 | |
  | |
Hello 'Pussy' it's Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle and Pippi Longstocking:
You need, in effect, a think tank inside the White House: a small group, separate from the process-oriented Domestic Policy Council, whose only task is to brief the president regularly on how Trumpist premises should shape any given legislative deal.
Do you have any idea why we feel so ashamed? I do!
Should I remain in bed, leave my country or fight against the dragon?
( see also the story by Wolfgang Hampel,
' Betty MacDonald: Nothing more to say ' )
Betty and Don MacDonald in Hollywood
Betty MacDonald's mother Sydney with grandchild Alison Beck
Betty MacDonald fan club fans,
Easter is near.
We have some colourful Betty MacDonald fan club Easter Eggs for you.
Anita and Eartha Kitt II are working on the new Betty MacDonald fan club item ' Easter with Betty MacDonald and her family '.
There will be a new Betty MacDonald fan club item entitled: Betty MacDonald and her sister Mary Bard Jensen.
A fascinating story about the two famous sisters and authors.
By the way what is your favourite book by Betty MacDonald and Mary Bard Jensen?
Let us know, please and you might win a Betty MacDonald fan club Easter surprise.
More info soon!
Betty MacDonald fan club event team is very happy to hear from you and they got some really great ideas for the next International event.
Thanks a lot!
Vita Magica with Betty MacDonald fan club founder Wolfgang Hampel and Betty MacDonald fan club honor member Letizia Maninco was outstanding.
The audience enjoyed it very much.
Wolfgang Hampel's Vita Magica is fascinating because he includes Betty MacDonald, other members of the Bard family and Betty MacDonald fan club honor members.
Betty MacDonald fan club honor member Mr. Tigerli and our 'Italian Betty MacDonald' - Betty MacDonald fan club honor member author and artist Letizia Mancino belong to the most popular Betty MacDonald fan club teams in our history.
Their many devoted fans are waiting for a new Mr. Tigerli adventure.
Letizia Mancino's magical Betty MacDonald Gallery is a special gift for our Betty MacDonald fan club fans.
We'll have several International Betty MacDonald fan club events in 2017.
Join us in voting for your favourite city, please.
Wolfgang Hampel's Vita Magica guest was a very famous TV lady, author and singer and she is our new Betty MacDonald fan club honor member.
Betty MacDonald fan club honor member Mr. Tigerli is our beloved Betty MacDonald fan club honor member.
I guess our Casanova adores our Betty MacDonald fan club honor member very much because author and TV moderator Tatjana Geßler is a very beautiful, charming and intelligent lady.
Tatjana Geßler's books are outstanding. I've read several of them.
Enjoy Betty MacDonald's very beautiful Vashon Island, please.
Great Betty MacDonald fan club news!
You can join
Betty MacDonald fan club
Betty MacDonald Society
Vita Magica
on Facebook.
Thank you so much in advance for your support and interest.
If you join Betty MacDonald fan club blog as a follower during March you'll receive a very special Betty MacDonald fan club Welcome gift.
Send your email-address to our contact address, please.
Great news!
Betty MacDonald fan club honor member Mr. Tigerli is back and his fans are delighted.
We'll have several International Betty MacDonald fan club events in 2017.
Don't miss Wolfgang Hampel's Vita Magica March, please.
You'll enjoy it very much.
You can see brilliant Brad Craft.
"This is Me," by Bad Kid Billy. [Official Music Video]
Seems I'm in this for a hot second. I remember being asked to participate one day on the street in front of the bookstore where I work. I didn't think to ask what it was for, or even so much as the name of the song or the band. Didn't want to be late coming back from lunch. Silly bugger. The very nice young woman with the green hair also featured herein happens to work at Magus Books. She mentioned she'd seen me. Told me the name of the band, and here we are.
Betty MacDonald fan club honor member Monica Sone and other Betty MacDonald fan club honor members will be included in Wolfgang Hampel's new project 'Vita Magica'.
We got very interesting new info for updated Betty MacDonald biography.
Betty MacDonald fan club founder Wolfgang Hampel and Betty MacDonald fan club research team are going to include all these new details and info in updated Betty MacDonald biography.
If you'd like to join Betty MacDonald fan club you only have to press the join button on Betty MacDonald fan club blog.
New Betty MacDonald fan club fans will receive a special Betty MacDonald fan club Welcome gift during March.
Send us your email address to our contact address, please.
Wolfgang Hampel's Vita Magica February was outstanding and so was Vita Magica Betty MacDonald event with Wolfgang Hampel, Thomas Bödigheimer and Friedrich von Hoheneichen
Wolfgang Hampel and Betty MacDonald fan club research team are working on an updated Betty MacDonald biography.
This very new Betty MacDonald biography includes all the results we got during a very successful Betty MacDonald fan club research which started in 1983.
You'll be able to find unique Betty MacDonald treasures in our Betty MacDonald biography.
Betty MacDonald biography includes for example interviews with Betty MacDonald, her family and friends.
We got many letters by Betty MacDonald and other family members even very important original ones.
Our goal is to publish a Betty MacDonald biography that shows all the details of Betty MacDonald's life and work but also to present her fascinating siblings.
Dear Betty MacDonald fan club fans let us know please what you are interested most in a future Betty MacDonald biography.
Do you prefer an e-book or a so called real book?
Wolfgang Hampel and Friends of Vita Magica visited Minister of Science of Baden-Württemberg, Theresia Bauer in Stuttgart.
They visited Landtag and had a great time there.
Do you have any books by Betty MacDonald and Mary Bard Jensen with funny or interesting dedications?
If so would you be so kind to share them?
Our next Betty MacDonald fan club project is a collection of these unique dedications.
If you share your dedication from your Betty MacDonald - and Mary Bard Jensen collection you might be the winner of our new Betty MacDonald fan club items.
Thank you so much in advance for your support.
Thank you so much for sending us your favourite Betty MacDonald quote.
We are so glad that our beloved Betty MacDonald fan club honor member Mr. Tigerli is back.
New Betty MacDonald documentary will be very interesting with many new interviews.
Alison Bard Burnett and other Betty MacDonald fan club honor members will be included in Wolfgang Hampel's fascinating project Vita Magica.
Betty MacDonald fan club founder Wolfgang Hampel interviewed Betty MacDonald's daughter Joan MacDonald Keil and her husband Jerry Keil.
This interview will be published for the first time ever.
New Betty MacDonald documentary will be very interesting with many interviews never published before.
We adore Betty MacDonald fan club honor member Mr. Tigerli
Thank you so much for sharing this witty memories with us.
Wolfgang Hampel's literary event Vita Magica is very fascinating because he is going to include Betty MacDonald, other members of the Bard family and Betty MacDonald fan club honor members.
It's simply great to read Wolfgang Hampel's new very well researched stories about Betty MacDonald, Robert Eugene Heskett, Donald Chauncey MacDonald, Darsie Bard, Sydney Bard, Gammy, Alison Bard Burnett, Darsie Beck, Mary Bard Jensen, Clyde Reynolds Jensen, Sydney Cleveland Bard, Mary Alice Bard, Dorothea DeDe Goldsmith, Madge Baldwin, Don Woodfin, Mike Gordon, Ma and Pa Kettle, Nancy and Plum, Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle and others.
Linde Lund and many fans from all over the world adore this funny sketch by Wolfgang Hampel very much although our German isn't the best.
I won't ever forget the way Wolfgang Hampel is shouting ' Brexit '.
Don't miss it, please.
It's simply great!
You can hear that Wolfgang Hampel got an outstandig voice.
He presented one of Linde Lund's favourite songs ' Try to remember ' like a professional singer.
Thanks a million!
Betty MacDonald fan club honor member Mr. Tigerli and our 'Italian Betty MacDonald' - Betty MacDonald fan club honor member author and artist Letizia Mancino belong to the most popular Betty MacDonald fan club teams in our history.
Their many devoted fans are waiting for a new Mr. Tigerli adventure.
Letizia Mancino's magical Betty MacDonald Gallery is a special gift for Betty MacDonald fan club fans from all over the world.
Don't miss Brad Craft's 'More friends', please.
Betty MacDonald's very beautiful Vashon Island is one of my favourites.
I agree with Betty in this very witty Betty MacDonald story Betty MacDonald: Nothing more to say by Wolfgang Hampel.
I can't imagine to live in a country with him as so-called elected President although there are very good reasons to remain there to fight against these brainless politics.
THE series of columns I’ve been writing lately, floating implausible proposals
for an ideologically unstable age, has been a useful way of avoiding
the depressing subject of the Trump administration’s first 100 days —
because really, in the face of such incompetence and chaos, what is
there to say?
But
precisely because this administration seems so hopeless, any
constructive advice for the Trump White House automatically falls into
the category of implausible ideas. So I can continue my ongoing series
while also talking about Donald Trump — by proposing, as this week’s
unlikely-to-happen proposal, that our president should go out and get
himself a brain.
I think the future dinosaur flatulence will be the behaviour of 'Pussy' and his very strange government.
Poor World! Poor America!
Don't miss these very interesting articles below, please.
The most difficult case in Mrs.Piggle-Wiggle's career
Hello 'Pussy', this is Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle.
You took calls from foreign leaders on unsecured phone lines, without consultung the State Department. We have to change your silly behaviour with a new Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle cure. I know you are the most difficult case in my career - but we have to try everything.......................
Betty MacDonald fan club founder Wolfgang Hampel sent his brilliant thoughts. Thank you so much dear Wolfgang!
Hi Libi, nice to meet you. Can you feel it?
I'm the most powerful leader in the world.
Betty MacDonald: Nothing more to say
Copyright 2016 by Wolfgang Hampel
All rights reserved
Betty MacDonald was sitting on her egg-shaped cloud and listened to a rather strange guy.
He said to his friends: So sorry to keep you waiting. Very complicated business! Very complicated!
Betty said: Obviously much too complicated for you old toupee!
Besides him ( by the way the First Lady's place ) his 10 year old son was bored to death and listened to this 'exciting' victory speech.
The old man could be his great-grandfather.
The boy was very tired and thought: I don't know what this old guy is talking about. Come on and finish it, please. I'd like to go to bed.
Dear 'great-grandfather' continued and praised the Democratic candidate.
He congratulated her and her family for a very strong campaign although he wanted to put her in jail.
