Week-long Welcomings from Moosylvania: Jan. 24th through Jan. 30th

January 24, 2016 JanF Community 179

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. Last night CNN hosted a town hall at Drake University in Des Moines IA for the Democratic Party candidates. Here are YouTubes of Secretary Clinton’s portion of the program:

    The CNN post town hall commentary gave the “win” to Secretary Clinton but was quite odd.

    There was, however, a downside for Clinton in her triumph — the once seemingly inevitable Democratic nominee opted to tie herself ever more closely to President Barack Obama’s foreign policy. Indeed, come the general election, Clinton’s full-throated defense of the controversial Iran deal and other foreign policy choices will make it that much harder to distance herself from the broader historic catastrophe of the unraveling of the Middle East that has unfolded during Obama’s watch.

    I’m sorry … “controversial Iran deal”??? There is nothing controversial about a deal that ends the chance for a nuclear bomb in Iran. And the Middle East was set aflame by Republican President George W. Bush. That the region is a catastrophe – yet did not suck us into another quagmire – is positive for people who hate war and are suspicious of American Exceptionalism that comes at the point of a rifle. CNN really does want to be Fox News.

    • Thanks Jan – I missed the whole thing.
      CNN reportage makes me grit my teeth. They might as well be called the “Conservative News Network” these days.

      FYI – am going to post my Tuesday’s Chile piece now – my new schedule at school is later than normal – and given the outages on my internet – I’m going to post it while I have a connection (just in case)

      • I will watch for it!! Thank you for taking care of your moose peeps. :)

        If you have time, watch the videos of the town hall. Secretary Clinton was pitch perfect and handled the questions well, even the “you are dishonest” question by the young person who started the questioning. I am not sure how long the YouTubes will stay up (they look unauthorized to me).

      • Great line from Hillary – “the other side is not talking issues – they’re talking insults”

        I think she was really excellent – including dealing with the “gotcha” questions.

        Thanks for the POTUS interview too.
        I really need to do some catching up.

        • Sometimes I can only scan the news and put links into my Read Later service and hope to catch up the next day. I haven’t listened to the POTUS interview yet but I saw it discussed. The Sanders campaign is going to have to be very careful how they react to it – if they say “meh, who cares what that guy says!” they risk alienating the Obama Democrats. I know many of Bernie’s supporters think that they don’t need the Obama Democrats, that millions of previously unallied voters will come from somewheresomewhere and vote their candidate in. They are as wrong as Ted Cruz thinking that there were 27 million Republicans who sat out the 2012 election because Mitt Romney was not conservative enough.

          The same voters who elected Barack Obama in 2008 and 2012 are the same voters who will elect the Democratic candidate running with President Obama, not against him. It could not be more simple.

          • They have already alienated a slew of Obama Democrats – especially black ones. Have been following a lot of the stuff on twitter

            The attacks on Ta Nehisi Coates haven’t helped either – he’s now been thrown under the bus as a shill, on Hilliary’s payroll, an elitist ….etc etc for daring to raise a question to BS.

          • The attacks were amusing because many of the attackers have no idea who Coates is; shows how interested they are in the blah people, don’t you think?

  2. Good morning, Meese! It’s 36 F. on a grey morning, going up to 41 F. today. Where’s all the fog we were supposed to have? Someone must have spread sand over the street while we were sleeping, because now it’s a dirty brown color against all the white.

    Skipped the Town Hall last night. In my fragile physical state I couldn’t have coped with CNN. I understand that Bernie won, but Hillary really won. You can tell where that came from.

    Writing the last two chapters of the novella is very slow going. Perhaps I’ll do something else today. At least I don’t have to think about dinner, because Dearly is having dinner out tonight.

    Will be SO GLAD when Iowa and New Hampshire are over! Wishing everyone a good day.

    • The links I put up are only Hillary and no commercials! I can’t open the CNN site because it kills my browser and annoys me. I did not watch the Bernie clips because I cringe when angry old men are shouting at me. Sorry, I am done. Time to move on to the general election.

