Week-long Welcomings from Moosylvania: May 7th

May 6, 2023 JanF Community 90

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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NOTE: The comments page will 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 (right before “Leave A Reply”) and use the Pages Tool to view previous pages, shown here with 3 pages of comments available and Page 2 circled.

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43 Comments

  1. It’s 71 heading for 87 and sunny at the moment. We got 19 KWHs yesterday and the m-t-d at 131 is on track for 480. So far we’re mostly getting more sunshine than the widget is predicting. Mostly. This is good. We could use some rain but we don’t need clouds without rain. That just ramps up the humidity. Which is high enough already.

    I voted today. Schoolboard election. Nonpartisan so no help there. But the incumbent hasn’t done anything egregious enough to get called on and his website photo is of him and his family. The challenger’s website has a lot of meaningless platitudes about children and schools – and a photo of her with the RWNJ County Judge. You can guess which one I voted for. I walked which was a bad idea. I’d hoped that since the site only 4 (long) blocks away (a little over the 10 minutes I do in a treadmill session) and I could rest when I got there it would be OK. Since it’s been over 2 years since I did that walk I’d forgotten how rough it is. Sidewalks in this town are not designed for walking – and are not repaired when they’re damaged. Hips, knees, ankles, and feet are all complaining. I’m so glad I invested in that (non-electric) treadmill!

    I haven’t heard from anybody since Sunday evening so I’m figuring they’re OK. I hope. Anyway, off to do my boosting chores. Holding the Good Thoughts for everybody. {{{Meese}}}

  2. Good morning, 55 and mostly sunny outside my window today. We had a zoom visit with some friends yesterday afternoon, and we are indeed all getting older now. They live in the midwest so zoom and email is a nice way to stay connected.

    My friend with cancer is in hospital due to chemo side effects so I took her a lilac bouquet from the garden and then called it a day. She has one more round of chemo and then surgery is scheduled in June, and then more chemo if needed. This is a struggle for her and I am very worried.

    So on that note I’d best get busy with daily life tasks. As always, my best wishes to all.

    • Can someone please test posting and editing your comment? I want to make sure it works for everyone and not just for me as an Admin.

      There is a 5 minute timer link added to the comment.

      Thanks!

      • Tried it – don’t seem to be able to blockquote when in edit mode.

      • Now see this in red “Your comment is awaiting moderation. This is a preview; your comment will be visible after it has been approved.”

        • Well, that is certainly not useful. The WordPress is called Simple Comment Editing – perhaps it is too simple. I will keep searching.

      • Works for me. Mine was a simple correction to a typo but there was no problem with editing it.

        • I think it may only be useful for the text typo. It appears to send the comment back through moderation and does not appear to consider who the poster is. Dee’s comments are never moderated.

  5. Puerto Rico

    During a “sermon” aired live on Facebook and YouTube, the head pastor of an evangelical church in Puerto Rico denounced people of color as racist, slammed the LGBTQ+ community, and complained that the Black actress starring in Disney’s live-action remake of The Little Mermaid was ugly.
    […]
    Looking like a Boricua Tammy Faye Bakker, Torres Padilla began her hate-filled rant by calling the Black community racist.
    “What is the problem with calling a Black person Black, just to say that a Black person’s life is worth more than a white one, than a yellow one?” she said, referring to the Black Lives Matter movement. “What are Blacks looking for, privilege?”
    “You want me to tell you something?” she continued, her long acrylic nails stabbing the pulpit to make the point. “If there are racist human beings in the world, it’s Black people.”
    “They have taken the figure of Aunt Jemima from me,” she added. “From the pancake syrup bottle, we grew up with Aunt Jemima.”
    […]
    “They have changed the Little Mermaid,” she said. “And they have replaced her with a black Ariel uglier than the word ‘boo.’”
    Torres Padilla referred to Disney’s latest live-action remake of The Little Mermaid starring African-American singer-songwriter and actress Halle Bailey, who earned five Grammy nominations since 2018 – and is beautiful.

  6. Good morning, meeses! Wednesday …

    It is 55 degrees in Tucson with an expected daytime high of 73. Sunny skies are in the forecast. This is perfect weather and I am going to try to spend as much of it as possible outside.

