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Saturday, February 28, 2009

Mr. Jindal, your pants are on fire
Posted by Jill | 7:51 AM
This guy is supposed to be a Rhodes Scholar. Why does he feel he has to make shit up? Or is that just part of the conservative DNA these days?
Remember that story Bobby Jindal told in his big speech Tuesday night -- about how during Katrina, he stood shoulder-to-shoulder with a local sheriff who was battling government red tape to try to rescue stranded victims?

Turns out it wasn't actually, you know, true.

In the last few days, first Daily Kos, and then TPMmuckraker, raised serious questions about the story, based in part on the fact that no news reports we could find place Jindal in the affected area at the specific time at issue.

Jindal had described being in the office of Sheriff Harry Lee "during Katrina," and hearing him yelling into the phone at a government bureaucrat who was refusing to let him send volunteer boats out to rescue stranded storm victims, because they didn't have the necessary permits. Jindal said he told Lee, "that's ridiculous," prompting Lee to tell the bureaucrat that the rescue effort would go ahead and he or she could arrest both Lee and Jindal.

But now, a Jindal spokeswoman has admitted to Politico that in reality, Jindal overheard Lee talking about the episode to someone else by phone "days later." The spokeswoman said she thought Lee, who died in 2007, was being interviewed about the incident at the time.

This is no minor difference. Jindal's presence in Lee's office during the crisis itself was a key element of the story's intended appeal, putting him at the center of the action during the maelstrom. Just as important, Jindal implied that his support for the sheriff helped ensure the rescue went ahead. But it turns out Jindal wasn't there at the key moment, and played no role in making the rescue happen.

There's a larger point here, though. The central anecdote of the GOP's prime-time response to President Obama's speech, intended to illustrate the threat of excessive government regulation, turns out to have been made up.


So the Great Female Hope of the Republican Party makes shit up about saying "Thanks but no thanks" about the "bridge to nowhere", and now the Great Male Hope makes shit up about practically holding back the waters with his magical exorcising hands. Of course, if you look at who Republicans believe -- people like Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, and Bill O'Reilly, you realize that truth doesn't have a whole lot of resonance for these guys.

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3 Comments:
Blogger Melina said...
Another psycho....the GOP seems to think that because Bush and Cheney carried off so many lies in an institutional forum that it continues now.
Too bad that all they have left are the cartoon characters who definitely cant carry it off.

maybe Americans are finally just plain tired of being lied to...? Is that possible?
2/28/09, 10:07 AM  
Blogger DBK said...
Read Somerby. When I saw the liberal blogs on this story originally, I went to the transcript. Somerby today points out the complete bogosity of Marshall and Olbermann and Maddow on this story. Jindal may have been trying to misrepresent, but Marshall, Olbermann, and Maddow all very clearly misrepresented.

When the Republican noise machine did it, we all saw through the scheme. Don't be fooled by the Democratic noise machine. Yes, Jindal is a conservative and I, for one, don't agree with him on much of anything, and yes, his speech was pretty bad, but he didn't say what they claim he said.
3/2/09, 1:03 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...
It reminds me of the time Reagan told some "true" story that actually was a scene from "Hellcats of the Navy" !
3/2/09, 4:25 PM  
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