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, Motley Meese! The week begins …
It’s 70 degrees in Madison WI with an expected daytime high of 82. The forecast calls for morning rain then sunny skies this afternoon.
Have a great day, all y’alls!!
Good Sunday Meese
Between people defending Islamophobic, misogynist, racist Coulter buddy Bill Maher and the vile antics of the Young Turks’ Tracey smearing and lying about Maxine Waters – I’m disgusted
Deeply saddened to see yet more terrorist attacks in England and Kabul.
Glad to see so many marchers out yesterday.
Will be addressing Trump selling out his white voters who are affected by the opiate overdose crisis this morning.
It’s 50 degrees here in Saugerties NY and we have rain on the way.
I was up in the middle of the night with disturbing dreams and was not surprised when I checked into Twitter and found that they were still arguing about whether Bill Maher was an awful person. Of course he is! He has always been! And someone correctly pointed out that the Venn Diagram of alt-right and alt-left is now a perfect circle with all overlap. I saw enough of Cenk on the GOS to know that his brand of “left” is really Cenkism and ideology that plumps up his own worth with little or no regard for others. The world seems full of narcissistic men who attract hero worshipping minions who are incapable of critical thought. “Leave our Maxine Alooooone” Twitter was pretty funny, though.
Trump is selling out all his voters except the Republican establishment. There is really no space between him and mainstream Republicans – the “starve the beast” anti-taxers – except that they are personally less disgusting, believing for whatever reason that such a thing matters. They are the Party of the Southern Strategy enjoying the gift from the Founding Fathers that gave permanent veto power to the slave states, a power that allowed them to never face the consequences of their racism. Their embrace of the religious right and the prosperity gospel – and Paul Ryan’s “deserving poor” test – guarantees that anyone who has fallen on hard times will simply keep falling until they die or kill themselves. There is no way to reach them, though, because all their news is now filtered through Fox News and right-wing media and Trump’s Twitter Feed where they are told that Trumpcare 2.0 is “great” and no one will be left uncovered.
Maher described his politics
He disgusts me.
When someone tells you who they are, believe them the first time. Extreme Left = Extreme Right and neither of them believes anything but their own fantasies. Maher is Deplorable. The fact that upon occasion he’s got a point on something is almost by accident.
To those who will actually listen – the gormless Right, Center, and Left – what I usually say is “how much is left after taxes?” If they are willing to listen (and believe it or not even some on the Right are willing to listen) I go on with “did you pay your rent? utilities? buy groceries? gas up the car? buy a book, go to a movie, buy a shirt? – then obviously whoever told you that all your money is going in taxes was wrong.” And my mantra regarding at least local (I was in county government, remember) government services always started “you can’t get married, you can’t get buried, and you can’t hold an election without county services – your tax dollars at work”
Libertarians in general are part of the Extreme whatever who deny facts for dogmatic fantasy.
Good morning, Meese! Fair here in NoVa, with a current temp. of 57 F. on its way to 90 F. today. Have to get out early this morning and do a bit of gardening before it gets too hot. Unusually, we are almost an inch over normal for rainfall in the area, which is great.
More awful events in London, so saddening. As for Bill Maher, I’ve despised him for his misogyny for ages. It doesn’t surprise me that he’s a racist along with it. As for the nasty attack on Maxine Waters—what is this tsunami of vile bile against her, Hillary, and even Chelsea, for Goddess’ sake? During the so-called “Renaissance” (it certainly wasn’t a “rebirth” for women), women were burned at the stake for speaking out, having opinions, and generally behaving as if they had a right to exist. Now it’s castigation by cable talk show, torture by Twitter, bullying in the blogosphere. To hell with that.
We’ll keep speaking out, running for office, and making HUGE nuisances of ourselves until we achieve our rightful share of power. LOL—re that, have you been following the outcry about Austin’s Alamo Drafthouse showing “Wonder Woman” for women only? Someone put a picture of that on Facebook, along with a photo of twenty elderly white MALES sitting around talking about health care on the Hill, with not a woman in sight.
Wishing all as good a day as possible.
Trump attacking Mayor of London on twitter is the height of awful.
But “normal” for him.
We still have the vote – for now:
Here is Dee’s diary:
The machine-made signs handed out by the Trump Campaign to the “Pittsburgh Not Paris” rallygoers in Lafayette Park yesterday include “Promises Made, Promises Kept”
Er, no. Except for the promise to Make America Gross Again.