    It sounds like the feds may have caught up with George Santos. Of course, in Marj’s House, there is no shame in being a lying sack of dung and members under indictment will still be on committees and have security clearances. I hope he resigns but that would be too much to ask.

    tRump being officially labelled a sex abuser and defamer will not stop a single MAGAt voter from supporting him. I am glad that his victim won her case but the likelihood of this outcome stopping him from being a out and proud pig are slim to none.

    I just noticed that the Archive to the right is no longer in a pull-down list but each month is shown! I was wondering what looked different when I was working on a comment. Yikes! I shall get that fixed and also look for a better edit/preview plug-in.

    See all y’all later!

    • Yesterday, Janet Yellen outlined her plans for managing the United States treasury running out of money. Her plan was to pick and choose what to pay, prioritizing interest payments so that US Treasury instruments don’t default. A commenter on Josh’s blog made this observation:

      I think that the suggestion that the government pays some bills but not all of them is setting up a lawsuit more than the actual plan. SCOTUS made clear that the President does not have the choice to execute only parts of the spending of the US as commissioned by Congress in Clinton v. City of New York.

      Let that be true! The best solution is for Biden to ignore the debt limit, determine that the 14th Amendment (we must always pay our bills) overrides the 1917 statute regarding Congressional approval of the debt limit increase and pay the bills. Here is an opinion piece in the NY Times outlining this:

      Now suppose the president decides to challenge or ignore the debt ceiling and instructs Ms. Yellen, on June 1 or before, to continue paying our nation’s obligations, as established by Congress in the most recent budget legislation, no matter what. Assume also that he and his administration carefully explain to the nation the legal and financial bases — not to mention the moral ones — for continuing to pay our debts.

      The best-case scenario in this situation is that Mr. McCarthy’s caucus recognizes it has no legal case and its bluff has been called and that it gives up the tactic and passes budget legislation to which the Senate and the president can ultimately agree. This is unlikely but not impossible. After all, the only real alternative for Mr. McCarthy would be to go to court and seek to enjoin the president’s decision to continue to pay obligations — legal obligations already legislatively incurred. The impact of going to court to argue for defaulting on the nation’s debt, let alone the political optics for Mr. McCarthy, would be very risky.[…]

      But suppose the Republicans take the president to court nonetheless. What then? Assuming the courts didn’t refuse to hear the case on justiciability grounds, the challenge would certainly receive expedited review, given the magnitude of the matter. During the brief time the issue was being litigated, we’d see the beginnings of some of the nightmare economic scenarios sketched above.

      But only the beginnings. The president’s multiple arguments would be compelling, and the markets, in any case, are already pricing in worries of this sort. The prospect of an end to the too-often threatened fiscal terrorism that is debt ceiling gamesmanship, moreover, would surely be more welcome to the markets than would be continued hostage taking and associated uncertainty of the kind that Republicans now regularly impose on the nation and its creditors.[…]
      However radical some of the Supreme Court’s right-wing justices might be, even they understand the legal precept that the Constitution isn’t a suicide pact. Even less so is the 1917 Liberty Bond Act, in which the debt ceiling is rooted. As a legal matter, this ceiling has long since been superseded by a new congressional budget process that has determined its own ceiling through budgeting since 1974 and was of doubtful 14th Amendment conformity, at least as now interpreted, in 1917.[…]
      Will invoking the 14th Amendment amount to a constitutional crisis, as Ms. Yellen suggested this week? Not really. For one thing, as noted above, there are multiple grounds upon which Republican hostage taking on the debt ceiling is contrary to law, and not all of them implicate the Constitution. For another thing — and, in my view, yet more important — the present issue is not really a legal issue pitting the president against Congress.

      The current debt ceiling nonsense is a case of one faction of Congress being pitted against Congress itself. Our legally contracted debt is congressionally legislated debt; refusal to pay on this debt boils down to the House Republican faction refusing to pay what Congress itself has mandated we pay.

      Let us now end the absurdity. Let us bury the Liberty Bond-era debt ceiling.

  7. Good morning. Didn’t walk yesterday due to stomach issues, hope to get one in today. Glad about the decision yesterday, and the Santos indictment. The bill to raise the age to buy an assault rifle died overnight, I knew it wouldn’t pass but it’s still frustrating. Well, I have astronomy to watch & my twitter timeline is full of people celebrating Bono’s birthday, so I take what I can get.

