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 (usually Saturday night with a Sunday date). 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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My topic today in Black Kos
Ghouliani and Tulsi – mad about Kamala
Tulsi
I went to the gym yesterday, yay me! Not gonna make it today unless I leave work early. I should have made another batch of tea over the long weekend. I only have about 1 day’s worth left & it takes about an hour for it to cool down enough to pour into the pitcher, so I need the evening for that. It’s 80 degrees this morning — heat index (even before the sun’s up) of 82. But sure, it’s totally fine. I’m already taking extra showers because the Epstein news is so horrible to listen to. Listening to sweet, happy Disappear by INXS. Not deep, just a sweet love song.
The Stones troll Trump
We didn’t drop below 70 overnight but it’s still only 73 – muggy as all get out but 73. Got 18 KWHs yesterday and the m-t-d is 138.5 – still on track which is nice. The handyman roofer guy just showed up – I hadn’t heard from him in over 2 weeks so I sent him an email Saturday saying “do you plan to do the work or should I look for somebody else?” & got an email back yesterday saying “how about tomorrow?” – I’d wondered if he would actually. Hopefully what he’s doing today is going to stop the leaking in the enclosed porch area and along the southwest-side of the house soffits. There are two other places that need repair – we’ll see when I can cover it. Barring emergencies – my own or somebody else’s – I think I can do it this month after my Social Security comes in.
I hope someday we actually do break up the RW propaganda machine AKA the MSM. We are deep in a political process than shouldn’t even have started for another 6 months. We’re being drained of energy and funds at a time when we should be building both. And the fear – that we can’t win the election because the Rs are cheating, that even if we do win the presidential election twitler won’t leave…That last is one the RW propaganda fear-mongers have been pushing for years. I remember it being said about W by our team and about Obama by theirs. The owners, that “vast right-wing conspiracy” Hillary warned us about back in the ’90s, have been preparing America to accept it when it happens. Because they plan on a when and not an if for it to happen. I think they are too impressed with their own successes – for that to work there would also have to be pretty much a military coup and while there are some career military who wouldn’t have a problem violating their oaths most ain’t gonna do it. I could be wrong, of course.
I need some coffee and to work on some bills – paying, juggling, whatever – to fit these roof repairs in. But repairs now means less to no damage to repair later. As with most Americans, my “wealth” is in my home. Bright the day, Meeses. {{{HUGS}}}
Good morning, Meesefolk; 57 when I got up and going up to 81 today. It took multiple tries and 45 minutes to get connected to the internet this morning. Rural living has its downsides! I don’t typically consider myself all that rural, because I live in the village (a distinction without a difference for those accustomed to places with populations that easily exceed 1000). But whenever a candidate starts talking about improving and increasing rural broadband, I do find myself in fist-pumping, standing to cheer mode.
I’m very disappointed not just in VP Biden, but Dr. Biden too. Her comment objecting to Joe being accused of racism, when she had already acknowledged that she knew exactly what Sen. Harris had actually said, was pure BS. This white butthurt fragility has to end. They’re hurting his candidacy (which doesn’t particularly bother me), but more to the point, they’re providing ammunition to the Right and the Leftiest Lefties to take down a viable candidate. And anyone that thinks this will only hurt Sen. Harris hasn’t been paying attention; anyone who isn’t a white cis male is at risk. I’m beginning to think that Whiteness+Oldness is a lethal combination for national Dem politics, and I say this from the perspective of being white and not exactly young.
Good day to and for all!
I was terribly disappointed in Jill Biden. At one point, I was telling people “the wrong Biden is running!” Apparently privilege runs very deep and protecting a spouse’s privilege causes some people to regress.
Good morning, Meese! Mild and fair here after we received a month’s worth of rain yesterday. Currently it’s 78 F. in Ashburn, going up to 89 F. later.
We are packing frantically for our afternoon departure. At least, we hope it’ll be in the afternoon. If we don’t Get On at 5, our bookings will roll over to 10 p.m., which means we’d be knocking on our friend’s door well after midnight.
I’m taking the password, sign-on, and URL of this site with me, but I’ve never yet succeeded in getting here on my iPad. Why? Je ne sais quoi! Probably I am not meant to know.
Anyway, hope to say hello on Sunday, if possible!
Wishing all a good day.
Someday, when neither of us are pressed for time, I want to see if we can figure out why you can’t Moose from your iPad. I can Moose just fine so I know it is possible.
It might take some back and forth on email to get it done or perhaps a temporary remote session.
Have a good trip!
Good morning, 65 and partly sunny in Bellingham. We’re taking care of our son’s dogs this week, so Milo and Maggie have taken over. They are small dogs but they have claimed all the bed and all the pillows! And yesterday morning Milo threw up on said bed so it was a busy laundry day.
