Michael J. Matheron, July 1, 2017

“In politics, absurdity is not a handicap”

-Napoleon Bonaparte

Insiders report that President Trump strives stout-hearted amid the many raging foreign policy imperatives that interest him not a bit. The in-the-know crowd within the White House praised the attention to world threats that occasionally capture the boss’s attention that he normally reserves for television and for a daily National Enquirer briefing. As an example, a day ago the President opened a new foreign policy campaign against another deadly force that threatens Trump’s attempt to refashion the world: MSNBC’s Morning Joe is now officially a national security priority worthy of rapid fire tweeting. Iraq, Syria, Iran, Russia, Haters, Women, Journalists, and now Mika Brzezinski and Joe Scarborough, all begging for the President’s limited semi-conscious time. That’s a full plate, my friends, even for a big eater like Mr. Trump!

But woe, in one sense or another, this President’s work is never done. Another brush fire needs attention, and what’s a President for if not to splash water about? Enter Mr. Kris Kobach, Trump’s Election Fraud Commission Vice -Chairman (who also clings to his job as Kansas’s Secretary of State, apparently a part-time job like Rex Tillerson’s). Publicly, Mr. K. is presently punching his own damn self smack in the face. Here’s how:

To collect the necessary data to prove dead Democrats still demand and easily receive access to the ballot, Kobach wrote to DC’s and each state’s Secretary of State for a little help, help without which the project could never get off the ground. Under the official title as Vice Chair of the Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity, Kobach requested,

if publicly available under the laws of your state, the name, address, date of birth, “political party (if recorded in your state), last four digits of social security number if available, voter history (elections voted in) from 2006 onward, active/inactive status, cancelled [sic] status, information regarding any felony convictions, information regarding voter registration in another state, information regarding military status, and overseas citizen information.” [See letter to Connecticut Secretary of State]

What, no saliva sample? No puppy footprints?



Kobach, however, quickly learned that as of today 24 states show little interest in sending such data to D.C. Mississippi’s charm thrust through their republican Secretary of State Delbert Hosemann’s reply

“They can go jump in the Gulf of Mexico and Mississippi is a great state to launch from.” [See Mississippi’s Clarion-Leader]

Not an unlikely outcome, but here’s the good part. Kobach defied whatever laws of metaphysics designed to prevent this by acting in his other role as part-time Kansas Secretary of State to jot a few lines to the voter fraud commission. He informed the commission?/himself? that Kansas would not send voter social security numbers to them?/himself? So, in his present status as head of the very election fraud commission (them?/him?) that made those demands of all other states, Kansas?/he? would take a pass. How did he get the word processor (as the kids call it) to actually type those words; even a machine would recognize mutually exclusive events. Is metaphysics a fraud? Who is watching this planet?

Now, in his favor, Kobach explained to the Kansas City Star:

“‘In Kansas, the Social Security number is not publicly available. … Every state receives the same letter, but we’re not asking for it if it’s not publicly available,’ Kobach said.”

After throwing that water balloon at critics he acted as a Harvard, University of Oxford, and Yale Law graduate would: he prevaricated, sending what seems to be a clear signal of what’s coming.

“‘If the commission decides that they would like to receive Social Security numbers to a secure site in order to remove false positives, then we would have to double check [sic] and make sure Kansas law permits,’ Kobach said.”

He added helpfully, though unworthily of a supposed well-educated Harvard/Oxford/Yale man with right-wing totalitarian dreams:

“‘I know for a fact that this information would be secured and maintained confidentially,’ he added in response to security concerns.”

Do we not know to a certainty – even an otherwise lonely herdsman in a far off place has an iPhone – that the day ”this [highly sensitive] information” is “secured,” that otherwise lonely herdsman in a far off place will be downloading a mail list including every American? Next morning, he’s designing a “Sell Real Estate Real Easy” brochure for instant mailing. (He’s a very wealthy herdsman in a far off place. Just go along with it, O.K.?)

As for the larger questions, it’s discomfiting to know Trump has such under-performers advising him, he himself being one of them. They come up short, often and spectacularly. Some, like Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross verge on indictment, others, like Opioid Tsar Chris Christie, sneakily avoided it. Some are bat shit nutso, like White House Chief Forager Rudy Giuliani. Recently:

HUD Secretary Ben Carson, M.D., the least indictable agency head (so far) maintains that the Las Vegas pyramid-shaped Luxor hotel was a grain storage facility, or ought to be. Betsy DeVos briefly believed that the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act was not a federal law applicable, well, federally. Then there’s General Flynn and Mike Manafort who are on sabbatical awaiting their “get out of jail and into a lobbying firm free card.” Jared Kushner addressed Israel’s President Netanyahu as “Moses” so many times that Mr. Netanyahu simply accepted it, as did the Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas gracefully accept the label “Beelzebub.” Steve Bannon believes the Klan deserves a pick-up truck at the table. Rick Perry’s simple existence is compounded by his directorship of an agency, the Energy Department, that in 2012’s presidential contest he could not identify among his priorities for shutting down. Secretary of State Tillerson appears so disengaged from his generalship of State that many believe he passed away in mid-April. Heads of other agencies act like their departments are enemies of the state. EPA, for example, asserts that clean air is a black helicoptered plan to knock us all silly with too much oxygen in our systems.Clean water is even worse.

Our HHS Secretary believes that public health is not a top priority for the department and plans to privatize it as a publicly traded health insurance provider for exceptionally high risk people near death but still compos mentis enough to pay a monthly premium so expensive that, as he’s said, “it’s just plain silly!”

I could go on, but I see I have done so. The so-called Voter Fraud Commission, though, will go on farther. In this case I’d say a commission’s work is never done, but often undone.

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