He always called her the most corrupt person ever and repeated it over and over again in the fashion of a Tibetan prayer wheel.
She is so corrupt. She is so corrupt. Do you know how corrupt she is?
Betty MacDonald couldn't believe it when he said: She has worked very long and very hard over a long period of time, and we owe her a major debt of gratitude for her service to our country.
Afterwards old toupee praised his parents, wife, children, siblings and friends.
He asked the same question like a parrot all the time:
Where are you? Where are you? Where are you?
I know you are here!
Betty MacDonald answered: No Pussy they are not! They left the country.
They immigrated to Canada because they are very much afraid of the future in the U.S.A. with you as their leader like the majority of all so-called more or less normal citizens.
By the way keep your finger far away from the pussies and the Red Button, please.
I'm going to fly with my egg-shaped cloud to Canada within a minute too.
Away - away - there is nothing more to say!
Daniel Mount wrote a great article about Betty MacDonald and her garden.
We hope you'll enjoy it very much.
I adore Mount Rainier and Betty MacDonald's outstanding descriptions
Can you remember in which book you can find it?
If so let us know, please and you might be the next Betty MacDonald fan club contest winner.
I hope we'll be able to read Wolfgang Hampel's new very well researched stories about Betty MacDonald, Robert Eugene Heskett, Donald Chauncey MacDonald, Darsie Bard, Sydney Bard, Gammy, Alison Bard Burnett, Darsie Beck, Mary Bard Jensen, Clyde Reynolds Jensen, Sydney Cleveland Bard, Mary Alice Bard, Dorothea DeDe Goldsmith, Madge Baldwin, Don Woodfin, Mike Gordon, Ma and Pa Kettle, Nancy and Plum, Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle and others - very soon.
It' s such a pleasure to read them.
Let's go to magical Betty MacDonald's Vashon Island.
Betty MacDonald fan club organizer Linde Lund and Betty MacDonald fan club research team share their recent Betty MacDonald fan club research results.
Congratulations! They found the most interesting and important info for Wolfgang Hampel's oustanding Betty MacDonald biography.
I enjoy Bradley Craft's story very much.
Don't miss our Betty MacDonald fan club contests, please.
You can win a never published before Alison Bard Burnett interview by Betty MacDonald fan club founder Wolfgang Hampel.
Good luck!
This CD is a golden treasure because Betty MacDonald's very witty sister Alison Bard Burnett shares unique stories about Betty MacDonald, Mary Bard Jensen, Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle and Nancy and Plum.
Wolfgang Hampel's Betty MacDonald and Ma and Pa Kettle biography and Betty MacDonald interviews have fans in 40 countries. I'm one of their many devoted fans.
Many Betty MacDonald - and Wolfgang Hampel fans are very interested in a Wolfgang Hampel CD and DVD with his very funny poems and stories.
We are going to publish new Betty MacDonald essays on Betty MacDonald's gardens and nature in Washington State.
Betty MacDonald fan club honor member Mr. Tigerli is beloved all over the World.
We are so happy that our 'Casanova' is back.
Betty MacDonald fan club founder Wolfgang Hampel
and Betty MacDonald fan club research team are going to share very
interesting info on ' Betty MacDonald and the movie The Egg and I '.
Another rare episode (from March 21 1952) of the short-lived comedy soap opera, "The Egg and I," based on best selling book by Betty MacDonald which also became a popular film.
The series premiered on September 3, 1951, the same day as "Search for Tomorrow," and ended on August 1, 1952.
Although it did well in the ratings, it had difficulty attracting a steady sponsor. This episode features Betty Lynn (later known for her work on "The Andy Griffith Show") as Betty MacDonald, John Craven as Bob MacDonald, Doris Rich as Ma Kettle, and Frank Twedell as Pa Kettle.
Betty MacDonald fan club exhibition will be fascinating with the international book editions and letters by Betty MacDonald.
I can't wait to see the new Betty MacDonald documentary.
Enjoy a great breakfast at the bookstore with Brad and Nick, please.
Have a sunny Sunday,
Another rare episode (from March 21 1952) of the short-lived comedy soap opera, "The Egg and I," based on best selling book by Betty MacDonald which also became a popular film.
The series premiered on September 3, 1951, the same day as "Search for Tomorrow," and ended on August 1, 1952.
Although it did well in the ratings, it had difficulty attracting a steady sponsor. This episode features Betty Lynn (later known for her work on "The Andy Griffith Show") as Betty MacDonald, John Craven as Bob MacDonald, Doris Rich as Ma Kettle, and Frank Twedell as Pa Kettle.
Betty MacDonald fan club exhibition will be fascinating with the international book editions and letters by Betty MacDonald.
I can't wait to see the new Betty MacDonald documentary.
Enjoy a great breakfast at the bookstore with Brad and Nick, please.
Have a sunny Sunday,
Mats
you can join
Betty MacDonald fan club
Betty MacDonald Society
Vita Magica
on Facebook
Vita Magica Betty MacDonald event with Wolfgang Hampel, Thomas Bödigheimer and Friedrich von Hoheneichen
Vita Magica
Betty MacDonald
Betty MacDonald fan club
Betty MacDonald fan club on Facebook
Betty MacDonald forum
Wolfgang Hampel - Wikipedia ( English )
Wolfgang Hampel - Wikipedia ( English ) - The Egg and I
Wolfgang Hampel - Wikipedia ( Polski)
Wolfgang Hampel - Wikipedia ( German )
Wolfgang Hampel - LinkFang ( German ) Wolfgang Hampel - Academic ( German )
Wolfgang Hampel - cyclopaedia.net ( German )
Wolfgang Hampel - DBpedia ( English / German )
Wolfgang Hampel - people check ( English )
Wolfgang Hampel - Memim ( English )
Vashon Island - Wikipedia ( German )
Wolfgang Hampel - Monica Sone - Wikipedia ( English )
Wolfgang Hampel - Ma and Pa Kettle - Wikipedia ( English )
Wolfgang Hampel - Ma and Pa Kettle - Wikipedia ( French )
Wolfgang Hampel - Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle - Wikipedia ( English)
Wolfgang Hampel in Florida State University
Betty MacDonald fan club founder Wolfgang Hampel
Betty MacDonald fan club interviews on CD/DVD
Betty MacDonald fan club items
Betty MacDonald fan club items - comments
Betty MacDonald fan club - The Stove and I
Betty MacDonald fan club groups
Betty MacDonald fan club organizer Linde Lund
Betty MacDonald fan club organizer Greta Larson
Rita Knobel Ulrich - Islam in Germany - a very interesting ZDF ( 2nd German Television ) documentary with English subtitles
SundayReview | Op-Ed Columnist
Trump Needs a Brain
THE series of columns I’ve been writing lately, floating implausible proposals
for an ideologically unstable age, has been a useful way of avoiding
the depressing subject of the Trump administration’s first 100 days —
because really, in the face of such incompetence and chaos, what is
there to say?
But
precisely because this administration seems so hopeless, any
constructive advice for the Trump White House automatically falls into
the category of implausible ideas. So I can continue my ongoing series
while also talking about Donald Trump — by proposing, as this week’s
unlikely-to-happen proposal, that our president should go out and get
himself a brain.
I do not mean a vat-grown cerebral cortex cooked up in some underground anti-aging lab funded by Silicon Valley immortalists
… though I gather those may be soon available as well. I mean a brain
in the sense that people (unkindly, but not inaccurately) used the term
to describe Bill Kristol when he was the aide-de-camp to Vice President
Dan Quayle 25 years ago: a person, or better a group of persons, who can
tell Trump what specific policies he ought to support.
Because
a core weakness of this White House, more devastating (for now) than
the pugilistic tweets and permanent swirl of scandal, is the absence of
anyone who seems to have thought through how one might translate
Trumpism, the populist nationalism on which the president campaigned,
into substantive policy on any specific issue except a temporary visa
freeze.
The dearth of Trumpists in official Washington was always going to be a major problem for this administration, both in staffing the White House and in negotiating with Congress. But it’s been worse than anticipated, because Trump himself doesn’t know what he wants to do on major issues and there’s nobody in his innermost circle who seems to have a compelling vision that might guide him.
A
certain Steve Bannon — perhaps you’ve heard of him — was supposed to
help Trump figure all this out, perhaps with an assist from Michael Anton,
the once-pseudonymous pro-Trump essayist now ensconced in the National
Security Council. But there’s little evidence that either man’s policy
vision has advanced much beyond, “The conservative movement has failed,
let’s try something else.” Bannon seems to have been particularly
useless during the health care negotiations, encouraging Trump to work with the Freedom Caucus one day and trying to bully them the next, while throwing out various critiques of the Paul Ryan bill that didn’t point toward anything coherent.
It
was probably unreasonable to expect a sixtysomething whose life
experience is all in media and Hollywood to suddenly turn into a one-man
think tank, no matter how many French far-right agitators
he name-drops. But a think tank is basically what Trump needs: a small
brain trust committed to figuring out what parts of the mainstream
G.O.P. vision he should support and what heterodoxies it makes sense for
him to champion, so that he isn’t stuck governing on the Heritage
Foundation’s austerity budgets while his friends outside the
administration urge him to expand Medicaid.
Some Trump supporters — the folks behind the new journal American Affairs,
most notably — are trying to play that role already. But they’re
getting going slowly; Trump needs something sooner, faster, now. He
needs, in effect, a think tank inside the White House: a small group,
separate from the process-oriented Domestic Policy Council, whose only
task is to brief the president regularly on how Trumpist premises should
shape any given legislative deal.
The
way things are going, there won’t be many such deals struck. But this
brain trust would have a longer-term purpose, too: It would be assigned
to build up an easy-to-explain agenda that Trumpish candidates could run
on in 2018, that Trump could champion if he tries to triangulate
between Ryan and the Democrats, and that the president could campaign on
when he runs for re-election. (Aren’t you excited for 2020, dear
reader?)
Who
might staff it? The people involved with American Affairs would be
candidates, but I would also look to other dissident-conservative
publications like The American Conservative, junior (that is, not yet
set in their views) staff at places like Heritage and the American
Enterprise Institute, lesser known right-leaning outfits like the
Institute for Family Studies, and the offices of creative populists like
Senator Mike Lee of Utah. Possible brain trusters might include figures
like F. H. Buckley, the George Mason law professor and Trump
speechwriter who recently urged the president to come out for single-payer; Mickey Kaus, the once-liberal blogger turned Trumpista; and Henry Olsen of the Ethics and Public Policy Center, author of a forthcoming book on Reagan’s populism.
