Week-long Welcomings from Moosylvania: Dec. 13th through Dec. 19th

December 13, 2015 JanF Community 154

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 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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56 Comments

  1. Good morning, 40 and cloudy in Bellingham. When I came home from the pool yesterday the sun was shinning in my bedroom windows so I gave myself the gift of just resting until the clouds came back. It was a very nice few hours. I’ve got a Dr,’s appointment this morning, then the hairdresser, and then back to the endless December list so today will be busy.

    I’ve decided to just do what I can comfortably do though, so the list is shorter.

  2. Morning all! STILL too warm here, we’ll get a couple of cool days this weekend, then back up near 80 at least thru Christmas. Thanks Climate Change! ugh.

    I looked at GOS this morning to read Lysis’ diary on Hillary news, and I could recommend the diary but not her tip jar – I clicked on everything I could find and managed to see something to click to recommend comments, but not the tip jar. Man I hate DK5 – it’s doing nothing but driving me away from there, as if the vitriol over the Dem primary weren’t enough.

    Karma indeed for Mr. Drug Price Gouger! And the “affluenza” teen as well, although I feel sorry for him – his parents supervised his growing into a complete jerk and they need to be held accountable too, which I presume his mother will be if she’s aiding in his flight.

    I’m so depressed about the Baltimore verdict in the Freddie Gray trial – I haven’t read anything this morning about whether the prosecutor will go for another trial of this guy, but honestly, I cannot understand the jury in this, unless it’s just one or two stubborn people who won’t convict a police officer of anything under any circumstances.

    I wonder how Trump feels about getting Putin’s endorsement – I can only imagine Putin and other foreign leaders usually in opposition to the US, licking their chops at the prospect of manipulating such an idiot.

    Everyone have a great day!

    • I have tuned out The Donald. He, and his party du jour, are so hopelessly out of touch with general election voters, his candidacy is simply World Wrestling Federation Meets Reality TV. People will keep watching for entertainment but it is unlikely to cause them to pick him to run the most powerful country in the world.

      I am not sure about the Freddie Gray trial. Obviously, there are 5 more people who will go on trial so it is not YET getting off scot-free. I wonder if the jury couldn’t make the leap from obvious negligence to willful intent to harm him? The stories I scanned said that the prosecutors have not made up their mind on a retrial but would strongly consider a venue change.

      • It may be that the prosecutors were overly ambitious in their charging strategy – maybe you’re right that the jury could not connect willful inaction to charges like manslaughter. It does sound like they expect to try him again, though.

  4. TGIF Friday Morning Meese

    Listening to the news on the lead in the water in Flint – why isn’t this a national outrage?

    Disgusted by the school shutdown in Augusta County VA because of a homework assignment

    http://www.cnn.com/2015/12/18/us/virginia-school-shut-islam-homework/

    We have snow flurries in the forecast for the weekend – but temps will go back up into the weird 60’s during the week ahead.

    Looking at the stack of final papers to grade here on my desk but am going to ignore them for most of the day

    • That story about the calligraphy assignment is mind boggling. Why wouldn’t you find a highly ornate example to have your students draw and if the preceding paragraph talked about mosques, a religious saying would not be out of line. People are idiots.

      Oh noes!!! Just looking at that makes me want to jump on a plane and join Daesh!!! Can’t. Stop. Myself.

      Here is something real to be concerned about:

      “People are anxious,” [Congressman Keith Ellison (D-MN)] said after [an interfaith round table at the Masjid Muhammad]. “People have said that it’s worse than any time they’ve seen since 9/11.”

      He said that the attacks have become so rampant, that he would classify Muslims in America as a “persecuted religious minority.”

      When asked by ThinkProgress to explain why he describes the situation as outright persecution, he pointed to what appears to be a sharp uptick in hate-fueled attacks on Muslims and mosques around the country. A list of such instances have been compiled by a civil rights’ organization called Muslim Advocates.

      • My subject for my Sunday sermon – is rising islamophobia. Too late to add the VA story but will put it into comments.

        • I found a local paper reporting on the dustup. Yikes, these folks are scary in their fear and so protective of their majority religion!

