Week-long Welcomings from Moosylvania: June 25th through July 1st

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?

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.


Page 1 of this week’s Comments can be found here
Page 2 of this week’s Comments can be found here

37 Comments

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

    Morning low of 50 degrees in Madison WI with an expected daytime high of 64. Chance of thunderstorms in the forecast.

    Have a great day, all y’alls!!

  2. My right-wing rag this morning actually put on the front page that the Senate BCRAp bill will slash Medicaid. It will be unlikely to sway Ron Freaking Johnson. But a state that has a Republican Senator who might have a beating heart, Alaska, has a strongly worded story in their paper:

    Alaska doesn’t fare very well under the proposed Senate health care legislation: Many Alaskans are likely to face higher premium costs or less coverage, and the state would eventually have to make deep cuts to Medicaid coverage.

    It appears unlikely that the bill will offer the state relief from rising health insurance costs. Older, middle-class Alaskans buying insurance on the exchange are likely to face the highest cost jumps.

    We have one week to reach our Republican Senators and tell them to vote the bill down. If Mitch McConnell gets his votes before people have a chance to look more closely at this bill, it will pass.

    • I’m blessed to have 2 Democratic Senators – have been re-tweetiing the appeals to Alaska.

      I’m wondering if any Republicans are going to vote no – are we just being played?

      • Dean Heller from Nevada will vote no – he has gone too far to back away now. Mitch McConnell has one more free-pass to give out. My guess is that he gives it to Lisa Murkowski (Alaska). Susan Collins of Maine is “concerned” but she has been Lucy pulling the football away from Democratic Charlie Browns for years – she will vote with her party. The only other possible No votes would be from Senators who were just elected to new 6 year terms and who might get some pressure from their state. Rob Portman, Ohio, John Kennedy, Louisiana are possibilities.

        The one thing that I do not see happening is that the four conservative holdouts – Lee, Cruz, Johnson, Paul – will vote anything other than Yes. They simply wanted to “strongly disapprove” of the not-mean-enough bill so that they can keep their anti-ACA donors pleased but will “reluctantly” vote for it.

  3. Good Sunday Meese
    Lovely day here – 68 going up to 81 here in the Catskills.

    Looking forward to talking about the impact of dance this morning – and a documentary movie that will be in theaters in August that I must see. I needed a brief time out from hate and death and Republicans and ultra-leftists
    This trailer really got to me – inspired me to explore related forms.

    Hope you have a great day today!

  4. Didn’t make it to the gym yesterday before the training. Today, I’m going to clean house so I might or might not make it to the gym. Garbage, recycling & take a bunch of books to the 2nd hand store; any they don’t take will go to a little free library I saw in my neighborhood. I just thought about how many books I have that I haven’t looked at in years, thought I should get them a better home.

    Training yesterday was interesting. There was literally no one there I knew — which I think is great, so many more people getting active. And people are soooooo pissed about the AHCA. If we can gum up the works till they come back to the districts, we can kill this bill.

  5. Good morning, 63 and sunny in Bellingham. I finished planting my containers yesterday, and with RonK’s help pruned the growing under and around the living room and sewing room windows. I love how plants frame a view, but not when they are the view! So it was a good day in the garden, but my knees are complaining this morning.

    This afternoon we’ll go to the grand girls dance recital. It’s been a full weekend of dancing for them so they will be ready for flowers and a treat after the last performance today. I enjoy making them each a bouquet and I think between the flowers in my garden and the roses in my son’s I can gather what I need.

  6. Checking in while I wait for the washer to finish its cycle. Cool – like 60 cool – this morning of a beautiful, clear, sunny day that is not generating any electricity because my interverter is still down. OK the company is small and people should get regular time off – but they need to have somebody on-call at least weekends and evenings until just before dark to handle problems like this. That inverter has a 12-year warranty. It’s just over 3 years old. It’s gone down with an “arc fault” 3 times in 2 months., losing me about 40 KWHs in May and over 100 KWHs in June. How much over depends on how soon they manage to get it fixed. (Yes, I’m pissed. Yes, it’s – at least sort of – a first world problem.)

