(H/T: Instapundit) The Atlantic’s Chris Good, on Governor Jindal’s (correct) observation that polls show that the public does not support the Democrats’ health care plans:

Of the most recent, reliable, non-partisan major polls–a Sept. 12 Washington Post/ABC survey, an Economist/YouGov survey released Sept. 15, and a Sept. 25 NY Times/CBS poll–only the first shows Americans opposed to Democratic plans (48 percent to 52 percent); the other two show Americans in favor, though NY Times/CBS found that 46 percent say they don’t know enough to decide.

Slate’s Mickey Kaus, after noting that Good unaccountably ignored Economist/YouGov polls done after September 15th, not to mention some others that destroyed Good’s narrative, provides a correction:

Of the most recent, reliable, non-partisan major polls–a Sept. 12 Washington Post/ABC survey, an Economist/YouGov survey released Sept. 29, and a Sept. 25 NY Times/CBS poll–two of the three show Americans opposed to Democratic plans. The only one showing even a plurality in favor is the wacky NY Times/CBS survey that managed to generate a 46 percent undecided number. [E.A.]

I know that the Atlantic is getting to be one of those places that seem to be overly tolerant of bizarre conspiracy theories, but this is bush-league stuff - and easily checked. One wonders why nobody did.

Or why nobody’s fixed this yet, either.

Moe Lane

Crossposted to Moe Lane.

Consider this your must read of the day.

The left in Washington has concluded that honesty will not yield its desired policy result. So it resorts to a fundamentally dishonest approach to reform. I say this because the marketing of the Democrats’ plans as presented in the House of Representatives and endorsed heartily by President Obama rests on three falsehoods.

Bobby Jindal, more than probably anyone else in elected politics right now including Barack Obama and his Secretary of Health, is probably the most qualified person to talk about healthcare reform.

Read the whole thing here.

Sometimes you have to wonder if reporters just do dictation for Democrat Press Secretaries. Check out this story by Politico’s Andy Barr. He invented a debate between Louisiana Republican Governor Bobby Jindal and former Vice President Dick Cheney to make sure that it had the White House’s framing, no matter how far from the truth it was, excluding all sorts of essential facts.

You see, Jindal was on Good Morning America, Jindal came on right after Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano, who had just attacked Cheney. The GMA host asked Jindal to respond to Napolitano about Cheney. Jindal ducked and attacked Obama’s policies. Watch it:

But look at how Barr reported it:

“I think Democrat or Republican, we should all agree that our current president, our former president would obviously want to do everything they could to keep us safe,” he said. “Let’s give the new administration a chance. Let’s not question their intentions. Let’s have a real debate on their policies.”

The Republican governor praised Obama for “showing more flexibility when it comes to Iraq than maybe some of the campaign rhetoric suggested.”

“I am, quite honestly, pleasantly surprised,” he said. “That’s the kind of pragmatism, listening to the commanders on the ground, I think is very important.”

Jindal did offer some criticism of the president, pointing out that it is “fine to have an honest disagreement on the policies that both administrations would choose to try to keep us safe.”

Somehow Barr’s report manages to exclude Jindal’s criticism over Guantanamo prisoners, which was one of Cheney’s specific attacks. He also excluded the fact that the question asked was explicitly in response to Napolitano’s attack on Cheney. Or even that Jindal didn’t even mention “Cheney”, “Vice President”, or anything like that.

And that tells you really what you need to know. Like with Rush Limbaugh, the White House is trying to pick their opponents. They want to be debating Dick Cheney, not Bobby Jindal. GMA didn’t give the White House’s framing by asking Jindal to respond to Napolitano. So Barr stepped in to frame it up with the White House’s preferred story-line, points of disagreement. What was “Cheney attacks Obama”, “Napolitano attacks Cheney”, and “Jindal attacks Obama” was twisted into “Jindal attacks Cheney” by aggressive editing and removal of context.

This is just a reporter taking dictation for the White House. Nothing more complicated.

Fantastic! Have you heard about the speech? As CNN writes about it:

Jindal described the premise of the question — “Do you want the president to fail?” — as the “latest gotcha game” being perpetrated by Democrats against Republicans.

“Make no mistake: Anything other than an immediate and compliant, ‘Why no sir, I don’t want the president to fail,’ is treated as some sort of act of treason, civil disobedience or political obstructionism,” Jindal said at a political fundraiser attended by 1,200 people. “This is political correctness run amok.”

Jindal said his answer is, “It depends on what he is trying to do.”

Absolutely, and that is what the rest of us have been talking about.

If Barack Obama wants to save the free markets, we’d support him. But we can see thus far that Obama has no interest in saving anything — he wants to destroy the free market so he can import European style socialism into the country. More regulations, more bureaucracy, more government control, more intervention, and less freedom — that’s Barack Obama’s America.

