Week-long Welcomings from Moosylvania: Oct. 11th through Oct. 17th

October 11, 2015 JanF Community 132

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, Motley Meese! The week begins …

    It is 55 degrees in Madison WI, on its way up to 78. Sunny skies are in the forecast.

    Have a great day, all y’alls!!

  2. Good Morning Meese
    Nippy here at 41.
    I wonder how many people will be watching Major Bradley Podliska on CNN this morning at 9AM?

    Bennnnngazi!!!

    • I was watching that story unfold and it struck me that, more often than not, people who go after the Clintons end up doing more damage to themselves than the Clintons. Hillary put out an ad about Kevin McCarthy … I hope she goes after Trey “John Calhoun” Gowdy next.

      The email server story loses its potency when people see it for what it is: a partisan witch hunt. It will still be “reported” on Fox and the right-wing news sites but the people who get their “news” there are never going to vote for Democrats anyway.

      Did you see what Jerry Brown did in California? Automatic voter registration!! Yay, us … and U.S.

      • Elated about CA voter registration – now if we could just stop voter repression in red states.

        • The State of Oklahoma just settled a lawsuit over the “shocking” lack of people registering to vote when they were present at public assistance agencies.

          Between 2013-2014, the Oklahoma State Election Board (SEB) reported receiving 254 voter registration applications at public assistance agencies. This included individuals registering for the first time and updating their information.

          What? People getting public assistance not being offered the opportunity to register as required by law??? Hard to believe, I know. After the complaint was filed, this happened:

          In August 2015, the first month following a settlement with Demos and partners, the SEB reported receiving 1,574 voter registration applications from state public assistance agencies, an increase of almost 520 percent.

          Of the total registrations received from public assistance agencies, the (SEB) received 1,206 new voters who were not previously registered in the county. Compare that to 2013-2014, when Oklahoma reported an average of about 179 new voter registrations submitted at public assistance agencies per month.

          We have a long way to go and I hope that the Justice Department steps up its game … we need some federal lawsuits started NOW to get through the pipeline for the 2016 elections. People will be voting in primaries and “non-partisan” elections, like our State Supreme Court, starting in February.

  4. Good morning, 56 and cloudy in Bellingham. I love seeing the branches of my old maple trees fill my window as daylight arrives. The leaves are starting to turn now and I am preparing myself for this to be the last seasonal change I’ll share with the old trees ::::sniff::::: Wind gusts last night had all the neighbors moving their cars from the street. The trees were fine, but everyone is worried. I want to get another arborist’s opinion before I make the dreaded call to the Urban Forester though.

    The NYT has a feature article re the small number of wealthy families funding the 2016 Presidential Election The visual impact of using monopoly pieces is alarming……

    They are overwhelmingly white, rich, older and male, in a nation that is being remade by the young, by women, and by black and brown voters. Across a sprawling country, they reside in an archipelago of wealth, exclusive neighborhoods dotting a handful of cities and towns. And in an economy that has minted billionaires in a dizzying array of industries, most made their fortunes in just two: finance and energy.

    Now they are deploying their vast wealth in the political arena, providing almost half of all the seed money raised to support Democratic and Republican presidential candidates. Just 158 families, along with companies they own or control, contributed $176 million in the first phase of the campaign, a New York Times investigation found. Not since before Watergate have so few people and businesses provided so much early money in a campaign, most of it through channels legalized by the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision five years ago

    .

    I am used to using Chrome as my browser, but I can’t copy/paste from the NYT when using Chrome. I can with the new Edge browser that comes with W 10, but getting used to something new is a challenge!

    • Princesspat, men do not like to share power with women. They realize they are inherently inferior to women, so they co-opt political and military institutions through violence in order to assure their own dominance.

    • I have seen Edge but I haven’t done much with it. I tried to set up Favorites and couldn’t and gave up. I don’t have to use Windows 10 yet and none of my clients are using it so (it is on my daughter’s computer) so I will ignore it for a while. :)

      Rick Hasen had reported on that NY Times article and I read it this morning. Amazing! Like I said in the Open News Thread, I don’t understand why they would want to prop up the Republican Party. Low taxes, no regulations, I get. But the Republican Party right now wants to default on our debt, defund highways, and shut down the government. I am not sure how that helps anyone who is wealthy unless they have their own planet.

  5. Morning all! well, just barely morning. It is what passes for cool here this morning, but still getting to the mid 80’s every day – guess we’ll have to wait a couple more weeks for the high temps to subside.

