Week-long Welcomings from Moosylvania: July 17th through July 23rd

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?

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.

51 Comments

  1. Weather wise today is the same as yesterday – and probably will be for the rest of the week. Wish it would clear off a bit sooner in the afternoons so I could get more electricity generation to deal with all the A/C I’m running. sigh.

    The more upset I get by the Rs, the more I look at Hillary and am reassured. Got a Hillary for America organizing meet-and-greet tonight after work. The Chair of our Dem Central Committee was delighted with the approximately 1000 (2-1/2″ stack) of Hillary bumper stickers I handed him last night. I know the haters are not only not going to go away, they are going to get more violent as they decrease in number and power – but I trust Hillary to put together a team that will not only deal with the damage but will also prevent as much as is humanly possible of the future damage.

    Got work to do so I’d best get to it. Bright the day, Meeses. {{{HUGS}}}

  2. Morning all. Hot, humid and awful here – will be waiting all day for my new computer to be delivered, as it requires a signature.

    I was following the Republican of Crazy somewhat on Twitter last night, but oh man, what a crazy mess. Boring speakers followed by the Cruz Missile of Non Endorsement – they had to get security in to protect the Cruzes as they made their way off the floor. What’s amazing is that Trump knew Cruz was not going to endorse him in the speech, and tried to laugh it off, essentially, afterward – seriously, this is what happens when you let total amateurs take over your political party. Between Cruz and Kasich, it’s been a parade of non-endorsements. Wild.

    And then there are Donald’s NATO comments, which are truly scary, and his comments praising Erdogan of Turkey who is busy suppressing all dissent – he actually said “when the world sees how bad the United States is and we start talking about civil liberties, I don’t think we are a very good messenger.” Good god – so where are all those Republicans who’ve been accusing Obama of “apologizing for the US” for all these years, huh? I do think it’s quite possible he’s allied himself privately with Putin – in addition to the NATO stuff, his camp got the GOP platform changed to be more pro-Putin – and that should scare the bejebus out of ALL the Republican establishment. Most of the foreign policy types have been declaring for Hillary anyway, this should scare the rest of them into it.

    I disagree on the plagiarism stuff, though – I think it was Mrs. Trump who put those phrases in herself, and it’s a demonstration of the sheer incompetence of this campaign, which goes directly to how they’d try to run the country. Of equal importance is the inherent racism of the act – a white woman appropriating a black woman’s own words is the height of privilege. And it’s something the press can handle and make fun of Trump for, while the terrible proto-fascism and racism on display every night seem to be too much for them. I’m trying to keep in mind Charlie Chaplin’s approach – he made fun of Hitler and Mussolini in ‘The Dictator”, and it was an effective tool in the fight against their propaganda. Besides, ridicule gets under Donald’s skin like nothing else!

    VP announcement tomorrow I guess – Al Giordano is reading the tea leaves as predicting Warren, which would greatly disappoint me. But if Hillary decides that’s who she needs, I will stick by her – if I’m going to trust her judgment in running the country, I have to figure she knows what she’s doing here, with more information than I have.

    Ok, everyone have a great day!

    • The plagiarism stuff is just a squirrel for the media – so they don’t report all the terrifying stuff the GOP is saying.

    • Everyone should be terrified about Trump’s foreign policy “plans”.

      I am not sure that Melania Trump stole Michelle Obama’s words in a “privileged” way; I really think she has no idea what plagiarism or copyrights or trademarks or any kind of intellectual property is. Why would she? She is a former model who is the trophy wife of a billionaire – she has no education or experience that would have exposed her to the concept. See works, like words, use words. I do think that is shows that the campaign is really not organized in any way. It is amateur hour – all three days of the convention, the failure to build a ground game in swing states, the VP rollout, everything. If Trump is trying to soothe the nerves of the Republican faithful, he is doing a terrible job. But this is a man who sleeps in a room with gilded ceilings … he may simply lack the ability to recognize what is in bad taste!!