          [Completely unhinged parent Kimberly] Herndon accused LaPorte of indoctrinating children into the Islamic faith and she hasn’t sent her son back since the incident occurred. Hendron said she will take this to the Supreme Court if she has to.

          “She gave up the Lord’s time,” Herndon said, of LaPorte’s lessons on religions. “She gave it up and gave it to Mohammed.”

          There were people pushing back:

          “Are any of you deeply disturbed parents concerned that your child might convert to Islam?” wrote John B. Parker of Waynesboro on Facebook. “Is that the fear here? If you are far enough out of touch with your own child that you think their geography teacher might convert them to Islam against your will, then maybe it’s time to turn off the TV and spend some time with your kids.

          Sadly, that writer went on to say “We’re talking about Muslims, not witches.” Sigh. Witches get no love. ;)

  5. Good morning, meese! Friday …

    It is 22 degrees in Madison, on its way up to 27. Morning clouds and afternoon sun in the forecast.

    In New Orleans, the city council voted 6 to 1 to remove the city’s Confederate monuments from public display. Lee Circle will be renamed to its earlier name, Tivoli Circle which it had been called for most of the 1800s. Sad but funny that the “pleas of those who opposed removing the monuments” were to not “rewrite history.” You mean like changing the name of a place to honor the leader of the army of rebellion that wanted to form a different county, one that would continue enslaving people? Apparently this is not just a benign “General Lee on horseback” statue but is described like this:

    The most imposing of the monuments the council has voted to strike from the cityscape has had a commanding position over St. Charles Avenue since 1884: A 16-foot-tall bronze statue of Lee stands atop a 60-foot-high Doric marble column, which itself rises over granite slabs on an earthen mound. Four sets of stone staircases, aligned with the major compass points, ascend the mound.

    Above it all, the Virginian stands in his military uniform, with his arms folded and his gaze set firmly on the North — the embodiment of the “Cult of the Lost Cause” southerners invoked to justify continued white power after the Civil War.

    And this lovely piece of history will be removed, gosh, who could misinterpret this?

    … an 1891 obelisk honoring the Crescent City White League. An inscription added in 1932 said the Yankees withdrew federal troops and “recognized white supremacy in the South” after the group challenged Louisiana’s biracial government after the Civil War.

    The lone vote was a white woman who said that “fixing historic injustice is a lot harder work than removing monuments”. Well of course it is. You can’t erase the past but removing the large middle finger of a defiant Robert E. Lee in a white supremacist pose will go a long way to promoting the kind of future you want to have.

    I saw rumors that the president will hold his year end press conference today. I will watch for it and post it if I am online. President Obama’s final State of the Union Address will be January 12, 2016. The White House is indicating that it will be different than other SOTUs, less about policy (as if he could get anything passed!) and more about the direction he thinks the country should be going.

    See all y’alls later!

    • Dorothea Lange photo of Liberty Monument in New Orleans. Inscription reads “United States troops took over the state government and reinstated the usurpers but the national election November 1876 recognized white supremacy in the south and gave us our state.”

      photo 1af5a9e0-b4f9-4cd4-a2ac-ae6373b16885_zpsnghwcxgj.jpg

      • Nothing bigoted about that! That was to honor the rebellion against the Reconstruction, you know, the laws that put uppity blacks in government. Fast forward to 2008 when the first black president was elected and you can see why the unreconstructed South is in such an uproar.

        The election of 1876 was disputed and this compromise is what the monument refers to:

        After a first count of votes, Tilden won 184 electoral votes to Hayes’s 165, with 20 votes unresolved. These 20 electoral votes were in dispute in four states: in the case of Florida, Louisiana, and South Carolina, each party reported its candidate had won the state, while in Oregon one elector was declared illegal (as an “elected or appointed official”) and replaced. […]

        An informal deal was struck to resolve the dispute: the Compromise of 1877, which awarded all 20 electoral votes to Hayes. In return for the Democrats’ acquiescence in Hayes’s election, the Republicans agreed to withdraw federal troops from the South, ending Reconstruction. The Compromise effectively ceded power in the Southern states to the Democratic Redeemers, who went on to pursue their agenda of returning the South to a political economy resembling that of its pre-war condition, including the disenfranchisement of black voters.