Read it – r,r,t in fact – but my comment would start a pie fight so I didn’t make it there – Hillary warned us. Hillary had a plan.
It’s too late now anyway, but yes action is the only answer. {{{Denise}}}
;)
There is just too much hate in this world. The London attack, a candidate having to drop out because of death threats…… I just don’t understand any of this. Here’s U2 Ultraviolet from Houston — where Ann Richards was one of the women they highlighted. My boys love women.
I have no idea what the temp was at dawn since my weather widget doesn’t seem to be working – cloudy, warm and muggy, and getting warmer and muggier as well as a little cloudier, is all I can say. Got my muffins baked (cinnamon-vanilla) and the house cleaning stuff done. Need to make soup for lunches but taking a coffee break first.
Haters gonna Hate – and lie about it. I really don’t care what label they put on themselves, underneath the label is a Hater. Some of them are stupid Haters – they’re the ones who’re astonished when their hateful actions come back to bite them and they lose their own jobs or healthcare or whatever. Some of them are so filled with Hate they don’t care if they get hurt as long as whatever they did/voted for hurts the people they hate. So pvl45 voters? Haters. Young Turks? Haters. Libertarians? Haters. Bernie “bros”? Haters. And what we need to do about Haters is strengthen our caring communities until we are strong enough – together, of course – to remove them from power and isolate them so they can’t hurt anybody else. We’ll never get them all, but we can get most. And it starts with caring.
Need to put my soup on, then read Michael’s Breakfast and Denise’s FP – and check on my community needs folks, of course. Bright the day and wind to thy wings, Meeses. {{{HUGS}}}
Good morning, 55 and cloudy in Bellingham. I was awake in the night with the tRump flue so my day is starting slow. You all are already busy and I’m just finding my coffee!
A quick scan of the news is all I can do, but this bit of dark humor made me smile. Drew Drezner, at the WaPo…..
I can’t stop laughing at the Trump administration. That’s not a good thing.
I was reading a story this morning that said Tillerson is ignoring the 75,000 employees at State and trying to run everything with people he trusts – himself and two aides. When Condi Rice, one of those who promoted his nomination, called to talk to him, she got relegated to one of the aides! More and more, it appears that Defense Secretary Mattis is both SoS and head of the military which is a bit alarming.
No, we shouldn’t laugh but at least it releases endorphins. Crying is just crying.
Molly Ivins used to say that you could laugh, cry, or throw up and laughing’s easier on the system. :)
Monday morning
John Oliver
I watched the entire Manchester concert
Most of the acts were young people I don’t know – but that’s okay – the spirit in the arena was so very moving.
I did know Black Eyed Peas and Katy Perry
The vulgar talking yam’s response to the London terrorist attack will be a permanent blemish on America. From his leaking the information to Drudge so that he could retweet it without getting in trouble for ONCE AGAIN sharing intelligence information from our allies to the awful response to the attack – making it about his priorities and then attacking the mayor of the city. JHC!!
He is a constant continuing embarrassment.
I was elated to see the flood of support for London’s Mayor after the Orange Asshole attacked him by lying (yet again) with a quote taken out of context
Love the hashtag #LondonIsOpen
I picked that song, too! Also unfamiliar with most of the acts. There was also this song – the whole crowd sang along – Angels. Never heard of the guy before but… left me in tears
I realize that I am really old :)
I know longer know the names of pop stars – don’t listen to their music – don’t know the names of young actors or actresses – and I’m fine with it.
I had seen that my boys sent a message to the concert, but didn’t find it anywhere, till just now
Good morning, meese! Monday …
It is 63 degrees in Madison with an expected daytime high of 72. Mostly sunny skies are in the forecast. Perfect weather.
This week Congress will start the process to repeal the Dodd-Frank Act because, really, nothing says “We Care About Coal Miners and Oppressed White People” like giving Wall Street permission to piss away your retirement account money and crash the economy. And the shitgibbon will introduce his plan to sell off America’s assets and privatize the government. He will call it his “Infrastructure Plan” because his supporters have shown him that they are the most ignorant people on earth and that when he hands them a pile of shit and calls it roses they breathe in and say “This is Fine.” This morning I can’t deal with what is happening to our country.
See all y’all later!
LOL, Jan! That’s it exactly!
