Jindal could land major role at GOP convention

As it appears Gov. Bobby Jindal is getting the prime speaking slot at the Republican national convention, of course this causes no end of consternation for liberals.

Perhaps a little luster is off Jindal's shine courtesy of tax-cutting and absurdly high legislator pay raise waffling, but if Jindal aspires to higher office, he's got a few years to regain it and polish it with a solid conservative agenda and record. Making the keynote speech at a convention offers a prime opportunity to continue this process, and history shows it can be an important stepping-stone for a party politician with national ambitions.

This is not a welcome development for liberals, who regard Jindal as one of the most dangerous conservatives around to tear down their playhouse of governing. His unabashed, thoughtful argumentation for conservatism is damaging enough to expose the bankruptcy of liberalism, but worse is he's the "closest thing to a minority" on the GOP side.

At least that seems to be the line now coming from one prominent Democrat, former Gov. Kathleen Blanco operative Bob Mann who bailed out of that job into a cushy academic sinecure. The change in profession doesn't seem to have sharpened Mann's demographic and/or reasoning skills: 2006 estimates of a U.S. population of just under 300 million show that 19 million call themselves other than white, black, Hispanic, Asian, or native Indian, which includes southeast Asian Indians of the same ethnic stock as Jindal. By any real definition southeast Asian Indians like Jindal are not "close" to being an ethnic minority in America, they are.

But liberals like Mann can't allow themselves to think that way because to them a "minority" is a group who is "disadvantaged" in an economic sense and, frankly, Asians of almost any ethnicity do decently in America. No, to them a "minority" is "disadvantaged" because they are being "oppressed" in some way, by virtue of race, gender, class, or whatever suspect category and thus deserve some kind of preferential treatment. (Why Asians escape "racism" to allow them to prosper, liberals never can say.)

Naturally, Jindal subscribes to none of this nonsense, realizing the locus of success or failure economically resides in the individual, not from "racism" institutionalized in our societal institutions (any impulses of which are suppressed by law), or any other aspect of the economic system. Liberals cannot allow this to be understood because their whole hustle is on the idea that only they and their policies can empower people, whereas …
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Kennedy Again asks Landrieu for Debate Series
(The Advocate)

Republican U.S. Senate candidate John Kennedy on Wednesday again asked incumbent Democratic U.S. Sen. Mary Landrieu to commit to a series of campaign debates.

“I have talked about it and asked for the debates since qualifying. I thought I’d try one more time,” Kennedy said.

“There are a lot of issues in front of us — from energy to immigration to the war — and I think it’s important that voters know where we stand.”

Landrieu could not be reached for comment. Her campaign spokesman, Scott Schneider, said the senator was in an airplane Wednesday afternoon and unavailable for an interview.

“We are still going over the debate invitations and have not finalized the debate schedule,” Schneider said.

Kennedy’s campaign released a letter addressed to Landrieu in which he seeks a televised debate in each of the state’s seven congressional districts prior to the Nov. 4 election.

Favor for Salazar comes back to burn Louisiana seantor

All one needs to know to understand how Democrats campaign for office can be learned from watching Star Trek, at least its The Next Generation spinoff, as recent actions on the issue of energy concerning Louisiana's Sen. Mary Landrieu and Rep. Don Cazayoux demonstrate.

First, let's review a primer of Democrat strategy, and then the important concepts to be learned from ST:TNG. The most basic principle of today's American political world is that if Democrats and/or liberals display and behave who they really are, they cannot win national elections thus power. Their beliefs and desires are so at odds with the majority's views in America, as well as what is best for Americans as a whole, that (as long as their opponents express principled conservatism and don't merely echo the bankrupt liberalism of the Democrats) an informed, thinking electorate will deny them the White House and a majority in Congress.

Therefore, Democrats must present a chimera of what they really are to win. Here is where concepts from ST:TNG can be useful and used. In the science-fiction television series set in the 24^th century, science has created holographic imaging that is virtually indistinguishable from reality. Democrats seek to create the same: they want the public to see the holographic images they choose to represent their candidates which will appear to be much closer to the median voter than in reality, not their candidates as they really are.

Also present in the future according to the series is a "cloaking device." Some galactic powers equip their vessels with these to move around largely undetected. Just so with the Democrats: they employ cloaking devices over various issue preferences of their candidates to hide or obscure as much as possible their true records and issue preferences because, again, nationally they are out of step with the electorate's.

