Wednesday, February 25, 2009

My Follow Up to Governor Jindal’s Response, as Well as a Little Something about “Volcano Monitoring”


By the way, this is volcano monitoring.

While there are a lot of problems with the stimulus bill, the 140 million dollars set aside to pay for “Volcano Monitoring” is not part of the “pork” that the GOP is suddenly, spontaneously worried about. We have US citizens and military personnel living in the shadow of potential volcanic threats in many regions stateside and around the world. These Scientists also monitor for earthquake events. I guess Governor Jindal thinks that’s on the order of goofball experiments and hobbies, but I don’t think Americans in the Hawaiian Islands or in Alaska or California for that matter, think this is unimportant. I wonder how much Governor Jindal would think we should spend monitoring volcanoes, if there were one in his very own state of Louisiana. No one who lives in the Gulf States thinks there should be cuts made to the Weather Bureau’s budgets for monitoring tropical storms right?
No one thinks that the systems that could warn us of another Katrina are funded by "pork" or runaway spending right?

Right.

It’s funny, Republicans didn’t complain when the Bush administration and the Republican controlled congress spent like drunken sailors, (which is to say, they spent money we didn’t have and lowered taxes on the Rich) and created the herculean deficits we live under now. Now that there is a move to inject money (Which I have many, many problems with but that’s for another post) into the very same economy they allowed to fracture, they are becoming budget hawks.

How nice. How responsible. How patriotic of them.

But after last night’s address by President Obama and the customary follow up address by the opposing party, I have a question of my own:
Why are we hearing from Bobby Jindal all of a sudden?
Isn’t it Republican Minority Leader John Boehner’s responsibility to reply? I have my own suspicions of why the GOP, a party that only trots out its members of color in calculated shows of inclusion, is suddenly shoving Governor Jindal into to the national spotlight, (but I will save them for another post as well.)

In his response Governor Jindal opened with:
"…Tonight, we witnessed a great moment in the history of our Republic. In the very chamber where Congress once voted to abolish slavery, our first African-American President stepped forward to address the state of our union."

Funny. You’d think he wasn’t talking about that same first African American President the GOP claimed was not fit to be President of the United States.

Now they’re proud, go figure.

Governor Jindal continued with:
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.”

Really? No shit, Bobby.

Call me crazy, but I believe President Bush, his administration, his hand-picked appointees and the Republican Party are where Governor Jindal should be placing his doubts…
Oh, that’s right, -they were voted out of office.

So let me see if I understand this:
... because a Republican administration that governed for eight years made the Federal Government an operational shambles; because Bush and Michael Brown and the vast ranks of incompetents and sycophants they appointed couldn’t rescue a cat from a tree, much less a population from a catastrophic flood they had ample warning about;
-Jindal believes Government is incapable of responding to or solving big problems.

Bullshit.

But Governor Jindal goes on, blowing smoke up our collective ass while essentially telling us to stop whining and stand up for ourselves:
We can have confidence in our future - because, amid today's challenges, we also count many blessings: We have the most innovative citizens ...the most abundant resources ... the most resilient economy ... the most powerful military ... and the freest political system in the history of the world. My fellow citizens, never forget: We are Americans. And like my dad said years ago, Americans can do anything.

Yes Mr. Jindal, I agree with your father, “Americans can do anything,” but that doesn’t mean their government should do nothing.

American potential and the enduring power of our people doesn’t mean that Washington can wash its hands of its responsibilities just because the GOP squandered the surplus of the late 1990s and doesn’t feel like correcting the mistakes Republican lawmakers made when they pushed for deregulation, and lowered taxes on those who are the wealthiest, and consequently benefit the most from their citizenship in this nation.

Sorry Governor Jindal.

Just because your party is not the functioning majority anymore doesn’t mean Government can’t accomplish anything.
It means quite the opposite in fact.

-SJ

You can read Governor Jindal’s address in its entirety here.

1 comment:

Jack Jodell said...

Jindal sounded like an old broken 78 rpm phonograph record stuck on an ancient 1936 Alf Landon speech, and his little TV debut was every bit as effective. What a phony, wimpy dud. He was so obviously playing to the camera for his own benefit that I was embarrassed for him. What a shallow hypocrite. And he's supposed to be the GOP's new "wonder boy"? Haaaaaaaa Haaaaaaaaaa!!!!!