Issue link: https://www.epageflip.net/i/779841
Checkoutthe25thConstitutionalAmend- ment. A vice president, working with a "ma- jority of either the principle officers of the executive departments, or of such body as Congress may by law provide," can remove the president for being "unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office." Eventhecravenenabling Republicans would do well to read that provision, be- cause the day may come when they're finally compelled to acknowledge — in the national interest — that Trump is dan- gerously off his rocker. We're only six days into this farce, and it's obvious already. As con- servative commentator An- drew Ferguson rightly points out, "the candidate who cam- paigned as a sociopath shows signs he may yet govern as one." The latest reminder is Trump's alternative fact about the election. At the tail end of November, he said he was robbed of a popu- lar vote victory because mil- lions of people had "voted il- legally" for Hillary. It was just another baldfaced lie. He had zero evidence of massive voter fraud, just as he'd had zero evidence that Obama was foreign-born. We figured — foolish us — that Trump, with his attention deficit dis- order, would simply forget the lie and find a new one. Which he did. But now he's obsess- ing about it again, marinat- ing anew in his delusion. We should not be surprised. Sick and twisted people do stuff like this. On Monday night, during a bipartisan meeting with congressional leaders, he stated that he lost the pop- ular vote because three to five million people voted il- legally. He offered no evi- dence of mass fraud, because there isn't any. Then during a press briefing, propaganda minister Sean Spicer recited Trump's alternative fact, and said it was "based on stud- ies and evidence that peo- ple have presented to him." The press asked: What stud- ies? What evidence? Spicer re- plied: "Studies and informa- tion he has." What studies? What infor- mation? Trump is apparently still fixated on a November story that was posted on In- fowars, a tinfoil-hat website, which declared in a head- line: "3 million votes in pres- idential election cast by il- legal aliens." Problem is, the story had no evidence. Plus, the guy who runs Infowars has stated on the record that the Sandy Hook elementary school massacre never hap- pened. But Trump still won't let it go, taking to Twitter to an- nounce, "I will be asking for a major investigation into voter fraud." Someone in the Justice De- partment should tell him that illegal voting on a massive scale is impossible to pull off without everyone noticing it on day one. Someone in Jus- tice should remind him that when Jill Stein sought re- counts shortly after the elec- tion, his own lawyers wrote: "All available evidence sug- gests that the 2016 general election was not tainted by fraud or mistake." But he wouldn't listen, because he doesn't do irony. A few Republicans have roused themselves to protest Trump's idiocy. Mike Huck- abee, a big supporter, told Fox News Business Network, "I have no evidence whatso- ever, and I don't know that anyone does, that there are that many illegal people who voted ... I'm not sure why he brought it up." Sen. Lindsey Graham had the most substantive rebuke. "I would urge the president to knock this off ... To continue to insist that the 2016 elec- tion was conducted in a fash- ion that millions of people voted illegally undermines faith in our democracy," Gra- ham said. "People are go- ing to start doubting you as a person." But, all too predictably, most Republicans reacted as if jelly had replaced their spines. In their lust to en- act their long-stymied agenda (throwing people off Obam- acare, gutting the EPA, etc.), they're apparently prepared to indulge Trump's serial lies and delusions. His temperament is al- ready a burgeoning issue. The anecdotes are piling up. But what's most remark- able about a recent Washing- ton Post story about Trump's first week in office is the ninth paragraph: "This ac- count of Trump's tumultu- ous first days in office comes from interviews with nearly a dozen senior White House of- ficials and other Trump ad- visers and confidants, some of whom spoke on the condi- tion of anonymity to describe private conversations and moments." In other words, Trump aides are already leak- ing like a sieve — to the free and independent press that Trump hates. So the question is: How long will Republicans indulge him before they man up to do their duty? Will they sit silent until he rants us to the brink of a needless war that could get a lot of people killed? This week's "voter fraud" delusion is merely a toxic appetizer. Dick Polman is the national political columnist at NewsWorks/WHYY in Philadelphia (newsworks. org/polman) and a "Writer in Residence" at the University of Pennsylvania. Email him at dickpolman7@ gmail.com. DickPolman Willthemeninthe white coats drag Trump away? Cartoonist's take Last week's column neglected, due to space, to address the Women's March, protesting Pres- ident Trump in the streets of Wash- ington, DC, and nearby Redding and Chico. I re- gard such crowds "peaceably (al- though hysteri- cally) assembling" with respect but not seriously. Some Washington speakers' foul-mouthed and hate- ful rants weren't for children's ears. What are they mobilized about? What had Donald Trump done as president to earn their ire? By Sunday the 22nd, he'd done practically nothing that could affect any of the protesters. He's promised to repeal Obam- acare but the Affordable Care Act was sold to the voters with end- less lies, passed illegitimately, against majority disapproval and has never been popular. 