That’s also a second class America run by a Democrat kleptocracy in Washington.

We don’t want that, which is precisely why we want Obama to fail.

Here, though, is an important corollary. We know Obama’s policies will actually fail. They will fix nothing, but will destroy much. Sadly, to Barack Obama, those failures are how he defines success. Without the destruction, he can’t change the stars on the flag yellow and change the blue field on the flag red.

When we talk about this, we must speak clearly because of the corollary. We must point out that Barack Obama has been successful in getting his economic policies through Congress and we must point out that those policies have made things worse. The public grows weary of Obama trying to escape blame and put this all off on the Bush administration. He, after all, went begging for the job. The people gave it to him and don’t appreciate his feigned “I didn’t realize it would be like this” cry. He bought it, he broke it, he owns it.

Fantastic! Have you heard about the speech? As CNN writes about it:

Jindal described the premise of the question — “Do you want the president to fail?” — as the “latest gotcha game” being perpetrated by Democrats against Republicans.

“Make no mistake: Anything other than an immediate and compliant, ‘Why no sir, I don’t want the president to fail,’ is treated as some sort of act of treason, civil disobedience or political obstructionism,” Jindal said at a political fundraiser attended by 1,200 people. “This is political correctness run amok.”

Jindal said his answer is, “It depends on what he is trying to do.”

Absolutely, and that is what the rest of us have been talking about.

If Barack Obama wants to save the free markets, we’d support him. But we can see thus far that Obama has no interest in saving anything — he wants to destroy the free market so he can import European style socialism into the country. More regulations, more bureaucracy, more government control, more intervention, and less freedom — that’s Barack Obama’s America.

That’s also a second class America run by a Democrat kleptocracy in Washington.

We don’t want that, which is precisely why we want Obama to fail.

Here, though, is an important corollary. We know Obama’s policies will actually fail. They will fix nothing, but will destroy much. Sadly, to Barack Obama, those failures are how he defines success. Without the destruction, he can’t change the stars on the flag yellow and change the blue field on the flag red.

When we talk about this, we must speak clearly because of the corollary. We must point out that Barack Obama has been successful in getting his economic policies through Congress and we must point out that those policies have made things worse. The public grows weary of Obama trying to escape blame and put this all off on the Bush administration. He, after all, went begging for the job. The people gave it to him and don’t appreciate his feigned “I didn’t realize it would be like this” cry. He bought it, he broke it, he owns it.

Bobby Jindal can draw a crowd, it seems.

NRCC raises $6 million for annual dinner

The National Republican Congressional Committee raised more than $6 million for tonight’s annual March Dinner, surpassing its goal for the event.

95 percent of the GOP House Conference contributed to the event, the committee announced.

For those following at home, that will mostly wipe out the NRCC’s existing debt, assuming that they apply it accordingly; it’s also about a million more than their goal of $5 million. This dinner’s usually a good fundraiser for the GOP; in fact.  The Democrats’ first fundraising dinner is of course tomorrow, and is for the DNC: President Obama will be the highlight of the evening.

If you want to go to that, by the way, tickets are still available.

Moe Lane

Crossposted to Moe Lane.

This is disappointing. The Prowler, over at the American Spectator is going after Bobby Jindal this morning. Writes the Prowler:

Reichert hasn’t been sitting on his hands or worrying about the race. Instead, he’s been looking to build his war chest. That’s one reason he sought out Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal and asked if the popular conservative would be willing to travel to Washington state in early March to headline a fundraiser for him. Jindal declined through aides, citing scheduling conflicts.

So Reichert, according to the House leadership aide, was surprised to discover that Jindal showed up in Bellevue, Washington (the largest community in Reichert’s district), on March 5, for a two-tiered fundraiser hosted by the Clark County Republican Party. Jindal held a 7:30 a.m. roundtable policy discussion for $5,000 per individual or $10,000 per PAC contribution, and then a $1,000 per head breakfast for the others interested in meeting him. Jindal raised, according to state party sources, more than $100,000.

There’s just one problem: it’s not true.

I’ve checked with Governor Jindal’s staff. A trip to Washington State had been planned, but was cancelled. The governor was not there.

Geez. Welcome to the Republican circular firing squad.

A good compendium of counterattack links is found here. But if that isn’t enough, we also have Warner Todd Huston explaining why Jindal is so important and why the other side feels so compelled to take him down.

One can also watch the 60 Minutes piece on the Governor to realize the significance of Bobby Jindal. His political opponents realize that whatever the effect of one speech, the Governor will be a force to be reckoned with for decades to come and that his rise represents a threat against the established Democratic (note the absence of a small “d”) order. Thus the desperate attacks, launched at a fever pitch, to try to take the Governor down. It’s not working, of course, but that may not necessarily stop the Governor’s political opponents; as far as they are concerned, facts only get in the way when it comes to smearing and sliming Republicans.

