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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Hai Meeses – heading across the street in a minute and don’t have time to even read stuff this morning. I’ll try to get back online sometime today. Got with Dee for a few minutes last night at the C&J dinner and got a nice hug. She disappeared when I was talking to side pocket and I didn’t get to really talk – hopefully today. I also met Belinda last night at the C&J Dinner and this afternoon she’s going to help/teach me about Pootie diaries. :) Bright the day.
Have fun, bfitz!!
Reminder to meese who are reading today’s news:
1. It is July, neither party has had their nominating convention, and we are still months from the election.
2. The bern was just salved a few days ago and has not fully healed.
3. We do not elect presidents via national popular vote but state by state so national polls are simply click bait. Look at the ground game.
That is all! ;)
Thanks Jan……I know election angst is creeping in when I click on Sam Wang’s site for daily reassurance. The purist part of me wants HRC to be ahead by larger margins, but as the folks at the pool keep reminding me Trump has more widespread support than I want to accept.
I have to believe sane voters will prevail and she will be elected, but worry (and doing what little I can to GOTV) will continue for a few more months.
http://election.princeton.edu/
Good morning, 59 and mostly sunny in Bellingham. A quiet day ahead for me, and I need one. Summer fun with the girls happened instead of sewing yesterday, and then we went to The Green Frog for music and a late dinner last night. So today I need to water plants and take care of some desk work. Might even have time to read my book.
Ron Sims, at The Seattle Times……
Ron Sims gives his take on driving while black in Seattle
Morning all! Sorry I didn’t get to check in yesterday – my internet went down not long after I got on the computer and wasn’t restored till late in the day. Apparently a tree took out one of Cox’s main cables many miles away from me, and caused a huge outage in the area (my friend told me it was on our local news which I don’t watch.) It was weird, because my TV cable was working but with most channels missing, while my internet and phone were both gone. But they finally got all the threads repaired and it’s fine now.
I spent a lot of time last night defending RBG at GOS and on Twitter, so I’m a bit disappointed that she’s apologized this morning – her comments on Trump were “ill-advised and I regret making them. Judges should avoid commenting on candidates.” I still think what she said was righteous and proper – as I said at DKos, RBG is Jewish and born in the 30’s and knows very well the horrible consequences that flow from good people staying silent in the face of the rise of fascist demagogues. Everyone needs to go watch or re-watch Judgment at Nuremberg, imo. RBG probably found it amusing but stressful to be the target of so much vitriol from the right, and decided to defuse it a bit with this mild apology – as Karen Tumulty paraphrased, I regret saying what I think about Trump but I still think it. lol
And of course, what she said is out there and totally correct – “regrets” at this point are kind of like telling the jury of public opinion to disregard a statement in reaching their verdict. I would very much like a poster of that graphic the New York Post did of RBG in Darth Vader’s helment on their cover – they were slamming her for the comments, but that image just adds to her legend among the younger folks who love her.
I’m not going to worry about polls at this point – I think all the polls at this point in 2012 had Romney slightly ahead or tied with the President, and we know how that turned out. Plus, most of these pollsters I think are really undercounting the Latino vote because they don’t have Spanish-speaking poll takers. And, we’re just getting started – we’ll see how it looks in September, before I start to get really worried. No matter what, it appears that the nation will once again have to count on POC, particularly African-American women, to save us from ourselves – it’s appalling that even this many people are considering voting for Trump at all. Ugh.
Ok, got to start preparing my office to make room for my new computer which has shipped and should be here next Wednesday, woot! I’m going to keep this one functioning and not transfer a lot of files to the new one – my WOW friend Thanael suggested I network the two machines, which I had not thought about. He said with Windows 10 it’s pretty easy to do, and if that means I don’t have to have another monitor setup, that I could just switch between computers using my same monitors, keyboard and mouse, that would be fabulous. But I’m not sure that’s possible – I will explore that before it gets here to see.
