If You Can't Beat'em, Join'em

Dear Citizens,

Last night the Republicans rolled out their best version of Obama, Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal. Young, ethnic and highly educated. That's where the comparison ends. In his address, Obama spoke to us as adults. Jindal seemed to be speaking to a group of third-graders. I admit it was difficult to take him seriously because he reminded me of an Indian-American version of Kenneth - The Page on "30 Rock." If I remember correctly, there was an episode where Kenneth reminisced about his Daddy taking him to the store. (Okay, I made that up.)

I'm sure Jindal has lots of potential as a Republican politician but last night he didn't say much. What could he say? He was a little sideways in stating the stimulus bill was "irresponsible" considering he accepted $3.7B of the $3.8B offered to LA. (I suppose only $100M was irresponsible.) He also didn't mention the billions the evil government paid to rebuild after Katrina.

IMO, we are the government and we gotta do what we gotta do. Yes, the current state of affairs and resulting stimulus plan is painful and unfair in many respects; especially for fiscally responsible American citizens. As one of those citizens, I don't like it... but I'm willing to look at the big picture and what's at stake for all of us.

Okay, so we must act quickly in this crisis and there's a lot of ground to cover. I'm all for getting the heart beating again ("clear!") while simultaneously making things happen like health care reform. Because we, the government, are historically slow to act, I'm hesitant to say let's be careful about acting all at once. We don't want a mind-boggling amount of money to be squandered. There must be change at the core or money won't fix anything. Obama recognizes this.

Lastly, the atmosphere in the house chamber was so incredibly different from the last - well, forever. Where has our leadership been for all these years?

Obama gave a brave and highly ambitious speech. And, yes, we need his kind of leadership.

CitizenB