All
of this assumes that Trump cares about Trumpism as something more than a
grift, and that he can accept advice and counsel in a sustained way,
without changing his mind the instant someone makes a different case. As
I said, it’s a deeply implausible idea.
But so is every solution to this White House’s struggles — and we’ve still got most of four years left to go.
Politics
Sean Spicer Repeats Trump’s Unproven Wiretapping Allegation
By MICHAEL D. SHEAR and JULIE HIRSCHFELD DAVIS
March 31, 2017
WASHINGTON
— The White House on Friday revived President Trump’s unproven
wiretapping allegations against the Obama administration, insisting that
there is new evidence that it conducted “politically motivated”
surveillance of Mr. Trump’s presidential campaign.
Senior
government officials, including James B. Comey, the F.B.I. director,
and lawmakers from both parties, have repeatedly and forcefully rejected
the president’s claim, saying they have seen no evidence of direct
surveillance. A spokesman for former President Barack Obama has denied
that Mr. Obama ever ordered surveillance of Mr. Trump or his associates.
But
Sean Spicer, the White House press secretary, asserted to reporters
during his daily news briefing that members of Mr. Obama’s
administration had done “very, very bad things,” just as Mr. Trump alleged without proof on March 4 when he posted messages on Twitter accusing Mr. Obama of “wire tapping” his phones at Trump Tower.
“The
question is why? Who else did it? Was it ordered? By whom?” Mr. Spicer
said. “But I think more and more the substance that continues to come
out on the record by individuals continues to point to exactly what the
president was talking about that day.”
Mr. Spicer
appeared to be basing his assertions on reports from right-wing news
outlets that took out of context a month-old interview with a former
Obama administration official.
Mr.
Spicer’s comments came in the midst of a drumbeat of developments in
the multiple investigations into Russian contacts with Mr. Trump’s
associates, and a week after the president failed to make good on his campaign promise to replace Mr. Obama’s signature health care law.
The two story lines have helped drag down Mr. Trump’s approval ratings, which slumped to a low of 35 percent in Gallup’s tracking poll on Wednesday.
Mr.
Spicer’s remarks on Friday seemed designed to give new life to the
allegations against Mr. Obama after weeks of trying to focus attention
on the damage that Mr. Spicer said had been caused by leaks from the
investigations into Russia’s involvement in the 2016 presidential
campaign.
The allegations dominated his briefing,
crowding out other parts of the White House agenda, including the
president’s signing of two executive orders on trade and meeting with
manufacturing executives.
Mr. Trump hastily left
that signing ceremony without adding his signature to the trade orders
as a reporter shouted a question about possible testimony in the Russia
inquiry by Michael T. Flynn, his former national security adviser. The
White House said Mr. Trump signed the directives later.
At
Mr. Spicer’s news conference, the press secretary chastised reporters
for failing to accept that Mr. Trump had been right all along. “The
substance we are talking about continues to move exactly in the
direction that the president spoke about in terms of surveillance that
occurred,” Mr. Spicer said, even as he deflected questions about the White House’s role in providing intelligence reports to Representative Devin Nunes, Republican of California, the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee.
The
senior Democrat on that committee, Representative Adam B. Schiff of
California, arrived later in the day at the White House to view the
intelligence reports. In a statement, Mr. Schiff confirmed that they
were the same materials Mr. Nunes had seen, and said that nothing
justified Mr. Nunes’s failure to share them with the entire committee.
“The
White House has yet to explain why senior White House staff apparently
shared these materials with but one member of either committee, only for
their contents to be briefed back to the White House,” Mr. Schiff said
in a statement.
Mr. Spicer provided no evidence of
the surveillance allegations. But he pointed several times to news
reports that he claimed backed up the president’s accusations.
One
was a March 2 interview with Evelyn Farkas, who served as deputy
assistant secretary of defense in the Obama administration until leaving
the government in September 2015.
TheGatewayPundit.com,
a right-wing site, called it a “notorious” interview and said it proved
Obama administration officials had disseminated “intel gathered on the
Trump team.” Reince Priebus, the White House chief of staff, said on the
Hugh Hewitt radio show that Ms. Farkas had made “just an incredible
statement.” Breitbart News reported on Mr. Priebus’s comments.
The
comments by Ms. Farkas, Mr. Spicer said, were evidence that Mr. Trump
or his associates “were surveilled, had their information unmasked, made
it available, was politically spread.” He said that such stories were
proof that Obama administration officials had “misused, mishandled and
potentially did some very, very bad things with classified information.”
In
fact, the reports do not back up the allegations that Mr. Trump or any
officials in his campaign were ever under surveillance. In the March 2
interview on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” program, Ms. Farkas said she had
expressed concern to her former colleagues about the need to secure
intelligence related to the Russian hacking of the American election.
Ms. Farkas was commenting on a New York Times article
a day earlier that documented how in the days before Mr. Trump’s
inauguration, Obama administration officials had sought to ensure the
preservation of those documents in order to leave a clear trail for
government investigators after Mr. Trump took office.
In
a statement she gave to The American Spectator, a conservative
publication, Ms. Farkas said the furor over her remarks was “a wild
misinterpretation of comments I made on the air in March.” She added, “I
was out of government, I didn’t have any classified information, or any
knowledge of ‘tapping’ or leaking or the N.Y.T. article before it came
out.”
White House officials also confronted on Friday the disclosure that Mr. Flynn, who resigned in February
over his contacts with Russian officials, has offered to testify before
the two congressional committees investigating the Trump campaign’s
ties to Russia about those contacts in exchange for immunity from prosecution.
Mr. Trump said on Twitter on Friday morning that he agreed with Mr. Flynn’s proposal.
“Mike
Flynn should ask for immunity in that this is a witch hunt (excuse for
big election loss), by media & Dems, of historic proportion!” Mr. Trump wrote.
The
president has been eager to dismiss as “fake news” all allegations that
members of his campaign colluded with the Russians, and the post
appeared to be an effort to discredit the congressional inquiries that
are examining those claims. It also appeared to be aimed at defusing any
speculation that Mr. Flynn might be seeking immunity because he has
incriminating information to share about Mr. Trump or his associates.
It
was not clear from the president’s post on Friday whether he fully
appreciated the potential effect on his administration if Mr. Flynn
received immunity to participate fully in the investigation. Mr. Trump
has said previously that seeking protection from prosecution is a
telltale sign of wrongdoing.
“If you’re not guilty
of a crime, what do you need immunity for, right?” he said in September
at a campaign rally in Orlando, Fla. Mr. Trump was referring to Hillary
Clinton aides who received immunity during an F.B.I. inquiry into her
use of a private email server.
Mr. Spicer declined
to address the inconsistency, telling reporters on Friday only that Mr.
Trump “believes that Mike Flynn should go testify.”
“He thinks that he should go up there and do what he has to do to get the story out,” Mr. Spicer said.
The
F.B.I. is investigating whether any of Mr. Trump’s advisers colluded
with Russia in its efforts to disrupt the 2016 election. An immunity
deal would make it extraordinarily difficult for the Justice Department
to prosecute Mr. Flynn.
Mr. Schiff said Mr.
Flynn’s decision to seek immunity from prosecution was a “grave and
momentous step,” but not one that investigators were ready to consider
at this stage.
“While Mr. Flynn’s testimony is of
great interest to our committee, we are also deeply mindful of the
interests of the Justice Department in the matter,” Mr. Schiff said in a
statement. He added that before considering immunity for any witness in
the inquiry, “we will of course require a detailed proffer of any
intended testimony.”
Politics
‘We Must Fight Them’: Trump Goes After Conservatives of Freedom Caucus
WASHINGTON
— President Trump launched a vengeful tirade against conservatives in
his own party on Thursday in an attempt to kick-start health care talks
and show that he remains a force to be feared in the looming battles
over the budget, a tax overhaul and infrastructure.
In an early morning Twitter attack, Mr. Trump singled out members of the House Freedom Caucus, which scuttled his health care overhaul
last week. “The Freedom Caucus will hurt the entire Republican agenda
if they don’t get on the team, & fast,” he wrote. “We must fight
them, & Dems, in 2018!”
He
continued on Twitter throughout the day, naming individual members of
the caucus, likening them to Democrats and urging other Republicans to
“fight them” in the 2018 midterm elections if they do not back his
agenda.
But
the Republican upstarts hardly cowered in the face of Mr. Trump’s
criticism. They struck back, some of them ridiculing the president,
using his own taunting and confrontational social media style.
“Stockholm
Syndrome?” Representative Tom Garrett of Virginia asked on Twitter,
suggesting that the president had become captive to the Republican
establishment he attacked during the campaign.
“It’s a swamp not a hot tub. We both came here to drain it. #SwampCare
polls 17%. Sad!” wrote Representative Thomas Massie of Kentucky, who
often sides with the caucus on votes, mocking the president’s
drain-the-swamp campaign pledge.
This
was the moment when Mr. Trump, riding a wave of populist anger, was
supposed to be at his most fearsome — enforcing discipline on his
fragmented party. But in the wake of last week’s stunning defeat of
legislation to replace the Affordable Care Act, which further eroded his
already flagging poll numbers, Mr. Trump has made an abrupt shift from
courting his party’s most conservative lawmakers to hurling threats at
them, a vivid illustration of his difficulties uniting a still-riven Republican Party.
“Intimidation
may work with some in the short term, but it never really works in the
long run,” said Representative Mark Sanford of South Carolina, who
opposed the health overhaul pushed by the White House and written by
House Speaker Paul D. Ryan.
Mr.
Trump and his team believe the Twitter attacks will re-establish his
tough-guy leverage in coming negotiations. It also has the added virtue
of allowing the most expressive of presidents to give voice to his
anger.
And
they were not done out of impulse. Mr. Trump’s advisers have become
more involved in his free-form Twitter feed in the last few weeks, ever
since his impetuous, conspiratorial posts about President Barack Obama’s
supposedly wiretapping his phones touched off a still-running
controversy.
