So we've been hearing Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal whine and moan about the federal response to the oil spill crisis in the Gulf. But what has Bobby been doing?
Gov. Bobby Jindal's message has been loud and clear, using language such as "We will only be winning this war when we're actually deploying every resource," "They (the federal government) can provide more resources" and "It's clear the resources needed to protect our coast are still not here."
But nearly two months after the governor requested - and the Department of Defense approved the use of 6,000 Louisiana National Guard troops - only a fraction - 1,053 - have actually been deployed by Jindal to fight the spill.
Governor Skippy really needs to work on governing more and accusing less. Soooo not ready for prime time.
UPDATE (10:10pm): Well now we know why Jindal has only deployed one sixth of National Guard troops available to him for help with the Gulf clean up. He was too busy authoring and declaring a Statewide Day of Prayer.
Tell you what, motherfuckers, when dead people are left to rot in the sun because of the incompetence of the federal government, when corpses are floating in the streets, when the President passively ignores the pleas of the governors of Gulf Coast states, when entire neighborhoods have been physically destroyed, when the federal government strands tens of thousands of people without food or water, when the federal government starts to blame the local governments, when the President praises the work of a failed, incompetent bureaucrat while a major city rots, then you can say that this is Barack Obama's "Katrina."
It only took a couple of days before I started hearing the conservative pundits and assholes in general tried to dub the BP accident and subsequent oil spill clusterfuck "Obama's Katrina." Even Alex Witt-less on the "Obama News Network," also known as MSNBC, was asking if the federal response to the oil leak disaster was fast enough.
Question to Witt: Does the US Coast Guard work for British Petroleum or are they under the direction of the federal government and Commander in Chief, President Obama? Because the Coast Guard was there during the accident looking for survivors and leading in the rescue effort, you stupid twit. And coordinated efforts have been overseen by the government from the beginning. Yes, BP is in the middle of that, but are under government oversight to make sure the response has been cohesive.
I'm willing to bet that states' rights proponents were the first to run to the federal level for help or blame the feds for a lack of response, neither reaction being rational for their ideology. See Jindal, Bobby.
Adding... Stay tuned for the sabotage conspiracy to take wing, right wing that is. Of course, the President had said just recently that we need to expand oil drilling while we begin a transitional phase to other sources of energy in order to ween ourselves off of the Middle East teet, so why would this be sabotage? Wouldn't he have said the opposite so he can have an "I told you so" moment? Fucking wingnuts...
UPDATE (7:30pm): See what I mean? CONSPIRACY!!!
Great job, Neil Cavuto! But I wouldn't expect anything different. Seriously, does "Heckuva Job, Brownie" really have any credibility? It's not like we're talking about Arabian horses.
Someone get Bobby Jindal on the phone for a comment.
When Republican wunderkind, Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal gave his party’s response to President Obama’s speech before a joint session of Congress, he decried Democrats for passing a spending bill “larded with wasteful spending,” ...including "$140 million for something called “volcano monitoring.”
...Jindal is the governer of a state dependent on tens of billions of federal dollars to predict, prepare for and recover from natural disasters, and however exotic “volcano monitoring” may sound to his fellow bayou residents, he’s in no position to criticize disaster preparedness expenditures elsewhere.
...Dave Stricklan, a hydrometeorogical technician with the National Weather Service, expected very fine ash. … “The heavier stuff drops out very quickly, and then the other stuff filters out. There’s going to be a very fine amount of it that’s going to be suspended in the atmosphere for quite some time, but nothing to really affect anything such as aviation travel. The heavier stuff will filter out,” he said. Still, Alaska Airlines on Monday canceled 19 flights in and out of the Anchorage international airport because of the ash.
Because ash intake can damage jet engines, causing planes to, you know, crash. But I guess, as long as they’re not crashing in the bayou, it’s no big problem.
I've been reading some comments on other web threads of those who are concerned of the Limbaugh situation and how it may galvanize Republicans in 2010 and 2012. Or perhaps that the Democrats are not taking Limbaugh seriously.
Sure, it's great comedy for the left - right now. What about in a couple of years when these idiots mobilize? And mark my words, they surely will. This whole "kiss the ring" mentality of the party is ludicrous, but it keeps them in the news cycle.
I say fine, let it come. Let them continue to make asses out of themselves by bowing down to a radio talk show entertainer. Anyone who listens to and agrees with Limbaugh is never in a million years voting Democratic anyway. It's the independents who are annoyed, frustrated and fed up with the Limbaugh rhetoric, and if the Republican party refuses to distance themselves from Rush because they're afraid of him and the power he wields with 20 million listeners, then it shows them for weak party they've become. They can sit behind their podiums and threaten to filibuster when they're in the collegial body of the Senate, but when they have to shiv someone in a Rush Limbaugh airwaves street fight, they kneel down, cower and beg for mercy.
