Coach Trump's Really, Really Big Win

A health care victory parable:

The greatest coach ever, the greatest in his own mind, at least, strode the sideline like a lion, orange mane flapping in a light breeze. What passed for a signature smile, what observers might describe as a smirk, broadened as he watched the clock tick down. 

After starting the season, 0-10, the Trump Golden Grabbers appeared poised for a huge win. It was the best win in the history of organized football. Any story that said different would be “fake news.”

The Golden Grabbers held the ball, 4^th and 1, at the opponent’s 44 yard line. Coach Donald J. Trump shot a look at the scoreboard, figured there was time for one final play. He watched punter Reince Priebus take the snap and kick the ball out of the end zone. Priebus danced a jig in celebration and head for the sidelines.

Quarterback Paul Ryan, he of the steely blue eyes, focus of every American woman’s rape baby dreams, high-fived Priebus as he came off the field.

Coach Trump seemed baffled when lusty boos from the home crowd filled Donald J. Trump Stadium.

“Why don’t all the fans love me,” he asked offensive coordinator Steve Bannon, standing to his (far) right.

“Maybe they’re mad about last week,” Bannon replied. “When Ryan ran the wrong way after he picked up his own fumble and scored two points for the other team.”

“There has never been a new coach like me, none has ever turned around a bad team as quickly,” Trump whined. “I’m the greatest coach ever. 

“I inherited a mess.”

A defensive lineman, sitting on the bench nearby, couldn’t resist. “Coach,” he said, masking his disgust, “we’re 0-10. You told fans when you took over at the start of the season they’d get sick of winning.”

As if to illustrate the point, the crowd roared again. An angry cascade of boos filled the stadium and the 40-foot tall golden “T” atop the press box (now empty on Team Owner Donald J. Trump’s orders) vibrated as a result.

“You suck, you moron,” a fan of the Grabbers, seated in the first row behind the bench, was heard to shout.

“Kick a field goal, next time, dumb ass,” bellowed a disgruntled fan.

Trump winced and made a mental note. Clearing the press box of all who criticized him had been a great move. Now he needed to issue a few tweets following his big win. Maybe he could blame the 0-10 start on the previous coach, who retired after eight solid seasons. Or he might issue a series of tweets, claiming other teams kept lining up fifteen players on every play vs. his Grabbers eleven. How could he make his team great again when “so-called” referees wouldn’t call penalties they should?

On ESPN talk shows they might show film, indicating that no penalties had been called for 15 men on the field because there had never been 15 men on the field. Trump puzzled a moment, but figured he’d do what he always did. He would say he was told there were 15 opposing players on every play. 

He was only repeating what others said.

The Grabbers cheerleaders chose that moment to start the only cheer they ever performed: “Give us a T, an R…a U-M-P…What’s it spell…” For a moment, Trump’s attention wandered.

Boy, those cheerleaders. I’d like to grab one of them by…”

“Coach! Coooooooooooach,” defensive captain Mitch McConnell pleaded, interrupting his reverie. “What do we do now? What defense do we play?”

“Travel Ban Right, I guess. Why?” Trump replied. Why play defense if the game was over?

McConnell pinched his lips more tightly than ever, threw up his hands in disbelief, and wandered away.

“I never knew coaching could be so complicated,” Trump muttered to no one in particular. Ryan heard him—shot him a look of disdain—but quickly recovered, and a fake smile returned to his face.

After ten consecutive losses he had doubts about Trump’s fitness to lead. The fool had never coached before, not even a peewee squad. He had no idea what he was doing or tweeting most of the time. Worse, every time something went wrong, he blamed someone else.

And there had been a litany of disasters.

Coach Trump’s “Mexican Wall” defensive scheme, involving 11 men crowding the line of scrimmage, with no defensive backs, led to the Grabbers giving up seven touchdown passes the first week.

The day before the second game, Defensive Coordinator Mike Flynn had to be fired after it was discovered he had secretly handed over a Grabbers playbook to the Putin University Big Red squad.

Fans were still angry about cost-cutting moves. When Grabber’s linebacker John McCain suffered a spinal injury in Week Three, he had to be dragged from the field by his feet. Team Owner Trump had gotten rid of the cart used to haul injured players away—and the stretchers—and the team doctor—and the entire training staff—because he said he wanted to save money for fans.

A 35-0, Week Four loss, with daughter Ivanka calling ever play for fun, didn’t help the fans’ moods. Nor were they impressed when they visited the team store after the game. There they discovered there was only one jersey for sale, a signature Ivanka design. The team colors, gold and green, remained the same. But individual player names and numbers had vanished. Only a single choice was left, the name “Trump,” emblazoned above a big gold “1.”

