Louisiana Voice

“When will all of the ‘reporters’ who have received Noble (sic) Prizes for their work on Russia, Russia, Russia, only to have been proven totally wrong (and, in fact, it was the other side who committed the crimes), be turning back their cherished ‘Nobles’ (sic) so that they can be given to the REAL REPORTERS & JOURNALISTS who got it right. I can give the Committee a very comprehensive list. When will the Noble (sic) Committee DEMAND the Prizes back, especially since they were gotten under fraud? The reporters and Lamestream Media knew the truth all along Lawsuits should be brought against all, including the Fake News Organizations, to rectify this terrible injustice. For all of the great lawyers out there, do we have any takers? When will the Noble (sic) Committee Act? Better be fast!”

— Donald J. Trump tweet, April 26, 2020. Trump is such a “family man” that he spent his wife’s birthday jealously trying to get Nobel (and it is Nobel, not Noble, you illiterate ass clown) Prizes taken away from reporters who covered the Russia scandal. (The prizes awarded for journalism, by the way, are Pulitzers. There are no Nobel or Noble prizes for journalism.)

https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/trump-noble-prize-tweets/

“We passed VA Choice and VA Accountability to give our veterans the care that they deserve, and they have been trying to pass these things for 45 years.”

—Donald Trump at a May 2019 rally.

“I said, you know, ‘I have a great idea. I’ve been thinking about it a lot’. This was during the campaign and I came back to my people, I had experts, and I said, ‘I have a great idea. These lines for the veterans are too long. It takes them three, four weeks sometimes to see a doctor. I have a great idea — let’s let them go outside, go to a private doctor. We’ll pay the bill, they’ll be all fixed up all perfect, and they can do it immediately and we’ll pay the bill’.

“And I thought, I said, ‘Man am I smart. I am the smartest guy, to think of that’. So, I went before this panel of experts that were with me working on things, and I said, ‘How do you like that idea?’ And they said, ‘Sir, we’ve known about it for about 40 years, but we’ve never been able.’”

—Donald Trump, in an August 2019 Interview. [Except that The Veteran’s Choice Act, which allows Vets access to health care outside the VA system was the result of Senate Resolution S.2450, co-sponsored in the Senate by Bernie Sanders and John McCain, and House Resolution 3230, co-sponsored by Harold Rogers, Tom Latham and Jackie Walorski. After the House passed HR 3230, the Senate set aside S2450 which was basically the same bill, and Took up HR 3242 in its place.

It passed the House On Oct 3, 2013 by a vote of 265–160.

It passed the Senate on June 11 of 2014 by a vote of 93–3. The Three “Nays” were all Republicans.

It was signed into law by Barack Obama August 7, 2014.]

Oops.

“I’m the president, and you’re fake news.”

—Donald Trump, at a recent press conference held to discuss the coronavirus.

“Nothing makes Trump supporters angrier than when you directly quote something he has said.”

—Tweet by Travis Allen, April 24, 2020.

“Calm down, Trump just suggested injecting people with bleach. It’s not like he said anything really dangerous like when Michelle Obama suggested that kids should eat vegetables.”

—Recent tweet by “The Volatile Mermaid.”

“There has been no President in the history of our Country who has been treated so badly as I have.”

—Donald Trump tweet, September 25, 2019.

“JFK was shot in the head in the middle of the street next to his wife.”

—Tweet by Frederick Joseph.

“Mr. President, a little history lesson: Abraham Lincoln (1865), James A. Garfield (1881), William McKinley (1901), and John F. Kenned (1963). They were all treated pretty badly.”

—Tweet by Matthew Dowd, chief strategist for the 2004 Bush-Cheney presidential campaign, September 25, 2019.

If I am to lay claim to a shred of credibility, I must be able to admit when I am wrong and boy, was I wrong with the first quote I posted today under Notable Quotables.