Our grandson arrives tonight via Amtrak so this week will be busy, but in a low key way. We’re going to work on several projects together this summer. His health issues this spring have changed his gap year plans so working here will give him some needed recovery time and as a bonus we’ll have time with him.
Best wishes to all.
Good morning, meeses! Wednesday …
It is 73 degrees in Madison with an expected daytime high of 86. Sunny skies are in the forecast.
Just a quick check-in as I have to gather notes for a project that will require my full attention today. If you are interested in a long-read that touches on many of the problems our society is facing today, WaPo offers this: A black principal, four white teens and the ‘senior prank’ that became a hate crime. The young white males in this incident were sheltered by their privilege from truly understanding the terror and pain they created in their community.
See all y’all later!
Wednesday Meese.
65 here in Saugerties NY going up to 91. Leaving for Philly this morning around 11 – for Netroots Nation- same weather there.
Puerto Rico
Safe travels and have fun. {{{HUGS}}}
It must be very welcome to have Netroots so close. I recall too many traveling horror stories!
Have a great time!
Hot & sticky — I can just copy & paste that till October. We might get a tropical storm this weekend, or if it hits Louisiana, we’ll be on the dry side & get no rain at all. Very excited about this evening — movie night at church & it’s RBG. Popcorn, a bunch of feminist rabble rousers & RBG. So today’s song is Brave by Sara Bareilles:
This song has always, without fail, made me cry. Here’s the link to all the words, but just, wow.
Weather here is like anotherdemocrat’s – including the “cut and paste” through the rest of summer – only about 10 degrees cooler. Maybe. Hot, sticky, and heat index in the upper 90s so far. I’m not sure how much longer I’ll be able to keep the A/C off. The temps are still dropping into the 60s-low 70s – but that low happens around 6 am. Cool enough to sleep is getting later and later. And I’ve never been fond of heat rash. It’s already 76 and I’ve just closed up the house. To Rennie’s great displeasure. We got 19.6 KWHs yesterday, 2nd highest for the month, and the m-t-d is 158 so still on track.
Ours is a sick society, rather evilly sick. The markers of success, of wealth, are totally disconnected from the well-being of the community. Employment as a marker without being connected to livable income is a farce. How employment is calculated is also a farce (thank you, Reaganomics). Stock Market as a marker without being connected to the companies’ actual rather than perceived worth is a farce. Since the 1980s the Market is a special casino for the uber-wealthy – and for those who got that way suckering public employee systems to put their retirement funds in the Market. The “zero-sum” idea of survival is both sick and a farce. Only community working together can survive long-term or thrive at all. Last man standing is dead man walking. And wealth itself – our society’s insistence that wealth is relational. That having 1000x more than everybody else has makes one wealthy – even if what everyone else has is dirt floors and tarp roofs – rather than a measure of how much one has compared to what one needs. That’s sick. And it’s driving our economy down because wealth always trickles up, never down. Which brings it home and personal – I am donating to as in helping to crowdfund – folks who’d be doing fine except sales have flatlined. Across the board. No matter how good the product. Money’s trickled up and hasn’t been replaced. Even folks who still have money are hanging onto it. Everybody’s making do with what they have or doing without. That’s a downward financial spiral that always ends in Depression. Which starts years earlier at the bottom and works its way up – the last sign is when the Market crashes. That’s when the bus is over the cliff, no turning back. But as long as we treat the Market as our marker, do things to only keep the Market from crashing for the benefit of that monied elite, instead of putting the money at the bottom to benefit everybody – well, the final actual crash grows in magnitude with every “fix” to the Market that didn’t address the source. Sigh. This society is evil, greedy, and stupid. (Kamala’s plans to change that – to do as Hillary said and change policy/reallocate resources – is a major reason why I support her.)
The roof repair came in under quote which is good. The next priority roof job can wait until the first week of August so that’s the plan. Crossed fingers that it also comes in under quote. If the roof jobs are enough under quote I’ll be able to afford to build a “catwalk” in the porch a couple of feet from the ceiling. High enough to be “up” but low enough to walk and also to be able to see out the windows. Joys of kitties and all that. LOL. Bright the day, Meeses. {{{HUGS}}}
“Wealth” as a measure of “success” (or intelligence or worthiness) has always been a problem. Now, when wealth is in billions instead of millions – many times more than a human could spend in a lifetime or would need to have even the most luxurious of life styles for themselves and their next 5 generations – that money is being used to destroy the lives of people who can just barely get by. For every philanthropic billionaire, there are 10 rapacious ones who support the Republican Party so that they can hoard more of their wealth. It is easy to see why people cry “revolution!”, as ill-advised as that is. Revolution has to be at the ballot box, not in the streets throwing rocks at the gated mansions, and it will be slow and pretty boring. As long as we don’t let the rule of law disintegrate, we have a chance.