So in a sense, Democrats and liberals who are making the correlation between Limbaugh and the leadership of the GOP aren't doing it for a laugh, they aren't taking Limbaugh for granted, they're embracing the fact that as far as GOP voters are concerned, Limbaugh TRULY IS the de facto leader of the Republican party and every time a GOP politician tries to distance himself from Rush, he looks like twice the fool when he tucks his tail between his legs and apologizes the next day. They can't say Rush doesn't speak for the party and then backtrack and say they "cherish his voice in the public debate."
And what if they do "mobilize"? The crazies came out in droves to vote against what they perceived was a black, Muslim, Manchurian candidate, foreign born socialist who palled around with terrorists. There were shouts of "treason" and "terrorist" and "off with his head" from the wingnuts at Sarah Palin rallies.
What did that get them? 45 million votes, 160 some odd electoral votes, and major seat losses in Congress. They're in for the same thing if the strategy remains the same. If the Republican party was serious about changing, they wouldn't be touting the likes of Jindal and Palin for 2012.
As an aside, I don't know whether the Obama staff and the Democratic party in general stumbled upon Limbaugh equaling the head of GOP by chance, or whether it was a carefully laid out tactic, but it seems to be working. The Republicans are in Limbaugh quicksand right now, and the more they struggle to extract themselves, the deeper they sink.
UPDATE (4:25pm):
Maybe it was planned after all. Well, I suppose not "planned" per se, but the Democrats are definitely using it to their advantage.
Raise your hand if you guessed that Piyush "Bobby" Jindal's Sheriff Lee and The Katrina Rescue Boats story during his Republican response was a bunch of bullshit. Well, the part that Jindal was there, that is.
...Jindal spokeswoman Melissa Sellers told Smith, "It was days later .. Sheriff Lee was on the phone and the governor came down to visit him. It wasn't that they were standing right down there with the boats."
Jindal was on a foreign trip when Katrina made landfall on Aug 29 ,2005 - he inserted himself into the story for... we'll call it "dramatic purposes." Not a great way to make a your debut as the Republicans' Great Brown Hope.
And now it seems that the Jindal office is trying to revise their revision multiple times. When you find yourself in a hole, stop digging, Piyush.
Coming hot on the heels of "Bobby" Jindal's spectacularly awful performance in delivering the GOP response to President Obama's recent address to Congress, now we have news that "Joe" the "Plumber"'s recent Washington book signing event was something of a dud:
About 11 people wandered into the rows of seats set up hopefully in the basement of a downtown Border's bookstore to hear Joe speak. Joe addressed them from behind a lectern and with a microphone, but that seemed unnecessarily formal.
Even the Washington Post can't keep the snark in check on this one. Classic:
It's fair to say Joe's appearance at Borders at 18th and L streets wasn't eagerly anticipated. People just kind of shuffled over when Joe strode in with Thomas N. Tabback, the co-author of "Joe the Plumber: Fighting for the American Dream." Annie Hickman, a young woman whom Wurzelbacher called "sweetie" during a brief Q&A, was browsing when the PA announced that Joe was in the house. "I'm missing pottery class for this," she said.
You know what I especially love about the rise and fall of this gormless nitwit? The fact that he, like so many other intellectual midgets before him, has been hailed by the Republican party as the embodiment of a "real American." As if those of us who, for example, manage to pay our taxes and speak in coherent sentences, should by all rights pack up and move to France. The irony is breathtaking: this guy is somehow the real thing, according to the right-wingers, yet he goes by a fake name and lied about being a licensed plumber. It's as if there was a Women Who are Proud of Having Real Boobs organization, and they appointed Pamela Anderson as their spokesperson. Makes no sense. Just ain't right.
Luckily for the rest of us, it looks like old "Joe," or Sam, or whatever the hell his actual name is, is about to shuffle off into the obscurity he so richly deserves.
This guy is super smart. He is, apparently, a Rhodes scholar. I'm sure the folks who award the Rhodes scholarships are feeling extra proud right about now:
In his response to President Obama's address, Jindal said he opposed the stimulus package's inclusion of “$140 million for something called 'volcano monitoring.'”
“Instead of monitoring volcanoes, what Congress should be monitoring is the eruption of spending in Washington, D.C,” Jindal said.
While the claim was factually inaccurate (the $140 million will go to the US Geological Survey, of which volcanic research is only a part), scientists are also decrying Jindal's comments as a blast of hot volcanic air.
