Bobby Jindal, in command
Saturday September 6, 2008
Categories: Louisiana, the Great State
My dad got through on the phone line this morning. Their phone service is still hit or miss in their part of south Louisiana. We talked for a while, and he catalogued the devastation they're dealing with. Five days later,...
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About Crunchy Con
Rod Dreher is an editorial columnist for the Dallas Morning News, and author of "Crunchy Cons" (Crown Forum), a nonfiction book about conservatives, most of them religious, whose faith and political convictions sometimes put them at odds with mainstream conservatives. The views expressed in this blog are his own.
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Practice makes perfect?
Steve
Bobby Jindal is very impressive. It is good to see someone who is really COMPETENT.
The media played the same game during Katrina. We heard from friends about the damage in Mississippi, and our daughter flew there with goods and cash collected far and widehere. But the people there took care of themselves, while the pictures and reports from the news services and networks simply concentrated on New Orleans' disfunction. By their actions we have learned who to trust for news.
First, I'm glad your dad is ok, and I don't want to belittle the difficulties people are battling with right now.
Second, I have to take issue with the effort to lionize Jindahl while reinforcing the myth of Blanco's blame. I did see a number of extended stories on Gustav the day it hit and the days after, a couple by reporters who said they'd also been at Katrina. They both said that while damage from Gustav was heavy, it didn't come close to approaching what they saw with Katrina. The scale of the disasters that Jindahl and Blanco had to deal with seems substantially different.
And of course Jindahl is getting much more effective help from a federal government that is determined not to repeat earlier mistakes, and which had Katrina to "practice."
Kudos to Jindahl for learning his lessons, but comparisons to Blanco are inherently unbalanced. Especially when they are tinged with sexist implications that Jindahl's gender has something to do with his leadership ability - a bias of which I don't accuse you or your dad, but which I have heard from more than one conservative commentator, and would like to see more fair-minded conservatives disavow.
I worry about the people who are "imperiled," but the same number of days after Katrina there were about 2000 people dead. That's a whole different kind of disaster, worthy of a whole different level of focus from the media, wouldn't you agree?
Rod as I posted earlier this week on your blog New Orelans and the crisis it faces is a indicative of the entire coast. I hope people click on that link you provided because it was what I have been screaming for years now
I was watching the FOX business show this and they were all complaining about Federal help for home owners in Louisiana after the hurricane. One guy said well that is the trade off you get for great weather unlike in Chicago. You choose to live there and deal with it. First let me say I would like Mr Chicago to get down here and suffer through the humidity we do.
We are not exactly like Alabama, Mississsippi, or Florida. Hell we don't even how beaches besides two small slivers of sand on the whole Coast.
As I keep pointing out in my posts on Coastal erosion we are a working Coast and the nation needs people on it!! That is one reason why I am excited about Governor Palin. She runs a state that also supplies a good bit of the nations energy and seafood but is pretty much ignored. It is an asset that is often neglected.
What The Might Favog is talking about was not on the FOX business show or any other for that matter. It is much more popular tto talk about silly people that live in fragile areas. Now these silly people are working their asses off so the Country does not go into a crisis of huge porportions. All the while most of the State, including major areas in the north were devastated.
Be careful Rod, irrational exuberance a la "cult of personality" won't save us from a President getting ready to introduce socialism by the back door (and Mayor Guiliani, even with Elliot Spitzer's help, could never control the madness on Wall Street):
money.cnn.com/2008/09/06/news/economy/fannie_freddie_paulson.fortune/ (add http://)
I've seen enough fake cowboys - let's get real here.
The GOP isn't "conservative" in any meaningful sense of the term. Their appeal on Monday night was a flop - the Red Cross is in debt already ($70 million in estimated expenses, only $5 million in donations) the folks in Louisiana will be reduced to a barter economy within the week when their cash reserves run out (no power, no credit) meanwhile, worldwide the rich are turning their backs on the poor "(Reuters) - The world's wealthiest countries are reneging on promises to boost development aid, threatening U.N. targets for drastically reducing poverty by 2015, according to a new U.N. report released on Thursday."