The string of losses grew, but the debacle of Week Ten was by far the worst. Facing a road contest against their hated rivals, the Pyongyang Marauders, the Grabbers blew a 17-0 lead in the final quarter. The low point came when Trump called for a quick-strike pass, “Aircraft Carrier North,” but told the intended receiver to run a different route. The receiver went one way, Ryan threw it the other, the pass was picked off and run back for a touchdown, and the contest ended in a stunning 21-17 defeat.

Now, Trump seemed baffled. Here in Week Eleven he and Ryan had put up enough points for a 3-0 win. “Why are the fans booing?” Trump asked, turning to Bannon. “I bet they’re paid to boo. Nobody thought I could win. But I did. I’m the best coach ever. Bill Bellichek, Vince Lombardi and George Patton have nothing on me.”

“It’s only the end of the first quarter,” Bannon replied glumly. “We haven’t won at all. We have three quarters to go.”

After a long commercial break, the second quarter began. Trump, as already noted, had put his defense in the “Travel Ban” formation. This involved putting all eleven defenders on one side of the field to guard a receiver named Mohammed Sanu. Trump used the formation every time a Muslim player on an opposing team stepped on the gridiron. It might have worked if the enemy quarterback had been dumb enough to throw the ball only to Sanu.

Instead, he dropped back, made a quick and easy toss to a wide open receiver not named Sanu, on the other side of the field, and watched him waltz into the end zone for an 80-yard score.

Chants of, “Fire Trump!” cascaded from the stands. Trump turned and sneered at the crowd, and offered a “thumbs up.”

Sadly, fans seemed to forget: Owner Donald J. Trump had signed Coach Donald J. Trump to an ironclad, four-year, you-can’t-fire-me deal.

And Trump still loved Trump.

The Trump Grabbers take the field.

Trumpcare 2.0: The Coalition of American Oligarchs Loves It!

Well, thank god. The Republicans are started down the road (or maybe across the Bridge to Nowhere), on the way to repealing and replacing Obamacare.

The Affordable Care Act was terrible, right?

Okay, maybe it did reduce the number of uninsured Americans to an all-time low, cutting the total from 16%, or 1 in every 6 of our neighbors, to 8.6% of the nation’s population, or 1 in 11. 

Who cares about uninsured neighbors? Unless they crawl over to your property and die on your lawn.

Obamacare is imploding. President Trump says so. According to Speaker Paul Ryan, U.S. health care was perfect until President Obama started messing around. From the days of smallpox and the Founding Fathers to passage of the ACA people with preexisting conditions were never able to get insurance. 

Just as Jesus intended!

(I’m not sure about right-wing theology in this matter. My understanding of Jesus and his message would be: Heal the sick and help the poor.)

As of Thursday we know Trumpcare 2.0 is going to be fantastic even though House Republicans dared not wait to let the Congressional Budget Office score it. In fact, according to Mr. Trump every American is going to have better coverage, at way lower cost, and all nurses will be Victoria’s Secret models.

If you don’t believe any of that—because you actually understand math—well, you must listen to “fake news.”

I know. You might be conservative. You know someone who had to pay for maternity care in their insurance package and they’re 93 years old. Or you know someone who couldn’t choose their own doctor back in 2010.

Or you, yourself, saw premiums spike.

We liberals get that. That does sting.

And remember when America was great, before President Obama, and premiums never went up!

And benefits were never curtailed, until the Affordable Care Act was enacted!

And Big Pharma priced drugs fairly because executives who run the companies love the sick so much they wish they could give them drugs free. But legally they can’t, so they jack up the price of live-saving insulin by 700%.

Yes! Let the Big Business folks shape the entire health care system again. Big Business folks are saints.

Big Government? Always evil! Always.

Just ask Mitch McConnell.

No, scratch that. Senator McConnell made sure in a budget deal last week that money would be there to cover retired coal miners and widows who lost health insurance when mining pensions failed.

As a liberal, by the way, I’d say, yes, we can afford to cover unfortunate miners and widows. 

We can also afford to cover five-year-olds who suffer from leukemia. 

To be fair, we all know, except maybe for President Trump, that health care is a maddeningly complicated business. Every honest person knows this issue has a thousand moving parts—and honest people may disagree about details and cite competing examples. But if you believe Trumpcare is going to be way better and cost way less, you’re being played for a sucker.

Consider the opinions of those who know the system best. Below is a list of groups that came out against the first GOP plan in March.

That plan was so terrible, only 17% of Americans approved. You might as well have asked people: “Do you approve or disapprove of cholera?” 

Cholera would have polled higher.

