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 (usually Saturday night with a Sunday date). 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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– Page One of Comments is HERE!
– Page Two of Comments is HERE!
Good morning meese, 44 with high of 63. It rained yesterday, which was good, and today is expected to be clear. I didn’t get much sleep but am resisting the urge to go back to bed since I have a long day at work ahead.
{{{basket}}} – we all seem to be running short of sleep right now. Hope your long day at work is at least a smooth day at work. {{{HUGS}}} & Healing Energy.
Good morning, Meesefolk; 37 when I got up with a rainy high of 46. March. Michigan. Typical. Can’t complain (but I may anyway, if prompted).
I see my boy Pete stepped in it, and twitter is now aflame with pissed off commenters. I’m staying out of it for the most part; I really like Pete, but I think he needs to correct/clarify sooner rather than later. The big difference for me is that my objection to his quote is very, very different than most of the folks I’m seeing on twitter. This is very difficult to say, particularly since I’ve never shared my experiences with the Hillary campaign in MI in 2016 (let’s just say that losing MI was not surprising to me; it was just made worse because what I experienced of the campaign here was a full-on clusterfck), but I don’t think he was altogether wrong. Where I disagree is with the implied slam against Democratic women and the insult and erasure that goes with it. There seems to be a strain of thought, which Mayor Pete definitely amplified and may even share, that the anger of women went away after the midterms and therefore we can be discounted again. That’s not just patriarchy; that’s a fundamental misreading of how women process and use anger. If he wants to have a future in the Democratic Party at the national level, he needs to spend some time with the base and listen. The good news is that he’s very good at that. Whether he chooses that route is another matter; if he hunkers down in a defensive posture and cries about his bona fides (he did endorse Hillary in 2016, despite knowing she was not being well-received by Dems in IN while Bernie was), he’s probably toast for any national role in the near term. It would be a shame for the party, because he brings a lot to the table, but the men of our party need to learn now that it’s not about Hillary…it’s about the women who believed in her.
Good day to and for all!
Holy Mackeral! I can’t understand anyone believing this!
As in “there there, missy, you got Speaker Pelosi – now go sit down and be quiet and let us menfolk take over again”? I am glad I missed the dustup for it would surely have raised my hackles. Mayor Pete does not have the advantage of having a female spouse to bounce ideas off of and he needs to find a friend to do that for him or he won’t survive. And you are right, that would be a shame.
I definitely think it’s a theme with the media and a bias that male politicians may be prone to (if not careful). The lack of visible Indivisible actions; the relative quiet compared to 2017 in terms of protests and direct actions; the shift in focus from women across the country to AOC-as-exemplar (I wish I was kidding about that last one)…all of these sorts of things contribute to a sense of “getting back to normal” for those immersed in patriarchy. I’ve said since 2016 Election Day+1 that men well and truly don’t get how deep, how visceral, how elemental our anger is. Anger like ours isn’t quelled by the 2018 election; it’s fed. That’s what I don’t see most men getting. It’s certainly one of the reasons that, as much as I have always liked and admired Mayor Pete, he’s never been my #1 choice. I am unabashedly a vagina voter these days. My anger demands it.
This! “Men well and truly don’t get how deep, how visceral, how elemental our anger is.”
And they would prefer that we just march and protest rather than do what we did in 2018 – run and win elections. Last year was only ramping up for elections in 2019 and 2020 including statehouses, more governors races, Senate seats and the presidency. I noticed that Wisconsin’s losing loser governor is going to be working for a new Republican group planning to protect their partisan gerrymanders by pumping money into statehouse and governors races. A lot is riding on how the Supreme Court rules in the Maryland and North Carolina cases – if they allow partisan gerrymanders to ratfk our democracy, our only hope is finding a way to break the gerrymanders by winning huge victories (in Wisconsin we need to outvote the Republicans by 10 to 12% in order to win a seat!). I am not sure how we do it as farmers really seem to not care that their president and their party is destroying them – we are 99% white outside the cities so it will require that the youth vote breaks with their parents.
