Category: General

There was a spectacular failure in the House of Representatives today as the Republican party attempted to vote ‘yes’ for a long-anticipated law they called the American Health Care Act (AHCA) of 2017.

The AHCA was supposed to repeal and replace the landmark Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) of 2009.   That law took 13 months of extensive deliberations by the Obama Administration, and spans some 20,000 pages.  The health-care industry in the United States is a US$3 billion-a-year business, and touches 350 million people.

So in 2017, along comes the know-nothing Trump Administration, have policy wonk and Speaker Paul Ryan draft up the new AHCA proposal, and it is debated in the House for 20 days.  But it was such a bad law that many moderate Republicans could not vote for it (not one of the 193 Democrats was in favor). There was also the ultra-conservative House Freedom Caucus (Republicans) that insisted on Thursday that the proposed AHCA law be made even ‘meaner’. They were given their demand. (Obamacare mandates that all policies include care such as emergency care, maternity care, prescription drugs and mental health care. So on Thursday night, this requirement was stripped out of the AHCA).

Unhappy with the dissent in the ranks of the House Republicans and impatient, President Trump issued an ultimatum last night to his party: pass the AHCA or we leave Obamacare in place and move on.

By mid-day Friday it was clear Speaker Ryan would not get the votes to pass it, and Pres.Trump instructed him to withdraw the AHCA law altogether.

Sunday was a gorgeous day in the Western Cape. My friend Marlien and I drove out to Stellenbosch, up the across the mountain via Helshoogte Pass.  We stopped at the Tokara wine estate for lunch. (While we were there, a party of six or so people arrived in style in a helicopter, landing at a heli-pad nearby.  As if that ruckus was not enough, they took their seats close to us and talked loudly and animatedly while having their lunch!).

Here’s a cute junior picture crossword featuring mongooses and meerkats, that I found in the Die Burger newspaper of a few days ago.  The meerkat is not a cat, but belongs to the mongoose family.

The South African Mint has been producing gold Krugerrands* since 1967, so 2017 marks the 50th anniversary of the world’s most popular gold bullion coin (more than 50 million ounces of Krugerrands have been sold over the decades).   What’s new this year is that the coin is minted in silver and and platinum for the first time ever.  And I want to get my grubby hands on at least the silver coin (about US$ 59), so I ordered one from the South African mint.   A coin store I went to today would only sell me a full roll of 25 silver coins, or none. What’s up with that? I thought. The gold coin sells for a much more serious $US 2,368 and the platinum coin goes for US$ 2,164 !

*The word Krugerrand is a combination of Kruger (after Paul Kruger, President of the South African Republic from 1883 to 1900) and the South African currency, the rand.

Only about three months’ worth of water remains in the dams in the Cape Town area. On Wednesday, the newspaper ‘Die Burger’ published a map of the municipalities in the Cape Town area, pointing out the ones that use way, way too much water.   One property owner reportedly used 80 swimming pools’ worth of water in one month.  Yikes. Sir! Do you have a large forest-like garden, and do you drench every square foot day and night with water? The water utility acknowledged that leaking faucets and even leaking water pipes, might be the reason for some of these extraordinary consumption read-outs, and continues to look into it.

Bryan, Dale and I visited Robben Island on Tuesday.  Robben Island (‘island of the seals’, although there are none around today), is the site of the prison where Nelson Mandela was held for 18 years.  Mandela arrived on Robben Island in the winter of 1964, and would spend 18 of his 27 years in prison there.  Our tour ended with a view of his small cell, the floor as his bed, and bucket for a toilet.  We also stopped by the limestone quarry where he did hard labor.    After Mandela’s release, the centuries-long use of Robben Island as a place of banishment, was finally ended.

I found these proteas for sale when I was out at the mall on Saturday.  Protea is both the botanical name and the common-use name for a large group of flowers found in the Cape Town area and on the slopes of Table Mountain.  They are named after the Greek god Proteus (who could change his form at will), because they have such a wide variety of forms.

South African Minister of Finance Pravin Gordhan presented his budget for 2017 for South Africa in parliament on Wednesday.   He had to make some tough calls, but the budget was generally well-received and seen as balanced.    A new super-tax rate will kick in at a rate of 45% for earners with income of above R1.5 million (about US$113,000).   Value Added Tax for goods and services is kept the same at 14% (the country’s labor unions vowed nationwide protests if that rate was raised).   Gas will become even more expensive (currently at the equivalent of about $4/ gallon), and all the vices – cigarettes, cigars and alcohol products – will be taxed more heavily as well.