“Apparently the governor of Louisiana doesn't remember any of the major volcanic eruptions in recent history,” said Mark Brandon, a professor of geology at Yale University who has studied volcanoes around the world. “Volcanic monitoring right now is absolutely essential for protecting lives and property. The amount of money invested compared to the amount of money returned is trivial. It's not just some hobby—if the governor were in a volcanic eruption, he'd realize that the people who do that work are very useful in protecting you from direct hazards.”
Brandon was a student at University of Washington when Mount St. Helens erupted in 1980, killing 57 people and destroying hundreds of homes. Many more would almost certainly have died without the volcanic monitoring that allowed authorities to evacuate the population ahead of time.
Circumstances prevented me from watching President Obama's address to joint Congress live last night. I was about an hour behind so I purposely stayed away from the Internets until I watched the full speech for fear of spoilers. As usual, I was not disappointed in another Obama speech full of The Awesomeness™.
Then I waited with trepidation for the Republican Party response from Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal, the "rising star" of the GOP and one being touted for a presidential run in 2012. Jindal was on Meet The Press the previous Sunday and although he typically regurgitated Republican talking points, he seemed well put together, able to speak off the cuff and is obviously an intelligent individual. What I witnessed last night however, was a completely different Bobby Jindal. I include the entire speech for those who missed it.
Who is this man and what did they do with Bobby Jindal? Surely, this isn't the rising star with the hopes of the GOP squarely on his shoulders in 2012, is it? ...Really?
His sing-song approach was a little disconcerting - was he trying to sell me a used car recovered from the 9th Ward? I was inadvertently shot back to my youth and half expected Jindal to break into song and take us to the Magic Kingdom where Republicans know what they're talking about, but then I realized there were no hand puppets... at least within camera shot. Or maybe Jindal is a hand puppet...
Then my jaw hit the floor when I heard the following line:
"Today in Washington, some are promising that government will rescue us from the economic storms raging all around us. Those of us who lived through Hurricane Katrina -- we have our doubts."
Wait... did I hear that right? Was Jindal telling us we can't trust government and using the devastation of Hurricane Katrina and the incompetence of the Bush administration's rescue efforts as a gauge? Was he telling us, by using Hurricane Fucking Katrina as an example, that citizens have to deal with disaster on their own? And in seemingly the next breath, asking us to trust the Republican Party? Government shouldn't be trusted and that is why the GOP is the correct choice for 2010 - we don't give you hope. With us, you know you'll be fucked from the beginning, so there'll be no surprises!
Then he told us a story about Sheriff Harry Lee and the volunteer rescue boat operation, featuring the evil government bureaucrat who insisted on seeing the insurance and registration for the boats before allowing them to rescue New Orleans' drowning victims. I found this story a little hard to believe until I realized that, yeah, maybe it was true - after all, who was running the government back in 2005? After hearing that story, do you think RNC Chairman Michael Steele was staring blankly at his television in a "What the fuck?" haze? Yeah, me neither. He was probably pumping his fist, Arsenio Hall style, and barking up a storm, thinking this speech was "off the hook!"
But this childish, pathetic excuse for a speech turned sour in my book when Jindal insisted on using the latest GOP talking points of an imaginary "'magnetic levitation' line from Las Vegas to Disneyland," categorized as wasteful spending the replacement of the government fleet of cars, which would create manufacturing jobs to produce the energy efficient cars and reduce our oil dependence, and pointed to "$140 million for something called 'volcano monitoring.'" Well, perhaps down by the bayou, volcano monitoring may be thought of as wasteful spending, but I'm sure citizens of Hawaii and Washington state appreciate it. Had the shoe been on the other foot and a GOP led country was blindsided by a volcano eruption that turned a Hawaiian town into a 21st century Pompeii, they could just pull out the Katrina textbook and say, "Well, no one could have anticipated the eruption of the volcano." Not to mention the fact that Jindal was pointing to 0.00018% of the entire plan, the very thing President Obama warned against in his address to the nation's governors as well as during the Fiscal Responsibility Summit.
So this is what we have to deal with in 2012? We've seen what we're going to get with Sarah "Position Flexible Also" Palin. And the latest Michael Steele Foot in Mouth Disease moment regarding civil unions makes me wonder what the GOP was thinking. But for the time being until this all dies down, Bobby Jindal has to take the gumbo. The Republican Party's sad attempt to show that they're inclusionary and exotic with the choices of Palin, Steele and Jindal as a substitute for Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama and the Oscar winners for Slumdog Millionaire don't mean a thing if their ideology is skewing further right than ever.
Heh. Slumdog Millionaire. Yeah, that's right! I said it.
