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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Last night, Rachel highlighted Waller County, Tx’s long history of voter suppression. Still fighting voter registration by Prairie View A& M students even into the 2000s. This year they came up with a new trick: they — county officials — told students to use 1 of 2 campus addresses when they registered to vote. (if you’ve ever done voter registration, that sounds fishy, right? because it is) The deadline was Tuesday. On Wednesday, those officials said “oopsie” and admitted that information was wrong. A field director for the Democrat running for Congress in the area took a letter to the voter registrar’s office asking what they were going to do about their erroneous information — and was arrested. Literally, all he did was deliver the letter, take a picture of the delivery of the letter… and they arrested him as he was leaving. Asked what party his candidate was. Yes, they did. He was on the phone with the candidate when they asked, so he heard it, too. They asked what party he belongs to, and arrested him. The more I think about it, the madder I get. They fought registration all the way to SCOTUS, closed voting locations, lied about voter registration, and now arrested a man for…delivering a letter & being a Democrat. (and yes, Waller County is where Sandra Bland was killed in custody). Here’s Hozier doing Nina Cried Power last Friday morning at an early morning fundraiser for healthcare for musicians, part of the ACL Fest goings on.
Rs can’t win without cheating. I don’t remember the last time they could. Waller County is one of the many counties in TX that are good to stay out of and will be until some of that cheating is blocked/overturned. Not a safe place for anyone – even white males if they don’t know the “secret sign” and toe the Deplorable line. Maddening yes. Also frightening. Thank heavens you live in Austin. {{{HUGS}}}
48 with 100% humidity (it’s drizzling) and maybe going up to 57. Hope the sun comes out this afternoon as it’s been doing the last week or so. Otherwise electricity production is going to drop like a rock. Got 12 KWHs again yesterday and the m-t-d is 117 – on track for meeting 300 for the month. As long as we average 10/day. House is staying relatively warm with baking in the afternoon and a fire in the evening – but I also need the afternoon sun to keep that up. Imma gonna have to turn the furnace on soon.
Totally angry at Aji’s tax situation – one more legally abuse Natives situation. They couldn’t get a bank loan to build the house because it’s on Rez land. So between sales & donations (also taxable) they raised the whole amount. And are being taxed on that whole amount as if it were their normal income – and they don’t have any of the deductions, like mortgage interest, they could have taken if they could have gotten a bank loan. They’ve built very efficiently but under #45 the deductions for doing that have either gone away or been so restricted as to be useless for them. On top of her health situation – $30K in medical bills & can’t get any more testing to find a Dx much less treat it until those are paid off – well, it’s maddening. And frustrating because I can do diddly to help. So I’m daily – sometimes hourly – at my altar Channeling Healing Energy. And hoping it will bring mundane help. Healing Energy to everybody shaped to the need. Bright the day, Meeses.
Good morning, 48 and mostly cloudy in Bellingham. Our house is heated an old hot water radiator system. We replaced the old furnace with an energy efficient gas one, but kept the old pipes and radiators. It’s nice to feel the quiet heat in the mornings and to hear the sound of the pipes warming up. The radiator in the kitchen was replaced before my time here and isn’t working very well so I hope to find a cast iron one that fits the space and is similar to the others in the house. I should have done this in the summer when the system isn’t running but the garden called.
It’s a pool morning for me, and hopefully some time in my sewing room this afternoon. Take care everyone.
It’s a nice sunny day out here in Costa Mesa with a temperature of 74. I am basically watching new library software instruction videos… for 3 hours now. I think my eyeballs have glazed over.
Staring at videos for 3 hours will definitely do it. (& it’s always all about money. They just tend to forget stuff done by staff – like dealing with intra-library loans – because they always assume the grunt work is done by brownies and fairies so they shouldn’t have to budget for it.) {{{HUGS}}}
Retweet this.
Done.
The video hits all the high points – low points? – of the Republican tax scam. I wish it were a little shorter but it probably couldn’t be to lay out the entire case. This issue is, unfortunately, not going to be felt by most individual taxpayers until they start preparing their tax returns and realize that their deductions are mostly gone or shrunken. In Wisconsin, we are a high property tax state because that is how we fund our schools. The $10,000 limit on the deductability will make a lot of tRump’s suburban and exurban fans unhappy but they will not find out until after the election. Some people I talked to did not even realize that was happening – but many noticed that their take home pay was lower because the pennies they got from the tax cuts were eaten away by the dollars they had to pay for higher health insurance premiums. Add in the higher cost of gasoline this year and most wage earners will have a net negative under tRump. We have some powerful “Don’t Vote For Republicans!” pocketbook issues but they might not be usable until the 2020 election.