Ron Paul's movement is becoming more appealing by the day... let's see what he has to say on Wednesday at the Press Club, shall we?
That vulture your parents saw, reminded me of all the weird things that happen in storms. My wifes friend once saw, blowing end over end across a pasture during a tornado, a sign that had in big letters "Jesus Loves you" painted on it. A refrigerator fell out of the sky into another persons back pasture. Another guy down by Crane, had built a huge barn for his expensive horses. A tornado wiped it all out, and killed his horses. He rebuilt exactly in the same place, new horses, and the next year a tornado came, and wiped out everything again. He decided someone did not want him in the horse business, and hasn't rebuilt since. Yea, storms are eerie. I can't imagine what a hurricane must be like. Hope your parents and everyone else, gets thru it all right.
.
//
I'd like to hear from Louisiana readers (who have power) as to how Jindal's performng from your point of view.
//
As I was reading that sentence I asked myself, gee whiz why is Rod interested only in persons of power? What IS it with these media types, that they only care about folks who move among the elite? Doesn't the input of ordinary folks count with these high and mighty men of the media?
"Uh, Dave, I think he means people who have electrical power. Not people who are connected to politicians and corporate bigwigs, but people who are connected to an electrical outlet."
Hmmm. Never mind.
Bobby Jindal. Yay!
Father God, help the folks hit by the weather. In Jesus' name, amen.
.
First, I am so glad Rod's family is okay. I also took that "Country Boy Can Survive" as a tribute to them and others like them. May God bless and aid them all.
The media, unfortunately, can make or break a fund-raising charity effort by their focus. They seem far more interested in regurgitating false rumors about Sarah Palin and her family than of being any public service for those who need their help. I have never been so disgusted with the MSM as I am right now.
But, Rod, Silly Rabbit, don't you know that Bobby Jindal deserves no credit for anything that he does right?
That's because he has Christianist views of a sort that one is not allowed to have, unless, of course, one is African-American and votes for the Democratic Party.
And because, as a non-Caucasian and as a child of immigrants, he is not allowed to belong to the Republican Party ... not if he wants if it matters to him what Oprah Winfrey and *The New York Times* will say.
The ungrateful wretch!
And doesn't he also have ... gasp! ... *children*?
Isn't there a chance that he will breed more and more of those horrid greenhouse-gas-emitting piglets, "down there" in the sultry and fetid swamps of the backward, primeval, and just-plain-evil *South*?
Why, sir, it's enough to give Andrew Sullivan vapors.....
..... but, then again, what isn't?
I don't have power, but have made a couple of trips out of town (where I am now) for supplies and because of family issues.
The most disturbing thing to me is the mis-information that came out of the governor's office in the early days - he said that various hospitals were up and running days before that was true. One in particular had made several attempts to come back over several days, all of which failed. Yet in every address (which I was hearing over battery powered radio), he said the hospital was back even while they were telling their employees to prepare to evacuate patients because of the worsening crisis.
I hope he was just mis-informed.
Some parts of the city have power coming back, but others will be waiting quite a while (I'm in the latter group). And from what I gather, it's much worse in more rural areas. Lord have mercy.
As BRR makes clear, we should probably wait to see how the story shakes out, but even so, Jindal makes a good case why a politician needs some experience under his or her belt before going into the national ring. Jindal will be able to bring something to the table beyond his exotic origin.
Opposed to the glowing remarks nationally about Bobby Jindahl's great handling the aftermath of Gustav, in LA he's getting mixed reviews.
He was to have 700 pre-contracted buses, 200 showed up. He should have NAMED NAMES of any company contracted to provide emergency transport, and failed their contract. Companies to evacuate pets also were no shows. For all Jindahl's tough talk he hasn't gotten Entergy to move a second faster to restore electricity to many regions told they won't have elictricity for another 3 weeks.i survived Gustav in a VERY hard hit area outside Baton Rouge still with no power.
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