As one unlikely president leaves the White House, another one takes the stage.
He’s a political outsider who seized victory by aiming at Big Government and firing the first shot. That man is Ted Cruz — er, oops. We mean Donald J. Trump.
It will be years before the history books figure out how to feel about 2016. In the meantime, the world moved on — so did we. It’s 2017.
But in a “post-truth” era, is everything we know wrong?
Here’s an attempt to separate fact from fiction.
A picture of the scene when local police arrived – Dodge County Sheriff’s Department
1. American farmers secretly feed Skittles to cows.
When a truck full of defective Skittles overturned on an icy rural road in Wisconsin, police asked the obvious question: Where was it going? Turns out, it was going to a feedlot to fatten up cows just before slaughter. Farmer say Skittles have been cheaper than buying corn since prices jumped in 2012, and more environmentally friendly.
2. There is a moth named after Donald Trump.
Some said there would be hell toupée if Trump got elected. Instead, Canadian scientists named a new species of moth after him: Neopalpa donaldtrumpi. Its scaly head resembles Trump’s famous yellow coif. The moth is distinguished from the next-closest species by its comparatively tiny penis.
3. Obama kept a registry of American gun owners and Muslims.
The ATF keeps databases of firearm transactions so it can trace illegal weapons. Some of these databases also illegally kept personal data on more than 10,000 Americans until May 2016, according to an investigation by the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO).
Obama also kept a completely legal registry of immigrant men from Muslim countries. The Bush-era program, called NSEERS, screened more than 93,000 people over 9 years and failed to catch a single potential terrorist. Obama ended the program in December 2016, as a parting shot to Donald Trump.