    • My tea leaves say Perez.

      I really hope it is not Vilsack because it will rip the scabs off the still healing bern wounds – he is DLC and Monsanto and old time Friends of Clinton – all the things that make people nervous about having the Clintons in the White House again. Hillary needs to jettison that baggage and embrace the Obama coalition … you don’t do that by choosing a middle-aged white male who was part of the Republican Lite coalition.

  3. Good morning, 61 and sunny in Bellingham. I’m slow to wake up this morning, but grateful for a good night’s sleep. The girls and I made slow progress with sewing yesterday but we had fun anyway….lunch (with the dogs) at the farmers market, a visit to my favorite used book store, and just talking while I iced my throbbing knees and they played around with art projects.

    I watched a bit of the R’s convention mess last night and after scanning the news this morning I’m going to retreat to my domestic bubble and try to stay there!

    • I have been too busy to check news except for my early morning quick scan. I am looking forward to seeing more Republicans in Disarray stories!!!! We have a few weeks before we have to get serious and for now, it will be fun seeing the Trumpcollapse.

  4. Good morning, meese! Friday …

    It is 70 degrees in Madison on its way up to 90. Another day with dangerous heat and thunderstorms. Last night we had some major storms packing 80 mph winds that downed power lines and caused dangerous flooding. We were relatively unscathed but folks on the other side of town had a rough evening.

    The white nationalist rally in Cleveland is over. Today we will find out who Hillary Clinton has chosen to be Vice President. There is a big rally in Tampa today; Florida, with its large Latino population, would be a good place to announce a Latino running mate – just sayin’.

    Roger Ailes is out at Fox News. It was an easy call and the sexual harrassment charges came at a good time: the Murdoch boys saw that loyal Fox viewers were dying off at an alarming rate and young people don’t like Republicans. That makes a Republican Party propaganda channel a long term loser. It will be interesting to read about how much it changes – I still won’t watch it.

    I read the story about the therapist getting shot trying to help his autistic patient and it was horrifying. Wonkette does a pretty good explainter: “Florida Cops Protect Community From Black Man Lying On Back With Hands In Air“. The police later said that they meant to shoot the autistic young man and missed – which does not explain why the shooting victim was handcuffed and left to bleed in the hot sun for 20 minutes before medical help arrived. The big question is what the hell do people need to do to avoid getting shot?

    See all y’all later!

  5. Good morning, Meese! Up too early as usual. It’s going to be another hottie here—do wish it would rain. This weekend will bring dangerously high heat and humidity. It’s 71 F. now in NoVa on a fair morning, going to 93 F. later.

    Couldn’t stay awake for the end of the clown show last night, so missed Ivanka and the Buffoon. Things are so bad in this country under Obama that the stock market has more than doubled since he took office after Dubya’s disastrous occupancy of the White House.

    Had another acupuncture session yesterday. This time the needles really felt uncomfortable going in. Hope this will do some good.

    Not much to say at the moment—back later!

    • I was up too early, also. I think there is a disturbance in the force.

      I had no intention of watching any of the RNC convention knowing that it would only creep me out and/or make me angry. I followed it on Twitter for a while but gave up around the time the rich gay guy came out and pointed out that being rich shelters him from bigotry. Really!!!?? Shocking if true.

      I am curious to know if this was a photoshopped image (found in Wonkette) or if this is really what Trump’s speech stage looked like. If it is real, holy mackeral!!

  6. Good morning Meese
    77 here going up to 94 with rain.
    I’m dragging this morning. Didn’t watch any of the Rethug convo – was too busy dealing with response to my diary on Charles Kinsey – people are still commenting
    Am now following the Austin story just coming to light – about teacher Breaion King body-slammed last year by cops

    Violent arrest of teacher caught on video; officers face investigation

    Officials are investigating an Austin police officer’s violent arrest of an African-American elementary school teacher who was twice thrown to the ground during a traffic stop for speeding and comments by a second officer who told her police are sometimes wary of blacks because of their “violent tendencies.”