  6. Star Wars Day!!!! Woohoo! There is other stuff going on in the world, I know, but today is all about the movie for me. Maybe a long walk this afternoon. But — I’m all about SW this morning.

    • I take great pride in my cultural illiteracy and the fact that I have never seen a single Star Wars movie. I must admit that it leaves me with a lot of headscratching as my Tweeps seem to be speaking in a foreign language.

      But I will Fierce your comment in Moosely solidarity – may the Fierce be with you! :)

      • I saw the 1st three quite happily – but then they are basically old-fashioned Westerns just set in space and I used to love old-fashioned Westerns. (You know, the kind where when trouble starts the first thing the Sheriff orders is “everybody check (as in stash them with the Sheriff’s office) your guns when you come into town”.) I saw the 4th and that was the last movie I’ve seen in a theater. It would have been the last movie altogether if my younger son hadn’t insisted I see the 1st Harry Potter at his house when I was visiting some 6 years ago, which now ranks as the last movie I’ve seen, period. :)

        • bfitz, we keep meaning to go see a movie, but somehow we never seem to get around to it. A lot of good ones have passed by us, although we did manage to see “The Butler” on DVD and “Twelve Years a Slave” on DVD and liked both.

          We’re too cheap to go at night when prices are high and too enamored of our afternoon naps to go during the day when matinee prices are lower. Besides, going to the movies is so unpleasant, nowadays. Not only is the sound level for the trailers MUCH too loud, but most of the “coming events” seem absolutely puerile—nothing but car chases, profanity, plus lots of gore. Who needs that?

      • I will admit I am a Star Wars fan – I saw the first one 38 years ago the first night it opened. My then husband and I were in our mid-20’s – couldn’t get into the first show we wanted so went and had something to eat while we waited for the next showing, and it was worth it. It was magical – the effects in space were like nothing we’d ever seen, and the story, while campy, just grabbed us. I was divorced by the time Empire Strikes Back came out, but went to that one I think with friends, as well as the last of that trilogy, The Return of the Jedi. I refuse to admit the next 3 that Lucas made exist, they were THAT bad, but I did go see them. I’ve watched the original 3 many times on TV – they’re just a lot of fun. I’m looking forward to this new one – going to try to catch it this afternoon, if my knees permit.

  8. Good morning! It’s cloudy here in NoVa, 42 F. now, going up to 46 F. today.

    Popped over to GOS to see the Hillary News diary and saw diaries blaming the Bernie Breach on DNC and Hillary! Those diehards make me laugh. Is anyone here planning to watch the debate tomorrow night? I’ll be looking after Babylicious, so I hope he sticks to his alleged bedtime of 7:30 p.m.

    Got a few Christmas cards out. Ran out of free ones, though. Today I absolutely must finish my Yule newsletter and email it. Lately I haven’t felt like doing anything but eating, reading, and sleeping, much to my chagrin.

    Hope everyone in Moosylvania will have a good day!

    • I will probably watch the debate because I want to know what the issues are and how our party responds to them. I would hope that they would all go after the Republicans and use their bully pulpits to position our party for the general election.

      I have read a few things about the data breach this morning and because some of the reporting was in the NY Times, I am not always sure if I am reading quotes or words put into people’s mouths. If the Bernie campaign director really blamed the software vendor for exposing the Clinton campaign data THAT HIS STAFFER THEN LOOKED AT, that is pretty weak. If a door is left open, you have an ethical decision: do I walk past the door because the things in there are not mine … or do I go in and poke around? Even if the staffer was just curious and not looking for anything that would allow them to gain an advantage (I suspect we will know more when the DNC finishes their investigation), it is an ethical lapse. Sometimes the heat of a campaign may lead to people putting their ethics on hold but under no circumstances should people be defending that behaviour.

      • More on the breach

        http://www.bloomberg.com/politics/articles/2015-12-18/sanders-campaign-fires-data-director-after-breach-of-clinton-files

        <

        After one Sanders account gained access to the Clinton data, the audits show, that user began sharing permissions with other Sanders users. The staffers who secured access to the Clinton data included national data director Josh Uretsky, who was fired on Thursday, and his deputy, Russell Drapkin. The two other usernames that viewed Clinton information were “talani” and “csmith_bernie,” created by Uretsky’s account after the breach began.