In a sense it would be very easy for any man who actually paid attention to not make that mistake. Hillary’s campaign slogan was “Stronger Together” – very inclusive of everybody – and nobody was more policy oriented than she was. The only reason the environment or Flint came up at all was when she introduced them because they hadn’t come up as topics the moderators or reporters were asking about. The slogan “I’m With Her” was our slogan, Hillary supporters. So when you diss the “I’m With Her” slogan you’ve just dissed millions of women. And when you ignore everything Hillary to accuse her of running a personality-focused campaign and use our slogan instead of hers you’ve erased us totally AND used our words to attack the person we were supporting. If Pete had simply noticed which slogan came from where…but he didn’t.
This is precisely why I want to wait and see how Mayor Pete addresses this, if he even does. He clearly knows what Hillary’s slogan was; he was a supporter, a delegate, and a strong advocate for her. His statements in Esquire seemed to be, to my eyes, a mangled attempt at talking strategy. And that’s what I find particularly odd…Pete has long been known as a master at expressing nuance, and yet the answer to the question was a word salad that was being interpreted so many different ways, depending on one’s personal bias, that I don’t find it at all clear as to what his point was.
But I will say this (based solely on my experience working with the campaign in MI), strategically and logistically, the campaign was a shameful mess. Our organizers did their best, but somewhere along the way, their was a huge disconnect between field offices and HQ. I didn’t even get started helping as early as I intended, because the nearest field office was too far away…not even in my county. Then I read that Cecile Richards was coming to MI in support of Hillary and to my county seat, which is reasonably close. When I went to sign up for the event, I discovered it was being held at the field office for my county; a field office I would have sworn didn’t exist. When I later talked to the organizers, they told me that they had been there for months…longer than nearby counties…but despite repeated requests, HQ never got them on the website. So in Macomb County, a critical county in the state of Michigan, the campaign office for HRC was next-to-impossible to find, and thus suffered from a chronic shortage of volunteers. When I found out I had pneumonia and my doctor said no canvassing, I COULDN’T EVEN CALL TO LET THEM KNOW. I didn’t have any of the FOs phone numbers (our mutual oversight) and could find no way to call the office (I’m not even sure there was an office phone, tbh, but there was certainly no listing).
Additionally, our office offered no persuasion training. I don’t know if this was just our office or the approach of the entire campaign, but nothing was available. I was fortunate that I’d received topnotch training, both in quality and quantity, during the Obama campaigns, so I was more prepared than most at the field office. But quite a few of the women I met were n00bs to political campaigns, and it was like watching lambs being fed to wolves. When canvassing, we typically ran into three types: automatic Dem voters, Berners, or not even Dems (our lists were absolute shit, for reasons I still don’t fully understand). When the Berners would say, “I’ll never vote for her, because Wall Street corporate shill blah, blah, blah…”, our untrained n00bs would say, “OK, thank you for your time” and mark them as ungettable. I begged our FOs to get guidance from Brooklyn [about training] for using persuasion, because it was clearly needed. I don’t know if they ever did; one of my FOs didn’t even know what I meant about persuasion training. To this day, I don’t know if it was just our office or if there really was a huge disconnect between field offices and Brooklyn. But Brooklyn surely wasn’t getting the information they needed, and we weren’t getting the resources we needed.
The overall point, as it relates to Mayor Pete, is that when he said (in other articles) that he held events at a union hall and got a lukewarm reception at best, I understood what he meant. And in those cases, “I’m With Her” really didn’t resonate. I ran into more than enough racist union members during canvassing to know that a slogan that meant so much to women was not going to be part of my persuasion patter with that demographic. Unfortunately, his quote in Esquire sounds like he is saying “I’m With Her” didn’t resonate, period. And there, he is most obviously wrong.
