Louisiana Voice

This is neither a eulogy or condemnation of Charlie Kirk. I didn’t agree with him the same way I didn’t agree with Rush Limbaugh but he had a right to express his views as guaranteed by the Constitution’s First Amendment. As Voltaire said, I may disapprove of what you say, “but I will defend to the death you right to say it” (so long as you’re not goading a mob into attacking the U.S. Capitol or some other form of violence).

Having said that, it’s interesting and more than a little hypocritical how certain ones have turned this tragedy into an opportunity to vent their rage at the so-called “radical left,” as if one end of the political spectrum is solely responsible for the political vitriol that now characterizes a once-United States.

Rep. Nancy Mace of South Carolina, for example, said the left “owns this,” as if the Jan. 6 incursion of the U.S. Capitol never occurred or the Unite the Right rally never happened in Charlottesville in 2017 or that lynchings of black people was not the number one method of entertainment in the South until football came along, or that a certain right-leaning reality TV star didn’t once utter the complete nonsensical declaration that blacks were happier in the fields picking cotton.

Donald Trump vowed vengeance against the “radical left” for the killing which he said made Kirk a “martyr for truth.”

Exactly what “truth” would that be? Was it Kirk’s calling Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King an “awful” person? Was it his calling Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson an unqualified “diversity hire” while ignoring Trump’s employment of his own kids during his first term? Was it calling the passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act a “mistake” and “an anti-white weapon”? Was it his support of the “replacement theory” conspiracy that Jews were trying to replace white Americans with nonwhite immigrants (that subsequently prompted a gunman to kill 11 worshipers at a Pittsburgh synagogue seven years ago)? Was it his lip service to free speech while at the same time promoting his “Professor Watchlist” by urging students to identify professors with leftist positions? Was it his steadfast denial of climate change? Or was it his ironic support of gun rights when he said it was impossible to avoid gun deaths in a society with an armed citizenry but that the benefits of gun rights outweighed the costs of “some gun deaths every single year so that we can have the Second Amendment to protect our other God-given rights.”?

So, please tell me which truth was he martyred for. I really want to know.

A reader of this blog wrote me to say, “They (the MAGHATs) wanted [the shooter to be] a gay, trans, black Muslim, College Democrat, atheist, named José Jabar Abdul Valdez, who hated guns, ate vegan from Massachusetts, with ties to Ukraine, with a PhD in Literature and Women’s Studies from Berkeley. What they got was a young, white male Mormon gun lover from a MAGA family — an uneducated electrician’s apprentice from Utah.”

Gonna be difficult to justify vengeance against the “radical left” with those demographics.

I recently completed the manuscript for what will eventually be about a 400-page book about child sex trafficking.

I suppose it would go without saying that part of the book deals with the Jeffrey Epstein matter, but by no means does it dominate the book; it’s just a small part. There are just too many tenacles to this horrific monster: the Roman Catholic Church, Protestant churches, cops, judges, elected officials and those group homes for so-called problem kids. The child sex trafficker knows no demographic.

The manuscript is currently undergoing final edits and should be available in the next three months or so.

BUT (there’s always a but), out there in the world of in-your-face politics, that Epstein matter just won’t go away and as crude as it may sound, Louisiana’s two U.S. senators have just gone on record as being at least tacitly complicit in the dirty business of child sex trafficking.

John Neely Kennedy and Dr. Bill Cassidy both VOTED TO TABLE Sen. Chuck Schumer’s amendment on Wednesday that would have forced the release of the Epstein files. The vote was 51-49. Had our two senators voted against the motion to table Schumer’s motion, the results would have been reversed.

Instead, both men, devoid of any courage or moral fiber, voted to support child sex trafficking on a grand scale. There’s no other way to say it.

They actually sided with the one person who is most desperate to keep those files hidden despite repeated promises in his campaign of full disclosure. There must be a reason for the secrecy now, and Kennedy and Cassidy voted to keep those records concealed, to abet a convicted felon.

Kennedy I can understand. He’s a coward through and through. At least Cassidy once summoned enough courage to vote to convict in Donald Trump’s second impeachment trial. That instantly cast Cassidy into the political trash bin with the MAGHATS. He’s history anyway now, so why not go out in a blaze of glory? Show some backbone. Be your own man. Don’t be Trump’s patsy when you know he’s not going to endorse you in next year’s election anyway. Why suck up now?

