Louisiana Voice

Two points right up front so there can be no misunderstanding, no misinterpretation, no twisting of my words, no false accusations.

1. I am, on general principle, opposed to abortions except in cases of rape, incest,  sexual abuse or in cases where it is certain that the fetus is horribly deformed (see Sherri Finkbine and the 1962 Arizona Supreme Court decision and the harmful effects of THALIDOMIDE).
2. Despite my opposition, I am fully cognizant of the fact that I am not a woman and that I have no right to making decisions for women about their bodies (it’s almost comical – almost – to now hear the anti vaxxers invoking the my body, my choice mantra that pro-choice women have been saying for years).

Now, despite having gotten those two points out of the way, there will be those usual nutcases who brand me as a murderer, a communist or any other derogatory label they attach to me. But that’s okay. I’m comfortable with my position and I can sleep at night.

What I don’t understand is how those Repugnantcan legislators over in Texas can live with themselves. What’s even more puzzling about the males among that group is how their wives can live with them.

They have enacted a law that’s clearly unconstitutional (though the U.S. Supreme Court, thanks to Trump’s appointees, has, while not actually upholding the law, refused to take action of any kind on it, not even suspending the law until the legal challenges can be heard).

While the Texas law does not strike down Roe v. Wade, what it does do is incentivize those without a dog in the hunt to intervene into the private affairs of people they might not even know.

In legal parlance, that calls into question a little matter jurists like to call legal standing, meaning that if you are not directly affected by an action, you have no legal right to intervene. For example, if I’m standing on a street corner and driver A runs a red light and broadsides driver B, driver B has a right to file suit but I would not because I have no legal standing, or direct interest, in the carnage the wreck may have caused.

But in Texas, everyone now has legal standing in all cases of abortion after detection of a fetal heartbeat, which physicians say is not really a heartbeat at all, but more of a random flutter.

So, if I reside in Texas and I witness a woman enter an abortion clinic, or see anyone even give here a ride to that clinic, give her advice on or money for an abortion, or have knowledge of anyone who provides abortions, I can now SUE that advisor, that doctor, that pregnant woman, that driver and collect up to $10,000 from each one – the woman, the driver, the advisor, and the doctor.

So, what we now have is a state where there is no hotline if you see a man enter a kindergarten with an AR-15 but there is if you see a woman go into a Planned Parenthood parking lot in her vehicle. Texas will not force a 12-year-old to wear a mask at school but it will force her to have a baby.

Repugnantcans: the party of limited government where mask mandates can be banned, abortions can be outlawed, school curricula can be dictated by legislators and voting restrictions can be imposed on citizens – all so we can get the guvmint out of our lives..

Oh, by the way, the new law makes no exceptions for rape, incest, or sexual abuse.

That, folks, creates a whole new cottage industry: Finksmanship, Inc. Remember all those stories about how the Nazis and later the Communist Party in the Soviet Union and China had neighbors spying on neighbors? Well, now we have it on our very own doorstep – deep in the heart of Texas.

Instead of concerning themselves with an archaic power grid that left everyone in the state except Ted Cruz in a deep freeze last winter, the Texas governor and legislators plow into that knotty problem of what to do about their womenfolk.

Repugnantcans are all about pro-life up to birth. After that, the little tykes are on their own. No laws promoting day care, no intervention to prevent hunger and poverty – especially if such efforts would go against the interest of big corporations like utilities, pharmaceutical companies, oil and gas or defense contractors.

The DEMOCRATS, led by Nancy Pelosi, are scrambling for a strategy to overcome the Texas law absent any showing of a spine by five of the Supreme Court justices. As is customary for the Democrats, they’ve been caught off guard by a conniving, sinister Repugnantcan Party which always seems to be a step or two ahead of the less organized Democrats.

One of the Democratic suggestions is to pack the Supreme Court by enlarging its membership from nine to 13. Good luck with that. You think for a nanosecond Mitch McConnell’s gonna let that happen? Not a chance! And I’m not sure that would be a viable answer anyway. Someday, there would be another Repugnantcan president who would get his shot at appointing justices and before you know it, there would be seven Repugnantcan appointees to just six Dems and some Democrat would be calling to expand to 17. Where would it end?

But one of our readers did come up with a helluva plan and it had merit and would turn the Repugnantcan strategy back onto them (I’d love to identify him, but he may wish to remain anonymous, so I won’t).

Every Democratic Texas legislator and congressmen who has friends in the media should suggest to all their reporter friends that they approach Repugnantcan Texas legislators to interview them about the new law. Most would consent without hesitation because campaign contributions is the mother’s milk of politics and the best way to attract contributions is by keeping your face out there before the public.

