Bobby Jindal on The Huffington Post

Bobby Jindal: Something Is Wrong With The GOP

2008-11-16T19:11:54Z

When asked about the future course of the Republican Party following their losses on Election Day - losing not only the White House but also considerable ground in the House and Senate - Gov. Bobby Jindal of Louisiana said it is imperative his party offers solutions to voters, and not just be the opposition.

"As Republicans, we need to do three things to get back on track," he said on CBS' Face The Nation. "Number one, we have got to stop defending the kind of spending and out-of-control spending that we would never tolerate in the other side. You know, when voters tell us that they trust Democrats more to cut their taxes [and] control spending, that tells you something is wrong with the Republican Party. We've got to match our actions with our rhetoric.

Paul Szep: The Daily Szep: Caricature of Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal

2008-11-12T09:47:56Z

2012 Watch: Huckabee Already Headed To Iowa

2008-11-09T10:27:44Z

Votes are still being counted in some races in last Tuesday's election, but no matter: talk of the potential Republicans field in the 2012 presidential election is already underway.

Too early?

Too bad - just look around.

Two potential candidates will be in Iowa before month's end, multiple prospects - almost certainly including Sarah Palin - will make high-profile appearances next week at the Republican Governor's Association (RGA) meeting and Newt Gingrich's name has already being floated in a Bob Novak column.

David Quigg: Dear Conservatives: Break Some Liberal Hearts. Vote Obama.

2008-11-03T14:50:48Z

No group in America would have more trouble adjusting to an Obama presidency than the Bush Liberals.

With the president's approval rating so deep in the tank, you might question whether there really is such a thing as a Bush Liberal. Let me explain.

This isn't about ideology or policy. This is about mindset -- a Bush mindset, a with-us-or-against-us mindset. These are folks whose version of the politics of hope is to hope that Barack Obama didn't really mean what he said in his 2004 Democratic convention speech, didn't really mean what he wrote in his books, and doesn't really mean all that he's preached during this grueling campaign about the need for healing, unity, bipartisanship, cooperation, and mutual respect. These Bush Liberals have fumed through eight long years of Bush-Cheney.

They. Want. Payback.

They want payback and they're simply not going to get it. Not with an Obama presidency.

Go ahead. Break their hearts. Vote for Obama on Tuesday.

If you want a glimpse of whose hearts exactly you'll be breaking, read through some of the comments that people posted online back in January when Obama told the Reno Gazette-Journal editorial board that Ronald Reagan "changed the trajectory of America" by rallying voters who'd rejected the "excesses of the 1960s and 1970s" and had decided "government had grown and grown but there wasn't much sense of accountability in terms of how it was operating."

Here's one of the online comments Obama's remarks triggered:

"I've been trying to tell people that Obama is way too much like Reagan for my comfort level. His supporters do not see this at all. I wouldn't even mind if I felt Obama really had the potential to realign American politics. But unlike Reagan, Obama is just trying to build an electoral coalition based on hope and optimism, without also using every opportunity to educate people about why conservatives and Republicans are the problem. In Obama's world, partisanship is the problem. He is way off base."

Now, that quote only goes so far. I'm not trying to peddle nonsense here. While there are an eye-popping array of people from the Reagan White House who have endorsed Obama, I'm not trying to trick anyone into believing that a vote for Obama is a vote for a third Reagan term. Obama's book, The Audacity of Hope, makes plain the areas in which he thinks Reagan's policies left many Americans worse off.

So if you're the type of conservative who thinks the lesson of Reagan is that trickle-down economics is a cure-all for every woe at every moment in American history, you shouldn't vote for Obama. He's not your guy. Never will be.

But you should be giving Obama a good, close look if you're the type of conservative who thinks the lesson of Reagan is that the U.S. government must deliver value to taxpayers and foster, as Obama put it, "that sense of dynamism and entrepreneurship" that had gone missing during the Carter administration. Because those observations Obama made about Reagan back in January were not some unintended gaffe during his talk with that editorial board. He'd covered the same basic territory back in 2006 when he published The Audacity of Hope. He wrote there's a "good deal of truth" to Reagan's "central insight ... that the liberal welfare state had grown complacent and overly bureaucratic, with Democratic policy makers more obsessed with slicing the economic pie than with growing the pie."

Such words, obviously, are not what you want to read if you're a Bush Liberal, a with-us-or-against-us liberal. Specifically, it's not what you want to read if you're that blog commenter I quoted above who thinks Democratic politics should be about seizing "every opportunity to educate people about why conservatives and Republicans are the problem."

Confession time. There's some Bush Liberal in me. Going way back. Supposedly, I spent part of my Watergate-era toddlerhood stomping around my neighborhood, chanting "Put him behind bars!" about Nixon. During high school and college, I tossed around the word "fascist" with a shameful disregard for its real meaning or history.

Two things changed me.

1) As you'll see if you are ever bored enough to read my HuffPost bio, I went into a life-changing political hibernation when I became a newspaper reporter. It's not a job you can do honorably while clinging to your ideological biases. I cared deeply about doing the job honorably. My political biases just fell away. I came to prize candor above all else. For a reporter who cares about accuracy, sources who spin are basically useless; honest sources are priceless. The source I came to respect most happened to be a Republican. Now that I've quit journalism and had my political awareness shocked back to life by the incompetence and lawlessness of the Bush-Cheney years, I can see just how much my old Republican source and I differ in our political views. But he's running for reelection to statewide office right now and I just voted for him. Again.

2) Barack Obama's message has changed me even more. It's one thing for me to look past ideology and vote for a former source because he demonstrated his integrity to me -- one-on-one, repeatedly, without fail. It's quite another thing to seek out conservative ideas and open myself to the possibility that they might have something useful to teach me. But that's something I do now. Because Obama's words have persuaded me that my kids' futures will be brightest if we can stop glaring at each other across ideological divides. It hasn't hurt, either, that I read Team of Rivals this spring and learned all about the dream-team cabinet Lincoln assembled from the political foes he beat out for the presidency.

There are flashes when I see so clearly how much I've changed. One such flash came Sunday when my phone lit up with an e-mail from a good friend. She'd forwarded something titled "Fair Warning," a satirical letter to America's red states, threatening a blue-state secession if "you manage to steal this election too." There's stuff like this: "We get Harvard. You get Ole Miss. We get 85% of venture capitalists. You get Alabama."

Now, the old-old me would have found "Fair Warning" hilarious. The post-journalism, Bush/Cheney-loathing, pre-Obama me would have taken some grim, vengeful comfort in passages such as "you ... will have to cope with 88% of obese Americans (and their projected healthcare costs)."

