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 53 degrees in Madison WI, on its way up to 81. Sunny skies are in the forecast.
Have a great day, all y’alls!!
Good Sunday morning, Meese! It’s 53 F. here in NoVa this morning, and yes, it has rained. It will rain again. (I can hear my strawberries mouldering in their cosy bed outside.) Our high today will be 55 F., so roast beef and Yorkshire pudding with gravy will be on the menu. Haven’t decided about Dearly’s dessert yet.
We’re in the process of getting washed and brushed to take Miss Pink Cheeks out to breakfast.
Not many thoughts in my head, except that shopping and cooking are consuming so much of my time I’m still behind on emails and laundry. Watched a really riveting movie last night, called “All the Way” on HBO! It was the first time I’ve been able to focus on a movie for months. (Books are so much more interesting.)
It was about LBJ’s first years in office and his maneuverings to get the Civil Rights bill and the Voting Rights bill passed. The actors were all splendid, so convincing we almost thought we were watching the real thing. LBJ may not have been the most lovable teddy bear of a guy but he certainly got things done. The speech he made about teaching first-grade kids, loving them, and then watching the light die in their eyes when they realized they were black, was so moving I started to cry.
He gave us Medicare, Medicaid, and Head Start. IMHO he was one of our greatest presidents.
Got to run, hope everyone will have a good, peaceful Sunday!
Twitter was buzzing about it but I don’t get HBO. I wonder if it will make it to a YouTube some day?
I did see this Tweet that reminded me that #ImWithDemocrats:
Here’s the trailer:
I also thought All the Way was excellent – it was originally a play on Broadway, and that’s Bryan Cranston, the wonderful actor from Breaking Bad, playing LBJ, and Melissa Leo playing Lady Bird. Showed all sides of LBJ, good and bad – and I think a lot of people now only remember him for Vietnam, not for the good he did which was considerable. My first Social Security subcommittee chair, the man who really hired me onto Ways and Means, was J.J.Pickle (D.Austin), who was a protege of LBJ’s and took great pride in representing Lady Bird – I got to hear more about the good side of LBJ from him, and I’m thrilled this play and now TV movie were done to show that (along with the womanizing, etc.)
It will probably show up on Netlifix or Amazon Prime, but I doubt it will be bootlegged onto YouTube, HBO tries to protect its properties (although Game of Thrones continues to be the most bootlegged cinematic property in the world I think.)
Good Sunday morning Meese
Wish we had some sun here – it’s a damp 56 – we’re supposed to have rain all day.
So distressed reading yet another story of a child shooting and killing herself playing with a gun.
I really don’t get it. How people can be stupid enough to leave loaded guns around where kids can play with them is unfathomable.
My family had guns and hunted. All the guns were locked in cabinets. None were kept loaded.
Getting ready to do my orange duty at 9AM. Today’s topic is intersectionality.
Have a good day y’all.
I was reading some of the commentary about the NRA convention. Wayne LaCombovre said in 2008 and 2012 that electing Barack Obama would be the end of gun ownership in America – confiscation!! Now, of course, Hillary Clinton is poised to do the same non-thing if she is elected in 2016. They are caricatures of themselves.
Hillary gave a speech to the Circle of Mothers yesterday and spoke about gun violence, the NRA and The Donald.
I guess not all NRA members are okay with the endorsement worrying about Trump’s statements after Newtown. Nothing new, really. He has been a random opinion generator over the years and pinning him down will be impossible. Everyone voting for him will cite the Tweet that allows them to assuage their cognitive dissonance about voting for someone who is completely unsuited to be president of the United States. I hope they come to their senses by November. I don’t want this to be a close election where voter suppression can win the race.
Slept some. Not great but at least some. I still have some fever so maybe no work tomorrow. Eating breakfast — almond butter sandwich, and drinking tea. Going to cook today, might as well even if I take a day off. The baked oatmeal is easy & healthy. And not going to church is weird, I need to do something normal.
Hope you’ll feel better, another! It’s a bummer to have a cold.
Morning all! It’s sunny and warm here but with a slightly cool breeze, so very pleasant outside.
I’m so outraged at Sanders’ saying the election will be about choosing the lesser of two evils – he is so arrogant and outrageous, I don’t know how Harry Reid and the other Democratic leaders can trust any deal they might make with him about the convention this summer. He’s addicted to the attention and the adoring crowds now and will have to be dragged off the stage.
ok, off to read Dee’s Sunday diary at GOS, have a great day everyone!
Good morning, 55, breezy and partly sunny in Bellingham. A long nap interrupted my plans to actually work in the garden yesterday so I’ll see what today brings. I do feel more rested this morning.