It’s the foundation of our “colonizer” society – and is the root of every evil that comes from our society. A decent society recognizes that wealth always trickles up and has a mechanism to redistribute it at some point. Other than most of the Native societies I know anything about, there are no decent societies around. And yeah, the ballot box is the peaceful revolution the Founders wrote into our Constitution. Refusing to vote is refusing to take up arms in the most important kind of revolution there is. Most of the folks calling for revolution have no idea what they are talking about. Most haven’t been in the military much less combat. They have a bloodless video game idea of revolution where nobody’s really hurt or killed and the “collateral damage” is animated characters the video game programmers put in for “reality”. They also think the president is more powerful than he is, that whatever person in power who doesn’t do what they want done immediately (even if it isn’t possible) is a traitor, and that marches and twitter rants should count more than votes. sigh. But yes, as long as rule of law is in place, we can turn this around.
Good morning, Meesefolk; 61 early but going up to a humid 90 today. That should mean storms later in the day, but the weather widget says otherwise. The greater chance of storms is tomorrow, but it may be mostly upper Lower Michigan. When the weather reports start looking like this, I prefer reading the reports from Windsor (Canada) which tell me that the temperatures will peak in the low 30s. ;D
I spent yesterday doing errands which took about twice as long as they should have, and when I was home, I was fighting to get an internet connection of some sort. Even using my phone was a struggle, which usually means one of the towers in the area is offline/under repair/totally bolloxed, but there were no reports that I could find. The bottom line is that I was mostly without news yesterday; except for when I was in waiting rooms and late last night, I was mostly untethered from the internet. I’m ok with that.
Good day to and for all!
Ha, nice try! “I prefer reading the reports from Windsor (Canada) which tell me that the temperatures will peak in the low 30s.” When I was in a country in the former Soviet Union during an extremely hot summer (with no air conditioning), I remember being grateful that I was unable to convert easily from Celsius to Fahrenheit. I knew it was hot – I really didn’t want to know just how hot.
We had a weird weather pattern here where it was hotter in Milwaukee than in Madison – generally it is “cooler near the lake” but yesterday it was 93 in Milwaukee and 86 here. Of course, both temperatures are HOT and it was not a nice day to be traveling in a black vehicle. The air conditioning could never quite cool down my car which had been sitting in the sun all afternoon.
Hot, sticky morning (like I said — this is every morning till some time in October) 80 degrees at 6am. Sigh. Looks like the developing hurricane will hit east of us, New Orleans is already getting heavy rain. So no rain for Texas. RBG was awesome. She’s even cooler than I knew. Brought gym stuff, so I’m gonna go after work.
Good morning, meeses! Thursday …
It is 66 degrees in Madison with an expected daytime high of 79. Sunny skies are in the forecast.
So the Trump administration – installed by a foreign power who hoped to destroy America – will be rolling out their Gestapo to arrest and deport thousands of our neighbors. I hope there are people ready to help them fight the deportations. I am sure we will hear people wringing their hands and saying “this is not who we are!” when it is exactly who we are, a country built on white male supremacy which has never had to reject its past because it is so much part of its present. I am not sure what it will take for the “promise of America” to become the “reality of America”. Maybe when we are a minority white country and the Stephen Millers will have to give up on their dream of a white christian nation. :(
I am going to give a hard pass to the “news” of House division ginned up by the press so that they can lazily copy/paste their favorite meme “Democrats In Disarray”. House Democrats are not Stepford wives and there is always some friction when trying to lead such an ideologically diverse group. We will come together when we need to and I see nothing that tells me otherwise. It is easy to mute the naysayers on Twitter and I have done a fair amount of that lately.
See all y’all later!
We got a cool front through yesterday afternoon – went from heat index high 90s and oppressively humid to relatively cool mid 70s. So I went from miserably about to turn on the A/C to opening the house to a cool and pleasant breeze. Which we needed to cool down the house. The rain went around us which is fine – we aren’t hurting at all this year – and I could keep the windows open for that breeze. It was 68 at dawn, 69 now, and I’ll probably be able to keep the house open until 10. Of course with the front came dark clouds. We only generated 10 KWHs yesterday. The m-t-d is 168.8 which isn’t on track but it’s close. Maybe today’s predicted sunshine will get us back.
I’m still concerned about Murf. With the CBD oil he’s not gratuitously attacking Charlie any longer or hissing at anybody unless the actually get in his face so that’s good. And he is eating but it’s not as much or on the same “schedule” as everyone else – he nibbles then walks away (& I have to put his food up or Freddie or Cloud will eat it). Basically he’s not getting worse but he’s not getting better either.