    That is great news out of California – would that more states would follow their example, but I’m not hopeful. Voter suppression is, as the kids say, a feature, not a bug, of current laws, and until the cast of characters in charge of state laws changes from those who use those laws to hold on to power, we won’t see enough change.

    Have a great day all!

    • Florida is in the news again with their gerrymandering court battle. It looks like the court is siding with the Democrats on the districts in Miami that were created for Republicans. The legislature is determined to push it to the limit and the Circuit Court judge is having no part of it:

      Circuit Court Judge Terry Lewis on Friday gave tentative approval to a new congressional redistricting map that has the potential to unseat at least three incumbent congressional candidates and opens the doors for others to enter the fray.

      Lewis rejected the Florida Legislature’s third attempt at redrawing its congressional districts and recommended a map proposed by the challengers to the Florida Supreme Court for its final review. His ruling adopted the bulk of the map approved by lawmakers in the northern and central portions of the state but specifically rejected the proposed boundaries for District 26 in Miami-Dade County, now held by Republican Congressman Carlos Curbelo.

      The challengers, a coalition of League of Women Voters and Common Cause of Florida and a group of Democrat-leaning individuals, agreed with the Legislature’s configuration of 20 of the 27 districts proposed in a staff-drawn base map but asked the court to adopt their changes to the remaining districts. Lewis agreed.

      “The Legislature has thus not met its burden of justifying the proposed versions of Districts 20 through 27,” he wrote in a 19-page ruling. He said that a map drawn by the challengers showed no evidence of being drawn with partisan intent and “best complies with the directions” set out by the Florida Supreme Court in July.

      There is a gerrymandering case in Virginia also.

  6. Good morning, Meese! We have another flawlessly beautiful October day here in NoVa. October is the most beautiful month of the year in terms of color and weather. Current temp. is 64 F., going up to 72 F. A bit coolish for grilling out tonight, but we must do it while we can. We never seem to make any progress on getting the house ready. However, Dearly Beloved and Younger Son did heave the sofa up to the living room area yesterday and the microwave man is busy installing a new microwave.

    Yesterday Dearly, a former building inspector, informed me that our contractor has put in two of the doors wrong. Oh, Goddess! That’s just what we needed.

    Wishing a good day to all!

    • At least your weather is good. Hope the contractor will correct without hassle (or extra charge). Enjoy your grilling out – as a former resident of TX I say any temp between 35 and 80 is great grilling weather :) And you’ll get there on the house. It just seems like no progress because there’s so much of it – all of your “get around tos” having to be done at once and right now – but you already have lots of stuff checked off. Truly sooner rather than later the checked off stuff will outnumber the still to do stuff, and then it will seem like no time til it’s done.

  7. Good afternoon Folks – sitting on our projected high of 80 at 1406 CDT with mostly sunny skies. Our temps ranges/changes are too gentle to call it a rollercoaster – more sort of undulating 80s-50s down to 70s-40s and back – but we are starting to get some Fall Color (other than the drought yellow/brown) mostly from the maples but the pin oak in my front yard (the one shading the east side of the roof this time of year) has some bunches of leaves turning as well.

    Orange muffins for breakfast/coffee breaks and roast pork for dinner this week. This is the last week for the Jonathans at the market – I’ll be getting Macintoshes next week. Got some strawberries at the Market yesterday – they were wonderful. Still getting green beans but the folks aren’t sure how much longer the tomatoes are going to last. The cukes are already gone.

    If it weren’t for the community things I think I’d be totally giving the All-Bernie-All-the-Time GOS a miss. I can usually get my political news here just as quickly (thanks Jan) and it’s getting harder to find the community diaries amid the All-Bernie-All-the-Time. sigh. Hope Hillary gets a good ad out on Gowdy. I’m no less P.O.d at him and his “committee” wasting my tax dollars that are seriously needed elsewhere than I was at the “whitewater” committee witchhunt (partly run by my current governor – how soon they forget) back in the day. I said then and I say now it’s misappropriation of government funds and there are a slew of people who ought to be either in jail or fined enough to make up the loss!

    So. Everybody have the good week. {{{HUGS}}}

  8. 3.8 miles. I had to get the coach to give me a ride back, it was a really long walk back. We did drills on a hill: sideways twist, and the other side, high knees, fast with hands behind your back, backwards. After 2 miles to get there, I managed 1 mile back.

    A friend & her mom visited at church, and we had great music. They said they’ll be back.