Semi good news from the Wa. State R’s convention……
Washington state GOP convention backs Cruz over Trump
The 2016 election is an opportunity for Wa State to move away from divided governance, so I hope the R’s dislike of Trump will result in more Dems being elected.
Washington State Legislature:
57 at dawn and 75 now on this sunshiny Sun’s day – Already have 6.5 KWHs for the day (360 KWHs for the month and 7.04 MWHs lifetime) and climbing. Muffins (peanut butter-cherry jam) are baked, soup (pulled pork veggie) is made, house cleaning is done, and the laundry is on the line drying. I’m not silly enough to say “all’s right with the world” but there is a cat in my lap, another in the window, and a bird merrily chirping away outside (which is why Charlie is in the window. heh).
Doing my best to ignore B.S., his b.s., and the BoBs – the only reason they are even getting any attention is because the media is giving it to him/them. They are basically irrelevant at this point to the political process – just a ratings/clicks generator – and it’s their own fault for their non-stop attacks on both Hillary and the Party itself. You don’t get a say in the program if your purpose is to destroy the program.
My eldest grandson is going to do some goatherding with his parents this summer then start the University of Arkansas this fall. He’s going into the Engineering robotics program – the only one of my grandsons who not only knows now what he wants to do with his life, but has known since he was 10 and was first introduced to the Lego robotics program. Second grandson will be 16 the end of August and is still more interested in Ultimate Frisbee and making 1st chair clarinet in marching band than what he’s going to do in a couple of years when he graduates from high school. The rest aren’t in high school yet. :)
Heading over to GOS to read Denise’s diary and then probably hang out in one of the Hillary spaces for a bit – at least until Sekritarmy posts at 2 CDT. (And of course get my clothes in some time or other. LOL.) Bright the day, Meeses. {{{HUGS}}}
Good Monday Morning Meese.
51 here going up to 80 and it isn’t going to rain!
Off to scan the news and make coffee.
Not much new in the news. The president is in Vietnam today and will be heading to Japan to visit Hiroshima and then take part in a G-7 meeting.
I sure wish that “normalizing relations” with a country did not include lifting arms sales embargos (as he is doing in Vietnam). How can countries having access to more weapons lead to a better world? Sigh. I am glad to see that the president is going to Hiroshima. I read a frightening story that suggests that Americans are becoming more willing to nuke a country. Time to remind people about what nuking a country really means – and why it hasn’t happened since World War II precisely because of the horrors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Are you enjoying your vacation?
I am enjoying the idea of it :) I now have to do major changeover from winter to summer mode – sigh. Putting stuff away into the barn and dragging other stuff out.
Is anyone going to Netroots Nation? I’m getting ready to make my reservations.
I think Bfitz is. I thought about it and it was tempting because it would be a car ride instead of plane fare but I just can’t do it this year.
I’m going – be great to meet you there.
Wish I could go and meet you both in person! Too far to drive, though, and air travel is so iffy for me.
Good morning, meeses! Monday …
It is 58 degrees in Madison, on its way up to 83. Sunny skies are in the forecast. Last week I had to turn the furnace back on because the house temperature never got above 62. This week I may have to turn the air conditioning on! I hope to resist but I am not a big fan of discomfort.
The weekend polls are showing that Republicans are “coming home” and are satisfied with the nominee chosen in the primaries. Even Lindsey Graham is doing fund raising events for Donald Trump! Darn! I had finally settled in for a long election season of Republicans in Disarray and now we will have an old fashioned race that boils down to getting out our vote. :) I will still enjoy the occasional Republican “how did we get ourselves into this mess” piece but there will be no #NeverTrump.
Two things I read:
– An excellent piece on Labor Secretary Tom Perez, a possible Hillary VP.
– A discussion of the false equivalence between Hillary’s negative favorability and Trump’s negative favorability:
That piece led me (as they often do) to this piece by David Roberts at Vox about how the media has no idea how to cover this campaign. And this brilliant observation:
Looks like it is already happening.
See all y’all later!
Good morning, Meese! It has rained, of course, but I seem to see blueness beyond the clouds this morning and both Dearly Beloved and I saw a glimpse of the sun as we drank our early morning tea just now. Current temperature in NoVa is 55 F., going up to 78 F. later. Improvement seems to be on the way!
We had roast beef and Yorkshire pudding for dinner, it being that kind of day yesterday, rainy, gray, and cold.
We had some good news this weekend. Miss Pink Cheeks took the Advanced Academic Placement test at her school in March. On Saturday her parents received a letter stating that MPC had scored in the 99th percentile across the nation and earned far and away the highest score in her school with 158 points! Mommy is so pleased she allowed MPC to order a Lego game called “Minecraft” from Amazon.
