Motley Moose – Archive

Made you look.  I don’t mean that word you dirty-minded people I mean this one:

Good morning, Moosekind. TGIF!

Today at 16:57 UTC (11:57am RPT), the Spring Equinox occurred.

An equinox occurs twice a year (around 20 March and 22 September), when the tilt of the Earth’s axis is inclined neither away from nor towards the Sun, the center of the Sun being in the same plane as the Earth’s equator. The name “equinox” is derived from the Latin aequus (equal) and nox (night), because around the equinox, night and day are about equal length.

The amount of daylight and darkness became equal over the past few days (on March 18, near here) and soon daylight will extend ever deeper into the evening and the early morning hours.

Spring is about hope and new beginnings and the sheer joy of being outdoors in the light and the warmth. Here is some (light!) kidding around as we celebrate this year’s Spring Equinox.

RNC Chairman Reince Priebus is boasting that the 2014 midterm election will be a “tsunami”, a mere “wave” not being big enough to show all the awesomeness of the predicted GOP WIN this fall.

Maybe “tsunami” is the new Etch-a-Sketch because it clearly has Reinced away the reality of the 2012 presidential election for the Republicans:

Forget the final results. Priebus told MSNBC’s Chuck Todd that voters thought Mitt Romney had the better presidential chops.

“I mean, the fact of the matter is Mitt Romney won on the message,” Priebus said. “He won on jobs, he won on the economy, he won on the question of, ‘Who do you actually think would make a better president?’ But where he lost was on the question of, ‘Who cares about you?'”.[…]

But it’s unclear from the exit polling what led Priebus to believe that Romney “won on jobs” and even more inexplicable why the chairman believes that voters said Romney “would make a better president.”

Speaking of “who cares about you?”, something that they may have trouble tsunami-ing away this fall, here is Speaker John Boehner showing his empathy gap: Boehner Rejects Senate Deal To Revive Jobless Benefits

Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) on Wednesday came out against a bipartisan Senate deal to revive emergency benefits for the long-term unemployed, a sign that the Republican-led House intends to nix the proposal.

Boehner didn’t offer a counter-proposal on jobless benefits. “Frankly,” he said, “a better use of the Senate’s time would be taking up and passing the dozens of House-passed jobs bills still awaiting action.“

What’s this? The Republican House of Representatives passed some jobs bills??? Oh that’s right: each of the 51 “repeal Obamacare” votes was in order to save GOP freshmen’s jobs, guys who need to burnish their tea party credentials.

More …

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this starts at 6pm Thursday — so please donate after that time – more info on the Amplify challenge .

On March 20 & 21, there’s a major charity drive in Austin — Amplify Austin. Charities have matching opportunities, and the charities that raise more money get prizes. I am, of course raising money for the Hill Country Ride for AIDS. Below is a list of some of the ways specific amounts donated help. And you can donate at my Hill Country Ride page

But first, the bad/alarming news. There has been a 40% rise in new infections in youth in Travis County. Below is something AIDS Services of Austin executive director Paul Scott wrote about that:

Good morning, Moosekind.

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.

I’ve been waiting for video of this speech to be posted. You already know how I feel about Moral Monday and how it is moving through and gaining strength in the south.  It’s great to be able to share a coming together of the progressive fighters in Wisconsin with Moral Monday from North Carolina.  

Yara Allen, from the NC NAACP and a Moral Monday arrestee opened with song, introducing Rev. Barber to the enthusiastic crowd gathered in the Bethel Lutheran Church on March 13, 2014.

Many thanks to the blue chedder blog, for documenting this. Check out the site for lots of photos.

They posted a preview of a piece by Glenn Schmidt, soon to be posted to Union Labor News:

In the vibrating crowd of at least 800 people in the pews of Bethel Lutheran Church in Madison on March 13, Barber’s call and response was not at all out of place. “Moral dissent,” the crowd repeated after him, “is the pathway,” here they paused again, “to higher ground,” pause, “in our nation.”

Isaiah and Ezekial soon found their way into the conversation. So did Rush Limbaugh, as Barber called out the radio talk show extremist, “Caring for the poor and workers’ rights is not Communism. It’s the Gospel.”

Barber reinforced the connection between North Carolina and Wisconsin by invoking the name of Father James Groppi, the Wisconsin priest who led civil rights marches in the sixties. “Many people saw Milwaukee as the Selma of the North,” Barber said.

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