1/31/2026

 Saturday, January 31, 2026

def

ft5

In bed at 10:10, up at 6:25.  16/0/24/12

Meds, etc. Morning meds at  a.m.   

Aw23$$     

k

2/3/2026

 Tuesday, February 3, 2026

1931 Arkansas legislature passed a motion to pray for the soul of journalist H. L. Mencken after he called the state the "apex of moronia"

1959 Plane crash known as "The Day the Music Died" killed musicians Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens, J. P. Richardson (aka The Big Bopper), and the pilot near Clear Lake, Iowa

1994 President Bill Clinton lifted the US trade embargo against Vietnam

2025  El Salvador offered to jail ‘American criminals,’ including U.S. citizens.  Marco Rubio said 'the U.S. was grateful for the offer

In bed at 10, up at 7.  14/7/23/11

Morning meds at  11 a.m.  

What a strange coincidence.  Yesterday, I chatted with Larry Anderson for half an hour or so during which we discussed, among much other stuff, my Dad's Marine service on Iwo Jima in 1945.  Afterwards, I sent him the chapters of the memoir dealing with those experiences.  Last year, on this date, I had the following email exchange with him:

LOA: Robert  Bly?

CDC:  If I recall correctly, you were an English major at UWM, one of those increasingly disparaged, "useless" majors (like history) that aren't specifically designed to prepare college students for a trade or profession, like accounting or computer science. If so, uou may be more accepting of one of what Geri thinks of as my "eccentricities," i.e., I like poetry.and classic literature. I don't like most of the poetry I come upon, which is simply incomprehesible to me, but I have some that move me deeply like Walt Whitman's "Come Up From the Fields, Father" about a mother's grief over the death of her soldier son, and Yeats' "Vacillation", only the 4th and 5 stanzas. Now that I am an old man, all that seems to have stayed with me from my college education is my enjoyment of literature that I picked up in my English classes in Marquette's Liberal Arts college. In any case, I came across Robert Bly's poem about the dream of a telephone call from his dead father in my paperback anthology of poems edited by Garrison Keillor, "Good Poems." It grabbed me because of its suggestion of a troubled relationship between the poet and his father and ambivalent feelings toward his father: "Why did it take us so long to get going. Perhaps he left us somewhere once, or did I simply forget that he was alone in winter in some town."

I think you know my Dad was one of the 70,000 Marines who fought on Iwo Jima 80 years ago this month. He was a radioman He came back to my mother, my little sister, and me quite thoroughly fucked up from the experience. He never talked about it until he was in his 80s and I was in my mid-60s, and then only sparingly. Growing up with him and his PTSD was a miserable experience for my sister and me.   I had a strained relationship with him most of my life. There was a period of 13 years in which we never spoke, never wrote, never communicated at all and it was only when we were both old men that we developed a healthy relationship and real friendship and even then, he held onto what seemed to be his life's motto: 'The less said the better.' In any event, it was with that personal background that I read Robert Bly's "When My Dead Father Called."

The last few years of my Dad's life, he lived with Geri and me during the warmer half of the year and with my sister Kitty in Phoenix during the colder half. My children didn't know him. All they knew of him was that my former spouse Anne told them he was "a crabby old man," which was what she knew of him. I wrote a long memoir for my children that contains a lot about my childhood with him, about Marine training, Iwo Jima, and PTSD. Quite a bit of research went into the memoir. I have the chapters on my computer in digital form and, if you're interested, I can email you the chapters on his time in the Marines and the effect it had on him. They would explain why I was so moved by the conclusion of Bly's little poem: "Perhaps he left us somewhere once, or did I simply forget that he was alone in winter in some town." 

I'm still deeply moved by Robert Bly's poem, and by Whitman's "Come Up From the Fields, Father," and by Yeats' "Vacillation," and, not surprisingly, they are all related to my experiences with my parents.  My Mom's been dead almost 53 years now, and Dad 19 years, yet they fill my old age with memories and feelings, both of gratitude and of regret.

When My Dead Father Called

Last night I dreamt my father called to us.

He was stuck somewhere. It took us

A long time to dress, I don't know why.

The night was snowy; there were long black roads.

Finally we reached the little town, Bellingham.

There he stood, by a streetlamp in cold wind,

Snow blowing along the sidewalk. I noticed

The uneven sort of shoes that men wore

In the early Forties. And overalls. He was smoking.