Took another day off, actually I’m only working Tuesday & Friday this week. It’s been nice & restful. Disappointed with myself for not getting in any walking. But not going to beat myself up about it. From yesterday’s One Love concert: Where Is The Love. And this song from the concert left me just sobbing: Coldplay – Fix You.
Welp, wordpress decided to log me out as I was writing my check-in comment (only letting me know when I hit “preview” and it disappeared my comment) and I don’t have time to try and re-write it. Suffice it to say I’m not happy about it but started the day at 67 heading for 76 and it’s trying to clear off which is good. The M. Cherry tweet is right on but we have to keep going anyway, and I gotta go. {{{HUGS}}}
If your comment disappears, it is very often in your browser’s buffer and you can get it “back” by clicking the back button.
Losing the login cookie happens about 1 out of every 20 times for me now – it used to be 1 out of 5 before I made the last change. What I do, before I click preview or post, is I do a right click in the comment box, choose Select All then Copy. Then if the comment won’t “take” I can login then reply again and do a right-click paste of my words. The extra 2 seconds it takes to save my comment in the paste buffer is worth it since some of my comments take 20 minutes to compose!
I have no idea what makes a comment reply lose track of the login cookie but so much is tied to the operating system, the type of browser and other people’s comments – tweets and youtubes and links – that it makes troubleshooting impossible.
I used to be able to get back to my comment by clicking the back button and I’d do exactly that – copy it, log back in, paste and submit. But it doesn’t work that way for me now. Now it just takes sort of blinks and all the little error messages about not being able to comment unless logged in show up. So i guess i’d best start copying the comment before I hit “preview”.
Don’t know what, why, or how wordpress decides after I’m already on the site and have “fierced” multiple comments that I’m not really logged in. But I totally understand too many variables to troubleshoot. sigh. Thanks.
Different parts of the database and different processes to comment versus rate. I have never been logged out on a rate – I don’t think it rechecks the login status after the page is displayed which commenting does. I ran the database optimizer this morning to tighten up the database a bit which can help. I am supposed to run it once a month but I forget! Maybe I should put it on a calendar reminder. :)
Good morning, 50 and sunny in Bellingham. The new arthritis meds are working! I spent yesterday afternoon in my garden happily planting flowers and I can still walk this morning. I don’t expect to be pain free, but to have increased mobility and tolerable pain is wonderful.
So this morning I’ll go to the pool, and then get my new tooth, and then plant three more pots. I’ve saved the overgrown ferns and astilbie I dug out last week so I have the basics, just need a few more begonias and impatiens. The back entrance patio is so shaded now my plant choices are limited, but in a way that makes it easier.
The headline to this AP story makes me ::::sigh::::
AP FACT CHECK: Attack draws visceral Trump tweets, not facts
He is so awful.
Der Spiegel: Donald Trump’s Triumph of Stupidity
Good morning, Meese! Late to check-in, as before breakfast I was out planting two lavenders and one pot of petunias before the rain was supposed to start at 9 a.m. It held off until considerably later and is now just sprinkling. Also, I had Miss Pink Cheeks and Toddlerlicious this morning. Our tenant took his little girl, who is in the same grade as Miss PC, to school. Toddlerlicious and I just came home from shopping.
Re the Awfulness—don’t know what to say. Like Jan, I’m not sure I can deal with it today. It’s not even lunchtime and I’m already tired! Going to make lunch and then lie down with Mr. Toddler in the spare room with some books. He might take a nap.
Overcast and sprinkly here in NoVa, current temp. 72 F., going up to 75 F. today. Eek, I forgot to defrost the meatballs for the spaghetti. Got to do that right now. Cheers, dears!
Shorter Adam Serwer – Robert E. Lee was an asshole:
Good morning, meese! Tuesday …
It is 52 degrees in Madison with an expected daytime high of 73. Sunny skies are in the forecast.
I am staying away from the Greenwald “expose”. First, I don’t trust him as far as I can throw him. It is like the berners lapping up WikiLeaks – just because they are leaking something that you are excited to see doesn’t mean that it is real or that you should laud it. I feel sorry for the young woman who trusted the Not Really Journalists at that “news” site and who was thrown to the wolves. Yes, it is not smart to use your work email to communicate with someone like that but there are things that a real journalist would have done after the initial communication that may have shielded her. Plus, when all is said and done, hacking voter sign-in sheets did not tilt the election and the Republicans in Congress are not going to impeach and remove Donald Trump. Period. They are already starting to pushback and claim that the Russia-Trump story is made up. Who will their constituents believe after the news media has delegitimized themselves and they are letting the shitgibbon own the airways?
