Swine of the Week: Jindal

Congratulations Bobby Jindal, you entered the 2012 presidential campaign just in the nick of time.

The Swine of the Week pitched his first stump speech to Americans in the Republican response to President Obama’s address to Congress on Tuesday. The 37-year-old, who has already campaigned Iowa, talked about himself when no one cares. (Close circuit to the Louisiana Governor: We can hear about your Indian heritage in, say, three years. The country just picked Obama, you need to shut it, stay in your state and spend the stimulus.)

When in Iowa in November he said, “Americans need a break from politics, but more importantly, ‘it is time for us to work together on solutions.’ And, he said that means it’s time to get behind the newly elected Congress and president-elect Barack Obama to overcome the country’s ’substantial challenges.’ “

He said that as he campaigned!

Then on TV Tuesday he gave a sneak peak to a future anecdote he will undoubtedly spin to Iowans, “During Katrina, I visited Sheriff Harry Lee, a Democrat and a good friend of mine. When I walked into his makeshift office, I’d never seen him so angry. He was yelling into the phone: ‘Well, I’m the Sheriff and if you don’t like it you can come and arrest me!’ I asked him: ‘Sheriff, what’s got you so mad?’ He told me that he had put out a call for volunteers to come with their boats to rescue people who were trapped on their rooftops by the floodwaters. The boats were all lined up ready to go, when some bureaucrat showed up and told them they couldn’t go out on the water unless they had proof of insurance and registration. I told him, ‘Sheriff, that’s ridiculous.’ And before I knew it, he was yelling into the phone: ‘Congressman Jindal is here, and he says you can come and arrest him too!’ Harry just tol the boaters to ignore the bureaucrats and go start rescuing people.”

What a maverick against big liberal government! He went on and on in the speech about “empowering you, the American people.”  Then, out the other side of his mouth, he championed business tax cuts and national defense. 

Bobby Jindal (left) gladhands with someone. ... Maybe it's John the Electrician.

Sure, Republicans can’t put another crotchety white-haired guy in front of the camera, but Jindal’s speech was a  premature stunt.

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When developments turn to drivel

When discussing Iraq, a story about moderate improvements turns disingenuous when it fails to acknowledge important associated circumstances.

Take ABC News’ story about Iraqi women now having the ability to drive and not being forced to wear full-body veils. While the Tank rails on TV news as the chief enemy of context, ABC should have cited the 1,000 women who were recently widowed due to the war. What good is being able to show your face in public if your husband can’t be there to see it?

The TV segment also propped up the relatively violence-free elections recently held in the occupied country. True, true, but what good are the free democratic elections if the elected Sunni officials cannot leave their homes because of death threats?

 

Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al Maliki recently pushed to reopen the country’s National Museum as a symbol of progress. What good is the reopening if a several-block radius around the museum is cordoned off to stop violence by keeping the public away? What progress is made if heightened security and helicopters patrols are in the area while diplomats and government officials munch on hors de oeuvres?

The Tank isn’t denying that some progress is being made, but when ABC News and Maliki ignore the big picture, it’s just drivel.

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Secrecy isn’t sacrosanct

 At this rate, the Obama administration will soon cite “executive privilege” like Karl Rove and the rest of the Bush-era crooks.

In the first month of the new presidency, Obama has sided with Bush on rendition, state secrets, and Obama will try to stop a lawsuit into the hidden White House e-mails during the run up to the Iraq war and the Valerie Plame charade. Now, that is change that doesn’t exist.

As an indistinguishable talking head said last week, and the Tank paraphrases, ”It is easy to campaign against secrecy, but once you have that job, secrecy is nice to have.”

Secrecy is fundamental to keeping power, according to Noam Chomsky. He writes:

“As for the secret diplomatic record, it’s difficult to think of anything that has been released that was ever a secret which actually involved security — they involve marginalizing the population, that’s what government secrets are for.

“The idea that a government has to be shrouded in mystery is something that goes back to Herodotus [ancient Greek historian]. You read Herodotus, and he describes how the Medes and others won their freedom by struggle, and they the lost their freedom when the institution of royalty was invented to create a cloak of mystery around power. See, the idea behind royalty was that there’s this other species of individuals who beyond the norm and who the people are not supposed to understand. That’s the standard way you cloak and protect power: you make it look mysterious and secret, above the ordinary person — otherwise, why should anybody accept it? Well, they’re willing to accept it out of fear that some great enemies are about to destroy them, and because of that they’ll cede their authority to the Lord, or the King, or the President or something, just to protect themselves. That’s the way governments work — that’s the way any system of power works — and the secrecy system is part of it.”

Exposing the secrecy of the Bush administration isn’t politically advantageous for Obama — he had enough trouble getting Republicans on board with the stimulus package. Trying to expose the truth with subpoenas will only exacerbate the partisan divide.

A possible compromise is what Sen. Patrick Leahy calls a truth commission, where no charges will be filed. The only goal is to “get to the bottom of what happened — and why — to make sure it never happens again.” It would be like granting immunity for candid testimony.

If the awful actions of the Bush administration remains hidden, it will only hurt people and protect power.

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Window dressing

Like applying lipstick to a pig, the U.S. military is throwing a fresh coat of paint and a new banal name to the Abu Ghraib prison, where detainees were tortured by U.S. soldiers and the image of the occupier was plagued in 2004.

 

 The newly-minted Baghdad Central Prison (What? Baghdad Central Park was taken?) already holds about 400 inmates.

A skeptic can’t  help but wonder how many of those detainees are being held without charges — a la Guantanamo. The Iraqi detainees might now be able to workout, shoot hoops or visit the prison’s greenhouses, but they are still overseen by Americans in their country after five long years.

Despite some possible showy flower boxes in front, the windows still have bars on them.

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Siding with Boehner

I’m officially a few billion dollars over my malfeasance threshold.

The latest government bailout for corporate greed, the $275 billion to ease the home foreclosure crisis, is fundamentally just: keeping struggling families in their homes. My top complaint, however, is that it forgives – even rewards – mortgage companies who wrote bad loans knowing full well that the families couldn’t meet its terms.

So, I’m siding with U.S. Senate minority leader John Boehner.

“Does your plan compensate banks for the bad mortgages they should never have made in the first place?” Boehner asked in a quote in the New York Times. “Will individuals who misrepresented their income or assets on their original mortgage application be eligible to get taxpayer-funded assistance?”

Friends of mine left the mortgage business because they felt it was morally corrupt. As mortgage brokers, they gave rubber-stamp approval to families without means to pay. Now, their employers are being forgiven for their misdeeds.

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