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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Good morning, meese! Friday …
It is 55 degrees in Madison with an expected high of 81. Sunny skies are in the forecast.
Brexit is roiling the markets and is likely to roil the political landscape as well. Cameron, who called the referendum, effectively destroyed his own government in what one commentator called an “own goal”. It is worrisome because it feels like a victory for the Trumpian forces, those who are angry and scared about The Other and looking for scapegoats for the changes that globalization has brought. You can’t live 20 miles from Europe and not have dealings with them that will necessarily impact your country anymore than we can have a border with Canada and Mexico and just build walls. The “special relationship” with England will be strained when the new Prime Minister is the man who said that President Obama “has an ancestral dislike of Great Britain because he is Kenyan”. Sigh.
Bernie Sanders is taking his $27ses and his $38,000 a day Secret Service protection on the road to campaign for his handpicked probably-as-unelectable-as-him candidates. Along the way he will be attacking the Democratic Party for wanting to pick a Democrat to run as our nominee. I agree with him that changes need to be made in the nominating process but they are changes that make party allegiance mandatory. I never want to see an independent run in our nominating contest again.
The Supreme Court issued one positive ruling, in support of the admission policies at the University of Texas, and rejected the government’s request to lift the injunction blocking the president’s DAPA/DACA program. It is not an affirmation that the president overstepped his bounds, it is not the “end of the program” although it probably makes it impossible for it to get through the rest of the hurdles before the president leaves in January 2017. And what it does not do is require the Justice Department to begin deporting 4 million family members who might have been protected under the plan. Deportations will still be prioritized for criminals. But it does add a potent political issue for the election: the president alone can’t fix this as long as there are right-wing forces willing to go to court to block him and as long as the rights are based on an executive order that can be repealed by the next president. We need not just a Democratic president but a Democratic Congress and a ninth Justice picked by a Democrat. Take solace in the fact that if Scalia were still alive, the outcome would have been more drastic.
I am going to resist looking at my investment portfolio which I am sure contained stocks about to take beating today. I switched to a more conservative portfolio at the beginning of the year as my investment goal changed from growth to preservation but I am sure there are some international stocks left.
See all y’all later!!
Cameron may have set the stage for the unification of the Irelands. We live in interesting times:
yep, the Irish papers are all noting that vote & going “ahem”
Good Friday Meese
Watching the Brexit vote has been interesting – sad to see the rise of right wing xenophobia in GB – have read quite a few comments from people here who predict that this means Trump will succeed here – but I disagree strongly.
I made this comment at Orange:
I refuse to accept that “leave” in GB augers a Trump win here.
BRexit certainly does not auger a Trump win but I hope it reminds people that we can’t sit back on any kind of “good news” related to polls – we have to assume our votes are needed and vote as if our lives depend on it (they do).
Agree. Which is why we all need to GOTV.
Good morning, Moosekind, and it’s a beautiful Freya’s day here—clear blue sky, slight breeze, possible thunderstorms tonight. It’s 68 F. now, going up to 80 F.
This has been an exciting week for news, hasn’t it? The Brexit vote just shows how very, very wrong polling can be—as if we didn’t already know from Michigan this year. All week long our stock market has been trending up because of the “secret internal polling conducted by the banks with Remain being favored”—yeah, right. In London the Remain vote prevailed, but not in the rest of the country.
Waiting with interest to see what the Supremes have decided about our ex-gov, Bob McDonnell. I loathed his smug little smile and robotic face, along with his hatred of women, even before he was elected. After he left office he threw his wife under the bus. She’s not blameless, but for him to shift it all onto her, and have lots of people saying what a “nice guy” he is, makes my teeth grind all night like millstones. He is not nice at all!
I want an easy morning today, working on “Jolyon,” part II. There’s going to be a part III as well. My trainer nearly finished me off yesterday! It didn’t seem so bad at the time but dear Goddess, after I returned home, the exhaustion was evident. It would be a good evening to grill things for dinner if I weren’t panting to try a new vegetarian restaurant tonight.
