Week-long Welcomings from Moosylvania: Oct. 18th through Oct. 24th

October 18, 2015 JanF Community 147

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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39 Comments

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

    It is 34 degrees in Madison WI, on its way up to 59. Sunny skies are in the forecast.

    Have a great day, all y’alls!!

  2. up for ungodly hour workout, back later – workout, church, cooking (making a cold spinach soup for next week, since it’s still hot here)

    • We’re going to see the 70s again mid week but I think Fall is finally here. We had frost on the pumpkins last night … or would have if we had pumpkins!

      Nothing ungodly about this hour … I am usually up at 4am. Now midnight … that is an ungodly hour!

      • I hate not sleeping in on the weekend, can’t wait till February, when I’ll at least get Saturdays back

  4. A tongue-in-cheek “investigation” from ThinkProgress’ Judd Legum on the “controversy tearing the GOP apart”: “Was George W. Bush president on 9/11?”

    Was George W. Bush president on September 11, 2001? It’s time to settle this once and for all.

    It’s true that, in the presidential election held on November 7, 2000, George W. Bush received fewer votes than Al Gore.

    Ha!!

    Calendars from that era indicate that January 20, the day Bush was sworn in as president, occurred some time before September 11.

    …
    Taking into account all the evidence, it seems more likely than not that George W. Bush was president on September 11, 2001.

    Now I hope he “investigates” the “George W. Bush kept us safe after 9/11″ lie. Twitter says “No”:

    Politics RX ‏@PoliticsRX
    Things @JebBush’s brother didn’t keep safe:
    -Your 401k
    -New York City
    -Your house
    -Iraq
    -Your job
    -Your budget surplus
    -US credibility

    • “Kept us safe,” my assets! He did nothing of the kind. If he hadn’t been thinking of that catfish burger at the briefing in August, he might have paid some attention to the memo, “Bin Laden Determined to Strike in U.S.” But naw, nothing wuz as important as clearin’ brush on the ranch. That dirtbag. Wish there really were a hell so he could join Bin Ladin and Idi Amin there.

  5. Good glorious blue-and-gold October morning, Moosekind! Patchy frost on the grass when I went out in the dawn to pick up the paper and superintend Monty’s “business.” It’s 36 F. right now, going up to 52 F. today. It’ll be a good evening for the beef stew I plan to make—that is, if I can find the potatoes—and to use up the last of our apples by making an apple pasty.

    Haven’t looked at the news much, been reading The Washington Poop. One thing I do like about Jeff Bezos’ ownership is that on Sundays there are huge feature articles about people living in other parts of the country. Today’s feature is about a young black man growing up in the Deep South. He seems on the way to a good job and a better life, if he can keep his focus.

    Other than that, this will be another miserable day of downsizing and cleaning. Our usual maid service refused to come tomorrow morning, which means Dearly and I will have to do the work ourselves. Grroan! It’s too much for him. He fell asleep right after dinner and didn’t get up until 8 a.m.

    I’m not at all sure this effort is worthwhile. Anyway, I hope all at the Pond and Beyond will have a good Sunday!

    • I am finding MORE articles from the Washington Post in my news feeds since it was Amazoned. Some of them are very good and a few of my favorite opinion writers write under their banner.

      I still like Al Jazeera for news that is underreported. For example, this morning there was a story on homelessness in Hawaii:

      Hawaii Gov. David Ige has declared a state of emergency to deal with the state’s homelessness crisis just days after city and state officials cleared one of the nation’s largest homeless encampments. […]

      Hawaii saw a 23 percent increase in its unsheltered homeless population between 2014 and 2015, and a 46 percent increase in the number of unsheltered families, said Scott Morishige, state homelessness coordinator.

      There were 7,260 homeless people in Hawaii at the latest count, meaning Hawaii has the highest rate of homelessness per capita of any state in the nation.

      Paradise, not. The biggest cause of homelessness is the lack of family supporting jobs, something that the Republican Congress has no interest in addressing. Marco Rubio even said that people can’t live on $11 an hour yet he is adamantly against the $15 minimum wage claiming that the magic trickle-down fairy will create good jobs if only we would cut taxes for the elebenty billionth time.

      Good luck on your staging work! I look at my house and even though I was ruthless with my belongings the last time I moved, over the past 10 years I see “stuff” piling up again. Next spring I am going to do a pruning. But this is the time of year to hunker down for the winter. Samhain is only 13 days away!!

      • Yikes, you’re right, Samhain is 13 days away! And here I am with my next Fiction Cafe story still unwritten. Tonight I MUST work on it or die in the attempt!