Why did it take us so long to get going? Perhaps

He left us somewhere once, or did I simply 

Forget he was alone in winter in some town?

 

Vacillation

My fiftieth year had come and gone,

I sat, a solitary man,

In a crowded London shop,

An open book and empty cup

On the marble table-top.

While on the shop and street I gazed

My body of a sudden blazed;

And twenty minutes more or less

It seemed, so great my happiness,

That I was blessed and could bless. 

. . . 

Although the summer Sunlight gild

Cloudy leafage of the sky,

Or wintry moonlight sink the field

In storm-scattered intricacy,

I cannot look thereon,

Responsibility so weighs me down.

Things said or done long years ago,

Or things I did not do or say

But thought that I might say or do,

Weigh me down, and not a day

But something is recalled,

My conscience or my vanity appalled.

 

Come Up from the Fields Father

Come up from the fields father, here’s a letter from our Pete,

And come to the front door mother, here’s a letter from thy dear son.

Lo, ’tis autumn,

Lo, where the trees, deeper green, yellower and redder,

Cool and sweeten Ohio’s villages with leaves fluttering in the moderate wind,

Where apples ripe in the orchards hang and grapes on the trellis’d vines,   

(Smell you the smell of the grapes on the vines?

Smell you the buckwheat where the bees were lately buzzing?)

Above all, lo, the sky so calm, so transparent after the rain, and with wondrous clouds,   

Below too, all calm, all vital and beautiful, and the farm prospers well.

Down in the fields all prospers well,

But now from the fields come father, come at the daughter’s call,

And come to the entry mother, to the front door come right away.

Fast as she can she hurries, something ominous, her steps trembling,

She does not tarry to smooth her hair nor adjust her cap.

Open the envelope quickly,   

O this is not our son’s writing, yet his name is sign’d,

O a strange hand writes for our dear son, O stricken mother’s soul!

All swims before her eyes, flashes with black, she catches the main words only,

Sentences broken, gunshot wound in the breast, cavalry skirmish, taken to hospital,

At present low, but will soon be better.

Ah now the single figure to me,

Amid all teeming and wealthy Ohio with all its cities and farms,

Sickly white in the face and dull in the head, very faint,

By the jamb of a door leans.

Grieve not so, dear mother, (the just-grown daughter speaks through her sobs,

The little sisters huddle around speechless and dismay’d,)

See, dearest mother, the letter says Pete will soon be better.

Alas poor boy, he will never be better, (nor may-be needs to be better, that brave and simple soul,)

While they stand at home at the door he is dead already,

The only son is dead.

But the mother needs to be better,

She with thin form presently drest in black,

By day her meals untouch’d, then at night fitfully sleeping, often waking,

In the midnight waking, weeping, longing with one deep longing,   

O that she might withdraw unnoticed, silent from life escape and withdraw,

To follow, to seek, to be with her dear dead son.

Whitman's great poem always reminds me of what my dear sister told me during one of our daily, early-morning chats in our 70s.  When she and my mother came home from work one day to the apartment building where they lived, my mother opened her mailbox and saw that I had written from Iwakuni to tell the family that my squadron had been deployed to Vietnam and that I would soon follow.  She had opened and read the letter in the vestibule where the mailbox was, not even waiting to take the letter upstairs to her apartment.  And she wept.  She wept because her son, her firstborn, her comfort and joy during the years of WWII, was going off to his war just as her husband had 21 years before.  And she must have feared that I might come back from my war, if at all, as shattered as my Dad was when he came back from his.  That was 60 years ago and I still picture her, standing next to the mailboxes, crying, my little sister holding her and comforting her, but dealing with her own fears.  It reminds me, of course, of the millions of mothers and fathers, sisters and brothers, who are the uncounted casualties of all our wars, including the few I was destined to meet as a Casualty Assistance Calls Officer on the north side of Philadelphia in 1966-67.  