Stephen
K. Bannon, Mr. Trump’s chief strategist, has counseled a tough tone
with the rebels, instructing his staff to use Twitter as a rhetorical
prod to keep the party in line. Dan Scavino, an aide who controls Mr.
Trump’s official White House Twitter account, recently moved into Mr.
Bannon’s West Wing office, where he closely monitors social activity by
and about the president, according to two officials.
A
handful of people have always had access to Mr. Trump’s personal
Twitter account, but in the weeks since the president’s accusation
against his predecessor, there has been a stricter imposition by aides
to make sure there is a strategic imperative behind his posts, according
to two people briefed on the process.
The
cannon blasts at the House Freedom Caucus followed nearly a week of the
president’s stewing about the debacle over his failed health care
effort. He did not take the loss especially well. His aides quickly
began discussions about reopening negotiations that would at least
demonstrate a commitment to what in the past has been one of his party’s
most urgent priorities.
The
House Freedom Caucus came away from the health care fight feeling
emboldened, and Mr. Trump’s senior advisers are now mindful of the need
to slow any momentum the group has going into other legislative battles,
including the budget fight just four weeks away.
The
health care bill that the many House members rejected was extremely
unpopular. Only 17 percent of Americans — and 41 percent of Republicans —
supported the proposal, according to a Quinnipiac poll released last
week.
Presidents
— from Franklin D. Roosevelt to Mr. Obama — have said they would
campaign against rebels in their own parties, and the threats have
mostly been empty. Mr. Trump seems especially ill-equipped to follow
through, senior Republicans say. Beyond blustery Twitter messages, he
has so far not shown even a willingness to take them on.
In
the mostly conservative House districts where Mr. Trump could target
lawmakers, voters are likely to be more in sync with their
representatives, who felt that the rollback of the law did not go far
enough, than their president, who simply wanted a win.
When
Mr. Sanford, fresh off helping torpedo his party’s health care bill,
showed up at a Berkeley County Republican meeting in South Carolina on
Saturday, he was met with applause and praise.
“It’s
fairly banal,” said Representative David Schweikert, Republican of
Arizona and a member of the caucus, said of Mr. Trump’s attack. “We are
used to it. It goes with the job. He is not the first president who has
attacked us, just the first from our own party.”
If
the back and forth between Mr. Trump and the House hard-liners inflamed
tensions between the president and some of his most loyal, if not
exactly ideologically aligned, congressional supporters, it bound the
president more closely to Mr. Ryan, reinforcing the most unlikely of
shotgun political marriages.
“I
understand the president’s frustration,” Mr. Ryan told reporters on
Thursday when asked about the president’s morning Twitter attack. “I
share frustration.”
All
week, the White House lurched between battering conservatives and
trying to win them over. On Wednesday — about 18 hours before Mr.
Trump’s Twitter blast — senior officials invited two dozen leaders from
conservative groups for a closed-door session to plot a path ahead.
Participants,
who were instructed by the organizers of the event not to divulge
details of the meeting, or even the groups attending, described the
hourlong session as a welcome but long overdue policy discussion. It
included a candid, polite airing of complaints that they have been
largely left out of the loop on major administration decision making,
according to people who attended.
The
meeting, put together by Mr. Trump’s conservative outreach director,
Paul Teller, at the request of conservatives, included representatives
of the Heritage Foundation, Americans for Limited Government and
Judicial Watch, all of whom were critical of some administration
policies, including the health bill.
Thomas
Fitton, the president of Judicial Watch — a conservative legal advocacy
group that successfully sued the Obama administration for the release
of Hillary Clinton’s State Department emails — made a pointed pitch for
the release of all documents pertaining to Russia’s interference in the
election campaign controversy, according to people who attended the
session in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building beside the White
House.
Mr.
Fitton, the participants said, told Mr. Teller that the president
needed to be committed to a policy of extreme transparency about
contacts between Russian government officials and Trump associates
during the 2016 campaign, including Michael T. Flynn, the former national security adviser, and Jared Kushner, Mr. Trump’s son-in-law.
He
also asked Mr. Teller and other administration officials present to
more rapidly approve bottled-up Freedom of Information requests about
Russia and other topics — likening the foot-dragging on legally mandated
disclosure to what he said was the Obama administration’s flouting of
immigration laws.
An activist in attendance said that Mr. Teller nodded, took notes and was noncommittal.
Mr.
Trump’s targeting of the Freedom Caucus came on a day of an unexpected
change in his senior staff. Katie Walsh, a deputy to Reince Priebus, the
White House chief of staff, announced her sudden departure after less
than three months on the job to work for a “super PAC” allied with Mr. Trump. The White House offered no explanation for the timing of her departure.
Headlines March 29, 2017
Trump Signs Executive Order Dismantling Rules to Curb Climate Change
Mar 29, 2017
Surrounded by coal miners, President Trump signed an executive order Tuesday to dismantle a slew of climate rules established by President Obama. If carried out, the executive order will virtually guarantee the United States will fail to meet its 2015 Paris Agreement pledge to reduce emissions in order to curb the effects of climate change. The executive order marks the first step to undo Obama’s Clean Power Plan to limit plant emissions and replace coal-fired power plants with new solar and wind farms. The Clean Power Plan is considered to be a critical element of the U.S.’s plan to meet the targets established in the Paris accord. Environmental and civil rights groups have vowed to fight the executive order.
On Tuesday afternoon, protesters gathered in the freezing rain outside Trump Tower in Manhattan to denounce the executive order. Other demonstrators gathered outside the EPA’s headquarters in Washington, D.C., with a sign reading "Get this toxic dump out of the White House." We’ll have more on Trump’s executive order later in the broadcast.
Topics:
Fact Check: Trump’s Misleading Words on Energy and Jobs
WASHINGTON — In his first major move to undo President Barack Obama’s climate change policies, President Trump declared Tuesday the beginning of a “new era in American energy and production and job creation.”
Here is an assessment of his claims about energy production and jobs.
Mr. Trump said his executive order would pave the way for energy independence.
“First, today’s energy independence action calls for an immediate re-evaluation of the so-called Clean Power Plan.”
This is misleading. Mr.
Trump’s executive order is the start of the process to withdraw the
Clean Power Plan, Mr. Obama’s signature rule that regulates carbon
emissions from power plants.
The United States has been exporting more coal than it has produced for the past decade, and is expected to become a net exporter of natural gas by 2018, even with the Clean Power Plan in place, according to the United States Energy Information Administration.
Over all, the energy information agency projects that the United States will be a net exporter in most cases this year. The Keystone XL Pipeline, which Mr. Trump reminded that he had approved, will carry foreign oil into the United States.
Mr. Trump characterized the Clean Power Plan as a threat to coal miners.
“Perhaps no single regulation threatens our miners, energy workers and companies more than this crushing attack on American industry.”
This is misleading.
The rule was announced in August 2015, and halted by the Supreme Court
the next February. During that time, there were about 9,300 fewer coal
mining jobs.
But
Bureau of Labor Statistics figures show that coal mining jobs have been
on the decline since the 1980s, the earliest data available.
The trend is more attributable to an increase in natural gas production and an increase in automation, as The New York Times’s Coral Davenport has reported. Rolling back the Clean Power Plan will not change either of these two forces.
Mr. Trump claimed the Keystone XL and Dakota Access pipelines would create thousands of jobs.
“We approved the permit to finally build the Keystone XL Pipeline and clear the way to completion of the Dakota Access Pipeline, thousands and thousands of jobs.”
This needs context.
Keystone would support 42,000 temporary jobs in its two-year
construction period, about 3,900 of which are in construction, according
to a State Department report from 2014. After this initial phase, the pipeline would create about 35 permanent, full-time jobs.
Similarly,
the Dakota Access Pipeline is expected to support 8,000 to 12,000
temporary construction jobs and up to 40 permanent jobs, the Brookings Institution found.
Mr. Trump took credit for job growth in the first two months of 2017.
“We’ve already created a half a million new jobs in the first two jobs reports of my administration.”
This is misleading. The Bureau of Labor Statistics reported
that the economy added 238,000 jobs in January and 235,000 jobs in
February. This is healthy, but it’s more attributable to the policies of
Mr. Obama.
As Neil Irwin has reported for The Upshot,
Mr. Trump “has virtually nothing to do with the most recent economic
statistics.” The January jobs report was conducted before Mr. Trump took
office, and the February report reflects conditions roughly three weeks
into his presidency and before he had enacted any significant economic
policies.
Mr. Trump took credit for Ford’s manufacturing expansion.
“And if you notice today, Ford, great company, announced massive new spending on three big plants in the state of Michigan, the state which I love very much. Do you remember what happened in Michigan? Remember, November 8, oh, that was an exciting Michigan evening.”
This needs context. Mr. Trump won Michigan by just under 11,000 votes on Nov. 8 and has repeatedly singled out the Detroit-based automaker for its investment plans during and after the election.
Ford
announced a $1.2 billion investment in three Michigan facilities on
Tuesday morning, which the president immediately praised on Twitter. But
Ford had previously agreed to the investment in a labor contract with the United Automobile Workers. In November 2015, the company pledged $9 billion over four years in United States plants.
Mr. Trump said he has mandated pipelines to be built with U.S. steel.
“This came up a little bit coincidentally when I was signing the pipeline deals. I’m all signing, I’ve got them done. And I said, folks, when do we get this deal? And they said, I think it’s from foreign lands. I said no good. Who makes it, who makes those beautiful pipes for the pipeline? Sir, they’re made outside of this country, and I said no more, no more. So we added a little clause, didn’t take much, that you want to build pipelines in this country, you’re going to buy your steel and you’re going to have it fabricated here.”
This needs context. Mr. Trump signed a presidential memorandum
requiring domestic steel in new pipelines four days after he took
office, but the White House has suggested that the Keystone Pipeline is
exempt because it is not a “new” pipe. By this logic, the directive
would not apply to the Dakota Access Pipeline either.
Neither of Mr. Trump’s memos greenlighting the Keystone and Dakota Access pipelines includes language requiring American steel.
The Opinion Pages | Editorial
The Trump Administration’s War on Science
“Think
of the marvels we can achieve if we simply set free the dreams of our
people,” President Trump said in his speech to Congress last month,
after summoning a list of technological triumphs from America’s past.