  3. Allergies still killing me. Windy & sunny — so the trees are happy & the wind is blowing the pollen around. But I brought my workout stuff to change into & I’m going to walk after work. Yes, I am. Left my iPod at home because I’ll be walking on the street, but What You Need came up in my playlist. Happy, poppy song. Maybe it’ll help me stay awake.

  4. Geordie wrote a great comment over at orange this morning on the realities of how Congress works.

    Hope she will log in and reprise it here.

    Seeya later – off to school.

  5. 30 at dawn heading for 45 today – mostly cloudy but not as dark as it could be (generating in hundreds of watts rather than over a kilowatt, but it’s early still and the fact I’m generating at all says light) – got caught up in a community diary at Orange so running late on everything. Need to get some work done, then will watch the Hillary videos – thanks for posting them – and check in with HNV. Also the Muslim migration story – glad it won’t run away while I’m tied up elsewhere :) Happy last Tuesday in January! {{{HUGS}}}

  6. Morning all! Dee, thanks for the kind words about my comment on that nice diary at GOS about Hillary’s great appearance at the town hall last night. I’ve said a lot of this in other ways here before, but I think this is the first time I ventured to put it out there over at GOS – here’s what I said, for those understandably reluctant to wade into comments on pro-Hillary diaries over there:

    “The naivete about how Congress works with Presidents that is displayed by many Sanders supporters just wearies me. Just one point, speaking as a former Capitol Hill Democratic staffer — Sanders is not a Democrat, he has spent his entire career thumbing his nose at the party he is now trying to take over lead of, and Democrats on the Hill will not forget that. I used to live in Vermont, I know about how Sanders went up again Madeleine Kunin, a revered Democratic leader there, in the 80’s, saying there was little difference between her and the Republicans — and you can bet most Democratic politicians remember it too.”

    “It is a truism that the worst enemies of any new President are the Senators of his/her own party, who all think they’d do better in the White House. Compound that with the disdain of Democratic Senators who, IF Sanders were to win, would have just seen their party taken over by a guy who to them seems like a carpetbagger, and you have a recipe for a VERY rough ride in Congress, even if the Democrats took back both Houses. Which they won’t, no matter who the Democratic nominee is.”

    “Saying he’s a politician like other politicians does not mean he knows how to get things done (I don’t think he’s really done that much in his years in the Senate, he’s mostly functioned as a gadfly from the left which is a necessary job that he’s done well), it just means he’s not pure as the driven snow and unsullied by political calculation, as it sometimes seems people want to think of him. Being a politician is not a bad thing, it just means he’s figured out how to stay in office, which is a necessary prerequisite to getting anything done. The same can be said of Clinton.”

    I didn’t get completely flamed, which is a relief, although there were a couple of snarky replies which I’ve decided to ignore. Life is too short to get caught in flame wars over there.

    I’m very encouraged by the response to Hillary appearance last night – I didn’t watch it either, but I love the clips JanF provided here, and I think she made the best possible case for her candidacy: she’s the best qualified, she knows how to do the job, and she’s got the principles and value we want. I am so thrilled at President Obama’s comments about her – so generous of him, and as she said a couple of times last night, really sweet – she was clearly very touched by his loyalty to her. Very very cool.

    I am so tired of the crap about Goldman Sachs money over at GOS – as if taking money for a speaking engagement turns you into an indentured servant! When I worked at Ways and Means, there were as yet no real restrictions on what members or staff could take from lobbyists in terms of gifts and our offices were always flooded with goodies at Christmas time (I’m talking cases of liquor, tickets to professional sports, etc.) But I also remember one of my colleagues at the Committee, a seasoned staffer who had worked on a Congressman’s personal staff before coming over to the Committee, repeating a well worn mantra to me – I’ll try to give a cleaner version of it, something like “Drink their liquor, take their money, [be intimate with]their women, and then vote against them anyway.” I doubt that those are words Hillary lives by, but it’s a fact that people get paid for speaking – it doesn’t mean they’re in thrall to the people who cut the check. That is simply, again, naive crap from some (not all) Sanders supporters – but then, why should I expect better from a crew who have been repeating Republican Benghazi lies for the last month.