 My worst job, however, – the worst job I have ever had – came every 6 days when I was the Marine Corps’ Casualty Assistance Call Officer for the north side of Philadelphia and the northern suburbs.  When a Marine was killed or seriously injured while on active duty, whether combat-related or not, an officer and a senior staff NCO delivered the news personally to the next-of-kin, almost always the wife or the parents.  The information about the death or injury came into the Marine detachment at the Philadelphia Navy Yard.  If the family member to be notified lived north of Market Street, one of the teams in my rotation got the call to tell the family.  My team was myself and a staff sergeant who worked for me, a fellow named Schmidt from Antigo, Wisconsin.  The call would first go to Pete Powell, our admin officer, who would call me or the other officer on CACO duty.  I would call SSgt. Schmidt and pick him up at his home and we would drive, usually silently, to the home.  Each of us knew that if the circumstances were a bit different, it could be his wife or parents receiving the Marine at the door.  As soon as the person visited opened the door, or saw us approach, he, or usually she, knew why we were there.  If the Marine was not dead, I would have to get that information out immediately.  If I wasn’t yelling “he’s all right” or “he’s alive and being cared for” or some such statement, I didn’t have to tell the wife or mom that the Marine was dead.  She knew it from my uninvited and dreaded presence in her doorway.  If we didn’t have information already about church membership, I would stay with the family while SSgt. Schmidt went to get a priest or minister or at least a friend or neighbor who could stay with the bereaved after we had left. Such misery! Such suffering!  How awful those encounters, how awful still the memories of them.

It was the memories of the mothers and wives that were with me as I watched George H. W. Bush gushing over the Gulf War in 1991.  “The specter of Vietnam has been buried forever in the desert sands of the Arabian peninsula. . . It’s a proud day for America – and, by God, we’ve kicked the Vietnam syndrome once and for all.”  Those memories remain with me as I watch “H. W.’s” idiot son “W” and his band of neocon chickenhawks prove Daddy wrong in the desert sands of Mesopotamia.  Bush and Cheney and Paul Wolfewitz and Richard Perle and almost all of their legion of neocon supporters never stood in a doorway in front of a shrieking, terror-stricken mother learning that her son is dead, never spoke with a young wife about the return of her husband’s body and the need for funeral arrangements.  While others were making these casualty calls in north Philadelphia and all across America, George W. Bush was getting inducted into Skull and Bones and enjoying his last year at Yale under his student deferment while Richard Bruce Cheney was on his fourth or fifth deferment, working in Madison for Governor Warren Knowles while working on a Ph.D. at the UW.  Richard Perle was working on his master’s degree at Princeton after attending the London School of Economics while Paul Wolfowitz was doing graduate work at the University of Chicago after graduating from Cornell.  These men were all privileged.  They were not the type to get their asses shot off in a messy war in Asia.  They were not the type to let military service alter the trajectory of their privileged lives.  Like the vice-chickenhawk-in-chief Cheney, they “had other priorities in the 60s than military service.”  Very few of the Marines and soldiers and airmen and sailors who did serve came from such backgrounds.  They came from backgrounds much like mine: blue collar, the so-called ‘working class.’  They did not have estates in Kennebunkport.  Their homes were apartments and modest frame houses on small lots.  Their list of educational attainments usually stopped at high school, boot camp and infantry training.  These were the men the United States sent to kill and be killed, not the likes of Bush and Cheney, Wolfewitz and Perle.  And it was the wives and children, the parents and siblings of such men who would live with the consequences of their service.  For them, it wasn’t “the specter of Vietnam” that was “buried forever,” it was their son, their husband, their father, their brother.  For them, the “Vietnam syndrome” has never ended, any more than World War II “syndrome” or the Korea “syndrome“ has ended for those who suffered the deepest losses.  

....

 

2/2/2026

 Monday, February 2, 2026

2007  My Dad died at age 86.

r5t

In bed at ?, up at 5:18.  21/15/26/18.

Meds, etc.  Morning meds at  a.m.  

34r  

 Sunday, February 1, 2026

1913 Joyce Kilmer wrote his poem "Trees" in Mahwah, New Jersey

1933 Hermann Goering banned Communist meetings and demonstrations in Germany

1948 President Harry Truman urged Congress to adopt a civil rights program

1954 President Eisenhower announced the detonation of the world's 1st hydrogen bomb 

1974 Pope Paul VI's encyclical "To Honor Mary"

2021 Joe Biden signed executive orders to reunite immigrant families, setting up a new task force to address around 1000 remaining separated families

2025   President Donald Trump announced 25% tariffs on Canada and Mexico and 10% tariffs on China. Canadian PM Justin Trudeau announces retaliatory tariffs of 25%

In bed around 10, up at 6:10.  9/2/26/8

Meds, etc.  Morning meds at 9 a.m.