    I have no idea whether or not we’ll be able to stall, block, or peel off 3 Rs to stop DeathCare. Rs abuse power because they can. Heck, Gingrich actually admitted that was why they impeached Bill. Their one goal in life is to piss off Libruls and they don’t care how many people they kill doing it. Even their own base (who tend to cheer them on – until they themselves suffer/die). I know we will overcome them, get power back, clean up the mess as best we can, and move forward again however slowly. I do not know when this will happen – or how many will die first. So yes, I will call my bloody senators. And vote whenever an election comes up. But mostly I hold my communities in my heart and support them as best I can. Love does conquer Hate eventually.

    Washer’s about to cut off so I’d best get offline. I’ll be back later to read the Albanian Breakfast and Denise’s diary on dance (which I can’t do but love to watch). Bright the day, Meeses. {{{HUGS}}}

  7. Good morning, meeses! Monday …

    It is 52 degrees in Madison with an expected daytime high of 64. Early morning showers will give way to sunshine but showers are expected to return later this evening. I am enjoying the cool air-conditioning-less days.

    Today will be the last day of Supreme Court opinions and word may come of the status of the Muslim travel-ban as well. The speculation (flat out panic?) about Justice Kennedy retiring was dampened over the weekend with word that he is hiring clerks for 2017-2018. The same gossip suggests, though, that Clarence Thomas may choose this time to retire. It would guarantee the most awful person possible will carry on his legacy with the Federalist Society picking his replacement and no worry about the filibuster. The window is narrow for that because if the Democrats take back the Senate in the 2018 election, we will be able to block. Another conservative won’t change the makeup of the court but it will lock that in as a conservative seat for another 20 years. I have no doubt that with a Democratic president, he would have stayed on until they dragged him out feet first. Now he can leave.

    This is RepubliCare week – all hands on deck to convince 2 more Republican Senators to at least delay the vote until after the 4th of July holiday so that the full horror of the bill can be laid bare. My Republican Senator says he wants to wait and is holding a telephonic town hall this afternoon which I will participate in. I am beyond frustrated that Bernie Sanders chose this week to call Democrats terrible and push single payer. Single payer is a budget buster and if Republicans are allowed to gin up the fear that it is either BCRAp or socialism, that will give them the wind at their backs. They don’t need that wind – the Kochs are providing a $400 million breeze – but it makes their job easier. Lets not run on things that will make us lose, okay? There are plenty of things we can run on that are winners – jobs, minimum wage, affordable health care, justice – we don’t have to put our necks out in 2018 or 2020. And for crying out loud, DON’T call it Medicare for All – that makes it too easy to scare the olds into thinking that Democrats want to give away their Medicare benefits. What a mess we are in where there is no truth anymore and lies are given so much power. :(

    See all y’all later!

  8. Good Monday Meese
    54 here in Saugerties – going up to 71 with rain.

    This is something we have never seen before

    As much as I fault the NYT for spending all their time attacking Hillary and letting Trump slide – I don’t think I can remember them ever doing something like this

    • We need more of it. The blatant lies told over the weekend about Medicaid cuts should not be allowed to stand. If the shitgibbon’s 38%ers want to believe it, fine. But get the word out to the rest of America.

      More headlines like this on CBS, please: Carrier workers facing layoffs feel betrayed by Trump.

      You can’t govern without public support even if you hold all the levers of power. At some point, the town halls with “friendlies” will give way to out and out revolt in the red districts and the red states and the lockstep will break.

    • I have still not forgiven them and for every “Trump Lies” there are 3 puff pieces on Trump and his family. They are intent on covering their malfeasance with more layers of lipstick on their pig.

      • Agree. However, they are still viewed as the US paper of record – while USA today and WSJ have higher circulation the NY Times still holds sway over WaPo and LA Times

  9. Good morning, Meese, and a beautiful morning it is, too, with blue skies, lots of sun, and low humidity. We turned off the a.c. yesterday and will be able to keep it off for days. Currently it’s 63 F. here in NoVa, going up to 79 F. later.

    The weekend was full of child care and errands. Despite the fact that we are actually an inch over normal for rain so far this year—yay!—on days when it doesn’t actually rain, I still have to water the garden morning and evening. The front garden gets hammered by sun in the afternoons. Still desperately seeking that low-growing, silvery-gray, spreading evergreen shrub for the front mulch bed between the apple trees. I see it around the neighborhood but don’t know the name of it.