Suddenly, though, I'm the jerk who's become so allergic to words like those that I sit in my car in a supermarket parking lot, tapping out an instant response to my poor, unsuspecting friend. As politely as I can manage, I write that "this seems like an unhelpful moment to be quite so condescending." I go on to be all preachy about how we shouldn't look down our noses at Ole Miss. I cite a public-radio piece I heard about how the univeristy has transcended the ugly reputation it earned during the civil rights movement. I write about our "shared American-ness" and add "Obama's campaign grows out of the insight that we're stuck with each other and might as well try to make the most of it."

Who is this person who's taken over my body and commandeered my phone to send that e-mail? And why am I so much happier being him than I was being a Bush Liberal, a with-us-or-against-us liberal?

This is not unique to me. Not by a long shot. Many more people are looking toward the future than the past. That's no easy thing. Reagan speechwriter Peggy Noonan recently wrote in the Wall Street Journal that Obama's "rise will serve as a practical rebuke to the past five years, which need rebuking." Yes, the Bush car wreck is spectacular. Dazzling in its carnage. Magnetic to our eyes. We're looking. Not staring. Looking. Because we're looking beyond it, too. Far beyond. As Noonan added, "(Obama's) victory would provide a fresh start in a nation in which a fresh start would come as a national relief."

This is what this moment offers. Conservatives -- true conservatives, who've watched Bush sully conservatism's name badly -- need to decide whether they want to help make this "fresh start" happen.

Sarah Palin should decide this for you. If you look at Sarah Palin and see a cure for Bush's non-conservative spending binge, non-conservative war of choice in Iraq, non-conservative dreams of sprinkling magic democracy dust all around the world, there's only one choice for you Tuesday. If you look at Sarah Palin and see the best possible future of your party, there's only one choice on Tuesday: Vote for McCain.

But if you see the future in Romney or Fiorina or Jindal or Whitman or Pawlenty or Petraeus or Condi Rice, you've got some serious thinking to do. Because this ticket is not your party's varsity squad. This is your JV. Palin is pure JV. McCain, whatever he once was, proved with his reckless, unvetted pick of Palin that he, too, is JV.

This is not a JV moment in American history. A JV administration will make things worse. Surely, you know deep down -- both in your brain and in your gut -- that this is true. We'll be right back here in four years with an angrier electorate even more desperate for change than it is today.

Conservatives wouldn't get to handpick the Democratic change agent who finally sweeps the JV team from the White House. Maybe that change agent would be Obama again. More likely, it would be someone who convinces Americans that Obama and all his pretty talk of hope and bipartisanship amounted to a naive recipe for defeat. Me, I'm betting the 2012 change agent would be a Bush Liberal.

So you can have your bipartisan, collaborative, team-of-rivals administration now. Or you can watch a with-us-or-against-us, winner-take-all, it's-payback-time president take the oath of office in 2013.

If it sounds like I'm trying to scare you, I am. But I wouldn't be doing it if I didn't believe it. It scares me, too.

We don't need a Bush Liberal in the White House any more than we need a third Bush term. We don't need payback. We don't need big pendulum swings in our politics. On issue after issue, we need to return to the sane center of American politics. We need durable progress, the progress that comes from building a broad coalition for change. Obama offers the best chance for durable progress in many years -- probably the best chance in my lifetime.

Obama has promised to give Americans the tools for unprecedented civic involvement. Real conservatives need to decide how much faith they have in the power of their own ideas. They need to decide whether unprecedented civic engagement sounds scary or whether it sounds like an unprecedented chance to win lifelong converts and forge a fresh, new conservative majority.

At base, conservatives need to decide how invested they are in America and in conservatism. You need to decide whether -- ideologically speaking -- you're building a business you can pass on to your kids and grandkids or whether you're a huckster out to make a quick, fly-by-night buck.

If you're a fly-by-night huckster, your choice is clear: McCain-Palin.

I can't for the life of me figure out what the McCain-Palin mandate would be. That neither of them has a foreign-sounding name? That neither one of them "pals around with terrorists"? That neither one of them has ever been falsely rumored to be a Muslim? That neither of them (despite their non-conservative pander to buy up hundreds of billions of dollars in bad mortgages) has been smeared as a "socialist"? That Palin's extremist pastor got less news coverage than Obama's ex-pastor? This is perfect Rove-style, fly-by-night hucksterism: a meaningless temporary coalition held together with fear, bigotry, greed, and ignorance.

So we get malignantly out-of-context claims that Obama wants to bankrupt the coal industry. We get socialist bribes to voters during the same rallies that McCain and Palin smear Obama as a "socialist" who wants to be "redistributionist-in-chief." I think all this "redistribution" talk is, fundamentally, a smokescreen to keep conservatives from seeing how much they have in common with Obama's worldview. Obama spoke the seemingly toxic phrase "redistributive change" in passing back in 2001 while criticizing the 1960s civil rights movement for relying too much on an activist Supreme Court to improve the lives of African Americans. Sounds sort of conservative, doesn't it?

But it's hard to hear Obama's substance over the dim-witted din.

America deserves better. Conservatives deserve better. Conservatives deserve a presidential candidate who won't flee from deregulation when it becomes politically dicey. Conservatives deserve a presidential candidate who will stand up against the headwind of the mortgage crisis and explain that the market is doing what it does best: punishing the foolish and the careless and sending their assets down and down and down until someone prudent and sensible can purchase them and bring renewal. Conservatives deserve a presidential candidate who will argue that a $700 billion bailout is about the only thing that can keep financiers from learning the ruthless lesson the market is teaching. Instead, conservatives have McCain. Which is to say that conservatives have nobody.

The conservative thinker Andrew Sullivan wrote this today in a long, moving piece summarizing his endorsement of Obama:

"His fiscal policies are too liberal for me - I don't believe in raising taxes, I believe in cutting entitlements for the middle classes as the way to fiscal balance. I don't believe in 'progressive taxation', I support a flat tax. I don't want to give unions any more power. I'm sure there will be moments when a Democratic Congress will make me wince. But I also understand that money has to come from somewhere, and it will not come in any meaningful measure from freezing pork or the other transparent gimmicks advertized in advance by McCain. McCain is not serious on spending. But he is deadly serious in not touching taxes. So, on the core question of debt, on bringing America back to fiscal reason, Obama is still better than McCain."

Sullivan has also posted his top 10 reasons why conservatives should vote for Obama. Click here to consider them.

If you want to experience a sharp contrast between huckster conservatism and the sort of conservatism you can bequeath to your grandchildren, read William Kristol's empty-headed, disingenuous column in today's New York Times and then read this Sullivan piece.

Reclaim your movement. Start fresh. Collaborate with an Obama presidency when its proposals are sound. Raise hell when the proposals aren't prudent. Make America think. Trust in your ideas. If Obama succeeds in moving us past longstanding impasses, be there to recruit women whose votes are freed from a one-dimensional defense of abortion rights, gays who are freed from worrying they'll be barred from visiting the love of their life in the hospital, hard-working immigrants freed from being used as a perennial political pinata.

