2017 Jan 25^th

At the inauguration riots, where some anarchists were desperately trying to light trash can contents afire, five journalists were arrested for encouraging this misbehavior. What a great idea: If there is public rioting just arrest journalists for reporting it and if it isn’t reported then the lawlessness will stop.

This technique has become a conservative Republican staple: Florida Governor Rick Scott believes he can roll back the oceans, like Moses escaping from Egypt, if he stops Florida state employees from writing or speaking about “climate change” or “global warming.” If they just stop talking about it. the Florida coastline and the investors in beachfront property will be quite safe. Wanna bet?

This gag order has now risen to the federal level. The National Park Service people are the same bad boys who, according to Trump, underestimated his huuge inauguration crowds. These miscreants have put out a comment on global warming, several of them in fact. The tweets flew in Trump’s face because he insisted that all communication to the public from The Department of the Interior, which includes the NPS, cease until further notice. These tweets contained simple facts about ocean acidification and about the amount of carbon dioxide in the air.  These were “true facts” and the President has his own “alt-facts” that are often quite different. It’s no wonder that the poor man was upset. Perhaps he should be allowed his own facts; he is the President after all!

Our new president seems badly nettled by the news that he lost the popular vote to Hillary Clinton. The numbers weren’t trivial, he lost it by nearly 3 million votes. One supporter pointed out that the Electoral College is all that matters and another asserted that Clinton only had the plurality of votes and not the majority of votes. That matters not a whit to Trump so he must respond to explain this loss to his own satisfaction.

The reason he lost the popular vote is simple: The alt-fact he has offered is that between 3 and 5 million aliens were allowed to vote and every last one of them voted for Hillary Clinton. There is no evidence for this alt-fact at all which is why it is called an alt-fact. Even the Speaker of the House, Paul Ryan, third in line for the presidency, admits he sees no evidence for this assertion.

If we take a median figure of four million aliens voting and note that there are about 3200 counties in this country we are faced with the fact that Trump is claiming an average of about 1250 illegal aliens have voted in every US county in the last election. This is obviously nonsense. That would mean that illegal aliens make up more than half the votes in many sparsely populated counties. (The least populated county is in Texas with a population of 82 people.)

Trump’s advisors seem to have recognized that the boss is not tracking very well on this one so now things have changed. Trump is claiming that voter rolls need to be examined because dead people are on the voter rolls. (At least he hasn’t claimed that any of these dead people have been voting.) Problems of this sort have been recognized since 2012 when the Obama administration decided to look into updating voter registration rolls.  This is a very different complaint than suggesting illegal aliens caused him to lose the popular vote.

A very important corollary here is that this fraudulent vote complaint feeds directly into increasing voter ID requirements making it more difficult for low income people to vote. We have already seen the Trump Justice Department in action because they are delaying a lawsuit filed in Texas against some restrictive voter ID laws. What will be next?