At some point in the interview, the reporter should ask the Repugnantcan what alternative a Texas woman had available to her if she had no other choice but to terminate her pregnancy.

Some would dance around it but a persistent reporter could glean some response – such as, “Well, she’d just have to go to another state or to Mexico where it’s legal.” Or he might suggest something as benign as saying, “She would need to consult her physician.”

Bingo! That Repugnantcan has provided advice and counsel and anyone who sees the interview response on TV or reads it in a newspaper could sue.

Any bets as to how long it would take the Texas Legislature to repeal that law?

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so·cial·ism

/ˈsōSHəˌlizəm/

noun

1. a political and economic theory of social organization which advocates that the means of production, distribution, and exchange should be owned or regulated by the community as a whole.

It is perhaps the most misunderstood word in the English language.

But just to set the record straight, I am not a Socialist, nor am I a Socialist Democrat as I have been labeled. Again, those terms have been applied to me by people who have no concept of the meaning of the words. They most likely slept through their high school civics classes.

But as an experiment, I recently embarked on a hypothetical trip around town along with my Republican friend, John Wayne Billy Bob Culpepper to see what socialist programs might be eliminated in the interest of preserving what my friends calls the “Murican way.”

Our first stop was the public library. “That’s gotta go,” said JWBBC. “Who the hell ever heard of the guvmint lending out free books for folks to read?

Well, I said, it’s been going on a long time. “Don’t care,” he shot back. “It’s socialism. Any fool can see that.

As we left, we fell into traffic behind a garbage truck. “Now that’s free enterprise as it should be,” he said.

“Who do you think pays for it?” I asked. “Garbage pickup is paid for with tax dollars, which makes it a social program.”

Before he could respond, my car hit a deep pothole. “Damn!” JWBBC grunted. “They oughta fix that.”

“You do know, don’t you, that street construction and repairs are part of our infrastructure that’s financed with tax dollars, making it another social program.”

About that time, a police car sped past going the opposite direction, lights flashing and siren wailing. It was followed quickly by a fire truck and an ambulance. “Looks like there’s been a traffic accident,” my friend said.

“Yup, gonna need the police to control traffic and the fire truck in case of a potential fuel leak,” I said. “Of course, police and fire protection are provided by the government with tax dollars. Don’t know what we’d do without ‘em. Probably be anarchy in the streets.

“Do you like football, John Wayne?” I asked absently.

“Hell, yeah. Who doesn’t? Can’t wait for LSU and the Saints to crank up.”

“Well, you are aware that LSU is a public university operated by taxpayer dollars, student tuition and any number of federal and private grants, aren’t you?

“So what?”

“My point is that LSU and every other public university – and public elementary and high schools, for that matter – are all supported by taxpayer dollars. Public education is a social program in every sense of the word.”

“Well, at least the NFL is privately owned.”

“Except for the Green Bay Packers, who are publicly-owned. And how do you think the Saints’ home, the Superdome, was financed? Even the stadiums privately owned, like AT&T Stadium where the Dallas Cowboys play, received all sorts of tax concessions from Dallas County and the State of Texas.

“What you call socialism when individuals receive governmental benefits is called economic development when corporations receive them but in reality, it’s the same thing, no matter the recipient.”

“When’s the hurricane supposed to hit?” asked JWBBC, apparently making a feeble effort to change the subject.

“Why don’t you log onto the National Weather Service? They have all the latest updates. And oh, by the way, that’s another government program supported by tax revenue.”

I could see he was getting irritated at my constantly pointing out all those socialist programs, so I decided to end with a flourish.

“John Wayne, in case you weren’t aware, all this socialism nonsense goes back nearly a hundred years. FDR instituted a host of federal programs that helped pull us out of Hoover’s Great Depression by giving work to unemployed Americans.

“Those unemployed people went to work and built stadiums, university buildings, museums, post offices and public schools. My alma mater, Ruston High School, is one of those. Updates to the Audubon Zoo and the French Market in New Orleans were part of those socialist programs.

“Big Charity Hospital in New Orleans, where Sen. Bill Cassidy and former Rep. Charles Boustany, Jr., learned to be physicians, were part of FDR’s socialist experiment. Malaria was eradicated in New Orleans the same way. (Here’s a link to a comprehensive list of Louisiana projects financed by FDR’s SOCIALISM.”

 To drive my point home, I pointed out to John Wayne that he would be eligible for social security and Medicare in a couple of years. “You gonna forfeit those benefits because they’re socialist?” I asked.

I could see I’d crossed a line as his face reddened. “You know,” he finally said, “Those guys L. Frost and Outlaw who always call you stupid and a socialist are right. You ain’t a Murican patriot at all. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to get on back home. It’s time for my treatment of ivermectin.”