    Still haven’t cut out the fire blight on the Golden Delicious apple tree out back. Sigh. My summer is going to be full of child care except for the middle of the day. Mr. Preschooler will go to day care next week except for Mondays. I’ll have him on Mondays from here on out, which is fine. Monday is our library day.

    Don’t know what to say about the deathcare bill except that I hope it won’t pass. The sight of the police dragging people out of wheelchairs in the Capitol was so outrageous I’m surprised there wasn’t a big outcry. But it’s OK to abuse people if you’re a Rethuglican.

    Wishing a good day to all at the Pond and Beyond—wishing for relief for the beleaguered souls in Syria (war), Yemen (war and famine), and South Sudan (famine).

    • The deplorables elected a man who made fun of a disabled reporter, this “the sight of the police dragging people out of wheelchairs in the Capitol was so outrageous I’m surprised there wasn’t a big outcry” would not have even registered.

      I thought it was funny that the “Trump Is Great” Rasmussen poll that the shitgibbon was touting last week (he hit 50% approval) was not mentioned today. He is underwater again at 46%. Sad!

  10. Got a lot less done yesterday than I planned, what else is new. I have a meeting tomorrow about my appeal of my property tax appraisal. There is just no way any of our units are worth — well anything right now, but certainly not what they were appraised for before the damage was known. Anyway, that should be….. fun. yeah. We had rain overnight, supposed to get more during the day. And no 100s for at least a couple of days.

  11. 63 at dawn of another bright sunny day I’m not generating any power from. sigh. Dealing with my installer tech guy is in many ways akin to dealing with a berner – when I emailed him that it was down again, said i was not happy about it and that I couldn’t afford expensive roof art, he emailed back in a snit that nobody was happy about it and snarky comments about roof art didn’t help. I still haven’t replied because i don’t have a good enough handle on my temper yet.

    We have some serious good news though. It’s so anonymous it might as well be secret but something really, really good happened yesterday afternoon that Aji referred to as “another blessing now, a windfall that we could not have anticipated” – she says they don’t need any more fundraisers (and being Aji, said to direct everybody’s energy to my community needs list) and that the house will be finished as soon as the guys can physically do the work. We’ve been crying and “snoopy dancing” and rejoicing since she told us yesterday evening!

    So yes, there is Evil in the world and it seems to be in control right now. We do our best to block and circumvent for the time being – and work to take back power as soon as we can. But there is also Good, there is Love, there is Caring for community. Blessed. Be.

    Need to get to work. I’ll check back later. Bright the day, Meeses. {{{HUGS}}}

    • What wonderful news, bfitz! So glad about Aji’s house!

      And many thanks to YOU, for working so tirelessly on community needs. You’re an angel. :)

      • {{{Diana}}} – it is wonderful news. Don’t forget you are invested in that house, too. And I’m not going to claim angel, but I’m doing my best.

  12. I am following the liveblog of SCOTUS orders and decisions today.

    1. The concealed carry law in California will not receive Supreme Court review. The gun humpers wanted to have them declare that open-carry is protected by the 2nd Amendment. Not happening this term. Gorsucks, Thomas dissenting.
    2. The Colorado bakery case – the public accommodations law violation that the fundies want to allow religious exemptions to – has been accepted for review.
    3. Arkansas cannot deny same-sex couples the right to have both names on a birth certificate. Only Alito, Gorsucks, and Thomas wanted to hear the case.

    Six cases to be decided (or declared an impasse) including the one where the family of a Mexican boy shot and killed playing in Mexico by a U.S. border agent can sue the border agent.

    • The Muslim travel ban stay was lifted in part in a compromise that allowed for people with U.S. connections (family, business, school) into the country but blocked others. SCOTUS will hear the combined cases, 4th Circuit and 9th Circuit, in October although they are asking for briefs as to why it might possibly be moot, the ban having expired on June 14th. There is more here. The class still banned is pretty narrow so for the administration to call it a “complete vindication” is sheer propaganda.

      The Hernandez v Mesa case (the family suing the border patrol) was remanded to the lower court for further adjudication and two other cases were consolidated to be reheard in the fall.