    Clearing out the dvr. I don’t have to cook, since I’m working Monday then off for 3 days. All in all, today is nice so far.

  9. Good morning, Meese! Monday …

    It is 63 degrees in Madison, on its way up to 69. Partly cloudy skies and high winds in the forecast. The temperatures will drop throughout the week with daytime highs in the 50s on Friday and Saturday. Yay, Fall!!

    Gov. Jerry Brown of California is on a roll. Saturday he signed a number of bills including this one:

    California is now the first state in the nation to prohibit public schools from using the term “Redskin” as a team name or mascot.

    On Sunday, Gov. Jerry Brown signed the California Racial Mascots Act barring use of the term Native Americans call a racial epithet.

    It is beyond embarrassing that the NFL team in our nation’s capitol insists on retaining their nickname. And why is today, a day that celebrates the arrival of white Europeans on the North American continent, still called Columbus Day? I thought they had changed the name to Founders Day?

    The president was on 60 Minutes last night, being treated disrespectfully by another “journalist”. The president did not hesitate to say “Yes” when asked if he could win a third term. He is 100% right and I hope that our nominee realizes that: distancing oneself from this president would be mindnumbingly stupid. I guess we will find out on Tuesday night when the Democratic candidates meet on the debate stage in Las Vegas. I will be watching.

    See all y’all later!

    • Here is the 60 Minutes clip. If you fast forward to about 12:30, Steve Kroft starts carrying lakes full of water for his Republican friends. President Obama will have none of it:

      View More: 60 Minutes News|Live News|More News Videos

      CBS Talking Head: … no, let ME finish MY thought! They say you’re projecting weakness not strength.
      President Barack Obama: You’re saying they … but you’re not citing too many folks …
      CTH: (interrupt, sputter, sputter, how dare you) No, I’ll cite folks if you want me to: the Saudis, the Israelis, our friends in the Middle East … everybody in Republican party …
      PBO: HAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!! If you’re citing the Republican Party, I think its fair to say that there is nothing I have done right in the last 7 and a half years. And what is also true is that these are the same folks who were making an argument that we go into Iraq and in some cases still have difficulty acknowledging that it was a mistake. … I guarantee you that there are still factions in the Middle East, and I guess, factions within the Republican Party, who think that we should send endless numbers of troops into the Middle East … that the only measure of strength is sending BACK hundreds of thousands of troops …

      (Rough transcript from listening)

      • There is an official CBS transcript here but it does not include facial expressions or “President Obama laughs at Steve Kroft’s apparently serious concern that the Republican Party disagrees about the use of force in the Middle East” … which it should!!

        Steve Kroft: You say he’s doing this out of weakness. There is a perception in the Middle East among our adversaries, certainly and even among some of our allies that the United States is in retreat, that we pulled our troops out of Iraq and ISIS has moved in and taken over much of that territory. The situation in Afghanistan is very precarious and the Taliban is on the march again. And ISIS controls a large part of Syria.

        President Barack Obama: I think it’s fair to say, Steve, that if–

        Steve Kroft: It’s– they– let me just finish the thought. They say your–

        President Barack Obama: You’re–

        Steve Kroft: –they say you’re projecting a weakness, not a strength–

        President Barack Obama: –you’re saying “they,” but you’re not citing too many folks. But here–

        Steve Kroft: No, I’ll cite– I’ll cite if you want me, too.

        President Barack Obama: –here– yes. Here–

        Steve Kroft: I’d say the Saudis. I’d say the Israelis. I’d say a lot of our friends in the Middle East. I’d say everybody in the Republican party. Well, you want me to keep going?

        President Barack Obama: Yeah. The– the– if you are– if you’re citing the Republican party, I think it’s fair to say that there is nothing I’ve done right over the last seven and a half years. And I think that’s right. It– and– I also think what is true is that these are the same folks who were making an argument for us to go into Iraq and who, in some cases, still have difficulty acknowledging that it was a mistake. And Steve, I guarantee you that there are factions inside of the Middle East, and I guess factions inside the Republican party who think that we should send endless numbers of troops into the Middle East, that the only measure of strength is us sending back several hundred thousand troops, that we are going to impose a peace, police the region, and– that the fact that we might have more deaths of U.S. troops, thousands of troops killed, thousands of troops injured, spend another trillion dollars, they would have no problem with that. There are people who would like to see us do that. And unless we do that, they’ll suggest we’re in retreat.

