 more months on crutches and he’s very distraught. The good news is that his bones and growth plates aren’t injured. The bad news is that the tincture of time treatment choice is the best for him, poor kid.

    Ron’s knee is better today so we’ll have Ava to keep us busy this afternoon. She is determined to learn to use my sewing machine, but her “I’ll push the pedal and you do the hands” idea isn’t going to work!

  8. Late evening all, sorry I didn’t check in this morning, I was teaching today. I just wanted to share a video link a friend of mine put up on Facebook, in case you haven’t seen it before – I think it’s wonderful – enjoy! Looking forward to talking Hillary at the Town Hall tonight when we get going in the AM – I thought she was great!

    http://www.realclear.com/inspiration/2015/12/21/she_was_sick_of_being_photoshopped_so_she_did_this__12551.html

    • Thanks for that video!

      I like this in particular: “When you are all alone by yourself … do you like you?”

      Of course this is from my safe perch well past the age when what I look like matters a whit to me but that seems like the only question that matters. And that you answer YES.

  9. Good morning, meese! Friday …

    It is 40 degrees in Madison on its way up to 48. Cloudy skies, accompanied by high winds, is the forecast.

    The GOP continues to twist itself in a knot trying to walk back the blatant obstructionism they expressed after Justice Antonin Scalia was found dead and realized that the Kenyan Muslim would be appointing the next Supreme Court justice. The best summary of the current status is from Kaili Joy Gray at Wonkette: Senate Republicans Quite Conflicted About Whether To Do Their Job.

    In what has provoked right-wing outrage, the president opted to visit with Scalia’s family at the ceremony at the Supreme Court today to pay his respects and Vice President Biden, who has a personal connection to the Scalia family, will be attending tomorrows funeral. The former justice’s family is more than fine with this arrangement.

    Rep. Jim Clyburn (D-SC) will be endorsing Hillary Clinton today. In 2008, Rep. Clyburn stayed neutral in the South Carolina primary and endorsed Senator Barack Obama after he won there.

    I am working on putting the Hillary Clinton speech on race into a moose post. I want to try to weave in some of the historical context and it is taking longer than expected. I am not black but I have black heroes and sheroes, Dee is one of them, and the issues of race and racial discrimination – and misogyny and poor shaming and our broken criminal justice system – are important to me. So I don’t want to just slap together video/transcript but want to add some commentary. So there!

    See all y’all later!

    • Thanks Jan :)
      I’m tired from staying up to watch the candidate forum – I turned it off as soon as the talking heads came on at the end.

      Hillary’s remarks on race were very important – glad you are taking time to put a post together.
      Have school today – and it is back to being very cold here – sigh.

      Am looking at weird headlines like “Obama meets with civil rights leaders — minus Black Lives Matter” except there were BLM folks there.

      Sigh. (I’m doing that quite frequently)

      • I finally got the post done. As you know, I am the kind of person who likes to let an important speech steep for a while before I weigh in with a post. And this one was vitally important because it wasn’t a boiler plate stump speech, it was a statement about the role of the Democratic Party and the special obligation that white Democrats (like me) have to make sure that we own our part in perpetuating systemic racism.

        Here is the link: Hillary Clinton: “Hold every candidate accountable”

        I did not watch the town hall because it is painful to me to see our president and other Democratic Party icons have to be defended against attacks by people running for the Democratic Party nomination. I figure if something important is said, my peeps will tell me. :)

        And the Republican Party primary – JHC on a popsicle stick! Just when you think it can’t get any crazier, it does. The Republican Party base doesn’t like Catholics and only embraced them to get the votes of a reliable forced-birthers. So that the GOP front runners would align themselves with the anti-papist KKK wing of the Republican Party is no shock. They cherry pick the bible and their Catholic candidates (just like their Catholic Supreme Court justices) find it easy to ignore the moral teachings of their Church. One interesting thing, though. The “Reagan Democrats” are strongly Catholic and they very much support their pope. If the Trump Republican Party wants to diss Pope Francis, they might want to pause and reflect:

        Donald Trump took a break from threatening to sue rival candidates on Thursday and appears to be trying to start a holy war with Pope Francis instead. Trump may not care about any resulting eternal judgment, but he might have reason to worry about worldly opinion: Pope Francis has a net +53 favorability rating among Americans, while Trump has a net -27 favorability rating.