        Though the Sanders campaign initially claimed that it had not saved Clinton data, the logs show that the Vermont senator’s team created at least 24 lists during the 40-minute breach, which started at 10:40 a.m., and saved those lists to their personal folders. The Sanders searches included New Hampshire lists related to older voters, “HFA Turnout 60-100” and “HFA Support 50-100,” that were conducted and saved by Uretsky. Drapkin’s account searched for and saved lists including “HFA Support <30” in Iowa and “HFA Turnout 30-70″‘ in New Hampshire.

        Uretsky told CNN on Friday that he probed the Clinton data to get a sense of the full extent of the problem, but the breach was reported to NGP VAN by a third party, not by the Sanders campaign, a source familiar with the investigation said. “We knew there was a security breach in the data, and we were just trying to understand it and what was happening,” he said. “To the best of my knowledge, nobody took anything that would have given the (Sanders) campaign any benefit.”

        What seems dumb was to claim no data was taken – when it could be tracked.
        I don’t understand how this is done – but looks like taking stuff leaves a trail

        • There are logs of the logs, especially for data this sensitive. I heard that the Sanders campaign is going to sue the DNC for blocking their access. Yikes! Maybe they should apologize instead of lashing out.

          That said, Debbie Wasserman Schultz needs to tone it down. Bernie’s campaign screwed up, he didn’t kill anyone.

          • 4 accounts, 25 downloads. No, they didn’t kill anybody but I’d put that a little further than they “screwed up”. As to the responses – Best I can figure out DWS just said make sure all Hillary’s stuff is deleted and you can have your access back. And the only thing Hillary’s team is saying is delete our stuff and make sure it doesn’t happen again. But the Bernie supporters! Well, your decision to stay off GOS is very wise.

          • Ha! I see plenty on Twitter that makes me glad I don’t feel compelled to read more than 140 characters at a time. Plus I can MUTE certain people for a day or two and my stream becomes more pleasant. :)

    • Eating, sleeping, and fiddling around (“pleasure” reading counts) is what you are supposed to be doing this time of year/this light length & intensity. It’s normal – no matter how much our society wants to manipulate you by denying it – and it’s even more normal at this time of year to basically have to force yourself to do anything else. (I only needed 20 cards so the free ones covered my list. heh.)

      • That is very comforting, bfitz, thanks! Honestly, one might as well be a bear, with all this hibernating and EATING. I dread getting on Les Scales tomorrow morning.

        • We are trained to disassociate ourselves from Nature, but we live in and are part of the natural cycle. And especially for those of us with Nordic ancestry our systems go into as close to hibernation mode as a primate can. Our ancestors wouldn’t have survived being cooped up in small huts with no light but the fire through months of next to no sunlight otherwise. We’d have killed each other off. (As to the eating part – switching what you are eating to sliced veggies between meals and reducing portion sizes at meals should help with that.)

  9. 25 at dawn, 27 now and heading for 45 this bright sunny last working Friday in December. I’ve got stuff I’d like to get done before the University shuts down at close of business next Wednesday, but since it depends on other people doing something first (mostly giving me information right now) that may not happen. I’ll be hit and miss on checking in once we close. I still don’t spend much time online from my home computer. (For one thing it’s in my living room which tends to be chilly this time of year except during the few hours there’s bright sunshine in it, presupposing there’s any bright sunshine that day.)

    Hope everyone has a lovely weekend – or at least a productive one. {{{HUGS}}}

  10. Morning all! Finally a bit cooler here this morning, although we’ll only have it for a couple of days, then back up into the high 70’s by Monday. It’s not unpleasant, but I want some cool weather.

    It is disturbing that this data breach was even possible – I hope dirty tricksters in the GOP were not also able to exploit it and just weren’t caught. I am not surprised the Sanders supporters at GOS are finding a way to blame the Clinton campaign for this – isn’t everything her fault? I really think Clinton Derangement Syndrome is just kicking into high gear now – in Dee’s and my game last night, a guildmate said he’d played with another player who declared himself a huge Bernie Sanders supporter, but that if Sanders didn’t get the nomination, he’d switch to Trump! To me that looks like CDS big time, perhaps mixed with some old fashioned mysogyny.