Build an ideological legacy you can leave to your children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren. But first, reject the huckster conservatism on this year's ballot. Vote for Obama. Then start fresh.

Just don't expect the Bush Liberals to thank you anytime soon. Or ever.

Georgianne Nienaber: Why Should Anyone Care About Louisiana?

2008-10-23T12:45:26Z

Louisiana is solidly Republican and is not a swing state, but it should be front and center in every political discussion in this important election year. Louisiana ranks fourth in crude oil production, and 2 percent of U.S. oil reserves are located in her waterways. The state's natural gas reserves account for about 5 percent of the U.S. total, and it is the port of entry and exit for the largest inland shipping waterway in the United States. Commerce and the economy from Minneapolis to New Orleans rises and falls upon the Mississippi River infrastructure, tariffs, and value added taxes.

Polls show Louisiana still solidly in the red column, even with Obama's recent surge in national polls. Louisiana has a popular incumbent Democratic senator in Mary Landrieu who has come out enthusiastically for Obama now that she is solidly ahead in her own reelection bid. Her opponent, state Senator John Kennedy, ran as a Democrat in 2004 and lost to Republican David Vitter, who was recently involved in a sex scandal. This is Huey Long country after all, and politics can be as crazy as Mardi Gras.

That's the thumbnail political/economic sketch.

The human sketch is surprising, sad, and begs many questions that the candidates should answer, noting Louisiana's importance to the US economy and how the local population supports an infrastructure that impacts the rest of the country. Consider the fact that Louisiana is ranked number 42 in per capita income in the United States, and 19.2 percent of Louisiana's population lives below the poverty line, and the reasons why someone should care about Louisiana become more compelling.

Newly elected Republican Governor, Bobby Jindal, who some see as future presidential timber, is at the helm of state government. It is highly unlikely that candidates will make appearances down here in the final two weeks of the election, even though many parts of the state are still reeling from the after effects of Hurricanes Gustav and Ike, and crashing oil prices are putting a damper on rosy predictions for budget surpluses.

Governor Jindal admits a one billion dollar budget shortfall is inevitable next year, but does not seem worried. He says now that he won't raise taxes. Perhaps it is because oil continues to flow like never before in Cajun country. The oil and gas industry is booming and "millionaires are being made overnight," according to Dr. Loren C. Scott president of Loren C. Scott and Associates, an economic consulting firm. (Source: Tri Parish Times, October 8, 2008)

Image: Oil infrastructure heading up the Atchafalaya

The New Orleans Times Picayune senses something in the winds, and it is not just the smell of the petrochemical plants. The paper reported Tuesday the fact that "in recent weeks, just as the financial crunch has slowed business on a global scale, the state appears to have tipped toward a decline on key indicators, creating an unclear and perhaps gloomy forecast for Louisiana commerce and government."

Falling oil prices in a state where each dollar paid per barrel equates to $12 million dollars can wreck a budget in a hurry. Louisiana counts on severance taxes and royalties from oil and gas production on its turf. There are other shortfalls as well. Jindal's budget advisor, Angele Davis, told the press this week that corporate income tax has declined for the first time in five years and personal income tax has fallen for the first time in 20 years.

Louisiana is America's third largest producer of petroleum and also leads in petroleum refining. You will find the largest concentration of crude oil refineries, natural gas processing plants and petrochemical production plants in the entire Western hemisphere here. Louisiana supplies twenty five percent of the US supply of natural gas. Port Fourchon in Terrebonne Parish serves over 90 percent of the Gulf's oil production activity.

Go over any bridge from New Orleans to Lake Charles after dark and this fact is brought home with the orange glow of gas vents painting the night sky a sickly hue, blotting out the stars, and creating a huge carbon footprint. Louisiana is America's second largest producer of natural gas, supplying more than one-quarter of the total U.S. production. Louisiana pioneered the techniques of offshore drilling and the oil companies ruined the protective barrier of the wetlands in the process.

Speaking of wetlands, because of its bays and sounds, Louisiana has the longest coastline (15,000 miles) of any state and 41 percent of the nation's wetland -- or it used to before the last three years of hurricanes, beginning with Katrina and ending with Ike.

Louisiana leads in sugar cane production and petrochemicals. Louisiana is also home to "cancer alley," the geographical corridor between Baton Rouge, New Orleans and the Delta Parishes (counties). You will find clusters of the rarest childhood cancers here, as well as epidemics of lung cancer and spikes in childhood asthma during sugar cane burning season.

Image: Burnin' the cane outside Thibodaux

Louisiana's commercial fishing industry produces 25 percent of all the seafood in America. More shrimp are caught in Louisiana waters than in any other place in America, but the industry is in deep trouble because of foreign imports of cheaper farm raised shrimp, and the imports are full of pollutants according to some studies.

The standard of living in some areas compares with third world countries. You don't need a study to prove this. Just drive around.

Image: Neighborhood within 2 blocks of billion dollar ocean industry

This week George Bush was in Alexandria with the Central Louisiana Chamber of Commerce saying "I have heard that people's attitudes are beginning to change from a period of intense concerns --- I would call it near panic --- to being more relaxed," he said.

Chamber President Elton Pody was "impressed" that Bush took notes at the meeting, which he later folded up and put in his coat pocket, according to a report published on an Alexandria blog, Bush also said that without prayers and Christian guidance, he wouldn't know where he would be. He said that he was "sure the Lord would never give him more than he could handle."

One wonders if the same can be said of the poor and dispossessed of Louisiana. The oil machine is humming and perhaps that is why the national press ignores compelling social and economic issues, and no pressure is put on the candidates to comment specifically on how to fix our national energy policy.

Some may shrug and say, "well this is the deep south after all," still under the Napoleonic Rule of Law. That is a common misconception. It is incorrect to equate the Louisiana Civil Code with the Napoleonic Code but it is a regular occurrence.

Louisiana is the place where back bayous run deep and mysterious, home of filming for the Tarzan movies and creepy horror films. Holy Cajun healers practice here, and so do Voodoo priests and priestesses in a largely Protestant religious landscape.

Cajuns and Creoles, descendants of French-speaking Acadians from colonial French Acadia, populate the Delta region. They are the remnants of the great American Diaspora celebrated in Longfellow's Evangeline.

Driven out of Nova Scotia for refusing to pledge allegiance to British rule, the Acadian "migration" can be called a genocide and descendants are still paying the price. The cemeteries are hauntingly beautiful and Evangeline lives in memory in St. Martinsville as if she were real. Some believe that she was.