I'm still gathering my thoughts for a longer post about last night's speech by President Obama, but in the meantime I wanted to parachute in here with a couple of quick thoughts:
1. Did our President kick some Republican ass last night or what? and
2. As far as Bobby Jindal is concerned, I for one was quite impressed with his performance, in that, as a public speaker, he makes Sarah Palin look positively eloquent. If this chicken-fried dipshit represents the best of the Republican party, they are beyond hosed. They are DONE. I can't wait to see this guy run for VP on the ticket with Palin. Go Bobby go!
Looks like the Southern Regional GOP is losing their shit. For years now, these Boss Hoggs sat in their sties as they enjoyed rolling around in their shit. But now that there's a new farmer in the house, they're squealing as they're being led to the election slaughterhouse.
...a Republican, has said he is considering turning down millions of dollars in unemployment aid because it would force his state to raise taxes when the stimulus money runs out by putting in place a tax on employers.
"There is some (money) we will not take in Mississippi. ...We want more jobs. You don't get more jobs by putting an extra tax on creating jobs," Barbour told CNN's "State of the Union" on Sunday.
Maybe if Governor Barbour took the mud out his eyes, he might see that extended unemployment aid might help bridge the time between receiving the aid and developing the jobs. Is he telling us that hey have absolutely no infrastructure to improve in Mississippi? Mississippi?!
I think the best thing they could've done, for example, was to cut taxes on things like capital gains, the lower tax brackets, to get the private sector spending again.
Uh... how many citizens of Mississippi receive capital gains?
...How does $300 million for federal cars, $50 million for the National Endowment for the Arts, how is spending like that going to help our economy? How's that stimulus?
Somebody has to make those cars. That equals jobs. It also makes the new hybrid fleet more energy efficient thereby reducing our energy dependence over the long term. NEA spending? I'm sure hundreds of thousands that are employed in the arts, actors, dancers, artists, stage crew employees, designers, non profit public television, and on and on would appreciate the continued employment. Or would you rather have them lose their jobs and homes as well?
You know, now they're talking about spending billions of that to build a train from Disneyland to Las Vegas. There was so much wasteful spending here.
Please show us the provision in the bill for the train from Disneyland to Las Vegas. Go ahead. What page is that on? After watching Jindal on Meet The Press, I heard absolutely nothing new but the same typical Republican talking points that we've heard all along. More tax cuts for businesses, wasted spending in the bill, blah, blah, blah. I'm surprised he didn't go for the "Pelosi's swamp mouse" dig.
At a Lincoln Day Dinner speech over the weekend, Bunning predicted that Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg would likely be dead from pancreatic cancer in nine months, according to the Louisville Courier-Journal.
The paper reports that Bunning reiterated his support of conservative judges, saying “that’s going to be in place very shortly because Ruth Bader Ginsburg…has cancer.”
“Bad cancer. The kind you don’t get better from,” Bunning went on. “Even though she was operated on, usually nine months is the longest that anybody would live after being diagnosed with pancreatic cancer.”
What a compassionate Christian conservative, that Jim Bunning. Talking about support for conservative judges because Ginsburg is about to kick the bucket? How sweet of him. By the way, Ginsburg went back to work today, 18 days after her surgery.
ADDING... Thanks to commenter Annette who reminded me of this little doozey which prompted me to start this post in the first place, but being so riled up, forgot to add.
[A] local resident asked Shelby if there was any truth to a rumor that appeared during the presidential campaign concerning Obama’s U.S. citizenship, or lack thereof.
“Well his father was Kenyan and they said he was born in Hawaii, but I haven’t seen any birth certificate,” Shelby said. “You have to be born in America to be president.”
Shorter Shelby: When you are a Republican and see your base shrinking as your nose is growing, it never hurts to sling mud and bring up doubts about a Manchurian candidate for rabble rousing purposes. Git yer pitchforks ready!
Since the reporting of Shelby's statement, a spokeman for Shelby has stated that the partial quote attributed to Shelby distorted its meaning.
Johnathan Graffeo: "At the town hall meeting in Cullman, Sen. Shelby laid out the Constitutional qualifications for the Presidency and said that, while he hasn't personally seen the President's birth certificate, he is confident that the matter has been thoroughly examined."
Well that begs the question, if Shelby is confident that the matter was thoroughly examined, why make a statement that sows the seeds of doubt regarding his citizenship? Instead of remarking about President Obama's father and confirming that he personally hasn't seen a birth certificate, Shelby could have said President Obama was born in Hawaii, therefore an American citizen. Period. But he didn't say that so Shelby done brought that shit on hisself. Or perhaps Shelby spokeman Jonathan Graffeo should remind Shelby that Hawaii is a fucking state!
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