    Have a great day everyone – if I can make it to the movie, I’ll be back with a spoiler free review!

  11. Good morning, 42 and cloudy in Bellingham today, but last nights pouring rain stayed in the drains and our basement is dry. The wind and rain kept me awake though so now I’ve got to hurry to get to the pool on time.

    Thanks to my sons’ fascination with Star Wars movies, books, action toys, Legos, etc the saga has been part of our life for years. And now my grandson shares the fun. He’s seeing the movie at an Imax theater this weekend and is so excited. And I found Star Wars pj bottoms deemed acceptable (by his mom) for one of his Christmas gifts. I’ll wait to see the movie with him because I know it will be in his collection when he come to visit next year. But I just can’t watch all of them again!

  12. Back from the movie which I was glad my knees allowed me to make it to – it was the smallest screen in the cineplex, but still bigger than my TV, and I got a seat on the aisle which I need to stretch and bend my knees, so it was perfect. No spoilers, but I greatly enjoyed it – a nice blend of old and new, both cast and setting. Really well done, although I imagine you would not enjoy it as much if you’d never seen any of the original 3 movies – cheers and applause at the end of my showing, a real crowd pleaser. And the much more diverse cast that JJ Abrams put together seemed totally at home and natural in the roles – it was great.

    • I loved it. Going back on the 24th. Maybe 25th, too. I love all the hints & “I wonder….” Will make the next 2 years very hard to wait through. Fun action, exploding stuff, old friends.

  13. Good morning, meese! Saturday …

    It is 14 degrees in Madison on its way up to 27. Sunny skies are in the forecast.

    Six million people signed up for an insurance plan via Healthcare.gov including 600,000 on the last day.

    About 60% of the people who signed up for plans in the last two days were new customers. Overall, about 2.4 million people were uninsured, new customers to Healthcare.gov. The new enrollment numbers are at least a third higher than the number of new customers who signed up before the first deadline last year.

    This is, as Joe Biden might say, a BFD. The president mentioned this in his presser yesterday saying that “the more who sign up the stronger the system becomes”. Indeed. And the harder it will be for the Grinchie Republicans to kill.

    I am watching Bernghazi with interest as it is the confluence of politics and information technology. Sanders has his data access back after filing suit in federal court accusing the Democratic Party of hating on him. But there are some real questions about his campaign’s response to news of the breach. It is rarely the “crime” that sinks someone, it is the post incident spinning; in this case the reaction from the Sanders campaign manager and spokesman shows an organization that is clearly run by, how shall I put this nicely, idiots. Now they are ginning up their supporters against the Democratic Party! Sigh. I hope this occurred early enough in the election cycle to be overcome when we will need every vote to beat whatever psychopath the Republicans nominate and to take back the Senate and make some gains in the House.

    As a palate cleanser, here is an excellent article by Ryan Lizza at the New Yorker about how Nancy Pelosi, with help from the hard-core NO-things in the Freedumb Caucus, got a pretty darn good budget bill:

    The most significant policy change in the legislation is an end to the forty-year ban on American crude-oil exports, which Democrats agreed to in return for an extension of solar- and wind-energy-industry tax credits. The extension of the tax credits is an enormous victory for Democrats, perhaps the most significant green-energy achievement of the Obama era. Bloomberg Business, citing one industry analyst, says, “the deal will speed up the shift from fossil fuels more than the global climate deal struck this month in Paris and more than Barack Obama’s Clean Power Plan that regulates coal plants.” As for the end of the ban on crude-oil exports, in a letter to colleagues yesterday the House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi argued that “the wind and solar tax credits in the omnibus will eliminate around ten times more carbon pollution than the exports of oil will add.”[…]

    … because many of the most conservative Republicans would not support the spending bill under almost any circumstances, Ryan had to depend on Democrats to reach the two hundred and eighteen votes necessary to pass the legislation. That put Pelosi in a powerful negotiating position, and is the most recent example of how the House Freedom Caucus, by withholding support for Republican leadership’s priorities, has helped to shift legislation to the left.

