Louisiana Voice

68 days to go

“A conspiracy theory only sounds crazy until it’s proven.”

—QAnon congressional candidate Erin Cruz (R-Calif.).

“I hope that [QAnon] is real because it only means America is getting stronger and better,”

—QAnon congressional candidate Lauren Boebert (R-Colorado).

“The question isn’t whether QAnon-connected murder, terrorism, and law enforcement scrutiny will cause the mainstream press to take QAnon as a serious extremist threat. We’re past that point. The question is now how much QAnon-connected crime and death are required for the press to understand the dangers associated with QAnon.”

—Travis View, a host of a podcast about QAnon.

“Last night there were two people from St. Louis who were at the convention because they had waved guns at black people. That is their sole reason to be at that convention.”

—Stuart Stevens, a Republican strategist, speaking out against Donald Trump.

“We can be as great as we want to be,” he said. “We don’t have to be a socialist country like Europe.”

—Rudy Giuliani, on Fox & Friends, Aug. 24. 2020. [So, where on the map is this socialist Europe country? And what’s its capital?]

‘Kimberly Guilfoyle’s speech at the Republican Convention seemed to make way more sense with North Korean propaganda music in the background.”

https://twitter.com/i/status/1298089911954714624

—Mother Jones, Aug. 26, 2020.

“The student honor code is called ‘The Liberty Way,’ and according to it, premarital sex is forbidden, as are same-sex relationships. Drinking alcohol and ‘obscene language’ are infractions, and students are instructed to ‘dress modestly at all times.’”

—Ashlie Stevens, writing for Salon, Aug. 25, 2020. [And Jerry Falwell Jr. is now out a Liberty. But isn’t he one of Trump’s foremost evangelical supporters?]

FALWELL CONVENTION SPEECH CANCELED

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“The president has always said he’ll see what happens and make a determination in the aftermath.”

—White House precious secretary Kayleigh McEnany, on whether or not Trump will accept the results of the Nov. 3 election.

“There’s no more direct attack on democracy than saying you’re not going to respect the outcome of an election. It’s the People’s House. Saying there that you might not respect the result of the election does seem particularly galling.”

—Noah Bookbinder, executive director of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW), on McEnany’s remarks.

“The Court finds that the President has not sufficiently pled that the subpoena is overbroad or was issued in bad faith on this basis.” 

—Ruling by U.S. District Judge Victor Marrero, Thursday, on Trump attorneys’ attempt to shield his tax records from the Manhattan district attorney’s office.

“Donald Trump was the national leader of the grotesque, racist birther movement with respect to President Obama and has sought to fuel racism and tear our nation apart on every single day of his presidency.  So, it’s unsurprising, but no less abhorrent, that as Trump makes a fool of himself straining to distract the American people from the horrific toll of his failed coronavirus response that his campaign and their allies would resort to wretched, demonstrably false lies in their pathetic desperation.”

–Joe Biden campaign statement on Trump’s reprise of the birther issue.

“I’ve been in this business more than three decades, and what’s happening now is unprecedented. We are attacked on a near daily basis using Stalinist language. We are called corrupt and dishonest. We are given false information from staff who often know full well that it is false. I have never encountered a public official, a candidate for office, a bureaucrat, a defense lawyer or, frankly, an actual criminal who is as regularly and aggressively dishonest as the current president of the United States. And that includes a dozen years covering the Florida legislature. It is no longer newsworthy that the person leading the world’s most powerful nation, commanding the most destructive arsenal in human history, is untrustworthy to his core,”

–HuffPost reporter S.V. Dáte, on Donald Trump and his lies. [Finally! At long last, perhaps the MSM is starting to find the backbone to challenge Trump on his distortions and outright lies.]

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“It should be readily apparent by now that there is no treason, no crime, no act of cruelty or instance of corruption or incompetence that will be enough for supporters to abandon Trump. This is how fascism works, how cults of power follow their leaders into the dark abyss.”

—Jared Yates Sexton, author, political commentator and associate professor in the Department of Writing and Linguistics at Georgia Southern University, Aug. 25, 2020.

“So far, the RNC seems to be mostly providing content designed to thrill MAGA devotees who already love Trump. I’d think that’s a questionable strategy.”