Keep us posted on all the doings at NN16, all of you there – hope you’re all having fun! And everyone, have a great day!
I think the RBG nopology was a win win for her. She got to remind people for one more news cycle how she feels about the gross tangerine ballbag and pointedly did not apologize to Trump or take back her words, just regretted not being circumspect.
The polls before the conventions in 2012 had Obama and Romney in a dead heat nationally and it ended up being an electoral blowout. I really am not sure how Trump wins Pennsylvania or Ohio with 0% of the black vote. THAT is solidarity.
Happy Bastille Day, everyone! Arrived back home at 11 a.m. this morning. Weather: ‘ot, ‘umid, and ‘orrible, with bright sunshine and a heat index of 101 F. or something like that. Humidity is 76 percent. Thank Goddess for air conditioning!
Awful night in Elder Son’s spare bedroom. First, the pillows were too hard. Second, the DOG wanted to go out at 3 a.m.! Then the Baby woke up. I changed him and put his dummy in his mouth, but he still wouldn’t settle down, so I took him into bed with me. It took us a long time to fall asleep again and we woke up at 6 a.m. Gods!
Anyway, I am now going to retire for a well-deserved nap. Lots going on in our Moose world, with two of us at NN, Geordie almost offline, and princesspat and Jan valiantly holding down the fort. I’m having a bath before tea. The chocolate Lab gave me a bath with his tongue this morning—he likes me, for reasons best known to himself—so I’m looking forward to getting rid of this sticky feeling. Ugh.
Wishing everyone a good rest of the day!
I realized after I went offline that I forgot to wish everyone a Happy Bastille Day! My French peasant ancestors surely feel dissed.
I hope the bath refreshes you! We will have to meet in hilarity tomorrow over Trump’s pick of Mike Pence. He is now officially against women, Latinos, Black people, LGBT, Jewish people, Muslims, and Catholics. Two-thirds of young people despise him and college educated whites are horrified. Who is left?
Hai Meeses – dropping in for a minute to report. I’ve had fun volunteering – setting up the swag-bag packing, helping to pack swag-bags, and at the registration desk. C&J Dinner last night was great, too. And aside from the hotel beds and hotel food sux routine, I’m enjoying myself.
Dee will probably report when she gets a chance, but her trip hasn’t gone so well. Not only did she almost miss her connection and they kept her sitting in the plane when her flight landed here (lightning storm going on) but the airlines lost her bag. So no clean clothes and her meds are wandering around somewhere – “they” say the bag has reached St. Louis but when it will actually reach her is still up in the air (which her bag may be for all that “they” say otherwise). And her gormless doctor’s office sent refills for the meds – to her home pharmacy! But she’s in watching the keynote speaker right now (should be finished soon).
I’ll probably check in tomorrow before heading back over here, but I’ve got morning Registration Desk again. Take care. {{{HUGS}}}
Thanks for the update, bfitz! What rotten luck for Dee. Hope she gets her bag and her meds!
Thanks for checking in, bfitz! Tell Dee we are sorry to hear of her miserable start to the convention. I hope she catches up with her meds.
Good morning, meese! Friday …
It is 63 degrees in Madison on its way up to 66. The forecast calls for morning showers and afternoon drizzle, clearing in the evening. I am glad to be able to turn the air conditioning off for one day, at least.
I am afraid to open my news feed. I was following the trumpence disaster on Twitter when word of the attack in Nice came across. Daesh is not a political ideology, it is just pure raw hatred of humanity attracting the soulless. In the olden days, these “people” would just fester in their own misery – now they have weapons of war at their disposal and they can kill scores at a time.
The president hosted a town hall on police and community last night and I couldn’t watch it when I realized that it was going to include the Attorney General of Texas. Why? What does someone like that have to offer to a conversation that is looking for solutions to a real problem? Meh.
I am going to sip some coffee, do some mid-month accounting and prepare for a morning appointment.
See all y’all later!
