Obama Shines, Jindal Flames Out

There wasn't much mystery preceding President Obama's address to a joint session of congress last night. Everyone knew it would be about economic stimulus, everyone knew it would involve cheerleading America, everyone knew it would be pretty damned good. Obama used the constitutional requirement that the president address congress on the state of the union "from time to time" to get both houses together in one place. Not specifically a state of the union address, it still filled the bill. The state of the union is not strong and Barack Obama -- as we've come to expect -- asked us all to roll up our sleeves and strengthen it.

Republicans -- still patting each other on the back for their near-universal opposition to Obama's stimulus -- were forced to face the undeniable fact that there was no victory here for them. The bill passed and the obstructionism of they were so proud of had cost them dearly. Polling shows that voters see the party as out of touch and just "not getting it." But, as I've pointed out before, in the House of Representatives at least, only the farthest right wing reps from the very reddest districts remain after two consecutive Democratic election cycles. They are the crazies, those for whom ideology borders on religious belief, those who are lost causes. Reality doesn't bother them, since it's not where they live. Being forced to face it the way they were must've been painful.

In this party made up of the surviving nuts, leadership has been hard to come by. They've elected party leadership, but no one pays any attention to them. "I don't even know the congressional leadership," says Utah's Republican Governor Jon Huntsman Jr. "I have not met them. I don't listen or read whatever it is they say because it is inconsequential -- completely."

Given this lack of leadership, the big celebrities in the GOP have been Sarah Palin, Joe the Plumber, and Rush Limbaugh. Seriously. They desperately needed someone serious to become the face of the party. Someone who wasn't a national joke or a divisive figure. Since only the crazies are left in Washington, they needed to go outside DC. They found Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal.





He was just what they needed -- far enough right without seeming ridiculous and not an obvious fool. He's threatened to turn down a tiny sliver of the stimulus money for his state, while grandstanding on the threat. He's considering a presidential run the next time around and, unlike Sarah Palin, he speaks English. The GOP had found their guy. Gov. Bobby Jindal would deliver the Republican response to Obama's address. The new face of the Republican party was now something other than an unemployed plumber, an empty-headed former beauty queen, or a drug-addled blowhard.

It didn't go well. Jindal, already handicapped by limiting himself to the party line, was wooden and uncomfortable. He shot for a southern folksiness and wound up with the pacing and inflection of a Quick Draw McGraw. Even his walk to the camera at the Governor's Mansion in Baton Rouge was stiff, prompting one commentator on MSNBC to say "Oh God..." under his breath.

The governor started off well enough, pointing out the historical nature of the president's first address to a joint session of congress and giving a brief son-of-an-immigrant bio of himself, but things quickly went south. He claimed that Republicans had "better ideas," then went on to list off some of the things in the stimulus that he didn't like.

While some of the projects in the bill make sense, their legislation is larded with wasteful spending. It includes $300 million to buy new cars for the government, $8 billion for high-speed rail projects, such as a magnetic levitation line from Las Vegas to Disneyland, and $140 million for something called volcano monitoring.

Instead of monitoring volcanoes, what Congress should be monitoring is the eruption of spending in Washington, D.C.

We shouldn't be keeping an eye on volcanoes? And that "magnetic levitation line from Las Vegas to Disneyland?" Yeah, that's not in the stimulus. That "$300 million to buy new cars for the government" is $300 million to buy a more fuel-efficient fleet, saving the federal government money in the long run. As Republicans have been throughout this debate, Jindal makes stuff up to oppose. It makes you wonder how genuine their reasons for opposing it can possibly be.

Of those "better ideas," Jindal offered tax cuts, tax cuts, and tax cuts -- because using tax cuts to cure every ill has been working so well for us so far. He said that Republicans "stand for universal access to affordable health care coverage," but that's the first I've ever heard of it. They used to be all about health care savings accounts, where you put money aside to pay for health care -- because everyone's finding it just so easy to build up savings accounts these days. If the GOP has a plan for universal coverage, it might've been a good idea not to keep the details secret.