Nothing new under the sun, including the evil being done by a US government to BIPOC. Folks liken the concentration camps to what we did to Japanese Americans in WWII but the Native folks know – and have been saying for well over a year – that what we’re doing it exactly like what we’ve done to Indigenous of this geographical country. And largely for the same reason. Most of these asylum seekers are Indigenous people being driven off their treaty lands for the resources said lands contain. Genocide has always been the answer of the US govt as well as other colonizer govts. But it doesn’t have to be. We know it’s wrong. We have people working to stop it. NGOs are now doing the immediate direct work but Dems are very publicly proposing legislation that might pass now but definitely will pass if we can get the Senate back. We work at it from all directions – and maybe, just maybe, this time we can do it right. And fix our own bad laws and treatment of Natives here in what is now the U.S. The tragedy, the evil, is in how many will be tortured, will die, before we can get this done.
I did finally manage to reach the Dem Party volunteer coordinator again. She’s supposed to be bringing me the sign-in sheets from the last meeting for data input this morning. It will be good to be doing something towards getting us out of this evil, criminal, mess – even if it’s only data input. So. Coffee and tour the internet before she gets here. Hope Dee is having fun at NN. Bright the day, Meeses. {{{HUGS}}}
Good morning, Meesefolk; 70 when I got up and going up to 82 today. That seems a bit low, or maybe it’s just the humidity that hasn’t tapered off yet. Windsor weather reports are warning about possible pop-up storms, but they’re well south of me. My area shows nothing but blue skies, so I’m going to assume that I’m going to have to go home and water some plants tonight rather than leaving it to Mother Nature.
I have no idea what’s going on with AOC and Speaker Pelosi; it strikes me as one of those distractions that feeds the press and the Left but doesn’t solve problems. So I’m ignoring any tweets about it. Admittedly, I’ve never been a huge AOC fan, so it’s been a relatively easy task to ignore whatever kerfuffle is going on. I will admit, however, that when I saw a tweet from Ragnarok Lobster referencing the House “Loose Cannon Caucus”, I knew exactly to whom he was referring.
I had hoped to attend one of the Lights for Liberty vigils tomorrow, but those that are within reasonable driving distance start early enough that there’s no way I could get there until they’re almost over. If I had “normal” work hours, it would be a non-issue, but I don’t so it is. I’ll just play things by ear; it’s rare, but there’s always the possibility that I’ll get out of work tomorrow at a decent time, so I would be only a little bit late.
Good day to and for all!
Good morning, 62 and raining in Bellingham. Sleepy morning, Milo and Maggie (our visiting grand puppies) are asleep as close as they can be to me, and our grandson in sleeping in. We’ll all have to get moving soon but the quiet rain makes staying put inviting.
Time to find some coffee. Best wishes to all.
Good morning, meeses! Friday …
It is 63 degrees in Madison with an expected daytime high of 84 degrees. Sunny skies are in the forecast.
Trump backed down from the census question with fig leafs a-flyin’ from Barr to soothe his rabid base. They have already been gathering citizenship records from other agencies so that is not new and, no, having more time to make up better lies would likely NOT have made John Roberts change his mind – it may have made it more difficult for the other four Republicans to ignore the lies. It is easy to declare something to be true when there is no way to challenge it. So Trump can claim he is circumventing the law by “getting the information elsewhere”, exciting his base who likes the idea of an authoritarian president, and the census will not ask the dangerous question. More troubling is that the Republicans appear to be planning to re-litigate the Evenwel case where Texas wanted to just count citizens for their state redistricting and SCOTUS blocked that. Now that they have 5 justices who are rabid Republican partisans and who realize the need to take steps to insure a white minority rule, the group behind Evenwel v Abbott might want another crack at it.
Warren is rising, Sanders is dropping like a rock – people are still learning about Harris. AOC has a chief of staff who hates the Democratic Party and wants to bern it to the ground. That explains a lot since she is a berner also and chose “revolution” rather than the best candidate when she stumped for his candidates around the country. She is not a team player just like Bernie Sanders was never a team player when he was in the House. The rock throwers and the consensus builders can co-exist, they always have. But it helps to know who the players are to put it back into perspective.
I hope our NN people are enjoying Philly. :::waves to Dee:::
See all y’all later!
80 degrees at 6am. And we’re on the dry side of the hurricane, so no cooling rain here. I really wish it had turned westward — New Orleans was already flooding because of the Mississippi, the Texas coast could have handled the storm better. Kamala Harris was really great last night on Rachel Maddow’s show. I actually dreamed about meeting her, was working at a presidential forum & was walking her into the venue.