        True, Pope Francis is somewhat less popular with Republicans than among Americans overall. But he’s still reasonably well-liked. In a CNN poll in September,3 56 percent of Republicans had a favorable view of Pope Francis as compared to 21 percent with an unfavorable one. Francis had +20 net favorability rating even among self-described tea-party supporters.

        When “Reagan Democrats” are asked to choose between Trump and their pope, I wonder where they will go.

  10. Happy Freya’s Day, Moosekind! It’s 20 F. under cloudy skies here in NoVa, going up to 43 F. later today.

    Just read an open thread on GOS about the town hall last night with Hillary and Bernie. Why did I bother? I should have known it would be lather, rinse, repeat.

    Didn’t realize that Nevada caucuses are on Saturday! What happened to Tuesdays? Why can’t all elections be on Saturdays? Although that doesn’t help the people who work that day. When you work three jobs to stay alive, I don’t suppose you ever get a day off.

    Not doing much today—nails at 10 and cleaners coming this afternoon. Hope nothing too awful happens in the world, so that everyone at the Pond and Beyond will have a good Friday.

  11. Another night of insomnia. Ugh. And I’m running the a/c at home. Highs in the 80s. This is just nuts.

    Loved Rachel Maddow’s interview with Joe Biden last night. I wish he & Obama could stay another 4 years. I had it on mute for Bernie’s part of the town hall — there’s nothing he can say that will win me over. I had forgotten that he was a sponsor of the bill to dump nuclear waste at the Sierra Blanca site in Texas — and the callous way he treated people from there who traveled to ask him to change his mind. So very concerned for the poors was Bernie. Yeah.

    Head is playing Snow Patrol at me, which is not helping me stay awake.

    • I like the town hall format because it is easy to mute during the yelling parts and unmute when I want to hear my candidate speak. I am that way!!

      I will probably go dig up a video and watch it after I get my work done.

  12. 60 heading for 70 and overcast today in Fay., AR – ‘posed to be 70 tomorrow, then rain and 50-60s move in for next week. That’ll put a damper on my electricity production but I’ve already topped 200 KWHs for the month so I should still have a “credit balance” by the end of the month as long as it doesn’t get so cloudy that I get no production at all next week.

    Forgot about the Town Hall but I wouldn’t have watched it anyway. Hopefully Lysis’ HNV will have a good recap, maybe with a video of Hillary. I don’t listen to Bernie. His voice grates on my nerves. Why goddess invented writing, right? :) Still haven’t been able to move the pile of papers off my desk. (OK, I managed to process 2 of them yesterday. whoop.) I’ll check back when I can. Everybody have a lovely day, however you define it. {{{HUGS}}}

    • So, bfitz—do you get paid in actual money if you have an electricity credit? I don’t know much about the “produce electricity at home in your spare time” thing. Wish we could do it here.

      • Not in AR, we’re not a “net metering” state. Whether or not you have net metering is up to the state’s utility commission (unless overridden by the state legislature). CA has it and I think CO does. I’m pretty sure AZ does but is trying to take it away. For non-net metering states it goes like this: The electricity I generate first goes to run my house. Anything I don’t use while it’s being generated goes back “down the line” into the flow in the grid. There’s a meter that keeps track of that. When I’m not generating power or am using more power than I generate, my house is drawing from the grid flow. The regular utility company meter keeps track of that. Since I am hooked to the grid, I pay a minimum “maintenance fee” for being hooked to the grid. That’s $8.76 a month. As long as I generate more electricity than I use in a month I only pay the maintenance fee and the excess electricity is “banked”. When I hit a month where I use more electricity than I generate, I draw from the banked electricity and still only pay the maintenance fee. It’s only when/if I have a string of months using more than I generate and use up all my banked electricity do I ever pay more than that $8.76 per month maintenance fee. But I will never be paid for the extra. If I never fall below my banked, I’ve made a nice present to SWEPCO.

        I have no idea what VA does about it. Some states, like CA and CO, have all kinds of tax incentives for this. The feds will give something like a 30% credit on your income tax if you install solar or wind. So with the state and federal credits plus high electricity generation fees, some places you get a payback in a few years. I probably never will because I basically won’t live long enough – no state incentives, our electricity is relatively inexpensive and I never used that much (relatively speaking) in the first place. The cost for my 4K system was about $13K, which I’ve already paid off, but my levelized electric bill was never more than $35/month anyway. I did it for two reasons. One is environmental – I’ve been pushing for “zero net carbon” most of my life and this is about as close as I’m going to get to it (not really close but…). The other is future planning. Once I retire with my house paid off and my electricity bill pretty much capped at under $10/month, I will be able to live quite comfortably on my single, secretary’s wages, Social Security benefits. :)

        • That’s wonderful, bfitz! Thank you for the explanation. I’m not sure how Virginia handles this but as we may not be in our house forever, we’re not going to go for solar panels on the roof. I do think passive solar and other energy-saving devices are wonderful, though, and wish all new houses would incorporate energy-saving features.