Evangeline's memory gives hope to a vanishing culture and lifestyle, where until recently, English was considered a second language in some areas.

Louisiana residents are experiencing a huge disconnect between what the politicians and industry experts are saying and the personal realities of their livelihoods. Louisiana lost 1,700 manufacturing jobs from August 2007 to August 2008.

Since the hurricanes of 2005-08, a large part of the labor force has left. No one knows for certain, but New Orleans seems to be short about 200,000 people since Katrina, most of them poor and reliably Democratic voters who have moved on. FEMA graft and mismanagement is an on-going story and no longer surprising or newsworthy.

General Motors recently laid off almost 800 employees at its Shreveport plant. No surprise there. The plant produces gas guzzling pickups and Hummers --- but if the oil continues to come out of the ground like never before --- producing those overnight millionaires, why lay them off? Is there enough oil, or not?

Other analysts say that the Louisiana economy is outperforming the nation because of oil, hurricane reconstruction, and imports fueled by a weak dollar. Talk to locals and the obvious question is "Where's the money?"

A 49-year-old grocery clerk at a neighborhood market in Morgan City said she has never registered to vote. When asked why, she did not bat an eye, saying, "Why should I? Politicians ain't gonna do nothin' for me baby."

Yeah, everyone here calls you, "baby." I kind of like it --- a comforting greeting for a road warrior.

I ask the clerk about the stories that there aren't enough workers to fill the offshore job openings.

She looks at me like I'm nuts and tells me that her two sons were laid off twice by the oil industry in the last year. They are welders and pipe fitters; just what the industry claims they are looking for. Morgan City has is anchored to the offshore drilling and oceaneering industries. The Morgan City Daily Review recently published a sixteen-page broadsheet supplement featuring three of the companies, Oceaneering, Diamond Services, and Veolia Environmental Services.

Morgan City is also home to "Mr. Charlie," a once cutting-edge offshore drilling rig that is now a training facility for would be roustabouts. Mr. Charlie drilled the first oil well for Shell in the Mississippi River and was kept in service for thirty years, before retiring to its place on the Morgan City waterfront in 1986.

I stopped by the rig museum where Charlie is tethered and class was in session for offshore trainees, so there is truth to the rumor that the jobs are out there.

Still, the money is not reaching the local economy. The neighborhood within shouting distance of Mr. Charlie looks like something out of the Great Depression. A source within the ocean industry responded to my query --- "Where's the oil money?" --- with the admonition that "perhaps the money just stays in the same circles." There is also the consideration that the older labor is unskilled.

Louisiana is also home to Capitol city Baton Rouge, named as "one of the best places to ride out the coming recession," by Business Week. "Gulf Opportunity Zone incentives following the 2005 hurricane season definitely have insulated Baton Rouge and New Orleans from the national financial downturn," Business Week said. I am wondering how this can be true.

So, is it possible to separate economic fact from fiction in Louisiana?

Editor/publisher Steve Shirley of the Morgan City Daily Review (circulation 5,597) sat down with OfftheBus for a good two hours and offered a regional tutorial. Shirley still runs his newspaper the old-fashioned way and prints the broadsheet in the back room on a mammoth Goss press. The Internet newspaper meets with a "real" newspaper guy. It's the local guys who understand their community best and Shirley is passionate about Louisiana. He's lived in the area for 35 years and hails from Spartanburg, SC, a southern boy, through and through.

Pale blue eyes flashing behind gold-rimmed glasses, Shirley moves his arms up and down as he illustrates Louisiana's economic fortunes in relation to the price of oil. Responding to a question about the seeming inequity of Louisiana's dismal place ranking in per capita income, Shirley is quick to respond that it was not always so.

"In the 1970's Louisiana was in the top five ranking for everything. The crash happened in the eighties when all of the white-collar jobs left and went to Houston. Mobile, Texaco and Shell, they all just left," Shirley said while his eyes conveyed deep frustration that it happened at all.

"After that we lost the blue collar coattail industries like Halliburton and Brown and Root. They all lost touch, keeping field offices open, but only the grunts stayed while the bosses left."

Shirley emphasizes that oil is booming. "Offshore is going and blowing like never before," he said.

Does he think McCain and Obama understand the economics of oil?

"What we need is a guy who can stop the US energy patch (oil producing capability) from being cyclical."

"So, the cry down here would be 'drill, baby, drill?'"

The blue eyes stare me down.

"Well, we are all for energy independence, I can tell you that," Shirley says. "Nobody will disagree, it rings the cash register, although I might want to change the slogan to 'Give us more of the royalties.'"

"In the seventies, when we were importing 25-30 percent of our oil, we were caught with our pants down. It was as crazy then as it is now. For two months after Ike, you had a hard time finding gas in the southeast."

Shirley leans back in his chair and reflects for a moment. My eyes drift to the crawl on the muted television, perched on a double set of file cabinets, tuned to CNN, and focused on the candidates out on the campaign trail. The editor stretches and gets me refocused and back to business.

"The most important thing Louisiana needs right now is a national energy policy. We have to take the roller coaster out of the economy here and learn to live within the reality of what we can do. We need the same economic protections and scale as corn producers. OPEC could put us in a real economic tailspin --- all we would need would be another terrorist attack. Fuel is volatile by its nature --- the energy market is volatile in a whole other way."

Shirley fidgets and stretches again. He is clearly frustrated, but it is not with the conversation.

"I don't think either Obama or McCain has a clue what to do about energy. America is in a serious leadership vacuum," he says.

"The little people like Joe the Plumber have no real influence on national politics. The pollsters tell the politicians what to say, but they won't deliver on the promises."

I wonder silently what "Horace the Roustabout" would have to say.

Driving through the dilapidated neighborhood just steps away from a billion dollar infrastructure, I spy Rose's Café. The sign says "open," so I park my car on the otherwise deserted street and try the front door, hoping for a cold one and conversation on a hot afternoon. A newer Dodge Ram Hemi cruises by slowly and the driver looks at me and then averts his gaze.

Bummer. A padlock ends my plans.

I regroup and decide to take a second drive out to see the decommissioned Mr. Charlie.

Image: View of barge from Mr. Charlie

Mr. Charlie becomes a distraction from my worry, and while no one is watching I climb to the top of the rig and look out across the waterway which holds the key to a nation's economic security, at least for the foreseeable future.

It feels romantic and nostalgic to be up here, alone, on Mr. Charlie. How many million gallons of crude were pumped through this infrastructure back in the day? I pull the notebook out of my back jean pocket and make a note to call someone with the question. One last look around and I bound down the steps, the height producing intoxication, and walk across the grass parking lot to my car. Turning around for one last look, I see that Mr. Charlie is not alone; an ancient tow vessel the "Clipper Patricia" is lashed to his side like a lover. The stories they could tell.