    He also points out that the business wing of the Republican Party is still stronger than the insane wing. I wish those business interests would see that they have better outcomes with Democrats in power than with Republicans and start helping us marginalize the right-wing even more.

    Yikes! I wrote a blog post!! I need to put my nose to the grindstone, less than 2 weeks before the end of the year.

    See all y’all later!

    • Good morning Meese
      Thanks for all of that Jan – I’m really appalled – get busted with fingers in the cookie jar – and respond by biting the cookie maker. I see it is at the top of my news feed – hope this goes away – soon.

      Am grading final papers today and doing a little end of the year cleaning.
      see y’all later.

      • I hope it is not the topic of the Democratic Party debate tonight. I want to hear our candidates talk about how awful the Republicans are, not how awful the Democratic Party is. It feeds right into “Democrats in Disarray!” a theme that the mainstream media has been pushing for about 40 years.

          • I thought it was a guy named Weaver. I recall Weaver as the one who said that Bernie might interview Hillary for the vice presidency. He is a dude bro: snarky, privileged white guy in charge of a campaign filled with snarky, privileged white guys. And bad liars!!

            I laughed out loud when I saw that the latest “defense” by the fired data guy was “we didn’t use any of the data!”. JHC! What difference does that make?

          • Good lord, what a weasel!! He pivots from “what would you say if Hillary had done this” to “she probably did”. I know exactly what they would say: “DNC GAVE HILLARY OUR DATA!!! THEY’RE IN THE BAG FOR HER!!!”.

            Own it, man. You screwed up and refuse to admit culpability, calling it a “mistake”.

            p.s. You made me watch Mark Halperin!!! Actually, they did a good job of holding Tad Devine’s feet to the fire. It helps that the right-wing media hates Democrats because if that had been a Republican campaign operative, he would have gotten softball questions and “oh, you poor man!”

          • I don’t know them but it is a very good idea to get an outside firm to investigate. NGP, the data vendor, is too busy doing CYA and obviously the Sanders campaign is in spin mode, trying to bury what happened under bs.

  14. Up for ungodly hour workout. Only 6 miles today. But I haven’t done any other working out this week, so this’ll hurt. Oh well.

      • it was hard, especially at first because it was soooooo cold – in the 30s; but I did it

        This week, I have to be darn sure I get in my mid-week workouts because next Saturday is a long one – 8 miles.

  15. Good morning! It’s 26 F. here in NoVa on a lovely morning, going up to 44 F. today. However, there’s a sharp wind that makes being outside very unpleasant.

    I’m supposed to buy shoes this morning but I don’t feel up to it. I need to finally do some writing and spend the afternoon making Cornish pasties for dinner, which will be at 5:30 p.m. We have to have dinner early because I’ll be going round the corner to babysit for the evening.

    Have just spent far too much time looking at diary titles on GOS re the Bernie Breach. Some of his supporters are borderline insane. I mean, really, properly barking mad. Read a few of the comments, then wished I hadn’t. Hope everyone will have a good day!

    • I will be heading to the grocery store later today to hunt and gather for our Solstice meal. We will celebrate tomorrow, the 20th, because school districts in Wisconsin do not recognize the pagan holidays and my daughter has to go to school on Monday!! What is wrong with them!!??!

      In the meantime, I have a to-do list for clients that I need to update to make sure that things promised for 2015 – and that really must be done in 2015 – are scheduled properly. I only have one weekend day to work with so I better get to it!

      Barking mad is a good description. Some old GOS friends shared a bit of the “mood” there and I had no interest in even looking at it in a train wreck sort of way. I hope that sensible people can sort through the facts and we can move forward as one party after our nominee is chosen.

  16. Morning! Chilly here this morning – finally! – only in the high 50’s today, but it will only last a day or two and we’ll be back in the 70’s by Monday, alas.