Sleepwalking.  I haven't written anything worth reading for at least the last two and a half weeks, or perhaps months or years.  I copy and paste some stuff from past years' entries, or from newspaper articles, or elsewhere, but the last thing that required any thought at all (and not much) was my thoughts after watching Wild Strawberries again on January 14th.  It's looking like my journaling has come to an end, a bit short of 3 and 1/2 years.  I feel like I am sleepwalking through life, not depressed in any clinical sense, but seeing no purpose in being alive.  I've stopped doing the Connections puzzle in each morning's New York Times, after doing 500 puzzles.  I still do the morning mini-crossword, but haven't tried the regular Monday and Tuesday puzzles for quite a while.  I read hardly any of the articles in the morning papers, and this morning I didn't watch any of the Sunday morning talk shows.  I get out of bed each morning, but don't know why, looking forward to nothing, not doing anything, reading anything, or writing anything.  Quo vadis?  Quare?  The last time I wrote anything semi-extensive about what was going on was on January 9th.

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k

l

1/30/2026

Friday, January 30, 2026

2019 A continuous 24-hour church service lasting 97 days to prevent deportation of Armenian asylum seekers ended after Dutch authorities relented at the Protestant Bethel Church in The Hague

2019 An approaching polar vortex prompted a state of emergency to be declared in Wisconsin and other states.  US Postal Service suspended deliveries to ten states

In bed at 9:40. awake at 5:25, up at 5:52.    7/-5/18/7.  Snow around 10.

Meds, etc.  Morning meds at  a.m.

The State of the Union: titles of NYTimes opinion pieces this morning;

The Rot goes deeper than ICE, Ben Rhodes

Time to say goodbye, David Brooks

The fathomless resentment of Tucker Carlson, Michelle Goldberg

This Moment Is Asking What Kind of America We Are.  You might not like the answer, Lydia Polgreen

The Polls Are Clear. Americans Don’t Want This.  Kristen Soltis

How the World Sees America, With Adam Tooze, Ezra Klein 

 There’s this quote from the Italian theorist Antonio Gramsci that has been making the rounds a lot over the past few years. It goes, “The crisis consists precisely in the fact that the old is dying and the new cannot be born; in this interregnum, a great variety of morbid symptoms appear.  There’s also a looser translation of that last line that you hear sometimes: “Now is the time of monsters.”

It sure feels like the time of monsters. It sure feels like a time of morbid symptoms. In our last episode, we talked about how Davos last week seemed to be this wake-up moment for the world when Mark Carney, the prime minister of Canada, said in his speech, “We are in the midst of a rupture, not a transition.” You then turn on the TV, and you watch agents of the American government killing protesters on the streets of Minneapolis. 

I cannot think of a week when it has felt clearer that not just the old order is dying but that the old order is dead. I cannot think of a week when it has been more obvious that there are monsters. 

   From the Wall Street Journal:

America Needs Restraint—and Facts, Peggy Noonan

 

1/29/2026

 Thursday, January 29, 2026

w3e

r5t

In bed around 9:30, up at 5:30.  2/-8/14/1.

Meds. etc.  Morning meds at 3 p.m.  

From 3 years ago:

George Floyd, Tyre Nichols, Eric Garner, Renee Nicole Good, Alex Pretti

Musée des Beaux Arts

By W. H. Auden , December 1938

About suffering they were never wrong,

The Old Masters: how well they understood

Its human position; how it takes place

While someone else is eating or opening a window or just walking dully along

How, when the aged are reverently, passionately waiting

For the miraculous birth, there always must be

Children who did not specially want it to happen, skating

On a pond at the edge of the wood:

They never forgot

That even the dreadful martyrdom must run its course

Anyhow in a corner, some untidy spot

Where the dogs go on with their doggy life and the torturer's horse

Scratches its innocent behind on a tree.

In Brueghel's Icarus, for instance: how everything turns away

Quite leisurely from the disaster; the ploughman may

Have heard the splash, the forsaken cry, 

But for him it was not an important failure; the sun shone

As it had to on the white legs disappearing into the green

Water; and the expensive delicate ship that must have seen

Something amazing, a boy falling out of the sky,

Had somewhere to get to and sailed calmly on.

