Donald Trump apparently demanded an investigation using taxpayer money to prove that his inauguration was bigger than Obama's.

@POTUS Obama inauguration photos on the left, Trump on the right--'nuff said: pic.twitter.com/7DIUYNLYoW

— Vilmos Nagy (@PunjabNagy) March 8, 2017

Courtesy of Share Blue:  

Donald Trump and his allies triggered an investigation by the Office of the Inspector General that ended up proving, at taxpayers’ expense, that he is not nearly as popular as former President Barack Obama. 

After Trump’s sparsely attended inauguration, he and his team put on a full-court press to prove that it was the most attended inauguration event in Washington history. The claim was the focus of press secretary Sean Spicer’s first briefing, during which he infamously claimed, “This was the largest audience to ever witness an inauguration, period.”

Now the Inspector General has released its findings after it received a complaint, which alleged that National Park Service employees had been instructed to alter official records on crowd sizes. The complaint also insinuated that public relations employees of the service had leaked the details of calls between Trump and the acting director of the park service about his disappointing crowd size. 

Unfortunately for team Trump, the Inspector General’s investigation came up empty. 

“We did not find evidence to substantiate any of these allegations.” The report further indicates, “All of the witnesses we interviewed denied that the NAMA official instructed staff to alter records for the inauguration or to remove crowd size information. We also found no evidence that the public affairs employees released any information to the media about the President’s phone call.” 

The facts of the case remain the same as they were on the day Trump was sworn in: There were more people at Obama’s inauguration. Period.

Unbelievable!

This idiot just cannot let things go.

Don't forget he also spearheaded the search for the park service employee who first pointed out that his crowds were significantly smaller than President Obama's.

Here we are over six months into this debacle called the Trump presidency and due to his vast and debilitating insecurities we are STILL talking about the inauguration crowd size.

This is going to be a long four years. 

Donald Trump actually pressured the director of the National Park Service to provide photographic evidence that his inaugural was too bigger than Obama's.

Courtesy of the Washington Post:  

On the morning after Donald Trump’s inauguration, acting National Park Service director Michael T. Reynolds received an extraordinary summons: The new president wanted to talk to him. 

In a Saturday phone call, Trump personally ordered Reynolds to produce additional photographs of the previous day’s crowds on the Mall, according to three individuals who have knowledge of the conversation. The president believed that the photos might prove that the media had lied in reporting that attendance had been no better than average. 

Trump also expressed anger over a retweet sent from the agency’s account, in which side-by-side photographs showed far fewer people at his swearing-in than had shown up to see Barack Obama’s inauguration in 2009. 

According to one account, Reynolds had been contacted by the White House and given a phone number to call. When he dialed it, he was told to hold for the president. 

For Trump, who sees himself and his achievements in superlative terms, the inauguration’s crowd size has been a source of grievance that he appears unable to put behind him. It is a measure of his fixation on the issue that he would devote part of his first morning in office to it — and that he would take out his frustrations on an acting Park Service director.

Hey, hey Donnie. We understand.

Some guys simply don't measure up to the other guys.

It's nothing to be ashamed of.

You know some people compensate by being nicer people, or more attentive to their loved ones.

And some men compensate by buying huge yachts.

Putting their name on giant phallic shaped objects.

Being ostentatious with their wealth.

And of course arguing that it is bigger than it looks.

By the way it really would not have mattered if this Park Service director HAD sent Trump pictures.

As this time lapse video shows, his inaugural crowds were NEVER as impressive as Obama's in 2009.

Let's face it Donnie, you are just not the man that President Obama was, and still is today.

So while the Republicans have been distracted President Obama has been busy expanding public lands.

Courtesy of UPI:

President Barack Obama further expanded his public lands legacy Friday by designating three new national monuments, marking the most extensive expansion of protected lands and waterways by any U.S. president. 

In designating the Mojave Trails, Sand to Snow and Castle Mountains national monuments, Obama winds down his final term as one of eight presidents known for a commitment to preservation and conservation, the White House said.

This is what I LOVE about this President.

While the conservatives are bitching and moaning about things he has done in the past, and what he might do in the future, he just continues quietly doing his job in ways that once they hear about will piss them off even more!

"Wait, he did what? Goddammit!"

Really gonna miss this guy.

How wolves change rivers.

This is an incredible story of the return of wolves to Yellowstone National Park, after being hunted to extinction in the area, and how their return dramatically changed the landscape.

Viewing this should be made mandatory for everybody who suggests that wolf populations be controlled by man or who feel that there is no harm in over hunting.

We have done so much damage in our clumsy attempts to manage predator populations in the past, and it is in the best interests of the planet, and all of its inhabitants, for us to do a much, much better job going forward.

Federal biologists see largest decline in wolf population in the last twenty years. Suggest aerial wolf hunting likely to blame. Gee, ya think?

Courtesy of Alaska Dispatch: 

The long-simmering dispute between the state of Alaska and the National Park Service over how to manage wildlife in northern ecosystems has erupted again with Yukon-Charley Rivers National Preserve upset about a 50 percent drop in wolf numbers since fall 2012. 

Wolf numbers usually fall significantly over winter due to natural death from starvation, injuries and territorial wars between packs, but the Park Service noted in a press release that the latest drop "is substantially more than normal and coincides with predator control efforts by the Alaska Department of Fish and Game near the preserve." 

That's a polite way of saying the state agency has been killing wolves around the perimeter of the preserve to try to give moose and caribou a better chance at survival. The state is engaged in what it calls an "intensive management program'' to maximize moose and caribou numbers. The park service favors what it calls a more natural situation in the 2.5-million-acre preserve. 

Federal biologists argue state wolf control has now depressed the Yukon-Charley wolf population. They say a 50 percent decline in numbers is the largest they've seen in 20 years. The previous high was 37 percent.

 Gee cannot imagine how an "intensive management program," ie aerial wolf slaughter, could have anything to do with the decline in the wolf population can you?

But hey just so long as people can still get the chance to fly in from out of state to kill a real live moose without having to worry about some indigenous predators eating them to survive the winter, who cares that the population has been cut virtually in half?

No wonder people in the lower forty-eight think we are a bunch of barbarians!