Louisiana Voice

LouisianaVoice normally holds two fundraisers per year—one in April and the other in October.

We are now in April, but it’s an April none of us has experienced in our lifetime and hopefully, never will again.

Because of the sacrifices being made by all of you, we are forgoing our April request for contributions. We are all feeling the stress of the financial hardships being forced upon us by necessity and any request for funds would be, I believe, a display of greed and arrogance.

I would ask, however, if you do feel you do have expendable income, please help someone in dire need at this trying time. There are those out there who are truly hurting and those federal checks may be months in arriving for them. Donations of food, toiletries, running errands, even mowing an elderly person’s lawn, are all things we can do that would help.

Thank you for your years of loyalty and let’s pull together like never before.

Stay healthy.

Tom Aswell

“it’s supposed to be our stockpile — it’s not supposed to be state stockpiles that they then use,”

—Jared Kushner, protesting the release of ventilators held by FEMA to states hit hard by the coronavirus pandemic. [We’re not exactly sure what he meant by “our stockpile.” We apparently have been under the misconception that FEMA exists to help us during crises.]

The FEMA website on Friday morning described the Strategic National Stockpile as “the nation’s largest supply of life-saving pharmaceuticals and medical supplies for use in a public health emergency severe enough to cause local supplies to run out.” The website further said on Friday morning, “When state, local, tribal, and territorial responders request federal assistance to support their response efforts, the stockpile ensures that the right medicines and supplies get to those who need them most during an emergency.”

By noon Friday, the website’s wording had been mysteriously changed to say, “The Strategic National Stockpile’s role is to supplement state and local supplies during public health emergencies. Many states have products stockpiled, as well. The supplies, medicines, and devices for life-saving care contained in the stockpile can be used as a short-term stopgap buffer when the immediate supply of adequate amounts of these materials may not be immediately available.”

“Power always thinks it has a great soul and vast views beyond the comprehension of the weak, and that it is doing God’s service when it is violating all His laws.”

—John Quincy Adams

“If we are to have another contest in the near future of our national existence, I predict that the dividing line will not be Mason and Dixon’s, but between patriotism and intelligence on the one side, and superstition, ambition, and ignorance on the other.”

—Ulysses S. Grant 

“We’re not looking to shoot the messenger here.”

–Admiral Michael Gilday, after Secretary of the Navy Thomas Modly announced that apt. Brett Crozier, commanding officer of the USS Theodore Roosevelt, was relieved of command after writing a letter pleading with Navy brass to address concerns over the coronavirus outbreak aboard his ship. Modly assured the media that Donald Trump had nothing to do with the decision. [of course not. Why would we think that? So, just who are you trying to shoot, then?].

“I knew it could be horrible, and I knew it could be, maybe, good … I want to give people a feeling of hope.”

–Liar-in-Chief Donald Trump, trying once again to spin his way out of a web of lies spun over a period of weeks in which he denied the severity of the coronavirus pandemic.

“Individuals could have been infecting people before they ever felt bad, but we didn’t know that until the last 24 hours.”

–Idiot Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp, in finally issuing a shelter in-place order. [Isn’t Atlanta, Georgia the headquarters for the CDC? This goes far beyond stupidity; it’s arrogance and reckless disregard. It’s malfeasance.]

EDITOR’S NOTE: I am re-posting here, with only minor editing, a comment made yesterday by one of our readers in response to another reader’s criticism of Gov. Andrew Cuomo. I found his thoughts particularly important not because of any defense of Cuomo, but because the reader so accurately pointed out the tactic of Trump supporters, repeated over and over, of deflection and misdirection of all criticism of Trump by pointing to others’ shortcomings and failings, a ploy I consider to be the underlying characteristic of failure.

This will doubtless prompt the usual outcry from the handful of Trump apologists who regularly comment on this site. That is their right as Americans and as long as their comments are not racist or vulgar, they are invited to share their views in accordance with the First Amendment, which I wholeheartedly support.

Here is yesterday’s comment by Keep the Faith:

“Why not distract from the death and destruction Trump has created all on his own? No, let’s attack Gov Cuomo and his family and friends.

“Can you provide the conviction rate of Trump’s previous administration members? Can you fathom those on his transition team who are now serving in prison?  Don’t remember the past 3 years of this presidency? His children’s wealth and how they got it? How Trump inherited his and lost $450 million in 1985? The single highest bankruptcy in this nation?

“Don’t go after Gov Cuomo. There are criminals surrounding Trump’s past and present. The here and now is what’s important – people are dying. Your president declared this COVID-19 a Democratic hoax. Wrong! Wrong! Wrong!

“His leadership in this pandemic is less than stellar. In case you have forgotten, this is the United States of America, the richest, most powerful, most influential country in the WORLD. This is an emergency! This Pandemic which Trump knew back in January and refused to prepare his country saying instead that a miracle will transform the country in 14 days to zero.

“His doing little to nothing in helping the survival of our citizens who are DYING. How unconscionable are you to refer to Gov. Cuomo as whinny, Gov. Lamont of Connecticut, Governor Whitmer of Michigan asking for help, but instead, being accused by Trump of stockpiling? Accusing Doctors and nurses on national TV of selling the much-needed medical equipment out the back door of hospitals – even as they’re putting their lives on the line to help others.

