Louisiana Voice

“We thought this was only a respiratory virus. Turns out, it goes after the pancreas. It goes after the heart. It goes after the liver, the brain, the kidney and other organs.”

—Dr. Eric Topoi, director of the Scripps Research Translational Institute in La Jolla, California, about the coronavirus. [But Trump said as recently as yesterday that it was only “the sniffles.”]

“Let’s make this clear. I’m not buying a mask. I’ve made it this far by not buying into that damn hype.”

—Richard Rose, an Army veteran with tours in Iraq and Afghanistan, in an April Facebook post, who was dead on July 4, three days after testing positive for COVID-19. [The most dangerous enemies are those we refuse to acknowledge.]

“It is what it is.”

—Donald Trump, when told by Chris Wallace that the US death toll from coronavirus is approaching 1,000 per day. [Is it me, or does that seem just a bit cavalier? A bit reminiscent of “Let them eat cake.”]

“I will be right eventually.”

—Donald Trump, in interview with Chris Wallace. [Lordy, we can only hope so.]

“We don’t know why they’re here. We don’t know the circumstances under which they’re making arrests.”

—Portland Mayor Ted Wheeler, responding to controversial arrests and abductions being carried out by unidentified, uniformed military personnel in unmarked vans. [Looks like Trump has ripped a page from Richard Daley’s 1968 playbook.]

“You’ll see something rolled out this week, as we start to go in and make sure that the communities — whether it’s Chicago or Portland or Milwaukee or someplace across the heartland — we need to make sure their communities are safe.”

—White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, in announcing that the administration will intensify its storm trooper-like activities in response to what Acting Secretary of Homeland Security described as “violent anarchists,” activities primarily limited to painting graffiti on public buildings. [God knows what’ll happen if one of those anarchists gets his hands on a bull horn.]

“Unidentified stormtroopers. Unmarked cars. Kidnapping protesters and causing severe injuries in response to graffiti. These are not the actions of a democratic republic.”

—House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, on Trump’s storm troopers. [Regardless of your political party, your political philosophy or your personal opinion of Pelosi, what’s occurring in Portland sets a dangerous precedent and places in literal peril everyone’s constitutional rights from this moment forward. We all should be hearing the alarms and seeing red flags in these tactics. THIS IS NOT THE AMERICA WE WERE TAUGHT ABOUT IN CIVICS CLASS!]

“I just want to do my job…and I’m going to keep doing it.”

—Dr. Anthony Fauci.

“The tempting analogy is to the election of 1932, in the midst of another set of crises. The public barely knew Franklin D Roosevelt, whom critics called an aristocrat without a coherent theory of how to end the Great Depression.

“ [T]he breadth of the anti-Trump coalition is a remarkable testament to Donald Trump’s capacity to inspire disgust.

—Former US Secretary of Labor Robert Reich, writing in Sunday’s The Guardian

“Mr. President, the American people … have a right to protest. You cannot stop the people with all of the forces that you may have at your command.”

—The late Rep. John Lewis, a month before his death.

Donald Trump is correct. Fake news abounds; it’s one of the few commodities which has been and likely will never be in short supply

From McCarthyism to weapons of mass destruction to Rush Limbaugh, fake news beats us over the head every single day. Alex Jones’s Media Wars, QAnon lead the pack with their child trafficking via their Wayfair and Pizzagate wild-eyed hogwash.

You can read about these debunked stories HERE, HERE, HERE, HERE, and HERE.

Sadly, our president, that “very stable genius,” has dutifully re-tweeted every one of those conspiracy stories—along with others that question Barack Obama’s birthplace, claim that Obama bugged Trump’s campaign, that Joe Scarborough murdered an aide, that Ted Cruz’s father was somehow linked to the JFK assassination, that windmills cause cancer, that the coronavirus is a “hoax” perpetrated by Democrats and/or China to lessen his reelection chances, and any other bizarre crap he could imagine in his sick, demented mind.

And while he gives credence to these absurdly-contrived fantasies of the right-wing extremists, he is just as quick, or quicker, to label news stories from such sources as The New York Times, The Washington Post, CNN, or other legitimate news services, i.e. “lamestream media” as “fake news.’ And of course, he is, by his own humble admission, smarter than all our intelligence agencies and general combined.

He continues to invoke the “fake news” mantra because it’s a convenient dog whistle to his shrinking base that hangs onto every word as though he was some kind of latter-day savior of mankind.