    Hope everyone has a great day! Dee, hope your internet connection stays up and that you have a great trip to PA!

    • I just looked at this comment over at GOS, and someone actually hide rated it. Seriously. Those people are insane.

      • Good lord! You are kidding, right? What is hide-rateable in that????? Is it the “Bernie is not a Democrat” part? He isn’t!!!

    • Thank you for sharing that here!! This: “[Bernie] mostly functioned as a gadfly from the left which is a necessary job that he’s done well”. We do need a purity wing in our party so that we can anchor to it and not get too far adrift. I think that the DLC, the 90s aberration that led to some of the worst “Democratic” policy in decades, drifted too far. We can be left and center-left, center and center-right. But we should never again drift so far to the right that we, as a party, make common cause with the authors of Gramm-Bliley, for example. I like the idea of pragmatic LBJ Democrats merging with ideological FDR Democrats as long as we remember that things that Hillary said in the first video: we are the party that works against all forms of inequality, not just economic but racial and gender.

      What I liked best about Hillary’s town hall appearance was that she answered all her critics in the Democratic Party, clearly and forcefully. She will NEVER be able to answer her Republican critics and it is our job to help her get elected by showing up and voting. We outnumber them and when we vote, we win.

      • Yes, Bernie helps pull the Dem Party left and that’s good. He didn’t pull Hillary left, she was already there. Wish I could agree about Hillary answering all her critics in the Dem Party – but unless you consign the Bernie bros so noisy at the Orange to not being in the Dem Party (which of course is possible), I’m afraid she didn’t. Like the Rs, they will never accept her answers. But as Hillary has been doing for over 40 years, we just keep moving forward – and when we vote, we win.

        • Hillary is not from the liberal wing of the party. She is more a pragmatic progressive, a person who is able to separate the possible from the pie in the sky. There is nothing wrong with imagining the pie in the sky but if you are hungry, you better find someone who knows where tonight’s supper is.

          I did not say that she satisfied her critics in the Democratic Party … but she did address every one of their issues, and to my mind quite well. It is still a nominating contest and I would not expect her opponents to stop opposing her. It will be over soon enough and we can get on with the important business of defeating Republicans.

          • Yes she addressed all the issues. Being believed is another matter. Having lived part of my life where I knew where the next meal was coming from but not the one after that, I am perfectly happy to call someone who dreams of pie in the sky but works to put food on the table right now a liberal – but pragmatic progressive works, too. :) But yes, the primaries will soon be over and we can get back to that very important, life and health-sustaining business of defeating Republicans.

  7. Good morning, 51 and raining in Bellingham. I was awake in the night, remembering this time last year when I was preparing for surgery. The scar tissue must have been remembering too, because that’s what woke me up. It’s been a long year in medical land, but I’m very grateful both my son and I are recovering our health.

    Thank you again Jan for the Moose archives. It’s very easy to revisit our morning conversations and check on the dates……can’t trust my elusive memory!

      • Thanks Diana. Anniversaries are always a reflective time for me, and this one gives me much to be thankful for. I’m just muddling through January though…can’t seem to keep my focus on any one task. So today will be another one of those days where I’ll just see what happens!

  8. Good afternoon! Finally managed to make my way back here – I can read from work, but can’t log in and comment because our firewall blocks the wordpress login. Grr.

    I’m home sick today; running a fever last night/this morning along with sinus/head issues, blerg. Still snowed in too from the blizzard; we got about 30 inches. Cleared enough to get the truck to the end of the driveway (yay 4WD), only to realize we’d been plowed in when they cleared the roads. It was a bit of a surprise, because they’re usually really good about not blocking the driveways, but apparently they had trouble even getting the plows through on the first pass, so it’s not surprising that they’re leaving the driveways blocked until they can come back through again.