Auden's Musee is one of my favorite poems though I wonder why since it induces such recognition of guilt in me.  He tells us the subject of the poem not in the title, but in the second word of the text: "suffering," human suffering. He goes on to reflect that while one human being suffers, anguishes, excruciates and dies,  He notes that even 'dreadful martyrdom' occurs in some 'corner, some untidy spot' where dogs may be pissing and the killer's horse scratches his ass on a handy tree.  He reminds us that Breughel's Icarus depicts a "disaster," "a boy falling out of the sky," "his white legs disappearing into the green water" with a 'splash' and a 'forsaken cry,' while the "expensive delicate ship . . . had somewhere to get to and sailed calmly on."  How easy it is to think of the forsaken cries of.  George Floyd and Tyre Nichols crying for their mothers while being murdered by their official police department executioners, to think of Eric Garner on Staten Island crying 'I can't breathe.'  How easy to think of all of them as martyrs to Black oppression in America, even with Tyre's murderers all black. Is is conceivable that Tyre would have been treated as he was had he been White?  Ditto George Floyd.  Eric Garner . Freddie Gray.  And as for 'the expensive delicate ship . . . sail[ing] calmly on, consider the video of the casual conversations of the vicious murderous police officers during the 22 minutes that elapsed before an ambulance arrived for Tyre, with the 5 cops offering no assistance whatsoever to their lethally injured victim.   Consider the nonchalance of Derek Chauvin as he pressed his knee on George Floyd's neck for  more than 9 minutes while Floyd's life drained away.  Or Daniel Pantaleo after applying his unlawful and lethal chokehold on Eric Garner.  How can I knot be guilty culpable indifference when I have done nothing to stop or reduce this police criminality other than to 'tsk tsk', or to write about it in my chronicles or journal to be read only by me, or to commiserate with my 'expensive delicate' highly educated very comfortable White liberal friends about what a racist society we live in, virtue signalling. Never picketed, never marched, never carried a sign, never wrote to politicians to demand action.  I'm reminded of the concluding lines of Kenneth Rexroths memorial poem to Dylan Thomas "Thou Shalt Not Kill: "And all the birds of the deep sea rise up / Over the luxury liners and scream  / 'You killed him, you killed him / In your Goddamed Brooks Brothers suit / You son of a bitch!"

Donald Hall, Essays After Eighty:  "My problem isn't Death but Old Age.  I fret about my lack of balance, my buckling knee, my difficulty standing up and sitting down.  Yesterday I fell asleep in an armchair.  I never fall asleep in a chair.  Indolence overcomes me every day.  I sit daydreaming about what I might do next:putting on a sweater or eating a pieceof pie or calling my daughter.  Sometime I break through my daydream to stand up  . . . Fiends die, friends become demented, friends quarrel, friends drift with old age into silence . . ."

Queries to my Seventieth Year, Walt Whitman, died at 72.   "Approaching, nearing, curious / Thou dim, uncertain spectre - bringest thou life or death? / Strength, weakness, blindess, more parahysis and heavier? /  Or placid skies and sun?  Wilt stir the waters yet? / Or haply cut me short for good?  or leave me here as now? / Dull, parrot-like and old, with cracked voice, harping, screeching?

Answers from my Eightieth Year, Chuck Clausen, died at ???? "Approaching, nearing, curious - now a decade on / The clear and certain spectre - diminished life and death. / Touch, sight, hearing, taste and smell grow dull and deaden / Memory, identity, and self evanesce. / And cut me short.  There's no leaving me here as now / Plague or plaques or plasias ultimately see to that."              

Vacillation,  W. B. Yeats "Things said or done long years ago / Or things I did not say or do / But thought that I might say or do / Weigh me down, and not a day / But something is recalled, /  My conscience or my vanity appalled."

