Trump and GOP Congress Like Runaway Bomb-Laden Train Without Brakes

Running the Show: This Trio, Triad, Troika, or Cabal  

The Man Who Signed Regulations that the Triad Hates

(And whose legacy they want to erase from history)

Topic of Events in DC: Repeal or eliminate Obama regulations like the extended gun background checks and other regulatory hypocrisy by this GOP now in control and hell bent on running the backwards, or so their actions seem to indicate.

Background from CNN on year ago and related story from Vox.com just recently.

Polls show a strong majority of Americans — including 87% of Republicans and 84% of gun owners — believe background checks should be required for gun purchases made at gun shows or online.

This is a simple, broadly supported, common-sense policy. So isn't it a good thing that in the face of persistent congressional inaction, President Obama took executive action to do just that?

No, says Republican Speaker of the House Paul Ryan — who has endorsed fixing the background check loophole but is against Obama fixing it.

FYI: Back in January 2013, and on more than one occasion, Ryan called for closing the so-called “gun-show loophole in background checks reasonable and obvious. There is a loophole here. We should address that.”

BTW: Nothing Obama ever proposed — even the common-sense gun policies supported by the broad majority of Americans and yet continually blocked by Republicans in Congress — would have done anything to affect the rights of law-abiding gun owners.

Consider this example: If the Federal background check system is so broken that it allows a person lawfully barred from buying a gun in Texas to simply go and buy one in Louisiana, should we call that okay, and just shrug like there's nothing we could have done and thus still do nothing? Of course not...!!! 

But, don’t seek advice from the NRA (who BTW used to support closing those same loopholes but changed their mind under Mr. Obama term in office).

Here’s the deal and the numbers support this contention: Republicans seem fully willing to suspend the First Amendment for Muslims in the wake of a horrifying recent attacks by Islamic extremists around the country. On the other hand, those same Republicans don't want to do anything about guns because the Second Amendment is sacrosanct (that view and of course the fact that the NRA threatens them with big money to oppose their reelection). 

Sacrosanct second amendment? Ha ... What if it were a member's child shot and killed in the 1^st grade,  or on campus, or at work, or just out strolling one night? Aren’t their lives and the lives of all children, all families, all co-workers, and all our neighbors just as sacrosanct?

Also, this GOP also wants to repeal other Obama-era regulations like the “Coal Waste Regulation” described in this reminder about two coal waste spills (waste seen in this photo at the Widows Creek plant in NE Alabama). Those who want to repeal the regulation say “jobs are our concern,” wow. Jobs over health and the environment… so, how much work do very sick and ill people work, I wonder?

In Summary: We must do whatever we can as a country to protect everyone all the time and as much as possible – nothing should ever take the place of health and safety – nothing.

Former President Obama’s actions on those two issues were not only smart and lawful, and desperately moral and vital, but needed. Speaker Paul Ryan agreed but only it seems if those kinds of actions were taken by someone other than Mr. Obama. 

That aspect my friends is the raw nasty political part isn’t it – you know the part the GOP always complains about?

That is more so now with Donald Trump with an all-GOP congress calling the shots to toss everything with Mr. Obama’s name on it regardless of the harm just in the name of smaller government, less rules, fewer taxes (mainly for the top crust to trickle down jobs, um), and of course, more phony rhetoric to the GOP base to keep them in line and hopeful.

Even as Mr. Trump might tweet at 3 am: SAD…!!!