More death, destruction & sadness. I hate this planet. Two of the dead are from Lakeway, near Austin; I’m sure more Americans will be identified. And children. Witnesses have said they say strollers hit. Too much sadness.
another, Austin is very close to my heart, I have so many relatives living there. When something awful happens to Austinites, I feel as if it’s happened to a member of my own family.
What a tragedy! That family probably saved up for their vacation in France for years and were so happy to see it at last.
Sometimes I wish I actually believed in hell so people like that truck driver-terrorist would go there.
I don’t believe in hell, either. But this Onion article may be the funniest thing I ever read — and it is appropriate today
http://www.theonion.com/article/hijackers-surprised-to-find-selves-in-hell-1445
Hi Meese. Finally got my bag and meds last night. Am tired from the stress of it all.
Will check in later.
Yay! My mother is still waiting for the airline to deliver a bag lost in 1975. :)
Glad to hear this, Sis! Rest up and check in later if you can.
Good morning, all. I was going to wish everyone a happy St. Swithin’s Day, but after the news from Nice I don’t feel like it.
Death, death, death. Is that all these people know? And it’s men! Always men doing this, always men burning with hatred, desperately afraid that someone, somewhere, is having a good time and not thinking either of Allah or Jesus.
You know, I can’t even think of it as “the news” any more, it’s the “horrible happenings.” There’s never anything good happening. As the daughter of journalists I’ve always thought it my duty to read and watch the news. Not at all sure of that now.
This morning my beautiful Miss Pink Cheeks had horrible red patches on one peachy cheek and red streaks on the other. Her mother thinks it’s from the water mine expedition she went on last Sunday. But if it’s that, wouldn’t it have manifested itself earlier? I mean, this is five days later! My daughter-in-law also reputedly told Miss PC that “Grandma freaks out a lot.” Grandma is currently freaking out about the possibility of flesh-eating bacteria from that blasted water mine.
I have red patches all over my neck and left arm, but that’s from picking runner beans yesterday. Happens every year. Thank Goddess for Tecnu and Calagel!
Wishing a better day for all at the Pond on this steam bath morning. See you later.
Morning all. Dee, so glad your bags showed up!!! It’s so distressing to arrive at a destination already tired and then have to deal with more stress of not having your medications and clothes – get some rest so you can enjoy your panel this afternoon!
So – the polls are getting like the weather – if you don’t like them, just wait a day and they’ll change. New round of polls last night NBC/Marist and others show Hillary up big in several battleground states including Florida, NC, Virginia and Colorado – the polls yesterday showing her tied nationally really cannot be right if these new ones are correct. I think the message is forget the polls at the moment and work like hell to get people registered and then to the polls in November. I am worried about the combined effect of Johnson, the Libertarian and Jill Stein, the Green, pulling enough votes away from Hillary to make it closer than it should be. My hope is that some of those currently saying they’ll vote for either of them will come to their senses by November, remember 2000, realize a vote for Johnson or Stein is really a vote for Trump, and do the right thing.
I just saw a picture of a young American boy from Texas who was killed along with his father in this terrible Nice attack – they were there on a family vacation. I too just can’t fathom the kind of mindset that would deliberately run over hundreds of people, families, people of all faiths including Muslims, people in wheelchairs – to what purpose? To provoke the West into a ground war against ISIS which would be a recruiting tool for them? They are losing the drone and air war the West is engaged in against them now, their leaders are being picked off and they’re losing territory – I guess this is desperation, but I still just can’t wrap my head around it.
I will say that Trump and Gingrich’s reactions last night exactly prove the point Hillary keeps driving home – Trump is not fit to lead. His erratic, undecided course of action on simply picking his VP and the irresponsible crap he was talking on TV last night about “declaring war on ISIS” says volumes about how he’d be as a decision maker in the White House – it’s just too troubling to even contemplate.