Wishing a good day to all at the Pond and Beyond!
Watched the BBC news all morning…… wow. I’m really stunned. They said it’ll take 2 years to take effect, but still…. And it looks like before that, there’ll be another Scottish referendum & this time they’ll leave the UK for Europe. The Irish papers are also pointing out significantly that the North voted to stay in. This comment was really interesting (“when facts met myths they were as useless as bullets bouncing off the bodies of aliens in an HG Wells novel”)
For all my wishing for a time machine to go back & fix stuff, today I’d like one to take it outside time & just take a couple of weeks outside of time to catch my breath & catch up with the world. Ok & I’d still go back and save the Kennedys & King & Lennon & I’d tell Prince to have the damn hip operation because no God would have him literally die because of the pain from NOT having it, and Michael Hutchence because that was a stupid way to die. And maybe find a British politician to tell them about yesterday.
Thanks for the link anotherdem. I read the comment last night and wanted to share but I’m tech challenged with twitter. I can’t find my “likes” and I don’t know how to c/p when reading on my iPad. The concluding sentence gives me pause….”But can anybody tell me the last time a prevailing culture of anti intellectualism has lead to anything other than bigotry?”
You can grab the image locations off Tweets and post them as an Image in a comment but it requires knowledge of HTML because our Comment buttons don’t include an image link. There is probably a way to do that but I am hesitant to add custom code to the Moose theme because then I have to keep it up to date.
That was a strong statement:
There are undercurrents of anti-intellectualism here and enough parallels between the white butthurt vote there and our white butthurt vote to make me itchy. But the rising coalition in America is not anti-intellectualism but pro-people and is made up of people who don’t fall for the “economic reductionism” argument and elect representatives who are also anti-bigotry anti-racism anti-sexism and pro-justice.
Thanks Jan. Now that I know I’m fine just posting a link.
75 at dawn so opened the house and aired out. Kittehs enjoyed the open windows. Some A-hole dumped a couple of black cats down the street a couple of days ago. The larger one is skittish and runs off when s/he sees people, but the smaller (not small – looonnnngggg kitteh) and floofier one is about half-grown, very friendly, likes to be petted, and as of this morning very hungry. So. I’m feeding another kitteh on the carport and trying to think of something inexpensive to do about it besides calling Animal Control. Sigh.
Got just over 19 KWHs yesterday – IF I can average 20/day for the rest of the month, I’ll still meet last year’s production. Considering it’s partly cloudy now and pretty much projected to be (with predicted rain that I’ll believe in when it falls on my head) for the next 10 days, that’s a big IF.
Brexit vote sux. Well, Obama managed to get us out of the economic pit in 2009. I’m hoping he and Hillary have already gotten their heads together (or at least have the appropriate staff meeting) to keep us from falling into another pit. Brexit is going to be seriously bad for exports unless something is done. Hope this isn’t the impetus needed to get TPP through. If Hillary, who started those negotiations, says it needs some re-negotiating, I believe her. (On the bright side, while B.S. didn’t come out and say the words, “I lost/concede and support Hillary” he did say, when asked, that he would vote for her in November.)
Got some more end of year stuff to do. Bright the day, Meeses. {{{{HUGS}}}}
Good morning, 56 and cloudy in Bellingham. Progress on all my lists has stalled……I’m to tired to be in the garden, my son’s hot water heater has failed and flooded his basement so the work in my sewing room is on hold while he deals with that, my knees need a rest from the pool, and my mind needs a break from the tasks on my desk. I’m going to drink a second cup of coffee and read awhile.
Best Friday wishes to all!
Good morning, meese! Saturday …
It is 68 degrees in Madison with an expected afternoon high of 90.