80 to 90 percent of Americans were happy with their health care in 2009 but that didn't stop Democrats' ram- rodding the ACA through Con- gress; many people lost their doc- tors and plans. He promised to cut fund- ing to Planned Parenthood; that will likely find support in Con- gress. Solid majorities of voters have told pollsters that they dis- approve of taxpayer funding of abortion. Nobody can dispute that, or that federal funds going to businesses performing abor- tions are fungible (replace other funds) and facilitate abortions. PP defenders point to non-abor- tion services but the fact remains that the profits derived from kill- ing babies in the womb are essen- tial to supporting said services. They could spin off the abortion side of the business, make money therewith, and taxpayers would not object to financial support for the remaining services. Many displayed their disap- proval of Trump by wearing knit- ted "pussy caps" (forgive the nec- essary double entendre) with cat-shaped ears. Excuse my ob- servation that, this being a pro- test by women of liberal Demo- crat leanings, it consisted of sup- porters of Hillary Clinton, the enabler of Bill Clinton, the great- est abuser and violator of women ever to occupy the presidency. It mattered not that other Demo- crat presidents like Obama and Lyndon Johnson were, in private, as foul-mouthed as Trump about women. It has meant nothing that Trump's winning campaign manager, Kellyann Conway, was the first woman to do so. Liberals respect only other liberals. Other perspectives abounded: In "No hats off to rallies' huge double standard," Adriana Co- hen correctly pointed out that 1) Hillary "went low," called Re- publicans "deplorables" and com- pared conservatives to "terror- ist groups"; 2) Clinton, a hypo- critical advocate for "equal pay," gave "the majority of the top-pay- ing jobs to men (Senate financial expenditures forms)" and her fe- male staff earned 72 cents for the men's dollar; 3) "Under Obama's watch, more than 2 million women fell into poverty (Census Bureau)." Liberal women with double standards care not. According to Canadian blogger, reporter and activist Ezra Levant, a female reporter, Sheila, attended the (Edmonton) Women's March, to record answers to questions, and was punched by a man who was then shielded by (New Dem- ocratic Party of Canada) women. They "helped the thug scurry away…sided with the male crimi- nal, against the female victim." In "How the Women's March Reinforced Every Negative Ste- reotype about Women Ever," Su- san M. Goldberg wrote, "The platform of the women's March is nothing short of a list of opin- ionated vagaries written in left- speak and completely lacking fac- tual citation. It was carefully de- signed to stimulate the passions of armchair activists who have and will remain ignorant of the majority of crimes committed against women around the world on a daily basis." Especially galling is the pres- ence of "organizers like Linda Sarsour, an Islamic activist who supports the oppressive Saudi re- gime, openly meets with Hamas financiers and romanticizes Sharia law. And supporters like Planned Parenthood, a business that participates in 'human or- gan harvesting and the fetal body part trade.'" The liberal, feminist ap- proach is not universally support- ive of women. Pro-life women; Trump-supporting women (Hill- ary's narrow win among women needed huge majorities of minor- ity women while a majority of white women, particularly non- college-educated women, voted for Trump); and females in the womb—none are deemed wor- thy of respect. Neither are women with more than 2 children, whose 4 or 5 children families regu- larly get disrespect. Some black women told white women on so- cial media to shut (their white privilege) up. In "The Pointless Paranoia of the Women's Marches," Roger Si- mon wrote, "The success of the demonstrations in terms of size attests to the power of mutually reinforced paranoia…The Dem- ocrats are always trying to paint Republicans as the preacher in 'Footloose' (look the movie up at IMDB.com), but that's never been as ridiculous as when talking about Donald Trump. "The motivation? Tom Hayden started the anti-nuclear move- ment…as a way to preserve the infrastructure built up in the anti-Vietnam War protests. I sus- pect that this is about keeping up Hillary's woman-card machin- ery for the post-election era, just as the Black Lives Matter protests are mostly about keeping up the position of the urban black wing of the Democrat coalition in the post-Obama era. [It's just] intra- Democrat Party positioning." While George Soros isn't the bogeyman that the left applies to the Koch brothers, Rick Mo- ran wrote "Soros Has Links to 56 'Partners' of the Women's March on Washington." "Seriously, did you really think a half a million people just showed up in Wash- ington, D.C. unbidden and… spontaneously decided to pro- test Donald Trump? To the sur- prise of few, it turns out that bil- lionaire George Soros either has funded or has close ties to 56 of these 'non-partisan' organizations that are listed as 'partners' for the march." They were leftwing big- moneyed "astroturf" protests for the media's partisan narrative, trying to tell the rest of us what to think. Don Polson has called Red Bluff home since 1988. He can be reached by e-mail at donplsn@ yahoo.com. The way I see it Women's March hysteria, hypocrisy Someone in the Justice Department should tell him that illegal voting on a massive scale is impossible to pull off without everyone noticing it on day one. Someone in Justice should remind him that when Jill Stein sought recounts shortly after the election, his own lawyers wrote: "All available evidence suggests that the 2016 general election was not tainted by fraud or mistake." But he wouldn't listen, because he doesn't do irony. The liberal, feminist approach is not universally supportive of women. Pro-life women; Trump- supporting women (Hillary's narrow win among women needed huge majorities of minority women while a majority of white women, particularly non- college-educated women, voted for Trump); and females in the womb—none are deemed worthy of respect. Neither are women with more than 2 children, whose 4 or 5 children families regularly get disrespect. Some black women told white women on social media to shut (their white privilege) up. GregStevens,Publisher Chip Thompson, Editor EDITORIAL BOARD How to have your say: Letters must be signed and provide the writer's home street address and home phone number. Anonymous letters, open letters to others, pen names and petition-style letters will not be allowed. Letters should be typed and no more than two double-spaced pages or 500words. When several letters address the same issue, a cross section will be published. Email: editor@ redbluffdailynews.com Fax: 530-527-9251 Mail to: Daily News 728Main St., Red Bluff, CA 96080 Facebook: Leave comments at FACEBOOK.COM/ RBDAILYNEWS Twitter: Follow and send tweets to @REDBLUFFNEWS Dick Polman Don Polson OPINION » redbluffdailynews.com Tuesday, January 31, 2017 » MORE AT FACEBOOK.COM/RBDAILYNEWS AND TWITTER.COM/REDBLUFFNEWS A6