Football Wars 

Football and the World Order:  North Korea is threatening to explode a hydrogen bomb into the atmosphere and we’ve countered by sending B1 and F15 bombers as close to their airspace as possible.   Trump is threatening to pull away from the Iran nuclear agreement and they’ve countered by testing a new long range ballistic missile that could reach Israel and Europe.  Having thoroughly disrupted the world order Trump’s moved on to domestic politics. In an effort to further exploit the racial divide, he is now targeting football and basketball players for exercising their First Amendment rights. What he started by insulting players and their mothers in his campaign speech in Huntsville, Alabama, he continued with a series of tweets over the weekend calling on football fans to stay away from games, team owners to fire players and by rescinding an invitation for Stephen Curry and the rest of the Golden State Warriors to visit the White House as part of a customary victory trip, although as the Cleveland Cavaliers’ Lebron James pointed out “U bum” you can’t rescind an invitation to someone who “already said he ain’t going, Going to the White House was a great honor until you showed up!”  Much the way that his tweet attacks on North Korea and Iran have inspired more hostility from North Korea’s Kim Jong Un and Iran’s Hassan Rouhani, his attacks against the mostly African American players inspired an even larger number of football players, team owners and coaches to follow in the footsteps of Colin Kaepernik, the former San Francisco 49er, current free agent, who initiated the kneeling movement by refusing to stand during the national anthem as a protest against racial oppression.  Ironically, Trump, who can’t distinguish a neo-Nazi from a weaponized car victim and who famously said that John McCain isn’t a war hero because he was a prisoner of war for five years, claims that the players’ protests show disrespect for the military.  Yesterday, after a number of players, coaches and owners supported their kneeling colleagues by locking arms, Trump amended his complaint to say that locked arms were okay, because if a White guy like New England’s Tom Brady, his bro crush, locks arms it must be okay, right?  Kaepernik, who has had trouble finding a new team ever since he initiated his protest is no longer kneeling alone, with several quarterbacks off to a bad start this season, he may find himself in demand again, which is more than anyone can say for Treasury Secretary Mnuchin.  Mnuchin was the designated Trump moron this weekend.  He was sent out to defend Trump’s increasingly hostile tweet diplomacy against North Korea and hint about tax reform plans but ended up fielding questions about Trump’s football philosophy and racially charged provocations.  Proving once again why he is one of Trump’s favorites, Mnuchin said that players only have First Amendment rights when they are off the field.  He called for owners and the National Football League to pass rules requiring that players stand during the playing of the national anthem.  League Commissioner Roger Goodell missed that memo, he called Trump’s remarks divisive.          

Down to the Wire:  This year’s war against Obamacare is gasping for air but still has a few breaths left.  Though it looks less and less likely that the Graham-Cassidy plan will pass the Senate, Trump, Majority Leader McConnell and Senators Graham and Cassidy haven’t given up yet, they are still trying to induce fence sitters and naysaying Senators to jump on the no care health care bandwagon.  As of now, Arizona’s Senator McCain is a hard no, Kentucky’s Rand Paul says he can’t vote for anything that doesn’t eradicate all vestiges of Obamacare, and by vestiges he means Obamacare taxes, and Maine’s Susan Collins says that she can’t imagine voting for a bill that dismantles Medicaid but is waiting for the Budget Office to release its report so that she has all the information she needs before voting no. Alaska’s Senator Murkowski has gone into hiding and a few other Senators, including Texas’ Ted Cruz, Utah’s Mike Lee, and Colorado’s Cory Gardner are leaning towards voting no if in fact the plan makes it to the Senate floor for a vote, Cruz and Lee because the plan is too liberal and Gardner because it is too damaging.  Today, Senators Graham and Cassidy are expected to announce changes that will increase funding for Arizona, Alaska and Maine, changes that will make the soon to be released Budget Report useless even before it is released.  Graham is enthusiastic and confidant that these changes will make Graham-Cassidy passable.  He may or may not be delusional, changes that please Murkowski and Collins are likely to further distance Paul, Cruz and Lee; McCain, to the extent that he is to be believed, is insistent that he won’t change his vote under any circumstances.  For his part, despite evidence to the contrary, Senator Cassidy is still insisting that his eponymous plan covers pre-existing conditions even though it doesn’t, a point dramatically hammered home last week by night show host Jimmy Kimmel, with the coaching of Trump’s erstwhile friend, Chuck Schumer.  Still today is only September 25 and Obamacare repeal is a festering sore that never heals so we will have to wait this one out until the clock strikes twelve on September 30, the last day that an Obamacare repeal bill can be passed with the votes of only fifty senators.          

More Irony:  You’ve got to hand it to Jared Kushner.  While his father-in-law launched himself into the presidency by relentlessly attacking Hillary Clinton for her private mail server, Kushner set up his own private email account and then used it to communicate with other members of the White House staff including former Chief of Staff Priebus, former strategist Steve Bannon and economic advisor Gary Cohn. Kushner’s lawyer, Abbe Lowell, insists that only 100 emails were sent from Kushner’s private email address and none of them contained confidential information but as we know from his difficulty filling out his security forms, Kushner’s lists have a tendency to grow over time and his facts tend to meander, so who knows how many emails he really sent from KushnersChutzpah@NotTheWhiteHouse.com.  Ivanka also set up a private account, but she’s managed to limit its use to making hair appointments and arranging after school dates for the kids, or at least that’s what we are being told.   

Another Travel Ban:  Last night the White House announced that with the earlier heavily litigated travel ban expiring they’ve replaced it with a new and improved travel ban.  This one includes a few more countries some without Muslim majorities. The nations facing travel restrictions under the new policy include Chad, Iran, Libya, North Korea, Somalia, Syria, Venezuela and Yemen.  Sudan was dropped from the earlier list.  Venezuela and North Korea’s inclusion is largely symbolic,  not many North Koreans travel to the US as visiting Disneyland is a crime punishable by poison dart and Venezuelans are still welcome, it’s only their government officials who are banned, but neither country has many Muslims so including them on the list makes it seem more balanced and justifiable.  More litigation is likely because basically this is still a Muslim ban, albeit one sporting a new headscarf.  

Another Merkel Term:  Angela Merkel, the leader of the free world, won an unprecedented fourth term as chancellor of Germany yesterday.  However, her party didn’t win enough votes to rule on its own so she will have to form a coalition government.  Sadly, for the first time since 1957 a right wing, anti-Muslim, anti-immigrant, anti-Semitic party garnered enough votes to be seated in Parliament. Merkel doesn’t plan on inviting them into her coalition but their very presence will make governing more complicated.