WAQB: The wrap-up

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.

Nobel prize-winning economist Paul Krugman writes:

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."

Krugman writes:

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.


David Brooks - David F'ing Brooks - called Jindal's speech a disaster.

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.