        • Let’s not take that “do or die” routine literally, um ‘K? And sux boo to your cleaning service. Not somebody I’d give recommendations to if that’s their attitude. Wish I could give you some help, but it’s a 17-hour drive from Fayetteville, AR to the DC area. All I can do is send you White Light, which of course I do.

  6. Good morning, 50 and will be sunny in Bellingham. My knees are still telling me they don’t want to be in the garden, but I may do so anyway. The winter rains will be here soon so a sunny day in October needs to be enjoyed outdoors as best I can.

  7. At 1438 CDT and 72 degrees we’re 4 degrees above our predicted high in Fay., AR, with sunshine. No frost on our punkins (if I had punkins) and so dry no dew on the grass either. The maples are trying to turn – bless them, every year they give us a little color even when nothing else does – but most everything else is just drought-yellowing and dropping. Overnight lows going up to mid-50s for the next several days, then back down to mid-40s. Year’s winding down and so are my energy levels sigh. Thank goddess for the Pond (and the pootie diaries) – I don’t know how I’d keep it together without the calm space – especially when I see the news. {{{HUGS}}}

  8. Good morning, meese! Monday …

    It is 47 degrees in Madison, on its way up to 71. Partly cloudy skies are in the forecast. The 70s will last for a few days and then back to the Cooling Down.

    The wheels are coming off the Benghaziiii Committee clown car. First, Kevin McCarthy admits that the committee was set up to do political damage to Hillary Clinton. Then another Republican congresscritter from an R+3 district in upstate New York, worried about his re-election prospects no doubt, says the same thing. Then on Sunday, Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-MD) releases a memo showing that Trey Gowdy’s accusation that Secretary Clinton’s emails outed a CIA agent was a complete fabrication and asked him to set the record straight. Of course, all this has made Trey sad: he tells his colleagues to “shut up” and complains to Politico that “these have been the worst weeks of my life” mainly because Democrats are mean to him!!

    Gowdy says the specifics of his rebuttals don’t matter; he feels he “just can’t win.

    “I think that’s just [the Democrats’] M.O.: If you can’t attack the facts, you can attack the investigators … just attack, attack, attack and something will take hold,” he said.

    Good lord, does the man own a mirror? Thursday’s interrogation of Hillary Clinton should be interesting. I suspect that he will wish he had not invited her to testify just like Jason Chaffetz wished he had not invited Cecile Richards to testify at his Planned Parenthood “investigation”. These men must forget that Democratic women are not like Republican women, deferring to their “betters”, seen but not heard. I hope it is televised.

    Today, Canada will be voting for a new government. They have been at this for about 6 weeks, which is long by Canadian standards. How I wish we could compress our electoral process into a shorter time frame! Anyway, liberals are trying to unseat the dreadful Harper administration and their standard bearer is Justin Trudeau, son of one-time prime minister Pierre Trudeau:

    Justin Trudeau, the son of late Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau, is leading in the polls, apparently tapping into an appetite for change among many Canadians with promises to cut taxes for the middle class and increase them for the wealthy. He plans to spend billions on infrastructure, running deficits for three years to do so. And he has pledged to take in 25,000 Syrian refugees by the end of the year.

    A Canadian acquaintance of mine says that the polls close at 9:30pm across the country so the far western polls won’t close until 12:30am Eastern time. We will not likely know the results until we wake up tomorrow morning. Good luck, Canada!!

    See all y’alls later!

    • Thanks for this, Jan. Best news I’ve had this morning. I hope the wheels come off on TV so we can all see how stoopid Gowdy is. I mean, he already looks stoopid, but public testimony would reveal even more.

  9. Hoping for a Trudeau win in Canada!

    John Oliver reports ;)

    It’s 26 degrees here – Brrrrrrrrrr. Going up to 52. Have school today.

    Looking forward to my “Witchcraft, Magic and Sorcery” class this morning – students had to do ethnographic interviews with practitioners of various systems, crafts in the area – it’s always fun to listen to their reports.

  10. Good Monday morning, Moosekind! It’s 28 F. on a morning that bids to be fair, going up to 57 F. today. Last night I had to cover up the chrysanthemums and pansies with towels and blankets. It wouldn’t do to have several hundred dollars worth of plants blackened before the photographer arrives on Tuesday morning at 9. Luckily, it’s supposed to warm up so I won’t have to do that tonight.

    Goal for the day—get the rooms clear by carrying things out to the garage, then polishing the floors. I have to finish polishing all the fixtures. I did not work on my story last night, yet I’m still alive. I think about it all the time, though. Can’t work on it tonight because I have to do some computer work and pay some bills, plus fill out the financial forms for the interview tomorrow. I rate our chances of passing the financial interview to move into this place as Very Low. So, off to eat a hasty breakfast and hide as much as possible.