Ours wasn’t as effed up as yours but it had many of the same problems. The national campaign was trying to work through the state offices to the locals. Unfortunately in AR and it sounds like in MI there were turf wars between the state and local party groups. So for instance we got Hillary bumperstickers because they were in the goody bags at NN16 & the NN officials basically told us volunteers to throw out all the unclaimed goody bags. Well, we didn’t. We took them apart as had been the procedure in previous years (according to what I was told – NN16 was my only NN) and I nabbed all the Hillary bumperstickers. Otherwise NW AR would not have had something as simple as bumperstickers because national sent them to state and state didn’t send them to us.
As to Mayor Pete – he had to know what Hillary’s actual slogan was. That he phrased what he said in his interview the way he did, well, I see 2 possibilities. He’s going the “trash Hillary” route that white men & the MSM owners so love or he’s not ready for prime time. And this business that all the male and some of the female candidates are pulling, talking about how the Dem party should have done exactly what Hillary did as if she hadn’t done it…After a while I just want to punch somebody – and I’ve run out of slack to cut them.
Good morning, 43 and sunny in Bellingham. Seeing the full moon shining on the water was a lovely start to my day and a needed reminder to focus on the beauty of life. We were at Joe’s Gardens yesterday so I have a few flowers to plant and RonK has starts for his veggie garden. Going to Joe’s is our official rite of spring.
Best wishes to all.
I know you follow this more closely than I do – I saw this Bloomberg article that seems to do a pretty good job of summarizing the Mueller investigation and the expected report.
I think that is good advice – Mueller is unlikely to decide to go against Justice Department policy that a sitting president cannot be indicted and the report may be the roadmap to indicting him after he leaves office. But the indictment of key campaign officials, including family members, will be a big deal.
Good morning, meeses! Friday …
It is 39 degrees in Madison with an expected daytime high of 46. Mainly sunny skies are in the forecast. I got to see the full-ish moon last night and she was spectacular! I woke this morning to moonlight streaming into the house.
The Twittersphere is bumming everyone out with rumors that the Mueller indictments are done and that his report will be delivered to Bob Barr for placement in his circular file today. I hope that only means that the Special Counsel indictments are done but that the grand jury has approved indictments to be handed down in SDNY and DC (I have no idea how this works). That would make sense as there is no need for Mueller’s prosecution staff to stay beyond when the report is issued and the Special Counsel office is shut down. If there are no more indictments and the Trump campaign avoids punishment for helping Russia ratfk our elections, that will be a huge black eye for the rule of law.
Mayor Pete keeps stepping in it – now he is giving interviews to The Intercept. Sheez, who are his advisors? Maybe he figures he has already lost the Hillary vote and may as well go full anti-Clinton asshole. He is dead to me.
A judge in librul Dane County blocked implementation of the laws passed in the Wisconsin lame duck session. Governor Evers quickly instructed Attorney General Josh Kaul to withdraw Wisconsin from the Texas lawsuit seeking to repeal protections for pre-existing conditions and he did so. Republicans legislators are livid and immediately sought to hire attorneys, on the taxpayer dime, to fight the order only to realize that the law allowing them to raid taxpayer money to hire attorneys to protect their stupid laws was one of the laws blocked! Interesting times. I am not sure what legal theory the judge was using and will read the news accounts this morning but the next step Appeals Court is firmly in liberal hands. Our Supreme Court is 5-4 Walker so when it gets there they will likely kill the order but in the meantime it is nice to see the courts not sitting idly by while the will of the people is thwarted.
I have a metric ton of errands to run today and need to organize projects for next week, the last week of March and the last week of the quarter, so I best get to it.
See all y’all later!
Good Friday morning Meese
41 here in Saugerties NY going up to 44
Raining here. Won’t complain – at least it is not snow.
Puerto Rico
In the olden days (pre-2015!) diverting money from military projects – including combat readiness, per the Marine commandant – would have made Republicans livid. The current Republican Party, now completed subsumed by trumpism, has no problem with trashing the military, their own celebrated veterans, all norms, and the rule of law in service to their party’s leader. I will keep repeating this until it comes to pass – we have to burn the Republican Party down and salt the earth where it once stood and NOT give the faux #NeverTrump‘ers any cover to reconstitute it.