But there is another “news service” that pops up in my email inbox daily that, while flying under the radar, is nevertheless comical in its own ham-handed way of reporting news intended as favorable to the Tangerine Toddler. I say “a” news service, though there actually are two but they are so near in content and appearance they sometimes seem to be one and the same.

The first is an outfit called Patriot Powered News run by some outfit called JKW Enterprises of Moore, Oklahoma.

One of its dispatches features a headline that says “You Won’t Believe Who’s Calling Obama the Greatest President Ever.” Click on that heading and you’re taken to a one-question “poll” that asks, “Would you vote for a Barack Obama 3^rd term?” and then gives you two choices:

Yes – Barack Obama is a great president and better than the choices we had in 2016, or

No – He was a terrible president and I am happy he is no longer in office.

No third choice like, for instance, “No, I don’t believe a president should serve more than two terms, or a fourth choice that says, “No, the 22^nd Amendment put a limit on how many times a person could be elected president.

Another features this headline: Michelle Finally Snaps: Melania Sent Her Over the ‘Edge.’

But when you click on the headline, you’re taken to a page that’s nothing more than an INFOMERCIAL disguised as a news story hyping some kind of skin care treatment that is supposed to make you “look two decades younger.” It even comes complete with “Before” and “After” photos of Melania.

Some news story.

The other so-called news service, which also is heavily pro-Trump, is little more than an advertising medium for such products as an “Ancient Japanese tonic to melt 3 pounds every 3-5 days,” or a “cheap air cooler (that) takes United States by storm,” or Dr. Ben Carson’s “over the counter memory drug.

That news page also has a headline that hypes a “CBS breaking news story” headlined, “Dr. Phil mourns after tragic news…” but when you click on that headline, you are taken to a story about a “revolutionary product” released by Dr. Phil and Dr. Oz that’s “causing outburst in the health community. And what is this “revolutionary product?”

CBD. Cannabinoid oil.

I guess truth is where you find it, folks, sort of like beauty being in the eye of the beholder.

So, with all disrespect to Alex Jones, QAnon, Limbaugh and Patriot Powered News, I’ll just stick with the lamestream media for my news because as opposed to those just cited, sometimes they get it right.

After all, it was Trump himself who recently said, “What do we have to lose?”

“60Minutes & third place anchor, @NorahODonnell, are doing everything in their power to demean our Country, much to the benefit of the Radical Left Democrats. Tonight they put on yet another Fake “Whistleblower”, a disgruntled employee who supports Dems, fabricates stories, &…spews lies. @60Minutes report was incorrect, which they couldn’t care less about. Fake News! I don’t know this guy, never met him, but don’t like what I see. How can a creep like this show up to work tomorrow & report to @SecAzar, his boss, after trashing him on T.V.?….This whole Whistleblower racket needs to be looked at very closely, it is causing great injustice & harm. I hope you are listening @SenSusanCollins I also hope that Shari Redstone will take a look at her poorly performing gang. She knows how to make things right!”

—Donald Trump tweet following the 60Minutes interview of whistleblower Dr. Rick Bright [Yet another person Trump says he “doesn’t know.”]

“It says nothing about defunding the police.”

—Fox News anchor Chris Wallace, to Donald Trump when Trump lied and said Joe Biden wants to defund the police in a 100-page charter that Biden signed with Bernie Sanders. [Finally! A member of the media calling out Trump—and a Fox News anchor at that! Trump never read 100 pages of anything in his life but nevertheless ordered his staff to fetch the charter so he could prove it to Wallace. They did and he couldn’t—because it’s not in there.]

“The president has said unmistakably that he wants school to reopen. When he says open, he means open and full, kids being able to attend each and every day at their school. The science should not stand in the way of this.”

—White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany. [Sure. Why let science stand in the way?]

“He is going deeper and deeper into a darker and darker place, and he is starting to drive away people who were formerly voters of his.”

—Democratic strategist Steve McMahon, on Donald Trump’s meltdown leading up to the November election.

“I can’t explain Peter Navarro. He’s in a world by himself.”

—Dr. Anthony Fauci, responding to bizarre criticism of him by Director of the Office of Trade and Manufacturing Policy.

“He may be out of the loop and in disfavor with the White House, but it’s clear from the numbers, voters would like Dr. Fauci back on call.”

—Quinnipiac polling analyst Tim Malloy, on poll results showing that 65 percent of Americans trust Fauci.

[The op-ed piece by Navarro] “did not meet USA TODAY’s fact-checking standards” because of factual errors with “several of Navarro’s criticisms of Fauci.” 

USA TODAY editorial page editor Bill Sternberg, on Navarro’s piece that the paper ran on Tuesday.