On a more trivial and happier note, I had a talk with my friend Thanael about networking my new and old computers together, and I think it will work the way I was hoping. I will see when the new one gets here next Wednesday – have to start cleaning up my desk and table area to make room, that’s this weekend’s project.
Love getting updates from NN16 you guys who are there, when you get a chance to update us – have a wonderful time! And everyone have a great day!
I am sure you saw that Obama-hater Cornel West endorsed Jill Stein. We need to change our party’s rules to NOT allow independent candidates to run for the party’s nomination and NOT allow non-Democrats a say on our platform drafting. Sanders should repudiate him but of course he won’t.
By the way, I am still looking for “apology” in RBG’s words and the closest I can find is the word”regret”. She did not apologize to the buffoon Trump and won’t. She made her point. #ImWithHer :)
Today I will watch the Trump VP beauty contest via Twitter. I cannot imagine what Pence brings to his ticket – the religious right was already on board, the Freedom Caca was already on board, anti-LGBT, anti-woman, anti-poors, anti-minority … all on board. So who does this attract? Someone said that Pence has fundraising prowess but I am not sure that all the money in the world would raise Trump’s numbers in the swing states we will all be concentrating on. Pence’s nomination just adds another log to the fire incinerating the Republican Party.
Good morning, 60 and partly sunny in Bellingham. Maggie (grand puppy) arrived early this morning. Her family is going to the San Juan Islands for a few days so she will be with us.
When our kids were little we rented an old farm house on a private beach on Orcas Island for our family vacation so all the kids have fond memories of packing the VW bus for our two week stay. It’s fun to see them make similar memories for their families.
I know the world around me continues to be a dangerous place, so I am even more grateful that at this moment in time my family is safe and happy.
This may be the funniest thing I have ever seen on the Internets. Someone animated what we were all thinking about the Trump Pence logo …
– Moved off to a Click (it was making me seasick!)
From Samantha Bee’s Tumblr.
Hai Meese – just checking in. Did Registration Desk again this morning (also scheduled for tomorrow morning) – the only session I’ve attended was the Daily Kos one. The main points were: technical issues which pretty much got the response of “working on it” and how to diversity mostly white, mostly male, mostly above median wage DK which pretty much was “we’re trying, anybody got any good ideas we haven’t tried already?” There was the apparently required older white male saying we could get more Hispanics in by posting diaries in Spanish and being very upset when a black female (Dee) shook her head at him – then tried to talk over her when she expanded on the head shake. (Somehow didn’t notice that Jotter and Meteor Blades were also shaking their heads at him.) Finally there was the issue of how to move NN back in the direction of the DK annual reunion and to be less of a vendor show – response to that was, well, how about getting all these new, young, black and brown vendors onto DK.
I’m grabbing a GF peanutbutter sandwich and some carrot sticks for dinner while checking in. Dee and I are going to the Pub Quiz later. I may take a nap. :) Bright the day. {{{HUGS}}}
Meta! :) Did you by any chance see Liz Winstead? She was doing a show with LadyPartsJustice and Twitter said it was quite funny.
Who are the political speakers this year?
Good morning, meese! Saturday …
It is 54 degrees in Madison on its way up to 75. Mostly sunny skies are in the forecast.
I am avoiding the news today. Someone on Twitter last night asked “Have we tried turning 2016 off and then back on again”. :(
Here is some good news, the lineup for the Democratic convention:
Missing from the featured speakers is Elizabeth Warren. Does this signal VP???
See all y’all later!
Good morning, Meese! A fair morning here in NoVa, currently 71 F. on track for 90 F. Salad for dinner, as it’s Vegetarian Night anyway. I hope the thunderstorms supposedly happening this evening do in fact materialize, as the gardens really need it.
The news is too awful to contemplate. Is there going to be one Horrible Happening per week now, instead of one per month?
Might watch some of the Rethug convention if for no other reason than to see them make fools of themselves.
Hope everyone will have a good Saturday!
