Betty MacDonald, the Kettles and the anniversary

same colour, isn't it.........................

Betty MacDonald fan club fans,

as already mentioned we are 'celebrating' a very special anniversary.

There is no doubt regarding Betty MacDonald's reaction to such a politician.



I totally agree with Betty MacDonald fan club founder Wolfgang Hampel. 

We have to disagree if people say Betty MacDonald wasn't very interested in politics.


You only have to read Betty MacDonald's fascinating letters.

Tina, Greta, Mats, Soeren, Martin, Astrid and Betty MacDonald fan club research team are working on it.

They are going to publish their results in Betty MacDonald fan club newsletter November and December 2017.

Can you remember the Kettles' opinion about the politicians?

If so send us an answer and you might be our Betty MacDonald fan club Monday surprise winner.

Happy Monday - although we have some really sad and tragic news!

Take care,

Claus  

Many ESC fans from all over the world are so very sad because we lost Joy Fleming - one of the best singers ever. 


Betty MacDonald fan club founder Wolfgang Hampel sings  'Try to remember' especially for Betty MacDonald fan club organizer Linde Lund at Vita Magica September

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Vita Magica Betty MacDonald event with Wolfgang Hampel, Thomas Bödigheimer and Friedrich von Hoheneichen

Vita Magica 

Betty MacDonald 

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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

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Betty MacDonald fan club items  - comments

Betty MacDonald fan club - The Stove and I  

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Betty MacDonald fan club organizer Linde Lund  

Betty MacDonald fan club organizer Greta Larson

A year ago

Donald Trump's Republican Fascist Party. Puppets for Putin.

Why I refuse to sit down, shut up and get over it

Nov 25, 2016 5:06pm by Libby Shaw
 
This outspoken bigoted, xenophobic, misogynist fascist who lost the popular vote by two million and counting will never be my President.  Period. I will never accept the legitimacy of Trump’s Presidency.  Nor should any of us. 

This is not about sore losing, sour grapes or the lack of a sense of humor after a devastating, stunning travesty of an electoral injustice.  The egregious, dog whistling reality is that twice in my recent lifetime the Electoral College and Supreme Court (in 2000) elected two Presidents that clearly lost the popular vote. In 2000 Al Gore won 500,000 votes over W. who, as we all well remember, is one of the most destructive Presidents in recent U.S. history. We can hardly forget what happened under W.’s watch.  Two unfunded wars, tax cuts for the rich, at the expense of middle and working class Americans, and a global financial meltdown that nearly matched that of the Great Depression in 1929 dealt a crushing economic blow to the majority of us.  Hard working Americans lost their jobs, their homes while their retirement savings accounts went poof!  College graduates in 2009 and 2010 had a tough time finding well paying jobs.  Jobs that could sustain them as the recent graduates struggled to pay off their college loans. The lack of economic opportunities forced too many college graduates to move back at home with their parents. Who, by the way, also struggled during the bleak W. years of unpaid wars and tax cuts for the 1%.  Meanwhile the GOP’s donor class, the rich, got richer. Its wealth never did trickle down to the lower masses, a Republican fraudulent myth that has been promoted since the Reagan Administration.  There is no way in hell that I will roll over and passively watch the ensuing nightmare that is about to unfold. The right wing shit show ahead promises to be even worse than anything W./Cheney visited upon we the wee ones during the dark Bush years. 
 I will not get over it because Trump is a fraud. He may be a favorite play thing and puppet for Vladimir Putin, global oligarchs and U.S.  warmongers, but he's no President of mine.  Trump lost over 2 million American votes. And counting. 

You are an aberration and abomination who is willing to do and say anything — no matter whom it aligns you with and whom it hurts — to satisfy your ambitions. I don’t believe you care much at all about this country or your party or the American people. I believe that the only thing you care about is self-aggrandizement and self-enrichment. Your strongest allegiance is to your own cupidity. I also believe that much of your campaign was an act of psychological projection, as we are now learning that many of the things you slammed Clinton for are things of which you may actually be guilty.

My sentiments exactly.   And the real crook at hand turns out to be Trump, himself.  Lock him up.  Hillary Clinton leads by two million votes so far.  But she is not our President.   This should be appalling.  We “sore losers” are literally terrified that Trump will make W. look somewhat competent.  There is already talk of dismantling Obamacare, Medicare and Medicaid. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and Dodd-Frank will soon be toast, no doubt.  Wall Street will become a venue for reckless gambling casinos all over again.  And when the casinos crash and burn, for they will, you and I will pick up the tab. And so it will go.  Ironically and yes, sadly, Trump and U.S. House Speaker Ryan’s economic plans will punish Trump’s working class voters the most. 