    I thought some might be interested in this piece from the Atlantic about the new Star Wars movie protagonist as an embodiment of current takes on feminism – Rey is one of the many great things about the new movie, a strong woman action hero – http://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2015/12/star-wars-the-feminism-awakens/420843/

    I was thinking about this as I read about the Sanders campaign shenanigans with this exploitation of the database breach. How his supporters have turned this into yet another negative against Hillary is one more example of both Clinton Derangement Syndrome AND sexism, and it is simply a shame that GOS has become a principal platform for both. I have struggled to read stuff I wanted to there because the new format is so hard on my eyes (and I still haven’t figured out how to tip the Tip Jar on a diary), but all this crap makes me want to take it off of my bookmarks list, seriously. And I’ve been a member there since at least early 2004, maybe late 2003. Sad.

    I seriously hope Bernie will not push this crazy “the devil/Clinton made us do it” strategy tonight in the debate – I think it just makes him look like a chump and a sleaze, and his whole campaign is built on his not being like other politicians. This defense strategy makes him look like the worst of them, frankly.

    OK, everyone have a good day and stay warm!

    • DK has always struggled with sexism; their demographic is dude bro: about 75% of the members are white males who make more than the median income. That Bernmentum would take hold there is not really surprising when you realize that having a woman president is probably a nightmare for them. Being a fact-based person, I don’t completely understand how the transgressor became the victim except that it is a time-honored tradition … when you are attacked you deflect it back on the victim as asking-for-it/undeserving-of-respect/wearing-skirts-too-short.

      You are an older user than I am! I started reading when I was directed there by early morning talk shows on the old Air America after Kerry’s defeat and finally signed up for an account in 2005 to follow the Katrina aftermath. It was surprisingly easy for me to detach from the click-to-see-what’s-new. I have a very good Twitter stream and now read stories from a variety of different media outlets which makes me better rounded. That’s my story and I am sticking to it!

    • Don’t you dare leave!

      (You have collapsed your comments – which is why you can’t tip – un-collapse them)

      • ah, ok – I will try that, thanks! I won’t go anywhere, I just can’t stand to read anything but your stuff and Black Kos, and Lysis’ Hillary news diaries at this point. I swear, the cumulative efforts of the Sanders supports at DKos has driven me firmly into the Clinton camp, from lukewarm to strong supporter.

        • This: “Sanders supports at DKos has driven me firmly into the Clinton camp, from lukewarm to strong supporter. ”

          It is not just DKos, it is all over the Internet. I have watched people who were pretty “meh” about Clinton on Twitter and other blogs become sickened by the misogyny and the martyr syndrome. The berners remind me of the Clintonistas from 2008 and how that led me firmly into the Obama camp in the waning months of the primary campaign. I hope our primary ends quickly because it is not “toughening up Hillary” for the general, it is letting Republicans off the hook for their awfulness.

  17. Good morning, 37 and partly sunny in Bellingham. It’s so nice to see pinky blue clouds and actual blue sky this morning, especially after last night’s pouring rain.

    I’m so grateful for the ACA today. As you all know our son has had a challenging medical year but thanks to the health care law and the people making it happen he now has a new insurance plan and it was purchased via the web site. Without the ACA he would be uninsurable, and without the emergency Medicaid program a caring hospital social worker enrolled him in last spring he probably would have not survived.

    The ACA is an accomplishment we all need to celebrate and protect. Needless to say I hope the next election will bring lawmakers who will work to strengthen the program as opposed to tearing it apart.

    • I just listened to the Republican response to POTUS – attacking the ACA. I am with you on how important it is – will fight tooth and nail to keep it.

    • I saw a story last night that reminded people that the first day of Healthcare.gov, October 1, 2013, 6 people signed up. In the last two days of the 2015 sign-up period, 600,000! Remarkable … and awesome for your son and others like him who were uninsurable before the ACA. I hope that in November 2016, people vote and say “Hands off my ACA!” to the Republican destroyers.

  18. Hi Folks – had to look something up online so thought I’d drop by and check in. Overnight low was 27, currently at our high for the day of 55 (and sunny which is why the living room is warm enough to sit in and do computer stuff) although clouds will start moving in this evening. (Of course they will. Tomorrow is laundry day. I just hope it will be clear enough long enough to hang the sheets outside.) Going to gird my loins and check GOS for the bernghazi (that’s a good one!) status. Hopefully Bernie is honorable/ethical enough to stop the anti-Dem crap. But I’m not holding my breath. Hope everybody’s Saturn’s day goes well. {{{HUGS}}}

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