Washed Up

Remember when Bobby Jindal was the great non-white hope of the Republican party? How he squealed recently that he wasn't getting enough help in the cleanup from Obama, even though it was he who'd delayed deployment of the thousands of National Guard troops okayed by the President?

Better yet, recall Bobby's demand for help building berms to protect the shores, the fact that scientists said they'd wash away, and the fact that -- giving in, no doubt, to pressure and claims from the RWS™ that this was "Obama's Katrina" -- the effort was approved? (Wonder where the company awarded the contract ranked in donors to Jindal? Name of Shaw?) Anyone curious how it all worked out? Whether science was right, or a partisan and science-free former exorcist?

June 25:

July 2:
July 7:

[Update: some might sense I take a certain amount of pleasure in the titles of my posts. I just realized a much better one for this: Berming Man. Oh well. An opportunity lost.]

B and B

I was at a lecture series last night, so I watched Barack and Bobby online. I have a few thoughts.

It's incredibly distracting to have to watch Nancy Pelosi pistoning up and down like a crazed crankshaft. Her thighs must be throbbing, and that's not an image I wanted to take away when I clicked on. In fact, the whole bobbing spectacle of congressfolk thrusting themselves in and out of their chairs in some sort of parapatriotic dance-off with the other side is a perfect image of their collective vacuity.

On the other hand, our president was in fine form, saying things that both sides needed to hear. I'm certain that if the author was unknown to them, most on the right would have said they agreed with most of his words. In some alternate universe -- one doing much better at the moment than ours -- it might have happened. I'm looking for a wormhole as we speak.

I figured it would be strange the minute I saw Bobby Jindal appear in a setting meant to evoke a president walking down that White House hall to a podium. Except that he came only half-way, and from the right, bouncing boyishly with a silly grin on his face. Uncaring of the irony, he declaimed as if he'd not even heard what Obama said, which happened to have contradicted most of his points. And he used Katrina as an example of why we shouldn't trust Obama!! OUCH. Guess he missed the point of the election: the people voted out BAD government, in the hope for and belief in GOOD government.

When you get dumped on by Charles Krauthammer, who could -- and did -- rationalize every failure of the Bush administration and who has never found a worthy molecule in Barack Obama's body and never will, I'd say the great hope and future of the Republican party failed to measure up. But he didn't have much to work with. As one of my mentors liked to say, you can't shine a turd. I give him credit for trying. Too bad he sounded like this.

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