But if this isn't enough, Democrats try to resort to another nifty device of the future. Among the advanced powers, the series shows them using "shields" that, to varying degrees and with varying degrees of success, prevent incoming weapons, transportation, and/or communication from occurring relevant the protected object. For Democrats, weaponry concerns them as they do not want opponents pointing out the true beliefs and records of their candidates (called "attacks") so their frequent response is to rotate between two different kinds of shields, "inoculation" and "relativity."

The inoculation shield appears when a Democrat with a series of liberal votes or actions attempts to negate that record by arguing he has cast a conservative vote here or there. This is an attempt to fool the public into thinking a small handful of votes entirely defines the candidate, hiding the …
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Landrieu attacks Kennedy in TV Ad

(The Advocate)

Democratic incumbent Mary Landrieu launched her first TV attack ad Tuesday against her Republican opponent in the U.S. Senate race, a spot that portrays John Kennedy as an office-shopping politician.

Kennedy, meanwhile, this week will air his first television ad of the campaign, a sign that the campaigns are stepping up their TV presence in what so far has been a media campaign mainly defined by press releases, e-mail criticisms and Internet postings.

Landrieu has run two other spots, but the latest 30-second statewide ad is the first televised attack ad offered by a candidate in the race.

In it, a narrator lists offices for which Kennedy, the state treasurer, has run over the years as a Democrat - before switching to the Republican Party last year.

Radio ad hits Cazayoux on drilling

(The Advocate)

If voters in the 6th U.S. Congressional District have forgotten in the last 24 hours how Republicans and self-described conservative groups feel about domestic drilling, prepare to be reminded.

A new radio advertisement accusing U.S. Rep. Don Cazayoux, D-New Roads, of blocking multiple efforts to increase domestic energy production is scheduled to hit the airwaves today.

“Instead of staying in Washington to fix the problem, he was the deciding vote to send the House on a five-week recess,” the advertisement states, referring to the 213-212 vote that allowed Congress to recess for its “district work period.”

Cazayoux faces state Sen. Bill Cassidy, R-Baton Rouge, and state Rep. Michael Jackson, No Party-Baton Rouge, in the Nov. 4 general election.

Favor for Salazar comes back to burn Louisiana senator

Democratic national convention may lack Southern support

One needs to go beyond surface impressions to understand why southern Democrat candidates for Congress - even the ones bestowed with party leadership status and made delegates - seem reluctant to attend their own party convention.

All those named in this category are participating in competitive contests, just as are some Republican seatholders skipping the GOP version. However, a notable difference is that the latter are veteran lawmakers fighting in tossup battles, while many of the Democrats either seek to win initially or won very recent special elections. In other words, the GOP absentees clearly are identified with the GOP and will sacrifice that for more campaigning opportunities, while the Democrats planning on playing hooky have but a tenuous connection in people's minds with that party and seem disinterested in strengthening that.

Or to put it more bluntly, Republicans are trading away reinforcement of positive identification for more campaign time, while Democrats are avoiding any identification to better mold an image at odds with what Democrats are all about. This is because the districts they are trying to win, or win again after just a few months, contain majorities that oppose the bulk of what Democrats believe.

One analyst argues that this avoidance deals with racial attitudes connected to the party's presumptive presidential nominee Sen. Barack Obama. That's a bit too simplistic: while some voters in these districts will react negatively to Obama's being black, many will object to him because he, the most liberal senator in that body, represents all too well everything that modern Democrats stand for - pro-abortion, gun control, higher taxes, bigger government, drill never, blame America, global tests, and withdraw now (even as he tries to move away from several of these).

Another observer notes this but wonders whether these candidates have misjudged Obama's top-down appeal on the ticket and could later try to create a stronger link between them. That itself misjudges the real situation: any Democrat in the South who wants to win a national seat must avoid always insinuations of attachment to Obama's liberalism and the growing sense that his flip-flops on issues (which he denies are precisely that because he is supposed to be the candidate of principled change) to obfuscate that liberalism make 2004 Democrat nominees Sen. John Kerry look stable. Until Nov. 4, almost always these candidates will avoid Obama like the plague.