Anyway, these groups opposed the first version:

American Medical Association

American Hospital Association

Catholic Health Association

Association of American Medical Colleges

Children’s Hospital Association

AARP

Oh, yeah, also:

American Nurses Association

American College of Physicians

National Nurses United

National Physicians Alliance

Association of American Physicians and Surgeons

American Academy of Pediatrics

These groups joined in opposing the second iteration of Trumpcare:

American Cancer Society Cancer Action Network

American Diabetes Association

American Heart Association

American Lung Association

Cystic Fibrosis Foundation

JDRF (Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation)

March of Dimes

National Multiple Sclerosis Society

National Organization for Rare Disorders

WomenHeart: The National Coalition for Women with Heart Disease

Then again, there were a few groups that did come out strongly in favor of Trumpcare 2.0. So let’s not forget them:

Coalition of American Oligarchs

Trump Family, Inc.

Koch Brothers Family Reunion

Mar-a-Lago Supper Club

—and—

The Walton Family Foundation for Not Insuring Our Own Workers

All across America this weekend, the top 25 billionaire hedge fund managers, the seven members of the Walton family, worth a combined$134 billion according to the Forbes 400 list, and the two richest Koch brothers, who suffered so deeply under Obama that their wealth only increased to $42 billion each, are celebrating. So are big Trump backers like Sheldon Adelson and Carl Ichan, assorted members of the Trump cabinet (Wilbur Ross, Betsy DeVos) and, of course, the President, himself. With a personal fortune estimated to be $3.7 billion, he is #156 on the Forbes list—and if this plan goes through, he’ll save a bundle.

In other words, it’s a great day for freedom (to develop lung disease and die if you’re poor), to be an oligarch in America.

At Mar-a-Lago (membership fee: $200,000; annual dues: $14,000), they’ll be partying hard in weeks to come. I think all the members will now be able to afford second helpings of beautiful chocolate cake.

Got a child with cancer! Too bad for you.

President Trump Gets an "F" in History (Even Grading on a Curve)

Well, thank god, I say, that President Donald J. Trump is a pure product of America’s private schools. 

As a former public school teacher, I grow weary listening to “experts” bash the nation’s public schools. But our current President’s bumbling grasp of history, not to mention science, syntax and social norms—it’s all on the private schools.

Today we stick with history. Based on what we know, Mr. Trump believes the only good generals we’ve had since World War II are…well, no one. “Oh, boy,” you often hear him say, “if only we had generals like Patton and MacArthur!” Or: “We don’t win any more. We need Patton and MacArthur.”  Or: “We’re going to bring back Patton and MacArthur from the grave. With Patton and MacArthur and the Ghost of Christmas Past, we’ll defeat ISIS in, like, fifteen minutes.”

Easy as that.

This week, President Trump talked about how Andrew Jackson could have stopped the Civil War.

Unfortunately, if you know even a tiny fragment of history, you wonder why Trump doesn’t mention generals H. Norman Schwarzkopf Jr. and Colin Powell. The latter masterminded the plan for the invasion of Iraq in 1991 and the former led U.S. and Allied forces to a smashing victory over Saddam Hussein in only six weeks.

Remember? Iraqi losses were at least 100,000 killed and wounded. Schwarzkopf and his troops captured another 70,000.

Losses on our side totaled 1,700.

So Schwarzkopf would be worth discussing.

And Powell.

Wait. Never mind. During the 2016 campaign a leaked email from General Powell referred to Trump as a “national disgrace and an international pariah.”

Moving on.

It’s actually kind of fun to realize that the only leader from the First Gulf War who merited Mr. Trump’s praise is Saddam Hussein. According to Trump, Saddam was a master at dealing with terrorists. Yes, that homicidal maniac had his good points. 

He knew how to deal with terrorists.

As it often seemed, Trump appeared to know less than nothing about history. What he did know was wrong. You wondered if he had heard of the Kurds, currently, and for the last decade, easily our most dependable allies in the fight in Iraq. You wondered if he knew anything at all about how Saddam used torture, gunfire and heaping helpings of poison gas to kill at least 50,000 Kurds in their villages.

(Press Secretary Sean Spicer, care to comment?)

Getting back to U.S. history and U.S. generals, Trump could just as easily have mentioned Dwight D. Eisenhower, Patton’s actual commander during World War II. He could have mentioned him and got in a plug for a sane Republican leader at the same time. Then again, “Ike,” as he was known, liked golf.

And we all know how much Mr. Trump despised seeing a president play golf. He couldn’t stomach watching Obama on the links. During the campaign he promised adoring crowds in red hats he was going to be so busy working for them he’d hardly have any time left to poof his hair in the morning or tweet!

(Now, he loves golf.)