    Video from the previously unreported June 2015 incident was obtained by the American-Statesman and KVUE-TV this week. The video shows the traffic stop escalating rapidly in the seven seconds from when officer Bryan Richter, who is white, first gives a command to 26-year-old Breaion King to close her car door to when he forcibly removes her from the driver’s seat, pulls her across a vacant parking space and hurls her to the asphalt.

    Richter wrote in his report of the incident that he acted quickly because King demonstrated an “uncooperative attitude” and was “reaching for the front passenger side of the vehicle.” He didn’t know whether she had a weapon, he wrote. He said King resisted by pulling away from him and wrapping her hands and arms around the steering wheel.

    Police charged King with resisting arrest, but the Travis County attorney dismissed the case after reviewing the police dashcam video.

    • Yeah, that video is the lead story on the morning news. Sigh. They’re (the news people) asking why it took over a year for it to come out…. ugh

    • It appears that “white cops in Austin TX” have violent tendencies. :(

      That video and that story make me want to cry. There is no fix for that kind of disrespect,

      • that whole video is so awful – the violence is awful, then that conversation is….. I don’t even know what to classify that as. I don’t know what planet he lives on, but it isn’t mine.

  7. I tried pulling people away from that awful speech last night with a “positive things” diary, but it didn’t get many comments. Oh well.

    I’m eating breakfast & watching Le Tour. Today I’m taking out the recycling, going to the used book store & looking for frames for the pictures the U2 fan site sent out — there’s one with the lyrics to Ordinary Love that I want to put up (that’s the song they wrote for the Mandela movie). Anyway, having another nice quiet day.

    • The speech was like a train wreck that people apparently could not avert their eyes from. I had no interest in watching it – I am already determined enough to do whatever is necessary to make sure that people vote for Hillary Clinton. It was interesting, though, reading the stories this morning … Trump did not invoke the christian god but said “I alone can fix it”

      I am your voice, said Trump. I alone can fix it. I will restore law and order. He did not appeal to prayer, or to God. He did not ask Americans to measure him against their values, or to hold him responsible for living up to them. He did not ask for their help. He asked them to place their faith in him. […]

      The most striking aspect of his speech wasn’t his delivery, even though his tone often strayed over the line, from emphatic to strident. It wasn’t the specific policies he outlined, long fixtures of his stump speech. It was the extraordinary spectacle of a man standing on a podium, elevated above the surrounding crowd, telling the millions of Americans who were watching that he, alone, could solve their problems.

      And the crowd cheered.

      Scared yet, America?

      • According to the folks at HNV, armando tweeted out:

        Armando @armandodkos
        Trump’s speech was a 75 minute Willie Horton ad.
        8:49 AM – 22 Jul 2016
        14 14 Retweets 22 22 likes

  8. Hillary would like to comfort us:

    Jan —

    It’s been a long week in Cleveland — four straight days of anger, and Trump’s speech last night doubled down on it all.

    Some people may be feeling discouraged about what the Republican convention showed us about our country.

    Don’t be, Jan.

    On Monday, our own convention begins, where we’ll reveal our values. We’ve built the most progressive Democratic platform in history, which calls for affordable health care, affordable college, a fair wage, strengthening LGBT, labor, and reproductive rights, criminal justice reform, and the explicit acknowledgment that black lives do matter.

    Be proud, Jan. It’s going to be inspiring, unifying, and by this time next week, you may just have recovered from what happened in Cleveland.

    We’ll have to work our hearts out not to let this country, and all the progress we’ve worked for, fall into the hands of Donald Trump and the Republicans. But we need your help to get it done. Chip in $8 to let us know that you’re in.