—Robby Soave, writing for the conservative publication Reason, Aug. 25, 2020.

“This convention is targeted to one voter: Donald Trump. The whole convention is to make his lonely soul feel affirmed.”

—David Brook, The New York Times, Aug. 25, 2020.

“President Trump brought our economy back before, and he will bring it back again.”

— Former U.N. ambassador Nikki Haley. [The United States added jobs for 94 straight months, of which 18 were under Trump’s leadership. In 2017, Trump’s first year in office, monthly job growth slowed to 179,000 per month. It jumped to 223,000 a month in 2018 — lower than under President Barack Obama in 2014 and 2015 (more than 250,000 jobs each month in 2014 and 227,000 a month in 2015) — and fell back to 175,000 a month in 2019. Facts.]

“Those kinds of sentiments have some appeal — to the people who already form the Trump base. But it is difficult to see how they help bring voters from the center ground into the fold. And it is those voters whom the president desperately needs.”

—Niall Stanage, The Hill, Aug. 25, 2020,, describing the speeches of the first night of the Republican Convention.

“It would pass, I can guarantee it. It is 100% owned by him. Not even bought and paid for. They sold their souls to him so he could own them.”

—Conservative activist Kendal Unruh, speculating that a resolution to rename the Republican Party the Donald J. Trump Party would likely be approved, Aug. 24, 2020.

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I watched the ABC-News interview with Joe Biden and Kamala Harris on Sunday and I have to admit I was disappointed at the lack of research shown by David Muir and Southeastern Louisiana University alumnus, Robin Roberts who lobbed softball after softball at the Democratic nominees.

Muir, for example, asked Biden to respond to Trump charges that Biden, if elected, would “defund” police departments, a claim that Biden naturally denied on its face.

He was being truthful, of course. His record in the Senate underscores that in spades.

In 1981, for example, the General Accounting Office released a report commissioned by Biden which called for more extensive use of the use of CIVIL ASSET FORFEITURE, a provision that law enforcement agencies across the country have abused well beyond its intended use, Jefferson Davis Parish being a prime example of such abuse. Read more HERE.

Under that law, if you so much as lend your vehicle to a friend who then uses it to transport or even possess a small quantity of marijuana, you can lose your car to the local law enforcement agency which can use it in undercover raids or sell it outright. The same goes for your residence, should your teenager be caught with an illegal drug in your home.

In one instance in northern California, a family owned several hundred acres of prime forest land. Unbeknownst to the owners, a small, remote corner of their property was used to grow marijuana by trespassers. They lost their entire property to asset forfeiture when the growers were busted because the burden of proof is on the property owner to show that he was not part of the ongoing drug operation/possession. In other words, the innocent until proven guilty concept is turned on its head.

Radley Balko, an award-winning investigative reporter, in his 2014 book Rise of the Warrior Cop: The Militarization of America’s Police Forces, writes that in 1989, when President G.H.W Bush pushed his Byrne grant program, which infused federal cash into local police programs, many Democrats, including Biden, said the bill didn’t go far enough.

Biden, who then chaired the Senate Judiciary Committee, told Associated Press that Bush’s bill, “quite frankly, is not tough enough, bold enough, or imaginative enough to meet the crisis at hand.”

Among other things that both the Reagan and first Bush administrations advocated was defunding….not the police, but treatment centers for addicts. Treatment centers, they claimed, just did not work. And the Biden-led Democrats agreed. That issue should have come up Sunday night.

Thus, was born the SWAT assault teams that, originating in Los Angeles, proliferated to the remote corners of the country, found in virtually every municipal and county law enforcement agency – with or without the proper training.

Originally intended for riots and dealing with hostage situations, the use of SWAT teams became so commonplace that Maricopa County, Arizona Sheriff Joe Arpaio employed one in a raid that rendered embarrassing results. With ramrod attached, an urban assault vehicle with none other than actor Steven Seagal at the controls, knocked down a residence in order to bust an apparent community-threatening cockfighting operation. Seagal justified his participation by saying he didn’t like animal abuse. The chickens seized in the raid were euthanized. Problem solved. Euthanizing chickens: how humiliating.