        Steve Kroft: They’ll say you’re throwing in the towel–

        President Barack Obama: No. Steve, we have an enormous presence in the Middle East. We have bases and we have aircraft carriers. And our pilots are flying through those skies. And we are currently supporting Iraq as it tries to continue to build up its forces. But the problem that I think a lot of these critics never answered is what’s in the interest of the United States of America and at what point do we say that, “Here are the things we can do well to protect America. But here are the things that we also have to do in order to make sure that America leads and America is strong and stays number one.” And if in fact the only measure is for us to send another 100,000 or 200,000 troops into Syria or back into Iraq, or perhaps into Libya, or perhaps into Yemen, and our goal somehow is that we are now going to be, not just the police, but the governors of this region. That would be a bad strategy Steve. And I think that if we make that mistake again, then shame on us.

        Steve Kroft: Do you think the world’s a safer place?

        President Barack Obama: America is a safer place. I think that there are places, obviously, like Syria that are not safer than when I came into office. But, in terms of us protecting ourselves against terrorism, in terms of us making sure that we are strengthening our alliances, in terms of our reputation around the world, absolutely we’re stronger.

        • Someone I follow on Twitter ( I forget who) was live-tweeting the interview & they were enraged. Kept talking about how disrespectful & condescending Kroft was. I’m glad I was watching the season finale of Fear The Walking Dead from my dvr.

      • Aging, overfed, elitist Steve Kroft with his presumed millions in the stock market tries to take down our president, who actually possesses a working brain—unlike the members of the traditional media. A disgusting sight. Glad I didn’t watch it.

    • Was that Steve Kroft? Gods, I hate these smirking, overfed, overprivileged “journos” who disdain our president. They didn’t disdain Raygun, even though his stupidity shone through his every utterance. The misguided worship of a third-rate actor with a 1940s worldview (“Amurricans good—everyone else bad”) still plagues us to this day.

  10. Good morning, Moosekind! It’s another flawlessly beautiful October day here, 39 F. now, going up to 75 F. Days like this remind me why Dearly and I got married in October.

    Bfitz, thanks for the encouraging words! To add to my stress-related woes, now a rash has broken out on my face and neck, which look like a patchwork quilt. Still feeling overwhelmed and on the verge of tears. Why did I ever start this? Monty Beagle will miss the backyard. I already miss the furniture that was taken away. Speaking of which, 1-2-3 Junk sent us an entirely inaccurate list of what we supposedly donated. It was someone else’s list.

    Hope everyone else will have a good day!

    • Oh noes! It sounds like you are having a dreadful time of it!! At least the weather is nice (fingers crossed that it stays that way).

      When will you be out of downsizing hell?

        • Ready, smeady – appearance is all when selling a house. A clean house with a relatively fresh coat of paint, no holes in the walls or windows, and maybe the smell of apple pie or chocolate chip cookies in the kitchen will sell a house faster and for more money – even with structural damage – than an everything perfect down to the last covered nail hole house that’s dirty or is an unappealing color or smells bad. In fact, clean and good kitchen smells will do almost as much by themselves as all the rest combined. The flip side of that is how I managed to afford my house – it was filthy and painted pepto-bismal pink with sickly turquoise trim – after it had been on the market for over 6 months I offered them the top penny I could finance which was something like 20% below their asking price and they took it. So. I know you keep a clean house and I know you cook wonderful food that smells divine. You’re covered.

  11. Glad to see this:

    More cities are recognizing Native Americans on Columbus Day

    I assign all my students to read Bartolomé de las Casas “Brief Account of the Devastation of the Indies. (1542)” to get a picture of what Columbus wrought.

    On the Island Hispaniola was where the Spaniards first landed, as I have said. Here those Christians perpetrated their first ravages and oppressions against the native peoples. This was the first land in the New World to be destroyed and depopulated by the Christians, and here they began their subjection of the women and children, taking them away from the Indians to use them and ill use them, eating the food they provided with their sweat and toil. The Spaniards did not content themselves with what the Indians gave them of their own free will, according to their ability, which was always too little to satisfy enormous appetites, for a Christian eats and consumes in one day an amount of food that would suffice to feed three houses inhabited by ten Indians for one month. And they committed other acts of force and violence and oppression which made the Indians realize that these men had not come from Heaven. And some of the Indians concealed their foods while others concealed their wives and children and still others fled to the mountains to avoid the terrible transactions of the Christians.