      And Justice Kennedy did not retire!!!

      Rick Hasen has an interesting view of the Russian Court – he thinks that Roberts will move to the center as he tries to preserve the institution of the court now that he sees that Gorsuch is interested in knocking down all its pillars (sound familiar?):

      More broadly [the travel ban compromise] lets us divide #SCOTUS into three camps in these kinds of cases centrist block, hard right, and hard left:

      centrists-Breyer, Kagan, Kennedy, Roberts

      hard right–Alito, Gorsuch, Thomas

      hard left–Ginsburg, Sotomayor

      If this is right, then when Kennedy leaves and Roberts is the swing Justice, he’s likely to be more institutionalist than hard right. What I mean by that is Roberts is more likely to vote in the center for pragmatic reasons even if his ideology lines up with hard right.

      We will welcome Chief Justice Roberts to the light!

  13. Good morning, 65, sunny and very breezy in Bellingham. We enjoyed the grand girls dance recital yesterday but I lazed the morning away so I had to make bouquets in a hurry and we arrived just in time. The stage was full of children enjoying moving with the music, so it was a fun afternoon.

    On Dad’s Day the family gifted Ron with an Instant Pot so we had our first dinner cooked in it last night. The chili cooked in an amazingly short time but the cook needs to refine his prep skills. The kitchen required a major clean up! The kids are busier than we are so they love their pots and Ron will have fun sharing recipes with them. I’m a basic pot and pan cook so I’ll just enjoy eating the meals they produce.

    Why Do Cooks Love the Instant Pot? I Bought One to Find Out

    People have fallen in love with their Instant Pots.

    They may like their blenders, cherish their slow cookers and need their food processors.

    But the Instant Pot — a device that combines an electric pressure cooker, slow cooker, rice cooker and yogurt maker in one handy unit — sends even mild-mannered cooks into fits of passion.

  14. Good Tuesday morning Meese

    57 here in the Hudson Valley of NY – going up to 71 with rain.
    This

    became this last night

    • I was just going through my Twitter feed and saw that! Remarkable.

      Here is the link to the video of Cory Booker and John Lewis planning the “meet-up”. If you are not on Facebook, you can view the video without logging in or signing up but it is behind an annoying notice. I wish people would find a different way to share video or that Facebook would consider themselves an open publishing platform and let people read public pages and videos.

        • Dee, I think the thing most unforgivable about the berner movement, besides the fact that it likely helped elect the shitgibbon, is their disrespect to Cory Booker and John Lewis. When I watch those two interact, it is like looking at the history of the Civil Rights struggle. The Booker speech in opposition to Sessions, where he sat with John Lewis, was one of the finest moments in the Senate this year.

          A movement that denies the black identity (and the LGBT identity and women’s reproductive rights) has no place in the Democratic Party, none. I am alternately angry and weary when I see them on Twitter, especially yesterday when the youngs were proudly declaring their willingness to kill the ACA to advance their pipedream of single payer. Fk them.

  15. Good morning, meese! Tuesday …

    It is 50 degrees in Madison with an expected daytime high of 73. Sunny skies are in the forecast.

    The CBO score for the Senate’s ACA repeal bill, the BCRAp, was devastating. Not just 22 million uninsured but 14 million next year – 6 months from now, 14 million people will lose access to healthcare and by election day 2018, 15,000 to 20,000 people will die from treatable illnesses and injuries. Or as Republicans call it (in the context of gun violence) “the price we pay for freedom.”

    The bill is hung up right now and there is a short window for getting it passed this week because of the procedural hurdles. It has to get past a Motion To Proceed vote which Heller and Collins won’t agree to and which Rand Paul and Ron Freaking Johnson are blocking. Paul and Johnson are the Principled Conservatives, the guys who hate that pre-existing conditions are covered, because when you cover all sick people, it gets expensive. They want to cull the sick and put them in underfunded High Risk Pools and hope they die quickly. Cornyn, the single-brain-cell creature from Texas, said initially that the vote could be put off until August and now says this week or never. I shall choose never! However, even if the bill doesn’t make it through the Senate this week, they can bring it back when they have the votes, just like the House did. In some ways, that is good – it slows down the rest of the agenda – but in other ways it is bad as stress leads to all sorts of medical issues and we might not have health care!

