Saw this on Twitter earlier today, perusing the #WednesdayWisdom hashtag. While I don't disagree with "The Trump Crew" with the sentiment of the picture (click image to go to original tweet), I have to enjoy the irony of people supporting a man who bravely fought through ailments and injuries severe enough to keep him from service but fit enough to play collegiate sports, and whose only personal comparison to the horrors of war was not getting herpes in the 80s. Maybe this is a crucial step of explaining what bravery looks like to our President, cause much like everything else since he took office, the reality is I doubt he freaking knows.

I counted myself among those relatively few people that did not freak out upon the election of Donald Trump as President. I fought the urges every morning to think for a half a second I was in a bad episode of a bad sitcom, waking up in a country with a President Trump. I was perfectly willing to give him the first 100 days, just like I have given every President in my adult life. I let the Trump social media circus, the political equivalent to Juggalos, hoot and holler. I was going to be an adult, and wait to start criticizing when he started inevitably fucking things up. We all then saw how long it took for him to start fucking things up.
 
So, I made criticisms. There were fair criticisms, some less fair, some lightly profane, some that I would have said tiptoed so precariously close to the edge as to actually make me worry (had our President not seen the line, then dragged his balls over it while spouting conspiracy theories and various insults during the campaign), only to be reminded of the extremely tenuous relationship between Trump, his supporters, and facts and reality.
 
But that is not to say Trump has been a complete and total disaster. I mean, 99% is still pretty much complete and total disaster-range, but there is still that 1% that can actually be worked with.
 
The current frontrunner for best example is Trump’s edict that for every new regulation a federal agency proposes, they have to identify “at least two existing regulations to be repealed.” While still a little vague, at face value it is exactly what he says it is- the elimination of more regulations than we create. As one of many who has watched one Trump campaign promise after another crumple and die, screaming in the daylight, there is the apprehension of execution versus a three day tweetstorm explaining whoever else’s fault it was. As one of many who actually want that smaller government we keep talking out, this is a thin ray of sunlight breaking through the rubble.
 
Unfortunately, however, for every Trump supporter that has no connection with facts or reality, there seems to be one on the left of the spectrum that will equally disconnect from facts or reality as needed based on the mere notion that President Lying Orange Snack Food proposed it.
 
The facts and reality are simple. It is the extreme and onerous amounts of regulations that do more to strangle the business environment in the United States than the corporate tax rate, or banks not lending, or anything else. It is the added cost to businesses, particularly in manufacturing, that stifle investment, expansion, and hiring.
 
It is the smaller businesses that bear the brunt of the cost of dealing with regulations, and the fines that can accompany noncompliance. Those costs are what prevents hiring employees and expanding operations, if the business can even get off the ground to begin with. Think I’m kidding? Google up John Stossel on starting a lemonade stand in New York City, and get back with me.
 
There will be those who will breathlessly argue that a push for deregulation is tantamount to corporate welfare, that the Trump administration is doing nothing more than handing America over to big business. It may be a righteous contention, but it’s a contention that ignores that a good portion of that America will be handed back to small businesses, who have a bigger hand in this country that those automatically against big businesses or smaller government are willing to admit when the numbers aren’t in their favor.

​Of course it would be Texas. Who the hell else would it have been? In response to a foster care crisis in the state, including a 2015 federal judge’s ruling that the state’s foster system violated the constitutional rights of the children involved, the Texas legislature has really knuckled down. Gov. Greg Abbott made repairing the system a priority, and the legislature has increased funding while it examines ways to fix the problems.
 
After being delayed due to other matters, a proposed bill is to make its way through the Texas House this week that will attempt to solve violations to the constitutional rights of children by simply violating the rights of everyone else. You know, to make it fair. Under the proposed bill, parents looking to adopt a child could be rejected by a private or state-funded agency that has a religious objection to the couple being Jewish, Muslim, gay, single, or interfaith.
 
What is it, I wonder, that enters the heads of legislators, whether local, state, or federal, that greenlights every single idea that enters their heads. Should we as a people worry more about these kind of creeping discrimination bills being manufactured on a more regular basis, or the fact a majority of the populace now seems either so inattentive or apathetic that it simply does not matter that the majority of the legislators being elected have no working knowledge of the Constitutions they swear to uphold upon election?
 
There should not be anyone who does not see this bill for what it is- an obvious violation of equal protection under the law. There should not be anyone who does not object to allowing any entity accepting state or federal money to make any kind of a decision based on a religious stance. There should not be anyone who does not object to any government entity mandating and providing funding for discrimination. And there should damn well not be anyone who does not object to granting an organization the right to impose their faith or belief systems upon the children in their charge.
 
Yes, you read that last sentence correctly. Under the bill, foster children could very well be required to comply with any faith-based requirements.
 
Rep. James Frank (R-Wichita Falls), the bill’s author, defends it by insisting the bill is designed to address the state’s foster care crisis by making “reasonable accommodations so everyone can participate in the system,” somewhat disingenuously adding “Everyone is welcome. But you don’t have to think alike to participate.”
 
You do not have to think alike to participate, but it sure as hell helps, in other words.
 
In his bill’s defense, Rep. Frank contends that there will be other adoption providers without religious objections made available to those parents who are turned away due to a religious objection. Yes, thank God indeed for the exception to the exception created by a bill to create an artificial sense of freedom.
 
There may be a constitutional crisis in the Texas foster care system, but creating another constitutional crisis to try and hammer a square agreement into a round hole seems to sum up the political process we have all gotten used to dealing with over the past few decades: address a problem with standard politics, and you’ll wind up with more government and less solution (if any) to the problem at hand.