You can't ignore the Democrat playbook in the South - support God and guns, avoid and obscure almost every other issue - that produces the only way such a candidate can …
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Oil drilling issue hot political topic
(The Advocate)

The debate raging in Washington over domestic oil drilling has become one of the first campaign topics among those vying for congressional seats in Louisiana in the fall.

Republican candidates and political groups say Democrats in the U.S. House and Senate talk about their efforts to lower gasoline prices but have nothing substantial to show for their words.

Democratic incumbents are warding off attacks with their voting records, new legislative proposals and requests to leadership to open discussion on the issue.

Offshore oil drilling already is the subject of a number of campaign commercials that many expect to only increase as the congressional elections draw closer.

A self-described Republican activist acknowledged Monday he sent out a political mailer smearing Mayor-President Kip Holden, but refused to say who paid him to do it.

Scott Wilfong said he was paid through his business, Capital Business Services, to send out the mailers that allege the mayor had an affair with a married woman and was beaten up by her husband.

“I didn’t write it, I didn’t print it and I wasn’t responsible for its content. I simply did a job for a client and sent them out,” said Wilfong, whose post office box and postal permit were on the mailings.

Holden has called for a criminal investigation by the FBI and the state Attorney General’s Office into the brochure distributed through the U.S. Postal Service last week.

Boasso chosen as port director

Oil inaction peeves some Demos

The Democrat playbook for the South - support God and guns, avoid and obscure almost every other issue - it's getting a mite hard for Rep. Don Cazayoux to handle because the political party to which he pledges his fealty keeps reminding Louisiana voters it does not reflect their views and, as a consequence, neither can Cazayoux.

U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi refuses to schedule activity that could lead to increasing drilling for offshore oil, an activity with little environmental consequence that will send prices down in the short term through knowledge that future supply will be less constricted, and with that supply coming will keep prices down permanently. Understand the ideological imperative why Democrats back Pelosi on this - under the guise of environmentalism, they wish to provoke antipathy towards the private sector because of high fuel prices and to channel frustration into greater acceptance of government intervention. This suits their long term objective of empowering themselves by getting control of government and having government take control more and more of the people's lives and their resources.

So Pelosi won't back down, which supposedly disturbs Cazayoux so much that he fires off a letter criticizing the leadership for its varied phantom solutions to a simple regulatory/marketplace problem. And it provide another demonstration of Cazayoux's strategy to retain power - provide cheap talk but being unable or unwilling to follow through for his constituents.

Simply, Cazayoux cannot overcome the internal contradictions of what put him into office. He says one thing and does another, or complains about the very people he continues to allow to stay in power - both which highlight the fact that his talk is cheap and his constituents deserve far better than what he delivers. The impact of the letter doesn't so much convey he's fighting for his constituents but that he's impotent in doing so - by his own free will.

An intellectually honest lawmaker, rather than talk about, would try to act on his principles, in this instance either trying to oust Pelosi, or to switch parties. But Cazayoux won't because he agrees with most of what Pelosi and liberal Democrats believe which is the opposite of his district's ideology. This letter merely tries to deflect people from thinking otherwise and even for those who believe Cazayoux can be two incompatible things at once, it's clear that he has no influence in the party with this useless effort so what's the point in having a zero representing you?

The deception works only if the public is not alerted to it. …
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AP: Thompson under fire before he left
(AP)

The first resignation from Gov. Bobby Jindal’s Cabinet was a surprise, and still hasn’t been explained.

Richard Thompson spent about five months as head of the Office of Youth Development, which oversees youth prisons. He took charge in February at an agency that has been trying to shake Louisiana’s reputation as a state that locks up its young prisoners without bothering to train them for life on the outside.

Critics didn’t like Thompson from the start, even before he arrived in Baton Rouge with an unusual résumé that included cosmetology in the Caribbean. Once in office, he failed to impress the panel of elected officials that oversees his office.

Thompson declined to explain why he resigned late last month, except to say that he’s recently been blessed with two grandchildren, one in Alabama and one in Puerto Rico. He has been traveling and unavailable for comment, said Jerel Giarusso, his former OYD spokeswoman.

Session’s new laws up costs

(The Advocate)

The costs of food and gasoline are not the only prices that are rising.

During the recent regular session, the state Legislature approved a number of bills that will impact consumers’ pocketbooks.

Expect higher costs for college tuition, weekend getaways, car insurance, traffic violations and pets.