    Meanwhile, the shitgibbon is threatening to start a new Middle East war. :(

    See all y’all later!

    • BCRAp is right.

      Every day I want to spit on all the people who spent their time attacking Hillary instead of being part of the effort to prevent this.

      • I just wish we could stick them on the Enterprise Holodeck – let them play out their fantasies where they can’t hurt anybody. I don’t have enough spit to deal with just the ones on DK, never mind the ones all over the internet.

  16. Getting ready to go to my tax protest. Took pictures of all the damaged siding last night & got an estimate from the property management — $18,300 will be my share. Sigh. Anyway, that’s my morning. Don’t have to go in to work till afternoon. Hoping the world can go one day without something horrifying happening.

  17. Good morning, Meese! The thick gray clouds of dawn have given way to white clouds and a pale blue sky. Current temp. here in NoVa is 63 F., going up to 79 F. later. Hope I feel like making that peach-blueberry crisp for dessert tonight. Younger Son brought me peaches and blueberries from their excursion to a farm on Sunday.

    Had an exhausting day with the two children yesterday. Mr. Preschooler got into my lipstick, completely reddened his face, then rubbed his face against the wall of my office. Toothpaste is supposed to get rid of crayon—it certainly doesn’t with lipstick! I had to use Bon Ami and a sponge. Even now the stains haven’t disappeared completely and a piece of paint fell off the wall. He also broke the plastic closure of the protective netting on my 18.5-oz glass water bottle. Sigh. That one came from Canada. I’ll have to look for another glass water bottle on line.

    Thought I’d take the little one to the farm down the road today to look at piggies and horsies. I think I’m going to have to stop child care after the summer, it’s wearing me out.

    I see Collins is a “No” vote. I can’t believe Rethugs, they’re so HATEFUL! Have you been keeping up with the shenanigans in Missouri? No woman who is using contraception, or who has ever had an abortion, or who has given birth to an illegitimate child, will be allowed to rent an apartment or get a job. WTF?

    The apocalypse is here. Hope we’re not in a war with Syria by the end of the day, folks.

    • I’ve become a tired grammie too Diana. My grand kids are older than yours so they don’t need day to day care anymore. But keeping up with visits and activities is harder this year. We agreed to doing something with the girls one day a week this summer but I just realized I forgot to plan something for today. They like to sleep in so I have a little time to pull myself together.

  18. Good morning, 56 and partly sunny in Bellingham. I had to keep my leg up yesterday, so I had time to follow the health care proceedings. Josh Marshall has a good summary of what comes next.

    McConnell On the Ropes. For Now

    My best guess is that McConnell won’t be able to do this in time for this week. They’ll take a lot of bad press for having ‘failed’. They’ll go to ground for a while, rejigger the calendar and come back at this at some point over the coming weeks. Then it will be a battle all over again. As we saw in the House, the amount of partisan inertia and pressure to repeal Obamacare, on almost any terms, and get that tax cut is immense. They won’t give up even after it seems like it proved impossible.

    All that said, if McConnell can’t get this done and has to bust his deadline, that is as big a victory as the opposition could have expected and it will be a big one. This was never going to be easy or quick. It was barely going to be possible to prevent McConnell from doing this. It’s going to be a long series of pitched battles. Opponents of Trumpcare will need to fight this over and over. But it now seems possible they win this first fight. If they do, it’s a big big deal.

    • I see the screaming by right-wing pundits that if Senators refuse to do this they are “letting down their base” since they ran on repeal for 4 election cycles. But that assumes that they were elected and re-elected on that one issue alone which is unlikely. They were re-elected by Republican identity politics which encompasses a lot – anti-abortion, anti-government, anti-gun control, anti-gay, anti-woman, anti-immigrant, pro-white. To cherry pick that single policy element as the “one thing” that they must not renege on is disingenuous. The Republican political class wants it because it gives them the tax cuts and meets a long-term goal of theirs: repealing the Great Society and the New Deal, programs that a majority of Americans actually favor.

      Rand Paul said that there is no need to repeal this year and create a worse situation. He thinks that Republicans can run on a more clean repeal next year and win big. Please do that!

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