    • {{{anotherdemocrat}}} Healing Energy to you. Maybe you can get in 2 today and catch up. Or not. As you wish. Enjoy Bono’s birthday. moar {{{HUGS}}}

  8. It’s 67 heading for 84 and overcast. I’ve got the lights on. sigh. We did get almost 1/2 inch of rain overnight and are supposed to get more this afternoon. And every day for the next 5. But the clouds didn’t move in until late-ish afternoon so we generated 18.5 KWHs and the m-t-d is 149 and at least for the time being we’re still on track for 480.

    Creaky today but I’m not sure if it’s residual from yesterday or part of the only-got-4-hours-of-sleep. The grogginess is. I guess my sinuses didn’t like whatever came in on that relatively chilly blow ahead of the rain. It cooled the house down nicely though. Which the house needed since I grilled 5 weeks’ worth of breakfast sausages then baked a pork roast yesterday afternoon. Anyway, groggy or not, there’s boosting to be done so I’d best get to it. Holding the Good Thoughts for everybody. {{{Meeses}}}

  9. Good Wednesday morning, Moosekind! I don’t know what degree it is right now as my weather widget is not showing in the tray. Windows is so tiresome. Or perhaps it’s Edge or Bing, who knows? Anyway, it’s partly cloudy and going up to 75 today.

    The visit yesterday to the otolaryngologist’s office was so disappointing. When I FINALLY was allowed to see her (after a half-hour wait past my appointment time, for which I arrived half an hour early), she examined my vocal cords with the usual ENT tools, and said they were swollen. When I asked about the injection of hyaluronic acid into my neck, she said Betsy’s husband was a completely different case. She then recommended voice therapy.

    VOICE THERAPY? What the hail? What rubbish! What good is THAT going to do? I’m American, I want instant relief, just gimme a shot and leave it at that.

    Let me tell you something. For a week now I have been taking hyaluronic acid by mouth, a dropperful every morning. People, including myself, Dearly, and a member of the Resident Pubs Committee I saw in the chow line have noticed that my voice is becoming stronger. It’s not back to normal, but it is stronger. This doctor said the problem is not permanent and possibly months from now, after voice therapy, my voice will come back.

    After this I was so frightfully upset that I cried in the elevator going down to the ground floor. Was so upset yesterday afternoon and evening that I took refuge in the only “drugs” I’m allowed—losing myself in a book plus some chocolate—and went to sleep. Mercifully, last night it was a better night’s sleep.

    OK, I am going to STOP whining and get on with things. I’m done apologizing for my voice. My daughter wants me to sue the doctor. I signed papers before the procedure saying I wouldn’t do that. Besides, I don’t have the money to hire a lawyer.

    One last note: I read the obituary in the WaPo this morning of Grace Bumbry, a beautiful, highly talented opera singer who was denied scholarships and exposure in this bloody country because she was black. Well, she had a great career in Europe and eventually did a tour or two in the USA. For many years she lived in Switzerland, and she died at 86 in a hospital in Vienna. Our filthy racial prejudice has cost us such geniuses as Paul Robeson, Josephine Baker, Dorothy Dandridge, and Grace Bumbry. May she rest in peace.

    Wishing a good day to all at the Pond!

    • {{{Diana}}} I am of course not a doctor but I’d strongly suggest that you get a 2nd, 3rd, or 4th opinion before you start doing voice therapy while your vocal chords are swollen! And maybe start with that if you do check with anyone else. “My vocal chords are swollen, have been for weeks, what do you recommend?” Don’t even mention your voice at all. Apparently voices aren’t important enough – especially in a woman – to get their attention. Swollen vocal chords should although apparently they haven’t. Healing Energy & moar {{{HUGS}}}

  10. Thursday Meese. 44 here in Kingston going up to 81! A mini heat wave for the weekend.

    Puerto Rico. The issue of Latino racism is front and center on Twitter.

    Puerto Rican Salsa legend Willie Colon posts racist tweet with a picture of Congresswoman Maxine Waters to Twitter- gets heavy pushback. Will be discussing Latino white supremacists in today’s Caribbean Matters

  11. Good morning. Back in the office. Didn’t watch the town hall last night, though MSNBC kept playing clips, so I flipped over to a house renovation show. Got my walk done, even ran a little. It is incredibly muggy. Yesterday’s exercise was walking back & forth to the laundry room (my washer is broken, so I have to use those) and running in place during the spin cycle. Today: just have to deal with being in the office.