It is these very voters—less educated, struggling to get by on low incomes—who will bear the brunt of unified Republican government under Trump. The GOP Congress may give Trump his “infrastructure plan,” but that looks like it will consist of a bunch of tax cuts for investors to sink into toll bridges and toll roads. It will definitely give him the rest of his huge tax cuts, but those are skewed toward those at the top and won’t bring much relief to the “forgotten men and women of this country,” as he promised when campaigning. If the GOP repeals the Affordable Care Act, as it’s vowed to do since it was enacted, many of these voters will lose their subsidized health insurance. Block-granting Medicaid and privatizing Medicare will dramatically increase these their economic insecurity. They’ll lose food stamps and Head Start slots. They’ll lose access to reproductive health care. They can forget about a hike in the federal minimum wage. According to one estimate, 20 million Trump voters will lose out on a big raise when Republicans kill Obama’s overtime rule. And if the GOP doesn’t get rid of it entirely, they’ll at least hobble the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which reined in the kind of predatory lending schemes that often indenture the working poor. It’ll be death by a thousand cuts.

Trump will not bring back working class jobs. Technologies will continue to do the work of humans in most factories. For unfettered capitalism thrives on personal greed for those at the top.  Jobs will continue to be outsourced to countries that exploit cheap labor. Coal mines will continue with strip mining and mountaintop removal that requires fewer workers than under the ground mining.  CEO’s will continue to receive huge bonuses on the backs of their employees. Libertarian billionaires like the Koch boys will continue to influence the destruction of labor unions that once protected workers.  There will be no doubt some voter’s remorse pretty soon when folks realize Trump conned them.  We should not demonize these voters.  No one can blame anyone for voting to climb out of minimum wage jobs,  poverty and the misery it brings. Unfortunately, a bait and switch con artist should not have been the struggling working class’s main man.    Donald Trump is correct when he bleated “the election is rigged.”  That it is.  It is rigged for Trump, thanks to the Electoral College. Our Founding Fathers apparently implemented this system in order to protect slavery in 1787 and 1803.

Standard civics-class accounts of the Electoral College rarely mention the real demon dooming direct national election in 1787 and 1803: slavery.

Right.  As in when the South fought the civil war in order to protect slavery.  Slavery as in some human beings literally owning other human beings is thankfully gone. The Electoral College should have been abolished along with slavery since its original goal was to protect human enslavement.  

If the system’s pro-slavery tilt was not overwhelmingly obvious when the Constitution was ratified, it quickly became so. For 32 of the Constitution’s first 36 years, a white slaveholding Virginian occupied the presidency. Southerner Thomas Jefferson, for example, won the election of 1800-01 against Northerner John Adams in a race where the slavery-skew of the electoral college was the decisive margin of victory: without the extra electoral college votes generated by slavery, the mostly southern states that supported Jefferson would not have sufficed to give him a majority. As pointed observers remarked at the time, Thomas Jefferson metaphorically rode into the executive mansion on the backs of slaves.

Disgusting. Nor does it help that Donald Trump has nominated three white supremacists into his administration (Bannon, Sessions and Flynn) for starters. White supremacists now replace former slave owners? How fitting.  We are in for some very rough times ahead all right.  But we cannot curl up and hide under our beds for the next four years.  While there is talk about an election audit we’re likely stuck with Trump for now. We must stay engaged.   For now is a time when none of us can afford to remain seated or silent.

Dan Rather is spot on correct in his assessment. 

And the press usually takes a stance that the new administration at least deserves to have a chance to get started - a honeymoon period. But these are not normal times. This is not about tax policy, health care, or education - even though all those and more are so important. This is about racism, bigotry, intimidation and the specter of corruption. 

