Saturday, December 6, 2008

Looking Ahead

A couple other interesting articles I found on Republicans looking ahead to what they will have to do for 2012. Many believe that they will regain popularity once Democrats raise tax cuts--which will in turn anger many people. But, on the other hand, if the Dems. help stimulate the economy, create better health care plans, work to create new jobs and help the environment with green energy--then they will have a tough battle.

GOP defining itself

I came across this article on MSNBC about how the GOP will define itself in 2010. The current issues with bailing out the auto industry will fall on their shoulders: if they fail to help them out, and the economy worsens, they will be to blame. A lot of these problems that we are facing today are because of the poor decisions that the Republicans made while they were in office and I think the elections in 2010 and 2012 will try to reflect a new way of thinking. Already we see people from the party, including Jindal (in the video I posted the other day) saying that Yes, the Republicans made some mistakes, they need to acknowledge that and then move on to try improve the situation. I think any candidate that would back anything that has happened would have a hard time gaining popularity. Jindal knows that the GOP climate right now is not positive, and if he, or anybody else on the republican ticket wants a chance, they need to be the first to acknowledge that they messed up and it can't happen again!

Fox twists it up again

Fox, the "Fair and Just" news program just can't stop twisting the news, or reporting on things that really don't matter, like this article about hwo much money Obama spent on campaigning, including temporary tattoos!
Hmmm..but I forget? How much money did we spend on this war in Iraq? And how many billions of dollars are we in debt now because of what this administration did??

Friday, December 5, 2008

Jindal states that we should allow oil exploration in more U.S. places, like coastlines and wilderness areas so that we aren't so dependent on foreign oil, yet check out these statistics I found:
Rated 0% by the CAF, indicating opposition to energy independence.
Jindal scores 0% by CAF on energy issues
OnTheIssues.org interprets the 2005-2006 CAF scores as follows:

0% - 30%: opposition of energy independence (approx. 206 members)
30% - 70%: mixed record on energy independence (approx. 77 members)
70%-100%: support for energy independence (approx. 183 members)

He also talks about implementing clean/renewable energy, but he votes against most things that would help promote this.

Voted NO on removing oil & gas exploration subsidies. Creating Long-term Energy Alternatives for the Nation (CLEAN) Act
Opponents support voting NO because:
I am wearing this red shirt today, because this shirt is the color of the bill that we are debating, communist red. It is a taking. It will go to court, and it should be decided in court.
This bill will increase the competitive edge of foreign oil imported to this country. If the problem is foreign oil, why increase taxes and make it harder to produce American oil and gas? That makes no sense. We should insert taxes on all foreign oil imported. That would raise your money for renewable resources. But what we are doing here today is taxing our domestic oil. We are raising dollars supposedly for renewable resources, yet we are still burning fossil fuels.


First off, our problems with global warming and depleting environment aren't going to change if we can't stop saying we are are going to implement clean renewable energy, yet still working with oil. We've had the technology for solar, and wind power for YEARS ..theres no reason why more can't be done right now.

If I were on Jindals campaign team I would have to make his position on these issues look positive. He does want money raised for renewable resources and our dependence on foreign oil to start. He also believes in creating more jobs here in the U.S. with clean gas, since most of them are currently overseas. He is aware of the fact that by working on renewable resources we will create thousands of green jobs--helping to stimulate the economy and put a damper on global warming.
This amendment takes out all of the energy production. It is a callous disregard for the jobs that have been lost over the last 30 years of following an anti-energy policy. The people who work in oil and gas, their jobs are in the Middle East or Canada. We have exported their jobs. If this amendment passes, we are going to send the rest of them. We should know how important it is to create jobs in this country, to create clean natural gas in this country, so that it can be the bridge to the future.

Jindal on getting Republicans back





Jindal does another interview with Fox. It seems that he is trying to gain popularity by acknolwedging the fact that the Republicans have messed up. Without actually answering the question she throws at him about if he believes the current administration is to blame, he dances around it by saying that the Republicans aren't ahead in the senate anymore, and that is because they have been saying things they don't follow through with--that was the breakdown of the Republican party. I notice he also talks about many other issues within the questions he's asked--trying to get out his ideas on healhcare, the economy, welfare, government spending etc. He's not afraid to say what he believes, he's taking every opportunity he gets to get his beliefs out. "Conservative solutions" seems to be his favorite phrase.

Environment: Energy--'conservative solutions'. He believes we need more domestic oil and gas production, nuclear, biofuel, clean energy. So we're not as dependent on other countries. He believes this will help the auto companys and generate new jobs.

Thursday, December 4, 2008

I had to post this, as I am the "Environmental Campaign Manager" for Jindal 2012, and me just thinking it's very important!

Robert Redford speaks out on Rachel Maddow about Bush's secret plan to open wilderness in Utah to drilling before he leaves office! How sneaky!

The Non-Obama

The more I read about Bobby Jindal the more I think the tag line" The Next Obama" is so false...
check out his policies and voting record here and you'll see what I mean.

On a different note, that of technology and the media, I found this article on NPR today about "media ecology"--how our lives are basically run by the media mania that surrounds us. In case you don't have time to go to the article heres an interesting tidbit:
"For example, we feel swamped by how much information is instantly available on the front page of The New York Times or on NPR.org. But Berreby notes that a tribal African who hunted to survive would be swamped by information when seeing a wildebeest in a field: Male or female? Alone? Wind direction? Predators nearby? What kind of trees in the distant forest? None of this data is mediated, trivial or distant. We have (had?) a lot of Darwinian hard-wiring to process that kind of data.
That isn't true of media information: It doesn't engage all the senses. It is all crafted by humans, much of it deliberately intended to sell or market or be addictive — or get our attention. It is harder to filter this information than unmediated information, harder to attend to only the important. "We aren't overwhelmed by information," Berreby said. "We're overwhelmed by information anxiety."


I know I definitly feel overwhelemed and anxious when looking at certain news websites or any website really that has too much stuff! Yes, if we have an hour of free browsing time it's fine, but who really does have that time? So--the question then is: what does this mean for Jindal and the future of campaigns with media? While most Americans soak up all the technology (youtube, facebook, myspace, twittering, comedy central ...) I think many are certainly feeling overwhelemed as the article says. When it gets to be too much, what do you do? Unplug from it all!

So what would happen if we just unplugged? Where would our main source of news come from? Well, the daily papers and journals I suppose that you could subscribe to or pick up at the library. Word-of- mouth for sure--nothing spreads faster, but then theres the truth factor with that. Perhaps radio, which is free of visual stimuli. There are still other sources to go to, but when it comes down to it if you want to be up to the minute on what is going on, you'll find the best media outlet. However, Jindal and any future candidate need to realize that too much media might not be a good idea.
On a side note, I think one plus for The Atlantic is that their website isn't very cluttered. It's just enough and has a nice visual appeal.