Apparently, I’ve been a victim of my own failure to thoroughly vet quotes by Donald Trump. As one who routinely goes to SNOPES.COM for verification, the one time I neglected to do so, it comes back to bite me.

Accordingly, I apologize for and retract the quote attributed to Trump about Republicans being stupid [in fact, that entire quote was a complete urban legend fabrication.] It turns out he never said that. It also turns out that yours truly was the stupid one this time.

I would also be remiss if I did not offer a thank-you to the reader who pointed out my lapse. She knows who she is.

On April 1, I posted my annual April Fool’s column on LouisianaVoice.

You can review the post HERE, but today I’m writing to say that once again, life imitates art, even when that “art” is published as parody. As has been said by wiser people than I, irony is wasted on some people.

I wrote about a fictional preacher named Rev. Howe Dewey Connem who appeared more motivated by the potential loss of love offerings than in the actual welfare of his parishioners.

It turns out that that had a tad more than a tinge of truth with the real-live travails of the minister of a Baton Rouge-area church who has defied orders by Gov. John Bel Edwards to avoid clusters while we are in the throes of a worldwide pandemic.

Three stories about Rev. Tony Spell, pastor of Central’s Life Tabernacle Church, caught my eye this week, two of them local and one a national story.

First, Spell was arrested on a charge that he nearly ran over a protester with one of the church’s 27 buses used to haul worshipers to services at his mega-church. The near-victim was protesting Spell’s insistence on continuing to hold full-blown worship services at his church in defiance of both the governor and a court order. Spell, of course, denied that he nearly ran over the person.

Then, on Saturday, it was learned that Spell had been placed under HOUSE ARREST after refusing to tell a state judge if he would continue to hold services or not.

One of the conditions of Spell’s release after the bus incident was that he “refrain from any and all criminal conduct, including but not limited to strictly abiding by all emergency ordered” issued by Edwards.

When given a deadline of 5:45 p.m. Saturday to answer the judge about his intentions, he responded instead with a Bible quote: “But and if ye suffer for righteousness sake, happy are ye; and be not afraid of their terror, neither be troubled.”

No mention of any observance of common sense.

Spell posted a video from his home in which he vowed “to continue to do what I do,” adding that “This is not about me. This is about our religious liberties.” Then, as an ankle monitor was being attached by authorities, he said beginning at 12 noon on Sunday, “my voice will silenced for several months. You will not hear from me again.”

No explanation was given for that last statement, but to be sure, this most certainly is about him. It’s always been about him. If you don’t believe that, consider the CNN story was preceded the two stories in the Baton Rouge Advocate.

Last Sunday (April 19, Easter Sunday), Spell was quoted by CNN as asking his congregants to DONATE THEIR FEDERAL STIMULUS CHECKS to the church, prompting one reader to ask if those who do so would receive an anointed prayer cloth.

To Spell’s credit (I suppose), he at least offered the pretense that he was thinking of others (besides his church members who just might need that money). “We are challenging you, if you can, give your stimulus package to evangelists and missionaries who do not get the stimulus package.”

He didn’t mention whether or not he was eligible for stimulus money but he did reveal that his motives for defiance may rooted as much in a desire to keep the money flowing in as in any concern for First Amendment rights, which he continues to tout.

“This is not about me,” he said Saturday. “This is about our religious liberties.”

Louisiana has the 9^th-most confirmed cases of coronavirus and 1,267 people—about the same number who attended his church for Easter services last week—have died in the state. Still, Spell insists that the pandemic is “politically motivated.”

The whole thing reminds me of the John Denver-George Burns movie Oh, God! in which the televangelist in the movie, clad in an electric-blue leisure suit proclaimed to his congregation that when he talked about “LO-uve, (love), I’m talkin’ about the feelin’ you get when you dig DEEP into your pockets to support this min-is-try.”

You have to wonder if Spell has given any thought at all to the plight of his members who have been thrown out of work by the shutdown caused by COVID-19 or if he is even capable of thinking of others’ misfortunes as the Bible teaches us to do.