BY EDWIN E. VINEYARD
“Aarrrgh!” This is the sound that comes from a thoroughly disgusted person who has just witnessed something nauseous. It is the sound of someone who just got a big taste of something sour after having a scrumptious dessert. It is the sound made by an intelligent person who has just heard something idiotic passed off as logic.
Actually, “Gaahh!” was the sound made by one female television political pundit. Asked by the moderator immediately after Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal’s response to the president’s speech before the Congress, the female commentator was speechless, although such pundits rarely are found so. She struggled, she choked, but still she sat there in jaw-dropping amazement of the inanity of Jindal’s presentation.
A little later, her contribution was, “Gaahh!” Then she found words to express her utter consternation.
And so it was with many of us who sat through the drama of an eloquent speech full of challenging proposals to the nation’s ailments, and then had this rambling set of party talking points, inanities, and even outright lies.
What is this about a super-science gravitational floating train from Disneyland to Las Vegas? Rush Limbaugh had been saying that, but that did not make it true. It should have been tax cuts, he says. Well, a large part of it was – to middle class working people, some 95% of citizens.
What about that Jindal’s conversation in the sheriff’s office, with [Bush] bureaucrats, during Katrina in New Orleans where he was not, but rather was known to be in Baton Rouge at the time. We don’t know what Louisiana swamp this guy came from, but he really made no sense.
Jindal has been labeled as a young “rising star” in the Republican Party. He appeared anything but a star that night. If this governor, along with Sarah Palin, are the future leaders of the party, then it is doom and gloom ahead. Even his fellow Republicans are now rejecting him, because he was such a dud.
Turning back to an earlier occurrence, after the speech in the House chamber this observer saw Oklahoma Sen. Tom Coburn shake President Obama’s hand and the two shared a momentary hug and a few words. This was a surprise. One wonders if the President had struck a responsive chord in the senator. One wonders if by chance Coburn offered to help the president with his health care proposals.
Would it not be a wonderful change, a fresh new breeze, if the conservative, constantly negative Coburn would find something to be positive about? Wouldn’t it be something if Coburn were to be found not only supportive of something good for the country, but actually out there leading the way instead of blocking progress?
That is much too much to hope for, we suppose. It seemed to be a good sign. But it would be nice if the party of “NO!” would become positive, would actually participate, and even lead jointly some of our national recovery efforts.
Of course, some like Sen. Rick Shelby of Alabama would say, “When hell freezes over.” Recently, Shelby was caught repeating the old lie that Obama was not eligible to be president since he was not born in America. They’re actually spreading that manure again [even state Rep. Mike Ritze, R-Broken Arrow, raising such questions]. News media were helpful by showing again Obama’s birth certificate in Hawaii.
It is shameful for party leaders to keep repeating those old lies about Obama’s birth, his being a Muslim, and hanging out with terrorists. There are nuts all over America and Oklahoma who believe that trash peddled by their current unofficial leader Rush Limbaugh and his ilk at Fox News.
It is no wonder we have so many crazies out here in America, if that line of trash talk is all they ever hear. But still they are supposed to be intelligent, thinking, human beings.
They are equally responsible for choosing to remain misinformed, just as the German people were to blame for the frenzy with which they took Goebbel’s propaganda to heart prior to World War II.
– Dr. Edwin E. Vineyard, AKA The Militant Moderate, lives in Enid, OK and is a regular contributor to The Oklahoma Observer