    And the Christians attacked them with buffets and beatings, until finally they laid hands on the nobles of the villages. Then they behaved with such temerity and shamelessness that the most powerful ruler of the islands had to see his own wife raped by a Christian officer.

    From that time onward the Indians began to seek ways to throw the Christians out of their lands. They took up arms, but their weapons were very weak and of little service in offense and still less in defense. (Because of this, the wars of the Indians against each other are little more than games played by children.) And the Christians, with their horses and swords and pikes began to carry out massacres and strange cruelties against them. They attacked the towns and spared neither the children nor the aged nor pregnant women nor women in childbed, not only stabbing them and dismembering them but cutting them to pieces as if dealing with sheep in the slaughter house. They laid bets as to who, with one stroke of the sword, could split a man in two or could cut off his head or spill out his entrails with a single stroke of the pike. They took infants from their mothers’ breasts, snatching them by the legs and pitching them headfirst against the crags or snatched them by the arms and threw them into the rivers, roaring with laughter and saying as the babies fell into the water, “Boil there, you offspring of the devil!” Other infants they put to the sword along with their mothers and anyone else who happened to be nearby. They made some low wide gallows on which the hanged victim’s feet almost touched the ground, stringing up their victims in lots of thirteen, in memory of Our Redeemer and His twelve Apostles, then set burning wood at their feet and thus burned them alive. To others they attached straw or wrapped their whole bodies in straw and set them afire. With still others, all those they wanted to capture alive, they cut off their hands and hung them round the victim’s neck, saying, “Go now, carry the message,” meaning, Take the news to the Indians who have fled to the mountains. They usually dealt with the chieftains and nobles in the following way: they made a grid of rods which they placed on forked sticks, then lashed the victims to the grid and lighted a smoldering fire underneath, so that little by little, as those captives screamed in despair and torment, their souls would leave them….

    Students from my campus have taken a page from the Zinn project The People vs. Columbus, et al and put Columbus on trial.

    • I saw some inane article that suggested that Christopher Columbus should be treated better. JHC! The White Male Privilege protection racket never rests, does it?

      Thanks for those links.

        • This colonialist sentiment from the USA Today AP article is another head shaker. One woman from the Sons of Italy’s Denver Lodge was complaining that the parades are not a draw any longer because of those uppity Native Americans:

          “It’s been a struggle to even get people to come and attend the parades as spectators,” [Anna] Vann said. “It’s a celebration of when the Europeans came over and started their lives here. We wouldn’t be where we are today if it weren’t for this history.”

          “We wouldn’t be where we are today” … ugh. Maybe if they actually celebrated it as the day that Europeans came over but also respected that white European culture is not the only culture, that would help. Instead we get Columbus “discovering” the home of the tribes of North America and putting in place their “superior” culture.

          • Well, it’s true I probably wouldn’t be here – if my mother’s Irish family hadn’t had a place to go they’d probably have died several generations back during “The Hunger” – but that doesn’t mean I don’t know a very great evil was done to the First Peoples. And really, since we didn’t follow the path of sisterhood we will never know, but the Americas might have become a refuge for the poor and abused anyway if we had followed the path of peace.

            The viciousness of a people for whom “other” = “not people” and therefore not just expendable but deserving of killing in the nastiest ways they could imagine is what my mother had against the folks she called “the people of the book” – whether the book in question was the Torah, Bible, or Koran didn’t matter as they all seemed to operate the same way.

        • Here is a fun Tweet:

          Charles Clymer ‏@cmclymer
          “Happy Columbus Day! I’m celebrating by taking over my neighbor’s house, enslaving them, killing them, and claiming I discovered their land!”

    • One of my favorite science fiction books is Pastwatch: The Redemption of Columbus. It is, weirdly enough, by rwnj Orson Scott Card — so get it from the library or used book store, do not buy it. People in (post-apocalyptic, of course) future have found a way to view the past & do so obsessively, looking for where things went wrong. They decide it was the whole Columbus thing, and send back 3 teams. 1 to Hispaniola/Central America & 1 to future North America, to prepare people for Europeans, help them resist, etc. 1 team went to Columbus himself, to try to, well, redeem him. To teach him that other people are people, and that whole raping & pillaging thing is wrong.

      It’s an interesting book. And being by frothing-at-the-mouth right wing lunatic Card is…. surprising. Maybe one can be a homophobe & hate (really, really hate) anyone to the left of Ronald Reagan, but not be a racist?

