The White House machinery has slipped a gear. President Trump declared the White House hierarchy and personnel, “a fine(sic) tuned machine.” This was on the heels of his National Security Adviser’s resignation or firing, the unsuccessful Labor Secretary nomination of Andrew Pudzer and the banning of his assistant White House Counsel Kellyanne Conway from two cable news stations for distortion of facts.
I hear a few gears grinding. Meanwhile, the magician twirls his wand while the EPA is now allowing ( per Donald Trump and an accommodating Congress) indiscriminate dumping of waste from coal mines into water tributaries, opposed by former President Obama http://www.snopes.com/2017/02/06/dump-coal-waste-into-streams/. The withholding of negative information to consumers investing in financial institutions may become customary, as Republicans move to reduce the power of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/trump-consumer-financial-protection-bureau_us_5877ac9ee4b05b7a465e3262. Most importantly, a perverse give and take rule that calls for the removal of two regulations for every one instituted is taking shape https://qz.com/847534/donald-trump-can-use-the-obscure-congressional-review-act-to-overturn-some-of-the-obama-adminsitrations-regulations/.
On its face, such a rule sounds childish. Removing a rule without the benefit of meritorious debate and using an ill-advised quantifying scale is foolish. The Republican Party that has preached personal responsibility, patriotism and the rule of law until my ears have bled now have the power to stop anarchy. I know the hackles of Republicans were jut raised being associated with anarchist but this is where we are. A President who defiantly refuses to disclose his financial ties to a dictatorship, brazenly pitting the watchdog of government, the press, against the people and has turned the so-called, “Winter White House” into a money-making scheme. Donald Trump has dubbed his Mar-a-Lago Club the Winter White House with a two hundred thousand-dollar membership fee, raised from one-hundred thousand once he took office. I supposed a part of this fee grants access to what is now being called the “outdoor situation room” http://www.timesofisrael.com/mar-a-lago-situation-room-raises-questions-over-trump-security/. Mr. Trump is a danger to national security. His use of twitter on possibly and unsecured personal phone http://www.npr.org/sections/alltechconsidered/2017/02/03/513256171/is-trump-tweeting-from-a-secure-smartphone-the-white-house-wont-say, patrons of his club snapping photos of his emergency meeting with Japanese Prime Minister Abe and photos taken of a soldier carrying the ‘nuclear football.’ These things are no longer fodder for SNL skits but are breaches of protocol that could prove deadly.
I love this country despite its imperfect past and its future mistakes. I love this country because it is ever growing and has been willing to face its moral failings. We have lost our way on many occasions, slavery, native American genocide, internment camps and Jim Crow. I have lived a life that has forced segregation upon me; Enslaved my ancestors and left me the remnants of the indignities it has caused. It has given me Presidents who have proudly touted the superiority of white men. I still remember as a 6-year-old boy seeing my great-grandmother cry because she could not explain to me why I was being called names by little white boys. Despite it all, I love my country, as I would a spoiled child, and hate seeing it become the laughing stock of the world.
’18 and Change’