Stephen Colbert will be live next week and will have Jon Stewart as a guest to help report on the convention. I will probably try to catch the videos.
I have no intention of watching any of it where I can’t fast forward through the icky parts. Life is too short!!
Hai Meese – checking in before heading for breakfast which I decided I want hot today. Hope the convention will be shown somewhere I can get to it online. That I’m willing to watch. :) None of the Veeps on the media -bait short list are on the featured speaker list so I’m going to continue holding out for Perez. :) But of course it’s up to Hillary. Pub quiz last night was more fun for Dee than for me. In between rounds they played loud music while the judges graded – I had to leave the room until the next round started, it was so loud it hurt (at least it hurt me, didn’t seem to bother anyone else – guess there’s a reason I live alone with cats). But it had some fun moments. Our team tied for 9th place – would have been 8th except Chris changed the answer on the only question I knew the answer on. sigh. Once Dee manages to get over to Best Buy or someplace like that to get a power cord and a new mouse she’ll probably give a better description of it. :) Take care and Bright the day. {{{HUGS}}}
Tom Perez and Julián Castro can’t speak at the convention unless one of them is the VP pick. President Obama said that no cabinet members will be allowed to speak, in order to avoid charges of politicization of his administration.
I went to the Pub Quiz at NN12 because my dear friend Julie Gulden insisted – she had won it the year before and it was nearly an obsession with her! :) It was not my idea of fun because I don’t like loud places and hyper-focus on competition. We did not win and I was glad when it was over and I could go hide out in my hotel room again.
Giggle—Jan, I think you and I are twins separated at birth!
I almost said “I don’t like being enveloped in clouds of testosterone” but I thought that would make me sound like a humorless feminist! The Pub Quiz is run by men for men and the participants pounding on tables and chanting “You suck!” at the other teams when they miss an answer is probably why the NetRoots has the DudeBro reputation it has.
I pretty much did go back to my hotel room and hide out. Dee and Chris went to the “after” event. She said I’d have hated it and she wasn’t happy about the noise level (or what was passing for music) either. She did have fun – explaining – to a Bernie supporter why “blacks don’t like Bernie” while Chris, who’s actually a Bernie delegate, sat back and smiled.
I think they may have changed the format a bit since you were there. While, yes, there is a lot of rah-rah, cheering, and table-pounding, it wasn’t possible to yell “you suck” at anybody who missed a question because nobody but the judges knew who missed which question. There were 3 rounds of 12 questions. The answers were written down and handed in, one answer sheet per team, at the end of each round. Loud music played while the judges graded them, then the standing of the last place and first 3 place-teams were announced. So at least the bro-ness was curtailed a bit.
It is the same format. It wasn’t a literal “you suck”, more an implied feeling – the rah rah frat boy atmosphere definitely does not appeal to me. I think maybe I am a humorless feminist!
I did not do any of the late night activities, either. I am an early to bed early to rise person. I enjoyed my NN but probably not for the reasons most people do.
Eating breakfast & watching Le Tour. Today is a sprint day, but they’re riding into a 20 mph headwind. This afternoon, I should go figure out if I still belong to the gym so I can exercise indoors. Watching the news in the breaks…. or maybe not….
Good morning, 58 and cloudy in Bellingham. I’ve got another quiet day ahead, so I’m glad I have Maggie to keep me company….she takes her job as a lap dog very seriously! Resting my creaky knees and my BCH leg is helping , but I’ve had to curtail my summer gardening plans so I feel all out of sorts. I’ve got lots to do indoors but this is the time of year to be outside.
Time for coffee and to take Maggie out. I’ll enjoy the blooming hydrangeas while she sniffs around.
Morning all! Trump’s about to announce Pence, so off the TV goes. What month this has been for horrible news and we’re only half way through.