    Anyways, happy to have a progressive place to hang out that’s not all Bernie v Hillary flamewars. :-) It’s getting so the only diaries I visit at GOS anymore are Cheers & Jeers, CUA, & KTK. Can’t even look at the wreck list without getting sick. Haven’t decided yet who I’m going to support in the primary (assuming the nomination isn’t locked by the time it gets to us in NJ), I like them both well enough and also realize they both have issues. I just hope we can all come together after the nomination is decided.

    • “hope we can all come together after the nomination is decided.”

      Me too. We really really really have to.

      • I am optimistic (although I am by nature an optimist, so … ;) ) given how divided the primary was in 2008, and how we managed to come together after that. But nothing frightens me more than a Republican as president, getting to set agendas and appoint supreme court justices.

        • A Republican president will undo all the progress over the last 7 years.

          Look at where we were 7 years ago: people were losing their jobs, their homes, their life savings; people were literally dying because they could not afford health care. The Justice Department was filled with people who approved of torture and discrimination and used federal prosecutions to punish enemies and reward friends. Our disaster response was manned by former Arabian horse lobbyists. The president did more than lead us out of the Great Recession caused by lax regulations (and a war of choice) but he made the government work again for people. He appointed scores of good judges who are interested in the rule of law and established guidelines to protect our natural resources and help save our planet. He avoided war.

          A lot of that will be gone on the Republican’s Day One that they are so fond of talking about, with the rest after the first session of a Republican Congress. And there will be nothing we can do for 4 years to fix the mistake that the American people will have made.

          It is horrifying. I have never been more scared about our future than I am right now.

      • Thanks! Working on the feeling better; stayed home again today. Will be good to have energy to do things again.

  9. Good morning, meese! Wednesday …

    It is 22 degrees in Madison, on its way up to 32. Afternoon snow showers are in the forecast.

    The FBI lured the Bundy militiamen out of their compound and arrested 6 including the Bundy brothers. One of the Bundyans was killed in the shootout. They will be charged with a federal felony “conspiracy to impede officers of the United States from discharging their official duties through the use of force, intimidation, or threats, in violation of Title 18, United States Code, Section 372.” I hope they set bail high enough so that they don’t end up someplace else where the loss of life is higher.

    Trump won’t go to the GOP debate on Thursday because of his feud with Fox News over Megyn Kelly. There is no downside for him – he has nothing more to prove and he can get all the media attention he wants on CNN and/or NBC with the alternative event he has planned. I am not sure that Trump needs Fox as much as Fox needs Trump. Grab popcorn!

    The president will meet with Bernie Sanders today. I wish I could be a fly on the wall of the Oval Office. I suspect that President Obama wants to clear the air over the Politico interview to make sure that there are no hard feelings. Certainly, the president is entitled to his opinion and he is the leader the Democratic Party. This may be where we find out that having a candidate running for your party’s nomination who is not a member of your party may not be the best idea. The whole thing has always made me itchy.

    See all y’alls later!!

    • Good morning – am heading to the airport in a few minutes – as soon as the sun is up – on my way to Harrisburg PA – Dickinson College.

      Will log in from the airport when I get there.

    • So glad they finally took action against the Bundys! Thanks for the link.

      Would be interesting to listen in on the conversation between Sanders & Obama. I’m with you, Jan; while I’ve long been a fan of Sanders (having listened to “Brunch with Bernie” on Thom Hartmann’s show for years), it never made sense to me that someone who has insisted on staying independent would run in the Democratic primary. He always touted the whole “longest serving independent” thing, which is fine, but then why do you get to invite yourself into a party’s primary. I wonder if anyone else would have stepped forward to run if Sanders had stayed out of it, or if O’Malley would have been a serious contender absent Sanders.

  10. Good Woden’s Day, Moosekind! It’s 37 F. here in NoVa under a grayish-blue sky (sunshine promised later), going up to 40 F. today. There’s enough black ice around to make me wary of driving. This is the best part of being retired—I don’t really have to go anywhere. I’ve been in enough fender benders during my working life that I don’t want to risk any more.

