Louisiana Voice

A friend alerted me to an interesting story that illustrated the courage of U.S. Sen. John N. Kennedy in confronting difficult situations. It seems that like Col. Bone Spurs his own self, he hits the bricks, cuts and runs, vamooses, bails, takes a walk and otherwise opts out.

There don’t seem to be sufficient verbs for what Kennedy did, But NewsNation’s CHRIS CUOMO certainly gave it the old college try when Kennedy scooted away from a scheduled live interview on Tuesday, just five minutes before air time. Who knew he could move so fast? Like they say, when the going gets tough, the tough take a powder.

It seems that he learned it wasn’t going to be a softball Fox News-type of question-and-answer session but instead, was going to include some tough questions for which his Foghorn Leghorn approach wouldn’t suffice. “Seeya!”

Cuomo, who said Kennedy didn’t so much as call him, text him or make any other effort to contact him to cancel. The show’s host said Kennedy blew him off after learning that the interview would include questions about El Presidente Tub-a-Lardo’ demand for the freedom of a 2020 election denier TINA PETERS, who was jailed over an election security breach last year.

“He doesn’t even call me himself. He just bails,” Cuomo said of Kennedy’s no-show. “Mr. Man’s Man. Mr. ‘I’m a straight shooter.’” It’s “very poor form,” Cuomo added while accusing Kennedy of puling a “punk-ass move. I’ve been in this business a really long time and nobody does that unless they’re a coward,” he spewed.

Further venting, Cuomo expressed his disgust with the pollical climate when he said officials are “more afraid of getting caught saying something that will offend the president than any kind of duty, any kind of morality, any kind of philosophy, any kind of principle. They are about nothing but fealty.”

Ouch. That’s gonna leave a mark. Looks like someone left Mr. “I-have-a-platitude-for-everything” speechless for a change because as of Wednesday morning, Kennedy had not uttered a peep about the cancellation.

And while we’re on the subject of Kennedy, here are a few more votes by Kennedy and Sen. Bill Cassidy which further display that fealty alluded to by Cuomo.

Voting in lock-step with the Party of Trump (it ceased being the Republican Party back in 2016), the two Louisiana senators, with absolutely no free will of their own (except for the animalistic instinct of self-survival, which pitifully takes precedent over – again quoting Cuomo – any kind of principle, they:

Voted along Trumpian lines on a motion to proceed on House Joint Resolution 60 which provides for congressional disapproval of the rule submitted by the National Park Service as it relates to motor vehicle use restrictions in the 1.2-million-acre GLEN CANYON NATIONAL RECREATION AREA in Arizona and southeast Utah. The motion PASSED BY A 53-47 VOTE-..

Voted with an identical 53-47 MAJORITY (again, along Trumpian lines) to confirm Frank Bisignano as commissioner of the Social Security Administration. A self-described “Doge person,” Bisignano, as president and CEO of Fiserv, established a slash-and-burn reputation for cutting to the bone with massive layoffs. Writer Branko Marcetic said that “Maybe no part of the Trump administration’s program of dismantling federal government agencies has generated as much concern as its drastic cuts to the SSA, the agency responsible for trillions of dollars’ worth of payments to retirees, people with disabilities, and millions of other Americans, and which is already seeing its workers laid off en masse, its offices shuttered, and some of its core services ended.” Another write, Jessica Corbett, said that Bisignano “is also a liar,” claiming he was “not involved in all the chaotic and destructive changes at the Social Security Administration: the hollowing out of the agency, the stealing of our most sensitive data, the harmful and poorly rolled out policy changes, their sudden reversals, and more. However, there are well over a dozen long-serving civil servants, identified by a brave whistleblower, who CAN VALIDATE that he is lying.”

Voted with the 53-45 majority (alas, again along Trumpian Party lines) in favor of HOUSE JOINT RESOLUTION 61 for congressional disapproval of the rule submitted by the Environmental Protection Agency relating to “National Emission Standards for Hazardous Air Pollutants: Rubber Tire Manufacturing,” proving once again that politicians are far more knowledgeable about environmental concerns than the scientists in the agency created to deal with that specific subject.

Voted in lock-step with the Trumpian majority of 53-46 in favor of proceeding on SENATE JOINT RESOLUTION 13 providing for the congressional disapproval of the rule by the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency of the Department of the Treasury relating to the review of application under the BANK MERGER ACT. Now you really gotta wonder about this one: the author of the resolution is none other than the junior senator from Louisiana, one John Neely Kennedy. Not sure what his motives are for this bill but I bet if you sniff around long enough, you’ll pick up the scent of bank lobbyists and maybe a little campaign money floating around from a few prominent bankers.

Or could it be that Sen. Kennedy has some bank stock in his portfolio and he stands to make a killing if a certain merger that we don’t yet know about is allowed to go through?

The following isn’t about Kennedy; it’s about four of the six Louisiana members of the lower chamber, the House of Representatives, and the most cringe-worthy vote yet. It is the perfect illustration of just how far our gutless wonders are willing to go to please the aforementioned Herr Tub-a-Lardo.

In somewhat confusing verbiage, it’s the vote on ordering the previous question on House Resolution 377 which provides for consideration of HOUSE RESOLUTION 276.

And what is H.R. 276 you ask? Why, it provides for the renaming of the Gulf of Mexico as the Gulf of America, of course. With veterans homeless and/or needing mental health care; with housing costs spiraling out of control; with impending runaway inflation caused by insane tariffs; with college costs becoming more and more out of the reach of students; with looming threats to Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid; with an egomaniac president choking off critical grants for scientific research by foundations and universities and with a host of unqualified cabinet members too numerous to list here, we waste time on crap like indulging an overweight, mentally underdeveloped psychopath by passing a meaningless resolution to rename a body of water? Are you kidding me?

As might be expected, the four members of the Party of Trump fell in line, as required, behind this silliness (as did every single member of the party who voted – 14 did not vote as was the case for 13 Democrats). The final tally was 206 to 200 in favor of this life-altering piece of legislation which was fast-tracked past such things as the wars in Ukraine and Gaza in order to massage the ego of this physically big (as in grossly overweight) but mentally miniscule sad excuse for a leader. Voting yes, predictably, were Reps. Julia Letlow, Clay Higgins, Steve KKK Scalise and House Mouthpiece Mike “I have a porn-detector app” Johnson. The two Democrats, Reps. Troy Carter and Cleo Fields, voted no.