Motley Moose – Archive

The President’s Weekly Address post is also the Weekend Open News Thread. Feel free to share other news stories in the comments.

From the White House – Weekly Address

In this week’s address, the President highlights small business owners across the country acting to raise wages for their workers, and calls on Congress to give America a raise so more hard-working Americans have the opportunity to get ahead.

Ahhh, Cliven Bundy:  newest Conservative hero and, surprise! he’s a racist,too.

I admit I haven’t paid much attention to the Bundy Ranch story.  Jan, IIRC, referenced it in a comment last week and there was a Twitter #bundyranch hashtag a few days ago but I’ve been busy with work and Spring and stuff so I have only a vague idea of thw whole story but what Krauthammer says about Bundy could be said about any number of people:

CHARLES KRAUTHAMMER: … why conservatives, or some conservatives end up in bed with people who, you know, he makes an anti-government statement, he takes an anti-government stand, he wears a nice big hat and he rides a horse, and all of a sudden he is a champion of democracy. This is a man who said that he doesn’t recognize the authority of the United States of America. That makes him a patriot? I love this country, I love the Constitution, and it is the Constitution that established a government that all of us have to recognize. And for him to reject it was the beginning of all of this. And now what he said today is just the end of this.

And I think it is truly appalling that, as Chuck says, there are times when somehow simply because somebody takes an oppositionist stand, he becomes a conservative hero. You got to wait, you got to watch, you got to think about it. And look, do I have the right to go in to graze sheep in Central Park? I think not. You have to have some respect for the federal government, some respect for our system. And to say you don’t and you don’t recognize it and that makes you a conservative hero, to me, is completely contradictory, and rather appalling. And he has now proved it.  http://mediamatters.org/video/…

  Make sure you let your peeps

  know where to find you!  

A profile of a commercial photographer … whose capturing of the end of the steam train era in the 1950’s made him an icon (and not just to rail buffs) after the jump ….  

Football players at Northwestern University on Friday became the first U.S. student athletes to cast ballots in an election to decide whether to unionize.

The vote, which has the potential to upend college sports, was supervised by the U.S. National Labor Relations Board in a university building near the football field on the Evanston, Illinois, campus.

But the outcome will likely remain unknown for months. The NLRB is impounding the ballots cast by the players, who voted before and after workouts on a sunny, windy Friday morning, with small groups of four or five players wearing their Wildcats purple practice jerseys voting.  http://www.reuters.com/article…

Good morning, Moosekind. TGIF!

  Make sure you let your peeps

  know where to find you!  

Happy Shakespeare’s birthday, everyone! The future playwright made his first appearance on the stage called “life” on 23 April 1564 at Stratford-on-Avon in Merrie Olde England and was baptized three days later. Little did John and Mary Shakespeare think that in his lifetime their infant son William was destined to become the greatest playwright and poet in the English–or indeed, any other–language. Join me in celebrating the 450th anniversary of his birth-it’ll be fun for the whole family! We have cake (even though it’s, ah, cybercake), links, poems, a video clip, and lots of speculation.

Good morning meese! Happy happy Wednesday!

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’m doing the Hill Country Ride for AIDS on Saturday. This Saturday. I’m nowhere near my fundraising goal, but I’m not moving the goalposts until after the opening dinner the night before the ride. And we’re just not gonna talk about my fitness level. (even though I’m doing the shortest route, prayers would probably be appropriate this Saturday morning) This diary is to tell you about the people helped by your donations. If you want to bypass all the heartwarming stuff, you can just donate here at my Hill Country Ride Page. But if you want to read some great stories about people getting the help they need, come below the squiggly thing. Be warned, since the Ride is only at 72% of their goal, and I’m at 20% of mine, I’m going to pull on your heartstrings all I can. my Hill Country Ride Page