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I just finished an interesting book entitled Falling Up: How a Redneck Helped Invent Political Consulting, by Raymond D. Strother (LSU Press).

Though the book was published in 2003 and I was late in discovering its existence when I found it on a friend’s bookshelf and borrowed it, the book’s subject matter is perhaps more relevant today even then when it was written.

I almost worked for Strother once, though I’m certain he doesn’t remember it.

It was back in either late 1978 or early 1979 when the governor’s race was heating up. For the first time in eight years, Edwin Edwards wouldn’t be a factor; he was term-limited, so as is the norm for Louisiana, the candidates were lining up to become his successor.

I had just left a job at the old Shreveport Journal where I found I wasn’t a fit for the Journal or for Shreveport. I had left the Baton Rouge State-Times in 1976 to return to my first paper, the Ruston Daily Leader as managing editor and when publisher Tom Kelly ran afoul of the Leader’s ownership in Panama City, Florida and was unceremoniously fired despite all he had done for the paper, I left as well for a less-than-satisfactory tour at the Journal.

So, as the governor’s race was heating up, I was looking for a job when the late Wiley Hilburn, then head of the Louisiana Tech Department of Journalism came to me to say that Strother had a spot for me as Paul Hardy’s press secretary for his gubernatorial campaign.

Even that early on, I knew Hardy would never be governor. I didn’t have the foresight to realize that in political consulting, there are always other campaigns in which to work. The work is almost self-perpetuating, but I didn’t understand that basic political truism, so I declined Stother’s offer.

It turns out after reading Strother’s book that I’d made a good decision. I would never have fit in the high-rolling, rollicking world of big-time politics. In fact, that point was driven home on pages 122 and 123 of his book. In those two pages, he described how the days of Bob Dole, John Stennis, Sam Nunn, Patrick Monynihan “and a host of others from both parties (emphasis mine) represented a dying generation of comradeship and decorum in the Senate.

“They have been replaced in large part,” Strother continues, “by petty partisans who care more about their party than about the institution of the Senate or even about their country (emphasis mine). I always…wonder how American voters allowed giants to be replaced by midgets.”

Strother also laments the morphing of political consultants like Karl Rove into policy wonks. He recalled how Sen. Lloyd Bentsen had a firm rule for political consultants: “You make the campaign commercials and I’ll draft the legislation.”

Strother takes Louisiana Democratic political operative James Carville (at one time one of his employees, by the way) to task for his violation of the Bentsen rule. In 2001, Zell Miller was elected to the Senate from Georgia on a promise to vote the interests of Georgia and not blindly follow party dogma. “He said it and he meant it,” Strother writes. But when Carville denounced Zell over his independence and publicly demanded that his own thousand-dollar contribution to Miller’s campaign be refunded, Strother says bluntly that Carville was out of line, especially when Zell pointed out that he’d paid Carville’s firm more than $300,000 in fees when he worked on Zell’s gubernatorial campaign several years earlier and wondered if Carville would be repaying that money.

“James Carville is a brilliant campaign consultant, one of the best in the country, but he shouldn’t be running the Senate.”

Strother’s is an insightful but somewhat depressing book that gives us a behind-the-curtain peek at the inner machinations of political campaigns, the decision-making process that has evolved from the savvy observations of consultants who have fought in the political gutters to today’s committees of pinstripe suits with Ivy League degrees but no feel for the average working American.

Written as it was nearly two decades ago, it also may have been an unwitting omen of what today is an unquestionably sorry state of political compromise and diplomacy that has given us the likes of Ted Cruz, Ron DeSantis, Ron Johnson, Josh Hawley, Marjorie Taylor Greene, Matt Gaetz, Clay Higgins, Steve Scalise, Greg Abbott, Andrew Cuomo, Gavin Newsom, Debbie Wasserman Schultz, Robert Brady, Anthony Weiner, et al.

The book may be 18 years old, but it’s as relevant today as the day it was written.

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I’m sometimes amused at the critical comments that show up at the ends of some of my posts. It seems that some critics prefer to spend more time hurling insults than in trying to contribute meaningful dialogue.

There are exceptions. One, who identifies herself as Zoe, disagrees with me virtually 100 percent of the time. But at least she attempts to back up her position with her own research, flawed though some of it has turned out to be. Also, Zoe has never personally insulted me and for that, I am appreciative.

I can’t say the same for others whose comments are just laced with sarcasm, rarely offering any facts to back up their claims. One who pops up from time to time in the comments section identifies himself only as “L.” His actual last name is Frost and I suspect he’s also he one who jumps onto the reviews of my books to describe them as trash, nonsense, a waste of money, etc.