    Thank you,

    Hillary

  9. Welp, weather’s the same as it has been. Jan, you seem to be getting the storms, we’re just getting a lot of humidity, more than occasional cloud cover, and heat index readings in the 110s here in NW AR. Supposedly this “system” is going to inch its way over the Appalachians starting about Sunday. As if you folks on the East Coast need it. I should get up to and over 350 KWHs month to date which is close to 100 KWHs less than what I had at this point in July 2015. Hopefully I won’t still be that far behind by the end of the month.

    Hillary’s team has done a stellar job of squirreling the media regarding her Veep choice – and is seriously stepping on the media coverage the Rs could expect to have through the weekend by announcing her Veep choice today. I have no idea whether or not we’ll be able to flip AR back in the blue column, but she’s sitting on 44% right now. If we can bring in the Bernie folks (Bernie won Fayetteville) in our area that will help some, but as I pointed out last night at the organizing meet and greet for Hillary for America, we need to get the Latino vote to actually turn out and we need to find some common ground to pull in the more conservative Dems, Dem-leaning Independents, and even a few R-leaning Independents. I mentioned AR Kids (SCHIP) as being something every family below the median income knows about and uses/has used. Out of state folks assume she’ll get a “bounce” from having been a former FLOAR but Arkansans don’t look at her as being “one of us” – she was the out-of-state wife of “one of us” which doesn’t count. Still, I think we are close enough to give it the good try and not just put our energy toward winning other states.

    Got work to do and some of it just walked through the door. Bright the day, Meeses. {{{HUGS}}}

    • OMG, Denise! This has to STOP!

      When she’s president, is there any kind of executive order or anything she can do on a federal level to get the police to stop acting like Wild West outlaws who shoot first and ask questions later?

      • I wish I knew the answer – I’m sure there are things that can be done – it will take a massive effort – federal, and state

    • Pushing Hillary’s relationship to AR Kids sounds like a plan

      With a state population that is 6.4% Latino and 15.4% Black – wonder what work is being done getting unregistered folks of color registered and out to vote. My assumption is the majority of that number would not be Trump supporters.

      • We’ve got both Black and Latino Dem Committees that do voter registration during the election seasons. The big issue is convincing them to actually get out and vote. This part of AR has been R since there was an R party to belong to, with just a few isolated Dem slots around the university (which of course went Bernie) so they mostly don’t see the point. We are going to do our best to convince them that in a state-wide election there’s a point!

  10. Hi, bfitz! It’s a great day for solar collection up here and will be, all weekend. Wish I could send some of it your way.

    Keep forgetting to mention this, but this is a general invitation to Moosewomen: if you are coming to the Washington, DC area, you’ll have a free place to stay with me. We’re 10 minutes from Dulles Airport, 15 minutes (depending on traffic) from the Silver Line Metro in Reston. Downstairs I have a small bedroom, bathroom with shower, and sitting room with a desk for your laptop (and wifi), plus a sitting area for TV and reading. Upstairs I have a double bed in the spare room and whoever occupies that can have my bathroom.

    Of course it’s true that we’re 11 miles from DC, but if you don’t mind the agonizing commute by Metro, the accommodation at our house is something to bear in mind. :)

    It would be a super-thrill to meet some or all of you in person!

    • Thanks for the generous offer Diana! We were surprised yesterday when colleagues from graduate school days stopped by for a visit. They were traveling in the PNW and thanks to Google found us. It was fun to reminisce, but it was also a bittersweet reminder of how close to home my life has become. If I can ever travel again I’ll remember your hospitality.

      And, my guest rooms are available for visitors as well!

      • Princesspat, if you were to visit, I’d buy a whole bunch of flowers to welcome you. :)

        Well, I’ll buy them for all of you, actually. I love having an excuse to buy flowers!

    • Hey Diana – I wish you had solar panels to take advantage of it. :) Should I ever be in the DC area, I most certainly will take you up on that. What I’d love to do but am unlikely to ever actually do it is get over to the Atlantic Coast and get a train pass (presupposing such a thing exists) and visit all the Meese and Kossacks I can find.