Kennedy, on the other hand, knows no other way to survive than to constantly kiss his master’s ring (mind you, I’m not saying which ring). He is scared to death of staking out his own position for fear of offending TACO Don. It’s that simple. That’s not courage, its cowardice.

But in the meantime, if you’ve ever had a child who was sexually molested or know someone who was, just know where our two U.S. senators stand on the issue.

There was once a Baptist minister who was shipwrecked on a desert island for several years. When the rescue boat finally came ashore, the visitors noticed three grass huts along the shoreline. They asked what they were.

“The one in the middle is my home,” the preacher said. “The one on the left is my church.”

“What about the one on the right?”

“Oh,” the minister replied, “we had a split in the church.”

The Baptist church has more flavors than Baskin-Robbins.

You have your basic, garden-variety Southern Baptist, of course.

But then you have the National Baptist Conventions, the American Baptist Churches USA, the North American Baptist Conference, the reformed, the Particular (Calvinistic), the general/Free Will (non-Calvinistic, the Primitive Baptists, the Seventy Day Baptist, the Missionary Baptist, the Congregational Independence Baptists, the Strict (as opposed to not-so-strict?) the Berean Baptist Church, the Independent Fundamental Baptists, the latter two born because members felt the Southern Baptist were too (ahem) liberal. Speaking of oxymorons, I personally don’t know what a liberal Baptist is, so if any of you know, please enlighten me.

Ministers in the Berean Baptist Church have been credibly accused of the rape of teenage girls being held in church-affiliated group homes, including New Bethany Home in Bienville Parish.

And those wild and crazy Independent Fundamental Baptist! Here’s Jack Schaap, former pastor of First Baptist Church of Hammond, Indiana, (before his arrest, conviction and SENTENCING to 12 years imprisonment for child sexual exploitation and abuse) as he demonstrates POLISHING THE SHAFT during a church service before his fall from grace. (Two things here: Watch the other men on the stage and how there is absolutely no reaction from them to this spectacle – except for the one on the far left; he’s absolutely mesmerized. Also, don’t go getting your feathers ruffled at me for posting this; Schaap is the one who did the “polishing.”)

And now we have a new player because they don’t think the Baptists have swung far enough to the political right. And it’s a group from BOSSIER CITY’S FIRST BAPTIST CHURCH and closely-aligned with our distinguished Speaker of the U.S. House, one Mike Johnson, he of the covenant marriage and cellphone app to keep him off porn sites.

In 2022, the fledgling Conservative Baptist Network received a $50,000 contribution from the far-right Turning Point USA for the purpose of fostering “awareness of traditional American values.”

Turning Point USA is led by Charlie Kirk, one of the most visible proponents of Christian nationalism and Trumpism and of the merger of church and state. The now defunct Falkirk Center at Liberty University was named by combining the names Falwell and Kirk.

Liberty University was founded by Jerry Falwell Sr. and was more or less inherited by his son, Jerry Falwell, Jr. until Junior got caught with his pants literally down while watching his wife having sex with their pool boy.

It’s certainly curious how all these so-called political conservative preachers end up in sex scandals.

The Conservative Baptist Network is led by BRAD JURKOVICH, pastor of Bossier City’s First Baptist where Johnson was once a member. The church has been ordered by the Louisiana Supreme Court to turn over FINANCIAL RECORDS to a group of members who sued over what call inappropriate expenditures.

Even Johnson’s financial disclosures have come under SCRUTINY.

Stay tuned. We’re going to be following this saga closely as it unfolds in the courts.

It would seem to some that TACO Don would be so busy playing oligarch and trying to deflect the Epstein story to find time for a brand-new grift.

Yeah, it would seem so, but never underestimate the U.S. Grifter-in-Chief.

This time he’s come up with a scam for senior citizens – just like all the other low-life leeches who prey on the elderly.

Yours truly got a solicitation in the mail on Tuesday offering a membership in something called the Association of Mature American Citizens (AMAC), which he touts as being an alternative to “the liberal AARP,” which he says is a “driving force” behind ObamaCare, Medicare for all.

