The Unaffordable Care Act

("24 Million Fewer Could Receive Health Coverage")

The unaffordable care act.

It is larceny in broad daylight, stealing from the poor to satiate the rich,  stripping Medicaid, making coverage unattainable for those most in danger, treating misery as a pre-existing condition, holding the only self evident truth, the only mandate, is insuring that insurance is once more a privilege and not a right.
 

For the vast portion of the population who stand to lose the most, many of whom sought comfort in the arms of the Republican party, it is far past time to end the delusion that this President and those in control in this Congress are in your corner.
 

The President will rely on his standard bag of tricks, crying foul that the figures from the CBO are without basis, that this agency, like his intelligence agencies, are filled with incompetents, that numbers lie (except when they support him), that everyone in the fictional land of Trump will live happily ever after.
 

Except we know better (or worse). We know that millions will suffer unnecessarily if this plan become reality, that we will have taken yet another giant step backward in our journey to reach the moral high ground, that we will be complicit in a crime of staggering magnitude.
 

There would be some who might think, for selfish political purposes, that the Democrats should put up a fight but then step aside to allow the Republicans to orchestrate their own political demise. But that cannot be adequate response. The only acceptable reply is to stand resolute and unbending, to push as hard and as long as possible, to give those who require our aid the most, assurance if not insurance they will not be abandoned in their hour of desperate need.

On Dying Young

("Amy Krouse Rosenthal, Author and Filmmaker, Dies at 51")

The piece she wrote for the Times in the days before her death ("You May Want to Marry My Husband") was unique in its intimate view of a life at it's conclusion. Her family ripped from her arms, her husband to become a widower far, far too soon. And Ms. Rosenthal, with not an ounce of self pity, with her humor and intellect still intact and her dignity and purpose still preserved, gave us not merely a dating website to peruse but her own eulogy. We were provided a front row seat to a woman of courage and great fortitude.

None of us envision dying young, with so many promises still to be fulfilled and so many memories still to be created. But if I should pass before my self contemplated expiration date, I hope I do so with even a small portion of the grace that Ms. Rosenthal exhibited.

While she may have written her words intending to extol the virtues of her husband, Amy Krouse Rosenthal also left us with her own unforgettable character to admire.

An Afternoon with Chris Thile

The sweetest music runs through his veins

Like the feel of a gentle warm summer rain

Like the taste of a cherished vintage champagne

Like a truth that no one can possibly feign  

 

His fingers move as instrument to his soul

His eyes alive as those of a new born foal

His body in a pulsing dance to and fro

His beating heart and his song halves of a whole

 

It is the sound of unadulterated joy at play

It is the sight of new bloom on the first spring day

It is the smell of a field of freshly mowed hay

It is love pure and simple as any ever made

 

He is in concert with us and too with his art

He mingles with us, old friends from the start

He laughs, we smile, for he's captured our heart

He plays on in our head long after we part

Name of Republican Health Care Proposal

Idon'tcare

Mr. Trump and the Office of the CYA - A Story of "Unintelligence"

("How Trump Undermines Intelligence Gathering")

The essence of Donald Trump is to reach conclusions and then search for the evidence to justify and confirm. This makes the task of an intelligence agency an impossible one, and their value, in the eyes of their President, limited to providing truth to lies.

In such a universe a President can denounce those who gather the information upon which the most critical decisions are founded as a useless disgrace or accuse them of being complicit in an illegal wiretap. 

Mr. Trump may well have run his business enterprise by making those in his employ uncomfortable, uncertain of their standing and unsure how best to please their boss. And maybe that was, in Mr. Trump's estimation, a key to his success. But it does not translate into how to run a country, it does not lead to the discipline to detail and fixed focus on letting the facts direct the decisions that is a mandate for effective and efficient government.

No one in this bizarre universe of Mr. Trump is immune from criticism or attack. When the only rule is to follow his lead, strange suddenly becomes the ordinary.

And head shaking, hand wringing and ducking for cover become key components of your job.

