Good news from the old home state

I moved from Louisiana to Houston in 1998 for employment. I applied to the Louisiana State Police and after initial acceptance to academy class 76, they rejected me. I failed the psych test.

No comments from the peanut gallery.

Fast forward to 2005 and we pretty much saw Louisiana in general and New Orleans in particular poorly in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. The clueless Mayor of New Orleans and the idiot Governor didn't put the government in the best of lights. And our football team had it's pretty much worst record in it's history Yes, I know we won more than 1980 but still, this was bad, then again when your stadium was destroyed, you're practicing on a high school baseball field, you got problems.

Fast forward to 2007 and we rid ourselves of this idiot who occupied the governor's mansion and put in a competent leader. Bobby Jindal is truly among the best and the brightest.

Every morning I get the Morning Jolt from National Review and I was happy to see this article on Governer Jindal.

1. Meanwhile, Down in Louisiana . . .

I thought about making a list of "Bobby Jindal Facts," in the vein of the Rick Perry Facts that have left us laughing in the past weeks and months. But I realized that with Jindal, wacky exaggerations are less eye-opening than some actual Bobby Jindal facts.

Ready to feel old? He turned 40 in June.

As far as I can tell, having spent much of Wednesday with him, he barely eats and he doesn't go to the bathroom. What's more, apparently his security detail noticed this during the Gulf Oil spill, and the police told each other to eat hearty breakfasts before their shifts because as far as they could tell, the governor didn't stop to eat.

At one point, during the BP oil-spill crisis, the federal government didn't like the use of certain watercraft designed to suck the oil out of the water and wanted to bar its use, out of concerns that some of the vacuumed oil might spill back into the water.

He tries to do at least two public events a day, preferably outside of the state capitol of Baton Rouge. This apparently has thrown off some Louisianans, not used to seeing their governor so frequently.

All that stuff taking up space in your garage? The firewood pile, the old kids' toys, the stuff from country fairs from long ago, etc? It's in the Governor's Mansion garage, as well.

I realize the schedule of events -- a visit to a charter school, a visit to a Catholic school where certain students are assisted by state-run "scholarships" (a lot like vouchers, yet somehow exponentially less controversial), a "state of the state" address to a chamber of commerce, a visit to a reopened aluminum-processing plant celebrating its 250th new job -- are all designed to make Jindal's term look like a cavalcade of policy triumphs. I realize I'm supposed to be impressed, and you can't get a complete look at a state, even with a marathon of events.

But from what I've seen so far, I can't shake the feeling that the past years have seen a fundamental transformation in Louisiana. Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath have to have been about as hard a time as any state has ever endured, yet the failure of so many of the state's leaders during that crisis forced the residents to rethink all of their old ways of doing business. And with new ideas and new leaders comes new hope. At a time when the news out of Washington seems relentlessly bad, I've seen a thriving high-school student in New Orleans' Ninth Ward describe her determination to go to Boston University, and her classmates at least appearing to excel at pre-calculus. The roomful of business owners at the Chamber of Commerce luncheon nodded in agreement that their children and grandchildren would find good jobs in this state instead of Texas or elsewhere. At the plant, more than 70 workers who worked at the closed plant before have now returned. And the voucher -- sorry, "scholarship" school, a pre-K child just came up and hugged me. That doesn't happen often in political journalism.

Of course, while I've been galavanting around the Bayou State and having my faith restored, the wheels of the political world continue to turn.

He did have a down moment in the response to B Hussein Obama's first State of the Union address but he has shown what leadership can do. Louisiana is making progress. Slowly but LA is moving in the right direction. That cannot be said of the California or New York.

Sometimes it takes hitting bottom to show what your are made of of and Katrina was the worse. But progress has been made. The feds finally played hard ball with the state and got them in getting rid of 17 levee districts around New Orleans so the now two levee boards can be interested in, get this, flood control and levee maintenance. As opposed to justifying someone's worthless job. Orleans Parish (New Orleans) has combined the two sheriff office's (they had both a civil and criminal sheriff for years) and that will get rid of a lot of the dead wood.

It took a hurricane to get Louisiana back up. Will it take a major earthquake in California or New York for them to get back up. Or will it take leadership both states are desperately missing right now. Time will tell.

And Jindal is only 40...President in 2020 or so is not out of the possibility for a Senator Jindal

Also, Saints are making another legit run for the Superbowl. Giants, they should make it in the playoffs. Jets, Chargers and 49ers...don't make me laugh.

Have a great day

Again, better times! :)