I heard last night on cable TV that Louisiana has received about $175 BILLION to repair Katrina damage. For Jindal now to scorn & vilify Federal assistance shows his utter hypocrisy!

Poor Mr. Jindal. Expectations were so high - how could he have done as well as he was being touted?

Even so, I was surprised at how bad he was. And what kind of political instincts does he have, to even mention Katrina in that context?

It's good of Jindal to remind people of the utter failure of the GOP-controlled government to act effectively in Katrina.

I have one GOP-ish friend for whom Katrina was the last straw. He was appalled by the federal government just abandoning an American city in a natural disaster.

Normal people who listened to Jindal's speech thought "What the heck is he talking about?"

But the dittoheads who were Jindal's target audience -- Rush Limbaugh's zombie army of weak-minded, mean-spirited, ignorant, gullible dupes, a.k.a. the "Republican base", the people that even Republican propagandist David Brooks last night called "too weird and too conservative" -- they don't have to know what he's talking about.

They only know that they must immediately begin repeating his inane talking points at every opportunity.

As some of the dittoheads who post comments here will shortly demonstrate.

Actually, I think Rachel Maddow was much more eloquent than Jindal.

Because the sheriff of Pompeii took charge and saved lives, while those damn Roman bureaucrats diddled over paperwork.

Jindal came across as a complete huckleberry - and we've just finished 8 years of incompitent rule by these hucksters. It's amazing how well he illustrated the partisan bubble the right wing lives in - as if the past 2 elections never happeneed - as if we're all still living in "Morning in America".
Dude... that stuff is embarassing.

I didn't bother to watch the response last night since I was pretty sure that I already knew what Jindal was going to say, but after hearing how exquisitly bad it was I found it on the intertubes this morning. I tried to watch it, I really, really did, but I only made it through his sheriff story before having to turn it off. The GOP has truly failed--now it's just a matter of time until we find out what's/who's going to be the party to replace them as the major opposition to the Democrats. Thank God the grown ups are in charge for a while!

As some of the dittoheads who post comments here will shortly demonstrate.

Al? Al? Paging you, Al!

While some of the projects in the [stimulus] bill make sense, their legislation is larded with wasteful spending. It includes $300 million to buy new cars for the government,

Yeah, with the auto industry struggling the last thing we'd want to do is BUY NEW AMERICAN-MADE CARS FROM DETROIT!!!

JESUS, THE STUPID!

I think the Republicans were hoping that Jindal would give a speech comparable to Obama's early speech before the Democratic convention, the speech that put him on everyone's radar. How sad for Jindal to fail so miserably. How good for the rest of us.

It is hard to tell this early in the game what the MSM will really do, but Jindal, like so many of the Repubs, seems to be trying to use the Republican Reality Reinvention machine. I hope it is broken for good, but one can never be too careful.

Jindal was speaking to the base, the people who believe that government always fails and do their damnedest to make that belief come true. The "point" he was making wasn't that the feds wrongly messed up in their response to Katrina; his point is that federal assistance couldn't do otherwise than fuck things up. He is arguing that Bush's handling of this disaster, far from being a monumental failure, was the standard state of affairs.

Of course, he's been grabbing and begging for help from the federal government these last years, so he's a damned liar and a worse hypocrite. But to understand his comments last night, you have to view them from the wrong end of the telescope, the side into which his supporters are peering.

Don't call the rail thing ridiculous. Call it a lie.

Jindal's speech reminded me of Stalin's polemical writings that I had to read back in a college PolSci class. Very simple words and ideas with frequently repeated catch phrases of dubious merit. Repetition substituting for reason. The overall feel and rhythm sounding like someone teaching the catechism to a very stupid child.

I won't even go into the value of the content.

Did Jindal address the nation from an undisclosed galaxy? Katrina? What point was he even trying to get across? Maybe he thought we needed to be reminded that the fed's response to Katrina is still the GOP's signature disaster.

The one thing that really jumped out at me was the line about the gop supporting universal health insurance- since when???

I do love that their only defense against gov't being involved in insuring everyone is that it's "government-run health care" overseen by bureocrats, not doctors.These arguments only work if you're stupid and/or have stellar health insurance and have never known anyone who had to fight with their insurance company over denied coverage.

If that's the best they got they're going to lose.