Text messaging while driving could cost you $175 in fines. Habitually taking your child to school late could reduce your bank balance by $50.

The Legislature doubled fines, created new ones and very likely increased insurance rates for many.

Ignored law leaves taxpayers in the dark

State Progresses toward health weight

Elderly, disabled aid costs soaring

Louisiana never has been good at making good health care spending choices with public money. The first signs that this may be changing perhaps are appearing.

For decades the prevailing philosophy was to take anybody considered low income with more than a mild long-term disability (through misfortune or aged infirmity) and to warehouse them in institutions either run by the state or private sector. The lobby that built up around nursing homes to keep the gravy train rolling eventually would exacerbate this trend and send costs (compared to other states on a per capita basis) sky high and force many who could have remained productive citizens in the community into shut-in situations.

But the backlash finally came through the Barthelemy case (which technically remains active since a settlement is being played out) where the state agreed it was not doing enough to provide elderly and disabled care in the least restrictive environment. This brought forth a Medicaid waiver program that would pay for home- and community-based care - but with an important indicator that it should do so only where the expense would be reduced as compared to institutionalization.

Unfortunately, spiraling costs of the state's Elderly and Disabled waiver are casting doubt on the program's effectiveness as well as stressing taxpayers. Fortunately, a solution is at hand.

The major flaw in the program is that from the start it has been first-come, first-serve. If one met a certain level of disability, one qualified, with no distinctions made in degree of disability. Further, when entering the waiting list (which has never come into the 90-day target of the settlement and in fact now stretches for years) it's strictly done on chronological basis. Therefore, you have some people with severe disability waiting for years to get any services, while there are other only mildly disabled who have had services for years, and others like that who will get them prior to those worse off.

This makes no sense and a major change floating around the state's Department of Health and Hospitals is to adjust service levels to the degree of disability and to create priorities on the waiting list along the same criterion. If implemented, these changes will send dollars where they really are needed and better accomplish the original goal of the program.

(It should be noted that this program is a Medicaid waiver, meaning to qualify the household must be near the poverty level. State policy for the infirm and disabled for those households lower middle class and above in income and/or assets is simple if immoral - they get no help from this kind of program. Or, to be more blunt, if …
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3 Senate Seats Now Held By GOP At Big Risk Of Being Taken By Dems

A not-so-new Zogby Interactive poll puts Republican state Treasurer John Kennedy up by six points over Democrat incumbent Sen. Mary Landrieu, with her treading in almost impossible waters to win reelection at 41 percent. It's been out for over a month but only publicized today in conjunction with the release of other Senate contest polls by Zogby. Yet release of these somewhat stale results drew a swift response from the Landrieu campaign organization which raises a larger question about the viability of her effort.

The critique was a mixture of the valid, invalid, and hypocritical. Most of it concerned that the Zogby effort gathered voluntary Internet responses, rather than random contacts who then volunteered to participate. While the statement was long on criticisms of the Zogby method, it overstated them (to some degree the non-random/voluntarism problem can be mitigated by certain selection methods) and understated problems with its comparison group of random, presumably telephone polls (principally, the growing problem of voluntary nonresponse and non-random sampling due to the proliferation of cell phones as solitary lines for a household).

It also pointed out that Zogby had been paid last year by the Kennedy organization for a campaign, but failed to note that this one was independent. While insinuating that Zogby therefore would bias results to favor Kennedy, it failed to acknowledge the Landrieu campaign was ripe for the same charge with a poll down by a Democrat operative paid for by her campaign in May which showed her with a tremendous lead. Even that one and none yet done have put her over the presumed magical 50 percent line: any incumbent who cannot go over 50 percent conventional wisdom declares her to be in danger.

That is the real reason the group so savagely attacked the results of the latest Zogby poll. Over the life of polling this race, Landrieu still treads overall barely above 46 percent; industry folks who consider an incumbent who cannot average over 45 percent as a likely loser. If the campaign itself felt confident, it would have issued a simple statement to the effect that polls go all over the place, most have Landrieu ahead, the latest of all (Rasmussen) had her up five at 49, etc. If things are all right, why get upset about a poll which is a snapshot five months before the actual vote?

But the vigor at which it went after these results showed a nerve got hit and means two things likely are happening which have the Landrieu campaign very worried. First, their …
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