“It's just a disaster for the Republican Party”

Watching Jindal’s remarks last night, I was shocked just had bad he was on camera. He is supposed to be the Second Coming of Ronald Reagan but oh my God, the Great Communicator he is not. I thought he sucked out loud and my response was fairly typical. Sam Stein has a roundup of reactions from the punditry on HuffPo but my favorite has to be conservative NYTimes columnist David Brooks (Ed. Note – never thought I would write that phrase).

"You know, I think Bobby Jindal is a very promising politician," said New York Times columnist David Brooks, appearing on PBS, "and I oppose the stimulus because 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 federal government" -- it's just a disaster for the Republican Party [emphasis mine]. The country is in a panic right now. They may not like the way the Democrats have passed the stimulus bill, but that idea ... that government is going to have no role, the federal government has no role in this ... it's just a form of nihilism. It's just not where the country is, it's not where the future of the country is.

Pretty damning criticism coming from the same team and doubly so when viewed in the context that Jindal is billed as a rising star within the GOP. So I am going to ask everyone get in with me on the ground floor of the Palin/Jindal ticket in 2012. How awesome is that? And we can make it happen people. Yes we can!

The Speach

President Obama killed. While his speach was monstrously ambitious and a bit light on details, it was also visionary, inspiring and enheartening in this gloomy economic climate. In contrast, the GOP response delivered by Bobby Jindal just plain sucked. That guy is Ambian in a suit.

Today’s Required Reading

Krugman makes a great argument for nationalizing the big insolvent banks like Bank of America and Citibank, pointing out that the FDIC has been taking over smaller troubled banks, per its charter, at a clip of two a week. He then proceeds, quite correctly, to thump the Obama Administration for continuing to offer plans that would put the risk onto taxpayers rather than shareholders but may not actually fix the problem. All good stuff.

Buy up the banks and punish the bankers

Nicholas Kristof makes a pretty good argument that solving the banking problems in this country will require some form of nationalization (egads, the "N" word!) as well as punitive treatment of the bank execs that got us in this mess. All in all, it is a really good piece on how we might get out of this mess but I just loved this bit:

A more plausible approach might be the one that some White House aides unsuccessfully argued for: tougher curbs on executive compensation. The Obama administration in theory limits certain compensation for top executives in companies receiving taxpayer dollars to $500,000, but the plan has loopholes big enough to drive a Mercedes through.

Yes, troubled banks might lose good people to hedge funds that can pay more because they’re not bound by these curbs. But that upsets me less than the idea of single mothers working multiple jobs so that their tax dollars can underwrite million-dollar bonuses at companies getting taxpayer assistance [Emphasis mine].

Well put sir.

I love this

Pornstar Stormy Daniels may challenge Senator David Vitter (R-LA) in the GOP primary. Vitter you will remember become something of a national joke when it was revealed that he had a penchant for frequenting New Orleans whorehouses. One prays that if Daniels runs, the issue of family values will be front and center.

From bad to not terrible

The stimulus bill working its way through Congress is, to be frank, a mess and the blame for that falls largely on President Obama. It is too small (we are attempting to fill a trillion plus dollar hole in the economy with what looks to be something in the neighborhood of $800 billion), it is leans too heavily on not so effective tax cuts and many solid, stimulative provisions were watered down in a failed effort to gain Republican support. All of Obama’s talk of bipartisanship led him to get rolled by the House GOP which voted unanimously against. This was not a good showing for the President or the House Republicans (and is there a bigger asshole in Congress than Minority Leader John Boehner?).

So for all of these problems, it is good to see that at least some of the better ideas for the bill are being included/augmented and the dumber ones excised/diminished. Moving this legislation out of the Awful Piece of Shit category and into the somewhat more pleasing Not Completely Worthless is progress; measured progress, but progress nonetheless.