Though I am sure that he doesn’t like it, and while the wording of his post tries to keep up a smidgen of controversy about the matter, even Kevin Drum is forced to admit that there’s not that much there there when it comes to attempting to manufacture a Jindal scandal. I would be even less generous, but at least, Drum makes it clear that there pretty much is nothing to the manufactured scandal.

Too bad his is a lonely voice on the other side of the partisan divide. But then, that is what happens when the overwhelming majority of people on the other side of the partisan divide simply choose not to be honest concerning this issue.

The defense of Bobby Jindal began here at RedState. You can read more about it here, here, here, and here.

To summarize: Some guy named Zachary Roth is apparently offended that Bobby Jindal is not a Democrat due to his skin color. Roth, who is apparently overly emotional, constructed a fable distorting Jindal’s story about Sheriff Harry Lee. The lefty blogs and MSNBC picked it up and broadcast Roth’s fable as truth and the true story as a fable.

The attacks are, superficially, about Jindal — a popular Republican who might one day challenge Obama. But dig deep, and the attacks are really about big government.

Here’s the story as recounted by Governor Jindal in the Republican response to Barack Obama’s non-State of the Union State of the Union Address:

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Emotionally unstable people, for reasons unknown to me, are frequent fabulists. I guess they need to compensate for the overly emotional life they suffer through. The lies help them cope. They become their reality and calm them.

Zachary Roth is apparently one of those people.

The New York Observer’s beleaguered media editor, Zachary Roth, “has quit,” according to Mediabistro. Word on the street since Roth took over the weekly’s press coverage in August, was that he might have been ill-prepared for the task. Roth was under so much pressure, in fact, that according to a source he broke down in the newsroom at one point.

It seems pretty certain now that he’s trying to rehabilitate himself as a left-wing hit man in the mode of David Brock, etc., by distorting Bobby Jindal’s story and then, as the facts come out, moving the goal posts further and further off the field.

Keith Olbermann suffers the same way, but then Olbermann is bat crap crazy. I don’t know whether this Roth guy is or not. But he’s definitely lying about Bobby Jindal — the liar accusing the honest person of lying. Typical leftist.

By the way, Ben Smith worked at the New York Observer for a while. Did he and Roth know each other there? Is that why he’s trying to carry water for Roth’s story?

Get over it, and stop with the one-handed typing on this story. Contra your increasingly wild-eyed protestations to the contrary, this story started with your pet failed sportscaster babbling about Bobby Jindal being 75 miles from New Orleans, mostly because he’s just smart enough to read what people like you put in front of him, and too dumb to read a map. And now that enough people from the Louisiana that’s in Reality Non-Unicorn have shown up to point this out, you’re trying to base your increasingly shaky case on a post that Ben Smith just keeps having to clarify and clarify and clarify. He’s at the stage where the Jindal people literally calling BS on this story, which puts us right back to the fact that this says nothing about Bobby Jindal, and everything about your inability to get past skin color.

Oh, and before you tell me that you don’t believe Jindal’s aides, shall we listen to the late Sheriff Lee himself? This is from when he endorsed Bobby for Governor: unlike you, he saw the content of the man’s character rather than the color of his skin.

God save me from the racism of the Online Left.  God save us all, in fact.

Moe Lane

PS: Thank you for confirming that you’re afraid of him. The smart thing would have been to just let the speech go.

PPS: I have to ask: is there sexing involved with this? Did they promise that you could wear the moose head during your session? - Because I have to say, you’re showing all the signs of being a person who has five hundred slightly different drawings of Sarah Palin being punched in the face saved on your hard drive.

The left wing has descended into asshattery to try to discredit Bobby Jindal’s story about Sheriff Harry Lee and Katrina.

The left accuses Bobby of not being near New Orleans when Katrina hit and only flying over.

Apparently, the left is now defining “during Katrina” as “when the hurricane was blowing over. That’s a big shift from 2005 when they were attacking Bush for delaying getting to New Orleans.

The asshats of the left, however, are going to have some trouble now. Here’s Sheriff Lee talking about Bobby being on the ground the “day after” the hurricane hit as the levees were collapsing and hell was actually then being unleashed.

Tuesday night, Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal recounted to the nation an anecdote about his experiences on the ground during Hurricane Katrina, citing a meeting with Jefferson Parish Sheriff Harry Lee. On Wednesday night’s telecast, apparently relying exclusively on the speculations of left-wing bloggers far from Louisiana, MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann called Jindal a liar, not only saying that this anecdote was “apparently not true” but claiming that Jindal was “about 75 miles away in Baton Rouge” and “when he did tour the immediate disaster area, he did so by air, flying over it.”