1) No one wants the gov't to run health care and the dems aren't proposing that the gov't take over medicene;

2) The vast majority of people with insurance already know that private insurance is run (and ruined) by penny-pinching beureocrats, not doctors. Most people, especially doctors, think that the current system is broken and needs to be fixed.

I hope that whenever McCain, etc start saying the free market is the only way to go that the dems say "great, if that's true drop your gov't insurance for you and your family and go get it on your own. Afterwards get back to us and tell us how that works out for you."

This will be yet another area where the gop is totally out of touch- with americans, with businesses, with everyone.

The attempt to rewrite Katrina as a failure of govt. bureaucrats will be a major talking point gonig forward. They tipped their hand a bit with that and they'll use it for every argument made about the economy going forward. Autos? Fault of govt. bureaucrats. Banks? fault of govt. bureaucrats. Housing? Fault of govt. bureaucrats. Environment? Fault of govt. bureaucrats.

There was a preemptive strike in an NPR "news" story about the expansion of the FDIC yesterday by some snarky girl who I imagine is a Bob Jones grad who got her NPR job in the last 5 years. "The FDIC has a brand new building and is bursting at the seems with jobs, meanwhile you can't pay your mortgage..."

Look for more and more of these stories from the corporate controlled propaganda "news" machine.

It's painfully obvious that the GOP simply lacks the ideas and innovations we need to excel in the 21st century. Americans know this, as evidenced by Obama's approval ratings.

Republicans sound completely off base because they have yet to figure out that Americans WANT a government that works. They WANT competent leaders. They WANT a government that PROMOTES THE GENERAL WELFARE.

Obama hammered the nail on the head when he said that Government has a role to play in creating an atmosphere in which the majority of it's citizen's can prosper (my words, not his). We have tried the republican way for 3 decades and it has failed. Americans now this, republicans to do not. This is why Piyush's speech seemed tone deaf or disconnected.

The greatest irony about Jindal's anti-government speech is that Louisiana has one of the lowest unemployment rates in the country right now. (Which is why Jindal doesn't need or want more unemployment insurance.)

Why is Louisiana doing so well? Because of the huge infusion of federal money to rebuild katrina and rita damaged areas-- aka infastructure spending-- roads, bridges, levees, buildings, etc. In other words, Louisiana received federal stimulus money and is a test case that proves that it WORKS.

Whenever Jindal says "Disneyland" he should point at his head for emphasis.

Mr. Rogers by way of Bollywood.

While some of the projects in the [stimulus] bill make sense, their legislation is larded with wasteful spending. It includes $300 million to buy new cars for the government,..."

$300 MILLION?? Well, that's really over-the-top. You can't get a better definition of "questionable government spending" than that.

The measly 2 Billion-plus dollars in DoD contracts that Louisiana rakes in every year really pales in comparison.

I think Jindal once and for all provides the answer to that timeless brainteaser about Republican politicians: "Are they liars or just stupid?" Listening to his short speech, riddled with inaccuracies, I remembered that he was accepted to Harvard Med, Yale Law, and went to Oxford on a Rhodes.

Heck, you can't call a guy like that stupid!

'Magnetic levitation' ??

Aka 'maglev' - it's not some kind of magicky weird futuristic concept. Maglev trains have been used since the 1970s around the world. They can provide fast, energy-efficient, low-carbon emission transportation.

That the Republicans think 'maglev' is something out of the pulp science fiction era just reinforces what citizen_pain pointed out: "It's painfully obvious that the GOP simply lacks the ideas and innovations we need to excel in the 21st century. "

Listening to him again, it finally hit me, and I'm surprised he didn't since he mentioned Disneyland. The delivery, the gentle condescension, the disengaged demeanor, the whole lot of talk about not a lot at all, he sounds like an audio animatronic at Disney. If Disney produced a generic politician AA for the Hall of Not-Presidents, it would sound like Bobby Jindal.

You know if someone ran around in circles and yelled repeatedly that the earth is flat we'd pay absolutely no attention to what they were saying but we'd watch them closely to make sure that they didn't hurt themselves or anybody close by.
This never ending mantra preached by the repubs of tax cuts and less regulation is akin to the same thing. When it comes to taxes the rates on taxpayers heve steadily declined since the 1950s and since Reagan we have seen less and less regulation on business. So by the repub logic everyone in the country should be living like kings. And since that's not the case we go back to the guy running in circles yelling the earth is flat.