  11. Good morning, 61 and cloudy in Bellingham. In my world the garden is blooming, the veggies are growing, the grand kids are all well and happy, our retirement fund remains solvent, our Social Security checks arrive on time, our medical care not a source of concern, our kids are all working and are relatively happy…….so much to be grateful for! It is not the dark dystopian world T-rump was shouting about on the tv.

    Josh Marshall, at TPM……

    Who Was This Angry Man Yelling At Me?

    Coming up on an hour I was feeling amazed that this man whose face had gotten very red was basically yelling about America as some dystopic hellhole. Everybody takes for granted – rightly or wrongly – that an acceptance speech is supposed to be commanding but humanizing, perhaps critical of the status quo you intend to replace but nonetheless fundamentally positive, optimistic and forward-looking. This was not an admonition Trump heeded.

    On a more positive note, Sam Wang’s Senate Snapshot favors the Democratic control.

    ……. Five Senate races are currently within 3 percentage points: Arizona, Nevada, New Hampshire, North Carolina, and Ohio. This gives a likely range of 48 to 53 Democratic/Independent seats. The outcome of these seats is likely to be strongly correlated with which way the Presidential race moves in the coming months.

  12. Morning all – hot and muggy here, going to be another terribly hot weekend, but at least we got some rain last night.

    What to say about the Nuremberg rally that was the RNC last night. I was keeping up with it on Twitter, and had it on tv on my second monitor, but muted for the most part. Trump’s speech was Hitler rhetoric revamped for the 21st century white American insecure racist sensibility, no two ways about it. I can’t believe that speech will broaden Trump’s appeal – and, hilariously, this morning, he’s back off message, going after Ted Cruz again, even bringing up the whole Cruz’s father kille JFK conspiracy theory crap. He’s unstable, to say the least. And one of the most skin-crawl inducing moments for me was when his daughter introduced him (with a speech that talked about some alternate universe Trump who apparently agrees with Hillary Clinton on almost every policy), and he came out to greet her with what can only be described as a grope at her hip. It was beyond skeezy, and totally consistent with the pictures we’ve seen of him with her from a teenager on – he’s always got his hands on her butt in some way, and it is just kind of horrifying. I hope there’s nothing more to it, but frankly, I wouldn’t be surprised if there were.

    ugh. Well, thank god that 4-day horror show is over – back to our regularly scheduled program of “what does a black man have to do in America NOT to get shot by the police”? And the black teacher in Austin pulled over and roughed up last year being told by a white officer, apparently without a trace of irony or self-awareness, that black people have “violent tendencies”!!!!!!!!!! I can’t even, as the kids say.

    Well, on a more mundane front, my new computer arrived yesterday – it’s just the tower with the CPU, I didn’t order any new peripherals – but it’s still in its box while I figure out how to position it. It’s very heavy (although somewhat smaller than my current tower which is 24 inches high and 10 inches wide and probably weighs over 60 lbs), so it will be hard for me to lift up onto my desk. I decided maybe leaving it on the floor is best, and I ordered a floor stand with wheels that will lift it 4 inches off the carpet, for air flow – I think I can manage to get it onto that. It will have to sit in front of my desk, off to the side of my chair, but I think it will work. My concern now is that the documentation included, the booklets for the various components, reference a different, less expensive video card than the one I ordered, and there was no shipping list that itemized the components so I can’t tell if the correct card was installed. So I’ve left it in the box and e-mailed the company to find out. I’ll probably set it up tomorrow, assuming the video card is the right one – I need to put a few files on a stick drive to transfer over, and I need to finish cleaning up the area where I have to move my current tower which I’ll still use for word processing and the like.

    Ok, everyone have a great day – looking forward to hearing the VP pick later today. As I said last night on Twitter, after watching this proto-fascist RNC (they actually highlighted on their big electronic display board, tweets from a white supremacist site!), I find myself unconcerned with who Hillary picks – whoever it is, it will be fine, we just have to get out and beat Trump like a drum!