A couple of weeks ago I saw Pink Cheeks’ report card. She had straight 4’s! Apparently in Fairfax County elementary schools, that’s like an “A” in high school. Needless to say, Granny is very proud.
We had a very busy weekend, with shopping and so forth. I finished part 1 of “Jolyon,” the Fiction Cafe story for June. Part II will appear in July.
I’m going to have to ban anything except PBS at dinner time. My blood pressure won’t take the false equivalence, the “national” polls showing Hillary behind, and so on. I’ve got to call the League of Women Voters to find out which team registers voters in front of public libraries. I think I know who the local precinct chair is, so I want to contact him so I can drive voters to the polls in November.
Wishing all a good day!
Congratulations to MPC – and to her parents and grandparents for supporting her development so well!
Minecraft is extremely popular especially with kids and teens – and VERY addictive from what I hear. I got it to try it out but never really got the hang of it – but it’s building stuff (virtual, of course, on the computer, at least if this is the same Minecraft I’m familiar with) so seems like a pretty positive game.
Stayed home from work, still feel icky. I wouldn’t feel safe driving — especially in the heavy traffic coming home. Sneezing your head off is exhausting. Watching the news, waiting for my tea to chill. I like to drink it when it’s been in the freezer just long enough to have a little slush. One good thing about staying home is I can clear out the dvr, assuming I can stay awake long enough.
Take care of yourself, anotherdemocrat!
Good thing about staying home is you can nap at need. My standard recommendation for dealing with colds is 500 mg vitamin C every couple of hours and 1/2 c. garlic soup the hours in between. (Since you are vegetarian it would be a fist of garlic to a quart of miso soup/broth.) Healing Energy heading your way.
Started the day at 60 and overcast and heading for 80 – supposed to get some rain about noon. Hopefully it will clear off after that – while prime generating starts around 11, I can still get upwards of 20 KWHs this time of year from 1 to 7 if the sun is shining.
Got lots of stuff to do today – hope I can figure out how to get it done. :) We’re in the 2nd/last week of May Intersession, summer school starts next Tuesday (yea! for Monday off!), and fiscal 2016 stuff has got to be done by the end of June. Wish this were my last instead of next to last of these. Oh well, barring something fatal, I’ll get there. Bright the day, Meeses. {{{HUGS}}}
Got myself an unexpected day off. The Chair decided to polish the furniture in her office this morning. I didn’t stop coughing until I was half way home (20 minutes after I left the building). One of the many reasons I’m not entirely sure I’m going to make it until full retirement. I hope I can – a secretary’s Social Security benefits are not large to begin with. Oh well, the kittehs are happy to see me. :)
Sorry to read this bfitz. I have the same reaction to furniture polish and most household chemicals. I use a simple butcher block oil when I need to restore a finish, and just swifters and /or a damp cloth in between.
Hope you are feeling better soon.
Thanks. I can use very diluted Murphy’s oil soap if I don’t do it very often but that’s about it. Vinegar, baking soda, and Dr. Bronner’s Magic soaps are pretty much my cleaning staples. I’m OK – the coughing is gone and hopefully the headache will be soon.
Poor you! I do wish people would try to be a little more considerate.
She didn’t realize I have a problem with fumes – not just dislike, an actual problem. She’s very considerate – second reason I decided to try and stay until full retirement was when she became Chair last July – but like many people she just didn’t think to ask. The vice Chair is also a very sweet person but I will definitely be gone before she steps into the Chair’s position. She wears very heavy scent. Nice scent, but still. (Kind of like lilacs. I love the smell – as long as the trees are half a block or more away.) I still sometimes think about bailing early – but the difference in estimated benefits is something like $150 per month and I’m betting my Medicare Part B premium will be at least that. sigh.
Yes, it will make a big difference if you can even one more year – hope you can do it.
Good morning, 55 and raining in Bellingham. I was to tired to go to the pool this morning and I’ve got another round of estate sale arrangements to deal with today so I’m grumpy as well. Looks like we’ll have to change plans yet again, have a three day sale next weekend, another one when a new venue is available, and sell the old farm equipment, motel T, and car collectibles later with a separate sale…..too complicated and too many trips to Kennewick :( Oh well, if I can just stay healthy it will soon be over.
Bummer! Hang in there, princesspat!
Any chances of being able to sell the specialty stuff via the internet? There must be a lot of people who’d be interested if they just knew about them. Anything you can do via internet is one less trip.
I’ve thought of selling via the internet bfitz. but a sale means shipping and/or arranging delivery of the goods and I’m 5 hrs away. Collecting antiques is fun, but finding new homes for them is a challenge!
I would never sell anything over the Internet to strangers; there are just too many bad actors out there and it is simply not worth the risk. The last time I moved, I had a 2-day garage sale and sold a lot of things. The creepy feeling from having people in my house pawing over my stuff was left with the house (which also had people in it from the sales process) when it sold.