“Cures to illnesses that have always plagued us,” and “American
footprints on distant worlds.”
Against those lofty promises, his first budget blueprint is a cramped document that sacrifices American innovation to small-bore politics, shortchanging basic scientific research across the government — from NASA to the Department of Energy to the National Institutes of Health
— in ways that can only stifle invention and undercut the nation’s
competitiveness. Meanwhile, more than 40 top government science
positions, including that of presidential science adviser, remain
vacant.
Already Short of Needs
National Institutes of Health budgets have been falling for years.
Funding change for each sector,
fiscal years 2008-17.
Overall N.I.H. research and development
funding fell 16.6 percent over that time.
$6 BILLION
5
Figures in 2016 dollars.
–14.3%
Cancer
4
3
–15.2%
Heart, lung and blood
2
–15.7%
Diabetes, digestive and kidney
–16.1%
Mental health
–2.4%
1
Aging
–14.8%
Environmental health sciences
–15.5%
Human genome
–9.7%
Biomed, bioengineering
FY ’98
’00
’05
’08
’10
’15
’16
’17
Some
research cuts, particularly to the N.I.H., aren’t likely to make it
past Congress. But they show Mr. Trump’s lack of understanding of
science’s role in national and domestic security, in protecting air and
water and other resources and in preventing disease and lowering the
cost of health care, which consumes one-quarter of the $3.7 trillion federal budget.
Peter
Thiel, a venture capitalist and biomedical research investor who is one
of Mr. Trump’s few supporters in Silicon Valley, is an outspoken
advocate for government-fostered science. A week before the election, he
said:
“Voters are tired of hearing conservative politicians say that
government never works. They know the government wasn’t always this
broken. The Manhattan Project, the Interstate Highway System, and the Apollo program
— whatever you think of these ventures, you cannot doubt the competence
of the government that got them done. But we have fallen very far from
that standard, and we cannot let free market ideology serve as an excuse
for decline.”
That, however, is exactly what Mr. Trump’s budget does. In service to small-government ideology, it proposes
to whack 18 percent from the N.I.H.’s budget, and even more from the
Department of Energy and the E.P.A.’s science programs. A $250 million
annual grant program administered by the National Oceanic and
Atmospheric Administration “supporting coastal and marine management,
research and education” would be killed, including programs that provide
important resources to help coastal states prepare for the coming
effects of climate change
(no surprise there, since Mr. Trump doesn’t believe in climate change).
The earth sciences division at NASA comes in for a 6 percent cut; other
reductions take aim at the United States Geological Survey and the
National Science Foundation, a big player in scientific research.
The
cuts in human health programs have drawn the heaviest criticism. Mary
Woolley, president of Research!America, nonprofit advocates for medical
research, says Mr. Trump’s budget “doesn’t reflect the priorities of a
nation committed to protecting and improving the health and well-being
of its citizens.” The N.I.H.’s 27 institutes underwrite the bulk of the
nation’s medical research; after hefty budget increases in the early
2000s, championed by Senator Arlen Specter, who was a Pennsylvania
Republican, the economic downturn and internal turmoil have led to cuts
that erased most of those gains.
Mr.
Trump’s budget greatly worries medical researchers like Dr. Jeffrey
Lieberman, chairman of the psychiatry department at Columbia University
College of Physicians and Surgeons and director of the New York State
Psychiatric Institute. Nearly 60 percent of Dr. Lieberman’s $240 million
departmental budget is sponsored research, most of it underwritten by
the N.I.H. “Each year we eat what we kill — there is no guaranteed
recurrent revenue,” he said. “And this is true for all academic
medicine.”
In
its budget heyday, the N.I.H. approved about 30 percent of eligible
grant applications. Since 2008, that number has fallen to 10 to 15
percent. “One would have hoped that biomedical research was spared from
the political arena,” Mr. Lieberman said. Not under Mr. Trump.
Today in Trumpworld – March 27
TRUMP’S SCHEDULE:
10:30 a.m.: President Donald Trump will receive his daily intelligence briefing in the Oval Office.
11 a.m.: Trump will participate in a roundtable discussion with women small business owners in the Roosevelt Room.
12:30 p.m.: Trump will lunch with Vice President Mike Pence and Secretary of State Rex Tillerson in the presidential dining room.
3 p.m.: Trump will hold a bill-signing in the Oval Office.
OTHER HAPPENINGS: Sean Spicer will brief the press at the White House at 1:30 p.m.
NOW WHAT: From POLITICO’s Tara Palmeri: “After suffering its first legislative blow at the hands of the Washington establishment, the White House regrouped over the weekend with senior aides strategizing on ways to score their boss a few wins and reassessing future friends and foes. Instead of dwelling on the humbling Obamacare repeal defeat, President Donald Trump's chief strategist Steve Bannon told POLITICO there would be "action, action, action" this week coming from the White House. Expect executive orders this week on trade, energy and environmental regulations, he said in a text message.”
ACTION, ACTION, ACTION: From the Washington Post’s Ashley Parker and Philip Rucker: “President Trump plans to unveil a new White House office on Monday with sweeping authority to overhaul the federal bureaucracy and fulfill key campaign promises — such as reforming care for veterans and fighting opioid addiction — by harvesting ideas from the business world and, potentially, privatizing some government functions. The White House Office of American Innovation, to be led by Jared Kushner, the president’s son-in-law and senior adviser, will operate as its own nimble power center within the West Wing and will report directly to Trump. Viewed internally as a SWAT team of strategic consultants, the office will be staffed by former business executives and is designed to infuse fresh thinking into Washington, float above the daily political grind and create a lasting legacy for a president still searching for signature achievements.”
BLAME GAME IN THE WHITE HOUSE: From POLITICO’s Alex Isenstadt: “With President Donald Trump’s sweeping agenda hitting the rocks as he edges toward the 100-day mark, top aides, political allies and donors are embroiled in a furious round of finger-pointing over who is at fault. The recriminations extend far beyond the implosion of the GOP’s Obamacare repeal on Friday. Senior aides are lashing each other over their inability to stem a never-ending tide of negative stories about the president. There is second-guessing of the Republican National Committee’s efforts to mobilize Trump’s electoral coalition on behalf of his legislative priorities. At the Environmental Protection Agency, a top official quit recently amid accusations the department is failing to advance the president’s campaign promises. And one of Trump's most generous benefactors, Rebekah Mercer, has expressed frustration over the direction of the administration.”
TAX REFORM PROSPECTS: From the New York Times’ Alan Rappeport: “Picking themselves up after the bruising collapse of their health care plan, President Trump and Republicans in Congress will start this week on a legislative obstacle course that will be even more arduous: the first overhaul of the tax code in three decades. Mr. Trump’s inability to make good on his promise to repeal the Affordable Care Act has made the already daunting challenge of tax reform even more difficult. Not only has Mr. Trump’s aura of political invincibility been shattered, but without killing the Affordable Care Act, Republicans will be unable to rewrite the tax code in the sweeping fashion that the president has called for. The grand plans of lower rates, fewer loopholes and a tax on imports may have to be scaled back to a big corporate tax cut and possibly an individual tax cut. A lot of people think Mr. Trump might go for this to get an easy win.”
Mr.
Trump, in a telephone interview moments after the bill was pulled,
tried to put the most flattering light on it. “The best thing that could
happen is exactly what happened — watch,” he said.
“Obamacare
unfortunately will explode,” Mr. Trump said later. “It’s going to have a
very bad year.” At some point, he said, after another round of big
premium increases, “Democrats will come to us and say, ‘Look, let’s get
together and get a great health care bill or plan that’s really great
for the people of our country.’”
Mr.
Trump expressed weariness with the effort, though its failure took a
fraction of the time that Democrats devoted to enacting the Affordable
Care Act in 2009 and 2010. “It’s enough already,” the president said.
A
major reason for the bill’s demise was the opposition of members of the
conservative House Freedom Caucus, which wanted more aggressive steps
to lower insurance costs and to dismantle federal regulation of
insurance products.
In
a day of high drama, Mr. Ryan rushed to the White House shortly after
noon on Friday to tell Mr. Trump he did not have the votes for a repeal
bill that had been promised for seven years — since Mr. Obama signed the
landmark health care law. During a 3 p.m. phone call, the two men decided to withdraw the bill rather than watch its defeat on the House floor.
Mr.
Trump later told journalists in the Oval Office that Republicans were
10 to 15 votes short of what they needed to pass the repeal bill.
The
effort to win passage had been relentless, and hardly hidden. Vice
President Mike Pence and Tom Price, the health secretary, visited
Capitol Hill on Friday for a late appeal to House conservatives, but
their pleas fell on deaf ears.
“You
can’t pretend and say this is a win for us,” said Representative Mark
Walker of North Carolina, the chairman of the conservative Republican
Study Committee, who conceded it was a “good moment” for Democrats.
“Probably that champagne that wasn’t popped back in November may be utilized this evening,” Mr. Walker said.
At
3:30 p.m. on Friday, Mr. Ryan called Republicans into a closed-door
meeting to deliver the news that the bill would be withdrawn, with no
plans to try again. The meeting lasted five minutes. One of the
architects of the House bill, Representative Greg Walden, Republican of
Oregon and the chairman of the Energy and Commerce Committee, put it
bluntly: “This bill’s done.”
“We are going to focus on other issues at this point,” he said.
The Republican bill would have repealed tax penalties for people without health insurance,
rolled back federal insurance standards, reduced subsidies for the
purchase of private insurance and set new limits on spending for Medicaid,
the federal-state program that covers more than 70 million low-income
people. The bill would have repealed hundreds of billions of dollars in
taxes imposed by the Affordable Care Act and would also have cut off
federal funds to Planned Parenthood for one year.
Mr.
Ryan had said the bill included “huge conservative wins.” But it never
won over conservatives who wanted a more thorough eradication of the
Affordable Care Act. Nor did it have the backing of more moderate
Republicans who were anxiously aware of the Congressional Budget
Office’s assessment that the bill would leave 24 million more Americans
without insurance in 2024, compared with the number who would be
uninsured under the current law.
The
budget office also warned that in the short run, the Republicans’
legislation would drive insurance premiums higher. For older Americans
approaching retirement, the cost of insurance could have risen sharply.