Check out these cool arty gemsbok* mugs that I spotted in a Woolworths home store.  Did something made the gemsbok a little peeved, with that sideways look?

*The gemsbok or gemsbuck is a large antelope in the Oryx genus. It is native to the arid regions of Southern Africa, such as the Kalahari Desert.

The Oroville dam* in California has the highest dam wall in all of the United States.  It made headlines the last week and into this week because it is overflowing – and damage to the main spillway as well as the emergency spillway made it hard to lower the level of the dam.

*Construction started 1961; opened 1968

At some point more than 100,000 residents downstream from the dam wall were given emergency evacuation orders, with officials fearing the erosion under the emergency spillway may cause the natural wall next to the man-made wall to break.    Emergency repairs were done on the spillways this week (basically helicopters and trucks dumping rocks and soil into the eroded areas), and for now, the emergency seems to have been staved off.

Question for President Trump and the Republican Congress: how is that promised $1 trillion infrastructure bill coming along?

I wasn’t around for Watergate here in the United States, but the on-going revelations about this story seems to approach Watergate proportions.  It now turns out ..

1. Trump was told three weeks ago by the Justice Dept that Flynn was a compromised candidate for NSA (that he could be blackmailed by Russians), but Trump went ahead and appointed him anyway.  (Never mind that Flynn was also woefully unqualified).
2. The Trump 2016 Presidential campaign and other Trump associates had repeated contacts with senior Russian intelligence officials in the year before the 2016 election.

If any of this was the case with President Hillary Clinton, the Republicans in congress would have started impeachment hearings tomorrow.

America’s National Security Advisor Michael Flynn that I wrote about on Friday, is out. He resigned late Monday night after 24 days on the job. (Henry Kissinger served for 2,478 days under the Nixon and Ford Administrations. (Source : Wikipedia).

Flynn should never have been appointed in the first place.  It’s not an easy job. The advisor should serve as an honest broker of policy options for the President in the field of national security, rather than as an advocate for his or her own policy agenda (from Wikipedia).   It goes without saying, that he should not lie to the Vice-President and others in the Administration. (Right now it is unknown at what time and what President Trump had known about all of Flynn’s Russia dealings).

Meanwhile, there was Friday’s North Korean missile test, which could start the first international crisis of the Trump administration. Trump’s aides briefed him on the matter in front of paying Mar-A-Lago club members (where he and Japan Prime Minister Shinzō Abe were having dinner).  New US Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley said on Monday : ‘It’s time to hold North Korea accountable, not with our words, but with our actions.’  She did not specify what those actions may be.

Ever since I worked in China on and off for two years, I run out and buy a sheet of the US Postal Service’s stamps of the lunar year.
Here is a sheet of the 2017 Year of the Rooster stamps.

 

Amid all the chaos of the Trump Administration, this feels like a big story.  Reliable sources told the Washington Post that now-National Security Adviser Michael Flynn talked to the Russians about Obama’s sanctions against Russia in December, before Trump took office.  If this is true, Flynn should be dismissed immediately (and be prosecuted).  He was already asked about it, and denied it.  He had VP Mike Pence, WH spokesman Sean Spicer and WH Chief of Staff Reins Priebus lie about it as well.  Is he guilty of colluding with a foreign power (Russia, no less) to undermine the Obama Administration’s foreign policy, and of lying about it?

Am I imagining this?, asks New York Times Op-Ed Columnist Roger Cohen.  From the column: Trump says “X.” Uproar! Hordes of journalists scurry to disprove “X.”  He moves on, never to mention it again, or claims that he did not say it, or insists that what he really said was “Y.”   People begin to wonder: Am I imagining this? They feel that some infernal mechanism has taken hold and is dragging them toward an abyss. The president is a reference point; if he lies, lying seeps deep into the culture. Americans start to ask: Will we ever be able to dislodge these people from power? What are they capable of?

The United States Federal Court (the 9th Circuit court of Appeals) ruled against President Trump’s ‘Travel Ban’ Executive Order today.  The emergency stay (temporary restraining order) that was granted last week by a US District court in Seattle, stays in place. The ruling was extensive and detailed, unanimous at 3-0 and per curiam (a ruling ‘by the court’, not by individual judges. Some observers say the court wanted to make a statement by stipulating that).