Brexit consumes the news. It was mesmerizing watching the story unfold on Twitter. Apparently there is some provision to do a re-vote but I don’t see anyone embracing it. Perhaps Leave would still win and the horrific shocks to the market would simply be repeated. People in Britain who thought that their problems were all caused by refugees and EU regulations will soon find that they were duped by a failed press and demagogues. Hmmm, that sounds familiar. The good news here in America is that the the right-wing echo chamber is the only place reporting that Trumpism (and Brexit) is a good thing and the people getting their news from those outlets are not a big enough voting bloc, or in enough states, to tilt an election.
Kansas voted $38 million in funds reallocation to keep their schools open. Four former governors came out with a scathing rebuke of Sam “Starve the Beast” Brownback and will be working to defeat his minions in the legislature. Their group, Save Kansas, has had enough of his “revolution” and want sanity returned. I wish them luck and hope we can find sane people to do the same thing for Wisconsin. The difference between them and us, though, is that they have a Supreme Court that cares more about the constitution than the Republican Party – we don’t.
The president’s weekly address is the announcement of the Stonewall national monument and I will post it shortly. If I have time later, I am going to put together a post of some of the commentary from Brexit and what it means and doesn’t mean to our election.
See all y’all later!
Good gray Saturday morning, Meese! Definitely not a good morning for solar collection, although no rain is predicted for the weekend. Current temp. here in NoVa is 70 F., going up to 80 F.
Trying to read all the pros and cons of Brexit and finding it difficult to know how to put it all together. My gut feeling is that this is less awful than it appears at first glance. I do wonder whether Brexit will influence Hillary’s choice of VP. I’m quaking in my boots that she’s going to choose Kaine, a man who, while simultaneously governor of Virginia and head of the DNC, never met an antichoice bill he didn’t like and got rid of the 50-state strategy. Kaine’s great political gift, if you want to call it that, is accurately figuring out who’s going to be the Democratic nominee and climbing on the bandwagon early. In my opinion he brings absolutely nothing to the table.
I want another easy day, although I do feel less exhausted than yesterday. Thursday’s training didn’t seem so bad while it was happening but afterwards I just wanted to fall down and not get up for a long time. Wishing everyone a good Saturday!
The analysis of Brexit will be going on for some time. The EU is saying “hey, if you want a divorce, take your stuff and get the heck out!” … they don’t want it dragging out. The biggest issue, after Scotland independence, is trade. The U.S. has no trade agreements with the UK and in our political environment (gridlock + anti-trade) it is unlikely that a trade agreement would be approved. So the UK just chopped themselves into pieces and isolated themselves from their trading partners. Millennials are distraught, they were mainly Remain’ers, so there is going to be ongoing anger and frustration over this very close vote. Those saying it is “just a flesh wound” look as ridiculous as the Black Knight of Monty Python fame.
I hope you have an easy day!
p.s. It won’t be Tim Kaine. He brings absolutely zero nothing nada zilch to the ticket and he is despised by nearly all Democrats, including us. Hillary is going to need a unifying campaign and you don’t do that by ticking off the base and the young people.
I think it will be a Latino: either Castro, Perez or Becerra. My money is still on Castro although Tom Perez’s experience in the Justice Department and Labor Department would be invaluable. Smartypants wrote a post on him yesterday, linking to an in-depth article:
I could easily see him being put in charge of important domestic policy issues like Joe Biden was.
Another name that has been surfacing recently is Sen. Al Franken. He would bring humor and high-energy to the campaign. And his Senate replacement would be appointed by a Democratic governor.
I think Hillary is going to go with a Latino as well – she is very smart and knows what the future holds for Democrats
This would be nothing but good! :)
Jan, I like what you said here:
He seems to be loved by Pond-its and Republicans. Who else despises him? I’ve been reading nothing but smarmy “what a good fit” memes.
Agree with you and Denise that a Latino or Latina VP would bring far, far more to the table.
“Pond-its and Republicans”! Perfect description of the Kaine Train. Remember how Conservadem Senator Evan Bayh of Indiana was a sure thing for Barack Obama in 2008? They even had TV trucks parked outside his house the morning of the announcement. I am not sure why people like that are floated as trial balloons unless it is to make us feel good when our screams of anguish result in a better but still not perfect choice. :)
I slept in. So nice. I’ll have to remember this when it’s time to sign back up for my training group.