I started following a couple of seemingly knowledgable Turkish journalists on Twitter last night, and the best I can tell, the coup was of a minority of the military and thus doomed to failure. And even though Erdogan is not who the West would want as the head of a NATO state – he seems determined to turn Turkey into an Islamic fundamentalist state, overturning a century of determined secular government enforced by the military – apparently the US and European govts decided they had to support a democratically elected head of state. It’s possible a strengthened Erdogan will push Turkey even further away from secularism, but it doesn’t seem there is much we can do about it.
Trump’s campaign has withdrawn the logo that made him a laughingstock – a bit late for that. I have no intention of watching any of the Republican convention, and I won’t watch Jon Stewart – he hates Hillary and Bill, and his “both sidesism” is so annoying, I can’t stand to watch him any more. Much speculation on Hillary’s upcoming choice of VP nominee – I’m worried it’s going to be Warren, which I think would be a mistake, but Hillary has more information on the state of the race than I do. I imagine she’ll do what’s most likely to get her elected first and worry about working relationships later, which is probably the right call as Chris Matthews was saying on tv earlier this morning about Kennedy and Johnson.
Opera today is Turandot by Puccini – I always want to pronounce it “Tur-an-doh” but the opera announces always say “Tur-an-daht” which just sounds so ugly to my ears. But anyway, it’s a Vienna State Opera production which is usually a sign of good quality singing, so I’m looking forward to it.
Hope our Netsrootsers are having a good time – I hear you bfitz on loud pub noise, as I get older, I’m much less able to tolerate that kind of hubub. But I hope you’re enjoying the rest of the conference anyway.
Have a great day everyone!
Very definitely we should not meddle in other country’s choices of leaders. That is very Bushian and we know where that got us. President Obama has tried instead to use America as an example of democracy, to make it attractive to other countries. Sadly, there is evidence that our democracy is not working very well now – Congress just left for a 7 week vacation having set new records for do-nothingness. I am hoping that our election in November shows the world that right-wing excesses can be turned away peacefully at the ballot box.
Jon Stewart’s last foray into “both sides don’t do it” was his brilliant reply to Tucker Carlson many years ago. Maybe he got pushback for that but I really hated that he had Republicans on his show as if they were ordinary people instead of destroyers of everything good in our country. I got some static for questioning why Hillary went on Bill O’Reilly’s show the other night. People said “so she can reach people who might not otherwise hear her words”. Bulldung!! People who watch Fox News have closed hearts and closed minds. It is better to refuse to acknowledge it as a legitimate news source, in my opinion.
Ha!! TrumpPence pulled back the logo? Darn … we were having so much fun!!
I think Hillary did have to get her voice, calm demeanor, and knowledgeable response heard where it otherwise would not. The people who watch Fox News are largely unreachable, but not totally. And they are largely a totally impossible combination – war monger-isolationists. So a strong response, which she gave, combined with pretty much an assurance of no ground war in the Middle East, which she also gave, can actually reach them. It sure seemed to reach BillO – he was polite, courteous, and only tried to talk over her once in 7 minutes. It’s not going to take much to convince them that Hillary may be evil, but she’s the safer evil.
I don’t know because I didn’t watch it! I just have a problem legitimizing Fox as a news channel. I despise the way they treat President Obama at pressers and refuse to cover news that does not promote their agenda. Their lies are why someone like Trump can get this close to the presidency. They gin up their low information viewers who can’t see the improvements that the president has made in the lives.
Only reason I saw it is that the clip was in one of the Hillary diaries at GOS yesterday – I’ve been reading and rec’ing all the diaries I normally read there as well as checking in here before I go to bed so I don’t really remember which one. And yes, Fox is a whole lot of evil and isn’t really a news channel at all – but if you want to be heard by a segment of the population that is really easy to spook, that’s the only place you can. She called in on his show (not a personal appearance or anything) in response to some freaking out his “panel” was apparently doing. I’d bet she’s got at least one staffer whose job it is to monitor what’s being said on shows like BillO’s and alert her when she needs to do something ASAP to defuse a potential bomb.