With
the House’s most hard-line conservatives holding fast against the bill,
support for the legislation collapsed Friday after more and more
Republicans came out in opposition. They included Representatives Rodney
Frelinghuysen of New Jersey, the soft-spoken chairman of the House
Appropriations Committee, and Barbara Comstock of Virginia, whose
suburban Washington district went for the Democratic presidential
nominee, Hillary Clinton, in November.
“Seven
years after enactment of Obamacare, I wanted to support legislation
that made positive changes to rescue health care in America,” Mr.
Frelinghuysen said. “Unfortunately, the legislation before the House
today is currently unacceptable as it would place significant new costs
and barriers to care on my constituents in New Jersey.”
The
bill died after Republican leaders, in a bid for conservative support,
agreed to eliminate federal standards for the minimum benefits that must
be provided by certain health insurance policies.
“It’s
so cartoonishly malicious that I can picture someone twirling their
mustache as they drafted it in their secret Capitol lair last night,”
said Representative Jim McGovern, Democrat of Massachusetts.
“Republicans are killing the requirements that insurance plans cover
essential health benefits” such as emergency services, maternity care, mental health care, substance abuse treatment and prescription drugs.
Mr. Trump blamed Democrats for the bill’s defeat, and they proudly accepted responsibility.
“Let’s
just, for a moment, breathe a sigh of relief for the American people
that the Affordable Care Act was not repealed,” said Representative
Nancy Pelosi of California, the House Democratic leader.
Defeat
of the bill could be a catalyst if it forces Republicans and Democrats
to work together to improve the Affordable Care Act, which members of
both parties say needs repair. Democrats have been saying for weeks that
they want to work with Republicans on such changes, but first, they
said, Republicans must abandon their drive to repeal the law.
“Obamacare is the law of the land,” Mr. Ryan said. “It’s going to remain the law of the land until it’s replaced.”
Whatever
success Mr. Trump had in making business deals, he utterly failed in
his first effort at cutting a deal at the pinnacle of power in
Washington, Democrats said.
“This
is not the art of the deal,” said Representative Lloyd Doggett,
Democrat of Texas, alluding to Mr. Trump’s best-selling book. “It is the
art of the steal, of taking away insurance coverage from families that
really need it to provide tax breaks for those at the very top.”
Rejection
of the repeal bill may prompt Republicans to reconsider the political
strategy they were planning to use for the next few years.
“We
have to do some soul-searching internally to determine whether or not
we are even capable of functioning as a governing body,” said
Representative Kevin Cramer, Republican of North Dakota. “If ‘no’ is
your goal, it’s the easiest goal in the world to reach.”
Representative
Robert Pittenger, Republican of North Carolina, offered this advice to
hard-line conservatives who helped sink the bill: “Follow the example of
Ronald Reagan. He was a master; he built consensus. He would say, ‘I’ll
take 80 percent and come back for the other 20 percent later.’”
Failure of the House effort leaves the Affordable Care Act in place, with all the features Republicans detest.
“We
tried our hardest,” said Representative Michael C. Burgess of Texas,
chairman of the Energy and Commerce subcommittee on health. “There were
people who were not interested in solving the problem. They win today.”
“The Freedom Caucus wins,” he added. “They get Obamacare forever.”
Jennifer Steinhauer, Glenn Thrush and Emmarie Huetteman contributed reporting.
Get politics and Washington news updates via Facebook, Twitter and in the Morning Briefing newsletter.
Why is the Trump presidency such a rolling disaster?
When Republicans imagined having a president of their own and control of Congress, they thought it would be a nonstop string of legislative achievements and improvements to government, bringing an inspiring new era of efficiency and effectiveness that showed Americans what the GOP was really capable of.
That is not quite how things are working out. Let’s take a brief tour around the news from just today, to see what is befalling the Trump administration:
- The travel ban: Federal judges in Hawaii and Maryland halted the second version of the administration’s travel ban, ruling that its discriminatory intent likely makes it unconstitutional and putting it on indefinite hold.
- The Affordable Care Act repeal: After a brutal Congressional Budget Office assessment showed that the Republican bill would cause 24 million Americans to lose their health coverage, House Speaker Paul Ryan now admits that the bill can’t pass the House in its current form.
- The budget: “President Trump on Thursday will unveil a budget plan that calls for a sharp increase in military spending and stark cuts across much of the rest of the government including the elimination of dozens of long-standing federal programs that assist the poor, fund scientific research and aid America’s allies abroad.”
Where Trump's budget proposal goes next
President Trump has introduced his budget
plan, but that's just the beginning of the appropriations process. The
Washington Post's White House economic policy reporter Damian Paletta
explains what happens next.
(Photo: Jabin Botsford/Video: Jenny Starrs/Photo: Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post)
Abysmal management. Trump was only the latest in a long line of political figures who argued that if someone from outside politics took over the government, he’d whip it into shape with his business savvy and management expertise. The result has been the most chaotic and incompetent White House anyone can remember. As Politico reported Wednesday, “A culture of paranoia is consuming the Trump administration, with staffers increasingly preoccupied with perceived enemies — inside their own government,” creating “an environment of fear that has hamstrung the routine functioning of the executive branch.”
Almost no one at the top levels of the Trump administration has experience in government, which not surprisingly has made everything more difficult as they bumble around trying to figure out how things work. Whether because of their own indifference to governing or the inability to find anyone willing to work for Trump, the administration hasn’t even nominated people to fill more than 500 of the 553 key positions requiring Senate confirmation, leaving agencies across the government barely able to function. If this is what Trump considers a “fine-tuned machine,” imagine what it would look like if it weren’t running so smoothly.
A disastrous first legislative priority. Republicans may have had no choice but to pursue the repeal of the ACA right off the bat, but they could hardly have gone about it in a less competent way. After seven years of attacking the law, they still hadn’t settled on their alternative, leading to a hastily written plan that not only would create a health-care catastrophe if implemented but also managed to win the displeasure of their members in both the Senate (for being too harsh) and the House (for not being harsh enough). Now the White House is saying it’s Paul Ryan’s fault, Ryan is trying to make Trump share the blame, and the whole thing is spiraling downward. Rich Lowry, the editor of the conservative National Review, writes that the repeal bill “has had the worst rollout of any major piece of legislation in memory,” and has left the GOP “staring into the abyss.”
An impulsive, distracted president. People keep wondering if the latest Trump outburst is a clever ploy to distract the country from whatever piece of bad news is currently vexing the administration. But the one who’s easily distractible is the president himself, and then he in turn distracts his staff and congressional allies. Just look at what’s happening with his accusation that President Barack Obama tapped his phones. On impulse, after reading an article on a white nationalist website, Trump levels a ludicrous and baseless charge, then everyone in the White House has to pretend that it’s serious and legitimate, and they’re forced to answer questions about it for weeks. All that time could be spent advancing an affirmative agenda.
Because he can never admit that he was wrong, Trump drags the issue out endlessly, just as he did with earlier iterations of this pattern, about the size of his inaugural crowd or the millions of phantom illegal votes that led to his popular vote loss (I’d encourage you to read the transcript of his Wednesday interview with Tucker Carlson and marvel at the fact that this man is actually president of the United States). That then makes life difficult for Republicans in Congress, who are put in the awkward position of either defending the latest bit of stupidity issuing from the Oval Office or being honest about how ridiculous it is, which they know would win them the president’s ire.
Much as you can blame Republicans in Congress, including Ryan, for being Trump’s enablers, there’s no doubt that they’re not happy about how things are going. And as time goes on and their minds turn to the 2018 elections, they’re going to start thinking more and more about their own survival. Given that even in the best of times the president’s party usually loses seats in the midterms, they may begin looking for ways to separate themselves from an unpopular president, which is only going to make future legislating more complicated.
Now, the caveat. Liberals shouldn’t make the mistake of thinking that if the Trump administration’s political standing or basic competence don’t improve, then lots of very conservative things with profound effects on people’s lives won’t still happen. They will, and in some cases already have. And there’s plenty of time for the administration to get its act together and start operating with some minimal level of competence. But if I were a Republican, I wouldn’t be too pleased with what we’ve seen so far.
Politics
Gorsuch Says He’d Rule Against Trump if Law Required It
WASHINGTON — Judge Neil M. Gorsuch, President Trump’s Supreme Court
nominee, sought to assure the Senate and the nation on Tuesday that he
would be a fair-minded and independent justice. He said he would not
hesitate to rule against Mr. Trump if the law required it, and he
repeated his earlier private criticism of Mr. Trump’s attacks on judges who had ruled against the administration.
“When
anyone criticizes the honesty or integrity or motives of a federal
judge,” Judge Gorsuch said at his confirmation hearing, “I find that
disheartening and demoralizing.”
Asked if that general statement applied to Mr. Trump, Judge Gorsuch said, “Anyone is anyone.”
By
turns expansive and evasive, Judge Gorsuch discussed legal doctrines at
length, but refused to take positions on specific issues. He asserted,
as have previous Supreme Court nominees, that it would be unfair to
future litigants for him to announce his views on issues that could come
before the court.
Judge
Gorsuch’s style was folksy, earnest, learned and emphatic, and he
easily dodged questions from members of the Senate Judiciary Committee
that he was not inclined to answer. But he spoke forcefully about his
devotion to the rule of law.
His
exchanges with Democratic senators were sometimes tense and testy. Yet
through every planned line of attack — from his record on workers’
rights to his skepticism of the power of regulatory agencies — Judge
Gorsuch emerged with few scratches.
Graham Is Comfortable With Judge Gorsuch
Senator Lindsey Graham of South
Carolina said he was at ease with President Trump's nomination of Judge
Gorsuch. “Quite frankly, I was quite worried about who he’d pick," Mr.
Graham said. "Maybe somebody on TV.”
In
response to questions from Senator Patrick J. Leahy, Democrat of
Vermont, Judge Gorsuch expressed admiration for Judge Merrick B.
Garland, President Barack Obama’s nominee for the same Supreme Court vacancy created by the death of Justice Antonin Scalia.
He is “an outstanding judge,” Judge Gorsuch said.
“Whenever I see his name attached to an opinion, it’s one I read with special care,” Judge Gorsuch said.
But
he refused to say whether Senate Republicans had mistreated Judge
Garland by refusing to consider his nomination for the better part of a
year.