If NBC News has any respect whatsoever for factual accuracy, it will require Olbermann to retract that accusation and make a public apology to Jindal on air.

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We all saw the rocky performance that Bobby Jindal gave in his response to the president’s not-the-state-of-the-union speech earlier this week. There was a lot of wincing going on during and after his performance. But, let me stress the word “performance,” here. It was NOT the basic theme of the speech that was so bad. It was but how he delivered it.

Still, despite his less than show-stopping performance, a lot of second guessing on Jindal started to waft about conservative circles. The “he’s not ready yet” stuff was everywhere. So, we need to remind ourselves of just what sort of stuff Governor Jindal is made of. That reminder comes in the form of his reaction and efforts during Hurricane Katrina. If you want a show-stopping performance, there you have one.

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But not to their own facts:

In giving the republican response to President Obama’s speech Tuesday night, Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal pointed out fundamental differences in how republicans and democrats see the economy.

Wednesday morning on the CBS Early Show, Vice President Joe Biden asked, “But what I don’t understand from Governor Jindal is what would he do? In Louisiana, there’s 400 people a day losing their jobs. What’s he doing?”

But that claim is wrong if you look at the numbers from the Louisiana Workforce Commission.

“In December, Louisiana was the only state in the nation besides the District of Columbia, according to the national press release, that added employment over the month,” said Patty Granier with the Louisiana Workforce Commission.

“The state gained 3,700 jobs for the seasonally adjusted employment,” Granier said of the most recent figures.

Those numbers are available on Louisiana’s employment website, laworks.net.

To be fair to the Vice President, he probably did not know the website number.

Related to the discussion concerning Bobby Jindal, as Brother Erick writes, everyone and their pet canaries on the other side of the partisan divide are after him and are seeking to lie about the work he did in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. At first blush, it strikes one as amazing that so much of a fuss is made of the person who delivered the GOP response to Barack Obama’s non-State of the Union address . . . until one remembers that Governor Jindal’s work in reviving a Louisiana battered by the corruption and incompetence of a predecessor Democratic Governor, Jindal’s own expertise on a whole host of policy issues–including health care–and his inspiring background and highly impressive intellect make him a tremendous threat to Democratic dreams of electoral dominance.

If the Democrats did not fear Bobby Jindal, they would not be paying so much attention to him. The Governor ought to be flattered.

Welcome to the leftwing asshats coming over to check out this post. Note you’re being brought here instead of to say this post or this post or this post.

“During Hurricane Katrina, I and former Sheriff Harry Lee were with (then Congressman) Bobby Jindal more than anybody else from the federal government. He didn’t wait for cameras or permission — he was boots on the ground, and anyone that disputes that obviously wasn’t in Louisiana.” — Jefferson Parish Sheriff Newell Normand, Democrat

Something is rotten at TPM.

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You see, President Obama is supposed to be the only minority who is allowed to address — and inspire — the American people (not to mention the fact that Jindal’s politics are all wrong, making him the worst possible kind of minority).

Listen to the clip below and you’ll hear Keith Olbermann [Someone on the set; it sounds like KO to me] mutter “Oh, God,” as Jindal walks out to give his response to Obama’s fake State of the Union address.

Olbermann, unsurprisingly, isn’t a big fan of Jindal, nor of the idea of Republicans actually getting a chance to speak in public at all (let alone in response to his beloved Dear Leader’s big national address).

Just don’t question his obvious objectivity — he’s a BIG, OBJECTIVE man in BIG, OBJECTIVE media, after all (don’t look at the ratings; just ask him!)

Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell and House Republican leader John Boehner today jointly announce that Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal will give the response to President Obama’s budget message on February 24:

Gov. Jindal to Deliver Republican Address to the Nation on February 24
-Speech to immediately follow President Obama’s First Address to Congress-

WASHINGTON, DC –House Republican Leader John Boehner (OH) and Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell (KY) announced today that Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal will give the Republican address following the President’s first address to Congress on February 24, 2009. The Governor will speak to the nation from Baton Rouge, LA.

In making the announcement, Leader Boehner noted the Governor’s leadership and innovation in public service:

“Gov. Jindal embodies what I have long said: the Republican Party must not be simply the party of ‘opposition,’ but the party of better solutions. His stewardship of the state of Louisiana, dedication to reforming government, and commitment to bringing forth new and innovative ideas make him a leader not just within the Republican Party, but in our nation as a whole.”

Sen. McConnell said the Governor personified reform and recovery, saying he was a strong choice to offer the Republican address:

“Gov. Jindal’s leadership during a time of recovery in Louisiana, his commitment to real government reform, and his protection of hardworking American families make him an excellent choice to offer Republican solutions for the challenges which lay ahead.”

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