Good morning, Moosekind! Cloudy, windy, and cold are the weather watchwords in Northern Virginia today. The current temp. in Ashburn is 40 F., going up to 48 F. You should see the creek in the woods! It did git up, as the saying goes.
Driving through the rain to Greenspring and back was not fun, but it was good to see my friend. She does seem to be a little stronger after the physical therapy, so that’s reassuring.
I’m continuing with revisions to the book. Goodness, it takes a long time! I’ve discovered I can only incorporate one set of revisions at a time: first I’ll do my own edits, then I’ll incorporate my beta reader’s edits. Still wishing I could find a 24-year-old man so I can ask him the question.
Today I have Book Club at 12:30 (we have to guess which biography the members have chosen to read), and the Birch Point party from 3 to 5. Doubt I’ll stay for the whole thing.
Glad to hear of the improved state of affairs in Wisconsin! Wish PR could catch a break. I do not believe the Mueller report will drop today. And just for the record, I have no patience at all with the “B-Boys”—Bernie, Beto, Buttigieg, and Uncle “Biden his time for far too long” Joe.
Anotherdemocrat can’t log into the Moose, so I’m going to get on Twitter and say hello to her. Wishing a good day to all!
I see the Twitter messages and will see if I can figure out what is going on. I don’t want to do any more troubleshooting on Twitter because I don’t want to make us a target for someone.
It is odd that both anotherdemocrat and DoReMI have the problem yet we don’t. I never log out of the site so perhaps it is fresh logins that are the problem.
I didn’t have a problem. I don’t log out either so that may be it.
45 with high of 57, and am definitely going back to bed to get a bit more sleep. I was logged out, but was able to login.
Thanks for that report – of the weather and your login status!! :)
{{{basket}}} – rest well. moar {{{HUG}}} & Healing Energy.
It’s 37-feels-like-33 and sunny at the moment in Fay., AR. Yesterday we reached another milestone – 21 KWHs for the day! The m-t-d is 255.8 so we’re getting close to 300 at least. Forecast says rain this weekend and also again towards the end of next week so I don’t know if we’ll make it much less get even close to previous years (range from 360 to over 400) but…
Aji’s news is promising. No surgery scheduled yet but the surgeon is a good, caring, professional person. They had a great consultation and first off he is VERY UNHAPPY with the quality of that biopsy. Basically he ain’t cutting into anybody’s neck based on that. She goes back next week so his people can do one before any decisions are made. Now that doesn’t mean she doesn’t have either of those very nasty cancers or a prognosis of a year maybe – but it certainly means there is a person who gives a damn and who is going to make sure of what they’re dealing with before he starts cutting. Hope is sproinging like Spring lambs & kids even as the pain and symptoms are progressing. Prayers/Invocations still needed – I’d say they’re working even in just getting her to a good way-they’re-supposed-to-be doctor.
I’m about to head off for errands. Getting a haircut (which I shouldn’t need but the last person who did it couldn’t seem to understand what “short professional woman’s cut” means and I had a headache and wasn’t very coherent in describing it I guess) then going to a local pet supply store for cat collars. I’m keeping the Twins in until I get them collared. If I can anyway. Since they are indoor-outdoor cats they need to be wearing their rabies tags. One twin is watching kitty TV (birds out the window) and the other is fussing about wanting to go out. sigh. Joys of being a kitty mom to adolescent cats. Bright the day, Meeses. {{{HUGS}}}
At work, eating breakfast, drinking tea. My opinion of Buttigieg has gone way down. It’s lazy (and, frankly sexist) to make the mistake of saying that HRC’s slogan was “I’m with her”. It wasn’t, that’s what we were saying — her slogan was “Stronger Together”; and she had more policy pages — and super-detailed ones — than probably anyone ever. Lazy, and dismissive.
Anyway, looking forward to a short workday, then going with people from my church to the mosque nearby, to just hold up friendly signs, and be supportive. Speaking of happy, supportive demonstrations, here’s Empress, which I am sure was at least partly inspired by the Women’s March.
