It's great to see the New York Times finally coming around to report on Bobby Jindal's ridiculousness -- and it only took weeks of Rachel Maddow exposing his roid rage grandstanding and nonsensical, ineffectual ideas (like the stupid sand berms) to get to this point. But we're here and it's about time.
Here's a rundown of Louisiana and Bobby Jindal oil spill failures, via Jed Lewison:
1. The state's oil spill coordinator's office has had its budget slashed by 50% over the last decade.
2. Last year, Jindal cut funding from the state's oil spill research program.
3. The state's oil spill contingency plan's include "pages of blank charts that are supposed to detail available supplies of equipment like oil-skimming vessels." A plan for a worst-case scenario was labeled "to be developed."
4. Before Jindal decided to attack the Federal response, state officials signed off on all Coast Guard response plans.
5. Jindal, who raged at the Federal government for not having enough boom, requested three times as much boom as the state's plan had called for -- and 50% more boom than existed in the entire nation.
Rachel Maddow exposes Jindal's loud but ineffectual grandstanding:
Jindal's whole thing with this oil spill is to erase his disastrous Republican response address. Now, I totally understand and embrace the idea that government has a significant role in mitigating this disaster. But holy hell. Someone take away Jindal's Red Bull supply before his eyeballs explode.
As Jindal and the conservative media criticize the federal government for not deploying enough resources, they seem to overlook that they are the same ones who have championed the private sector over the public sector. Jindal himself just over a year ago said, "There has never been a challenge that the American people, with as little interference as possible by the federal government, cannot handle."
In this case, the private sector clearly caused the greatest ecological disaster in the history of the United States. But the private sector cannot clean up its own mess. Further, the states, including Louisiana, clearly cannot solve the crisis on their own.
In February, 2006, while serving as a member of the GOP-controlled US House of Representatives, Jindal introduced the Deep Ocean Energy Resources Act. Passed by the House a few months later, the bill would have opened up the entire US coast to offshore oil drilling. States could override the law and ban rigs in their territorial waters, yet the law would let them share lease royalties with the federal government--a strong incentive to drill. Adjacent states would have little say in the matter (clearly a problem, given that BP's spill has marred several states' coastlines). On the risks of deepwater drilling, the text of Jindal's bill is comically pollyannaish:
(4) it is not reasonably foreseeable that . . . development and production of an oil discovery located more than 50 miles seaward of the coastline will adversely affect resources near the coastline.
(BP's Deepwater Horizon rig is located 50 miles from the coast, and of course would have devastated the Gulf even if it was further out to sea).
Jindal is certainly at the forefront of the conservative media campaign to discredit the ability of the Obama campaign to deal with the oil spill. But Jindal and the media conservatives will never be able to escape the fact that spills like this are bound to happen with more and more offshore drilling. Nor can they escape the fact that this ecological disaster is the consequence of the private sector's inability to clean up its own mess.
Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal is now clamoring for federal dollars to help clean up the Gulf of Mexico oil spill that's going to devastate his coastline.
This is the same Bobby Jindal that mocked President Obama for "wasteful spending" in the stimulus bill, including "$140 million for something called 'volcano monitoring'". It looked stupid when Mount Redoubt blew in Alaska in March of 2009. It looked dumber when Rhyluodurbrrruop exploded in Iceland last month and shut down Europe.
And now it looks hypocritical when the guy who mocked federal disaster planning and decried Washington's "meddling" in state business is now asking the federal government to save him from a disaster.
Which is it Governor? You cant't have it both ways. Either the federal government exists to help the states or it doesn't. You can't complain about it one day and then the next day come begging for it to redistribute some of my Pennsylvania wealth to solve your Louisiana problems.
Bill Maher ended his show Friday with a humorous and also impassioned segment on why government is important in light of recent attacks on its place in American life. Pointing to Bobby Jindal's suggestion last week during his response to Obama's speech that government was at odds with the American people, as well as attacks on the stimulus plan as typical 'tax and spend,' Maher responded by explaining that "the people are the government": "the first responders who put out your fires, that's your government. The ranger who shoos pedophiles out of the park restroom."
Instead of wanting less government involvement, Maher said that "recent years have made me much more wary of government doing the opposite--of stepping aside and letting unregulated private enterprise run things it is plainly to greedy to trust with."
Hey, and he's the new face of the GOP. He fits right in.
(Talking Points Memo) ...a Jindal spokeswoman has admitted to Politico that in reality, Jindal overheard Lee talking about the episode to someone else by phone "days later." The spokeswoman said she thought Lee, who died in 2007, was being interviewed about the incident at the time.
Rush Limbaugh said today that he didn't want to hear from anyone criticizing Bobby Jindal based on his style. "I love Bobby Jindal" said the Large Addict.
"Style won't take back our country." We need "solid conservative values, articulated in a way that inspires."
So THIS sing-song response, riddled with lies, half-truths and hypocrisy is conservative values articulated in a way that inspires?
AWESOME! I cannot wait to see Bobby The Page debate the President in 2012.