Of Impetigo, Andrew Bogut and Me - A Tale of Broken Parts and Shattered Dreams

I read that Andrew Bogut, who had just joined the Cleveland Cavaliers, broke his leg less than 60 seconds into his first game with the team. He and I now have an immutable bond.

Almost 50 years ago, I was to begin my senior year as captain and left wing on my high school soccer team. Junior season had ended after four games. A little rash under my chin turned out to be impetigo, a seemingly benign skin issue. But exercising extreme caution (kind of the equivalent of Trump's extreme vetting) and the haunting warning of the school nurse that this could spread to my brain if left untreated (where was that diploma on her wall), I sat out the entire balance of the schedule.

Meanwhile, the team won the league championship, the goalie made the "people in the news" section of Sports Illustrated and life generally proceeded along surprisingly well in my extended absence.

So, like Bogut who came to the Cavs with something to prove, I was ready to show the soccer world that my 5 goals before my "illness" had not been a fluke.

Still I was not in the best physical condition, lazy my perpetual state of being. In our first practice, we had to run the 3.1 mile cross country course at Van Cortlandt Park. I started briskly and then, hidden from sight by a large hill, abruptly stopped, gasping for air. As the rest of the team ran ahead, I pulled a Rosie Ruiz, cutting through the trees and brush and emerging, still out of sight of our coaches, near the finish. So I am not perfect. Sue me.

Our first game of the season was being played in Brooklyn. The field was particularly dusty, swirling gusts clouding my eyes and choking my airways. Just before the first whistle I began a sneezing fit which continued, unabated, for several minutes. Meanwhile, to my great chagrin, 22 players took the field and began the contest without me. My return to glory had gotten off to a decidedly inauspicious start.

About 6 minutes in a ball was kicked out of bounds past the goal line. My sneezing subsided, I triumphantly entered the fray. As the free kick made its parabolic journey towards me I readied for my first action in nearly a year. I rose to meet the ball in mid air, to "trap" it with my chest and then show off my exquisite footwork and powerful left leg.

I don't recall seeing the player who contested this space and knocked me, off balance, back to earth. In the next instant my 10 second season, and my career in soccer, was over.

I remember being placed in the back of my dad's car for the trip to the hospital in New Jersey. I think I passed out (maybe slept is the more accurate term) on the way there. My ankle broken,  the only picture of the team and me from that lost senior season showing me in my full cast.

I consider Mr. Bogut my blood brother. A gifted athlete ready to demonstrate his immense talents on the big stage only to be cut down in mere seconds by cruel fate. Left only with possibilities, broken parts and shattered dreams

.
Andrew, I feel your pain.

P.S. - the team won the league championship again my senior year without any help from me.

Hair Today, Gone Tomorrow

 ("About Clint Frazier's Lush Locks, Will the Yankees Let Their Hair Down?")

It was not always this way in the Bronx. For those who were not alive in the BS era (before Steinbrenner), you missed the unforgettable sight of Oscar Gamble trying to stuff a glorious mountain of hair underneath a cap that looked as if it had as much chance of staying on his head while Oscar was legging out a triple as Alec Baldwin now has of receiving a tweet of appreciation from Donald Trump.
 

And even though the 4th of July born King George made all his Samsons shear off their locks before they were locked into their contracts, he could not keep all the personalities under his command buttoned up, even as they cleaned up.
 

Reggie Jackson may have cut his hair but he did not shut his mouth as he, the Boss and the brat of the Brat Pack, Billy Martin had a never ending high profile, high volume feud. And even though Dave Winfield was neatly coiffed, he still managed to get into the head and under the skin of Mr. Steinbrenner.
 

Do the multi-million dollar players of this era feel stifled by their inability to express their first amendment right of freedom of hairstyle? Would Samson now play for the Yankees if they offered him enough money? Did the Oakland A's in the 70's, or more recently the San Francisco Giants, prove victorious because of their dedication and devotion to growing great mustaches and beards or rather growing great farm systems?
 

Yankee Stadium has been filled over the past decades not because of short hair or long, but because of short relievers and long. Not due to big hair, but big salaries, not owing to freedom from constraints but free agency.
 