“I
can’t get involved in politics,” Judge Gorsuch said. “There’s judicial
canons that prevent me from doing that. And I think it would be very
imprudent of judges to start commenting on political disputes.”
Mr.
Leahy had no such qualms. “I think it was shameful,” he said of the
Republicans’ gambit. “I think it has severely damaged the reputation of
the committee. I think it has severely damaged the reputation of the
senators who concurred with that.”
On
other questions, Judge Gorsuch was less reserved. He did not hesitate,
for instance, when asked to declare his independence from Mr. Trump.
“Specifically
tell us whether you’d have any trouble ruling against the president who
appointed you,” Senator Charles E. Grassley, the Iowa Republican who
leads the Judiciary Committee, instructed him.
“That’s
a softball, Mr. Chairman,” Judge Gorsuch said. “I have no difficulty
ruling against or for any party, other than based on what the law and
the facts and the particular case require.”
During
the presidential campaign, Mr. Trump said he would seek to appoint
justices ready to vote to overturn Roe v. Wade, the 1973 decision
establishing a constitutional right to abortion.
But
Judge Gorsuch said that no one from the White House asked him to make
any commitments on legal issues that could come before the Supreme
Court.
“I
have offered no promises on how I’d rule in any case to anyone,” he
said, “and I don’t think it’s appropriate for a judge to do so, no
matter who’s doing the asking.”
Senator
Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina, asked Judge Gorsuch how
he would have responded had Mr. Trump asked him to vote to overrule Roe
during his interview at Trump Tower.
“Senator, I would have walked out the door,” Judge Gorsuch said.
Asked
about Roe and countless other Supreme Court decisions, Judge Gorsuch
responded with variations on a theme. The rulings were entitled to
respect as precedents of the Supreme Court, he said, and should not be
overturned lightly.
“If
I were to start telling you which are my favorite precedents or which
are my least favorite precedents or if I view a precedent in that
fashion,” Judge Gorsuch said, “I would be tipping my hand and suggesting
to litigants that I’ve already made up my mind about their cases.”
Republicans
largely used their questioning to help insulate Judge Gorsuch from
expected criticism, offering 30-minute safe harbors. Senator Ted Cruz of
Texas was perhaps the most creative, coaxing Judge Gorsuch to hold
forth on “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy,” judicial basketball
games and the rodeo practice of “mutton busting.”
And
for Democrats still straining to determine how aggressively to counter
Judge Gorsuch’s nomination, the proceedings on Tuesday offered little
help. At times, after fits of effective sidestepping from the nominee,
they paused for several seconds to regroup, looking through their notes
anew.
Efforts to make the hearings a referendum, in part, on Mr. Trump himself also faltered.
Mr.
Leahy pressed Judge Gorsuch on Mr. Trump’s order banning travel from
several predominantly Muslim countries. “Senator, that’s an issue that’s
currently being litigated actively, as you know,” Judge Gorsuch said,
declining to weigh in.
Mr.
Leahy said that some Republicans had argued that a rapid confirmation
for Judge Gorsuch could represent the administration’s best chance of
winning a case on this issue before the Supreme Court.
“Senator,
a lot of people say a lot of silly things,” Judge Gorsuch said, adding
that anyone making that argument “has no idea how I’d rule in that
case.” He said he would not tip his hand on Tuesday.
Democratic
senators pressed Judge Gorsuch about his involvement as a Justice
Department lawyer in 2005 and 2006 defending Bush administration
policies on harsh interrogation and surveillance. Judge Gorsuch
responded that he had been a lawyer defending a client.
Mr. Leahy also asked if the president’s national security determinations were reviewable by the court.
“Senator, no man is above the law,” the judge said.
Judge
Gorsuch, who had criticized liberals for preferring litigation to the
political process in an essay written before he became a judge,
distanced himself from his earlier statements.
On Tuesday, he said “the problem lies on both sides of the aisle.”
Senator
Dianne Feinstein of California, the committee’s top Democrat, asked,
“How do we have confidence in you that you won’t just be for the big
corporations, that you will be for the little men?”
Judge
Gorsuch said his record demonstrated that he had ruled for both
business interests and workers. He said he had not always been happy to
vote as the law required. One example, he said, came in a case Democrats
have cited often: the tale of the trucker fired for abandoning his
cargo for his own safety in subzero temperatures.
“This
is one of those that you take home at night,” said Judge Gorsuch, who
wrote in a dissent that the company was permitted to fire the man.
But
the law, he argued, was clear: “The law said the man is protected and
can’t be fired if he refuses to operate an unsafe vehicle.”
In
fact, Judge Gorsuch said, the driver had unhitched his vehicle from the
trailing cargo to get to safety. “He chose to operate,” Judge Gorsuch
said, adding, “I think by any plain understanding, he operated the
vehicle.”
The
nominee expressed no fondness for this particular law — “I’ve been
stuck on a highway in Wyoming in a snowstorm,” he said — but said it was
his duty to observe it.
Later,
Senator Al Franken, Democrat of Minnesota, perhaps the most aggressive
questioner of the day, asked Judge Gorsuch what he would have done if
faced with the same conditions as the trucker. Judge Gorsuch would not
say.
“That’s absurd,” Mr. Franken, a veteran of “Saturday Night Live” in a previous life, said of Judge Gorsuch’s dissent in the case.
“Now, I had a career in identifying absurdity,” he added. “And I know it when I see it.”
In the Garden: A Welcome Sign of Spring
By Charles Kidder
Perhaps
the first plant I could recognize and name as a child was the daffodil,
a welcome sight and fragrance after a long New York winter. And
although native to the Mediterranean, daffodils (Narcissus species) have
been in Virginia since at least the middle of the seventeenth century.
Beginning in the 1890s, Gloucester County became a
center of daffodil production for much of the eastern United States.
Much of this revolved around “wild” or naturalized daffodils that were
cut and shipped north. By the middle of the twentieth century, this
industry was rapidly dying off for a variety of reasons. But Gloucester
County still has one daffodil breeder of note and continues to celebrate
its floral heritage with the Daffodil Festival on the last weekend of
March. More on that later.
The various Narcissus species, hybrids and
cultivars are commonly referred to as either daffodils, jonquils or even
simply narcissus, the latter especially when referring to the paper
whites commonly forced indoors. The term jonquil is commonly used in
certain regions for any daffodil, but technically refers only to one
group that has narrow reed-like foliage. The various daffodils are
divided into 13 divisions—or 12, if you believe some sources—that are
based on flower shape and heritage. For example, Division 1 daffodils
are called Trumpets, since the central portion or trumpet is quite long.
Regardless of division, colors range from yellow to white, perhaps with
some pink or orange in the trumpets. If you seek out specialty
nurseries, hundreds of cultivars are available.
All daffodils have similar cultural requirements.
As for the amount of sun they want, the more the better. Part sun, or
about six hours per day, is sufficient, but less sun than that will lead
to reduced blooming, even though the plants may soldier on for a long
time. And sunlight in a deciduous woodland does not really count as full
sunlight. As for soil, good drainage is important to avoid bulb rot. If
your soil is unusually sodden, either amend it with gravel or put
daffodils in a raised bed.
Daffodil bulbs should be planted at a depth equal
to about three times their diameter, so a two-inch bulb should be six
inches deep. Six inches is also a good distance between bulbs. Farther
apart and they lose visual impact; closer, and they will require
division sooner. Bulbs will look funny planted like soldiers in a
straight line, so if you have ten bulbs, better to either plant them in
two groups of five, or in a staggered double row. If you are planting a
very large number, you can avoid an overly orderly appearance by picking
up a handful and tossing them to the general area in which you wish to
plant.
There are any number of “new, improved,
back-saving!!” bulb planters out there. Use whatever works best for you,
which might just be an ordinary trowel or even a garden shovel. And
remember: nothing says you have to plant one bulb at a time. You can
take a spade and dig up a good-sized hole with one or two punches, and
then throw in three to five bulbs. For even larger areas, a rototiller
might be the quickest option. And do the bulbs have to be pointy-side
up? That’s the ideal, but the shoot will always get turned around and
pointed toward the sky anyway. If you’re in a hurry, ensuring that the
bulbs are at least on their side would be a good compromise.
Amending your soil with compost will definitely
give your daffodils a boost, but there’s no need to fertilize when
planting—which of course is not now, but in mid-to-late fall. In very
early spring, a balanced fertilizer—about 5-5-5 or 10-10-10 is
best—should be sprinkled around the plants just as their foliage
emerges. (You can also do this in the fall, but that assumes you’ll
remember where your daffodils are!) And speaking of feeding your
daffodils, we all know what to do with their foliage, which is there to
provide nutrients for the bulb, right? Doing nothing is perfectly okay.
Or when the foliage turns yellow and lies on the ground, you can throw
some mulch on it if the sight offends you. Do not cut the foliage off
while it’s still green or tie it up in cutesy knots! That prevents
movement of nutrients down to the bulb; plus, it takes a lot of valuable
gardening time.
But back to Gloucester County. The annual Daffodil
Festival takes place on the last weekend of March and includes the usual
attractions: a parade, a queen, entertainers, a race, a car show, and
of course, daffodils. (A full schedule is available on the county’s
website. There’s also a link to the history of daffodil farming in this
corner of Virginia.) On Saturday they will be running frequent buses
over to Brent and Becky’s Bulbs for tours and shopping. Brent and Becky
Heath own a business that has been in the family for several
generations, at one time operating as the Daffodil Mart. Although they
now sell many other types of bulbs, daffodils are still a specialty,
with over 200 varieties available.
Once planted, daffodils tend to naturalize, meaning
they spread slowly, but never seem to become invasive. Part of their
secret to longevity might be their poisonous nature: deer and other
critters don’t bother them, so you can enjoy your host of daffodils for
many years.
Betty MacDonald fan club fans,
we share a very special gift by beloved and very popular Betty MacDonald Fan Club Honor member Letizia Mancino.
We know you'll enjoy it as much as we do.
Thanks a Million, dear Letizia Mancino.
You are an outstanding writer and artist.
We are so proud and happy to have you with us.
Letizia writes: One should not underestimate Wolfgang Hampel’s talent in speedily mobilizing Betty MacDonald’s friends.
We agree. Thank you so much dear Wolfgang Hampel for doing this. You founded Betty MacDonald Fan Club with four members.
Now we have members in 40 countries around the world. A dream came true.
