Black & White and Cardinal Red All Over

Jindal Mania Is Dead

Looks like the mania surrounding the rising star called “Bobby” Jindal has flamed out after the horrendous speech he made in response to President Obama’s joint Congressional address. Even after getting help from the RNC and heavyweight republican advisors, Jindal laid a huge egg that had even ardent rightwingers groaning in embarrassment. Looks like Jindal Mania has fizzed out. Of course, I am presuming that republicans do not look upon utter defeat as success, which they have been known to do. 

Jindal’s speech centered around the recently passed stimulus package. Republicans do not have a counter for this measure so they hope to pick it apart by lying about what is in it and turn public opinion against it. That may have worked back in the 1980’s but there is too much information available to everyday folks via the Internet to bamboozle the country the way Ronnie Raygun did 30 years ago. None of the rightwingers like government being the big dog on the block when their vaunted free market has collapsed thru its own greed and mismanagement but government is the only player in town that can fix the mess. Reagan’s motto about government being the problem is what got us into this fix in the first place. All their hopes that the market will correct itself and regulations only prevent people from making money have been dashed in a huge steaming pile of crap that is our economy right now. Jindal apparently did not get the memo down there in Louisiana.

Part of Jindal’s criticism came in a diatribe about the federal government’s response to Katrina. Now, if you are intent on bashing Washington for being incompetent make sure you also include the fact that it was a republican president, an ignorant GOP party hack in charge of FEMA, and a republican Congress that sat on their hands while the city of New Orleans drowned thus proving quite conclusively that when republicans are in charge that government IS the problem. Governing was never a strong suit for NeoCon country destroyers. Strike one.

Jindal was critical of stimulus money that went to volcano monitoring. Funny thing about that part of the package: it’s designed to better predict when they might erupt so people’s lives can be saved. It’s on par with the request Jindal himself made to have levees rebuilt using federal money because it would save lives. I guess the people of Louisiana are just more important than folks in Hawaii or Alaska or Washington State where active volcanoes are located. Strike two.

He was also critical of money allocated for high speed rail projects repeating the debunked claim that Senator Harry Reid wanted the money to build a Vegas to Hollywood magnetic train line. This RNC-Rush Tub-a-lard talking point has been shown to be a lie but that did not stop Jindal from repeating the lie in hopes of convincing some people of duplicity by Obama and the Democrats. Strike three. You’re out, pal.

Jindal said that to solve our current crisis that Washington must lead. Well, that’s exactly what the president and Congress are doing. Jindal’s solution is to cut taxes and further deprive the government of the capital it needs to pull us out of this mess, the solution tried by George Bush for eight years and caused this mess to begin with. This is the perfect example of failed republican ideas and lack of leadership. More of the same is not what we need now. If anyone thought for a second that individuals with a few more dollars in our pockets could repair our decrepit bridges, our potholed highways, our lack of police on the street, or any other infrastructure problem, we’d be there in a heartbeat. Too bad for Jindal it doesn’t work that way. Never has.

Finally, Jindal claimed that the stimulus bill was unread by Congress and the American people were not aware of what was in it. I guess he doesn’t get the Internet down there in Baton Rouge because the White House set up a web site called Recovery.gov that laid the whole thing out for anyone to see. I can’t remember the Bush White House being that transparent about their spending plans. Obviously, Jindal can’t either because he’s still fighting last fear’s battles. Someone drop him a line and tell him that they lost that war, big time.

Thanks.

Link: http://www.propublica.org/article/volcanos-and-the-levitating-train-to-disneyland

http://www.recovery.gov/