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  •  my favorite poems though I wonder why since it induces such recognition of guilt in me.  He tells us the subject of the poem not in the title, but in the second word of the text: "suffering," human suffering. He goes on to reflect that while one human being suffers, anguishes, excruciates and dies,  He notes that even 'dreadful martyrdom' occurs in some 'corner, some untidy spot' where dogs may be pissing and the killer's horse scratches his ass on a handy tree.  He reminds us that Breughel's Icarus depicts a "disaster," "a boy falling out of the sky," "his white legs disappearing into the green water" with a 'splash' and a 'forsaken cry,' while the "expensive delicate ship . . . had somewhere to get to and sailed calmly on."  How easy it is to think of the forsaken cries of.  George Floyd and Tyre Nichols crying for their mothers while being murdered by their official police department executioners, to think of Eric Garner on Staten Island crying 'I can't breathe.'  How easy to think of all of them as martyrs to Black oppression in America, even with Tyre's murderers all black. Is is conceivable that Tyre would have been treated as he was had he been White?  Ditto George Floyd.  Eric Garner . Freddie Gray.  And as for 'the expensive delicate ship . . . sail[ing] calmly on, consider the video of the casual conversations of the vicious murderous police officers during the 22 minutes that elapsed before an ambulance arrived for Tyre, with the 5 cops offering no assistance whatsoever to their lethally injured victim.   Consider the nonchalance of Derek Chauvin as he pressed his knee on George Floyd's neck for  more than 9 minutes while Floyd's life drained away.  Or Daniel Pantaleo after applying his unlawful and lethal chokehold on Eric Garner.  How can I knot be guilty culpable indifference when I have done nothing to stop or reduce this police criminality other than to 'tsk tsk', or to write about it in my chronicles or journal to be read only by me, or to commiserate with my 'expensive delicate' highly educated very comfortable White liberal friends about what a racist society we live in, virtue signalling. Never picketed, never marched, never carried a sign, never wrote to politicians to demand action.  I'm reminded of the concluding lines of Kenneth Rexroths memorial poem to Dylan Thomas "Thou Shalt Not Kill: "And all the birds of the deep sea rise up / Over the luxury liners and scream  / 'You killed him, you killed him / In your Goddamed Brooks Brothers suit / You son of a bitch!"

    Donald Hall, Essays After Eighty:  "My problem isn't Death but Old Age.  I fret about my lack of balance, my buckling knee, my difficulty standing up and sitting down.  Yesterday I fell asleep in an armchair.  I never fall asleep in a chair.  Indolence overcomes me every day.  I sit daydreaming about what I might do next:putting on a sweater or eating a pieceof pie or calling my daughter.  Sometime I break through my daydream to stand up  . . . Fiends die, friends become demented, friends quarrel, friends drift with old age into silence . . ."

    Queries to my Seventieth Year, Walt Whitman, died at 72.   "Approaching, nearing, curious / Thou dim, uncertain spectre - bringest thou life or death? / Strength, weakness, blindess, more parahysis and heavier? /  Or placid skies and sun?  Wilt stir the waters yet? / Or haply cut me short for good?  or leave me here as now? / Dull, parrot-like and old, with cracked voice, harping, screeching?

    Answers from my Eightieth Year, Chuck Clausen, died at ???? "Approaching, nearing, curious - now a decade on / The clear and certain spectre - diminished life and death. / Touch, sight, hearing, taste and smell grow dull and deaden / Memory, identity, and self evanesce. / And cut me short.  There's no leaving me here as now / Plague or plaques or plasias ultimately see to that."              

    Vacillation,  W. B. Yeats "Things said or done long years ago / Or things I did not say or do / But thought that I might say or do / Weigh me down, and not a day / But something is recalled, /  My conscience or my vanity appalled."

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Alas, poor

1/28/2026

 Wednesday, January 28, 2026

D+82

2021 Bernie Sanders' mittens that he wore to Biden's inauguration raised $1.8 million for Vermont charities after the images went viral

2025 The Office of Personnel Management offered a "deferred resignation" scheme to the 2 million federal government employees to announce their resignation by February 6, while stating that employees who resigned would still receive salary and benefits until September 30, 2025. 

In bed at  9:40. up at 3:40.  3/-9/12/2 

Meds, etc.  Morning meds at  a.m.  Kevzara injection at  a.m.  

From "After Donations, Trump Administration Revoked Rule Requiring More Nursing Home Staff; Executives who donated to the president’s super PAC met privately with him and urged a repeal of the rule, which was intended to prevent neglect of patients" from this morning's New York Times, by Ken Vogel and Christina Jewett.

Starting in early August, the industry began making donations that over the course of weeks would eventually total nearly $4.8 million to MAGA Inc., a super PAC devoted to Mr. Trump and run by his allies.

Later that same month, a handful of nursing home executives who had given the biggest donations joined industry lobbyists at Mr. Trump’s golf club in suburban Washington to plead their case, according to campaign finance filings and people familiar with the meeting.

Over light lunch fare, the contingent “urged the president to formally repeal the harmful minimum staffing mandate, which would have surely forced providers throughout the country to close their doors to new residents — or possibly close their doors altogether,” Bill Weisberg, the founder and chief executive of Saber Healthcare Group, recounted in a text message to The New York Times.

Less than one month after the lunch meeting, Trump administration lawyers quietly stopped defending the pending staffing rule in court against challenges from the industry.

Complete victory came a couple of months after that, when the White House approved a full revocation.  

The best government money can buy.  So it goes.