  13. Addendum: the Digital Storm guys got back to me promptly and assured me the correct video card was installed. So once the stand i ordered gets here tomorrow, I can go ahead and set it up. IF I can physically lift it – I can call a neighbor to help if I can’t, tho.

  14. Geordie:

    and he came out to greet her with what can only be described as a grope at her hip.

    OMG! So you noticed it too! Made me ill. I didn’t see any of the crap last night, fell asleep, but I saw it on TV this morning.

    It really makes you wonder about That Man and his family.

  15. Good morning, meese! Saturday …

    It is 73 degrees in Madison on its way up to 88. Threat of thunderstorms this afternoon into this evening.

    Tim Kaine as VP is a fine pick. Ultimately, the presidential candidate needs someone who they are comfortable with and who can help them govern. One analyst said Kaine was a Decaf Joe Biden: same background, same good connections to Congress. He also has executive experience and he has won tough campaigns in purple states. I liked Tom Perez but he never ran a statewide race (I think he was on a city council at one point) and this is going to be a tough campaign with lots of nastiness. Kaine has seen it all. Regardless, Tom Perez will have a job in the Hillary Clinton Administration, you can count on it. Watching the complaints over the pick roll in, it is kind of funny because Hillary was going to get crap either way: for pandering if she chose a person of color and for dissing the base if she chose a white purple state male. In the end she went with the veteran campaigner who fills a demographic gap that she can’t.

    In Virginia today, the Republican Supreme Court ruled that re-enfranchising the states 200,000 former felons by executive order was unlawful. Fine, said Gov. McAuliffe, I will sign each order individually:

    “Once again, the Virginia Supreme Court has placed Virginia as an outlier in the struggle for civil and human rights. It is a disgrace that the Republican leadership of Virginia would file a lawsuit to deny more than 200,000 of their own citizens the right to vote. And I cannot accept that this overtly political action could succeed in suppressing the voices of many thousands of men and women who had rejoiced with their families earlier this year when their rights were restored. […]

    “The men and women whose voting rights were restored by my executive action should not be alarmed. I will expeditiously sign nearly 13,000 individual orders to restore the fundamental rights of the citizens who have had their rights restored and registered to vote. And I will continue to sign orders until I have completed restoration for all 200,000 Virginians. My faith remains strong in all of our citizens to choose their leaders, and I am prepared to back up that faith with my executive pen. The struggle for civil rights has always been a long and difficult one, but the fight goes on.”

    Good for him! Elections matter and electing Democratic governors and legislators and judges matters a lot.

    See all y’all later!

    • And I missed this on my morning news re-scan because it wasn’t there – I had seen it on Twitter. This is a BHD: Indiana Court Tosses Purvi Patel’s 2015 Feticide Conviction. She was shockingly charged with feticide after a self-induced abortion, convicted, and sentenced to 20 years in prison. The Class A felony charge was tossed out with instructions to re-sentence based on it being a Class D felony. That “crime” carries a sentence of 6 months to 3 years. It is still a travesty but it provides Ms. Patel with some relief.

  16. Good morning, Moosekind, and happy Saturn’s Day! Clear and sunny at the moment, 74 F. now, going up to 96 F. or worse. Tabouleh for dinner tonight, with tomatoes and mint from our garden, and the rest of the giant Stealth Zucchini I found the other day lurking under the big leaves.

    Miss Pink Cheeks, washed and brushed, is downstairs with Grandpa. We’re going out to breakfast, after which we will go to Son and DIL’s house. DIL is going to show us the new house this morning because the contractors will start work tomorrow. The floors and bathrooms upstairs have to be updated. Goodness, I’ll miss having the little family right around the corner!

    Nothing intelligent to say about the news so far. Kaine, okay. She has her reasons and I’m fine with that. I would not like him to run for president eight years or four years from now, though. Gosh…that reminds me of a song. Will we see Chelsea’s daughter Charlotte wandering into the Oval Office wearing Grandma’s high-heeled shoes, a la Caroline Kennedy in 1963? Does anyone else remember that song, “My Daddy is the President/What does your daddy do?”