Good morning, 44 and partly sunny in Bellingham. I’m slow and sleepy this morning, but feeling more relaxed is what I’ve been trying to do. I do note that being so aware of the difference is telling :)
I’m also feeling less tRump angst than I have been and that’s a huge relief. Regardless of what happens publicly with Muller’s report the DOJ, the SDNY, and other state’s actions will continue for years. Essentially we’re witnessing a complex international financial scandal with a national security/espionage subtext. The legal consequences for tRump and his family are ramping up now, not ending. It’s our job to pay attention, and to elect public officials who will protect the rule of law.
Time to find some coffee and sort out my day. Best wishes to all.
The show of support at the mosque was nice. People kept coming over & hugging us. The men going in on the side smiled & waved. Even some of them came back where we were & said thank you. It was wonderful.
That’s wonderful. People like you and the groups you belong to keep bringing me back to Bill Clinton’s comment (paraphrased) that there’s nothing wrong with America that can’t be fixed by what’s right with America. {{{HUGS}}
Good morning, meeses! Saturday …
It is 27 degrees in Madison with an expected daytime high of 54. Sunny skies are in the forecast.
The Mueller report has been delivered and the takes are hot enough to fry eggs on! The best piece of advice I saw was to avoid the cable news shows, which, when they have no news, tend to focus on wild speculation and/or the airing of grievances. After reading a lot of the background on what the report’s purpose is, it will explain what happened in 2016 and how the Russians influenced our election. That fact alone, without any indictments, will send the Orange Pustule into a rage because the legitimacy of his election is a sore spot for him. I am satisfied that there are still state charges pending in New York state that could destroy the Trump business empire and possibly imprison a Trump or two. That we won’t have to live through a Trump pardon of his children and the embarrassment of the Republican Party saying “this is fine” is good news. That we won’t have to test the “indicting a sitting president” theory is good news (really, it is). We have an election in 2020 and our efforts should be on removing tRump via the ballot box – in a landslide, preferably – to reset the rule of law and return decency and honor to the White House and our federal government.
The Democratic Weekly Address is by Rep. Lauren Underwood of Illinois, one of the impressive members of the House freshmen class. I was sad to hear that she has 7 primary challengers now that she has shown that a Democrat can win in IL-14. She is already having to fund-raise which simply underscores how ridiculous our system is, driven by donations. Anyway, her topic is pre-existing conditions and protecting the Affordable Care Act which is about to turn 9 years old. I was pleased to see that our 2020’s are coalescing around a more practical solution to our broken system of health care – Medicare for Anyone – where we get closer to universal coverage by adding the option to the exchanges of purchasing a Medicare policy. Private insurance and employer-based insurance would still be available, we just add the piece that Joe LIEberman (in service to his donors) had removed in 2009. Good. I am not comfortable running on Medicare for All and giving Republicans an opening to scare little old ladies into thinking that the government is going to reduce their health care coverage in some way – or to to keep adding to the cost estimates which, last I saw was at $71 trillion. :::insert eyeroll emoji here:::
Busy morning as I catch up on quiet day tasks that have stacked up.
See all y’all later!
Saturday Meese.
High winds here in NYS and light snow. Sigh. Spring!
Puerto Rico
I saw on the Internets somewhere that Mayor Berner threw her hat in the ring for Puerto Rico governor. Do we have any alternatives to her or the current governor?
Elections have consequences – good news from Michigan:
Good morning, Moosekind! I’m afraid to try to log in lest I get the unwelcome message again. I’ll be so upset if I can’t log in to the Moose Pond. This very morning I have a meeting with Teen Tech Help at 10:30. I was going to ask them to help me get the Moose Pond on my iPad for when I travel (I think we’ll be traveling for spring break, barring the unforeseen).
The book club yesterday was a lot of fun and I was able to guess the subject of one biography—Flannery O’Connor. Apparently the reader of the biography and I were the only people who’d ever heard of her. She wrote the most disturbing short story I’ve ever read.