    Forget Putin! The Trumpet is afraid of a woman! OMG, I would be so embarrassed if I were he, I wouldn’t want to show my face. Dear Goddess, please don’t let this drive his supporters Cruzy.

    It’s about time that crisis in Oregon was resolved, but as usual, it involved loss of life. Of course if they’d been black or Muslim, as we’ve pointed out here at the Moose, they’d have been dead on Day 2. Seldom has the term “white male privilege” been illustrated in more revolting fashion.

    Feeling much better today, so I might actually get some work done! Now pondering the possibilities of a website kit called SiteBuilder. I do wish I could find something that shows examples before forcing one to sign up.

    Wishing a good day to all at the Pond and Beyond!

    • You should send your Googles off to look up SiteBuilder and see what is available as either a demo or example. Many times there are YouTubes of people who have used a product walking you through the process.

      It sounds like the Bundy militia guy wanted to die … he said he never wanted to go to prison. I am sorry that law enforcement accommodated him though because now he is a martyr. I am sure it will be blamed on President Obama.

      I read an article this morning that explains what Trump did and he is probably not in any danger of losing his appeal to the masses:

      You won’t find Roland Barthes on the Sunday morning roundtables dissecting the presidential race. Barthes is a French philosopher who died in 1980. But his work may hold the key to understanding Trump’s popularity and his unusual decision to skip a major debate.

      Barthes is best known for his work in semiotics, the study of signs and symbols. But he wasn’t limited to lengthy, esoteric treatises. Rather, Barthes published much of his work in short, accessible pieces breaking down elements of popular culture. […]

      In his essay, Barthes contrasts pro wrestling to boxing.

      This public knows very well the distinction between wrestling and boxing; it knows that boxing is a Jansenist sport, based on a demonstration of excellence. One can bet on the outcome of a boxing-match: with wrestling, it would make no sense. A boxing- match is a story which is constructed before the eyes of the spectator; in wrestling, on the contrary, it is each moment which is intelligible, not the passage of time… The logical conclusion of the contest does not interest the wrestling-fan, while on the contrary a boxing-match always implies a science of the future. In other words, wrestling is a sum of spectacles, of which no single one is a function: each moment imposes the total knowledge of a passion which rises erect and alone, without ever extending to the crowning moment of a result.

      In the current campaign, Trump is behaving like a professional wrestler while Trump’s opponents are conducting the race like a boxing match. As the rest of the field measures up their next jab, Trump decks them over the head with a metal chair. […]

      But why can’t voters see that what Trump offers is just an act? As Barthes illustrates, that’s asking the wrong question.

      It is obvious that at such a pitch, it no longer matters whether the passion is genuine or not. What the public wants is the image of passion, not passion itself. There is no more a problem of truth in wrestling than in the theater.

      This analogy reveals why the attacks on Trump are so ineffective. Fox News put out a statement mocking Trump’s reluctance to appear at the debate.

      This is as effective to running into the middle of the ring during Wrestlemania and yelling: “This is all fake!” You are correct, but you will not be received well.

      Will Trump’s gambit pay off? Will he become the Republican nominee? No one really knows. But we do know that traditional punditry is incapable of understanding his appeal.

      Trump is a master promoter and he is particularly effective when promoting his favorite subject, himself. Fox will lose this battle. The side benefit is that Fox will be diminished which is good news for our country.

    • Fox News apparently skewered Trump over the whole debate thing too:

      Fox’s statement said that network officials “had learned from a secret back channel that the Ayatollah and Putin both intend to treat Donald Trump unfairly when they meet with him if he becomes president.”

      The statement added that Trump “has his own secret plan to replace the Cabinet with his Twitter followers to see if he should even go to those meetings.”

      hahahahaha

      I doubt it’ll make any difference to the republican party base, but I find it hilarious.

  11. I was actually asleep when the alarm went off. I know, because I dreamt about not being able to turn it off. Which was confusing when I actually woke up & my phone wasn’t in my hands….

