Bobby Jindal is grandstanding in front of television cameras — taking interviews, and walking along shores in hard hats day after day. Oh yeah — he’s busy criticizing everyone else instead of taking his own huge share of the blame.

1.) It turns out Jindal has only bothered to deploy 1,100 out of 6,000 National Guard members to handle LA coastline.

It also was revealed that the state has called up only 1,100 of the 6,000 National Guard members authorized for the spill clean-up efforts, Peterson said.

2.) Also Jindal hasn’t yet dispersed the 25 Million in funds BP provided as a grant to assist LA immediately.

Peterson said that at a meeting Thursday with BP officials, coastal Louisiana legislators and representatives of the Jindal administration, it was disclosed that the state has spent only about $3 million of a $25 million BP grant for spill-related expenses, and that it has not yet issued a contract for BP’s $15 million grant to promote tourism attractions threatened by the spill.

NOLA’s article on what Jindal is really doing

All this time Southern Republicans have been pounding a drumbeat about both “states rights” and “drill baby drill” ; yet, when a direct outcome of those policies causes a massive accident, rather than having a state-level response, there are nothing but complaints.

Jindal himself is uniquely responsible for this current calamity — In 2006, Jindal sponsored the Deep Ocean Energy Resources Act (H.R. 4761), a bill to eliminate the moratorium on offshore oil and gas drilling over the U.S. outer continental shelf.

Fox News incredibly misrepresents Sarah Palin hosting “Real American Stories,” by trying to represent Palin interviewing guests such as:

Toby Keith — Country Music Star
James Smith (LL Cool J) — Hip Hop Musician
Jack Welch — Former G.E. C.E.O.
A Congressional Medal of Honor Winner

However, it turns out Uncle L blew the whole operation out of the water with a simple tweet:

“Fox lifted an old interview I gave in 2008 to someone else & are misrepresenting to the public in order to promote Sarah Palins Show. WOW” LL Cool J

To which Fox News, responded with class right? :

“Real American Stories features uplifting tales about overcoming adversity and we believe Mr. Smith’s interview fit that criteria. However, as it appears that Mr. Smith does not want to be associated with a program that could serve as an inspiration to others, we are cutting his interview from the special and wish him the best with his fledgling acting career.“

Brett Michael Dykes @ Yahoo.com [emphasis added]

Folks need to remember that Fox News behaves just like a political organization, rather than respond and say simply that James Smith (LL Cool J) was correct, Fox went out of their way to personally attack him even though Fox was clearly in the wrong.

HuffingtonPost has more:

Likewise, Toby Keith never sat down with Sarah Palin, Keith’s spokesman told HifFix. “We were never contacted by Fox,” Keith’s spokesman said. “I have no idea what interview it’s taken from. They’re promoting this like it’s a brand new interview.”
…
“If someone at Fox News Channel wishes you well, watch your back,” the AP’s David Bauder wrote in 2006. “The seemingly benign sentiment is a creative signature of Fox’s public relations, usually accompanied by a kneecapping. It’s something like a kiss from a Mafia don.”

So, either Erick Erickson has “sold-out” to make money on CNN or CNN has hired an “angry right-wing guy.”

Newsflash to CNN … replacing Lou Dobbs with a younger angrier guy is not going to help you compete with Fox News. In a contest for “teh crazy” Fox News will always win.

In spite of theGrio.com’s attempt at inflating Michael Steele’s tenure as the Republican National Committee chairman, I have always had my doubts about the ability for Steele to focus on the RNC as opposed to his on “career” as a political operative.

Once on the ground, FEC filings suggest, Steele travels in style. A February RNC trip to California, for example, included a $9,099 stop at the Beverly Hills Hotel, $6,596 dropped at the nearby Four Seasons, and $1,620.71 spent [update: the amount is actually $1,946.25] at Voyeur West Hollywood, a bondage-themed nightclub featuring topless women dancers imitating lesbian sex.

RNC trips to other cities produced bills from a long list of chic and costly hotels such as the Venetian and the M Resort in Las Vegas, and the W (for a total of $19,443) in Washington. A midwinter trip to Hawaii cost the RNC $43,828, not including airfare.

Jonathan Strong@TheDailyCaller [Emphasis added]

Greg Sargent @ theplumline.whorunsgov.com has a LaTimes article on Voyeur West Hollywood that describes the “intense” atmosphere.

While the RNC has said the person who spent the thousand+ at a bondage strip club was a “non-committee staffer,” they have yet to identify them.  So much for family values.  Other goodies from the Daily Caller piece — Steele had thoughts about buying a private jet.  These spending embarrassments have been a consistent under Steele’s tenure, sorry theGriot.com Steele is far from a success at the RNC.

I’ve written several times about the hypocrisy surrounding the Austin IRS terrorist and those like Congressman Steve King Iowa who are significantly interested the use of extreme measures in the “Global War on Terror.” The Austin IRS bomber (has anyone come up with a name that has stuck yet?) became a sympathetic figure in both anti-IRS fringe movements and some folks on the right like Congressman King.

Sullivan has a great catch from Mark Shea entitled “She says her Dad was a hero… “

Although she said that act was “inappropriate”, she hopes that “now maybe people will listen.” Charles Krauthammer has instructed us that if you have the “slightest belief” that torture will save a *single* life then you are morally bound to do it. Surely, there is at least the *chance* that this woman is linked to other extremists and terrorists. She was, after all, raised by an extremist and terrorist and she publically acclaims him as a hero…
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An interesting phenomena (or perhaps more accurately a “meme”) has happened in the American Media complex (I say that because there seem to be many implicit rules about how events are covered, and what subject matter is deemed worthy of discussion) — essentially any Muslim act of violence against the government has become a terrorist event.

However, as we notice with the Austin plane suicide event, the media has allowed the Austin authorities to downplay the terrorist intent of the perpetrator. That’s interesting given the perp essentially wrote a manifesto against the United States government and committed a suicidal act of violence against what he thought were government workers in a federal building.

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