“Those same hospital personnel, overwhelmed, facing possible death, working long hours desperately trying to save those in their care while hooked up to ventilators, dying. Don’t complain about Trump’s politics for a moment. Let’s bring up the impeachment, Pelosi, Schumer, anything but the realization of today, The Pandemic is life or death here and now, not the Trump train to re-election months down the road. A bridge too far to cross, with its crumbling infrastructure which he promised to replace and repair in 2016.

“They are asking for beds, PPE, ventilators to help save their sick and dying citizens, front line responders – Doctors, nurses during this pandemic. While Trump has chosen to ignore them and us and only worry about his re-election campaign? I guess when it finally hits home, when family members or close friends test positive and die, maybe you will begin to FEEL something, but I doubt it.”

In watching the daily briefings and updates on the coronavirus, I am struck by the contrast in styles, knowledge, character and priorities between Donald Trump and the various governors, including our own, and the experts who know what they’re doing—and saying.

On the one hand, we have Trump who after weeks of declaring that coronavirus was a Democratic hoax created to destroy his presidency, that only one person was infected, that the virus would disappear, yada-yada-yada, finally conceding it was a problem, then saying he knew it was a pandemic before anyone else, then wanting to get the country’s business back up and running by Easter (because his approval rating and the stock market were taking a hit), and finally reversing himself again, saying things are really bad and that we’re in for a rough two weeks.

That, folks, is not leadership.

Trump has done more flip-flops than an Olympic gymnastics team, more inconsistencies than an Iowa Democratic caucus. No one knows from one minute to the next what to believe what comes out of his mouth. The safest bet is to not believe anything, but to wait until Dr. Anthony Fauci or Dr. Deborah Birx get a chance to get the facts out there.

And now we learn that they’ve had to beef up security for Dr. Fauci because of threats on his life. Have Trump’s supporters gone so bat-guano crazy that they have to threaten a 79-year-old man because his knowledge in his field of expertise (allergy and infectious diseases) clashes with the knee-jerk mouthing to their hero? That he has infinitely more credibility than the big Cheeto-head?

We have real heroes who continue to go to work each day to keep this country going. Grocery store stockers, checkout employees and baggers see to it we don’t go hungry—without thanks. We have truck drivers who make sure perishable goods make it from the farm to wholesalers and from wholesalers to the retail grocers so that they may remain open.

We have law enforcement officers who must continue to maintain order and to protect us from those who would do us harm.

For those who have lost their jobs, there are the overworked, stressed-out civil servants who are striving to keep up with the applications for unemployment benefits. They deserve our heartfelt appreciation.

There are the first responders who, while exposing themselves to infection, still transport the sick and hurt to hospitals where exhausted nurses and doctors try in vain to keep up with the COVID-19 victims who keep pouring in. Many of those same law enforcement officers, first responders, nurses and doctors have themselves contracted the virus and those who haven’t keep working with the prospect of not seeing their own families for weeks on end. Nursing home employees are particularly under the gun as they care for the most vulnerable among us.

And yet, there are those who refuse to heed the desperate pleas to stay at home and to not expose others or become exposed themselves. Preachers who mistakenly think they are doing God’s work are satisfying only their own egos while placing their congregations and their communities in peril. That is not the work of God—it’s the very epitome of greed and pride, two of the seven deadly sins.

Watch Trump as he reads—and at a sixth-grade level—from a prepared script, rarely looking up. He’s totally unprepared as he stumbles over the words of his text, not pausing at the appropriate intervals, and with no inflection in his voice. It’s so mechanical and detached—much like his detachment from reality.

Then watch our own Gov. John Bel Edwards. You can feel the despair in his delivery. He is tired, bone-tired, because he so obviously cares. His pleas for citizens to comply with his stay-at-home directive rings with sincerity that reveals his sadness for the havoc that has beset our state. At the same time that he has been the voice of reason, he has also been the voice of restraint, refusing to let himself be drawn into some kind of ideological dispute with Trump. He is truly the adult in the room.

Much the same can be said for Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, who, like other governors, has issued a desperate plea for ventilators which are in short supply all around. New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo and Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker, however, have shown a little less patience.

Cuomo, who has been mentioned as a possible Democratic presidential candidate (and should there be a brokered convention, he could yet slip into the race) has been more outspoken in his criticism of Trump and of those who continue to ignore social distancing pleas.

While Drs. Birx and Fauci rely on cold, hard statistics and scientific data, Trump continues to shoot from the lip, even accusing (without any evidence) nurses of theft of masks and gloves, thus “creating” the personal protection equipment shortages.

Such petty rhetoric is not productive, but then that has never held Trump back from petty rhetoric. In fact, that’s about all we’ve heard from him in three-plus years in office while aides scramble to repair the damage done by him.

Despite the lack of leadership from the White House, I’ve not seen this country this united behind a common cause since 9/11.

It’s just a sad commentary to acknowledge that it takes something like an attack on the World Trade Center or a pandemic like COVID-19 to bring this country together, however briefly.

Now, if only Trump could grasp that concept and reflect more on the problem at hand rather than the TV ratings for his daily briefings. That would show some needed maturity.