    Where is our Portlaw? I’ve seen comments from her once or twice when I ventured to have a peep here and there at GOS. Wishing a good day to everyone at the Pond and Beyond!

    • Portlaw mentioned that she will be traveling and largely unavailable for a while. She must be checking in via phone as her comments are indeed few and far between.

      :::waves to Portlaw::: We miss you!!!

  11. Oops—one more thought. As little as I like Donald Trump, I must say I like the fact that he’s publicly disputed the notion that Dubya “kept us safe.” There is no escaping the fact that 9/11 happened on his watch and that Dubya—or rather, the real prez-dent, Darth Cheney—could have paid more attention to the secret briefings from the CIA. Dubya didn’t “keep us safe” from anything, including the Wall Street crash.

    • I saw a Tweet last night that echoed your sentiment. It was essentially “I hate this guy – I love this guy”. Trump is a despicable character (I am not even going to read the article under the headline “Trump: We don’t need the EPA … environment will be fine”) but he is going after the sacred cows (bulls?) in the GOP with reckless abandon. I am not a 9/11 truther but I do believe that Bush/Cheney ignored intelligence reports (see Clarke, Richard) … more of a fiddling while Rome burned situation than actively torching it.

  12. Walked before work this morning – and it was cool enough for long sleeves! I probably could have worn short sleeves, but it’s been so long since long ones……

    Star Wars tix go on sale today, I’m definitely buying. And earworm is still Disappear. Nice bouncy song to walk to.

    • funny earworm update: my friend can’t come see SW with me because she’ll be visiting her daughter at MIT, is going to see Ringo Starr while she’s there, now my earworm is Photograph. My brain is so weird. Literally anything people say to me changes what the jukebox in my head plays.

  13. 55 heading for 75 in Fay., AR this sunny morning. “Fall Break” – no classes – so campus is quiet this morning. This is good as I need to get some paperwork done – and somehow track down the last of my professors regarding Spring text book requests (they were due at the bookstores last Friday). Hope everyone has a lovely, safe, and productive day. {{{HUGS}}}

  14. Morning all! It’s a perfect morning here in north Florida, clear and crisp and actually cool! We’ll still be getting up to the 80’s for another week at least, but it’s staying cool at night so it’s wonderful now.

    I got absorbed in WOW yesterday so forgot to check in – my only comment on the zombie fest shootings, beyond how senseless and tragic it is – sometimes living down here feels like living in an episode of a TV show. Except you can’t make this stuff up, really. That’s why I said, shortly after moving here almost 20 years ago, that Carl Hiaasen doesn’t actually write fiction, he just changes the names on news reports and adds details.

    “Bush kept us safe” to me is a perfect example of the Big Lie in action – the Repugs have said it so often that I think they actually believe it themselves now. What I believe is if Al Gore had been President, as he should have been, the intelligence would have been acted on and we might not have had the 9/11 attacks at all.

    I wonder if they’ll televise Hillary’s testimony – I’m thinking they should be scared of her at this point, but they may be so ego and hate driven that they think they can cow her. I’m thinking they’re in for a surprise if they do.

    Have a great day everyone!

    • Congressional Republicans are definitely delusional. For Trey Gowdy to make the incredible statement that he feels like the victim in all this underscores that. Four Americans died … and the GOP is trying to score political points by using their death to disqualify a Democratic Party candidate for president.

      Please proceed, GOP.

      Looks like CSPAN will have the testimony:
      October 22, 2015 – Hillary Clinton Testimony at House Select Committee on Benghazi:

      Hillary Clinton testifies before the House Select Committee on Benghazi, which is investigating the events surrounding the 2012 terrorist attack on the U.S. consulate there, in which Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three others died.

      Airing LIVE Thursday, Oct 22 10:00am EDT on C-SPAN3

      Bookmarked.

    • Apparently, complaining about what George W. Bush did not do to keep us safe before 9/11 is some kind of third rail that must never be touched. But there is a lot of real estate between “9/11 truther” and “didn’t do enough to keep us safe”.

      Peter Beinart at The Atlantic: Trump Is Right About 9/11 – George W. Bush didn’t do all he could to prevent the attack—and it’s time Republicans confronted that fact.

      [Trump’s] latest ugly truth came during a Bloomberg TV interview last Friday, when he said George W. Bush deserves responsibility for the fact that “the World Trade Center came down during his time.” Politicians and journalists erupted in indignation. Jeb Bush called Trump’s comments “pathetic.” Ben Carson dubbed them “ridiculous.”