As for me, I shaved my head accidentally yesterday (that is another story), and maybe this is nothing more than my tale of follicle envy. But the bottom line is that if Mr. Frazier does not make the team ("down goes Frazier" should be the headline) it will not be because of his lack of flaming red hair, but merely a lack of ability to catch up with a flaming fastball.

Chasing Shadows

("F.B.I. Chief Pushes for Justice Dept. to Refute Trump")

He is the president of disinformation, the chief purveyor of bogus, the master of through the looking glass speech. Donald Trump has us chasing after shadows even as we know his tweets are filled not with truths but with hot air.

Jeff Sessions is today scheduled to "amend" his testimony before Congress, but the fact that the attorney general of the United States is compelled to try to unlie a lie is not today's headline. What should be the lead is instead buried beneath the manufactured suspicion that Mr. Obama orchestrated an illegal investigation into Mr. Trump's head.

In fact, based on multiple reliable sources, I can report that such an investigation did occur and, despite a thorough and exhaustive effort, nothing was located. Let me repeat, nothing was found, for Mr. Trump's brain is completely empty. Not a single thought representative of Mr. Trump's elevated station was located. All that was uncovered was a bunch of loose marbles rolling around aimlessly.

Mr. Trump is not armed with knowledge, with understanding, with intellect or integrity. But he is equipped with an immense capacity to deflect and defuse. It is his greatest, and truly his only weapon and he used it to decimate his Republican rivals and to semi-defeat Ms. Clinton. Whenever he feels cornered, Mr. Trump's best defense is to be extremely offensive. And attacking Mr. Obama's non-existent actions is nothing if not extremely offensive.

So, as we head down yet another rabbit hole we must stop and ask ourselves: who is the fool, Mr. Trump for his brazen falsehoods, or us for continuing to follow them to their inevitable dead end.

Brother Can You Spare a Dime?

( "The Pope on Panhandling, Give Without Worry")

I have been told that I could not live in the city. That the homelessness that is pervasive would be too hard on me. That I cannot feel a personal pain for each suffering soul I pass on the street, that I cannot reach into my pocket for a dollar for every sad story, every difficult life. That to be living in the midst of these personal tragedies requires some distance, for the sake of my own well being. I understand the harsh reality and inevitable truth in that advice.

Several months ago I was in New York attending an annual memorial service honoring the mostly nameless who had perished in the streets of the city that past year. As I surveyed those gathered, I tried to determine who among the assembled were the homeless. Who would leave this room and return to a darkness I could never understand. And who looked at me, sitting alone, and saw what they believed was the face of a homeless person.

I listened to the speeches, some which recalled a friend or loved one and spoke of that person's humanity, dignity or grace. How could we not be impacted by their lives, how could we dare to feel somehow more entitled to life's bounties?
 
And yet I must admit my own failing. Far too often I pass by a fallen soul without a glance, a nod, a hello or a dollar. I tell myself I am too busy, it is too crowded, I cannot take my wallet out in public. I now apologize to each person I have treated with indifference or even worse, with deliberate inattention.

 I am sorry. You deserved better of me.

The President's VOICE

I wish to use this post to compliment Mr. Trump: he is getting better at teleprompter reading.

But even beyond that he is wonderful at giving VOICE to our hatreds and prejudices. As he surveyed a nation of 330 million he found that we are in collective pain, victims of immigrants. We have been mauled and murdered, minimized and marginalized, traumatized and terrorized. And we could be sanitized and our safety secured by purging ourselves of a mythical plague in our midst.

For a President who has spent a month not living up to his biggest lies, like replace and repeal of Obamacare or building his magical wall at another's expense, who we have come to know best through his tweeting out his insecurities and, let us be honest, his insanity, who is constitutionally challenged and continually confounded, for all of this Mr. Trump last night took us on a fantasy ride of non-existent accomplishments and nonsensical goals, plans that will be funded and attainable only through the actual pain and suffering of so many of those among us.

It was a worthy effort of the President's speechwriters to distort and distract. And of course, to find the villains among us. For Mr. Trump to survive he must always be able to rail against a villain. And give VOICE to our worst instincts. Congratulations Mr. Trump on a bad job well done.