    • I expected Twitter to be a mess and I rarely open the feed there in any event but even my Mastodon feed was filled with people liveblogging tRump’s campaign rally. It was an easy call to shut it down. The “well we have to cover what CNN did because it is news”, is such bulldung. I hope that when E. Jean Carroll files her NEW defamation suit against tRump over his Truth Social posts and continued attacks on her that she names CNN as a co-defendant. Deplorable.

    • I am going to break my “no orange” rule because I am interested in this topic. I hope there are no jerks there to trigger my PTSD.

      What are people like Ted Cruz and Representative Juan “my parents snuck across the border and got amnesty but there is no room for any more Mexicans” Ciscomani (AZ-6)? They identify as white and want nothing to do with people of Latino descent who are struggling – they believe that their success as completely earned – like Blacks from the Clarence Thomas wing of the Republican Party.

  13. Good morning, meeses! Thursday …

    It is 50 degrees in Tucson with an expected daytime high of 81. The overnight low may have set a record according to one of my weather widgets. In any event, clear skies and abundant sunshine are on tap.

    It was a busy news day yesterday: George Santos indicted, Dianne Feinstein comes back to town and casts a vote, hopefully one of many breaking the logjam for federal judicial confirmations, Tommy “I am so dumb even boxes of rocks are embarrassed for me” Tuberville is fine with white nationalists in the military – they be ‘muricans – and is continuing his one man crusade to destroy military readiness and harm officers and their families with his refusal to allow votes on any military promotions, CNN continues to show their ass, the same ass that led to my going no-click on their stories after they full-on embraced birtherism to ding Kamala Harris.

    I have three projects percolating and I better get back to them before I lose the threads.

    See all y’all later!

  14. Good Thursday morning, Meese. It’s 57 F. right now, going up to 81 F. later. (I’m using the Mac at the moment, which does have a weather widget showing.) It’s beginning to be sunny in Ashburn.

    Today my writers meet. I’m making little “May baskets” for them, although they aren’t really baskets, they’re paper sacks with “Happy May Day” printed on them. We’ll be critiquing everyone’s flash fiction during our session, and mine, of course, was the May Day story. In each small paper sack will be a tiny blue organza “favor bag” containing tiny blue, white, and pink candy eggs (Cadbury’s), and then I’ll put blue and white flowers and green ferns in each bag. I like to make our meetings into festive occasions.

    We also have a commission. The Benevolent Fund Campaign will be happening in August, so I offered to supply paragraphs about it to the Director of Philanthropy for her campaign literature. She was thrilled. She can’t be with us today but she might be present for the first half of the June meeting.

    The Benevolent Fund is used when a resident runs out of money. There are four people in this community of 2,000 who are in that situation. It’s nice to think they will be fed, housed, and cared for rather than being thrown out into the street in the middle of the night with nowhere to go. I saw that on TV years ago, before we moved here.

    I wish, as I’m sure do all of you, that I never had to look at That Face or hear That Voice ever again. Kaitlin Collins, who apparently used to work for The Daily Caller (dear Goddess), apparently did a lousy job of interviewing the owner of That Face on CNN last night. My Twitter feed is full of jokes about it this morning, two of which made me laugh out loud.

    Must rush off to buy the flowers and other things. Y’all play naicely! I’m calling myself McRibby now that my voice has improved slightly. Wishing a good day to all at the Pond.

    P. S. I DuckDuckGo’d “voice therapy.” Apparently I’m to drink lots of water (I already do, thanks); breathe (I’m convinced I’m already doing that too); not to smoke (my last cigarette was 40 years ago); and not to breathe secondhand smoke. I don’t know anyone who smokes. Around here, people just don’t. Since my voice is improving a bit every day with the hyaluronic acid, I’ll just keep doing that.

    • I hope your voice continues to improve! Your baskets sound delightful – Cadbury eggs are the best!!

  15. It’s 66 heading for 78 and raining (been raining since yesterday afternoon). Dark enough for house lights although the PV system is actually on. Yesterday we managed 11.68 KWHs and the m-t-d at 160 is still on track for 480. It won’t be after today.