My weather gadget isn’t working this sunny but bitterly cold morning, but Dearly, who took the dog out, assures me that it’s perfectly wretched out there. Yesterday it was windy enough to blow our hair off. Wishing all a good day.
There are a few queued up patches that WordPress would like me to install and I will try to get to those tomorrow. I did not want to do them when I was not at a real computer and real keyboard (and without my tech tools available). Perhaps that will resolve the problem. The other issue is that we can’t run https because it would require reworking a lot of the site’s foundation and I simply don’t have time for that kind of project in the short term. The connection to the moose is reported as not secure (as you will see if you look in the address bar) but I decided when that message started showing a year or so ago that it did not matter because we don’t do financial transactions. It is possible that SSL changes have now made it necessary to address the issue. I will see if I can carve out a chunk of time to dig deeper but with the looming end of the month, end of the quarter and still catching up from my trip, I can’t see how I can do that until sometime in April.
Whatever was blocking logins for some people (I had no problems logging in from any of my devices – with three different browsers) yesterday cleared itself and we can hope that the attackers moved on – I can’t believe we are a very exciting target!
Jan, it’11 a.m. on Saturday andI still can’t login. Keep getting that message. When I click on Help it looks like a scam page.
Let’s see what it looks like tomorrow morning after I have a chance to apply the patches.
The site is letting you comment, just not log in.
Slept in, watching the MSNBC morning show. Good, calm analysis — lots of former feds, talking about next steps. Yesterday at the mosque was really nice, people were so grateful for our little show of support. Today is groceries & exercise. I’m worried by how tired I was yesterday, I need to get into better shape.
Mid 50s and overcast at the moment – we many not get out of the 50s today at all. I’m hoping we get some sun but the rain forecast for this afternoon says even if we do it won’t be in peak production time. We generated 20 KWHs yesterday and the m-t-d is 276 – a couple of good sunny days would/will put us over 300 for March. If we get them. Currently long-range forecast has March going out like a lion – with snow. We shall see what we shall see.
Aji’s back to waiting – for the next procedure, for the reading of the next procedure, for what the heck comes next after that…there’s hope in the surgeon’s rejection of what the apparently botched biopsy suggested – but the Dx could have been right even if it was just a CYA guess. Up and down like a roller coaster. I’ve always hated the damned things.
I got collars for the kitty Twins yesterday and they’re still on so I may try attaching the rabies tags and see what happens. The cats are all scratching so while I haven’t seen any fleas I’d best quit dithering about what and how I’m going to treat all these cats and do something. Cats are taking money I would otherwise be giving to people. I feel kinda guilty about that. Of course I’ve just commissioned a necklace from Aji & Wings that is, too. I’d feel even guiltier about that except the money is going to Aji and Wings and Aji loves making sales. I still feel a little guilty though. It’s a good thing my tax refund came back in 4 figures, I’m still working, and my property taxes aren’t due until September. That covers cats, chimney cleaning, several “extra” gifts to folks with sudden urgent needs – and that necklace. Call it my last set of big splurges because I really don’t think I’m gonna be able to do any of it again.
Oh well. I need to schlep more firewood onto the porch before it starts raining and get some coffee. Then call my son and see if he’d like to do lunch today or tomorrow – it’s his birthday Tuesday but so far I’m scheduled to work then. I’ll see what his schedule and plans are – we could make it dinner on Tuesday if he’s not doing something with his family instead. Bright the day, Meeses. {{{HUGS}}}
Good morning, 48 and cloudy in Bellingham. Another quiet sleepy morning, so my day is just beginning. I’m going to try to be in the garden this afternoon, and to finish Sophie’s Dr Who pillow cases this morning. In between twitter and tv moments re the Mueller report I finished the Call Box pillow sham yesterday and to my surprise it’s quite nice. When projects drag on as this one has I tend to lose perspective :)
Best wishes to all.
I hope you can post pictures, all that Dr Who stuff excites my geeky little heart