Good luck finding homes for your things! Have you considered finding a dealer who will take them on consignment and sell them for you?
I was mostly only thinking of the special stuff like the Model T/car collectibles – give you a wider “audience” for the sale. You could make the deliver/pick up as part of the conditions of sale. The rest of it is probably best handled locally.
Good morning, meese! Tuesday …
It is 58 degrees in Madison on its way up to 82. Afternoon thunderstorms are in the forecast.
Vince Foster. That is what Trump called for as “hard-hitting attacks on Hillary Clinton”. Sigh.
Cornel West. Good idea! You are given the opportunity to name some people to help form the Democratic Party platform. You pick Rep. Keith Ellison, environmental activist Bill McKibben … then you toss a turd into the punchbowl. Sanders explained in one action why he is not to be trusted with anything important at the convention or the campaign. As a reminder:
And thank you, Secretary Clinton, for not giving in to the pressure to debate Sanders on the Trump News Network. You are the nominee … there is nothing to be gained by being beaten up by a deluded old man and Roger Ailes’ employees.
Justice was done in the Foster v Chatman case yesterday. SCOTUS ruled 7 to 1 that the prosecutors ignored the Batson rule resulting in an all-white jury that SURPRISE! sentenced a black man to death for the murder of an elderly white woman. Clarence Thomas, the lone dissenter, was angry that defendants can relitigate their convictions!! Just trust the prosecutors and the judges!! Is Chief Justice Roberts getting the scales lifted off his eyes? (h/t Charlie Pierce)
See all y’all later!!
yup. Cornel – A turd.
I will say no more.
Good morning (almost afternoon here) Got up early and decided to get some writing done.
Lost track of time – but the writing is completed a day before my deadline so I feel a sense of accomplishment
Tired of seeing Trump-Hillary breathless horse race poll articles. It’s only May!!!!!
Sam Wang, the polling guy from Princeton, said that the worst month for poll accuracy is May. The best, until August, is February for whatever reason.
National polls are sketchy to begin with (we don’t elect people using the national popular vote – just ask President Al Gore) but one poll can almost never be taken as The Poll. Polling averages are better but then you have to make sure that there are no outliers in the average, for example a Rasmussen “poll”.
Bottom line is that it is better to worry about getting people to the polls than the public opinion polls. Today the 5th Circuit has an en banc review of the Texas voter id law. Since the Republicans refuse to play by the rules and we have a 4 to 4 tie on the Supreme Court right now, they will have the final word.
Good Tiu’s day, Meese! Although it rained during the night, we have a fair morning with pale sunlight and a rapidly clearing blue sky. Current temp. 53 F., going up to 78 F.
Still tired after yesterday’s weight training session. It’s doubtful I’ll get to the gym today unless I can persuade Dearly to pick up Miss Pink Cheeks from school.
Perhaps we can finally plant the zucchini, the squash, the herbs, and peppers today. Let’s hope so.
Wish something good would happen for Hillary. It’s nothing but attack, attack, from the so-called media, Saint Bernard, and the Trumpet. Feel a bit grumpy this morning because of that and because despite this nasty low-carb diet and yesterday’s intense exercise, my weight was up this morning.
Wishing a good day to all at the Pond and Beyond!
Well, I thought I was going to go back to work. Then I had a 5 minute sneezing fit, and I spoke out loud & heard myself…. So I’m home. When I called in to work, they said I actually sounded worse than yesterday. Anyway, I’m going to try to do something — maybe clean house or something — today.
70 and overcast this morning – although the light intensity keeps waxing and waning – not supposed to get to 80 today and is supposed to rain. Because of that and I was bringing in milk for my coffee, I drove in today instead of walking (my usual ride is taking the day off). At least I walked home yesterday. We’ll see if I get any more walking in this week – the rain chances keep shifting all over the place.
B.S. is coming up with some of the most insulting demands/ideas. Write her platform? Help choose her cabinet? Really? If it were anybody else I’d say rank misogyny, but with B.S. I figure he’d probably do it to anybody. (Especially Barnie Frank.) OK. Now I go back to ignoring Bernie.
Need to put some music on – I think I’ll play my way through the Beethoven symphonies – and get to work. Got to do everything I was planning on doing yesterday as well as what was on the schedule for today. Bright the day, Meeses. {{{HUGS}}}
Good morning, 54 and cloudy in Bellingham. And another day of estate selling lists, laundry, paying bills, watering the garden, and packing. Grumble, grumble!
This article is a needed reprieve from the politics of the day.
Designed in Seattle, this $1 cup could save millions of babies
http://www.path.org/
Thanks for rare good news!