Oil will come into play later, but next up is a look at sugar, how it figures into the ethanol debate, and how "cane" has been both a blessing and a curse to the bayou country since slavery.

If only the candidates were interested in the story of Louisiana as well. It is a fantastic story and it is a wonder that the Delta is not crawling with writers and politicians

Harry Shearer: Bush Favors Texas Over Louisiana -- Even Bobby Jindal Notices

2008-09-18T23:05:13Z

As horrible as Hurricane Ike was to Texas, and it was, one can't help noticing the disparity in death tolls between Ike and Katrina. It is dispositive, I think, as to the difference between even the nastiest of hurricanes (the Ike event) and the breaching in more than fifty places of federally-built levees (the Katrina event).

Louisiana's Republican Governor Bobby Jindal has noticed another disparity, that between the federal government's willingness to lift a recovery burden off the state of Texas and its refusal to do the same for Louisiana.

Bush decided Tuesday to have FEMA pick up 100 percent of the costs for debris removal and emergency measures that Texas governments incurred when Hurricane Ike blasted ashore at Galveston last week.

When Jindal saw that, he decided to renew his call for eliminating the 25 percent share Louisiana must pay for the public costs from both Ike and Hurricane Gustav, which hit the state 12 days earlier.

"Singularly, each was a major disaster; combined, these storms amount to a catastrophic event for the state," Jindal wrote.

Even electing a Republican Governor can't help Louisiana keep this President's thumb off the scale.

GOP Superstars Cancel Convention Appearances

2008-08-31T10:25:25Z

ST. PAUL, MINN. -- As city workers hung American flags and added patriotic-elephant decorations along downtown streets Saturday, tens of thousands of Republicans from across the country began arriving here for the party's national convention.

But the festive atmosphere was dampened by growing concern over Hurricane Gustav, which is bearing down on the Gulf Coast; the arrest of protesters who police say planned riots; and cancellations by several high-profile speakers, including California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger.

John Sauer: Finding the Toilet in Stockholm

2008-08-27T14:56:21Z

Last week a mix of water and sanitation experts gathered for World Water Week in Stockholm, Sweden to mull over the world's biggest public health crisis. The problem is that not enough people paid attention.

Each year over 2 million deaths could be prevented with improvements related to access to safe drinking-water, sanitation and hygiene. To put that in perspective, we have it within our grasp to prevent the equivalent deaths of 10 Asian tsunamis or 1,000 Hurricane Katrinas. Yet a major effort--like those that have been launched to address HIV/AIDS and malaria--to tackle the global drinking water and sanitation crisis remains elusive. The scope of this disconnect is baffling; water- and sanitation-related diseases (like relatively-easy-to-prevent diarrhea) kill more children each year than HIV/AIDS, malaria, and measles combined.

One reason why there hasn't been a Herculean effort to address this global scourge is that we in the water and sanitation sector are not doing enough to influence how this issue is understood by others. We have not been proactive or coordinated enough to frame the issue to the media and the wider development community in an action-oriented "this-can-be-done" tone.

All too often, water and sanitation has been framed as a "privatization" issue instead of an "access" issue. This is problematic. The "privatization" frame is confusing. It too often results in a blame game that takes attention away from the end result of the sector's work: getting water and sanitation to those who need it. Many of the most innovative, scalable solutions to the water and sanitation crisis are locally initiated approaches, such as the production of latrine slabs or ceramic water filters. They are put in place by a combination of actors: beneficiaries, communities, governments, local entrepreneurs, corporations and NGOs. The work of all of them is necessary to solve this problem.

There is a great need for the water and sanitation sector to reframe the issue so that those outside the sector understand what is at stake and become part of the solution. This effort will take leadership, resources, and working together (for more than one week in Stockholm). I propose "universal access" as the theme that guides this new direction. Developed countries have had universal access to water and sanitation for nearly 100 years. It makes no sense why the rest of the world can't get universal access as well.

Another explanation why the water and sanitation crisis remains in the shadows is that "sanitation" specifically has been ignored. Let's face it-- diseases associated with sanitation, like diarrhea, do not have "disease appeal" for governments and donors. The result is that very few people in the general public even know that 2.5 billion people do not have access to improved sanitation--nearly half of whom actually have to resort to open defecation. Those who do learn are outraged and take action.

More resources must be devoted to recruiting sanitation champions. HIV/AIDS has a built-in constituency because many people have a direct connection with someone who has suffered from or died of HIV/AIDS. Malaria has David Beckham trumpeting its cause. Sanitation needs a brave soul to be its spokesperson.

It has become a joke in the sector that no one in their right mind would become a "sanitation spokesperson." But this is no laughing matter. The lack of sanitation is one of the main reasons there isn't greater progress towards enabling the world's poor to meet their basic needs; malnutrition, poor education and disease burden are all exacerbated by inadequate sanitation. And the plight of the poor becomes more related to the survival of all as the world gets smaller each day.

In fact, some high-profile individuals have spoken out about the urgency of access to sanitation and they should be applauded. Matt Damon, Ashley Judd, Keira Knightley are a few. Would they be willing to form a Sanitation Celebrity Council to move this issue to its tipping point?

So the appeal I'd make to the 2,500 experts who went to Stockholm is to start a "universal access" campaign and to make sanitation--the most important medical advance since 1840--a major part of it. It's time to elevate water and sanitation to the status that it enjoyed during the UN's first Water Decade, which ended in 1990. This is, after all, the second Water Decade (2005-2015) in case we forgot. It's time to get this done.

Logan Nakyanzi Pollard: Those McCain Houses... Why They Don't Matter

2008-08-22T20:41:09Z

The problem with John McCain and his houses is not that he has them or doesn't know how many he has. It's that most Americans aspire to be so lucky, to have his wealth.

So to belabor the point that McCain doesn't know how many houses he has - while it's witty and cute for the moment - shows a misunderstanding of 'the psychology' of how many Americans think. Americans want to be rich, they want to be so fortunate that they don't know how many houses they have.

A good example of the gap between how Democrats think and the reality of our culture is this exchange from "The Larry King Live" show, between King, Bobby Jindal and Bill Richardson:

KING: And John McCain answered, governor, does a guy who made more than $4 million last year, just got back from a vacation on a private beach in Hawaii, bought his own million dollar mansion with the help of a convicted felon, really want to get into a debate about houses? How do you respond, Governor Jindal, to all of that?

JINDAL: // I think what they really care about is how do they keep their own homes, how do they pay their mortgages, how they afford gas? What I think the candidates should be talking about is how do we get energy independence. I prefer Senator McCain's approach, with more domestic production, more nuclear, clean coal, conservation. Senator Obama has said he wants to raise taxes on gas on coal, on natural gas. He doesn't want more domestic production. He's against nuclear power for America.//

// KING: Do you think this house thing, Governor Richardson, has any traction?