Trump’s tenuous grip on history became even more obvious after he took a seat in the Oval Office. On the first day of Black History Month, in February, he offered a shout out to a giant in the fight for equality. “Frederick Douglass is an example of somebody who’s done an amazing job and is getting recognized more and more,” our Chief Executive said.

No doubt, Trump lovers were impressed. “Hey!” you could almost hear them saying, “This proves our guy’s not a racist! And neither are we! He’s the least racist person he knows. I mean: He just complimented a negro!!!!” (I believe some Trump fans still prefer the small “n” form of the word, the style a century ago, when America was great and Jim Crow and lynching were all the rage.) 

Unfortunately, neither Trump nor his fans seemed to realize Douglass’ best work was behind him. He wasn’t getting noticed “more and more.”

He was dead.

Like since 1895.

It was another piece in a sad pattern. Trump seemed surprised to learn all federal judges were actual not “so-called” judges and had a right to block his travel bans if they were thought to be unconstitutional. He seemed mystified to find there were three branches of government and Congress could be refractory and appeared surprised to “discover” that Abraham Lincoln was once a Republican who lived at some point in a distant past.

What Lincoln might have done, chopped down a cherry tree, or agreed to the Louisiana Purchase, or got stuck in the White House bathtub one really bad day, apparently stumped President Trump.

Andrew Jackson, though! Now there was a president! When the U.S. Supreme Court told “Old Hickory,” as Jackson was known, he couldn’t force the Cherokee Indians off their lands—because they were rightful owners—he stood right up to those “so-called” judges, particularly a pesky Chief Justice! “John Marshall has made his decision,” the President fumed. “Now let him enforce it.”

Yeah, who needs an independent judiciary!

So what if the Cherokee had signed an array of treaties? In the old days, no one cared about treaties! As the governor of Georgia said at the time, treaties were “expedients by which ignorant, intractable, and savage people were induced without bloodshed to yield up what civilized peoples had a right to possess.” Jackson and the U.S. Army sent the Cherokee packing to Oklahoma in 1835.

The civilized people got the land. They brought in slaves and grew lots of civilized cotton. Jackson occasionally sold one of his slaves and pocketed the civilized cash. All was right with a civilized Union. 

Besides, only a quarter of the Cherokee people perished on the trip west. They still had three-quarters of their men, women and children. 

Plus they didn’t have to worry about repealing and replacing Obamacare.

Now, this past weekend, President Trump dived into the shallow end of the historical pool yet again, cracking his skull on adamantine facts. In an interview with a reporter from the Washington Examiner, Trump brought up Jackson again. Only this time, he felt the urge to talk about Civil War.

Clearly, Trump has an affinity for Jackson. People, he says, compare him with Jackson all the time. “It was during the Revolution that Jackson first confronted and defied an arrogant elite,” Trump explained during a visit to The Hermitage, Jackson’s old home near Nashville, in March. He was going to be just like Jackson! He promised! He was going to fight a “growing aristocracy.”

I believe his plan was to do so by giving billionaires (not to mention himself and all his children) massive tax cuts.

What President 45 really wanted to do was revisit the story of President 7. “I mean, had Andrew Jackson been a little later, you wouldn’t have had the Civil War,” Trump mused. “He was a very tough person, but he had a big heart and he was really angry that he saw what was happening with regard to the Civil War. He said, ‘There’s no reason for this.’ People don’t realize, you know, the Civil War, if you think about it, why? People don’t ask that question, but why was there the Civil War? Why could that one not have been worked out?”

Well, people do ask that question. Frederick Douglass, who ran away from slavery, asked it often while he was alive.

Why couldn’t it have been worked out—by Jackson, for starters—just because he happened to die in 1845? Okay. One must admit he died before Texas entered the Union as a slave state. He died before we battered Mexico in a war. Old Hickory died before gold was discovered in California, before the people voted to come into the Union as a free state. He was dead and moldering in his grave when violence exploded and “Bleeding Kansas” bathed in gore. He was even deader, if possible, by the time the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that Dred Scott, the slave, would not be freed because Mr. Scott was property and had “no rights which the white man was bound to respect.”

So, for Trump, a little history lesson seems in order. First, a deceased president can’t stop anything, including a Civil War that began in 1861. Second, the war was all about slavery and that’s not just “fake news.” Finally, the struggle for justice, for the advancement of freedom for all members of the human race, that struggle has always proved long and hard. And you don’t want to halt or retard it.

Or do you, sir?

Only the future and future historians will tell.

Jackson's home, The Hermitage.

You can afford silver servings if you're "workers" don't get paid.

The "help" at The Hermitage.

What was the Civil War really about? See if you can figure it out?