A Plea for Divine Intervention

After Obama's non State of the Union, Bobby Jindal had the unenviable task of giving the Republican response. Unenviable for a multitude of reasons, I mean after all, what can the response be if your party is the one that created the disaster that has befallen the country? What do you say when your party is completely bereft of any ideas? What do you say when Obama has such a strong mandate for change? And how do you follow someone who is one of the strongest orater in memory. Some would argue Ronnie's gifts, but frankly I always thought that he seemed like a simple minded, mean, ignornant, lying fool, irespective of his ideology. I clearly never felt the Ronnie magic. When Jindal walked out to give his speech, he looked like death warmed over, and someone on MSNBC, said either "Oh god," or what I heard, which is probably wrong, is "Oh my god." It is hard to figure which is worse. "Oh god" could mean here comes that insufferable bore, and "Oh my god" could mean, jeez he looks awful and we now have to listen to him. Asking for divine intervention to be spared from the speech was probably a good idea. Jindal was awful. Aside from spouting the mantra of the Republicans, taxcutstaxcutstaxcuts, he had the nerve to talk about the rebuilding of New Orleans as a triumph of volunteerism with no government assistance, completely disregarding that Katrina was the calamitous event that lifted the veil for many Americans to see what no government would mean. The sight of the hapless Bush in his helicopter with his stagey look of concern, as he desperately tried to recapture the 9/11 magic, an obscene thought in itself, was deeply disturbing. It was indeed his Oz moment, when he gave that speech in the eirily empty square in New Orleans. The curtain pulled back to reveal the what the Bush administration was all about - the image of caring, while thousands of people were struggling for survival and begging to be rescued in the richest country in the world.