(Scroll down past first blank page to see letter and enrollment form)

The letter reads, “If you’ve had enough of the crazy leftist policies that have been killing America – and enough of the leftist groups like the AARP who are behind it – I’m pleased to welcome you as a FREE AMAC member with this trial membership care!”

But a separate enrollment page offers membership fees for one year ($11), three years ($32 with one year free), five years ($35 with three years free) or lifetime ($250).

Wow. Who could pass up an offer like that?

Well, for one, I can.

For the MAGHATS who still refuse to see it, this man is nothing more than a con man, a carnival barker who sells tickets to see the world’s largest rat from Russia that turns out to be a nutria from South Louisiana. He runs a shell game to bleed money from suckers.

Still don’t believe he’s a fraudster peddling elixir from a medicine show? Then explain how he happened to get my name and address when I am certainly no registered Repugnantcan. Could it have been from the IRS records or Social Security records grabbed up by DOGE?

Still don’t believe me? Then do your own damned research on Trump University, Trump Steaks, Trump Airlines, Trump Water, the New Jersey Generals football team, Paradox Hotel in Vancouver, Plaza Hotel and Casino, TD Trump Deutschland, the Trump Network, Trump Ice, Trump Magazines, Trump Mortgage, Trump Productions, Trump Shuttle, Trump Vodka, Hard Rock Hotel & Casino in Atlantic City, Golden Nugget in Atlantic City, Trump Entertainment Resorts, Trump Ocean Resort, Baja, Mexico.

Then ask yourself: how in the name of betting odds does one bankrupt not one, but five casinos? Better yet, how did he manage to shift the financial burden of those failures to investors and bondholders while protecting his own personal finances?

Thanks, TACO, but I’ll stick with AARP.

When I see headlines like THIS, I can’t help but think of a former friend who could best be described as penny-wise but pound-foolish. He loved to ridicule women who said they “saved” a certain amount of money when they purchased some item of clothing that was say, marked down 50 percent.

“They say they saved $50 by buying a dress for $50 that was originally priced at $100,” he was fond of point out, “when in reality, they were spending $50 foolishly.”

That was his math formula as applied to women, whom he apparently preferred to see dressed in rags. But as for his own purposes, he thought nothing of paying $4,000 for a wristwatch or $375 for a pair of sunglasses.

Once, he showed me his watch while proudly telling me the brand and the price. I showed him my watch and said, “Timex. $17.95. It keeps the same time as yours but when mine quits, I just buy another one. What do you do when your $4,000 watch quits?”

In his most condescending manner, he said, “I buy another one.”

Such is the mindset of most Republicans I know. It’s a philosophy of “I got mine; you don’t deserve yours.”

There’s a sad but undeniable parallel between my former friend and Senate Republicans who voted in lock-step to confirm Trump’s nominees right down the line. It’s almost as though they were programmed to be completely subservient to their master. Why, it’s almost as though they have no original ideas of their own.

Our own two senators are classic examples of this sycophantic behavior. Both, for example, voted to confirm Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as Secretary of Health and Human Services (along with every single one of Trump’s other nominees). Here’s their vote on Kennedy:

That’s not political propaganda; it’s from https://www.govtrack.us/congress/votes/119-2025/s52, which tracks the vote of every single member of Congress on every single issue.

A few days ago, I had the opportunity to ask Cassidy what it would take for him to finally rebuke Kennedy. Cassidy, the milquetoast that he has shown himself to be, simply walked away without answering.

But at least he did show his face at a speaking event that day. That’s more than John Neely Kennedy has done. All his public utterances are made within the safe confines of the Senate chamber where he recently lamented the presence of radioactivity in shrimp.

That’s correct. He is apparently gravely concerned about the health threats to Louisianans who consume nuclear shrimp than he is about the potential to those who eschew vaccinations. Somehow, I see smallpox, measles, whooping cough and polio as being a far greater threat to our well-being than consuming a few contaminated shrimp.

But does Sen. Kennedy speak a single word of buyer’s remorse? No, of course not. That would mean that (gasp) he might’ve been wrong in blindly complying with our FBI Informant-in-Chief’s wishes.