    Ran errands after work yesterday instead of walking. I had a notice from the library that I had a book to pick up at the library, so obviously I had to go there. Anyway, I have me stuff here today & today I will walk after work. No, really.

    Earworm is another INXS song — the grocery store had their 80s mix on & this one was playing. Made me happy & sad both. In the video, Hutchence looks impossibly young. Which, of course, he was. And those 80s clothes….. and hair…..ah, yes, 1985…. Anyway, I give you: This Time

  12. Morning all! I really, really hope the FBI had cameras rolling at that traffic stop in Oregon, because this man’s death is going to be the focal point for right wing martyrdom, just like Waco became. I am SURE the authorities did everything they could to arrest these guys peacefully precisely because they couldn’t have wanted to create a martyr, so I hope we’ll get some details soon, backed up by evidence.

    Not feeling great today – some sort of cold percolating – and I have to clean up the house for the cleaners who come later today, so will check in later. Everyone have a great day!

  13. 20 with sunshine at the moment in Fay., AR, heading for 50. Hope everyone is having a good Wednesday.

    Had a scare last night – Trish (Pootie Queen) was hauled off to the hospital after a couple of weeks of G.I. problems. Her husband called me (you can guess how that freaked me out – especially with a bad connection – took a minute for him to reassure me she wasn’t dead) as she was on her way in. I passed the word at GOS (Marti put up a diary for good energy/wishes/prayers) – and managed to connect with Trish herself an hour later (IV re-hydration on the way in got her more or less conscious). Severe dehydration and electrolytes a mess so they admitted her. Running tests today. So any good energy you want to send her way would be appreciated.

    Got another weird one at work – somebody on social media accused one of our former professors of having had sex with a student and been fired for it. Not true but we’re being FOIA’d over it. He was one of our really good, dependable non-tenure professors but after 12 years of teaching for us he finally got tired of the no-future position, gave notice, got an offer which he accepted from the Dallas Police Department who are very happy with him, and left us after turning his grades in at the end of the semester 2 years ago. We were very sorry to see him leave and the Dept tried to figure out someway to entice him to stay – but couldn’t offer him a tenure-track position and that’s what he wanted – something with a future. I haven’t seen the picture but those who have say “nope, not him”. I don’t know if sex was involved with him at any time but the rest f the story is lies. And if it is another of those false accusations, I hope the accuser is nailed to the wall. Women have enough trouble being believed when they are assaulted without another example of “they make stuff up” for the perp-defenders to use. Sigh.

    Bunch of papers back on my desk so I’d best get to them. {{{HUGS}}}

    • Yikes, bfitz, I hope the story is not true! A high school gym teacher’s life was ruined by a false accusation here in Fairfax County, years ago. He and his family had to move and they probably changed their names, too.

      • Well, the parts of it “provable” are not true. It’s not his picture on the social media site and he most certainly was not fired from his position here. Heck, half the staffing mess we’re in to this day is trying to replace his teaching load. University Relations is working with Legal – going through every record we’ve got on him, including of course all of his student evaluations – to deal with this. Meanwhile faculty college-wide have been informed so they can deal with student inquiries on it. (And goddess help us, some of the students are insisting that it’s true because it’s on the internet!) False accusations in the short run hurt the people accused, but in the long run hurts any woman – or child – or man for that matter – who reports sexual abuse.

  14. Good morning, 52 and cloudy in Bellingham. I made small progress in my sewing room yesterday, so after the pool this morning I’ll tackle ironing all the table linens we used for the holidays. I love setting a pretty table but I’m slow to put the linens away. My cutting/ironing table is drapery making size so I can stack every thing on one side and still have room on the other. And when both sides are full I have a serious clean up to do!

    Five more days and events in Iowa will no longer dominate the news……just hope the outcome bodes well for our future.

