Golly gee wilickers, Bobby Jindal sure has some strange ideas about how medicine works.
He’s also extremely careful and calculated, personality traits that come out during even the most mundane activities, like taking pills. Jindal, who has a background in biology, medicine and public policy, never follows the directions on prescription medicines. “I always just take half the dose,” he says. “I’m very cautious.”
Cautious, in Jindal’s book, means only killing half the bacteria when he’s got an infection. Taking on the other half might… wait, f*** it, this guy’s CRAZY! What? This guy has a background in medicine? What? He’s not even remotely rational in his own areas of supposed expertise.
And yeah, that pretty much explains Lobby Bobby Jindal’s approach to the economic recession, also. “Let’s only fix half the problem, and let the rest spiral out of control! Because we’re cautious, see?”
Fun tidbits from the article:
The branding of Bobby Jindal started in 1996, when former Gov. Mike Foster plucked his Republican protégé out of virtual obscurity—Jindal was contemplating a career in law or medicine—and appointed him secretary of the Department of Health and Hospitals. Foster had been hearing good things about Jindal from members of Louisiana’s congressional delegation who had reviewed a Medicaid proposal written by the young go-getter. He was only 24. Two years later, which is the average amount of time Jindal has spent doing anything since entering public life, he was appointed by members of Congress to be executive director of the National Bipartisan Commission on the Future of Medicare.
After a year of working with the feds, Foster lured Jindal back to Louisiana in 1999 and made him president of the University of Louisiana System. Word of Jindal’s work traveled through upper circles again, this time reaching the White House. In 2001, President Bush tapped Jindal to be assistant secretary for planning and evaluation of Health and Human Services.
Oh, so Jindal’s made a career of being ill-informed and underprepared. Now it all makes sense. This is the natural career path of the Young Bush Republican – get politically promoted without accomplishing anything until finally you can run for president.
There are two votes in particular where Jindal supported killing ethics investigations related to convicted lobbyist Jack Abramoff.
So much for “Mr. Ethics”.
He currently supports a veto override if Bush tries to kill a water bill for Louisiana, voted in favor of a Democrat-heavy farm bill, endorsed the populist minimum-wage hike and rejected a Bush-backed trade bill early in his congressional career. “I’m happy to agree with my party when they’re right,” Jindal says. “But party doesn’t come first.”
Still, Jindal has supported billions in funding for the war in Iraq, and he has also been known to vote against his own measures to stay in step with the GOP. In June, Jindal attached an amendment to an interior appropriations bill offering an extra $2.5 million for the Gulf of Mexico Program, which was short on money for research. The following day, Jindal joined the Republican House delegation in voting against the bill that contained his amendment. “I was pleased to get the attention for the issue and the funding, but I couldn’t support the overall bill because of its pork-barrel spending,” Jindal explains.
Like many Republicans, Bobby defines “pork barrell spending” as “spending which does not further my future electoral prospects”. Except when KBR spends billions to give our troops diseases; that’s how he and the GOP define “patriotism”.