Mary Holmes did an excellent job in translating this great story.
Thank you so much dear Mary Holmes.
We are really very grateful.
All the best to Letizia, Wolfgang and Mary and to all Betty MacDonald Fan Club fans from all over the world!
Lenard
Following in Betty’s footsteps in Seattle:
or some small talk with Betty
Copyright 2011/2016 by Letizia Mancino
All rights reserved
translated by Mary Holmes
We were going to Canada in the summer. “When we are in Edmonton”, I said to Christoph Cremer, “let’s make a quick trip to Seattle”. And that’s how it happened. At Edmonton Airport we climbed into a plane and two hours later we landed in the city where Betty had lived. I was so happy to be in Seattle at last and to be able to trace Betty’s tracks!
Wolfgang Hampel had told Betty’s friends about our arrival.
They were happy to plan a small marathon through the town and it’s surroundings with us. We only had a few days free. One should not underestimate Wolfgang’s talent in speedily mobilizing Betty’s friends, even though it was holiday time. E-mails flew backwards and forwards between Heidelberg and Seattle, and soon a well prepared itinerary was ready for us. Shortly before my departure Wolfgang handed me several parcels, presents for Betty MacDonald's friends. I rushed to pack the heavy gifts in my luggage but because of the extra weight had to throw out a pair of pajamas!
After we had landed we took a taxi to the Hotel in downtown Seattle. I was so curious to see everything. I turned my head in all directions like one of the hungry hens from Betty’s farm searching for food! Fortunately it was quite a short journey otherwise I would have lost my head like a loose screw!
Our hotel room was on the 22nd floor and looked directly out onto the 16-lane highway. There might have been even more than 16 but it made me too giddy to count! It was like a glimpse of hell! “And is this Seattle?” I asked myself. I was horrified! The cars racing by were enough to drive one mad. The traffic roared by day and night.
We immediately contacted Betty MacDonald's friends and let them know we had arrived and they confirmed the times when we should see them.
On the next morning I planned my first excursion tracing Betty’s tracks. I spread out the map of Seattle. “Oh dear” I realized “the Olympic Peninsula is much too far away for me to get there.”
Betty nodded to me! “Very difficult, Letizia, without a car.”
“But I so much wanted to see your chicken farm”
“My chickens are no longer there and you can admire the mountains from a distance”
But I wanted to go there. I left the hotel and walked to the waterfront where the State Ferry terminal is. Mamma mia, the streets in Seattle are so steep! I couldn’t prevent my feet from running down the hill. Why hadn’t I asked for brakes to be fixed on my shoes? I looked at the drivers. How incredibly good they must be to accelerate away from the red traffic lights. The people were walking uphill towards me as briskly as agile salmon. Good heavens, these Americans! I tried to keep my balance. The force of gravity is relentless. I grasped hold of objects where I could and staggered down.
In Canada a friend had warned me that in Seattle I would see a lot of people with crutches.
Betty laughed. “ It’s not surprising, Letizia, walking salmon don’t fall directly into the soft mouth of a bear!”
“ Betty, stop making these gruesome remarks. We are not in Firlands!”
I went further. Like a small deranged ant at the foot of a palace monster I came to a tunnel. The noise was unbearable. On the motorway, “The Alaskan Way Viaduct”, cars, busses and trucks were driving at the speed of light right over my head. They puffed out their poisonous gas into the open balconies and cultivated terraces of the luxurious sky- scrapers without a thought in the world. America! You are crazy!
“Betty, are all people in Seattle deaf? Or is it perhaps a privilege for wealthy people to be able to enjoy having cars so near to their eyes and noses to save them from boredom?”
“When the fog democratically allows everything to disappear into nothing, it makes a bit of a change, Letizia”
“ Your irony is incorrigible, Betty, but tell me, Seattle is meant to be a beautiful city, But where?”
I had at last reached the State Ferry terminal.
“No Madam, the ferry for Vashon Island doesn’t start from here,” one of the men in the ticket office tells me. ”Take a buss and go to the ferry terminal in West Seattle.”
Betty explained to me “The island lies in Puget Sound and not in Elliott Bay! It is opposite the airport. You must have seen it when you were landing!”
“Betty, when I am landing I shut my eyes and pray!”
It’s time for lunch. The weather is beautiful and warm. Who said to me that it always rains here?
“Sure to be some envious man who wanted to frighten you away from coming to Seattle. The city is really beautiful, you’ll see. Stay by the waterfront, choose the best restaurant with a view of Elliott Bay and enjoy it.”
“Thank you Betty!”
I find a table on the terrace of “Elliott’s Oyster House”. The view of the island is wonderful. It lies quietly in the sun like a green fleecy cushion on the blue water.
Betty plays with my words:
“Vashon Island is a big cushion, even bigger than Bainbridge which you see in front of your eyes, Letizia. The islands look similar. They have well kept houses and beautiful gardens”.
I relax during this introduction, “Bainbridge” you are Vashon Island, and order a mineral water.
“At one time the hotel belonging to the parents of Monica Sone stood on the waterfront.”
“Oh, of your friend Kimi!” Unfortunately I forget to ask Betty exactly where it was.
My mind wanders and I think of my mountain hike back to the hotel! “Why is there no donkey for tourists?” Betty laughs:
“I’m sure you can walk back to the hotel. “Letizia can do everything.””
“Yes, Betty, I am my own donkey!”
But I don’t remember that San Francisco is so steep. It doesn’t matter, I sit and wait. The waiter comes and brings me the menu. I almost fall off my chair!
“ What, you have geoduck on the menu! I have to try it” (I confess I hate the look of geoduck meat. Betty’s recipe with the pieces made me feel quite sick – I must try Betty’s favourite dish!)
“Proof that you love me!” said Betty enthusiastically “ Isn’t the way to the heart through the stomach?”
I order the geoduck. The waiter looks at me. He would have liked to recommend oysters.
“Geoduck no good for you!”
Had he perhaps read my deepest thoughts? Fate! Then no geoduck. “No good for me.”
“Neither geoduck nor tuberculosis in Seattle” whispered Betty in my ear!
“Oh Betty, my best friend, you take such good care of me!”
I order salmon with salad.
“Which salmon? Those that swim in water or those that run through Seattle?”
“Betty, I believe you want me to have a taste of your black humour.”
“Enjoy it then, Letizia.”
During lunch we talked about tuberculosis, and that quite spoilt our appetite.
“Have you read my book “The Plague and I”?”
“Oh Betty, I’ve started to read it twice but both times I felt so sad I had to stop again!”
“But why?” asked Betty “Nearly everybody has tuberculosis! I recovered very quickly and put on 20 pounds! There was no talk of me wasting away! What did you think of my jokes in the book?”
“Those would have been a good reason for choosing another sanitorium. I would have been afraid of becoming a victim of your humour! You would have certainly given me a nickname! You always thought up such amusing names!” Betty laughed.
“You’re right. I would have called you “Roman nose”. I would have said to Urbi and Orbi “ Early this morning “Roman nose” was brought here. She speaks broken English, doesn’t eat geoduck but she does love cats.”
“Oh Betty, I would have felt so ashamed to cough. To cough in your presence, how embarrassing! You would have talked about how I coughed, how many coughs!”
“It depends on that “how”, Letizia!”
“Please, leave Goethe quotations out of it. You have certainly learnt from the Indians how to differentiate between noises. It’s incredible how you can distinguish between so many sorts of cough! At least 10!”
“So few?”
”And also your descriptions of the patients and the nurses were pitiless. An artistic revenge! The smallest pimple on their face didn’t escape your notice! Amazing.”
“ I was also pitiless to myself. Don’t forget my irony against myself!”
Betty was silent. She was thinking about Kimi, the “Princess” from Japan! No, she had only written good things about her best friend, Monica Sone, in her book “The Plague and I”. A deep friendship had started in the hospital. The pearl that developed from the illness.
“Isn’t it wonderful, Betty, that an unknown seed can make its way into a mollusk in the sea and develop into a beautiful jewel?” Betty is paying attention.
“Betty, the friendship between you and Monica reminds me of Goethe’s poem “Gingo-Biloba”. You must know it?” Betty nods and I begin to recite it:
The leaf of this Eastern tree
Which has been entrusted to my garden
Offers a feast of secret significance,
For the edification of the initiate.
Is it one living thing.
That has become divided within itself?
Are these two who have chosen each other,
So that we know them as one?
The friendship with Monica is like the wonderful gingo-biloba leaf, the tree from the east. Betty was touched. There was a deep feeling of trust between us.
“Our friendship never broke up, partly because she was in distress, endangered by the deadly illness. We understood and supplemented each other. We were like one lung with two lobes, one from the east and one from the west!”
“A beautiful picture, Betty. You were like two red gingo-biloba leaves!”
Betty was sad and said ” Monica, although Japanese, before she really knew me felt she was also an American. But she was interned in America, Letizia, during the second world war. Isn’t that terrible?”
“Betty, I never knew her personally. I have only seen her on a video, but what dignity in her face, and she speaks and moves so gracefully!”
“Fate could not change her”
“Yes, Betty, like the gingo-biloba tree in Hiroshima. It was the only tree that blossomed again after the atom bomb!”
The bill came and I paid at once. In America one is urged away from the table when one has finished eating. If one wants to go on chatting one has to order something else.
“That’s why all those people gossiping at the tables are so fat!” Betty remarks. “Haven’t you seen how many massively obese people walk around in the streets of America. Like dustbins that have never been emptied!” With this typically unsentimental remark Betty ended our conversation.
Ciao! I so enjoyed the talk; the humour, the irony and the empathy. I waved to her and now I too felt like moving! I take a lovely walk along the waterfront.
Now I am back in Heidelberg and when I think about how Betty’s “Princessin” left this world on September 5th and that in August I was speaking about her with Betty in Seattle I feel very sad. The readers who knew her well (we feel that every author and hero of a book is nearer to us than our fleeting neighbours next door) yes we, who thought of her as immortal, cannot believe that even she would die after 92 years. How unforeseen and unexpected that her death should come four days after her birthday on September 1th. On September 5th I was on my way to Turkey, once again in seventh heaven, looking back on the unforgettable days in Seattle. I was flying from west to east towards the rising sun.
Is this Mr. Tigerli?
 |