After they shut down the remote feed from Louisiana, even conservative commentators gave Jindal the thumbs down. "It came off as amateurish, and even the tempo in which he spoke was sing-songy," said Juan Williams on FOX News. "He was telling stories that seemed very simplistic and almost childish."

"In a moment when only the federal government is actually big enough to do stuff, to just ignore all that and just say ‘government is the problem, corruption, earmarks, wasteful spending,’ it’s just a form of nihilism," said conservative columnist David Brooks on PBS. "It’s just not where the country is, it’s not where the future of the country is."

"E-mails I’m getting are from disappointed conservatives," wrote Kathryn Jean Lopez for the National review's The Corner. "They wanted a full-throated response to Obama and expected and/or wanted more."

But these people should have less criticism for Jindal and more for the party in general. Jindal may not have done well, but he was only as good as the material he had to work with. Republicans really don't have anything but criticism to offer, so no one should be surprised that Gov. Jindal didn't have any solutions. If all you have is "Obama's wrong," it's hard to come up with some idea of what might be right.

The new face of the Republican party won't do much to change people's minds if the only thing it has to offer are the same tired old failures, instead of new ideas.

-Wisco

Remember when Barack Obama wasn't 'Black Enough?'

One thing that's gotten me about news coverage of this election season is the focus on intangibles. Intangibles are those immeasurable qualities that are supposed to make the difference to voters. The King of the focus on intangibles has been MSNBC's Chris Matthews. Anyone who's read my stuff for a while knows that I don't put a lot of faith in Chris's punditry powers. In fact, I've called him a "freakin' loudmouth who spends almost as much time interviewing people on his show as he does with sentences that begin 'I think...'."

I wouldn't have as much of a problem with what he thinks if I thought it was worth something. But Matthews seems obsessed with intangibles; those things which, if we get right down to it, are trivial crap that some jerk on TV is telling you you're supposed to care about, but has probably never even occurred to you. Of course, Matthews isn't the only one who does this; it's a 24/7 news network staple. I've said it before, but talking heads talk -- even when they really don't have anything to say. Dead air is bad TV, so during a lull, a TV pundit's greatest skill is pulling crap out of his ass.

Let's take a little trip back to about this time last year. The big question then was, "Is Barack Obama black enough?" In fact, run a Google search for that question and it returns 106,000 hits. Sure looks like a stupid question now, doesn't it?

And that's because it was a stupid question then. But the question got so big that the Obama campaign was forced to address it.

CNN:

Michelle Obama, wife of Democratic presidential hopeful Sen. Barack Obama, Friday called questions early in the campaign about whether her biracial husband was "black enough" to appeal to African-American voters "silly."

"It's silliness and it's about part of the silliness of our culture," she said.

A Harvard-educated attorney and vice president at the University of Chicago, Michelle Obama, 44, said the question -- raised most famously in a New York Times article -- wasn't hurtful to her.

With almost nothing substantial to talk about at that point, the media glommed onto that NYT piece and ran with it. That was what the campaign was going to be all about -- identity politics. Suddenly, black voters had been transformed into people who'd only vote for black candidates. Likewise, Hillary Clinton was assumed to have a lock on women. The larger issue isn't that the punditry just makes up these issues. The issue is why they make up these issues. And that reason is that they think you're a freakin' moron.

They think you care that John Edwards' and Mitt Romney's hair is too perfect. Faced with issues of war, economy, foreign policy, and health care, they think that sort of thing is what the clincher for you is going to be. To get back to Chris Matthews, he's the master of this crap. "Does he have sex appeal?" Chris asked about Fred Thompson. "Can you smell the English leather on this guy, the Aqua Velva, the sort of mature man's shaving cream, or whatever, you know, after he shaved? Do you smell that sort of, a little bit of cigar smoke?"

Do you believe anyone gives a crap, Chris? The way Thompson's campaign panned out showed that Matthews was the only one who thought Fred Thompson -- who reminds me most of Clayface from Batman comics -- was sexy enough to be president. The rest of us didn't care.