WAQB: Wednesday Afternoon Quarterbacking. After Obama's speech last night, let's look at some of the threads.
First, Bobby Jindal tried to mock some of the Recovery Act spending by criticizing volcano monitoring. Really? The guy whose state got destroyed because the government did not have early monitoring for hurricanes now mocks natural disaster preparation.
And leaving aside the chutzpah of casting the failure of his own party’s governance as proof that government can’t work, does he really think that the response to natural disasters like Katrina is best undertaken by uncoordinated private action? Hey, why bother having an army? Let’s just rely on self-defense by armed citizens.
I suggest that Krugman not float that idea. Methinks the GOP would go for it.
On top of that, this is an old GOP ploy to criticize legitimate programs by citing them in an indignant voice. In 1932 it would have been: "The government thinks they're going to put asphalt and cement coast-to-coast? For cars to go all willy-nilly? Oh ha-ha-ha. Next thing you know they'll be telling us we can skip the train and FLY to our destinations. Silly pinkos."
The intellectual incoherence is stunning. Basically, the political philosophy of the GOP right now seems to consist of snickering at stuff that they think sounds funny. The party of ideas has become the party of Beavis and Butthead.
Then Jindal decides to go after federal spending when his state has benefited from federal spending in hurricane recovery finds. Jindal was throwing red meat to the hard right while showing himself to be nothing more than a hypocrite.
This shows the total lack of ideas on the right. They trot out Jindal because he's not white. He's exotic. But he's no Obama. To the GOP, Jindal is their counter-punch to Obama simply because he looks "different".
They trot out Michael Steele as head of the GOP. Now, Steele is qualified, but I'll eat my old socks if he wasn't elected partly because of his color. It's an "oooh, we need one of those" move.
And then Steele TRIES to act black, promising an "off the hook" approach to strategy. Really? Off the hook? You think using hip urban language is what will get you inner-city votes? Keep going. Nice work.
Jindal was a smarmy condescending joke. He spoke to us like we're retarded. Actually, no he didn't. People don't talk to the retarded like that. Referencing my post last night, someone posted the following on YouTube.
I think Bobby Jindal is a very promising politician, and I opposed the stimulus package - I thought it was poorly drafted - but to come up at this moment in history with a stale, "government is the problem...we can't trust the government"...it's just a disaster for the Republican Party.
Jindal's speech was panned from both sides of the aisle. From HuffPost: "he came up short. Both Democrats and Republicans alike panned Jindal's rebuttal in terms that were decidedly harsh: "amateurish," "laughable" and, most commonly, "a missed opportunity. "
Finally, HuffPost's Jason Linkins makes the comparison between Jindal and Kenneth the Page from NBC's 30 Rock.
They're both Southern, and they both have weird religious things going on what with Jindal's exorcisms and Kenneth's views that "choosing is a sin" and that hot is "the devil's temperature." They also both have the tendency to look like they're dressing up in their fathers' suits.
"As a CHIld I reMEMber MY dad telling me boBEE amERIcans can do ANYthing. LIIIKE the prESIdent, I ALSO came from a FARRRRRRRRRR off land."
Gosh gee wilikers, I'm going to talk you like you're a retarded 3rd grader visiting a 2nd rate national park.
I'll post video later.
MORE: Jindal just complained about federal spending. Check me if I'm wrong but didn't Louisiana make out pretty well in federal spending the last few years?
MOREMORE: Did Jindal just use the botched federal response to Katrina under Bush as a model for how the government SHOULD work? Maybe it's the meth kicking in, but I'm pretty sure he just did that.
One of the new talking points for the GOP is to demonize the $8 billion in the Recovery Act to build high-speed rail lines. Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal trots out the line on the Sunday talkers, criticizing the "Disneyland to Las Vegas" line.
Chris Matthews rightly dismisses it as "cartoon talk", "stupid talk". MSNBC's David Schuster confronts Republican Congressman Darrell Issa when Issa tries to slip the lie in. Forward to 4:20 for the clip. Ironically.
...as negotiations on the package wrapped up, Rahm Emanuel secured an extra $8 billion for high-speed rail. The Maine and Pennsylvania Republican "centrists" approved, and the bill progressed. The $8 billion is not directed at any specific state or project.
Meanwhile, Newt Ginrich sees this bill as his party's ticket back to power in 2010. He's been leading the cry against pork-barrel spending such as a project for marsh-mouse preservation.
MSNBC's "Morning Joe" has been repeating the marsh-mouse claim quite a bit lately, and to its credit, the show invited PolitiFact.com's Bill Adair on to the show this morning to scrutinize the story. Asked if MSNBC was "unfair" to go after this story, Adair said, "You were.... This one gets a 'false' on the Truth-o-Meter.... The reality is, the money is just not in the bill to do this the way that they said."
Joe Scarborough said he'd talked to a Republican House member about this, who defended the claim. Adair said the GOP lawmaker "lied to you."
Go to the :45 mark and watch how simply flabbergasted the crew is that they miht have *gasp* reported a lie as true.
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