Someone collected the best of the Scottish insults to Trump, they are really great at this. Joy Reid is going to talk about this on her MSNBC show.
for some reason, I can’t do the link thing this morning, so here: http://www.barstoolsports.com/boston/donald-trump-was-the-victim-of-some-vicious-british-insults-which-are-incredible-and-my-new-favorite-thing/
Heh, going to read this when I come back from a sandwich run, another.
So glad to hear you slept in!
Good morning, 58 and cloudy in Bellingham. I’m so fortunate to have creative friends at my favorite garden shop. Planting the containers is hard for me this year so I took liners for the four column pots to the shop, chose a few plants, and then trusted their creativity to plant them for me. They know me well!
Lovely! Thanks for sharing!!
Beautiful!
Thanks……I need to find a new way to enjoy my garden this year because my knees are in revolt. My plan for few pots, planned and planted with some creative assistance, is off to a good start.
How lovely! I do so enjoy your photos of plants and flowers.
Just wish you were here to tell me to get off my bohunkus and plant my stuff! :)
Morning all – I forgot to check in yesterday as I was mesmerized by Brexit fallout. Favorite tweet:”Britain: Jeeves, set all the money on fire. Jeeves; Very good sir!” Over $2 trillion in value lost world wide yesterday, in part because some people didn’t realize they were voting in a referendum and not a preference poll. And also because young people didn’t turn out in sufficient numbers to offset old, conservative, racist, scared white English people. Gosh, that sounds familiar, doesn’t it? I lived in England for a year between my sophomore and junior years in college, over the winter of 1970-71, in London but travelled around the country. There were lots of brown and black people from Commonwealth countries already in Britain then – and I remember hearing a wealthy English friend of ours (I lived there with 3 other girls from Swarthmore) and her sisters (they were Clarks of Clark Shoes) say they wanted to get out of London “because there are hardly any English people here any more.” Those women are all in their 60’s now, and I’d bet quite a bit they all voted “Leave.”
I’m refusing to look at my portfolio – I am hoping we’ll see a swing back up after the markets get over the shock of this. I have always been an anglophile, but I’m having trouble this morning feeling fond of people who just took thousands of dollars out of my pocket. And it’s terrifically sad to me that the UK itself may not survive this, as Scotland gets serious about independence in order to stay with the EU, and Northern Ireland struggles to link up with the Republic of Ireland to avoid recreating all the old barriers between north and south. The degree of political incompetence that led to this is astonishing and somewhat familiar – Cameron only called for the referendum to throw a bone to the right wing of the Conservative party, never dreaming it would succeed. arrggh.
And Trump’s press conference from Turnberry, the fabled Scottish golf course he has taken over and renovated, was so completely bizarre and, once again, disqualifying. There he was, in Scotland which had voted overwhelmingly to remain, where the British Prime Minister had resigned shortly before he got in front of the microphones, stock markest plunging world wide, and what does Trump open with? A word on the vote which he simply termed “historic”, and then TEN FREAKING MINUTES about the golf course, his renovations to the lighthouse, and “the greatest par 3 in the world!” It was astounding – and then his kids took turns speaking about how great it was to work for him, and THEN the probably dumbfounded press there got to ask him some questions. And he was predictably awful, saying ignorant, foolish stuff about ‘taking their country back’ and ‘I think it’s great’, apparently unaware that he was IN a country that voted AGAINST leaving. A comedian snuck up and scattered several sleeves of golf balls in front of the microphones – the balls were red and printed with swastikas. Pretty hilarious.
I don’t think the Brexit vote means anything much positive for Trump here – certainly watching the economic fallout, a LOT of people, esp older white people living off their savings and investments in retirement accounts (my demographic), are likely thinking that having someone like Hillary who knows what she’s doing actually in charge might not be such a bad idea. And I totally agree with Dee – we have the Obama Coalition alive and well and getting stronger, a huge difference from the British electorate. In many ways, this country already is what white racists in Britain fear – polyglot, diverse and tolerant. Immigration is this country’s strength and lifeblood – nativists come and go, but sooner or later we tend to remember that.