    There was a shooting in my neighborhood last night. Next door I’m pretty sure. But I can find nothing online about it. (I’m not very good at searches I’ll admit.) All I know is the red lights of a fire truck caught my attention and when I went out to look it was pulling away with another FFD vehicle and an ambulance behind it and the street was crawling with cop mostly standing around in small groups talking to each other. When I called out to ask what was going on, the nearest cop said there’d been a shooting “down the street” and a little later another cop came by to ask if I heard it (I heard a single shot but didn’t realize it was gunfire so probably a small caliber pistol) and if I saw anybody running away or driving off fast. Nope. The cops set up a rain fly 2 houses down in the driveway. There were over a dozen of them. The reason I think it might have been next door is the investigative team was taking a whole lot of photos of the chairs on the carport. If there’s blood on them, it’s not visible from 20′ away & I’m not going over there to look closer. Nor am I going to go knock on the door to ask. I’m sure they’ll tell me the next time I see them in the yard.

    Anyway, aside from my sinuses I’m OK. And need to get on with my boosting chores for the day. Holding the Good Thoughts for everybody. {{{Meeses}}}

  16. thought I should share this:

  17. Friday Meese. 53 going up to 86 here in Kingston.

    SCOTUS decided against the people of Puerto Rico and a lot of people are pissed.

    Vultures rule

    This made me smile

    • It is INCREDIBLE how PR is being treated! Tell you what, when Biden is reelected, our “I don’t give a damn what the MAGAs think of me” President is going to do something for the citizens of that oppressed territory.

  18. Good morning. It is so muggy here, it feels like July. Cleaning up after my walk/run takes some doing. The Texas legislature continues dismantling democracy, and the national news is still talking about tfg. Chris Hayes spent all but his last segment last night talking about him, at least every time I flipped back over from Captain America, it was tfg again/still.

  19. Good Friday morning, Moosekind! It’s 67 F. in Ashbuggy at the moment, going up to 85 F. I’m going to wear shorts today. We have spectacular weather. Makes me feel quite optimistic!

    The writers loved the “May baskets” with their trailing blue ribbons, and we had a marvelous session critiquing our flash fiction stories. One was far and away the most brilliant, involving space aliens. Another particularly enjoyable story was about the woman deciding to to jazz up her marriage by following Marabel Morgan’s advice about greeting her husband at the door wearing nothing but Saran wrap. Most of the writers pretty much grasped the idea that the flash fiction should contain a zinger of an ending.

    The air quality is poor today because of the smoke from Canadian wildfires. Dearly keeps watching awful TV, which drives me crazy. Before breakfast he had “Morning Joe” on. Arrgh!

    Busy day planned. I can’t think of anything but tacos for lunch, so we’re going across the street to have some.

    Oh, before I forget—my voice is so much better owing to daily ingestion of the hyaluronic acid that the writers changed my nickname from “Croaky” to “Squeaky.” Progress!

    Wishing a good day to all at the Pond!

  20. It’s 70 going to 83 and overcast. Humid enough for a steam bath but not warm enough. Which isn’t comfortable either but it’s easier to breathe in. Yesterday it cleared off early enough for us to get 13.7 KWHs. The m-t-d at 174.5 is no longer on track for 480.

    I took advantage of it not getting over 80 yesterday to bake cocoa-walnut muffin bread and make butterscotch pudding. I went to get milk this morning before I signed on. The long-running 2-gallons/$6 sale finally ran out. It’s $4.85/gallon. Oh well. It takes me about 2 weeks to use up a gallon of milk so it’s not going to stress the food budget that much. What’s going to stress my household budget this month is cats. Not only will I need to do my Tractor Supply run for kibble & litter but the vet’s coming next Tuesday. That’s a minimum $200 and probably at least $250 – IF I manage to get Bobbie, Freddie, and Rennie into the carriers before the vet shows up. This is a new vet so I’m not sure how things will go. We shall see.

    The mushmelon’s parting shot before he hands twitter over to a MAGAt is to ban all over-30-day inactive accounts. So no more visiting the last tweets of deceased friends. Ebil bastid. But the app itself is still functioning so I’m still boosting stuff there. And carrying a certain amount of “sources” to Spoutible. So I’d best get to it. Holding the Good Thoughts for everybody. {{{Meeses}}}

    • I wonder when the @MotleyMoose feed will disappear? The automatic posts stopped with the attempt to post the April 30th Welcomings. Sad to lose the history.

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