    • Great Mother, Denise! That fills me with outrage, disgust, and grief. What a vile, vile system is patriarchy! All patriarchal religions are EVIL. They do nothing but perpetrate violence against women, children, and the old in the name of their filthy god.

      Sometimes I wish there really were such a thing as hell so people like the conquistadores would be consigned to it.

  12. Not that I’m a big fan of cold weather – I hate when I have to stop wearing sandals & wear close-toed shoes. But our highs over the weekend were in the mid-90s. Today, upper. It’s the middle of October & the El Nino was supposed to give us “cooler & wetter than normal” weather. We’re back in drought – some ares in severe drought. My Halloween costume (Hermione Granger) has long pants & long sleeves — it may still be too warm for long pants.

    Weird work week for me. Working today & Friday. I have a ridiculous amount of vacation time saved, and I’m tired & cranky. I took off days that I don’t have any of our rotating duties. Had a stunningly lousy night’s sleep last night — isn’t working out supposed to help with that??

    Earworm is from my alarm – Bad by U2 this is from their current tour, with Bono talking about the Syrian refugee crisis

    • Exercise is supposed to help with that. Wonder why it isn’t working for you? In the days when I used to do half an hour on the treadmill, followed by half an hour on the Nordic Track ski machine, believe me—I fell asleep the instead my head touched the pillow.

      It’s odd that exercise is not tiring you out. Does UT have a Sleep Clinic you could enroll in? M’daughter and my nephew both have sleep problems, although not as severe as yours. My nephew said the clinic helped him.

    • My sleep problems are all sinus related – doesn’t matter whether I do or don’t exercise – so when the pollen is bad, I mostly sleep sitting up. sigh. Hope you find a solution.

  13. Good morning, 52 and partly cloudy in Bellingham. Today will be busy with the pool and the insulation contractor. The access to the attic is in the middle of the upstairs hallway so I’ll have people working right in the middle of my quiet space. Fortunately our son will be here to direct traffic and make sure everything goes well.

    Our family dinner was very fun last night. RonK barbequed a pork roast, flavored with rosemary and garlic, and I made a very tasty gluten free gingerbread cake. I’ve finally decided it’s best to start with a gluten free cake mix so all the flour science is done for me. Per the recipe I added cinnamon, cloves, nutmeg, molasses, eggs, and buttermilk and I served the finished cake with a lemon glaze and whipped cream.

    Paul Krugman’s column The Crazies and the Con Man is to the point…..

    How will the chaos that the crazies, I mean the Freedom Caucus, have wrought in the House get resolved? I have no idea. But as this column went to press, practically the whole Republican establishment was pleading with Paul Ryan, the chairman of the Ways and Means Committee, to become speaker. He is, everyone says, the only man who can save the day.

    What makes Mr. Ryan so special? The answer, basically, is that he’s the best con man they’ve got. His success in hoodwinking the news media and self-proclaimed centrists in general is the basis of his stature within his party. Unfortunately, at least from his point of view, it would be hard to sustain the con game from the speaker’s chair.

    • That meal sounds wonderful! I love roast pork but I have never had it cooked on a barbeque. Oven baked with sliced potatoes sizzling and browning next to it. Hmmmm!!

      Ha!! Paul Krugman really does not like Paul Ryan: “he’s the best con man they’ve got”. I remember when he was beside himself with the Slobbery Press proclaiming Ryan the “smart one” and Krugman skewered him as the “Flim-flam man” … 2010:

      Mr. Ryan has become the Republican Party’s poster child for new ideas thanks to his “Roadmap for America’s Future,” a plan for a major overhaul of federal spending and taxes. News media coverage has been overwhelmingly favorable; on Monday, The Washington Post put a glowing profile of Mr. Ryan on its front page, portraying him as the G.O.P.’s fiscal conscience. He’s often described with phrases like “intellectually audacious.”

      But it’s the audacity of dopes. Mr. Ryan isn’t offering fresh food for thought; he’s serving up leftovers from the 1990s, drenched in flimflam sauce. […]

      So why have so many in Washington, especially in the news media, been taken in by this flimflam? It’s not just inability to do the math, although that’s part of it. There’s also the unwillingness of self-styled centrists to face up to the realities of the modern Republican Party; they want to pretend, in the teeth of overwhelming evidence, that there are still people in the G.O.P. making sense. And last but not least, there’s deference to power — the G.O.P. is a resurgent political force, so one mustn’t point out that its intellectual heroes have no clothes.

      But they don’t. The Ryan plan is a fraud that makes no useful contribution to the debate over America’s fiscal future.