    Steve Benen, writing about Robert Gates at The Maddow Blog……

    Bush’s Pentagon chief sees GOP candidates as childish, misguided

    “The level of dialogue on national security issues would embarrass a middle schooler,” Gates said of the Republican contenders at a Politico Playbook event in Washington on Monday. “People are out there making threats and promises that are totally unrealistic, totally unattainable. Either they really believe what they’re saying or they’re cynical and opportunistic and, in a way, you hope it’s the latter, because God forbid they actually believe some of the things that they’re saying.”

    http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/bushs-pentagon-chief-sees-gop-candidates-childish-misguided#break

    • Robert Gates lost my respect when he trashed President Obama in order to beef up sales of his “memoir”. I am sick of Republicans saying “OMG!! I did not realize the Republican Party was so awful!!??!!”. Bull. They ginned up the anger of their base using race, resentment, and religiousity and now they are surprised that their base is made up of racist xenophobes?

      Every day there is another Republican with a lament about their party. I have no sympathy for them … I hope their party is crushed under the weight of the toxic sludge that they manufactured to stay in power, and are buried, never to be seen again.

  15. Joan Walsh: “I’m struck by the insistence among Sanders supporters that Democrats who support Clinton—and right now, we are still the majority—are doing so joylessly, like party automatons. ”

    ” I’ve come to feel passion for Clinton herself, and for what I see as a movement that supports her, even though only Sanders is judged a “movement” candidate. I believe she’s evolved back to be the progressive Democrat she used to be, more progressive than her liberal husband. Some of my feelings remain defensive, but in a warmer sense: I really don’t want to see her abused again. I’m tired of seeing her confronted by entitled men weighing in on her personal honesty and likability, treating the most admired woman in the world like a woman who’s applying to be his secretary. I’m stunned anew by the misogyny behind the attacks on her, and her female supporters.”

    http://www.thenation.com/article/why-im-supporting-hillary-clinton-with-joy-and-without-apologies/

  16. Charlie Pierce on the push to the left. We are all going to benefit by having THIS Hillary Clinton running:

    “HRC sounded genuinely angry when she told the story.

    “Johnson Controls begged the administration and the government to bail out the auto industry,” she said. “And now, in the last few days, Johnson Controls has decided to pretend to sell itself to a company in Europe just to avoid paying taxes. They call this an IN-version. I’d call it a PER-version. ”

    There is no question that she’s swum in these circles like a fish in cold water. And there also is no question that she’s tuned up the populist outrage as a result of being challenged from the left by Bernie Sanders. But, whatever the reason, she is right to call out this company for being the towering corporate ingrate that it is.”

    http://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politics/news/a41587/hillary-clinton-bowling-corporations/

    • This is fantastic stuff. I wish every Sanders supporter would read it – not that it would change people’s minds about who to support, they have every right to stick with him if they want, but to at least understand the bigger picture of racism as the base issue at the core of everything else. I think she’s spot on in her analysis. At least as far as I’ve read.

      • It is excellent. I had been watching the Tweets, some in real time, some from retweets. You can’t fix everything by fixing income inequality … it is not that simple.

        Some inroads are being made in understanding that. A recent study reveals that white people are realizing that we are not post racial (Hello, Justice Roberts, you need to jump on that bandwagon!!).

        More white Americans now share the view, long held by minorities, that racism is a national problem and should be confronted, according to an analysis of recent public opinion polling.

        The review, compiled by the W.K. Kellogg Foundation in conjunction with the Northeastern University School of Journalism, concludes that a majority of Americans across racial groups think more should be done to end racism.[…]

        New York Times/CBS polling in 1995 showed only 15 percent of whites believed the criminal justice system was biased against blacks, compared to 51 percent of blacks. By 2015, that number had risen to 44 percent of whites and 77 percent of blacks. Polls from CNN/Kaiser Family Foundation and Gallup showed an increase in the number of whites who believe the criminal justice system is biased against black people.

        As they say “now that we have gotten your attention”. I hope our leaders are paying attention, too.

  18. Good morning, meeses! Thursday …

    It is 32 degrees in Madison, on its way up to 35. Mostly cloudy skies are in the forecast.