In other news, there are now 10 states in the Climate Alliance – accounting for 16% of our greenhouse-gas emissions. Yesterday an ABC poll showed that only 28% of Americans approve of our leaving the Paris Accord. Good people are not giving up on our planet and the way we protect our future is to make more states and cities sign on by turning them blue. It is the height of irony that a party that named itself the Green Party is directly responsible for the two worst presidents for our planet – ever – and what will be at least 12 years of setbacks to our environmental agenda. We have to make sure that we put a firewall in at the state level in 2018 by taking back some governorships and and state legislatures.
I have not looked at this morning’s news other than to note that yesterday an angry white guy shot up his former employer’s place of business and 6 people died. But because the cause was not “Islamic terrorism”, but simply Wayne LaPierre’s America, it was barely noted. :(
See all y’all later!
Good morning, Meese. It’s a fair morning here in NoVa for a change, with a few cirrus clouds streaking the blue sky. Current temp. is 62 F., going up to 75 F. later. We’ve had the air conditioning off for days and are relying on open windows and fans, which is really nice.
Haven’t looked at the news yet, I heard enough of it yesterday. Today will be another day of child care, so I’ll take Mr. Toddler to the library. There’s a program called “1,000 books before kindergarten.” I signed him up for that last week. I have no doubt he’ll make it.
Was too tired after dinner to do anything much, so went to bed early. Hope my energy returns soon. There is such a lot to do around here in the way of housework, etc. I still haven’t put away my tax return printout. It’s just too easy to get sidetracked.
Wishing a good day to all at the Pond and Beyond!
I have a lot of deferred spring cleaning to do in my office and now here it is almost Summer Solstice! I am hoping to get a spurt of energy soon because the stacks of unsorted papers are beginning to depress me. Some should be tossed, some should be stored – and none of it should be in my line of sight. I may start by attacking the shredding stack – that is already sorted and is generally mindless work.
I did a run-through of the news and there is nothing new. The latest genre of think pieces is the “people who trusted Trump to be a more or less normal Republican realize he is fking nuts” stories. I am over them – he is a pig and you knew he was a pig and accepted it because you wanted tax cuts. You will forever have that blemish on your soul.
The conflicting stories about the fate of Trumpcare 2.0 in the Senate are alarming, though. On the one hand we see the “Oh noes, we can’t find common ground” stories and then the “Mitch McConnell is sending the Senate bill to the CBO” stories. I suspect the first set are to get us to take our eye off the ball. I sent a fax to Wisconsin’s Republican Senator asking him (nicely) to fix the ACA instead of killing me. Because our state will apply for the pre-existing conditions waiver, my premiums would go up by about $16,000. I will go uninsured and hope to make it to Medicare where I, and others like me, will likely arrive with a boatload of untreated illnesses – putting increased pressure on the system. Penny wise and pound bloody ignorant.
Ugh, I’d forgotten how I hate getting up for work. Eating oatmeal, drinking tea that will not be strong enough. While I was out, my co-worker sent me a thank you e-mail, so that was nice. Still taking tomorrow & Thursday off. Still loving The Little Things That Give You Away
Just put a quick piece up on Dkos – hattip Yasuragi
Got to get back to writing Bkos
Seeyas!
Started the morning at 64, clear and sunny and heading for 84 – hopefully that will generate a bunch of electricity :) – and I may walk home today. Rain or at least rain-threat the past week made me short on exercise again. I always feel better when I’ve gotten some exercise.
Years from now what we are living through is probably going to make lots of exciting movies and TV shows. We’re doing the classic Good v. Evil, Love v. Hate right now. Evil always starts out looking like the winner for the simple reason that they planned the attack. They hit hard out of nowhere and run wild for as long as they can hoping to cow the attacked into accepting them as rulers. Ain’t gonna happen. What makes them look successful – the sudden attack and running wild – is what wakens The Resistance. It takes time to mobilize and start pushing back. But Good always does it. Always. We’ve done it before and we will do it again. (On that note – last I saw, we’re only $60 short of making the $500 match for Aji & Wings. We will do this small part of a much bigger “good pushing back” too.)
Need to check in at DoReMI’s Village diary then get to work. Bright the day and wing to thy Wings, Meeses. {{{HUGS}}}