RICHARDSON: It remains to be seen. I mean Senator McCain should know how many homes he has.

Richardson doesn't have a good comeback for Jindal, and Jindal is able to frame the issue in a way that makes McCain look good and Obama disconnected from the issues that people really care about.

So what might Richardson have said? Well, my problem with McCain, if I were to make the argument, is that he doesn't think about people like me.

And, here's a clip you've probably seen a few times, confusing key details about Iran: it hints at a certain laziness of mind. This kind of modus operandi from an influential person creates friction abroad because it says - I do not care. Even though I have access to a lot of information, I do not care to get the facts correct. I do not need to get the facts correct. And, it massages a feeling in all of us that we don't have to get the facts right. By setting this standard he conveys to us that none of us really need to know the facts. That maybe most of the time is good enough.

While it's arguable that a leader who comes up short, who has a flaw like this one, could surround himself with better men and women, wouldn't you rather someone who started out with better stuff to begin with?

Dems can capitalize on this. Because they seem to understand complication, nuance, and detail, they could play that strength. They could show that the other way of being in the world is dangerous. They could show how a simple-minded leader creates more chaos and how this type of person makes us less safe. They could show we need a leader to take us through chaos, not create more of it.

Todd Gitlin: Sunday Watch, 8-17-08: On Air Kisses and Free Passes

2008-08-18T13:58:44Z

[originally published on CJR.org, the Web site of the Columbia Journalism Review.]

Once again, ABC This Week’s roundtable tilted off-center, even without semi-regulars Sam Donaldson and Cokie Roberts to do the honors. (Perhaps Ms. Roberts, having sneered last week that Obama was making a big mistake in taking his vacation in “exotic” Hawaii, was on vacation someplace tidily normal, like Hilton Head, Rehoboth Beach, Kennebunkport, or even that fabulously apple-pie, heartland-homeland-Main Street town of her birth, New Orleans.)

It was left to old reliable George Will and former Bush speechwriter Michael Gerson to continue the wearisome work of insulating McCain from close scrutiny. Gerson, a right-wing evangelical whose expertise, I suppose, extends primarily to the question of evil, was presumably there to comment upon the Saddleback Church’s double interview of McCain and Barack Obama Saturday night. Will and Gerson did share one (probably inadvertent) nice moment: While Gerson rattled off an extended nonanswer to a George Stephanopoulos question about Russia, the camera caught Will looking away—unimpressed, I’d like to think, with all the smoke being blown by the man who wrapped George Bush’s lips around some of the emptiest phrases in human history.

What predominated were unanswerable questions about the effects of the Rev. Rick Warren’s interlocutorial exercise. E. J. Dionne of Brookings noted that, to prevail, Obama needed only to peel off a small percentage of the fundamentalist audience—a valid tactical point, but Dionne lacked the opportunity to make any argument against McCain as such. The fourth, ostensibly uncommitted seat was taken by network reporter Jan Crawford Greenburg, who proceeded to repeat the conventional blather about McCain the rodeo-riding, tall-in-the-saddle, staunchly stand-up independent maverick: “McCain again and again reaches across party lines.” No one intruded to disabuse her with the inconvenient facts.

If pundits want to note McCain’s maverick moments, fine. He’s had some. But it never ceases to amaze me (call me naïve) how this flattering label circulates uncorrected. (This same morning on Meet the Press, David Gregory let motormouth Bobby Jindal designate McCain a—surprise!—maverick and then roar on unimpeded.) Talk about Teflon. If I had a nickel for every time an anchor, moderator, or roundtable chief reminded listeners of the growing percentage of times McCain has voted with George Bush in the Senate—most recently 95 percent of the time in 2007 and 100 percent in 2008—I’d have…a nickel, or maybe a dime.

Speaking of vacant chairs, a visiting Martian on an inspection tour of the news media’s treatment of the world’s most important political event might wonder whether ABC’s round table, or anyone else’s, could find room once in a while for the authors of two recent McCain-deflating books: Matt Welch of McCain: The Myth of a Maverick and Cliff Schecter of The Real McCain. Welch, the editor-in-chief of Reason, is even a libertarian—bonus attraction!

The visiting extraterrestrial might also wonder why we have heard so little from the Arizona reporters who have been covering McCain for years. One of them, Amy Silverman, recently published a not awfully flattering profile in Phoenix’s alt-weekly New Times last week, featuring examples of McCain’s general nastiness and specific misogyny. True, Silverman’s examples are old ones, from the days when McCain was reinventing himself after being tarnished by a close association with the crooked banker Charles Keating. Still, given all McCain’s years in public life, it ought to be possible to bring forth observers of his career who can look beyond his often-noted and not exactly newsworthy years in Hanoi. Anyone interested in his years as a Navy lobbyist? His years of favor-granting for well-connected Arizonans?

To bring this column full circle, the following anecdote from Amy Silverman is apropos:

“I learned the [Washington journalists’] love lesson firsthand during the 2000 election, when — cajoled into doing an interview about McCain for a piece by TV newsmagazine 20/20 — I flew back and forth to Washington in a single day to be interviewed by Sam Donaldson, only to learn later from his producers that, whoops, Donaldson had decided he really liked McCain and didn't want to include anything negative in his profile.”

Tossing euphemism overboard, Time’s Joe Klein reached the acme of his nonfictional career this week when he wrote that “there is no excuse for what the McCain campaign is doing on the ‘putting America first’ front. There is no way to balance it, or explain it other than as evidence of a severe character defect on the part of the candidate who allows it to be used….[McCain] has made a fateful decision: he has personally impugned Obama's patriotism and allows his surrogates to continue to do that. By doing so, he has allied himself with those who smeared him, his wife, his daughter Bridget, in 2000.” Who will dare carry such Straight Talk onto the Round Table Express?

Jindal Can't Name Any Of McCain's "Big Ideas"

2008-08-18T08:25:53Z

This morning on NBC's Meet the Press, host David Gregory asserted that the Republican Party "used to be the party of big ideas." Gregory then asked his guest Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal (R-LA), "What's the big idea Senator McCain is campaigning on?" Jindal responded, "I think there's several," but couldn't provide an answer. Gregory asked again, "Where are the new big ideas of the Republican Party that John McCain is, is championing?" And again Jindal couldn't provide an answer.

Michael Carmichael: August is the Cruelest Month for Democrats

2008-08-07T11:12:43Z

August always marks the launch of tornado season, and today is especially poignant for it is the anniversary of the single most deplorable act in world history: the genocidal bombing of Hirsoshima -- an event that incinerated over 100,000 people in one atomic instant. Ominously August is the month when Democratic candidates traditionally meet their doom in a wasteland of presidential dreams.

