Train rolls by

I had to politely give a coworker a smackdown the other day, when he started complaining about the "pork" in the stimulus law, specifically pointing to the so-called Sin Express, the fictional $8 billion earmark supposedly providing for a high speed train from Las Vegas to Los Angeles. Republicans have continued to rant and rave about this to their gullible ideological adherents in order to highlight their newly-rediscovered claim to fiscal responsibility, despite the fact that there is no such earmark.  And the so-called liberal media has continued to report it, assuming that its audience is as intellectually lazy as are its "journalists."

Matt Yglesias has been the go-to guy on this story, pointing out the ongoing dishonesty of the likes of John Boehner and John McCain, and the incompetence of the media's reporting of the issue.

In the face of this nonsense, on Tuesday night I had the misfortune to read Bobby Jindal's ill-fated Republican Response to the non-State of the Union.  Jindal, a former member of Congress and the current Governor of Louisiana, is touted as the Future of the Republican Party, hailed by Republican Party Ayatollah and puppet-master Rush Limbaugh, as "brilliant," "the next Ronald Reagan." 

Along with his now-admitted fictional account about his never-actually-happened experience with a Louisiana sheriff in the midst of Katrina flooding, pretending to have taken the initiative in the face of federal government bureaucracy and incompetence (explain to me again why a Republican wants to remind us of the Bush Administration's response to Katrina), the Future of the Republican Party has hurled himself onto the bogus stimulus-bashing bandwagon. Giving himself the cover of the always useful "such as" - hey, he never said the money was actually being used for that, nudge-nudge, wink-wink - Governor Jindal came up with this little gem:

While some of the projects in the bill make sense, their legislation is larded with wasteful spending. It includes $300 million to buy new cars for the government, $8 billion for high-speed rail projects, such as a "magnetic levitation" line from Las Vegas to Disneyland, and $140 million for something called "volcano monitoring." Instead of monitoring volcanoes, what Congress should be monitoring is the eruption of spending in Washington, D.C.

Which is fantastic in terms of imagery, but patently absurd in terms of reality.  Jindal mocks actual, legitimate and smart spending with real stimulative impact, like the hybrid car purchasing provision and, yes, high-speed rail.  Blind to the obvious comparison of the failure to properly prepare for and respond to the Katrina disaster to other potential natural disasters - in a speech where he witlessly, dishonestly, but expressly reminded us about Katrina, no less - Jindal mocks important safety programs, like volcano monitoring. Yeah, Rush, this guy is brilliant. The next Ronald Reagan, for sure. I mean, sheesh! 

Yet Jindal parades out his most creative outrage for a contemporary program mockingly mischaracterized as a Disney-esque "magnetic levitation" train, an $8 billion boondoggle direct high-speed train route from Las Vegas to Los Angeles, imagineered by the Republicans to offend Main Street. Just to make sure you get the point, the rail line has now morphed into a direct connection to Disneyland. Truly a visit to Fantasyland.

Are you trying to insinuate something? Say no more.

All of which should be ridiculous enough as it is.

As we know, however, dishonesty and silliness is never quite sufficient for the GOP. Today's Republican Party cannot be satisfied unless they can mix in a little bit (or a lot) of hypocrisy. This morning, the New Orleans Times-Picayune has this report (via Yglasias):

Louisiana's transportation department plans to request federal dollars for a New Orleans to Baton Rouge passenger rail service from the same pot of railroad money in the president's economic stimulus package that Gov. Bobby Jindal criticized as unnecessary pork on national television Tuesday night.

So get to the point, Bobby.  You're a man of the world, aren't you?  You've been there.  

What's it like?