"He came across as a complete huckleberry"

How apt - Some of the finest areas for picking huckleberries are on the slopes of volcanoes Mt Adams, Mt Hood to name just two. Perhaps, with the exception of Alaska, most volcanoes being in Blue states, brings out Bobby Brady's ire.

When Jindal started that sheriff harry lee story last night, I said to myself-"this is a total fabrication" and other websites almost instantly confirmed that Jindal was in baton rouge, not with the late sheriff lee getting boats in the water august 30, 31st. No record of jindal telling this whopper before either. The man is a Republican, ergo he is a liar.
He gets $175 billion fed tax dollars and says he's done it w'out the Feds; he doesn't understand valcano monitoring after a natural disaster ruins his state.
He is a dumb lying Republican hypocrite-move him to the head of the GOP prez sweepstakes: fully qualified by their standards!

Perfect point on the volcano monitoring (would Jindal mock hurricane monitoring?). It might surprise you to know that were Mt. Rainier in Washington State to erupt (it's considered active), the cities of Olympia, Tacoma and Seattle (only 57 miles away) and surrounding cities are all vulnerable to devastation. Those old enough know of the extreme damage Mt. St. Helens did back in 1980 and Mt. Rainier is far greater in mass.

Per the US Geological Survey website, the last eruption was in 1882. And "History of massive debris avalanches and debris flows... A mudflow caused by steam explosions about 5,700 years ago was one of the largest known in the world. Expected to erupt again within the next few hundred years; hazards consist mainly of mudflows, floods, and fallout of tephra 3." Got that? Expected to erupt again in the next few hundred years.

Also from the USGS website: "Mount Rainier, the highest and third most voluminous volcano [after Shasta and Adams] in the Cascade Range, is potentially the most dangerous volcano in the range because of the large population living around its lowland drainages. These areas are at risk because of the mountain's great relief and the huge area and volume of ice and snow on the cone."

And, Mt. Rainier: "dominates the Seattle-Tacoma area, where more than 1.5 million know it fondly as The Mountain. The Mountain is, however, the most dangerous volcano in the range, owing to the large population and to the huge area and volume."

Also Jindal might want to consult his fellow governor, Sarah Palin, who has an active volcano very near her state's largest city, before criticizing this. "Also". I don't miss hearing that every other word from Alaska's governor, nor anything else coming out of her mouth.

I'll ask here too, having no radio/TV handy: what are the on-air dittohards saying about Jindal? It's been noted, that was a red-meat satisfier speech and not "reasonable", so the blowhards should love it and be running with the junk ...

I would be very afraid if I were a republican and the President of Hurrican Kartrina Bobby Jindal is the best my party has to offer. Where the hell was Charlie Crist? Oh thats right, he supports, or doesn't obnoxiously trash, the stimulus package. Bravo GOP you have just added another nail to your coffin.

And Salon pointed out, shortly after Jindal's speech, that his good buddy and democrat sheriff Lee was a racist. He closed the bridge, I forget the name of it, that would have allowed people to evacuate New Orleans. He said, and I'm paraphrasing, that why patrol white communities when the black community is where the crime is. He told his officer to pull over blacks driving "rinky dink" cars. But I guess its not out of the ordinary to have a racist sheriff in Louisiana.

If you follow Steve's Rachel Maddow link in the post, watch Chris Matthews in the lower right-hand corner. He LITERALLY has his head buried in his hands when the camera goes to him. He's completely in shock at how astoundingly bad Jindal was. No wonder Maddow had to try and say something, anything, to cover for him.

"That the Republicans think 'maglev' is something out of the pulp science fiction era just reinforces what citizen_pain pointed out: "It's painfully obvious that the GOP simply lacks the ideas and innovations we need to excel in the 21st century."

And the reason for this is that the Republican Party has been fully captured by people who are fundamentally suspicious of education in general, and of science in particular. Ignorance is the only possible result. It's truly an American Taliban-lite party.

I'm sure the GOP thinks the Katrina disaster had more to do with break-downs in local based communication and preparation...or some other twisted logic..
===============================================

But the term "Femasized" didn't just come from no-where. In fact, Krugman used it recently to help explain how degraded the SEC has become over time, how impotent they've been rendered in the era which began with Reagan and seeing government as the evil problem --which in turn contributed to gross attention and lack of oversight over the likes of the Madoff debacle.

