The Government of One
This morning I woke up to a startling newspaper headline, “Trump bans Boeing 737 Max Flights.” To my way of thinking, and many avionics experts agree, this action should have taken place days sooner. A major flaw in the process is that we didn’t hear this decision from the FAA or it’s “acting” Administrator Daniel K. Elwell, nor did the pronouncement come from US Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao. We had to wait for Trump to decide. The plain truth in this age of a power-hungry president is that government agencies are afraid to act. They are frozen in place because everything is judged on how it will affect the Donald or how he will feel about it. Our government agencies are not making decisions in the best interest of our nation. Their actions are based on emotions, not science.
Donald Trump was more interested in talking to the CEO of Boeing than discussing matters with experts at the FAA and NTSB. He’s more comfortable dealing with business executives than lifelong government specialists. What if a plane had fallen out of the sky while Boeing’s top guy, Dennis Muilenburg, was chatting on the phone with POTUS? Trump took the word of the company that its planes were safe to fly, while every other country grounded the jets out of an abundance of caution if not plain common sense. And I would be negligent if I didn’t mention that Trump’s acting Secretary of Defense, Patrick M. Shanahan, came to the administration from Boeing. He worked there for more than two decades and was known as “Mr. Fix-it.” Was he even consulted? What did he have to say?
The United States of America is not a big company to be piloted by one person. The institutions, cabinet positions and administrative heads should be qualified in their specialty and be allowed to state their opinions quickly and unfettered. Trump wants it all to be top down, fighting the foundational concepts of our country where ideas and desires should flow from the bottom up. The people who work in our government aren’t there to agree with Trump. They are supposed to use their radar to find problems and solve them. If we must wait for King Trump to declare anything, we will only get one answer, and that will probably not be a good answer or the correct answer.
The comments from Ms. Chao and Mr. Elwell seem to say that we were making our decision based on facts, rather than emotion. Clearly, Chao wasn’t worried. She flew a Boeing Max 8 to Texas where she spoke that day. But President Donald Trump really mucked things up with this Tweet, “Airplanes are becoming far too complex to fly. Pilots are no longer needed, but rather computer scientists from MIT. I see it all the time in many products. Always seeking to go one unnecessary step further, when often old and simpler is far better. Split second decisions are needed, and the complexity creates danger. All of this for great cost yet very little gain. I don’t know about you, but I don’t want Albert Einstein to be my pilot. I want great flying professionals that are allowed to easily and quickly take control of a plane!”
Someone should ask Donald Trump if he would like the Einstein’s in the military to take the radar and telemetry out of Air Force One. This response from our Commander in Chief is lacking science, logic and facts. It demonstrates his stupidity. For someone whose company owned jets, Trump shows a worrisome lack of aviation knowledge. His tweets prove he shouldn’t be around any decision that involves science, technology or law.
We heard him on the campaign trail saying he knew more than his military generals. Most of us thought it was just another lame, boastful joke. But the longer we experience this swamp scum of a man, the more we are coming to believe he actually thinks he knows everything. Hopefully, he won’t attempt heart surgery on anyone. Or attempt to invade a country. Or launch a nuke. Or run the FAA. Oh shit, he’s in charge of most of this. Are we doomed?
This morning we are reading the news about how the air crash in Africa is affecting Boeing stock, a loss of some $25 billion. A Boeing 737 Max jet sells for slightly more than $100 million. If you are mentally calculating the cost per life, then you are guilty of the President’s belief that everything is a transaction. You can kill a journalist, but if you want your oil and money you will look the other way. If the Saudis, Russians and Iranians want to spray poison on their people, it’s their problem. If you don’t like dissidents, just sneak into a country and kill them. And if you want to use social media to screw with the election in our country, go ahead and do it. Trump’s beliefs and actions are those of a dictator.
Our president dodged a bullet this time. If he had waited longer and another plane had crashed, he would have had to explain to America why this government isn’t working. His supporters will believe that he was strong and made the right decision, but in truth he was SLOW and frozen by the corruption and lies of his underlings. When he should have been meeting with smart people about this air travel dilemma, he was busy watching the sentencing news of Paul Manafort.
We also learned yesterday that Trump most likely attempted to manipulate the Justice Department through his fake “acting” Attorney General Matthew Whittaker. Nonetheless, his followers simply swat another fly away from the slowly rotting administration he has created. The “trumpsters” will continue to disregard facts from the Oversight Committee in Congress while wearing their little red “Hitler hats” in public. It might be time to remind ourselves that those “best people” Trump promised to hire are mostly unpatriotic liars. Many of those people trying to “be best” are now convicted felons. People who Trump put in charge of important parts of his campaign and administration are now in jail. Could this be why the Donald thinks he must make every decision himself? Would it not have been a better idea to hire authentically good people and listen to them? Why do we have a jackass President?
BRAND NEW BOOK ON AMERICA
Gold, God, Guns & Goofballs shows how we’ve wasted our GOLD on bad wars and corruption. While GOD is there for many people as a spiritual enrichment and the provider of glowing feelings, the truth is just praying and believing will not change our major arc. We don’t determine who gets a GUN. We aren’t sure if we have paramilitary groups ready to storm the White House or a White Castle. There is no control of weapons. The GOOFBALLS with the power constantly try to manipulate us into spending more money on bombs and tanks and wars. When all of our institutions are infected with neglect and fall in disrepair, we will only have ourselves to blame. This book is not an antidote for the left or right, it’s an accelerant to move the middle off their collective asses to go do something positive for America.
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