Ok, opera day today – another obscure one, Dante by a 19th century composer Godard. Have never heard of either one, but it’s fun to discover new operas, so I’ll listen in. Everyone have a great day!
I think we’ve all been watching the Brexit train wreck – I hope the markets get back to normal quickly – I have to admit I don’t understand any of that
Benjamin Godard? He wrote one of my favorite piano pieces, “Florian’s Song.” There are many different translations, but here is my favorite of one stanza:
“Should in your village you e’er view him
A shepherd lad with gentle ways
Whose very sight to love, betrays love that would grow
The more you knew him–
He is my own,
Give him to me
Mine is his heart,
My love has he.”
Actually used this in one of my short stories, “House of Blue.”
I think Brexit will have less impact on the U.S. election than some think, and considering that it will take years to wriggle out of all those current trade agreements, I don’t think things will change very quickly.
Awesome analysis! Yes yes and yes – all those things. I did look at my portfolio and it was not as bad as I expected. I had made some adjustments based on the amount of risk I was willing to accept as I approach retirement and it appears that those changes paid off.
The main impact it will have on our election is as a reminder that we CANNOT take anything for granted – polls mean nothing if people wake up on election day and say “oh, Hillary is ahead by 12 points and it’s raining” and turn over and go back to sleep. We have plenty of cautionary tales, we do not want Nov. 8, 2016 to become one because we failed to defeat Trumpism.
Morning Meeses – 75 at dawn so I aired the house out again. Mostly sunny at the moment so I’m hoping we can make up for the 17 KWHs max yesterday. We shall see. The little black kitty that showed up this week – and on my carport yesterday morning ravenous – showed up again, ravenous again, is sweet, likes scritches and tummy rubs, and is all black. At the moment I have him/her on my porch and will be taking him/her to the vet in little over an hour. Once the boy/girl checks out I’ll see if my boys can be persuaded to accept another kitty in the house – or see if the vet thinks they can rehome (since obviously this cat had a home). What I will not do is take said kitty to the shelter. I support our shelters and appreciate them, but I don’t trust them to rehome a half-grown, all black cat. Here’s another we shall see. (And it’s only 3 weeks until NN – I’ll be gone an entire week – not the best plan when trying to introduce a strange kitty into the family. sigh)
I wish it were just the RWNJs who are crowing about Brexit – but the LWNJs who only accepted Bernie because it looked like he’d be able to take over the Dem Party and turn it into the classical Marxist Party love it, too. I had a short and louder than I like exchange with one this morning at the Farmers’ Market – and just walked away. Somehow the tyranny of the unelected Banksters in Brussels and Putin is arming because Obama-Hillary are threatening Russia’s borders got mixed up together and Brexit is The People’ Revolution to stop both. I told him he sounds like the people who refused to stop Hitler in the early 1930s and walked off before the conversation got even louder and less polite. And the stupid git doesn’t even realize what the Pound tanking, the Dollar rising, and no trade agreements is going to do to everybody’s financial health and well being. sigh. At least there’s the Stonewall Monument. That’s a good thing to think about in all this mess.
Oh well, gonna get a cup of coffee, check HNV at GOS, and get ready to take a cat to the vet. Bright the day.
Hope you can find a home for the sweet catty! I love cats, especially if they’re all black.
Just back from the vet. I left the little guy there – he’s checked out healthy, male, about 8 months old, and definitely in need of neutering. They’re going to keep him until Monday and do the surgery then – and post his picture on the clinic’s FB page and with a few other sites to see if they can find him a home. If not, I’ll pick him up Monday after work (there goes $300 including tests, shots, surgery, and boarding) and start trying to integrate him into our household. More we shall see what we shall see.