Saturday Meese
46 degrees here in the Catskills – I am toasty and warm now that I have a working furnace.
Cant stop replaying this
Working furnaces are good! This morning when I got up, the furnace had just kicked in and it seemed like cool air was coming out! I was unnerved and stood over the heat duct until it changed to heated air. Whew!
Great video! I am not sure if the current backlash – raw hatred in many cases – against women is the thrashing of the white patriarchy being exposed to the light and trying to hang on or if it just means the same-old-same-old – a few steps forward by women is so terrifying to them that they will stop at nothing to crush whatever tender shoots are emerging and we will be cast back into the bad-old-days. It seems unlikely that they can stop it but some days it feels overwhelming to me. Donald J. Trump is the perfect leader for the misogynistic Republican Party – gross and disgusting, blatant (proud, really) user and discarder of women. The Republicans will never be able to clean the stench off.
Decided to diary it
Thank you! I was going to go look for a YouTube and you saved me from a long search!! I have viewed it multiple times as well – it is so energizing and hopeful. Our First Lady is so inspirational.
Good morning, meeses! Saturday …
It is 28 degrees in Madison with an expected daytime high of 52. Sunny skies are in the forecast for most of the day with clouds rolling in this evening.
I was up late watching a live sporting event and let myself sleep in this morning. I have a few projects to complete this weekend which I can do at my own pace with no urgent requests impeding progress – maybe I will even get some of them done!
Saudi princes being ruthless killers is not breaking news but the brutal slaying of a journalist seems to have triggered an outcry. I am not saying this is a bad thing, just that the Yemeni children killed by Saudi missiles didn’t bother a lot of these folks. I hope there is some “there” there on the report that Trump prince Jared Kushner gave his counterpart in Saudi Arabia information from the Presidential Daily Briefing that he was then able to use to purge his enemies. Seems illegal to me!
The midterm election cycle is entering the final stretch with the Senate and spineless Chuck Schumer leaving town to campaign. That he couldn’t figure out some way to temporarily block the votes for 15 more Federalist Society judges to get lifetime seats on the federal bench is amazing to me. I know that eventually they will get the votes but talk about deflating the base! I hope that a new leader – minority or majority – is chosen, maybe Patty Murray. Schumer is not the guy to lead the Senate during the last two years of the tRump administration. We need someone tough and smart who can go toe to toe with Mitch McConnell and energize our base.
The Democratic Party Weekly Address is by Senator Doug Jones of Alabama and the topic is healthcare. It will be part of the Fighting Back post which I hope to get to later today.
See all y’all later!
Will look for the post Jan – thanks
Slept in — I really love Saturdays. Rainy day — I hope it doesn’t affect ACL Fest too much. Apparently Paul McCartney seriously rocked it last night — he’s still the top trending thing on Twitter here this morning. 76 and he played a 2+ hour set that blew people away.
I’m going to see if there’s any non-speaking volunteer work that needs doing. I can’t abide making calls after all week in the call center. But maybe there’s literature to distribute or something.
great picture of Sir Paul (seriously, the man must have a portrait in his attic)
47 “feels like” 42 with 100% humidity might get up to 57 cloudy and is probably gonna start raining about the time I start my shift at Dem HQ. The difference a day makes – Thursday I got 12 KWHs and was on track for 300 for the month, yesterday I got 2 KWHs and am not (m-t-d is 119, needed to be 120). Today through Tuesday look to be similar so to get 300 for the month imma gonna need a lot of sunny days thereafter. We shall see what we shall see.
There’s a whole lot of “not right, honorable, or fair” out there right now. It’s depressing. For this generational cycle, I think/hope WASP men are at the last ditch and fighting like cornered rats a losing battle and we’ll make some progress. But while women are interested in getting things done, men are interested in power. They’ll always sneak it back while we’re busy getting things done (that if they like, they take credit for). That too is depressing. But even if the win is for a generation, that’s one more generation who gets it. Who has a greater share of freedom, safety, and abundance. It’s worth working for. Healing Energy to everyone everywhere shaped to the need. Bright the day, Meeses. {{{HUGS}}}
Good morning, 44 and mostly sunny in Bellingham. I’ve got a dilemma with my pool exercise program. It’s the only safe way to exercise my damaged blood clot hell (BCH) leg, and it’s important to help me manage the arthritis afflicting all my joints now. But the fatigue I experience after a pool time is extreme and unfortunately the physical therapist and my doc don’t know why that is happening.
So yesterday afternoon I didn’t have enough energy to sew. But I rested, wandered around the garden and thought about doing so!
Best Saturday wishes to all.
Maybe a minor change in the temperature of the water? For me, even a little cooler would sap energy. For others warmer is enervating. Sending Healing Energy. & {{{HUGS}}}