    Clearly, it’s time for me to get off here until I can say something intelligent. Back later!

    • I don’t remember that song but I grew up in a Republican household and we weren’t allowed to think that “Democratic kids in the White House” were cute, I suspect.

      I thought about this: “I would not like him to run for president eight years or four years from now, though” and I wouldn’t either. But in 8 years Kaine will be 66 and by then our Democratic Party bench will be groaning from the weight of excellent candidates! Kaine can take a Bidenesque bow (hopefully not as long as Biden’s took) and let the youngins grab the reins of the party. I don’t recall him ever entertaining ideas about running for president – he may just be willing to be a good partner in good government.

  17. I didn’t get my errands done yesterday, was transfixed by events in Munich. This morning, I’m watching Le Tour, waiting for Joy Reid to come on MSNBC. I have 2 friends arguing with me on my FB page about Kaine. I posted that thing about the “progressive case for Kaine” — neither has read the article, both are spouting their purist talking points. One even attacked Cecile Richards when I replied to his “but anti-choice” by telling about what she said on Rachel’s show (as well as what the article said — hate it when people argue with something they clearly didn’t read). I’m not thrilled with Kaine, I wish she had picked a groundbreaking person like Becerra or Castro, or another woman; but he’s who we have and the only alternative is literal evil.

    Please, please may we have a day with no horrific acts of violence. Just one.

  18. Morning all! Still contemplating how to get my new computer set up back here – I will wait till tomorrow probably as the stand I ordered probably won’t get here till late today.

    I was ok with Kaine as the pick – as you know, I was worried she would pick Warren for the pizzazz factor in the campaign and to appease the Bernie folks – but the more I read about him, the better I like him. Diana, I’m interested to hear why you wouldn’t want to see him run for Pres? I pretty much doubt he would anyway assuming it would be in 2024 – I really hope one of our up and coming Latina/o pols can take the reins at that point. Anyway, everything I’ve read about him seems good to me – Al Giordano wrote a very strong tweet storm last night supporting him as a great pick, and I like that Kaine is fluent in Spanish, and campaign in that language, something Perez could not have done.

    Here’s Al’s tweets:

    Good into to Kaine. Read all 20 https://t.co/bcwiPwjCpK— Mark Tyson (@MoonshadowMark) July 23, 2016

    The Bernie bots like Nina Turner and Ben Jealous were out in force last night to dump on Kaine – I’m so fed up with them. They talk about the “base” of the Democratic Party and how Hillary won’t get it with Kaine – Hillary already HAS the base, the Obama Coalition is strong and with her. They’ve deluded themselves into thinking THEY are the base, when in fact those of them who actually are Democrats, are on the left wing of the party, important to be sure, but NOT the base. I think the only person they wouldn’t have been dumping on is Warren, and that’s because she would have served as a substitute, in their mind, for Hillary who they hate.

    I’m impressed with Hillary’s decision, the more I think about it – she was thinking of who would make the best governing partner for her, who would best help her in Congress getting legislation done, and she picked the guy everyone there likes, with broad and deep political experience and ties. Very similar to Obama’s Biden decision – he almost picked Kaine too, but I think maybe the age thing was a factor then, and having older Biden with the youthful Obama made more sense. This time Kaine is on the younger end from Hillary. I’m happy with it and I didn’t think I would be. I am sure Kaine will be an effective campaigner, but the pick also says to me, as some were saying on TV last night, that Hillary is confident about beating Trump. I’m confident too, but we have to work like hell to make this a landslide to give her a Congress that will actually work with her.

    OK, I need to save some files onto a stick drive in preparation for the computer changeover and finish clearing out the table here to make room for everything. Have a great day everyone!