None of these examples were addressed in Sunday night’s so-called tough interview. I would have liked to have Biden explain that as well as his verbal abuse of Anita Hill in the Clarence Thomas Supreme Court confirmation hearings back in 1991.

For the reasons above, I would have preferred a stronger (and yes, younger – we’re the same age) candidate like Corey Booker or Mayor Pete, but I’m forced to go with the hand I was dealt.

So, even with those negatives – and they certainly are that – I can still see no way out of the mess we’re in today other than supporting his candidacy over a pretender, a shop-worn failure such as Donald Trump.

There is an online service (I suppose one could call it a service) called Quora which fields questions from readers on a multitude of subjects, the most popular ones being about The Beatles and Donald Trump, mixed in with the deeply personal ones involving sexual encounters, overcoming bullies, etc.

One that caught my eye as recently as last Friday was this: “Why is Donald Trump criticized so mercilessly? Is he really that bad?”

I cite this particular one not because of the question, but because of the responses provided by several readers. There are several good explanations but the first one is by far, the best.

You can read all of them HERE.

It’s worth your time to read them all.

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“The greatest threat facing the nation was an insider threat and still is. The insider threat is sitting in the Oval Office.”

—Frank Figliuzzi, a former FBI assistant director for counterintelligence, on MSNBC network last week. [Okay, I know, the FBI doesn’t have the greatest credibility in the eyes of Trump and his crowd, but still…]

“Who needs Vladimir Putin when we have Donald Trump? If you were Vladimir Putin and you wanted to disrupt this election, what would you do? You’d spread disinformation. You’d make people doubt the legitimacy of the vote. You’d peddle conspiracy theories and you might want to mess with mail-in voting. That’s all happening without him. Our president is doing that. It’s very clear that Trump will use every lever of governmental power to stay in office. There’ll be many mail-in votes and the mail-in votes will be very different than the same-day votes. What he will do – and it will be very much on brand for Donald Trump – is declare victory on election night and then, as the mail-in votes are counted, he will insist that that they are not legitimate, that the election is being stolen from him, and I think that has the potential to create massive doubt and chaos.”

—Conservative author and broadcaster Charlie Sykes. [Trump supporters, did you get that “conservative” part?]

“The deep state, or whoever, over at the FDA is making it very difficult for drug companies to get people in order to test the vaccines and therapeutics. Obviously, they are hoping to delay the answer until after November 3rd. Must focus on speed, and saving lives!”

—Idiot child Trump tweet, Aug. 22, 2020, 6:49 a.m. [The “deep state” is everywhere…and nowhere.]

“Trump has been saying mail-in ballots will bring fraud to the election but absentee ballots are legit. Which is it? It can’t be both ways. I laughed because if the campaign actually took information from other times, they have reached out to me, they’d know I won’t vote for Trump despite being a registered Republican.”

—Chandler Carranza, after receiving an absentee ballot in the mail with the Tangerine Toddler’s smiling photo on it. [Again, Trumpettes, did you catch the words “registered Republican”? And do you understand the irony of Trump’s voting by mail-in ballot?]

“The committee found that Trump’s team knew ahead of time that emails stolen from the Democratic National Committee by Russian intelligence agents would appear in Wikileaks, and worked with Wikileaks to produce an ‘October surprise’ toward winning that election. Despite Trump’s recollection, the committee assesses that Trump did, in fact, speak with (Roger) Stone about WikiLeaks and with members of his campaign about Stone’s access to WikiLeaks on multiple occasions.”

—-Republican-majority Senate Intelligence Committee report on the 2016 Trump campaign. [So, while the word “collusion” is not mentioned specifically…]

“I think you take a look at the great people President Trump has surrounded himself with, some of the brilliant women and some of the brilliant leaders. I would say that overall, the president has had a very good track record of hiring excellent people.”

—Trump adviser Jason Miller, on NBC’s Meet the Press, Aug. 23, 2020.  [Bannon, Flynn, Manafort, Gates, Cohen, Papadopoulos, Stone…]

“We don’t have any authority to do that at the department.”

—Acting Department of Homeland Security secretary Chad Wolf, on sending agents to guard polling places in the November election. [Gawd, at last someone in the administration who gets it right.]

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