          • You’re welcome and passive solar/energy-efficiency is one the things built into Hillary’s environmental plan – to partner with state and local planning offices to require it. Hope she can get her hands on a nice enough carrot to get that one accomplished. It could cut America’s building carbon footprint by a third or more.

  13. Morning all! Hope folks will check out that Colbie Caillat video I linked last night – I think it’s a wonderful commentary on natural beauty and the way young (and old!) women sometimes turn themselves inside out to please others.

    I just kept up with the Town Hall last night via Twitter, but it certainly sounded like Hillary did a great job – and that Bernie revealed himself even more as the one-note candidate, no matter what he was asked about. He’s also done an interview with BET that will air this weekend in which he accuses Hillary of “cosying up to Obama to win black votes in SC”!!! He’s really getting outrageous IMO.

    I just saw this that Joy Reid linked on Twitter – as she put it, Clinton campaign calls on the Voice of God to help in SC – lol, it’s a great ad.


    Have a great day everyone – I won’t talk about the weather here as you would all hate me!

    • Thanks for the CC video Geordie……just watched it. One of the best parts of being an older woman is that the hair and makeup part of my life takes much less time.

      I enjoyed watching HRC last night. Her answers have an impressive depth of knowledge, and she has a commanding yet comfortable stage presence.

    • I have the video you left up in a tab and will view it when I get my work done – which is taking longer than I would like! I have about a dozen articles and videos open in tabs that I want to read and watch.

      We might hate you for your weather now … but I for one will have no envy in July and August. ;)

  14. Good morning, 47 and cloudy in Bellingham today. Thanks to Ava, Ron and my friends at the flower shop my house smells like spring. They surprised me with a blooming pot of Hyacinth and pussy willows and an armful of fresh flowers to arrange. So I’ll have some creative fun after the pool today.

    Ava and I started reading The Secret Garden yesterday. The story is timeless but I do edit as I read, especially the parts re British colonialism and the Indian people. I also got her started on a cross stitch project. She has so much energy my hope is reading the book together and learning to cross stitch will encourage her attention span. She was very focused yesterday, but did get tired. So then she drew about 10 pictures and relaxed!

  15. Yesterday, President Obama met with black faith and civil rights leaders including BLM activists. After the meeting he made these remarks:

    Transcript: Remarks by the President After Meeting with African American Faith and Civil Rights Leaders

    … what I am most encouraged by is the degree of focus and seriousness and constructiveness that exists not only with existing civil rights organizations, but this new generation. They are some serious young people. I told them that they are much better organizers than I was when I was their age, and I am confident that they are going to take America to new heights. My job is just to make sure that I’m listening to them and learning from them a little bit. And hopefully, working together across divides of race and party, we can make sure that we’re living up to our highest American ideals. There’s no better way for us to celebrate Black History Month.

  17. Good morning, meese! Saturday …

    It is 40 degrees in Madison on its way up to 46. Mostly cloudy skies are in the forecast.

    The first post-Scalia SCOTUS ruling was issued and it is a smackdown to the North Carolina state government and their attempts at “black packing”, putting all African Americans into two Congressional Districts to make sure that all the other districts can elect unapologetic racists who don’t have to care what they say or do to black voters. The state was ordered to change the maps on Feb. 5th (with the new maps due yesterday) but they decided to file a request for a stay with the Supreme Court instead of getting the maps fixed. Ooops! There is an 8-person court now and only 4 of them hate the Voting Rights Act. Rick Hasen at Election Law Blog said that the Shelby County v Holder ruling which removed pre-clearance led directly to this. If the DOJ had to pre-clear the maps, the “emergency” of having unconstitutional maps would not have occurred. Emboldened by the Scalia Court to let their racist freak flags fly, they are now forced to change the primary dates.