In fact, when you look at polls, the American people care about stuff that actually matters. A USA Today/Gallup poll shows that the top priorities of voters are Economy/Jobs (38%) and Iraq (21%). Call me crazy, but I think maybe these are the sort of things that people will use to make their decisions.

In the last presidential election, the big question was "who would you rather have a beer with?" Do you know anyone who used that criteria in making their decision? Anyone at all?

I guess what's really getting to me is that there's no reason for all these pundits to pull this stuff out of their butts. If you want to know what we think, don't try to read our freakin' minds -- ask us!

There's this crazy new idea out there called "polling." It exists so that people don't have to rely on speculative crap to determine what issues people care most about. You don't have to guess, you don't have to break out the tarot cards, you can just ask us.

It's my opinion that, if you don't have even anecdotal evidence for something, it's not a scientific assessment and it isn't worth jack. It doesn't mean anything if you "get the feeling" that voters won't like Candidate X because they wear the wrong colored suits. We don't care if Fred Thompson looks like someone who'd wear English Leather. We don't care that you could crack walnuts on Mitt Romney's hair. That much has become obvious.

As things are now, the punditry is useless. Reading tea leaves doesn't tell you jack -- it's just as pointless figuratively as it is literally. I don't need someone to tell me what to care about. And I especially don't need someone to tell me that I care about trivia.

This sort of thing is simplistic and stupid because the mainstream media thinks that's all you're capable of. If you don't find that insulting, you should.

--Wisco

Technorati tags: politics; elections; 2008; Republican; Democrat; Hillary Clinton; Barack Obama; racism; sexism; Mainstream media pundits think we're all morons

Bush on Compassion

Reading the news paper can often be a jarring experience. You can read one story, then move on and find other stories that completely contradict it. At least, this has been my experience for the last six or seven years. The Bush administration has a very bad habit of saying one thing, while doing the exact opposite. Orwell's Newspeak slogans "War is Peace; Freedom is Slavery; Ignorance is Strength" would seem right at home in the White House press room, where contradiction is embraced with a big bear hug.

So, it wasn't really surprising to see Bush practicing his own brand of cognitive dissonance on the occasion of the King Holiday.

Associated Press:

President Bush today hailed Martin Luther King Jr. as a towering figure and called on the country to honor his legacy by showing compassion to those in need.

"It's fitting that we honor his service and his courage and his vision," Bush said during a visit to the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Library with first lady Laura Bush.

His comments came on the federal holiday honoring the birthday of King, who would have been 79 on Jan. 15. An advocate of peaceful resistance and equality for people of all races, King was assassinated in April 1968.

The entire speech is here.

Yeah, I know -- you're thinking Iraq. So was I. Not a lot of compassion is wasted on those people over there. But all I had to do was turn the page and a couple of stories undercut Bush's message of "compassion" a lot closer to home. Another AP piece, titled "Dems, Bush at Odds on Rebate Recipients" in my paper, offered the first contradiction:

The poor are the people most likely to spend a tax rebate, if they are handed one in an economic revival plan. Whether that happens depends on who prevails - the White House or the Democrats who run Congress.

Democrats want to make sure rebates get to more of the poor, including those who have jobs but earn too little to pay income taxes.

The idea is the more that people spend, the more it will energize an economy threatening to slide into a recession for the first time since 2001. According to many economists, the lower that people are on the income ladder, the more probable it is that they will spend a rebate and spend it quickly - just the shot for the ailing economy. These people are more likely to be living from one paycheck to the next, without other assets to draw on.

"The White House, for now, envisions providing one-time rebate checks to people who pay federal income taxes," the piece goes on. "That would leave out millions of the working poor, who do not make enough to pay income taxes but do pay Social Security and Medicare payroll taxes."

And here's where things get weird. AP quotes Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson as saying that Bush "is focused on broad-based tax relief for those who are paying taxes. And that's - that was the principle he laid out. This is something that has worked well before. It's worked in 2001, worked in 2003."