It was August, 1968 when Mayor Richard Daley ordered the police to beat the Yippies in the streets of Chicago. Five hundred civilian casualties resulted, and Abraham Ribicoff addressed the Democratic National Convention to condemn Mayor Daley for his "Gestapo tactics." The Humphrey campaign dropped precipitously in the polls but valiantly fought back to a photo-finish with Nixon who barely eclipsed his rival in the sordid precincts of Daley's Chicago where the election was finally decided.

On August 1,1972 Thomas Eagleton withdrew from the Democratic ticket following embarrassing revelations about his medical history that included electroshock therapy.

In August 1984, rumors began to circulate about the unsavory business dealings of Geraldine Ferraro's husband, John Zaccaro, that destroyed her credibility and led to a massive Democratic defeat in the Reagan landslide.

In August 1988, George Bush, Sr.'s campaign launched the notorious "Willie Horton" TV spot that demonized Michael Dukakis who behaved like a deer caught in the headlights and failed to respond to the unscrupulous attack that drenched of racism.

In August 2004 the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth launched their scurrilous attack on John Kerry reversing the polarity of the election in one dreadful week when Robert Shrum vetoed any response while awaiting polling data that delayed the rebuttal for two tortuous weeks.

In August 2008 the Republican attack machine is zeroing in on Barack Obama with their brazen plan to finish him off this month by destroying his standing in the polls. This August the Republican method for executing another Democratic challenger will be a textbook political dissection. Karl Rove and his acolyte Steve Schmidt who is currently directing McCain's strategy unit have elevated character assassination to an art form.

At this point, the Republican attack on Obama appears to be working. Over the past eight weeks, Obama has dropped from a commanding double-digit lead to a dead even horse race that is now within the margin of error - or worse. If the campaign continues on this course, McCain will command a large lead by Labor Day.

However, the news is not all bad for there is still time aplenty for Obama to change the course of history and turn the tables on McCain. But the stakes are high and bound to go much higher next month when a flotilla of Republican 527s will launch simultaneous attacks on Obama from emails to websites to TV spots to a full length documentary designed to redefine his campaign as a dangerous cult of personality -- a mere fabrication of the mainstream media -- a puff of smoke -- a cavalcade of hype -- a particle of trivia -- nothing more, nothing less. In the Republican master plan, Obama's political demise will be a Pre-Columbian sacrifice by ritual mutilation -- a death by one thousand cuts inflicted via flickering images flashed across screens in our palms, our living rooms and our offices.

Barack Obama is on a remarkable journey. On his journey, he has to make a crucial decision. In the game of presidential chess, Obama must decide who shall become his Vice Presidential running mate -- a person capable of steering the ship of state should presidential succession take place during his term of office.

The Democratic National Convention convenes in two and a half weeks. Since the Olympics begin on Friday, there is little time for either Obama or McCain to make the selection of their Vice Presidential running mates public without the overbearing distraction of the Beijing Olympics.

Both candidates have deployed starkly different searches for their potential successors. McCain has openly considered a group of Republican hopefuls from Charlie Crist and Bobby Jindal and Mitt Romney.

Obama has observed the traditional ritual in his own way that is remarkable for its silence and mystifying in its obscurity. Word has leaked out that a few grandees are being vetted including: Evan Bayh, Joseph Biden, Tim Kaine and Kathleen Sebelius. While Hillary Clinton was being seriously considered, official word came last week that she would not be the nominee.

While each of these people have their merits, the most important characteristic for each of them is their strategic viability -- their unique abilities to help McCain or Obama win the election.

In a little studied and very under-reported poll by John Zogby, we learned that there is a very interesting method for determining the strategic viability of each of the Vice Presidential hopefuls.

On the Republican side in Zogby's poll, Mike Huckabee and Mitt Romney were virtually tied as capable of helping John McCain win the November election. For months the smart money has been on Romney for a constellation of reasons: personal rapport with McCain plus his immense personal wealth and his acceptance by the Bush Dynasty -- still the royal factor in the GOP.

But Zogby's results for the Democrats were much more interesting. While Hillary Clinton led the other Democrats, she brought the largest dollop of negatives to the ticket, in effect canceling out her positive impact. Bill Richardson had the same problem, while Joe Biden's negatives more than cancelled out his benefit to Obama. The results for Sebellius, Bayh and Kaine were just as depressing. They brought more negatives than positives to the ticket.

One person towered over the field of potential running mates for Obama, but he presents a mysterious paradox. Colin Powell was overwhelmingly the most popular potential Vice Presidential running mate for Barack Obama. Powell was the only candidate that would bring a net gain of circa thirty per cent to the Democratic ticket. A shift of this magnitude would cover the electoral map in a much deeper shade of blue and transform several states including: Virginia; North Carolina; South Carolina; Georgia; Colorado and New Mexico from red to blue.

The fact that Powell has been a Republican for the past decade or so is actually quite trivial. Powell is as apolitical as an American of his stature can be. A military commander tested in wartime, a Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, a Secretary of State -- Powell strengthens Obama's candidacy more deeply and more consummately than any other American. If he were to select Powell, Obama would reinforce public confidence in his role as a unifier, a uniter, a unique presidential candidate capable of redefining American politics at a critical juncture in world history.

Over the past two months Powell has made it known that he is now counseling Obama. That tantalizing fact suggests that -- at the very least -- Powell will endorse Obama in what would be a devastating reversal of fortune for McCain. Powell's role as counselor opens the door to his potential role as Vice President.

August is the cruelest month for Democratic tickets, but Obama has the opportunity to reverse the polarity of a troubled nation and to inaugurate a new era of world history. Whether Obama will select Colin Powell or Evan Bayh or Joseph Biden could seal the fate of his rivals or liberate them to follow their tried and trusted formula of August demolitions followed by September desecrations and the surprising events that are bound to come in October.

In one fell swoop, Obama could press the button and change the course of history. Perhaps that is why he has so conscientiously shielded his vice presidential contemplations from the gaze of his staff, his confidants, his loyalists.

Time will eventually tell what the thunder said.

Natasha Chen: Largest Asian-American PAC Endorses Obama

2008-08-03T03:14:39Z

On Saturday the largest Asian-American political action committee, the 80-20 Initiative, formally endorsed Sen. Obama for president. They decided on the endorsement after a day-long convention and discussion among 33 delegates of various ethnicities, ages and party affiliations. The delegates represent a national, nonpartisan organization of 700,000 supporters.

80-20's press release did include a caveat at the very end, to say that if Sen. McCain chose Gov. Bobby Jindal of Louisiana as his running mate, the organization would "view it very helpful in winning equal opportunity for Asian-Americans. In that event, this convention may reconvene" to reconsider its endorsement. But since vice presidential candidates are not yet known, and the 80-20 Initiative did not wish to speculate, leaders encouraged members to fully support Barack Obama, including financial donations to the campaign.