    The president and Senator Sanders met at the White House yesterday. Bernie seems to be working on scaling back his Iowa expectations (“I’m not saying we can do what Barack Obama did in 2008 — I wish we could — but I don’t think we can. If there is a large turnout, I think we win. If not, I think we’ll be struggling.”), perhaps understanding that it is difficult to poll Iowa and that polls with him leading by 20 points are no more reliable than polls showing Secretary Clinton leading by 20. It is a close race and the winner will have bragging rights and that is about it. No delegates will be selected. By the way, the meeting had been set up back in December so it had nothing to do with the Politico interview.

    There were three more arrests in the Oregon armed occupation. I was worried that the feds would let the other leave the compound and go home – demonstrating that there is no rule of law. The arrested men were charged with the same felony conspiracy count.

    Donald Trump still won’t debate. Ha! Pundits are at their wits end:

    David Redlawsk, a political science professor at Rutgers University who once taught at the University of Iowa, called it a “bad move” that makes Trump look like a “whiny baby, not a leader.”

    Of course, Trump’s supporters won’t care, Redlawsk added, though “it may make it more difficult for him to expand his base.”

    Aaron Kall, the director of debate at the University of Michigan, called the boycott the first big mistake of the Trump campaign and said it “seems like a dangerous and unnecessary unforced error by a front-runner candidate that’s been nearly perfect to date.”

    Trump has been perfect? Yikes! No one even knows what a Trump mistake would look like because not a single thing has come back to bite him. Where do they find these “experts”?

    See all y’all later!

  19. In case you were wondering what our Dee was up to yesterday, from Dickinson College in Carlisle Pennsylvania:

    Reclaiming the Radical: MLK Jr. Symposium highlights youth activism and organization

    Jan. 27: The Legacy of the Young Lords: A Conversation, moderated by Jerry Philogene, associate professor of American studies, 7-9 p.m., Denny 317. Speakers include:

    Iris Morales, community activist, filmmaker (¡Palante Siempre Palante!: The Young Lords) and director of the Manhattan Neighborhood Networks El Barrio Firehouse Community Media Center;
    Denise Oliver-Velez, a former Black Panther and Young Lord and on the faculty of the women’s, gender & sexuality studies department at the State University of New York, New Paltz;
    and Darrel Wanzer-Serrano, assistant professor and director of undergraduate studies, communication studies, University of Iowa.

    • Today’s program at Dickinson will have Iris Morales screening her film. More on that here:

      !Palante, Siempre Palante! The Young Lords documents the period from 1969 through the organization’s demise in 1976. The Young Lords represented another cycle of militancy, write Andres Torres and Jose Velasquez in The Puerto Rican Movement: Voices From the Diaspora, a collection of personal narratives from activists of the period.

      Through on-camera interviews with former members, archival footage, photographs and music, the documentary surveys Puerto Rican history, the Young Lords’ political vision and actions, and the organization’s legacy.

      There is a short introductory clip at the link. Here is the trailer from YouTube:

  20. Good morning, Moosylvania! It’s 14 F. here in NoVa under a pale blue sky, going up to 41 F. today. Outside my window is a snowscape of blue, gray, and white. It looks peaceful.

    Didn’t have the filter on when I sneaked a peek at GOS this morning—talk about toxic sludge! And this is with polls supposedly showing Bernie ahead three points in Iowa and squiggledy-seven points in New Hempshire! Sorry, New Hampshire. Ugh, for the sake of my stomach will be careful if I take another look there today.

    Have enjoyed reading the comments here this morning. I have nothing intelligent to add, so will go down to breakfast. Must watch the video links Jan provided and catch up on correspondence afterwards. Everyone please have a good Thor’s Day!

    • Good morning! Your comment for some reason got caught up in the spam filter and I only just now saw it.

      Sorry you fell into the toxic sludge! I am determined to only read good things about my candidate and ignore the naysaying. If Hillary Clinton loses Iowa by a whisker and loses New Hampshire to the Senator from the state next door to it, I will not rend my garments. Now if she loses Nevada and South Carolina, then I will start fretting.

      Have a great day!

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