I assume the "Disneyland" bit stems from the fact that there's an Amtrak station in Anaheim; it is (roughly speaking) at the north edge of the parking lot at Anahiem Stadium, where the Angels play. That would put it maybe two or three miles from Disneyland.

It would also make it an absolutely reasonable, logical terminus for any high-speed rail between southern California and Las Vegas.

Maybe 30 seconds after mentioning the "Disneyland" train last night, Jindal was on to talking about oil; as someone who has driven between L.A. and Las Vegas for work, for a wedding, to visit friends, to attend UNLV football games, and yes, to gamble, I promise you that a high-speed train is CERTAINLY something that would save of fuel consumption, cut air pollution, etc. etc.

Jindal's response proves, once and for all, that owning an Ivy League degree doesn't inherently make you smart.

Jindal's response proves, once and for all, that owning an Ivy League degree doesn't inherently make you smart.
Posted by: Vincent on February 25, 2009 at 11:49 AM | PERMALINK

You mean 8 years of Bush rule DIDN'T prove that once and for all?

Maybe 30 seconds after mentioning the "Disneyland" train last night, Jindal was on to talking about oil; as someone who has driven between L.A. and Las Vegas for work, for a wedding, to visit friends, to attend UNLV football games, and yes, to gamble, I promise you that a high-speed train is CERTAINLY something that would save of fuel consumption, cut air pollution, etc. etc.

Exactly. I'm still waiting for a conservative to explain to me why it's ridiculous to build a train connecting the two biggest destinations in the southwestern US. It's like snickering at the idea of connecting New York and Washington DC.

Not that I disagree with you, Mnemosyne (I almost never do), but I gotta ask: Which one is LA and which one is Vegas in that scenario? ;)

MagLev trains are pure fiction!

Now you might respond to that saying: "But isn't there a Maglev train in China that goes 20 miles from the Pudong airport to downtown Shanghai in 7 minutes?"

To that, my answer is not really, because Shanghai does not exist either - the world ends in San Fransisco.

/snark off

I felt like I was being scolded by my wife about buying new tires because she racked up untold debt buying designer clothes and we can't really afford the tires.

I am still trying to wrap my head around it. I love it, but what where hey thinking. God damn I hope they keep bringing up Katrina and I hope they keep having Governors who have received untold billions scolding us about taking handouts.

All I could think of last night was Manchurian Governor.

Exactly. I'm still waiting for a conservative to explain to me why it's ridiculous to build a train connecting the two biggest destinations in the southwestern US. It's like snickering at the idea of connecting New York and Washington DC.

It's ridiculous ecause...because....shut up that's why!

Conservatives do have this odd trend where they will decide among themselves that some perfectly reasonable and ordinary idea or activity (checking tire pressure to increase fuel efficiency, building a train between two large tourist destination cities, not destroying the American economy) is somehow risible, and then will snicker among themselves like seventh graders whenever the idea gets mentioned.

Now you might respond to that saying: "But isn't there a Maglev train in China that goes 20 miles from the Pudong airport to downtown Shanghai in 7 minutes?"

I am so insanely jealous of this. I live in NY, and the idea of being able to get from, say, Penn Station to JFK (a roughly analogous distance) in 7 minutes is to me nothing more than a remote fantasy.

I am so insanely jealous of this.

Maybe you'd just like to move to China, then! If you love Communism so much, why don't you marry it?!

Moments after ernestly pledging that the Republican party was going to re-earn America's trust, Jindal(R) lied about the Vegas to Disney train.

Not that I disagree with you, Mnemosyne (I almost never do), but I gotta ask: Which one is LA and which one is Vegas in that scenario? ;)

I think after the past 8 years it's obvious that Vegas is DC in that scenario. Taking people's money while distracting them with shiny objects? Sounds about right.

And then you have all of the gamblers from NY/LA coming to try their luck at the tables ...

Piyush Jindal is a hero of the Catholic/Evangelical wing of the Rove coalition.

[...] $8 billion for high-speed rail projects, such as a 'magnetic levitation' line from Las Vegas to Disneyland,[...] -- Jindal

An obvious waste of money... Why, *everyone knows* that one can levitate people directly, without any need for for a railway. It works jut like an exorcism; you just use a slightly different incantation, is all.

Leviosa!