Yeah, except it didn't work in 2001 and 2003. Bush added zero net jobs in his first term -- the first time that had happened since Herbert Hoover. Bush is so committed to top heavy tax breaks that he's willing to ignore the obvious -- if you want money to move, you get money to people who need it. The CEO of MegaCorp isn't going to look at his rebate check and say, "Honey, look! Now we can finally get that new fridge we need!" The fact is that money moves up the economic ladder a lot easier than it does down. Bush's supply-side economic voodoo doesn't work because it's bass-ackward and anti-capitalist. It's actually trying to force capitalism to work in a way that it doesn't. If the idea that money moves up the ladder wasn't true, capitalism would be a failed system and there would be no wealthy. There have been wealthy capitalists a lot longer than there's been a "trickle down theory" -- hell, there have been wealthy capitalists a lot longer than there's been the word "capitalists."

But the real story here is that Bush went one place to talk about " compassion to those in need," then formulated a policy that did the exact opposite. Screw the poor -- they don't pay taxes. Well, not real taxes, anyway. Just rinky-dink payroll taxes like Social Security and Medicare. In Bush world, this is equal to paying no taxes at all.

Bush's commitment to compassion for those in need takes another hit in another AP piece -- this one was "Bush Strategy: Hold Dems on Health Care" when I read it:

The Bush administration's health agenda this year will consist largely of fending off Democratic lawmakers until a new president and Congress take charge.

In a preview of what is ahead, Health and Human Services Secretary Mike Leavitt says the administration will work to limit the government's role in the delivery of health care. That goal is at odds with several Democratic proposals, such as giving the health chief the power to negotiate drug prices and greatly increasing enrollment in federally sponsored health insurance for children.

So pharmaceutical companies will still be able to rake you over the coals and uninsured sick kids remain sick and uninsured. I know there's "tough love," but is there "tough compassion?" In fact, never mind how compassionate this isn't, this story is another story about how Bush is working directly against a strong economy.

For one thing, the lack of universal coverage is actually making US manufacturers less competitive than foreign companies. By providing health insurance and drug coverage to employees, a factory in Boise has an added expense that a factory in Japan does not. If you're really committed to trickle down BS, then call expanded health coverage "corporate welfare." The supply-siders will become instant fans.

And, in terms of economic stimulus, expanding coverage would be a long term boon. In 2007, 63% of Americans saw their health care costs rise. 50% put off going to see a doctor and 28% didn't fill or skipped doses of their prescribed medications. If coverage expanded, not only would we all be healthier as a whole, but consumers would get a boost in the money they'd be free to spend.

Economics is like a tree -- starve the roots and you starve the branch. It's the people at the bottom who move the money and it's the people at the top who collect it. The economy won't improve if you're only getting money to the people on top. Get money to people who need it and they'll spend it pretty much that same day. A hungry person doesn't lose a lot of time getting a lunch and people who need stuff -- as opposed to those who only want stuff -- don't lose a lot of time buying what they need.

Long, long ago, President Bush used to talk about "compassionate conservatism." But, in the intervening years, he's proved that his compassion is reserved for fetuses and stem cells -- in other words, hypothetical people. When it comes to compassion for actual people, Bush doesn't have any. He talks a good game, but he doesn't play.

So, the next time Bush manages to string together a few pretty words, remember that he doesn't mean them. They're just things he has to say, because saying the things he'd like to say are impossible in the circumstances. At the Martin Luther King, Jr., Memorial Library, Bush couldn't say that wealthy people need more money, that the taxes the poor pay aren't real taxes and don't really count, or that sick kids don't really matter much in the grand scheme of things.

So he talked about "compassion" and meant it as much as when the cashier at Burger King tells you to "Have a nice day." It's just something appropriate you say at the appropriate time. It doesn't mean a damned thing. And, since it's meaningless, it doesn't matter that his words don't match his deeds, that his commitment is to the least compassionate route or that his plans are to comfort the comfortable. In doesn't matter if none of his words are true.

They're just something meaningless and pretty you say when the moment calls for it.

--Wisco

Technorati tags: politics; poverty; taxes; economy; health care; Bush talks about compassion -- but he doesn't really give a crap about it