The PAC came to its decision after a three-hour discussion at the Crowne Plaza in Foster City, Calif., on the San Francisco peninsula. The debates centered on how effectively Sens. Obama and McCain would address issues of the Pan-Asian American community. The group specifically focused on equal opportunity in the workplace through the enforcement of Executive Order 11246 of 1965, which outlined laws for equal employment opportunity.

80-20 had sent out questionnaires early in the primary season to all presidential candidates, asking for their written commitment to equal employment opportunities, and to give Asian-American legal professionals equal opportunities to be judges at all levels of the Federal Courts. All the Democratic candidates responded to the questionnaire, but McCain never did.

"I'm very disappointed that John McCain did not respond to our questionnaire," said Victor Lee, a Republican delegate to the endorsement convention. "He didn't say no, but he didn't say anything." Lee said that as a Republican, it was hard to argue for a McCain endorsement at the convention, when McCain simply ignored the group's questionnaire. The questionnaire consisted of six questions, and can be found here.

The 80-20 Initiative is a national, nonpartisan group dedicated to the issues of Asian Pacific Americans. Saturday's convention followed group bylaws, under which one-third of the delegates must be Democrats, one-third Republicans and one-third Independents. According to the rules, the group may endorse one, both or none of the major party candidates for president.

The group formed six years ago with the intent of creating a swing voting bloc among Asian Americans. Putting aside political differences to look at this ethnic community's interests as a whole, the goal was for 80 percent of the community to vote for the candidate that the organization would endorse.

On Super Tuesday, the Asian American vote produced a 71-to-25 percent victory for Hillary Clinton in California, where Asian Americans make up more than 12 percent of the population. The 80-20 Initiative had endorsed Clinton before the primary, purely due to the candidates' timing. Clinton had responded to their questionnaire in December, while Obama did not respond until four days before Super Tuesday.

The Obama campaign sent surrogate Ted Lieu, a California assemblyman, to speak at the convention. The campaign also sent a video message from Obama's sister, who is half-Asian. The McCain campaign sent no representative. At the end of the day, all the delegates unified in support, based on what they described as unequivocal commitment from the Obama campaign to better the rights of Asian Americans.

Victor Lee said he would tell Republican friends beyond the Asian community to vote for Obama, because he said he'd like to spread the word and get the candidate in office who can deliver on the promise of giving Asian Americans the opportunities they deserve.

Lee was not the only Republican delegate feeling disappointed in McCain. Charles Zhang, a Republican from Michigan, said of their endorsement, "I know we'll probably pay more taxes. But the most important thing for Asian Americans is equal opportunity and justice...I hope during the next election, the Republican will do more for the Asian American community."

The 80-20 Initiative had even lacked the necessary number of Republican delegates to their endorsement convention initially, filling the last four spots only a week before the event. While Republican delegates bemoaned their own party's candidate, Democrats at the convention were expectedly upbeat. But a unified attitude of determination and full support for Obama eclipsed the usual party tensions .

"We have to separate the emotions from the 'brain' side of it," said Arthur Cheung, an Independent from Mountain View, Calif. Cheung, among the younger delegates present, had stood up in the rounds of introductions earlier and said, "My name is Arthur Cheung. I don't have kids and I'm not married. But I think the work we did here today will affect the future -- for my kids that I will have."

When asked whether issues of the pan-Asian community would trump matters of national security, economy or environment, Cheung let his actions speak for themselves. In 2004, when 80-20 withdrew their initial endorsement of John Kerry, in effect making no endorsement at all, Cheung did not vote in that general election. "Sometimes it's what you identify with. Some people identify with age, some identify with gender -- high on my list is ethnicity."

If these delegates and the other 700,000 members of the 80-20 Initiative follow through in such a fashion, Obama could very well have gained a large percentage of Asian American Republicans in just one day.

Bobby Jindal: McCain's Vice President?

2008-07-30T13:49:43Z

JULY 28 -- Louisiana Paper Says Jindal's Denial Isn't Definite: A Times-Picayune columnist suggests the governor could be privately jockeying for the job.

Rather than put speculation to rest, Jindal's comment -- which came as John McCain was planning a mysterious visit to Louisiana amid heavy chatter that he poised to choose a running mate -- set off a new round of confusion. ...

Jindal is a master practitioner of the "aw shucks, who me?" school of politics. He knows how to create the impression that he's just minding his business, when in fact he's lobbying behind the scenes.

JULY 23 -- Jindal Says He's Not Interested In VP Slot: Jindal says emphatically that he won't be VP.

Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal said Wednesday he will not run for vice president on the Republican ticket, adding himself to a growing number of those pulling themselves out of the race. ...

"Let me be clear: I have said in every private and public conversation, I've got the job that I want. And I'll say again on air: I'm not going to be the vice presidential nominee or vice president. I'm going to help Senator McCain get elected, as governor of Louisiana," Jindal said.

Jindal Pulls Himself Out Of VP Race

2008-07-23T13:47:53Z

Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal said Wednesday he will not run for vice president on the GOP ticket, making him among a growing number of those pulling themselves out of the race.

Jindal's comments come as speculation is swirling that John McCain might announce his running mate choice imminently, as a way to draw attention away from Barack Obama's high-profile overseas trip.

The Louisiana governor told "FOX & Friends" that he'd be "surprised" if the McCain campaign came down with a decision this week. And he threw water on the buzz about his own chances.

McCain Meeting With Jindal Shrouded In Mystery

2008-07-23T08:48:09Z

Mystery continues to surround Republican presidential hopeful John McCain's plans to interrupt a tour of battleground states today for a visit to New Orleans and a meeting with Gov. Bobby Jindal.

Campaign officials confirm that McCain will fly to New Orleans tonight but declined to give any more details about the visit. The trip attracted even more attention after a nationally syndicated columnist reported that McCain planned to name his running mate this week, sparking speculation that Jindal is a finalist.

McCain deflected the question Tuesday when asked whether was going to make an announcement this week.

John McCain To Huddle With Possible VP Pick Gov. Bobby Jindal Of Louisiana

2008-07-21T19:26:03Z

John McCain will huddle with vice presidential aspirant Bobby Jindal during a trip to New Orleans later this week, sources close to the campaign confirm to The Fix.

McCain's trip to Louisiana on Wednesday was the cause of much head scratching in the political world as it was not in keeping with a week of planned stops in battleground states.

But, the meeting with Jindal, who has been the state's governor since 2007, suggests that McCain himself is deeply engaged in the process of picking his second-in-command and that the youthful Jindal is under serious consideration.