    • That pork sounds good – makes me wish I’d added rosemary to my pork roast. The nice thing about oven roasting is I can save the juices to go into the soup pot. :)

      Most gluten-free mixes are rice-flour based which does give you a product as similar as gluten-free can get to a white/refined wheat flour product. I prefer using Bob’s Red Mill All-Purpose Gluten-Free Flour which is predominantly bean-flour based and gives a product closer to a whole-wheat flour product (with the same caloric and protein load as WW flour). The main thing to remember when using it is the old-fashioned “sift, measure, sift again” as it packs down with sitting.

      • I use Bob’s Red Mill gf flour too bfitz, but I used a Bob’s gf vanilla cake mix as the base for the gingerbread because my last attempt substituting gf flour for my favorite gingerbread recipe was a total failure. It’s so disappointing when that happens!

        • His – well anybody’s really – cake mixes are too sweet for me. But yes, it’s very disappointing when a recipe doesn’t work out right. Especially if it was for “company”.

    • Great idea, bfitz! I’ve got a couple of frozen bread loaves I’m dying to bake before we move—if we do. Perhaps the smell of baking bread will help. I’ll ask the realtor.

      • The smell of anything that comes under the heading of “comfort food” works just fine. I count baking bread in that category big time! :)

  14. Hi Folks – 65 when I left the house this morning heading up for 80 today and mostly sunny, mostly. Tonight is going to be one of those situations where it’s going to be too warm for a fire until after I go to bed but I’m really going to wish I’d had one when I get up in the morning. Oh well, transitions are always messy. Hope everyone has as good a Monday as possible. {{{HUGS}}}

    • Ha! I was up at 3:30am but have been scanning the news. There is a lot going on!!!

      Did you see that the Confederate flag wavers who terrorized a black child’s birthday party in Georgia were charged with … TERRORISM!! Knock me over with a feather. It is especially delicious because they are charged under an anti-street-gang law. HA!!

      A group of white men and women who drove trucks flying huge rebel flags to a black child’s birthday party near Atlanta have been charged with terrorist threats and gang activity, prosecutors announced Monday.

      Fifteen members of a group called Respect the Flag drove around Douglasville, Georgia with multiple Confederate flags on each vehicle on July 25. The 10 men and five women drove through a black neighborhood and then stopped outside a child’s birthday party at about 3:30 p.m. Party attendees allege that the group threatened the guests with violence and yelled racial epithets.

      A Douglas County grand jury charged all 15 defendants with terroristic threats and with violating the state’s Street Gang Terrorism and Prevention Act.

  16. Good morning, meese! Tuesday …

    It is 49 degrees in Madison, on its way up to 59. Morning clouds and afternoon sun are in the forecast.

    Tonight is the Democratic Presidential Debate on CNN. I admit to a little nervousness because the GOP debate is theatre and they don’t care what their party looks like … in fact the screechier and more unhinged, the more appealing to their base. I want the Democrats to look like adults who can discuss the issues we care about in a civil way. There is not a lot of difference between our candidates except for Jim Webb who should be running in the Republican Party. It is interesting to me that there are only two candidates who are actually Democrats, Hillary Clinton and Martin O’Malley. Jim Webb became a Democrat to run for the Senate in Virginia, Lincoln Chaffee was a Republican then became an independent to run for governor of Rhode Island then became a Democrat after he lost. Bernie Sanders is an independent and has never been a member of either national party.

    CNN at 8:30pm Eastern. I will have to stay up past my bedtime!!

    See all y’all later!

    • What I wonder is – what kind of gotcha questions are they going to be asked by Anderson Cooper – who is a smarmy creeplet (imho)

      • An easy guess is that it would not be the same questions you or I would ask. :)

        For one thing, I could not care any less about Hillary Clinton’s emails and I am willing to bet that it is a topic of conversation. How many ways can she say “I made a mistake, I should not have done that, I’m sorry”. President Obama said Sunday night that her private email server posed no national security threat. End of story.

        • Have there been any hints? Are they focusing on foreign policy, or domestic? I wonder if they are going to badger Bernie about “socialism”?

          • just checked – seems everyone in the TM has a different opinion about what will be asked – though the majority think it will involve BlackLivesMatter and incarceration.

            About 5 or 6 pointed to the fact that only two of the candidates are truly Democrats.