He may well be correct in his assessment of my literary talent, but I wish he would at least read the book before attacking it. To simply offer negative comments without even picking up the book is artistic prostitution in its very worst form.

I will say this for L, though. The guy is a regular Bob Hope. He’s so hilarious, he really should go on tour.

Another called me a “socialist democrat” for my post about vaccines and masks. I’m not sure how he makes the stretch from my wanting to take steps to prevent my contracting COVID to being a socialist – especially when he obviously can’t even define the meaning of the term.

My favorite, though, was from a reader who reminded me that a vaccine was an “experimental gene therapy using mRNA” still in early trials and not yet approved by the FDA. Somehow, he worked Garth Brooks into his comments, which kind of lost me.

But now I’m here to admit the error of my ways and to express my contrition with just one word:

Ivermectin.

Yes, that’s correct. Forget all those half-baked COVID vaccinations. Throw out those useless masks. Get yourself some good old cattle dewormer. That’ll do the trick. Hell, an authority no less reputable than Dr. Paul Marik of Eastern Virginia Medical School says it’s all the rage, preferable even to dexamethasone that came so highly recommended by Donald Trump, though probably not as effective as bleach or ultra-violet lights shoved up your derriere.

I had no idea ivermectin had so many uses, though after watching me dance at a club once, a veterinarian called me aside and said I looked like I needed deworming.

Dr. James Ford, a pulmonary and critical care physician at a Baton Rouge hospital said there was a real risk of overdosing which could result in neurological problems, seizures or even death. “Ivermectin isn’t the problem,” he said. COVID is the problem. If people are focusing on eating dewormer instead of getting the vaccine that could save their life, that’s a new problem.”

Well, obviously Dr. Ford doesn’t understand so, I will try to enlighten him. First, Donald Trump said COVID was just the flu, that it affected only about 15 people and would “magically disappear” even though he told writer Bob Woodward that he knew it was a pandemic long before anyone ever attached that description to the virus.

When that didn’t happen, he instituted Operation Warp Speed to develop a vaccine, albeit pretty late in the game when he finally got around to it.

Now, Trump wants to take all the credit for development of the vaccine but stops short of recommending that his devotees take it or wear masks.

One of our readers commented that he wanted no part of the vaccine until it was approved by the FDA.

Yet, that same FDA specifically notes that ivermectin has not been approved for treating or preventing COVID and that taking large doses of the drug “is dangerous and can cause serious harm. The FDA also says, “Never use medications intended for animals on yourself. Ivermectin preparations for animals are very different from those approved for humans.”

The agency also released the following INFORMATION on ivermectin:

“The FDA has not reviewed data to support use of ivermectin in COVID-19 patients to treat or to prevent COVID-19; however, some initial research is underway. Taking a drug for an unapproved use can be very dangerous. This is true of ivermectin, too.

“There’s a lot of misinformation around, and you may have heard that it’s okay to take large doses of ivermectin. That is wrong. 

“Even the levels of ivermectin for approved uses can interact with other medications, like blood-thinners. You can also overdose on ivermectin, which can cause nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, hypotension (low blood pressure), allergic reactions (itching and hives), dizziness, ataxia (problems with balance), seizures, coma and even death.”

Vaccine doubters, mostly Republicans, invoke the “my body, my choice” rallying cry that they usurped from pro-choice women. Seems the Republicans are all about dictating what a woman can do with her body but don’t want anyone telling them they need to wear masks or get vaccinated – or better yet, both – in order to protect themselves and those around them.

And they don’t seem to have a problem of exposing millions of school children by forbidding school boards in Florida, Tennessee, Mississippi and Texas from mandating masks.

And in so doing, they point to the inexact science of the vaccines while farm supply stores in Louisiana, Mississippi and Texas are running out of dewormer.

Yeah, that makes sense.

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One of Livingston Parish’s most sacred religious shrines has been shut down for a cleaning and sanitizing because of the recent spike in COVID cases in the parish.

The Walmart Supercenter on Range Avenue closed at 2 p.m. today and will be closed through Thursday but is scheduled for re-opening on Friday so as to keep from traumatizing as few Denham Springs residents as possible.

In the meantime, for those who feel a spiritual need for regeneration of the soul, there are Walmart supercenters five miles to the east in Walker and a couple miles up Range Avenue in Watson. And in case there are any stragglers or sheep otherwise gone astray, there is another Walmart just across the Amite River in nearby Central.

“As an essential element of the Livingston Parish spiritual experience, we understand the role we play in providing emotional strength to our customers members during these trying times,” a statement from the company worship center said.

A third-party faith-healer will lay hands on the store edifice on Thursday in an effort to exorcise all COVID evil spirits.

Worshipers should be able to return to their normal rituals on Friday.

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