There is now no question that the Executive Order was sloppily written, was burdened by public statements about its true intent, and was an executive overreach.  The ruling points out that the three judges disagree that the Executive Order is ‘unreviewable’ (as argued by the White House; so not subject to scrutiny by the Judicial Branch).  The ruling also pointed out that the White House lawyer could not just argue ‘Oh, ignore the bearing the executive order has on permanent legal residents, and make a narrower ruling’ : The White House counsel is not the President, and he is not known to be in the chain of command for any of the Executive Departments. Moreover, in light of the Government’s shifting interpretations of the Executive Order, we cannot say that the current interpretation by the White House counsel, even if authoritative and binding, will persist past the immediate stage of these proceedings. 

On top of all this, no evidence that the Government will suffer irreparable harm was submitted.  So no intelligence re: expected/ active terrorist plots from citizens of the 7 countries, or any of that. The court pointed out that nothing stopped the White House to submit classified information from the CIA to the court (it would stay classified).

Here is the is the cover of this Friday’s influential German weekly magazine The Spiegel.

Update (Friday night): Washington State Attorney-General Bob Ferguson won a nation-wide halt of Trump’s travel ban from a federal judge. (The White House will appeal).  It turns out upwards of 60,000 visas for traveling to America that had been issued, was canceled after Trump’s executive order.

Update (Saturday):   This is far from over.  The Department of Justice has filed an appeal to restore the travel ban.   President Trump has sent out a barrage of tweets.  Yes, actually arguing his case on Twitter, and calling the United States Federal Judge (appointed by Pres. Bush), a ‘so-called’ judge, and disparaging the free press (The New York Times), saying they publish  ‘fake news’!

The United States of America is a democracy*, not a dictatorship.  The President of the United States does not rule by decree, and does not rule by unlawful executive orders. 

*The three branches of government are : the Executive, (President and about 5,000,000 workers), the Legislative (Senate and House of Representatives) and the Judicial (Supreme Court and lower Courts).

 

A journalist posted a video clip of this picture on Twitter : of a Labrador retriever trying to cope with a dump load of hopping tennis balls.  (It reminded me of our neighbors’ Labrador in South Africa.  If we left tennis balls on the court in our back yard, the dog would come by and steal the tennis balls one by one, until they were all gone.  The kids would tie a tennis ball to a rock, and put it at the bottom of their swimming pool, and the dog would dive down and go get it).

Anyway : the point the journalist was trying to make, was that he is the dog; trying frantically to report on material emanating from the White House, from incorrect statements made by Trump’s spokespeople, from Trump’s tweets (insults, getting the facts wrong almost every time), sent from his unsecured Twitter account, and from his grotesque appearance at Thursday’s National Prayer Meeting (boasting, talking about reality TV show ratings, insulting Arnold Schwarzenegger).

Here’s a picture of a little speck of an island in the Indian Ocean, called Tromelin island (its size is one square kilometer). Apparently a long-running dispute since 1976 between France and Mauritius (itself an island some 500 km to its south), has been settled.   Tromelin will remain French.  In 2010, then-French President Sarkozy, proposed that France retain sovereignty, but that France and Mauritius share ‘control’ of the island.  But when it came to ratifying the agreement in French parliament this year, there was a little storm over the ‘loss of French territory’ and the agreement was rescinded.

The island is basically used for weather research.  It does have a landing strip which could come in handy in times of war .. something that would be bad for the masked and red-footed boobies (sea birds) and sea turtles that made it their home.  Oh!  And I see Wikipedia indicates the island’s official currency is the Euro, and that the internet domain country code is .tf.

The White House’s response to the protests from all sides, and an announcement from acting Attorney General Yates that the Dept. of Justice will not defend the travel ban in court, was to fire her.  And for good measure, replace the Immigration and Customs Enforcement director as well.  This was after President Trump went out of his way on Monday morning to ridicule Senator Chuck Schumer for getting emotional when he talked about the ban, calling it ‘fake tears’. (Schumer’s grandfather lost his mother and seven siblings in the Holocaust).

Which petrifies you more: willful lying, or gross incompetence? .. asks Elise Jordan in TIME.  The article is called ‘A White House Devoid of Integrity’.  And we are – what? 10 days- into the Trump presidency.