    Today is Nevada caucuses for Democrats and South Carolina primary for Republicans. I have been reading some horrifying polls out of South Carolina that scare the crap out of me about Republican anger unleashed by the politics of hate. And don’t miss Charlie Pierce’s reminder that GOP 2016 is the legacy of Lee Atwater:

    What Atwater did was more than inject into Republican politics a modern form of strategic viciousness. With it, he injected an entirely new form of strategic unreality. From that has come the party’s inability to recognize or acknowledge the empirical. By creating an entirely new Dukakis in which his voters could believe, Atwater showed them how to build the bubble and to armor it against reality. The combination of strategic viciousness and strategic unreality has come full flower this year. We have Donald Trump, who is one ring of the circus all to himself, calling his opponents liars and Mexicans rapists, and threatening to sue Ted Cruz, who responds by telling Trump to bring it on, and that he, Cruz, would be happy to depose Trump in discovery personally. And Marco Rubio is telling people that the United States is at the edge of the abyss and that only he can restore it to its former glory. What seemed crude and nasty in 1980 has become sleek and edgeless and as common as milk now.

    See all y’all later!!

    • Lee Atwater came to a bad end. Woe to those who tempt the Fates! Clotho spins, Lachesis measures, and Atropos cuts the thread of life. Atwater’s life was relatively short.

      • He died at 40 years old but he did damage to generations of Americans. I did not feel even the tiniest pang of sadness for him or his family when I saw his “fk you world” grave marker (shown in the Pierce article). His faux remorse never reached his eyes and obviously not his final words .

    • I assume you saw the Albert Woodfox news (posted above). I wonder if the new Democratic governor of Louisiana had anything to do with the state deciding to settle the case.

      • Yes – saw it yesterday on twitter – and also at their Angola 3 blog on Dkos – which is ignored.
        Don’t know about the LA gov.

  19. Good morning, Moose country! It’s a balmy 43 F. here in NoVa this cloudy Saturday, going up to an even balmier 61 F.

    Got to deliver Girl Scout cookies today. Yesterday we looked after Baby Apple Cheeks, Miss Pink Cheeks’ younger brother, who absolutely wefused to eat his nice chicken, gravy, and mashed potatoes. This child likes only yogurt drink and applesauce. His mother was very late picking him up, past 9 p.m.

    Looking forward with interest to the caucuses. Can’t stand the way the idiot media gleefully predict Hillary’s downfall. May I say I am far more frightened of the Cruz missile than of The Trumpet? The latter is a buffoon (who, of course, could do considerable damage), but the former is an ayatollah without the beard.

    There’s a link I would like to put in but I have to go look for it. Will do that and then come back with it and also read Jan’s post.

    • Pretty good oped except for this nonsensical statement “the 2016 race has given us two substantive female candidates, Carly Fiorina for the Republicans and Hillary Clinton for the Democrats” – Carly Fiorina “substantive” in the same way that Hillary Clinton is? Puhleese!

      Good point here: Hillary will take on the hate, in many ways like President Obama did, and will clear the path so that the next Democratic president does not have to leap the hurdle of “first” – first person of color, check … first woman, check:

      More than any other woman in the United States, Clinton has experience absorbing tides of sexist trash and getting along with her work, whether she’s representing New York in the U.S. Senate, serving as secretary of state, or stumping on the campaign trail.

      Clinton has had decades to learn how to withstand the attacks that will be aimed at the first female president, and to build relationships with other lawmakers, bureaucrats and foreign heads of state who now know her for herself.

      Perhaps asking her to weather another four or eight years of viciousness is unfair. But Clinton appears to want the role. And if she wins it, she could spare another woman the very specific politics of personal destruction aimed at the first women and people of color to hold major roles in American public life.

      • I think that’s part of why she’s doing it – to spare the next woman president the onerous burden of being first. She has the knowledge, experience, and the ability to build an incredible team for getting stuff done which makes her the best choice at any time – but she also had dealt with the crap and as she says herself, she’s still standing. I only know of two other women as duty bound (I know there are lots more, these are just the ones I personally know of) as Hillary Clinton – Eleanor Roosevelt and the new Chair of my department at work. I admire them greatly but don’t have their courage, stamina, or stomach.

      • Yes, Jan, agree that the Carly “woman of substance” remark is a case of substantial overreach.

        My own theory is that even if Elizabeth Warren the Marvelous (and she is, in many ways) were running for POTUS, she would be subjected to the same kind of abuse. Face, hair, makeup, clothes, figure, shoes, political views, policy positions, ALL of it. This is patriarchy’s “women must never win” tenet: “Don’t matter what you do, chicky, we’ll see to it that you get nowhere.”

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