Motley Moose – Archive

Since 2008 – Progress Through Politics

Archive for February 2014

The Daily F Bomb, Thursday 2/6/13

Interrogatories

Do you go along with the re-naming of stadiums and ballparks after corporations, or do you insist on calling them by the original names?

Do you think that the U.K. should dump their royalty, or are they worth maintaining?

Do you lend out things (tools, money, books), even if you know there is little likelihood of seeing them again?

The Twitter Emitter

Thursday Morning Herd Check-in

  Make sure you let your peeps

  know where to find you!  

   


    PLEASE Do Not Recommend the check-in diary

        Fierces on the Weather Critter Comment are obligatory welcome.

State of Conflict – North Carolina (Bill Moyers) and Moral March on Raleigh, Feb. 8th


If you haven’t seen this report from Bill Moyers, on what is going on in North Carolina, take some time out, look at it and pass it on.


“State of Conflict: North Carolina” offers a documentary report from a state that votes both blue and red and sometimes purple (Romney carried it by a whisker in 2012, Obama by an eyelash in 2008). Now, however, Republicans hold the governor’s mansion and both houses of the legislature and they are steering North Carolina far to the right: slashing taxes on corporations and the wealthy, providing vouchers to private schools, cutting unemployment benefits, refusing to expand Medicaid and rolling back electoral reforms, including voting rights.

You can read a full transcript of the program here.

Moyers warns:

Last summer, Pope succeeded, opening North Carolina’s highest court to the highest bidders.

Katie bar the door – except that no matter which door we’re talking about, Art Pope has the key to it. And possibly to the future.

Take the firepower of the rich, pour in heaps of dark money loosed by the Supreme Court’s Citizens United ruling, add generous doses of fervent ideology, and presto: the battle for American politics and governance is joined. And every state becomes North Carolina, including yours.

We can stop this.

Saturday, February 8th, 2014 people of good will and commitment to addressing injustice are gathering in Raleigh NC to raise their voices in protest.

This is one of the broadest based coalitions of progressive people being forged today.

The Daily F Bomb, Wednesday 2/5/14

Interrogatories

What is your favorite source for weather information? Do you have a weather radio?

Nutella: Love it or hate it?

What is your favorite game involving hitting balls with sticks? Are you any good at it?

The Twitter Emitter

Wednesday Watering Hole: Check In & Hangout for the Herd

Good morning meese! Happy happy Wednesday!


  PLEASE Do Not Recommend the check-in diary! 

        Recs on the weather jar comment are still welcome.

The common Moose, Alces alces, unlike other members of the deer family, is a solitary animal that doesn’t form herds. Not so its rarer but nearest relative, Alces purplius, the Motley Moose. Though sometimes solitary, the Motley Moose herds in ever shifting groups at the local watering hole to exchange news and just pass the time.

A Moose in my neck of the woods right now would look like this:

photo purplemoose1_zpsf38d0ed0.jpg

En Garde! Fencing and black fencing masters




photo GeneralDumas_zps10105513.jpg

Thomas-Alexandre Dumas

En Garde! Fencing and black fencing masters

I grew up with dreams and fantasies of fencing and swashbuckling, duels and derring do. As a child my dad played a musketeer in the cast of Cyrano de Bergerac on Broadway, starring Puerto Rican actor Jose  Ferrer, and one of my cherished mementos is his dueling foil.

I buried my nose in the works of the black French author Alexandre Dumas, and in my head the three Musketeers were black.  Little did I know at the time, that Dumas had modeled his Count of Monte Cristo on his father, Alexandre Davy de la Pailleterie, better known as Thomas-Alexandre Dumas.

The Daily F Bomb, Tuesday 2/4/14

Interrogatories

If you could travel to any fictional world, where would you go?

Miracle Whip: Good food or abomination?

Are you ever a klutz? Any embarrassing stories?

The Twitter Emitter

Tuesday Morning Herd Check-in

  Make sure you let your peeps

  know where to find you!  


    PLEASE Do Not Recommend the check-in diary!   

        Fierces on the Weather Critter Comment are obligatory welcome.

The Plight of the Affluent-Americans

On Saturday morning, I read a sobering first person account at Think Progress about “The Bone-Chilling, Heart-Wrenching Process Of Counting The Nation’s Homeless”:

It was 1 a.m., three hours since I’d last felt my toes, and the four of us stood over a man who may have been dead.

“Are you okay under there?” Catherine asked the pile of blankets tucked away in a building alcove on the corner of 23rd and I St. NW in Washington, D.C. It was the type of spot where most pedestrians wouldn’t even know a homeless person was there.

He didn’t move. She asked again. No answer. She repeated a third time. Nothing.

The three of us held our breath, looking to her for some simple explanation why this wasn’t what it seemed. Maybe he was ignoring us. After all, we were uninvited guests to his makeshift home in the middle of the night.

Maybe he had some secret way of handling five-degree temperatures, even when others might freeze to death.

I wondered, along with the author, about what kind of nation we were that 610,042 people are homeless on any given night in America, some in the worst possible physical conditions.

But nothing prepared me for my reaction to an Op-Ed piece in the Miami Herald by Leonard Pitts, the reminder of those who have, perhaps, too many homes.

Grab a tissue …

The Daily F Bomb, Monday 2/3/14

Interrogatories

Have you ever been in the cockpit of a plane? Have you ever flown a plane?

What’s the smallest plane you’ve been on? The largest? Have you ever flown in a helicopter?

Would you go to the Sochi Olympics, given the opportunity? Would you take your family?

The Twitter Emitter

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