    • I read the Al Giordano Twitter storm last night and it reinforced what I have seen elsewhere. It was comforting to see that Barack Obama would have chosen him and that this pick ties the Obama brain trust more tightly with the Hillary Clinton brain trust.

      This!! : “Hillary already HAS the base, the Obama Coalition is strong and with her”

      Kaine may or may not bring rural white voters or male white voters or Catholics but the base is with Hillary; it did not need shoring up with a VP pick – they know that she has their back and has for years. The left of the left is so silly!

      Good luck with your computer setup. It is always stressful moving to a new PC, so much that can’t be moved, or shouldn’t be moved, a new look, all your favorite settings gone. I try to only do it once every 8 years, usually when forced to by operating system obsolescence. In 2020, I will have to leave Windows 7 behind as it falls off support. :(

      See my comment upthread about the 2024 election and the bench. For one thing, that is a long ways away. The other thing is that Kaine may not have presidential aspirations – not everyone wants that job! I expect to see some excellent choices for Democrats after Hillary’s two terms are up.

    • By the way, Tim Kaine is not Jim Webb – he has a pretty good record of support for civil rights as does his family. Here is a Tweet from the NY Times:

      Jonathan Martin @jmartNYT

      .@nytimes page 1 photo, 9/3/70: KAINE father-in-law, Gov Holton, enrolls daughters, son at integrated public schools

    • Kaine signed a parental notification bill, which I strongly disapprove of, and signed several other pieces of legislation that put me off him. He’s okay, but not great. I’d like to see someone with considerably more pro-choice credentials and pizzazz follow Hillary in the White House—say a pro-choice Latina or black woman.

      • Joe Biden is personally anti-abortion as well. It must be a white male Irish Catholic “thing” that feels a need to control women’s bodies or simply cannot imagine what it would be like to be pregnant and not want to give birth.

        The 2024 nominee will be a mixed race pro-choice woman. :)

      • Just as Hillary “evolved” on Marriage Equality, Kaine evolved on abortion/women’s health issues. If he’d done it last year, I’d have a problem with it, but he’s come to the conclusion progressive RCs usually come to – he does not represent his church, he represents his constituency and he has no business pushing his religion on his constituency.

  19. Hillary will be at a rally in Miami at noon Eastern. CSPAN link:

    Hillary Clinton Campaign Rally in Miami, Florida
    Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton introduces her running mate, Senator Tim Kaine (D-VA), at a rally in Miami ahead of next week’s Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia.

    Airing LIVE Saturday, Jul 23 12:00pm EDT on C-SPAN

    Here is the CSPAN video of her rally in Tampa yesterday.

    Excellent speech where she goes after Trump and his convention. My favorite part: reminding people that we had a revolution to get away from a monarchy and asking why we want another one. Brilliant framing! Trump as king is a joke and we can mock him – Trump as a Hitleresque dictator, not so funny; PLUS Hitler analogies are so common they are now meaningless.

    Buzzfeed covered the speech:

    Five small words from Donald Trump’s 75-minute acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention shot out, leaving Hillary Clinton “shocked.”

    I alone can fix it.

    The phrase, so Clinton argued to a crowd of 3,600 here on Friday in Tampa, encapsulated Trump’s vision of an isolationist, divided America, driven by hate and fear, and led by an authoritarian president who “talks trash about America.”

    “‘I alone can fix it,’” Clinton said, repeating the line with a raised brow. “Now, just think about that for a minute, because it’s really important. His vision of America is one where we Americans are kind of helpless — where we need to be rescued. I can’t really imagine him on a white horse, but that seems to be what he’s telling us: ‘I alone can fix it.’ Well, he doesn’t understand that Americans — we Americans — we are strong, big-hearted, results-oriented, generous people in America.”

    “That’s not a democracy, my friends,” she said, adding in stark terms that could very well be found in a conservative pitch for small government, “We had a revolution to make sure we didn’t have someone who said, I can fix it alone.”

    • Here is a CSPAN video from a rally held on July 14th with Tim Kaine in Annandale VA

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