      Former Bush flack Ari Fleischer called Trump a 9/11 “truther.” Even Stephanie Ruhle, the Bloomberg anchor who asked the question, cried, “Hold on, you can’t blame George Bush for that.”

      Oh yes, you can. There’s no way of knowing for sure if Bush could have stopped the September 11 attacks. But that’s not the right question. The right question is: Did Bush do everything he could reasonably have to stop them, given what he knew at the time? And he didn’t. It’s not even close.

  15. Good morning, 58 and cloudy in Bellingham this morning. Leaves are falling, by the truck loads full! Fortunately the city has a green recycling program so we can take them there to become compost. After raking and bagging leaves for several hours we were both ready to rest so RonK didn’t enjoy the Seahawks game (they lost) and I did enjoy my book.

    I’m having a reading challenge with the Malazan series. The books are complex, with many new characters, and the author writes in POV style so the characters become very “real.” I really dislike the main one in Book #4, but his story becomes pivotal character for the rest of the series so I need to come to terms with his barbarian ways or just stop reading. Erickson ( the author) wrote a long essay about this character and what his goals were when creating him so that has helped. Compassion is an overriding theme in all the books, so accepting this character (Karsa) is part of my reading experience.

    I

  16. Note to meesepeeps:

    • I am finishing the work of uploading the archive and setting up access to view it.
    • During that time, the site may be slow.
    • Thank you for your patience.

  17. Canada elects Liberal government!

    Prime Minister Elect Justin Trudeau. At this point, it is not clear if he will lead a majority or a coalition government.

    He ran for immigration and against austerity. This is very good news for our neighbors to the North. Maybe our fellow citizens will also reject hate and austerity and destruction of our natural resources and kick Congressional Republicans to the curb.

  18. Good morning, meese!! Tuesday …

    It is 56 degrees in Madison, on its way up to 73. Mostly cloudy skies are in the forecast.

    I stayed up late to watch the Liberal Party win the majority in the Canadian elections so I am running late this morning (it needed a post!!). Fingers crossed that demagoguery and austerity will be rejected in America next year.

    In other news, Texas just voted to illegally withhold Medicaid funds from Planned Parenthood one day after a similar move by Louisiana was smacked down in the Federal courts. It’s sad that people in red states don’t mind their money going for legal bills but can’t stand seeing a penny go to help the poor.

    And Jim Webb apparently is thinking of a third party bid. I believe his new party will be called Butthurt Southern White Guys Party which will draw heavily from the Republican base. Good riddance.

    See you later all y’alls!

  19. Good morning, Meese, it’s 41 F. on yet another glorious October day, going up to 70 F. October is the best month of the year in Washington, DC–Northern Virginia.

    Started filling out the financial documents last night in preparation for the interview today and discovered, to my bone-dissolving horror, that we don’t have a copy of our Revocable Living Trust documents! Did I accidentally throw them out the other day? Will have to call the lawyer and see how much it would cost to get another copy. I didn’t have time to look in detail at all the stuff I threw out. Well, now the score is even—Dearly Beloved donated the Verizon FIOS box instead of the Go-Video. Yikes!

    This morning after breakfast I’ll have the inestimable privilege of taking one of those little white “magic” sponges and removing scuffmarks from the wall room by room. But I’m going to get my hair done at some point.

    And as I scrub I shall contemplate the statement in a Biden diary on GOS I just peeped at, to the effect that Trump could beat Hillary, so we need Biden in the race. [WHUT?] However, he’s been Biden his time so long that his entry into the race now would be irrelevant.

    Wishing a good day to all in this Month of the Falling Leaf!

    • Biden-mania is sweeping the land … fueled by the bored press. It is no more a “thing” than Warren-mania was earlier in the year.

      The only people happy about a Biden presidency are these folks:


      The next Democratic president is going to be facing a Republican House and will need to work with Republicans to get big things done.

      Work with Republicans? That ship has sailed. Biden will get rolled by his refusal to understand that Senate “comity” is an oxymoron and his quaint belief that Republicans in Congress are honorable. We need someone who will duke it out with the Republicans, who will expose them for what they are: nihilists intent on destroying our government. You can’t work with these guys, Joe. Retire, like John Boehner, with some of your dignity intact.

  20. Walked again — and included 5 bouts of 1 minute running. More like 50 seconds — my lungs complained loudly at about that point.

    I got my Star Wars ticket! On Friday the 18th at 9 am — 3D of course.

    earworm is from my marathon mix, U2’s Blow Your House Down

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