Land of Confusion

I wasn’t as interested in Barack Obama’s national speech as much as Bobby Jindal’s response on behalf on the Republicans. In case you don’t know, Jindal is 37 years old and is already the Governor of Louisiana (the youngest governor in the country). He is definitely one of the brilliant people; he went to Brown University, graduating with honors in biology and public policy. Although he was accepted by Harvard Medical School and Yale Law School, he chose to pursue a political career at Oxford, as a Rhodes Scholar. He was Louisiana’s Secretary of Heath at 25 years old, than was the youngest-ever president of the University of Louisiana System. He went off to work for the Bush administration, than became a Congressman, than Governor. On a personal note, his real name is Piyush and his family came here from India when his mother was pregnant. And this is nothing personal, but he looks one of Ronald Reagan puppet, who dressed up like Superman from the Phil Collin video for Land of Confusion.

So now, the Republican Party of old white guys has a black leader of their national committee (Michael Steele) and young Indian as their spokesperson. And don’t say that the Republics aren’t all white. In the past 80 years, there have been exactly three Black, Republican Congressman (including both the House and Senate). On the other side, the Democrats have 36 Black Congressman in the House as this very moment. I know diversifying is a good thing, but who are they kidding, 95% of African Americans voted for Obama and it wasn’t because he is Black, it is because the Republicans have never cared about the actually helping the African-American community (in my opinion).

Anyway, back to Jindal…I had heard that he was the next great thing. A republican Bill Clinton (super-smart on policy, but also very charismatic). Everything looked good, that is until he spoke. What a terrible speech. I know he wants to get his name out there, but he spent about a ¼ of the speech talking about himself. Honestly, nobody cares about you, tell us about the state of the country. He looked very uncomfortable and over-prepared, it was very high-school. And the content was just as terrible. This was the jist of what he said, “Americans can do anything. Obama is right out the situation, but wrong about the solution. Americans are better than great. Our solution is tax breaks and not the kind of tax breaks that failed with Bush, but some new kind of magical tax breaks. Did I mention how great you are and how you can do anything. And the only thing that stops you from being a superstar if government, yes the same government I am part of somehow. PS, American can do anything.” No joke, he said “American can do anything” as least five times. The fact is that Republicans had eight years to try and see if tax cuts help everyone or just the rich. They proved, without a shadow of a doubt, that Republican policies only helped the super rich, not even the middle class, but only the very wealthy. How can they keep trying to say that tax breaks are a good idea, it just blows my mind. And the republicans can’t even go back to family values and religious tactics as George Bush was their poster boy for that too. They can’t be strong on the military since they are viewed as completely incompetent in that area. The only option left is be “not a republican”, and I guess that is Bobby Jindal. He is the “new” Republican, but the problem was the he combined the inexperience of someone new with the same ideas that have failed in the past.