  17. Here is some good news from Iran: Iran’s parliament approves nuclear deal

    Iran’s parliament voted on Tuesday to support implementing the nuclear deal it struck with world powers, sending the measure to a council of senior clerics who will review the accord before its final approval.

    Many lawmakers strongly opposed the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) that President Hassan Rouhani’s government reached with world powers on July 14.

    Tuesday’s vote removes an obstacle to putting the agreement into practice.

    Giving peace a chance: apparently easier if you are a ruthless state sponsor of terrorism rather than a Republican United States Senator. I am certain that Tom Cotton is preparing a letter to the clerics as we speak.

  18. Good morning, Meese! It’s 57 F. on a cloudy morning in NoVa, going up to 75 F. It might actually rain today—huzzah! Out in the garden, Jose the gardener has cut down the raspberry canes to one foot. Yikes! We were going to do it after the first frost, but no matter. The carrot tops are pushing up out of the soil, the green peas are looking for something to cling to, and the scarlet runner beans are already twining themselves around the pole and anything else they can find.

    Yesterday evening I had an hour-long chat on Facetime with an ordained priestess I know. She lives in D.C. We discussed the arrangements for my memorial service. She’s going to write up a draft of what we discussed, add some ideas, and then send it to me and the other priestess I’ve asked to officiate. M’daughter wrote to me recently and said I was the only person she knows who isn’t afraid to talk about death and the necessity of preparing for it, however far into the future it may be. I enjoyed our discussion: the priestess seems to have abandoned the “radical honesty” schtik that made her personality so off-putting when I first met her 15 years ago.

    The downsizing lady is coming today. I’m hoping to get out of here early enough for some time at the gym. Haven’t been since Friday! Just read that eating nothing but boiled potatoes (no butter) three times a day for 3-7 days makes one lose weight. Might try that. The Irish lived on potatoes and buttermilk until the Great Hunger happened in the 19th century.

    Looking forward to the debate tonight. In light of recent revelations, I think my candidate will be fortified and dangerous, so watch out! Wishing a good day to all at the Pond and Beyond.

    • Have fun with the downsizing lady, good for you on discussing your memorial service (I need to do that except with my sons who probably don’t want to hear it), and “radical honesty” surfaces every generation or so under a different name – check out “Absolute Truth, Absolute Love” from back in the 1930s :)

      As to the potatoes – you’ll only lose weight if you are replacing something with a higher calorie load. Plain boiled/steamed/baked potatoes average 20 calories per oz. Depending on how thickly it’s sliced, wheat bread averages 80 to 120 calories per slice. So you can eat between 4 and 6 oz potatoes instead of 1 piece of dry toast and come out even – if you normally eat 2 pieces of toast with butter, those 4-6 oz plain potatoes will save you 1/3 to 1/2 the calories. On the other hand if what you normally eat is a bowl of strawberries at 15 calories per oz, well, you can see where this is going, right?

  19. Slept in – fitful, interrupted sleep but it was nice to keep going back to sleep. Eating breakfast & watching the news. Plan for the day: do laundry & get some exercise. I wouldn’t normally go to the debate watch party, but I need to do some fundraising for the Walk, so I’m going. At least, as of now I’m going. I may come up with a reason I can’t later.

  20. Morning all! Coolish here this AM, but still getting into the 80’s these days – that’s fall for us lol.

    I am so heartened to hear those barbarians in Georgia are charged with terrorism – what a brave bunch, frightening children at a birthday party. I just hope the authorities carry thru with prosecution.

    I doubt I will watch the debate tonight – I rarely watch any political debate, and I am sure Hillary is going to be heavily criticized no matter what she says.

    Today, I must do my taxes – I know, how is it that a tax lawyer like me can’t get her taxes done in April? It’s a mystery.

    Everyone have a good day!

    • There is a part of me that does not want to watch the debate but to just follow it on Twitter. First, I hate being party to giving CNN any ratings surges. Second, I know that the questions will make me angry and upset and, for what? My watching won’t change the outcome of the primary race or the 2016 general election, the two things I am focusing on. I am sure I will be “told” who won or lost and have access to post-debate videos. A good night’s sleep, without angry thoughts running through my head, sounds better.

      I am not surprised that a tax lawyer would wait! You realize that it really does not make any difference when you file as long as you apply for the extension and pay any taxes due. I did it one year when I lost track of time and found out at the (literally) last minute that I could not get the tax forms I needed before the filing deadline. No big deal, as they say.

    • It’s so good to know we aren’t the only ones filing taxes in October. I’ve avoided the April rush for years.

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