Like most members of this community the outcome of this election all but destroyed me. My husband I reeled in shock, unable to eat for two days. I skipped a class that I take at Rice University. I cancelled a swimming date with a friend on Wednesday. Both of us were afraid we’d sink to the bottom of the 7’ deep pool and never re-emerge.  My siblings, relatives and friends from New York City to Seattle are still speechless. Some of us among Texas bloggers were too shocked to write for several days after the election.  It took me over two weeks.  When I learned that a few Catholic members of my large family voted for Trump b/c the right to lifers got to them, I wanted to scream.   When I visited my mother in Cincinnati days after the election I saw Trump/Pence and Choose Life signs in too many yards.  These are neighborhoods with a large Catholic population. My mother knows that her daughters are highly upset with her. Our Catholic mother is 91 years old. I had to say “No one will blame you for voting for your religion, Mom.”  She hated voting for Trump, she admitted, but she felt she had to because of abortion.  I sucked it up and hid my tears out of love and respect for our mother.   None of us felt so hopelessly ravaged before because we know this election has gone terribly wrong.  We didn’t lose to a McCain, Romney, Jeb Bush or John Kasich. 

Though we would have been distraught and disappointed, we could have moved on because these men don’t terrify us.  But we “lost” (not) to a plain spoken hate master, bigot, misogynist, xenophobic, self-serving narcissist and fascist instead. Who essentially said a President can do anything he wants and get away with it.  As if he is a King or CEO.  Moving on and getting over it are not viable options. Playing the blame game at this point in time is counter productive. No more talk about Bernie vs. Hillary.  We are well past this point in the political dialogue. We are down to the basic survival of our country’s democratic process.  Citizen bloggers like me and members of our community must continue our activism, no matter the challenges.  Our local Democratic Parties must stay focused on and shout out about the forthcoming abuses of power as well as an era of unsurpassed government kleptocracy and intimidation.   We should make sure to donate to organizations such as the ACLU, Planned Parenthood, the NAACP and the Southern Poverty Law Center. For these are groups that can put the legal brakes on the right wing shit show that lies ahead. 

But as I stand I do not despair, because I believe the vast majority of Americans stand with me. To all those in Congress of both political parties, to all those in the press, to religious and civic leaders around the country. your voices must be heard. I hope that the President-elect can learn to rise above this and see the dangers that are brewing. If he does and speaks forcibly, and with action, we should be ready to welcome his voice. But of course I am deeply worried that his selections of advisors and cabinet posts suggests otherwise. 

​Birds of a feather flock together. Trump has chosen three white supremacists to serve in his government so far.  Non-Christians have much to fear in a Trump administration, as well. 

To all of you I say, stay vigilant. The great Martin Luther King, Jr. knew that even as a minority, there was strength in numbers in fighting tyranny. Holding hands and marching forward, raising your voice above the din of complacency, can move mountains. And in this case, I believe there is a vast majority who wants to see this nation continue in tolerance and freedom. But it will require speaking. Engage in your civic government. Flood newsrooms or TV networks with your calls if you feel they are slipping into the normalization of extremism. Donate your time and money to causes that will fight to protect our liberties. 

Many of us became political activists during the Bush Administrations.  The results of the 2000 (stolen) election had stung so many of us to the core. In my case, while working for a private academic institution in Houston, a colleague courageously sent an email to those whom she thought would be open to serving as grassroots activist watch dogs of the Bush Administration.  Sarah had reserved a conference room on campus and about 30 of us met there for a couple of hours.  We met once a month.  Sarah and another colleague are well seasoned organizers (supporters of the former Kucinich progressive movement) and they got us started.  We joined our neighborhood’s Democratic clubs and Civic Clubs.  If we had kids we ran for PTO school board posts. We became voter deputy registrars in our home counties.  We joined forces with our local party as well as with Battleground TX in 2014.  Some of us are bloggers. We know how to use social media.  The good news in this ongoing horror show is that Hillary swept Houston/Harris Co. The Tea Party has been put to bed.  For now. The fight never ends especially for those of us who live in Republican controlled states. The US government is about to become another Koch boy owned Kansas if we don’t fight back.  The battle ahead is like none other so far.  We are literally fighting for our basic democratic rights as well as for our country’s future.  I must add, in the sixteen years that I have served as a political activist I never cease to be amazed by voters who will routinely vote against their best interests.  I understand how it happens (right wing media, online fake news sites, religious beliefs, dog whistles, the fear, the evil doing “other” cards) but what will it take, finally, to wake folks up?   And when will hard working Americans end their romanticization and worship of billionaires like Trump?   Billionaires like Trump don’t give a damn about anyone but themselves.  Nor will Trump, et al  allow their vast wealth to trickle down to a bunch of “undeserving, dumb morons” who are poor and lazy. Former President Ronald Reagan’s demonization of the “welfare queens” is still in play within the Republican Party.